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Tiffany Hanssen: You are listening to All Of It from WNYC. I'm Tiffany Hanssen filling in for Alison Stewart, who will be back tomorrow. Earlier this year on the show, I had a conversation with Nashville-based soul singer, Devon Gilfillian, about his latest album called Love You Anyway. The 10-track project follows up his 2020 debut Black Hole Rainbow, which featured a mix of old school influences such as Jimi Hendrix and Al Green. A Rolling Stone interview of the latest album, Love You Anyway, says, "Like its predecessor, there are thick R&B grooves shuttering funk breakdowns, and crunchy rock riffing."

The album was, and is, so much fun to listen to that we wanted to re-air part of my conversation with him, especially since he's on tour, and will be playing at Racket on Monday, September 25th. Devon Gilfillian wrote most of the songs on this album during COVID. I asked about his pandemic experience and how it affected his songwriting. Let's listen.

Devon Gilfillian: I feel like during the pandemic, it forced us to sit still and look in the mirror and go to therapy and really do the work and read, read the books and attached and all the things, all the books of relationships and just trying to dig deeper, on top of all of the craziness that was happening, the conspiracy theories and fake news and misinformation being spread. It was just so much a tornado of so many things.

Tiffany Hanssen: Before we get too far down the road here, I want to listen to the title track, Love You Anyway, which interestingly, and I'm going to ask you about this, is the last track on the album. It's not typically how it's done, I'll say, which I find very interesting. Let's take a listen.

[music - Devon Gilfillian: Love You Anyway]

Tiffany Hanssen: Not everything has to be a revolution for change to happen. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it's just putting dishes in the dishwasher.

Devon Gilfillian: Oh my God, you're speaking my language right now, Tiffany.

Tiffany Hanssen: I want to talk about that, but first I promised I would ask you about, this is the last song on the album. Obviously, it's intentional. What is the intent there?

Devon Gilfillian: The intent for me and the flow of the album for me, the first half is I wanted people to feel joy and lightness and love. Then, I wanted the second half to be the rock and roll, Follow the Leader, the Righteous and then the anger of what's happening. Then I wanted to anchor that with Love You Anyway being the heaviest-- To me it's the heaviest song on the album. I wanted Righteous, I wanted Follow the Leader to come first because I wanted the anger to come first in the album, and then I wanted it to be followed with, "But we need we need to come together, we can't be villainizing each other or we're not going to get control of our country again."

Tiffany Hanssen: I find, I know you said that it's heavy, but I do find a little optimism in Love You Anyway.

Devon Gilfillian: 100% and that is me, that is who I am. I'm an optimistic person. I feel like we can get to a place of understanding, whether it's in the small things, the small relationships, your romantic partner or your neighbor who has a completely different view than you, or even your nana, my nana, who has a completely different political view than myself and you're forced to-- Listen, we can't turn our neighbors and our family members into villains because of their political views and politics. We have to tell people, "Yo, we're not here to worship politics. We're not here to worship our country. We're not here to put that as part of our character. That's not who we are. We are humans. We are brothers and sisters and people that love each other." The reason why the government is here is for it to work for us and for us to control it. I have optimism. I have optimism that we can get to that middle ground.

Tiffany Hanssen: We're talking with Devon Gilfillian about the new album, Love You Anyway. Before we start yakking again, Devon, I want to hear another little bit from the album. This is called Let the Water Flow.

[music - Devon Gilfillian: Let The Water Flow]

Tiffany Hanssen: Devon, tell me what this song is about.

Devon Gilfillian: This song, it gets down to just the fight that the Black and poor, even poor white people, but mostly Black people and women have fought for the right to vote and how insane it is that today we're still fighting for that right. In Georgia, I was sitting at a bar watching the news with my buddy Henry and Brian Kemp was passing laws making it harder for people to vote, making it illegal to pass water out to the people waiting in line to vote. The lines in Georgia are historically insanely long. The system, it's insane. We're in 2023, and they can't figure out how to make voting easier for people. That frustration led to, let's figure out how to sing, let's write a song about this. Let the Water Flow to Georgia was the first line that we thought of when we saw the laws, and that led to the whole song.

Tiffany Hanssen: Politics is on your mind.

Devon Gilfillian: Hey, listen, you brought up, Let the Water Flow to Georgia.

Tiffany Hanssen: I think it's safe to say that. I wonder you're in Nashville.

Devon Gilfillian: Oh yes. It's going down.

Tiffany Hanssen: Talk about that. Talk about how you feel about it, but also how are you interacting with politics in your backyard?

Devon Gilfillian: I'm trying as hard as I can to be as active with politics locally and voting obviously as much with every election that comes up. During the Pandemic, I watched Justin Jones protest every day. He then got into the office, and then watching what had happened, watching Justin Jones and Pearson get expelled. To me, it's two steps back, and then one step forward, but also the eyeballs are on us and everybody's looking and seeing. I pray that people are looking and seeing and going, "Yo, that's in our country. This is not in the Middle East. We're in the United States. We don't have control of our democracy because of the gerrymandering, and also the racism that is just blatant, just pouring out."

Tiffany Hanssen: What is it about music specifically that can help with the problems that you identified?

Devon Gilfillian: I feel like music has the power to-- music is like medicine to me. It has this power of-- you can hear it and you don't quite listen to the message yet, but if the groove is just right, it tricks you. It has the power to make you move your body before you even know what you're getting into. Then you start to hear the message in the words and it makes people open. It opens people.

Tiffany Hanssen: That was Nashville-based soul singer Devon Gilfillian talking about his latest album Love You Anyway. Devon Gilfillian is on tour and he will be in our area on Monday, September 25th when he's playing at Racket on West 16th Street in Manhattan.

 

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