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Describing her friend and collaborator, lyricist/singer Lorraine Feather said: "Tierney (with her unbelievable band) manages to create something really thought-provoking and original out of material we have heard hundreds of times. Her sense of rhythm was the first thing that electrified me when I heard a cut of hers on the radio one day; it was 'Squeeze Me.' [Pianist] Shelly Berg once described her as a great intellect and I agree. Not many of those around."
Earlier this year the Tierney Sutton Band released the breakthrough recording, Desire (Telarc, 2009).
Jazz (Jazzers Jazzing): I want to start with a discussion of your most recent recording, Desire. It's sort of a departure. You've traditionally been using a spiritual approach to your music, but this one is a bit of a departure, because the theme is a very pronounced and explicit theme. It's hung on a hook, and says: This is a concept. Was there something in particular that inspired this?
Tierney Sutton: I think it's something that's been coming for 15 years in terms of the process of the band, to a certain degree. I've been a practicing Baha'i for over 25 years and definitely approached my work and my singing from a spiritual perspective. But as a band leader, and as a band partner, as the years went on--because my band are now legal partners--it's all [been] done by a collaborative process. This is our eighth album where we collaborate on the concepts, the arrangements--the whole thing.
So that being the case, I would never have imposed my own personal spiritual beliefs and any particular outlook on a project, unless it emerged from the band process. And so, 15 years in, that's what started to happen. Over the last three years, more and more conversations within the band were about how, when we take to the stage, we're basically engaging in a spiritual process. We're meditating. Sometimes at the end of a set we can't remember consciously what happened. And the goal of any performance that we do, or any time we play together, is basically to have a transcendent experience. I mean, that sounds kind of high falutin' but that's really what we're going for all the time. So it kind of became logical to kind of be out with it a little bit. As we started putting a collection of songs together, there were certain songs I really liked, because of what they said.
One is a brilliant Dave Frishberg song that he wrote with Blossom Dearie, called "Long Daddy Green," which Blossom used to say was about the almighty dollar. But I think it's much more than that. The first part of the lyric says "Long Daddy Green is an old, old friend/He hangs around the rainbow's end/dealing out dreams from a potful of fortune and fame/fanning the flame/Hear him calling your name." Now if that doesn't basically nail what's going on in American culture right now, I don't know what does. Even though the song's probably 25 years old, or whatever it is. I just think it's brilliant, and it's completely timely in terms of materialism in western culture. Period. End of story. So I heard that song and I said "I want to record this song."
I had this idea that there was this one song that was, to me, about materialism and really brilliant. Then we had this idea that maybe we should bring the spiritual element that we're always talking about, which is in the background of what we do, and put it in the foreground. And so, that's how that began.
TS: That's great.
J(JJ): I actually stopped it at the half-way point and walked into the living room, because I was sitting in my office. I told my wife, "I'm just freaked out... I haven't heard anything like this in so long."
TS: Oh, wow!
J(JJ): It's just changing, as I go. It's changing the way I'm looking at things.
TS: That's the nicest thing you could say, that it changes the way you look at things. Because for me, if I really get into a great song... I mean, this is why it's really hard for me to turn away from the great American songbook, and the few songs that stand next to it, which are Frishberg and a few other people that can stand in there.
When you find material that's so pregnant that every time you sing it, there's something else that you see that you didn't see before, that's what you want. Anything that's monochromatic or one-dimensional isn't good enough anymore. And the way that the band plays; when I listen to our recordings I'm always hearing this little counter-thing that Ray is doing on drums that I never realized before. Or some brilliant piano fill that Christian did here or there that actually echoes the lyric I was singing without him even being conscious that he was doing it.
Those layers are the things that keep us interested in what we're doing. So for us, we want to be changed, even if we've played it eighty-seven times. We want this time to be different than any other time, and we want to say "Oh, I just realized here..." Like, for example, on "Cry Me a River," which I'm really proud of in terms of the arrangement. Arthur Hamilton, who wrote it, has heard us perform it and really likes the arrangement, too.
That bridge... the guys come up with this thing where, to me, it's like insomnia and a migraine headache where you're playing the story of this romance gone bad. "You drove me, nearly drove me out of my head/while you never shed a tear/Remember? I remember all that you said.../told me love was too plebian/told me you were through with me, and/now you say you love me." Now, that bridge, everybody's heard it a million times. But to me, that is a really well-crafted lyric in terms of the truth of what you go through in that situation. In real life when someone messes you up, you're awake at night and you replay every conversation that you had. That is the truth.
And some of it is ridiculous. So even the word "plebian" doesn't bother me at all--there was this one strange conversation you had where he said this to you, and you're replaying it, and you're thinking "what did that mean?" So, to have this kind of pulsing, migraine headache kind of vibe going on behind that, it's like they took the emotion that I was feeling singing the lyric and singing the melody, and put it into their part of the arrangement.
