Fans of musician Iris DeMent have a lot to celebrate this year. In February, she released a new studio album, and now she is in the middle of an extensive tour that will bring her to our region on Saturday, when DeMent will perform at Cohoes Music Hall.
DeMent’s seventh album is “Workin’ On A World,” featuring her trademark vocals and vivid lyrics. It is also an album that comments on some of the key political debates of our time.
Congratulations on the new album. It's been great listening to it. And I know you are sort of famous for working at your own speed. So why did you decide to release an album this year?
I don't really decide. You know, I get motivated to move. And things come together in such a way that next thing you know I'm making a record. You know what I mean? It's not like a, it's never been a, Well I mean, in this case, I just had a bunch of songs that I had been kind of had laying around for a few years. And it started out, I don't know, maybe in 2018, I can't remember now. 2017 … 2018, something like that. I went in and recorded a few not planning to make a record, went home for about a year and went back in another studio with another producer Richard Bennett, the first time I went in with Jim Rooney. And kind of started at it again, just basically recording songs that I had around that I liked. And then about another year after that my good friend and co-producer, Pieta Brown, asked if she could listen to some of the recordings that I shelved, and I let her and she was the one who, the first person who had well, not the first, but she had the sense that I had a record. And I felt motivated to rethink, to revisit what I'd done. So, and I agreed and wrote a few more songs, and there it was. But yeah, I mean, these things just sort of, I guess the word might be organic. They just have this, for me, the music just sort of starts showing up and growing. And next thing you know, you have this bigger thing that it's time to call a record.
How do you decide when your song is finished, when it's ready to be seen by other people?
It's an instinct. That is really all I can tell you. I could try to go into my head there on that but not much would come out of it. It's just an instinct. And that's the tricky part you know, it's scary to trust that instinct. I think most people might be like me, you know, I want to rationalize things to make them safe. But with me with knowing when something's done, it's just a gut feeling. And then you have to go out on the limb. And, you know, hope you don't get laughed out of town. And I have songs that I've done for 20 years that I have to admit, I've not had much validation for publicly, but I still feel the instinct that they are completed and they're of value, and they need to be played. And so, I do it anyway. So once that locks in with me, it's sticks. And, and I cannot tell you how I know that. I'm gonna guess most artists couldn't, but I could be wrong there.
I have a question about your musicianship. I know that you grew up kind of surrounded by music, your mom sang and is actually on one of your records, and your sisters and so on. And there was a piano around. How did you pick up a guitar and learn how to play guitar?
Well, the first guitar I picked up, I was about 7 years old, and my mother had bought my brother Glen a guitar collecting blue chip stamps. And since that time, she had eight kids at home, she could collect a lot of blue chip stamps. And she filled enough books to buy my brother a Fender guitar. And the first one I picked up, much to my brother's dismay, I picked up a pick and carved my name in it, not thinking. My little kid brain, it never occurred to me anyone would notice that word ‘Iris’ was etched across his new guitar. So that was kind of my first and last experience with a guitar for a really long time. That didn't go over well. So, I thought I'd just stick with the piano. Staking my claim to the guitar didn't, yeah, that didn't work. And honestly, I didn't start playing guitar again until I started writing songs and knew that I wanted to go out in public and play them. And, you know, most venues don't have a piano and pianos are impossible to lug around. So that's how I came to the guitar. I still don't think of myself as a guitar player. It's something I took up so that I could deliver my songs.
You didn't really start writing until your mid-20s. So, you were kind of making up for lost time on both fronts, I imagine.
