People Brought Me Back to Music: An Interview with Leah Callahan

Leah Callahan made waves in the Boston music scene as the front woman for Turkish Delight US, Betwixt, and The Glass Set. After a hiatus of thirteen years, she released three highly-praised albums in eighteen months: Simple Folk, Short Stories, and Cut-Ups. Her latest album, Curious Tourist, debuts on April 29. Influenced by the likes of Blur, Lush, and Bronski Beat, builds on the legacy of Britpop’s past, and kicks things into overdrive with brand new takes on dance-pop, post-punk, and shoegaze, for what might be the next wave.

You first hit the Boston music scene in the 90s, and the intervening years have seen massive changes in the music industry. How have you adapted to them?

The biggest change obviously has been digital. I remember the shift to digital like it was yesterday. One day we were sending postcards to people, the next we were doing this thing called email, some folks with money had computers, others had a day job with a computer. Digital in the mid-90s promised to level the playing field, but like anything, having a lot of influence digitally, isn’t much different than say having a lot of support and promotion (magazine, radio, etc) in the pre digital world. Digital reach, like the old-fashioned reach, costs money, it’s not free.

How have I adapted? Learn every day, work harder, take the punches as they come and get right back up. I do love a challenge, and getting one’s music out there in this environment certainly is a challenge, perhaps more of a challenge now than the 90s, perhaps it’s always been challenging. But my final word on this after having mulled it over for a few years now after coming back after a 13 year hiatus: Life would be boring if everything were handed to me.

Are you okay with talking about why you took a break from music for a while?

Sure. It was a combination of exhaustion of trying to juggle work and music and just didn’t have the psychological strength… to deal with all of the negativity and constant rejection. Leaving music gave me perspective, on the way of the world, and I saw how things work, outside of the context of the music scene/industry, and that gave me power.

What brought you back?

People brought me back to music. Ilya and Thor from the label IHeartNoise, and the labels Reckless Yes and Custom Made Music who reissued my band Turkish Delight. People, friends and fans, showing up to both a Turkish Delight and a Betwixt (my second band) reunion in 2018 and 2019. My producer Richard Marr of Galaxy Park studios encouraging me to record rock records and helping me meet amazing musicians that I have collaborated with like Chris Stern, Alex Stern, Alex Brander and Jeremy Fortier. People like you, giving me press even though you’re not friends with me, I am not on a major indie label, I don’t buy ads, and won’t provide you with massive traffic to your site.That all got me out of my angry, bitter, feeling-sorry-for-myself slump.

And you released three albums in eighteen months. Had the songs been percolating for over the years, or did you write them more recently?

Nope I wrote them recently. When I do something I never do it half-assed, so when I quit I completely forgot about music, wiped art and creativity from my psyche like it never existed for me.

I’m also curious about how the recording process might be different now compared to when you first started making music. Would recording three albums in eighteen months even have been possible in the 90s? 

Yes, sure. I mean I was young, I had a group of young friends, we all pitched in financially to make it work even though we had no money. We usually recorded an album a year.

But me now, trying to record solo stuff with people who have limited time and don’t live near me or play live with me, and during COVID like I did. Yeah agreed, digital, being able to send files, and my collaborators being able to use pro tools, as much as I complain it hasn’t been a blessing, has enabled that, for sure.

You’ve been praised for your attention to storytelling in music. What draws you to songs that tell stories? 

My perspective on life is really a mixed bag, and honestly I find the English language lacking, in trying to convey my emotions. I think human emotions are more complex than the words we have – whether that is because I am a songwriter/poet, or because there is some conspiracy in language to control and maintain a certain behavior standard – I don’t know. This also explains why I write lyrics with melodies, and not poems. The melodies, for me, add an extra layer in order which to communicate with. This need to communicate incommunicable thoughts drives me.

Stories, short vignettes in my songs, fill in where words are lacking. For example, I have feelings in situations where I am both jaded and joyful at the same time. There is no word in the English language which conveys both, nothing comes close. I also feel disillusioned, but have strong desires. How can one feel both disillusioned and have desire at the same time? According to the English language it’s not possible, there’s no word to express it. But it’s not impossible for me, so I try to convey those emotions in melodies and lyrics which are little stories.

