![]() ![]() To Mitchell’s surprise, the songs not only started to come easily – some songs, she says, “dropped out the sky” – but she wasn’t writing “big, mythic, archetypical” narratives, but rather about herself. But I found there’s value in not second guessing yourself and saying yes to what’s passing through you.” “I tend to overthink things, and think that for something to be good, it has to be hard and take a long time. During the first Covid-19 lockdown, she took on the group’s challenge to write a song a day. Anaïs Mitchell had her life changed by the runaway success of Hadestown (Photo: Jay latter proved a catalyst for her new album. ![]() It’s easy to see why other artists coalesce around her: Hadestown community aside, she is a member of folk revivalist trio Bonny Light Horseman and 37d03d, a musical community founded by Justin Vernon and members of The National. She’s sparkling conversation, speaking with an infectious wide-eyed enthusiasm. Mitchell is on a video call from Edmonton, Canada, where she’ll later perform at the city’s folk festival. “For so long I couldn’t think outside of it.” “I had to put Hadestown behind me,” she says. “So to do, I had to put the blinders on to everything else.” It’s a decision she’s happy with – “I have no regrets, coyote!” – but she recently realised the need to move on. “I can be really obsessive,” Mitchell says. Mitchell’s new self-titled album, a beautiful, melodic, intimate folk-meets-country collection in contrast to the elaborate of blues-jazz cabaret of Hadestown, is her first original composition since 2012’s Young Man in America. “I’m still the most awkward person in the room.”īut the demands of Hadestown has taken up much of the past 15 years. “I don’t walk into a room feeling like ‘I have a Tony!’ she laughs. Mitchell was even named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2020. The Broadway production, created with director Rachel Chavkin, won eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Original Score, as well as a Grammy for Best Musical Theatre Album. But it doesn’t feel like mine at all.”Īn indie-folk singer-songwriter by trade, Mitchell had her life changed by the runaway success of Hadestown. I know objectively that I wrote Hadestown. I’ll never understand what it means for those kids.’ That was a really radical experience. “Some of them were dressed up, you know, cosplaying? And that was the moment where I was like, ‘Wow, I have no idea what this thing is that I’ve been working on. “And there was a line of young people camped out, waiting to get rush tickets,” Mitchell says. One morning, she woke up at 4am in her temporary Manhattan base and decided to go for a jog past the theatre. But Mitchell was still working on updating it for Broadway right up until first curtain: a new rhyme here, a costume alteration there. ![]() Hadestown, a reimagining of the Greek Orpheus myth set in 30s Great Depression-era America, had already existed in various forms since 2006: a lo-fi production that toured around her hometown of Vermont in a converted school bus a 2010 concept album featuring Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon a fully fledged stage show in New York (2016) and London (2018). Just before her award-winning musical Hadestown opened on Broadway in 2019, Anaïs Mitchell was so stressed, she could barely sleep. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |