SAINT PAUL – In the 10 years between her first and second solo albums, Lucy Michelle has been busy.
“Since then, I’ve had three kids,” said Michelle on Centerstage Minnesota, “and you know when you have kids, everything outside of kids takes 10 times longer than it did before kids.”
Along with raising children, the global pandemic further changed the timeline. Michelle and her producer/bassist John Munson (Trip Shakespear, New Standards, Semisonic) decided to delay Womanly’s release until they could play it live. She also released an album with her band Little Fevers in 2019.
The additional time spent on Womanly was well worth the wait, for listeners and for Michelle herself. Usually, only a few songs from an album are played on the radio. All eleven songs from Womanly are currently being played on KAXE.
“It was totally worth the wait,” Lucy Michelle said, “I think a lot of the songs really speak to what life is like with a family and with kids, and how much my life changed after I had kids.”
Even the album title was tinkered with, after the singer realized her initial idea, American Mom, was too narrow of a focus. Inspired by a line in a Bill Callahan song, Michelle thought Womanly would resonate with more people, and be a shift in gendered thinking.
“You hear the word manly all the time,” Michelle said, “womanly is not really a word people use to describe things. But I loved it and I felt like this is my word.”
Listen to the complete conversation with Lucy Michelle above.
Centerstage Minnesota, Fridays at 2 p.m. and 10 p.m. on KAXE/KBXE, is made possible by the citizens of Minnesota through the Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund.
