Jaime Wyatt (photo by Jody Domingue)
EDITOR’S NOTE: Jaime Wyatt is No Depression’s Spotlight artist for November 2023. Her new album, Feel Good, comes out Nov. 3 on New West Records. Learn more about Wyatt and the new album all month long at nodepression.com.
Jaime Wyatt was trying to find the words.
She was constructing “World Worth Keeping,” a simmering, up-tempo takedown of capitalism, colonization, and climate corruption that opens her third studio album, Feel Good, amid a meticulous jam session in an LA studio. She would play a recording of the instrumentals, sing whatever came to mind first — a sound, part of a phrase — and then play it back, running it several more times before finally nailing the phrase, editing as she went. “What does it sound like I’m trying to say?” she’d ask herself, until something came out that felt true.
Truth is key to this especially timely barnburner of a song that is somehow ruthlessly eviscerating and utterly joyful at the same time. In it, she imagines a world without evil billionaires, with clean air and water, and with equality for all people. A fantasy that shouldn’t be one. “This generation has not just war in the east / But there’s a war, deep within,” she belts, raspy and cool. “Take a look around you / There’s a world worth keeping.”
“It’s important that these themes be in the music right now because people are finally learning about how society has been structured for a long time,” she says. “I would be greatly missing out on a current feeling if I didn’t write about those things.”
As evidenced by how much effort went into this song alone, making Feel Good was a labor of love. It took a level of time, attention, and collaboration she’d never attempted before. But more than anything, it required intuition. Every musician was handpicked by Wyatt, who acted as what she describes as a kind of “sports agent,” assembling tapes of players trying out the trickiest bits of songs until she found the right fit for her vision, her team. For instance, drummer Will Rockwell was tapped for his killer backbeat, ideal for capturing an old-school sound like something you’d hear on a track by The Ronettes. But another drummer, Kyle Egart (also Wyatt’s road drummer), can, in her words, “do sixteenth notes on the hat like nobody’s business.” Both lend their respective skills to Feel Good.
This laborious process of bottom-to-top songcrafting is one Wyatt could only arrive at after years of diligently committing to self-care and growth, artistically and personally. She wrote a ton, taught herself piano, took voice lessons, practiced yoga and meditation, did all kinds of therapy, read, and surrounded herself with like-minded people. In other words, she healed.
And there was a lot to heal from, as has been well documented in Wyatt’s origin story. Not necessarily in this order, she survived a closeted youth, drug addiction, and incarceration. She got clean, moved to Nashville, came out, and put out two stellar albums on which she began to open up about everything, 2017’s Felony Blues and 2020’s Neon Cross (ND review). Her journey hasn’t been linear, but that isn’t the point.
“I am incapable of compartmentalizing so much pain and suffering in the world. Not to say compartmentalizing is not healthy … It’s a valuable skill that I have to practice, too. What I’m talking about is carving out that space for oneself, in between the moments of vigilance,” she says. “I feel a deep need to advocate for others, so what I’ve learned in the last couple of years, and what Feel Good is all about, is learning how to care for myself and lift myself up so that I can be of better service. And that’s kind of always been my mission, but I didn’t know how much self-reflection and healing I had to do.”
Loving and Accepting
Produced by Adrian Quesada of the Black Pumas (thanks to a connection made by mutual friend, Nikki Lane), Feel Good is the culmination of the daily work, or what Wyatt calls “radical self-care.” It’s about loving and accepting who you are in a cruel world. Its front half is all smoky soul, 1960s doo-wop, Motown, and R&B — new-ish territory for Wyatt, but fabulously suited to the natural fluidity and command of her vocals. Its back half starts to weave in a little of the vintage country and psych-rock sound Wyatt has been perfecting since her early days.
“The way that I like to be creative is to go to outer space first and then bring it back for some tradition,” she says. “I think we just wanted it to feel like an experience, and I am always of the belief that if you have something crazy or wild to say, you should lead out the gate with it. And I needed to express that.”
Feel Good has plenty to say. On the album’s standout title track — all slinky, ultra-cool vibes — she sheds all the things that aren’t working for her anymore: dishonesty, self-flagellation, dismissing her gut feelings. On the buoyant bop “Love Is a Place,” she celebrates the way a healthy, loving relationship can be a kind of spiritual salvation.
She condemns the epidemic of police brutality and gun violence on the dark western “Fugitive,” lamenting the hollow song and dance of thoughts and prayers that follow each tragedy. Album closer “Moonlighter” is a rootsy diary of the lonely life of an artist, with its constant sacrifices and fleeting connections, suggesting cheekily that where Wyatt moonlights is not in clubs and on stages, but in her personal life. Rich, full-bodied groove “Hold Me One Last Time” is a desperate plea for a lover to stay that builds to a cathartic wall-of-sound finale akin to a primal scream.
Sonically, Wyatt references Black Sabbath as much as James Booker, Jerry Lee Lewis as much as The Grateful Dead. Wyatt’s love of the latter, imparted by her parents, who idolized the Dead and took her to shows as a kid, even resulted in her cutting a cover of “Althea.” She knew she could put her own stamp on it and “carry the torch,” so to speak.
“I just thought [it] would be the most haunting thing that I could sing. The lyrics are super cool, it’s a story of treachery. There’s a betrayal aspect and there’s this relationship. It’s a love, maybe, or it’s an addiction. They say Robert Hunter may have written that song about Jerry Garcia’s addiction, and that’s something I can relate to in my journey with addiction,” she says. “This time of reflection that I’ve been in, all these feelings and relationship dynamics that are being assessed in the song are so pertinent to my own life.” Her late father would love that she found a way to include it, she’s certain.
Fearless
Feel Good is an uninhibited, statement-making record by a self-assured artist willing to push herself. Wyatt wrote songs that would be difficult for her to sing and arrange, creating a challenge she could rise to in every way possible. “Do I think soul is a great way to express frustration? Yeah, I do,” she says. “Live, I would end up belting whatever I sang on the record, and now I’ve finally gotten to a point where I can really belt on record and really access physically what I need to access. I just wanted to put on recording the most emotive performance I could possibly get.”
Being fearlessly emotional and true to herself is non-negotiable now. It is a philosophy that stretches from making time for herself on the road all the way to dancing and moving more on stage and writing unapologetically queer love songs. “If I’d have seen someone [whose music I admired] and then I heard lyrics of them being true to themselves and being gay and singing about being gay, I think I’d maybe have had an easier time … It wasn’t okay to say. We’ve always been here, people have always been gay, people have always been trans, people have always been nonbinary,” she says. “My journey was greatly confused by a lack of visibility and seeing queer people as idols. There weren’t as many, and where I grew up was still very closeted. So, my journey is taking place out of chronological order. Accepting that has taken years.”
Feel Good is Wyatt removing whatever might have been left of the muzzle imposed on her by an industry often lacking in inclusivity, by a culture that has been slow to reveal itself, by her own doubts or shame in the road she took to get here. But here she is, shouting at the top of her lungs from a place so deep inside, it can’t be contained any longer.
“Nashville’s been problematic,” she says. “All I can do is just be myself and try and get a little bit more free.”
