isn’t the first artist of heritage status to be embraced by Epitaph’s
adventurous Anti- division, but she’s no doubt outnumbered by the
corporation’s younger, more punk-leaning brethren.
None of that, however, explains why Staples is
stunned this afternoon, repeatedly using the words “awesome” and
“blessed” during an hour-long interview. Ask a question about one of
her songs, and Staples doesn’t answer it. Instead, she sings the number.
Ask Staples about recording for Anti-, which released her
the punk rock founder of Epitaph/Anti-. Ecstatically, she relays that
he gave her a tour of Epitaph’s coffee collection. “He said to me,
‘Mavis, we’ve got all different kinds, different flavors of coffee out
here.’ I will sleep tonight with a big smile on my face. I am just so
happy.”
If Staples speaks with the wide-eyed optimism of a
first-timer, it’s because in some ways she is. Though she has been
singing for 60 years and got her start as a member of the Staple
Singers, her career seemed destined for the nostalgia circuit as
recently as 2003. Having been devastated by the 2000 loss of her
father, Pops, the patriarch of the Staple Singers, her recording output
slowed. Unable to find a label, she funded the 2004 album “Have a
Little Faith” herself, and it was eventually picked up by
Nearly six years later, Staples has returned to
recording and performing at a prolific pace. (Her sister Yvonne, also a
member of the Staple Singers, continues to sing with Mavis.) “You Are
Not Alone” is her third album for Anti- and her first collaboration
with Tweedy, the architect of
art-pop collective Wilco. It reconnects Staples with the folk-gospel
sound that marked her work with the Staple Singers in the ’60s, when
the family band would tackle songs from
“I really believe that the best stuff in Mavis’
career has been the stuff where it’s not necessarily just her voice but
the voice of her and her family and her father,” Tweedy said. “You
don’t need much else.”
“You Are Not Alone” continues what’s becoming
something of a tradition for Anti-, the multigenre offshoot of Epitaph
Records. Overseen by
Having LaVette, for instance, work with Southern
rockers the Drive-By Truckers brought a contemporary backbone to her
sound and helped alert the press to the artist’s legacy. “Being on this
label,” said Staples, “I won’t say I’ve gotten more respect, but I’ve
met more people, like people who want to interview me.
“I’ve been singing 60 years, and I have known other people who have sang a lot of years, like
and I don’t know if they were as blessed as I am. I’m just grateful.
I’m overjoyed. I’ve never come to a record company and sat and done
interviews. I’ve never done that.”
Though
reputation as a home for the left-of-center, and the combination of
Staples and Tweedy fits the company’s genre-hopping approach. “From a
business level, it’s a no-brainer,” Tweedy said. “The fact is nobody is
buying the genre records as much as they used to. You have to try to
find an audience that’s younger.”
Kaulkin doesn’t want any of the credit. He released,
in collaboration with avant-blues label Fat Possum, Burke’s 2002 album
“Don’t Give Up on Me,” which saw the artist singing the songs of
“The Solomon record made me aware of what we could
do, and it gave us some credibility,” Kaulkin said. “Our mission is not
to revive older artists who are at a career lull. We’re like any other
label. We’re looking for great artists and artists who have something
to say. Mavis is one of those artists, and she has something to say. It
doesn’t matter how long she’s been around and how old she is.”
It does, however, to Staples. Her 2007 album with
Anti-, “We’ll Never Turn Back,” was a modernized take on the freedom
songs of the ’60s, an idea that sprang from Kaulkin. Ry Cooder produced
the effort, which sold a modest but respectable 57,000 copies.
How to follow? Staples wasn’t sure, but she wanted
something that would get her noticed. “I was thinking, ‘Maybe I should
do a country album. Or an all-folk album.’ I was thinking of covering
old-school. I’m so old. I was thinking, ‘I have to do something people
will hear.’ But I didn’t think
Tweedy had gone to a small
club to see a Staples performance, which was released as an album by
Anti- in 2008 (“Live: Hope at the Hideout”). At the time, he noted that
talks were already happening about Wilco backing Staples. Such a
concept was nixed early, however.
“I remember talking to the rest of the guys in Wilco
afterward, and we all agreed that it would be a shame to separate her
from her band,” Tweedy said. “It was a case where somebody was trying
to talk her into having Wilco back her, and we would have been happy to
do that if her band wasn’t smoking hot.”
Tweedy did, however, write a pair of songs for
Staples — the bluesy gospel rocker “Only the Lord Knows” and the
album’s title track, a disarming ballad with a compassionate backing
choir and a slow-burning electric guitar. It all frames Staples’ rich,
deep voice, which Tweedy reverentially describes as its own instrument.
Staples wanted the song to be the centerpiece of the
album, as it was inspired by a conversation she had with Tweedy.
Staples was telling him, remembered Tweedy, of how the church began
turning its back on the Staple Singers as the act took on more folk and
pop stylings.
“I went off on my little theory or rant about what I
believe all music says, and it all says, ‘You are not alone.’ Even the
most vile, disgusting heavy metal music is saying to someone sitting in
their bedroom that they are not alone,” Tweedy said. “There are two
consciousnesses at work. Maybe it was too metaphysical to get into at
the time, especially since we didn’t know each other very well, but she
responded to it. She said, ‘That’s the name of a song.'”
For Staples, consider the message received. “Tweedy
came with these songs, and I was thinking, ‘You know, I could have done
that.’ If I had just put my mind to it, I could have done that. But I
didn’t. So after this, I told Tweedy that we have to do this again. I
want to do another CD with him. He said he would continue to write
songs for me, and I will go into the studio and sing them.”
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