Sliding to multi-styled success
Muirsical Conversation with Erja Lyytinen
Muirsical Conversation with Erja Lyytinen
Erja Lyytinen isn’t just one of the best slide guitarists you’ll see or hear this side of the bluesy watered Atlantic Ocean; the award winning Finnish singer-songwriter and multi-styled musician (there’s more to the blues than this jazz swing and soul-pop influenced lady) is also prolific when it comes to releasing quality product, having produced twelve albums (ten studio, two live) over the last fifteen years.
The most recent of those releases is this year’s excellent and stylistically diverse Stolen Hearts, an album that benefits from not just the quality and variation of the songs (many of which contain a deeper lyricism) but from the involvement of Chris Kimsey.
The legendary recording engineer and producer captured Erja Lyytinen’s vocals on an old analogue console used by the Rolling Stones back in the sticky fingered day; the warm sounding results are not just Erja Lyytinen’s best album to date but her best vocal performances to date.
Shortly before embarking on her Stolen Hearts UK tour Erja Lyytinen spoke to FabricationsHQ about the new album, working with Chris Kimsey, a jazz influenced background that has led to her own brand of blues, playing slide guitar and the anticipation and excitement of being part of Tähdet Tähdet (Stars Stars), the highly popular Finnish TV music show.
Ross Muir: It’s great to be able to welcome you back to the UK as you undertake a seven date tour in promotion of Stolen Hearts. I know you love to play live – that is in evidence every time you perform – but from what I hear on your studio albums, and the sound and style of those albums, you are an artist that embraces both environments.
Erja Lyytinen: Very much so. I’ve always really enjoyed being on stage and I love the interaction between audience and band because it’s something that happens in the moment.
But when you are in the studio you can exploit that – you can still be in that moment but you can always go back and redo a part later. So, yes, I love working in the studio as well.
And with the latest album, Stolen Hearts, I think I even enjoyed it better than before; it was just such a joy to play and record all the songs on this album.
RM: In my review of Stolen Hearts I made mention that previous album Live in London was almost acting as the end of one chapter and Stolen Hearts was the beginning of another, because this is such a stylistically different album for you but still with that blues enthused thread running through it.
It’s also, for me, your most accomplished work.
EL: Yeah, I really do feel that everything came together on this album; I managed to put together a bunch of great songs that, although they are stylistically different from each other, they work well together.
While I was collecting the songs for Stolen Hearts – some of which I actually wrote years ago and some were written just for this album – I was thinking "which songs would work nicely together" and, lyrically, "which stories will work best together."
There’s definitely a lot of diversity on this album but that doesn’t seem to bother people; there is still the essence of the blues and a lot of blues guitar and rockier guitar – in fact I would say it’s a guitar album.
There’s also a lot of heartbreak on Stolen Hearts, and other stuff I wanted to get out of my system [laughs],
but there are also songs on it that are full of hope, forgiveness and joy – all the good things we need in life!
RM: Yes, it’s a real life album, with real life themes featured on many of the songs' lyrics.
24 Angels, for example, is themed around forgiveness, consequences and final judgement; you also have the lovely little number Silver Stones, featuring a lyric on the dangers of the thin line between pushing too hard and serious mental illness. That’s strong stuff to take on.
EL: It is but I think we all experience these things in life, although the subject matter is always bigger for yourself than for the others. But, also, when you talk about these things, other people hook up together and realise we all go through the same pains.
When it came to Silver Stones, I had watched a close friend of mine just kind of losing it – and we all know how close that can be to being us.
So cherish the happiness and all the good stuff in your life and remember how easily you can push someone over the edge. That’s why you should always treat other people with respect.
RM: There’s a parallel to stress becoming serious illness in a Buddhist teaching about the pebbles and the stone – if you continue to ignore the pebbles, you will eventually get the stone; if you don’t have that balance in life, it can become a very thin line.
EL: It can be, yes. Boy, this is really deep stuff!
