SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Chemistry between musicians can be tough to contrive. But when it's there, it is magic, song after song. You can hear that chemical process occur when Edie Brickell and musicians CJ Camerieri and Trever Hagen come together in a project called Heavy MakeUp.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WAIT UP")
HEAVY MAKEUP: (Singing) I can't go so fast. Don't rush me.
SIMON: They improvised over 100 songs. They've chosen 11 for their album "Here It Comes." And the trio joins us. Thanks so much for being with us.
EDIE BRICKELL: Thank you.
CJ CAMERIERI: Thank you so much, Scott.
TREVER HAGEN: Thanks for having us.
SIMON: I have to ask what brought the three of you together. You're all very busy on your solo work, Edie with New Bohemians and Steve Martin, Mr. Camerieri, a chamber music group that was on NPR's Tiny Desk earlier this year and Bon Iver. And Trever Hagen, you've also played with Bon Iver and Mouse on Mars. Why are the three of you together on this?
BRICKELL: We started out just getting together to play music for fun, and these guys were recording our improvs. And a couple of months later, they surprised me with an album. They sent me back a fully produced record, and it was so beautiful.
SIMON: Who gave you an album? I mean, what a gift.
BRICKELL: CJ and Trever (laughter).
SIMON: Trever?
HAGEN: So we'd all met at Edie's a couple of years ago, the first time we'd all three had been in the room. And whenever we'd play, Edie would have fully conceived lyrics and a form of a song, a melody and harmonies. And we had thought she'd maybe prepared these before. And it turns out she was improvising along with us the whole time.
SIMON: Oh, my gosh. What did you feel, Mr. Camerieri? What was set off in all three of you, do you think?
CAMERIERI: I didn't know that improvising songs was a possibility or a thing. And so it was this whole other skill set it tapped into immediately where we would get kind of a sound going, and you'd sort of see the light bulb go off, and she would start singing.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "SO EMOTIONAL")
HEAVY MAKEUP: (Singing) Don't you know you never had a chance?
CAMERIERI: And then it was like being on a roller coaster - right? - 'cause she would give us a look that kind of meant, all right, I'm going to go to a B section or a chorus or a bridge here. And we would just have to do that. So we're improvising song form and harmony and all of this and following her melodies and following the metaphor of the story she was creating on the spot. It's kind of like a constant musical trust fall...
SIMON: Oh, my word.
CAMERIERI: ...Where you just have to, like, believe that the other person is going to do the thing that you think they're going to do and have confidence. And then we would get to the end of these songs. We'd be like, that's unbelievable. And I think it's been an unbelievably magical process.
BRICKELL: Well, these guys are so talented, and they have amazing ears. And when they start to play, I'm inspired. And that makes it so easy. It's like somebody just rolling out the red carpet for a song. That first moment of inspiration strikes, but I don't know how it's going to get there. You just trust and go. And it's playful. It's fun, and you're just singing in the dark.
SIMON: Let me ask you about a song. We're going to hear a little of it first - "Shoe In The Air."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SHOE IN THE AIR")
HEAVY MAKEUP: (Singing) I thought I saw a flying saucer, but it was only a shoe in the air. Someone threw it there. Out of the corner of my eye, colors in the sky flashing late at night.
SIMON: I mean, that's wonderfully charming and totally unexpected. Is that a fair way to put it?
BRICKELL: For both of us. Yeah.
SIMON: Yeah.
BRICKELL: And luckily, those guys found it. They had the cat that ate the canary grin on their faces when I came into the studio when they - and they said, look what we found. Check out this one.
SIMON: Trever Hagen, what about you?
HAGEN: When we get together and we're playing and improvising together, it's - I mean, you remember a lot of it, but sometimes you're going on to the next idea. And with "Shoe In The Air" - and that evening, I remember I went to bed, and in the middle of the night, I woke up, and I had that melody stuck in my head. It was the first time that ever happened where I woke up in the middle of the night and I'm singing a song in my head. And so right there was, like, that was the kernel of that song.
