Photo Credit: Vincent Perini
For singer-songwriter Abby Jeanne, Music Box Dancer is much more than a clever title she came up with for her latest album. It’s a true representation of who she is.
Ever since she was a teenager, Jeanne has considered the Hi-Fi Café in Bay View a magical place to get lost in for hours. Jeanne made her first visit to the café as a 13-year-old and immediately was drawn to the café’s jukebox, which is packed full of records spanning many decades and musical genres. She made a point to come back to the café whenever she could.
Eventually owner Peter Steinhoff took notice of the café’s frequent visitor and offered Jeanne a job. He also started sharing some of his favorite artists and records with her.
“He would expose me to really old, underground music from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s,” says Jeanne. “All things that were new and different to me that I started really getting into. And then I got into collecting records because of it. This place culturally shaped my musical tastes.”
The album, she says, is essentially a tribute to the “magical rock ’n’ roll world that I grew up in.”
As she grew up, she started listening to all sorts of music, including ’60s psychedelia, ska music and punk rock. It’s natural then that Music Box Dancer hops smoothly between genres from track to track.
“I think it just naturally flows out of me. I never sit down and say I’m going to make this kind of song. It just happens,” she says. “So, I think it’s a subconscious thing of all the music I’ve been absorbing most of my life.”
When she was 16, she left Milwaukee to travel the world and pursue a life in music in nomadic fashion. For a year, she lived in a minivan with a guitar and would perform as often as she could. She followed that up with a year-and-a-half living in Europe, hopping between different trains and busking on the streets.
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About three years ago, she moved back to Milwaukee and set forth establishing herself as an artist. She recorded her debut album Rebel Love in her living room and started performing wherever she could. As things started to really click, she turned her attention to her favorite café.
“Now that I’m a full-time artist, I figured it was time to turn this place into a record label,” she says of Hi-Fi Records. “Because now I’m making records, and what better place to do that?”
Music Box Dancer will be the label’s first album release. She intends to release her future work on the label and is working on expanding the label’s artist roster.
It’s been a whirlwind past year for Jeanne. Highlights include a four-show “Fire in February” residency, a WMSE Record Store Day 7-inch, song placement in a Summerfest commercial (“Cosmic Beings”), a $20,000 Backline grant, and a “Cosmic Weekend” festival that she hosted.
“I have so much energy and emotions that are constantly running through my mind,” Jeanne says. “Being an artist, it’s almost first nature to feel like a misfit in a way because I don’t have a normal life; I don’t have a normal job. My job is constantly creating and expressing myself… I like that people are responding to the music and I love connecting. But most of the time I just see myself as a weirdo girl that’s expressing herself.”
Expressing herself was much easier on Music Box Dancer than Rebel Love, since she had more resources. For a while, she was doing everything solo. She had to make do with what she had, including jumping between different instruments. Finding a band rectified that problem.
“Once I had a solid band with me and is still with me through thick and thin, I can now direct my vision exactly how I want it,” she says. “If I hear this crazy guitar part and sing the part, my guitar player can just do it. Whereas before, on guitar I can play and write but I’m not a guitar player. It’s not my expertise.”
“I have so much more in my garden of instrumentalists and members that can help me complete this vision that’s in my mind, just with more ease.”
The final piece of the puzzle was found with producer Daniel Holter, who runs Wauwatosa studio Wire & Vice. They first met in 2016 following her performance at Milwaukee Record’s Local Coverage. She left immediately that night for a month-long trip to India with her guitarist, where she wrote “Cosmic Beings.” The song was a catalyst for the recording of the rest of the album.
“Since ‘Cosmic Beings’ was the first song I recorded in such a great studio, hearing the first mix was an all-time high for me, just hearing the vision come to life,” she says.
Jeanne chatted with the Shepherd about the new record.
On Music Box Dancer, you designed and arranged the album art and photos. Why do you like being so hands on with every aspect of an album?
I’m not just a musician. I’m a multifaceted artist. I love photography. I love animation. I love design. So, it’s pretty much DIY from the start. Which I prefer since I need so many outlets to express myself because I have so much stuff going on in my head all the time. It’s great because I can really express my vision to the fullest when I’m invested in not only making my music and singing about my life but also aesthetically with character and the world I live in.
How was the Music Box Dancer sign on the album cover created?
I worked hard on designing that. I worked with a local artist. Her name is Marge at Electric Eye Neon. She works out of her kitchen in Bay View. I brought her the design and she did the glass part of the sign. Right now, it’s living here at the Hi-Fi.
Why did you decide it was time to record a new album?
I had a feeling that it was the right time. I had released Rebel Love and was playing a lot of shows. I was already writing all of these songs as soon as I recorded Rebel Love. I still had so much left. I have a feeling that this is going to happen the rest of my life. All these songs kept coming to me. It’s constantly pouring out of me, so what is there to do other than record it and put it out into the world.
