Shara Worden’s still all over the map
by Andrew Kimball
Through a lot of miles and a lot of styles, Shara Worden has been hard to pin down. Even as a child in a musical family, she felt ambivalent. (“I remember just really, really loving it. And as I got older, singing in church was a little more difficult for me. I would hide in the bathrooms and do some strange things.”) She’s done blues, soul, and opera; unclassifiable indie-pop-chamber music with My Brightest Diamond; and a high-voltage turn with the Decemberists in The Hazards of Love. As if to underscore her musical restlessness, she’s just put out four different remixes of A Thousand Sharks’ Teeth. We caught up with her just before an overseas tour.
Where does music take you emotionally these days?
Songwriting is very personal, and now I feel like I’m transitioning into a different place in my life with it. A large part of My Brightest Diamond records were so intimate and so personal, and the last couple of years, doing a lot of the collaborations I’ve done with the Decemberists and Sufjan Stevens, it’s been so much more about having fun, and just bringing a lot of joy, and then experiencing that joy yourself as a performer. So that has really been an amazing thing for me.
It sounds like your childhood was pretty eclectic.
Well, we moved around a lot. My parents had a pretty wide listening palette, and a very different one than my peers. We moved from state-to-state quite a lot. That exposed me to so many different kinds of music. I like it all. Some people think of style as inherent to they are, and I don’t feel that way at all. I feel like there are certain styles that are specific to me, but in general I think style is like what clothes you wear. You can decide to wear certain clothes because you’re in a certain kind of mood that day, and the next day you feel like dressing something else. And it’s still you. It’s still you underneath the clothes.
Now, this doesn’t mean that I do all styles well. You know what I mean? There are things that my body won’t do well. I would love to sing really chesty soul music and belt like Aretha Franklin, but my body simply won’t do that. So I can imitate that to a certain point, but my instrument, my voice, is going to say, “Hey, stop doing that – you’re hurting me.”
People are listening to so many styles now – everybody’s all over the place with what they listen to. It’s like a hundred years when Debussy was at the Paris Exhibition and heard the Chinese scales for the first time, and then suddenly you get these Debussy pentatonic scales, and it’s a new, fresh thing but…French. French-Chinese!
Your work with My Brightest Diamond is hard to put in one genre. It’s like a combination of pop and classical. Are you taking a break from that?
Yeah. Definitely. Acoustically, it’s just completely impractical. Touring for me with that kind of ensemble was very impractical. The live show was so frustrating for me – I wrote that music to be played by fourteen people, and then when you try to play it with three…. And so I’d rather make something a lot closer to what the live experience will be like. I feel like focusing on the songs and the tunes.
I was in agony for so long because I wasn’t doing classical music, and I love writing songs, so I figured I should write some songs with chamber orchestra. And now I’m like, no, I just want to turn my amp up really loud! And write some stuff for chamber orchestra over here. And not try to put them together. Maybe I was trying to remedy, trying to come to terms with not having chosen a path musically. I thought, okay, maybe I should put all the styles I love into one thing. Now I’m, Ehhhh. They can all be separate. That’s okay.
Do you prefer the studio or the stage?
Hmm. Do you like wine or ice cream? They’re totally different. I love them both. The thing is balance. I’ve been on the road for almost two years, nearly non-stop, and I just haven’t been home. In order for something new to happen, you have to give it space. You have to feed yourself a lot creatively. It just takes time, and being on the road doesn’t allow for that.
Performing, you’re learning that the music isn’t just about you, it’s about this exchange, and that people are really sacrificing to be there at the show, and that music is a way of elevating your spirit, which in times of economic recession is so important. Music says there’s this whole other world in your mind and your heart that is accessible to you. It doesn’t matter how much money you have, or what your bills are, or whether you lost your job, or whether your mom just yelled at you, or whether you just had a fight with your friend – it’s like, there’s peace, there’s joy, there’s something else infinite that’s available to you outside your experience. It’s not just about me and my personal life. It’s the giving, the exchange that happens between the performer and the audience, that’s really great.
