John Bommarito: 89.1 WEMU, you're listening to The song break. I'm John Bommarito. That is music from Suit Yourself, the brand-new record from Judith Owen. And Judith Owen joins me again on the program. Hello Judith, how are you today?
Judith Owen: Hi John, it's great to hear your voice again.
John Bommarito: You as well. We spoke last in August of 2024 when Comes Alive was a new release. And since then, you've released a great holiday record with the Judith Owen Big Band and this mighty fine new album called Suit Yourself.
Judith Owen: Yes, indeed. And I've been having a glorious time with both of them, but I must say, this new album feels like it's pulling on all aspects of who I am, hence the title of course, Suit Yourself. So far, and I'm just kicking off, it's been received wonderfully, so I'm over the moon, I really am.
John Bommarito: Well, congratulations on that! The “new” phase, I'm putting new in air quotes you can't see because it's radio, your career kind of began with….
Judith Owen: No, I get it. I hear your quotes. I get them.
John Bommarito: It began with your album, Come On and Get It, back in 2022, which you told me then when we spoke last time, had streams in the multi-millions. So that's good news. That was a good start to shifting.
Judith Owen: Yeah, it's a very good start and this one has been out for three weeks and is at half a million already, so that's pretty great. I must say. Nobody knows how any of these things work anymore when it comes to streams, but all you can tell is that this is healthy. This is good. When you get into the millions you're feeling kind of okay about it
John Bommarito: That is pretty awesome. Well, jazz apparently brings you joy. Did the other phase of your music career, which I'm not sure what to define it as, where I first discovered you, did that bring you a level of satisfaction? Or is this just a different kind of satisfaction.
Judith Owen: Yeah, it's a different kind of satisfaction. It's all brought me satisfaction. There's a difference between feeling a creator's satisfaction and feeling filled up, complete or, you know. There's many things that you can feel and we do feel when we write, perform. They're cathartic. I'm a very honest writer as you know from everything that I've done. I write about my own experiences in life. I've been a singer-songwriter, pianist but those who know me know, clearly as you do, that I have a very very clear backbone or feeling of influence of jazz and blues in everything I've ever done.
Music: “Mind is On Vacation” feat. Joe Bonamassa
Judith Owen: I grew up in a classical environment with an opera singing father who loved jazz and blues and a mother that loved big band and it was, to me, it was like a natural mixing of all those things. They never felt like they were in a different world it was all part of the fabric of my household and of the musical life that we had. And so I've always felt the catharsis of being a musician. It saved my life, seriously, over and over and over again.
I think the word joy is specific to what happened in 2022 during COVID where I decided that it was time to do something I've been putting off for a very long time. Which was to play the songs and to actually not be focusing on my own music, but to completely make an album that was covers of the women who I had grown up idolizing and who had inspired me to be the... sort of braver, bad-ass, you know, the fearless woman that I heard as a kid. Women like Nellie Lutcher and all, but forgotten now, Julia Lee, Blossom Dearie, of course, the Nina Simones, Aretha Franklins. The early women,the Pearl Baileys, Dinah Washingtons. These were all women who were kind of bridging a gap between, let's say, the Ma Raineys, the Bessie Smiths. They were the bridge between that era, when they came into the late 40s, early 50s, that went into the next era, which was very much the jazz where you're an accomplished musician. These women were at the piano and they were killing. And so, their demeanor, what they were putting out there, what they were selling, was just unapologetic joy and just this sense of having fun. Like really, really find finding joy in the face of adversity and I think that is what I felt as a child is this was about finding joy in the hardest of times. That's what these women did, that's what they brought. Then during COVID I went back and I made an album, Come On and Get It, which was really about honoring them because I needed to feel joy. Joy at a time when the whole world was terrified and anxious and didn't know what was going to come next.
So, I realized that this state of joy in the face of adversity was a very important thing. That I needed it. That my audience needed it and that with this album. Having done Come On and Get It, Comes Alive, the big band album for Christmas, I was moving more and more towards that place of finding the respite, the salve, the joy. But what that needed in this album was to actually then return to me at the piano. My music, my songs, and to be able to mix the heightened state of joy also with things that are more introspective. The things that are the blues. The things that are talking about the hard stuff. It's really an album that is about grasping life and living in the moment and appreciating every second of it because you know who knows what will come tomorrow. We have no power over what's been and what's coming. We can only really invest in and enjoy and grasp the present and that really is what it’s about.