J(JJ): I was thinking about that same thing. Somebody else did that--Joe Cocker. The arrangement had that kind of pulsing bass line in it and, you're right, that the sort of discomfort is exactly right. It's not supposed to be a real comfortable thing to listen to, because you're describing something very painful.
TS: Exactly, yeah. And so it's supposed to change us. It's supposed to change us, even in the time that we're doing it. And a lot of times in our arrangements, if they work well, there are things I see in them after playing them for several years, that I didn't see in the beginning. So I'm hoping that that's the way it is.
J(JJ): Well, it sure did it for me.
TS: Well, good! We're delighted. I will pass it along to the Crust Brothers, as I like to call them.
J(JJ): Please do. At the beginning and end of the recording you quote from Baha'u'llah. I've gone back and studied this, but I'm not a student of Baha'i teachings, so I'm not completely clear on it. I think it would be interesting to just kind of sort it out, because it's part of the recording. Could you help me understand a little bit, what those lines are about?
TS: It's really interesting, because the central tenet of the Baha'i religion is the oneness of all religions, and the oneness of all people. So our basic belief is that, you know, the un-knowable essence that is God has expressed himself/herself to humanity through a series of messengers throughout history. So we affirm the holiness of Jesus Christ, of Mohammed, of the Buddha, of Krishna, and Baha'u'llah says he's just the most recent of these same beings, the same spirit expressed to humanity throughout the ages.
Now, because of that, when I was first looking for writings about materialism, I knew that the Baha'i writings were not the only source of those things, so I quite literally read through the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, cover-to-cover several times, and the Koran, and the Old and New Testament. My son and I, for many years, have been doing a multi-faith Sunday school, so I have this big bag that one of the mothers that does it with me, and I, call the Big Bag of God because it's just all these different holy books. We would get writings to share with the kids about different virtues... truthfulness; stuff that everybody agrees on. We try not to get into the big, controversial stuff, but there's a lot that isn't controversial between the religions--you're not supposed to lie, you're supposed to be nice; this kind of thing.
So, my original was not necessarily to use Baha'i writings. I just wanted very pithy, focused statements that would frame the songs in terms of materialism and the soul's nature. And what I found was that the Hidden Words of Baha'u'llah, which is a book that he says he's taken the essence of the spiritual writings of the religions of the past and cloaked them in a garment of brevity. I found that he wasn't kidding, because I really tried to find little, pithy things in all the different holy books. I found the essence there, but they didn't necessarily fit poetically as a short statement that then I could sing "Paper Moon" after. And then, once I had one, there's a rhythm to the hidden words. "O! Son of..." something. "O! Son of Being." Several of the Hidden Words start "O! Son of Desire," and I had already decided to call the album Desire. So I thought, 'Okay, I'm trying to be very ecumenical here, and I don't want to be, in any way, shoving my own faith down anybody's throat, but if these are the writings that actually work, then that's what I've got to use.'
And I was trying different things with the guys on the road. I would read something from the Bhagavad Gita. Sometimes a lot of the holy writings that are from deep in the past might use imagery like... you know, there's oxen and there's yokes, and things that sort of take you out of the moment for a second, even though the essence of what's being said spiritually is exactly the same and equally profound, and all the rest of it. So in the end, I settled on these writings. You know, Hidden Words is a very short book. It's not that long and there are I don't know how many of them, maybe eighty, of these little writings. I realized that the essence of this book is materialism.
The hidden word that I read on the record says, "O! Son of Being. Busy not thyself with this world. For with fire we test the gold, and with gold we test our servants." Then you think of the New Testament, it says it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get to heaven. This idea that wealth and things--material things that we desire--keep us from our true nature. And so, the essence of The Hidden Words of Baha'u'llah, as I see it right now--which may change as the years go by--is that our time here on earth is a kind of spiritual obstacle course, that we're constantly being sucked into desiring things and some of those things are just flat-out bad for us. Sometimes it's really obvious that they're bad for us, and then other times it's not so obvious. In the personal relationship category, that's when it gets really mysterious, because you can really desire a person and it can seem perfect and lofty. But it's never perfect and lofty; it always goes somewhere else.
J(JJ): Which is the theme, at least part of it, in...
TS: "Then I'll Be Tired of You."
J(JJ): Yeah, there's another one, it's "My Heart Belongs to Daddy." It's like this strange dichotomy of what you want, and what you need, something like that.
TS: I think of "My Heart Belongs to Daddy"-- there are different ways to look at it, but I think of it pretty much as a woman who is materialistic and is with a man because he's got money. And she actually is more interested in other men, but she's not going anywhere because he treats her so well. I always thought of it as kind of a tongue-in-cheek, happy little song. But then I thought, 'This isn't really funny.' If you think of the fact that every spiritual tradition seems to affirm that there's more than this, and that this is a finite thing, and the other part is bigger. But what we do here really has a big effect on what's going to happen after, whatever tradition you follow.
