The last few years have been traumatic for Jeremy Ivey. The arrival of a baby daughter to him and his wife, Margo Price, in June 2019 was a high point, as was the release of his debut album THE DREAM AND THE DREAMER in the same year. His sophomore album, the politically charged, WAITING OUT THE STORM was already recorded and due for release. However, things turned on their head on 2nd March 2020 when a violent tornado, the sixth costliest in terms of financial damage in U.S. history, caused extensive damage to East Nashville. The passing of their dear friend and mentor John Prine brought further heartache and was preceded by Jeremy, at high risk due to underlying medical issues, contracting Covid that left him severely debilitated for a couple of months. The pandemic effectively put the couple’s careers on hold. Those harrowing times have passed, thankfully, to give way to brighter ones including the emergence of Jeremy’s third album, INVISIBLE PICTURES – and he recently took the time to discuss the background to it with us.
How are things health wise with you at present?
I had Covid for about two and a half months in 2020, but I’m fine now, I don’t have any long-term effects. I’m pretty healthy now.
There are a lot of dark titles such as Black Mood, Downhill, Silence and Sorrow, on your latest album INVISIBLE PICTURES and yet the album plays out quite upbeat and optimistic.
What happens is that I naturally write from an upset and dark place and when I develop the songs, I find hope in there. That tends to be the theme. I never really thought about the titles reading so glum, that’s just how it turned out.
Was that a reflection of your mood or what you were listening to at the time of writing the songs?
Yes, I was listening to a lot of Elliot Smith for the first time in a long time. I was also listening to a lot of flamenco guitar and also listening to The Handsome Family around the time I was working on the songs. And as always, The Kinks and other British rock bands.
I certainly get a Lennon/McCartney vibe to both Black Mood and Silence and Sorrow.
The Beatles’ music is ingrained in me, their music has been inside me for a long time. There’s always a little bit of that coming out in my music.
You got Andrija Tokic on board to produce the album. Does he still work at The Bomb Shelter and what drew you to him for this album?
Yes, he’s still working out of The Bomb Shelter in East Nashville and we’ve been friends for a long time. The first time I recorded with him was in 2008. Me and my wife’s old band Buffalo Clover used to record with him, so I knew him from those days.
Did he select the musicians who play on the album?
Yes. I had heard an album that Andrija had recorded just before mine called START IT OVER by Riley Downing, from the band The Deslondes. He’s the guy with the real deep voice in that band, he kind of sounds like Blaze Foley in a way. The production and the arrangements were incredible on that album and what really drew my ear to it was the rhythm section. When I heard those guys play, I just said: ‘I need that’. I basically asked Andrija to get the same players from that album to play on my record. So, we had Megan Coleman, the badass drummer who plays for Yola and other people, Jack Lawrence from The Raconteurs and Dead Weather on bass, a couple of different keyboard players, one of them being Margo’s keyboard player Michael Hulscher. We added string arrangements and a number of random people came in playing marsophone and a couple of Asian instruments that I can’t even pronounce, adding a lot of colour. I was connected with all those weirdo musicians who are legendary in their own right. Usually, I record with my band so it was cool to branch out this time and give the control connected to Andrija.
You’ve been prolific in recent years despite all the distractions. The title of your 2020 album WAITING OUT THE STORM was fairly prophetic?
WAITING OUT THE STORM was written in 2019, before the pandemic. It was about things that I saw coming down the line politically. I didn’t know there was going to be a pandemic but with all the racism and polar opposition, everyone was being divided in our country. It was coming to a boiling point, apocalyptic in a way, I suppose.
Do you consider if things have moved on at all?
I see myself moving away from paying so much attention to it. With the pandemic and going through Covid myself, that taught me, even though I need to know what’s going on in the world, that’s important. But it’s also important not to let yourself be too affected and doom orientated by it, to the extent that you can’t enjoy a day with some sunshine in it and your family, the things that really matter. I do like that sort of political writing but also think that some of the causes that I wrote about, although I can help in my own little way, but as a white male, I can fight the fight, but I’m probably not the right voice to express that side of the story.
Are you seeing things returning to normal career wise for you?
The new Covid strain seems to be really weak and things are getting back to normal. I’m going on tour next month, fingers crossed, on a tour that has been rescheduled twice already. Margo is going on tour later in the year, so it seems to be getting back on track.
Is Margo working on new material at present?
Yes, we’ve been to California recording and have finishing work on a record up here. I don’t know when it’s coming out, hopefully later this year. That’s been fun too, it’s cool for me because there’s a thing that happens to most musicians which is like post album depression. You put a lot of work into an album and then everything just stops and you’re thinking ‘what do I do with my life now.’ Having Margo’s project was great because just as I finished mine, I got shipped over to work on her album.
With two working musicians, recording and touring, and two children, how do you keep all the balls in the air?
It can get a little hairy but we have great support from both our parents, which helps us. We make it work because it’s what we love to do. I don’t do a lot of media or interviews, except when I have an album coming out. Mostly I have the time to do the dishes. Right now, Margo is doing another interview in the other side of the house. Thank God for school for the kids.
It’s such a wonderful story of how your career’s have developed since the release of Margo’s MID WEST FARMER’S DAUGHTER in 2016 after many years of hard work prior to that.
Speaking of which, Margo is just finishing writing a book about it all. She’s been writing it since she was pregnant with our daughter who is two and a half now. It’s an early life memoir, talking about her growing up, meeting me, the whole story.
Finally, will we get to see you perform at AmericanaFest again this year?
Hopefully, I will be playing some shows. Last year I was supposed to be on tour and didn’t get to play any gigs. That tour got cancelled the week before AmericanaFest, so I wasn’t booked for anything. That was life in Covid times, hopefully this year they’ll put me on something.
Interview by Declan Culliton