“The record... feels like a series of letters to different friends of mine.”: Interview with Skye Steele
Interview by Molly Louise Hudelson.
Describing his music as “PsychFolk”, Skye Steele was born in Alaska, but- as his father was in the Army- he’s lived all over. New York City (which he’s called home since the age of 17) has always felt like home. But another place that’s always been close to his heart is his family’s cabin in the Bitterroot Valley in Montana, where he headed to write the songs that would become his latest album, All That Light (set to be released on May 26). Two songs have been released so far: “Back In The Valley” and “Stay With Me”, which you can stream here.
Steele plays the violin and guitar and in addition to his own music, he’s also toured with Vanessa Carlton. Last month, I interviewed him when he had a few minutes between soundchecks in Seattle. Read on for the interview, where we discuss the record, what’s so special about the Valley, and why it’s important to get involved in activism!
CIRCLES & SOUNDWAVES: For the record, could you state your name and a random fact about yourself please?
Skye Steele: My name's Skye Steele, and I was born in Alaska.
C&S: Did you grow up in Alaska?
SS: No, my dad was in the Army and we moved all over the place when I was a kid, so I didn't really grow up there.
C&S: What's your favorite place that you've ever lived?
SS: Oh, New York City, really. I moved there when I was 17 and I had the instant feeling that I was home, I was where I was supposed to have been the whole time.
C&S: You're out in Seattle right now, on tour with Vanessa Carlton- how's this tour been going?
SS: It's been really good! We've got a nice crew- Tristan, who's opening all the dates, is super awesome. I'm opening a few of the shows also, so that's been really fun. Vanessa's tours are always a pleasure- I get to play violin, play some guitar, sing a little bit, I do a bunch of looping- I stay busy.
C&S: Vanessa actually appears on your new album, All That Light, which is coming out at the end of May. You wrote it at your family's cabin in Montana- why head all the way there to write the album?
SS: My aunt and uncle moved up there long before I was born. They were kind of back-to-the-landers; in the early 70s they moved there from the South, and built this little house in the woods. Some of their friends and them just got together and helped each other shave logs and they all built these houses and they still live there.
When I go there, my aunt and uncle and I all get up in the morning and have breakfast. They go off to work and I sit down and just write all day. I've been going to their house to do that almost every year for about the last five or six years, I'll go and spend a month with them and just scribble away.
C&S: And that's your "place"- you've been living in New York City for a while and New York is very busy and loud- versus [Montana is] somewhere that's a lot quieter, more peaceful in a sense.
SS: When I go there I carve out the time very specifically. I give myself permission to ignore the outside, both in terms of news and politics and in terms of my career goings-on. So I'm not booking tours, I'm not promoting anything. I wake up in the morning, my job is to sit with the notebook and the violin and the guitar and create. I have a very specific schedule when I get there- I'm up at 7, I do a little yoga, eat a little breakfast, write for four or five hours, have a little lunch, practice violin for three hours, and then my aunt and uncle come home and we have dinner together and shoot the shit and have a beer and go to bed and do it again the next day. So it's a very productive space for me.
When I was growing up, we used to go [to the cabin] every year in the summers to visit. I have two cousins who are almost the same age as me who I kinda grew up with and I have really close friends that I've known since I was a teenager in that valley because of that, and they're some of my best friends and closest collaborators. People that I've toured with and that have done artwork for my records and we've done music videos together and I've written music for their work- so it's probably the closest thing that I have to a hometown, really.
C&S: Right, because you moved around so much. When you're out there, you said you really keep yourself from, essentially, doing anything besides writing- is it ever hard to keep that concentration and not do any of the million other things?
SS: Well, it helps that where they live out in the woods, I have to go about three miles away to do anything of any substance on the internet! But it's really such a gift, that time, that whenever I manager to carve out some weeks to be there I'm very hungry for it.
C&S: And then you actually recorded the album in LA- do you usually record out in LA?
SS: No, this is the first time I've done something like this! The producer on the record is Ben Cassorla and he's one of my closest friends. He lived in New York for a long time- we were roommates. I played in bands of his back in the day, he played in bands of mine back in the day- we've done a lot of music together [and] a lot of life together.
