It's no surprise that most bands today don't record albums live, straight to tape, in one room, no Pro Tools, no auto-tune. There are only a handful of modern artists that can pull it off.  Since Ben & The Innocent Criminals were so musically connected after such a long tour, they entered the studio immediately. And on a sixteen track tape machine and one full week in the City of Lights, they successfully recorded and mixed an album that will sit alongside all of your old favorites...just like a classic record should.

Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals On The Making Of Lifeline:

Ben Harper (vocals, guitar): A dream of mine had always been to make a record in Paris. But to fly everyone over and put them up, it would be too expensive; it just seemed like something I would never get to do. At the first soundcheck on the European tour, I was like, “Wait a minute -- we’re in Europe for seven weeks with our best technicians and our best equipment, why don’t instead of soundchecking every day for seven weeks, how about we take that time and do pre-production for the next record?” We used the soundchecks as pre-production, and every day we’d get to the stage and work on new material.

Michael Ward (guitar): We were recording sound checks every day, and making notes as to what was going on, and listening to CDs of it later.

Leon Mobley (percussion): The process where we took the time from soundcheck to create was a bit touchy for me. The process of reaching into your inner feelings to put into the music is sometimes is a very personal effort; having the venue people setting up, getting ready, made it very hard to reveal so much.

Ben: I’m glad we did this record this way. It was basically the band and I taking a bunch of ideas that were eventually going to turn into songs, throwing them out on the table, and saying, okay, this is how far these are to this point, let’s collectively make them better. The only guideline was “acoustic soul.”

Juan Nelson (bass): Usually, when we’re collaborating in the studio, the songs don’t really get a chance to evolve, but we really had a chance to really sit with the music.

Jason Yates (keyboards): Ben has a great ability to listen to everybody’s idea, and filter it, and funnel it into one cohesive thing.

Ben: It was a recipe for disaster. You can’t book a studio on possibility. We only had a week to record. But I stepped into it with complete confidence, in the music, in the band. But at the same time, it took some emotionally charged moments. It wasn’t a cakewalk; it wasn’t as simple as I think I am making it sound.

Michael: This record is beyond primitive, it’s pre-primitive. No ProTools, no AutoTuning. The studio was touted to us as a 24-track studio, when we got there it was 16-track, and one of the tracks wasn’t working so you basically have a 15-track.

Jason: We didn’t intend for it to be so archaic, we weren’t trying for that, it just kinda happened. It wasn’t that we were forcing it to be this old-school kind of thing.

Ben: It’s really an acoustic-based record, and I think for acoustic guitar, analog is the way to go. 16 track analog. Two-inch inch tape.

Michael: We nicknamed the tape machine Frank, as in Frankenstein, because the machine itself was so taped together and stitched together, and temperamental, it was this monster.

Oliver Charles (drums): Oh my lord, this thing was a piece of work. It was like the moon landing in Houston, with these really primitive computers and dials with these big knobs. There was definitely a lot of personality in Frank. Some days it decided not to work, and it humbled us: you better get it right the first time.

Michael: It became a seventh member of the band. “Can we do this?” was like, “I don’t know, go ask Frank.”

Ben: I’ve always had a love affair with Paris; I’ve always been fascinated with it, by it, from it, for it. It has always spoken to me in a specific way.

Oliver: Paris, come on. Paris is not exactly one of the worst places to be in the world. And it definitely put a feel into this record—late fall in Paris.

Jason: When you’re overseas as an American, especially nowadays, you feel vulnerable, because of the language barrier, the social barrier. It affects the way you carry yourself; everything is a struggle. So when you do finally get to sit down with your instrument, you’re dying to communicate.

Leon: The experience was overwhelming. Being in a beautiful city making beautiful music was such great fun. But also, there was no interference from business, family and friends; we were able to concentrate on the music fully.

Juan: There were no distractions from anybody. You know when you’re home, you get that phone call, and something goes wrong and you gotta go handle it for a second? We got a lot accomplished in a short amount of time.

