Jenny Lewis had no intention of ending the marimba.
But for the past year, an antique percussion instrument has taken center stage in the singer-songwriter’s home studio. He inherited it from his godfather, Jerry Cohen, a television and film music editor, who died last spring. He was a surrogate father to her. She was the only person in the room with him when she passed away.
“He was my mentor and my best friend and the most Jewish of all the people in my life.“, said. “Jerry would like me to take marimba lessons.”.
Lewis, the 47-year-old indie artist whose country-rock troubadour style and evocative lyricism has earned her comparisons to great songwriters from Nashville to Los Angeles, has suffered a lot of loss of late. The death of her mother in 2017 was the backdrop for her latest album, “On the Line,” in 2019. Now, after losing Cohen and another mentor, album designer Gary Burden, arrives “Joy’All”, an album that grapples with aging, life cycles and romantic (im)possibility and yet somehow feels lively.
“My 40s are kicking my ass and handing it to me in a margarita glass,” he sings on the third track over peppy acoustic guitars. The song is called “Puppy and a Truck” (Puppy and a Truck), his most recent recipe for happiness. “Having survived this moment, I felt it was important to project something joyful,” she said.
The dog, a black cockapoo, greeted me with a hop when I visited Lewis at his home in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County.
Lewis managed to get out of a career as a child actress to succeed in another artistic universe.
“She’s a unicorn,” said Soleil Moon Frye, fellow child star and friend for decades. Even as a preteen, Lewis had musical chops, Moon Frye said.
Though billed as a country-tinged folk rock songwriter, Lewis’s cornerstone remains hip-hop, reggae, soul and funk — “finding history in rap-style verses and picking up an acoustic guitar, and like to merge the two worlds,” he said.
“Joy’All” is her fifth solo studio album and her first release on Blue Note Records, the jazz record label.
Lewis’s parents, traveling salon musicians, separated when she was little. Her acting career in the 1980s changed the family’s fortunes for a while, but drug addiction and the instability of her mother outpaced her earnings in sitcoms. She was estranged from her parents for decades, then reconciled with each at the end of her lives.
Jess Wolfe, one half of the Lucius duo, sings second vocals on “Joy’All.” “I truly understand the need to try to elevate yourself through your art and hope that you can do the same for other people,” she did, in her calm and natural way.Wolfe said.
Lewis shared that growing old as an unfiltered, unvarnished music star isn’t easy. “I look at myself and I don’t always love it,” she said. “But I’m trying to come to terms with being a woman in my 40s and all that that has to offer.”
Now she’s happily single, though she’s trying out a dating app and eager to write about it.
“my life is extravagant”, he said, although his composition is not 100 percent autobiographical. “But if I’m honest, I’m on every line.”
MALENA RYZIK
THE NEW YORK TIMES
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6769396, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-06-20 21:00:07
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