Ana Egge photo by Lorenzo Wolff
Ana Egge ’s Sharing In The Spirit Gives Songs Their Moment
Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter, frequent musical collaborator, and apprentice luthier Ana Egge will be releasing her 13th studio album, Sharing in the Spirit on May 17th, 2024, which was recorded, like her previous album Between Us, with Lorenzo Wolff. The songs hail from a sound world that is both folk-leaning and gently experimental while pulling in blues and rock traditions where and when they are needed. While there is a loose but prevailing theme of finding common ground as individuals among the songs, each separate composition really follows its own path, and it turns out, that was intended from the beginning by Egge.
Approaching this batch of songs, Egge gave full attention to each track, even recording it before moving onto writing or thinking about the next one. Shaking off any overarching ideas about these songs and how they might relate to each other, she and Wolff pursued the importance of fun and being in the moment with each song. Commonalities still emerged under their own steam, and finding herself with an album after all, Egge is gearing up for touring where she intends to play the album in full for audiences. I spoke with Ana Egge about creating Sharing in the Spirit, a title which is also an apt way of describing the way the songs in the collection relate to each other.
Americana Highways: I understand that you’ll be playing the album Sharing in the Spirit in full on your upcoming tour. Is that common for you?
Ana Egge: I performed an album in its entirety in 2004 called Out Past The Lights. I was just moved again by that album and did a whole set of songs from that record.
Americana Highways: Albums often have a kind of shared mood or shared world, so if they are presented together, they create that again in a live setting.
AE: I think that’s true. They also really speak of the time in your life when you wrote them. In my life, I’ve had many great, collaborative relationships with musicians. Many of the people who I have on the record and have more recently met I’ve been excited about. Then we have this moment in the studio where magic happens. Then, revisiting that magic live with the songs can be really special, especially if some of those musicians are around to step back on stage with me.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=hNW5Sfio8jc%3Fsi%3DmrVOoM_HynFmJOMp
AH: In speaking to older musicians, I’ve asked how their songs might change for them over time, but it sounds like, for you, it’s more about touching base with that time again.
AE: I think, simultaneously, both things are true. For some of my songs, I still have new realizations about what they are about. Often, I’ll have written a song years before, and I’ll still have moments where I think, “Oh! That’s what that means!” There’s a certain amount of collaborating with the invisible, or the Muse, for lack of a better word, when you’re writing.
Then there’s being a fan of something once it’s done, thinking, “This song is so cool!” Then, there’s interacting with the song and witnessing it over the years. Even as I’m playing it, I’m witnessing the song. I have changed. Maybe it’s my perception that’s changed. Or maybe it’s what it’s bringing up for me in the moment. There are more meanings.
AH: Are these songs on Sharing in the Spirit from a long period of writing, or a more recent one?
AE: They are all new.
AH: I heard that you had taken a singles approach at first, just creating one song at a time. Was it on a day-by-day basis?
AE: I wanted to do something new. This is my 13th record. I talked myself into thinking, “Maybe I’m not making a record.” [Laughs] Because I just wanted to do something new. I would write a song, get excited about it, then go into the studio. Then I’d write another song or two, get pumped about it, go into he studio. Everything was super fresh and had a lot of energy. It was only about that song at the moment.
In that way, it was different, because I wasn’t thinking about all 10 or 12 songs at once. I wasn’t figuring out the budget and how many days I could be in the studio. There weren’t as many limits or ideas holding it back. The expectation wasn’t there, either. I wasn’t tied to the idea that I had to continue to write songs in order to put out a record. That was very freeing. I was able to be in the moment with the song each time.
AH: It makes sense, because if someone sat down to write a novel, and had an incredibly detailed plan, with every day accounted for, that could be quite a heavy thing. You could lose any sense of really wanting to do it. But if you were writing it as fragments that might go into a book, that’s a whole different feeling.
AE: Yes, right! And being in the moment of creating and making is that kind of super-engaged, awake feeling that I love so much. It’s where you allow yourself to see what happens. There were so many moments in recording these songs that were like that. Because we didn’t have those rules, we could record stuff, and say, “That’s just not right. Let’s do it again.” We’d use different instruments, even different musicians. Then it would sound great.
AH: I’ve rarely heard people doing what you’re describing, as it happens. The exceptions are people I’ve known who live near their producers and studios, and can just go over for a song or two. But you and Lorenzo had worked together, I know. What did he think of this approach?
AE: That was so fun because we’d worked on a record before, which was also created in a totally different and weird situation, because it was during the pandemic. We were all masked. It was so weird that when the whole record was done and we were sending the files off to the mixer, we walked out of the studio, then we took off our masks, saying goodbye. And I thought, “Oh, that’s what you look like!” That was so weird. Talk about different!
But Lorenzo is someone I love and we really have such playful, kid energy. He uses the word “fun” as much as I do, unironically. He was totally down with this approach. I would send him a demo and he’d say, “When?! When can we do it?!” I also play multiple instruments, and so does he, so we have a lot of freedom of expression in exploring and stretching into songs without anyone else there.
AH: Were the songs also mixed and produced separately?