Ben: It started out as six days, but we had to add an extra day to get it done.

Oliver: It was just ‘Let’s get it done. We sound real good together right now, let’s get it done.” The live element of our show really came out on this record, because we recorded a lot of this record all in one room, and because the night before we played a show.

Leon: How can you go wrong when the music is so fresh in your dome, it's bubbling?

Ben: Collectively, the album works as a traveling musician’s journal. It’s like what’s going on in the mind of anyone who’s in the wind, where traveling musicians are. We were going on ten months touring in a year by the time we drug ourselves into that studio.

Oliver: We were exhausted by the end of the run. By the time we got there, we were zombies. The exhaustion was bringing a lot of emotion out of us. We were homesick, and when you’re away from home for so long, things just start to mess with your head a little bit. Whatever was going on with him, it’s in his voice – it just brought his voice up.

Ben: You just cannot argue with tired.

Michael: His singing on this record, it blew me away, it really did. You talk about one take, real, just doing it – it was staggering to me.

Leon: A special moment for me was when Ben recorded the title track, “Lifeline.” It was the last song to go down and Ben did it in one take. With tears in my eyes, we all watched from the control room.

Ben: I’ve never felt so close to a musical group in any environment as I did the Innocent Criminals in this experience.

Juan: Everyone was really relaxed and playing together really nicely, and that’s a fun thing. That’s what we do live.

Oliver: Seriously, this is one of the greatest things I’ve been a part of, and recording-wise and music-wise; I think it was the best thing I’ve ever done.

Michael: I wouldn’t be saying this if it weren’t true, it’s an honor to play with these guys, and it was an honor to make this record. This’ll be one of those records that I pull out and play for people 10, 20 years later, “yeah, man, check this one out.”

Ben: One of the most exciting things about Lifeline, other than the accomplishment of making a record, is that this is a band.  less...

Formed in the tiny college town of Bellingham, WA, Death Cab for Cutie started out as a solo project from engineering student and committed indie rocker Ben Gibbard. Having turned a freshly broken heart into nine songs he wasn't embarrassed to share with someone else, he recruited fledgling four-track producer (and fellow Teenage Fanclub fan) Chris Walla and bassist Nick Harmer, the most amiable (and comic-book obsessed) musician on campus. The result was the 1997 cassette, You Can Play These Songs With Chords (finally released on CD in '02, expanded to include various DCFC rarities).

To set the record straight, the band's name comes from a song performed by British jazz/rock/comedy combo the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band in the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour film.

Generating a Seattle-area buzz, Death Cab for Cutie quickly became a proper band, releasing their official debut album - Something About Airplanes - in 1998 on the burgeoning area indie Barsuk. Then came touring. And new drummers. And more touring. And more albums - including 2000's We Have the Facts And We're Voting Yes and 2001's The Photo Album - each more successful, in content and sales, than the last. Having created a substantial body of work as a band, Ben, Chris and Nick looked around and realized this wasn't a college extracurricular anymore, this was a life. So they did what all sensible people do: they took a break. Chris returned to his first love, producing, working on widely hailed releases by The Decemberists, The Thermals, Nada Surf, and Travis Morrison. Ben spent some time in the L.A. neighborhood of Silverlake recording electropop songs with his friend, producer Jimmy Tamborello. This little side project, called The Postal Service, yielded an album, Give Up, that has, to date, sold over 600,000 copies.

Death Cab's 2004 Transatlanticism tour is documented on the just-released DVD, Drive Well, Sleep Carefully, directed by noted filmmaker Justin Mitchell.

In the fall of 2004, Death Cab for Cutie inked a worldwide deal with Atlantic Records. The band's label debut, Plans, will be released in August 30 2005.

