If he'd been born just a few decades earlier, in the era
of Tin Pan Alley and the Brill Building, the world never would've heard
Nick Jaina's voice on record, and he'd be perfectly fine with that.
“People don't really seek out songs anymore. Everyone's a
songwriter now,” the soft-spoken musician (and occasional Willamette
Week columnist) says over a bowl of vermicelli noodles at Pho Hung in
southeast Portland. “If this was the '50s, I would be a songwriter and
never sing, because that's my strength.”
For his new record, The Beanstalks That Have Brought Us Here are Gone,
Jaina lives out his dream of remaining silent. Only, he's not
necessarily writing songs for other singers—he's communicating through
other singers. After producing a batch of songs for his last album,
2010's A Bird in the Opera House, Jaina reconsidered the ones
that failed to make the cut, and found most didn't work because his
voice just wasn't right for them. So, he brought in different vocalists
to give them new life; those singers happened to be women.
“It seemed to just emanate from there. I tried to find
ways to use female voices as instruments to do things my voice just
couldn't do because it's masculine...slightly,” he says with a laugh.
“And it just changes the perspective of the story to have a woman
singing it.” But expressing himself from the point of view of someone
else is how Jaina has always written songs, whether it's comparing his
personal heartbreak to the pain of war or swapping genders. “It's
extreme, but I think extreme emotions make for interesting songs.”
Track 1: “When the Blind Man Rings That Bell” featuring Kaylee Cole
Beanstalks' spare, overture-like opener—which a
friend compared to “Auld Lang Syne”—was inspired by a trip to Argentina.
Flying standby on the way home, it took Jaina a few trips between the
hotel to the airport before he was able to actually leave Buenos Aires.
“It's an odd feeling, being in a place you've gotten familiar with and
staying in this hotel, and you get to know the doorman and everything,
and you're walking out to get to a cab and you're thinking, 'Either I'm
going to come back here in an hour, or I'm never coming back,'” he says.
“I realized that's every moment of your life: You never know if this is
goodbye forever, or if this is going to repeat for days and days.” In
the midst of a divorce, the theme resonated with Northwest
singer-songwriter Cole, as did the details of the lyrics: Her great aunt
played piano in an old hotel in California. “Those are the magical
things that you hope will happen when you throw these elements
together,” Jaina says.
Track 2: “You Were So Good To Me” featuring Jolie Holland
Jaina originally wrote this mournful, bossa nova-inspired
tune for soul singer Tahoe Jackson, but a miscommunication led him to
believe she was disinterested. (As it turns out, she took vocal lessons
specifically to learn how to sing in the appropriate style for it;
she'll perform the song at the CD release show.) He passed it along to
Houston folk artist Jolie Holland, for who Jaina played trumpet—an
instrument he's not well-skilled in, he admits—on her last record, in
exchange for her promise of a contribution to the project. “She has this
hyper-emotional quality to her singing that seems to disregard notes
and formality sometimes. Her voice always gives me the chills just
because of the unexpected leaps she does,” he says. “The subject of the
song fits with that, because I picture it as a widow singing it to
someone she loves.”
Track 3: “Once But Never Again” featuring Luzelena Mendoza of Y La Bamba
In contrast to “You Were So Good To Me,” and despite its
light, breezy feel, Jaina describes this song as a “diatribe,” of a
woman cursing a former lover rather than honoring him. It was originally
intended for Laura Gibson, who felt she wouldn't be an appropriate fit.
When Mendoza agreed to sing it, Jaina completely changed the
instrumentation to better suit her voice. “Luz is amazing because she
does these three-part harmonies on the spot, in one take. There's these
crazy intervals and all these weird things I don't understand at all,”
Jaina says. “She just does them straight, and they just work. So many
times I'm in the studio, and I'm thinking, 'I should quit singing,
because this is how you sing.'”
Track 4: “Whiskey Riddle” featuring Annalisa Tornfelt from Black Prairie
Jaina first collaborated with Tornfelt at the wedding of a
mutual friend, who asked them to duet on Etta James' “At Last.”
Although his vision for Beanstalks was to utilize female singers
with a lot of character to their voices, Jaina realized then that her
unaffected “prairie voice” would be perfect for “Whiskey Riddle,” a
rootsy folk number he'd been kicking around for 10 years. “When I sing
it, it just seems like a depressing dirge,” Jaina says. “When she sings
it, it's this seductive, charming thing.”
