Full-Hearted Hymns

HEFFNER: I’m Alexander Heffner your host on The Open Mind. From time to time, according to recent tradition, we invite artists who help us escape the frequent weekly exchanges of public policy here on The Open Mind, increasingly weighted down by the unprecedented struggles of democracy. These are specially curated by your truly, for whom the criteria is only the most soul rejuvenating, who can recharge our hearts with love, in an age of heightened despair. French-American jazz and blues singer-songwriter Madeleine Peyroux, continues her musical journey, with Secular Hymns, a masterwork of sassy, feisty, and sexy tunes, delivered in a captivating collage of funk, blues, and jazz. Peyroux’s previous album, Keep Me in Your Heart for a While, a collection of her most inspired songs, is downloaded and repeated on all of my music playing devices, and it’s a special treat to introduce you to her today. Madeleine, thank you for being with me.

PEYROUX: Thank you so much.

HEFFNER: For the audience to know I, I do really invest in artists and listen to artists who calm and soothe the soul and the mind at a time when we’re impassioned, and in danger of losing something. Do you think we’re losing something? I mean your music is such an antidote to that.

PEYROUX: In danger of losing something, yeah, that’s uh, probably one of the things that musicians, [LAUGHTER] focus on a lot actually, especially I think, people that are aware of early 20th century music uh, and how, how much we’re influenced by, people like myself who are cover artists, who work on songs and look over the American songbook and, and think about, you know, how, how all of this, um, music is valued or how it should be valued, and whether or not we should be fighting over it, or just sort of um, I, I, I guess, in my position, it’s, it’s mostly a question of just, keep on going, keep on playing it. I mean in my live shows, I have a really great experience of sharing something and being there with an audience and audiences from all over, um, in different areas of the world. Um, you know, I, [LAUGHTER] I don’t know how much of it is like, how important it might be if I had a larger audience. I don’t necessarily think that it’s a bad thing that I’m playing to, for example, playing old songs to, like for example, like a thousand seat theatre, or a 500, 600, seat club for example, uh, and not really trying to break into some other arena-style, you know, audience. But, but the music is, is always appreciated when we do play these old songs.

Like, recently, after Chuck Berry died we said, well, come on, let’s throw one of these old Chuck Berry songs in there, which of course, uh, was hard on the hands, cause it’s really fast, [LAUGHTER] and uh, um, and people just, you know, they just go wild for something that’s good, I think.

HEFFNER: I think it was said that if we were going to deploy NASA spacecrafts, to show the last imprint of humanity, we would send Chuck Berry.

PEYROUX: Yeah. [LAUGHTER]

HEFFNER: And that would be the artifact that the martians find uh, in our, in our heart and soul, and, what about Ella Fitzgerald too, celebrating an anniversary recently…

PEYROUX: Yeah. Absolutely.

HEFFNER: From whom I’m sure derive a lot of inspiration.

PEYROUX: Right, and then so many other musicians last year, um, Allen Tussaint, and uh, you know, obviously um, Prince. It’s been kind of boggling how that’s happening so, and that’s another reason I guess that musicians are thinking about that a lot too, um, and so um…

HEFFNER: There, there is something biologically different, if we were gonna put a microscope on your music, or Ottmar Liebert, I don’t know if you know Ottmar, but, he is also a guitarist, and he was on the program, and we titled the show, Zen for America, because there was something in the music that was soothing, at that particular moment, in the heat of the political season.

PEYROUX: Hmm.

HEFFNER: And I find the same thing about your music. He, he said, he has a surprisingly conservative audience, and a lot of, guitar, [LAUGHTER] has no political strings attached to it.

PEYROUX: Yes. Right.

HEFFNER: How the music comes out resonates with you, irrespective of your…

PEYROUX: Yes. [SIGHS]

HEFFNER: Party affiliation.

PEYROUX: Uh, that’s an interesting problem for me, whether or not there’s really something there. I mean I just did a tour of the United States. Well actually I was on tour during the, during the week of the elections. I had that day off, Tuesday, um, and then I had to play every night for the next four days. And so it was kind of a devastating moment to just be there for, uh, myself. And it was devastating, I think to my audience. So, on some level, I was afraid that, while I was on tour, if I had songs that talked about this or that, or that I had thrown jokes into the show that were, mentioned our political, you know, situation, and that I would get some negative feedback throughout like, for example, certain states, and we, we went down through the D.C. area and then the South, I played South Carolina, in a couple of places, and North Florida, and then Atlanta, and then Dallas.

