![\"Issue36-jenny-lewis\"](\"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Issue36-jenny-lewis.jpg\")
<\/h1>\n<\/h1>\nAfter taking three years to write, record and re-record her third solo album, The Voyager<\/i>, Jenny Lewis cut the final version in a week and a half with producer Ryan Adams at his Pax-Am Studio in L.A. \u201cOnce we started rolling, we just ran through all the songs,\u201d she says. While working on the album, the former Rilo Kiley frontwoman\u2014and half of Jenny and Johnny\u2014stayed busy: She toured with the Postal Service for a year, and scored the film Very Good Girls<\/i>, starring Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olsen. (Olsen performed \u201cGo Ahead\u201d\u2014a Rilo Kiley composition by Lewis\u2014in the film.)<\/p>\n
When did you begin the album?<\/b><\/p>\n
A long time ago\u20142011. The first song I recorded was \u201cJust One of the Guys\u201d with Beck. I wrote the last song at the end of last year.<\/p>\n
How did you connect with Beck?<\/b><\/p>\n
We\u2019re both from Los Angeles, so I\u2019ve seen him around for years, but I\u2019d never worked with him. I sent him some demos, and he responded to \u201cJust One of the Guys.\u201d But we didn\u2019t finish it. In fact, I didn\u2019t think it was going to make it onto the record. He finished it and sent it to me while I was mixing. Before he sent it, I was like, \u201cWell, he\u2019s a part of the creative process and a muse in a way.\u201d While I was working on \u201cJust One of the Guys,\u201d I started \u201cLate Bloomer.\u201d I had a couple of missing verses, and I wanted to record a version with him. He instructed me to go into the next room and finish the song. Without him I wouldn\u2019t have finished \u201cLate Bloomer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why select Ryan Adams to produce?<\/b><\/p>\n
I heard he was opening a studio in L.A., on the Sunset Strip. I had a song I was working on in the Keith Richards open tuning. I wanted to just cut that song, but then one song became a whole record. By the end of the day, after we cut \u201cShe\u2019s Not Me,\u201d he was like, \u201cHey man, I think you should recut your whole record here at Pax-Am.\u201d<\/p>\n
The record has a polished sound.<\/b><\/p>\n
That has to do with Ryan. I had very little to do with the arrangements on his sessions. I recorded both Rabbit Fur Coat<\/i> and Acid Tongue<\/i> while I was still in a rock band. This is truly my first solo record in that I didn\u2019t have any rules. I wasn\u2019t trying to make anything different from what I already had. I was just trying to serve the songs.<\/p>\n
What was it like writing a film score?<\/b><\/p>\n
That was a challenge. I\u2019ve never thought of myself as an instrumentalist. When I started sending stuff, there was too much music there. The idea of a score is to support what you\u2019re seeing on the screen. I continually had to strip stuff back to its essential elements rather than trying to tell the story that was already being told on screen. I didn\u2019t have money to go into the studio and demo stuff, so I had to record myself on GarageBand playing everything. I somehow had to make that listenable enough for the director and producers to convince them, \u201cThis is going to sound good once I actually go in and record it.\u201d<\/p>\n
How\u2019d it feel having \u201cGo Ahead\u201d in\u00a0<\/b>the film?<\/b><\/p>\n
It was really fun. Elizabeth and I became friends based on that song. \u201cGo Ahead\u201d was a pretty early arrival for me as a songwriter. It was amazing to have her learn it. That\u2019s the thing about a song: It\u2019s just there for anyone to interpret, whether it\u2019s a movie star like Elizabeth or a kid in her bedroom with an acoustic guitar. A song is something that hopefully lives forever.<\/p>\n
\u2013Amanda Farah<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
JENNY LEWIS Taking her time pays off for the Rilo Kiley singer on a new solo set\u00a0 After taking three years to write, record and re-record her third solo album, The Voyager, Jenny Lewis cut the final version in a week and a half with producer Ryan Adams at his Pax-Am Studio in L.A. \u201cOnce […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[7655,7652],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14633"}],"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=14633"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14635,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14633\/revisions\/14635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}