AE: They were all mixed by Daniel Goodwin once we had finished the recording. They were all done in a batch. At a certain point, I thought, “This might be a record.” It was when we had eight songs. I also realized that there was a theme and the songs were connecting, and if I was going to release singles, I was thinking, “How do I prioritize?” I kind of fell back into thinking about why an album works so well. I had played a good trick on myself! Who knows what I’ll do for the 14th record.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=WVZUhhY0zRw%3Fsi%3DylYMMnz2l0GnT3Qa
AH: I do think there are connections between the songs on the album, but I didn’t want to read that in. I don’t know if this is typical of your work, but I think the most intense ideas and feelings are often handled very quietly, which raises questions and makes them approachable. Nothing can be easily stereotyped in terms of feelings and emotions, which leaves room for thought.
AE: Thank you. That is really great to hear. I think the really difficult, challenging things in life are hardly ever healed by a bombastic kind of approach, though they might be. Having curiosity about things and questions can lead to answers whereas declarative, dismissive anger sometimes doesn’t lead to any kind of resolution.
AH: I’ve often encountered this attitude in life that if there’s an emotional disturbance or struggle, we’re supposed to get it over with simply and quickly. It needs to be gone. Taking a quieter, more thoughtful approach is not encouraged. These songs feel like the opposite approach, of actually looking closely at things.
AE: I think we’re all taught to be afraid of our feelings, to be super-afraid, not just of what someone could do to you, but afraid of your feelings. When we’re taught that, and it’s passed down by generations, to practice to have curiosity is a revelation. Then you’re asking, “I wonder why I am feeling freaked out right now.” That interrupts it. There’s a moment in that interruption where you actually allow yourself to have that feeling. You may feel sad and freaked out, but you aren’t dead yet.
It all comes from a loving place, including not talking about things. There are reasons why people don’t tell the truth. But is it helping people? I don’t think so. That’s what I learned from slowing down and allow these feelings to pass through me.
AH: A straightforward example of quietly handling something difficult is the track “Don’t You Sleep.” In some ways, it’s an outward-facing song in that people will probably recognize society in that song. But it made me wonder, “Is there a way to sleep through this? How would that happen?” It made me think of being an individual versus being part of a community.
AE: It’s a deep subject. I think that zeroes in on a big pain and sorrow in the world, and in our country, though not just our country. It’s an intense aloneness and isolation that so many people are living. It’s so real. There have been these headlines like “The Pandemic of Loneliness” talking about people being so isolated and withdrawn into their worlds. It’s the substitution of online and social media for in-person community.
AH: I’ve seen those articles, too.
AE: “Sleep” is a word to use, just like “awake.” I think of the word “awake” to mean “aware, conscious, connected to others.” “Asleep” is the opposite of that. It’s disconnected, withdrawn inward. There are positive things, too, to being drawn within. I meditate, so to me, that’s positive. But the sense of sleeping through something, and missing it completely, is a metaphor.
AH: It’s a scary thought. It’s something that a person might most want to happen, change. But it’s possible for them to miss it.
AE: I think there’s a lot of people who are like that. They say, “I just can’t handle this right now.” And they walk away from the TV. I do that, too! And yet, where’s the sense of thinking, “Is there something I could do about it, even if I can’t fix it?” Maybe there’s an action that you could take, something that you could handle. Maybe not? It ties right into what we were talking about, about being afraid of feelings. It’s saying, “This is too much for me. I can’t feel this right now.” But that’s a feeling. Start where you are.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=sxFv-dwo3Go%3Fsi%3DN_EGQmcDr7dPMa6v
AH: I think the song “Door Won’t Close” is one that people could take in different ways, but it’s clear there a complex relationship where things are not good for them, are not going well. It’s a perspective on that. The video is really interesting as well, with all this fire imagery, and a sense of leaving, or wanting to.
AE: That song was created kind of in the middle of the other songs. That was a very difficult experience in my life, and telling the truth is something I took a hit for. It’s hard to accept when justice is just an idea, a hope, not something that always works. Truth always comes out. It doesn’t stay in forever. There’s that saying, “Don’t kill the messenger,” but sometimes you’re the one that has to tell the truth and stand up. I was willing to do that, and I don’t regret it.
AH: I was thinking about some of those ideas when I heard the song, because it’s astonishing how much you often aren’t able to allowed to say, even to people who are close to you.
AE: Or especially so!
AH: There are often things that you know the other person doesn’t want you to say. And if you break that rule, it causes everything to crash down. But sometimes you have to, for the sake of that other person.
AE: That’s what this was.
AH: It can still cause an implosion, even if it’s a small thing.
AE: Or the big things that people watch and deny. Yes, sometimes I’m naïve to think that people already know things.
AH: That’s tricky because even if people know there is some major problem in their life that everyone else can see, pointing it out can still cause an incendiary reaction.
AE: Right. I’ve learned how strong denial can be. And how strong love can be. Because I still love and hope for resolution.
AH: How involved were you in choosing the imagery for the video?
AE: That was a great collaboration. Most of the ideas were from Haoyan of America. And then when he said, “We’re going to set the door knob on fire…”, I said, “Really??” He said, “Yeah!” He’s helped me with lots of different filming. It happened! We set it on fire many times. It was a powerful image! It’s so good. It’s such a huge metaphor.
AH: What about the human shape cut out of the door? It’s great.
AE: I said, “What is this about??” I think he wanted it because you have to burn through the door yourself to walk through it. The door won’t allow for that otherwise.
Thanks very much for sharing your thoughts with us, Ana Egge. You can find more detailed information here on her website: https://www.anaegge.com/
Enjoy our previous coverage here: REVIEW: Ana Egge “Between Us”
