Interview: Tony & Grammy Winner Anaïs Mitchell Talks New Self-Titled Album, 'Hadestown' and More

As funny as it may sound, Anaïs Mitchell has spent the past 15 years in some kind of hell. Ok, not actual hell, but the multi-faceted world of Hadestown, a musical project she began in Vermont in 2006 that has grown into a Tony-and Grammy-award-winning Broadway phenomenon with touring editions now delighting audiences as far away as South Korea.

She was named to TIME's prestigious TIME100 list in 2020, and her first book, Working on a Song - The Lyrics of Hadestown was published by Penguin/Plume in the same year.

Dubbed by NPR as "one of the greatest songwriters of her generation", Mitchell's new self-titled album is Produced by Josh Kaufman. It was made with close collaborators from Bon Iver, The National and her own band Bonny Light Horseman, and is Mitchell's first collection of all-new material under her own name since 2012's Young Man in America. Mitchell will debut the new songs during her headline tours in the U.S. and Europe in 2022, at which she'll be accompanied by players from the album.

BroadwayWorld's Kevin Pollack recently chatted with Mitchell to talk about the new album, Hadestown and Bonny Light Horseman.

Tell us how this new album came to be?

When the pandemic reached New York, I was *just* about to give birth to our second kid, and we made an 11th hour decision to relocate to my family's farm in Vermont to have the baby. The baby was born a week later and then we all moved into a little house on the farm that used to belong to my grandparents when they were alive (my parents and my brother's family also have houses on the farm). Suddenly there we were, in this extraordinary stillness. I started writing songs again and got into a flow that I hadn't felt in years. All but one of these songs were written in the summer and fall of 2020.

What influences did you have for your new album?

Mostly, I think, stillness and the rediscovery of what is is to write a song that can be anything it wants to be, that is, that doesn't have to also do the job of advancing plot or developing character. I also think these songs are influenced by my work in my collaborative (and when we started out, traditional) band Bonny Light Horseman. My bandmate Josh Kaufman produced it, it uses a lot of open tunings, and the core band are also the same folks who played on our BLH record. So there's a bit of a sonic stamp there.

Where did the concept for Hadestown start, and what was that whole process like?

I was in my early twenties and just starting out as a singer-songwriter when I started working on Hadestown. I was curious about using songs to tell a longer-form story, and so when I was driving from gig to gig and some lines kinda fell out of the sky that seemed to be about the Orpheus + Eurydice myth, I just started working on it. I reached out to my early collaborators Michael Chorney (who remained an orchestrator and guitarist right up to Broadway) and Ben t. Matchstick, the show's earliest director. We got all our friends to play the roles of the characters and put on the show two years in a row in Vermont. It was a very DIY community theater situation, and the show was much shorter, and more abstract back then. The next thing that happened was I made a studio record with producer Todd Sickafoose (who became our other orchestrator!) and all these guest players and singers, so the whole show moved completely into the music world for a few years as we made and toured with that record Then I moved to New York, met Rachel Chavkin and the lead producers who helped develop the show for Broadway, and started a phase that lasted another six years, as we readied the show for off-Broadway, Edmonton, London, and finally Broadway. So it was a long, slow, organic journey for us...

What do you think makes Hadestown different than any other musical out there?

Well it definitely is a show that came out of the music world first and foremost, and I think you can feel that in the songs, the orchestrations, and also the way the music pointed the way toward certain sets and staging ideas... sort of, the culture of the show, which Rachel was very adamant, should straddle the worlds of music and theater.

What song on the new album means the most to you and why?

There's a song called "Revenant" that is sort of dreamy and gauzy, it remains mysterious to me and I think that's why it means so much. It's a little bit about my grandma, my memories of being a child in and out of my grandparents' house, it's also about me sort of "seeing" the child I was and wanting to embrace her, tell her I get her, this mysterious encounter between myself at the age I am now and myself as a child.

Who are your musical influences?

I'm very influenced by the sort of wordy, epic, "songwriters' songwriters" like Joni Mitchell, Townes Van Zandt, Dylan, Leonard Cohen, British Isles folk balladry. I also fell in love with Rickie Lee Jones, Ani Difranco, Tori Amos at an impressionable age. In terms of musical-writing, I'd say Les Miserables, Sweeney Todd, The Threepenny Opera, were all very important to me.

You released one album with Bonny Light Horseman. How did you get involved with that group?

I started working with Josh Kaufman when we were both living in Brooklyn, messing around with some traditional music. Josh brought his friend Eric into the group, which I was super excited about because I had recently discovered and fallen in love with his band Fruit Bats. I think I was looking for something COMPLETELY different than Hadestown, and that's what Bonny Light Horseman was, at least at first. We've now made a second album, which is original co-written songs rather than trad material, and it'll be coming out later this year!

What do you think the future of musical theatre will be?

I'm very impressed with how flexible and fluid Broadway seems to be becoming in terms of embracing shows that come through unusual channels, potentially coming from all corners of the music world. I think people are figuring out how to story-tell using all kinds of music and that is soooo exciting. I also think, with live captures, and a lot of musicals being adapted for film, it forces us to think hard about what exactly it is that makes a live performance in a theater different, moving, and essential, and to lean into the magic of that... people together in a room... which is what the concert experience has always been.

Now that you have a Grammy and Tony Award, is film and TV next?

I would love to work on film and TV if the right project crossed my path and if I had the time and space to do it! I find the pairing of music and film/tv sooooo emotional. But I haven't quite found my way in yet.

What's on the horizon for you?

I'm currently touring this self-titled record, but I also have an album coming out later this year with my folk band Bonny Light Horseman! So we'll be touring that record as well. I'm having so much fun writing and recording right now... and collaborating!!

Anaïs Mitchell Tour Dates

2/4 - Iowa City, IA - Englert Theatre

2/5 - Eau Claire, WI - Pablo Center at the Confluence

2/7 - Ann Arbor, MI - The Ark

2/8 - Cincinnati, OH - Longworth-Anderson Series at Memorial Hall

2/10 - Springfield, OH- Kuss Auditorium

2/11- North Bethesda, MD - The Music Center at Strathmore

2/12 - Princeton, NJ - McCarter Theatre Center

2/14 - New York, NY - Webster Hall

2/15 - Hanover, NH - Hopkins Center for the Arts

2/16 - Tarrytown, NY - Tarrytown Music Hall

2/17 - Portland, ME - Merrill Auditorium

2/18 - Boston, MA - Berklee Performance Center

2/19 - Burlington, VT - Flynn Center for the Performing Arts

2/20 - Kingston, NY - Old Dutch Church

2/23 - Roanoke, VA - Jefferson Center

2/24 - Charlotte, NC - Knight Theater

2/26 - Athens, GA - Hugh Hodgson School of Music

2/27 - Auburn, AL - Jay and Susie Gogue Performing Arts Center at Auburn University

2/28 - Greenville, SC - The Peace Center

4/28 - Evanston, IL - Space

4/29 - Milwaukee, WI - Shank Hall

5/01 - Minneapolis, MN - Turf Club

5/04 - Seattle, WA - The Crocodile

5/05 - Portland, OR - Revolution Hall

5/07 - San Francisco, CA - The Chapel

5/09 - Los Angeles, CA - Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever

To find out more info please visit www.anaismitchell.com

To post a comment, you must register and login.