Yeah, yeah. When I wrote my first song, which was ‘Our Town,’ I was 25. And I was learning the chords as I was writing the song. Yeah, I was learning G, C, and D. And, yeah. You know, again, it's kind of like what you asked me, you know, how do you decide to make a record or how these things come about? It's just always been pretty mysterious. I've wanted to write songs since I was a kid. I mean, I really wanted to write songs, I would sit at the piano. My mom would chase me out the house in the morning and I was late for school. I don't know how many times because I'd be sitting there thinking, I might figure out how to write a song. But even into my teen years, I just, I had been so exposed to music. It's kind of ridiculous. I mean, I was just absorbed in it. But I couldn't figure out how to make the leap to how I say my own thing, you know? So, in one way, yeah, it did all just come together at once. You know, I just suddenly started writing songs. But on the other hand, some part of my brain and my ears were listening and working and trying to figure that out for a really long time. Oddly, in my case, I never had any, like, physical evidence of that. I never wrote poems. I mean, when I say I never wrote a song. I never put more than two or three lines together. But my brain, you know, was working on that stuff. So, it wasn't as sudden as it sounds. You know what I mean? I was some part of me was doing the homework. That's how it worked for me.
After you got the first one written, did it come easier?
Well, I think there was definitely a period there, like, you know, the floodgates kind of opened, sort of thing. And definitely, you know, I've crossed that hurdle and it was like OK, you know, I think I did this so let's keep going. And then I you know, went through a period where I think wisely I just kind of trusted myself to just fumble around and try and I would go to open mics and sing all kinds of songs I hope never get heard. But you have to do that and I finally for whatever reason I was finally able to let myself you know, out that door and start enjoying you know, the joy of the experience of learning something you know. And so yeah, I guess I could say easy might be the word for it for a period of time. But then you want to keep growing and growing involves effort so you know, it gets harder I would say but harder kind of a self-imposed harder, this you know, in little ways, little increments you I can say to myself, I've kept evolving and growing and yeah. That takes effort and that's work. I like work, it's fine.
Now that you're taking your new batch of songs and then of course all of your older songs on tour, is that something that you have become more comfortable with, the performing aspect of your life in music?
You know, it comes and goes and that's another thing I can't explain. Just a few months ago, I was having panic attacks on stage. I'd be playing and I couldn't remember which chord to go to next. I'd have to just stop. You know, my heart was racing. You're trying to carry on and look like something remotely resembling an ordinary human being and I got bad enough. I thought, okay, this is the end of the line for me because this isn't fun and you know the audience feels that. However, that lifted and I think I just have this way about me I have to kind of get to the bottom and then go well, you know, short of jumping off the bridge. I can't go down any further so might as well start heading up and now, knock on wood, I've been the last few months really enjoying playing and feeling really comfortable. I think you know, it's good sometimes to just, what do you what do I want to say? To fully look a fool on a stage to let yourself, I don't know if let yourself because it wasn't a matter of me letting myself, I just did. But those moments where you're so fully human you know in front of that many people under bright lights I think in some ways are gifts because it really kind of keeps you. I don't know, it keeps you in your real self and I'm trying to find the language for it and I can't but it reminds you…
It strips away the artifice of you on the stage and them in the crowd.
Right, you don't get to keep that. It forces you, you can't keep this stuff that's really not useful, which is, you know, your ego, you know, ‘Boy, look at what a great show I did blah, blah, blah.’ And it also reminds me of how interdependent we are that when I go out there, it isn't me, it's we that I'm doing the same with the audience. So, all that to me, I'm actually grateful for those times when I've barely been able to remember a lyric or figure out where my hands were gonna go. And my heart was racing, my knees were shaking, I'm actually grateful for that. It's, there's something in it that feels real, and has kept me I think smarter, wiser, healthier, truer sort of relationship with myself and the audience. And my job, you know.
If you don't mind my asking, I know you have talked about your battles with depression in the past. Do you think that the onstage panic attacks that you were talking about are kind of related to a similar issue?
