Communal experience

An interview with Adrienne Gilley

On June 22, it was hot—and the turtles that inhabit our courtyard were nowhere to be found. Still, Courtyard Concert attendees sat with rapt attention as Adrienne Gilley ran through her interesting and strange chord progressions and tempo changes with varying degrees of loudness and softness in her voice. We were sitting, but it felt like we were on our toes.

Gilley’s music makes you think she probably has a lot to teach us. From early influences of church music and ‘80s pop country, she’s clever but sincere, sweet but never saccharine. Her voice is at once playful like Regina Spektor’s and pragmatic, like how Karen Dalton can get.

Adrienne Gilley’s performance was the grand finale of The Tulsa Voice’s summer 2017 Courtyard Concert series. The series will resume in the fall, or whenever temperatures stop making us want to hide under rocks like our turtle friends.

Find information about her upcoming shows at facebook.com/AdrienneRosanne.

Liz Blood: Was there a musical background to your childhood?

Adrienne Gilley: Yes, church. The Assembly of God and the Pentecostal Holiness Church—it was sort of music out of the Charismatic movement of the ‘40s and ‘50s. [And] my dad is a musician and both his parents were musicians. My dad played jazz and could play by ear pretty much his whole life.

Blood: Do you remember the first song you learned to play?

Gilley: It was Neil Young “The Birds.” It’s off of After the Gold Rush. (singing) “Lover there will be another one.“

That whole album is just great. I listened to it a lot when I was like 18.

Blood: That’s when you started playing?

Gilley: Well, I had a guitar and I plucked it, but as far as really like in any style, I didn’t really try that hard. I just plucked at songs so I could mostly sing.

Blood: What’s the most memorable show that you’ve played?

Gilley: It would have to be singing with Green Corn Rebellion at the Soundpony. I mean, that I’ve played when I’m playing my guitar and singing my stuff, that’s a different story. But those shows are mind-blowing. It’s my favorite place as far as being with a big loud band like that and being on the floor with the audience. It feels more like a communal experience rather than like we’re up here on the stage and you’re down here observing us.

Blood: Yeah, it is nice that you get to be right there in it with them. Do you have any nonmusical influences when you’re playing or songwriting?

Gilley: On songwriting … just life, I guess. Is that what you mean? I mean, I’m inspired by nature a lot—by trees and clouds. I feel like it just kind of frees me up to want to write, but I’m not necessarily writing about those clouds. You know?

Blood: Yeah, I know. I think that’s exactly what I mean. Any kind of thing other than, like, listening to Neil Young might inspire you, but that’s a musical influence.

Gilley: Okay, yeah. The sound of the trees blowing. Just really when it’s really windy. I love just being around that. It’s probably the closest thing to the ocean sound that we have in Oklahoma.

Blood: Speaking of the ocean, what are your desert island discs? Like, if you were stuck and needed some tunes?

Gilley: Definitely a Beatles album, probably Let it Be or Rubber Soul. Rufus Wainwright—his second album, Poses. It’s incredible. What I love about Poses—or one of the things, I should say, I love about that album—is that their harmonies, they’re just … there’s this particular song—the way that [Rufus and his sister’s] voices blend and they have this way of sort of pressing down on the notes in a … I’m not sure. It just blends really well. It’s so beautiful. Her name is Martha Wainwright, she has two or three albums herself that are really good. And Nina Simone, Lady Sings the Blues.

Blood: Sounds like a good island. Do you have a dream venue?

Gilley: No, not really. I mean there’s so much about this to figure out still, you know? I’m really excited to be here.

Blood: You mentioned earlier you hadn’t been doing this in earnest for that long. How long have you?

Gilley: In earnest, playing my guitar and singing for four or five years. I’ve been playing shows probably more like four. But really only three playing in regular venues. I was doing some stuff at the Coffee House on Cherry Street. I had a duo called Rosie and Dot and we just asked if we could play and it was great. All our friends came. But my first gig with my songs was probably in 2014 or late ’13.

Blood: What’s the best show you’ve ever been to? Or what’s up there?

Gilley: What’s up there? Oh my gosh. The Skatalites at VZD’s in Oklahoma City was a really, really special show for me because it was the first time I ever saw them live and I’d been listening for a long time so just the overall experience was so incredible.

Blood: What about guilty pleasure listening?

Gilley: The Judds. I still like The Judds. Wynonna and Naomi. I grew up hearing a lot of country music and a lot of ‘80s pop country. So, whenever I hear—I mean, I don’t, like, put on the album and just, like, bliss out—but when I hear The Judds, I am happy, you know? (singing) Mama he’s crazy.

And “Daddy’s Hands,” that one makes me so uncomfortable.

Blood: “Daddy’s Hands”?

Gilley: Oh, you don’t know that?

Blood: Nope.

Gilley: Daddy’s hands were—it’s like—“rough and hard when I was lying, hard as steel when I had done wrong, but there was always love in daddy’s hands.” It’s pretty weird.

Blood: Yeah, especially if you got spanked as a kid. (laughs)

Gilley: I know, right? (laughs)

Gilley: It’s like the way that child is rationalizing it. Like, “Well, I’m doing this because I love you.”

Blood: Yeah, no thanks. Okay! So, what is music to you? Just gonna drop the heavy question here at the end.

Gilley: It’s a way to connect with myself, other people, the universe, that’s like—I don’t know—sort of contained in a way that I can’t do in other ways. It’s just such a release. And without words. It’s freedom, it’s life. I don’t know.

For more from the courtyard, watch John Fullbright play “All the Time in the World.”