Outlaw country queen Jessi Colter and garage-punk avatar Lenny Kaye roll holy for The Psalms
There is absolutely nothing off or odd about Lenny Kaye—longtime Patti Smith collaborator, producer/curator of the Nuggets psych-punk series—having teamed with legendary country singer/pianist Jessi Colter for the gorgeously spare The Psalms, her first album in 11 years. Considering an aesthetic existence where chance plays as much of a role as providence, the Jewish-born Kaye says, “It’s the Buddhist in me; my entire artistic life, I’ve emptied myself of expectations. Things just happen.”
Colter’s no Buddhist (“Mom was a ferocious Pentecostal minister, dad was a mountain man who built and raced cars and believed in the power of nature,” she says), but she too lives a life where anticipation is trumped by serendipity and fortuity. “Lenny just heard me playing hymns a long time ago, and that image stuck in his head,” she says, referencing the years between 1993 and 1995 when Kaye went to Nashville to convince Colter’s husband, legendary country outlaw Waylon Jennings, to pair up on Jennings’ autobiography. “I became part of their family, with Waylon taking me around town, introducing me as his New York hippie writer friend,” says Kaye. To which Colter cheerfully counters, “I can still recall seeing his long legs coming down from the bunks on our tour bus.”
With that, The Psalms—as much an exploration and exaltation of God as poetic expression—just happened with no plan, with Colter and Kaye turning pages of the bible and finding psalm passages that moved them and letting music and vocals come up in response. After two brief days of recording in 2007, Kaye worked on further illustrating the tracks as the spirit moved him, and collaborators such as Al Kooper (“Who better than the man who did the most iconic organ signature for a rabbinical student such as Dylan?”) and Bobby Previte (“I knew he’d be sensitive to the floating time and rhythm Jessi’s songs had”) appeared.
Both Colter and Kaye agree: The Psalms wasn’t so much produced as it was guided; birthed, quietly and with a divine hand.
“This memory of me walking through their house, one morning in 1995, while she was at the piano, alone, stuck with me,” says Kaye. “Jessi wasn’t so much playing as she was putting her fingers on the keys and expressing melodies as they came to her.” That same sense of intuitive expression, one Kaye used as a guitarist for Colter during their sessions, is how the country songstress works when it comes to the Old Testament.
“I wasn’t planning anything,” she says. “We turned the bible’s pages, found poems such as ‘Psalm 136 Mercy And Loving Kindness,’ and just let it happen.”
Colter knows that this might seem like a far cry from her outlaw-country past—being the lone female on 1976’s Wanted! The Outlaws, with Willie Nelson, Tompall Glaser and Jennings, the first-ever platinum country music album, duets such as “Storms Never Last,” from their marrieds’ 1981 Leather And Lace—but is quick to offer one fun fact: “When it came to Wanted!, I was the only one of the bunch who had—sadly, at that, considering how much hard work Willie and Waylon did— real success and gold albums at that point. Willie had tried Nashville, failed and retreated back to Texas. Waylon, too, had been back and forth with bad management and publishing deals and still felt the sting of Buddy (Holly). I didn’t have the easiest ride, but as soon as I had pop success (1975’s “I’m Not Lisa”), doors opened wider.” For more on this outlaw time, her one-time marriage to twang-guitar-king Duane Eddy and more, “You’ll have to read the book,” she laughs, pointing to her autobiography, An Outlaw And A Lady: A Memoir Of Music, Life With Waylon, And The Faith That Brought Me Home, “due, just like the album, between Easter and Passover.”
Mention going from badass country to the holy balladeer of The Psalms, and Colter says that she was never far from the religious music of her youth to begin with, despite not particularly thinking of herself as singularly religious or dedicated to one creed. The spirit just moves her.
“I always looked to the psalms for inspiration and for understanding on the human condition we’re in, so it has been very close to my heart,” she says. “That’s why Lenny asked me to do this with him. I can’t say that I am evangelical or that I write as a cypher, but there is something to how I write and compose that brings God close to me in a way that I knew something had to happen. I didn’t write any of this album, it just occurred as we went. That’s God, right?”
—A.D. Amorosi
