My favorite conversations compare and contrast disciplines: lyrics vs. poetry, music vs. art, or gymnastics, or anything. Azere Wilson dove into this territory without prompting.

Azere Wilson (AW): Art for me is more stressful. It isn’t fluid. If I’m looking at something, I can replicate it, but coming up with things the way that music comes through me – art doesn’t move through me the same way. I am not abstract. I’m meticulous with it, and if anything is off then I have to fix it. I’m just really detail-oriented when it comes to drawing and painting.

me: This is making sense to me. You focus on the details of the art and the accuracy. That’s an attainable goal to set, because when it’s correct, it’s correct. Maybe, once you feel confident that you’re going to get to correct, then your brain might have a little wiggle room to find a story. For example, this piece of art – (I show her Ocotillo tongue) that’s a definable story.  Maybe the difference is that with art, the audience is not expecting the kind of closure that they’re expecting from a song.

AW: True. If not closure, they expect to at least feel something. I think that’s what’s so special about the blues, especially with the intimacy of acoustic blues. It is all feeling. And when I am truly connected and living and breathing the music as it is, I channel deep and bring that to my audience. 

me: We wanted to talk about your roots and about your album. Give us a schedule for the album.

AW: The album’s coming out on Saturday (June 15, 2024) and now every night, I’m thinking: should I stop it? Should I stop it? Last night, when I woke up in the middle of the night: Should I cancel it? Should I stop it? Should I just not release it? The whole posting on Instagram and all the things, or even just on my newsletter, it’s all baffling. “Why am I doing this again? Why am I sharing this information? Who actually wants to hear what happens, anyway?”

me: That part where you try to share and then nobody actually clicks on it. They say, “oh, but it’s the algorithms” and it probably is…but I have a feeling that it’s not just you waking up in the middle of the night like that.

AW: I mean it’s my whole soul out there, and as an artist, writer, musician, it’s literally sharing my entire being with the whole freaking world for them to do whatever they want with it. Information about being a single mom, about being the only black girl in a sea of white, it’s about being all these things and it’s just putting it all out there. Bittersweet Addiction – that one is about losing myself in a relationship.

me: That is so universal. It’s happened to me twice, giving things up in the name of compromise. I got this tattoo (I show it to her) so I’ll remember who I am, and not to do it again. My Korean coworker found that so strange, and asked if it was normal for American women to forget who they are. 

AW: Maybe it’s just unique to America that we just lose ourselves.

It’s hard sometimes to play some of these songs because they are so emotional. I’ve had to have practice pulling myself out of my own stories, yet not lose the emotion in what I’m doing…but if I’m in it, and I’m feeling it, then I can’t play because I’m just crying.

me: Maybe that’s why I don’t want to perform, because I don’t think I could do it. I don’t think I could pull out. It’s challenging.

AW: It’s challenging, yeah, but I’m getting better at it and I’m getting better at it.  Now I can play “People Who Move”  – all of it.

(I mentally insert a ::cheering:: .gif here)

AW:  This actually goes kind of back to what we were saying about “Bittersweet Addiction“: the reason why I play guitar now. I’ll tell you the story. I knew three chords and I could never play the way I sing the blues. It is blues. Anything I do a cappella, it comes out in this way, all the time, every day, right? But the music I played wasn’t matching. It was frustrating and I didn’t like it.

I finally met this ex-boyfriend – a future ex-boyfriend – he could play the guitar the way I’d play if I could. I would sing anything I was saying; I would grab a piece of poetry that I wrote and turn it into a song with him playing the guitar behind it. It was so beautiful, it was such a gift and he actually inspired me in a lot of ways. When he turned out to be not a very good human, I needed to find another guitar player.

I wanted to continue to write music: This has been my dream for so freaking long. I’m done waiting, it’s time to just put it out there and there’s so much inside of me and this is what I’m supposed to do in life and I know it. Then I realize they’re not coming. And if they do come, then they could just leave again. Fuck all that – I need to handle this shit for myself! I need to know how to play and not have to rely on some man (because for some reason it’s always a man.) Not many female guitar players, that I knew anyway. Now it’s a different world – now I know many of them. “Bittersweet Addiction” came out of that relationship. And then we got this tune right here that I’m working on.

stick a guitar in her hand / then God knows you need no man / no more, no more, no more
take back the moon and stars / only the willow left to weep / fish get out, get out of my sea

I have lyrics written down somewhere but they’re all over the place. Sometimes I talk about Prince charming, “ain’t know knight in white shining armor,” but then I don’t want it to just be all about that. Cuz next you’re going to be about yourself, not giving up on your dreams, and actually living your truth, because that’s where I am right now. It’s like releasing that bittersweet addiction, realizing you stick a guitar in your hand and then you know. You don’t need a man.

I’ve been doing this for a while now. I do it again, and sometimes I really like the things that come out. Sometimes, “Oh, I’m going to try this new way of writing, for me to sit down and actually try to work on this song and make the song come out and do the writing thing.”  It’s so weird. Do you write like that ever?

Me: No.
also me: Well, I can’t say never. I do sometimes work on things later, but no, not like that.

(and this is the part where we thought we were wrapping up the discussion)

AW: I should probably go to bed. I feel like it’s 1:00 in the morning or something.

me: It’s 1:00 in the morning at my house!

(and this is the part in which we still didn’t go to bed.)

AW: What do you think of me adding my own lyrics into these old-time lyrics ?

me: I love it and I hope some people are unnerved. I could see how some people might think you were stepping on toes, but I see it as reclaiming. That’s it’s as if you recognize it and say, “I know what that is. Let me show you.” I think if Blind Lemon Jefferson were still alive, he would be sitting right there going, “Yeah, take it.”

AW: It’s for me a huge reason why I do this music is because time and time again – sometimes it really frustrates me when I hear White women do Black – White people do Black music sometimes… “In My Time,” the first song I released and the only cover on my album, is an African American traditional spiritual from even before the very first time it was recorded.  Stuff like that, or like when I heard even more recently this woman Melody Gardot covered Nina Simone’s “Four Women” and my blood was boiling inside of me because how can you…sometimes it’s like how can you have the audacity to sing this song?

me: That’s a good example. I don’t think Nina would condone it.

AW: No, she wouldn’t. I’m delving deep into this music and bringing it back to life and sharing it with the world, and also honoring my black roots and connecting with my ancestry through this old-time music. Honoring my roots  and bringing this music back to life. That’s where I’m coming from. I can’t help but have my own… it just comes out that way.

Azere Wilson’s debut album released on June 15 2024. You can find it in CD, digital, or vinyl form here: azerewilson.com/merch. I highly, HIGHLY, recommend this dope tote bag. Follow Azere on Instagram @azerewilsonmusic to see when she gets a handle on social media.