Never Really Apart: Aoife O’Donovan on I’m With Her’s return, shared roots, and the power of musical kinship

After a seven-year stretch since their acclaimed debut See You Around, the trio behind I’m With Her (Aoife O’Donovan, Sara Watkins, and Sarah Jarosz) return with Wild and Clear and Blue, an album steeped in reflection, connection, and creative evolution. Ahead of their June 14th show at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Aoife O’Donovan spoke with us about the band’s deep bond, the spiritual threads woven through the new record, and how their songs continue to grow and transform on stage.

“Really the truth is that it’s almost like we never really thought of ourselves as not being together.”

Music in Minnesota: It’s been seven years since the debut release, See You Around. Obviously all of you are very busy with your own solo projects and albums, so what inspired you three to get back together for the new album Wild and Clear and Blue?

Aoife O’Donovan: Really the truth is that it’s almost like we never really thought of ourselves as not being together. We toured from 2018 up to a couple of weeks before the pandemic shut everything down. Our last show was in February of 2020, and we all had other projects in the pipeline that we were going to planned on working on. And so those things did come to fruition, but we kept the flame alive and really we got started to write the new record in the fall of 2021.

So it wasn’t like that much time actually passed when people came on asking us how was it getting back together? But it’s sort of like we were never really apart. We were doing our own thing and Jarosz and I both put out a bunch of solo albums. Sarah Watkins made a gorgeous solo album and then did her whole Nickel Creek tour. We’ve been very busy, but we’ve always remained connected.

“I think that being on stage and being in a room and hearing a concert and hearing people play live music is just going to continue to be a thing that we need and that we seek out. And as performers and as the audience, it’s just we need the audience and they need us, and it’s a circle. We need that.”

MIM: The interplay between your voices and instruments on Wild and Clear and Blue feels incredibly seamless to me. It feels like a conversation between old friends, which obviously has some warmth to that. How has your collaborative dynamic evolved since that first album?

Aoife O’Donovan: Oh gosh, it’s evolved so much. I think like any friendship and musical friendship and musical collaboration, the more somebody, the more you’re comfortable with people and you can really anticipate what they’re going to do on stage and in the studio, it just becomes a really special sort of kinetic experience.

When we first started writing See You Around back in 2015, It didn’t come out of course till 2018, but there was a long lag between when we wrote it and when we released it. But that first batch of songs we loved and we still stand behind and I’m so proud of all those songs.

But this new project, I just feel like we’re all more comfortable in our own skin as individuals, and I personally feel that I am a better songwriter now 10 years later than I was in 2015 and have just lived a lot more life and had a lot more experience, and I think you can really bring those things to the table in the writing room.

MIM: Many of the songs like “Sisters of the Night Watch” and “Standing on the Fault Line” seem deeply rooted in emotional and communal reflections. Was there any particular conversations or shared experiences that kind of helped shape the lyrical direction of the new album?

Aoife O’Donovan: I think so much of this album is about this way of communicating with our past selves and our future selves and sort of referencing mentors and actual people who have passed away and thinking about who we are in relation to those people. Of course, on the title track we’re talking about specifically Nancy Griffith and John Prine. We’re talking about our parents, we’re talking about our children.

It’s a very deep album lyrically, and I think that really from song to song, we’re kind of trying to follow this through line of these ancient voices, these ancient lights, these spirit sounds. Everybody’s sort of on this journey up a mountain. Maybe it’s the same mountain, maybe it’s a different mountain each time, but you’re really just sort of trying to claw your way through the bushes to figure out what’s on the other side, and maybe you’ll see that you’re just looking in the mirror.

MIM: The new album has a little bit of a rhythmic complexity of some of these songs, specifically “Ancient Light” being in 7/4, which is unusual in Americana and folk. How do you decide when to experiment with time signatures like that, and what do you think that they allow you three to express that a more traditional rhythm might not?

Aoife O’Donovan: It’s so funny. I think that for us, and for me particularly because I have a lot of songs in my original catalog that are in odd times with features, but it’s always just natural. This song never, we didn’t sit down and say, how do we make a song on seven four?

Jarosz just kind of had this melody idea that, and that was really how that song started. It just kind of happened to be in seven, and then we started messing around with the instrumental of it, and then we put the chorus in four and the bridge in four. I think that the best odd meter songs are the ones that sound really natural and the come out naturally, and that’s what happened in this case.

MIM: It’s such a strong lyrically rich album. Then you get to “Strawberry Moonrise”, which is the standout instrumental track. How do you three approach composing pieces that speak without using lyrics?

Aoife O’Donovan: It’s so funny. People keep on calling that the standout instrumental track, but really it’s just the introduction to “Year After Year”. It’s the same melody. It’s the chorus of “Year After Year” with ooze and we put it as its own track, and it’s really cool how much people think of it now as its own instrumental track, and it’s not just you.

