FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Music

Son Little Is Dissolving the Barrier Between R&B and Rock 'n' Roll One Tearjerker at a Time

The soulful one-man band's style is timeless, but don't call it retro.

Photos by Anthony Saint James

Son Little is the one man band/alter ego of Aaron Earl Livingston. You know him (or not, what you know is your business) from collaborations with the Roots and as one half of the very fine “psychedelic soul” outfit Icebird with RJD2. With a sure-footed foundation made up of equal parts R&B, blues, rock, and hip-hop, Son Little is adept in all contemporary soundtracks to kissing in the dark and/or crying. He gets Marvin Gaye comparisons but could just as well get Jeff Buckley or Josh Homme. He’s also signed to Epitaph Records’ where-do-we-put-this? imprint, Anti-. While it’s unlikely there’s a Deafheaven package tour in his future, he’s a solid fit with their out-of-time/timeless auteurs like Jolie Holland and Tom Waits.

Advertisement

Son Little’s upcoming self-titled debut full length is a potent collection of soulful new Americana. It’s personal and political, political in the “personal is political” sense (political occasionally in the “political is political” sense) and, throughout, deeply felt and lovely. The intention was that, while Livingston categorizes music he digs depending on moods and when he is most inclined to listen to it, his own album would be suitable for all occasions of the heart and mind; 24 hours music. He was kind enough to take my call while cruising away from Woodstock, New York to talk about politics, process, and all those infernal genres we love so much.

Continued below

A lot of contemporary soul records, be they produced by Mick Ronson or dude from Wilco, strive to sound like records actually recorded in the 60s and 70s. You don’t do that. Was that a conscious decision?
I was… aware that I was not doing that. Might just be that I’m not as savvy as some of those guys. Those throwback sort of records, I don’t even know how to do that. So that might be what it is… Ineptitude. I think it’s just never been something that I’ve wanted to do. I admire a lot of those old soul records; I admire a lot of soul record in general. I don’t necessarily feel inspired to make something that sounds just like that, you know? I want to make something new.

You’ve said in the past that genres seem more a concern of the industry than actual listeners. There are songs on this album that wouldn’t be entirely out of place on old Queens of the Stone Age albums, you know, just sort of mid-tempo downcast rock. Are you at the point where you’re entirely unconcerned about genre? Or is it unavoidable?
It is unavoidable. Because people want descriptors, they want to file things away. In some ways it’s something I’ve had to confront more than most artists, where to put it, because I lean to having my own genre that involves a lot of styles. Sometimes I might feel like I made a rock record, sometimes I feel it’s an R&B record, but, you know, R&B is rock and rock is R&B.

Advertisement

Totally, one of the things it reminds me of is those early 70s Buddy Miles records…
Right right… the things that people associate with R&B now and the things that they associate with rock now are not the things that people associated with those genres 20, 30, 40 years ago. If you made a rock record back then, you had a ballad, you had a Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses.” R&B you had Otis Redding who did ballads, but he’d do a “Respect,” which was this rocking song. R&B tends not to that anymore. I do find those kinds of things restricting.

One good thing about the internet flattening everything out is that, ten years ago, you would be constantly be talking about, “Hey, you were involved with hip-hop acts, now you’re doing guitar music or whatever,” and that’s all you would be talking about…
Or just not even getting to the point where I could talk about it. Because, “Who’s this guy? He can’t do this!” I have experience that. Even if it was just a general implication that what I was doing was not legitimate.

From which side have you gotten that?
Probably having come from the hip-hop field, I’ve run into it from there. But like you said, that’s changed, it doesn’t happen so much. And it’s never artists that do that. Never.

If I hadn’t read recent interviews, I’d think that the general themes of the record where romance and maybe existential despair. But, understandably, there’s been a shift in what you’re saying, towards the political. Some of the lyrics are at least obliquely political, but am I missing a larger theme?
I don’t know. The songs are derived form my thoughts on my life. People are complex. They surround themselves with a lot of different things. Sometimes my relationships are on my mind and I’m meditating on those, and I have other times when it is, like you said, existential despair. Someone else called it “existential dread.” That’s definitely a part of it. That’s something I’ve struggled with, depression… and some of that comes from the news, extenuated by facing the reality of the world. Things are happening. That demand attention. And those things are affecting me. And thinking about them and processing them. I don’t know if it’s conscious.

