When singer-actor-artist, Bethany Thomas, left Chicago to drive to California’s Mojave Desert to collaborate with singer-actor-comedian, Tawny Newsome, to record the music that would soon become the new co-produced LP, Material Flats, her home city of Chicago was on fire. It was the first week of June, a city tired of quarantine and systematic racism erupted – along with many others across the globe. But when Thomas met up with Newsome, the two planned to write a new record together, using the energy and insight borne from creative lives existing amidst unprecedented unrest. The two got to work, efficiently and effectively. They will release their debut LP – a mere four months after those fires – on October 9th.
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“Buildings were still on fire from riots in my neighborhood,” Thomas says. “I said, ‘Alright, let’s get the fuck out of here!’ Tawny had a handful of demos she’d made for some songs. I thought maybe we’d get an EP together. But in the time that it took to get there, the energy kept building. It was just really charged and a lot of cool ideas were flying around.”
Musician friends who took their co-leads’ directions on sound, rhythm, structure and composition joined Thomas and Newsome for the desert recording sessions. This freed the two primaries up to focus on writing, singing, lyricism and, for Newsome especially, engineering. During the course of the recording process, the comedian, who recently co-starred with actors like Steve Carell and Lisa Kudrow on the popular Netflix show, Space Force, found she had both an aptitude and an affinity for the board.
“I had built a studio in my garage,” Newsome says. “But I realized that to do a real album, I had to greatly improve my engineering skills. I learned through a lot of YouTube tutorials and FaceTime calls with friends. I really loved it. In another life, I could work in the studio.”
The duo’s eight-song album is powerful. It’s Lo-Fi and fuzzy. But it also wails and showcases diverse writing styles. There are foreboding songs like “White Balloon,” which blossomed out of a fear of violence perpetrated in the name of white supremacy. The record’s mesmerizing single, “Juneteenth 2020,” highlights notes of self-care and self-appreciation in a world that all too often tries to ignore the necessity of both. “You’re Still Up” imbues a bit of humor with a chorus reminiscent of a booty call but is really just asking: Do you want to rock?
“What I like about this sound,” Newsome says, “is that it’s truly the best example of our overlapping sensibilities coming together. We like similar things but we’re both really different artists.”
Thomas, who released her own solo record this year, is also a stage actor. Acting on-stage is how she and Newsome first met some 15-years ago. Newsome, who performed with the prestigious improv group, The Second City, in Chicago, for five years is known for her comedy. But, while writing Material Flats, she greatly appreciated the space to work earnestly while simultaneously singing her own songs. Too often, she says, she’s performing other writers’ work. With this LP it was her and Thomas.
“I like that there is no one else’s stamp on this,” Newsome says. “This is purely our own. This time it’s no one else’s shit!”
Growing up, Thomas says she was introduced to music at an early age. Her father played guitar in bands and her Godmother’s partner was a blues pianist. So, she was exposed to bar shows and cover bands at an early age. Newsome, though, didn’t have the same experience. She found choir and more classical avenues to music but they didn’t excite her. Later, in Chicago, Newsome and Thomas would sing backup vocals in rock bands around the city together. Their chemistry led them to collaborate with two friends in the famed Muscle Shoals recording studio in Alabama. That band, Four Lost Souls, was set to record this year but when the pandemic hit, the project was put on pause. Thomas and Newsome, though, decided not to be.
“The whole thing has been a sprint,” Thomas says. “But we’re almost there!”
Thomas, with her stage career in tow, brings a strong sense of storytelling to Material Flats. Vocally, both her and Newsome’s voices blend expertly. Almost like the way birds fly together in unison. Then at seemingly preordained times, they take off in their own directions to swoop and dive, before coming back to the group. Newsome, who says she draws from her Second City experience, says she’s learned over the years to be fearless in performance.
“At Second City,” she says, “we did eight shows a day for 300 people. Doing that, you bomb so many times. You eat shit in front of so many strangers. It really does build you up. It gave me nerves of steel.”
Now that the whirlwind process of writing, recording and releasing the new record is almost complete, Thomas and Newsome may have a chance to take a moment to relax. That is, if 2020’s litany of trials and tribulations lets up. But even if they do not, the music now exists, and for both Thomas and Newsome that’s crucial. It’s a place of discovery, practice and communication. It’s theirs.
“Music is the most useful and sincere and healthy way that I have learned to express myself,” Thomas says.
“We all could use more of that,” Newsome echoes.
FOLLOW TAWNY & BETHANY
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Bethany: Instagram * Twitter