I do. And I think, you know, the state of the world, especially when I put this record out. I made the record and it kind of required that I keep my attention on, you know, on some really unpleasant things. And then there was a period of doing a lot of interviews, which meant keeping my attention on some pretty unpleasant things, and some of the songs in the same category. Although I will give myself this, I also feel a ton of joy in this record and hopefulness. And I don't feel down at all when I go and play songs, but they at the same time, there's a there's a gravity to them. That probably yeah, did touch on my, my inclination to think. So, I've had to work really hard on that. And I, yeah don't look at the news anymore. And I don't mean, I have things that I go to, that I count on and rely on for good information. But corporate controlled news, I don't look at it. It's creating a terrible sickness here in all of us. And I have some definite things that I'm doing to keep myself whole, I guess that's the modern word. Maybe it's been, you know, I don’t know. I don't want to go under, man. There's too much here to live for and fight for too much love to keep circulating around. And so yeah, I'm doing what I need to do. And I feel that, you know, my, my work is valuable, and something I can do to help. And sitting home, chewing my nails down to the quick isn't something I could do to help. So, I'm doing all I can to steer myself in the direction, you know that I can stay afloat and keep being useful.
Good. Well, when I was getting ready to speak with you. I read that you and your husband, who's also a musician, of course, did a show together in July of the same year when you got married just a few months later in November. And that concert was in our neck of the woods in Saratoga Springs. So, what's the story of that year, and your coming together and the role that Saratoga might have played in it?
Yeah, I mean, I've said this many times that it continues to be true. We had dinner maybe three times and got married. We weren't living in the same town, you know, we were about five, six hours away. And so, you know, there were those kinds of complications. But I don't know. I mean, I think that's something he and I, both we had a lot in common in terms of our history. You know, I came out of Pentecostal church, Greg’s dad was an open Bible preacher. There was just a lot and we both left the church but not the spirit of the thing. And we just had a lot in common on that front. And I think one of the things maybe in our nature, and also maybe that came to us through that particular sort of religious background that we shared. There was a lot of respect for, like, moving, when the spirit tells you to move. We both have this belief that there is spirit, and it communicates with us. And when it says go, you better go. And frankly, when we met, we both felt that, like very clearly that we're supposed to get married. And there was a lot of, there wasn't a lot of logic to it. And there continues to not be a lot of logic to it. But there's something really deep and true there, that we picked up on. And we've, I can't say that we've seen it through yet because anything can happen. I've been married 20 years, I think it is now. But um, but whatever that undercurrent thing was, it's lasted. So that's the short answer or actually ended up being little bit longer.
Sometimes when people get a little bit older, they do find themselves drawn back to religion or church, whatever that was for them in their childhood. Do you think you'll ever go back in a formal way?
Well, I guess that's a yes or no question. So, I sort of did go back I found a church in Kansas City that Greg and I actually became members of. And the pastor there was at the time Reverend Sam Mann who wrote the lyrics to one of the songs on the record, one of my very favorites, the last song on the record, ‘Waycross Georgia.’
Great song.
Yeah, yeah, fantastic. Well, that’s Sam. So, you know, we finally found a church that was an inner city, predominantly Black church, where we felt at home. And it was the first and one of probably a handful of churches in the country where you can go in, and you're gonna hear somebody preach from texts, you know, Jesus to Thich Nhat Hanh, the great Prophet, Martin Luther King, etc. So, and everybody of all genders, you know, orientations were included. There were books of the Bible that he would just straight up say, we need to get rid of those. I was like, I am so at home, you know, when I joined, I told him, I said, I don't even know if I believe in God, and I don't want to join a church that requires me to say that I do. And, you know, he said, ‘We don't believe in a magic Jesus.’ So, an answer to your question. I did find a church that I could attend and feel really, that spiritual connection, feeling, and power that I had missed, without all of the BS, you know. But I don't live in Kansas City anymore. So. no I don’t attended church. And so, I don't know, I guess, I don't know if I can say I went back because it might be more accurate to say, I went forward. I went to a church that was a, you know, the next step kind of thing that was really more in keeping with my own beliefs and values and it had the heart to it that the other church had, I don't know. I mean, I always felt the spirit and the church, even those radical Pentecostal churches that were telling you we're going to Hell every five minutes. Underneath it, even as a kid I can feel there was something going on here outside of all of that nonsense that needed to go. And I've embraced that my whole life. And that's where I always go when I try to write, I'm trying to deliver that thing I knew from a child that I'm trying to put it out into my songs into the world. It helped me. I figure it's going to help somebody else. No, it's not a book. It's not a religion. It's the big story.