Track 5: “James” featuring Johanna Kunin
A few years ago, Jaina dated a Christian girl. He went to
church with her once, and found in the preacher's insistence that Jesus
is a man whose return is worth waiting around for a metaphor for the
leap of faith required by falling in love with someone. (“Again, the
deep religious meaning is lost on me,” Jaina says.) Sung with soaring
grace by Kunin, a.k.a. Bright Archer, over piano and violin
accompaniment, “James”—a reference to the Biblical apostle—also conveys
the insecurity of being in a relationship with someone whose heart
belongs to a deity. “Being in love with somebody who's essentially in
love with Jesus is a weird position to be in,” he says. “They'll never
look at you the same way, and in some respects they're comparing you to
this person who's impossibly perfect because he's not around.”
Track 6: “The President of the Chess Club,” featuring Amanda Spring of Point Juncture, WA
“It's nerd love,” Jaina says of the record's most
lighthearted and catchiest track. Although joyfully sung by Spring from
the perspective of a girl crushing on a brainy high schooler, many of
the details of the song, which describe a boy with an effeminate walk
“who mispronounces words because he's never heard them in conversation,”
are taken from another of Jaina's real-life relationships, with a
well-read woman from Canada. Not every lyric is inspired by her,
however: The line referencing a notary public came from his mother. “She
said, 'You can get a certificate as a notary public, and you can just
drive around and notarize things, and it's not that hard,'” Jaina says.
“A few weeks later, I play that song for my brother, and he's like, 'All
you heard when she was talking about a career was lyrics for a song,
weren't you?' That's the only thing I care about when somebody is giving
me career advice. It's hopeless.”
Track 7: “Ortolan,” featuring Myshkin
An ortolan is a French songbird; it is also a French
delicacy, served whole—feathers and all—after being drowned in cognac.
When he first heard about it in an NPR story, Jaina was drawn to the
concept of a creature beloved for its singing being killed and consumed
in such a brutal manner. “It's like being in love: You want it to taste
really good, so you torture it, then you eat it,” he says. “That's kind
of what love is.” Jaina wrote the song for Myshkin, singer-guitarist for
gypsy jazz collective the Ruby Warblers and an artist he considers
deeply underrated, and not just because of her penchant for singing
about birds. “I wrote this song that was lyrically dense and had a lot
of tight imagery coming quickly, and that's the kind of song she
writes,” he says. “Maybe that's why she hasn't taken off: Her songs are
almost too packed with amazing lyrics, and you have to crack them open a
bit.”
Track 8: “Missing Awhile” featuring Corinna Repp of Tu Fawning
Jaina pitched a few songs to Repp, who told him she chose
this one because it made her cry. “It's a song about suicide, or the
last ditch before suicide, which would be to just kind of disappear,”
Jaina says. Harking back to Repp's solo material more than the dusky
noir-pop of Tu Fawning, “Missing Awhile” is indeed a subtly moving
composition, featuring only melancholy guitars, gently brushed drums and
a distant organ. Jaina says he is familiar with the depths of
depression explored in the lyrics, where he's considered leaving town
and effectively becoming a ghost. “I've been at those moments where that
seemed like the best option. You don't want to dwell on it or be
self-pitying, so maybe it's easier to give that to someone else to
sing.”
Track 9: “Awake When I'm Sleeping” featuring Audie Darling
If the jangly electric guitar reminds of Brooklyn indie
rockers the Walkmen, well, that was Jaina's intent. But having Darling
sing this song brought out elements he didn't even know were there.
“Audie has some inherent country twang to her voice that she doesn't
even admit to, but you hear it there. It's that Neko Case style, where
it can be so small but it completely changes the whole landscape of what
you think the song is,” he says. It's a beautifully uncomplicated song,
both in its arrangement and lyrics, a series of contradictions
expressing deep yearning. “I just always think I should try to write
something simpler,” Jaina says. “Artistically, the goal is to open up
and let people inside rather than just being obscure or obtuse. I'm
trying to find the limits of that.”
Track 10: “No One Gives Their Heart Away,” featuring Laura Gibson
Beanstalks concludes with the song that started the
entire project. Jaina had tried to get venerable Portland crooner
Gibson to perform one of his songs for years before she finally
connected with this gentle lullaby. He originally thought to begin the
album with the song but moved it to the end because of its dreamlike
quality. “I like the idea of listening to an album as you're going to
sleep, and the last song ending as you're half-conscious,” he says. “It
seems like that kind of song, that at a certain point lifts up into the
clouds.” It also expresses what Jaina considers the message of the
entire record. “To take it literally, nothing is for free. Nothing is
given to you, you have to earn it—with relationships, too. It wouldn't
be as good if someone just said, 'OK, I'm in love with you.' You should
have to earn it, constantly.”
SEE IT: Nick Jaina plays Mississippi Studios
Wednesday, Aug. 24, with Dovekins and Run On Sentence. 9 pm. $10 day of
show. 21+.
