Caroline Herring September 25, 2010

"We were recording," recalls songwriter Caroline Herring, "when, right in the midst of a very intense song, a blizzard came through and dropped fourteen inches of snow all around us. I had never been in one before...now I think there's a little blizzard in this record somewhere."

Sudden snow showers are just one unfamiliar element Herring introduced to her creative process on her new album Golden Apples of the Sun, available October 27, 2009 on Signature Sounds. Daringly intimate and unguarded, the making of Golden Apples of the Sun took the Mississippi native far from her comfort zone, to striking effect. Long associated with the Austin, Texas music scene from which she sprang nearly ten years ago, Herring chose to record on unfamiliar turf - the Signature Sounds Studio in Pomfret, Connecticut - with only producer David Goodrich providing tasteful, understated accompaniment to her own delicate, intricate guitar. "On this record," she observes, "I did none of the things that I've become comfortable with. I made it in a totally different part of the country, with a different kind of producer, and deliberately made it sparser. Still, I think it sounds like me."

From her 2001 debut Twilight and its immediate successor Wellspring (2003) to the widely acclaimed Lantana (2008), Herring's music has been hailed for combining traditional sounds with striking, original observations into modern life and love. The Austin Chronicle proclaimed Lantana to be "the best modern Southern Gothic album since Lucinda Williams' Sweet Old World." On Golden Apples of the Sun, Herring stakes out new terrain, exchanging the country-influenced sound of her previous albums for a darker, hauntingly personal sound inspired by the iconic female folk singers and songwriters of the 1960s and 70s. "There's no getting rid of my accent," she says slyly, "but other than that, this is not a twangy record. It's not roots-based." The new record suggests that Herring has been as much influenced by classic songstresses such as Joni Mitchell and Judy Collins as by her native Southland.

Unusual for a songwriter as evocative as Herring, half of the material on Golden Apples of the Sun comes from other writers. Her artistry shines through, however, in her understated and surprising reinterpretations of songs, as well as in the choices of the songs she covers. "Song of the Wandering Aengus" by W.B. Yeats is a good example. "Every version I've heard is different," Herring says. "I first heard Judy Collins sing it, and I loved it. Yet after listening to other musical arrangements of the poem, I realized that you could make the melody anything you want." With a confidence that reflects her musical maturity and originality, Herring performs a range of covers from pop (the Cyndi Lauper hit "True Colors") to traditional blues ("See See Rider") to the folk music that so strongly inspires her (Joni Mitchell's "Cactus Tree"). The choices seem like strange bedfellows on paper, but filtered through Herring's sensibility - stark, elegant, bittersweet - they settle in exquisitely alongside her original compositions, illuminating a new facet of her abilities as both a composer and interpreter.

Noting her new take on "True Colors", Herring admits that she was skeptical at first. "Goody suggested that I try a Cyndi Lauper tune, but I couldn't figure out how to do one. We both loved the lyrics of ‘True Colors'. As I was writing and rehearsing other songs, it kept coming back to me. Eventually I realized I could make this pop song my own. It's moving, and so beautifully written. I suppose great songs have certain things like that in common, despite their different genres. It was similar with ‘See See Rider' - that's an old blues tune that I learned from Mississippi John Hurt and Ma Rainey. I didn't feel comfortable trying to imitate them. So instead I honored them by taking the song in a new direction."

The process of reimagining the outside material on Golden Apples of the Sun was akin to the work Herring pours into her own songs. "I'm a huge editor of the songs I write," she explains. "My best songs are usually not on their first melody. Sometimes it's not entirely finished until I sing it in the studio. I just have to keep working at them until they feel right - when I reach the point that I enjoy playing a song over and over.

"I've been working on the first song, ‘Tales of the Islander', for several years," she continues. "The melody has changed a lot, the structure has evolved. It's about Walter Anderson, a Mississippi artist whom I've always loved. He was a naturalist - and I'm not. It took me awhile to understand his world. I was intrigued with his long trips to the islands around Mississippi, and I wanted to know what he got out of them - what he saw. He was so thirsty for life, and when he was on a good jag, he was so aware and just drinking in everything at once. In the end, I built the song around this little cottage he lived in that no one was allowed to go into. After he died, his family went in and discovered - in addition to thousands of pieces of art - that he had painted magnificent murals on the walls. Each wall was part of a day's cycle: sunrise, sunset..."

The spontaneity of Goodrich's approach, combined with the direct and uncluttered arrangements, fostered an atmosphere where chances could be taken and new avenues could be readily explored. "Almost all my vocals were cut live," Herring says, "which I had never done before. Most of the time it was me playing guitar and singing, and Goody playing alongside me on whatever instrument seemed appropriate. There were a lot of possibilities in that combination, and also a certain amount of flexibility. We recorded ‘The Wild Rose' three different ways. The last time, we played it with Goody doing a slow piano part, and I sang it in a totally different way than I ever had sung anything. Then, our dear engineer Mark Thayer, said ‘Why don't you make it sound like a Methodist hymn?' The next take was the one."

Paradoxically, Golden Apples of the Sun is both a departure from Herring's previous work and her most personal and representative collection yet. "I've been gone from the alt-country world of Austin for seven years, and it just seemed like it was time for me to make a change," she concludes. "It was the right time to launch out. On the road, I'm a storytelling folksinger, so it made sense for me to make that kind of record. I didn't have an absolute idea of what it was going to be when I started. I just knew I wanted to get back into the studio and do something new and different while also representing my sound clearly and truly. The process, the material, however, was all so unusual for me. It's not like anything I've done before..."

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