Narrow Stairs

When asked to describe Death Cab For Cutie’s sixth studio album, Narrow Stairs, guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Chris Walla characterizes it as “having teeth,” and we can’t think of a more apt summarization of the disc. While many bands in Death Cab For Cutie’s situation would try to recreate the success of hit songs like “Soul Meets Body” or “I Will Follow You Into The Dark,” instead the band have crafted the most ambitious and varied album of their career by simply doing what they’ve been doing since they formed in Bellingham, Washington a decade ago – made a brilliant record that refuses to pander, while stretching the artistic boundaries of what a Death Cab For Cutie record should sound like.

After spending much of 2006 in the midst of a turbulent tour cycle surrounding their RIAA platinum, Grammy-nominated album Plans, the band took a well-deserved break during the first part of 2007.  Frontman Ben Gibbard embarked on his first-ever solo tour; guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Chris Walla released a solo album and produced records for acts like Tegan And Sara; drummer Jason McGerr constructed his own recording studio, Two Sticks; and bassist Nick Harmer, as always seems to be the case, worked on various projects. If Plans was a collection of firsts – Death Cab’s first album for a major label; the first disc to feature songwriting contributions from someone other than Gibbard; the first Death Cab disc recorded with the same drummer as the one before – Narrow Stairs feels more like home.

The decision to record the new album at McGerr’s Two Sticks, Walla’s studio Alberta Court, and long-time friend John Vanderslice’s studio Tiny Telephone allowed the band to abandon self-conscious tendencies in order to craft the most creative album of their career. “I wanted more than anything to create a professional studio that was also somewhere that was comfortable to hang out in,” says McGerr about the conception and construction of Two Sticks (which was designed largely with the Narrow Stairs sessions in mind). “To do that, I had to take into account what we all love and hate about the studios we’ve been to, and make it comfortable enough to spend five or six weeks there at a time without feeling homesick.” That environment, combined with the heightened amount of collaboration on the new songs, makes Narrow Stairs the climactic culmination of Death Cab’s first ten years.

While much of this is due to the musical and emotional relationship the current quartet have developed over the last few years of playing, singing, and touring together, it can also be attributed to the environment Narrow Stairs was tracked in. According to Harmer, the album was recorded “with all of us sitting in a room looking at each other,” making the sessions seem more like a typical band practice than a high-budget recording. And listening back to these eleven songs, there’s a level of intimacy that couldn’t have been attained any other way.  “There was a lot of talk about what we wanted to accomplish as a rhythm section,” Harmer continues, adding that he took acoustic bass lessons in order to stretch out on the record. “I just wanted to think of my instrument in a different way.”

Recorded entirely on two-inch tape (thus limiting the amount of overdubs), the result is an album that captures Death Cab For Cutie’s live sound – a process that was scary for the band at times. “There’s stuff on this album that makes each of us uncomfortable performance-wise,” explains Walla, adding that the happy accidents – such as tripping over a cable and unplugging Harmer’s bass on “I Will Possess Your Heart” – turned out to be some of his favorite moments on the disc. “We spend an overwhelming amount of time as a band playing live together, so it doesn’t really make sense not to approach our recording the same way,” Gibbard adds. The live feel of the recording not only affected the way the songs were put to tape but also the way they were arranged, making for the band’s most aggressive record to date.

The opening track, “Bixby Canyon Bridge,” is an excellent overreaching metaphor for the sonic scope of Narrow Stairs: The song begins somewhat characteristically, with Gibbard’s singing about “descending a dusty gravel ridge” over an ebbing bed of subdued synthesizers and chiming guitars… but halfway through the track, the song unexpectedly veers into a syncopated drum-and-guitar breakdown aided by Harmer’s low-frequency melody line. These types of aural experiments take the approach of such Plans songs as “What Sarah Said” to dazzling new heights, whether it’s the eight-and-a-half-minute-long first single, “I Will Possess Your Heart,” or the carefree orchestral waltz, “You Can Do Better Than Me.”

