Train Hopping

The whiskey-tinged soul pipes of Jolie Holland.
by Lucy Bernard

Jolie Holland has a mouth like a truck driver. Or maybe it’s more like a train hopper. “A lot of my friends are train hoppers,” she says, in a speaking voice that’s deceivingly gritty. “It’s fucking dangerous.”

It seems quaint that a category of people considered “train hoppers” still exist today. One would think with post 9-11 security and the multitude of other, far less “fucking dangerous” ways to travel, that the groups of box car children traveling across the U.S.-swilling and whistling the days away, eventually rolling off into the grass at 30 miles per hour whenever their hobo sacks feel light-would have died out. But it hasn’t. And, in a way, the knowledge that this way of life continues to exist is comforting.

It’s the same kind of timeless comfort that pours from the smoky pipes of Texas-born singer-songwriter Jolie Holland. Her music feels like a hot night spent on the floor of a train car. A bit like a half empty bottle of moonshine turned over on a deserted, sun-bleached porch in the Appalachian Mountains. It rings with the depth of a panhandler’s cup caught in the shadows of a gnarled oak tree. It’s sultry and country and jazzy and utterly out of place in today’s musical landscape.

“I’m not considered part of any traditional music scene at all and I never have been,” says Holland. “I mostly just played violin on the street for money in touristy areas and shit. And then people’s backyards and shit.”

Jolie Holland spent her atypical childhood playing the fiddle in Houston, TX, but as she explains, “It was just an accident of where I was born.” At the age of 19 Holland fled her hometown and took to the streets of cities all over the country, eventually hooking up with Samantha Parton to form the Be Good Tanyas with whom she played and toured for several years, spending extended periods of time in New Orleans along the way. Eventually, Holland split from the group and retreated to a basement where she recorded what would later become her first solo record, as well as a remarkable, seemingly out-of-nowhere success story: Catalpa.

“[Catalpa] was supporting me before I even got signed,” says Holland. “It was in the ‘top 10′ on two of the biggest independent radio stations in the country and shit, and I hadn’t even toured to those places. I was just waitressing in San Francisco.”

She wasn’t wiping down tables for long, however. With demands for the then “basement tapes” quickly exceeding the capacity of Holland’s actual basement, a record deal was inevitable, and it came in the form of folk friendly label Anti-, which has put out records by Nick Cave, Tom Waits and Elliot Smith.

Not even six months later, Anti- released Holland’s second album, Escondida. With a loungey feel, lyrics about “old fashioned morphine” and wandering strangers, and a higher production value than Catalpa, Escondida quickly became a mainstay on Borders CD listening stations and Morning Becomes Eclectic playlists. The album was an underground-quickly to become above-ground-hit, with its jumble of harsh country themes, Billie Holliday vocals, and a wide, genre-free appeal.

Holland’s haunting, versatile aesthetic suits both her covers of little known, classic American folk songs, as well as her ageless originals. “The [cover songs] that I put on the records are the ones that just have a great message,” says Holland, “but I also just write all the time.”

Most recently, her bulging songbook filled up a third full length entitled Springtime Can Kill You. Here, she incorporates glowing guitar, cigar-like piano, and of course, her eerie vocal twang. According to Holland, Springtime is the first record full of songs that were specifically intended to work together as a set. “Basically, I just had more time to plan for this one,” she explains. “The other stuff, I didn’t really think of it as being songs as part of a record.”

To celebrate Springtime’s release, Holland and her small clan of musicians are hitting the trail for a worldwide tour, roaming the parched, varied landscape of the globe in a 15-foot van. And from the moment she snaps the last suitcase closed, Holland will be essentially homeless-if you don’t count the fact that for her, the road really is home. “I was just one of those people who couldn’t stop moving for a long time,” says Holland, whose constant pacing is audible even over a phone line. “And I really can’t now. Actually, I’m packing up as we speak ’cause I’m moving. Where? I don’t know [laughs]. I have three cities in mind, and a long time to figure it out.”

None of those cities is Austin, TX, where Holland performed twice during this year’s South by Southwest festival. In the outdoor venue-under dim orange lights and springtime sheets of rain-Jolie Holland played to a surprisingly packed house. Streams of water were dripping off a small tent covering some cameras, dousing the audience in periodic, bucket-sized dumps. But despite the downpour-and the fact that it was St. Patrick’s Day and a “crazy Celtic band” was playing on the street 100 feet away-the show had a quiet, candlelit, sloppily drunken intimacy. Everyone’s eyes and ears were fixated on the brunette with the ashen voice at center stage. As the droplets fell on the sea of green-clad spectators, Jolie Holland began to sing-”Amen, there’s a ring around the moon tonight.”    LAA

Catch Holland at the start of her tour next Wednesday, April 26 at Largo in Hollywood.