Lorna Hunt's Sentimental Bedlam is a wish fulfillment record; a wish hard-earned and devotedly executed. The passion that drove her, literally, back and forth between her home in Santa Barbara, CA and Boulder, CO during the year-long recording process with producer Dave Willey (Hamster Theater) is clearly represented in Sentimental Bedlam's ambitious musical landscape.
Fans of Lorna's audiophile awarding-winning debut All In One Day (Classic Records, 1998), will cock a curious ear at Sentimental Bedlam's funky marriage of progressive rock and roll and intensely passionate folk. Alchemical synthesis is the secret weapon here as the non-traditional song structures, suprising shifts in meter and Lorna's awfully nice voice conspire to make perfect organic sense.
Skirting the traditional and just barely claiming the experimental, Lorna's interest lies in the inextricable influence of the personal and the universal in songwriting, and in the expansion of her tender, clarified voice to it's bolder limits.
An interview & article by Johanna Randall Reed
The Santa Barbara Independent, 10/31/2002:
Your first question about Lorna Hunt is probably “Who is she?” She expects this - at the end of her press release she includes the paragraph “Questions You May Still Have About Lorna: Does she like boys or girls? Has she undergone any decorative self-mutilation? Does she know the rules?” But it should be said, that no one will ever really know; those questions are not supposed to be answered. Whether it is because of her coy, downward glances during conversation (and performance), or the enigmatic stories that fuel her songs, Lorna Hunt is Santa Barbara's best-kept secret, even to her fans. With the release of her second album, Sentimental Bedlam this Saturday at Roy, we might hope that some of those questions may be answered. But after one listen to the record, her image and message remain as murky and magical as ever.
The first time I met Lorna Hunt was three years ago, at SOhO, playing songs from her debut album All in One Day. She wore her waist-length hair in two long braids down her back, held together with clothespins. She played introspective folk songs with a lovely, feminine voice. But something about her - maybe it was the patch of hair shaved by her neck, or her penchant to entrance the audience with something never before seen in folkies - suggested a deeper, darker performer lurking within.
Now, sitting in the electric blue dining room of her Mission Canyon home, a spiky halo of bleached-blonde hair framing her face, black boots up to her knees, and her second album sitting between us, it is clear: Lorna Hunt has excavated the most shadowy places of her soul and emerged with an ambitious, genre- and gender-bending identity. But who that is exactly - folk-feminist, drag-king, coy lesbian, showy introvert, hetero-sex goddess, pixie, witch, siren - is not entirely clear.
“I can't stand to be something in particular,” she said, speaking about the stereotype of female singer/songwriters. “I do resist the image of girls with guitars, but that is fundamentally what I am. I play guitar, I sing, I write songs, and yes, sometimes they're sappy. When I first started out, I had long hair, and more feminine ways. I think I used it as a crutch, a mode: cute-girl mode. But two-and-a-half years ago there was a shift. Life was hell here in paradise; and the words 'sentimental bedlam' came out. I knew that was the title of the next record.”
To begin recording what would be a journey through the wilderness of herself (and the backcountry of Colorado at times), Hunt enlisted Dave Willey (of Colorado band Hamster Theatre) as a co-producer. Hunt would drive 900 miles to cut a few tracks of just her voice and her guitar, and Willey would then experiment with different musical instruments and finish the songs. Half the record was done this way. The rest of the songs were begun and produced by Hunt on her own four-track recorder.
The songs unfolded in their own time: “There was no one picture of the record,” she said. “It was each song for its own sake. I'll be playing guitar and some words will come out. When things spontaneously feel good together, tears come out of my eyes. Often times, I don't know what the song is about until much, much later. But the emotion comes first.”
When asked about her penchant for piecing together bits of lyrics that make no logical sense (for instance, “Saturnine I wait for the spark / easy for you / but not so easy for me / bored stiff / unrecoverable”), she said, “I feel sick to my stomach if I have a straight narrative. When I piece it together, if it feels good, it doesn't matter if it makes any logical sense.”
The recording process took a little over one year. The result is music not only outside, but completely unaware, of the usual boundaries. Sprinkling songs with bassoon, clarinet, organ, and patty-cake, Willey and Hunt came up with a record that is both playful and dark. Hunt's tender voice leaps up at points, then lulls into girlish whispers. There is rock-star sass next to vulnerable heartbreak. At one point, Hunt said, “Dave had a misunderstanding that I was trying to make a hit record. I said, 'Let me remind you that we're doing whatever we want. No one has to like it. It only matters that we like it.'” That noted, Hunt says of her new release: “It's exactly what I wanted.”
And now that her record is finally in her hands (after a lengthy comedy of errors with the artwork and manufacturing that pushed back the release nearly a year-and-a-half), Hunt is ready to conquer the world. Or is she? When asked if she wants to become a star, she frowned and said, “I think I should probably decide about that. I can't see beyond a couple of days. I'm tortured by tons of past, but the future means nothing.” She laughs. The few things set in stone are: “Play some gigs, plant some flowers.” Bedlam will be welcomed into being with eight CD release parties up and down the West Coast. “Playing is my favorite thing. It's not a performance, but a mutual engagement. I love being engaged one on one, and that's what playing is. I get shaky talking about it. It's like trying to describe someone you love. There are no words.”
I'M NOT TELLING: During the course of our four-hour interview - in which we consumed three cups of tea, two brownies, and one pomegranate - her life story unfolded, only to provoke more questions. Her stories swung between funny happenings (the wild turkey perched on the telephone pole outside the window), interesting factoids (Anaïs Nin supposedly had sex in the room directly above where we were sitting), and delving into childhood (which she tackles on the song “Kiss Me Goodnight”). Born in Manhattan, high schooled in Hong Kong, and graduated with a BA in music at Naropa University, how exactly she came out West was answered only barely. “I had a friend read my Tarot cards,” to decide if Boston, Los Angeles, or Colorado was the best for establishing a career in music. The fortune: Colorado would provide a modest musical following and a placid life; in Boston, music would eventually fade away. But out here in Southern California: “Life would be hell, music would flourish, and I would find my true love,” Hunt said. “So,” this smitten interviewer asked, “is life hell, is music flourishing, and have you found your true love?” Hunt raised one end of her mouth, bringing her lips into what could be a smirk, a smile, or a look of puzzlement. I sat on the edge of my seat awaiting her response, like it was the password to a secret, magical paradise. Will she finally let me in? “Well,” Hunt said slowly, “I'm going to answer 'yes' to one of those questions . . . ” pause, “but I'm not going to say which one.” Ah, divine mystery.
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