Music making, before and after the pandemic
When she recorded her latest album, California & Other Stories, songwriter and guitarist Megan Slankard decided to try something new. “On my last album, Running on Machinery, I brought my band into the studio, Oakland’s Tiny Telephone, for a couple of weeks. [We] perfected the songs, before I flew [producer] Alex Wong out [from Nashville]. My parents stopped by and brought us burritos,” recalled Slankard. “It was fun to be creating together. One of my favorite things is to be in the studio, with people you love and respect.”
Since most of the songs on California & Other Stories deal with the end of a relationship, Slankard wanted to take a more intimate approach to the recording process. She flew down to Wong’s studio in Nashville, only taking along Kyle Caprista, the drummer from her band. There, she worked with Wong to produce the songs.
“It’s a break up album,” Slankard said, “but I wanted to pull from all aspects of my life. There’s climate change, the past administration, getting older and reclaiming my life after a confining relationship. It was like ripping open a box I’ve been inside of for a long time, and breathing the air, exploring all of the feelings I’d pushed deep inside for a very long time.”
“I needed to explore my emotional part [of the breakup],” explained Slankard. “It was supposed to be two different EPs. I noticed the songs coming in two directions. One was a feeling of anger and empowerment and a bit of confidence coming back to me. I was gonna write a belligerent rock record and strut down the street with my band, but there was this other side tapping on my shoulder that was also very real.
“There was a feeling of loss, confusion and mourning,” she continued. “I’d allowed myself to disappear and, after this relationship, it took quite a while to figure out who I was again. I kept flip flopping between the two sides of me, so I wrote a rock EP and a sadder conciliatory, tears leaking from my eye kind of EP.
“[For the rock songs] it was just me and my drummer in one room and Alex doing all the other instruments,” Slankard said. “He had a couple of other musicians come in to do [violin and cello]. This was in 2019, just before COVID. Later that year, I went back and recorded the introspective and contemplative EP. We had a harp on a couple of tracks. There are not many places in the world where you can say, ‘What would be cool here is to bring in a harpist’ and give one a call.
“In Nashville, anything you can think of, you can do. Liana Alpino brought in a huge harp and brought it home,” said Slankard. Wong also hired a full string quartet for several tracks. “I get chills thinking about sitting in a room, listening to the strings play parts we wrote. It was magical.
“I was going to release it in Spring of 2020, as a gentle trickle [of singles],” Slankard said. “It’s nerve wracking to share something you created with the world. I remember being in Nashville, playing at the Bluebird Café, and we just heard about all the COVID stuff. I had a huge 2020 planned out, playing Stern Grove with Billy Ray Cyrus and a bunch of festivals. I realized I’d have to cancel all the tours. The whole industry stopped, not just musicians. Venues were having to close, bartenders, booking agents, session musicians—anyone who had a music related job just stopped. It was wild.”
After the COVID shift, Slankard ditched the idea of two EPs in favor of one album, California & Other Stories. Without any income, it was hard for Slankard to save enough money to release the album. “Two years of no work was another hurdle to get over,” Slankard said. “When I toured with my band, The Wreckage, it was easy to sell copies of CDs. Now, nobody has [CDs] anymore. I don’t even have a CD player. It’s a different world in music. It’s changed so much, so fast. How are we going to pay the rent, or release the music so people can hear it?”
California & Other Stories was finally released last October and is available on the artist’s Bandcamp page. The 10 songs on the record cover a wide range of styles, with arrangements that show off the various genres Slankard and Wong drew on for the album.
With the album out and things slowly moving back toward normal, Slankard’s reaching out to her band again. “[COVID] was hard for everybody,” Slankard said. “It was interesting to see them navigate through it. There was a lot of commiserating: ‘I feel depressed. I used to play 200 shows a year, and now I’m inside driving my partner crazy.’”
Slankard and her band will play the Hopmonk Tavern in Novato on Saturday, Feb. 18. Details at meganslankard.com. One may listen to Slankard’s music on her Bandcamp page: meganslankard.bandcamp.com.
