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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Jessy Greene: On Green's Demon street
Wednesday 13 December @ 21:15:05 |
  by ANDREA MYERS
[It’s not often that I have the opportunity to sit down with someone as genuine, humble and well-spoken as the lovely and multi-talented musician Jessy Greene. And it’s even more rare that all of the bits of wisdom I collected, which were recorded by my dying analog tape recorder, are completely and totally erased due to some sort of freak technical malfunction.As luck would have it, one of the better interviews that I have conducted in recent memory—which I intended to transcribe for you here—has been lost to the wayside. The following is an attempt to paraphrase our discussion and represent Ms. Greene as accurately as possible without the usual aid of notes or recordings.]
As I pull up outside Spyhouse, a swanky and slyly hip coffee shop sandwiched between the Minneapolis Institute of Art and and the heart of Uptown, it occurs to me that I’m more than a little nervous to go inside. Jessy Greene is probably the most accomplished violinist in town, and has been invited to play with everyone from the Jayhawks to P.O.S. to Mark Mallman to Golden Smog; over the past decade she has become the go-to girl when string talent is required. Nationally, she has played and performed with the Geraldine Fibbers, Wilco and REM, among others. In other words: She’s kind of a big deal.
It takes all of a few seconds to be put at ease in Greene’s presence. Everything about her is warm; she wears a fuzzy jacket and sweater, her smile is enough to light up the entire coffeehouse and, despite the fact that I had only met her once before, she greets me like an old friend. We are meeting to talk about her new album, A Demon and Her Lovers, which will be officially released Friday. It’s difficult to keep Greene on track as we talk about her music, though, as she is already excited to start working on more songs and putting together another record. Like any true artist, Greene stresses that she is more interested in the learning process of creating and refining her music than she is in sitting back and admiring the finished project.
 Greene’s musical journey started at a young age. She grew up in what she calls “a town that was made to break out of,” where her parents stressed the importance of classical musical training and put her into Suzuki violin lessons. By her teens she was craving more than her East Coast hometown could give her and she started hitchhiking westward, eventually landing in Los Angeles. After a few years rejecting the pressures of classical playing she decided to buy a violin in L.A. and audition to get into the music program at UCLA, majoring in ethnomusicology (“Which is basically everything except classical music, so it was perfect,” she jokes). Before long she had joined a rock band called the Geraldine Fibbers, and the group went on to tour and record two acclaimed releases for Virgin Records. Touring and playing in L.A. opened doors for the continually evolving musician, and to this day she continues to expand her repertoire to cover a vast array of genres and styles.
Though she is most often spotted playing alongside musicians with specific styles—alt.country (The Jayhawks), hip-hop (Dessa, P.O.S.), and rock ‘n’ roll (Golden Smog, REM)—Greene’s latest album is hard to associate with any of her other projects. With a spacy ambiance and funky, drawn-out beats, it is immediately obvious that Greene has crafted a unique sound that can be described as nothing else but hers. The album pulls in the listener immediately with a dramatic, sorrowful violin intro called “Raven’s Return,” and a few moments later we are introduced to her full band (members of the live band hip-hop group Heiruspecs) with a trance-inducing track that glides along so smoothly that it’s difficult to pay attention to one specific element. Greene’s voice floats along breathlessly, with a delicate air that seems to channel Beth Gibbons of Portishead with a little bit of a hard rock edge.
Highlights on the album include “You’re Breaking Up,” which features a vocal melody that is cleverly chopped up and echoed on the chorus and seems to crawl into the deep recesses of the listener’s mind and take up residence there, long after the record has been turned off. Another favorite, “Choking Fish,” shows off the vocal harmonies of keyboard player deVon Gray, whose gentle voice meshes perfectly with that of the leading lady as he breathes out the line “Stay just a little while longer” in response to Greene’s question, “Will you be the one that got away?” Though many of her lyrics focus on love and lost lovers, Greene does a fine job of steering clear of anything overly sappy or sentimental; rather, she speaks of her romantic history with honesty and a brave attitude that makes it easy to identify with the characters in her songs.
The album has actually been finished for several months now, and Greene admits that she has been hesitant to put it out due to an indecision about what comes next. She still has strong ties to the City of Angels and feels an obligation to return to the West Coast for a while to work on projects out there, but the community and cameraderie of Minneapolis seems to be holding her here for the moment. “I finally figured out what I want to be when I grow up,” Jessy declared during her recent appearance on Drive 105’s Radio Homegrown. “A hip-hop violin player.” Her newfound friendship and collaboration with Dessa Darling have thrown her into a whole new world of musical experiences. “I really love to dance, and I like music that makes me dance,” Greene says. “There’s something about hip-hop that’s very simple, and I don’t know, there’s something about it I’m very drawn to, even though I grew up playing rock ’n’ roll and country.”
“The reason I’m still here is the hip-hop scene,” Greene admits. “There’s a great community in the hip-hop scene. I dig it.” And judging by her solid new record and her continuing passion for musical growth and development, Minneapolis is lucky to have her. ||
Jessy Greene plays the CD Release Show for her CD A Demon and Her Lovers on Fri., Dec. 15 at the Triple Rock Social Club with Omaur Bloss, Otter Darling (Cecil Otter and Dessa Darling of Doomtree) and DJ Paper Tiger. 9 p.m. $7. 21+. 629 Cedar Ave., Mpls. 612-333-7499. For more info on Jessy Greene, check out her official website at jessygreene.com.
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