Ever since she was young, stories have surrounded folk artist Anaïs Mitchell. The daughter of an author, she said that when she would read books as a child, she would picture them happening in her own backyard in Vermont.
“I remember reading the Bible story of Abraham and Isaac as a kid,” she said.
“And I was reading it, and they go out on Mt. Sinai, I was picturing this mountain, a Vermont mountain. I’d picture the burning bush, but it’s on the back cliff behind my house, and there are pine needles on the ground.”
Despite this, her early career focused more on the political, she said. Ballads and early Bob Dylan songs, she said, influenced her first album, “The Song They Sang… When Rome Fell.” Mitchell would also set out to write songs about specific issues. Nowadays, she said, she prefers to let songs evolve on their own terms.
“I think as I’ve gotten older, I enjoy the mysterious process of it so much that I’m reluctant to have too much of an outline going into it,” she said. “There’s so much you can discover if you’re open to where it might go at every step.”
Mitchell writes to express feelings, she said, but her latest albums have brought her closer to storytelling again. Her entire fourth album, Hadestown, retold the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. It also featured guest spots from heavy-hitters like Ani DiFranco and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver.
When preparing its follow-up, this year’s Young Man in America, Mitchell said she didn’t see the songs as “a collection of short stories around a theme.”
“It wasn’t until we were going into the studio that I thought, ‘Oh, god, I see how these things are connected,’” she said.
One connection, parenthood, is visible just from looking at the album’s cover art. It shows Mitchell’s father, whose book The Soul of Lambs forms the plot for her song “Shepherd.” The focus on her dad, she said, came after seeing him react to his father’s death a few years ago.
“[I got] to see my dad go through that, and see him as not just as my father, but as another man’s son, and as a young person in the world, see him as a character in his own story…” she said.
Similar male characters show up a lot on the record. Mitchell often sings from a man’s perspective. This lets her draw from common archetypes, which she said helps make her ideas more meaningful.
“It helps you to make sense of your own meagre little life if you feel it can be part of this litany of other lives,” she said.
Still, Mitchell’s biggest goal is for her songs to feel honest. While her characters may appeal to the head, she said, she goes for the heart when writing.
“I don’t want people to think that I’m writing these songs from an academic perspective,” she said. “It’s not just an exercise of the mind. I’d like to really move people from an emotional place.”
