ENTERTAINMENT

Anais Mitchell works with Session Americana

Brent Hallenbeck
Free Press Staff Writer

The members of Session Americana knew who they wanted to co-produce their new album, "Pack Up the Circus:" Vermont folk musician Anais Mitchell.

Mitchell was happy to help her friends. She just wasn't sure she was the right choice, considering she's not a studio whiz and has always relied on other producers to help with her own albums.

"I was sort of like, 'I don't know if I'm the best person. I'm always on the other side of the glass,'" Mitchell said, referring to her usual place in the recording studio across the window from a producer inside a booth. When the band explained it to her, though, she thought she could help.

"They sort of needed someone whose ears were fresh," Mitchell said last week at Capitol Grounds in Montpelier, near her central Vermont home. "From the get-go it was understood it was a co-production."

The Boston-based group released its seventh album last week and plays Friday at ArtsRiot in Burlington. (Mitchell and her collaborator on the "Child Ballads" album, Jefferson Hamer, are expected to make appearances at the show.) Session Americana has worn a well-beaten path to Vermont in its dozen years, playing shows from Burlington to Montpelier to Plainfield to Bradford.

Luther “Dinty” Child (fourth from left) and Session Americana worked with Vermont folk musician Anais Mitchell on their new album, “Pack Up the Circus.”

Multi-instrumentalist Luther "Dinty" Child is a frequent visitor on his own; one of his daughters attends the University of Vermont and another is a recent UVM grad who still lives in Burlington. Before heading back to Boston after a recent visit with his daughters, Child talked over a bowl of corn chowder and a pot of tea at Muddy Waters about why the band asked Mitchell to help with "Pack Up the Circus."

"We really just wanted that umbrella person," Child said, someone "to hold the reins a little bit." They wanted a musician they love and respect, one with wide-ranging tastes. Mitchell is known for her literate acoustic folk songs, but Child also remembers her footloose '80s cover band, Sputnik.

"We've never felt much of a limit," Child said of Session Americana, "and I don't think she has much of a limit, either."

Mitchell and Session Americana met nearly a decade ago in Cambridge, Mass., at the Lizard Lounge, where the band's drummer, Billy Beard, books shows. Session Americana began as a jam-session band that now writes its own songs, and Mitchell joined them for impromptu gigs in their early days.

Child was smitten with her songs right away. "They're sort of perfect while seemingly effortless, simple," he said.

Mitchell, meanwhile, loves the vibe Session Americana creates at its shows as they sit around a table. "It feels very participatory," she said. "You feel alive. Anything could happen."

She brought the band to Vermont for shows at Goddard College and the now-defunct Langdon Street Café in Montpelier. Child remembers thinking Session Americana had a chance of being more than just a loose side project when he saw people in the crowd calling friends on their phones telling them to get down to Langdon Street.

"It really just kind of started a love affair with us and Montpelier," he said.

"I just sort of knew that Vermont would fall in love with them," Mitchell said.

What she didn't know was how much she could help with their new album. "Am I going to be able to give them what they need?" she wondered "Whatever the job is, I want to rise to the occasion."

Child said the band needed someone to winnow its songs down. The five core members submitted about 50 songs for the album; Mitchell helped trim that to 15 or 20 before the band settled on the 10 included on "Pack Up the Circus."

Luther “Dinty” Child (third from left) and Session Americana perform Friday at Signal Kitchen in Burlington.

The band sent demos to Mitchell. Child remembers one email where Mitchell said the song was great but lost her in the second half of the last verse. Child knew she was calling him on rushing through to get the song done; he rewrote it and said the song turned out much better.

Mitchell's albums often have themes — her folk opera "Hadestown" retells the story of Orpheus while "Young Man in America" touches on the struggles in coming of age. Child was surprised to find that Mitchell found common themes in the band's seemingly disparate collection of songs.

"There's a thread to the thing," Child said of "Pack Up the Circus," noting that Mitchell honed in on songs that told of journeys and the passage of time. Mitchell said she was struck by the frequent imagery of storms in the songs, and found the thread of journeying expressed as musicians traveling as a community and through life.

She and the band are happy with the results of her first co-production on another act's album. "I'm so proud of how it sounds," Mitchell said, "and I also feel I don't take credit for any of it."

Child would disagree with that last part. "We're all hard critics on ourselves, and I listened to it and I said, 'This is a good record, this is our best record,'" he said. "All of us would say that there's little bits of her sprinkled through the whole thing, without it being a heavy hand."

Contact Brent Hallenbeck at 660-1844 or bhallenbeck@freepressmedia.com. Follow Brent on Twitter at www.twitter.com/BrentHallenbeck.

If you go:

WHAT: Session Americana

WHEN: 8 p.m. Friday

WHERE: ArtsRiot, Burlington

TICKETS: $5-$10. 540-0406, www.artsriot.com