RM: Which is why these are conversations and not interviews…
The most recent of those releases is this year’s excellent and stylistically diverse Stolen Hearts, an album that benefits from not just the quality and variation of the songs (many of which contain a deeper lyricism) but from the involvement of Chris Kimsey.
The legendary recording engineer and producer captured Erja Lyytinen’s vocals on an old analogue console used by the Rolling Stones back in the sticky fingered day; the warm sounding results are not just Erja Lyytinen’s best album to date but her best vocal performances to date.
Shortly before embarking on her Stolen Hearts UK tour Erja Lyytinen spoke to FabricationsHQ about the new album, working with Chris Kimsey, a jazz influenced background that has led to her own brand of blues, playing slide guitar and the anticipation and excitement of being part of Tähdet Tähdet (Stars Stars), the highly popular Finnish TV music show.
Ross Muir: It’s great to be able to welcome you back to the UK as you undertake a seven date tour in promotion of Stolen Hearts. I know you love to play live – that is in evidence every time you perform – but from what I hear on your studio albums, and the sound and style of those albums, you are an artist that embraces both environments.
Erja Lyytinen: Very much so. I’ve always really enjoyed being on stage and I love the interaction between audience and band because it’s something that happens in the moment.
But when you are in the studio you can exploit that – you can still be in that moment but you can always go back and redo a part later. So, yes, I love working in the studio as well.
And with the latest album, Stolen Hearts, I think I even enjoyed it better than before; it was just such a joy to play and record all the songs on this album.
RM: In my review of Stolen Hearts I made mention that previous album Live in London was almost acting as the end of one chapter and Stolen Hearts was the beginning of another, because this is such a stylistically different album for you but still with that blues enthused thread running through it.
It’s also, for me, your most accomplished work.
EL: Yeah, I really do feel that everything came together on this album; I managed to put together a bunch of great songs that, although they are stylistically different from each other, they work well together.
While I was collecting the songs for Stolen Hearts – some of which I actually wrote years ago and some were written just for this album – I was thinking "which songs would work nicely together" and, lyrically, "which stories will work best together."
There’s definitely a lot of diversity on this album but that doesn’t seem to bother people; there is still the essence of the blues and a lot of blues guitar and rockier guitar – in fact I would say it’s a guitar album.
There’s also a lot of heartbreak on Stolen Hearts, and other stuff I wanted to get out of my system [laughs],
but there are also songs on it that are full of hope, forgiveness and joy – all the good things we need in life!
RM: Yes, it’s a real life album, with real life themes featured on many of the songs' lyrics.
24 Angels, for example, is themed around forgiveness, consequences and final judgement; you also have the lovely little number Silver Stones, featuring a lyric on the dangers of the thin line between pushing too hard and serious mental illness. That’s strong stuff to take on.
EL: It is but I think we all experience these things in life, although the subject matter is always bigger for yourself than for the others. But, also, when you talk about these things, other people hook up together and realise we all go through the same pains.
When it came to Silver Stones, I had watched a close friend of mine just kind of losing it – and we all know how close that can be to being us.
So cherish the happiness and all the good stuff in your life and remember how easily you can push someone over the edge. That’s why you should always treat other people with respect.
RM: There’s a parallel to stress becoming serious illness in a Buddhist teaching about the pebbles and the stone – if you continue to ignore the pebbles, you will eventually get the stone; if you don’t have that balance in life, it can become a very thin line.
EL: It can be, yes. Boy, this is really deep stuff!
RM: Which is why these are conversations and not interviews…
RM: Songs such as Silver Stones and 24 Angels make it clear this is not a one dimensional "my baby left me" blues rock and roll album but you do have more traditionally arranged blues tracks such as the lovely slow blues Slowly Burning and the melodic shuffle Lover’s Novels.
However we’re back to the more serious or thought-provoking with the piano and vocal led album closer Broken Eyes. That’s a clever, lyrically different take on the traditional broken heart ballad…
EL: That song just kind of poured out from my soul and was written in a very short time – on the very first day of recording I had all those lyrics just coming out of me and all the chord changes for the song, which are almost jazzy, a bit like some of the standards by George Gershwin, or a song like Autumn Leaves.
