Chattanooga Times Free Press entertainment reporter Casey Phillips spoke with blues singer Janiva Magness about her mental cocktail straw, reconnecting with her family and her secret dance of happiness.
CP: When did you first become interested in the blues? You were a teenager, right?
JM: I’ve always loved the blues. I loved it before then, but I don’t think you begin to start understanding what genre you’re digging until you’re a teenager. My father had blues records and a lot of early country stuff, which is obviously heavily influenced by blues. I was around 13 or 14 when I first started to get deeply interested in this great American art form.
CP: Was there a particular artist that took your fancy?
JM: I was listening to a lot of different people, but there was a really pivotal moment for me with Otis Rush. I was 14 when that happened. Really, the best way to paint the picture is that I got a chance to see him live. I had no idea who he was. I just went on the recommendation of some friends, but he really took me hostage in a good way. He reached across the room, grabbed my heart, ripped it out of my chest and never gave it back. (Laughs.) I’ve been chasing it ever since.
I left that show in the wee hours of the morning, and I didn’t know quite what had happened to me. All I know is that whatever I’d experienced at the show I needed more of “that.” I started to seek that thing.
He was so brutally honest in his performance. Every note was absolute desperation or complete joy or total rage. Every note he sang or played on his guitar – he was fully committed to his music and what he was doing -both feet all the way in.
I can articulate all that clearly now that I’m 53 years old, but when I was 14, I had no idea what had happened to me. I connected, connected deeply with the music and with him in that way. I had not had a whole lot of good experience with human connection up to that point in my life. It was really pivotal for me.
CP: From what I’ve read, you had a very rough childhood and adolescence. Do you feel like it’s necessary for a blues artist to have experienced some pain and loss, some real-life blues, to play the blues? Does having lived through that kind of experience make the delivery more honest?
JM: I can’t answer for anybody but myself, but what I can tell you is that this music has been a lifeboat for me because I understand it so deeply, because I really, really get it. Does my early life experience inform my music? Hell yes. (Laughs.) Do I feel that I’m one of the luckiest women alive? Hell yes, I do.
I’m terribly grateful that finally, ultimately, eventually, here I am at a place where at the early part of my life, which was ridiculous and didn’t make any sense, finally makes a little bit more sense.
In the way of how it serves my craft and what my job really is and how that connects with my huge honor to be a spokesperson for Foster Care Month and the ambassador of Foster Care Alumni of America – it’s all very closely connected.
CP: Early on, you didn’t have a lot of support from people and ended up taking several breaks from performing, right?
JM: I wouldn’t say my multiple decisions to quit the music business were the result of not having the support I needed. That was the result of fear and frustration, which are intense, formidable foes. (Laughs.)
It turns out that this is my destiny, at least so it seems. It seems this is my destiny. It’s not my fate. If I understand it correctly, fate is what life hands you; destiny is what we do with it. Destiny is what we’re meant to be.
CP: At what point did you realize this was your destiny?
JM: Not until really late. (Laughs.) Which I think is hysterically funny. I couldn’t see it. I had way, way too much angst and fear and feeling like I didn’t belong here. I still have it, and I’m 53. I still have this thing in the back of my mind that says, “I don’t know whose life this is. I’m waiting for the guy with the official badge and megaphone to come up and start yelling, ‘Step away from the life. There’s been a huge mistake. This doesn’t belong to you.’ ” I’ve decided, though, that until that guy shows up, I’m staying right here. I ain’t moving. Make me. (Laughs.) That’s the picture in my head.
I’m not the kind of person who seems to suffers from entitlement issues. I don’t have that challenge. At least that’s what my shrink tells me, and I believe him. He says, “Look, you’re never going to be one of those women whose head is too big to get through h the door. You’ll have other concerns, but that’s not going to be one of them.”
Really good news, really positive things, go into my head through a tiny, tight cocktail straw. It goes in really, really slow. I’m OK with that. I think that’s OK. It’s not like I can do anything to change that, and I don’t know that I really would, quite frankly. It takes a long time for me to exhale and believe the goodness.
