Mavis Staples Interview: One True Vine (2013) and more.
Happy birthday Mavis. Born July 10, 1939.
Mavis Staples toured Australia in 2014, after the release of the album One True Vine
produced by Jeff Tweedy. It was Mavis’s her 13th studio album, and the second on which she collaborated with Tweedy. (Tweedy also played many of the instruments on the album, while his son, Spencer Tweedy, played drums. The album was recorded at the Wilco Loft in Chicago.
One True Vine was released on June 25,2013, and soon after that I was able to talk to Mavis about it. It turned out to be a much lengthier interview than usual and the then 74-year-old Mavis was extremely forthcoming.
Hello Mavis. How are you?
Yes, sir. I’m fine thank you.
That’s good. Congratulations on the forthcoming album.
Thank you. I’m very excited about it, very happy with it.
We were lucky to see you down in Australia earlier this year and of course Jeff Tweedy was here with Wilco as well.
Yeah. In New Zealand we sang together. We did two shows together, and it was just a treat. It was just beautiful.
I think down here you actually got up on stage with Bonnie Raitt, didn’t you?
Oh, yes. Yes, Bonnie. Actually, earlier in the year I had toured with Bonnie for a month and a half, and we have this song that we sing together. She said, ‘Mavis, can I sing with you tonight?’ I said, ‘Are you serious? You asking me if you can sing with me?’ She’s my baby sister; my father just adopted Bonnie, he’s crazy about Bonnie. He thought that she was the best slide guitarist that he knew. We’ve always been very close, and more than 20 years I’ve known Bonnie.
What was the song that you sing together?
‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken.’
Of course.
That’s the very first song that our father taught us when we were little kids. He used to sing with an all-male group and these men wouldn’t come to rehearsal. Pops would go to rehearsal and there were maybe two guys there and he’d go back the next week and nobody would be there, the entire group. He went one more time and after that time he came home. He was disgusted. He headed straight to the closet where he had a little guitar that he bought at the pawnshop and he called us children into the living room, set us on the floor in a circle and he began to teach us voices, give us voices that he and his sisters and brothers would sing when they were in Mississippi. I tell you, my aunt Katie she lived with us, Pops’ sister. She came through one night. She said, ‘Shucks, y’all sound pretty good. I believe I want you to sing in my church Sunday.’ Man, we were so happy, we were going to sing some place than on the living room floor.
We went to Aunt Katie’s church. We sang this song. The only song that Pops had taught us all the way through. The people clapped us back three times, and three times we had to sing that same song. Pops said, ‘Shucks these people like us. We’re going home and learning some more songs.’ We been going ever since.
Brian, we’ve been going ever since. We signed with Vee-Jay when I was about 12 or 13 years old and we made a record called ‘Uncloudy Day’ and Vivian Carter called Pops one day and told him, ‘Staples this record is selling like an R&B.’ It turned out that particular record was the very first gospel song to sell a million. ‘Uncloudy Day’ and on the flipside was ‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken’. I think when we first started I was seven or eight years old. I was the baby of the family. I remember it so well. I’m just so grateful I have those days.
All these years later Mavis you’re still thriving and still making albums and still touring. It’s amazing, isn’t it?
It’s amazing. It really is. It really is. When we started, I never thought I’d be … Sixty-three years I’ve been singing. I’m not tired yet. I’m not moving over for these kids.
Well speaking of kids. I suppose Jeff Tweedy is a relative kid. Isn’t he?
Yeah, he is a kid. I told him I wanted to put ‘I Like the Things About Me’ on the record. He said, ‘Sing some of it for me Mavis. I don’t think I’m familiar.’ I started singing and he said, ‘Wow. How did I miss that?’ I said, ‘Tweedy, you can’t keep up with me.’ I said, ‘I’m too fast for you.’ He said, “Ah, Mavis come on. Give us the rest of the song.” I used to love to hear Pops sing that and I want to try to make it that I have one of Pops Staples’ songs on every record I make from Have a Little Faith. That was the first CD I made after my father’s passing. On that one it is ‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken’ and ‘A Dying Man’s Plea’. I’ve just kept it growing and on each CD, I have something that Pops wrote.
Mavis, speaking of Jeff Tweedy, do you remember how you originally came to work together? You obviously get on really well together, but how did you first come to work together? It must have been about what five or six years ago? Of course, you recorded the album You Are Not Alone, which won a Grammy, but how did you first get together?
Mm-hmm. You know, we both live in Chicago. The Wilco band they’re on the north side and I live on the south side. We had a concert on the north side at this little funky club called The Hideout. In fact, I was doing a live CD that night. I was doing a live CD of all of my freedom songs, and I had done this album with Ry Cooder and we wanted to do it live. Jeff Tweedy, he came in and came to the dressing room and introduced himself he and a couple more of the guys. In fact, the entire Wilco band came out that night. After the concert they came backstage and complimented us and we took pictures together and we sat and had a little chat.
