Anais Mitchell on music, gig in our 'beautiful town' and a 'series of serendipitous surprises'

On Thursday, June 9, Bonny Light Horseman comprised of Anais Mitchell, Eric D. Johnson, and Josh Kaufman saddles up for a return to Portsmouth for a gig at The Music Hall. The group will stretch things out a little bit as a quintet this time around with the addition of bass and drums (as opposed to the trio format they’d been riding with for a while, which included their last area performance at Prescott Park last summer).

Seacoastonline caught up with old friend Anais Mitchell to discuss the roots of the band, bringing a contemporary, celestial light to old traditional tunes, what’s in store for the band from a recording standpoint following their 2020 eponymous debut, and the anxieties associated with touring during a pandemic (with a few other things thrown in for good measure).

Seacoastonline: I kind of understand the back story of you guys coming together due to the forced realization that you needed come up with a set to facilitate a festival slot you were granted (feel free to correct me if I’ve got that wrong), but I’m genuinely curious how the idea even percolated at all. How’d you know Josh and Eric prior to the Bonny Light Horseman arrangement?

Mitchell: It wasn’t exactly random, like I think we were on a cosmic path to make music together, but the whole thing was sort of expedited by Justin Vernon and Aaron Dessner inviting us first to play a set at the Eaux Claires festival, and then take part in this beautiful artist residency in Berlin (both in the same magical summer).

They offered us the festival set before we even had a band name, and by the time the Berlin residency was done we had half a record. But basically, I had started playing with Josh when we were both living in Brooklyn, both with a shared love for traditional music and maybe just a mystical interest in each other musically. I had just discovered and fallen in love with Fruit Bats when Josh said, hey, I’m thinking we should ask my friend Eric to make this music with us, and I was like, YES, let’s do this. And from there it was kind of a series of serendipitous surprises. For example, I had no idea it would feel so right to sing harmony with Eric.

Seacoastonline: How has your collective relationship progressed over the last few years? I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a “super group” seemingly have so much innocent fun together.

Mitchell: We never really identified with that phrase “super group,” though I get why people would use it, since we are all three of us deep into our other careers at this point. But the music and the band and our whole story has felt so intuitive and organic, and also, the music itself, both the reimagining of trad stuff and the co-writing we’ve done for our new record, all feels like some kind of exercise in the blurring of the margins of the self, the exact opposite of a “super group” which to me is a collection of individuals kind of wearing their identities front and center, if that makes sense.

Seacoastonline: Speaking of that budding relationship, what did this whole pandemic do to the working element of the band? You guys got a few gigs in following the release of your debut record before the world shutdown. Was it weird to pick the support of that record back up 12 to 18 months later? Were you jonesing to go, or have the shows since been a more casual engagement? How do you get back “into the swing of things” after such a long, forced layover? I know there’s nothing to compare it to, but I’m curious what the experience was like.

Mitchell: We did a brief and glorious tour at the beginning of 2020, and then it was game over for the touring of that first record. But honestly, I was super pregnant for that tour, and we had planned a long time out anyway for my maternity leave. Josh and his wife Annie also had twins less than a year after that, so I think from a family standpoint it was a bit of a blessing in disguise that we had all that forced time at home. I guess the return to touring has been ,,, well, there’s delight in the fact that it’s still fun, and we’re not sick of the songs on that first LP because we didn’t tour them to death. But also, touring is really different right now. We canceled part of our January tour this year due to Omicron, and the rest of the tour we did in accordance with super tight protocols, no visitors, no restaurants, etc. It can feel like “did we really just play New York?” Because we basically just saw the venue. And who knows how long we are gonna be living like this… it’s VERY real for touring musicians; the anxiety of not knowing whether a positive case is going to shut down a tour or not.

Seacoastonline: In the midst of establishing Bonny Light Horseman, you’d been quite busy launching an acclaimed Broadway musical (Hello, “Hadestown”), and, hey, you’ve even dropped a new solo record for the first time in what feels like forever. Do you thrive off this type of creative madness?