“Narrow Stairs was the title Nick came up with, and I think it lends itself to a lot of the lyrical content,” explains Gibbard when asked about some of the themes of the record. “It doesn’t connate descension or ascension – and I think that by giving it some physical limitations in describing it as narrow, it leaves a lot more open to interpretation.” While subtle details like “softly snowing televisions” help the listener paint a vivid mental picture, ultimately the characters are the souls of these songs – whether the protagonist is giving away his Queen-sized bed out of desperation or searching under an abandoned bridge for a non-existent revelation.

Then there’s the aforementioned “You Can Do Better Than Me,” a lingering paean to relationship insecurities that shows how Gibbard has grown as a lyricist. “I think Ben’s lyrics will fall deep into the minds of many who think alike, but can’t find the courage to speak honestly and openly,” explains McGerr. “In other words, if the thought that you’ll never be worthy of a better mate hasn’t passed through your mind at some point in your life, no matter how fleetingly, you’re either lying or unable to articulate it.” While the content of the album is dark at times, Gibbard manages to express his melancholy musings with a sparkling – and sometimes subtle – dose of hopefulness.

“If you can’t stand in place, you can’t tell who’s walking away,” Gibbard croons on Narrow Stairs’ penultimate track, “Pity And Fear” – and while that’s true, Death Cab For Cutie have taken a giant step forward both creatively and conceptually with this album. While it hasn’t been an easy road to get to this point, Death Cab For Cutie insist that more than anything, this next chapter in the band’s evolution is due to the fact that they’re relating both as individuals and band mates. “To think that tension is adding to the music isn’t true for us,” Gibbard explains, citing notoriously at-odds acts like Fleetwood Mac and Metallica. “It’s easier for us to make good music when we’re all relating to each other and getting along.”  less...

Over the last 15 years, Ben Folds’ first-class melodic gifts, irony-laced lyrics, and punk-rock tendency to play piano as it were a contact sport have earned the North Carolina native a legion of devoted fans of all ages. These people, quite simply, are going to go nuts for Way To Normal. The album, Folds’ third solo studio release, is dominated by the kind of irresistible hooks and piano-pounding pandemonium that listeners haven’t been treated to since Folds’ years with his previous band, the platinum-selling Ben Folds Five. Way to Normal is an exuberant, raucous, and sometimes profane mix of sure-fire crowd-pleasers (“Hiroshima,” “Bitch Went Nuts,” and the frenetically fuzzed-out “Dr. Yang”), cheerful snark-fests (“The Frown Song,” “Brainwascht”), and thoughtful, moving ballads (“Cologne,” “Kylie From Connecticut”) that Folds wrote at the end of 2007 following the finalization of a two-year divorce.

But don’t assume that Way to Normal is Folds’ version of Marvin Gaye’s Here My Dear or Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks (though Folds says that in the early stages of recording he came close to calling the album “Blood on the Keyboard”). “The songs are not topical,” Folds says. “I was not interested in making a record about the D-word. I got all that stuff out of my system on the last record [2005’s pensive Songs for Silverman], which was deliberately stoic. This new album is really about me being free, which is why it feels cathartic and expressive. It’s about me coming back to being myself.” (Hence the title.) “I came out of the courthouse, kissed the ground, and walked straight into the studio. I felt like a bottle of champagne that had been shaken for 18 months and popped open in the studio. That’s why this record has so much energy.”

The album’s buoyant mood could also be due to the fact that Folds recorded the majority of it at his own studio near his home in Nashville, with his friends, long-time bassist Jared Reynolds and drummer Sam Smith. “We were just having a good time,” Folds says. “This was the most fun I’ve ever had recording.” Here are some of the album’s highlights:

“Hiroshima” — “I fell off the stage and landed on my head during a show in Japan,” Folds explains. “I had a concussion and got x-rays of my head. I just wanted to recount it literally, because when you are that literal, it can produce a surreal effect. The song is kind of about public failure, or perceived public failure. The video could almost consist of famous shots of important people at their worst moments where everyone’s watching.”

