Vanessa Lively and Ben Bedford bring their instruments into NPR Illinois Studio A to share some of their latest collaborations including her new single, Red Wolf.
Websites: VanessaLively.com - BenBedford.com
Email: VanessaLively@gmail.com.
Transcripted with AI and human editing for readability.
Randy Eccles:
This is Community Voices on 91.9 UIS. I'm co-host Randy Eccles. Today, an old friend, Ben Bedford, and a new friend, Vanessa Lively. Thank you both for joining us today. Vanessa, you haven't been here before. You're in the area. Are you from here originally?
Vanessa Lively:
No, I'm from Austin, Texas, and that's where I live. This is definitely my first time here, and I'm excited to be here.
Randy Eccles:
Welcome to Illinois. And Ben, we know you.
Ben Bedford:
Here I am.
Randy Eccles:
I think you've been touring around Nashville, You're in Illinois. Are you headed back to Texas? Are you from Texas, Vanessa?
Vanessa Lively:
Yes, I'm from Texas. Originally lived in San Antonio. When I was really little, I lived in Laredo. For the past almost 20 years, I've been in Austin.
Randy Eccles:
How did you and Ben come together?
Vanessa Lively:
We're both in the folk music world. We met years ago at the Kerrville Folk Festival, briefly, and had very close mutual friends. Kept crossing paths between the festival, which I attend every year and Ben had gone to a few years in a row. That's where our paths cross. We were in Texas.
Randy Eccles:
Lately you've been working together. You even have a new single out together.
Vanessa Lively:
Yeah, I'm embarking right now on a recording, and Ben and I are working on this project together. We've recorded a few songs already and have another batch of maybe five or six coming up. But we released one of them from the sessions that we just did a few months ago and that's called Red Wolf. There are a couple songs that we've worked on together as far as co-writes. It's been really fun to do more collaborative work and play more together.
Randy Eccles:
I see that you have guitars. Before I ask you to play, tell us how this song came together.
Vanessa Lively:
Red Wolf. I joined a songwriting group in Austin that's called the 1159 Songwriting Group. They would give a prompt every two weeks. You'd turn in a song and that lasted for the first quarter of the year. One of the prompts was Endling, E-N-D-L-I-N-G, which I had never heard of. This is the last of a species. In that little tiny fortnight period that I had to write this song, I also was in a student conference with my son, Jeremiah. He was telling me all about this project he did on the red wolves that are dying, going towards extinction. I was well, that's obviously what I'm going to write about. Ben just left Austin. I sat with that prompt and all of the facts that Jeremiah shared and basically did a deep dive into the red wolves and wrote this song, Red Wolves.
Randy Eccles:
Ben, when you started playing with Vanessa on this, how did you have to approach it?
Ben Bedford:
I am not a side person by nature. I've been approaching these songs that either Vanessa wrote or we've written together from more of a side person approach, which has been fun. It's made me stretch and I've been trying to find different, interesting chord voicings to go along with.
Randy Eccles:
For people who might not understand that difference, who aren't players, being a side person, what does that mean?
Ben Bedford:
An accompanist. I'm a singer-songwriter, I'll do my solo thing and I'm the front person, but if I have a fiddle player or a guitar player play with me on my side, they're my side person.
Randy Eccles:
Following you.
Ben Bedford:
Yeah, Embellishing, lifting the songs to a different realm than they might go if I were playing solo.
Randy Eccles:
Well, show us how this one lifts.
(Vanessa and Ben play Red Wolf on their guitars in NPR Illinois Studio A)
Randy Eccles:
Red Wolf, the latest single out by Vanessa Lively with Ben Bedford on it. We're thrilled to have you in the studio. Ben, we've gotten to talk with you a lot before, so I've got some questions I really want to find out from Vanessa. Like, I don't see artists listing that they have a mission, but I saw your mission, and it's cool. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Vanessa Lively:
I've always approached both my fine art and my music and songwriting from a heart-centric place. I always have held this quiet prayer in my heart as I wrote or painted that it would somehow bring a bit more solace, peace, connectivity, healing through the work that I do to some degree because I've always had that desire in my heart. What comes through, hopefully, in everything that I do is this compassion and understanding and empathy.