I have studied lyrical storytellers for this and the next album (which is in production right now), from Jarvis Cocker to Bruce Springsteen, and musical storytellers where I focus on the way emotion is conveyed in melody and approach, Beth Carvalho, Nazaré Pereira, to name just two of many. I try to investigate what is at the core, what is key to their stories, which they tell so well, and have tried, in my own way, to mimic them by listening and studying.

I was listening to the title-track from Curious Tourist, and in addition to having a 90s Brit Pop feel, it’s also reminiscent of 60s pop as well. I can definitely imagine it on the soundtrack of a film set in, say, Monte Carlo in 1968! What’s the story behind that song?

I love that imagery! “Curious Tourist” I feel like it’s Sade meets Nick Cave, there’s this vibe of a mysterious singer in a smoky café and she’s not singing a typical love song. My lyrics were influenced by the poet Arthur Rimbaud and the nonfiction writer Ed Yong. I revisited the poetry of Rimbaud after many years, after reading that Patti Smith found him to be an influence, I wanted to know why. 

Yong writes about microbes. His book: “I Contain Multitudes” will blow your mind. I often slip science into my songs, like a song such as “Competitive Clara”, I am interested in how the systems in our own bodies, or bacteria, or microbes affect our psyche and behaviors towards ourselves and others (and they certainly do have an effect). Chris had spliced two of my songs together, hence the odd mix. I never told him what the lyrics were about, but what he came up with, it drew the perfect picture of my lyrics for me, and it sounds very soundtracky indeed – complex and rich – as far from indie rock as you can get; not quite jazz, Southern Gothic, or art-pop but with some elements of those genres. 

I’m also curious about “Nowhere Girl.”

Chris Stern co-wrote that song with me, contributing the music and lyrics to the chorus which he sings on. It does have that breezy, sophistipop sound, reminiscent of say the song “Life in Mono”, or the song “Amalfi” by Hooverphonic. I am pretty sure Chris is a huge Stereolab fan, as is Jeremy Fortier the viola player, so you’ll hear that hybrid “Krautrock meets 60s French pop” influence too. Chris emailed me this back in August 2023 when he was working on songwriting and arranging the original melody and lyrics that I had sent him: “I felt like the second I saw the title I knew exactly where the song was going to go. It reminded me of ‘Nowhere Man’ by the Beatles and ‘Mystery Girl’ by Roy Orbison which put it in a pop tradition that felt right to me.”

I actually see it also as a shoegaze song, with a viola (played by Jeremy Fortier) instead of a lead guitar, and vocals high in the mix. It’s not shoegaze, then, of course, the way I just described it, but something brand new.

More broadly, how does the “curious tourist” concept inform the album as a whole?

When I wrote the song I knew it should be the title track. I believe Chris was surprised, because usually people decide things like song order and title tracks, album covers, etc. AFTER an album is completed, I do it all before. I work very conceptually. I am wacky.

Do you see yourself as a curious tourist in any way?

Definitely. You have hit the nail on the head here. A lot of my work deals with my experiences of other-ness and alienation, if you listen to the songs on “Simple Folk”, “Short Stories”, or “Cut-Ups”.

I have experienced and expressed those emotions, and I am ready for new ones. Calling myself a tourist, reflects this perspective, plus it’s way more fun and positive than calling myself an “outsider”. I am having a great time observing all the goings on in the world, although I’m not actually part of them, like a tourist. There is a loss for words here again, so I am borrowing words, repurposing words, and telling stories.

What’s on the horizon?

I am making this up as I go, learning from what has worked and hasn’t worked with these four solo albums. I work full time then spend about four or five hours most nights trying to promote my music with very little budget. I am looking forward to taking the summer off, not my paid job, but this unpaid one, then coming back and doing it all over again in September.

From time to time, I come across a crazy idea, the other night I applied for a $15K grant to hire a band to tour the UK for a week. The grant application literally fell into my lap, and I am not banking on it, but as you can see I am taking opportunities where I can find them, and hopefully getting my music out there. I can only control what I can control, writing, making and self-promoting my music, so I focus on that. If I keep my head down and keep moving, I imagine that I may just trip and fall into something fantastic.