Lili Haydn slides up on stage inside Columbia College Chicago’s Music Center and smiles at the small audience. She plugs her violin into an amp and begins to play Memory One, the first track off her new album, Places Between Places. It’s interesting to see, just a few nights ago she performed on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and a few days later she played the National Anthem at Dodger Stadium. From playing in front of millions on TV, to the small crowd in Chicago, Haydn puts as much passion into her performance no matter where she performs. Even while playing inside the Hilton Hotel while posing for pictures, people stop and listen.
Haydn first came into notice as a session violinist while playing in Los Angeles. In between composing her own songs as well as collaborating with artist like Porno For Pyros, Josh Groban, Hootie and the Blowfish, Tom Petty and Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, she became well-known during her two years performing at the Viper Room. By 1997, she released her debut album, Lili and followed it up with Light Blue Sun in 2003. These albums shared the sounds of these rock influences with her own classic violin sound. This is a hard sound to get at first, but something which grows on you.
Released on April 1st, Place Between Places, Haydn’s third album contains tracks from the pop-friendly “Strawberry Street” to commentary on the war in Iraq with “Children of Babylon" and questions addressing religion on “Satellites." Combined with these lyrics, the album incorporates influences from Haydn’s days of playing with other acts. Haydn sat down with us recently and talked about her influences, being invited to play with Roger Waters at this year's Coachella festival and the inspiration for her new album. Fans of Haydn's work will find that Place Between Places has some different elements compared to the first two albums, Haydn explained which artists helped lead her to the new sound.
“Pink Floyd definitely, Radiohead, Neil Young…something organic, some of the trippyness of those bands,” Haydn said. “My last album had more electronic elements. I loved the trippyness of it but I wanted the songs to come from a more organic place.”
As a frequent performer with Amnesty International and with a passion for human rights, much of Haydn’s lyrics are a departure from the familiar bubble-gum pop sounds of today’s popular acts. Haydn expresses her feelings for the real world issues and concerns of modern society.
“It ended up being kind of a map of my consciousness,” Haydn said. “A kind of personal kind of naïve longing. The song “I Give Up” is kind of a personal surrender really to giving up to a higher point, and that turning point turns to a world consciousness where we’re actually trying to make sense of how hideous people can be but also how blissful things can be.”
With references to Hurricane Katrina on “Satellites," a song which some critics have wrongly labeled self-indulgent, Haydn discussed her feelings on religion.
“The spirituality that rings the most true to me is the consciousness of oneness. We are all connected, all religion is the manifestation of the same divine presence,” Haydn said. “Some critics have said (“Satellites”) has to deal with a love affair (laughs)…but it has to deal with my love affair of God. It really is ‘how do you make sense of the tragedy (of Katrina).’”
Then, with “Children of Babylon," a track which has been adopted by the Global Security Institute, Haydn discussed her beliefs on war and Iraq.
“It’s overwhelming to think about the trouble that our planet is in,” she said. “In a best case scenario, say a democrat gets in, hopefully it's someone who can rally people into creating change. But even so, the infrastructure for the war machine and the face in Iraq…it’s not going to change over night.”
The lyrical content of most of the songs from Place Between Places come from Haydn’s work through human rights causes. While Haydn didn’t purposely set out to create an album heavy on spreading a message on these topics, it came about in a more natural way.
“It was borne of the experiences of being faced with people who are really going through real stuff,” she said. “So you can’t really fake it, there’s not a lot of time to be pop, bubble-gum about it.”
But “Strawberry Street," the first single off of Place Between Place,s brings an upbeat, pop-friendly element to the record. A type of song more one’s more accustomed to hear on television and radio. She performed the single recently on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
“With “Strawberry Street”, it’s really the only unequivocally happy song on the record,” she said. “So that was the only song they wanted to hear on the Tonight Show. But my goal was to actually perk people up, and after the first line I remembered my purpose and I had a really good time.”
Haydn says while she enjoys “Strawberry Street," she finds the songs dealing with real issues of concern more satisfying.
“I’ve tried doing the pop thing before,” she said. “It is much more gratifying to do these other songs and I decided, do I really want to spend my time faking it (with pop)?”
With Place Between Places, Haydn also covers “Maggot Brain," off of Funkadelic’s 1971’s Maggot Brain album. George Clinton, who has called Haydn “The Jimmy Hendrix of violin,” apparently told Eddie Hazel to play the first half of the song as if he found out his mother just died, and the second half as if he found out she was alive. This resulted in a 10-minute guitar solo piece which Hazel is most remembered for.
Haydn has been invited to play with Roger Waters this weekend at the Coachella Music and Arts Festival. While she looks forward to playing with the famous singer, songwriter and bassist of Pink Floyd, she also hopes her performance helps music fans understand her.
“I hope in some way it will contextualize me in a way that I’m not just some ‘chick singer,’” she said. “To have Roger Waters call me and tell me he likes my record and that he wants me to be a part of his trip…that’s a huge honor and hugely exciting. I would like to be able to be understood as an artist and somebody who has concept. Somebody who is operating from the head and the heart but also from a visceral place also.”
While Haydn has received mostly positive reviews for her new album, some have criticized her and her performance on the album.
“Some have refereed to me just as the ‘rocker chick or violin chick who’s just trying to sound like Kate Bush’ or something like that,” she said. “They don’t get where I’m coming from, this is really me. I grew up playing classical music. So when I got turned on to these other forms of music, it kind of gets filtered…it’s all the orchestra to me, it’s all just different sounds and I’m really moved by it and I make the sounds that move me”
Place Between Places’ fusion of classical and pop/rock influences, combined with Haydn’s own personal beliefs and ideas balance out to an album which seems to define Haydn.
“There are a lot of lyric-driven records where the music is kind of an afterthought, people aren’t really trying to play their instruments too much,” she said. “This is also a heavily musical record, so for me I refined my musicianship and composing as well as I could, and my heart and my head as well as I could and combined them into something that maybe everybody won’t get but something that is definitely authentic and it’s definitely me.”
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Maggot Brain cover sounds like Gilmore s
Written by Guest on 2008-11-19 04:47:54
This sounds a lot like Gilmore on guitar. This "Chick" is awesome. The intensity is moving. I can see why Roger Waters wanted her to play with him at Coachella. I wish I saw what song she played on. |
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