Interview: Thao Nguyen ‘lightheartedly’ promoting new Get Down Stay Down record
Thao and the Get Down Stay Down performs at Phono del Sol in San Francisco on July 12, 2014. Roman Gokhman/STAFF.
San Francisco resident Thao Nguyen of Thao & The Get Down Stay Down does community work in addition to writing and performing with her band.
Thao & The Get Down Stay Down, Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside, Before the Brave, Kacey Johansing
8 p.m., March 2
Great American Music Hall
Tickets: $17.
Valerie Bolden has never heard the song that was written for her — she is serving a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole for fatally stabbing her husband in 1996.
“She hasn’t been able to hear it because with recorded music, you can’t send CDs in,” says Thao Nguyen of Thao & The Get Down Stay Down, who adds, “I got her the lyrics and read them aloud to her. She said she hoped it meant more people would write about her.”
Nguyen, who appears with her band at a Noise Pop show Saturday, named the title track of the group’s new, third album, “We The Common,” for the inmate, whom she met during a visit to the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla.
A native of Virginia now living in The City, the singer-guitarist, who studied sociology and women’s studies in college, wanted to take an active role in her adopted community.
She worked with the education program 826 Valencia, the anti-poverty organization Oxfam and joined the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, which provides inmates with information about their legal rights and health care options. She also works with a group that visits people incarcerated in San Francisco County Jail.
Bolden, who spoke about missing her daughters and struggling to figure out what she could accomplish behind bars, became friends with Nguyen, who liked her sense of humor.
“We were well-aligned,” Nguyen says. “She was very stoic, but there were also these moments of very poignant emotions. I couldn’t stop thinking about her when I left.”
Many thoughts Bolden shared seeped into the album.
Even though Bolden has been transferred to a prison outside Los Angeles, the two have remained friends, exchanging letters.
Bolden is one of only a few of her advocacy work contacts who knows about Nguyen’s day job making music.
“I’m pretty shy about it,” Nguyen admits. However, on one rare occasion, she presented “We The Common (For Valerie Bolden)” to the group.
“It was the most meaningful experience I have had with sharing,” she says. “Because of course everyone in the group has intimate knowledge of what that song is about.”
Q&A with Thao and the Get Down Stay Down
We the Common was recorded partly in San Francisco’s Tiny Telephone Studios, and features a duet with Joanna Newsom on the track “Kindness Be Conceived.” It’s the third album for the Get Down Stay Down, and the fourth overall for Thao Nguyen.
What do you do when you’re not visiting jail inmates or making music?
Thao Nguyen: I really love to go to farmers markets and cook.
I’m loving the promo videos you shot. Where’d you get the idea to shoot comedic shorts to preview a music album?
Thao Nguyen: We wanted to have a more lighthearted glimpse into the making of the record. It was a lot more fun for the people involved and a lot more fun for people to watch it, I would hope, because there’s only so much entertaining content that can be had showing you the greatest song or playing guitar. We just wanted to have fun with it. We’re still making more.
How is writing for the banjo different from writing for a guitar?
Thao Nguyen: I play the banjo less well, so, there’s a limit. But also, there’s a freedom within it. I’m a lot less familiar with a banjo, so … the creativity was a bit more because I was on a different instrument.
Is that something you will continue using?
Thao Nguyen: Yeah. I’ve always loved banjo and mandolin.
Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.