It’s like everybody has commented on that and people love it, and now I’m starting to sort of re-see it as a beautiful, instrumental sort of wordless vocal moment. Whereas I think when we were making the record, we didn’t really see it that way. And it’s so cool that it turned into this thing that it’s like a touchstone on the record.

We call it “Strawberry Moonrise” because there’s a lyric in “Year After Year” where we talk about the strawberry moon, which is the full moon the month of June, and by reflecting in somebody’s grandchildren’s eyes and it’s so ethereal and so ghosty. It’s almost like that’s another sort of moment where if you’re listening to the record, you can just sort of take this breath and listen and really just try to conjure up this image of, it’s almost like howling at the moon, but it’s more peaceful than that.

But I love that not a single interviewer has been like, so was that originally the intro to “Year After Year”? To me it’s like a secret, so I’m giving you the secret.

“I love getting up on stage with I’m With Her and feeling like, okay, this is my thing, but it’s also her thing and it’s also her thing, and there’s this real sense of shared ownership over the music and the performance and the whole ethos of the band.”

MIM: All three of you have such strong solo careers. What is it about I’m with her that feels unique or even essential to your creative life?

Aoife O’Donovan: It is so essential for me getting to work closely with Sarah and Sara. I mean, first of all, they’re two of best friends in the world. Music aside, I love being around them on the off time as well, and I think that that’s something that’s really special and unique. We get along really well. We want to do the same things. We want to kind of go through life at a similar speed and pace, and we have similar interests. We’re all very different, the three of us personality wise, but I think there’s a lot of things about our personalities that really compliment each other.

Coming together in this band and feeling like you’re really a part of a team, especially coming out of several years of doing solo projects and leading a band. Last year I spent a lot of time touring, working with orchestras and there’s just a lot of pressure on being the band’s leader. I love getting up on stage with I’m With Her and feeling like, okay, this is my thing, but it’s also her thing and it’s also her thing, and there’s this real sense of shared ownership over the music and the performance and the whole ethos of the band.

MIM: Wild and Clear and Blue kind of carries this beautifully intimate almost, I guess I would say sacred vibe to it. How do you translate that sense of space and nuance into a live setting, especially in larger venues or even a festival type environment?

Aoife O’Donovan: Well, so far we’ve played four shows. We’ve played two shows, fully plugged in with our monitors and our separate mics, and they were both kind of outdoor festival concerts. Then we played two intimate shows in the UK. I say intimate, there were very large venues, close to 2000 people in each venue, but we were playing around one microphone. So it’s going to be really fun to be in St. Paul at the Fitz because we’re going to have our full lighting rig.

We’re going to have a really beautiful sort of set that is hopefully going to help people get in the mood and the vibe. We’ve all spent so much time at the Fitzgerald Theater, and I should have some family in the audience. My husband’s family is from Minnesota. My husband and my daughter are flying in. They’re going to spend the weekend at the Jacobson family lake cottage out in Square Lake and Stillwater.

MIM: Have any of these songs on this album evolved or taken on a new life when you’ve started to perform them live and have they kind of any revealed anything unexpected to you as artist?

Aoife O’Donovan: Yes. I’ll say one song that’s particular “Mother Eagle”, which is one of my favorite songs on the record, it’s really just feels like the three of us. It’s so uniquely, it’s almost like a thesis statement for our band. That song live has been really special and it has evolved. We’ve extended it, we’ve added some new chords. It’s almost like we don’t want to stop. We just wanted to keep going. So I’m looking forward to, once we get on the road, really seeing how these songs will start to change night to night.

MIM: Does that happen pretty often where you started tour playing songs and then by the end of it they’ve evolved or they’ve revealed either a new meaning or just a new way to play them?

Aoife O’Donovan: Oh, totally, totally. I mean, that’s the goal, at least for me. I love also messing around with new versions of songs and new ways to play songs or changing up things or adding an extended solo section or starting the song differently. I’m always open to that. I think that the coolest thing about making records is that you make a record and that’s just how you felt like the song should go at that point. The songs are living and breathing things.

MIM: You’ve all toured before, and obviously you’ve done these four dates already, but given the changes in your lives and musical pasts since the last album, is there anything that has stood out that has felt really different or even more meaningful about going back on the road this time around?

Aoife O’Donovan: Well, I can’t say yet because we haven’t really started the real sort of get in the groove of it tour. But I think that it’s something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is we just sort of witness technology changing and people, even in the last seven years being definitely, it’s hard to believe people are more into their own devices and more into solitude and sort.

I feel like there’s this collective retreat from socialization and all that said, I think that being on stage and being in a room and hearing a concert and hearing people play live music is just going to continue to be a thing that we need and that we seek out. And as performers and as the audience, it’s just we need the audience and they need us, and it’s a circle. We need that.

Catch I’m With Her on June 14th at the Fitzgerald Theater – TICKETS ARE LIMITED