By: Cody Sikes
Debra Devi – Photo credit: Capacity Images
One of New York areas finest rockers, Debra Devi is a multi-talented artist who can jam with the best of them. She has performed in numerous bands as well as fronts her own group.
Debra recently released her new EP, A Zillion Stars Overhead, with Jorgen Carlsson on bass, Rob Clores on keyboards, and John Hummel on drums. She not only rocks on stage, but is an ASCAP award winning author of her book, The Language of the Blues.
On stage she’s in charge of a hot red Stratocaster, and she’s been recognized by Fender as an official endorsee. Her journalism credits not only include her blues book, but she’s also written for a number of music magazines, including Guitar International, and is a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism.
Today, the world is facing many challenges surrounding the Covid-19 virus. These conditions have clearly not dampened the spirits and motivation of this rocker.
As in-person performances have been put on hiatus, Debra has been hosting live streams online of her incredible musical performances. In a highly competitive virtual world of music, performers at all levels are streaming both low-end and high quality gigs.
As expected, Deb pushes the envelope rockin’ the joint, that today is in your living room, as she rolls out song after song from her acclaimed debut album, Get Free, as well as songs she’s written that rock with cool hooks, spot on guitar work, with some haunting us with poetic lyrics and original melodies.
Guitar International spoke with Debra about her thoughts on music, the art and craft of songwriting, the give and take with her audience when performing, among other things. And, of course, we talked about her latest EP release, A Zillion Stars Overhead.
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Cody Sikes: So you’re living in New Jersey?
Debra Devi: Yeah, I’m in Jersey City.
Cody: Cool, how do you like it there?
Debra Devi: I love it, it’s been ranked consistently as the most diverse city in America, which is pretty cool. It’s got an incredible art and music scene, with a lot of cross-pollination of genres and races and people that’s really stimulating and fun. It’s also a really warm and welcoming art and music community.
Cody: So, there are a lot of good venues and live music opportunities?
Debra Devi: Well, we’ve been a little shy on venues. We really need a rock venue like a Maxwell’s in Hoboken, or something where it’s like two to three hundred people. But, we did open up a beautiful 800-person venue called White Eagle Hall, and I actually booked two big shows there that were both called “Jersey City Rocks”, and the bills were all local Jersey City artists.
We had two smash success concerts with that, which was really fun. We also had a Jersey City artist who came to hang and sell their art in the venue. We had visual artists involved in doing the poster and then displaying their art work, as well.
Cody: It’s really nice to hear about such a diverse scene there. Getting into your music, how do songs come up for you? And once you come up with a song, what goes into polishing them and getting them to the point of recording?
Debra Devi
Debra Devi: Usually, I write a song because I have some kind of overwhelming emotion going on [Laughs], and I pick up my guitar to try to express that emotion somehow through music, because I can’t really get it out any other way, so most of my songs start out on the guitar.
Sometimes the lyrics start to come to me, sometimes I write the whole thing musically, and then I go in and kind of struggle with the lyrics. The next step then is for me to get the nerve up to play it for my band and see what they think about it. If I turn around and my drummer is smiling after we play it, then I feel like we’re on the right track. [Laughs]
Cody: When you’re in the studio and you have the songs ready to record, are you more hands on with the mixing or do you just let the engineer do what they do?
Debra Devi: I’m very hands on, ya know, I produced all my records. I’m not running the Pro Tools, but every engineer who’s worked with me knows that I’m pretty much breathing over their shoulder.[Laughs]
I work closely with the engineers to comp and edit everything from the vocals to the guitar solos. I’m really involved with setting up the guitar tones. I’ll be running back and forth from the control room to the main room making sure that I like how the amp is set up and how the sound is being mic’d and is going in.
I love the recording process, and I work with super talented people who are able to execute whatever it is I’m trying to get.
Cody: Would you say you’re pretty meticulous about the mixing process?
Debra Devi: Yeah, I mean, for this most recent EP I had the incredible luxury of being mixed by Sylvia Massy, who is a renowned mixer, and what we did, my engineer here in town, John Roccesano, the other engineer, Wayne Dorell, and I, we meticulously cleaned all the tracks before sending them to her, because we didn’t want to waste a minute of her time.
