Call & Response: Buick Audra
(13 min)
We first got to know songwriter, singer, activist, writer, and overall badass Buick Audra from her hard rock band Friendship Commanders. And though her recent return to her solo work may not carry the same sonic weight of distorted guitars and hard-hitting drums, Audra’s powerful voice, intimate lyrics, and message are a through line in all of her work. We chat with Audra about her solo work and upcoming record, being unapologetic and honest, and being heard on her own terms. We also so get a detailed look at her single “All My Failures” from initial conception, to finding the right players, to having it out in the world.
Photo by: Ryan Reeve
Lab Notes (LN): If you had to boil your musical journey into one sentence, what would it be? (Run-on sentences accepted and encouraged.)
Buick Audra (BA): I do my best to tell the truth about what happened, what is happening, and what I hope for, because I want there to be a record of a woman’s life that looked like this—in varying volumes.
LN: Those who know you from Friendship Commanders might be surprised by the acoustic sounds of your recent singles as a solo artist. But observant listeners will surely recognize similar themes and your talent for impactful, melodic vocals. As a songwriter, how do you approach writing for projects with multiple genres? Is it clear what song goes in a project?
BA: Thank you for those kind words! The songs usually tell me which project they belong to. I very much believe in honoring how a song presents itself to me, even if it’s way outside of what I typically do. Like, when “All My Failures” showed up, I knew it leaned Bluegrass as soon as I heard it. Bluegrass-ish music doesn’t necessarily have to be executed with acoustic instrumentation, but in this case, it made sense.
For folks who don’t know, I made three solo records and did my solo work for years before I put it down and started Friendship Commanders. So, the singer-songwriter space is not new for me; it’s just new again. I have written some songs that were obviously not for FC over the years, and they were put aside until now.
The stuff I write for FC is so big, so made from a place of wanting to scare the bear. I can usually feel it in my body when it comes through. It has a real sense of emotional emergency to it. The one exception to that so far has been the song “July’s Revelations,” which is at the end of the HOLD ON TO YOURSELF EP by FC. I was sure it was a solo song, and one I would probably never record. But my bandmate heard it the night I wrote it and claimed it for the band. I thought he was out of his mind at the time, but now I’m glad he pushed me to include it there.
Actively writing for both projects at the same time right now is wild. So far, I can’t do both in one day. I’m either in FC or in my solo stuff on any given calendar day.
LN: Your first single as a solo artist in 10 years, “All My Failures” was recently released, featured in Rolling Stone, and mixed by the great Trina Shoemaker (Indigo Girls, Josh Ritter, Brandi Carlile). Can you tell us a bit about the journey of that song, producing the track, and working with Shoemaker? How has it felt having your new solo work out in the world?
BA: I’d love to tell you about “All My Failures.” So, I’ve had middle-of-the-night panic attacks for years now. They started when I was making a duets album with Joss Stone, over in England. That project went on for nearly two years. I was flying back and forth from Nashville, I was broke, and Joss and I had a difficult dynamic; she was famous, and I wasn’t, and that became weaponized as time went on. Even though I’ve been a trauma survivor all of my life, something about that situation with her pushed me to a new place of crisis. I’ve done a lot of work around it since, but the panic attacks have remained.
Early on in the shut-down last year, I woke up in the middle of the night and the song was writing itself very clearly. Very loudly. So, I got up and listened to it. I could hear the whole thing, the way it would sound when it was recorded. FC had just released a record and we were starting to play live-streams and all of that. I didn’t know if it would be a great time to record a Bluegrass song, but I reached out to Lex Price who has played on my stuff over the years and asked if he wanted to play on a track about my panic attacks. He’s always my first call. So, I tracked my guitar and scratch vocal, my partner and bandmate Jerry played drums on it, and we sent it to Lex.
