As the child of a minister in tiny Hahira, Ga., singer Lizz Wright always wanted to escape the wail. "Growing up in the church, I was around a lot of gospel, of course, and there was a lot of blowing gills," she says with a breathy chuckle. "But I've never been that kind of a singer. I can do it, but only if the feeling wells up in me. Even when I was in church doing gospel, what I actually was called to do was the worship part, a very meditative time, a clearing of the mind in preparation to engage in the service. [The organist] in the community choir offered to teach me to wail, but I would start coughing. I just don't feel that kind of singing, either."
With her beguiling current album Dreaming Wide Awake, it would seem that Wright, 25, has put the wail in her wake for good. The follow-up to 2003's Salt, her more conventional gospel-hued jazz debut, the new one simmers with sensuality, intimacy and understated soul.
To capture the right vibe, Wright and her label, Verve, turned to producer Craig Street, who has helped bring out the blossom in singers like Cassandra Wilson, Norah Jones and Me'shell N'DegéOcello. All the trademark Street-isms course through Dreaming Wide Awake: muted percussion; throbbing acoustic bass; a sinewy melding of acoustic, electric and slide guitars; smatterings of keyboards, vibes, harmonica, hushed background vocals and other sonic decorations.
The rootsy, low-key arrangements are the ideal backdrop for Wright's dusky contralto, which she keeps reined in, rarely reaching for a high note and never resorting to showiness. It was a big step for a singer who grew up in a musical culture where lung power and testifyin' were the hallmarks of feeling.
But Wright doesn't see her stylistic breakthrough as emotionally stunted. "Instead of projecting so much, piling up layer over layer of voice and technique, by stripping it away, I feel more emotionally naked in the songs," she asserts. "It's almost like being an actor; the power comes from reaching something inside myself, opening up myself every night, singing less but going inside more, and not spending all of my energy projecting this…" and here she pauses briefly, "…idea."
Wright's new street-smart aesthetic also shows in the choice of material. She wrote or co-wrote three of the dozen selections (including one of the standouts: the churchy ballad "Hit the Ground"), but otherwise turned her interpretive prowess to a wide range of songs — among them a simmering, bluesy rendition of the '60s pop hit "A Taste of Honey"; a warm, charming turn at the old Fats Waller signature "I'm Confessin'"; a restrained version of The Youngbloods' hippie rallying cry "Get Together"; and a swampy take on Neil Young's "Old Man."
Regarding the latter two Baby Boomer anthems, she says, "There's no improving on them, my God, but I didn't have a [prior] relationship with those songs. They were like big, shiny toys, which I picked up and said, 'Ooh, good songwriting.' I was just reintroducing those songs in a simple way to my generation. As an interpreter, I need to take those risks."
Wright, who exudes a peaceful calm even during a 40-minute phone conversation, is clearly the kind of artist who sees her career as a journey, her music as a means for self-discovery.
While doing interviews promoting the new album, she fielded lots of questions about her stylistic shift, her new penchant for singer-songwriters. "I finally figured it out," she says. "I was being random, very vague in my answers, and I'm not a vague person. Then it came to me: I'm very much into storytelling. I like music that tells a story."
The post-small town chapter of Wright's story took her to Atlanta, where she attended Georgia State and performed in clubs. Then she signed her record deal and moved to New York.
For Salt, she fell under the tutelage of three disparate producers: artful jazz drummer Brian Blade, who she says "softened her up to folk music"; John Cowherd, who stoked her classical passions; and veteran Tommy LiPuma, known over the decades for building sonic pillows around singers.
What sounds like something of a schizoid experience did not sour Wright, though. "I didn't have a clear idea of what I wanted to do," she says. "So all I could do was just be honest, and I made a broad record, with gospel and jazz and classical and all this little stuff in between. It took three producers, three experiences, to reflect me."
The singer never got accustomed to the pace of New York and, after a few stopovers, now calls Seattle home. "I don't have to talk to people," she says. " I feel comfortable sitting in the woods."
Three-and-a-half years ago, in the name of simplicity, she shaved off her hair to a fine burr, which accentuates her elegant face. It was a bold move, considering that the prevailing fashion among black women stars calls for long, straightened 'dos.
"It's not really a statement — I'm more earthy than Afrocentric," she says, and then adds wistfully, "Boys, they like their long hair. I showed the guys in the band a picture when I had a perm. And they said, 'Why'd you cut it off? You looked so cute.' But I'm kind of a raw woman. This is my life. I don't have time for hair."
Wright has been pounding the asphalt of late. She's in the midst of an extended tour that includes her concert-hall debut in the Bay area (she played the Clearwater Jazz Holiday a few years back). Shortly after, she'll head out on a European swing. Wright's band is particularly reflective of Dreaming Wide Awake: Instrumentation includes two guitars, upright bass and drums. She says that many of the keyboard-based songs from Salt have adapted quite well and are generally well received by "people who felt baffled by my quote-unquote change of direction."
When on the road, Wright prefers to spend considerable time alone. "Lately, I've been listening to a lot of Tibetan music," she says. "I'm still into the whole meditative thing. I don't understand the words, but I respond to the chants and moans. They're very human to me. It's storytelling of a different sort. I want my style to grow into 'world-folk.' People say 'What the heck is that?' I say, 'Stick around.'"
This article appears in Sep 14-20, 2005.