And I got just great responses. Everybody had a good time. Except, when I got to LA [LAUGHTER] I had one heckler in LA, and it was a pretty dramatic, uh, moment. So I, I almost feel like I’ve been taking part in the discussion just within my shows, just with me and the audience and the little rooms that we have in, um…

HEFFNER: Who would dare heckle you? [LAUGHTER]

PEYROUX: I never found out, but uh…

HEFFNER: An insane person.

PEYROUX: That person, unfortunately uh, the scary part was after he heckled me, and the audience started getting really mad at him [LAUGHTER] and booing him, and so that was, but it was, you know, I’ve had a, over the course of the, the campaign, I was on tour in the states, uh, last year in the spring. And there were people that would say, come on, that’s enough politics. Just sing the song. And yet, it wasn’t as if I was going on and on about something. I just, but I couldn’t really ignore it, so for me, it…

HEFFNER: Hmm.

PEYROUX: It’s gotta be there. It’s gotta, because otherwise it’s meaningless to not, uh, to talk about anything if it’s that present. And that’s how it is…

HEFFNER: Right, I…

PEYROUX: Now, you’re probably gonna say, well…

HEFFNER: [LAUGHTER]

PEYROUX: You’re supposed to be soothing us, and like…

HEFFNER: No, not at all, I wouldn’t say that.

PEYROUX: And [LAUGHTER] distracting us from the…

HEFFNER: Your words are soothing, as is your music. It reminds be of something that Aloe Blacc said to me when he was one the program. His, his music touches on some of the same themes, love, romance, um, and here’s a man who’s earnest and has a serious purpose in his, in his identity beyond the music. And some artists are willing to be more explicit about the state of society and contemporary issues.

PEYROUX: Hmm.

HEFFNER: He was one of them. When I asked him, is compassionate capitalism possible? He was talking about food deserts at the time, and the haves and the have-nots, and the challenge of this period of great inequity. And so I admire that. I think when you fuse the music with…

PEYROUX: Mm-hmm.

HEFFNER: A mission, that can open minds, right?

PEYROUX: That can be the most powerful, yeah, music can be the most powerful thing in that way, I think. So yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s kind of just, it’s, it’s a kind of a form of meditation, I mean it could even go so far as being, I think in functionally speaking, it’s kind of like a type of religion, you know, to musicians…

HEFFNER: Right.

PEYROUX: This is what I, this is my god, [LAUGHTER] you know, as it were, small g, but…

HEFFNER: I remember when I first discovered U2, I felt like I was being pumped, something was being pumped into my veins. I was…

PEYROUX: Huh.

HEFFNER: I mean I’m, I’m a fan of U2, but, to me, U2 now, a little too rough around the, people would say Metallica, or something, to me…

PEYROUX: Yeah. [LAUGHTER]

HEFFNER: I really do seek salvation with artists like you and Ottmar Liebert, and Aloe Blacc, and Guy Davis, who also is lower profile in the sense that, you know, he, he, his ideal venue is not an arena.

PEYROUX: Uh huh.

HEFFNER: It’s to reach people more intimately. And you certainly do that. You hit them, it’s a deep, intimate dive.

PEYROUX: Um, it works for me. I, I honestly don’t really pretend to be able to explain what it is that we’re doing. I mean I do think that music has that kind of quality to it. And it, it, it doesn’t, you know, yeah, you’re talking about Metallica and U2 and saying that, that that’s another form of, uh…

HEFFNER: Right.

