An Interview with Jesca Hoop - Page 3

What was Copeland like to work with?

If you don’t know the secret of the song, if you haven’t learned it through and through, which he hadn’t when he came in…He was familiar with it but he hadn’t learned all the little idiosyncrasies. It’s kind of a cryptic song, in a way. And so he kind of just dove into it and took over, really.

I learned that he was really trusting of his process. If you were making a little mistake, of course you’re going to make…I guess he didn’t make any mistakes. Do you know what I mean? He would fall in and out of the pocket of the song, not knowing it, and didn’t ever consider it a mistake. It’s a part of the process. So I learned that from him. When in the process of creating what is your work, you never apologize for keeping an engineer an extra 15 minutes or having to take the path again…

…to get what you want at the end of it.

Right. He was like a mad scientist with his kit…I have worked with him one other time and he was really a joy to work with. He’s got an extremely dark, dry, and intelligent wit. We were an odd pairing, for sure. (Laughs) It was really fun.

For the song you wrote about Hurricane Katrina, “Love Is All We Have,” was that based on a particular story? Or were you influenced by the whole event and the aftermath?

I would go online and pull little specifics out, of things that I could find. Like, the Plow Boys were to play in town, right around that same [time]. It’s more of a general account of what I observed as the importance of the event, what I brought from it. It was more of a general account. I put it on the record, not necessarily because I thought it was an accurate account or that the song was worthy of being a record of [the event], but more to help bring people’s minds back [to its attention].

But there’s an emotional impact that resonates, not necessarily as a news account, especially when you get to the chorus.

Right. I can’t sum [the event] up. I couldn’t try to sum it up, but I know what the basic underlying message is. That’s really the purpose of the song.

In reading the lyrics from your songs, they have a flow to them. You don’t necessarily need the music to appreciate the lyrics.

Article Author: Donald Gibson

A contributing music editor at Blogcritics, Donald Gibson devotes most of his writing to music criticism, paying particular attention to the craft and aesthetic of songwriting. He holds a B.A. in English from the University of South Florida.
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