The fact that she was even going to take on this independent project and mix it was a huge gift, so we worked really carefully on getting everything as close to perfect as we wanted before sending it to her for mixing. I did have some notes on her mixes, like “could we try this or that”, which she was super great about.
But, ya know, she’s such an artist as a mixer that there really was very little that I had to suggest even after the first mix.
Cody: Speaking of your EP, A Zillion Stars Overhead, what were some of the biggest inspirations for this project?
Debra Devi: The EP came out of a conversation that I had with Jörgen Carlsson, who is the bass player from Gov’t Mule. He’s a really amazing producer in his own right, as well as a great musician, and we met backstage after a Gov’t Mule show at the Beacon Theater. They do a stand at the Beacon Theater over New Year’s Eve, I think they do three or four nights in a row, and I was there for two of them.
Jörgen and I got into a conversation about ‘how do you mic your bass amp on stage and how do you get definition, even though you’re in this big theater? We got into talking about a bunch of stuff and that led to this idea of recording together.
Six weeks later, I got the news that he was going to be in New York, so I sent him some songs and some he wanted to do, and one he didn’t want to do, so instead I suggested we do a cover of “The Needle and the Damage Done”, but rock it out and he liked that idea.
I put the song “Stay” on the record because it’s sort of a pop song and he has a secret pop side, because he grew up in Sweden. So he grew up with Abba and other great pop music that comes out of Sweden. He also loves KISS, so I threw that pop, dance rock song in there and he liked and wanted to play it, and that’s how this EP came about.
Debra Devi: Kind of how I just described, in that, this happened so quickly that I didn’t have time to write a bunch of new material for him to come and play on. I chose “When It Comes Down” because, live, my band and I really jam out on that song; we’ll go for ten or twelve minutes.
I thought, that’s perfect for someone who plays in Gov’t Mule, so I sent him that one. Again, I sent him “Stay” because I thought he would enjoy the pop aspect of it. “The Needle and the Damage Done” we decided together to do. It just came together quickly.
Cody: What’s been your most memorable performance, and what made it memorable?
Debra Devi: I think the White Eagle Hall concerts, because, for one, it’s always fun to play in front of 700 people, and two, it was really wonderful to bring our community together and have our friends on stage. It was just a really beautiful night of music to have all of Jersey City coming in to support local artists at a big venue.
Cody: Do a lot of your concerts have the same sense of community, or is it specific to that one?
Debra Devi: Well, before the epidemic, we had started doing a residency at a nice, smaller venue here that had just started doing live music, called Head Room, that holds about 400 people. I was doing a monthly residency called “Debra Devi and Friends” and my goal for each bill was going to be Jersey City or Jersey City-related bands, and I wanted diversity.
We did one before the Covid epidemic hit, and the next one was going to be my EP release party on April 23rd and we had to cancel.
Cody: That’s really unfortunate, this virus has really put a damper on the music industry today.
Debra Devi: Oh yeah, it’s crushing the music industry.
Debra Devi: [Laughs] That’s not really something I want to talk about. I’m kidding, no, I think even if the audience isn’t 100% into it, I have so much fun playing with my band that I don’t really notice. We have a great time and, of course, the more audience response we get, the more fun it is. But, I don’t think we’ve ever played to a flat response.
Cody: As a rock musician, where do you think blues and rock as genres are going to progress, or regress, in the future?
Debra Devi: I don’t know. I think with the blues, we’re seeing a resurgence with some great artists carrying it forward: artists like Gary Clark Jr., Marcus King, although he’s blues and rock. There are some really cool black artists too, who are young and picking up the blues.
I’m thinking of Mr. Sipp, from Mississippi, who’s like a young Freddie King, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, and Shemekia Copeland. I like seeing the next generation of blues artists coming from the African American community, I think that’s really important and exciting, and it’s definitely injecting a lot of new energy into the blues.
Cody: Do you think that there’s going to be new influences or paths for the genre or do you think it’ll stick to the roots?
Debra Devi: I don’t know, I mean, that’s up to the artist with blues. With rock, what I think is exciting is that it seems to be coming back. It was, for so many decades, the dominant genre in pop music, but for a while now, it hasn’t been, which is a big shift.