Is there a theme that flows throughout the album?
It’s more about the feeling. Every song is about something that happens in my life. There are certain stories that flow throughout the record. A lot of it is about the world. A lot of it is about my past and things that have happened to me in the past and it correlates with my life now. Because everything goes full circle. The more you grow you find those meanings and you’re like “wow, this is all connected.” It’s about my life the past six years.
What was the inspiration for “Cosmic Beings”?
I spent a month in India with my guitar player. I had this big elaborate journey and wrote “Cosmic Beings.” And when I got home, I was like “I need to record this” because I love this song and it was a great experience where the song came from. I contacted [Daniel] and said, “Hey, I’m back in America.” And he said “Yes, let’s meet.” So, it was literally the next week we met, and I played him the demo and he was like “great, let’s do this.”
“Cosmic Beings” is the overarching theme of my entire life. Everything in “Cosmic Beings” is how I view the world. I generally see my journey and the journey of everyone around me as mythical and beautiful and something to follow. And the spiritual aspect is all there. I went to India and there was even more connection and synchronicity which is why “Cosmic Beings” came out of me from that trip, just reassuring me that this is my life, and this is the thing I need to follow. It’s also a commentary on money and how we view art. There’s a line “we’re cosmic beings and we can’t be sold.” Your soul is what guides you and not money. Especially in art. Art has nothing to do with money. You need money to survive, at least in this economy. But at the end of the day that’s not what it’s about. What it’s about is the relationships and your heart. For me it’s about serving the art, that’s really my destiny.
Between the hierarchy of cosmic connections, there is the human [element] which is where the heartbreak and trauma and love come into play. Which is just everyday life, the dramas of being a human being essentially.
What was the most challenging song to write?
“Blood Kin” was the most challenging song to write. It’s about my sister who was my best friend. Since I was 11, she had a bunch of epiphanies about life. Spirituality and politics and everything wrapped into one. And then she had a psychosis or that’s how society would describe it. I saw it as a breakthrough, like a genius kind of explosion happened. She ended up taking her own life. But not because she was depressed. It was about spirituality and about leaving her body behind and expanding her soul in the universe. I firmly believe it because I was there and it’s my life and story.
Shortly after my sister passed, I was sitting at a piano. The piano part in that song literally poured out. I don’t remember playing it, it was like I was disassociated with my body and watching my body play these notes and didn’t know how I was doing it. It was basically an out of body experience where my fingers were writing the song and my mind was watching me do it. The hard part of that song was writing the lyrics because it’s the most beautiful thing in my life but also painful thing in my life with what happened to my sister. Even in the studio I was having a tough time singing it and was crying, it was hard to get through. Even now it’s hard to play live just because it’s such a personal song.
What was the most surprising song to write?
“Die Easy.” I played it for Local Coverage. It was originally an Americana, country song written by another local band, Devil Met Contention. I turned it into a totally different thing. We changed the chords and lyrics a little bit. It turned into one of my favorite songs and now it’s a doo-wop rock 'n' roll song. I would have never imagined that I would take an Americana and country song and rework it into something that feels very personal. It almost feels like it’s mine because it’s relative to things in my life.
Do you feel you walk a fine line with how personal you want to get in songwriting?
Yes. Sometimes it’s perfect and then other times it’s all out there. The primary reason I make music is that it’s like medicine. I have a hard time communicating feelings a lot because I have a lot going on in my head. I’m a very frantic and creative, chaotic kind of person. It’s like therapy to be able to express yourself directly through music. The most truth is in the music for me.
What are you looking forward to next year?
We’re thinking we’re going to move to L.A. together for a few months and play as much as we can. And then come back and do the Midwest circuit. After that I want to go to New York and do the same thing. And then hopefully we can get out of the country. So, it’s going to be a crazy year of being on the road a lot between these bigger cities and Milwaukee. We’re trying to be everywhere at once.
I’m really excited about that because I’m at the point where, honestly, I can’t bear being in one place anymore because I traveled for six years since I was 16 and moved back here. It was always a lifestyle. It’s really hard for me to stay in one place. And now that I’ve built what I’ve built here and being able to record my record and do a bunch of great events and meet really great people, the word is getting out so now I’m ready to take it into the rest of the world.
What advice would you give people?
It’s worth taking a risk to pursue whatever it is that you think you should be doing. A lot of people are trapped by security, the idea of security and their fears of failure. While really all you have to do is work for it and take those risks. If you don’t ever take those risks, you might never have the opportunity to live your dreams. That’s all I’ve been doing my whole life.
Abby Jeanne plays an album release show Saturday, Jan. 5, at Turner Hall Ballroom with Saebra & Carlyle at 8 p.m.
