More about: Ida Mae

Have you ever wanted to look straight into an album's core? See where each guitar lick; ever vocal flourish comes from? Ida Mae, the married folksy rock'n'roll duo from Norwich but with a heart that beats for Americana, have got you covered.

On their new album Click Click Domino, Chris Turpin and Stephanie Jean are at their most infectious, and so we asked them to take us through it track by track. Boy, did they deliver. 

Below, find a detailed account of each of the LP's tracks, and some beautiful film photos from the couple's travels in the USA.

'Road to Avalon'

This was originally the title track of the record. We wanted this song and production to be a cinematic, slow pan across a vignette of the towns and cities we’ve travelled through that felt lost and forgotten. Travelling constantly as we have on our own across the US it's easy to romanticise ourselves as modern day wayfaring strangers. It's an unusual feeling, by chance witnessing moments of people's everyday lives that seem to take on a deeper meaning and resonance for you by being there to see them. You feel very present and very privileged. 

Clashing a 1900s American gut string ukulele banjo with modern synthesizers, casio keyboards, thumb piano and Beatles-esque Mellotron organ was intentional to try and create a kind of sparse transatlantic dreamstate. We chose Avalon because it's rich in Celtic mythology, an earthly paradise in the western skies, a pretty grandiose metaphor for searching or escaping to a place or situation that's better than where you are. We wanted it to have a raw and open hearted feeling, reminiscent of those early Richard & Linda Thompson records or John Martyn. 

'Click Click Domino'

This was written kind of as a knee jerk song. The unfiltered noise of social media, concerns surrounding social engineering, the lack of emotional connection and physical disconnection gets to all of us. We all know how easy it is to falsify an image, be it in fashion / politics / or any aspect of your everyday and in a lot of people's lives it has become a necessity to play into it. I wanted to write the lyrics to ‘Click Click Domino’ almost as Twitter statements, counting characters, making a short sharp stream of consciousness commentary. 

The riff was originally inspired by the playing of one of our favourite guitar players Pop Staples and it slowly morphed into something that in my mind almost echoed moments of Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac. It kicked up a gear when Marcus King came over and we stood side by side, soloing call and response guitar lines over the outro. The attitude of his playing was perfect.

As the weeks and months rolled on after recording this track at the beginning of the pandemic in Nashville, we felt Click Click Domino’should be the title of the album.

'Line on the Page'

In my mind this song opens with two lovers waking up in a motel room, the sun just beginning to come through the blinds. ‘Line on the Page’ is a one way conversation from one performer to another.

Like many touring musicians we feel a kind of magnetism to the road, a feeling like you can’t do anything else and through your commitment you throw yourself into scenarios and situations that I think a lot of people wouldn’t put up with. Although it's the greatest privilege to play your songs in front of people there is a sacrifice involved. Many times we’ve found ourselves physically and mentally pushed to the limit of what we thought we could take. At the beginning of any musical project you take a leap of faith, and that feeling of falling never leaves you. ‘Line On the Page’ tries to illustrate some of that commitment, love and risk.

Working with Ethan Johns was one of the biggest influences on our musical careers and we can hear his influence on the approach to this track...not in part because he’s drumming on it! We wanted it to lean towards something a little Ray Lamontagne-y and Rolling Stones-y.

'Raining For You'

This was one of the first tracks we recorded as Lockdown measures began here in Nashville TN. It's a simple love song written from the perspective of a friend of ours, someone I knew that was losing themselves in the darker memories of a past romantic relationship. Through social media and memory I think many people today can find themselves feeling like a helpless voyeur, watching the self-destructive behaviour of someone brilliant they love but feeling powerless to help. This song has become more poignant for us over the pandemic.

This song, like most of the tracks, was a live guitar and vocal performance by me and Stephanie Jean in our living room that was then added to by Nick Pini our bass player in London England and Ethan Johns on drums from his lockdown location in Wiltshire UK. Nick beautifully arranged the string parts. 

This guitar used is a very special one of a kind 12 String National Resonator guitar, an instrument first designed in the late 1920s. 

'Little Liars'

Sometimes when writing for myself a lyric will suddenly take on a whole new meaning and atmosphere when Steph sings it. ‘Little Liars’ was one of those moments. This a runaway song, the first person whisperings of a seductress that you’ll follow whatever the consequences! Politically speaking this song also has become increasingly poignant to us as 2021 has continued.

In the production of the whole record we wanted to juxtapose early traditional American instruments with distinctly modern sounds to reflect the land and climate that has inspired the songs. The main riff is played on a 1920s New Jersey made Mandolinetto, accompanied by a rare analogue drum machine used by piano players in hotel lobbies and bars in the 1970s. You’ll also hear a buffalo hide drum alongside a 1950s Cheerleaders marching drum we found in Ohio....we have an ever growing collection of rare and vintage equipment we’ve peeved together from pawn shops...even a Carnation Condensed Milk tins feature on the record...10 points if you can find it...

'Deep River'

Working as we have over the last decade we’ve met people from all walks of life. ‘Deep River’ is the rowdy dystopian dream-state adventure of two people In love. It was written in one sitting as a stream of consciousness storybook about two people leaving their home to try and make something of themselves only to find themselves lost in a system that is out of their control. It’s scraps of conversations we’ve overheard, experiences with people we’ve met, in sprawling cities to ghost towns in forgotten America. All the time the couple are framed by the modern world we’re living in, The River is a life giving image of the natural world, used as a vehicle of industrialisation.

