On March 3^rd, Joe’s Pub, located in New York City, alternative folk rock singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Serena Jost unveiled her current CD Closer Than Far.

“It was a wonderful night and we really filled the place out. All kinds of people, both whom I knew and whom I didn’t know, came out. People who were on the record and a smattering of other people who have been playing with me recently, were all on stage, at different intervals. The setting (of Joe’s Pub) is so great, because you can put on a real show. I enjoy playing smaller venues, but Joe’s Pub is the perfect size. We caught a wave and you don’t always know if you are going to,” says Jost, in recalling the night of her CD release.  

Although it is still early, some songs are emerging as early fan favorites. “A lot of people like the intro to “Jump,” when I use a made up language. People relate (well) to the cello and the voice combination (in “Jump”).  “Awake In My Dream,” comes out for a lot of people, and I don’t know why exactly. People also like the Iris Dement cover (“Our Town”). The original version of “Our Town,” is longer, but I edited it down a lot. Our version is totally different, but people enjoy the way that we have done it. A lot of people enjoy “Halfway There,” because it is catchy, and it is a real pop song. “Stowaway,” seems to be something that people relate to on an emotional level,” says Jost.

Serena Jost is a very accomplished storyteller whose lyrics do not leave the listener grappling with vague metaphors or symbolism, but instead are easy to follow, and more importantly easy to relate to. However, Jost’s music is not totally dependent on her skills as a lyricist, far from it. She is a wonderfully creative composer. Although Jost’s music is closer to an alternative folk rock style than anything else, there is no mistaking the fact that she often borrows from her classical training as a cellist, as she did with the song, “Awake In My Dream.”

The song “Jump,” is introduced by 1:40 of Jost playing somber tones on her cello and uttering words that I guarantee, you have never heard before. She explains, “I grew up speaking a Swiss dialect in the Midwest (her parents are Swiss). A lot of people, who know me, and are (aware) of that fact, think that (in the song) I am singing in my dialect, which completely cracks me up. It is actually a true story, but I make up the language every time. The story is the same, but the language changes. I have this screwball side of me, so I really enjoy entering that moment, where it is just me and the cello. I have no idea what is going to happen in the next segment. 

The song, “Jump,” also features Jost playing the keys and guitarist Julian Maile lets loose with some incredible riffs that sure sound pretty edgy and rock driven, for a guy wielding a classical guitar.

“He (Maile) is an incredible guitarist and one of the things that I like about Julian is he will never rest on his laurels, or do the same thing twice. He goes for it full on, and sometimes he just rams it up against the wall. More often than not, the risk totally pays off. That’s one of the things that I really love about him. We have very little need for communication. I can bring a song to a rehearsal and he drops into the center of it.  In the studio (when it came to) “Almost Nothing,” I remember saying to him, ‘I want you to move a wall with the solo, as if you were moving a boulder or something.’ That’s all that I said, and then he did his thing. He takes chances and he doesn’t fear the outcome, which is why I think you get some of those really vital moments,” says Jost. 

Serena Jost also invited her friend, alternative pop artist Greta Gertler to join her for the song “Almost Nothing,” and that led to Gertler recommending to Jost that a third New Yorker, Alice Bierhorst join Gertler in providing the backup vocals.

Jost recalls, “When we got to the studio I was really excited about the timbre of Alice’s voice. (On the other hand) Gretta’s voice is quite ethereal. She is a high soprano, and I wanted to create a counterweight to the guitar solos (in “Almost Nothing”). On one hand, I wanted the song to be monolithic, and on the other hand I wanted it to be very breezy.”

Jost describes her song, “Vertical World,” as being, “very bombastic,” and says it elicits a lot of toe tapping from her audience. If the fact that she makes up a language for “Jump,” is not enough to convince you that Jost will go to places where few are brave enough to go, to find inspiration for her songs, then wait until you hear the story behind “Vertical World.”

“The song started when someone I know in Atlanta Georgia sent me a postcard with a peach on it. The peach had hands, legs and a little face. I was sitting at the keyboards at the time and there was a sub line that came into my head. I didn’t know what it was for, but it just kept knocking. Often a line like that gets discarded, but it can be the key to the song,” she says, once she finally stops laughing, from my teasing her about her sources for inspiration.

Jost says, “The content of “Vertical World,” is really focused on New York City, about living here, and the excitement of living here (right on cue sirens start to wail in the background) It is about how small you are in the (midst) of the whole thing. It is about the various postures that people assume to survive (the sirens get louder). The song is meant to poke some fun, and at the same time (she then digresses) You can hear the vertical wall sound effects out the window here (referencing the sirens) On the one hand the song is really cajoling, and on the other hand, the line about the writing on the wall is serious. People come to urban places or move to places to quest or look for something. There’s this (she quotes the chorus), “New questions, pictures, places / Moods unfinished, find yourself saying things / New questions, pictures, places / Vertical world.” It is about everything that is unfinished. It is like the survival of the fittest.”

While “Vertical World,” is a song about making adjustments and learning to cope with life in the Big Apple (even if it was inspired by a peach), the song “Awake In My Dream,” is quite different. “The song is really intense. In families, there are a lot of patterns throughout the generations. There are possibilities and restrictions. The song is meant to be dreamy. I drop beats and things, and in the verses, I drop to three beats instead of four. I didn’t want it to be linear. “Awake In My Dream,” literally means watching myself dream, but it is also about being awake in my view and my hope. It is lucid dreaming and lucid wakefulness. That is what I am after with that song,” says Jost.

Talking cheerily and at an up-tempo pace, Jost theorizes as to why people are drawn to her music, “I think that I have an advantage, because people love the cello. When people pick up a guitar (she is also a guitarist), there is that first chord and you know what is going to happen, but with the cello they are asking, ‘What is going to happen now?’ The cello is also a beautiful sounding instrument, with which people are enamored, by the time you are finished tuning it. 

“I grew up on classical music and that was where I was headed, but I always found it difficult, because in classical music you have to behave in a certain way. (We share a laugh when I suggest, don’t you just hate that?) Playing the cello came very early, because different members of my family play string instruments, and we would play quartets and trios in our living room, sometimes (she is laughing), to greater effect and sometimes to lesser effect. I had these cello lines that were more like bass lines, and I got bored, so I started to create another line singing. I tried to come up with something that wasn’t written for all of the other parts. That is where that started for me,” Jost says in explaining her transformation from a classically trained cellist, to an artist with well-crafted alternative folk rock tunes. 

For those readers in New York City you can catch Serena Jost at Barbes, in Brooklyn, on July 10^th, while those of you on the west coast may want to dial into the Los Angeles’ WKHZ, a station which recently has aired some of Jost’s new songs.