{Lucy Woodward plays on Thursday, August 12 at the Triple Door at 7:30pm and on Friday, August 13 at Harbor Steps at 12:00pm, free.}
Lucy Woodward’s fantastic new album Hooked bears little resemblance to her previous two albums. Signing with Atlantic Records in 2002, she was signed to be a young pop singer/songwriter, not much different than the music Avril Lavigne or Vanessa Carlton were making at that time. When talking of her debut album, While You Can, she told me in a telephone interview it “was a super, super pop rock record and I was thrown into that world with my peers, who were like Kelly Clarkson and Michelle Branch. It’s a very young audience.” While she had a hit with her single “Dumb Girls,” even getting to play it on “The Tonight Show,” she was dropped after only one album.
After releasing her sophomore album Lucy Woodward is…Hot and Bothered, which was only available physically at Barnes and Noble, she signed to Verve Records, a division of Universal that caters to more adult listeners. Her labelmates include Jamie Cullum, Melody Gardot, Imelda May and Diana Krall. It makes complete sense today because Hooked incorporates jazz standards, Big Band/swing and cabaret into one compelling album. The sounds and themes she uses show her growth as an artist and songwriter. She said “when you get to your third record, you write a whole new batch of songs that are a little more lived-in, with new insights and more confidence and new ideas and goals; whether you’re making music or studying to be a school teacher, you can’t do anything but grow up. I just have the outlet of expressing it through my songs.”
When talking to her about music, you quickly realize that she has a lot of deep knowledge about pre-war pop and jazz standards. Of her musical education, she told me “I went to the Manhattan School of Music for a little while was I was young so I was already exposed to jazz and Big Band and Ella Fitzgerald.” She added, though, “After I got dropped from Atlantic, I was asked to sing on this song from a movie called The Ice Princess where I was singing the Bjork song ‘It’s Oh So Quiet’. It’s a total big band number. it’s actually a Betty Hutton song and she sang it in the 1950s and Bjork redid it. That was a real turning point for me, when I was singing ‘It’s Oh So Quiet’ with a massive Big Band orchestra behind me. I knew at that moment that that was what I was doing and it really set me up for the next few years.”
One song she covered on Hooked was “Stardust,” a Hoagy Carmichael song composed in 1927. She said she was particularly drawn to a version that was recorded in 1932. Although there are reportedly some 1,500 recordings of that song, she said “I hadn’t heard anyone do it in that type of barbershop style. I have always wanted to do it and do it a cappella.”
Another song she covered on Hooked was “Sans Souci”, of which she said “it’s a Peggy Lee song but no one really knows it. It may have been in some weird Peggy Lee film from a long time ago. Someone handed it to me and it blew my mind because I love Latin music and what I love about Peggy Lee is that she was always pushing the envelope and pushing boundaries. She’s sort of a white torch singer of that time, singing all of these jazzy, swing songs but then she loved rumbas, she loved salsas, she loved the Latin groove, which I can relate to a lot.”
“Another Woman” was a song written for her by the singer-songwriter Nellie McKay, who, she said “I worship and adore and wish I could stalk if I still lived in New York, knew I was writing songs for my record, so she wrote that for me, which I was honored to use.” McKay also appears briefly on that song with Woodward saying “when she was signed to Verve for her Doris Day record and knew that I was writing for my record, she came down and sang background on that song. You’ll hear her on the very last chorus of ‘Another Woman.’ You’ll hear her singing.”
Of the original songs she’s written, my favorite is the opener “He Got Away,” a Big Band number that demands to be played before a full orchestra. With its jazzy instrumentation and call-and-response vocals during the chorus, it sounds like an update of a Cab Calloway number. the most personal song might be “Purple Heart,” one of the ballads. When she talked of her growth as a songwriter, this was the first example she gave, saying “it’s a breakup song and I couldn’t have written that two years ago. It’s a very honest song for me and it was written very fast, in like half an hour. It’s a lot easier for me to write about that now.”
Lucy Woodward is going to begin playing these songs on a west coast tour that includes two stops in Seattle next week and she’ll have a stripped down version of her band in tow. She said “it’ll be me and four people. It’ll be a bit stripped down because it’s the first tour. Normally I play with a keyboard player but we’ll be doing it with guitar, bass drums and my trumpet player, who is like my right-hand man. It’ll be interesting. We’re going to be rehearsing for it next week before the tour. It’ll be a different sound, but that’s the fun part, where you can get creative with different arrangements. I’m really excited about that.”
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“Some weird Peggy Lee film”? If it wasn’t that her description of Peggy is somewhat accurate, I’d think she had her confused with Doris Day, which, I guess, she still might. Peggy only made a couple of films, none as the star. In any case, it makes me dubious about Lucy, whose music I still haven’t heard. I was nearly seduced by her glamourous photo sessions–never a good reason to think about listening to a singer.
Sorry to complain–this was a very interesting profile of someone very young who’s clearly trying something different from her contemporaries. I’ll withhold judgement until I actually hear what she can do.
You should have a listen, from her website http://www.lucywoodward.com, or iTunes. She’s absolutely the genuine article. She’s not ‘trying out’ something different. It’s who she is. But it’s not just jazz-oriented, it’s soulful pop, as well. The album is fantastic. Her voice is spectacular. Peggy Lee’s granddaughter has been telling everyone about Lucy’s version of San Souci. The best part is, she totally amazing line. If you’re on the West Coast, go see her. Seattle, Portland, Concord, San Jose, Los Angeles.
There’s some cool videos on her website, and YouTube.