When Jenny Lewis released “Joy’All” last year, there was an assumption that she’d made a country album.
After all, it was recorded in Nashville, with in-demand producer Dave Cobb, who’s known for working with the likes of Chris Stapleton, Sturgill Simpson and Brandi Carlisle.
“Not even close,” Lewis said of the misplaced perception during a late February interview. “It’s so funny, when you call something ‘Joy’All,’ which is a word I made up which I’m very proud of, and you put it in a place like Tennessee, people just assume that it’s a country record.
Credit: Bobbi Rich
Credit: Bobbi Rich
“But it is really a singer-songwriter record,” she said. “It’s got some R&B elements and soul elements, like deep soul, and a little bit of country and Americana. I don’t want to do something that feels like I’m doing a genre thing”
That “Joy’All” isn’t a country record is clear after the first few seconds of the gentle rocking “Psychos,” with its declaration “I’m a rock and roll disciple in a video game.”
“Well, that one is a fun opener to the record,” Lewis said. “I knew that I wanted it to be the mission statement. It’s very direct and hopefully funny. I feel sort of humorous in my writing at this moment, coming out of the seriousness of the pandemic and the loneliness and despair and fear. I wanted to make a joyful piece of art, and something that could make you chuckle despite all the trauma of the last couple of years.”
“Psychos” was written before the pandemic. But the equally funny “Love Feel” was composed during a pandemic songwriting workshop led by Beck.
“The assignment was to do a song with 1, 4, 5 chords that’s all cliches,” Lewis said. “So I wrote ‘Love Feels,’ which is a kind of laundry list. I wrote that song wanting to get John Prine in there because we had just lost him, and being in Nashville, an homage to Willie (Nelson) and Waylon (Jennings), then, the sort of alcohol tropes you hear in the honky tonk when you go out on Broadway.”
Then there’s “Puppy and a Truck,” a tropically tinged slice of autobiography.
“I have a pickup and I have a puppy,” she said. “’Puppy and a Truck’ sounds like I’m poking fun at the (country) genre, but I’m not. It’s like completely on the nose.
“They say write what you know, so that’s what I’ve done,” Lewis elaborated. “I think you could pick out the lines that are most true. Is it true that I traded my ‘64 Malibu for a van for cheap? Yes. Do I regret it? Oh yes. Somehow, that’s my most painful lyric. Every time I sing it, it just breaks my heart.”
Credit: Amy Harris/Invision/AP
Credit: Amy Harris/Invision/AP
Those who make their way to a Lewis show, including her stop at the Eastern on March 12, will hear a good sampling of “Joy’All” along with songs from throughout her now substantial catalog.
But there won’t be many selections from the four albums of Rilo Kiley, the late ‘90s/early 2000s indie rock band that Lewis fronted along with another former child actor, Blake Sennett
“They’re hard songs to do without Rilo Kiley, very quirky,” she said. “I’ve tried over the years and only a handful transfer without the family, without the band.”
What fans will hear is songs from Lewis’s five solo albums played by an all-female band she put together to tour last year. There is, Lewis said, a difference when she’s playing with a band of women.
“It’s just a different sort of style of communication,” she said. “I Iove playing with all people. I came from being the only woman and in an all-male indie band. Then I made a record with the Watson Twins (2006′s “Rabbit Fur Coat,” her solo debut). That’s when I was like, ‘Oh, I really like making music with women.’ I can sort of mimic growing up with my mom and my sister and being able to do those three-part harmonies.”
“There’s the singing and there’s the playing and there’s the whole hang, which is so chill,” Lewis said. “This band that I put together for this record, we all live in Nashville, and everyone’s so good. They all are just rippers and we’re having such a great time.”
Over the last couple years, Lewis and her bands have been joined on the bus by Bobbie Rhubarb, the aforementioned puppy, who’s not exactly a puppy any more.
“She’s been on several tours with me including the entire Harry Styles tour in 2021, which was two and a half months long and she was six months old,” Lewis said. “So she’s a road dog. She’s put in her time. But she’s gonna sit this one out. A little chilly.”
CONCERT PREVIEW
Jenny Lewis
8 p.m. March 12. $35. The Eastern, The Dairies Complex, 777 Memorial Drive SE, Atlanta. easternatl.com.
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