“The Frown Song” — “That’s about nouveau riche, bourgeois motherfuckers who forget how close they are to being the servant,” Folds says, acknowledging that it’s one of the more sharply acerbic songs on the album. (The lyrics skewer faux New-Age types who gossip about which of their friends is “fucking the guru.”) “I’ve seen so many people like that in spas, fancy shops, and yoga studios,” Folds says, “people who don’t tip their waitress and walk around bumming out baristas when they’re supposed to be in some kind of spiritual place.”

“You Don’t Know Me” (featuring Regina Spektor) — “One of the things that’s not often said in pop songs, or in real life for that matter, is how sad it is to spend significant time with someone and realize that you just don’t know each other because the most important things are completely off-limits,” Folds says. “That’s a failure not many people are happy to admit.” Folds recruited singer-songwriter Regina Spektor to sing breathy back-up on the track. “She gave it more life,” he says. “I think she’s one of the best singers out there, she’s just so talented.”

“Cologne” — “It’s both a love song and a break-up song,” says Folds, who is now happily married. “The ‘4-3-2-1‘ chorus comes out of two people on the phone not wanting to hang up, like when you finally go, ‘Okay, we’ve gotta hang up, we’ll count it down, and then we’ll both hang up.’” The emotional centerpiece of the album, “Cologne” features imagery that meant something to Folds regardless of how universal he felt it to be, like the reference to former astronaut Lisa Nowak who “put on a pair of diapers and drove 18 hours to kill her boyfriend,” as Folds puts it in the song. “That was exactly what was going on in my mind when I wrote it, so I left it in. You do a song a real disservice by going too wide sometimes.”

“Bitch Went Nuts” — “First off, can I just point out that this is the first time I’ve ever personally written the word ‘bitch’ into a song?” Folds says. “[Ex-Ben Folds Five drummer] Darren Jessee wrote the ‘Give me my money back, you bitch’ line on [Whatever and Ever Amen’s] ‘Song for the Dumped’ and then we covered Dr. Dre’s ‘Bitches Ain’t Shit,’ so I’ve become the ‘bitch’ guy, which is one reason I didn’t want this song on the record.” The other reason Folds fought to keep the track off was that he didn’t want anyone to think it’s about his ex. “It is absolutely not about her.” But producer Dennis Herring convinced Folds, who by this time had changed the words eight times, to keep the track by telling him it was one of the most fun songs on the album. “I agreed and so we’re stuck with it,” Folds says brightly. “But no one ever ‘stabbed a basketball.’ That’s silly.”

“Brainwascht” — “Let’s just say it’s addressed to some old friends who took sides and wrote a song about it. ‘Brainwascht’ is about hypocrisy in a way,” Folds says. (The line “You might reflect upon your own arrangement in ’94 getting blown in your basement … while your wife slept” pretty much says it all.) “The song I was responding to was super-judgmental. Anyway, I’ve always thought song wars were pretty cheesy, so I suggest a ‘dance-off’ in the bridge.”

Several things leaven the barbs on Way To Normal: the sheer musical virtuosity, the joyful melodies, the laugh-out-loud humor, and Folds’ heart-breaking tenor voice. (It’s amazing what you can get away with when you sing pretty.) “We wanted to keep the smile in the record,” Folds says. That job fell to its producer, Dennis Herring (Elvis Costello, Modest Mouse, The Hives), who was also tasked with getting the weary Folds to stop stalling and get to work.

“The previous 18 months had left me completely exhausted,” Folds says. “Not only did I need to work with someone who knew more about record-making than I did, which Dennis does, but I really needed someone to just kick me in the ass. Before, we’d play for two hours then I’d decide we should all go get coffee, then come back and sit around and watch YouTube. It was pathetic. So this guy came in and made me work. He didn’t want to see an idea rot on the vine, he wanted to see it done.”

