Former Wichitan Maria Elena Silva recorded her new LP, "Dulce," in Los Angeles with producer Chris Schlarb in September 2022 across four days with a band that includes drummer Scott Dean Taylor, organist Carey Frank, percussionists Danny Frankel and Stephen Hodges, as well as guitarist Marc Ribot.
The LP features lyrics in both English and Spanish, something Silva said creates a dual narrative on the record and allows her to speak not only about her present-day happiness but the struggles of women in her maternal bloodline.
Silva recently spoke with KMUW from her home in Chicago about the making of the album and some of its themes.
The interview has been edited for clarity and length.
You've said that the writing of this album went quickly and the recording happened over just a few days. Is there pressure when you have limited time like that or was it just a matter of you being able to get things done really quickly?
A little bit of both, I suppose. I think we had two days of recording and then two days for editing and mixing. We do everything mostly live over there. Chris does as much as possible. There's a lot of stereo going on so you have to make sure that you get pretty good takes. We had a list of songs and would play each of them one, two, three times. Chris would give us a note here or there. I remember, on the song "Jasper," he said, "Just keep going, keep hanging on, don't feel the need to close it out. Don't feel that you need to count how many times you're going through the choruses. Let it go." Other than that, I think he just kind of let us play through the songs. We would record each of them two or three times and feel like, "We probably got that."
We had to go back and overdub some vocals. On some of the stuff, my vocals were so low in the mix, they would be covered by my guitar or whatever, so we would have to go back in, overdub them so that we could use them in the mix; get a little bit of a better take. We don't use headphones in there, so not always the most perfect vocal take you could get but for the most part everything is live except for a couple of vocal overdubs and a few of Marc's guitar overdubs as well.
How did you go about getting those great vocal performances that feel so direct and communicate so clearly with the listener?
I appreciate you saying that! [Laughs.] For me, when I listen to it … I'm really happy with the takes. I'm really happy with the album. I don't necessarily think that it's the best vocal performances I've ever recorded. I don't think I was at all in the best voice I've had on mic. But I do think that I was at my most comfortable, maybe, that I've ever been. That room was so accommodating with all the attitudes of the people that were in there. Everyone was so intuitive. It was kind of impossible to not feel good about what you were making. I don't know. When it comes to how well I sing anything, I don't know about that but I think that it was a very authentic version of where I was physically with my voice and emotionally at that time, that's for sure.
If I'm not mistaken, your last record, "Eros," was sung entirely in Spanish. This time the lyrics are in English and Spanish. You told me that there's a kind of dual narrative happening in the music.
I'm pretty autobiographical usually. But the English ones are sort of detailing the state of my life as it is now. They're very celebratory. I felt a lot of confidence and freedom and all of this stuff that happens as an adult. Very maternal contentment. Whereas the Spanish songs are outlining the historical context, more specifically about my own bloodline, the women on the maternal [side] of my family and the history. The issues that they dealt with that I think I've been able to overcome. But they didn't necessarily have the resources to do [that].
Those would be all kinds of things: Poverty, cultural, relationships that they had with men, a lot of things that they were destined to struggle through. In the Spanish songs, I'm pointing out the things that I came through but really more specifically what my mother, my grandmother and my great-grandmother, all three, dealt with.
So there's a lot of layers for the listener to peel away. We have the musical layers but then the language and lyrical layers as well.
I definitely wanted to reference a lot of these things. I didn't intend to do it as Spanish vs. English, it just kind of happened that way, which makes sense. It was kind of a happy accident in a way, where I was doing all of this writing with them in mind and then from my grandmother's point of view and my great-grandmother's point of view in Spanish. It just so happened that these layers worked out very well; even the chronological narrative in putting the Spanish pieces in between the English ones. To me, it reads through. It might not to somebody else but to me it reads through as I sort of explain my own life. But it also can be taken apart and separated as where I currently am versus where I came from.
I love Scott Dean Taylor's playing on this record. I really like drummers who play with a melodic sensitivity, and he definitely does that.
He's very, very, very melodic. He didn't turn his snare on the entire session for the album. He probably hit the kick drum eight times. He doesn't even play with [a] crash [cymbal]. He's a very unconventional drummer, and I love the way that he approaches everything because he's so in-the-moment with the music. It's never about his solo, it's never about him setting the pace or the tempo or pushing any kind of crescendo or anything like that ever. He's never pushing anything. He always holds back and plays absolutely the least amount that needs to be played. You know that we're going to be fill out a lot of space. There's not going to be so much busy energy happening that there's not room for other instruments.
Working with him in general has also given me an appreciation for minimalist writing because I don't feel so much like I have to have my melodies or my progressions compete. We've made four albums together and now, usually, when I write, I bring stuff to him first because I know he's going to be the drummer on it. Then that sets the tone for who to work with next. It's kind of nice to have a really reliable second step in writing that I know is going to help to dictate the attitude behind it.
One of the people on this record is guitarist Marc Ribot. How did he wind up becoming part of the project?
Really, I just wanted him. I asked Chris, "What do you think about getting Marc on this? I've got kind of an attitude that I want for the record. I haven't really written much but I know the direction I want to go." It was going to be more aggressive than the last record, a lot more energy. I still, obviously, want it to sound a little bit outside. I tend to try to lean into experimental a little bit without going there. It was going to have to be somebody who's really adept in both of those worlds. Obviously, Marc is the end all, be all of pop-goes-experimental.
He occurred to me as the dream pick. If we could have anybody in the whole world, that would be the guy. I mentioned it to Chris, and I think he probably laughed when I first said it. But we thought about it, and he plays with [drummer] Chad [Taylor] and Chad's good friends with Marc. Scott, my drummer, studied under Chad a little bit, so we had a good connection there. So, we just asked him and he said yeah. It was very easy. But I wasn't really involved in that process. I say it was easy because I asked him and it happened. [Laughs.] Maybe Chris' story is a little bit different, maybe it involved more work but a far as I know, I said, "Hey, this is the guy I'd love to get" and within a few weeks he had listened to [my previous record] "Eros," had talked to Chris and was down to do it.
When you get him into the studio, do you just sort of say, "OK, do your thing" or is this a lot of directive about what and how you want him to play?
No, and I don't really do that either. I definitely want all of the people to play how they play. My idea, specifically, for this one was to write material where I thought Marc could be the most Marc without having to compromise at all. Or compromising his natural tendencies as little as possible. I would just present the stuff. I did very, very limited charts, just some chords. I would play it for them, we would all do it once and then we'll record the second one. Usually, that was the keeper one. It was mostly me just telling him, "I'm not afraid of you playing 'out.' I want to make sure you do exactly what comes naturally." He didn't hesitate. He jumped right into it.