PEYROUX: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I have tried to see if there’s another side to all this in my own career, like, in my own, rather my own exploration of my voice and, and what music is gonna, like, you know, can I be uh, can I find some other, cause I got such a, I just end up with all these ballads and then a, not only just a reputation, but honestly s little, a truth, a true reputation for being kind of melancholy, and that’s kind of who I was anyway, as a kid, already, and uh, it’s who I am. But, I really also love comedy, so I’ve been trying to, [LAUGHTER] I’ve been trying to jump into that, and basically my show is kind of uh, right now, comic songs are hard for me to come by, but, at least in there, it’s peppered with, with my own, [LAUGHTER] little jokes in between the songs, and uh, finding, finding another side to those, I mean I don’t know, Chuck Berry man, you know, it’s rock ‘n’ roll, and we certainly have fun doing it. Now whether or not that’s ever gonna be my forte…

HEFFNER: No, no, I…

PEYROUX: Or it it just sad songs?

HEFFNER: [LAUGHTER]

PEYROUX: Uh, what can I do? [LAUGHTER]

HEFFNER: But the thing about your music is that there is a truth of, within the melancholy and, I know you say it’s melancholy, but to me it’s, it’s actually more uplifting than not.

PEYROUX: I think that’s one of the big issues about the blues, and, maybe uh, and jazz, and maybe also the way that we look at American music, uh, and how much we value our own, like legacy in America based on these songs that are, um, really quite uplifting and, and secular and um, revolutionary, and powerful, and they’re kind of dismissed I think, in American culture a lot of times, as just being sort of a thing, like, you know, that’s, that doesn’t have the power that it does. Uh…

HEFFNER: Well we embrace you…

PEYROUX: [LAUGHTER]

HEFFNER: And would love to hear…

PEYROUX: OK…

HEFFNER: From your new album, um, or whatever track you have in mind.

PEYROUX: [GUITAR] This is an old uh, spiritual. [GUITAR] [SONG] Trampin, trampin Lord, trying to make a heaven, my home. Trampin, trampin Lord, I’m trying to make heaven my home. Hmm. I’ve never been to heaven, but I have been told, trying to make heaven my home, that the streets up there are paved with gold, trying to make heaven my home. Yeah I’ve been trampin, trampin, Lord, trying to make heaven my home, trampin, trampin, Lord, I’m trying to make heaven my home. Yeah and I walked around the city, Lord what did I see? Trying to make heaven my home. There’s a whole lot of homeless fools, just like me, trying to make heaven my home. I’m tramping, trampin, trying to make heaven my home. Lord, I’m trying to make heaven my home.

HEFFNER: Beautiful.

PEYROUX: [LAUGHTER]

HEFFNER: What do you experience when you play that.

PEYROUX: Yeah, well, the world goes away, a little bit. Um, I also have the opposite thing, where I feel closer to people around me, or at least I think I do. [LAUGHTER]

HEFFNER: Well when we talk about what we’ve lost, it’s a kind of community of spirituality.

PEYROUX: Um, you know, that means so much to me, the fact that music created a community in my life. Uh, it created a community in my life that was in the street. It was an open community. It was free, uh, open minded, [LAUGHTER] if you don’t mind. I can’t help saying that…

HEFFNER: Please.

PEYROUX: Uh, free and, and, and yet, you know, there was uh, you could say there might, you know, I was afraid, you know, this is gonna be cliquey, you know, coming out of high school and, and junior high and everything, and Brooklyn, and I ended up in Paris and I was like, oh god, there’s musicians here, and I wanna go hang out with them so I can learn some music, but, you know, I hope they’re not gonna be anything like these people back in school where, you know, you have to be something to get in. And, and I didn’t have that, and I was, you know, it was just music was the only thing that allied us all, and it, it supported me, and it supported everything. It it, it changed, obviously, you know, some of this is about me, but the community aspect of it is what made it work. Um, and it’s not just among the musicians. It’s the fact that when you go and stand on the street where you have enough quiet that you can hear, you get this crowd of people that are just stopping because they want, they some-, somehow we’re all wanting the same thing, and we’re all part of the same thing. Um, it’s hard, you know, to see how that could work in places like New York City, not just cause of the noise, but mostly because everybody’s gotta hurry up and make some money and get home.

