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Janis Ian.
 Janis Ian is essentially a politically driven folk singer (Society's Child) with a penchant to switch to country and western music (Boots Like Emmy Lou's) at the tip of a hat, but is also a chart-topping pop diva (At Seventeen) and even borderline disco queen (Fly Too High) in the 'seventies. However, the nine time Grammy Award winner has more than one particular reason to want to talk to the press: two new albums, "...and a tour!" she exclaims.
It's mid-afternoon in her hometown of Nashville, making it an ungodly 7am here; we start off with talk of her latest studio album 'Billie's Bones' and how every single detail of its making - including photos, lyric drafts, sound-bytes of rehearsals and studio takes - was posted on her website. "Yeah, we liked it," she effusively interjects, "We think it's really cool because it's nice for the fans to really feel like they can get inside of the making of something and be a part of it in some way. I have a pretty close relationship with my fanbase. I mean, I'm accessible by email and through the message board, so I really knew a lot of what my fans were looking for when I went in to record it."
Then, after many months of communal workshopping, the actual final recording process took a mere three days. "Um, partly budget and partly because I wanted it to stay loose," she offers as an explanation. "I thought since I was playing with studio musicians, the more we practiced the more codified it would get and I really didn't want that to happen." Having said that, I note that 'Billie's Bones' sounds far less ragged and clunky than her last album, the brilliantly paranoid 'God And The FBI'. "I think that you're probably right," she concurs. "With 'God And The FBI' we were pretty much holed up in a house for three months, the three producers and myself, so it was a very different vibe."
With 18 albums to her name, of which I own just over half, I wondered if she approached each project with a different personal agenda and method. "Well, I think that it's important to recognise that every album is its own beast and to respect that, you know?" she avows. "It's knowing that where you were two years ago, or even two months ago may not be where you are when you want to go in and start recording."
Which brings us to new CD release number two, 'Janis Ian Live: Working Without A Net', where Ian found herself sifting through over 400 hours of concert recordings to bring together a collection of twenty-four old and new favourites from shows dating back to the early 'eighties. "Yeah, and that was an interesting experience," she says, sounding almost relieved all over again, "because I really didn't expect the shows to sound that good and it kind of took me aback, in a nice way. I expected to have to do a lot more weeding than we actually wound up having to do, and it was nice to have the choices."
So why not just choose the set lists she wanted and go out and record a live album, like everyone else? "Because it wouldn't have been as representative," she states. "You know, I think the minute you know that you're recording and you're thinking that you've only got 'X' amount of shows to produce an entire live album the whole character of your performance changes, and I really didn't want that to happen. I wanted the character of the performances to remain pretty true to how they were."
Song selection for 'Billie's Bones' was also a curious process, with the title track being a re-working of an unused poem Ian wrote in the late 'sixties, and I Hear You Sing Again finding her sharing a posthumous writing credit with Woody Guthrie. "Woody's song only had three verses and there was no bridge and no real chorus so I just ripped it all to shreds and put it back together again," she clarifies. "And that was really great to be invited to do that by [his daughter] Nora Guthrie. Wilco did an entire album of Woody Guthrie songs but this is the first time a writer has been allowed to take co-writing credit, every other artist has had to leave the lyrics completely alone and maybe just put their music to the words."
Steve Jones
 | Janis Ian plays at the Governor Hindmarsh on Tues 15 March. |
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