Lee AdcockEven now, after years of playing and writing beside each other, Jack Blauvelt still can’t quite explain how Emily Braden first drew him in. If you’ve ever witnessed the eternal heartache of Neighbor Lady in real-time, though, you’d understand the paucity of words. With a Southern-fried voice steeped in both honey and molasses, the first-time frontwoman stirs her estranged lyrics into beautiful whirlwinds, the sort that uproots buried traumas and rips open old scabs. In our phone interview, when Blauvelt describes Braden’s first solo show at a singer-songwriter night at Athens’ Flicker Bar, he can only say he “got that experience that most people get when they see her play Neighbor Lady songs.” But what an experience! Because after a few lineup swaps, tons of gigs, and several months of shopping around their succinct debut Maybe Later, the four-piece now stand poised to transfix the masses.
In Neighbor Lady, Braden’s ideas fuel the veteran-powered engine, but in her hometown of Rome, GA, she followed everyone else’s lead. When her big sister joined the school choir in 6th grade, she jumped in behind her; when her best friend picked up guitar in high school, she wanted one too. So after Braden migrated to Athens—again, because her sister went to the University of Georgia—she easily slipped into the wings of her first band, the Breaks. (When I try to inquire about these folks, Braden cuts off her own reply with a laugh. “I think she’s going to tell you not to look that up,” Blauvelt says.)
The current version of Neighbor Lady assembled as most Athens groups do—slowly, through a protracted cross-pollination between bands. A friend of a bassist encouraged Braden to check out Dana Swimmer, the promising indie rock adventure squad helmed by Blauvelt and his sister Maggie, but when the neophyte songwriter debuted her first songs at Flicker, Blauvelt knew she needed a group of her own. “Songs are great on their own, but I feel like people them more seriously when there’s a band around it,” he tells me. “So I wanted to be in that band.”
The prototype of Neighbor Lady floated around town for years before fellow scenester Meredith Hanscom—from Semicircle and Party Favor—drifted into their orbit. When Maggie decamped to Seattle, Hanscom brought in her friend from Decatur, Andrew McFarland (also from Semicircle and, though we never discuss this in the interview, apparently Reptar). Thus, Braden had her band.
I’m not sure how I missed Neighbor Lady during my time in Athens. But when someone passed me a promo copy of Maybe Later in the dark weeks before Valentine’s Day, Braden and her crew bewitched me beyond repair. To get to the bottom of their long-awaited debut, I spoke with three-fourths of the gang, all of whom now reside in Atlanta. (“Meredith still lives in Athens, but we’ll get her here,” Braden says.) While we tap briefly on the members’ sundry hobbies outside of music—Braden actually embroidered the cover for Maybe Later—the conversation centers squarely on writing and recording their ineffable work. “If we’re not working on Neighbor Lady, we’re working on music in some other form or fashion,” Blauvelt notes. “A day doesn’t go by that I’m not playing on an instrument. I don’t know where I’d be without it.”
As someone who also made the jump from Athens to Atlanta, do you enjoy playing here more? It’s definitely a different experience than in Athens.
Emily Braden: Well, music is taken more seriously in Atlanta. It’s harder to be a band in Atlanta, and it’s just a little more challenging. And of course, there’s a wider range of people that get to see you play. But I’ll always love the music scene in Athens, because it’s very welcoming, and there’s free shows everywhere, and it’s a good environment to be a musician. A good place to start out, for sure.
Andrew McFarland: It’s a good germinating zone.
Jack Blauvelt: A good place to learn how to be a band.
AM: But I will say—it’s always interesting to me, still, that when I’ve done more of the things that involve the legitimate business side of music, a lot of that is way more present in Athens. Now there’s a couple of publicists in Atlanta, but for a long time—up until three years ago—all the publicists were in Athens, and quite a few labels. And now Athens has its own pressing plant, which is amazing. So it is kinda funny. Aside from the fact that, once you’re an Athens band, you could live there for three months and be a band there, but then you’re always gonna be an Athens band. And Neighbor Lady definitely falls under that category. We fluctuate between saying we’re from Athens or Atlanta, so we typically just say we’re from Georgia. It’s a funny thing—there’s more than just the “mystique” of Athens that keeps you coming back.
So let’s get into the album itself. Were these all songs that Emily had written, and then the band just fleshed them out?
EB: Yes, that is it. Some of the songs, I had for a long time. A couple of them, I played at that solo show Jack was talking about. And then they were reworked once the rest of the band came into the picture. It’s only seven songs, but they were the songs I already had. And the songs we’re writing now are way more influenced by the rest of the band, which is nice.
And then I wanted to talk about the songs, and I mention this every time I write about your songs, but you seem to always talk about the tension and ache of romance rather than the happiness.
EB: Yeah, that’s the good stuff. That’s where the most feeling is, for me. And I’m usually writing about something in the past… I don’t know. That is what I write about, isn’t it? I feel like if I started writing about how happy and in love I am, it starts to feel cheesy, and overdone, and not sincere. That’s not true [for everyone], but that’s just how I feel. I don’t think that when I hear other people write songs like that, but when I do that, I’m like, “Wow, what a cheese ball! What a loser!”
