jess joy on ‘WON’T BE KICKED OUT THE GARDEN’ and the beauty of being difficult
On WON’T BE KICKED OUT THE GARDEN, jess joy pulls us into a world where grief, humor, longing, and healing all sit together in surprising ways.
The album plays like a strange kind of existential sitcom, unfolding through baroque pop, jazz-touched experimental sounds, spoken word, and bursts of noise that do not fit into any easy box. It feels both personal and theatrical, shaped by joy’s move back to Louisiana after years of searching for home in other places. Along the way, she dives into deeper questions about identity, gender, ambition, and control. The songs ask whether we truly own our desires or if they own us. Her voice moves through different characters, from gentle to wild, from old willow trees to angry monsters. Produced mostly by Greg Saunier of Deerhoof in his living room, the record is carefully layered, with a cast of collaborators adding to its wide emotional range. Instead of trying to smooth out its rough edges, the album embraces honesty and discomfort and finds its way back into the light. WON’T BE KICKED OUT THE GARDEN feels less like a return to a new version of self.
“I gave myself permission to sprawl out with time and space”
You’ve described WON’T BE KICKED OUT THE GARDEN as a psychological, romantic comedy-drama set in a world on edge, almost like an existential sitcom scored by grief and longing. In making the album, was there a moment when you realized your inner world had shifted so drastically that the only way to return to yourself was through making this record?
jess joy: Existential sitcom, I love that. I think it took making the whole record to shift my inner world. Every song was processing, and when I was suffering, I was really suffering. When I wrote “welcome home,” I did feel that I had come back. I wrote that song, the last song, while walking through the sculpture garden in City Park in New Orleans, the first job I had after moving back home to Louisiana.
The line “Do we possess, or are we possessed?” from dreams feels like a thesis for the album. When you sing that, are you thinking about love, power, art, or maybe how memory itself can haunt us like a living spirit?
With that question, I am wondering if we have control over ourselves and others as we’d like to believe, or if our subconscious, our repressed dreams and desires, control us. That does apply to love, power, art, memory. I’d say that would be a nice album thesis, thank you. The character is totally acting out and throwing tantrums in every arena, until they essentially let go of control, grieve, and return to balance and reality.
This album feels like it’s not afraid to be unruly, to dip into baroque, experimental pop, spoken word, jazz ghosts. Was there ever pressure, internally or externally, to sand down those edges?
Not at all. I have nothing left to prove these days. This is my seventh album (if including my previous bands Moon Honey and Twin Killers). I’m 36. Done trying to make a hit. I gave myself permission to sprawl out with time and space and be ridiculous and even unlikeable or difficult to listen to. This is more about expression and healing than anything else. And Greg Saunier (the producer) would never touch that. He isn’t precious about sound or genre. He is 100 times more experimental and noisy than me, having played in and written for Deerhoof for 35 years as well as composed for orchestras and produced and mixed an unknowable amount of other artists’ work on the side. We recorded with his laptop in his living room.
You’ve mentioned Ursula K. Le Guin’s idea that “true voyage is return.” When you think about returning, whether to the body, to a place, to a former self, what have you found doesn’t come back with you? What gets left behind in that return?
I was reading The Dispossessed (which, just noticing, that thesis word “possessed” again) while wrapping up this record, and I was so touched by the sentiment of that quote. In the book, the main character lives on an anarchist planet that was started 200 years ago by his ancestors who were escaping a capitalist planet, Urras. He journeys back to the home planet in attempts to reunite the two through technology and has all these incredible insights about revolution.
In a lot of ways, I think this album personally processes having been born in the conservative Deep South near Baton Rouge, then living in Los Angeles for seven years and traveling about the US and abroad searching for a new home, then returning to Louisiana. When I was younger, I really shunned the culture here and wanted to escape. When I came back, I came back with more of a nuanced view and a strong desire to make peace with this place that I love. What I left behind: my twenties, my fantasy of an artist career and succeeding in capitalism, my roleplaying as a submissive woman, and my numbing strategies.
Tell us more about your voice. It transforms through different dimensions. Do you experience your voice more like a character you inhabit or a spirit that moves through you? Or maybe both?
Maybe both, haha, thank you. Certainly on this record I was trying to inhabit different characters, but they are all sincere, different parts of me I get to express. There’s an old willow tree speaking, an angry monster, a man, an airplane attendant, and more, but I do think those are all in me and came through.
The way your new album is sequenced is almost like a cinematic arc, like a dream diary, if you like. Were you consciously mapping a narrative as you built the tracklist, or did it reveal itself more like a constellation after everything had already been created, just spontaneously?
It revealed itself. I like how you say dream diary because I was just processing my life while writing the songs. I only saw the arc afterwards. I am pleased, though, that while it goes into a dark tunnel, it certainly emerges. It’s important to me that I don’t bring people anywhere that does not bring them back out into light.
Would love to hear about the recording process behind it.
Once I got to New Orleans, I assembled a three-piece band with two local musicians who I admired: Laura Fisher (keys, backing vocals) and Alex Brownstein (drums). I had the songs mapped out on guitar and keyboard, and they arranged their own parts for the songs, which was such a pleasure to hear. They both have unique styles and added so much. We took a trip to Tucson where Greg Saunier lives to record in his living room, using air mattresses as sound buffers to record the drum and keyboard tracks live, then we worked away at the other parts. We did as much as we could, then returned back to New Orleans where I tracked all the vocals and three more songs.
Most of the album was produced, engineered, mixed, and mastered by Greg Saunier, with two songs engineered by me (be longing, the earth sings through me), and all vocals produced and engineered by me, except welcome home, which Ajaï Combelic engineered all tracks for.
All songs were written by me, with arrangements by Laura Fisher (keys, backup vocals), Alex Brownstein (drums), Byron Asher (saxophone: easy), Jermaine Butler (drums: be longing), Sarah McTaggart (vocals: welcome home), and Anuraag Pendyal (piano: welcome home).
What’s next for you now?
I am completely tabula rasa. I don’t have a single song written on the back burner, which has never happened before for me. I usually have another album in the pocket. But I’m in grad school for expressive arts therapy and clinical mental health counseling. It’s consuming a lot of time. Still, I don’t feel I’m abandoning my art. I think I’m going deeper into what it means to be human, and I hope to return with insights that could have only been obtained through community work like this. Who knows, though.
Klemen Breznikar
Headline photo: Olivia Luz Perillo
jess joy Official Website / Facebook / Instagram / Bandcamp / YouTube
Joyful Noise Recordings Official Website / Facebook / Instagram / Twitter / Bandcamp / YouTube
