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Brenda Earle Stokes: On Music, Motherhood, and Being Here For Everything
Courtesy Matt Baker
Brenda Earle Stokes
piano and vocalsb.1976
Recorded in New York City in October, 2023, the album features Stokes (compositions, voice, piano),
Evan Gregor
bass, acoustic
Ross Pederson
drums
Ingrid Jensen
trumpetb.1966
Melissa Stylianou
vocalsb.1976
Nicole Zuraitis
vocalsFull disclosure: When Zuraitis, fresh from her Best Jazz Vocal Album Grammy win, was unavailable to perform on the New York City Motherhood CD release concert, Stokes asked me to fill in for her. Preparing for the date, I was struck by how unusual, and how very good, the music is.
People often compare creating a work of art to having a child, and several of the album's tracks express feelings not at all unlike those I've had when working on a project: excitement, uncertainty, anticipation, hopefulness. This is reflected powerfully in the album's first track, "The Endless Wait," which is also the first song Stokes wrote for the project. The other song ideas unfolded over the course of several years, with Stokes writing most of them during a 2019 residency at Banff Center for Arts and Creativity. In late July, Brenda and I met on Zoom to talk about the genesis of the album and the process of, yes, bringing it to life.
Who are you that grows in me?
(From "The Endless Wait")
Brenda Earle Stokes: I wrote "The Endless Wait" when I was pregnant, about the experience of my pregnancy, wondering who this person was, what it was going to be like. That's how the project started. But that song actually started out as lyrics to an existing instrumental by another artist; it would have been on the album I did in 2013, but I couldn't get the publishing rights to it. Over time I was writing a lot of other ideas down, and it turned into a collection. So when I went to Banff I knew what 80% of the album was going to be. I just had to sit down and write it.
All About Jazz: And you needed to set "The Endless Wait" to new melody.
BES: I still liked the idea and the lyrics I'd written. I knew the groove was not going to be the same as in the instrumental I'd originally written them for, so the first thing I did when I got to Banff was sit down at the piano with the lyrics and write the entire song. It was a bonus that I didn't get the publishing rights; if I had, the Motherhood album might not have taken shape, because that song would not have existed except as lyrics to another person's song.
Now I make this move
From one role to another
When a child is born
So is a mother.
(From "Who Am I Now?")
AAJ: You went through pregnancy and childbirth, then you had a baby, then a toddler, and your son is now 12. Did the ideas for the songs emerge as you went through each phase of motherhood?
BES: Yes; for example, the song "Saying Goodbye" came from thinking about how every season there's another thing you're letting go of. That's part of the gig: every season he outgrows his clothes or there's a toy he doesn't like anymore. I was thinking about how strange it is that your job when you're working with this person is to get them to leave. I remember packing up his Duplo Legos and Mr. Potato Head and thinking how funny would it be if we were saying goodbye, but the punch line was good bye to Mr. Potato Head. I think people who have a relationship with children would get that, how bittersweet it is.
That's how a lot of the songs came about. I thought of a hook line, or I was reflecting on things I was going through. "Where Are the Mothers?" came from an experience I had of looking for photos of myself with my best mom friend, Kathleen, and I realized that there just weren't any. I really thought about why, and I realized it's because she and I both felt like we were fat and not well put together. So that's how a lot of the songs came to be: reflecting on certain things and wondering, "why is that the case?"
AAJ: Did that have an impact on how you felt as a gigging musician?
BES: I think the biggest problem I had with performing after my son was born was feeling I couldn't do it anymore. I have this thing, I'm either in or I'm out, and for a long time I was out. I remember I was going to Toronto to play and I was so nervous that I didn't sleep the night before, and I wondered what that's about. I realized it was because I wasn't in it, I felt I couldn't do it anymore. It took me a lot of time to trust that even though I'm not doing it on the regular it doesn't mean I can't do it anymore. It's like riding a bicycle. I certainly don't live in the shape of elite musicianship like I did when I was able to practice all the time, so my mind plays tricks on me sometimes—but I'm a thousand times the musician I was when I had time to practice like that.
AAJ: Well, we're not only musicians; we're human beings dealing with the rest of life: being a parent, taking care of a parent, financial concerns, health issues—all the things that can happen.
BES: And I was not one of those people who was keen to get back to gigs as soon as my son was born. I was turning a lot of stuff down because I didn't like the pressure and the stress. It was just my disposition. I see people who take two months and then they're on tour, carrying the baby around with them. That was 100% not my experience. It wasn't that it felt impossible; it actually was impossible for me to consider being able to do that.
