What a success since the release of ‘Blood Harmony’! Now Grammy Award winners, the Lovell sisters also collaborated on the legendary Ringo Starr's album ‘Look Up’, and are back this year with their new album ‘Bloom’ to continue their irresistible rise to the top...
This new album, ‘Bloom’, is particularly catchy and very skilfully combines rock energy, blues sensitivity and a sense of pop melody. Do you think you have found the perfect formula to fully appropriate traditional American music?
Rebecca Lovell: Oh, the formula is perfect? I don't know? One of our objectives is to continue to evolve, but of all the projects we've done, I think that ‘Bloom’ is the one that comes closest to combining all the influences that inspire us, from Americana, blues and bluegrass to rock'n'roll and Southern rock...
We just wanted to create something that was honest and real
I'm going to be a cliché from the second question. Can we talk about a mature album that manages to combine all your influences in a single album?
Rebecca: Yes, I think we did a very good job with ‘Bloom’. But in the end, it's just another album in our discography and each album represents a stage and a journey. With ‘Bloom’, we've reached another stage and we're very proud of this album. I love the songs we wrote for this album and I love that we co-wrote all these songs together. It was one of the biggest changes we made in the creation of this album: the fact that we co-wrote all the songs together. It was the commitment we had to each other.
Megan Lovell: We didn't want to move towards a particular style or a particular album, we just wanted to create something that would be honest and real in terms of lyrics first of all. We knew that the music would follow because we have experience. We've done a lot of different things and we've been doing this for fifteen years now: it's not our first rodeo. We know what we can do, we have confidence in ourselves.
Despite everything, in the past, I think we may have written from the characters' point of view, especially in the blues rock scene where it's all about posture and showing that you're foolproof... but to be honest, it wasn't really us: we're empathetic and vulnerable people...
This is the second time you've said you're honest, does that mean it wasn't the case in the past?
Rebecca: No, no, no! We've always done our best to make honest albums, but it takes some songwriters longer to have the facility to know how to bring out their own experience honestly...
Perhaps this explains the three-year delay in releasing this new album, whereas you had a faster pace in the past?
Rebecca: Was it three years ago already? In fact, the album was ready at the beginning of last year, but we decided to postpone the release because we couldn't tour. The decision to postpone the release of the album depended more on our tours. As an independent band, we used to release an album without knowing our tour dates, but this time we wanted everything to flow together and so we waited.
But honestly, we were very excited and ‘Bloom’ was made very quickly. We started writing in January and took a break to go to the Grammys - which was a very exciting time because we won a Grammy for ‘Blood Harmony’ - and then we continued writing in February and then we started recording in March: we finished the album in 26 days.
We had a lot of conversations about what we wanted to achieve emotionally with this album
You said that you have gained experience over the years, but didn't this Grammy confirm your writing and therefore give you more confidence?
Megan: It comes back to the chicken and the egg question (Laughs)! Maybe we were already more confident at the time and that's why we got the Grammy and not the other way around? But indeed the Grammy is the result of the work we put in.
Rebecca: That's a good point, the Grammy gave us confidence! It was cool, but I think we were going to write this album without having the Grammy in mind because we were already in the process of composing when we went to the Grammy.
We had a lot of conversations about what we wanted to achieve emotionally with this album, but also about the progress we wanted to make with it.
There are very rock tracks on this album, such as ‘Easy Love Part 1’ or ‘Pearls’, and others that are more pop rock, especially in the choruses, such as ‘Little Bit’ or ‘You Are The River’. How do you strike this subtle balance between tradition and catchy music?
Megan: We are very much in the tradition of southern music, blues, bluegrass... but we are also children of the 1990s, we have heard a lot of pop songs, we grew up listening to Tom Petty's music, whose songs are not structured like today's, where everything bores the audience except the chorus (Smile)... There's nothing wrong with a song having deep roots and substance and shaping it in a way that can catch people's attention.
We like pop melodies, I love songs with
catchy riffs... It's wonderful to be able to sing songs with people, it's an experience we've had over the last few years: singing a song with the audience is quite glorious and we want to reproduce that...
Rebecca: That's true, and the best pop songs of all time are by the Beatles (she sings) ‘I wanna hold your hand’, ‘Here comes the sun’... you hum a syllable or two and everyone immediately recognises the song!