John Bommarito: Well, as a long-time fan and a fan of your previous work, sometimes artists like yourself will do a one-off record. They'll do one jazz record and then return to what they've been doing that they got known for. So my question here is, did fans, besides myself, follow along and say, “oh, I love this side too”? Or did you find yourself coming into a whole bunch of new fans who have no idea about your previous records?
Judith Owen: Well, that's what's interesting. Now that I've returned, now that I'm mixing every aspect of myself, including who I've always been, it's always there. Here I am at the piano again, here I am being the writer, here I am the person that's talking about the things that affect me in life. What's happened is that it's opened the door to a significantly larger audience because people wanted what I was offering. I was being in my need and I've always felt that way. It's like if I need joy, if I feel that I need something that distracts me and brings me something else, then I know my audience does too. I know that my audience will follow me. And, luckily, they grew exponentially through those last few albums, because it's still me in it. It's still me in the mix. It's still me doing the arrangements. It's still me being the interpreter of music, but making it personal to me, making it mine. It's still natural to me because it's part of my personality. It was just the last piece of the puzzle, really, that was waiting to be shown to come out.
The thing I remember always since I was a child was wanting to be was to be a truly great performer and entertainer. That was always at the forefront of my mind. My best friend, and I tell my husband, that my true husband is the piano. I had such an extraordinary relationship with this instrument and with my ability to express myself. Seemingly so effortlessly. It's not effortless at all of course, but you know, it seems such a natural thing and it's always been so natural to me to do this. My fans are thrilled to now be hearing me back at the piano doing what I do what they know what they've heard from before. Now with this extraordinary band that I have around me of players who are, by the way not just jazz not just blues not just gospel but everything else too. And that is the point I think. It's like watching John Batiste winning you know best Americana album in the Grammys. My feeling about this is that you should be able to do whatever you do that you're great at. The thing that is natural to you. The thing that you do in your style, your way that you make personally your own, that you own. And I don't see these boundaries and these lines like the business does. And I'm thrilled to see people like Batiste, blurring them and going in between them. It's what I've always wanted. And I guess I got to fulfill some of my dreams and fantasies, you know, with Come On and Get it and then with the big band and now here I am returning.
Long answer to a short question, but happily I've reached so many more people. The nice part of this is that now all these people who have discovered me in this jazz and blues world are now going to my catalog and discovering my music from 13 albums back. They're now discovering those things and becoming fans of that. So everything is coming up along the same time. It came as a big of a surprise to me as it would to anybody. The fact I'd made this left turn and just did something that felt right and felt like it was a long time coming. Because what it did is it, it allowed me to, to complete myself. That sounds so corny, but it was like the last piece of the puzzle. It really was getting up from behind the piano and being that big entertainer up front. That front woman. It is an extraordinary thing that happened. It was an extraordinary act of freedom. I became uninhibited in a way that I'd never experienced before. So when I say joy, I mean joy.
It's interesting as an artist. You can be at the piano, you can be performing, you could be doing what you do. Music has always given me, the performing has always given me such great pleasure. But I must admit, I have never felt the level of pleasure and joy that I feel currently, whether I'm standing up singing with the band and interpreting, or whether I’m at the piano myself performing my own songs. It has changed. A switch has flicked on. And it's quite wonderful, again, to be able to enjoy the moment you're in. That's not something you can always do when you perform. And I know anybody listening this who's an artist will know exactly what I'm talking about.
Song: Blue Skies
John Bommarito: My guest today on The Song Break is Judith Owen. I'm John Bommarito. You're listening to 89.1 WEMU. You did mention something in that last answer, something about when you were younger. It made me remind myself that when we spoke last time, you thought you were going to become an actress when you're younger. Do you think you'll explore that later? Is there gonna be time for that?
Judith Owen: Funnily enough, and this doesn't come as a surprise either, really, when you think about it, but the very nature of being up front and center and getting out from behind the piano, that was like a blast of my acting skills, my dancing skills, my movement skills, everything that I had learned.