Mitchell: I know it feels crazy, but I assure you it’s not! I spent more than a decade working on "Hadestown" and I remain a very slow songwriter. I do think different projects sort of balance each other out. After all that time working in a really methodical and tight way on "Hadestown," I was utterly healed by the looseness of Bonny Light Horseman. It also felt amazing to make a solo record after so much time away.

Seacoastonline: What do you appreciate about the collaborative nature of Bonny Light Horseman with regard to piecing together the material, which includes recreating centuries old folk tunes? It feels like a pretty unique experience and arrangement. I’d love to hear your insight into how the songs come together.

Mitchell: Our first record is almost entirely interpretations or reimaginings of trad songs, especially when it comes to the text. We wanted to go about it not as some kind of research project, that is, we wanted to fully inhabit the songs as the humans we are today, and also, we wanted for there to be a lot of spaciousness. Josh especially, but a lot of the players on that record, really thrive on improvisation, and there’s something about the framework of those songs that’s like, there’s infinite, epic space in which to play.

I will say we’ve recorded and are planning to release in the fall a second LP, and these songs are all original co-writes. They’re meant to live in the trad multiverse, to be in conversation with those old songs, and there’s a *little* bit of “love and theft” in there, a la Dylan or the Dead or Gillian Welch. I think we’re all really enthused by the ancient stuff and how it informs the new stuff that wants to flow out of our own mouths and fingers. As a band we are all in on every song, all hands on deck. Someone may bring the idea, but we’re all in the sandbox together and it feels like a very “yes and” process of following a song where it wants to go with each other.

Seacoastonline: What’s the power of vocal harmonies within a song structure from your perspective? For me, vocal harmonies have the ability and power transcend the song itself. You guys have such wonderful harmonies. Your voices complement each other so well. I forgot where I was going with a question here.

Mitchell: For me as a singer, singing with Eric makes me sing better, harder, more from the heart sometimes, because I think it makes me feel less self-conscious about the minutiae of my own expression, it’s like our voices are these two rivers that flow together. I had no idea it would be like that to sing with Eric. We’re both lead singers with kind of intense laser beam voices, it could easily go awry, but somehow it feels right.

Seacoastonline: Can we talk about Josh’s guitar playing for a bit? I think it’s somewhat understated, but man, that dude is like a master mechanic. He knows just what the vehicle needs (and how to install it without looking it up on YouTube).

Mitchell: Yeah, Josh, is capable of this crazy power with the guitar, sometimes standing on stage with him I feel I'm like standing next to a wild storm, this force of nature that is his playing. But he also can and does play with great tenderness and his ears are just wide open all the time, he’s feeling what the song wants THIS time, what the room wants, etc. Very special player! Also, Josh is the producer of our albums (and on a separate note, produced a record for me and one for Eric during the pandemic).

Seacoastonline: You guys are playing The Music Hall here in Portsmouth (a place you’re no stranger to) on Thursday, June 9. What excites you about the gig? What do you guys get out of spending time on a bandstand together? Again, it seems like you’re collectively having so much fun.

Mitchell: Oh man, yes, that’s just it, we are collectively having a wonderful time. We’re about to embark on this month-long support tour for Bon Iver (who we adore), so most of the shows in June are support sets. But we managed to squeak in four headlining shows on that tour, so I think we’re all looking forward to being able to stretch out a bit, play more of our catalog. We have an amazing support artist on that show, Allegra Krieger, who I’ve never met but so excited to see and hear. Also, I love Seacoast New Hampshire and am grateful that the music community there has welcomed us a couple times now, even though we haven’t even trotted around the country that much!

Do you have any different feeling about getting to step out on to a stage at all following a period of forced time off? Perhaps the time away recharged the batteries a bit?

Mitchell: I think the thing is right now absolutely no one takes for granted how miraculous it is to play music, with people you love, for people gathered in a room. It’s this ancient precious ritual. Man, we feel so lucky to do it.

Seacoastonline: What can folks expect when they come out to see you play this time around?

Mitchell: The three of us will be joined by JT Bates on drums and Michael Libramento on bass. Allegra Krieger opens. We are so thrilled to share music in your beautiful town.

For further exploration, check out bonnylighthorseman.com and themusichall.org for tickets.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Anais Mitchell, Bonny Light Horseman at Music Hall in Portsmouth, NH