Lissie earned mammoth success with her album ‘Catching a Tiger,’ this summer she will release two albums that take a retrospective look at her music.
Hi, how are you? How is everything out there at the moment – have you managed to get back out doing live shows and gigs?
I think some artists are starting to do stuff – especially in the southern parts of the US – I’m up in Iowa, where it’s pretty sparsely populated, so it does feel probably more open than cities and stuff, but personally, I’m probably not really going to do a ton of shows this year.
You can focus on these records and putting them out. Were these projects that you’ve always wanted to do, going back and having a retrospective look at all your past recordings?
It’s a little bit of both. We knew the 10 year anniversary of Catching a Tiger was coming up last year and I also had gotten the rights back to my first couple of albums. It seemed like a great time pre-pandemic to celebrate this debut album, which gave me a career and which I have so much gratitude for – there was always a plan to put out an anniversary edition, but of course with the pandemic that was put on the backburner, understandably so. As we were going through the songs that had been recorded for Catching A Tiger – but didn’t really make the cut – I was unearthing the songs and photos and videos and journal entries and things from my past that were in boxes in my basement, partly due to just having more time on my hands in the pandemic. The early works – Watch Over Me – was actually born out of just having this time off over the past year to really reflect and go through my things and be a bit more nostalgic, remembering the good times and feeling like I found these other songs that weren’t a part of Catching A Tiger. I feel like it completes the picture of my career and I get ready to move forward into whatever the next chapter will be out in the world.
It kind of rounds out your artistry. Were there any songs that you were surprised by or any that you’d forgotten about that have taken on a new meaning?
Yeah, I mean it was funny because I had my doubts at times about doing the early stuff, for example, ‘Hey Boy’ I wrote as a 19 year old who was going to nightclubs to see live music – if someone were to find that song now, I’m 38 it’s not really super relevant to what I think and how I feel and what I’m experiencing now. So there was that thing of wanting people to really understand that this is in the context of looking back and not to be taken as like a “new release”. I was a little surprised, I mean ‘Hey Boy’ I think is still really topical as we’ve gone through the ‘Me Too’ movement and seeing how there were so many spaces that women didn’t get to take up. I feel like that song really was saying some of the things that are coming out now.
It’s almost more relevant now. You can kind of look back through a double lens – you can look back through what you experienced and then the current social lens.
I think what’s interesting about ‘Hey Boy’ in 2002 was that I was almost resigned to the fact that it’s not going to change – I wasn’t going to get too bogged down by this, I had to keep doing what I was doing well. It’s heartening to be at a time now that even though there’s still obviously a lot of inequities and a lot of problems and intimidation and disrespect and so forth, but at least now there’s starting to be something you can do about it – we’re not just having to accept it as the way it is.
I’ve even noticed when I started out making my first album, I really was just surrounded by men and that wasn’t because I didn’t want to work with women, it just that there weren’t a lot of women in my orbit, even to present day where I have two women in my band, and I’ve been working with two managers who are women over the last couple years. I’m making the point of working with women.
We love to see it. In terms of choosing the songs for this project, how did you select songs for ‘Watch Over Me’? Was there any criteria in terms of positioning the record as a whole?
I had a quite a few songs and some of them really are just kind of guitar vocal demos. I think there was a selection process of wanting to balance out the stripped back guitar-vocal demo vibe with some of the more produced demos of songs, sonically trying to round out the dynamics of the record. There was a time this summer where I was listening to all the songs, and some of them just made me sad – I mean there’s some heavy topics in there and mood-wise I didn’t want the songs to dwell in a hopeless space, you know? I wanted to have a range of emotions and dynamic.
I mean, it was amazing how we’re talking about the relevance of certain tracks – ‘All Be Okay’ felt so needed in 2021.
Yeah, it’s funny because I always thought that song was maybe a little cheesy, but having revisited it, it does make you feel like even if it’s not going to be okay, it’s gonna be okay. I think it’s just kind of hanging in there and knowing things will work themselves out – it’s always a good thing to remember. Especially, you know, when we register in the past year all this collective trauma.
Talking about Catching a Tiger and the 10 year anniversary, looking back on that record and what it did for your career, how incredible was it to revisit it and how important is it to you as a body of work?
I mean, it was just such a thrill to have Catching A Tiger come out – I had iTunes Song of the Year and was getting all kinds of press and played Glastonbury and was on Jools Holland. It was this time where it was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is like a dream come true, stuff is actually happening – people are paying attention and like it.’ It was really exciting, it was such a whirlwind – very busy and very exhausting, but just so much fun. I mean, the summer of 2010, I played a sunny Glastonbury – the whole summer was like hot and sunny, and the World Cup was going on. Then I was going over to Norway, and it was this moment in time where everything kind of lined up where it wasn’t just about me and the album and the music, but it was a really good, happy summer. When people think back on those happy memories, my songs got to kind of be a bit of a soundtrack, so even more than what it means for me, it’ll be fun as I release it to sort of see how it brings individuals back to those memories.
Obviously you’ve included these unreleased tracks as well, you’ve talked about ‘It’s Not Me’ offering a different perspective – can you talk about that?
I wish there was some really great story to tell you about that, but really with ‘It’s Not Me’ and a few other songs, they were recorded with the whole Catching A Tiger record – it was all recorded in the same session – but we were putting together the tracklist and going through mixes, those songs didn’t seem to fit. It didn’t mean that they weren’t good, or that I didn’t love them, but at the time, they didn’t feel like they sat in the order of things. It’s kind of nice for me now, because I do have this sort of bonus material that is equally as good – there just wasn’t really room for them, it was nice to have extra things to share. I’m glad I held on to them so that I could sort of regroup 11 years later.
It’s really exciting to be able to do that and revisit the tracks. I’m really excited for these projects to be out and celebrate Catching a Tiger a decade later.
I’m ready for people to have this context of the bigger picture of my history and be ready to put them out there, so that I can move on to the next chapter of my life.
Thanks so much for your time today!
Thank you.
