eMusic Selects: Hurray for the Riff Raff
Featured Album
Alynda Lee embodies the folk ideal. At a time when much “folk music” has become the province of self-serious beardy auteurs content to ply their heartsick wares on the coffeehouse circuit, Alynda has a worried mind and a restless heart. She ran away from her Bronx home at age 17 and, like Woody Guthrie and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott before her, started riding freight trains, making acquaintances as she roamed from town to town and sleeping out at night underneath the big open sky. She eventually ended up in New Orleans, where she made money by playing washboard for a street band called the Dead Man’s Street Orchestra. Over time, washboard became banjo and Lee went from side player to central figure, forming Hurray for the Riff Raff to give voice to the song in her heart. She told her fascinating story by phone to eMusic Editor-in-Chief J. Edward Keyes.
[eMusic Selects is a program designed by eMusic to give exposure to unsigned or undersigned bands. This month's selections are Man/Miracle and Hurray for the Riff Raff]
So, Alynda, let’s just start straight out with where you were born and what you remember about the time that you spent there.
OK, well, I grew up in New York. I grew up in the Bronx. I’m Puerto Rican. It was a Puerto Rican and Irish neighborhood, and the minute I could take the subway by myself, I headed to the Lower East Side because I knew that’s where all the weirdos were, where all the punks were. I was always taking an hour subway ride out there. And that’s really where I feel like I grew up because I spent so much of my time there—all of my friends were there. That’s where I learned a lot about New York and about the world, really.
So were you like 13 or 14 at that time, or even younger?
Yeah, I was about 13 or 14. I was a pretty rebellious little kid. And I met tons of different people. I feel like growing up in New York was really good for me, because you just have so much at your fingertips, ya know? And you definitely are exposed to a lot of things that make you grow up pretty fast. But at the same time, if you can keep your head on straight, then it really prepares you for making good decisions. I left when I was around 17, but not really because of anything with my family. I grew up with my aunt and uncle who raised me, and they were really really great parents, you know? But it was mostly just about how I felt like I didn’t know how I could grow in NYC. I felt stifled there in certain ways, even though I loved it.
What were some things you thought were stifling you?
Just how big it was. At the time, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my life. And that’s such a big part of growing up in NY, you know? What are you gonna do with your life, where’s your head at, and what are your goals? And I didn’t know what I wanted yet, but I kind of knew it wasn’t there. There were plenty of times when I felt like I was just lost, you know? Because at the time, I didn’t play music and I didn’t graduate high school. I just felt like, if I wasn’t gonna go to school, I needed to be really passionate about something.
To just stick in NY for just a couple more minutes, what was it that—you said that you just “knew” to go to the LES. How did you know that?
It was because of the punk scene there. From a very early age I was really excited to go see live music. And there was a place called ABC No Rio–it’s still there—that has Saturday shows in the afternoon every week. It’s mostly a young audience that goes, and they’re really cheap shows—it’s about $5. And they’re all punk bands. And normally it’s a bunch of kids your age playing. That’s where I really first started seeing bands and really that place was where I met all of my friends. When I look back on it I totally see it as just a pack of wild kids.
So your aunt and uncle were cool with you just going down there? I’m assuming you blew off school most of the time to go down there?
They weren’t OK with it. They definitely were trying to make sure that I was doing the right thing. They were very confused about what I wanted to be. My aunt has always been a really supportive, understanding person even though she was kinda like “What are you? And you wanna dress like this? And I’ve never seen anything like this before.” Because I was dressing like a crazy punk kid and she’s an old-fashioned Puerto Rican woman. I look back on it and I’m definitely sure that she was worried about me. And I definitely got scolded and punished and things like that. I was a force to be reckoned with, for sure. I was really stubborn and I wanted to be around these people who I thought were really inspiring to me.
So how did you break it to your aunt and uncle that you were gonna leave at 17?
Well, I didn’t tell them. I ran away. And that’s definitely, when I look back on it, it was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make. I really regret how much it hurt them and how much it worried them. And like I said, they’ve been so supportive and understanding. And now we can finally talk about it and they will say to me that they’re just happy that I’m happy and that I found my way. Because I was so lost for a while.