I went to one of those Brit schools where I did drama, dance, music, but the least of it was the music. Although it was where it actually encouraged me to turn my focus towards music completely, because until then it had just been a private thing. I use every aspect of that now. That is really what has happened, and I think you always are, when you interpret music, when you are in the live situation, I think, you are an actor. In so much as I'm not saying you're pretending, I'm not saying, you're making it up, but you are…the very nature of interpretation of trying to, or rather I am anyway, wanting people to really feel what you feel, really understand the lyrics, really be enacting it. That is something I have always done. Now that I'm standing up front and center on stage, it's really there. My Goodness, you know, to come out from behind my safety blanket, the piano, which it always has been my anchor, to be, you know, vulnerable up there, up on stage. That is an act of a high wire, and it is something where the ability to act and be yourself and yet someone else, that is what it's all about.
It really, really is. And so, it again has come full circle. Here I am again. I'm doing all the things I've learned to do since I was a kid. It has all come around in a big circle. And as it happens, I'm actually going to be going to London and Europe to do a bunch of shows during summer. But I'm also going to in my wonderful husband's musical about J. Edgar Hoover, a comedic musical. It's just fantastic. It is going to running in London. So actually I have a role in that. Small role, but it's a huge song that I get in a very, very funny role. So acting to me is something that I naturally slip into. I'm thrilled to be doing it again but i don't have I don't t feel like I've ever not done it, because I think it is been part of my skill set. It's part of what I do every time I get on stage.
John Bommarito: Well, given that this jazz career that you've more or less just started, why didn't you start your career that way in the first place If it brings you so much joy? Considering what you grew up listening to in your home, that seems like it would have been the natural path.
Judith Owen: Well, it might, except the one piece of information missing is that I was very ill with depression and with a family hereditary mental illness that swept through my family.
John Bommarito: Sorry
Judith Owen: No, it's a fact and I have to say I'm very…can you imagine my life without music? So, what music really meant to me and became to me was the way that I could express myself. And actually, you can almost, I've said this in the past, you could almost follow my health and where I am and how I'm doing with each album you can see me getting better and being able to express myself more fully. It was a form of therapy. I don't know of anybody who it hasn't been a form of therapy, too. When you speak to somebody like James Stanley, he's a perfect example of when you hear him talking about it. It's sort of like... so many of us. I would say the vast majority of artists are doing it because it's the best form of self medication we can find and it's a survival mechanism. And so, I didn't have the wherewithal, the confidence, the ability to actually inhabit that place, that person, and to connect with that joy. I couldn't do it because...there was too much noise in my own head. There was too much rumination, too much self-doubt, self-loathing.
There was too much self-criticism for me to be able to actually be present and to have that confidence and it has taken literally my life to get to a point where I could just say I'm going to do it because I've reached a point where I don't care whether you like me or not. And if you get it, you do and if you don't, tough. But this is who I am and I'm showing you everything now, warts and all, and it's not gonna be from behind the safety, just behind the safety of a piano. It's going to be the big bold person that I always wanted to be since I was a child who I saw myself as being but couldn't quite reach. Well I finally reached that place and I am that person because I always was, but I was derailed both by circumstance. By things that happened in my childhood and by an illness that I had to really, really get control of and manage. I'll never be out from under that, but my life is one where it doesn't rule me, it's not my identity. I'm not a victim of it, I never wanted to be, but I needed to know how to live with it in a way that, like I said, allowed me to really be a joyful person, because I know the dark place, I know the darkness. It's why I so appreciate being somebody who on my 15th album has finally, I believe, reached the place that I'd always wanted to reach.
