Yahoo Sports Jenny Lewis’ Advice: ‘Get on Your Pony and Ride on Out’
Jenny Lewis knows she’s not a real Southerner. “Let’s be honest,” the 47-year-old indie-rock icon says on a Zoom call. “I’m a Jewish girl from the Valley, transplanted in East Nashville. I’m not an outlaw at all.” It’s true: In Tennessee, where Lewis has been splitting her time with L.A. since 2017, the only law she breaks is smoking weed. She’s also allergic to horses. And bonfires. “I’m the nerdiest, wimpiest Nashvillian,” she confirms.
Even so, Lewis’ new album, Joy’All, is her Nashville Skyline moment, full of cozy melodies and lush pedal-steel guitar. Due out June 9 on Blue Note Records, it’s produced by Dave Cobb, the Nashville ace known for his work with Jason Isbell, Brandi Carlile, and Sturgill Simpson. Some of the material was born in Lewis’ truck while she was driving around antiquing. There’s even a song titled “Giddy Up.” And during our interview, she drops wisdom like a local in a porch rocking chair. “You can look outward,” she says. “But really, you got to get on your pony and ride on out.”
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On 2021’s “Puppy and a Truck,” you sang, “My forties are kicking my ass/And handing them to me in a margarita glass.” Do you still feel like your forties are kicking your ass?
Oh, absolutely. I mean, my twenties and thirties were kicking my ass. That’s just my karma. Every 10 years, something major happens in my life and I melt down, but I persevere. Now, people can forever figure out how old I am, because I say [in the song], “I’m 44 in 2020.” So all you have to do is the math.
In a way, “Puppy and a Truck” is an answer to a line in “Rise Up With Fists!!” on my first solo record, Rabbit Fur Coat, which is, “And you will wake up at 45.” At the time, it seemed so far off, because I wrote that at 30. As the years progressed, singing that song on the road, you’re like, “Uh-oh, we’re at 35.” And now we’re at 47.
You wrote “Puppy and a Truck” while taking a virtual songwriting workshop led by Beck. What was that like?
That was actually the first song I wrote for Beck. I think that one resonated with the 40-plus-ers in the crew. There were a handful of amazing artists participating, but it’s sort of Fight Club, where the first rule of Fight Club is you don’t talk about Fight Club. I don’t want to necessarily out some of the others, but there were some pretty cool artists involved, and some people dipped. They got cold feet. So there was a tight group of people who showed up for all the challenges. It was like, “Write a song every day for seven days” with prompts from Beck, and everyone would write and record, and he’d upload it to SoundCloud.
Non-pandemic times, when I’m hanging out with my musician friends, we are sharing our newest songs with each other. But not having that for a couple of years, people were incubating. I was afraid to share some of these intimate thoughts with the group, but it felt so good to get it out there.
Did getting a puppy and a truck change you in real life?
I was in a really rough spot. I’d been isolated for over a year, quarantining totally on my own, and I had to find things to get me out of the house. The truck provided that. I don’t have any kids, but this dog opened me up in so many ways — being responsible for a soul and caring for something outside of yourself. It’s been a really important lesson for me. Kind of obvious, I guess, but I had no idea. I had fantasies of owning a white wolf. Instead I ended up with a cockapoo.
Your last album, On the Line, felt very cathartic. This one sounds like you’re having fun.
This record is a little prayer to myself, in a way. It’s linked to Rabbit Fur Coat, the first thing I had truly done on my own. And this is the first thing that I’ve truly done on my own outside of my relationships. So it’s a bookmark with Rabbit. There’s a lot of sadness in the record, but it’s also filled with a lot of joy, and it doesn’t take itself too seriously. I really needed something like that at that moment, to get through probably some of the weirdest years of all of our lives.
There’s a lot of relationship stuff in there, but the more I play these songs, I realize it’s about my relationship with myself and my higher power. There’s something about having a positive title like Joy’All that draws people in, instead of Death in the Valley, or whatever I could have called it.
You left Warner Bros. for Blue Note Records. Why?