I’m so grateful that that’s a challenge in my life, that I have to work at getting out of the way of the good news that’s coming my direction at this point in my life. It’s not perfect – it’s far from perfect – but it’s light years, a quantum leap, away from what I came out of. For that, I’m so grateful. I feel like I owe a huge debt for that. I feel like I owe a lot.
CP: With all the accolades you’ve received, is there any temptation to thumb your nose at the people who didn’t believe in you?
JM: You know, I don’t know that I really have that as much as that it feels really good to have all the quality problems that I have. It feels really good to know that people were wrong about me. That feels really good. That feels gratifying.
The gloating thing gets a little tricky for me, because then there’s some sort of implication that I deserve it. I’m not so sure I deserve that. That’s OK. I’m not talking about this like I use it to whip myself kind of thing. Good news comes and guess what, good news goes. If I’m a person who’s gloating, I feel like that’s a little dangerous and a little presumptuous. (Laughs.) I’ll have other challenges, but that won’t be one of them.
Do I secretly do little dances in my living room jumping up and down for happiness when I’m looking at a track record of 11 Blues Music Awards nominations and four statues of hardware in my office? Do I do secret dances when I’m all by myself with only the cat watching? Hell, yes. Of course I do. (Laughs.)
For a kid like me to come out of what I came out of and to be where I am today in my life? Most days, I have peace. Not all days, but most days. That’s huge. To be given the honor of being asked to be a spokesperson for national Foster Care month and to be appointed an ambassador for Foster Care Alumni of America? Those are huge honors and daunting responsibilities. I’m thrilled to step up to the challenge. I’m thrilled that people see me as a success.
Let’s face it, being in the music business is not for the faint of heart. If my life challenges serve as a picture to help somebody else, that’s glorious. That’s absolutely glorious to me. It come and goes, believe me, but god, it’s so much better than the internal place where I used to live.
CP: It’s interesting that you say that “other people see me as a success.” Do you feel like you’re a success now? Has that made its way through the mental cocktail straw?
JM: It’s seeping in. Do I struggle to pay my bills? Yeah. Do I have challenges in my personal relationships? Absolutely. Do I cry? Yeah, I cry a lot. Do I have tremendous joy? Absolutely. I do all that. But if you step back and look at my life through a long lens, I think the word “miraculous” is the one that comes to my mind. I feel like the luckiest woman on the planet.
CP: You seem so reluctant to acknowledge or dwell on your success, but your bio describes you as a “gutsy, dynamic music powerhouse.” That’s an odd juxtaposition. How important are guts in your music, beyond mastering your nerves to get up in front of an audience?
JM: They’re huge. It’s a huge chunk of it. Let’s face it, I do what I love to do. I love, I LOVE the music. I love performing. The music takes me to a place where there are no words. I need that. It’s like a balm. I do what I love to do, and usually people applaud, and then they give me money. (Laughs.) It’s kind of crazy. Crazy good, but still, kind of crazy.
Within the framework of that, it goes back to being the luckiest person alive, but also, most of my life, I haven’t understood this piece of myself. For most of my life, I didn’t see myself as a gutsy person. People would tell me things like “You scare me with how intense you are. You’re so strong.” I was like, “Really? I don’t know who you think you’re talking to.” I’m the biggest scaredy cat there is. I’m scared of everything, but there’s something in me that says, “You’re scared. Do it any way.”
I spent most of my life feeling alone because of that, feeling like the lonely weirdo outcast that didn’t belong. Then, something happened around 10-12 years ago.
From the early part of my life, there was a huge disconnect with family and extended family. My father came from a huge family in Oklahoma. We never knew any of our cousins or never very closely knew any of our aunts or uncles or grandparents. There was a huge disconnect. Then, when my folks died, it was permanently severed; there was no connection. The family didn’t step forward, in other words. They pulled away, and so did we, meaning my siblings and I. It was complete separation.