It’s a completely different kind of song, compared to any other on the album; I composed it on the piano and when I write with the piano it always comes out differently to the way it would if I was composing with guitar. Lyrically, it’s another deep story, about seeing what you are losing – we can fool ourselves sometimes with our minds, or what we think we might know, but if you see something, you usually believe it.
RM: That’s interesting about the jazz chords because if we go right back to your first couple of albums there’s a real smoky jazz and blues club vibe to them, with some soul-pop influences as well.
Is that the sort of music you were listening to or influenced by originally?
EL: Actually I’ve been studying at music schools and music conservatories since I was sixteen years old.
All those conservatory teachers want you to learn all types of music and material – and while I wanted to learn guitar as much as possible, I wanted to learn all different styles, too; I didn’t want to be just a blues guitar player or a rock guitar player – I wanted to be a musician who was making her own music.
I learned many different styles but also listened to a lot of jazz guitarists – modern stylists like Mike Stern and Pat Metheny and older players like Kenny Burrell, Grant Greene, Wes Montgomery – I always wanted to be able to play like them but it’s not really what, or who, I am.
But I’ve learned from them and exploited some of that in my own music – which is probably why there’s some jazz and some poppy styles in my music.
I don’t mind that; that’s fine, but what has happened is the blues has grown in to my music more and more over the years.
RM: Yes, if you follow that musical thread from those earliest solo releases through to albums such as your first Internationally released album Pilgrimage, with Aynsley Lister and Ian Parker, and on to albums such as Grip of the Blues, you can hear that blues progression.
Those stylistically different influences are still very much part of your musical vocabulary, though.
EL: Yeah, I wouldn’t want to ever make songs just for the shop labels – I wouldn’t want to do a bunch of blues songs, then write a bunch of rocky songs, or whatever other style.
I just write the music that comes out of me but you do, of course, have to combine it all, and make it cohesive for whatever album you are doing at the time.
RM: It’s not just the music of course. You have always been vocally strong and confident in front of a microphone but on Stolen Hearts, with Chris Kimsey recording your vocals and perhaps because of the deeper and personal nature of some of the songs, you’ve gone another step up in vocal performance, in your phrasing, emotive delivery, how you sound.
EL: Part of that was because I was so passionate about those songs and those lyrics but I had also tried out some of the songs on tour before I went in to the studio to record the album, so I had very precise idea of how I wanted some of the guitar parts and the vocal parts to sound.
I was also practicing a lot of the vocals and the sound of the vocals – in fact that’s one of the reasons I had Chris Kimsey involved in the recording; as an English speaking person he could help me out with the pronunciations, which is very important when you are coming from a non-English speaking country.
So I was really confident, and felt safe, in the studio, when it came to delivering the vocals.
There was a lot of magic happening with the recording too because Chris has such a large knowledge of microphones and trying out different ones – instead of just sticking with one that he felt suited my voice we picked a new microphone for each track. Different song, different microphone!
RM: As expressive as you are vocally, you are best known for your expressive slide guitar playing and have developed into one of the modern slide blues players – if you are looking for the best slide players on the European blues rock scene, the name Erja Lyytinen should always be mentioned.
EL: Wow, that’s a really nice thing to say, thank you!
RM: You’re welcome but quite frankly your playing deserves such comments.
I’m curious though – you mentioned guitar playing and guitar influences earlier but when did you develop the passion for slide guitar, because that’s quite a few notes away from jazz guitar…
EL: Well first of all I really, thoroughly enjoy playing slide guitar.
I had a couple of lessons from my guitar teacher when I was about twenty years old; he wasn’t really a slide player but he gave me a few tips on how to play and how to approach it.
From there I just taught myself and, of course, by listening to other slide guitarists and their recordings.
Also, for me, there are no rules for slide guitar and it feels quite natural – and you don’t have to be too fast.
