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Otago Daily Times

A house full of music

For her latest album, Jenny Mitchell filled a Wairarapa house with music and family, to tell the stories of everything that happens in a home, she tells Tom McKinlay. It's not always easy to know how your music is going over, Jenny Mitchell says. But just lately, there's been some welcome clarity on that score. The Gore-raised and now Melbourne resident singer-songwriter has been touring Australia's vast territories with the Lucky Country's answer to Emmylou Harris, Kasey Chambers. "And you know, 90-something-percent of the audiences have never heard of me before." But now they do, and it's translating into follow-up listening on streaming platforms. "There's a big spike on the day after the show." It's been life-changing, Mitchell says of the tour, and reinforced the wisdom of her decision to cross the Tasman. It's all also coincided with the release of her fourth album, Forest House , a collection of a dozen songs that demonstrate the breadth of Mitchell's talent. The album was recorded over about a week and a-half in a house in the Wairarapa that Mitchell found for the purpose, one that could accommodate all those involved for the duration. "It was definitely the most enjoyable experience that I've ever had making an album," she says. "The kitchen was where the drums were set up and at one point, we were doing demos, and there was a roast chicken cooking and then in one of the tracks we end up using an oven tray as percussion." And the location also dovetailed nicely with themes Mitchell was exploring on the album. "Before I booked the house, I started realising that all the songs were about things that happened behind closed doors, and sometimes good things, and sometimes heartbreaking things, but they were kind of all connected to this idea of the house. So, yeah, that's what led me to finding the house." Those themes are rolled up into early single Heart Like A House , which centres the potential for connection and community. Mitchell creates a domestic setting for her telling but recognises the values as universal. "I think those are the best kinds of songs. They're the songs I love anyway, that mean something particular to the writer but that you can find yourself in." Mitchell's vocals are prominent in the mix, as they should be — sometimes joined by her father, her sisters and longtime band member Michael Hood — employed across a range of styles, tempos and arrangements. Mitchell is quick to give credit to others for the ambitious terrain across which her collection of songs travels. Her producer, Matt Fell, she says, often brings an alternative perspective, which she leaned into, and the players in her band bring another set of influences, talents and virtuosity to colour the final mix. But it's clear it is the material that Mitchell brings to the process that allows her collaborators to add colour, either inside or outside the lines — from the heartstrings opener Little Less Lonely , through the propulsive social commentary of Wives Who Wait , the rib-tickling two-step of No Cash, No Meal , and the anthemic Heart Like A House . As always, Mitchell mixes very contemporary themes, as country has long done, while respecting the traditions, revealing bright new facets of the genre's well polished touchstones. Alongside the guitar, mandolin and banjo, there are touches of brass this time, trumpet and trombone. Mitchell's quick to claim the latter as legitimately country embellishments. "I was thinking the other day about Ring of Fire , which is maybe the most well-known country song, it has horns in it. The riff is horns, and everyone says that that's definitely, definitely country." Other notable collaborative elements on the album include with recent Country Music Honour inductee Tami Neilson, with whom she wrote No Cash, No Meal . "Stick a fork in me, because honey I'm done," Mitchell sings, just one of an overflowing pantry of culinary metaphors. "We wrote that one sitting on the floor in her house. There were many, many extended versions of that song, it was so much fun. We were just cackling about all these kinds of kitchen or food-orientated metaphors." The horns return for Where The Water's Cold , in which Mitchell swings by New Orleans and leans into some swampy deep-south rockabilly. "That's definitely a new sound," she says. "One of my main goals for this album was that if anyone played any track, that I would be really proud to say, 'yes, that's me, that's what I sound like, and that's my writing', and we actually recorded it over a year and a-half ago now, and I still now, at release month, feel really proud of it and excited about people listening to it." The sense of community captured by the album, in its recording and the themes the songs address extends out into the world outside the studio. In what has become a pillar of Mitchell's approach to making music and being in the world, there's a focused, aware philanthropy at work. There will be an opportunity to donate to the Women's Refuge at her shows, picking up on the territory explored in Wives Who Wait . The album has already begun that work, all proceeds from a recent in-store gig in Invercargill going towards Women's Refuge's Safe Night programme. "I was thinking about that whole idea of me being lucky but not everybody having that privilege. So, we are going to have that as a big part of the New Zealand tour, which I'm really excited about." The gigs Forest House is out now and Jenny Mitchell will be touring the album in August. • Errick's, Dunedin Aug 16 Presale ticket promotion at Then general ticket sales from June 18.