gretchen lieberum
Los Angeles based singer-songwriter Gretchen Lieberum had a vision for her latest album, This May Only Be A Dream, over ten years ago, when she first met and worked with BAFTA award winning producer and musician Keefus Ciancia. Gretchen, who also fronts the Prince tribute band Princess with actress Maya Rudolph, wanted to create an album of jazz and pop standards, songs she’d loved and performed since childhood, but deconstructed and reimagined in a modern context, with Keefus in particular producing and arranging: “There was really no one else I wanted to do this project with besides Keefus. His impeccable taste and astounding creativity were exactly what I wanted for this album.” Keefus’s schedule has been quite busy over the last several years, creating the score for seasons one and three of True Detective with T-Bone Burnett, as well as scoring Killing Eve with David Holmes, for which they won a BAFTA for best original score. Gretchen in the meantime was playing sold-out shows across the country with Maya Rudolph as Princess, including a slot at the 2019 Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival. But Gretchen and Keefus managed to work on the project in bits and pieces when they could, finally completing the album in early 2021.
To create the album, Gretchen recorded vocal takes of over twenty of her favorite standards, accompanied only by piano, before sending them to Keefus, who is based in France: “I chose songs that speak to me lyrically, and have melodies that I’ve always loved and been haunted by. When recording them, I kept the accompanying instrumentation very minimal, in order to allow Keefus to have room to let his creativity and imagination run wild.” While recording, Gretchen found inspiration from the music of her idols, such as Nina Simone, Peggy Lee, and Nancy Sinatra. Of the songs Gretchen sent, Keefus chose his favorites, removed the piano and began to reimagine them, taking a rule-breaking approach to harmony, arrangement and genre around Gretchen’s a cappella vocals: “Sometimes Keefus would send a track back to me and I’d be absolutely blown away by what he’d crafted around the vocal; a stark ballad would come back accompanied by a dense, swooping orchestra, tempos might be slowed down or sped up, all in the same song. Then I’d continue to build on what he’d worked on, like adding layers to a painting.” The finished tracks, inspired by Gretchen’s emotional and intimate delivery, are at once lush, dynamic, visual, and cinematic.
To complete the album, the two met in Los Angeles at the historic Electro Vox Studios, bringing in a variety of seasoned and like-minded session musicians such as Jay Bellerose, David Ralicke, Gabe Noel, Woody Jackson, Peter Smith, string player Gabe Witcher, and Wendy Melvoin of Prince’s The Revolution on background vocals. “It was amazing to be able to flesh out our songs with these incredibly talented musicians, while working in such a beautiful and historic space. And best of all, Keefus and I were finally able to work together in person after two years of collaborating from different continents. It was a really special experience.”
The lyrical stories within these classic songs are both hallowed and revered, written by some of the world’s greatest songwriters, from Johnny Mercer to Billie Holiday to Brian Wilson. In recording This May Only Be A Dream, Gretchen and Keefus endeavored to honor these past greats, but also to reinvent them without any strict adherence to previous arrangements or “standard” rules. The result is an album that is at once timely and timeless, appealing to longtime listeners while simultaneously opening a door for a whole new generation to discover great music anew.
MUSIC VIDEOS
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COME RAIN OR COME SHINE
miracles & light
FROM STEREOGUM: Gretchen Lieberum has a couple seemingly incongruous sides to her, which she showcases through two different projects. She’s every bit the disco-funk goof in her college band Supersauce — or Princess, her duo with SNL alum Maya Rudolph — but she’s also a serious singer-songwriter with a darkly-shaded energy in her music. The graver part of Lieberum’s artistry manifests as Sargent, and she’s dropping her self-titled debut under that moniker today. Along with the release of the album comes a stirring set of visuals for the single and standout track “Miracles And Light.” Here’s what Lieberum had to say about the track:
The song “Miracles and Light” was partially tracked six years ago and then finished just a few months ago. I had only half of the lyrics written and recorded before putting it aside. In the meantime, I started my other band, Princess, had my second child, and my mom passed away. The song is about pushing through adversity and appreciating how amazing it is that we even exist at all. It’s interesting, the lyrics I had written years ago resonated with me in a whole new way after all I’d been through. And now, I could add to them with even more life experience.