About 10-12 years ago, one of those cousins reached out. They said, “Enough of this. We’re having a family reunion, please come. We want all of you to come.” So I called up my brothers and sisters, and I was like, “I don’t know. I don’t want to go.” We all had the same reaction of “No, I’m not going.” Then, eventually, one by one, we all went, “Well … maybe.” It turns out, we all went to Oklahoma, very reluctantly, very cautiously.
I have like 83 cousins on my daddy’s side (laughs). It turns out that there are all these women on that side of the gene pool – the men are there and they’re good and they’re strong – but the women are like rocks. I mean, I’m talking “Steel Magnolias” strong, literally. Those are my cousins.
These women are rock hard, strong, so gutsy, laugh-out-loud, “go ahead if you don’t like me ’cause I’m going to do my own thing” women. It blew the top of my head off when I walked away from that family reunion, thinking, “Wow, this is a genetic problem. This isn’t just me. It’s the women in my family.” My daughter is the same way, poor thing. (Laughs.) It’s really interesting.
There seems to be this huge continuum of healing, this path. I’m pretty close with my cousins now. It’s wonderful.
CP: What’s your mindset when you’re on stage? What does a blues vocalist really need to nail to deliver the live experience effectively?
JM: As a vocalist, period – I don’t care what the genre is – it’s about making a connection. That’s my job. Telling the truth, my truth, and making a connection with the audience. If I do my job, you’ll go with me, you’ll be lifted up and travel with me on this journey throughout the show and throughout each song. If I’ve done my job, at the end of the show, there will have been a connection that will have occurred between you and I.
Whatever it is, you’re going to understand that you’re not alone on whatever that journey is you’re on through whatever song you relate to is. It could be a Freddie King tune or a ballad or a song called “Your Love Made a U-Turn” or “The Devil is An Angel Too” or the woman who is so angry in “I’m Going to Tear Your Play House Down” that she’s not even —-ed off, she’s just done.
If I’ve done my job, if we, as a band, have done our job, you’ve gone on that journey, and you feel better because you know you’re not alone in your experience. As far as I’m concerned, that’s my job. That’s what I need to do. I have to open myself up and get out of the way of the music so we can do that. Everything else is extra.
CP: What was your goal going into recording “The Devil is an Angel Too”? Did you accomplish it?
JM: I had an interesting experience this time with making this record. I don’t go into the studio like a lot of people do. I don’t have a plan for, “I want to make a record about blah blah blah.” I never do that. I have a couple of parameters, which are that I want to make the best record I can and that I don’t want to make the same record twice. I want to do a certain amount of mental planning.
The song selection process, obviously, critical. I have to choose songs that I connect to so I can tell the truth in the music and bring myself to it and then get out of the way. I’m a bit superstitious about the process. I want to get out of the way of the muse. I don’t want to make too many plans to inhibit the process.
I don’t go in with a theme, but right at the end, all the sudden, we realized this is a group of songs about the lightness and dark in all human beings. I think that’s a gift I was given, have been given with every record I’ve done. The theme makes itself obvious; I don’t choose it.
What’s different about the process this time is that normally, when I’m done, I can’t stand listening to it and don’t want to hear it. I go through this whole internal, painful thing about, “Who do you think you are to be making a record?”
Oddly, that didn’t happen this time. I listened to the record 10 days or so after we were done recording and mastering, and it’s so good. That’s really odd for me. That’s usually not where I’m at at that point, at least based on previous experiences. I felt good, like, “This might be OK.” That was a very different experience for me. I think that’s a good thing.
CP: Are you worried that feeling of accomplishment straight off the bat will make you in any way complacent about the next one?
JM: Doubt it. (Laughs.) I really doubt that. I’m not a resting-on-your-laurels kind of gal. I’m just not that gal. I really am very, very hard to please. I know that. I really ask a lot of my band mates and people I work with, whether in the studio or on the road.
I don’t ask anything I’m not giving, but it turns out that that makes for higher standards, and I think that’s a good thing. I think there is a glut of “Oh, this will do, let’s slap it on” records out there.
I think there’s a huge glut of mediocrity. Then, underneath that, there’s a massive pile of crap. Above that huge glut of mediocrity are the ones that push, really, really hard. I think that’s a good thing.