It was recorded late at night in quarantine after our tour was cancelled in Texas. We invited our friend Marcus King to guest on the track who delivered an incredible solo. It was a real privilege as he in our minds will go down in the history books as one of the greatest guitarists and vocalists of our generation. We sent the track to producer Ethan Johns in Wiltshire UK to play drums and Nick Pini in London to play bass.

'Heartworn Traders'

‘Heartworn Traders’ was written by Stephanie Jean on the piano, she’ll often disappear for hours and write instrumental piano music. This is one of the examples where the whole song was written instrumentally by Stephanie and we laid out a melody across it.

It was recorded live across the living room(!) facing each other. The song is self explanatory and draws on the more delicate moments of how we’ve been living.

The strings were arranged and recorded by our close friends Jessica Diggins and Nick Pini in the UK, they played separately, each in their own lockdown locations. 

'Calico Coming Down'

In late September we drove through a small town on the border of Arizona and Utah at dusk. We’d been driving for ten hours from LA to Telluride through California and Nevada, following the Colorado River. As we hit a place called Grand Valley the light seemed to change. The red dust over the Mesa hung in the air and glowed for hours as the shadows on the mountains stretched out into the desert. 

Pulling into a town on the outskirts of Grand Junction we started to see people emerging from their homes dressed in everything from black tie to fancy dress. It was prom night and we watched young couples and groups of friends laughing and spilling drinks from their houses and the local restaurant to the dance. It was a pretty tender moment to have stumbled upon after driving through all the nothingness of the desert for hours and one that stuck in both our minds for months.

‘Calico Coming Down’ is a first take that was tracked on a 100 year old parlor guitar that has travelled with us on the back seat everywhere we’ve been. It’s tuned to a rare Nick Drake tuning. Ethan’s drumming on this one we think is just sensational (but of course we’re biased). 

'Learn to Love You Better'

‘Learn to Love you Better’ came out of nowhere. I’d picked up the same late 1800s American made Mandolinetto that we used on ‘Little Liars’ and this song just fell out. This was written from the perspective of a friend of ours who was trying to find a way to better support the person they loved who was struggling with their own personal demons. 

Again we wanted to offset the Americana / Folk connotations of the mandolin with another vintage analogue drum machine often sampled on hip hop records. We found ourselves trying to land the production somewhere between Hiss Golden Messenger and a trashy Robert Plant & Allison Krauss after an all nighter.

'Long Gone & Heartworn'

Growing up in the UK and being dragged to pub gigs by my Dad since I was old enough to walk I wanted to throw a little clean cut Pub- Punk rock on the record...mixed with a little bluegrass. We wanted to write something we could imagine Dr Feelgood playing in a club on Canvey Island in Essex...a relatively unknown Mod Blues Pub Rock band that was outshined by the British Punk movement that came almost at the same time. 

This is our own own personal road anthem, partly inspired by Willy Nelson’s great road songs. It includes the names of some of our road crew and a cowbell wielded in anger by Stephanie Jean.

Some of our wilder stories and road memories were made over five weeks on the road with Greta Van Fleet. We’d gone from theater shows in Europe with Josh Ritter and Nick Mulvey, to club shows in the American South with Marcus King to all of a sudden standing up as a duo in Forest Hills Stadium in New York before Greta Van Fleet. It was such a pleasure to have Jake Kizka, in our minds one of the greatest modern guitar heroes, join me for a transatlantic guitar battle. We stood together late at night in our kitchen trading lines as the cutlery draw rattled in the background.

'Mountain Lion'

Idolising the 1950s guitar heroes of Chess Records (Bo Diddley, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters) and studying the country blues artists of the 1920s (Charley Patton, Reverend Gary Davis, Fred McDowell, Memphis Minnie, Blind Willie McTell, Lightning Hopkins etc) alongside being inspired by Dylan putting a 12 bar blues on every record we wanted to tip our hats to those artists that were the foundation stones of rock n’ roll. We hold their work in as high regard as Picasso or Monet. This was a one take live track, trying to pay some of our respects to those pioneers.

'Sing a Hallelujah'

Stephanie Jean asked me to write her a gentle country song. She always wanted to sing a song that sounded like something Townes Van Zandt would have sung at ‘Live at The Quarter House’...not something anyone but Townes is capable of, of course. We’d opened for Willie Nelson and Allison Krauss and living in Nashville and being such fans of Townes, Lucinda WIlliams, Blaze Foley and Willie Nelson we wanted to try and echo some of their works that we hold so dear. It's a simple song of unrequited love, thinking of an ex-lover you still crave.

The main track was recorded live, Stephanie Jean accompanied by a Chet Atkins Gretsch guitar into a 1950s valve Fender practice amp. Nick Pini surprised us with our favourite string arrangement of the whole record over the outro.

'Has My Midnight Begun'

This became the last song on the record as it took on a weight and an atmosphere we couldn’t place anywhere else. With the uncertainty of everything in 2020 and 2021, so much has come to a standstill and it begged a lot of questions of people. This song was simply a question of can you continue? Lyrically, I had Dylan’s ‘Knocking On Heaven’s Door’ in the back of my mind.

Mixing 12 string bottleneck slide guitar, hip hop analogue drum loops, juno synthesizer and gut string banjo through a fuzz pedal we wanted it to feel like it could be on Ry Cooder’s Paris Texas soundtrack or in the background of a scene in Stranger things.

This was all us on our own, working through the early hours of the morning. 

Click Click Domino is out now. Listen to it:

More about: Ida Mae