One of the things that was offered to me was a pretty high-profile gig in Washington DC for two months. I had a four-month-old, and they said, "Bring him along!" They might as well have told me to get on a spaceship and fly to the moon; that's how insane it sounded to me. I knew people who would do that, but for me, there was just no way. And it hurt my career. I was excluded from a lot of things because of that. It made it very difficult. I mean, most of the guys I know in jazz are dads, and they don't have that same experience.
Here's to the mothers that try their best
To keep all the feathers in their nest
To the mothers of sons and the mothers of daughters
Who manage to keep their heads above water
As a fellow mom, I'm here to say
Happy Mothers Day
(From "Happy Mother's Day")
AAJ: I confess I'm a bit surprised, because I see you as an extraordinarily productive "super woman." During the last several years you not only recorded, released, and promoted a high-concept album, but you home-schooled your child and then helped him transition to public school, started and built a music ed business that requires creating new content on a regular basis, and have been teaching piano and voice lessons. And you've done some performing. That's a lot.
BES: It is, but you'll notice what I've doubled down into are things I can do in a flexible capacity. A performance is not flexible: there's a time and a day. I created the bulk of my online business, The Versatile Musician, while my kid was, say, watching a video or at swimming lessons; that's something I can do. I have this capacity to be like a laser beam. One thing at a time, getting it done, getting it done. You can't do that when you're performing. If you put a tour together there's very little control over what you can do.
The other thing nobody wants to talk about is you go on tour and you lose $1,000. Or I'd go play a gig at Bar Next Door that paid $75, and the babysitter was $90. So it made a lot of sense for me to be able to focus my energy in the direction of my business; it felt like it was actually going to get my family somewhere, like it was going to be good for all of us.
And there's the typical age-old thing for women with children, they don't get as invested in their 401k or they don't have retirement savings or their career doesn't go as far because they take time off. To be making sound financial decisions or career decisions, it changes the whole game. It's not because I regret anything or feel badly, but I do think sometimes, I wonder what these last twelve years would have been like if I'd really been in it.
AAJ: I think one can have those "what if" questions no matter what the circumstances.
BES: Yes, and I don't feel sad about it; I don't want it to sound like I'm disappointed, but there are times when I see people who are out doing things I think I probably could have gotten to, but I took my choice to have a kid very, very seriously. There was a funny moment when my son was really little and I was getting used to the fact that I wasn't busy all the time in the way that I'm usually busy. I'd go to the library and load up on all the CDs, seeing whose new album is out, and thinking "Oh, my God, I'm so far behind." Then at some point I caught myself and thought, "No, no, you can't do that. You're gonna miss your life! You spent the ten years before this wishing you'd have a stable relationship with a nice person, wanting to have a home and a family, and here you are, with all the above!"
Have I had enough life to live?
Do I have enough love to give?
Will I learn what I need to know?
Will he have what he needs to grow?
Will I find a new way to be?
To love him and yet still be me?
From "Who Am I Now?"
I'm glad that I did the choices I did because I didn't miss anything. I was here for everything. I did all the kinds of traditional housewifey things that I had wanted to do, like preparing meals from scratch and coming up with home systems. I really got to scratch that itch. There were certain experiences that were a very, very deep need for me, and so I got to do all those things in a very big way, and I was able to make a lot of really productive choices. And I'm still able to keep my toe in the game to a certain degree. There's this podcast I listen to about moms who love their families and their jobs; it's called "Best of Both Worlds," so I feel like on some level I was able to have that.
AAJ: Let's go back to the album. Unlike your previous albums, this one tells a story through song. It has a certain theatrical quality, partly because there's an implied narrative, and partly because, while clearly coming from a jazz sensibility, your songwriting covers a lot of stylistic ground. Was that planned, or is it just who you are?
BES: I think it's who I actually am. And this is the first record I've done of all original music. I think being out of performing on a regular basis was really a good thing because previously I would record albums using the songs that I'd been working on. But when I wrote this I didn't have a sound in mind; I just followed the sounds that I was hearing and what it felt like. I coached musical theater singers for fifteen years so it makes sense that some of that might've got on my shirt. And I spend a lot of my time listening to pop and rock music, so it also makes sense that the Billy Joel, Elton John, and Carole King I've been freebasing all these years would somehow roll into it.
One of the most pivotal experiences I ever had in music was the three years that I was working on cruise ships: I had to learn, and keep adding to, a huge compendium of songs from all over the map, and I had to learn quickly how to engage and entertain people from all over the world. I keep going back to it because I look at what I'm doing most of the time now. I have a YouTube channel with 25,000 subscribers, and I have dozens of song tutorials of those songs: Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Elton John, Billy Joel. So why does that keep coming up? Obviously, it's a very important thing to me. When we're in the jazz world I don't know if there's always room for that conversation because there's not a cool factor to it.