I was on Warner’s for a long time, and it felt like a good moment to switch things up. I’ve been a Blue Note Records fan since I was a little kid. My godfather [Jerry Cohen], who passed away last year, was also my mentor. When I was a kid, he’d take me to the Virgin Megastore and say, “Pick out 10 CDs, but they have to be from the jazz section.” So I was the only 10-year-old with a crazy jazz CD selection. I picked the records based on the covers because I didn’t know anything about jazz. It was Coltrane, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Ornette Coleman, Horace Silver. Blue Note was the first almost-indie label that I got into. Later, as a teenager, I discovered Sub Pop and Up Records and got into indie rock. But Blue Note was the gateway to that world.
Have you always been into country music?
I’ve always been into great songs. I gravitated towards country music more through California — Buck Owens, Gram Parsons, and the Byrds. That was my foray into that. I went into RCA thinking that Dave and I were going to make more of an Americana-sounding record, but I had demoed all of the songs on my phone, and they had almost a Nineties, Tracy Chapman, R&B kind of vibe. He wanted to stay true to my demos. So we didn’t really hammer into the Americana stuff. It happened naturally.
I feel like I’m high when I listen to “Giddy Up.”
Well, I was definitely high when I wrote it. The lyrics are, “When I’m all by myself/I just hurt myself/Baby can you feel that? But when we are together/We say such sweet things to each other/Baby I need that.” That was the feeling in 2020 and 2021. The bridge is really where it’s at in that song. It’s actually from my phone where I’m in my bathroom at home at three in the morning recording those vocals. Dave wanted to keep that intimacy.
There’s a lot of stuff in that song. If you happen to be single now in the world, it’s about all those things. “The stakes is high/The whistle blows,” that’s a De La Soul reference — and a #MeToo reference. There’s a lot to unpack in that song, but ultimately, it’s up to you to get unstuck.
There’s a lot going on in “Love Feel,” too — like when you sing, “PCP and Mary Jane/Marvin Gaye, Timberlake.” What’s that about?
“Love Feel” was part of the songwriting workshop, and the assignment was to write a song with all clichés. The whole song is basically a laundry list of all of these phrases that are in big country songs. And then I peppered it with some humor — Timberlake is a little joke. But most of that stuff is stuff that has appeared in hit country songs. I wanted to get some honky-tonk references in there without being inauthentic.
When you opened for Harry Styles, you were basically performing to 20,000 people who didn’t know your music well. Was that a fun challenge?
I was up for it. I mean, I had been at home alone for about a year and a half at that point. I was a little nervous to be around people. Not even as a performer — just as a human being, learning how to socialize again. It almost felt like the biggest DIY tour of all time because we were in our respective bubbles. There was no press in the pit, no one backstage. So it almost felt like the old-school days touring with Rilo Kiley before phones, and it felt very intimate despite being very big.
I was free as fuck. Night one, which was at MGM Grand in Las Vegas — where I was born, where my parents played in that hotel, where I’ve seen many boxing matches — I’m standing on the stage, and there’s this giant catwalk in front of me. It’s like, “Well, you better walk down that catwalk, because if you don’t, this is a missed opportunity.” I’d barely walked down my hallway in my house in Nashville for a year and a half. So I was like, “All right, you better just strut it.”
Did you spend time with Harry at all?
Not really. We hung out a little bit in the hallways and stuff, but we were double-masking, testing every single day. I actually got a false positive one day in San Diego, playing that spot in Almost Famous, that famous scene where they’re on the dock outside of the venue. I almost didn’t get to play that show because of a false positive. It was a very tense time — and I kind of miss it in a way. There was something really simple about it. It didn’t matter if people weren’t into it. I was just happy to be singing my songs.
This is a funny story: During the pandemic, I went over to Ringo’s house to sing background on one of his songs [“Here’s to the Nights”]. And we’re masked, and he’s like, “How are you?” I said, “I feel like for the first time in my life, I’m off the hook.” And Ringo said [in a perfect Liverpool accent], “I wish I was on the hook!” Sorry to just name-drop Ringo. I know that’s pretty big.
What kind of TV and movies did you get into during the pandemic?