So basically it was the day after I turned 17, I left. I had already dropped out of school, and things were really hard because I knew I was hurting my aunt by feeling so lost. And she was confused as to what to do with me at that point. I just told myself that I had to get out into the world. I’m gonna catch a ride with my friends and figure this out and travel around and follow this desire that I had to see the country. I just had faith that I was gonna figure it out. It was definitely heartbreaking to leave and to know that I was hurting them but also to feel so sure that it was gonna be for the best and that I was gonna make them proud somehow. That’s definitely a lot of what drives me today is just feeling like I’ve gotta make these people proud. They really sacrificed a lot for me.
Did you have a destination in mind when you left?
Yeah, I wanted to go to California. That’s when I started riding freight trains—which was a big romantic idea.
Yeah, that’s amazing! That’s like some 1890′s shit. That’s awesome. That’s like Woody Guthrie—I didn’t think people did that anymore.
Yeah, people definitely do. There’s definitely a culture, but it’s pretty secretive because it needs to be. There’s definitely still ways to do it, and there are ways to be safe about it. It was, again, just a childhood fantasy of like “I wanna go out and see the country. I wanna ride freight trains. I wanna do all these things that I feel like I just gotta do.”
Were there any parts of the country that particularly struck you when you saw them for the first time, or anything that you found really beautiful or were taken by?
Montana was so amazing. That I will never forget. That whole area, the sky is so huge. I mean, I’m a city kid — or at least I was more of a city kid then. And going through Montana, I had just never seen real stars before, and that was a totally amazing experience. And also going to parts of California, being in the forest. Those experiences just blew my mind. When you’re with these people that you love and you know you’re safe with and all you wanna do is this common goal of playing music, none of it really shook me. None of the hard parts really got me too down because you’re just so happy to be alive and to be doing what you’re doing.
So tell me about your arrival in New Orleans — when you got there, how you ended up there, and what your first moves were after that.
I first came to New Orleans with a friend of mine. I came in a van with him. He lived there and he said that I could stay with him. But I’d known him from NY, I’d known him for a while—my friend, Andy. And he introduced me to a lot of his friends and he just told me “I really think you would like it down here. I really think you should come with me and check it out.” And I came and spent some time. I was still a little confused about what I was doing.
Coming to New Orleans for the first time was such an amazing experience. I had never been in a city like this before, where everything is just so beautiful and so magical. The culture of the city really took over me, and I felt like “This place is for real.” I met my friends Barnabas and Kaiwa, who I still play music with today, at the railroad tracks because a lot of people would go hang out and play music at night there. And I had a washboard—it’s the only type of instrument I had. But Barnabas was playing the fiddle, and Kaiwa was just an amazing guitarist. I kind of was just, “where did these guys come from,” you know? They’re these young kids, but they’re travelling around and they’re doing this so differently — I really wanna play music with them. They encouraged me to play the washboard — which is a very New Orleans instrument — and that’s kind of how I started — just playing washboard with them and singing sometimes. After that, a couple of other friends of ours started joining — there was an accordion player, a friend of mine was playing the bucket — it just became this really big spectacle. We were called the Dead Man’s Street Orchestra. It was just this really magical part of my life. This was the winter before Hurricane Katrina.
I was kind of wondering when all of this played out in relation to Katrina.
Yeah, this was the winter before that. The summer Hurricane Katrina hit, and we were all scattered at that point. We were not in New Orleans, and we didn’t have very many possessions, because we were travelers. And we were terrified for the people that we’d met and we’d loved, and for this city that we finally felt was a home that we could live and flourish in.
So you weren’t in New Orleans when the hurricane hit?
I was in Montreal at the time — very far away. I was travelling and playing music to support myself. I was actually very unaware of what was going on. When you’re travelling, you can really get stuck in your tunnel and not read a newspaper. Then all of a sudden you tell someone, “Oh, I’m gonna go back to New Orleans,” and they look back at you like you’re crazy and say, “Have you read the newspaper? Because you might not be able to live in New Orleans.” When you’re riding trains, you’re not really connected to what’s going on — you’re just so focused on your trip and trying to get to where you’re going.
It actually took me a while to go back — probably until November. It feels weird to talk about my experience with it, because I was still an outsider at the time. I can’t even imagine what it was like for people who had their homes here and who had settled down. I just remember coming back and saying, “Where is everybody?” It just seemed so empty. I was definitely sure that I wanted to live here, but it was also hard because, when you’re this vagabond kid, you don’t want to be mooching off people. I was asking myself, “How can I really live here, with the way that I make money? I don’t want to be mooching off these people who don’t really have anything right now.” It was a confusing period. But I knew that I cared about it here too much to just not come back.
At what point did you start playing the banjo?