It wasn’t just dealing with the legal system that wore Folds out. The 41-year-old father of eight-year-old twins has been going pretty much non-stop since the 2001 release of his debut solo album Rockin’ the Suburbs, which has sold more than half a million copies worldwide. In short order, Folds has released a live album (2002’s aptly titled Ben Folds Live) and a pioneering series of three Internet-only digital EP’s: Speed Graphic (which topped the Billboard Internet Album, iTunes, and Soundscan Downloadable Tracks charts), Sunny 16, and Super D in 2003-2004; co-wrote and produced William Shatner’s 2004 solo album Has Been; released Songs for Silverman (which featured the Adult Top 40 hit “Landed”); contributed three original songs to the soundtrack for the 2006 film Over the Hedge; and produced a forthcoming solo album by Dresden Dolls frontwoman Amanda Palmer.

In 2006, Folds released Supersunnyspeedgraphic, The LP — a compilation of tracks from the Internet-only EP’s and B-sides, including an inspired cover of Dr. Dre’s “Bitches Ain’t Shit,” which climbed to No. 71 on the Billboard Hot 100 and has now sold 132,000 digital singles at iTunes. “It’s my biggest hit,” jokes Folds.

Along the way, there have been numerous tours, including a few with The Bens, a “supergroup” Folds formed with fellow singer-songwriters Ben Kweller and Ben Lee in 2003, as well tours with Rufus Wainwright and Guster in 2004, and John Mayer in 2007. A classically trained percussionist, Folds has also gone back to his roots by performing with various orchestras over the years, including the West Australian Symphony and the Baltimore Symphony in 2005 and the Boston Pops in 2007. In September 2008, Folds will perform with the Nashville Symphony, opening their 2008-2009 season.

Beginning in May 2008, Folds began to give songs from Way To Normal their first public airings as he made the rounds of several outdoor festivals, including the legendary Glastonbury Festival in England and the annual Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Tennessee. His electrifying performance at the latter led one critic to call Folds’ performance “pop music at its most satisfying.”

“The songs have been getting a great reaction,” Folds says. “It makes me look forward to having a new album out there because it’s been a while. This feels like a really free period in my life and I’m really enjoying it.”  less...

M. Wards' last album Transistor Radio was a homage to the long lost golden age of music radio, a time when DJ's played 45s and the dust of the grooves could be heard crackling over the airwaves. Recorded in an attic in his adopted hometown of Portland over the past two years, Post War is its own special place and time, filled with enticing nooks and crannies. Post War is the fourth M. Ward album and his most absorbing to date. Its songs unravel their world wearied tales of life, love and human kindness with an innate and special grace, helped in part by the very talented friends who join him on this record, including Neko Case and Mike Mogis as well as old “Monsters Of Folk” touring buddy Jim James (of My Morning Jacket).  less...

Michaelson has touched a chord with countless listeners since the 2006 release of her debut album, Girls and Boys, which spawned several sonic appearances on the ABC drama Grey’s Anatomy -- not to mention the ubiquitous, instantly appealing hit “The Way I Am,” which topped radio charts from coast to coast and racked up nearly a million downloads along the way, thanks in part to its appearance in an Old Navy ad campaign that introduced the song to TV viewers across North America. That's no mean feat for a disc that Michaelson released on her own Cabin 24 label rather than going the traditional major-label route – making its success one of the most intriguing grass-roots stories of recent years.

Be OK, likewise issued on Cabin 24, kicks off the next episode in the singer-songwriter’s saga with typically adventurous attitude and -- even more importantly -- memorable tunes to spare. Michaelson is quick to point out that the disc, which combines covers, live songs and a passel of new songs, is something of an appetizer designed to satiate listeners between meals.

“I wanted to put something out as a gift to my fans,” says the 28-year-old native of Staten Island, New York. “I still feel funny saying the word ‘fans,’ but people who’ve responded really strongly to my music know a lot of these songs because they’ve heard me play them live. A lot of people have said they really wanted to be able to have them to listen to, and I wanted to give them that.”

Michaelson, who played those songs to her own audiences as well as on opening stints with Dave Matthews Band and Jason Mraz, isn’t merely talking the talk when it comes to that spirit of giving -- a tenor that imbues virtually every groove of the 11-song disc. She’s opted to donate a portion of the proceeds from its sale to Stand Up To Cancer, a group that’s already used the title track on its website, where tens of thousands of visitors have been uplifted by its message.

