Impromptu gig puts two singers in the spotlight
“Great Gig in the Sky,” from Pink Floyd’s album “Dark Side of the Moon,” made singer Clare Torry one of the most shamefully underpaid album contributors in music history. The song really is all about the soaring vocal parts, for which Torry was originally paid 30 British pounds.
Now, for shows on Roger Waters’ Us + Them tour, a moving update of “Great Gig” is a showpiece for two singers.
Waters needed a dynamic vocal presence for the song when he played the Newport Folk Festival in 2015. A friend suggested Lucius — a brilliant, experimental indie pop group built around the otherworldly vocals of Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig.
The two singers thought they were getting called in for two songs. But Waters liked what he heard and had them sing throughout the show. When he played the Desert Trip Festival a few months later, he brought them along. These days, they’re all over his new album “Is This the Life We Really Want?” and out on tour with him.
Before Waters’ stop in Houston, Wolfe and Laessig offered a report from the road and a vague update on plans for the third Lucius album.
Q: When Waters reached out to you to sing at his Newport show two years ago, did it occur to you it was an unofficial audition?
Wolfe: We had no idea. We didn’t even know at Newport that we’d be singing more than two songs. A day before the show, we found out we’d be singing on everything. And then a couple of months later, we got an email from Roger, basically saying, “I’m doing this festival with McCartney, the Stones, Dylan and Neil Young. Want to do it?” Sure, great idea! But it’s been a wonderful surprise at every turn. The thrill of our career so far.
Q: You’re on the new album, and live you get to play the new and old stuff Waters wrote, which gives you a different perspective perhaps than older fans. But I hear a common theme to his work, old and new. About connection and abandonment and expression.
Laessig: There are definitely common threads to all his work, influences and reasons why he’s so passionate about the topics. As far as the work, though, that’s his bit to talk about.
Wolfe: He makes his thoughts known in interviews and documentaries and what not. The things that sort of led to the direction of his art and poetry for his whole life. At the end of the day, it comes from loss and love. Those are powerful things that everybody can connect to in some way or another. And in the show, it does work together to where it feels seamless. Which makes sense: He’s the primary songwriter for all this amazing music. So it all sounds like him and his voice.
Q: “Great Gig” … that’s a big one. Was it a challenge?
Laessig: Yes. (Laughs.)
Wolfe: It is, but we got to a place where we could really let go when we do it. It started as a daunting task. You want to pay respect to the original and Clare Torry. But you are also you. And Roger has brought us into this thing to be us. If you had two people doing exactly the same thing one woman did decades ago, it would be weird. It wouldn’t be fair to her, and it wouldn’t be fair to us. So it’s a perfect opportunity to pay tribute to something as grand as what she had done without stepping on toes or be something it’s not. It’s been a learning experience doing that song. It’s really hard.
Q: What’s next for Lucius? It sounds like you’ve been writing for the third record.
Wolfe: Yes, we did some writing before this tour, and we’re writing while we travel. We don’t know yet what it’ll sound like, but it’s hard to imagine there won’t be some inspiration from working with Roger and being part of his machine. Even with the songs we’ve written, it’s a little hard to tell where they’re going, to be honest. But there will be some sort of experimentation and some different directions from what we’ve done before, yet we’re still writing pop songs. But you always want to do something different and exciting. There’s no point in doing the same thing you did last time.
Q: Your cover of the Kinks’ “Strangers” strikes me as telling about your work. The push/pull of collaborating with people you never fully know.
Wolfe: That’s just an ongoing theme for us, naturally. When it’s just the two of us, there’s this symmetry with the voices, but there are also two completely different people coming together and making something as one. It’s something we play with thematically in our writing, in our singing and the visual side of the band — the essence of the band in general.