Take an eclectic trio of singer / songwriters, fridge magnet poetry and an assortment of instruments that includes, glockenspiel, harmonica, Wurlitzer, tambourine, drums, piano, a broom on a bucket, an egg beater, a tuning fork, a pan flute, a toy piano, electric guitars, a fiddle, Hammond B3 organ, ukulele, acoustic guitar and a toy piano, and you have a fun, album, Your Heart Is A Glorious Machine, which showcases the beautiful harmonies of, Ruth Ungar Merenda, Aoife O’Donovan and Kristin Andreassen, collectively known as Sometymes Why.
“Ruth, Aoife and I have been friends since 2001. We met through our playing with other bands, Uncle Earl (Kristin), The Mammals (Ruth) and Crooked Still (Aoife). At the time I was dancing with a dance company called Footworks. (Percussive Dance Ensemble) and that is how I met Ruth. Aoife and Ruth met each other, because they were singing together in a band called The Wayfaring Strangers, and then I met Aoife when I was spending a lot of time in Boston where there is a really great folk community. All three of us met socially through being at parties with our bands, hanging out, playing music and singing together at those parties. We liked playing together and by that time, Uncle Earl, Crooked Still and The Mammals were playing fulltime. Those bands all played straight upbeat string band music that had a certain sound that focused mostly on traditional music. Each of us had stockpiles of original songs which we hadn’t been playing out in public, and we started playing them together one night at a party, when we realized that they sounded pretty with each other’s harmonies, so we thought that we should book ourselves a gig. We played at the Sidewalk Café in Manhattan, New York, in 2005. I guess New York is kind of the spiritual home of the band, and even though none of us lives in New York City, we say that we are from New York, because that is where we started jamming together, and that is where we played at the Sidewalk (Café) a couple of times that spring,” Andreassen recalls.
Sometymes Why’s first album was not planned and in some senses was almost a bootleg recording. “Our first record was made somewhat accidentally, when we were rehearsing for a gig. We put a microphone up in the room to record the rehearsal and then we ended up really liking the recording a lot so we released it as an album (self titled, 2005),” says Andreassen.
Andreassen, O”Donovan and Merenda, all have either solo careers or gigs with other bands, and Sometymes Why is a collaborative effort. Think of them if you will, in a similar light to what George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbinson, Tom Petty and Bob Dylan accomplished when they formed the Traveling Wilburys, only instead of this being a rock / pop collective, Sometymes Why’s music ranges from a rootsy folk sound to mellow folk rock melodies.
Andreassen explains, “Sometymes Why is always going to remain a part-time band for the three of us. We don’t do it fulltime and it is not our main focus. It is more like a labor of love and something that we want to stay fun. In a way it is our social time, combined with our work and our musical time. If we can go out on the road and make a little bit of money that’s great. We have all shifted a little bit, Aoife has gone even deeper into the Crooked Still work than maybe she was a couple of years ago and Crooked Still is going to be touring fulltime in the coming year. Ruth got married and had a baby, and she doesn’t tour with The Mammals, instead she tours as a duo with her husband. I have been playing more solo shows and I also have a solo album called Kiss Me Hello (which she produced), which Ruth and Aoife sing on. It is just a record of my songs. I toured on Prairie Home Companion last fall and I have been doing more shows with just me. Uncle Earl is taking a break this year, but we are going to do a month long tour in the fall.”
Then Andreassen adds a humorous afterthought, “My schedule is really crazy. The job of being a musician is scheduling and hauling gear (she laughs). That is what we get paid for, and we play for free.”
With three very good songwriters each of them possessing outstanding vocals, one might think that egos might be easily bruised, but Andreassen quickly dispels that notion, “We think of ourselves as a band with three songwriters, and we are equal in that respect. When we play, we sit down and we play around one mic. We take turns and we get up to move to the centre chair, when we are going to sing a song, while the other two women do the background singing. When we do a set list, we each sing an equal number of songs and when we record we each do three and if we don’t we each record four.”
“The Stupid Kiss,” is a song that Kristin Andreassen penned and she takes the lead vocals, as she accompanies herself on acoustic guitar. “The song started with refrigerator magnets. I like magnetic poetry. I lived in a house with some other dancers and we had a lot of parties (during one of them) somebody, I honestly don’t know who, wound up writing the bridge to that song (using the magnets). Everyday I would stand in the kitchen and stare at these two phrases, “single kiss,” and “infinite paradise.” (she laughs) That stuck in my head for a couple of years and it was there staring me in the face. The rest of it came about, as kind of a game with things that would be impossible. I started brainstorming images. It is kind of like emotional bravado, (such as) ‘hey look what I can do,’ when in fact we can’t help it if we get heartbroken, or feel weak and insecure. Things happen in our relationships and things get messed up, but this song is my attempt to brag my way out of heartbreak. I can fix it or I can make it like it never happened. Then the bridge came up. I think the bridge’s usual function in a song is to be the opposite of what the song is saying (she laughs). It is to take the opposite view point. The rest of the song is saying don’t worry about it, I am over it, let’s get back to normal, and then the bridge is saying I’m not (over it),” she says.