About two or three weeks later my manager called and said, ‘Mavis, Jeff Tweedy wants to produce your next album, your next CD.’ I said, ‘You got to be kidding me.’ He said, ‘No, he wants to produce.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s all right with me, but I’ve got to get to know him a little better.’ We didn’t talk that much at The Hideout. I said, ‘Do you think we can have lunch or something where we can sit and talk?’ He said, ‘Oh yeah. I’ll get back to his manager and we’ll set it up.’ I chose for him to come to the south side and Tweedy came in the restaurant. My sister Yvonne and I were there, and when he first sat down nothing was said. I said, ‘Uh-oh. This guy is shy.’ I thought he was bashful. I cracked some little joke. I forgot what it was, but I made him laugh. That broke it up and we started talking from there. I just enjoyed that so much. He grabbed my ear when he started talking about family. Family was always … My father and mother instilled in us family is the strongest unit in the world, and if you stick with your family nobody can break you. Nobody can harm you. He seemed to have felt the same way about his family. He would talk about his father, and he just let me into his life and I let him into my life and we clicked. When we left there, we must have talked two and a half hours or so. When we left that restaurant I felt like, ‘Shucks, we’ll be fine. We can make good music together.’ I really liked him. I thought that at least we had that in common, the family thing and the music.
He let me know that when he was a teenager he worked in the record shop and he access to all of the Staples Singers music. He said, ‘Mavis, I used to listen to you all, your father.’ He loved it so much too, I believe, because it was just our voices and Pops’ guitar. There was no rhythm section. We sang for years with just Pops’ guitar. That seems to be Staples Singers that he loves the most, the music from the 1950s and 1960s. As quiet as it’s kept, I feel that’s our best stuff, when we started out in the 1950s but I’m enjoying all of it. I always love to make a new CD, and with Jeff Tweedy, I told him when we were doing ‘You Are Not Alone’. I said, ‘Oh, Tweedy.’ We were about halfway through the CD and it was going so good. I said, ‘Tweedy, we got to do this again.’ He said, ‘Mavis, I don’t know if they’ll let me produce you again.’ I said, ‘Oh, they will. I’ll see to it. I’ll see to it that we work together again.’ Lo and behold it’s come to pass.
Well, it’s a fantastic result. I was wondering, Mavis, like the last album there are some really unusual song choices. How did you put the songs together? Was it you and Jeff choosing them? How did you choose? Did he come up with some songs and you come up with some songs?
Oh yes. We do that together. We do that together and we’ll put them all down and I go over to the Wilco Loft, and we sit on the couch and we listen. At the same time, if we choose what we want then Tweedy will get his guitar and we’ll get my key because I still don’t know what key I sing in. We get my key and I start singing and I say, ‘Oh yeah. This is good Tweedy. That’s going to be good.’ We’ll put that one down. That’s the way we do it.
Now, some of the songs we had to pull out because the song that Tweedy wrote. We couldn’t put everything on there. ‘One True Vine’, Jesus Wept and Every Step of the Way. He started singing me these and I said, “Shucks, Tweedy. How do you do it?” He’s such a good writer. His songs, you just don’t jump on a Jeff Tweedy song. He makes you think. His songs are a challenge. I’m taking my voice to a different place on ‘Jesus Wept’. I was singing it the way I would normally sing it and Tweedy; this is the only time he broke in he was in the engineer room. ‘Mavis, wait a minute. Take that word.’ It was just one word. I said, ‘Well Tweedy, it sounds like to me it should go over here.’ He said, ‘I know, I know because that’s the way you sing, but it would be better if you’d take it here.’ Lo and behold I love it. I have never sung in a different manner but on ‘Jesus Wept’ I’m doing something that I’ve never done before because that’s the Jeff Tweedy way. I said, ‘Well thank you Tweedy.’ I said, ‘Now don’t butt in on me anymore.’ He said, ‘Well Mavis if you take over there again, I’ll butt in again.’ We have fun. We have big fun.
You also do an interesting song called ‘Holy Ghost’ written by one of the guys from the band Low. I presume that Jeff might have found that song for you perhaps.
He did, he really did, and it blew my mind. When he played that, and he asked me how did I like that. I said, ‘I love this song. I love it.’ We got my key for that, and we put down ‘Holy Ghost’ and I still don’t know this band Low. I don’t know them. I would really like to meet them and meet the writer because that is a powerful, powerful song for me. It’s so short, but it’s saying everything that it needs to say.
Great song and also great that it’s a relatively new song. You’re bringing your attention to the fact that there are some great songs around these days.
Right. That’s very true and you know that Nick Lowe he wrote ‘Far Celestial Shore’ for me. I met him last year. I just met him, and he was touring with Jeff Tweedy. Tweedy let me know that he was his favourite singer. When he called me and told me that Nick Lowe had written a song for me, he said, ‘Mavis I’m going to send it to you. Now, if you don’t like it you don’t have to do it. So, don’t …’ I said, ‘I know that Tweedy. Send me the song man.’ He sent that song and you talk about, the lyrics are so beautiful. I’m kind of losing my voice. I’ve been talking a while. I’m sorry Brian.
That’s all right.