What I’m noticing now is that people are so excited to see spontaneous music making on stage that’s not programmed, that’s not autotuned, and they love it. That’s what drew me into the Gov’t Mule circle, because that’s something that they do so well, and the jam band scene as a whole is doing well. I think people got kind of tired of canned music, and get excited about improvisation.
Cody: When it comes to rock and blues music, why do you feel that you connected with these genres personally over other styles of music?
Debra Devi: I don’t play a lot of blues, but I guess my playing is blues-rock oriented. I did write a book called The Language of the Blues because for me, as a female guitar player, when I was 15 or so I really wanted to play electric guitar, and I was told it wasn’t for girls.
I was given an acoustic guitar, which I appreciated, but it wasn’t the same. I didn’t actually pick up an electric guitar until I was a senior in college, my last semester. When I saw Bonnie Raitt come to Wisconsin and saw her playing electric guitar, I was like ‘It is so lady-like!’ [Laughs] ‘I’m getting a guitar,’ I was so excited.
Bonnie was the first female guitarist I really saw play lead with her slide, and I bought a guitar the next day in a pawn shop. Then I moved to New York City and got into a punk band, and I just started learning by ear. I was drawn to the electric guitar more than anything else, and the other thing, besides punk, that gave me permission to play the guitar was the blues.
I’d see all these super fast rock guitar players like Dave Navarro from Jane’s Addiction, among other male guitar heroes, but then I had the opportunity to see Koko Taylor with Son Seals playing guitar. He was a great blues guitarist, and with just one note he could flatten an entire room. It was this insight that that’s what music is about; it’s about the emotional power of what you play, first and foremost, rather than the technical prowess. I felt like I could go at it that way.
Now I can play pretty fast too, but at the time it was the blues that gave me permission, like ‘you can solo. You don’t have to be able to play super fast to solo. If you can be emotionally connected, you can take a solo.’
Cody: Your connection to these genres is more emotional?
Debra Devi: Yeah, I think so.
Cody: Would you rather perform it or listen to it?
Debra Devi: Perform it. [Laughs]
Cody: When you do perform, who are some of your favorite musicians to collaborate with?
Debra Devi: I’d have to say Jorgen Carlsson from Gov’t Mule. Recording with him was an incredible experience; terrifying and intimidating and also really wonderful because he’s not trying to be terrifying and intimidating, he’s just that great of a player. He’s a really nice person and I really hope to work more with him in the future.
I just sang and played guitar on a song by a guy named Shawn Stewart, which is a really cool retro-soul song that’s coming out in July, called “I Fell For You.” I’m just excited to sit in and jam and record with a lot of new people this year.
Cody: Is there anyone specific that you’d like to collaborate or perform with in the future?
Debra Devi: That’s a good question. I don’t know right now. [Laughs] I’ll have to think on that one.
Cody: Sure. Moving on, do you have any upcoming projects, and if so, how do you motivate yourself to work on your projects?
Debra Devi: I’m currently writing new material for my next record, and as far as motivation, it’s usually emotion, feeling, being stuck home in a pandemic. I’ve written three new songs, and I’m studying guitar, trying to play catch-up and fill in the holes that develop when you’re self taught, so those are the things I’m focused on.
Cody: Has motivation been hard to find during the self-quarantine?
Debra Devi: No, I think it’s almost been easier, in a way. It’s been a very scary time, we were locked down here in Jersey City for about a hundred days. But, my artist friends and I, we always say that it’s sort of a guilty secret that artists enjoy being quarantined. Not that we want a single person to die, but like ‘Oh, we have to be stuck at home with our instruments and we can’t go anywhere? That sounds terrible!’
Cody: I’ve seen in plenty of pictures and videos of you that you play a red Fender Stratocaster. Is there anything that specifically drew you to Fender?
Debra Devi: I think seeing Bonnie Raitt play a Fender kind of drew me towards them. Then the Fender Strat was the first decent guitar I was able to afford, and I’ve hot-rodded it quite a bit. I’ve added jumbo frets on it, which I really like because I find they make bending easier, and I just feel more comfortable with them. I’ve also put a humbucker in the back, and vintage rails in the middle and neck spots, so it’s super versatile between the 5 settings.
