Jeremy Ivey will release his new album – Invisible Pictures – on March 11th. Here, we interview Jeremy about the creation of the album and the story behind some of the stand-out tracks. Pre-order the album here.
Hi Jeremy, how are you? It’s nearly a month out from the release of Invisible Pictures so how are you feeling about the build-up?
Good. Yeah, I feel confident. You know, I don’t ever really feel confident, but I do feel confident with this record. I feel like it’s the best thing I’ve done so far.
I mean the volume of music that you’ve put out the past few years is tremendous. Can you talk through that musical evolution in terms of your sound? Have you been very conscious of trying to do something very different with each record that you’ve put out?
Yes, no, I mean I just write all the time, so I think that it seems like I’m putting out a lot of music, but even in between the albums I’m throwing away an album or two here and there. Before I wrote Invisible Pictures I wrote two other records that I didn’t end up recording, because I just didn’t feel like they were fully realised. I’m always writing, so it’s hard to say where that comes from and when it will stop. I think I drive my wife crazy with it. I’m always coming up with new ideas, new concepts.
As far as the personality of each record, it kind of reveals itself, when I write a few songs here and there. I hit on one that I really like and really means a lot to me and I write a bunch around that to make a theme. I think on this record ‘Black Mood’ was the song that I wrote first. I was really kind of depressed and it was pretty honest. It also was different musically than what I’d done before, so I thought I need to focus inwardly and write in this musical theme.
I know that you have wrote externally quite a lot in the past – social and political commentary. Was it a very conscious decision to be more introspective with this project?
Yeah, I mean, it just had to do with not traveling anymore and being stuck at home and drinking too much and just getting into this pit of despair. It wasn’t something I was aiming to do but it just kind of happened. It’s good because I’m not necessarily going to write about myself, but since that doors open, it’s kind of nice to not be as defensive about who I really am.
It’s kind of keeping it fresh, but also holding back a certain part of yourself if you want to?
Yeah, I’ve got friends that are great writers that never put themselves in their work. I mean, really, every time we write something, even if you’re writing a story about a man that lives on Mars who communicates to birds through clicking noises, you’re still kind of talking about him through your viewpoint. So, I think that being more open about the fact that the songs are about me, then I can click back to the ones I’ve written before and think that those are also about me.
100%. I know for this project you worked with Andrija Tokic, who I don’t think you’ve worked with in the past. Can you talk about working with him and what he gave to the music? I know it’s so important to choose the right producer and the right people.
Yeah, Andrija has been a friend for a long time actually. I have worked with him with The Pricetags band and Buffalo Clover, everything we recorded for that band was done at his studio. When we first met him, it still rings true, he was the only person that was doing a really high quality job with making records and doing them for an affordable price. There were people that come to Nashville and are disheartened with the things are going on Music Row and the insane cost of everything. He was able to produce these incredible products for cheaper. That’s why bands he’s producing have come through that had nowhere to record – they went there. I’m making it sound like it’s $1 General or something, it’s not. I think he gets overlooked as far as that, because he’s not one of those flashy guys. I’ve known him for a while and then he made a record for my friend, it was just an incredible record. I couldn’t believe like how great the arrangements were. I’d been meaning to work with him again and I said, ‘Hey, you want to make the record?’ He said, ‘Absolutely!’ We got the people for the record that he just did, like Billy Contreras, who’s this incredible fiddle player and comes in with like four different fiddles and makes this string section out of them – just these kind of outside the box weirdos but geniuses.
There is so much focus on the producer and the artist on a record, but it’s important to show how much the other musicians do bring the project together.
That’s the personality of what you’re hearing, things you can’t teach or tell someone what to do. A lot of times someone will do something that is just incredible and that wasn’t even the plan.
I want to talk to you about the title track for Invisible Pictures, I know that was inspired by the bombings in Nashville. Can you talk a little bit about creating that track and how it came together?
Yeah, I mean, like many songs, it was inspired by that and mainly had to do with that, but there’s other stuff going on in Nashville and around too. It was that point in the pandemic of heightened chaos, and everyone was down the dumps about it and then this other random thing that should never even be a thing happened. This crazy guy comes downtown at a Winnebago and starts firing, but I think I just kind of snapped a little bit when that happened. I just thought ‘I can’t care anymore’. I just put up a political record before and I was so involved in thinking in those terms and I just couldn’t care about what the world’s doing anymore. I needed to focus on the positive things in my family and that’s kind of what that was, nothing can bring me down today. It was like, I don’t care what’s going on, as long as when I look around, all I see is the sun’s out. I mean it wasn’t to turn a blind eye to anything, but I just kind of hit my limit.
Sometimes it’s easier to reframe your mindset and reflect on the good. I know the other track you’ve already released is ‘Orphan Child’ – can you talk about that one too? I feel that it’s so many people’s stories, but in a way that’s not always told.
Yeah, it was. I mean, ever since I was a kid, I guess from being adopted, I always just felt like I had this imposter syndrome where I didn’t know where I was or who I was with. I felt that I was born in the wrong skin or something, you know, that goes even to a lot of issues. Maybe the reason that I’ve always been open about different cultures and people and never been judgmental is because I honestly don’t know what I am. I know I’m pretty white looking, but I don’t know what my history is, I could look it up on ancestry.com, but I kind of like the fact that I don’t know. I feel like it gives me the opportunity to write from a an open minded and creative point of view. I mean, I met my birth mother who said that I have gypsy blood, but I don’t know anything else. I kind of like the mystery that is more powerful than knowing, that’s the theme of that song – all the questions I’ve asked since I was five and I never really articulated.
There’s something very powerful in that and sharing that perspective. We’re a month out now from the release, so what do you hope people take away from the record?
It’s hard to say, I like ‘Phantom Limb’. I am excited, but I’ve moved on. I still love ‘Invisible Pictures’. I think it opened the door for me to be able to be freer about writing a certain way that I was kind of self conscious about before. I’ve got a whole group of other songs that I’m almost done with but I still am very proud of ‘Invisible Pictures’ – that phrase was always what I thought music was like.
It’s a very compelling idea that I’m probably going to take with the rest of the day now. Thank you so much for sharing your time with us.
