Johnette Napolitano has been involved with several successful projects throughout her career, most famously as the lead vocalist and songwriter for Concrete Blonde. In the last 6 years, she has released three solo albums, the most recent entitled Scarred.
RockOm.net recently spoke with Johnette about her album Scarred, religious art, the play of light and dark and her career.
RockOm: One of the songs that stood out to us from Scarred was "Poem for a Native." What can you tell us about this song and what you are communicating through the poetry's colorful imagery?
Johnette: That's a strange one. I'd written that a long time ago and had recorded it, but had never used the old version. I was inspired by a trip to Morocco and my lifelong interest in all things Native American. It is said that there is Native American on my mother's side somewhere, and I believe it; my Aunt always looked like she'd stepped right off the back of a nickel or something, black braids and all.
I was lucky enough to work with John Trudell, a legendary activist and poet. Sometimes in spite of myself I stumble into things; I truly have been blessed that way. In any case, I live out here in the desert where those spirits are very strong, and walking around one morning I found a piece of paper blown up against the chain-link fence. It was 'Poem', a piece I'd completely forgotten I'd written and was perfect for one of the tracks I'd been working on with Will (Crewdson, who I was working with on Scarred). I think it's my favorite track on the record.
RockOm: Another track from the same album, "Like a Wave," implies being swept away beyond one's control and drowning. Share with us about your inspiration for "Like a Wave" and were you intentionally trying to make the song mirror the lyrics in that it builds and crests at it's ending?
Johnette: It was the other way around. Music is a full on multidimensional experience for me; I used to lay with my head under the hi-fi when I was little and choreograph entire ballets to Gershwin in my head.
The music does crest and break, and the music wrote the lyric, really. In that sense the chorus comes first and you have to fit everything else around it, build it up to that. I'm particularly pleased at the flanging on the vocal there, the way they overlap, the phrases, like waves on the beach. The lyrics and the music became one... human emotions are as endangered as any other species.
RockOm: The song "Save Me" has a similar lyrical tone to "Like a Wave" in that it, too, implies a sense of drowning and desperation. How are those two songs alike - or different - in subject matter?
Johnette: The Chinese have a thing - you have to bend like a reed, let everything just happen, sometimes when you know things are just too strong and too much and it's just this constant sensation of another wave breaking over you. In this case, I was literally having dreams and nightmares during Hurricane Katrina, just black water creeping up, seeping into everything and the hell... it was just hell. I couldn't sleep at all... [it was] just fucking horrible. Smashed windows, storefronts, beautiful things just floating alongside excrement... I pick all that up, and as anyone else who is that intuitive knows, the challenge is to try to control and channel all that. I just had no choice than to pound away, write like crazy. I was exploding. In "Wave" it's more metaphorical, surrendering to it is the only thing to do. In "Save Me" it's a very literal story, and people were fighting every minute, every inch of rising water, and I could feel that.
RockOm: We came across an older poem you have written entitled "The Dark." The last section of which says this:
Yeah. I know the dark. I knew the dark for a very long time.
There are certain sects that prohibit the eating of anything that grows in the dark. Bad things grow in the dark. Doubt, fear, deception... lift the stone and expose the rot, the cancer, the things that need the dark to thrive.
I will never understand the dark again, because the light will always come, and the light is always certain. Wait a little while. Give equal time to the light. Feed the light within. Many sparks create the sun.
Would you care to share your journey between the dark and the light and what each mean to you now?