I really like this guitar, but I also play a Les Paul Special, which I really love for a warmer tone. It’s all mahogany so it’s got an incredible crunch sound. On a song on the new record, there’s a guitar instrumental called “Canna Indica”, the fifth track, and it’s on this guitar in DADGAD tuning. I usually keep this guitar in DADGAD, but lately I’ve been using it in standard tuning for songs like “Soulshine.”
Debra Devi: Ya know when I was out at NAMM the year before last, it was nice. I did a photoshoot and a video with them. For a while they had a program called “Fender Girl Rock Nation”, so that had some artists like me, Ana Popović, and Orianthi to try to encourage more women to buy and play electric guitar, which I thought was a really cool initiative. It’s not happening so much right now, I think because it’s not as needed; more and more women are picking up the guitar. So it was cool to do that, and you get discounts on gear, which is always awesome.
Cody: When you’re thinking about the acoustics of your guitars, are there any specific tonewoods or other aspects that you look for?
Debra Devi: I do like the darker woods, like the mahogany Les Paul I just showed you, which has a great sound. My Fender has a rosewood board, which is also a darker sounding wood. I like the brightness of a Strat, but I also like the darker sound of a rosewood fretboard.
Cody: Do you find yourself using darker tones more often than brighter ones?
Debra Devi: It depends on the song, ya know, whatever suits the song. I’ve been playing the Strat for so long, but I use the Les Paul on stuff when I want that heavier, darker tone, and it really delivers that.
Cody: Speaking of Fender’s “Girl Rock Nation”, today’s music industry seems to be predominantly male. Has this provided any challenges for you as a female in a mostly male industry?
Debra Devi: Yeah, sure. There have been times in the past when I’ve been on tour and I’ll be on stage and the sound man will come up and start changing the knobs on my amplifier. [Laughs] They would never do that to a male musician. Or maybe they would, I don’t know. But I was like, ‘stop touching my amp.’
I’ve definitely had music industry people say some very strange things to me. They make sexist remarks, or remarks about your figure, stuff that men are just not having to hear from them, which is tiresome.
(Left to Right) John Agnello, John Hummel, Debra Devi, Jorgen Carlson & Jeremy Delaney – Photo credit: Suzanne Hilleary
But, I have to say that overall, my fellow male musicians are super supportive. That’s gone from my first punk band to today. I feel like I’ve worked with male musicians who just wanted me to shine and grow, and were very willing to be like ‘Hey, here’s how this scale goes, here’s this cool finger exercise, give it a try,’ and that’s how I learned.
I would literally, at soundcheck or whatever, approach the guitarist for the other band and ask them to show me something. Like ‘how did you do that?’ and they’ll just sit down and show you. There’s a lot of generosity.
At the same time, it’s funny, today on my Facebook page, some guy keeps leaving nasty comments about my new record. He’s like, ‘it’s just another shitty chick player,’ [Laughs] I don’t know that he would go around saying ‘it’s just another shitty dude player’, but he has to throw that gender thing in there. I think if there was a male guitarist he didn’t like, he wouldn’t be like ‘it’s just another shitty male guitar player’, but for me, he’s got to emphasize the gender. And I’m like ‘dude, take it elsewhere. Seriously.’
Cody: It’s great to hear that the musician community is so supportive. How do you deal with people who are hateful or discriminatory?
Debra Devi: I usually try to be nice and friendly, and not a jerk, but then if it keeps up, I just ice the person out or block them. And don’t get me wrong, as a female player in punk bands in particular, before I got into singing and making my own music which is more ’70s rock sounding, ya know, I got hit, I got thrown against stages.
There were definitely male audience members that didn’t want to see a female guitar player. There were female audience members who didn’t want to see a female guitar player, and called me a slut, and tried to jump me in the bathroom. There were a lot of ugly incidents, to be honest, but the fun of it outweighed that problem for me.
Cody: That sounds like a really tough environment, but it seems like you’re perfectly strong enough to handle it.