So, yeah, I started out playing the washboard. And I was very serious about it! [laughs]. Because I didn’t know what else to do! So I noticed in our band that there was no banjo — there was a guitar, there was a violin, there was an accordion. And we were travelling through North Carolina, and I just fell in love with the sound of the banjo. When we came back to New Orleans, Walter — who plays in Hurray for the Riff Raff but who I didn’t know very well at the time — he was a musician that I looked up to so much but didn’t interact with very much. Well, he somehow got word that I was looking for a banjo, and he just gave me his old one. And I didn’t know him at all at the time. It was this crazy moment where he gave me this banjo and I was like, “I’ve got to learn how to play this thing, because Walt gave it to me!”
Do you remember the first song you wrote?
Yeah, it was a song called “Lady Lazarus.” And it was a really dark, heavy song! And I remember my friends just being blown away just because they were like, “Whoah, what is that?” And as soon as I wrote that, all these other songs started flooding out of me.
So let’s talk a bit about some of the songs on this new record, which I think demonstrate a real growth past even what you accomplished on It Don’t Mean I Don’t Love You. Were there any songs that gave you particular trouble?
Well, not ‘trouble,’ per se, but we’d never really played “Take Me” all together.
I love that song!
It was really impromptu, the way it came together. I decided that we really needed something a little bouncier on the record, so — I think it was one of the last days we were recording — I said, “Oh, I have this one, too, I wrote this a really long time ago, let me play it for you.” So I played it and then basically I was like, “OK, got it? Cool, let’s record.” It was really on the fly, and it ended up being one of my favorites, too.
You know, it’s bouncy and it feels very “up,” but the lyrics are very dark.
Yeah, that’s something I find myself doing a lot — “Slow Walk” is the same thing. I’m really influenced by traditional blues lyrics, and there’s just something about the lyrics to those old blues songs — they’re almost deceptively simple. You think it sounds really happy, the melody is really happy, but what they’re saying carries a lot of weight.
You know, “Is That You?” is a fascinating song to me—the imagery is so vivid. I was wondering how the concept developed.
Well, the lines just kind of came to me, and then the meaning grew. I wasn’t even sure the lyrics made sense at first, but then they kind of became clearer as I sang it. I think a lot of it relates to New Orleans life. People in New Orleans are really in touch with death for a lot of different reasons, and the longer you live here, the more encounters you have with it. It’s just a fact of life of living here. I think it has a lot to do with that — with getting older, living in New Orleans and becoming familiar with death — letting go of a lot of people you love, but also feeling at the same time like they’re still with you in some way.
I feel like that same idea comes up in the title track, actually — “My best friend in the whole world / is a man who’s dead and gone.”
That song has a lot to do with feeling very connected — and almost dependent — on musicians that are dead and gone. With people who are really inspiring to you that you never even got to meet, but who you feel like are really inspiring to you. They’re the people who have gotten you through really hard times in your life, but you know you’ll never be able to meet them. The older I get and the more I write songs, the more I develop really deep emotion for songwriters who have touched me. And a lot of them I’ll never be able to meet, because they’ve already passed away.
I also wanted to ask you about the idea that, “too much of a good thing will make you numb.”
It’s hard to say where that came from. A lot of these lyrics come to me, and then I understand them afterward. I think that expression can mean a lot of things, but I think it mostly means that sometimes you just take people for granted. I think it’s a lot about relationships, and how you can have this person who’s so special and so amazing, and you realize that you just haven’t really thought about that in a while.
The last song I wanted to ask you about was “Salli’s Song.”
Yeah, Salli Grace was a really, really amazing girl who I actually met when I was a very young traveler. She taught me a lot of good banjo songs, and we bonded over being young and travelling, and playing the banjo — because you didn’t meet very many banjo players! I lost touch with her over time, but when I heard about her again, it was because of her death. She was murdered in Mexico where she had been living for about two years. She was doing a lot of activist work down there — she was about to be 21. She was a really amazing girl, and she left the world in a really horrible way. I thought about it so much, but I never planned on writing a song about it. I just couldn’t get it off my mind — the way that she died. I just really felt bad for the world that we weren’t going to be able to see what she was going to become. And one day I found myself writing this song for her. She just loved old-time music and taught me a lot of old-time banjo songs that suddenly it became clear that Salli would love it if there was an old-time song about her. She deserved one. And she deserved a song that was pretty easy, so that a lot of people could play it, and a lot of people could sing along.
