I just remember how well the audience listened, it was so quiet that I could feel my own heartbeat.

I saw your Housing Works show here in New York last summer. It was the first time you had played solo in front of an audience, ever, right? Is there anything you remember about that night or is it more of a blur?
I just remember how well the audience listened, it was so quiet that I could feel my own heartbeat. At the same time, I appreciated but I had never really experienced it either. Because playing with the band, you’re always hearing something, glasses clinking, or something or somebody hollering or coughing or something going on.

At The Jammys this year, you performed with Dickey Betts and Reid Geneaur. What was that like?
I wouldn’t say I really performed with them. In fact, I think if there had been one of those long wooden canes, that comes out and gets you around the neck and pulls you off, that would have been an appropriate thing to happen. [laughs]
His songs [Dickey Betts’] are not in my register. It’s like when somebody starts “Happy Birthday” off weird and you’re like, “uh oh… Happy Birthday… [in a squeaky, awful voice]. I didn’t want to make him adjust to me. And then of course I didn’t know what in the world to do. So I was there basically honoring him and getting to enjoy being onstage with one of my all time favorite guitar players. His music, his playing, his tone, they sound like sunshine to me. It really brightens up my mood.
I’d listen to him in the hotel. When we were on tour, I’d get up and be all alone there, so… And I was feeling kind of homesick, so just kind of lonesome in general, early in the morning or the afternoon. And on a rainy day in some city where I didn’t know where I was in some funky hotel room, I’d put that on and it felt like home. It comforted me.

Was there any particular album?
I had the best of, with all their… a live one too. I don’t know what it was, it was a tape among all my tapes. It was a tape back then too. And it had a beautiful, live version of “Blue Sky.” And I remember “Blue Sky” in particular really picking me up.

The New Bohemians were perceived as somewhat “hippie.” What’s your take on the whole jamband culture?
They were a jamband. We started off in Texas, playing in clubs and jamming. All the songs were extended. They taught me a whole lot about jamming because I only heard music from records and from the radio. So when they would go into jams, they taught me to appreciate it. They turned me on to the Grateful Dead. Helped me understand how music can flow. I would naturally do that as a singer, but in shorter segments because of the way my ear was trained prior to meeting and being with them. They turned me on to making things looser. And tuning into how you feel. And then being open enough to completely go for it in improv and make changes. Actually being there in the moment and that’s one of my favorite things and it always was. That’s how we would write songs, we would just improve together and we would just run a tape and if we felt something, then we would go back and listen to it and go, “that’s it, there’s a song right there” and we’d create it. Or in some instances, I would just come in and sing them a thing and they’d just throw it down or they’d just jam something. It was just so loose and so nice. The funnest things we did were when we would improvise and we would do it at every single show—we would improvise a song. A lot of times, it was really happening. People would say, “Oh, we really like that song.” And we’d go, “well, that’s probably the only time you’re going to hear it.” Or we would try to remember it, check out a tape and recreate it again. It was a lot of fun. A whole lot of fun. But when we made the record, it didn’t express the jam spirit of the band. It impinged everything.

So what’s your take on the jamband culture now, like the one you saw The Jammys?
I felt very comfortable, right at home. That was my roots and it still is a big part of what I love to do and so I often go back and play with New Bohemians. So I felt comfortable being around that kind of musician, somewhere at home. Because it’s not fake or something. There’s a nice, real people vibe about that that can put you at ease.

From what I understand, you still get together with the New Bohemians every year down in Texas just to play around and jam for fun.
Yeah. We still have a lot of songs written that I would love to record with them. Our only problem is that we have never recorded as good as the band has been. So therefore, it’s left a lot of room for frustration. Since I live up here now, in New York, I’ve playing with other musicians. When something great happens, like what happened with Steve Gadd and Charlie [Sexton], then it’s… because they were here and I was here, I went ahead and recorded with them. But I would still love to make the real record with those guys because they haven’t been realized yet. I think they’re underrated and I think a lot of it has to with the name New Bohemians which, I never really liked that name. I think they can be some what put down by it because it’s… what happened was… It came out so naturally in that Bram/Gram?, the drummer, his grandfather walked down and looked at those guys jamming one day and said, “Y’all look like a bunch of new bohemians.” So it just stuck as their name. I was always mildly embarrassed by it, feeling like, you know, a self proclaimed kind of vibe to that as opposed to the natural way that name came to them. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you? I always liked the name The Slip, that’s what I wanted to go by so we could call our record Give Them The Slip. And move from there. Maybe that’s just corny, but I thought, “yeah!” It’s so simple. But then I heard some other band took that name after we used it for about a year.

Was there ever a point where you didn’t want to hear “What I Am” on the radio?
No, I don’t mind it. No, I don’t feel that way. It’s not like I want to sing it, but it’s part of who I am and it makes me think of those guys who I love and, like I said, who I can’t wait to make that real record with. I think it will be fun, Kenny [Whitton] has been sending me… You know, I’m not out there, privy to what’s going on and Kenny looks at things and the music scene more closely and he has told me that there are jamband festivals and that we should maybe get on one. And after performing at The Jammys, I sort of hungered to do that because there’s nothing so present moment as improvising in front of people, especially if they’re with ya, the same wavelength. So I long to do that again because it made me remember all those great rides we took, all those great chances we took and the chemistry that we share in improvising is very special and I’ve come to realize that after playing with other musicians, people don’t always jam in the form of a song and those guys and I had the ability to do that every night, everyday, every single time we get together to play there’s a string of songs that just flow out like magic. And that’s really hard to find.

I think people would be really excited to see you guys playing again.
Well, we never broke up.

I feel like people don’t know you’re still together then and would be excited to hear you play if they did.
It’s just me moving such a great distance, having my family and now that my kids are in school, our separation time is a lot longer because when my kids were young, and I wasn’t a slave to the school schedule, I would slip off to Texas about every three months and we’d always get together and jam and sometimes we’d book gigs. We were playing kind of regularly in our old stomping grounds in Deep Elem. We’d play like once year. The only drag of that was… A lot of time our old audience would come and that would be fantastic. But the drag of it was that after you make a record and they print in the paper that you’re playing, people come expecting to hear those recorded version of things. So you don’t always get the jam enthusiasts. You hear record enthusiasts that want to hear it just like it was on the record. So certain people, who are radio conscious, are bewildered and not into it and they’re intermingled in with the old crowd that just wants to hear us jam out. There seems to be a tug of perception and expectation and that wasn’t always completely comfortable as it was once before. So many times we would go under another name, like one night we booked a gig under the name The Super Elastic Waste band. And had just a great one. It wasn’t swamped with people expecting to hear the radio stuff or the one hit.
But I couldn’t go out on road and do all that because, I wasn’t. I was determined to be at home with the kids until they’re all in school. And now my schedule is a lot more freed up in terms of me being able to go create and do what I’m doing now. Not necessarily me being able to travel back to Texas and play with the Bohemians. Though a couple of times, two years in a row, they came up and spent some summertime in Montauk with me and we even made our own disc which they sell on the New Bohemians website with a live version of a couple of the songs that are on my record now. I jammed with them. Our problem was that we never recorded with a vibe. It always got messed up some how. But we put it on DAT one day, just checking out what our new songs were and we listened back to it, and we said, “that is vibing.” It’s not perfect, but it has a great spirit so we invested like $7000 because John [Bush] had just done it with his band, , so he said, “why don’t we just do this and sell it over the website,” and I said, “yeah I’m into it.” It does capture a bit more than anybody has ever heard. And we put that out. They’re still selling it on there. It’s got a song called, “Spanish Style Guitar” that’s got a nice jam in it. And it’s the closest to the band’s potential, although far from it, it’s the closest we’ve ever put down on tape.

Has motherhood changed your musical inclinations in anyway?
It kept me home long enough to become a more skilled player so that I can express my ideas more clearly to a band. Basically, so I can play. That helped because it kept me home and kept me focused. And then it’s definitely made me more secure and more empathetic because your kids make you love more. More empathetic to people because everybody was a kid once and you see that… you see from that perspective, I care about more.

Does being married to an extremely successful and well-respected musician put any pressure on your own work?
No, it doesn’t at all because I have great confidence in where I come from and my expression and although I’m a huge fan and respect him [Paul Simon], more than just about anybody because he continues to grow and change, I know that because I admire those qualities in him that I will strive, that they’re in me. That’s what I admire and that’s what I’m going to try and do. I also know that we’re in different places in life right now and definitely always will be. I may not make as many hits in my lifetime as he has had or even be as good in other peoples’ ears but I know what my passion is and I know how much I love music. If you compare yourself with anybody and allow yourself to create an editor, based on a comparison, then you’re just going to stunt your natural growth because you can’t go looking around. You have to look within.

Volcano was your first album in ten years. Was there a difference in the recording process from projects passed?
Oh man, that was huge! Steve Gadd put this band together for me and we went in and listened… I had given Steve all my demos. And he came to me with such encouragement and enthusiasm, he said, “let’s go record this stuff.” So we were in the studio and he put this band together and he played them a song and then we’d just go right into the booth a record it and bam! There it was. There was a spirit. There was an energy to it because it was fresh. And in the past, you know, we’d get a producer and we’d go into preproduction for like two or three weeks, play the songs over and over and over and over and over [getting slower], the same way until you weren’t even feeling it. The spirit was just gone. If only I had known and understood better. The time off gave me a lot of time to think about things and figure out that you can’t kill a vibe like that. And if I could, I would love to record a song right after it’s written because the spirit of it is… you’re still… um… with it. You can give it to somebody else and everybody can feel it and you can’t get that down. As I experienced, some of the time making this record… and when Charlie [Sexton] came in to produce, he did the exact same thing. He came in, played the song in the studio, let everyone check it out—everybody was so fast about hearing it, the musicianship was over the top—go in and play it like two, three times, then come back and listen to it and go, “oh, the second one, that’s it. Oh, the first one we had it, that’s it.” A lot of the vocals are live too. And that’s what I wanted to do. I made sure everything was isolated and happening because I like a live vocal sound. For the same reason I was just telling you—there’s a connection there.