“I met two of the women at Stand Up To Cancer and they were looking for songs,” Michaelson says of her involvement with the organization. “I hadn’t recorded it, so I sat in this little room and played it for them, and by the end, we were all crying. It may sound hokey, but everybody who was there can testify to how magical the moment was.”

She captures that magic just as beautifully on the studio version of “Be OK” -- every nuance of the vulnerability and the knowledge that it’s possible to own one’s broken parts and build upon them. That optimism -- free from guile, but without a trace of saccharine -- emerges on many of the previously unreleased originals that Michaelson unspools here. Take the disc-closing “You and I,” a charmingly retro ditty on which she sings of reaching for the brass ring -- and her desire to “get rich and give everybody nice sweaters and teach them how to dance.”

Ingrid Michaelson began pursuing the latter goal before she toddled off to kindergarten, thanks to artistically-minded parents who encouraged her musical aspirations with piano lessons and a house filled with inspiration that went well beyond the trends of the time.

“I didn’t grow up listening to the radio, I listened to my parents’ records,” she explains. “The Weavers, the Beatles and old musicals -- especially old musicals. Everyone else had a crush on one of the New Kids on the Block and I had a crush on Bing Crosby.”

She put that fondness to good use, working her way through the classic songbook and absorbing classic covers like “Can’t Help Falling in Love” and “Over the Rainbow” -- both of which appear on Be OK. But rather than simply offer her take on well-loved material, Michaelson began penning her own songs during her stint in a touring company of “A Christmas Carol.”

Michaelson didn't take long to make an impression with those compositions, as evidenced by the fact that she quickly won over a slew of professional peers -- who awarded her a top honor at Mountain Stage’s prestigious NewSong Contest.

“That was a really cool feeling, because I really worked at my writing,” she says. “As a younger person, I was super melody-driven, then somewhere along the way, I realized lyrics were just as important. I always knew when a song was catchy, but it took a while to realize when a song would really and truly resonate with people.”

As she proves again and again on Be OK, Ingrid Michaelson has figured that out beyond the shadow of a doubt -- listen once and you’ll be drawn in for a long, evocative ride.  less...

My name is Jewel. Jewel Kilcher. (Yes, Jewel is my real given name). I am 5'6”. I have green eyes, like my grandmother Ruth. Ruth was an aspiring opera singer who left pre-war Germany, got on a ship headed to Alaska to marry a man she hardly knew because she felt her future children must be born somewhere free. 
She married Yule Kilcher, who was a young idealist who hiked across the Alaskan glaciers by foot, with a ladder on his back, which he used to bridge crevasses in the ice so he could walk over them. He was looking for adventure and new land, away from the Nazi movement. Alaska was still not a state in the late 40's, so he was given (as all takers were) 600 acres of land for free if he promised to homestead it. He sent word back to his homeland of Switzerland, where many friends expressed wanting to move, that he had found a good piece of land. But none came, except Ruth.

I got my love of language from Yule. He studied the origins of languages. Ruth taught all her 8 children (she gave birth to most of them alone in a dirt floored log cabin!) to sing and play instruments. I was raised outdoors on the same homestead my family settled around all the music of my family.


We lived far from town. We had to walk 2 miles just to get to the saddle barn I was raised in... No running water, no heat- we had a coal stove and an outhouse and we mainly lived off of what we could kill or can. We picked berries and made jam. We caught fish to freeze and had gardens and cattle to live on. I rode horses every day in the summer beneath the Alaskan midnight sun. I loved it there.

My parents divorced when I was 8, and my dad (Atz Kilcher) and I became a duo. He trained me well and I practiced hard, for hours a day, to sing good harmony and learn his songs. I loved it. I loved everything about it. We sang at Veterans clubs and bank openings, and biker bars and honky-tonks all over the state. My dad is a good performer. He taught me not to use a set list, but instead just to read the crowd. He would joke and laugh with the audience. He stressed punctuality and being professional. 