AM: One of my writing teachers in high school basically said that, to be a great work in literature, the book has to be sad. So I’ve just latched on to that.
I also like how it might be easy for others to pigeonhole your sound, but there’s still plenty of variation within those seven songs. “Oh Honey” has that bouncy country feel, but “Wring Me Out” kinda sounds like Pink Floyd, a bit.
EB: Whaaa? I love that! I never write a song thinking, “I want to sound exactly like this genre, and I want it to sound like this.” That’s the best part of writing songs with this band: I write a song, and I bring it to them, and it’s not finished at all, it’s got three chords and maybe a melody, and then it just takes on a completely different life with the band, and it’s like, “Wow, that is completely different from how I thought that would sound!” It’s very refreshing. We don’t have to stick to a genre, or say we have to have this sound. Because that doesn’t make any sense! Why would you?
AM: One thing we’ve talked about in the band, regarding that, is that we’re all huge Beatles fans. And one of the things we really appreciate about the Beatles is [that] they just did whatever the fuck they wanted, and they still sound like the Beatles. So, with Neighbor Lady, since Emily’s voice is so distinct, it really frees the band, especially during these recordings. We’re like, “Well, we can pretty much do whatever we want, and it’ll sound like Neighbor Lady.” It makes it fun, because we do have some songs that you could pigeonhole into a particular genre, but at the same time I don’t know that I would be able to pigeonhole Neighbor Lady into a genre. Some of it is like that classic country, but some of it definitely isn’t! And I think, as we move forward, there’s going to be even less of that. There’s an even wider variety of styles.
You decided to settle with Friendship Fever for your label. Why did you go with them?
AM: Well, we finished the record—when, last year?
EB: In June.
AM: And even before that, we had it mastered this time last year, so it had been mixed a couple of months before that. So we had been sitting on it for quite a long time at that point. And we had talked to a couple of other labels. But our friends in Deep State, they’re also on Friendship Fever. And they had told the label about us at SXSW in 20… 17?
EB: No. 2016.
AM: Well, anyway, they had told them about us a while back. And we had been in touch with them a bit. But as we were shopping it around and talking to other labels—we talked to Fat Possum, and we were kinda in conversation, and we talked to a bunch of other people [just] once. But Friendship Fever was really excited about the record. And they really have the ability to do the things that we want a record label to do—they press vinyl. And I think what it really boiled down to was a) that excitement, and b) that they were able to put it out sooner than anyone else. We were talking to Fat Possum, and they were like, “Yeah, we’ll put it out, but with our release schedule, we won’t be able to put it out until January 2019.” And we were just like, “Oh, fuck that.” So that was a huge piece of it.
EB: And they’ve been awesome!
AM: Yeah. They’re out in Sacramento, which is funny, because after working with them for quite some time, we actually just met them when we went up there in the beginning of April.
So, I guess the most immediate thing is your album release show. If I remember correctly, I saw Salsa Chest is opening up for you guys! I haven’t seen them in four years!
AM: Yeah. They’re around. I don’t know if they’re going to open up, or just do the late-night dance party thing. Like, I don’t know what to call Salsa Chest, but they’ll be doing Salsa Chest.
JB: Can’t pigeonhole their music!
AM: They have such a special place in my heart, because I used to live with William [Kennedy] and Addison [Adams] for three years. And Salsa Chest basically started because that is just what would happen in our kitchen every day. And it was so funny—one day, they were just like, “Man, this is fun, we should do this one time!” Because William [was making] all these goofy little beats. So they’re like, “Man, we should just wear tights and do this one time!” And now they’re still doing it. They’re like my little babies. That’s the best thing to ever come out of Athens—not R.E.M., not Pylon, but Salsa Chest.
JB: In the top two.
AM: Objectively speaking.
But where I was going with that, is apart from that, is there anything else coming up soon for Neighbor Lady?
EB: Well, we’re going on some tours. I’m finally going to New York! I’ve never been! I’m really excited!
AM: Yeah, we’re taking her to New York in July. And honestly, one thing that I really like about this band, because this has never been the case with any other band that I’ve worked with, is… so we’re putting out the record on May 11th. But we’ve already got eight songs written for the next record, which is great. And I think, in the next couple of months, definitely in the fall, the goal is to start recording by then. We’d really like to put out our next record around this time next year. We are touring, but we’re really excited to keep writing and recording. We’re not really taking a break.
Neighbor Lady will celebrate the release of Maybe Later with a pair of release shows. Tonight, the group will perform at the Caledonia Lounge alongside the Hernies and Little Gold. Doors open at 9 p.m. Admission is $7-9. 18+ to enter. Tomorrow, the band will play at 529 with Dot.s, Deep State, and Salsa Chest. Doors open at 9 p.m. Admission is $8-10. 21+ to enter.
More Info
Web: neighborlady.biz
Bandcamp: neighborlady.bandcamp.com
Facebook: @neighborladymusic
Instagram: @neighbor_lady