Joan As Police Woman on her new album Real Life Evolution: 'Music is the main way that I have learned to handle life'
Back with a fresh take on her 2006 debut album, Joan Wasser (aka Joan As Police Woman) talks to Fiona Shepherd about the euphoria of playing live with Iggy Pop and how music has helped her get through life’s biggest challenges
Anyone who has encountered musical auteur Joan Wasser in her imperious Joan As Police Woman guise may find it hard to credit that this charismatic performer could stand on a stage and not be the centre of attention. But Wasser cut her musical teeth as a trusted player in touring bands, notably for Antony And The Johnsons, Rufus Wainwright, and most recently on keyboards and backing vocals for the formidable Iggy Pop. ‘When you play with Iggy, no one is looking at anyone but Iggy ever,’ she says, ‘but you will see me elated back there. I’m very aware that if you’re playing in Iggy’s band maybe you’re supposed to look tough and stuff. Well, I’m just smiling the entire time. I’m getting to play these songs that I consider to be perfect. For me, it is complete euphoria.’
In turn, Iggy appears on Wasser’s new/old Joan As Police Woman album, Real Life Evolution, supplying lead vocals on a version of her track ‘Save Me’. As its title suggests, the album is a re-recording of her 2006 debut Real Life, taking into account the way these songs have morphed over 20 years of live performance. ‘I’ve never been interested in presenting a song identical to the recorded version,’ she says. ‘I really respect the musicians I play with and like to allow them to bring whatever they are feeling to the song; so over time these songs have grown up in a certain way. The originals exist so I just wanted to present the new clothing they have grown into wearing.’
The songs on the album are among the first Wasser ever wrote, but they were suffused with years of experience as an instinctive live player and also a classically trained musician. Prior to becoming New York’s most wanted gun for hire, she’d studied violin at Boston University. ‘For me it was a great way to learn about a different style of discipline which has helped me throughout my life teaching myself other instruments. I know this sounds silly but practice makes you better. You’re not good at this passage? Practice it a lot and you will be.’
Sound advice which she now gives back as a songwriting and production tutor at New York University. Elsewhere, she has applied her production skills in unlikely places, not least on acclaimed Scottish folk trio Lau’s 2015 album The Bell That Never Rang which was inspired by Glasgow’s coat of arms. ‘Those guys are an ultimate crew of people to work with,’ says Wasser, ‘because they are so expansive and creative and so, so talented. I felt like I didn’t have to do anything, even though they would say differently. The chemistry between the three of them is something that you dream about finding.’
As for her own music, she has started work on a new record while marking the anniversary of her first. ‘I never cared about being a singer or a songwriter until my late 20s,’ she says. ‘I felt like my entire lived life was in the songs. They take me back to certain places. There’s certainly an innocence that I see now and a person trying to grapple with really big events [not least the accidental death of her fiancé Jeff Buckley in 1997]. Music is the main way that I have learned to handle life and the biggest emotions that go along with that because often the feelings are so huge that they feel almost amorphous. When I put it into music I feel like I translate it into a language that I can over time digest and understand in a different way.’
Joan As Police Woman: Real Life Evolution is released by Reveal Records on Friday 12 June.