In 2017, I started a nonprofit, and they asked for a mission statement and a vision as part of becoming a nonprofit. With that, I was thinking about the mission and the vision of this music group I was creating and this program for unhoused individuals in Austin. It made me think, "What is my mission statement just as an artist in general?" I sat down and wrote one. I don't remember exactly when it was. I thought it would help me keep a compass of sorts, where if I said it out loud and I wrote it down and I put it out there, that I would maybe remember to check in. It's pretty effortless for me. I'm always checking in and staying in alignment with my mission, but it also felt good to put it out publicly and be like, "Hey, this is my reason for existing."
It's quite apparent in how I love so much about community, about friendship and collaboration. We were just talking about Ben and him learning to be a side guy. What I find awesome is when we sit down to work on a song together, it's so much about like finding what piece he's going to bring that almost feels inseparable from the work. It's not, he's a side person. It's bringing a whole new element and layer that I feel it missing when we're not playing shows together. I hear Ben's part right here so much. He writes parts to the music and they are so beautiful and unique because his writing is that way.
Randy Eccles:
We see so many musicians, it seems to me more than it used to be, who put out music, who have a featured artist on it. A lot of times that's a marketing thing, but it's also collaboration. it's not as sidemen, right? It's collaboration. Ben, have you enjoyed this collaboration? It fits with the mission that Vanessa's talking about.
Ben Bedford:
Definitely, I've enjoyed it very much. Vanessa helps bring those elements, those things out in me to my desire for community and connectivity. I lean in a hermit-like direction myself.
Randy Eccles:
Wasn't that on one of your albums?
Ben Bedford:
It was, fully embracing my hermit nature on that one. It's fun. I love playing solo. It's its own animal. Playing as a duo and creating these parts and having this melding is really fun.
Randy Eccles:
Give us another example.
Vanessa Lively:
Let's do She Calls the Wind. This is one that Ben wrote, and I joined him one day on the front porch.
Ben Bedford:
I think it's going to be on the new...
Vanessa Lively:
We're going to put it on this next project, this next album of mine. But this will be a song that Ben wrote.
Ben Bedford:
So I can say I've been covered by Vanessa Lively.
Vanessa Lively:
Do you say it's a cover if you're also playing it and singing it? I'm not. I think you're just playing it.
Ben Bedford:
This one's got a nice challenge to it, too. The verses are in 13 time, so I like to say, if it derails, it derails permanently, because I can't find my way back.
Randy Eccles:
You've been playing together and collaborating, doing some really great music, getting to tour. Do you enjoy that?
Ben Bedford:
Definitely. The last little tour we went on, it was especially fun because we got to take my cat, Darwin.
Randy Eccles:
The infamous Darwin.
Ben Bedford:
The infamous Darwin. He's a man about town. He went with us through Tennessee and Georgia and Florida, and then Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas, he did a little driving. Only in Alabama and Louisiana.
Randy Eccles:
Thank goodness for those automatic driving features now, right? One of the things I read, Vanessa, is that you're also bilingual and have done that in your recording and writing.
Vanessa Lively:
I love to write in Spanish and English, and I hadn't yet written a song that had both in one, but I noticed a lot of people would use both English and Spanish in one song. This album has a song called The Circle that is both English and Spanish. I felt thematically the two songs that appear on this record that are in Spanish. One is called Mi Grito, which is, my call, like my yell. Or, there's a grito in mariachi music, and it's, "Ay, ay, ay." That type of thing. I was using it like to mean my unique voice, my unique sound, and also my purpose, and finding it in this lifetime. Migrito is about that. It was about bringing my Mexican roots and my heritage a little more front and center. to everything I do. I grew up in Laredo and then San Antonio and was, I have a huge Mexican-American family that is, culturally speaking, that was very much what I was immersed in. It colors who I am, and it also colors my music and my cultural way in the world. I have found myself keeping them quite separate in a way with this album in particular, sort of wanting to play with bringing it more to the center. The Circle is about bringing my, what I was thinking of as my Latin fire, but to my English being and singing.