Speaking of which, you worked with Ringo Starr, which is a dream come true I guess, and in terms of recognition, it's perhaps the greatest proof... What was it like to work with such a legend?
Rebecca: It was easy. We didn't even have time to be stressed because it was natural. And I think that's to the credit of the language of music. When people come together through their love of music, everything else around it - the fame and the way you perceive people who are described as ‘special’ - Ringo sat behind his drum kit and started playing. He's a drummer called Ringo Starr, but he's a drummer first and foremost, just like any other musician on stage. It was a truly wonderful experience to be able to work with him and to see the passion and joy that he brings to it. He is a real inspiration for both of us! We have been making music together professionally for twenty years, fifteen of them as Larkin Poe. And that is the trajectory, the evolution that we want our career to take. No, it was a very inspiring encounter.
Writing these songs was a therapeutic process
This album is really good for the soul, especially because it is extremely fluid. Did you compose this album with this quasi-therapeutic aim in mind?
Rebecca: I believe that we are all, all humans on Earth are in the process of working. That's why we're alive. That's why we gain experience and learn a little more about ourselves and our world each time.
And so writing these songs was a therapeutic process because of the conversations we had. And then singing these songs night after night like prayers, like a mantra, allowed us to remember where we wanted to end up...
We all have moments of clarity in our lives when we have good discipline, we can exercise and be nice to our neighbours, drive carefully, not look at our phones too much... but these moments are too brief to return to normal. So I think these songs allow us to remind ourselves every night how to be a better version of ourselves and what we want to be. I'm excited about these songs!
Megan: In the past, we would write songs based on guitar riffs that we created separately and then put them together to make songs. But these songs are a little different because they didn't come from nothing. There were no preconceived notions. We would sit with a cup of coffee in the morning and write for weeks before going into the studio. We would meet every day and work together over coffee, talking about what was bothering us, what was on our minds, our experiences... And these conversations would lead to an idea that we could write a song about, and the music would follow... picking up our guitars and starting to play... That's how the songs came about, which is very different from what we did in the past.
This album is about introspection and self-acceptance. Why did you feel the need to bare a little more than on previous albums?
Megan: Human connection is really important, I would even say the most important thing! Some of our songs have become very meaningful to some people and these songs are the ones in which we are the most vulnerable... Taking these experiences into consideration, we realised that we wanted to put even more of ourselves into the music so that we could have more connection with people and thus see in the eyes of the people in the front row and feel this connection.
Did you discover things about yourself while writing this album?
Rebecca: A lot!
Megan: As we were saying, this album was born out of our intense conversations where Rebecca and I were opening each other's eyes... We would discuss tensions we might have had to try to find out why we had these thoughts, these tensions between us...
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result
More than therapeutic, it's almost cathartic as a process?
Rebecca: Absolutely. And that's the motto: Larking Poe as sisters is about being able to create space in our relationship to evolve and converse and do things differently. Because that's the definition of insanity, it's doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. We are committed to trying to do things in a new way and to avoid being trapped by becoming jaded because when you start to have success - as we did in the blues rock scene - you can be tempted to repeat the same formula and stay in your comfort zone.
But I think we knew the limits of our writing, of being just a strictly blues rock band in our lyrics, the biblical metaphors and allegories about the soul using distant language... In this new album, we have dissociated ourselves from that by telling people how we feel, which is very different...
Originally, women were the first blues stars!
It's funny because the title ‘If God Is A Woman’ sounds like a warning to those who put women in boxes, or even on a pedestal. But isn't it also a way for you to say, ‘Oh guys, the blues is not just a man's music and we're going to prove it to you’?
Rebecca: Absolutely! Women were the original blues stars! The funny thing is that the blues became a male-dominated style when, originally, women were the first to play it, but that's something we've forgotten... When we think about the beginnings of the blues and the pioneers of the blues, it is very rare that people mention Elizabeth Cotten or Sister Rosetta Tharpe... on the other hand, we will mention Charlie Patton, Robert Johnson who are geniuses but we must not forget the skills of women... So writing a song like ‘If God Is a Woman’ is very important because it allows us to do blues rock as we perceive it and to be able to sing it with our words...
Today, being rock'n'roll means accepting who you are, and it's clearly a new idea of rebellion!
You mentioned letting go of your mobile phone a little. In this age of social networks and excessive appearances, isn't finally accepting yourself as an imperfect and perfectible human being an act of rebellion?