Musically, this song is a great example of how my songwriting partner and producer, Jake Blanton, and I would combine our different sensibilities to create something new. I knew I wanted the second half of the song to open up musically and Jake helped accomplish that by adding many different layers on top of the piano track, creating a powerful and emotional sound.
The video is a dreamy, sci-fi-leaning epic with a young space traveler exploring a new planet after she touches down. Director Kirk Woodward Nelson captures the wandering, fantasy feel of the song perfectly, with lush, sweeping wide shots of the alien landscape and emotive closeups of the young astronaut. Here’s what Nelson had to say about the clip:
I was inspired by the tone and lyrics of the song; the richness of Gretchen’s voice and purity of the uncluttered musicality. It has a complex emotional undertow that conjured feelings of loss and hope. I imagined myself ‘hurdling through space’ and time, falling to earth, and having the will to explore a new and unfamiliar land, but from the point of view of a child, open with sensitivity and flexibility. I wanted to riff on on Nicolas Roeg’s “the man who fell to earth” but give it my own painterly touch in a way that it would align itself with the purity of the song.
DIRECTED BY: Kirk Nelson
WALTZ (FOOLISH DESIRE)
FROM BUST: Sargent is the new project from singer-songwriter Gretchen Lieberum and her collaborator Jake Blanton (who has been a studio musician with The Killers, Beck, and many others). We're premiering Sargent's song "Waltz" from their first album Sargent, which will be released September 16th. The cabaret-pop style album is a soothing remedy for a broken heart. This project was a 6-year collaboration that is rooted in vintage instruments and has grown into airy, yet beautifully raw project.
She is in a Prince cover band called Princess with her college friend, Maya Rudolph.
Lieberum tells BUST: "The song is like a laundry list of images and things that, in my mind, evoke feelings of sentimentality, romantic desire and longing. For the video, I imagined someone writing their thoughts in a journal. I was really inspired by the animated sequences in the Kurt Cobain documentary, Montage Of Heck, and wondered if I could do something similar, but as a lyric video. So I wrote out the lyrics by hand and drew a bunch of little doodles along with it. I then gave my scribbled lyric ideas to my friend (filmmaker and graphic designer) Debra Matlock and she was able to bring my doodle idea to life. She drew and animated the whole thing by hand in Photoshop. I also have to give a shout-out to my artist and musician friend, Leah Hayes; the font she created was used for much the lyric portion of the video."
DIRECTED BY: Debra Matlock
DO YOU REALIZE??
The video for Gretchen Lieberum's take on the Flaming Lips song 'Do You Realize' was directed by Jacob Aaron Estes (Mean Creek) in three afternoons, with a three thousand dollar budget and no lights, shot with a used fifty dollar Canon Super 8mm film camera. With only two people on the small crew, the filmmakers and the artist traveled around Los Angeles through Silverlake, Echo Park, Chinatown, Downtown, Beverly Hills and South Central asking random people on the street for five minutes of their time to pose for a music video. With the exception of a few friends who let the filmmakers into their houses to film them and their children, all the subjects who generously posed for camera were friendly strangers. During the filming, each participant was passed a toy crown to place on their head and each subject then passed the crown off screen to the other side of frame-- to create an illusion in the editing room that the crown is being passed from person to person, starting with the artist in Echo Park, traveling to Santee Alley in the heart of Los Angeles' Garment District to Rodeo Drive and back again. Some of the subjects with more time on their hands to donate were then asked to attempt to lip sync the song, which the filmmakers played them on a cheap CD player and the participants had to learn the lyrics on the spot. The humanistic, equalizing quality of the video, dramatized by the passing of the crown from person to person was a visual-intellectual idea that came from the artist Gretchen herself, who was inspired by the themes of the song and by a friend of hers in Brooklyn named Ken Solomon who for years has been working on something called 'The Wig Project', photographing thousands of local residents posing for camera with the same wig. Shot by Cinematographers Paula Huidobro & Sharone Meir, Edited by Russell Lichter, with production support by Marc Webb, Hagai Shaham and David Naylor.
