photo of Clay Parker and Jodi James by Michael Tucker
Album photo credit: Jodi James
Clay Parker & Jodi James On Going Electric and Finding Your Very Own Dream
Clay Parker and Jodi James released their latest album, Your Very Own Dream, on January 19th, 2024, and it marks a few years since they had put together a collection, though they have continued live playing when possible during this time. Part of the journey through the last few years was marked by delays and uncertainties due to Covid, but for Parker and James, this has also been a period of discovery with a big impact on this latest batch of songs. For them, this has also been the jumping off point into electric instruments and adding more of a rhythm section to their work.
Blending Americana and folk elements has always been home territory for Parker and James, even during their solo years, but it took an experience getting a little out of their comfort zone and playing outside of their home studio to really get them hooked on the possibilities that electric bass and drums could offer, followed by electric guitar. Conceptually, this may seem like a big break with their past, but sonically, that’s far from the truth. Your Very Own Dream brings in multiple layers and textures that enhance a certain dream-like quality that’s always been alluring in their songs, and the blend of traditional and modern ideas in their lyrics also continues unabated. I spoke with Clay Parker and Jodi James about this rather seamless transition and the songs on Your Very Own Dream.
Americana Highways: I know that this album went through various phases of writing and recording and I was wondering about how that affected your view of the songs. I know that it went through a period of recording in your own studio, but there was also studio time elsewhere later. Then there was some more work right at the end.
Clay Parker: We started really thinking about a record prior to Covid. We felt like it was time to put out a record again. We started the first stages, gathering songs together, and then Covid happened. Towards the end of 2020, we tried to get some of the stuff recorded and down. We didn’t know when it might come out. We did three days’ worth of sessions with just us two. There’s a whole acoustic version of this record that was recorded at that time!
As the world played out, for whatever reason, those recordings just didn’t feel like they were saying what we wanted to say. We felt good about the songs.
Jodi James: But what we captured was something we’d done before.
Clay Parker: The word we kept using around that time was “safe.” It was also around that time that we started wondering, “What would this duo be like with a couple of electric guitars?” We started kind of moving in that direction and, it all feels like it was a very long time between these sessions now, but it didn’t feel like it at the time. Those couple of years flew by. That led us to late summer of 2022 when we picked things back up, but we had a whole new outlook about how we wanted it to sound.
That’s when we got out of town and visited our friends in Fort Worth who have a studio. Ryan Tharp is the engineer on that and Clint Kirby is a drummer who we’ve always loved. We brought our friend Dave Hinson along with us to play bass, and I think we had a session of about six hours where we laid down three songs. Those are the songs on the album that have the drums and electric bass on them.
Jodi: It was all live. We did that all live together, which felt really nice, to be in a room with people again. But after that, we came back home and the rest we recorded in our home studio with Dave.
Clay: We felt like we had momentum after that Fort Worth session.
AH: Your approach to this development is really interesting because for a lot of people when they decided to add more elements, it’s more of a production thing, and they don’t focus on the live aspect. But in your case, you stayed with your preferred method of recording live together, even though you wanted new more electric and heavier elements.
Jodi: Production is not so important to us. [Laughs]
AH: Because you were doing things live, did you talk about sound at all with each other before jumping into recording?
Clay: We didn’t really talk a whole lot about it. I think we showed Dave some of the songs when we were about to get to the studio in Fort Worth, as we were driving up there. He made some notes and then we got to the studio and played them once through for Clint, and he made some notes.
Jodi: I don’t think we wanted to give them too much direction and I think that’s why we chose these people. We knew that we could trust them to feel everything and jump right in. We were curious as to where they would take it instead of us just directing them.
AH: And Dave had played with you on everything before, I think, so he probably had a real feeling for where you were going.
Clay: Yes! But as far as the sound, we didn’t even talk about that much with Ryan. He set up the amps he wanted to use and suggested guitars for Jodi. Then we started making noise! It was a fast thing.
AH: Can you remember what your reaction was to hearing the drums and electric bass on these songs for the first time, that made you realize, “Yes, this is the right direction for us!”
Jodi: I’ll tell you, on the “Matchbook” song, that’s one that Clay and I have played together with acoustic guitars, but what you hear on the record is the first take, it sounded so perfect! We actually had to cut out me at the end of the song saying, “Fuuuuuuck!” [Laughs] So, yeah, that was the first take and it felt so good.
Clay: That song is one that we’ve always played as a minor key ballad, so it was one of those things that when the band came in, it became a dragging, Rock ‘n Roll thing.
Jodi: But it continued to have that folky, vernacular content, so the contrast is kind of cool between the content of the song and the production of it.
AH: It’s definitely got a bigger sound and I could hear the layers of the song very distinctly with each given its own space. Along with the dual vocals, it’s a very robust song with a lot of energy to it. Are these all songs that had been played live before or were they written totally in private?
Clay: Most of them we had played out.
Jodi: I think “In the Cool of the Evening” might be the only one that we had not played out.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=lKzIkqnLIsw%3Fsi%3DleomMbXOWup4-N4g
Clay: The song “Nothing At All” was relatively new. We hadn’t played that one out that much. That was one that we had to kind of figure out in the studio and make some changes. Also “Your Very Own Dream” was a relatively new one.
Jodi: Well, we didn’t play a whole lot from 2020 to 2022. We both had day jobs, Covid was still around, and gathering at shows was still few and far between. So a lot of them we had played, but not a whole lot.
