Jessica Malone has been a staple of the Sacramento folk scene for years, performing her lush melodies and poetic songs up and down Northern California with a large cast of collaborators.
Her sharply honed lyrics often highlight the natural beauty of our region while telling stories of love, loss, and personal growth. Jessica’s new EP Indigo, releases tomorrow and was recorded in Nashville.
And it shows, deftly incorporating the soulful sounds of one of the country’s premiere music cities into the warm acoustic style of her previous work. She’ll be performing with her nine piece band on Saturday the 29th at the Sofia in Sacramento.
Ahead of her show she stopped by CapRadio with her longtime violinist Giorgi Khokhovbashvili, to perform in this month’s Insight Studio Session and spoke with Insight Host Vicki Gonzalez about what inspired her new songs.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Interview highlights
Thank you so much for coming to Insight. Your music has so much soul and emotion to it. I want you to start with your songwriting, the stories that you tell. What inspires songs like Rather Be in Love?
I get inspired by a lot of different things and in the past, nature has been one of my biggest inspirations. I write a lot of songs about beautiful places. This song is about something completely different. I started writing the song and it was almost like the idea was writing itself. I was like uncovering it or something. And so it started out with a love story, somebody who was pretending, putting on a face and pretending like they were fine on their own, but really they would rather be in love.
And then it has this other part to it where they are reading books and living vicariously through the lives and love stories in the books that they read. So there’s all these book references like ‘line by line’ and ‘paper back’ and ‘up your spine.’
Jessica Malone — Insight Studio Sessions by Jessica Malone
I love that you mentioned nature because I kept getting visions of the outdoors and nature with this song. Why is that such a special inspiration for you?
Well, I grew up in Mount Shasta, California. I grew up in the little town of Mount Shasta city and I was always outside. That’s just what you did there. You played outside, you know, in the 90s. Then after that I went to Humboldt, so [I went from a] snowy volcano to where the redwoods meet the ocean. And I’ve just always lived in the most beautiful places.
So for your upcoming EP Indigo, you recorded it in Nashville?
Yeah, I did. I went out to Nashville last August, so it’s been like exactly a year. I went to Frida Recording and the engineer/producer Nick Bullock invited me out and we did the whole EP in a day.
I got there on a Tuesday. On Wednesday I finished [writing] the songs and then Thursday I met the band. It was a bunch of just really incredible Nashville musicians and we recorded the whole thing on Thursday and then I flew home on Friday!
So the title track off your EP is “Indigo,” why did you choose that one and what inspired that song?
So this one was a free associative writing about colors. I was like, “I’m just going to start writing.” I had this line ‘blue as the coast’ and then I just went with that. There’s a little bit of a heartbreak moment in the chorus where there’s a past tense. ‘Even though the colors fade, I’ll remember every shade, our love was indigo.’ That’s the little hook line there.
I think it sounds the most different and new from anything I’ve ever written before and that was really exciting for me. And maybe because Joni Mitchell has her Blue album so I wanted my Indigo album [laughs].
You’ll be performing at The Sofia this weekend, as you have been doing every year for a while now, what is so special about this venue?
We do a show there every summer with the nine-piece and it’s such a beautiful room. The sound is incredible and the size. I think it’s about 400 people, so it’s this big beautiful theater, but it still feels really intimate and I still feel connected to the audience.
It’s just an incredible place to get to showcase the songs and all the hard work we’ve done. And playing with Giorgi is one of my favorite things in the world.
And it must be such a special week when you’re performing at The Sophia and then it’s the release of your EP!
Absolutely, a lot of work goes into recording an EP and then doing all the things you need to do to get it out in the world. It feels like it’s exciting and then it’s also like all the hard work has paid off for that moment, you know?
It’s like it all led up to that and it’s always really fun to have everybody come out and celebrate with us.
So the last song on the EP is Gold and Green, what inspired this one?
So I moved to Grass Valley a couple years ago. I bought a little house out there and I have my garden. It’s the first time I’ve had a garden and I have my roses and I spent a lot of time with myself, by myself, at my house, making it my home and it was a really special time for me.
I learned a lot about myself and I grew a lot as a person and I just got a lot closer to myself and that’s what this song is about. The title of this song [came when] I was finishing. I had like one lyric I couldn’t figure out. And as I was driving out to a show in Sierraville the sun was coming through the trees in the most beautiful way. So there’s a line ‘sunset through the trees, everything is gold and green.’ Because it was just so beautiful. So more nature inspiration there, personal growth and nature and flowers [laughs].
Jessica Malone — Insight Studio Sessions by Jessica Malone
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