AAJ: Did you have or genre or style in mind for each song idea?
BES: Nope. The songs came out the way they came out. I knew what the songs were going to be about; I just didn't know what they were going to be. I knew there was going to be a song about the idea that childhood is shared experience, that my son's childhood is actually also partly mine. I knew that there was going to be a song about identity, I knew there was going to be a song about body shame. When I wrote "Where are the Mothers?" I didn't know it was going to sound so dreamy, but when I sat down to write it, that's what came out. I think the styles all make sense with the songs, but I certainly was not thinking about that at all when I was writing.
I knew the protest song, "Kathleen," was going to start with one of the typical conversations my friend Kathleen and I have, where we're talking and we can't figure out what's going on, what's wrong with us. And I knew that it was going to go from there into the greater picture, which is that this is a systemic situation, a deliberate patriarchal thing that has been established for a long time. I just wasn't sure how I was going to get there. And it turns out that's how I got there. I also don't think I realized how much rage I had about it until I wrote the song. I was bawling my eyes out when I was writing most of this stuff. I went through a couple boxes of Kleenex in the nine days I was at Banff.
The strength, the strength of a woman
The power and the might
The strength, the strength of a woman
My magnitude, my fortitude
My attitude, my gratitude
From "Strength of a Woman"
AAJ: Let's talk about that process. As I understand it, your son is a baby, you're pushing him in his stroller, using voice memos and making notes to keep keep track of ideas. Then several years go by and you have the opportunity to go to the Banff artist's residency and, boom, you write eight songs in nine days. That's kind of astonishing.
BES: I've never been in a situation like that. And like I said before, I have to compartmentalize my life a lot in order to function. I've realized you really can't do it all. I can't put a little bit in one basket, I have to put everything in one basket, and I have to do it right now. I think that gave me that laser focus to say, it's now or never, let's do it. That's how I do most of my life.
AAJ: You were at Banff November 2019. Then you wrote the remaining songs and were going to record in 2020, but the pandemic shutdown happened. When did you finally record?
BES: In October 2023. I had home schooled my son for two years; then he went back to public school and had a really bad year and had to switch schools. When he was finally stable and everything was fine, in May 2023, I said to myself, what do I need to do to get this thing finished? I knew I wanted to do deep rewrites of all the songs, and I knew I had two more songs that had to be written. I knew what they were about, I knew what I wanted to say in them. I just had to sit down and do them. So I spent the summer of 2023, particularly the two weeks when my son was at sleepaway camp, writing things down, recording myself on Garageband, and then rewrite rewrite rewrite rewrite rewrite rewrite, right down to the wire.
AAJ: So the music is written, the recording dates are scheduled...
BES: Yes, and then every second I had time I was working on it. I'm very specific about how I practice things because I can't just sit for the afternoon and play and see what happens; I had to "drill and kill" what needed to get done. So I'd say, "Such and such song needs a piano solo. It's in seven. You need to work just on that," and I'd practice soloing on that section for 15 minutes a day.
There will be hard times
I'll have to dig deep
From "This is Your Childhood"
AAJ: You had a CD release concert for Motherhood at Drom in New York. We both know that when you release an album you try to build on it, to extend its life as long as possible. So what's next for you?
BES: I'm pitching the Motherhood project to the Canadian jazz festivals, and I have three full narrative music videos that have been filmed for songs from the album; I just have to edit them. I just finished a teaching residency at a college in South Carolina, and I'm doing some dates in Canada in October and November.
And then who knows? Do I feel like I want to write another album? I think I have a little zygote of an idea that I might be able to write about... but I don't know; I kind of just want to work on my mental and physical health for a while. Maybe that's the artistic project I need to work on the most. To find a way back to that kind of pure music making when it isn't about getting ready for a project, but rather getting back to what interests me, what feels good creatively, doing things that serve no immediate purpose but are for the sake of doing something because I enjoy it, I like the way I feel when I'm doing it. Which is kind of lame, career-wise, but I think a lot of what we do is very dehumanizing, and I just want to feel a little better as a human.
Tags
Interview
Andrea Wolper
Brenda Earle Stokes
Evan Gregor
Ross Pederson
Ingrid Jensen
Melissa Stylianou
Nicole Zuraitis
Comments
About Brenda Earle Stokes
Instrument: Piano and vocals
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