Song Exploder - White Hinterland - Ring the Bell

Episode Date: March 13, 2015

Casey Dienel is a producer, singer, and songwriter who goes by the name White Hinterland. In this episode, she'll break down her song Ring the Bell. To make it, she had to break out of her comfort zone of working alone and reach to other people. She got a little unexpected help from Beyonce.

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kaysh Hirwe. Casey Dinell is a producer, singer, and songwriter who goes by the name White Hinderland. In this episode, she'll break down her song Ring the Bell. To make it, she had to break out of her comfort zone of working alone and reach out to other people. She got a little unexpected help from Beyonce. Here's the exploded view of the song Ring the Bell. My name is Casey Dinell, and I am the singer.

writer I guess for White Hinterland. Day to day it's a solo project. In 2010 I was touring and the opening melody, the chords that are just like just popped in my head and then I ran to the practice base and we like banged out a little demo. The way that my songs tend to work is that I create like a big mound of clay. I work backwards. So rather than starting from nothing, I like to have a lot of things to choose from and then just viciously cut away at it until I feel like I'm getting at the heart of whatever it is that I'm trying to experience or feel. Once I kind of commit words to a melody, it's really hard for me to go back from that because it's almost like the way that I write lyrics is like they have the melody in them. I never shoehorn

words into the melody. I find that the words kind of carry their own intonation and then I have to find a way into it. And so for a song like ring the bell, I think the words just ring the bell like that just carried the melody immediately and I didn't have to do much beyond that. I don't even know where it came from. I think I liked the simplicity of it. Like it's both a demand. but also a request. It's not just one thing. And I also like that it has like a positive need to it. Like I need you to tell me what you want or I need you to tell me how you feel.

There's some initiative in it that at the time I was going through a lot of stuff in my life where I was like, I just want people to say what they mean and what they need from me. And then I can give you that. You know, I didn't want it to be too wordy because there's a lot of other things that I wanted to accomplished, you know, texturally with the other instruments. In the winter of 2012, I was really stuck. I'd been playing around with all these different demos of Ring the Bell. I know what to do, and I was driving around in my car listening to Beyonce, and there's a part on the end of time where all these horns come in, and it's just like the sky opening up. That's what these songs need.

That's what I want. I want it to sound like. like, you know, when joy escapes. And then I was looking at the credits, and Cole's name was in the Beyonce credits. And he and I went to New England Conservatory together. And I dropped everything I was doing, and I was like, oh, my God. Like, I'd know him. And I hadn't spoken to him in probably eight years or something. And so I just, I called and I left like a really shy voicemail.

I was like, I really need your help. And he got back to me, like, immediately. That was Cole playing trumpet, and it actually is reversed. I was messing around with it, and I wanted it to feel like more pastoral in some way. And I thought, oh, I'll just reverse it and see what that's like. And then when I flipped it, I was like, oh, it's like this really wonderful kind of balletic texture, and I just had chills. And then I spent July recording for like about a week,

the whole brass section. The musicians on it are all part of the superpower horns who did a lot of the Beyonce stuff. Basically, you just call them and say, can you do this? And they're like, yeah, and in one take. And I've never seen anything quite like it. It's really amazing.

I ended up running all the horns through this tape machine to kind of compress and glue them together a little bit more. when we use that, it made it sound a little more aggressive. When the horns come in on the choruses, I wanted it to feel like when you blush, when someone says something nice to you, like that open warmth that you feel. I work a lot like that. I think I was like the worst composition student because all of my like directions and my scores were just like,

imagine that you have like half a leg instead of two legs with the deranged clarity of a psychopath, please play this oboe passage. I just wanted to have like hook after hook, and there's a lot of hooks in the vocal loops. I lived in another place where I wasn't allowed to make noise. There was a quiet building, and my neighbor was a nurse who worked the night shift, so she'd sleep during the day, and that was something I could do quietly, is just like sing these loops. But it's really just about improvisation.

I mean, I think that's the hugest part for me from playing jazz, and a lot of good stuff gets kicked up when you're not trying so hard. The human voice is my favorite instrument, but when it comes to my own voice, I think it's the hardest instrument for me to record. When that vocal loop happened, I was like, okay, we've got something. This song can happen now. Let's talk about the drums.

I wanted it to kind of move around in stereo space. But then, you know, with a lot of electronic beats with me, you kind of will be like, okay, I have ADD, I want a new flavor. And I would try to, you know, program it differently or, like, add a different pattern. And that was when I decided to call Neil Morgan, who's my friend. Because I was like, well, I'm going to call the best drummer I know and see what he thinks. He laid it down, like, two days later in Portland. Neil's like an incredibly spontaneous performer

and he doesn't really play anything the same way twice so I felt like it was perfect casting because I kind of gave it to like an agent of chaos in any job I've ever had it's the surprises that are the most exciting and there is no bigger surprise than having someone else come toy with your music and you see what happens

For me, the song is kind of about being vulnerable, you know, opening yourself up to someone, because it's really scary to say, I need help or, you know, I need affection for two years. I was just like messing around with it pretty much by myself. And it felt pretty fitting to have to open that up to other people to come play with me. And now here's Ring the Bell by White Hintreland in its entirety. A new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I live. last put out a full length. And this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikesh

Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists. And it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Rope. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me.

So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city. Like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzuchas, Josh Malina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners. on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.co,

or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. You can find all the past and future episodes of SongExploder at songexplor.net, or on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you download podcast. Next time on Song Exploder, How to Dress Well tells a story of how a Belgian film moved him so much that he wrote a song about its main character. Find the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Song Exploder. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of extraordinary, story-driven shows.

Learn more at Radiotopia.fm. My name is Rishi Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening.