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STORY & PHOTOS By PAUL ZOLLO
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 imee Mann is in Aspen. The altitude is getting to her, and driving around the towering mountains and rolling Colorado canyons to arrive here has made her a little queasy, on top of the exhaustion from being in the midst of an ongoing tour that brought her to the majestic Red Rocks Amphitheater outside of Denver on the previous night. So happiness is not the headline on her front page at this moment.
On this night we are to appear together onstage at the glorious Belly-Up club in the heart of Aspen - she is the guest of the Aspen Writer's Foundation's ongoing Lyrically Speaking program, in which I have the fortunate mission of interviewing great songwriters, a discussion punctuated by intimate performances. It's a great gig for many reasons, not the least of which is that it allows me to come frequently to Aspen, also known as heaven on earth. People I knew from Los Angeles who were consistently dour and miserable in the vast urbanity of L.A. are completely different people in Aspen; they ride bikes, they smile frequently, they are as peaceful as Buddhist monks.
Aimee is performing on this night with a stripped-down band - just her on acoustic guitar, and a bass player and keyboard player (the latter of which requested an old Wurlitzer, which was a challenge to find anywhere in Colorado, but was eventually located and transported to the club). On this early afternoon the chore is to do a soundcheck and to configure the stage - where we will sit, if she will stand or sit, should the mikes be on stands or handheld - those kinds of logistics. The stuff which can be painfully dull when feeling healthy, and simply painful when you're not. And she wasn't. Feeling healthy.
So after much discussion among musicians and managers and sound-men, we settled on a stage structure that seemed to make sense, and there was Aimee, unsmiling, discontent, evidently unhappy to be there or maybe anywhere at this moment - we sat on tall stools with twin wireless microphones. Soundcheck time had arrived, and my role was to pose a question or two, just to check the mikes, and also to maybe establish some kind of rapport. I'd interviewed her in the past on the phone, but we'd done very little in the way of in-person interaction. My instinct, as always, was to loosen things up - inject a little levity, if possible, into the proceedings, and let the artist know that although a serious discussion is intended, that it's not impossible to also have some fun. So I asked her about her boxing.
Yes, Aimee Mann boxes. She is in great shape, and among other physical activities, she loves boxing - real boxing, in the ring, gloves, punching, the attempted KOs, the whole thing. It seemed like the logical topic from which to launch our inaugural discussion. "How would you like to box Bob Dylan?" I asked, unsure as to how she might respond. Silence from all gathered. Then a slow smile spread over her face, and she caught the ball and ran with it.
"I'd love to box Bob Dylan," she said with relish. "And he does box. I think he'd probably be pretty good in the ring. But I think I could take him." This made us all happy and relieved; not only was willing to entertain absurdity - always a good sign - but did it with easy panache. Soon a discussion ensued about other songwriters she'd like to box (Neil Diamond, Neil Sedaka, Paul Simon) during which time sonic dynamics were balanced and tweaked.
Once upon a time is how it always goes
But I'll make it brief
What was started out with such excitement
Now I'd gladly end with relief
In what now has become a familiar motif:
"Nothing is good enough for people like you
Who have to have someone take the fall
And something to sabotage--
Determined to lose it all…"
From "Nothing Is Good Enough"
By Aimee Mann
She's an astounding songwriter. One of the best. Like Jules Shear, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell and very few others, she's equally gifted and focused on being inventive and innovative with both music and lyrics. Her melodies are consistently as engaging as her lyrics. And like her potential boxing mate Dylan, she embraces traditional song forms while breaking new ground within them - Krishnamurti's mantra that "limitation creates possibilities" in action. She uses real rhymes almost exclusively, lending her songs a powerful inner matrix which many listeners might never consciously register, but certainly sense. She employs often intricate rhyme schemes to great effect. and understands, as Dylan put it, that phrasing is everything. The flowing river rhythms of her words is as alluring as her rhymes and imagery. Her songs don't fall apart like cheap watches on the street, to paraphrase Van Dyke Parks. They are sturdy. They are poetic and colloquial both, ideally balanced and beautifully rendered.
She said once that she likes songs to be conversational. Confronted with some rather enriched poetic language found in her verses, she laughed and said, "Well, maybe I just have a larger vocabulary than a lot of people do." Indeed she does. She has a keen intelligence, a gentle and humorous knowingness, and is unafraid of instilling it into her songs. Unlike the majority of songwriters who created their best work in their 20s, she has surpassed her early work, and has gone on to craft one great album after the next.
Well, she's the face and I'm the double
that keeps the pace and clears the rubble that
lost in space fills up the bubble with air
From "Lost In Space"
By Aimee Mann
She is a fan of other songwriters - she loves her husband Michael Penn's work, of course - they are married after all, but is also a big fan of former beau Jules Shear, as well as Dylan, Bacharach and Elvis Costello. It was Elvis who said that truly great songwriters show a lot of attention to detail. She does that; her use of telling details is measured and inspired. She consciously creates a rich sense of place, of time, and of character in her songs, and always with genuine passion.
Much of that richness can be found in her most recent album, a remarkable song-cycle called The Forgotten Arm. It's the story of two lovers, John and Caroline, a musical fable painted with dimensional cinematic scenes, poignant poetry, and classic melodicism. She knows about the essence of singability - regardless of any other concerns, the words always flow flawlessly on the current of music. Her songs, even the morose ones - and there are many of those - are imbued with genuine joy: the joy of making music.
Born on September 8, 1960 in Richmond, Virginia, she studied music at Berklee in Boston, and joined her first band there in that historic city, Young Snakes. In 1983 she formed 'Til Tuesday with her boyfriend Michael Hausman - an amiable man and agile drummer who is now her manager - and they struck gold in 1985 with their hit single, "Voices Carry," which she wrote. Unlike many songs of that era, it wasn't a mindless confection - it bore her signature of a powerful melody with provocative words, and sounds as good in this 21st century (she caved to repeated demands and performed it onstage in Aspen) as it did in the previous epoch.
In the dark, I like to read his mind
But I'm frightened of the things I might find
Oh, there must be something he's thinking of
To tear him away
When I tell him that Im falling in love
Why does he say
Hush hush keep it down, now
Voices carry
From "Voices Carry"
By Aimee Mann
The band recorded several albums, and multi-instrumentalist Jon Brion - who went on to become an influential producer - joined them. The pressures of operating within the industry started to rattle her in every way, as such pressures will, and she broke up the band in 1990 to go solo.
Her next illustrious companion was the songwriter (and friend to Bluerailroad) Jules Shear - for whom she wrote the song "J For Jules." (When I asked her about putting his name into a song and thus stating her private truth so bluntly, she laughed and said she did it only because she liked rhyming 'Jules' with 'fools' and had his name been Byron or Henry it wouldn't have gotten in.)
I was winding my clock
Which was waking us up
In the morning, we were laughing
Away like fools
I was saying my prayers
He was combing his hair
In a country that began with a
'J' for Jules.
From "J For Jules"
By Aimee Mann
Her first solo outing was Whatever, the first of many albums to establish her, outside of the band, as one of the most talented songwriters and performers on the scene. Jon Brion produced two of her albums, as well as the soundtrack for the movie Magnolia, which director-writer Paul Thomas Anderson constructed around her songs. It earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Song, and launched the beautiful "Save Me" into the culture.
You look like a perfect fit
For a girl in need of a tourniquet
But can you save me?
Come on and save me…
From the ranks of the freaks
Who suspect they could never love anyone…
From "Save Me"
By Aimee Mann
These days she's much happier than during her long winter of discontent entrenched in the corporate confines of Geffen Records (where Bluerailroad columnist Peter Case also dwelled). She made the superb solo album Bachelor No. 2 while still under contract to Geffen, but it was roundly rejected by the company, who objected to both its artistic direction and content. They insisted it be radically rehauled, she refused, and a long season of legal skirmishes ensued. Her ultimate victory allowed her to release Bachelor on SuperEgo, and has generated a spirit of liberation which has led in turn to the deeply brilliant and beautiful cycle of songs which became Lost In Space, and all of her subsequent albums. These days she's a little weary when it comes to discussing such history, but brightens considerably when discussing her new music, and expounds with understated exuberance on the diverse and delicate considerations necessary to coax a song into being.
Music always comes first. Her primary songwriting process is to find a provocative musical idea, and allow it to define the direction of the melody, and the content of the lyric. Her most recent work, The Forgotten Arm, is produced by Joe Henry, and captures the energy of live performance by having been recorded mostly live in the studio; it's another compelling chapter in the musical tome she's been writing now for decades. As Jon Brion said, "She's certainly one of my all-time favorite intelligent, emotional pop songwriters. She is by far one of the best lyricists, I mean by a long shot. And the fact that she also happens to be gifted melodically just really puts it over the top. I still don't think the world at large even fully understands how good she is. I just think she's nothing short of remarkable."
That expresses the essence of what is at the core of this admittedly expansive introduction: that the world at large might not even get it yet. It's true of many of our greatest artists - painters, poets and musicians. That what they are doing is so good and at such a level that it takes a while for people to catch up with it. But those in the know certainly know, and they know there are few better than Aimee Mann. Though she said in Aspen that she writes her best songs when she's bored, there is nothing boring about her work - quite the opposite - and just as it elevates the artist herself from the everyday doldrums of life as lived, so do these songs enhance our lives with a sweet and solemn confederation of sound and soul and thought.
Bluerailroad: When you work on a song, do you always keep at it till it's finished?
Aimee Mann: It really depends. I think I'm pretty good at recognizing when I'm getting to the
flogging-a-dead-horse space. And then you've just got to let it go. And those kind of songs, it might be years later that I pick it up, and it seems like a totally new song, so I can work on it more. I think for me it's when a song needs a different section, and you don't know where to go, and that often requires a certain perspective. Like a bridge, for example, you need a section that has a lift to it, or a different kind of cadence, and sometimes I can get too caught up in the vibe of the verse that it's difficult to go to a different place, and the bridge turns out to be just like the verse sort of rewritten, and it get a little stale. That was the case with "Invisible Ink" where I needed a lot of time to see it differently, and to discover a new place to go with it.
Musically and lyrically?
Both. I started writing "Invisible Ink" with a friend in Boston years ago, and never finished it. I remembered it, and was able to reconnect with it and write a new section that made it complete. It has lyrics that I rewrote, but what it really lacked was a bridge. I could never write a bridge to it, and then twelve years later, I sat down and wrote a bridge to it. That song is different from the rest musically, because the music was mostly written by a songwriter friend of mine in Boston. So it goes to different places.
You wrote many of your early songs in Boston. Does it affect the song where you are when you write it?
No, I think what matters more is that I have some quiet time, without interruption.
When you start a song, do you start with words or music?
I start with music mostly. I'll have a couple of lyric lines and I'll fool around with them on guitar, and try to find some kind of melody that works.
Do you start with an idea that you are trying to express, or does that come while working on the song?
Both. I think they come together. Usually I'm playing the guitar and humming the melody, and usually they will form themselves into words, and I'll think about what it sounds like, and follow that. Music definitely leads me into lyrical themes. I'll find some music, and then see what it sounds like it's about. So the music is more of a driving force in forming the song, and what the song is about.
(continued ...)
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