Rebecca: That's a very good question (smile)!
Megan: Absolutely. I think we're entering a new age of rock ‘n’ roll. Sex, drugs... that's not rock ‘n’ roll and it's not cool! Nowadays, being rock'n'roll means accepting who you are, and it's clearly a new idea of rebellion! Not being afraid to show yourself as you really are, revealing your soul and accepting yourself as you are rather than masking it with substance, sex...
As we noticed during our previous interview and can see again, there is a real bond between you. You have largely built your reputation yourselves by exposing yourselves on social networks. How do you manage to maintain this bond and authenticity that is your strength?
Rebecca: Hmm. It's taken several years of work to try to find the right balance. Social media has always made me laugh. The fact that we sell our relationship to the public sometimes makes me feel strange. To be honest with you, when we were young and we started Larkin Poe, we didn't know what we were doing. That said, I think we've always kept love and respect at the centre of our relationship. And we work very hard to keep the peace and communication open so that we can grow together as sisters. In that sense, I feel proud to be connected to our audience, to whom we allow to be part of the peace and tolerance that exists between us. We feel this energy through the fans who support Larkin Poe's music, people who are clearly passionate about music: they buy our albums, concert tickets.... But I think they continue to be Larkin Poe fans because there is something special about the community. Knowing all this, I sleep well at night as a ‘content creator’ (Editor's note: she pretends to shoot herself in the head). But it's something we're still working on to understand how to continue to engage in this area because deep down I believe that social media is very bad for humans, very bad for the human brain, very very bad for the younger generations who can't live without it.... I feel very protected and I encourage people to put down their phones...
Megan: It's a bad thing, but like any tool, it's how you use it that makes it so. If you use it too much, it becomes a drug. Some people can't say no and it becomes addictive. But conversely, drugs and medication can be very useful...
Rebecca: It could be good!
Megan: Maybe we should prescribe social media.
Rebecca: Exactly!
Megan: A dose of Larkin Poe every day, but that's it. Just a little (Laughs)!
You have expanded your community by creating your own label Tricki Woo Records and you produce your music as a family with Tyler Bryant, Rebecca's husband, in particular. Is this label set to grow and sign other artists?
Rebecca: Probably!
In the same way that Ringo brought Larkin Poe on board for his album and thus brought fresh blood into his world, we want to do the same with the next generation of artists....
When I see the smile in your eyes, it's not a ‘probably’ that I see anymore, I believe that you have already signed someone...
Rebecca: (Laughs) Not yet, but I like that you've come to that conclusion because I think it's a natural progression for us. And in the same way that Ringo brought Larkin Poe on to his album and thus brought fresh blood into his world, we want to do the same thing with the next generation of artists.
Megan: Larkin Poe is very busy at the moment... We don't have much time and we wouldn't have the time we would need to give to an artist if we were to take them on. But in the future, yes, absolutely.
We've already won a Grammy, and it was an incredible experience that we don't necessarily need to relive....
‘Bloom’ is without doubt your most accomplished album to date. Do you really think you can do better with the next one, knowing that between the Grammy, the collaboration with Ringo Starr, this new album... don't you feel the pressure for the future?
Rebecca: No. If we were feeling the pressure, we should have felt it before the release of “Bloom”. But once again, I think we learnt a lot from writing ‘Bloom’. And in releasing this album, we chose peace and tolerance, and I think there are many things to say and do better for the next album.
Megan: I wouldn't say ‘better’, but ‘different’ while remaining close...
Rebecca: Our music is a journey and we have to keep moving. We don't put pressure on ourselves, unlike those who ask us if we think ‘Bloom’ was also going to win a Grammy, knowing that for them, this album is better than ‘Blood Harmony’... In our opinion, this album won't win a Grammy and that's fine with us because winning a Grammy is already something extraordinary. We've already won a Grammy, and it was an incredible experience that we don't necessarily need to relive....
To draw a comparison, I love celebrating my birthday and I want a cake every year because it's tradition. But do I have to win a Grammy every year? Is that a tradition? No! It could be something I experience once in my life and it will suit me perfectly because it was great and we were lucky enough to enjoy it.
Thank you very much.
Megan: Thank you very much!
Rebecca: Thank you, that was so kind. Thank you for your wonderful questions...
Thanks to Newf for his contribution and Stephan Birlouez for the pictures...