bio
Los Angeles based singer-songwriter Gretchen Lieberum developed a deep love of great jazz vocalists such as Nina Simone, Peggy Lee, Julie London and Sarah Vaughn while growing up in Berkeley, California, exploring her father’s vast vinyl collection. When writing and recording, she has always sought to incorporate that vocal delivery and combine it with her interest in other genres of music, from singer-songwriters such as Tom Waits to electronic influenced groups like Goldfrapp and Portishead. She has written and recorded four albums of original music featuring some incredible L.A. based musicians and producers, including Greg Kurstin (The Bird And The Bee), Greg Poree (Stevie Wonder), Joey Waronker (Beck, REM, Elliot Smith), Gus Seyffert (The Black Keys, Beck, Norah Jones, Sia), Bram Inscore (Beck) and Keefus Ciancia (T-Bone Burnett, Meshell Ndegeocello). She has been signed to Lakeshore Records in the US and Nomadic Records in the UK. Her original song “Angel On My Shoulder” was used for the closing credits of the Independent Spirit Award winning film Mean Creek.
In 2016 Gretchen released an album of songs co-written and produced by Jake Blanton (The Killers, Beck) under the moniker Sargent, which BUST magazine called “a cabaret-pop style album...a soothing remedy for a broken heart, rooted in vintage instruments...an airy, yet beautifully raw project.”
In 2013, Gretchen formed Princess, a Prince cover band, with Emmy award winning comedian Maya Rudolph. Both deadly serious and lovingly tongue-in-cheek, Princess has played many stages, from The Hollywood Bowl to Carnegie Hall to the Bonnaroo music festival, as well as two performances on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon where they were accompanied by The Roots. They most recently participated in the televised Grammy Salute To Prince. Best of all, they even got to meet their idol, the man himself, who gave them warm hugs and a thumbs-up, and told them that he had their previous Late Night performance of Darling Nikki recorded on his DVR. When he passed in 2016, Princess was honored to perform “Sometimes It Snows in April” on The Tonight Show with D’Angelo in his honor.
Gretchen’s latest project, This May Only Be a Dream, is an album of reimagined jazz and pop standards produced by her collaborator, BAFTA award winning composer and musician Keefus Ciancia, who recently scored the shows True Detective and Killing Eve. The music is lush and cinematic, Keefus crafting intricate and beautiful tracks around Gretchen’s intimate vocal delivery. Out now!
PRESS
Gretchen Lieberum has a couple seemingly incongruous sides to her, which she showcases through two different projects. She’s every bit the disco-funk goof in ...Princess, her duo with SNL alum Maya Rudolph — but she’s also a serious singer-songwriter with a darkly-shaded energy in her music. The graver part of Lieberum’s artistry manifests as Sargent, and she’s dropping her self-titled debut under that moniker today.
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PRINCESS
SNL vet Maya Rudolph and LA singer-songwriter Gretchen Lieberum are PRINCESS, a Prince cover band. The two have been singing together since college but it was only recently that the duo turned their mutual adoration for Prince into a musical project. Princess has played many stages over the last eight years, including the Hollywood Bowl, Carnegie Hall, the Bonnaroo Music Festival as well as two performances on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Born out of their collective, life-long obsession with Prince, each performance is a love letter to the Artist himself. Don't Worry, They Won't Hurt U... They Only Want U 2 Have Some Fun.