Pragmatic Troubadour: Singer-songwriter Keren Ann Details Life as a Touring Mom Ahead of Beijing Theater Show

Keren Ann has returned to China, again and again, to perform over the years, but not because she took to it immediately. In fact, at first she found the Middle Kingdom to be overwhelming, confusing and unlike any other culture she had experienced. And that’s saying a lot, considering the French-Israeli pop and folk-rock artist (who has recorded seven solo albums, worked on numerous soundtracks and dance production scores, and is probably best known for her hit songs like “Beautiful Day,” and “Lay Your Head Down,”) is a citizen of the world that splits her time between Paris and New York City and has toured all over. But the uniquely Chinese idiosyncrasies that threw her off at first became enchanting before long, stoking her sense of adventure, especially when she began performing for Chinese audiences that greeted her music with open hearts.

If all that makes Ann sound like a globe-trotting troubadour, she also immediately looked the part when I met her today at a cafe in Beijing’s CBD, hours before her performance tonight at Beijing Theater (which is part of a China wide tour before she returns home to Paris to continue working on her next LP). That wanderlust was apparent from the grey, backpacker style guitar case she had placed in the seat next to her, which starkly stood out among the designer bags that the chic cafe’s other patrons were totting.    

“It’s a semi-hollow Memphis Les Paul that works great for me now,” Ann says, gesturing at her current axe of choice. “I used to travel with a guitar that weighed as much as a family of triplets, but since I began touring a lot with my daughter I needed something that would be easier on my shoulders. Because there are days, between the soundcheck and the show, that you carry your guitar for six hours. You have to be practical when you’re a mom, especially when you’re a mom that’s a traveling musician!”

Exciting as that lifestyle may seem, Ann says her five-year-old daughter just sees it as normal. “She’ll watch a movie and I’ll be at the piano working on something, and then suddenly she’ll press pause and say: ‘I like this one, you should work on it more.’ Then next time she’ll say to me: ‘I like yesterday’s better.’ She always gives her opinion, but she’s very sweet and supportive.”

Ann goes on to recall another example of her daughter’s unique exposure to the singer-songwriter world: “We were once at the park with friends, and her friend’s father wasn’t there, just her mom. My daughter asked ‘Where’s your dad?’ And when the other kid told her he was at work, she went: ‘Oh, so he’s singing!’ For her, work is making music. It’s cute.”

Their life isn't always so adorable, of course. Sometimes the lifting can get heavy in every sense of the word, prompting Ann to choose a lighter guitar that also elicits a no muss, no fuss sound— another feature that suits this tour perfectly. “I know it’s very modern to have a lot of reverb, Telecasters and even Strats that kind of warm up the space. But for this tour I needed something raw and straightforward,” Ann says of the semi-hollow Les Paul that she’s currently touring with.

That guitar’s stripped-down sound will only be backed up by a piano player that she enlisted for this tour. It’s all part of Ann’s effort to “go to basics. Right now I’m into organics, I want to hear the piano and the guitars. I want to hear the song and its story. That’s how I feel when I’m in between records, I want to present the songs as they were written.”

And yet — with the same sort of pragmatism she uses to maintain a touring career with her daughter in tow — Ann is also mapping out a very different, far less stripped-down sound for her next chapter. This current minimalist tour will serve as a palate cleanser of sorts before she finishes work on her new LP later this year, the follow up to her 2016 album You’re Gonna Get Love.    

“My new LP will still be very organic in some ways. But I’ll also be working with very beautiful textures, a lot of classical instruments and production inspired by current hip-hop. I like the silences in the chord progression, the intricate textures of records by Frank Ocean and Drake,” Ann says of her forthcoming LP. It’s part of her endless endeavor to keep things fresh and continually break new artistic ground. As she puts it: “Anything I’ve done already, I don’t have an interest in redoing it.”

It also fits into Ann's broader balancing act— an elusive mix of raw and refined performing, of drawing on vintage and current sounds, of being culture shocked by China but remaining curious enough to return again and again, of remaining mindful of her maternal responsibilities without giving up her artistic aspirations.

That melding of left and right brain tendencies is probably best exemplified, however, in her creative process and, even more so, in how she carefully dedicates time to it. “When you’re younger, you can spend 15 hours before you get to that point of focus and concentration that you need. But with time, life teaches you how to do your job, and now I can go in the studio, and if I have three hours, I can be creative during that short time, because I know how to get to that place. I've had to do it that way for awhile now — between breastfeeding my daughter and other responsibilities, I no longer had the luxury of fifteen hours straight for work.”

Ann will be equally economical with her time during this China tour, somehow scraping together a few hours between sound checks and traveling to book a studio in Shanghai to write and record. Ann puts it this way: “I’ll need to be focused and concentrate when I get there. Because I have to be creative when I get the time to be creative.”

Keren Ann will perform at the Beijing Theater tonight from 7.30-9.30. Tickets range from RMB 182-687. For more information, click here.

Photos: Courtesy of Keren Ann, Wikipedia, 247 Tickets