(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:
In the 1980s and '90s, Kim Deal struck gold twice. She was in two very influential bands. She and her sister, Kelley were in the Breeders. This song, "Cannonball," was their big hit.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CANNONBALL")
THE BREEDERS: (Singing) Spitting in a wishing well. Blown to hell, crash. I'm the last splash.
SCHMITZ: Kim Deal was also in the Pixies. They made two of the 10 best albums of the '80s. That's not me saying that. That's Pitchfork magazine.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHERE IS MY MIND? ")
PIXIES: (Singing) Where's my mind...
SCHMITZ: So here's Kim Deal, rock legend, and she just released her first solo album. It's called "Nobody Loves You More." She's been working on it for decades.
KIM DEAL: What took you so long?
SCHMITZ: Yeah. She's apparently heard that question before.
DEAL: It's - I just always thought I wanted to be in a band.
SCHMITZ: Right.
DEAL: You know what it was? You know, me and Jim quit talking with each other after The Amps record.
SCHMITZ: Now, this is Jim MacPherson, right, from...
DEAL: That's Jim MacPherson, the drummer for the Breeders from "Last Splash." And I went down in the basement about 1996, and he had taken his drums out of the basement. You know, like good alcoholics, we didn't talk for 15 years.
SCHMITZ: Wow.
DEAL: I had no idea why he took them out. He doesn't remember why he took them out, just that we were mad at each other. Anyway, it's 2011. There was no band around me. So I went to Los Angeles and found some players, and I started releasing 7-inches under the name Kim Deal. That's what started this whole thing, really.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CRYSTAL BREATH")
DEAL: (Singing) Beat by beat, I'm feeling out of phase. Just another domino falling on my face. Beat on the inside. Beat's gonna lead on and on.
SCHMITZ: I really love this album. You know, I was listening to this over the weekend, you know? And I'm hearing, you know, familiar echoes of some of your past work, but I was also really pleasantly surprised to hear, like, some ballads that reminded me of old country songs. You know, I heard horns. I heard string sections. I heard, I think, a ukulele on one track.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SUMMERLAND")
DEAL: (Singing) I waited all day. It was thrilling. I watched the sun drop in the sea.
SCHMITZ: Explain some of the different approaches you took to some of the songs on this album.
DEAL: The ukulele one, it's never like I was - woke up one day and thought, you know, the ukulele is my kind of instrument.
SCHMITZ: (Laughter).
DEAL: I'm going to one day write a song on ukulele. You know, me and Kelley - we flew out to Hawaii, and we were the wedding band for Steve Albini and his wife, Heather.
SCHMITZ: And that's producer Steve Albini, who's worked with you for many years.
DEAL: That's right. And I had bought a lot of ukuleles for the other wedding guests 'cause they're all musicians anyway. And so we all were able to go (vocalizing) on the little ukulele, doing the little wedding march. It was really fun. And as a gift, Steve gave me a ukulele for a thank you. I'd liked hard rock bands from the '70s. That's how I grew up. So a ukulele gift is like, oh, thank you. Boom. Throw that over there on the couch, never to be looked at again.
And so I didn't pick it up for years and years, but I was driving with some guitars packed. I wanted to go write somewhere with a beautiful view, and I threw the ukulele in the car. And I wrote a song on the ukulele. I still don't know how to play the ukulele.
SCHMITZ: (Laughter).
DEAL: I just wrote a song on it. I don't know.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SUMMERLAND")
DEAL: (Singing) I won't even try to stop this. I'll follow the night.
SCHMITZ: So one of my favorite songs on this album is called "Are you Mine?"
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ARE YOU MINE? ")
DEAL: (Singing) Are you mine?
SCHMITZ: It sounds like a ballad out of the 1950s.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ARE YOU MINE? ")
DEAL: (Singing) Are you my baby?
SCHMITZ: It's really sweet, and it's nostalgic. What inspired the song?
DEAL: My mother had Alzheimer's for 18 years. It's not a one event. It's like, every day, there's something else to lose.
SCHMITZ: Yeah.
DEAL: This is years into it. So we were just passing each other in the hallway, and she grabbed my arm and said, are you mine?
SCHMITZ: Oh.
DEAL: And I - that was so sweet because I don't have children, but I knew that she didn't know who I was and did not know my name. But the maternal tug in her gut or whatever - and I was so happy to receive a flicker of recognition from my mother. She recognized me as something important.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ARE YOU MINE?")
DEAL: (Singing) Let me go where there's no memory of you.
SCHMITZ: You lost someone else very dear to you this year. You know, you mentioned him earlier in our interview. Your producer, Steve Albini who...
DEAL: Yeah.
SCHMITZ: ...Passed away in May. He worked with you on the Pixies. What made him someone that you trusted with your work again and again over the years?
DEAL: He's just - he's not producing. He's engineering the session. He's recording. A lot of times what he'll do, which I hate - I'll come in and listen to it and I'll say, you hear that note right there? That's a little out of pitch. It got stuck in my throat.
SCHMITZ: Right.
DEAL: And he goes, I don't hear it. I don't know what pitch is. Like, I don't know if he was serious or he just doesn't care about vocals so much, or is it that that's what you did out there? That was the experience you had, so capturing that is the ultimate.
SCHMITZ: So it's almost like he gets you out of your own way, in some ways.
DEAL: Yes, he does. And I never believe him...
SCHMITZ: Yeah.
DEAL: ...And I'm just - like, I'm always going, you're right. You're right. But in 1987, I was in Q Division in Boston, Massachusetts, recording with the Pixies the song "Gigantic." It was one of the first times I did a lead singing in a studio, and I took it - my headphones off, and I went inside to the control room, and I listened back. I sang the entire song out of pitch.
SCHMITZ: (Laughter).
DEAL: Nobody stopped the tape. And I just looked around the room thinking, am I getting punked right now? What is going on? And that's when Steve first told me, I don't know pitch. I don't think he did. Or did he just not care? To this day, I have no idea. Steve, thanks.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIGANTIC")
PIXIES: (Singing) She said, hey, Paul, hey, Paul, hey, Paul. Let's have a ball.
SCHMITZ: That's Kim Deal. Her first solo album is called "Nobody Loves You More." Thank you, and congratulations on this.
DEAL: Thank you, Rob.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIGANTIC")
PIXIES: (Singing) Let's have a ball. Gigantic, gigantic... Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
