Mick Harvey has been a staple of the Australian music scene for many years, working with The Birthday Party and The Bad Seeds as well as artists such as PJ Harvey. He has teamed up with Mexican artist Amanda Acevedo to release an album covering songs from American songwriter Jackson C. Frank. We had a chance to discuss their project and what made them choose Jackson C. Frank for their first tribute project.
Let’s start with how you two first met and started working together.
Mick Harvey: It was very gradual, by almost by happenstance, in a way.
Amanda Acevedo: Yeah, we were communicating a lot, and then at some point, Mick visited Mexico, because he was on tour with PJ Harvey, and we met in person. After that, we remained gradually more and more in touch. It was just very friendly at first, and then we started to exchange a few ideas. Then I realised that I have access to someone I admire very much. So, I might ask for advice, to help me with ideas, and tell me if there’s anything good that I’m doing. When that started happening, we recorded one song just to see how it went. It was so much fun, and we enjoyed it so much, and the result was so interesting.
Mick: Gradually it just started growing; there was no particular intention within it at first, and then it just turned into something. So, it was kind of an organic process. I don’t know what point we decided to take it seriously, or just say, this is a project. It just kind of happened.
Amanda: I think first we started recording random songs that we liked, and honestly, we just wanted to do one. Then both of us thought about other songs that would be good for our voices, and we started searching for more songs intentionally. There was a song I remember, “Phantasmagoria in 2” that sounded so good that Mick said, this needs to be out in the world. It needs to be a proper album. And I was a bit shocked, because I was not sure if it was going to be public or we were just having a fun recording. And that was really exciting when it became a serious project.
What I like about the Phantasmagoria in Blue album is the contrast between the two of you. Your voice, Amanda and Mick your voice, they balance each other out really well.
Mick; I’m not really in a position to be objective about it. I feel that they blend really well when we sing together. There’s certainly a contrast and there’s a conversation that’s happening between us with the lyrics, like turning it into a kind of dialogue. Voices are very subjective. Some of the greatest singing voices in the world, I can’t stand them. Celine Dion, for instance, she just makes me feel nauseous. So, you can’t judge that. You want your voices to convey something and be impactful, and for people to be able to enjoy that and get something powerful from it.
So, was “Milk and Honey” the first song that you recorded?
Amanda: No, actually, the first song we ever recorded is not even out. But the first song, from the ones that are out was “Indian Summer”. Then “Creators of Rain” and I think “Milk and Honey” we recorded it once we were a bit more…
Mick: We were looking like we were actually starting to compile things for the project and that was one of the songs that came up.
Amanda: And it was the first song that was released into the world.
Mick: By then I think we felt that there was some kind of direction with it, or a strength that we had. There was some kind of strength coming into what we were doing.
What made you choose “Milk and Honey” – what did you like about the song?
Amanda: I remember running into it, I think it was a suggestion from Spotify or something like that, because I was listening to folk and lots of artists that are a bit obscure, and probably Spotify thought that this is going in the same direction. I really loved the song, and I kept listening to it. I didn’t know much about Jackson back then, but when we started doing our Phantasmagoria in Blue, we were doing songs that were emotional and personal. I thought the song “Milk and Honey” would fit in this mixture. Then we started researching more into Jackson C. Frank and then when I suggested it, I already knew a bit more about Jackson. That was the selection process we were looking for, like, mystical, cryptic, surreal songs, and I felt that “Milk and Honey” had all of that.
When you cover a song, how do you put your own interpretation into it, yet keep the original true to life?
Mick: I don’t know if one’s concern is about keeping true to the original. I don’t think that’s necessarily part of what you have to be doing. Unless you actually set about destroying aspects of the original version, then you’re going to have a connection with the original anyway. So, I don’t think that’s really something you worry about. Particularly to lose connection with the original, you would have to change, deliberately, in such a way that it was disconnected from the original. So, if that’s not your purpose, then you’re going to end up with that anyway. I mean, it’s pretty easy for me to apply aspects of my own sound and playing approach, to any song, really.
One’s voices are what they are, so you end up with a with something that’s yours anyway, to some degree. So, if there’s a particular overlay of some atmosphere or musical feeling you want to put into songs that you’re looking at in general, then you just go down that path. I guess with Phantasmagoria in Blue, we had some of that. We had some kind of general sense of the type of thing we were trying to produce there. So, it becomes easy. I don’t find it difficult.
Amanda: I think we do like changing the songs because we don’t find any sense in making them exactly the same as they are. We try to find a different angle. In this case, we transform it into a dialogue with the song. It’s just one person singing. We thought, oh, this could be a conversation between two people, which is a big change. Also, we really like the original song, so there’s this sense of respect or connection with them. At least I can say that for me. I think he does like most of it. But the thing is that when you respect that, you know you won’t want to affect it. And I think I can connect to the lyrics.
Mick: I mean, there’s an exception there, actually. With “Love is a Battlefield”, for instance, we specifically wouldn’t have wanted to adhere to the original, so we deliberately took that into a very different space. I suppose it kind of revealed the lyrical content in a different way. It wasn’t out of disrespect to the original song. The song is still there in its core form, and it’s actually a really simple, beautifully written song. Their production and arrangement choices were questionable, perhaps to my ear; most people would prefer theirs to ours but that’s life. That’s my life in a nutshell.
