{"id":3358,"date":"2011-08-10T01:46:33","date_gmt":"2011-08-10T08:46:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=3358"},"modified":"2011-08-10T01:47:22","modified_gmt":"2011-08-10T08:47:22","slug":"meshell-ndegeocello","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2011\/08\/meshell-ndegeocello\/","title":{"rendered":"MESHELL NDEGEOCELLO"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h1>\n

MESHELL NDEGEOCELLO<\/h1>\n

A notorious perfectionist tries her hand at keeping it simple<\/strong><\/h2>\n

She\u2019s sung with MadonnA and John Mellencamp, played bass with the Rolling Stones and Alanis Morissette, but Meshell Ndegeocello\u2019s primary focus has always been her own solo work. Since getting her start playing in go-go bands in Washington, D.C., in the late \u201980s, the singer, bassist and bandleader has rolled through pop, soul, funk, jazz and R&B. She made her national debut in the early \u201990s with hits including \u201cIf That\u2019s Your Boyfriend (He Wasn\u2019t Last Night)\u201d and her duet with Mellencamp on a cover of Van Morrison\u2019s \u201cWild Night,\u201d but by decade\u2019s\u00a0end began pursuing an increasingly idiosyncratic path through her ever-expanding\u00a0musical imagination.<\/p>\n

Ndegeocello recently released her eighth studio album, the confident\u00a0and understated Devil\u2019s Halo<\/em>. It\u2019s a\u00a0back-to-basics set that she and her band recorded live to analog tape at L.A\u2019s Phantom Box studio. \u201cWe recorded all in a room together and just laid it down,\u201d she says. \u201cI wanted to slow it down and get back to music that came out of my hands.\u201d We caught up with Ndegeocello at her home in upstate New York to discuss her new album, her philosophy about the bass and her history as a self-confessed nitpicker.<\/p>\n

What prompted you to make an analog album this time?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I wanted to be able to play the songs and not have to trust in getting punched in to fix mistakes. Recording to tape was about the experience of getting something on the first or second take, before it became mechanical. For once I didn\u2019t have some grandiose concept album or sonic idea in my head. We had already played a lot of this music on tour. During pre-production we tried to work out better song forms. Then we went in and recorded most all of the initial tracks in three days.<\/p>\n

So you\u2019ve tried a more detailed, <\/strong>modern approach?<\/strong><\/p>\n

My previous record, The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams<\/em> [2007], was done on Pro Tools and had a lot of editing and tricks. And the first two records [1993\u2019s Plantation Lullabies<\/em> and 1996\u2019s Peace Beyond Passion<\/em>], took like two years each to make. I worked with [producer] David Gamson and we would nitpick and spend six months on one song. That\u2019s fun, I love that\u2014I love Steely Dan, and I guess that inspired me to think like that. But after a while, after spending all that time and energy, it wasn\u2019t any more enjoyable. I made a jazz record [The Spirit Music Jamia: Dance of the Infidel<\/em>, 2005] and I got to play bass for two years straight, no singing. I got into what I could generate from my hands, a more instant approach. The feeling of playing was more fun than trying to make someone\u2019s idea of a perfectly crafted R&B song.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re also a songwriter. How do <\/strong>you know when you\u2019ve written a <\/strong>good one?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I once worked with [producer] Craig Street, who said that a good song can have just a singer and a piano player or guitarist, and it translates. That\u2019s how you know it\u2019s a good song. That\u2019s how I started with \u201cLola\u201d\u2014which just started out as a guitar part and the words\u2014and \u201cCrying in Your Beer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Who do you look to for inspiration <\/strong>for that kind of song?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I really like [Pogues frontman] Shane MacGowan. He is lyrically and melodically an incredible songwriter. In that genre of music, the history of the music he comes from, Irish folk tales, it\u2019s not about the beat and the weird bass tone. It\u2019s about the harmony working with the melody and hopefully transporting your mind to make you involved with the lyric. That\u2019s what I was trying to do. I think I can get better at it. This was my first attempt but I\u2019m really starting to enjoy that, just trying to write songs that are simple that you can play in a pub.<\/p>\n

Tell us about your songwriting process.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I use a little 8-track box or a little Midi sequencing machine, and I usually sit at home and try to make beats, come up with guitar parts and bass lines. Sometimes I hear stuff all at once; I\u2019ll have a really clear idea in my head. Other times I try to work out things that I\u2019m hearing or feeling, and I keep demos until I write melodies and hear lyrics.<\/p>\n

Do you still practice on bass?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m trying to think of how to say this,\u00a0because it\u2019s going to sound really Jungian and super-hippie: I have a gift. It\u2019s a unique gift, and I guess it came from my father. I did all my practicing from 14 to 16. I can hear stuff, and play it. I can\u2019t rip and run; I\u2019ll never be like Pat Metheny or Jaco Pastorius. That\u2019s not what I aspire to, but I can hear bass lines and I think I play them well. So\u00a0I don\u2019t practice that. What I practice is taking a bass line and transforming it 20 different ways or having 20 different feels or tempos. I like to take an Elvis song and make it sound reggae. I practice my imagination and styles, and that has to do with listening. I try to listen to a lot of different music, and try to hone my ear to play whatever I hear.<\/p>\n

Do you have perfect pitch?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No, I have pretty good relative pitch, and I\u2019m getting better. I have a bass player, and he has perfect pitch. He\u2019s pretty much\u00a0a genius.<\/p>\n

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Wait, you have a bass player?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I love my bass player. I\u2019m not the best singer-slash-player, because I focus on the audience. Being up front is a little daunting\u00a0sometimes, so I\u2019d rather just focus on that and try to sing to the best of my ability.<\/p>\n

He must be totally intimidated playing with you.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m totally intimidated by him! He\u2019s\u00a0incredible. Everyone has a different\u00a0skill set. As a bandleader, I don\u2019t want\u00a0you to be intimidated by me. I want to\u00a0make you feel like you can express\u00a0yourself, and when you hear something\u00a0in my music that excites you and\u00a0you want to add something, come on.\u00a0Music is not a competition. I like\u00a0music: You get a bunch of people\u00a0and you\u2019re all concentrating on one\u00a0idea, and I like that more than being\u00a0competitive. I hated that about\u00a0the jazz stuff. That was the most macho\u00a0music I had ever played. It definitely\u00a0led me to what I do now: just trying to write good songs.<\/p>\n

\u2013Eric R. Danton<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MESHELL NDEGEOCELLO A notorious perfectionist tries her hand at keeping it simple She\u2019s sung with MadonnA and John Mellencamp, played bass with the Rolling Stones and Alanis Morissette, but Meshell Ndegeocello\u2019s primary focus has always been her own solo work. Since getting her start playing in go-go bands in Washington, D.C., in the late \u201980s, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[49,2378,970],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3358"}],"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=3358"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3362,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3358\/revisions\/3362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}