The former Civil Wars member, Joy Williams, talks to us about the journey from Venus to Front Porch, life-simplifying and coming home.
With her second album Front Porch (reviewed here), Joy Williams has turned away from the synth layers and processed beats of Venus and returned to the more traditional acoustic core that defined her work as half of The Civil Wars. It was quite a long process, but Front Porch is the sound of an artist confident enough to strip things back again. “Venus was my way of stepping out, trying something new, and stretching my creative muscles,” Joy begins. “I wasn’t ready to go back to the familiar sounds, for many reasons. I needed more time to heal. I’m proud of the music I made on that record, most of which was originally written on acoustic guitar. The DNA of how I crafted a song remained, even though the production was different. That said, I think once I made that record, and a lot of life happened in between then and now, like my Dad passing away, moving from Venice Beach back to Nashville and my son growing up a bit more, something shifted in me. It was like a sort of simplifying, grounding or rooting down began to happen. So the sound that you hear on Front Porch is more in that spirit, just set to music.”
From the very title of the album, the simplicity and purity of the sound comes across, but it seemed more of an organic shift than a deliberate decision from the off. “It was more of a feeling,” she says. “It was during the writing process itself, so it wasn’t a mathematical plan, but an intuition that I knew I needed to trust. That somehow, it was just time to return to a more stripped back sound. I’ve always felt my voice was able to be more honest tucked in the pocket of an acoustic guitar, so once I moved back to Nashville, I slowly began writing songs around town with dear songwriting friends who played guitar. I noticed that my soul came alive when I kept things on the acoustic path and with a simple and honest spirit. I wasn’t afraid of leaning into where I’d been before, but [wanted] to grow it in my own way. Over time, that simplified approach, like thinking of playing songs together with friends on a warm summer night, became more and more my North Star for this record.”
Another key element to the album’s sound is its producer, with acoustic duo The Milk Carton Kids’ Kenneth Pattengale stepping in to help Joy achieve the warm and grounded sound she was looking for. “Kenneth and I had known one another through music for several years,” she explains. “We wound up running into each other at a birthday party in town and got to talking. Once we started chatting about what kind of producer I was looking for, Kenneth was like, ‘You know I produce records, too, right?’ So we got breakfast a day or so later and ended up talking for three hours. By the end of the day, he had driven to my house wanting to discuss making the record. He was sitting on my kitchen counter, drinking the gin and tonic I’d made him when we both agreed that we had to make the record together.” It certainly has the sound and pace of an album that came together through agreements. “We both had similar thoughts on how to approach the record, so we didn’t have to do much debating,” Joy says. “We are both similar in how we like to arrange songs and both nerds over finding good harmony parts. We are kindred spirits in our love of live performances and [agree that] intimate moments are far more important than some false ideal of sterile perfection. He knew where I wanted to go, and he came alongside like a great producer does and helped me fully realise what I’d envisioned. It was, hands down, the most effortless and enjoyable time in a studio making a record to date.”
The positive creative process comes across clearly in listening to the album; in its review, we said it is the sound of Joy hitting her stride, but it is more like the sound of an artist finding and settling into her sound. “I do feel deeply connected to and proud of this project,” she says. “My heart and soul are etched into every song and what feels even more wonderful is how people who hear it seem to really connect with it, too. We recorded the songs front to back, with no overdubs. No fancy editing, no bells and whistles and no tricks; we just sat down and played the songs in real time and that’s what you hear. That’s what I had always hoped this record would feel like – warm, real, true, like a conversation between friends.”
There are a lot of subjects tackled across the album; we wonder if a particular song stands out for her. “Each one does in its own way to me,” she answers. “Whether it’s remembering the chirping crickets during the 3am write on the back porch with Natalie Hemby that led to ‘Trouble With Wanting’, or the tears that streamed down my face as I wrote pages of lyrics about my late dad and me for what would become ‘Preacher’s Daughter’, or my six-year-old son humming the chorus to ‘Front Porch’ back to me after I first played it for him. They all have their own personality and recording them was much the same. I remember laughing between takes with everyone in studio because I was enjoying myself so much, rubbing my rounded belly as I sat on a stool and recorded these songs and thinking, ‘my baby is getting washed in the sounds of all these songs, just as her eardrums are forming…’” It certainly sounds like an album that perfectly represents Joy Williams the artist, is that how she feels about Front Porch? “To me, I hope I can always stay curious, open and willing to grow,” she says. “But, with that said, yes, this record, to me, feels very much like coming home.”
Front Porch is out now.