All I ever wanted was to be well. To be well and to be doing this thing that is the love of my life every day of my life. That was my dream and here I am actually doing it and, surprise! surprise! I am now reaching more people and being more appreciated than I ever have been in my entire career for being exactly who I am which is just sort of like empowered woman in a suit and a fedora swaggering on stage and also being incredibly vulnerable and real, but being all aspects. Hence why the album is called Suit Yourself. We're not just one thing, we're so many things. So many grays. People aren't one or the other. We're not good and bad. We are not beautiful or monsters. We are so complex and we have so many parts to us. And that's really the thrill of it all is that the minute you open up and say who you are and all these things you are, and all your faults and all your graces and beauties, you'll find that there are people going, “oh gosh, me too.” Or forget me too. I get that. I start with that. I see that. I know that. I thought I was the only one that wasn't invited to the party. Well guess what? There is no party. We're all struggling. It's just smoke and mirrors and social media.
It's an extraordinary thing to now be playing these shows and to be having a career that's just getting bigger all the time. And to have young women come up to at the end of a show and say, “how do... I want to be as confident as you. How do you do it?” And it makes me want to cry, because I think about myself at their age, I think of myself as a teenager, and how I appeared to the world, which was always confident and together, but how unbelievably flawed and damaged I was. And it makes me realize, again, this full circle…that's what I heard in these women that I loved. That's what I wanted for myself. And so I take pride and joy in being able to say to all ages of people but most definitely these young women that you're enough, you don't have to please everyone, you're not here to be a pleaser, you are here to live your life exactly who you are, how you are, the way you are.And don't go through life thinking that you have to be loved by everybody. And that you have to please everybody, basically, why would everybody love you? That's not right, but if you're like me, you'll suddenly hit this moment where you realize that, like I said, if people get you, if they love what you do, they love who you do. They get you. That's it. That's, that's it, and if they don't, fine. It's all right. There's plenty to go around. And that’s the most liberating thing I can share in this world. The most liberating.
John Bommarito: I'm glad you found your way to this place in your life I'm so happy for you because yes, you
Judith Owen: No, believe me I am too.
John Bommarito: You and I both struggled with that demon.
Judith Owen: Those demons, they will kill you because the unseen demons, the ones that you can't go and get an operation for or physiotherapy for or figure out what the hell's going on, those unspoken, shameful demons will kill you.And I saw how they destroyed my family. I know this very, very well. So like I said, I'm grateful every day that I wake up when I don't have that. And I'm so grateful to be at this part of my career where I can't believe that it just gets better and better and better because finally I can feel everything properly. And I know there's a lot of people that will hear this and they know exactly what I'm talking about. You can have all the success in the world. If you can't feel it and if you can't appreciate it and the minute you stop doing the thing, you know the minute you walk off stage or the minute, you know, you go home for work or whatever you just feel like another failure and you know that you just are filled with that rumination. That isn't life. And so I really, really do appreciate it and I'm so grateful for everything that's happening right now. I'm still always managing this stuff. I'm learning, I'm always moving forward, but I'm... I'm now doing everything in my powers that I can do and want to do and need to do now that I'm in this frame of mind.
Song: Moanin
John Bommarito: Judith Owen is my guest today on The Song Break. A brand new album called Suit Yourself came out in April. Right out of the package I said, “Oh, I'm gonna be adding some of these songs to my playlist!” And that happened pretty much immediately. Some of these were familiar songs obviously. There's covers, there's originals. It's good combination of both.
I doubt you remember this from our last conversation, but I asked you whether you thought your next album might be a duets record and your answer was something along the lines of I was reading your mind, you're definitely going to have duets on the next record, which ended up being your Christmas record,. You do have some collaborations on this record. It's just not a proper duets record. Joe Bonamassa is on here.
Judith Owen It's not a duet, no, it's not duet's record, but the duet that is there is, I think, the gem of the album, which is with Devell Crawford on Today I Sing the Blues.
Song: Today I Sing the Blues
Judith Owen: Devell Crawford is somebody who comes from the church. New Orleans, born and bred. Every note out of his mouth, every note that he plays on the piano or the hand organ feels like you've gone to a place. A divine place. A higher place. I'm not a religious person that way, music is my religion, and that's the reason why is because it makes me feel like I'm almost like touching something on a higher level. I think that's what music does for us all. But Devell is so extraordinary. I've been a fan of his since I first came to New Orleans and it turns out he was of mine too, of my songs and my writing. So, it was about time and we finally collaborated last year and a show and sang together. It's just the chemistry it's just the lightning in the bottle when you get that, and so I had to do that, absolutely had to.
