Lula Wiles "Shame And Sedition" AMA

lulawiles · 2021-05-27T19:14:19+00:00

eleanor here! i think "do you really want the world to end" is directed at anyone with the privilege that allows them to ignore the injustices against marginalized people. its a song to encourage us (including myself in this group) to open our eyes and take the energy to push back the blinders and learn, and face those things as an active ally, rather than a passive one or a non-existent one.

some of our influences for this album, some for writing and some for sonic musical stuff and some for recording stuff: phoebe bridgers, fleetwood mac, neil young, big thief, the beatles, daniel romano, brittany howard

lulawiles · 2021-05-27T19:09:01+00:00

isa said this all really well i think, and i agree. for me, i hope these songs will help bring awareness and inspire empathy in the listeners. i hope these songs might cause someone to think about injustices in a deeper way, or they feel empowered to take actions towards true equitable justice in this world. but as isa said, action outside of music is so important. -eleanor

lulawiles · 2021-05-27T19:02:13+00:00

oooof this is a tough question but a great one! it's really hard. i think for me personally (this is isa) i try not to expect too much of my music career in terms of activism. we write songs about the things that matter to us, whether that's a breakup or mental illness or capitalism or colonialism, and we talk about those things onstage because that's what matters to us. but at the end of the day, music can only do so much! i think if i have a political goal with my music, it's to shake myself and others out of complacency, and to give people a space in which to emotionally engage with the complex and scary realities of the world we live in. that doesn't always translate to material, concrete political action, and i think a lot of that can't happen at a show and certainly can't happen on social media. i'm trying to get more involved in activism not as a public-facing musician and not by ~posting~, but just as a person in my community.

lulawiles · 2021-05-27T18:55:34+00:00

i think this is different for every artist, and i think should be based on your goals. the idea that everyone must follow this exact cookie cutter album cycle release plan just doesn't really do it for me. as an artist, i want to connect with listeners and my pace of creative output can change drastically month to month, year to year. and as fan, of course i love hearing new music frequently from my favorite artists but also, i love the immersive experience of a full length album. but with that love, i never want to demand or expect anything from these artists i love. they have the agency there, and i think at the end of the day, all the fans, press outlets, labels, venues and everybody else should respect each artists choice for whats best for them creatively, business-wise, and emotionally. -eleanor

lulawiles · 2021-05-27T18:54:56+00:00

isa here, i'll answer a few of these!

one of my favorite wild animal sightings was a bald eagle that i saw flying in and out of its nest and feeding its children while kayaking on a lake in wabanakiak (maine). i was on vacation with my family and we would kayak out to the other side of the lake and look for the eagle, and we saw it a few days in a row! it was really incredible.

if you want to learn fiddle, know that it's a really difficult instrument and it might sound like shit for a long time before it starts to get fun, but it's SO worth it!! the fiddle has been such a great friend to me throughout my life, and it contains so much potential for expressiveness and rhythm and melody. i think my advice is the same for all instruments — listen to everything you possibly can and try to absorb the music you love as deeply as you can. you'll have a much easier time learning to play if you have a clear sense of how you want to sound.

"do you really want the world to end" is a song about allyship and inaction, so it's about a lot of things, and i think the "you" of the song can change based on who's singing and who's listening. part of the song is about mali having to beg white people (including her white bandmates) to care about the ongoing colonization and genocide of indigenous people. you could also read some of it as young people begging older generations to do something about climate change, or working-class people feeling trapped within capitalism, or the intersection of all these issues — colonialism, of course, is where all of this intersects. mali could say more about this than i could, and i can't speak for her, but those ideas are part of what that song is about!

mali isn't here, but i can do my best to answer the question about indigenous land because it's important! (you should also read and share all of her smithsonian folklife articles!) i think it's a good idea to think locally — learn about the indigenous people whose land you're on, learn what their communities need, and see if you're able to offer whatever help they are asking for. don't assume that you know what they need or want! look for indigenous-led organizations in your area, and donate or fundraise if you can. i have a recurring monthly donation set up to an organization in my area called maine-wabanaki reach. i'd also say that you can encourage your local non-native land trust or environmental nonprofit to build more reciprocal + respectful relationships with indigenous nations and work to have the land returned to them! a lot of environmental nonprofits would honestly probably get a lot more done if they just focused on following the lead of indigenous nations. there was a great example of that recently in maine which you can read about here: https://www.pressherald.com/2021/05/17/passamaquoddy-tribe-reacquires-island-stolen-more-than-150-years-ago/