Then it was like, who else will make this land squarely in a dreamy, nighttime, Bluegrass space? Jerry Douglas and Bryan Sutton. It was much more vulnerable for me to send the song to them, I have to say. I hadn’t worked with either of them before, and my work is so personal. But they couldn’t have been more lovely and generous with their contributions. They tracked themselves, too, with requests from me that it not become a shred-o-rama. I have a real aversion to solos and shredding in most kinds of music. On songs where the lyrical message is focal, I find it distracting. I also have an aversion to certain tones.
Jerry Douglas actually did nine passes, so I would have what I was looking for. He’s such an emotional player; so responsive. Dobro is one of my favorite instruments and he’s my favorite person who plays it. But an interesting thing about it, is that it’s like another voice in the song. It occupies a similar space and tone. So, I had to make it work with my vocals.
When Bryan’s tracks came back, I actually wept. His parts had all this intimacy and respect built into them. There isn’t a musician on earth who could have done it exactly the way he did. He was last to play. And the song sounds exactly as it did in my mind the first time I heard it.
And then I sang it. I think I did three or four different sessions with myself because I just couldn't find it until I did. It's a hard line to walk for me, the quieter courage.
Trina’s name came up as a dream option, but I didn’t know her. Rodney Crowell made the introduction. When I told her about my work and what the song was, she said yes right away. She said other things, too, but I’ll leave them between us. She was the right person for the job, technically and personally. She understood the mission. I want to add that in the last year, I’ve worked with Trina and emailed back and forth with Dr. Susan Rogers, now a Berklee professor (among many other things), but she was Prince’s house engineer and technician for some years in the eighties. Both of those women engineers have had such notable responses to me talking about being a trauma survivor; both have responded with immediate kindness, empathy, and solidarity. It stands out to me.
Dan Shike mastered it and nailed it on the first pass. He’s great.
The song took about six months to render, top to bottom. I had to work it in around other stuff, but I kept coming back to it.
As far as how it feels to have it in the world . . . it feels like taking off the Hulk suit and walking around as Bruce Banner in my underwear. It was huge to have it featured in Rolling Stone. Made me feel like all of the weird thoughts that roll around in my head make sense to a few other people. That’s an incredible feeling. But overall, yeah, I feel very exposed. I’ve had to take incredibly good care of myself since beginning to release the solo work.
LN: When reading your lyrics, they can feel like poems or entries in a journal, very personal and intimate. Yet when listening to your songs, they take on a more universal quality and create space for the listeners to hear their own stories, struggles, hopes. Who do you hope hears your music? How important is that connection to you as an artist?
BA: They are very personal and intimate, and I used to think they were like journal entries, too, but now I’m aware of the fact that I’m speaking to someone else when I write. I’m telling you—whoever that may be—what it’s like over here. I’m telling you that my panic attacks tell me I’ll never be enough; I’m telling you that I come from not only abject abuses, but also passive abuses like silence and shaming when I succeed; I’m telling you that I think we can do better than telling women that they’re lucky to be in a band with whomever, or lucky to take up space; I’m telling you that Nashville (and the whole music industry) has a gender problem. I’m never telling me. I already know all of that.
It was wild to release “All My Failures” and have so many people reach out in public and private with their own stories of panic attacks. Some people didn’t even know what they were until they heard the song and read my posts about it. I’ve had a similar thing happen with the second single, “Maybe I’ll Fly Instead.” People tell me about their own grief around family or friends who punish them for thriving. It’s both comforting and troubling to me, how common it is. But I’m happy that the work connects with anyone out there, and that the songs hold space for issues that touch so many. That’s the whole mission, for me.
I hope that whoever is on the ropes hears it. Because music has saved my life at points—both consuming it and creating it—and sometimes it’s the best (or only) friend we have. I always go back to Little Earthquakes, Tori’s first album. So much can be said about the music, the compositions, the performances—all of it—but that woman had the courage to tell us she had been raped on that record, in careful and deliberate detail. I will never unhear it. It absolutely changed my DNA. I live for the work of courageous people. I hope to be counted among them one day.
Early on in the shut-down last year, I woke up in the middle of the night and the song was writing itself very clearly. Very loudly. So, I got up and listened to it.