I moved out on my own when I was 15. I had a cabin not far from my dad’s. It had one room and no water, no plumbing, and I worked several jobs. I rode a horse 12 miles into town for work and left my horse at my aunt’s place (who lived close to town) then hitch-hiked the rest of the way in. 


At 15 I applied to a fine arts school in Michigan, called Interlochen, and was accepted on a partial scholarship. I raised the rest of the money by doing my first solo show ever at the local high school in the auditorium. I had always backed my dad up, but this time I sang a variety of Cole Porter songs I loved, backed up by a friend who played piano. Local businesses donated items for me to auction off at intermission. My home town of Homer, Alaska raised $11,000 for me during that concert… all to help send me to school. I majored in classical voice and art and minored in dance and drama. I was 16 that year.



At spring break all kids had to leave the campus. But I couldn’t afford to get to Alaska, so I decided to learn 4 chords on the guitar (my dad had always played guitar, not me) and get on a train in Detroit to busk my way across the country. I made up lyrics about what I saw traveling. It took several days to sing my way across the country- earning my ticket money one street corner at a time when the train stopped. 


I made it to San Diego and crossed the border into Tijuana and hitch-hiked to Cabo San Lucas. I carried a large skinning knife with me for protection in a scabbard on my belt. I earned enough money to get on a ferry and cross the Sea of Cortez and take trains through central Mexico. I stayed in youth hostels and ate by singing in restaurants in exchange for food. I ferried back to Cabo, and hitch hiked back to Tijuana, and trained back to Michigan to be back at school when it started up again. The whole time I wrote one song. A long song. My first song, about people I met and things I saw. The song was called “Who Will Save Your Soul”. 
I was going to graduate high school a year early, because I was finished with my academics, but my senior year they gave me a full scholarship to return just to take all art classes- so I did! I fell in love with marble carving that year, and visual art became the focus of my senior year. I wrote songs in my free time.


I drifted after I graduated. No plans for college. Ended up in San Diego where I answered phones in a computer warehouse. My boss fired me because I wouldn’t sleep with him, and I ended up homeless for a year. I kept writing songs, and started singing in a local coffee shop called The Inner Change Cafe. I developed a loyal following. No one knew I was homeless. A radio station decided to put a bootleg of me on the air and a record label heard it. Soon after, a lot of limousines started pulling up and guys in suits came to watch me sing. There was a bidding war between several labels for me! I couldn’t believe it! I went with the label that didn’t want me to change and let me be a simple songwriter.


Against all odds my simple album went on to sell 12 million copies!


My grandmother Ruth was alive to see me succeed. She called me to her one day, and with a shaky voice she told me that she gave up all her dreams of being an opera singer, and a poet, because she believed if her future family had any chance of success, it would be in a free country. She had a high German-Swiss accent and looking into her green eyes was like looking into a mirror. We looked so similar. She patted my leg with her delicate fingers, and said that it was worth giving up her artistic dreams, to see the dreams for her family come true. The fact that I made it as I writer and a singer meant so much to her. 


So, this is me. I have been blessed to experience some amazing things in my life. I sang at the Vatican for Pope John Paul II. I toured and got to sing with Bob Dylan. I sang with BB King in England, and again in the White House for President Clinton. I got to be on Merle Haggard's album of #1 Hits. I have sold more records than a songwriter ought to.

But these are just things, (exciting things!) because more than anything, I am my father's daughter. He taught me to love horses and hard work and music. I am the beneficiary of my grandparents’ pioneer spirit and vision. I still work every day to maintain the things I believe in and care about and to uphold the proud pioneer spirit of my family. 

My life has exceeded any expectation I ever held for myself. I never thought a storyteller in today’s day and age would be able to go so far. It is because I have had passionate fans that demanded and let labels and stations know they care about my kind of music. You have all helped make my dream come true. And the dreams of Ruth and Yule Kilcher.  less...