I’m sure you’ve heard it plenty by now, but I sense some Joni Mitchell influence, particular on a track like “Oo La La.”
I respect her a lot but I never really got into her records for whatever reason. If it is, it’s a coincidence. Really, what influenced me on that song was that I was playing that chord and I was in Jamaica. I always write a lot in hot, tropical weather because I’m always here freezing to death and I just feel sort of closed down. So when I go to a place like that, I just blossom, just feel everything open up. And it just felt like… it felt like a sexy, warm, tropical vibe and I thought, “mmm, alright. Ok.” And what are the images that go with that? And I just did it. It was the air—that hot, humid, sexy air that influenced me musically and otherwise. I was challenging myself to write something with the same kind of vibe as “Tall and tan, …” [laughing]. And use those chords in that way but not really generating ideas based on other artists.

There’s term in literature called bildungs roman that refers to a coming of age novel like say, Joyce’s Portrait of an Artist as Young Man. Would you say this is your coming of age album? Or maybe a portrait of an artist as a middle aged woman?
Did you just call me middle aged? [in a low tone].

No…
Ha Ha Ha Ha. You did! You did! The middle ages! You know what, this the real beginning of conscious, independent expression of musical ideas. That isn’t dependent on other people listening to vocal expression and applying music underneath it. That’s all—it’s just the beginning of being a musician and singer and a writer as opposed to more of a singer with musicianship being secondary. This is the beginning of musicianship basically.

One thing our audience knows you for are the two songs you recorded with Jerry Garcia, “Zillionaire” and “American Popsicle,” for Rob Wasserman’s Trios album. What were those sessions like?
That was the best recording time I ever had, prior to working on this record, but one of the most magical times I’ve ever had in the sense that Rob called me up and told me about his idea and would I be interested in doing it. And I said, “yeah, yeah, yeah.” So I flew out to San Francisco and we met over at Jerry’s house just to jam and figure out what we’re going to do. Well Jerry had called me and said, “what do you want to do?” And I said anything. “Well, what kind of style?” And I said, “I like it all.” And he said, “A… ok.” [laugh] Then I got out there and we jammed and it turned out to be true—he likes everything and I like everything and we jammed and came up with lots of different ideas, lots of different songs. When he sat down at the piano, “Zillionaire” just came right out. The whole idea. He liked it, I liked it and Rob liked it so we thought that this is the one we’re going to go for. So the next day at his studio, we recorded that and then we were jamming on the down time. And Rob said, “maybe we should write a Christmas song.” And we were laughing, a lot, because the connection was mind blowing that we could both just have all three basically. And improv like that. And he was… it was just a crack up. And they kept the tape running so we have all this tape of song after song after song of improv, some just stop with Jerry laughing. One in particular, he just stops me, repeats this line and just laughs. And I love listening to that and hearing that. So anyway, Rob said maybe be should do a Christmas song. So he starts playing this goofy thing and Jerry starts making that funny sound and… and “American Popsicle” is just a recorded improv. It wasn’t written down. “Zillionaire” had a night to get lyrically, sort of in my mind. Where as “American Popsicle” and the whole vibe to it was just an example of straight out jam. Turned out Jerry liked that one so much that ended up getting out there and they put it on.

So how many songs did you work on?
We worked on “Zillionaire.” We did three different takes or something like that, maybe more, because that was the one song we were going to do. And then we have a whole tape filled with all these crazy jams and “American Popsicle” was one of them. And then just went ahead and stuck that on the record too. I knew Jerry had taken it and was playing it at half-time or something, but I wasn’t… I can’t even remember what was on it [Trios] because I just have my tapes.
But as I said, it was so fun. At one point, I looked over at him. The way he would smile at ya, looking over his glasses. And he would just turn around for a minute to this huge cabinet of sound boxes or whatever, make a few little adjustments, and the turn back around and look at you with a knowing kind of grin on his face, like “check this out.” And play it and I would start singing it and I would laugh. He just looked like a wizard over there. That was my impression of him when I left—that guy is a wizard. I guess they have that thing with his little hat and stuff. He’s been portrayed as that before, hasn’t he?

Well, I think more of a magician than a wizard.

First or one album that changed that way you thought about music.
The first record I ever bought was XTC Drums and Wires because I like that it was different. But the first record where the vibe really touched me and the musicality, was Astral Weeks by Van Morrison. That just sounds so loose and flowing in every respect.

Edie Brickell was interviewed by Josh Baron.