Maybe it's reincarnation, maybe it's Heaven and Hell, maybe it's whatever it is. There's some sense of that. So, we live in a world where the society sucks us into basically selling our souls on a daily basis, and it is just not easy to fight that. So, to me, that's what the record is about. We know, we get glimpses. We get glimpses of a higher desire, we get glimpses of something really beautiful, something that is more than just being rich or just being famous. We get little glimmers of it, and that's what "Skylark" is about: "Can you tell me where my love can be?" And then you think of the idea of a skylark as a Christ figure: "In your lonely flight/haven't you heard the music in the night/wonderful music." The people that really represent the pure in this society, suffer. It's just not the place where it's easy to do that.
J(JJ): The rules are set up for the one whose heart belongs to daddy, because that's the paycheck. And speaking of that, this album has got the greatest opening I've heard in years. "It's Only A Paper Moon" has got a set of lyrics that are just mind-blowing. These were great songwriters, but...
TS: It was a long time ago.
J(JJ): ...they weren't essentially philosophers, right? They were songwriters, and they made their livings writing hit tunes. And this song--there's a line that I'm going to quote, because it just knocks me out. You were talking about Baha'u'llah being "clothed in brevity," something like that?
TS: Clothed in a garment of brevity
J(JJ): These little stanzas are like microcosms of the entire album. Like, "It's a Barnum & Bailey world."
TS: "Just as phony as it can be." Think about that; turn on the TV for five minutes. And if you're spending time with an art form that's not phony--that is deep, of someone that is really engaged in craft and process and taking time--and then you see what's prevalent in the world, it's alarming. I mean it's just stunning, and crazy and weird, once you're sensitized to it. But it's very easy to get desensitized to it. Really easy, because it's so prevalent. But it is, it's a Barnum & Bailey world, just as phony as it can be.
J(JJ): But then the resolution is...
TS: "But it wouldn't be make-believe..."
J(JJ): "if you believed in me." That's working on several levels at one time. Because it could be between two people who, if they would just gain some trust and believe in each other, then they could make all this sham and phoniness go away. And it's also that spiritual thing of "Skylark," where it's a person talking to a deity, a soul seeking God, "if you believe in me."
TS: I think ultimately it's always that. I grew up an atheist, basically, and I was an atheist until I was about 18. And even when I first became a Baha'i, I couldn't use the word "God" for the first two-and-a-half-to-three years. And even now, it's hard for me to use it because it's so badly used in the culture, and I think it's cheapened.
The Baha'i definition of God is the unknowable essence, so that right now, right away it takes it out of that "some guy with a beard, and he makes the rules, and smites you, and is nice to you"; whatever. I think when we look at anything that is transcendent--and sometimes, the way that you feel about a person can be transcendent--when it's right, you see the God that's within them, you see the nobility within them. You see something of them that is not phony, and is not part of the Barnum & Bailey world, and you get that glimpse. And you crave it.
Often the attachments that we have, really that's what we're looking for; and we get it in different ways. I've often said that I think that the reason that a lot of the great heroes of jazz fell into drugs is that the transcendence that you get to feel when you're inspired is so intoxicating, so powerful, that you want to have it, you want to have it at all costs. And you can't always have it, night-after-night. So, they would try things, because the pain of separation from that inspiration was so great.
It's a mystical pain, and we have that. We are mystically separated from God, and trying to move toward God, and doing the best we can in this society that has no clue and is telling us the exact wrong things to do. And so we're trying to find it and we attach ourselves to a person, or to a thing, or to money, or to a career; but all of it is our soul trying to get to a better place, trying to get to a higher place, trying to desire something good.
J(JJ): Miles Davis has a night off, and he's missing this transcendent experience from the night before, and there he is, and what's he going to do? What's he going to do? He wants to transcend it, he wants that again, only the culture says well, what you do is load up a syringe and stick it in your arm.
TS: Or even if the culture doesn't say that, the pain, you want to deaden the pain of that separation, of not feeling oneness. We often say a prayer before we perform in the band, and the prayer says: "Oh God, maketh me a hollow reed from which the pith of self hath been blown, so that I may be a clear channel through which thy love may flow to others." I've never said that to a musician that didn't get the concept right off the bat, because what you feel when it's going right is lack of your self. You don't feel your self. You feel one with the other musicians, with the music, with something other than your self. You feel hollow, and free.
Selected Discography
Tierney Sutton Band, Desire (Telarc, 2009)
Lorraine Feather, Language (Jazzed Media, 2008)
Trish Oney, Dear Peg (Rhombus, 2008)
Tierney Sutton Band, On the Other Side (Telarc, 2007)
Grant Geissman, Say That! (Futurism, 2006)
Tierney Sutton Band, I'm With the Band (Telarc, 2005)
Tierney Sutton Band, Dancing in the Dark (Telarc, 2004)
Mark Isham, The Cooler (Commotion/Koch, 2003)
Tierney Sutton Band, Something Cool (Telarc, 2002)
Tierney Sutton Band, Blue in Green (Telarc, 2001)
Tierney Sutton Band, Unsung Heroes (Telarc, 2000)
Tierney Sutton Band, Introducing Tierney Sutton (Challenge, 1998)
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