Inside voice

The work of the singer/songwriter can be extremely personal, but personal doesn’t necessarily mean self-centered. The best vulnerable songs carry a broader relevance.

“I think it’s important to put yourself into art because you know yourself really well, especially when we’re writing things that are political because they can easily sound really preachy if they’re not also personal,” said singer/songwriter Zoe Boekbinder during a recent interview.

The New Orleans-based musician is no stranger to connecting the personal thread to the larger message, but it wasn’t an overnight revelation. Boekinder started down a musical path in 2006 as part of Vermillion Lies, a dark cabaret duo comprising the Boekbinder sisters—Zoe and Kim. In 2009, the two parted musical ways and Zoe began a solo career, pivoting into creating songs composed with stripped-down, sparse folk melodies.

Not too long after this shift, Boekbinder began volunteering at California State Prison, Sacramento (aka New Folsom Prison). Boekbinder went on to volunteer for five years at the maximum security facility, and the time there had a deep impact on the artist’s creative voice.

“Doing that work and seeing one part of our society that needs a lot of change made my music that I had been writing just seem really insignificant and unimportant, and I stopped feeling inspired,” Boekbinder said.

Boekbinder began what’s now become the Prison Music Project, a collection of songs stemming from workshops with inmates in the Prison Arts Program. It’s a collaboration with Ani DiFranco, who is producing the album—a mix of cover songs, adaptations of poems and raps (“[We] recorded the rapper over the phone,” Boekbinder said). The collection likely will be released in spring 2020.

During the time at Folsom, Boekbinder continually wrote songs, but the content began to shift into more political territory.

“I was still writing songs and not even thinking about releasing them,” Boekbinder said. “I think when I wasn’t thinking about releasing songs, when I was writing a song without ever imagining it being heard by anyone else, I could write political songs because I wasn’t scared what people would think about it. And then I ended up having a lot of songs that then felt like I should share them.”

The result was the 2018 release Shadow, a collection of songs informed by Boekbinder’s time at Folsom, as well recent personal tragedies. The songs maintain a bare bones intimacy with simple folky arrangements of rustling snare and muted guitar lines, balanced by Boekbinder’s clear voice with its evocative pronunciations and personal lyrics.

“I still feel nervous singing some of these songs,” Boekbinder said. “I guess there’s one in particular; I’m always afraid someone’s going to be offended by it. I want to win people over and don’t want to shut anyone out.”

The song is “Possibilities,” one specifically focused on the realities of privilege and the expanded “possibilities” in life for those whom it benefits. It’s one of many with a political nature not meant to preach, but to shine a light on a reality that’s been kept in the dark for so long.

“One time after a show this white man came up to me after and said, ‘that song made me feel really bad, thank you,’” Boekbinder said. “I’m not trying to make anyone feel bad; aware is more the thing I want folks to be.”