Randy Eccles:
Since you were born, you spoke both languages?
Vanessa Lively:
Yeah, I wouldn't say that I'm like extremely amazing in Spanish. I still stumble around almost like a young person speaking in Spanish. I make grammatical errors here and there for sure. But I can definitely communicate and get by. I lived in South America for a couple of years. Of course, I was only speaking in Spanish there. When I was really little, I would speak in Spanish to various people where they only spoke Spanish. My grandparents spoke English, but they'd speak Spanish when they were just speaking to each other pretty regularly. The woman that took care of me when I was really little, she didn't speak any English, and I communicated with her.
When my kids were little, I would discipline them in Spanish. I just noticed that was where I went to get into this different voice and be like, I mean business. I'd be like, you need to stop doing that. I'd say it in Spanish; I have almost a different personality when I speak in Spanish or sing in Spanish. The Circle and Migrito were about, what would it be like to try to blend it more and bring that part of me forward? A little more fire and passion.
Randy Eccles:
When you are bilingual, do you think in both languages? Your internal voice?
Vanessa Lively:
Yeah, when I moved back from South America. It's been such a long time that I am at this moment in time, I'm wanting to get reacquainted because it has been so long. I moved back home January 2007. It's almost 20 years since I have been in South America living. When I came back, I was speaking to people in Spanish, people with cowboy hats and cowboy boots that had a twang. I'd be speaking to them in Spanish as my first go to, and they'd be, "What are you saying?" That was because I was so used to just living in Spanish, and then I was dreaming in Spanish almost entirely.
Randy Eccles:
Wow. When you're writing, you're not really translating, you're writing within...
Vanessa Lively:
When I write in Spanish, I'm definitely not translating. When I translate, that does not sound correct, because in Spanish, there's a passion in that language. Even in the words and the way that the words are put together, when you translate it, there's a flatness sometimes. I have learned to study Pablo Neruda. There's a book that I have, Love Poems, it has the English and the Spanish side by side. Someone who translated it, translated it so beautifully, where they capture the essence and the lushness of the language, but into English. Spanish uses a lot more sensation and feeling words, words that are rich with some sense, sensory words and language. When you do a straight translation, it can fall so flat and lose all the passion.
Ben Bedford:
Which in my opinion, any kind of writing that incorporates a lot of sense, hearing, taste. smell, obviously sight. I find that to be more enjoyable.
Vanessa Lively:
It's way more interesting.
Ben Bedford:
Writing in general, whether it's in Spanish or English.
Vanessa Lively:
One of my tasks is to work my songs from Spanish back into English, but to actually sit down, I might do this with Ben. Ben's really good at sensory language, and we could like sit down and be, that's the word that it is literally, but I want to capture something broader, rounder, fuller.
Randy Eccles:
Did you come prepared to play one of those songs?
Vanessa Lively:
Yeah, we could play The Circle. That'll be in our next batch of of recording sessions when we go back.
Randy Eccles:
You're releasing a single or so as you're getting ready to release the full album later?
Vanessa Lively:
Yeah, the reason I released one single at the moment was because I got a grant from an organization in Austin called Wave Makers. They really were the people behind funding that project, which was the single. Tthen I wanted to give out the product, what their gift gave to me. That is why I was in a hurry to get Red Wolf out to the world. It's possible because the release date for this album might not be till January 2026. It's possible that between now and then we might release another one or two just as a way to get people familiar with the songs as they're ready and then put the full project out later.
Randy Eccles:
We're looking forward to hearing this is in Spanish.
Vanessa Lively:
It's in both. It's English and then goes into a little bit of Spanish at the end.
(Vanessa and Ben play The Circle in NPR Illinois Studio A)
Randy Eccles:
Vanessa Lively and Ben Bedford with The Circle. Thanks for playing live in the studio for us. It's very exciting to hear you working together. I love collaborations. You have other things you've been doing. You're going to be back touring and out of the area soon, but do you have another song you'd like to play for us and tell us about?
Ben Bedford:
This is a co-write that we borrowed the melody from, I knew as the Huron Carol, which was written in Quebec and 1643. They had stolen the tune from an older French song from the 14th century.