LN: We love your honest and “no apologies” approach, especially on social media, openly discussing the realities of telling stories of mental health, challenging misogyny and the patriarchy, as well as being an abuse survivor. Is it any easier to have these conversations in 2021 than even a few years ago?
BA: Oh thanks! Culturally, it might be a little more accepted today. I still feel like it’s often seen as unpleasant or “too much” by some, but I can’t worry about it. Those folx should ask themselves if they also consider it too much when cis men talk about those issues. Probably not. They probably find it brave. We maintain these enormous double standards that go unchecked. I want to check them.
Personally, when I look back at my earliest writing in my first band, I was talking about these things there, too. But somewhere in the middle, I really lost my hold on myself and prioritized being liked over being known. My earlier solo work reflects a lot of that and it’s hard for me listen to and honor. All I hear now is a woman who thought her only option was to be small and sweet and likable. And in truth, that might have been my only option at the time.
Friendship Commanders came about because I hated that woman so much and wanted nothing to do with her. So, returning to the solo work as I am today is a big personal challenge. And doing so with respect for all of the women I have been is nearly a full-time job. I’m making this solo work as an act of self-amends, for cramming myself into bad spaces, for starving parts of myself, for getting small.
I’m out here telling the truth today. And now, I don’t want to be liked; I want to be heard.
LN: We’re looking forward to your upcoming full-length album, Conversations with My Other Voice. Why is it important for you to release a full record as a solo artist? What can listeners expect in terms of content and style?
BA: Thanks! Here’s a wild card: Conversations was actually recorded first, before these other solo singles. I was going to release it last year, and then last year was such a swamp of unknowns, I set it aside. But I can’t wait to share it with everyone!
It’s an electric record! I think there might be one acoustic guitar track played by Kris Donegan, but the rest is all electric. The record was tracked as a full band at Sound Emporium in one day, with the exception of vocals, which I always track myself, later. The band is me, Kris Donegan, Lex Price, and Jerry Roe.
Conversations is a memoir in songs. I had this handful of five songs from my earlier solo days that never got recorded on albums, but which I consider some of my best solo writing. I was getting to a place where I thought if I never recorded them, I’d have major regrets. At first, I thought I’d record them and then just quietly release them and tell no one, like a tree falling in the woods. I was getting them ready to track them, and the songs felt . . . not like the truth anymore, even though I loved them. I’m not the woman who wrote them anymore. So, I wrote five response songs, one for each of them. The five new songs are how I see those situations now, through these eyes. That’s the album, both sets of songs. And that’s why it’s called Conversations with My Other Voice; it’s a literal back and forth between her and me. And I’m not releasing it in secret because I think it’s cool and weird.
I’m out here telling the truth today. And now, I don’t want to be liked; I want to be heard.
LN: What do you do when you’re not making music or working as an activist these days?
BA: I read a good amount; I’m an essay writer. But also, I build guitar pedals! Kurt Ballou (who mixes FC’s stuff these days) sent me a package of his PCBs last year because I was interested in trying one build, and then I got hooked. Right now, I’m building distortion and fuzz pedals for guitar and bass. I truly love it. It’s a crash course in failure, for sure, but when you win, it feels like you could maybe take over the world. Making an electronic device that functions and that you can use in your own music? What’s cooler than that?
LN: What are three things about you that wouldn’t want left out of your Wikipedia page?
BA:
1. I’m from Miami. I’ve lived a lot of places, but I’m 100% a Miami kid in every way. I think it has contributed to the way I see everything.
2. I am a self-taught guitarist who started a band and wrote a song the same day I got my first guitar.
3. Despite my Gospel Grammy-Award-winning status, I am a proud atheist. Life takes us strange places, friends. Sometimes, stranger than fiction.
Keep an eye out for Buick’s next single “Lullaby of Loathing” on September 10, 2021 along with a run of live performances supporting Aaron Lee Tasjan.
Want to learn more? Check out Buick’s website, Instagram, YouTube , and find her on Spotify.