[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC, I'm Alison Stewart. The new album from bassist Todd Sickafoose due out next week is the first album under his own name it 15 years. You might know Todd for a few reasons. He is a longtime bassist for friend of the show, Ani DiFranco. Sickafoose has been making records and touring with DiFranco for almost 20 years. You might also know him from his work on this.

[MUSIC - Anais Mitchell: Wait For Me]

How to get to Hadestown

You'll have to take the long way down

Through the underground, under cover of night

Laying low and staying out of sight

Ain't no compass, brother, there ain't no map

Just a telephone wire and a railroad track

Keep on walking and don't look back

'Til you get to the bottomland

Wait for me, I'm coming

Wait, I'm coming with you

Wait for me, I'm coming too

I'm coming too

River Styx is high and wide

Alison Stewart: That's Wait For Me from a cast album of Hadestown, the Tony-winning folk opera written by Anais Mitchell. Sickafoose first started working on the original Hadestown album with Mitchell in 2007 before it became a hit musical. He eventually won a Grammy and Tony Award for producing the music and orchestration of the show. Hadestown is one of the reasons why it's been so long since Sickafoose had released original music under his own name.

He's first recorded this new album called Bear Proof in 2014, but the success of Hadestown meant the release had to be slightly postponed. Now, it's finally time for Bear Proof to come out into the world. Let's listen to a bit of the lead single from the album, this is Switched On.

[MUSIC - Todd Sickafoose: Switched On]

Alison Stewart: Bear Proof will be out in the world on September 29th. Todd Sickafoose joins me in studio for a listening party preview. Todd, welcome.

Todd Sickafoose: Thank you so much, Alison.

Alison Stewart: I have to say, you get the MVP award because the tour bus blew it higher?

[laughter]

Todd Sickafoose: Right. There's a bit of a Burlington theme on your show today because that's where we played last night. We left about two o'clock in the morning and blew a tire somewhere in Connecticut on our way to New York.

Alison Stewart: And you managed to get here in time?

Todd Sickafoose: I'm here.

Alison Stewart: Impressive. Thank you so much for making such an effort. As I said, the music was first composed and recorded in 2014. What were the circumstances that led to the project in the first place? Let's talk about the origin of Bear Proof.

Todd Sickafoose: Well, thematically, there's an element of it that came from this conversation I was having with my friend about how I was living in California at the time in the Bay Area. In California, sometimes you think, my God, everything is a gold rush. Everything has boom and bust. Pot legalization and Hollywood and the tech industry. At the time that I wrote this music, there was the peak exodus of artists in San Francisco because the tech industry was just pushing everybody out.

This music came from a feeling of those emotions, not necessarily a specific story, but capturing the feeling of some of those things. It's instrumental music so I like to leave a lot of room for interpretation. I think people hopefully will listen to it and read the song titles and feel some of that.

Alison Stewart: We'll get to listen to some in a little bit. Why did this feel like a good time to release it through?

Todd Sickafoose: Well, it was a good time for me. I'm not sure if it's good time for anybody else.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Why was it a good time for you?

Todd Sickafoose: Well, there's not one answer to why it took so long. I guess we recorded it nine years ago in a little burst of activity. We really got deep inside the music and rehearsed it more than you ever get to with musicians of this caliber and played a lot of shows and went into the studio. One of the things about the piece is that it's three composites, 65 minutes of continuous music. When we perform it live, it really feels like ritual to do that. You feel changed at the end of it.

It was a unique recording experience to be able to actually record it that way. I've never quite done anything like that in the studio. All eight of us played for an hour straight. We actually did two takes. The record is take two.

Alison Stewart: Oh, that's so interesting.

Todd Sickafoose: As it happened, of course, now, I've broken it up into tracks. That's just to help the listener.

Alison Stewart: What was it like the first time you played it out in front of people?

Todd Sickafoose: I didn't know exactly how that was going to work.

Alison Stewart: Exactly. [laughs]

Todd Sickafoose: Sometimes you think, well, if you don't communicate with an audience every now and then, maybe there's some kind of loss of momentum or something confusing about it. Actually, it was beautiful and you felt-- Music is such one of the things that's so great about it. and I think instrumental music has this in spades is that it's a way to be really intimate with each other and an audience without using a language, without using spoken words to capture everything that we're thinking and feeling.

Which are a bit of a limitation sometimes, let's be honest, but it worked out. [laughs] We got really great feedback from that first night.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Todd Sickafoose. The new album is called Bear Proof. It will be out on September 29th. The first song in the album is The Gold Gate, hasn't been released yet so this is very exciting. What would you like people to listen for as we play a bit of The Gold Gate?