Johnette: The first thing that strikes me as the polite thing to say is "I suppose everyone has things to overcome" but the fact is some people don't, and just cruise along on the surface just fine. It will never be like that for me, and I accept that, things are just very screwed up from the earliest DNA formations. From what I've had to work with I think I've done very well, have maintained a balance, and have recognized the need to; it is so much easier to live than we make it. I have learned when, at what time of year, what time of day, season, etc., I function most effectively depending on what I need to do to take care of myself. It is very conscious, something I have to work at -a rhythm. It gets easier as you get older because the things that affected childhood so much fall further and further away, and it's a great thing to take spiritual responsibility for oneself. In the winter I write a lot, by spring release records, etc., in the summer I'm outdoors more so I build my art and play live more. The season calls for it, the fall is my birthday season and I'm most alive then. It's consciously overriding the things in your own mind you shouldn't trust - fear, it's not real. The past - it is gone. The future is from this very second on, and if I listen and pay attention and appreciate my place in the flow, and trust it, the big picture will be fine. I'm just a little belch in time, the only job I have is to at least belch in tune.
It's work. It's work to stay away from the influences that are there to take our natural ability to live in the world away. A lot starts in the body: minimal, organic food. Taking care of the body is extremely important. We have issues of pressure and stress that are quite unnatural for the human body and soul, and it is hard to feel mentally or emotionally bad when you feel good, physically, and vice-versa. I pretend that every day is my last as of course it may well be, and in doing so I find the hours, then days, take care of themselves.
Having said that, one person's poison is another's sustenance. Knowing one's physical, mental and emotional needs is pretty much a life's work in itself - especially for a woman, who has all this other hormonal shit going on every decade or so depending on whether you have kids or not, etc. It's truly a science, the female body.
RockOm: Your Myspace bio sites "14th century religious art AND all religious art for all religions" as some of your influences. What is it about religious art that inspires you?
Johnette: The inspiration itself, I suppose. The combination of inspiration and sheer craftsmanship that you just don't see a hell of a lot of anymore. There was a quote where someone said, "Those men were full of God" and I love that; never mind what your concept of God is or whether or not you need one at all, to be that full of spirit, of emotion, of passion that one would be driven to create some of that stuff - fucking incredible. There is a luminous quality. I love the purity of the Santeros, the Saint-Makers, Spanish Colonial art, the simple folk art. So beautiful. The artists, so honest. So humble. Pure. I was very lucky to study with Juan Quezada in Mata Ortiz, Mexico, who had such respect for the clay. I remember the village would be in church Sunday, but to Juan, the clay was God, and everything revolved around the clay, which supported everyone. If the clay were soft and ready to work, you worked it... screw Mass, screw everything, but be ready when the clay is. I believe when artists are truly filled with Spirit that we hear it and see it and taste it in their work... that's what we are moved by and drawn to.
RockOm: Finally, you're involved with music, art, film work, and even a book – can you tell our users more about some of your most recent involvements in any of those arenas… anything new you've got in the works right now?
Johnette: Will Crewdson has been here for a couple weeks from the UK and we just did a few shows on the West Coast to pimp out our cover of Midnight Oil's "Beds Are Burning" which we uploaded as an MP3 on ITUNES via CDBABY and all that. I'm a big fan of this point in time; it's a hassle making records fast enough and I like the fact you can upload something as quick as you can record it these days.
We've recorded a few more tracks and I'm compiling Sketchbook 3, third in a limited edition series of demos, ideas and home recordings. I love making those, my little art projects. I do 1,000 of them and sign and number them. The book thing is better than I thought it would be... select lyrics and comments on lyrics; I think any major serious writing endeavor (if I care to get deeper) is a few years away. It's a great time in my life; I don't have an overhead so I can pretty much do what I want. We're recording covers now just for the sheer fun of it and haven't had a whole lot of opportunity to play together aside from these three West Coast gigs. We've done Mott The Hoople's "I Wish I Was Your Mother" and we recently uploaded our version of Monster Magnet's "Baby Gotterdamerung." That's a pretty amazing lyric. It's really great to record something on one day, get it up and people are the first to discover it in the middle of the night... I love it. I'm working to have Sketchbook 3 available by Xmas.
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Thanks to Anissa Mason of the Brookes Company
Tags: art, Concrete Blonde, Darkness, hnette Napolitano, Hurricane Katrina, Light, music, Native American, Religious Art, Scarred, spirituality
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