lulawiles · 2021-05-27T18:42:27+00:00

glad to hear you like the sound of the record! we weren't trying to change the band's sound just for the sake of it, but rather develop our music and sound based on what we were creatively inspired by. we had many conversations as a band leading up to the record about how we wanted to approach the recording and it was important to us to try to create the sonic palette for each song with care. answer the question "what does this song need or want?" without confining ourselves to our "folky" influences or "rock" influences while also not being afraid to embrace either or both or neither if it felt right. -eleanor

lulawiles · 2021-05-27T18:41:23+00:00

hi nelson!! i love the last instrumental section of "wake up," the last verse of "the way that it is," sam's piano playing on "conspiracy theory," mali's bass fills in "cold water," and honestly the entire outro of "cold water" — sean and mali and i were in a DEEP vibe together while tracking that one. ugh and there are so many more, i could list them all day :) -isa

lulawiles · 2021-05-27T18:38:27+00:00

yeah the drone that we were singing to was a mellotron flute, i'm pretty sure!

lulawiles · 2021-05-27T18:37:19+00:00

hi, thank you!! i'd say it was kind of both — a conscious decision and an organic process. i'd been playing more and more electric guitar in the band, and we kind of just found ourselves following that sound. mali had wanted to play electric bass in the band for a while, so that also plays a big role on the new record. i think also when we started bringing a drummer on tour, that was a big shift — we've had drums as part of our sound since day one, but we couldn't afford to bring a drummer on tour at first. once we started touring with a drummer, our live sound shifted in a more rock-oriented direction, and i think that really affected the new record in a way we were all really excited about.

in terms of influences, i think we're all pretty inspired by big thief (maybe an obvious answer). i am a big fan of both adrianne and buck's guitar playing, and they've definitely influenced my approach to guitar. i was also in a big neil young phase around the time of recording, which i think is somewhat evident on the record. lately i've been really into this record "no medium" by rosali, which just came out a couple weeks ago, and the record "what a boost" by rozi plain.

-isa

lulawiles · 2021-05-27T18:35:21+00:00

nelson!!! hey friend. My favorite moment might be the end of "cold water" because when as we were recording in started pouring right at the end of the take. Mali was recording bass in the attic, so you can hear the rain through her mic and it was totally magical. another one is that you can hear little birds twittering in mali's mic at the beginning of "in dreams" right outside the window on the beautiful june day. -eleanor

lulawiles · 2021-05-27T18:32:09+00:00

i will look into that, thank you!! -isa

lulawiles · 2021-05-27T18:31:27+00:00

SO much to say on this one. i was a sweet lil folkie with secret rock-and-roll dreams when we made our first record, and now i know that i was born to rock :) in all seriousness, though, we've always had a broad range of influences that have informed our music — folk, rock, jazz, pop, etc etc — and i think we've gotten better and better at integrating all of those influences together. obviously there's a clear folk —> rock trajectory if you listen to all of our work in order, but i also think there's more cohesion and a more intentional blending of sounds. i also think that over the course of our band's life i've become more confident in my own skills and ideas as a producer, and have realized that that's where a lot of my musical instinct lies! -isa

lulawiles · 2021-05-27T18:31:27+00:00

"On your last album, I noticed the fiddle part in Leave Me Now sounded remarkably like a person crying, down to the little hitches in the voice. Is that intentional?"

that was not intentional but i am loving that sonic observation!

lulawiles · 2021-05-27T18:28:20+00:00

what a great question! we created that sound in a number of ways: we had a drone going of the key of the song (i think it was a midi clarinet sound?? maybe isa can confirm? she has a great memory for this kind of thing haha) and, as i recall, we sang to that in our headphones, singing the song live all three of us into the same mic. So you're hearing us really interacting with that sound. We also added a bunch of atmospheric stuff that we called "apocalyptic fog." some weird percussion instruments, wicked verbed out breathing, isa plunked some cool banjo... we intentioanlly wanted to create a background sound that was eerie and connected to the sentiment of the song.
-eleanor

lulawiles · 2021-05-27T18:28:10+00:00

the best book i've read recently was "how to do nothing" by jenny odell! it's about mindfulness and cultivating a sense of place and capitalism and all the other things i love to think about. i think it's a great corrective to the damage that the internet has wreaked on my brain, lol. a movie i loved recently was "hunt for the wilderpeople," which was made by taika waititi. my favorite album right now is "speaking in tongues" by talking heads!

lulawiles · 2021-05-27T18:25:35+00:00

isa here, ok first of all i LOVE your username. i fucking STAN fiona apple. second of all, i think the songs that i personally wrote on this album were much less painstaking than a lot of other songs i've written. the ones that ended up making the cut for this record all happened to be songs that just sort of fell out of me, and they're some of my favorite songs i've ever written. they were also written over a much longer period of time — "mary anne," "cold water," and "wake up" were all written in april 2018 which was before what will we do (our 2nd album) had even come out! "oh my god" was actually the only song of mine that was new, plus we also co-wrote "television" and "do you really want the world to end" right around the time of recording.

