They say “never meet your heroes”, apparently “they” never met Beth Hart. A few weeks back I had the absolute pleasure of spending some time with Beth on the rooftop of her NYC hotel as we talked about her new record, War In My Mind, her career and so much more. She is truly one of the most open, welcoming performers I have ever interviewed. The moment you meet you you feel like an old friend. There are some highlights below, but I highly recommend listening to the full interview.
Please press Play below to listen to the MisplacedStraws conversation with the one and only Beth Hart:
On the meaning behind “War In My Mind” – Okay, so I’ll tell you the honest-to-god story of what happened. It’s going to be very dramatic, but I tend to be overly dramatic anyway with everything. So I had had 5 years,5 months and 6 days of sobriety once when I was young and I lost it. When I lost that sobriety I couldn’t get sober again for eight years of struggling and it got so bad that I decided one day I’m going to kill myself. So I woke up and I got on my knees. I didn’t really want to cuz if I really wanted I wouldn’t have gone on my knees and beg God and I said “listen, you got to help me out here man, because I’m going to take myself out, I can’t do this anymore”. I can’t keep running off and hiding in bushes and leaving my husband, abandoning people. I heard a voice, bi-polar or not, that said “I want you to go to this church”. I didn’t know what denomination of a church it was, I didn’t know, Buddha, Christian, what it was, I didn’t care I went and when I went it was all in Korean and I remember looking up the ceiling “I’m going are you kidding me? You want me to come to a Korean church?” :34
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| Photo: Greg Waterman |
I’m such a stickler about words. It’s not just that I’m a stickler about word, I’m a stickler about finding the truth. Because I know me, basically I lie to myself just to keep me in a false sense of security. I know that you can’t do that if you’re ever going to heal, if you’re ever going to get better you got to search for it and keep searching for it. But every once in awhile the lyric comes fast and it came fast on that day because it was obvious. I’ve been up and down with my head so much here comes the war in my mind. 4:00
“War In My Mind”
On the song “Sugar Shack” – It reminds of if you took Trent Reznor and a Nine Inch Nails vibe and mixed it with early 80’s dance music…When it was finished I was like, oh my God, I love this song now more than ever! It made me want to make a whole record of this. Because you get to be really soulful, it’s not depressing lyric, it’s a sexual kind of naughty lyric which is fun and it’s energy, a lot of energy and that would be great to add I think. I don’t know, maybe I’ll get a shot at doing that. 8:30
“Sugar Shack”
On the Spirituality of her lyrics and the possibility of a gospel record – I don’t believe in running around and preaching to people about what to believe in and to have a god. I’ve met some atheists that are some of the most spiritual people, they hate me saying that to them, but they’re living right. To me, spirituality just comes down to taking responsibility of how important is in your life to not show how great you are through accomplishments of work or accomplishments of things, or what you look like, vanity, but accomplishments in reaching out and loving people that you don’t even know, that you’re never even been taught you’re supposed to love, people that, in fact, you’ve been taught to hate and you love them. That to me spirituality. So to make a gospel record, I think it would be so amazing to just stand up for that, for real love and try to write about that, to seek that out and see maybe if little angels come in and help us to write that. 10:00
“Let It Grow”
On meeting and collaborating with Joe Bonamassa –So it’s fuzzy because I’ve heard so many different stories about it, even when you experience something but you hear so many different stories about it. But how I remember it is I was playing a little place in England, in London, and Scott, my husband, came up to me and said that Joe had come down, or sent someone down, to say that he wanted a maybe do a soul cover record. And so Kevin Shirley and I, which is the producer of all of Joe’s stuff, he and I started talking and swapping back and forth ideas of songs to cover. And we figured out a big group of songs, and this is what we’ve done every record, and then I learn everything and then we literally show up the day of recording. No rehearsal, we get behind our instruments and we go and if there’s anything in the arrangement that fits, and if Kevin Shirley thinks should shift it shifts and it’s fast and it’s fun and it’s great. 14:09
“Bad Woman Blues”
On her experiences as a woman in rock – Okay. Now I got to tell you something man that’s the God’s honest truth. I don’t know if it’s cuz I’m in a total state of denial or if it’s just because I just don’t look at things from that, I never look at something from a defensive point of if I don’t get this or that it’s cuz I’m a woman. I never have and I never will, so in my experience in this business, I have never ever had a fight or a struggle about anything creatively or financially where I thought it was based on me being a woman. I just have never thought that way. I’ve never had a man trying to sexually do something to me in the business. I did as a kid with a child predator, but not in the business where they were saying, if you do this, you’re going to get it. I just never have but I’ve heard of course the stories about how women rock don’t get the respect that men and rock do, but I have personally never felt it. It was not towards me and it and if it was there I didn’t notice it. 22:40
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