Anda Marie
Celebrating steadfastness.
Anna Vogelzang traded leisurely songwriting retreats for hectic musical-production spurts in preparation for Driftless, a new EP she'll release Nov. 16 at the Old Sugar Distillery. A grab bag of tracks from her work with Real Women, Real Songs, a collective of 20 or so women who compose a new piece each week for a full year, the recording shows just how versatile the local folk artist can be.
At the start of the week, each RWRS artist receives a one-word prompt, then writes a song based on it. Vogelzang declined the offer to participate in the program for the first season and originally said no for the second season. But things changed when she received a last-ditch request from project leader Cary Cooper. Timing was crucial: Vogelzang was on her honeymoon in Paris when she got the message.
"Because she got me while I was on vacation, I was like, 'Oh, sure,'" Vogelzang says. "But it was also a super-scary decision. I was at a point where I could be brave and say, 'I'm going to do this thing that scares me.'"
In January 2014, Vogelzang began publishing a new song every Wednesday. Though the RWRS songs have a variety of different themes, each track on Driftless bears some relation to the others.
"Once you start listening to them as a group, sonically I think [they] work really well as a cohesive unit," she says. "And thematically, things started to kind of come out that I didn't realize."
The new EP features six new songs, four of which Vogelzang wrote for RWRS.
"Most of them are not winners," she says of the 43 songs she's written this year. "When writing [for RWRS], it feels like there's a lot less pressure that when you're writing a 'real song' because... if it's not the one, there will be another one next week."
Vogelzang also says her songwriting isn't quite as precious after working with RWRS. Her previous routine involved going on songwriting retreats and spending months creating an album. Driftless, meanwhile, was created in two and a half weeks. Vogelzang began in the studio, recording the main parts of the songs, then brought in percussion instruments. Count This Penny singer Amanda Rigell joined her for "Vanguard," a song they cowrote. Vogelzang then finished with orchestral additions and background vocals.
Vogelzang describes the album as music of hardships with an underlying spark of hope. It also explores the theme of home. Named for Wisconsin's Driftless region, the part of the state that escaped glaciers, the it's inspired by the concept of steadfastness.
"Each song has this little bit of hope or positivity," Vogelzang says.
Though Vogelzang has released six full-length albums and three EPs over the past several years, Driftless is the first recording she made in Madison. Originally from Massachusetts, she moved to the Midwest after college for a chance to explore. She settled in Madison, calling it her "self-made home."
"I felt like there needed to be some homage to this area because... Madison became a home to me in a way that I haven't been able to connect with other places before," she says.