Debra Devi: [Laughs] I did my best. And since you say that, one band I was with, we had a roadie who was a 6 feet tall, blonde, skinhead girl. Not a Nazi skinhead, but ya know, just a shaved head. We were playing a show, and we were actually on the floor, there wasn’t a stage, but there were a lot of people there.
There were these guys that were moshing in a circle and everytime they came around, one of them would try to hit me, land a punch. By the third or fourth time they came around, I just saw red, whipped my Strat off, and I was ready to… Then suddenly, I feel this big hand stop me. It’s this roadie, and next thing I know she’s got her knee on his chest and her hands around his throat. Ya know, she’s got him down on the ground and I’m like, ‘Alright!’ [Laughs]
Cody: It’s nice to know that you’ve got people looking out for you in those types of situations.
Debra Devi: Yeah, I mean, it does happen. There is sexist violence that can happen at shows, for sure.
Cody: Moving forward to another topic, I’d love to talk about your book, The Language of the Blues, and I watched your Ted Talk about the book. It seems like you do really well to encapsulate all the terminology involved with the genre. During the writing process, what were some of the challenges you faced?
Debra Devi: I think the first challenge was getting over my own, in a way, subtle racism in that I was listening to all the scholars and academics and not questioning their research.
What I mean by that is, for example, there’s the great song “Killing Floor” performed by Howlin’ Wolf with Hubert Sumlin on guitar, and the first person I had the opportunity to interview was Hubert Sumlin. I had read in all the literature, academic papers, and whatnot that the song “Killing Floor” referred to Chicago slaughterhouses. There were a lot of black people that came up North from the South during what’s called the “Great Migration” in the 1930s, and they got jobs in cities like Chicago and Detroit, really rough jobs like cleaning up the blood on slaughterhouse floors.
Everything I read said that’s what “Killing Floor” is all about. So, I go to interview Hubert Sumlin, my very first interview for the book, and I start to show off my knowledge by explaining this to him, and he’s like, ‘Nah, honey, that ain’t what that song is about at all,’ and proceeds to tell a whole other story about why Howlin’ Wolf wrote the lyrics to “Killing Floor” with Chester Burnett, what it was all about, that it’s a term for depression, and it traces back to this 1930 song by Skip James, “Hard Time Killin’ Floor.”
And I’m like, ‘Holy crap, all the research I’ve done, all the books I’ve read, did no one talk to the artist? Did no one sit down with Wolf or someone and ask what it’s about?’ And I thought that I better do that, so for this book, I focused on interviewing as many older blues artists as I could find. Robert Junior Lockwood, Milton Campbell, Henry Gray, everybody I talked to was over 75. I really thought it was critical to get their stories before they passed, because otherwise there’s misinformation getting passed around from one white scholar to the next white scholar.
Cody: Did you run into a lot of misinformation in your research?
Debra Devi: Definitely, I ran into some. There’s a lot of great scholarship in the blues, much of it by white professors, white writers. People like Alan Lomax, Harry Smith who did the Anthology archives. But, I thought maybe as an artist, my little gift could be to make sure I talk to the artists.
Cody: Going back to your music, you clearly have a knack for writing smart, catchy lyrics and combining them with earworm melodies.
Debra Devi: Oh, thanks [Laughs]
Cody: Earlier, you said song ideas come to you from emotionally passionate moments. Do these moments just come to you or do you sit down with a pen and paper to figure out how it will work?
Debra Devi: The latter. I have sketchbooks and Sharpies, and that’s how I write. I just scribble on sketchbooks with Sharpies and scratch stuff out. Ya know, lyrics are hard, I find the music easier to write. Lyrics have to be really tight poetry. In fact, when I was first writing songs, one of my good friends, Jana Martin, who is a fantastic novelist said “Your songs have too many words,” and she was so right. So, that’s a challenge.
Cody: How did you develop your lyricism over your musical career?
Debra Devi: Just by working at it, trying to write tight, concise lyrics that make sense and sing well. You just get better over time by doing it a lot.
Cody: Have you ever had a song in progress that just sounds totally different from what you imagined?
Debra Devi: Yeah, of course. I find that with every song that I write, it seems to go through this arch where, in the beginning, I’m excited about this new hook on the guitar, then I’ll work and work and work on it and I always hit a point where I’m like, ‘this song sucks.’
