Now a quarter of a century into her career, R&B/jazz singer Lizz Wright is reaping the benefits of that longevity. With her stunning new record, the magnificent Shadow, Wright got to work with her dream team, from producer Chris Bruce to engineer Ryan Freedland, as well as collaborations with Meshell Ndegeocello and Anjelique Kidjo.
The result is a masterful work, one filled with Wright’s artistic vision, authenticity and musical beauty. Wright sat down over Zoom with Sage Bava and I to discuss the making and writing of the record, becoming a label entrepreneur, writing a song about her vibrant grandmother and more.
Sage Bava: It is such a gorgeous album. I’d love to start off by hearing a little bit about how the whole thing came together and how you arrived at Shadow.
Lizz Wright: Thank you, Sage. I started on this record on the other side of the pandemic with Chris [Bruce]. Chris and I have worked on so many projects together. He has always been the right hand of a highly esteemed producer. And at some point, I started to wonder, “What can you do? You always help everyone else pull off these really wonderful productions. You and I have been in the same room so many times why don’t we see what we can do?” Then the pandemic hit, and I really had to start thinking about the kind of songs and ideas behind songs that were sustaining to me in the midst of a lot of uncertainty. I also was dealing with my grandmother who was very dear to me. She lives hours away. And I was aware during COVID when I couldn’t visit her, that she was going through stages of dementia and just trying to figure out what our last few encounters were going to be and when I could be there. She just managed to make the most beautiful striking [laughter] impressions funny also as she was on her way. I never imagined that someone could be so intentional and deliberately funny and just loving in transition. It’s all these things and about trying to find the courage to love. At some point I thought this album was going to be called Valley of the Shadow, Eclipse. Because I really am into eclipse. When they happen, I’m one of those weirdos outside with visors on in the middle of the street. But Shadow seemed to be something that wasn’t too dark, it alluded to alignment and left the door open to mean quite a few things. It ended up being the title. I got a little less ambitious and less precious as we got along. And I was like, “I think Shadow is good enough” [laughter].
Bava: I love it. It’s so evocative and I’m super into Carl Jung. It’s bringing that whole thing into perspective and view. I look up to your sound and how distinctive and authentic and effortlessly it is you from the very beginning, all of those albums ago. This feels very much of that lineage, but it has a new breath to it. How did all of those experiences shape this sound?
Wright: I’ve got to give a lot of credit to Chris Bruce. A lot of the writing and arranging and production was just built on a guitar. And he’s a great guitarist, great bassist, but he also plays keys [laughter]. Chris is also able to mix things. It’s really amazing what he brought to that role when it was his alone. We also had a wonderful pre-production process where he would bring me songs. Because we’re close, I was able to be pretty open with him about what I want to do or what I was open to exploring. He met me as a writer as someone who loved music and wanted me to try some songs I had never thought about. So he brought a lot of these songs on board. Then the way that we recorded, one day I said, “Listen, Chris, if I tell you the truth and if I aim for the stars, which sounds very cliche, I will tell you that I want to record with Ryan Freeland. He’s my favorite engineer. He has huge ears, he’s super musical. He stays out of the way, but he’s so present. I really want to work with him.” Chris was like, “Okay.” I was all geared up for some resistance, or he’s out of your budget. But he just called Ryan. Chris has these gentle relationships with powerful, talented people but he speaks softly to everybody. It was just amazing the amount of talent and the skill he was able to bring together. Because of how he works and the threads that he had with all these relationships this was a very gentle process. We broke Ryan Freeland’s basement in. He had just moved from LA to Chicago. We walked into this unfinished basement down there with his puppy and his family, and I brought some coffee, we just did our thing. I’ve got to say the nicest part of it was just driving 20 minutes across town and recording at home.
Bava: Was that something that you had done a lot for your previous albums? Or was this a new process for you?
Wright: This being set up with my label and me just paying for everything that was new. But also trusting myself to begin to take care and nurture these relationships in the business myself. I think that’s the biggest piece of courage I had to kind of find. Chris was a great guide for this. I watched him, as I said, speak softly and just be himself with everybody. Sometimes it seems like there are great gatekeepers in this business and, in any positions of power, that just make you feel like the world is going to move when they say and that that doors will open when they say. But if you keep moving forward with what you’re doing, and being yourself, I think that’s really the most abundant path.
Steve Baltin: I have found the higher up the person the nicer they are. Stevie Wonder being the pinnacle of that rule. So are there people you have been around you’ve learned that from?
Wright: There are so many. There’s so much spirit, so much energy, that there’s not a lot of space for pretense. You’re right, some of the most powerful people, especially in the arts, are just so kind, and they move in this generosity and trust. I keep running into it. So, I’m really grateful for everything that helped me to trust my vision. Again, just standing behind Chris in this role of producer and also having a very balanced dialogue in what we were doing, and having someone with that kind of reach just really honored my intentions for this project, and the concept, and to uphold it and give it so much more dimension than I could have is it’s exciting and humbling process. I feel relieved of the need to be projecting of myself. I feel more trusting and I just want to do good work. I think that’s going to take all I got.