HEFFNER: [LAUGHTER]

PEYROUX: And cook that dinner and save that, that time’s that’s available to them, and it’s uh, you know, it’s, it’s just the way that it is. I mean I still choose to live here. I didn’t choose, after spending all those beautiful years in Paris, I didn’t choose to stay in France, and I felt that I was, um, missing out on something. There was something here in the United States and New York City of course, um, with all the musicians that are here, but also with the openness of opportunity, and in terms of being a woman, for one, uh, in business, or being, being a woman in, in the arts or whatever. There’s, it’s, it’s very different, so yeah. I mean I don’t know how I feel about it now, as of this year, but, it’s…

HEFFNER: How was it different?

PEYROUX: How was New York different, or how was Paris different?

HEFFNER: How was it different in terms of aspiring to be the artist you are today? What did, what did you get from New York that you didn’t find in Paris, and vice versa?

PEYROUX: I didn’t feel that women had the same level of uh, respect afforded them, um, in Paris. And, you know, I, just, you know, the culture, the old world culture is still there. Um, somehow the British are ahead of us, but it seems like the continental culture, well, I don’t know, things have already changed. This is a long time ago, right? But uh, the, the French…

HEFFNER: It’s a fascinating history though.

PEYROUX: [LAUGHTER] Yeah, I mean in the last twenty years,

HEFFNER: Personally and…

PEYROUX: Well, uh, it was…

HEFFNER: Looking at…

PEYROUX: A wonderful time for me.

HEFFNER: Mm-hmm.

PEYROUX: That time on that street was a wonderful time, and, you know, and I hate to say, oh this is so romantic and everybody should just quit their jobs and live on the street, or especially high school kids, right? Like, that would be the worst possible thing you could get out of this. It’s not about that. It was a, it was about, uh, it was about that community that was available. And, if that’s not there then it doesn’t, then it doesn’t matter whether you’re in the street or in a, in a building, in a school, or in a church, you know? I don’t think there’s anything wrong with where it happens. It’s just how it happens, you know?

HEFFNER: Hmm.

PEYROUX: Um, and uh, yeah, and its open-mindedness, and…

HEFFNER: Looking at the Parisian worldview…

PEYROUX: Hmm.

HEFFNER: In the contemporary moment, what Le Pen represents is at least in part what you’re describing as the antiquated gendered assumptions, or something different?

PEYROUX: Um, yeah, well, I don’t know about Marine’s, I think that she probably is trying to promote women’s, you know, support among women, so, I don’t know that she’s uh, very backward when it comes to gender equality…

HEFFNER: Mm-hmm.

HEFFNER: Over there. But it was definitely very new, to have women in any uh, political office when I was there in the 90’s. Um, and of course, you know, we’re still waiting for a female president here in the United States, but uh, there was already a lot more, uh, uh, that’s been done in, in terms of that, that, the, jobs and inequality, and I think America is, is way ahead. And just knowing that, you know, I could be, often told for example, on stage at the Olympia or something like that in Paris, I could be told by the sound engineer, the local house engineer to just, uh, shut up and let him do his job. And I just felt at that moment that that was only because it was there in France, and I was a woman. I honestly think that if I wanted to talk to a sound engineer about my show, before the show started uh, in another circumstance, or if I had been a man over there, it might have happened differently. But that was a long time ago…

HEFFNER: Mm-hmm.

PEYROUX: And uh, we’ll see. You know, I hope it continues to change, uh, over there. I mean [SIGHS] the, you know, we’ve all got a long way to go [LAUGHTER] so I don’t know a lot about French politics. I really don’t. I spent most of my time just being on the, in the music scene.

HEFFNER: This dreamy idea of…

PEYROUX: Hmm…

HEFFNER: Whole-heartedness, what do you hope that your listeners glean from that?

PEYROUX: Yeah. I think that, that, it, it really is that healing, and time to think about love, or time to be in love, or whatever it is that you want. And I suppose it doesn’t have to live only in the song. I mean these can be ideas that you can take away from the music. But I mean, to me music has this sort of existence that, especially this kind of stuff where, you know, you can hear it in the voice but, you, there’s really no, uh, definition to, there’s no way you can mechanically create that, uh, you know the sound waves pervading, and the way everything resonates, uh, in your body and the audience member’s body, and the musician’s body and in, in the, in the street or the room, or, you know, you know, it’s all present in that moment, and yet we have this, somehow this cellular memory where, you know, we go back to it, and we can hear music for days, and, um, but, so it sort of exists without, [LAUGHTER] being able to grasp it, and uh, uh, I, I don’t think that there’s anything bad that could ever come from it. You know? It’s so tragic that some people actually do think that that’s a bad thing. Uh…