I went to YouTube University. I only went to community college in L.A., but I did a deep dive on narcissism and psychopathy. So I’m basically an expert on those subjects. I got deep into Ram Dass and listened to like, 90 of his lectures. Started meditating. Then I went on a new age kick. I listened to 50 audiobooks, tons of Stephen King, [Kurt] Vonnegut, tons of historical nonfiction.
I watched every single Ryan Murphy-related production. So I’ve watched all of American Horror Story, which I absolutely love, and everything adjacent. Sarah Paulson is my favorite actress. That’s how I became a fan.
She was an excellent Linda Tripp in Impeachment.
She was so good. But you just can’t record your friends, ever. I didn’t appreciate Monica Lewinsky at the time, because she was so vilified in the press. But when you really get to know that story, Clinton’s the fucking douchebag.
Did you watch Yellowjackets?
I did, the first season. I loved it. We truly are in this Nineties-revival moment. I have a pair of Docs that I’ve been rocking again.
What do you think kids get wrong about that era?
Luckily, it seems that the full brow is still a thing. I would never tweeze my eyebrows like I did in the Nineties, because they never fully grew back. That was the look … I can’t believe I’m talking about the Nineties, like a VH1 talking head.
Now, everything is accessible. It’s easier to find rare records and figure out who you are. Back then, if you were a hipster, you had to work really hard. You had to go to the record store and ask, “Hey, what’s this record that’s playing?” And they’d roll their eyes. “It’s Pavement. Don’t you know Pavement?” Like, “Yeah,” totally lying. “But which Pavement record do you like?” And then that’s how you would find Wowee Zowee, for example. You had to put your nuts on the line and ask questions and seek cool shit. I was a member of the Sub Pop Singles Club. That took work.
OK, how about the early 2000s? The Execution of All Things recently turned 20, and you’re about to do a 20th-anniversary Postal Service tour. How do those anniversaries feel?
It feels pretty weird. Time flies. Enjoy it. I appreciate all of it — all the records, all the bands, all the good songs, all the mediocre songs, all the failed attempts, which I think is what makes artists interesting. If you’re an artist, you can’t be perfect for everything. That’s fucking impossible. And that’s not interesting, to be perfect all the time. No, you have to falter. You have to make your Trans — the Neil Young record everyone hated at the time. But that’s a great fucking record. Only time will tell.
“Computer Age” was way ahead of its time.
Yes, totally. I was thinking a lot about Frank Ocean at Coachella. Isn’t it more interesting to not crush it, on some level? I think he’s a brilliant artist, and maybe he should have done a warmup show. But also, don’t you think Coachella knew that maybe he wouldn’t show up? He’s a mercurial artist, and that’s a lot of pressure. I wouldn’t want that much pressure. I wouldn’t want to headline Coachella. That’s too much.
Even if it was for a Rilo Kiley reunion?
I mean, I don’t think we’d be headlining. Maybe seven years ago. Not at Coachella now. We’d probably be on the second stage…. The first couple years of Coachella, I was there. I played eight of them over the years, and the last time I went was for Sunday Service [in 2019]. By that point, the festival had shifted. It was all LED screens. You’re like, “Whoa. This is where I saw Leonard Cohen play and Jimmy Eat World. [Now] it’s Ariana Grande.” Which is great and fun, but it’s a different festival. Is there an older person’s festival that my bands would play at?
Fair enough. Do you ever see a Rilo Kiley reunion happening?
I’m open to it, for sure. It just has to be the right alchemy and the right timing. I think we owe it to each other to play those songs again, because that’s the magic of being in a band. It’s just the four people in a room and the energy that creates.
Speaking of reunions, I keep seeing rumors of a Troop Beverly Hills sequel in the works. Is this true?
I don’t know. Is it? I haven’t gotten the memo if it is.
Where do you think your character, Hannah Nefler, is now?
Probably in Beverly Hills somewhere, although she was pretty grounded. I feel like she was the most grounded of all the kids. But where’s Nefler, the Muffler Man?
What do you think it would be like to act again?
“It’s been a while,” to quote Staind. I think if Ryan Murphy were somehow involved, I’d be open to it.
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