Advertisement

But to me the scariest thing is the true believer. To have that conviction sometimes suggests to me that a person is not considering parts of the truth, parts of reality. As much as I believe one thing, I can kind of see how maybe even the opposite is true. People believe different things so whether it’s protests in Ferguson, a presidential election, or a nuclear agreement with Iran, I’m writing about my own trying to process these things. These are my thoughts trying to understand it. More than me saying, “This is how this is.” Because I don’t know how this is! This is what I think, while I think about that. Anybody’s guess is as good as mine. What does all this mean and how do you deal with it. So I see all this as my part of the conversation.

Does that ambivalence inform the music writing or the narrative after the fact?
The process is not restricted to this album. “Oh Mother” (from the new album) is a good example. It was written while I was in France, and it was presented as a protest song where, as for me, I was processing my own feelings about what was happening. It’s not necessarily pointed at anyone. But it is a point of view from a certain moment where I was processing the idea of what was happening in Ferguson and New York and what was happening all over the country. Because I was not here, it gave me a different perspective than if I had been here. But I wasn’t in America, and that had a very drastic affect on how I felt about the situation.

Advertisement

A lot of white writers going to France were able to talk about whatever they wanted, and it was this very carefree liberating thing, whereas someone like Nina Simone looked at the difference between the US and France and just got angrier.
It really does shift your point of view. I’m going to make a terrible analogy: You take something and put it into a different medium, and the effects are different. You’re mixing chemicals. You put it into a different environment; it may burst into flames in one and dissolve in another. I. this case my mentality is the same, but I can see why a Nina Simone might get angrier. I get there, and not immediately, but you start to feel more freedom, and absences of a certain type of stress, and once you’re conscious of that, you look back and you’re like “Why was I feeling all that stress?” And you know why. But you look back, and it does make you angry because you realize how inessential that stress is; it’s not doing anyone any good, to feel that way at home all the time. The sad part is that there people that may benefit from it.

There’s the cliché that punk was so good in the 80s because of Reagan, and that’s a funny narrative, but then you compare it to the day to day stress of being a black man or woman in America, and it’s like “nevermind.” Because it sounds fucking exhausting.
Exhausting is the word for it. Because that’s what it feels like. And you don’t really know the effect that it’s having until it’s lessened a little bit. It’s funny… intellectually you know that. I know that a lot of black artists moved to France and didn’t want to come back. I know that. But until you’re there…

Advertisement

It’s like an abusive relationship where you’re like, “He loves me. I know he loves me.” And then when you’re out, you’re like, “Oh. That dude didn’t love me at all…”
Exactly.

You write and play everything on the record, correct?
I’d say 98% is me playing or programming.

I know it’s a boring question, but what’s the process?
I don’t have a specific one. I start with the rhythms, the drums. Usually. I mean it’s always drums or words or guitar. I can write from any of those directions. I can get the rhythmic idea first but I also have some songs that start with a lyrical idea only.

Do you walk or drive and then have to stop to write down the idea?
I don’t do that as much. Though I do have boxes of receipts with ideas written on them. And I have notebooks, but they’re never around when you need them. But sometimes I’ll just say a phrase into my phone. Doesn’t have a melody or rhythms to it, just a vague idea of a song. I have a lot of voice memos that are just bass, and I’ll go back and listen and be like, “I have no idea, what is this,” but some of those turn into songs. I find the more you repeat to yourself, the less you need to write down.

I repeat things, and then I lose things all the time.
I think that doesn’t bother me so much. It used to bother me, and now it doesn’t as much.

Why do you think that is?
I think whatever comes out, is in there. If you forget it, it will come back, maybe as something different, but it will come back. If you have a certain energy that wants to come out, it will come out. So I tend not to worry about it. Sometimes ideas need to die to get new ones.

That’s better way to look at it.
It’s certainly easier! It’s actually just that I’m lazy [laughs] “I don’t wanna write!”

Do you have prolific phases?
I do. I can to rolling down a hill. A snowball. A big snowball. I think I could be more even or balanced about it, but in some ways time and responsibilities don’t allow for it.

What takes up the time?
It depends. At the moment I’m driving around in a truck, playing shows. And that’s great, but it’s also frustrating because you can’t stop and process ideas. Sometimes it’s nice to get away from it, but the studio is a fun instrument on it’s own that I really enjoy. So I miss that when I can’t do it. It’s not the same just jotting down notes or playing guitar. I want to play everything at the same time.

Follow Zachary Lipez on Twitter.