AH: Obviously, not playing a whole lot during that time was weird for you, as it was for so many musicians. But was it also weird for you because you often changed songs a lot during performance and before recording them?
Clay: Oh yes. We would play a song live, and change it up, and ask, “How did that one feel?”
Jodi: Yes, songs often arrive somewhere where they feel usual and natural, and then we capture them like that. So this was a little bit backwards.
AH: It makes perfect sense that the recording sessions took more than one approach without that developmental period, but also you were reaching a new phase in terms of sound, so it’s so cool that you found it in the end. Do you feel like the experiences recording this album will change the way that you do things in the future?
Jodi: I think so, yeah!
Clay: For sure. We’re still in that phase of excitement about how our live shows are going, now. I know it may seem like such a small deal, but just moving from acoustic instruments to electric instruments is a big deal for us. Since that’s the only thing besides our voices that’s happening, changing that little bit, that’s changing 50% of how we do things. It was a big deal and it still is a big deal. It still feels exciting. We’re still discovering how to do it and what has positive effects.
Jodi: It brings a lot more in terms of dynamics and I think that is helpful for us. Most of the time, it is just our instruments and our voices, and now I feel like there are a lot more layers to work with. There are sonic textures and things like that which we didn’t have before and we’re still finding our place in all that, finding out what works for us.
AH: Has it been challenging transitioning to playing electric?
Clay: We’ve been transitioning for about a year and a half now. That’s how we do things now. It’s still just us two, but we have some opportunities coming up where we’ll have the band. Our album release show on the 19th of January in Baton Rouge will have a rhythm section, and possibly some festivals we’ll be playing. Anytime you’re trying something new, there’s a first hump that you have to get over where you say, “I don’t care. I don’t care what other people will say. We have to try this. If we like it, we’ll work on it and development.” I’m sure our first half-dozen shows were iffy-sounding. [Laughs] But we’ve gotten over that first hump.
Jodi: Admittedly, coming up in the folk world, I think we have a little bit of an older audience. At first, when we brought out the electric guitars, they thought it was going to be something else. But it’s just us doing the same thing! It’s not like we’re super-loud, it’s just texturally, a little different. It also breathes new life into our old songs, so it’s good for us and them. It’s having fun playing and experimenting on stage.
AH: These are very much still your songs and recognizable as the way you like to express things. I don’t think this is a big departure, it just brings more nuance to the songs. The video you have out for “Nothing At All” actually suggests a bit of newness to what you’re doing right now. It shows you exploring the song in new ways, I think.
Jodi: We had a lot of fun working on that one with a friend. Clay did have the idea to use that space, Mid City Ballroom, and that’s where we’ll be having our CD release show. It’s a great space. It felt so cool and natural to work with friends on that. That whole process felt really good.
AH: That song, “Nothing At All” is more gentle and reflective, though each song on the album is pretty different. It’s also a little darker, with the images of seasons changing. I loved the lyrics about the washing machine. It’s very much about daily life, but it’s so universal that it could almost work for other time periods as well.
Jodi: That one is a little bit different. I had written that one beforehand, then I brought it to Clay. I feel like we have a few on the record like that one, that leans heavily towards me in terms of composition. Then there were a few that Clay worked on before he brought them to us. I revisited some of the older themes of some of my solo work, and it was fun to bring some of that to what we were doing. It was fun to bring in a little bit of melodrama.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=MTMFn1eptFY%3Fsi%3DJd0_ITAb2O8UMc3X
AH: This does a good job of dramatizing frustration. Another great song with its own video is “Fire For The Water.” This song is so interesting because a lot of it feels like it could have been written a hundred years ago. But the way you cut things together feels so personal. How was that one written?
Clay: That was one that I had a heavier hand on in terms of lyrics. That’s kind of typical of how I write most of the time. Most of the time, it’s little four line or three line snippets that I’ll hang onto if I like them. In the past couple of years, I started using my phone for this stuff, but in my notes on my phone, I have something called “The Document.” It’s probably sixty or so verses where one of them has nothing to do with the next. It’s just lines. That’s how I write, in these snapshots. If I can come up with some kind of melody and five or six of them fit together, I’ll bring them to Jodi and we’ll start to whittle at it. She’s just so good with melodies that she can almost immediately create something beautiful.
Jodi: That’s one of those where people can probably sing along with the chorus after hearing it one time.
AH: I also love your title track, “Your Very Own Dream.” Where it appears as the title of the album, it feels almost romantic and sweet, but once you hear the song, it’s a very different idea! Because our dreams can drive us crazy, and they are also things we have very little control over.
[Laughter]
Jodi: Yes, absolutely.
Clay: That song came from snapshot verses, but all that took place in one afternoon where we put the song together. Jodi had woken up with a strange dream, and that’s what that first line is. Later on that day, we found out that John Prine died, and that’s in the second line, “We heard the news that they were hauling you away.” It’s two unrelated things that came together, and that’s how the song took shape.
Jodi: That was the tone of the day for us.
AH: That explains a lot of the feeling of the song, since there’s a foreboding feeling, but also a questioning feeling, asking what this means about the future.
Jodi & Clay: Yes.
Thanks very much for chatting with us, Clay Parker and Jodi James! Find more information here on their website: https://clayparkerandjodijames.com/
Enjoy our previous coverage here: REVIEW: Clay Parker and Jodi James “The Lonesomest Sound” is Refreshingly Great Album
