Joanna Newsom

By: Story by Matt Carr | Photographed by Annabel Mehran | October 11, 2010 | Music

With a purse slung around one arm and a crying child cradled in the other, an attractive young mother walks down the sidewalk occasionally peering through her oversized sunglasses at her upset son while typing a text message on her cell phone. It would be a thoroughly modern American portrait if not for the abundance of devilishly detailed monsters seen through the eyes of the hysterical young boy — a consequence of filming the heavily psychedelic music video for rock band MGMT’s “Kids.” More startling than the monsters, however, is the realization that the singer/songwriter renowned for her inimitable voice and accompanying harp is the “mother” starring in her first acting role — and she’s not half bad.

Six years after the release of the unapologetically idiosyncratic and acclaimed record The Milk-Eyed Mender, Joanna Newsom has risen out of folk obscurity with two lauded follow-ups and a string of interesting appearances, including a spot on the The Roots newest LP How I Got Over, a stint modeling for Giorgio Armani, paparazzi-snapped photographs with Saturday Night Live beau Andy Samberg, and perhaps most impressively, was turned into a Simpsons character by show creator Matt Groening for the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival.

But none of this paints a proper portrait of Newsom the musician. In an era dominated by computers and Auto-Tune-fueled production magic, she’s a traditionalist: an overwhelmingly talented and prodigious player and composer committed to the near-arcane process of analog recording. During the orchestral sessions for Ys, her wildly dense, second full-length album made with Brian Wilson collaborator Van Dyke Parks, the sound engineer had to, at one point, combine two separate 24-track reels of tape.

“Every time we rewound those two tape reels to do another take of any given song, all the orchestral players, with their headphones on, would start cracking up hearing the noise of the tape,” says Newsom. “A number of them told me later on that they hadn’t recorded to tape in 10 or 15 years.”

At 28 years old, the Northern Californian native may be one of the more out-of-the-ordinary figures in contemporary music. More surprising than the fact that she doesn’t own an iPod or a functioning CD player is her complete absence on the Web. With major record labels relegated to pinching pennies and the digital music revolution in full effect, the free marketing capabilities of social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook have forced bands — from pop stars like John Mayer to little-known indie rockers The Local Natives — to pump out daily tidbits of personal information to retain the interest of their respective fan bases. Newsom, an admittedly private person, doesn’t even have a MySpace page — the most basic social format used by everybody from The Rolling Stones to the noisy high school band down the street. Search for a primary source on the Internet, and aside from interviews, the closest you’ll come to connecting with Newsom is through the discography on her record label’s website. She might as well be the Net Generation’s Ned Ludd.

Then, there’s the polarizing voice: a wholly unique tone, part exasperated child, part quivering old lady, that at first listen either mesmerizes and intrigues or bewilders. Dave Eggers, in a 2004 article for Spin magazine, wrote: “Joanna Newsom’s voice makes Daniel Johnston’s voice seem perfectly sane, makes Bob Dylan sound like Teddy Pendergrass.”

As a singer/songwriter, Newsom fits into the general mold: She writes, composes and sings her own lyrics and melodies. Just trade the archetypal acoustic guitar for a harp and add complex polyrhythms and orchestral flourishes to every song so they average at about eight minutes in length. Stylistically, elements of traditional Appalachian folk, bluegrass finger picking and Celtic music are fused with Newsom’s training in classical, West African and Venezuelan harp music. To the average listener, it’s an obscure amalgamation that can be difficult to digest at first.

But while Joanna Newsom may not yet be a household name to the average American, in artists’ circles there are few contemporary musicians more feverishly revered and admired. Benjamin Gibbard, singer of the rock band Death Cab For Cutie, once admitted, “I can barely listen to her without being moved to tears.” Similarly, Dave Eggers gushed, “Her music has changed my life and will, I’m sure, make me a better person.” Just this past winter, Roan Press published an entire book of academic essays and critiques on Newsom and her music titled Visions of Joanna — a startling accomplishment for an artist still at the beginning of her career.

“It gives me an odd impression of being prematurely eulogized,” Newsom said of the book. “But I suppose, then, it also presents me with the rare opportunity to be grateful for the nice things somebody might say about me after I was gone. I just don’t know if I’ve done enough work yet of a high enough quality to justify that caliber and depth of analysis, but I’m very grateful for it, and honored and encouraged by it.”

The book was premature, if only for missing the opportunity to dissect Newsom’s most recent accomplishment — the February release of her triple album Have One On Me, that despite its intimidating scope, introduces Newsom’s clearest and most manageable vision to date.

Newsom grew up in Nevada City, Calif., a small town with a population of 3,000 that sits 60 miles northeast of Sacramento. Settled in 1849 amidst the zeal of the California Gold Rush, the town would later become a wooded escape for artist types and progressive professionals looking for affordable real estate in the 1970s. Newsom’s parents, two Bay Area doctors, relocated to Nevada City in 1981 to a big house in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

The city is filled with an eclectic hodgepodge of semi-famous and famous residents, including Beat poet Gary Snyder, minimalist composer Terry Riley, Supertramp’s Roger Hodgson and international tarot expert Mary K. Greer. According to the National Register of Historic Places, it’s also one of the most well-preserved towns in the West. That history is even richer when you consider the town’s neighbors: the site of the cannibalistic Donner Party, and Rough and Ready, the only mining town to have seceded and promptly voted itself back into the Union in a span of months in 1850.

The compelling history of Nevada City, along with Newsom’s own upbringing, is largely responsible for the narrative setting of Have One On Me — a record immersed in themes of love and loss. But ask Newsom for a specific allusion and you get inundated with detail — in my case, an overwhelming list of references concerning her hometown, from the clash of the violent American West with the overwrought concepts of aestheticism and romance during the Gold Rush to forest fires, secondhand smog from neighboring towns, meth labs and “magic pine woods choked with poison oak.” Perhaps the most revealing part of Newsom’s answer is not in the details but rather in the nature of her response: thoughtful, studious and caring at every turn.

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