BARING HER ‘SOUL’
Sallie Ford takes own path to honest, emotional landscape
Sallie Ford doesn’t mind the retro rocker tag. But please don’t call her rockabilly. “I have been haunted by people labeling my music all sorts of things, but it’s that rockabilly thing I can’t stand,” Ford said with a little laugh from her home of Portland, Ore. “Maybe it’s the way I dress. I’ve never been sure, but people insist on calling me rockabilly.”
Ford loves ’ 60s rock ’n’ roll — that’s clear after listening to her new album, “Soul Sick” — but she has as much in common with St. Vincent as she does with Gene Vincent.
After splitting with her original backing band, the Sound Outside, in 2014, Ford has suffered through plenty of people telling her they miss her old sound. Fans can be fickle, but they better not give up on Ford, who plays Great Scott tonight. “Soul Sick” is her best album yet. The disc is a sweet mashup of garage rock, girl group harmonies, Kinks homages and smart songwriting.
Like so many killer pop albums, it feels like a catalog of breakup songs. But like Paul Simon’s “The Only Living Boy in New York” and Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill,” the material seems to deal more with a musical divorce than a romantic one.
“There was a lot of coming to terms with not playing with the same band, and that drove me to deal with my own issues,” Ford said. “I don’t think that’s the main story of the album, but it’s in there, I hear that.”
As a solo artist, Ford was unsure of herself. She struggled with frustration, depression and bouts of writer’s block. Eventually, she broke through with this set of honest, direct rock tunes.
Over jagged rock guitar and a big beat, she sings, “You gotta learn not to care what they think” on “Never Gonna Please.”
“Middle Child” has her belting, “I wasn’t born first, I wasn’t born last/ There’s no use dwelling on the past” to jangling acoustic guitars.
“I think my writing has been very blunt before, but maybe here it’s even more blunt,” she said. “I think you can hide yourself in really poetic stuff. For this record, I would overwrite lyrics, almost a stream of consciousness thing. Afterwards, I would edit them to get them to come from a really honest place.”
To help her pair confessional lyrics with classic instrumentation, Ford enlisted producer Mike Coykendall. A bit of a legend out West — Coykendall has worked with M. Ward and Blitzen Trapper — he proved invaluable in shaping the aesthetic of “Soul Sick.”
“I think about a song like ‘Middle Child,’ which I originally wanted to be this weird, funky Stevie Wonder thing, but it just didn’t work,” Ford said. “Mike said, ‘What if we make it a British invasion thing?’ And then I kind of let him take the wheel, and he made me re-love the song all over again.”
Ford has been happy with her evolution, emotionally and sonically, on “Soul Sick.” As she hits the road to promote the record, she hopes fans forget the labels and just enjoy some good ol’ rock ’n’ roll.
Sallie Ford, with Molly Burch and Aisha Burns, at Great Scott, tonight. Tickets: $15; greatscottboston.com