Luckily I’ve learned to persevere through that miserable period [Laughs], because usually you come out the other side and think, ‘Okay, I think it’s alright.’
Cody: Have you ever had a song that, from writing to performing, just took off from the beginning?
Debra Devi: Yeah, I think most of the songs depend on how my band reacts. For example, on my first album Get Free, there’s a song called “All That I Need” that is just three chords because I had a boyfriend at the time who was not the most musically sophisticated person.
He liked the Rolling Stones, and he’s like, “You’re never gonna have a hit unless you write a simple three chord song like the Rolling Stones,” and I thought, “I don’t think Rolling Stones songs are three chords, but okay.” So I wrote this song, verse, chorus, bridge, it’s all the same three chords.
I took it to rehearsal, and I was petrified to play it for my drummer at the time, John Hummel, who is also the drummer on A Zillion Stars Overhead. He sounds like John Bonham meets Ginger Baker, so I thought that he was going to hate this three chord, stupid pop song. I played it with my back turned to him, because I was facing the microphone, and I was scared to turn around.
When I finally did, he was grinning from ear to ear, and he goes, “I love it,” so that song has been in our set ever since.
Cody: It’s really great when things just work out like that.
Debra Devi: Yeah, but there’s also been a couple other times that are more like, ‘I don’t know, that one’s okay,’ and that’s when I know it’s no good.
Debra Devi: I love trying to play along with The Pretenders’ first record, like “Mystery Achievement.” I drove my roommates crazy in college because I would just play it over and over. They were petrified enough that I had an amplifier in my room. But, I had a different trajectory than male musicians tend to do, because I didn’t get to play in junior high and high school, and take lessons, and play in college, and learn eight million covers, so that was both a blessing and a curse.
I don’t know a lot of covers and I didn’t get a lot of that vocabulary, but at the same time, I jumped into playing original music from the minute I started playing in bands, so I had to develop my own sound as a lead guitar player, which can be a benefit too.
Cody: Do you think that learning original material from the start gave you, personally, an upper hand over learning covers first?
Debra Devi: I’ve often asked myself that question. There are definitely times when I’m playing with male musicians who have such deep knowledge of their instrument, and such a deep catalogue to draw from that I feel at a disadvantage, because of the way that I got into music, and was discouraged because I was a girl.
But then, on the other hand, there are times that I feel really excited about it because I think I did develop my own voice, and people say things to me like “the minute I hear a few notes, I know that it’s you,” and I know that that’s something guitarists always strive for – a sound of their own.
What I’m doing right now is trying to go back and fill in the gaps of my knowledge. I’ve learned more covers this year, during the pandemic, during my entire time playing.
Cody: So what are some of your favorites to play along with now?
Debra Devi: Oh my gosh, well I’m loving “Soulshine” by Gov’t Mule. I’m stealing all Warren’s licks from the famous intro to that song. I’ve got a live version that I’m studying and I really enjoy playing along with his stuff and learning from his great, great phrasing.
Another thing I’ve been doing is playing along with a live version of “Further On Up the Road” by Freddie King and Eric Clapton, dueling guitars. It’s burning. I’ve been learning that and breaking that down to figure out what they’re doing. Eric Clapton will be in the minor pentatonic and Freddie will answer him in the major pentatonic, and they go back and forth. It’s just a masterclass.
Cody: Very cool. When you started out playing in punk bands, were you playing songs that other people wrote or were you playing your own?
Debra Devi: The first band I joined already had an album out, so I had to learn their album, and then we went right into the studio to do their second album. I wrote some stuff on that and then I began really writing with that band. We tended to write collaboratively rather than each of us bringing in our own songs, which was a really cool learning experience.
Cody: Was there ever a moment that really sparked for you to start writing your own music?
Debra Devi: I think it was when I decided to start singing. I had been in a bunch of bands and was writing material for these bands. The singer of the last band I was in before I decided to go solo decided to join the Hare Krishnas, and he was such a gifted singer.