Todd Sickafoose: Well, this is the very beginning of the piece. If there's anything that's appropriate to play as a starting point, it's this. It's the prelude to the rest of it. It's this simple melody that comes in is or reorganized in all sorts of ways over the next hour, so this is the first time you hear it.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to The Gold Gate.

[MUSIC - Todd Sickafoose: The Gold Gate]

Alison Stewart: That's The Gold Gate from Todd Sickafoose. I want to play a good long stretch of it.

Todd Sickafoose: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: I hope that's okay.

Todd Sickafoose: It's okay.

Alison Stewart: I know it's not out yet. Tell us a little bit about who's play-- You can hear all the different instrumentation. It's an octet, right?

Todd Sickafoose: It is, yes.

Alison Stewart: All right. I heard clarinet.

Todd Sickafoose: Yes, clarinet. Great clarinetist is from the Bay Area named Ben Goldberg, no stranger to these parts. He's in New York all the time as are most of these musicians if they don't live here permanently. You heard electric guitar, that's Adam Levy. Violin, Jenny Scheinman. On piano, that was Erik Deutsch. One of the more left-field instruments as part of this group is the accordion. That's a great accordionist from the Bay Area, Rob Reich and Allison Miller playing drums.

Alison Stewart: How did this group come together? Were these people who had worked together you've worked with before? Had they worked together as a group?

Todd Sickafoose: Yes, it's a subset of people who were involved in a band that I had for a long time called Tiny Resistors, also on the record called Tiny Resistors. Although this is a bit different version of that instrumentation, but I think it was the first time a couple of these people I'd played again. Oh, I left out Kirk, Kirk Knuffke on cornet. That was the eighth person. I think that was the first time that he had ever played with Ben Goldberg. The two of them had since played a lot together and made a duo recording.

Alison Stewart: That's great. It's turned out to be an incubator for another project.

Todd Sickafoose: It has. I think also a lot of this instrumentation and group of people ended up becoming a project that Allison Miller has made called Rivers in our Veins, which is really great and coming out soon as well.

Alison Stewart: Wow. This is a fertile project for a lot of people.

Todd Sickafoose: Yes. That's how it works in my part of the music world anyway. This group of musicians who have such beautiful personalities, so much goodwill, so much desire to get inside a composer's vision and speak with their own voice, but also really get deep into what the compositional ideas are.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Todd Sickafoose. He is a bassist and composer. We're here with the listening party preview for the new album, Bear Proof, which is out September 29th. Bear Proof? [unintelligible 00:11:23] with bears?

Todd Sickafoose: I do. I have some bear experiences. I think of it as just the, I don't know, protective skin that can be around you to keep you safe during the hard times. There's some failure in the way I think of the themes of this music, at least, to me, and the way I hear it and ruin. Yes, if there's a thing that can glow, I don't know, this is an audio medium radio, but there's some artwork to this record which I adore via an artist named Grady McFerrin. He shows this colorful box in the forest [unintelligible 00:12:14], I think. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Oh, let me see.

Todd Sickafoose: There's something really magical about it, and the whole world is encapsulated inside of it.

Alison Stewart: Yes, there's the sky on the side. Then also, it's the surrounding background is like twall, black and white, and then there's this big, colorful, three-dimensional tent rectangle.

Todd Sickafoose: Yes, something like that.

Alison Stewart: Look, there's people on the top. Oh, that's awesome.

Todd Sickafoose: I like your description of it.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] There you go. You said the word "ruin." There's a track that's called Boom Bust Startup Ruin.

Todd Sickafoose: Yes, that's a bit on the nose, but yes, there it is.

Alison Stewart: You're on Instagram. This one starts what I consider the second half of the hour-long piece. There is a constant theme of ruination or its teetering possibility in this music, maybe you can hear the water seeping up through the bottom of the boat. Let's take a listen and we can talk about it on the other side.

[MUSIC - Todd Sickafoose: Boom Bust Startup Ruin]

Alison Stewart: That's Boom Bust Startup Ruin from the new album, Bear Proof. When listening to this, I keep thinking I would love to see dance with this.

Todd Sickafoose: Oh, that's a great idea.

Alison Stewart: Let's just put that out in the universe.

Todd Sickafoose: Yes. Well, you know one thing about-- I love rhythmic tension. Though I think one of the things that it does for you in music is it makes you feel humanity and stuff. It mirrors the way our bodies work with different things moving in different ways and in different rhythms against each other. I like that and I'd go for that. I think you're picking pieces here today that emphasize that.

Alison Stewart: With a title Boom Bust Startup Ruin, did you ever have a boom bust period in your career where it seemed like things were going great and then, oh, boy?

