![\"Issue35-aimee-mann-Ted-leo\"](\"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Issue35-aimee-mann-Ted-leo.jpg\")
<\/h1>\n<\/h1>\nShe\u2019s a Grammy- and Academy Award-nominated songwriter; he\u2019s a socially conscious punk-rocker. Together, Aimee Mann and Ted Leo turned a friendship honed online into a new project they\u2019re calling the Both. What began as an onstage collaboration grew into plans for an EP, which then expanded into a self-titled album comprising 11 original songs that fall somewhere between Mann\u2019s literate, bittersweet pop and Leo\u2019s smart, rollicking rock \u2019n\u2019 roll.<\/p>\n
Their timing couldn\u2019t have been better. With the troubled state of the music industry dampening their enthusiasm, Mann and Leo each felt re-energized by the prospect of working together. \u201cI was like, \u2018I\u2019m ready for something totally different,\u2019 and I think it\u2019s always a good move to chase down what you\u2019re excited about,\u201d says Mann.<\/p>\n
The excitement began when Mann, 53, took Leo, 43, along to open for her on tour in the fall of 2012. Soon she was joining him onstage during his solo set, and he was singing with her as part of her headline performance. Joining forces seemed like the next logical step. \u201cI thought the two of us could do a really interesting show, maybe with a drummer,\u201d Mann says. \u201cI was hearing the possibility of a power trio.\u201d<\/p>\n
The duo recorded the album last year in two separate stretches, and they\u2019ll find out whether their enthusiasm for the Both spills over into their respective audiences. \u201cThat\u2019s a total question mark,\u201d Mann says. \u201cWe have no idea how anybody might receive it.\u201d<\/p>\n
How did you meet?<\/b><\/p>\n
LEO: We have a lot of mutual friends. We met in person eight years ago and saw each other infrequently\u2014once or twice a year. And then over Twitter, we started communicating a lot more and got to know each other better. Quick long story, there\u2019s a song on the record, \u201cBedtime Stories,\u201d that\u2019s about and inspired by this guy Scott Miller, who was in the bands Game Theory and Loud Family. I was a fan of his work and had some minimal contact with him over the years. But Aimee was actually his friend, and he introduced Aimee to my music.<\/p>\n
MANN: Yeah. I think he even sent me your record and said, \u201cYou should check this out.\u201d<\/p>\n
LEO: It\u2019s an interesting series of cul-de-sacs and winding roads. We met through other friends, then realized we had this connection from years before. That was a crystallizing thing for us, too, in terms of appreciating the good things you have in front of you and pursuing them with a, dare I say, passion.<\/p>\n
MANN: Don\u2019t say passion. How about vim?<\/p>\n
LEO: Vigor?<\/p>\n
How did the project come together?<\/b><\/p>\n
LEO: Aimee invited me on tour to open for her solo performance, and a couple of things happened: Being on the road together, we became better friends, and musically we started to get inside each other\u2019s heads. I had this one song in particular, \u201cThe Gambler,\u201d that I\u2019d written with Aimee in mind. Lucky for me, I didn\u2019t even have to pressure her about it. She approached me about possibly playing bass and singing on it on the tour, and I was already singing a duet with her. The more time we spent onstage together, the more it felt like we had a pretty good vibe, and we should try writing together.<\/p>\n
MANN: It was a lot of fun. In this business, anytime fun appears on the horizon, you really have to make an effort to spend more time next to it. Especially on tour, it can be grinding and wearisome, so if you\u2019re able to work with someone who\u2019s fun both onstage and off, you want to hunt that down.<\/p>\n
How did fun evolve into a record?<\/b><\/p>\n
MANN: Ted gets such a full sound, just him and an electric guitar, that I started hearing the possibility of a power trio watching him play. So I started playing on \u201cThe Gambler\u201d and we began talking about writing some songs together and maybe doing an EP. Also, Ted and I were both in a similar place because the business is such a question mark. If people aren\u2019t buying records, it\u2019s hard to feel super-excited about making a record, and the idea of doing a project together really invigorated both of us.<\/p>\n
LEO: The creative spark when we started, even just discussing writing together, was something more exciting than I\u2019d felt in a long time.<\/p>\n
What were the challenges?<\/b><\/p>\n
MANN: I really like the challenge of writing for somebody else\u2019s voice, or attempting to go into their style, or what I imagined Ted\u2019s style was\u2014which didn\u2019t go much past that it\u2019s a lot faster, there\u2019s a lot of shuffles, and he uses a lot of chord changes.<\/p>\n
LEO: You may have nailed it. I don\u2019t think I saw the challenge as writing for someone else\u2019s voice so much as how we were able to make things work for both of our voices. Almost right away, I felt that our singing voices worked really well together. After the first couple of songs we wrote that might have leaned more toward one side or the other, we found a third thing that really was a meshing of our writing styles and our actual voices.<\/p>\n
Describe the writing process.<\/b><\/p>\n
MANN: Usually one person comes up with the initial stem, like a verse, or a verse and a chorus, and the other person will write another verse or a different section. There\u2019s usually a little back and forth from lyric to lyric, but usually, I wrote one verse, he wrote the other verse, he wrote the next section. I would say nearly all of them could be described as 50-50.<\/p>\n
LEO: There are some songs with chunks that were Aimee\u2019s and chunks that were mine. There are some where they were more line by line, or part by part, or once the song was initially written, we\u2019d go back and change things.<\/p>\n
Did you record live?<\/b><\/p>\n
MANN: We did it mostly live in the studio. We had this great drummer, Scott Seiver, and we did it in two halves. The first half, we just thought we were doing an EP\u2014and then we were like, \u201cWhy not turn this into a full record?\u201d We both realized that was what we really wanted to do. That was where we wanted to put all our energy, that\u2019s where we had enthusiasm.<\/p>\n
LEO: We would largely write separately, and then we did the album in two sessions in L.A. And both times we played a show or two before we went into the studio to tighten up.<\/p>\n
See this collaboration continuing?<\/b><\/p>\n
MANN: I do.<\/p>\n
LEO: I do too.<\/p>\n
MANN: Unless it tanks, in which case, I\u2019m out of here. (laughs<\/i>) I think we both have a philosophy of, you move forward until there\u2019s an obvious wall, and then you don\u2019t kill yourself trying to scale the wall, you just do the next indicated thing. At some point, obviously, we\u2019ll both put out solo records and maybe we\u2019ll tour the solo records. But I do like the cross-pollination of playing a set and mingling part of the set. It gives me something to look forward to, having my buddy come up, and I get to joke around and play with him. It takes the pressure off. It makes it more fun.<\/p>\n
\u2013Eric R. Danton<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
AIMEE MANN & TED LEO\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Creative chemistry turns songwriting buddies into new duo the Both \u00a0 She\u2019s a Grammy- and Academy Award-nominated songwriter; he\u2019s a socially conscious punk-rocker. Together, Aimee Mann and Ted Leo turned a friendship honed online into a new project they\u2019re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[7649,7638],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14601"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14601"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14603,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14601\/revisions\/14603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}