You’re getting the butt of it. Yeah. I love to hear a Nick Lowe song. We sang together in Europe. We sang together. He sang with us on ‘Circle Be Unbroken’ and ‘The Wait’ and the audience just loved it. He’s such a likeable person. I called him the Silver Fox. Yeah, Silver Fox because his hair is just silver. He came here to Chicago; we sang together on the Wilco band show. We did ‘The Wait’ and I said, “Silver Fox you go with this one, ‘Go down Moses’, there ain’t nothing that you can say.’ Man, I loved the way he sang it. I’m telling you; I’m living the best days of my life right now Brian. I’m just so happy and excited. Who would have thought … Well, I shouldn’t ask you that?
I think plenty of people would have thought it, but it’s great to see it happen because it doesn’t often happen. We often wish for things to happen but they don’t always happen.
That’s right. That’s exactly right and I’m just so grateful. I’m so grateful.
Nick Lowe is a fantastic songwriter as you said, and I’m sure there are quite a number of other songs that he has written that you could do justice to.
Yes, yes. I’ve already heard that. He’s not getting out of my life that’s for sure.
What about the Funkadelic song [‘Can You Get To That], which is probably one of the most amazing bands I think I’ve ever seen.
Yeah, yeah. George Clinton. Jeff Tweedy brought that up on the You Are Not Alone album and somebody in the studio said that’s not for Mavis and so Tweedy left it alone. I let him know that I liked it. We came back to it on this one and the guy with the big heavy voice that’s my baritone singer, Donnie Gerrard. Donnie and my sister Yvonne and Vickie Randall, they are the background singers. I told Donnie, I said, ‘Donnie, the ladies are going to scream when they hear you.’ He said, ‘Oh Mavis.’ We’ve done that song about three times now in concert and lo and behold when he said, ‘Can you get to that y’all?’ The ladies just, ‘Ooh.’ I told you Donnie, ‘I told you. I love it. I just love it.’ I love variety and I don’t know who that was that said, ‘That’s not for Mavis.’ I’m just glad we came back to it.
I saw a fantastic interview with George Clinton and Jazz Fest one year. They do some interviews in the grandstand there and the person interviewing him sort of quoted a song [‘Flashlight’] and asked him about the meaning of the song and he just shrugged his shoulders and said, “Don’t take it so seriously. It’s just a song.”
That sounds like George. I love the lyrics. It makes good sense to me. I love to hear him tell stories. He’s like a walking musical encyclopedia.
Now, Mavis I assume that it’s possible that we’ll see you back in Australia with this album sometime next year as well.
Oh, yes indeed. We have to come see our friends in Australia and perform these songs on the CD. We have to. We’ll be back.
That will be fantastic to see you here. I assume that you’re with the same group of people you appeared with this year as well.
Yes, indeed. I wouldn’t take nothing for that band, Rick Holmstrom and those guys Jeff Turmes and Stephen Hodges. They are the greatest. They take me on a different journey every concert. Rick, he plays so many of Pops’ licks. I said, ‘Rick, I’m going to call you Pops’ Jr.’ I said, ‘Sometimes I have to look around and see if that’s really you or is that Pops playing up there with me.’ He was into Pops before they started working with me. He was already playing Staples Singers songs. I made a good choice with those guys. What happened was I was working at Santa Monica Pier and my band; my regular band was stuck in the snow and couldn’t make it. They were the opening band. My manager said, ‘Mavis, you’ve got to go on the people are waiting.’ I said, ‘Those guys do they know my stuff?’ He said, ‘Let this band play.’ Just happened they knew at least five of the songs. By the time they got finished with that last song that they knew my band was walking in. It worked out fine. That was my chance to meet Rick Holmstrom and his band. It all worked out.
Mavis, finally I’ll let you go but finally it occurred to me that you working with a young Jeff Tweedy is kind of symbolic of what has happened in America, hopefully over the last four or five years on a wider scale, although I know we can’t be too optimistic but certainly it’s sort of symbolic of that isn’t it?
Yes, it is. Yes, it is, and we feel that these songs are inspirational. It’s what we want to do. We want to inspire you to keep pressing on and motivate you. Just keep on going. Don’t give up. Everything is going to be all right if you just keep on. If you fall down dust yourself off, get back up and dust off and keep going because we know what’s happening in the world today. This is what Pops always told the songwriters. If you want to write for the Staples read the headlines. We want to sing about what’s happening in the world today. If there’s something going wrong we want to try to fix it through our songs. Today people are losing homes, people losing jobs. Kids are being bullied. It’s a messed-up world and you want to bring some joy through your songs. You want to lift people up. I get down sometimes. I have to sing a song to lift myself up because it’s worldwide spread with what’s happening. Jeff Tweedy, we sit, and we choose our songs. We want to make the whole CD a storybook. We want to keep it from song to song take you on a journey and a positive journey. Hopefully that’s what One True Vine will do for people.
It certainly does. Well, Mavis, thank you for your time. I better let you go while you’ve still got a voice.
Yeah, Brian it’s going. I tell you it’s going.
Look forward to seeing you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you very much for your time and look forward to seeing you back in Australia soon.
Okay, when you get back, I want to meet you. Thanks Brian
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