John Bommarito: Did you record this album down in New Orleans?
Judith Owen: Oh yeah, every single thing. Every single thing, I don't believe I could make this like... I've been saying since Come On and Get It, I couldn't do this kind of music…when I say this kind music. I found my home. I've found my musical home because New Orleans isn't just about jazz and blues and gospel and anything else on that end of things. It's about classical and folk and it's an extraordinary gumbo. I mean that suits it of course, but I've never seen anywhere that has more music on any one night of every type. The community around here is one that is supportive and embracing of everybody else people want you to do well they want to be your fan they want the support this is a music scene. I can only describe as being the most nurturing and inspiring and it's positively buzzing with that electrical energy . So I found my home down here long since.
I've been working with the fabulous John Fishback for a long time now and I met him down here and could not believe that he had recorded - he was the engineer on Songs and the Key of Life, Stevie Wonder. Which is, of course, a seminal album, but pretty much that's one of the albums that got me through my darkest times when I was a kid. So that's what I'm talking about. And when we're talking about somebody that brings the joy, there's a fine example in Stevie Wonder of a person who both in ecstatic joy and also in soulfulness and sadness in his music. That is the bringer of joy right there, of life. And so, it just became a natural progression. And then when I did this album, Come On Get It, of course here they all were. All these remarkable players who knew exactly when you're talking about 40s and 50s jazz and blues. We had to curate and find them, but they're all here and they became The Callers, The Gentlemen Callers who are now The Callers. They're a sublime group of musicians and it's interesting because they're all extraordinary individual players, but somebody like my drummer and someone who I co-wrote the last track on the album, Inside Out, which to me is a summation of what this is all about and of being your authentic self. But I share Jamison, and I'm very happy to say, with John Batiste, Snarky Puppy, and I think Boz Scaggs. It's kind of like he's one of those people who he plays with so many different people. He's played in so many styles, because he is just an artist through and through in his own right. A Grammy-nominated artist in his own right and great singer and composer.
That's who you meet down here. That's who you get to work with are people who have great knowledge of many genres, of many styles, of all eras who are musicologists in many ways. It's a thrilling place and the studio down here, I must say, Esplanade, has become my home now for some years. Before that was Piety and then John. That was sold and then John went to Esplanades and that's continued. So it, like I said, it's an nurturing place for somebody like me who wants to move in all these different directions but still keep it in my wheelhouse with my sound and my personality.
John Bommarito: Final question. You may not know this because you have team working for you. So, you may be paying attention, but how's the support from jazz radio and PR radio going across the country here in the U S do you know?
Judith Owen: Well, I do know that I have never had as much love and support as with the radio reaction to this album today. I'm on my way to go to LA and do a big show for Sirius for Mark Ruffin which is just thrilling. That's a different thing I know, but I can only talk about what's going on across the board. This is just the beginning of it. We're talking, It's been out for three weeks, it has streamed half a million already which I think is pretty good. And so this is the beginning, so you know, now it's a matter of just, you know, those singles come out, the music videos go out, and I come and get on the road. And then, you know you're looking at the whole this year and the whole next year. During which time I'll be writing the next album anyway. That is the love and the push that you hope for, but I think the reaction to it has been extraordinary. And worldwide reaction, I cannot believe, I mean, it's really quite something to see. I went to France and every magazine and newspaper did a feature on it. It was an extraordinary thing. I've just done an op-ed for Billboard who are just loving it. So, you know, I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that it continues and more people jump on and become my champion because ultimately that is what this is all about. It really is about a real thing, it's not smoke and mirrors, it is about people really connecting with it and that's the audience but that's radio people, that's journalists, that's everything. It can only grow from a real place.
John Bommarito: You've got my support here at WEMU, and you will for many years to come. Judith, such a pleasure to speak to you again.
Judith Owen: You're always such a great interviewer. Thank you so much for having me on.
John Bommarito: My pleasure. I look forward to eventually you returning to Ann Arbor. It's got to happen.
Judith Owen: Oh, me too. Gosh, at some point, let's hope next year I'll be back.
John Bommarito: All right, maybe sooner.
Judith Owen: Thanks, love, thank you.
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