Jenny Lewis, a nerd in Nashville

She is not a real Southern lady, Jenny Lewis. And she knows it. “Let’s be honest,” he says via Zoom. “I’m a Valley Jewish girl living in East Nashville. I’m not a hoodlum, not at all.” It’s true: Since 2017, Lewis has been split between Los Angeles and Tennessee, where he lives, and the only law he breaks that prohibits smoking weed. She also stays away from horses and bonfires. “I’m the smartest and smartest guy in all of Nashville.”

his new record joy’ol it’s like her nashville skyline Because of the sweet tunes and pedal steel riot. It is produced by Dave Cobb, known for working with Nashville big shot Jason Isbell, Brandi Carlile and Sturgill Simpson. It was partly born in Lewis’s van while she was driving around antique hunting. There’s even a song titled ready to go ,the “hop” of spurring a horse, Ed.). As we speak, the singer rattles off pearls of wisdom as if she’s a local, talking to you from a rocking chair on the porch. “From here you can see far away,” he says. “Indeed, you can mount your pony and go.”

In puppy and a truck In 2021 you were singing, “My 40’s kicking my ass / And handing it to me in a margarita glass.” Do you still feel like your 40s are kicking your butt?
well yes. But my 20s and 30s also kicked my ass. This is karma. Every decade something big happens in my life and I hit a slump, but I persevere. Well, now people will always know how old I am, because I sing “I’m 44 in 2020”. So just count. However, in a sense, puppy and a truck is the answer to a verse of Get up (with fists!!) of my first solo record, rabbit fur coat: “And you’ll wake up when you’re 45”. At that time it seemed that time is far away, I was 30 when I wrote it. Singing it live as time went on, I thought, “Oh oh, we’ve made it to 35”. And now we’re at 47.

you wrote puppy and a truck while participating in an online songwriting workshop hosted by Beck. how was it?
It was the first song I wrote for Beck. I think it especially affected the over 40 people in the group. The participants were amazing actors, but it works like Fight Club, where the first rule of Fight Club is we don’t talk about Fight Club. I don’t want to belittle others at all, but there were very good actors that they took back. He wet his pants, so very few people came to all the visits. It was a “write a song a day for seven days” challenge, with advice from Beck. Everyone was writing and recording and he was uploading songs to SoundCloud.

You Actually Bought a Van and a Small Dog: Has It Changed Your Life?
I was in dire straits. I had been living in isolation for over a year, looking for something to force me to leave the house. Van allowed me to do so. I don’t have kids, but the dog has broadened my horizons: I have a responsibility to a living being, I have to take care of another living being. It was a good lesson. That would be obvious, but I didn’t know what it was like. I dreamed of being a white wolf and ended up with a cockapoo.

your last album on the line, It felt cathartic. You seem to be enjoying yourself in this.
It is like a little prayer addressed to oneself. There’s a lot of sadness in the record, but it’s also full of joy and doesn’t take itself too seriously. We needed something like this to get us through the weirdest years of our lives. I sing about relationships a lot, but the more I play these songs the more I realize they’re really about me and my relationship with my inner strength. the fact of having a positive title joy’ol attract more people than if I called him death in the valley or who knows how.

ready to go It makes me feel stoned.
I was bad when I wrote this. The lyrics are: “When I’m alone I only hurt myself / Baby do you feel it? But when we’re together / We say such sweet things to each other / Baby I need it ” I felt the same way in 2020 and 2021. Bridge is the strong point of the song. It comes from a recording done with the telephone: I recorded that vocal line at three in the morning in the bathroom at my house. Dave wanted to maintain that kind of intimacy. There’s a lot inside the piece. If you’re single now, talk about that feeling, a reference to De La Soul and #MeToo. There’s a lot of iron in the fire in this song, but it’s up to you how you want to interpret it.

there’s a lot of stuff in that too feeling of love, like when you sing “PCP and Mary Jane / Marvin Gaye, Timberlake”. What do you want to say?
It was born during a composition workshop. The task we were assigned was to write a piece that included as many clichés as we could. The whole song is basically a list of lines found in all great country songs and I’ve added a little humor: Timberlake is just a joke. But most of these things show up in hit country songs.

When you opened for Harry Styles, you performed in front of 20,000 people who didn’t know your music. Was it a fun challenge?
I was ready to face it. By then I had been locked in the house alone for about a year and a half and was a little nervous to be around so many people. Not really as an artist, but more on a human level: I had to re-learn how to socialize. It almost felt like the greatest DIY tour of all time, because we were living in our respective bubbles. There was no press in the pit, no one backstage – it was almost like old times when we toured with Rilo Kelly before smartphones came along, and it felt very intimate, even though it was a huge tour. .

I was free to do whatever I wanted. The first night, at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, where I was born—my parents played at that hotel and I saw a lot of boxing matches there—I was on stage and there was a giant catwalk in front of me. I said to myself: you better do that catwalk, you can’t miss this chance. For a year and a half it was already a lot if I walked down the hallway of my house in Nashville, so I thought it was time to show off a little.

did you spend time with harry?
no way. We passed each other in corridors and things like that, but we wore double masks and showered each other every day. One day in San Diego I got a false positive: We were playing at the place you see almost Famous, in the famous scene where they are on the pier outside the club. I ran the risk of not being able to perform due to false positives. It was a hectic time and I miss it, because in the end it was all very simple: It didn’t matter if people weren’t interested, I was just happy to be able to sing my songs.

Let me tell you a funny story: During the pandemic, I went over to Ringo Starr’s house to sing backing vocals on one of his songs (is about Here to the Knights, ed.). We wore masks and he asked me how I was. And me: «I feel like I am safe for the first time in my life». and Ringo replied with a perfect Liverpool accent: “I wish I was in trouble.” Sorry if I brought up Ringo. I know it’s probably a bit much.

What do you think little kids didn’t understand about the ’90s?
Luckily, thick eyebrows are making a comeback. I’ll never pluck my eyebrows like I did in the ’90s, because then they never grew back. Yet it was the look that went… I can’t believe I’m talking about the ’90s here like I’m a VH1 reporter.

However, now everything is at hand. It’s easy to find rare records and understand who you are. Back then, being a hipster was hard work. You had to go to a record store and ask, “Hey, what’s this record?” And those inside rolled their eyes: «It’s the pavement. Don’t you know the pavement?». You answered yes, but you shamelessly lied. And they: “Which Pavement album do you like?”. that’s how you found out wow zowie

, to name one. You had to put yourself out there, ask questions, and hunt down the good stuff. I was a member of the Sub Pop Singles Club. We had to be busy.

Will there ever be a Rilo Kelly reunion?
I’m open to the possibility. There just has to be the right chemistry and right timing. I think we all got to be there to replay those songs, because that’s the magic of being in a band. It all depends on the four people in a room and the energy that builds up between them.

Speaking of reunions, I keep hearing rumors of a sequel Camping in Beverly Hills, It is true?
I do not know. It is true? If that’s the case, no one warned me.

Where do you think your character, Hannah Neffler, could be headed now?
Maybe somewhere in Beverly Hills. She was quite a balanced girl, I think she was most sensible. Where would Freddy Neffler the Muffler Man be instead?

What would it be like to go back to acting?
It’s been a while to quote Staines. But I would like Ryan Murphy to be involved in some way.

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