HEFFNER: You have to be pretty backwards to think that, but, but there is still…

PEYROUX: Well that’s when the attacks were last November in Paris at the uh…

HEFFNER: Right…

PEYROUX: Bataclan, which, I had, you know, performed there a couple of years earlier. And then I saw this, these talks about how jazz singers are bad, [LAUGHTER] which I thought was, it’s not funny, but uh, I thought it would be a really great, um, a really great comedy show, actually, if you had just like, jazz singers versus imams or something…

HEFFNER: [LAUGHTER]

PEYROUX: Like, how they would deal with each other. [LAUGHTER]

HEFFNER: You get Mel Brooks involved and, some…

PEYROUX: Oh yeah, lots of…

HEFFNER: [LAUGHTER] [UNCLEAR]

PEYROUX: Well he would bring, he would [LAUGHTER] have to have a bunch of musical numbers. I’m sure the Imams would end up singing at the end of it if he were, you know…

HEFFNER: Jazz with the Imams…

PEYROUX: [LAUGHTER]

HEFFNER: That sounds like some sort of nightly special…

PEYROUX: [LAUGHTER]

HEFFNER: With some Parisian culinary faire

PEYROUX: I wish, I wish we could be, yeah, explore that, yeah…

HEFFNER: Yeah, because that whole…

PEYROUX: [LAUGHTER] Parisian culinary affair too, OK…

HEFFNER: I, I don’t know the, Abrahamic tradition can only extend so far into the goat-cheese tartlets…

PEYROUX: [LAUGHTER] I…

HEFFNER: I don’t know, to me…

PEYROUX: I’m sure you could…

HEFFNER: Dying in goat-cheese tartlets…

PEYROUX: I’m getting really hungry right now…

HEFFNER: Yeah.

PEYROUX: So yeah.

HEFFNER: La Sirene is the best…

PEYROUX: Oh yeah?

HEFFNER: French restaurant in New York, but you’ll have to…

PEYROUX: Oh really?

HEFFNER: Taste test and confirm that, but…

PEYROUX: Mmm.

HEFFNER: Um, the, that full-heartedness, in the minute or two we have left, how do we get that not to be a transitory thing? Or just a temporary, fleeting…

PEYROUX: Hmm.

HEFFNER: Full-heartedness, in that moment, that you so eloquently captured a second ago?

PEYROUX: [SIGHS] Wow, well, I mean what kind of a, that’s like the, uh, the kind of thing you’d ask the, the Buddha or something when you, when you get up the mountain, and…

HEFFNER: [LAUGHTER]

PEYROUX: You know? Uh, how, how od you hold on to something like that? Well, you know I personally think that you can’t. And perhaps you can, um, just try to keep remembering it, remember what it feels like if you need to go back there, like if you’re stuck in traffic or something, [LAUGHTER] and you need something to, to take your mind off of it. Um…

HEFFNER: Or when you have those few moments of solitude…

PEYROUX: Hmm, yeah.

HEFFNER: To keep it going in your heart and in your mind.

PEYROUX: I mean, what works for me is singing, you know? My body resonates when I sing, and so it’s creating an experience that, uh, just exists. Of course, I really like to sing with other people, or for other people, or around other people. Um, and uh, but there is something just to making a noise. Maybe that’ll help, I, honestly…

HEFFNER: Keep playing.

PEYROUX: It could be anything, yeah, keep, just, just do it.

HEFFNER: Thank you. You keep playing, Madeleine.

PEYROUX: [LAUGHTER] Oh, thank you very much. Thank you so much.

HEFFNER: And thanks to you in the audience. I hope you join us again next time, for a thoughtful excursion into the world of ideas. Until then, keep an open mind. Please visit The Open Mind website at Thirteen.org/OpenMind to view this program online, or to access over 1,500 other interviews. And do check us out on Twitter or Facebook, @OpenMindTV for updates on future programing.