We’re with them!
US supergroup i’m With her on their new album and that Hillary Clinton connection
RAReLY is a supergroup quite as patient or as persistent as I’m With Her. the trio – singer/songwriter/multiinstrumentalists Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz and Aoife o’donovan – formed in 2014, recorded their first LP two years later, and are releasing
See You Around two years after that. “All of us are very busy,” says o’donovan. “We’re always collaborating with other people and doing different projects. I’m sure to certain people it looks ludicrous: don’t they have enough going on?” All three are solo artists, which makes I’m With Her something of a respite: a casual side project defined by the group’s iridescent harmonies, vivid songwriting, and deft picking and strumming.
I’m With Her has its roots in a backstage meeting at the telluride Bluegrass Festival in 2014. Bluegrass musicians jam with each other all the time; it’s one of the perks of the field. But something clicked when the trio first played together.
For Jarosz, it was o’donovan’s tune “Magpie” that really cemented the band: “We were backstage getting ready for a songwriting workshop, and the three of us started working up that song. ‘Magpie’ is really complicated, but I noticed how easily we all fell into a tune that wasn’t straightforward.”
“We actually haven’t played that song since then,” o’donovan laughs.
Rather than record right away, they honed their dynamic on the road, playing under their own names on the I’m With Her tour and eventually adopting that phrase as their collective identity. “We couldn’t think of anything else to call it,” says Jarosz. “We tried.”
even when Hillary Clinton adopted the phrase as her 2016 campaign slogan, the trio did not consider changing it. “the name caught on with friends and fans,” says Watkins. “When you find something that sticks with people, it’s tough to change it. So we kept it.”
After intense songwriting sessions in Los Angeles and rural Vermont, I’m With Her jumped the Atlantic to record with producer ethan Johns (Paul McCartney, tom Jones) in Box, a small village outside Bath. they played mostly live in the studio, the better to capture the immediacy of songs like their austere cover of Gillian Welch’s “Hundred Miles” and the lively instrumental “Waitfield”, which ends with a burst of studio applause.
“We took a few swings and misses to the arrangement, and I remember being fairly slaphappy at that point,” says Watkins. “that was the first time we got through the song.”
even during those sessions they were still juggling solo careers with band life. Jarosz was listening to mixes of her album Undercurrent during the sessions, and on the final day of recording o’donovan released her solo album In The
Magic Hour. Since then Watkins has released both a solo album and a full-length with the Watkins Family Hour, featuring her brother Sean and Fiona Apple.
“I think our patience speaks for itself,” says o’donovan. “We needed to wait for the right time and let everybody do their things. We kept the flame going but without really setting it ablaze. But we’re ready now.” See You Around is released on Rounder Records