On the Move All Her Life, UK Songwriter Jade Bird Finds Her Speed in Austin: “Austin feels quite grounded and down-to-earth, which just sort of mimics the English mentality” – Music
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Photo by David Brendan Hall
Jade Bird offers tea as soon as I walk through the door of her house in East Austin, which is perhaps a little too charming on the nose of the British songwriter. Most of the time, however, the 23-year-old has thoroughly embraced her new Austin lifestyle.
The house she shares with partner and guitarist Luke Prosser and photographer friend Austin Roa is across from Boggy Creek Greenbelt. It’s colorful and comfortable with mixed-up, mismatched furniture and instruments on the wall – indistinguishable in many ways from a house inhabited by young artists in the city.
The door that leads to the little fenced yard is splattered with dried mud, evidence of their mixed border collie, auspiciously named Tea when Bird adopted her from Austin Pets Alive! after moving here in November.
“I never went to college so this is my first home. That’s crazy, ”she laughs. “Having that dog alone and renting this house is really ready to take root. I love this city. Austin feels pretty grounded and down to earth which just mimics the English mentality. We really love it I love all of the radio here and it’s really nice to feel part of this community of songwriters too. Moving here definitely helped me integrate into a community that I wanted to be part of. “
Sitting at the kitchen table, Bird is an intensely focused ball of energy. She is serious and thoughtful, but she laughs just as quickly with her head thrown back into high, interrupted joy. She seems completely present and absorbed in every moment.
“I’m such an all-in-person with everything in life, for better or for worse,” she admits. “I didn’t really know I was so obsessed, but I have this really weird thing where I have to write a hundred songs and I can’t just write one song. I’m just 100% or not there. I’ve been working me to death and until the end of 2019 I needed a break. “
Bird has been out and about for most of her life. She was born into a military family and moved with her parents to various stations across Europe until her divorce brought her back to Wales with her mother. As an uprooted only child in new communities and with her sometimes turbulent family life from her mother’s partners, she found solace in her acoustic guitar. At the age of 18, she toured preparing her 2017 debut EP Something American – a track that would prove predictive.
She entered her second South by Southwest as a breakout artist in 2018, and the 2019 self-titled debut LP received universal acclaim for her poignant, personal songs – pared down but with emphatic vocals and an angry, rocking impulse.
“SXSW was one of the best times of my life,” she enthuses. “I’m a live act so you take me to a room where you say you can play as many shows as you want and it’s just heaven to my ears. And at that age I had just built my first band, so it was like a boot camp and we literally just poured out adrenaline. I don’t know if what we played was the worst in the world, but when you came to us it was mental but in the most beautiful way possible. It really was one of the best weeks of my life and I say that with all my heart. I still get goosebumps. “
“[SXSW 2018] was really one of the best weeks of my life and I say that with all my heart. I still get goose bumps. “– Jade Bird
The next few years were a hazy crash course for Bird in America. On tours across the United States, she drove across the United States, had her trips set to music on the local radio and fell in love with the diversity of landscapes and cultures.
She also quickly found support in the emerging Americana scene, and quickly made fans and friends of artists such as Jason Isbell and Brandi Carlile. She recruited Nashville-based star producer Dave Cobb for her follow-up album and began recording at the legendary RCA Studio A in early 2020. When the pandemic brought everything to a standstill, Bird moved back to London.
“The pandemic was the worst-case scenario for me,” she says. “London was completely closed and you couldn’t leave home for about eight months. I was at my parents’ house and my partner was with his parents because we’ve been touring for four years, so we didn’t.” We have our own home I’m 23 so in terms of not having a room of my own, well, I’m not a teenager anymore!
“In retrospect it was good, because I think that as a musician you are only a small person passing through,” she ponders. “You never sit in one place enough to look at yourself or the people around you. So the pandemic has done me really good as a person. I’ve grown a lot, which is simply more.” empathic and less selfish. “
That growth and maturity is evident on Different Kinds of Light, Bird’s second album due out next week on Glassnote Records. She wrote nearly half of the songs last fall during the contemplative solitude of a two-week quarantine in Mexico City while she waited to re-enter the States and finish recording.
While their debut LP was seething with understandable personal fears, their successor is guaranteed to strike. Musically, the songs become more adventurous, attracting influences as diverse as Britpop, Country and Punk, with an admitted nod to ’90s rockers like Alanis Morissette and Sheryl Crow – artists who refused to interfere. The result balances between Lydia Loveless and Elle King, but perhaps most impressively, her songwriting evolves beyond the solipsic.
“That’s what I love about this record, I write about other people,” she says. “My first album was all about me and I was kind of bored. I think to be a great writer you have to write really convincingly about other people. I always felt like I wasn’t up to date as a writer. ”That way, it was too much to look inward all the time. This second album is really about growth. I had to trust people more than myself to be in the process, so my partner was the one who worked things out with me.I am learning to be more cooperative in the creative process, not such a loner, and it got me for it done better. “
Bird’s move to Texas also marks a new era for the artist. Even when the tour resumes, she’s excited to have an anchor in Austin and the community she’s built here.
“I think in life I learn to be more relaxed and I think moving to Austin epitomizes that,” she admits. “You can’t really mix a Type A person with a Type A city. So I like the slow pace, it balances me out. And one thing I love right now is my friends I know it sounds so ordinary, but when touring without that it can be pretty isolating. I never had a great connection. I remember asking my mom, ‘When do I find my people?’ And then I found my partner, and then I found Austin, and it’s just been like that ever since. We’re all out here wrestling, we’re creative, and it’s just really cute. “
A version of this article appeared in print on August 6, 2021 with the headline: On the Move All Her Life, Welsh songwriter Jade Bird finds her speed in Austin
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