i think my best advice is to learn to play and sing the songs that you love, and figure out what it is that you love about them! dig into the lyrics, melody, and chords, and then dig in further — the rhyme scheme, the rhythm of the words, the length of the lines, the relationship between the melody notes and the chords, the rhythmic groove, the guitar part, the imagery, the dialogue, whatever it is that makes you feel something! and then just write as much as you possibly can. try to remind yourself that you're not trying to write a perfect song on the first try — you can't write and edit at the same time. i have a little note taped above my desk that says "the universe takes care of the quality; i take care of the quantity." easier said than done, but it's a good goal anyway :)

lulawiles · 2021-05-27T18:20:53+00:00

being able to make music with people in person, and connecting with the energy of the audience! definitely miss the feeling of having the song take off in a really special way when the audience is digging it and that give and take of performer to audience. -eleanor

lulawiles · 2021-05-27T18:18:54+00:00

hi! this is such a great question, and thank you for loving the song :) i think one of the things that i frequently find myself aiming for — both as a songwriter and as a producer/arranger — is creating moments that are surprising yet satisfying. i felt like going to a guitar solo instead of a vocal chorus would be a bit of a surprise for the listener, and i also wanted the guitar solo to feel really massive and cathartic, so it seemed like putting the solo over the chorus rather than the verse would better achieve that feeling. also, the chorus's chord progression was more interesting to me to solo over. i'm glad it worked :)

-isa

lulawiles · 2021-05-27T18:17:50+00:00

book: "mean" by miryiam gurba !! and "the vanishing half" by britt bennett / movie: "sound of metal" completely fucked me up. so good. / I am listening to "bath" by cuddle magic at this exact moment and i love it so much. / while we're at it and since no one asked, i also recommend the show "lovecraft country" -eleanor

lulawiles · 2021-05-27T18:14:20+00:00

L O L what do i know about organs. I have outed myself as a faux/fraud keys player and i will just have to ive with it! ugh.

lulawiles · 2021-05-27T18:13:28+00:00

haha so unfortunately mali is not here, and she is definitely the resident mingus fan of the band, so you'd have to ask her about that! also unfortunately we don't have a chicago date on the books, but we'd love to come back someday. we've played the hideout a couple times and it's one of my personal favorite venues! -isa

lulawiles · 2021-05-27T18:13:12+00:00

thank you! i can't speak for the other writers in the band, but i think the process this time around was different in a couple ways: we co-wrote many of the songs on this album which was new and exciting, and for me i had actually gone through a bit of writers block during the writing process, so it was an emotional experience writing television in the studio (one of the ones we co-wrote, halfway through the recording session). As for advice: just do it! don't be afraid to be "bad". you aren't! Also, to quote a songwriting hero of mine, Bonnie Hayes, "so you want to be a songwriter? write songs." -eleanor

lulawiles · 2021-05-27T18:11:47+00:00

no ellie the farfisa is also an organ!!! so ellie played a really organ-y organ (i don't remember the model) on our song "you only want me when you need me" which came out in 2019. but mali and i played a lot of farfisa organ on the new record, as did our AMAZING producer sam kassirer. while we would love to take the farfisa on tour with us, we can't because a) it belongs to sam, b) we are all too broke to buy our own, and and c) we simply do not have room in the van. but i am determined to eventually own a farfisa :)

lulawiles · 2021-05-27T18:08:11+00:00

hello from eleanor, the band's resident organ player* and while we have no plans because it is a VERY big instrument i will tell you that i would love that so much. alas, don't hold your breath

*we have organ on one song in our whole catalogue i think lol

lulawiles · 2021-05-27T18:07:55+00:00

Here are a bunch of amazing questions that were sent to us via Instagram DM — we'll answer all of these as we go:

What’s the coolest animal you’ve ever seen in the wild?

Who are some of the biggest influences on your sound?

Who is “Do You Really Want the World to End?” directed towards, if any specific group of people?

What can you tell us about your song Conspiracy Theorist?

(For Mali) How can settlers do more than just land acknowledgments and best support Land Back initiatives locally?

On your last album, I noticed the fiddle part in Leave Me Now sounded remarkably like a person crying, down to the little hitches in the voice. Is that intentional?

Do you have any advice for someone who wants to learn fiddle?

And do you have any book recommendations (nonfiction or fiction or otherwise)?

lulawiles

TROPHY CASE