7 questions for Oklahoma-Texas singer Susan Herndon about her 'Big Blue Beautiful Dream'
In Susan Herndon's "Big Blue Beautiful Dream," a cardinal soars over a leaping dolphin, an owl and deer boast similar piercing stares, and flowers bloom everywhere.
At least, that's what the Oklahoma-Texas singer-songwriter drew for the cover of her latest album with her band, The Bella Counsel.
"I drew a quick sketch of that cover about four or five years ago. So, it's something I've been carrying with me and finally sat down and painted at the beginning of this year," Herndon said, crediting Jennifer Robertson with laying out the artwork for the album cover.
"This one took six years ... so it's been a trip. We'd have to take breaks, because of the deaths in our family and then the pandemic. So, there were periods where we weren't working on it, but that we'd always come back to it. It was a real push to finally release it. It feels like a huge release."
Growing up in Tulsa in a musical family, the folk troubadour started learning piano when she was just a toddler. Surprisingly, the Red Dirt chanteuse didn’t pick up guitar until she moved to France. Herndon majored in French at the University of Oklahoma and spent a year teaching in France at the University of Clermont-Ferrand, where she taught herself to play guitar and started busking.
"Putting on a great live show, to me, that's the best. But I love records," said Herndon, noting that the 2019 death of her mother had a major impact on her musical process over the past few years. "I love albums. I love recorded music. And where would I be without it?"
A former Norman resident now based in San Antonio, Texas, Herndon is back in her home state and still living her "Big Blue Beautiful Dream." She and The Bella Counsel — which includes Herndon on lead vocals and upright bass, Bob French on guitar and Randall "Randy" Coyne on drums — will play a Nov. 11 show at Oklahoma City's Blue Door, which she calls "one of the premier listening rooms in the country."
Here are seven questions with Herndon ahead of her OKC show:
1. What's it like to release an album after six years of working on it?
"It's a birth. I've never birthed a baby, but musically, artistically, it feels like a huge catharsis to release this.
"An album, for me, is like a photo album and just represents this time period — and this is sort of the past 10 years. Even though (her 2015 French-English album) 'Vagabonde' was released in that time ... that was really more of a cover record in French. So, that was sort of a separate project. But in the meantime, while I was working on that, I was writing the songs for this one. ... This has been the bedrock and in the back of my mind the whole time."
2. I think this is technically your third pandemic album, right?
"Yeah. Since this album was taking six years, in the meantime, I had this backlog of songs. So, I got together with Kyle Reid and knocked them out in December 2019 and released '2020 Vision' at the beginning of 2020.
"It's just solo, and Kyle and I produced it. ... I played lead guitar and Wurlitzer on it, and then Kyle played some pedal steel on it — beautiful, beautiful pedal steel. ... Then, I wrote about 36 songs over the course of the pandemic, so I released some of those just online — both of those records are really exclusively online — as 'Singularity — A Pandemic Stay-At-Home Travelogue.' Again, (it was) solo. But this 'Big Blue Beautiful Dream' is a full-band (album), so it's very different than the other two records."
3. As a musician, how did you weather the COVID-19 pandemic?
"I really secretly enjoyed it — besides the fact that it's an awful thing and I've lost several friends from the COVID. But I kept very busy. For about four years, I was doing the 'Fighting the Forces of Evil' Happy Hour on Fridays in Tulsa — I did it at a place called Soul City, and then they moved out to Jenks and opened up Maggie's Music Box and I continued it there — and then the pandemic hit. So, I started doing it online, and I did it once a week. I did up to, I think, 57, 58 episodes, just an hourlong different show every week. ... It was actually really fun and wonderful to keep in touch with everybody that way on Facebook Live."
4. How did you end up in Texas?
"I'd been playing music full time and exclusively for 22, 23 years. ... And it's a huge hustle: It's like being unemployed, constantly, every day of the year. Right before the pandemic, that February, I had 27 gigs — which is really unheard of, especially for February — and I was just piecing it all together. But you take every opportunity you can in this business: You know it's feast or famine because you know something like a pandemic might come along the next month — which it did.
"But my cousin is a builder, and he also builds aquifers. I've always wanted to build my own home someday, and I'm interested in what we're going to need to do to combat this climate change, needing aquifers and solar and all these things. He needed help with his business. ... I'm still gigging — he's very understanding because he's a musician, too, so he lets me go off and do my gigs — but I'm working part time for him."
5. Can you talk about the vibe of 'Big Blue Beautiful Dream?'
"It's just been a real labor of love. ... About five or six years ago, we did a five-song EP called 'Spin,' because we did a tour in England and we took that with us. That was the precursor: Those five songs are included in this record, and then there are eight other songs that are on there, too. ... So, it's a continuation of 'Spin,' and it's hopefully the catharsis and healing of that whole experience in the past 10 years. ... Just coming to terms with having to rise above the spin and betrayal of my closest friend is basically what it’s really about."
6. Who worked on the album with you?
"Carl Amburn engineered, mixed and mastered it: He's been great to work with — he's a master here in Norman that's worked with so many of us. ... Then, Randy gifted me for my birthday four or five years ago having Andy Newmark play on the record — and Andy Newmark has just been one of my favorite drummers since I was a child. He's played on everybody's records: David Bowie, all the Beatles, Rickie Lee Jones, Carly Simon. Sly and the Family Stone, I think, was the first band I'd ever seen his name on, but he's played on just so many people's albums that I loved growing up.
"Randy, who's a lover of music and and fan of drummers especially, had befriended Andy and then got Andy to play on a handful of songs. ... So, that was a thrill, working with a hero of mine. Carl flew the tracks over to England to Mike Thorne over at Rimshot Productions, and Andy laid down the drum tracks for 'Love Glasses' and then these other songs.
"And I've always loved and wanted a horn section, so I got together with Roger Kimball and told him what I wanted on the horns. So, he wrote out some charts for me for the horn section for (the album opener) 'Love Glasses.'"
7. Did your pandemic experience give you a newfound love for playing music?
"Yeah. I love hooks and melody and rhythm. So, I love everything about music. ... The thing about playing music for a living is that there's only 2% that's really great. And the 98% is a hustle, and it's a pain in the (expletive). But that 2% is so great that it keeps you doing it, keeps you coming back for more, keeps you trying, keeps you on the path of it — holding it close and, yeah, loving it."
SUSAN HERNDON AND THE BELLA COUNSEL
When: 8 p.m. Nov. 11.
Where: Blue Door, 2805 N McKinley.
Tickets: https://www.bluedoorokc.com.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: 7 questions for Oklahoma-Texas singer Susan Herndon on her new 'Dream'