Lizz Wright and Me... — Vinyl Magic

I feel like the words end up directing me, and I try to let them have their life, and to let them open. They kind of push me, and I have to say I really enjoy listening to Shirley Horn when it comes to the study of space and how to create impact with emptiness. But it’s obviously not empty. There’s something of the smoke of the notes, the sentiment is still moving between the next phrase, the next idea, and I’ve learnt to have a lot of trust in that and interest in it. And it’s honestly very seducing: any kind of experience anyone is having – meditative or trance-like – is really a ripple from what’s actually going on. I try to only sing music that makes me get carried away. It’s learning over the years to run better tests to make sure that they all do that – learning how to write better, and how to become even more emotionally and spiritually available to let that happen.
Lizz Wright
I don’t know, I just get out on the water, you know. There’s so much great energy between the song itself and all the history it carries, all the voices that it’s held in the moment, and the gathering of people in the room, they have a beautiful, electric charge of their own. I literally push the boat out and hop in. I have my body, I have my memory, I have my relationship with these lyrics, I have my imagination. But it’s definitely one of those songs that, because of how it’s written and because of the moment it creates, I’m given so much to move inside of that I don’t feel like it all has to come from me. Between the actual song itself, the moment, and the people in the room and their presence, there’s so much magic and there may be only a difference in just yielding to it and playing with it.
Lizz Wright singing “The Nearness Of You”

Grace (2017) signed by Lizz
My favorite singers tell great stories. You know, Abbey Lincoln is one of my favorites, Nina Simone amazing. Joni Mitchell is so unique. And this is the kind of stuff I'm really attracted to, and I did purposely decide that this record, that I wanted to do less singing and just telling stories that brought something out of me. Singing a story, you're experiencing it. You're not completely in control. You're kind of following it, and it's happening to you, you know, and I love that. I love using my imagination, like closing my eyes and seeing a place or making up a story inside of a song that wasn't there before, and I'm often daydreaming while I'm singing.
Lizz Wright recording Grace
Every time I make a record, I check into Nina’s catalogue, and I also check into Roberta Flack’s catalogue. But the beautiful thing that happened this time around is, it’s also Ella Fitzgerald’s centennial year, so it was all this saturation coming from different ends. I kept thinking about these women, and how they all lived through times where they had to step into their full humanity and express their genius, express their opinion, onstage. I thought about the grace of who they are, especially Nina Simone in this case, because I think all these woman who inspire what I do, have exemplified grace as embodying the possibility that’s not realized around them. It takes a lot of strength to become something that your environment might not embrace or support. In my own way, I’m returning to that gentle, very deep strength of singing from a place of belonging and understanding.
Lizz Wright

Lizz Wright sings Hoagy Carmichael's "The Nearness Of You," Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit," Neil Young's "Old Man," Nick Drake's "River Man," Nina Simone's "Seems I'm Never Tired Losing You" and Led Zeppelin's "Thank You" with equal aplomb and skill, as eclectic a musical amalgam as you’ll find. Her mixture of blues, folk, gospel, jazz and soul is riveting, and her vocal performances are revelatory while transforming these legendary songs. Her approach in reimagining these songs is simple, “You know, by the time you strip a song down to just lyrics and the story that’s inside the lyrics and the first feeling that that provokes in you, you have something personal and you build from there... And it kind of unravels and changes shape on its own as we keep rehearsing it, and I’m learning lyrics and moving the phrases around.” Lizz is also an accomplished songwriter as evidenced by her compositions on six acclaimed releases since her debut in 2003.

Born in Hahira, Georgia, a small hamlet of less than three thousand, Lizz was steeped in the church and the gospel tradition. She grew up singing the pentecostal hymns she learned from her father who was also the church pastor and pianist, and her mother who sang in the choir, "I've been singing in church since I was six - I was drafted into it. My brother and sister and I used to sing as a trio when my dad would preach. If we weren't at home doing homework or chores, we were in the car with our parents and on the way to church and different revivals."

A gifted gospel singer, Lizz participated in several choirs, and as a senior in high school, she won a National Choral Award, "There's something grounding and transcendental about gospel music. Singing it feels like standing in front of the ocean and talking to it like it's kinfolk. I feel seen and understood. It always has me singing something we've all felt or want to say. There are a lot of prayers, tears, hope and blues inside of the gospel tradition, so its offerings are vast, even in the simplest hymn. I'm grateful to come from this tradition."

After graduation from high school, she studied music performance at Georgia State University in Atlanta but left, "I only did one year. When you have a major in music performance, you pretty much have to study classical. So on the side, I would work with small jazz combos so I could learn standards. That's what I really wanted to do." She joined an Atlanta jazz group, In The Spirit, and performed locally before catching the ears and eyes of Verve Records who signed her to a solo contract. She recorded her first album Salt under the auspices of noted producer Tommy LiPuma, drummer extraordinaire Brian Blade and pianist Jon Cowherd. An impressive debut, Salt featured five of her own compositions as well as a song list which reflected her varied influences and interests: "Open Your Eyes, You Can Fly" by Chick Corea, "Soon As I Get Home" from Broadway’s The Wiz, “Afro Blue" by Latin conga master Mongo Santamaria, and "Walk With Me, Lord" from the gospel canon, all my favorite food groups!

Freedom & Surrender (2015) signed by Lizz

Lizz has gone on to work with other distinguished producers on her subsequent releases, Craig Street, Larry Klein, Toshi Reagon and Joe Henry among them. And her tastes have remained as wide open and imaginative as ever, singing Bob Dylan's "Every Grain Of Sand", Jimi Hendrix's "In From The Storm" or the incredibly hip and talented Joan As Police Woman's "Feed The Light" (aka Joan Wasser, a one time Brooklyn neighbor of Lizz).

I saw Lizz perform at the Jazz Standard in New York City in January 2020 before things shut down, including the late lamented (now shuttered) club. It was a treat to see her in an intimate venue, much smaller than the theaters and festivals in which she was used to performing. She was accompanied by her friend and co-conspirator for over twenty years, pianist and organist Kenny Banks, guitarist Chris Bruce, bassist Ben Zwerin and drummer Jack Deboe. Highlights included a sultry “Southern Nights” from the pen of New Orleans wizard Allen Toussaint, much more soulful than the bouncy and buoyant Glen Campbell version, the sumptuous ballad “Stars Fell On Alabama” and an incendiary “Old Man” in which Chris Bruce shredded and channeled the guitar distortion of Neil Young’s Old Black. She also sang a sublime “Walk With Me, Lord,” honoring her gospel roots. It was a compelling night of music.

After the show, I visited with Lizz in her dressing room. At the beginning of her show, she said that she hadn’t performed in a venue this small since she started with pianist Kenny Banks more than twenty years ago, and she mentioned that she had seen shows here when she lived in Brooklyn. “Who did you see here?” I asked. “Oh, lots of great shows, Mingus Big Band on Monday Nights, Bill Frisell, I’m trying to remember the others,” she replied. When I handed her Grace, her most recent release, I asked where the beautiful cover was photographed, “That’s in North Carolina, near where I live now.” Yes, it seems a long way from Brooklyn! I thanked her again for her time and especially her music. There aren’t many artists who can cover Nina Simone or Led Zeppelin as elegantly as she!

An accomplished singer and songwriter of folk, gospel, jazz, soul and everything else, Lizz Wright is as gifted singing secular or sacred. I can’t wait to hear what she sings next.