Corinne Bailey Rae: KCRW Live from Apogee Studio

The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Chris Douridas: It’s my first time meeting you, although you’ve been to KCRW maybe half a dozen times over the years?

Corinne Bailey Rae: I have! I love KCRW. And when we finally got digital radio in the UK, I was so happy that we could put it on, listen to our book shows, listen to our Morning Becomes Eclectic, and all the things that are really familiar to us from being in Los Angeles. And also, we once came here to work on record. We were meant to be here for seven weeks, and we stayed for seven months. So we really got used to, you know, driving in our opened up car and listening to KCRW. So it's great that we can have that in the UK as well. But the station has [also] given me a lot of support so I'm really grateful.

It's so interesting to learn where inspiration comes from. You’ve taken this incredible journey throughout your career. The second album deals with intense grief, the third album was made here Los Angeles and inspired by jazz artists like  Kamasi Washington and Thundercat. What can you tell us about this musical evolution?

Being here was a real pleasure, we got to meet some amazing people. Moses Sumney was playing and recording here at the time. And of course, our very dear friends fromKING, we got to know them more deeply and spend more time with them. So yeah, LA was really special to us at that time. And we're lucky that we're able to invite some of our very favorite musicians James Gadson played on the record, who's a fantastic drummer. He's played with many people, including and especially Bill Withers. So just the fact that we could call on James Gadson, that we could call on Marcus Miller… you know, [it] was really wild to me. That doesn't happen in Leeds. Those people don't live there. 

I remember having a reception party and Herbie Hancock was there. And I just sort of thought, ‘I can't believe this is real.’ These are people that play music that I love, that [now] sort of know me, and I guess are giving me this support… It was amazing. And to get to play with Herbie over the years and have that encouragement — from the geographical remove of England to sort of dip in and out of this world almost feels like stepping into a dream world, and then stepping back out again. It's quite the ride.

And it was touring behind that third record, The Heart Speaks In Whispers, that brought you to Chicago and the inspiration for Black Rainbows?

I had seen this building on a friend's Pinterest board. In fact, I'd seen this photograph of an artist on my friend's Pinterest board. I saw this photo of this man, this Black man staring into the camera with this kind of stillness and ease. He was standing next to his art and his art was weird. And I didn't really understand it — it was a pile of bricks, it was a goat on these spindly legs going round on a circular track, it was a picture of Harold’s Chicken shop and someone chasing someone with a meat cleaver. And I thought ‘who is this?’ I found out that he was called the Theaster Gates and I found out about [Gates’ archive project] the Stony Island Arts Bank, which is this 100 year old historic bank in the south side of Chicago. 

… So when we were touring Chicago, I got a chance to see the building, Theaster showed me around. It was just amazing opening books, seeing photographs, pulling open drawers, finding historic objects, ephemera, things that might have been thrown away in 1852. But for some reason, someone saved the newspaper, and you can really see, feel, touch, smell, and experience what was [once] contemporary. I found these objects were sort of fizzing with life and history. … So when I left I, all I could do was think about these objects and things. I started writing stories, and poems, and songs. And then I knew I had to go back and I went back many, many times, just multiple times over the months and years. [I kept] making music in response to these objects and things that were happening in the bank.

And it seems to have taken you down musical avenues that you otherwise hadn’t explored for awhile?

Absolutely, I feel like the reaction to the objects happened really quickly. It happened in my body. Musically, [the songs] just came out in whatever way they came out. So when I was looking at the difficult and the problematic objects, that came out as a kind of raw, uncontrolled musical stream, which was my electric guitar, just one string with my distortion. Then there were other songs, which were much more expansive and elegiac,  there was a piano, and there was stillness.

And then there were other things that were kind of squelchy and funky. Thinking about the future, the past, and all the more cosmic things worth thinking about. You know, how much can we affect the past by our actions? How much are we connected to our ancestors, how much they know about what we're doing? So the musical styles, they came second to [these] responses. I thought it was a side project when I was making it. I didn't think it was my album at all and that gave me a massive amount of freedom. I thought, I don't have to make it for people who might like, “Like A Star,” or “Put Your Records On.” I just thought I can just make this as an intentionally free and weird thing. It felt really good. 

There are also songs on Black Rainbows that seem to nod to the punk band that you were in when you were 15.

Yeah, that was my first sort of music making thing. I played the violin when I was a kid and then my sister started playing guitar. It was around the same time that Nirvana were becoming really big and that just seemed much more fun.

And the band that you eventually formed, Helen, did well enough that you were offered a deal with Roadrunner Records. What happened from there?

We were going to be their first indie signing, but our bass player at the time, who is a very dear friend of mine, got pregnant. And we were kind of naive, punk feminists [thinking] like, ‘that's amazing, she's pregnant. She’ll have a massive bump, and she'll just sling the guitar low… But yeah, the phone stopped ringing around the time we shared that information. So that was my first taste of the music business side of [things] feeling different [from the creative freedom of making music]. 

… But [music] still was really my focus. I wanted to make up songs in my bedroom, practice them in someone's living room or a church hall, and then just play them in front of people. And the way it felt playing to 70 people in a pub is exactly the way it feels now playing to 70,000 people at a festival, or supporting someone giant, you know? It's [all] the same feeling, an out of body cosmic connectedness.

So if your friend hadn’t gotten pregnant, you could have had a completely different career track?

I think about that all the time. There's so many things that happen in your life, there's so much you can't control,  but I think if you have a desire to do and to make — especially in music — you find a way. [It’s] like water running down, finding its niche and its path. I'm really grateful for the journey I've had in music, really grateful for all the different experiences I've had in life, and [grateful for] how music has been a solace and a way of expressing myself. [It’s the] companion that kept me sane, and grounded, and all those things.

More: Explore KCRW Live From sessions

This KCRW Live From session was recorded and mixed by Bob Clearmountain at Apogee Studio. Learn more at Apogeedigital.com

Credits:

KCRW Music Director: Anne Litt
Interviewer: Chris Douridas
Directors: Vice Cooler & Angie Scarpa
Editor/colorist: Angie Scarpa
Director of Photography: Dalton Blanco
Camera Operators: Dalton Blanco, Vice Cooler, Kylie Hazzard
KCRW Engineer: Hope Brush
Executive Producer and Broadcast Editor: Ariana Morgenstern
Producers: Anna Chang and Liv Surnow
Digital Producer: Marion Hodges
Digital Editorial Manager: Andrea Domanick
Art Director: Evan Solano