Baltin: For you to find out that people that you admire, like Ryan, are fans of yours, had to be such a rewarding feeling.
Wright: I’m grateful. I also think I’ve been super fortunate to learn how to be a good singer in the room, how to be a good musician in the room when I have to be a band leader, how to be a band leader in the room. But all those roles involve trying to pull together the collective intelligence and gifts of the people around you. I also think that sometimes, I’m told this, that creatives get to breathe around me. They’re committed to a project that I put in front of them. I’ve set out a direction and a feeling, but I trust them and they feel this. So, everyone has this freedom and authority in their role cause they know that I really believe they’re supposed to be there. So, there’s another layer of generosity that is inspired. And this is what I always seek to do. It’s what I’ve been trying to learn to do all these years. I’m just super grateful. I’m into year 25 for my professional career. I really appreciate it and it’s always evolving and changing.
Bava: Speaking on collaborations, the arrangements and the musicality of all of your albums always blow my mind. I know that really has to do with who’s in the room and who’s taking care of this music. Can you talk a bit about the other collaborations, like with Meshell and the other members of your band, and how it was putting it all together?
Wright, Yeah, it was really fun. With Meshell [Ndegeocello] in particular, I wanted originally to do a duet with her. She said yes, and we were into the process. She was learning the song. Then, for some reason, with all this s**t going on, it didn’t work out. I was so bummed. We were going to do the [Stevie Nicks/Don Henley] song “Leather and Lace.” I was like, “Let’s go wreck them, let’s do this.” And she couldn’t do it in the end. I was super bummed, just forgot about it. Chris Bruce tours with her a lot and he’s like her right hand in the band. I didn’t realize that she was hearing what we were working on. I didn’t ask her to be on “Your Love.” She heard it and she asked Chris if she could just offer a bass part. So, of course, Meshell just plays this and it’s sent to me. She’s such a strange one, but I’m grateful for our friendship over the years, and I really admire her a lot. And Angelique Kidjo, also I’m grateful that she could do “Sparrow” with me. I’ve been really close to her since I graduated from culinary school back when I was living here in New York. We were on the Nina Simone tribute tour with Nina Simone’s daughter and with Dianne Reeves. We have talked together, we have cried together, cooked together. And she remembers me every holiday, all my birthdays. No matter how big or small of an artist you are, if she’s interested in what you’re doing and she knows you, she will be on your record. If she has time and she can do it, she’ll do it. I love her work ethic and her openness. She’s singing in Europe on that song. I also am very proud, though, that I got to do some songwriting with members of my band. My bass player, Ben Zwerin, is on several songs. Adam Levy arranged the Cole Porter song. Deantoni Parks is on drums, but his partner, Hanna Benn, is an incredible arranger, so she brought in a string section. It felt good to pull from the community. If I’ve been doing this for 25 years, at least have the riches of some really wonderful relationships, old and new, to bring together for a project like this.
Bava: Are there one or two standout songs from this project that just the whole writing process or the arrangement process was just so magical and just happened in a very mystical way?
Wright: In most cases with this record, I had to do the work of trying to write to find a way to paint the pictures of what I was seeing and what I was feeling. So, there was all of the beauty and the enchanted stuff was running through my head. I had a very visual experience in these songs, like “Root of Mercy,” for instance, it’s asymmetrical, it’s short. It’s really a poem. It’s about my grandmother. So, it’s highly personal. It’s all the things you shouldn’t do. It ended up taking a lot of work to get it to be something that was shareable to the people, where I could let them in to what I was seeing and what I was feeling and what it could mean. So, I’m grateful. I did a lot of collaborative writing on this record. I wrote a lot with Lynne Earls and Justin Hicks. And of course, Chris, what I’m amazed at is just their willingness to take these stories and these ideas on with me. Yeah, “Root of Mercy” is probably the one where I just let myself be quirky. I let it happen. I’m like, “I have a grandmother and she was a bigger weirdo than I’ll ever be.” She used to pray in front of this tree sometimes when she was sad, and it had moss hanging from it. It’s a picture of who she was to me and my family and even in American history that’s quite an image. So, I had the help to pull it off. So, it was this beautifully enchanted idea in front the dream in front and the love in the back I’m just grateful for all my friends helping me to get this stuff written.
Bava: Would you say music is highly visual for you in how you create and your process?
Wright, Yes it is. My eyes and imagination teach me what to try to find language for. I think spending a lot of time in the visual arts environment in Chicago is super helpful. My beloved is an incredible visual artist, so when we were stuck in the lockdown, I had no idea, that she was into pottery. And so she brings this kiln home and puts it in the basement. I’m like, “What are you doing? That’s really hot. Do you know what you’re doing?” Starts making plates and bowls and naming these series, and she’s just from another planet. But also at Little Black Pearl, which is a school and community arts center, I’m seeing the early work of Hebru Brantley and Theaster Gates is just around in the building, of Candace Hunter. So being in an environment where I’m surrounded by visual artists, I feel even more permission to have a relationship with my eyes.