What’s the scariest place you’ve ever performed?
Radio City Music Hall is pretty scary. Carnegie Hall. Jools-Holland. Leno. The big places. Because there’s so much history there. Some of the guys in the Decemberists are chill, but I was so freaked out myself.
Why did you choose to come back to Detroit now?
Yeah, and I live in one of the poorest neighborhoods, too. So it’s a really, really intense place to be. But my best friend from high school lives on this block, and I got this massive house for fifteen thousand dollars, and so it’s on this block of people that are doing urban farming. And it’s so awesome. It’s such a cool group of people. I needed space, needed earth, needed dirt. I’ve been in New York for nine years, and I just kind of needed a change. My studio space in Brooklyn was outrageously small.
Real estate is pretty cheap in Detroit. You could live in a pretty nice place, if you want.
Yeah, but this is my choice. It’s the punk side of me. This is the place that’s interesting to me. I wanted to be confronted with the reality that is around me. At times I find it upsetting. But I need that juxtaposition – flying around the country, doing these fancy things, and then I come home and the guy down the block doesn’t have running water. So we’re like, okay, we’ve got to work on this guy’s plumbing. So that’s what we’re gonna do. That’s a reality that just didn’t happen in New York.
How did you get hooked up with the Decemberists?
My Brightest Diamond opened for them, and we were singing Black Sabbath backstage. So I blame “War Pig.”
So when Colin Meloy needed a heavy-metal goddess, that’s what he went back to?
Totally.
Is there any sort of music that you don’t want to do?
No, I just want to be focused with my time and energy.
You’ve worked with some artists who have their own vision – Sufjan Stevens does what he wants to do, Colin Meloy takes the Decemberists in his direction. You’ve expressed admiration for Laurie Anderson, who also has a singular vision. Do you see My Brightest Diamond as your vehicle, or would you ever want it to be more collaborative?
I don’t know how to write with other people. It’s a little unfortunate. I wish I knew how to do that. Awry, my first band, was collaborative, but I found it incredibly difficult. It would be great if that did happen. Everybody wants a band. Bands are so cool.
Who are you listening to?
I love Dirty Projectors. I think they’re amazing. D.M. Sith. The Knife.
How would you describe your spiritual side?
I think that there’s an inherent relationship between music and something infinite, something greater. I saw Bruce Springsteen for the first time and thought I’d just been to church. And why did I feel that way? When you see a concert like that, something that moves you, gets you beyond yourself, when you feel your connection to the people around you, or the connection to something that is greater than yourself…that’s a really, really powerful experience. A lot of times, when we go to see shows, we’re looking for that kind of connectedness. Because we feel so separated – from God, from each other, from ourselves. And music can be a way to access that connection.
Now, the other thing I would say is, the American church is defined by a belief system rather than a set of practices. And so if you aren’t sure, if you have some gray spaces – and artists live in gray spaces – that church can be hard on you. So invariably the artist is going to feel rejection, is going to feel closed down, is going to feel a number of things that have sent me to the bathroom.
You felt that even as a child?
Oh, absolutely. I think creativity is one of the most frightening things in the world for many people. I just know so many people who can’t do what I call straight church.
For some odd reason, we humans have always needed to talk about the experience of being alive through creating something. In that way we mirror Creation. Sometimes I don’t like using the word God because we have so many assumptions that we make about that word, so I’m very reticent to use it. But we live on this planet, and there are millions and millions of stars out there, and we have this bizarre environment where we can actually exist! It’s absurd! To catch even a glimpse of the magnitude of the universe from a planet is pretty phenomenal. And then to think that music and art are ways to articulate something about that…it’s like, we’re here to talk about it. We’re here to be the observers of it.
It’s a complete and utter miracle that we’re here.
Did I answer the question enough?