For the clip you did for “Golden Mirror”, how much input do you have in the overall look and the feel? Was that your vision how the video clip came through?
Amanda: I think in this video, we didn’t even want to make public the credits, because we did a lot. Both of us did a lot in the video, it’s both of our ambitions. I decided the place like we were, it’s a place that we will go after.
Mick: I think Amanda means that that a couple of the previous videos, she’s actually the director. She actually directed and edited them, and there was no one else involved in the making of the video. So how much input we have into it is 100%.
It feels like some professional made it.
Mick: We just shot it ourselves, the two of us in that space. That’s what you can do these days, especially if you’ve got someone who’s good at that sort of thing. I’ve made quite a few of the videos I’ve been involved with over the years too. I have a little bit of a part time job as a video director that people don’t know about. When there’s little or no budget, then you’re put in that position. But aside from that, Amanda was at film school, and I’ve done a lot of it over the years myself, so I’m glad you couldn’t tell that.
Amanda: I think coming from film school, I had to do videos with absolutely no budget, just for fun or just for an assignment. He’s also a bit like that; we try to find something really good with what we have. And that’s what we’ve been doing with the videos most of the times. And I hope they’re great.
No, it’s good. I really like it. It adds to the to the song.
Mick: Amanda edited it and did that kind of colour processing, grading or effect, the overall kind of glowing thing. So, it’s a self-made video.
I didn’t know about Jackson C. Frank before this interview. It seems like he had a really difficult life. What drew you to him, to cover his songs?
Mick: I’d hadn’t heard of him either, until Amanda introduced me to him, so this is kind of a great thing. There’s a lot of negative aspects to the current way that one is sold music, or as one is exposed to music. You know, the streaming systems and everything aren’t necessarily that supportive of musicians and songwriters and so forth, but it does provide access to just about everything. The younger people these days, if they become enthusiastic in the way that I and my colleagues used to be back in our day, you can find everything. You can search pretty much everything. So, Amanda had found Jackson C Frank, through connections to other artists she’s interested in. Just about everybody I know, people who are very interested in music – nobody’s ever heard of him.
Amanda: In his time, he was not very well known. In recent years, his music has been used in films and TV shows that have been popular. One of his songs was in The Joker!
Mick: Some people are hearing his songs now, and he’s getting a lot of streams and a lot of interest on YouTube, so people are interested in him. There’ll be a bit more awareness about his name in association with songs and so forth. As we went into it, we’d done “Milk and Honey”, which is on the first album, and just as that was coming out, I was contacted by a friend from Italy who asked me if I was interested in contributing to a Jackson C. Frank tribute album. I said, well, that’s really funny, because our first song from the project is coming out this week, and it’s “Milk and Honey”. He obviously knew the song, and that’s really where the whole thing began. We went and recorded a few songs for him for this tribute project. And we thought, why don’t we record a few more so that we’ve got a selection, so that we can send him the ones that we think are the best or most appropriate for his project. We had five or six and then we just kept going with it, and decided we should just do our own.
Obviously, he’s trying to herd cats with about 30 different artists, so it’s taken two years to get to the point where he’s done his project. We’re kind of working hand in hand with the thing, but that’s really how the project began. Now we’ve got this potential series of things that we want to do, an uncovered series idea, albums where we investigate particular songwriters.
It’s a great idea because, like you say, even though we’ve got access to virtually everything these days, there’s still artists that fall under the radar. I’ve been listening to his music over the last couple of days and he really had very little recognition in his lifetime.
Mick: Some people slip through the cracks who really have something special to offer and potential for them to be re-found. That’s been happening with a few different people, like Nick Drake and people like that. Nick Drake’s had a mini resurgence a couple of times. In his life he wasn’t very successful, but he’s had a couple of little bumps through the years. But now he’s kind of become quite established as a classic underground artist. So, it’s happening with a few different people, because their music’s really accessible now. That’s one of the positive things, I guess, about the modern world.
What about the idea of the tortured artist, like he seems to have had a really hard life. Is that a prerequisite? Does that help artists?
Mick: Not necessarily. I remember some interview with Roy Orbison, where he was responding to his songs being very sad and depressing. And he said, Well, no, I’m not a sad or depressing person. When you’re in that state, you can’t really write very much, actually. I think people, oddly, would tend to write more when they’re outside of that zone.
Amanda: I think, reading Jackson’s lyrics and his life and everything, it obviously did impact what he was writing. But in a way, I think he was trying to escape the ugly things he was living and feeling and trying to find beauty through music. Because some of his lyrics are trying to capture something outside of the horrible things he was thinking, even though some songs like “Marlene” are directly about what happened to him. It’s an interesting mixture with that, and there’s a bit of hope in the songs.
Mick: I think the thing with Roy Orbison was, the vast majority of his life, was really happy and had a great time, but you can’t really write about that. It’s not very interesting material.
An exclusive gold edition of Mick Harvey and Amanda Acevedo‘s album Golden Mirrors (The Uncovered Sessions Vol. 1), a tribute to Jackson C. Frank is now available through Impressed Recordings . Limited to 200 copies.