Of course you can shred too and I do, I call it slide tapping [laughs], but then that’s my personality; you can play beautiful lines like Derek Trucks or shred like Johnny Winter – both are great and I like to combine both of those worlds in to my playing.
However we’re back to the more serious or thought-provoking with the piano and vocal led album closer Broken Eyes. That’s a clever, lyrically different take on the traditional broken heart ballad…
EL: That song just kind of poured out from my soul and was written in a very short time – on the very first day of recording I had all those lyrics just coming out of me and all the chord changes for the song, which are almost jazzy, a bit like some of the standards by George Gershwin, or a song like Autumn Leaves.
It’s a completely different kind of song, compared to any other on the album; I composed it on the piano and when I write with the piano it always comes out differently to the way it would if I was composing with guitar. Lyrically, it’s another deep story, about seeing what you are losing – we can fool ourselves sometimes with our minds, or what we think we might know, but if you see something, you usually believe it.
RM: That’s interesting about the jazz chords because if we go right back to your first couple of albums there’s a real smoky jazz and blues club vibe to them, with some soul-pop influences as well.
Is that the sort of music you were listening to or influenced by originally?
EL: Actually I’ve been studying at music schools and music conservatories since I was sixteen years old.
All those conservatory teachers want you to learn all types of music and material – and while I wanted to learn guitar as much as possible, I wanted to learn all different styles, too; I didn’t want to be just a blues guitar player or a rock guitar player – I wanted to be a musician who was making her own music.
I learned many different styles but also listened to a lot of jazz guitarists – modern stylists like Mike Stern and Pat Metheny and older players like Kenny Burrell, Grant Greene, Wes Montgomery – I always wanted to be able to play like them but it’s not really what, or who, I am.
But I’ve learned from them and exploited some of that in my own music – which is probably why there’s some jazz and some poppy styles in my music.
I don’t mind that; that’s fine, but what has happened is the blues has grown in to my music more and more over the years.
RM: Yes, if you follow that musical thread from those earliest solo releases through to albums such as your first Internationally released album Pilgrimage, with Aynsley Lister and Ian Parker, and on to albums such as Grip of the Blues, you can hear that blues progression.
Those stylistically different influences are still very much part of your musical vocabulary, though.
EL: Yeah, I wouldn’t want to ever make songs just for the shop labels – I wouldn’t want to do a bunch of blues songs, then write a bunch of rocky songs, or whatever other style.
I just write the music that comes out of me but you do, of course, have to combine it all, and make it cohesive for whatever album you are doing at the time.
RM: It’s not just the music of course. You have always been vocally strong and confident in front of a microphone but on Stolen Hearts, with Chris Kimsey recording your vocals and perhaps because of the deeper and personal nature of some of the songs, you’ve gone another step up in vocal performance, in your phrasing, emotive delivery, how you sound.
EL: Part of that was because I was so passionate about those songs and those lyrics but I had also tried out some of the songs on tour before I went in to the studio to record the album, so I had very precise idea of how I wanted some of the guitar parts and the vocal parts to sound.
I was also practicing a lot of the vocals and the sound of the vocals – in fact that’s one of the reasons I had Chris Kimsey involved in the recording; as an English speaking person he could help me out with the pronunciations, which is very important when you are coming from a non-English speaking country.
So I was really confident, and felt safe, in the studio, when it came to delivering the vocals.
There was a lot of magic happening with the recording too because Chris has such a large knowledge of microphones and trying out different ones – instead of just sticking with one that he felt suited my voice we picked a new microphone for each track. Different song, different microphone!
RM: As expressive as you are vocally, you are best known for your expressive slide guitar playing and have developed into one of the modern slide blues players – if you are looking for the best slide players on the European blues rock scene, the name Erja Lyytinen should always be mentioned.
EL: Wow, that’s a really nice thing to say, thank you!
RM: You’re welcome but quite frankly your playing deserves such comments.