Todd Sickafoose: It's always that, all at the same time.

Alison Stewart: Is it, really?

Todd Sickafoose: I think so. That's what your guests just now was talking about.

Alison Stewart: True.

Todd Sickafoose: I don't know. You mentioned Hadestown and winning Tony's and everything. The morning after that I got on a plane and busted my butt to get to a little gig, [laughs] it's all part of the journey.

Alison Stewart: Yes. It is part of the journey, right? You mixed this album as well, Todd, is that right?

Todd Sickafoose: I did, yes.

Alison Stewart: Where did you learn to mix? How does one learn to be in the mix and become an engineer?

Todd Sickafoose: God, I feel like all I'm doing is having the same thoughts that you've been talking about in this show before, but it's like, fake it until you make it. I think you can learn techniques, but I think the art of it actually, and I don't know, other people might agree with me or not, but I think the art of it is just completely tied with composition and putting things together in a sonic way because what you're doing basically is the final step of composing something and teaching the listener what to listen for.

That's the detail of it, is helping someone through a piece of music and giving them, reaching out your hand and walking them through it.

Alison Stewart: You can learn the technical part of it, and then the artistry has to come after that. Just like being a musician. You have to learn to read notes. You need to get it under your fingers. You need to get the theory, and then you can be creative.

Todd Sickafoose: I agree with that.

Alison Stewart: I mentioned that you got here after a tour bus blowout.

Todd Sickafoose: I hope they're okay. If you're listening to this, I'll come pick you up later.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] There you go. If you've been working with somebody for almost 20 years-- How long you've been working with Ani?

Todd Sickafoose: Yes.

Alison Stewart: How did you first meet? Let's start there.

Todd Sickafoose: Oh, well, I met her because I was opening some shows for her with a great songwriter from the Bay Area. Noe Venable is her name. We opened two tours, they were both six weeks long. I had a lot of time to get to know everybody. On the second one of those, Ani was by herself. She was playing solo at the time and putting together a band for the record that ended up becoming Knuckle Down produced by Joe Henry. They were brainstorming about what the band would be and wanted to hire me. That was the beginning of that association.

Alison Stewart: What do you get creatively after working with somebody for so long? How does that help you be creative?

Todd Sickafoose: I think that you talked about being able to finish each other sentences, really. I feel her rhythm so deeply. A lot of times, we perform just as a trio with drums. There's a lot of rhythm happening, what she's playing. You know her music.

Alison Stewart: Yes, sure.

Todd Sickafoose: What she's doing with her right hand is insane. Then what she is singing rhythmically over that is insane. Then to have a whole another person adding to that on the drums. There's a lot of 16th notes going on. Sometimes, I'm gluing things together. Right now, we've got a great fourth musician with us, this pedal steel player, Eric Heywood. I don't know, it's been 19 years and I'm still learning things.

Part of what is beautiful about being around Ani is just living the same day as her, seeing all the same things, and watching how she synthesizes the whole thing. The endpoint that she gets to and what she shares with an audience, sometimes it blows my mind.

Alison Stewart: I wanted to play a short clip of your Tony acceptance speech for when Hadestown won. Because you said something really interesting. Let's take a listen to Todd Sickafoose's Tony acceptance speech. It's about 10 seconds.

Todd Sickafoose: When you sneak in through the back door like we did, you don't expect to be welcomed like this. Thank you, and may this community only become more and more welcoming.

Alison Stewart: What did you mean "sneaking through the back door?"

Todd Sickafoose: I meant artistically. I hope people took it that way.

Alison Stewart: Oh, I think so.

Todd Sickafoose: Okay, good.

Alison Stewart: I think so.

Todd Sickafoose: I think for a bunch of people in this subset of folk in the rock created, whatever world, I think that wind felt like, "Oh my gosh, a little part of our community made it through to this other thing, got invited through the back door to this industry, this party, this stage, really. That's what I meant.

Alison Stewart: It's nice. It's the idea of just open-- And I think the theater community is very welcoming.

Todd Sickafoose: I think it is too. There's a lot of rooting for each other in that community.

Alison Stewart: For sure. Todd Sickafoose has a new album out. It'll be out actually on September 29th, it is called Bear Proof. I think we're going to go out on a final track. This one is Flush. What do you want people to know about Flush?

Todd Sickafoose: Oh, in my 20s, I played in a lot of Klezmer bands. I think that comes out in here, but I couldn't help it. You got the accordion, the cornet, the violin, and clarinet, so yes.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to Flush. Todd, thanks for coming to the studio.

Todd Sickafoose: Thank you so much.

[MUSIC - Todd Sickafoose: Flush]

 

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.