A B O U T S O M E T Y M E S W H Y
Check out this short video we made talking about our band & the new album.
Sometymes Why EPK from Sometymes Why on Vimeo.••
Hear us live on NPR's Mountain Stage.
New Youtube videos from Banjo Jim's in NYC.And... Our song "The Sound Asleep" was recently heard on ABC's Private Practice.
You can stream the show (Episode 310: "Blowups") in the show archives.••
Sometymes Why & Your Heart is a Glorious Machine
They were songs that fell through the cracks – long forgotten, ignored, or locked away in some special place for a later use that may never come. These songs finally emerged as the basis of something new in 2004, when Kristin Andreassen (Uncle Earl), Ruth Ungar Merenda (the Mammals), and Aoife O’Donovan (Crooked Still) decided to begin performing together. By some unagreed-upon combination of coincidence, design, and accident – the trio took those secret songs and, via an arresting DIY debut album and a series of riveting live performances, gave birth to an underground sensation they called Sometymes Why.
Your Heart Is a Glorious Machine, to be released by Signature Sounds on March 10, 2009, is the second Sometymes Why album. Produced by José Ayerve (Winterpills, Spouse), Your Heart Is a Glorious Machine, finds Sometymes Why taking a step out of the shadows, while continuing to nurture the languorous, luminously intimate pop that first inspired them to pursue their collaboration more intently.
Sometymes Why first came to be in the dark, quiet corners of the stringband renaissance. Fans of each other’s respective bands, Andreassen, Merenda, and O’Donovan had performed together in various contexts, both formal and informal, for years. “In 2004,” Andreassen recalls, “we went to an after-party in Brooklyn. I sang ‘The Seasick Dawn,’ and those two harmonized. It sounded too dreamy to not want to do it again.”
“We each had a bunch of songs that didn’t work with our own bands,” Merenda adds, “but they worked together. It became apparent to me that this is where I am most comfortable singing songs from a female perspective or that are very confessional. That’s what makes a Sometymes Why song for me.”
Andreassen, Merenda, and O’Donovan reprised their collaboration whenever possible, in apartments, at parties, and wherever else they happened to be in the same space at the same time – although not yet in front of a paying audience. Those early environments shaped their sound. “Sometimes it would be three in the morning,” says Merenda, “and we’d be getting complaints from the other rooms, so we had to bust out the quiet, pretty songs so we wouldn’t disturb anyone.”
The first official Sometymes Why show was at New York City’s Sidewalk Café in January of 2005. That May, they recorded their first album, using just a pair of microphones, about twelve hours, and a motley assortment of instruments including a guitar or two, two ukuleles, a glockenspiel, a Wurlitzer electric piano, a fiddle, a harmonica, assorted percussion, and the trio’s radiant three-part harmonies. The self-released, self-titled album quickly caused a stir, and whenever the members’ primary bands had time off, Sometymes Why took to the road. Among their tours were two runs opening for Chris Thile’s new acoustic project the Punch Brothers, a trek through Ireland, and appearance at Bonnaroo in 2008.
On the road, the initial batch of ten songs was quickly augmented. “A number of those first songs were things that have been written for a while before they come onto the stage for the first time in our band,” Andreassen explains. Once the context of Sometymes Why was invented, each member started writing new songs that were quickly worked up. Given all the potential combinations of instruments, voices, textures, and styles, the band’s process is surprisingly fast and intuitive. “Usually the person who wrote the song has a general idea of the instrumentation and the harmonies, but beyond that, it’s more fun to see what the other two people will do,” Merenda says. “Basically every time we come to a decision, it is raised and decided in a matter of ten seconds. We have a very collaborative process: it’s not dictated by any individual, but it’s still quick.”
“We all have sort of rotating roles at any given moment,” O’Donovon explains.
“Each of us has our strengths,” Andreassen adds. “Aoife and Ruth are really quick at working out harmonies. I’m good at mistakes – and sometimes they end up being cool ideas.”
In the fall of 2008, Sometymes Why entered Dreamland Studio, just outside of Woodstock, New York. A converted 19th-century church, Dreamland has been home to sessions by The B-52s, 10,000 Maniacs, Ron Sexsmith, Jack DeJohnette, NRBQ, The Band, and many others. While the studio had fallen into disrepair, it is currently being resurrected, and Sometymes Why were among the first musicians to brush aside the cobwebs and explore both amazing collection of instruments and the majestic space contained within the two hundred-year-old walls of Dreamland.
They came to the studio with the idea of balancing the warmth and closeness of their first record and of their concerts with the infinite possibilities of the studio. “The vibe of the first album was very DIY,” O’Donovan explains, “which we sought to preserve on this album. But we also wanted to be able to explore bigger sounds.”