He moved out to LA about six years ago and he had just finished building this little studio out there…. I was on this Bollywood Tour and we had a few days off in LA and I had about 30 demos I had written over the course of the year and I was like, "Why don't we work on one of these tunes?". We spent two days in his studio and took this little demo of mine and just turned it inside out, into this thing that I was so in love with. I said, "Man, Ben, let's do a whole record- let me come back when tour is done and let's carve out some time and really do this" and he was game for it. I had been on the road pretty much full-time for almost a year... I drove out to LA and rented a room and spent like five weeks there and me and Ben just treated it like a full time job. We'd show up to his studio every morning and work until 6 or 7 and he'd go pick up his daughter and come back the next day…. We were really, really focused on making it happen. It was a real pleasure to do that, to work in such a concentrated way.
C&S: For sure. Where was your last album recorded?
SS: The last one I did in New York, and it was a really different project because I had this ensemble that I had been working with live for about a year and they're all great composers and improvisers so the song forms were pretty set but there were no set parts. Everybody was playing very improvisationaly. We recorded that all live, together in a room, so that we could capture the essence of what that ensemble was about.
This record is a total opposite of that- it was just me and Ben tinkering with every little detail and every little part and exactly what do we want this bass drum to sound like, exactly which synth sound we want at this moment, you know- really tinkering over the parts and just polishing everything up as much as we could.
C&S: As we're getting closer to the album, is there any track in particular that you're most excited to have out in the world for people to hear?
SS: That's a good question. We just put out "Back in the Valley" and that song to me feels almost like the thesis statement for this record, and it's been really fun to see people reacting to it. But there's another one "Red Cloud" that I don't think is gonna be one of the singles but it's very dear to me, so I am looking forward to people hearing that one. And a lot of these songs are written [about] very specific friendships and interactions so the record in some ways feels like a series of letters to different friends of mine.
C&S: Back in February, on tour with Vanessa, you started a project where you invited fans to write notes to their senators or their governor saying "You're doing a good job" or challenging them to do better- have fans been pretty receptive and open to that?
SS: Absolutely. It's been really lovely, actually- people are so anxious to engage right now and we wanted to kind of do this as a way to encourage that habit. It's almost less about your senator getting this postcard as it is us being out there saying "Hey, remember this stuff is important- remember it matters, remember you have a voice and you have to use it."
I keep telling people, democracy [and] the country belongs to the people who show up and unfortunately old, scared people have historically been much better at showing up than our people, so they get to run shit.
C&S: And a lot of musicians are getting involved which I think that's something that definitely inspires young people to get more involved and more excited, to continue the conversation of politics after the voting booth.
SS: I hope so, yeah. And it's been great, just the conversations that get sparking at the postcard table, cuz a lot of people will come up and they're curious- "Oh, I like that you're doing that", people say "I've never written to my senator before", "I've never called in before, I don't know how to do that"- well, come here. Step up- let's do it now. And you sort of break down that notion of, "Oh well I'm not an activist"- well sure you are; you just wrote a postcard, yup, that's it- that's a thing that you do now. You get to widen your definition of who you are.
C&S: What music have you been listening to lately- what are some artists you think are doing cool stuff right now?
SS: I've been on this Oumo Sangaré kick- she's a huge star, a legend, from Mali. I've been really enjoying the new record by Dirty Projectors and the new record from Laura Marling, is really gorgeous- I was just listening to that one today.
C&S: How do you respond to "haters" or anyone who doubts what you can do as an artist- how do you respond to that negativity?
SS: Oh, I don't know- there's just no time. The watchers don't mind- those of us who are out here doing it are the ones who matter. Someone just gave me this really wonderful little nugget [of information] basically saying, "Your job is not to evaluate how great or not great the work that you have to offer is. Your job is to recognize that you have a voice that no one else has and if you don't do your work, the world will never have it." I try to remember that.
C&S: That's a good thing to keep in mind! Anything else you want to say or anything else people should be on the lookout for?
SS: I'll say this- they should buy the record. I hope some people find value in it and add it to their lives and I'm looking forward to making the next one. This one's been two years in the making- I'm chomping at the bit to start writing again!
C&S: I bet, I bet! Well thank you so much Skye, I really appreciate it.
SS: Thanks a lot- you too!
Thanks Skye! Be sure to keep up with Skye Steele on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and his official website. All That Light will be released on May 26; the album is available for pre-order here.
