More than moonshine

Jolie Holland laughs a lot. It’s not something you’d expect from someone whose lyrics embrace the dimly lit nooks and crannies of the South. High off a soulful, horn-filled hometown gig with friends, Holland revealed during our recent phone interview that aside from the fact that she doesn’t own an iPod or a computer, she’s not the vintage persona that her rootsy, cinema-noir music might suggest. Rather, she’s the type of girl who prepares freshly squeezed, pomegranate mimosas for her in-studio audience while recording and admits that she has a soft spot for “amazing, sexy musician men,” especially the horn players from her last show. She is as difficult to pinpoint as her signature rise and fall vocals and hybrid sound. She’ll perform at Gravity Lounge on Sunday, July 16 at 7pm.
    A Texan by birth, Holland spent much of her young life dabbling in music and by age 16 was seriously writing songs, despite the fact that she never had formal training. “People are always talking to me about my childhood and music,” says Holland. “That has nothing to do with my music. I listened to, like, The Cure, The Smiths, Depeche Mode, but they want to hear something that has to do with my music.” One critic went as far as to dub Holland an “Appalachian Billie Holiday,” which puzzles the songstress. ”Well, let me just tell you. I’ve never owned a Billie Holiday record and I know nothing about Appalachian music.”
    After founding the Be Good Tanyas in the 1990s, Holland departed and recorded a handful of homemade songs that would become Catalpa, her lauded 2003 debut. The humble basement recordings snagged the attention of Tom Waits, who nominated her for the Shortlist Music Prize. The follow-up, Escondida, catapulted Holland into the public eye and the hearts of music critics with a slew of four-star reviews.
    Her latest release, Springtime Can Kill You, is aching beauty at its best, again defying categories as it merges jazz horns, blues slides and brushed drums. It waltzes from country to folk and undulates with Southern Gothic eeriness. It’s no surprise that she cites Tom Spanbauer’s image-laden work In The City of Shy Hunters and Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita as recent inspirations. Then there’s her contact with a diverse network of players including bluesman Taj Mahal that contributes to Holland’s unique style. You have to wonder if she finds the darkness of things more beautiful, considering her woeful words, but she says, “No.” “It’s just a response to what’s happening. I just believe in telling the truth, but my life has been pretty hard lately.”
    Today, however, Holland is practically beaming over the wire despite only a few hours of sleep and explains that while touring can be exhausting, it’s an overall good time. A recent stint of European dates produced much new material, including two songs in one night, a feat Holland calls “ridiculous.” Unexpectedly, she offers up an engaging thought just before a faulty connection cuts the conversation short. “My friend and I came up with a really great thought together, “says Holland. “In his great accent, he said, ‘There is no justice in the world,’ and I said, ‘but there is magic.’ Somehow together we came up with ‘maybe there’s no justice in the world because there has to be magic.’” You get the feeling that Jolie Holland is far from old-fashioned, but definitely an old soul.