SIMON: Forgive me. Does it ever not work out so nicely?
BRICKELL: I don't give up so easily, Scott.
(LAUGHTER)
SIMON: CJ?
CAMERIERI: I don't think we've ever, like, started an idea and no song came.
BRICKELL: Well, they're very inspiring musicians. It's just a free pass. They just opened the door.
SIMON: Let's listen to another cut - "Let Them Lie."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LET THEM LIE")
HEAVY MAKEUP: (Singing) There doesn't have to be a visual to go with every chemical reaction in my body. I don't need to go searching for some memory. It's only going to hurt them more. Let them lie.
SIMON: CJ Camerieri, what's your recollection of how this song came to be?
CAMERIERI: So what you're hearing on that track - and I've never heard of this before. So that is her actual improv vocal take. And everything, all the music you're hearing on there, is what we improvised in a room together. And I had the brilliant idea that Edie should try to re-sing this 'cause we're making a record. And when we just listened to it together, it was like, no, that's the perfect way to sing that song. You're in the room with us when we wrote that song. And I get goosebumps listening to that.
BRICKELL: I think CJ wanted me to re-sing the song because when we first were playing and recorded it, there was a buzz coming from the lights in the barn where we were playing. But Trever figured out that if he lowered the EQ, we could get rid of the buzz. But it created that vocal effect on my voice, which I later came to love because when I discovered the meaning of the lyrics, listening back, I realized how internal it was.
SIMON: Yeah. OK. So when you say a barn, we're not talking about any breaks to milk the cows, right?
BRICKELL: No. They were the only GOATs in the room.
(LAUGHTER)
SIMON: Aw. Business question - is this enterprise, creative enterprise you've undertaken, in any way, trying to make - I don't want to say make a statement, but is it somehow railing against so much in the industry that is pre-formed, pre-packaged, pre-fabricated?
BRICKELL: No, I don't feel rebellious about what we're doing in any way. I just have always wanted to capture the spirit and the energy of music as it's first expressed because it changes for me every time you try to duplicate the feeling of inspiration.
SIMON: CJ?
CAMERIERI: This is what we did together when we first got in a room together with a bunch of instruments, and this is what we did. But, like, I think it's accidentally rebellious. It's what we did naturally.
BRICKELL: But Trever's pretty intentionally rebellious.
(LAUGHTER)
HAGEN: Besides grammar. Besides grammar rules. Those are the only rules.
SIMON: Well, let me ask you as the rebel, Trever, how do you see this project?
HAGEN: It was something that emerged from the three of our energies. And I think for all of us, it's really important and interesting to be at, like, the genesis of the writing process. So it's rebellious in that it's different for this next step and this new way of making music together.
SIMON: So what happens to the 90 songs that are left over?
BRICKELL: Oh, Trever has big ideas for those. Tell him. Tell him, Trever.
HAGEN: We have - you know, we have a lot of different ideas for different albums. We have some songs about love, songs about heartbreaks. And so the other ones will come out and be used at some point, but otherwise, we're just going forward and making more music.
BRICKELL: As long as we love it now and now lasts (laughter). It's fun. It's good fun. I think we'll make time to do this.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "STAY AND PLAY")
HEAVY MAKEUP: (Singing) Make me never want to leave. Inspire my belief in everything you say, hey.
SIMON: Edie Brickell, Trever Hagen and CJ Camerieri, they are Heavy MakeUp. Their album "Here It Comes" is out now. And I gather more to come. Thanks so much for being with us.
BRICKELL: Thank you so much for your interest. Thanks, Scott.
CAMERIERI: Thank you so much, Scott.
HAGEN: Thank you, Scott.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "STAY AND PLAY")
HEAVY MAKEUP: (Singing) I'm not asking for a lot if I give you my heart. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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