I’m curious though – you mentioned guitar playing and guitar influences earlier but when did you develop the passion for slide guitar, because that’s quite a few notes away from jazz guitar…
EL: Well first of all I really, thoroughly enjoy playing slide guitar.
I had a couple of lessons from my guitar teacher when I was about twenty years old; he wasn’t really a slide player but he gave me a few tips on how to play and how to approach it.
From there I just taught myself and, of course, by listening to other slide guitarists and their recordings.
Also, for me, there are no rules for slide guitar and it feels quite natural – and you don’t have to be too fast.
Of course you can shred too and I do, I call it slide tapping [laughs], but then that’s my personality; you can play beautiful lines like Derek Trucks or shred like Johnny Winter – both are great and I like to combine both of those worlds in to my playing.
EL: I’m still learning with the slide, still working to get that tone just right so it’s not got too much of a ringing sound, but I’m not afraid of being funny with that on stage, and I’m not afraid of being vulnerable, or open, when playing live – you need to have all of that, even although you are making [puts on stern voice] serious music [laughs]. But slide guitar really is fun for me.
RM: Having mentioned how prolific you are in the introduction I’m guessing you are already thinking about the follow up to Stolen Hearts?
EL: Actually we’ve already been rehearsing new material. I’ve been practicing with the band, going through some of my ideas and coming up with new ideas on the spot; it’s been fun; there’s definitely some cool stuff coming out of that.
I don’t know when we will go in to the studio though, because it’s really busy now until the end of the year; we’re in the UK for the tour and when that finishes I go back home to start a TV programme called Stars Stars.
RM: That sounds like a lot of fun and great exposure.
EL: It’s a live reality TV music show and a playful, fun competition that goes out every Sunday in Finland and has an audience of one million, so, yeah, that’s huge exposure.
On the show there are ten different singers and we all have to sing different genres, every week – so I won’t be singing blues, I’ll be singing rap, hip-hop, country, maybe musicals... you name it!
Stars Stars starts in October and runs until December, but we’ll have to wait and see if I’m still there in December! [laughs]
RM: With your multi-styled musical background, as we have talked a little about, you have every chance of being there at the end – having, as our closing song suggests, stolen a heart or two along the way...
EL: [laughs] Thank you so much Ross, and for the wonderful chat; this has been a pleasure!
EL: Actually we’ve already been rehearsing new material. I’ve been practicing with the band, going through some of my ideas and coming up with new ideas on the spot; it’s been fun; there’s definitely some cool stuff coming out of that.
I don’t know when we will go in to the studio though, because it’s really busy now until the end of the year; we’re in the UK for the tour and when that finishes I go back home to start a TV programme called Stars Stars.
RM: That sounds like a lot of fun and great exposure.
EL: It’s a live reality TV music show and a playful, fun competition that goes out every Sunday in Finland and has an audience of one million, so, yeah, that’s huge exposure.
On the show there are ten different singers and we all have to sing different genres, every week – so I won’t be singing blues, I’ll be singing rap, hip-hop, country, maybe musicals... you name it!
Stars Stars starts in October and runs until December, but we’ll have to wait and see if I’m still there in December! [laughs]
RM: With your multi-styled musical background, as we have talked a little about, you have every chance of being there at the end – having, as our closing song suggests, stolen a heart or two along the way...
EL: [laughs] Thank you so much Ross, and for the wonderful chat; this has been a pleasure!
Ross Muir
Muirsical Conversation with Erja Lyytinen
September 2017
Erja Lyytinen official website: http://www.erjalyytinen.com/
Photo Credits: Tina Korhonen (top image); Nicki Vinall (lower image)
Audio tracks presented to accompany the above article and to promote the work of the artist.
No infringement of copyright is intended.
Muirsical Conversation with Erja Lyytinen
September 2017
Erja Lyytinen official website: http://www.erjalyytinen.com/
Photo Credits: Tina Korhonen (top image); Nicki Vinall (lower image)
Audio tracks presented to accompany the above article and to promote the work of the artist.
No infringement of copyright is intended.