“We didn’t want to lose that magic,” Andreassen adds, “One thing that stayed the same is that each of us recorded one of our songs with the vocals all together, live on one mic, in the old-school way. Guess which ones…”
“When you’re in a really nice studio with all the gear and expertise at your fingers, you want to take advantage of some of it,” Merenda elaborates. “In some cases, it really sounds like our show – like on ‘Diamond.’ But then there’s something like Kristin’s song ‘The Sound Asleep,’ with dream sequence in the middle. Dreamland has a really extensive collection of real instruments and gear – keyboards and stuff – but also a big stash of weird noisemakers up in the belfry of the church; it’s hung with all these neat chimes and knuckles and keys and beads. Everything you’d want to make an unusual sound.”
“I played recorder on the dog races section of ‘The Sound Asleep,’” says O’Donovan. “That was hysterical at the time, but I think it actually really works. It has this very Charlie Brown vibe to it – it feels like kids in a playground, and I love that about it.”
Ayerve’s production beautifully blurs the lines between organic, digital, and mechanical; performance and processing; delay and decay. Instruments are reinvented and reconceived, like on O’Donovan’s “Slow Down.” “There’s something that sounds like a bass,” says Merenda, who is responsible for much of the percussion on the album, “but it’s actually a floor tom tuned to E-flat.”
“‘Slow Down’ probably changed the most from our live version,” O’Donovan adds. “I couldn’t decide which baritone uke to use, so I recorded a track with each of them, and we ended up using both, which created a really deep wall of sound. José suggested using the floor tom and then asked Kristin to hit the low E-flat on the glock with a drum brush. All of these little enhancements encouraged us to do something crazier at the end of the song, with the extended outro full of weird percussion and electric guitar feedback…”
Merenda’s thunderous percussion adds a tormented heartbeat to the surprising version of Concrete Blonde’s “Joey” that rests in the middle Your Heart Is a Glorious Machine. “We realized that all of our songs were written from the perspective of a woman talking to a person called ‘you,’” Andreassen explains. “Every song was, in its own way, a letter to someone, whether real or fictitious…”
“My favorite moment of the session was probably singing ‘Joey,’” O’Donovan recalls, enthusiastically. “It was the last thing that we did, on the very last night of recording. We had just worked it all up on the crazy instruments, and tracked the instrumental part. We then all gathered around one microphone in the gorgeous studio, and just wailed on it…it was such a crazy release – I felt like all of the glitches and stressful moments of the session melted away in that instant.”
As implied by the title (named for a line in O’Donovan’s haunting “Glorious Machine”), Your Heart Is a Glorious Machine resonates with a weathered elegance. Sometymes Why’s vein of richly personal, slow-motion pop is enriched by new sonic elements (electric guitar, Hammond organ, unusual reverbs and echoes, the clatter of the belfry noisemakers) and by more visceral songs such as Merenda’s sly “Aphrodisiaholic” and Andreassen’s ingenious “The Stupid Kiss.”
Every moment of Your Heart Is a Glorious Machine is underpinned and illuminated by the palpable warmth and camaraderie of the trio. “It is amazing to be a part of a band that includes two of my closest girl friends,” O’Donovan concludes. “It feels like a sisterhood, a club. It’s very cathartic to be singing these original songs that have so much weight in all of our lives, and not to be singing them alone – to sing them together.” – Brad San Martin
• •
A Little More:
AOIFE O'DONOVAN (first name pronounced "EEF-uh") has been dubbed the “voice of the new tradition” by Performer magazine. USA Today calls her "the newest darling of the Americana set." Since graduating from the New England Conservatory in 2003, Aoife has toured with her band, the alternative bluegrass group Crooked Still and has made guest appearances as lead singer with The Duhks, Solas, the Boston Pops, and the Utah Symphony.
RUTH UNGAR MERENDA has been called the “Hill-billie Holiday of song.” Her first musical influences were her parents (fiddler Jay Ungar and folksinger Lyn Hardy). Ruth is a founding member of the indie stringband quintet The Mammals (along with Tao Rodriguez-Seeger and her husband Michael Merenda). After touring the US, Canada, Australia and Denmark for the past seven years, Ruth & The Mammals are taking a break to focus on Sometymes Why, the Mike & Ruthy band (whose newly-released CD The Honeymoon Agenda No Depression calls “low key and lovely”) and their new baby boy.
KRISTIN ANDREASSEN started her performing career as a clogger & stepdancers with Maryland's Footworks Percussive Dance Ensemble, and then became known as a member of the "all-g'Earl" stringband Uncle Earl. Now gaining attention for her songwriting and solo performances, she won two awards in the John Lennon Song Contest for 2007 (Best Children's Song and Finalist in the Gospel category), and recently appeared as a featured guest on the NPR radio show A Prairie Home Companion. Kristin has been honored to work with multi-year Bluegrass Bass Player of the Year Mark Schatz (who produced her solo debut Kiss Me Hello) as well as modern stringband guru Dirk Powell and Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones (who each produced an album for Uncle Earl).• •