Vanessa Lively:
It's old. The song is about that too.
Ben Bedford:
It is, yeah.
Vanessa Lively:
It's about how song and sound and melody can go above and beyond boundaries and generations and space and time. That's the magic and beauty of it. The song prompt was Magik with a K. It was from the 1159 songwriting group. That's how you spell it in Wiccan traditions. Ben was in Austin, and typical for 1159 deadline, I've got a song due today. We have got to write one.
Ben Bedford:
And we wrote this through half an hour.
Vanessa Lively:
Which is really fun.
Ben Bedford:
Which is great, yeah. It's not my normal way.
Randy Eccles:
It can happen.
Ben Bedford:
It can happen, yeah.
Vanessa Lively:
Sometimes it's just magik.
Ben Bedford:
I like to tinker and like pull things apart, so it's nice to just do it.
(Vanessa and Ben play Magik in NPR Illinois Studio A)
Randy Eccles:
What's next?
Ben Bedford:
Recording the rest of the album. We're doing that in September. We're planning out our schedule for the next 12 to 18 months, trying to decide where we want to go and balancing being here and being in Austin and in between.
Vanessa Lively:
It's really fun to think about how we're fully in charge of how we put put our music out in the world and tour. It's been fun to sit down and get creative about where we're going to go. We're going to be doing a couple of folk music conferences and various shows on the horizon. But it's all going to be a lovely adventure.
Randy Eccles:
You've brought joy to me today, being able to listen. The pandemic, like so many things, took the energy out of the momentum.
Ben Bedford:
I still feel like I'm trying to rev my engine and get the momentum that I had in 2019 going again.
Randy Eccles:
It may just be the new momentum.
Vanessa Lively:
I feel what everyone did in the pandemic was a great review of, is this exactly how I want to do everything? Is this sustainable? Is this good on my body? All that. I think that every musician went there.
Randy Eccles:
A rare opportunity to evaluate whether we need to be on this wheel and spin it all the time.
Vanessa Lively:
To realize that we can fully decide how we do it and make it super and extremely sustainable, balancing home time and quiet time. Because a lot of artists are, as social as this job is, a lot of the artists are sensitive introverts as well with an extroverted side, which is odd. You go out and socialize all the time, are not at home, and then you have to recharge your energy. Always a balance. Sometimes the songwriter rhythm can end up being very out of balance with being out and constantly giving out. It's nice we can mold and shape it however we want.
Randy Eccles:
Your career has been based out of Austin mostly.
Vanessa Lively:
Yes, and I, pre-children, I definitely was on that kind of, out much more often. I'm A Libra, I have always been about balance. From way back, I need to have time to be at home and in my community, not always out on the road. I would go to Western Europe every year, had a record label there, had booking agents that I worked with there. That was back in 2007, 2008, 2009, all the way through, I went even pregnant in 2013. I was, "I'll be back every year." They were, will you though? I was not.
Randy Eccles:
We don't have rooms for kids backstage.
Vanessa Lively:
It's kind of challenging. Beyond the logistics of it, it's hard on the kids. That was what I was most mindful of. My son Jeremiah was born with clubfoot. He needed medical attention right away. Two weeks he was in surgery. He was six weeks. He had surgery and went under. I had shows on the calendar and I canceled everything. I flew out for one of them, but I canceled everything else. It slowed me way down and brought me home in a new way, and that was 2014.
Randy Eccles:
Ben Bedford and Vanessa Lively are so kind to join us today on Community Voices. Where does somebody get your music?
Vanessa Lively:
It's on all of the online platforms, of course. Bandcamp is a way to purchase the music and CDs. It'll alert me to send one via mail. I'm on Bandcamp. People can reach out directly as well via e-mail, VanessaLively@gmail.com.
Randy Eccles:
I found your website also: VanessaLively.com.
Vanessa Lively:
Yeah, there's a website with most everything on there. Ben has BenBedford.com and all of the music of his is also online everywhere.
Thank you so much for having us today.
Randy Eccles:
Great to see you. Nice to meet you. We really enjoy the music. I hope everybody goes and explore some more online.
Vanessa Lively:
Thank you.