We actually had big management and big plans, and he just went into cult mode, which was hard to see. I think that was it, I remember thinking, ‘If I could learn to sing, that would be one less person’s craziness that I would have to deal with.’ [Laughs] I knew I had to do it, so I started singing and writing all my own stuff. I got a band together and now that’s what I’m doing because I just needed one less crazy person.
Cody: From punk to blues to rock, how has your taste in music changed over time in terms of what you listen to?
Debra Devi: [Laughs] I think it’s still kind of the same. My favorites are artists like Prince, but I also love Ministry. I love guitar, that’s what it comes down to. I’m a huge fan of Elliott Sharp, the great avant-garde guitarist. I performed in his syndicate ensemble like three times, which is a twelve-guitar ensemble that he does. It’s completely wild and cool, based on fractals and all kinds of stuff.
I love Rhys Chatham and all that weird guitar stuff, and I love listening to Dave Navarro. I also love listening to St. Vincent, she has this cool, edgy approach to soloing that really amazes me. She also looks better in latex than anyone deserves to look. But guitar is really the through-line for me.
Cody: Do you ever make a point to look for especially obscure music?
Debra Devi: No, I don’t know that I do. I just listen to whatever comes through the ether toward me. Like the Skip James song, “Hard Time Killin’ Floor”, I found out about that through Hubert Sumlin, and when I listened to it I thought, that’s the most haunting song about poverty and depression I’ve ever heard. So, you do get led to more obscure things through other people.
Cody: Have you tried to incorporate techniques or stylistic elements from other cultures into your playing?
Debra Devi: Not really, no. But I do think that West African music is really cool. They’re great guitar players and I love the way artists like Cheikh Lô from Senegal play guitar like a percussive instrument. There’s very little bending, it’s very rhythmic. I really dig that and I think I have tried to incorporate that idea into some songs and into my playing.
Cody: As you’ve developed your own sound, do you feel like you’ve settled into a style or do you try to reinvent it with each new project?
Debra Devi: I’m not really trying to come up with a new sound for each new project. I’m more just trying to delve deeper inside to become a deeper, more connected and emotive player. I don’t really think about how I’m going to reinvent myself for each new record. I just try to be true to myself and be expressive, however that comes out.
Debra Devi: It’s been a fun process of discovery. It’s funny, I was just talking to my friend Jesse Malin the other day, who’s a great artist, you should check out his record Sunset Kids, if you get the chance.
We were talking about this idea that music is one of these cool things where, as an adult, you can discover new capabilities in yourself. I didn’t start singing until I was an adult and I didn’t know how I was going to sound. I didn’t know what my voice was, so I started taking lessons. I wanted to not damage my voice and grow really fast, so I saw this great voice teacher in New York named Don Lawrence, who’s worked with Bono and Mick Jagger and Christina Aguilera, he’s amazing.
He said to me in the second lesson, “What is your vocal identity?” and I said, “Don, I have no idea. I gotta just see what comes out.” I don’t know, that’s why music can be this lifelong journey of discovery.
Cody: Do you feel like you’re still learning and growing every day?
Debra Devi: Oh yeah, absolutely. That’s my goal. I want to get a lot better. [Laughs]
Debra Devi at 660 Grand Jersey City
Cody: That’s kind of the artist lifestyle, always improving. Anyway, I’m about out of questions. You mentioned that you’re working on new material for your next album. Are there any other projects you’d like to discuss?
Debra Devi: I’m live streaming because that’s our only performance option at the moment. So, I’ve been doing a weekly live stream with one of my keyboard players, Martin Schmid, but this coming Sunday we’re going to do something different. My bass player, Kevin Jones, is coming out and I’m going to devote this live stream to the Black Lives Matter movement.
It’ll start with a half hour talk from my book, The Language of the Blues, about what a powerful influence West African people have had on American English and American culture. That’s not taught in our schools.
In our grade schools we learn about the Dutch and the French and all their influences, and we don’t learn about the West African influence. I’m going to talk about that for about half an hour, and then we’re going to play a set of blues and originals. I know I said I’m not a blues musician, but in honor of this particular event, we’re going to play some blues songs.
Cody: That sounds incredible, I can’t wait to see it. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me.
Debra Devi: Yeah, thank you as well.
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