Jonell Mosser | Behind the Shades
“True, we love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving. There is always some madness in love. But there is always some reason in madness.”
These words by Nietzsche are committed to memory by Jonell Mosser, who, aside from being the popular and much-loved Nashville songstress, has a profound appreciation for the spoken and written word. She likes to punctuate her conversation with quotes from her favorite authors and philosophers, and at times it almost sounds as if she’s singing instead of talking.
When we meet for lunch, she has just come from teaching a songwriters symposium to nine kids at Battle Ground Academy’s summer performance camp. There, Mosser mentors and guides these young music aspirants through composing a song based on their own input and ideas. She will admit it’s hard conveying her own knowledge to these kids. But she loves it, nonetheless, when things start to come together. One student in particular she describes as having “a special focus and personal style,” which he proved while playing an original, hip riff on his guitar. Mosser describes the creation as if “something lit a candle in that boy.” After class that day, the assignment turned to fitting a song idea around it, and she is confident they will finish with a good song. Mosser proudly speaks of her adoration for young artists like these in the making. “I love to see people [figuring out] how to become,” she says, stressing the word become.
Mosser, who turned a youthful-looking 50 years old this year, reveals in our conversation how she has come into her own over the past two decades as a singer/songwriter. She’s a warm and spirited individual, strong in her words, with a lively personality appropriately framed by her curly, strawberry-blond hair. She brings up losing her parents at a rather young age—her father passed away when she was three and her mother when she was almost 30. As a result, “You become a different person,” she maintains. Her mother’s death occurred while Mosser was in the midst of a divorce, a particularly hard time for her. During her grief a friend told her, “It’s the only way to be; you can stand it. Your mother couldn’t have taken it, losing you.” Little did I know we shared this common bond of losing parents early in life. I shared my personal loss with her, and, after a little exploration, we agreed “there is no looking back.”
The Kentucky native moved to Nashville in the mid ‘80s with plans to be a demo singer but soon took on songwriting. She recalls performing her first song, Mama’s Dream, at a writers night. Shortly after singing the first line of the song, “My Mama and I never really got along,” she remembers seeing a man sitting in the front row, cowboy hat on, cigar hanging from his mouth, when he shouts out, “You can’t say you never got along with your mama!” With an appalled look on her face, she continues to explain, “I remember just trying to get through the song and thinking to myself, I’ll never do this again.” At the end of the song, as she hurriedly packed up, slamming the guitar case shut and hustling towards the door, she remembers, “I ran into this tall man, handsome, great big eyes, with tears in his eyes, and he says to me, ‘Did you write that song about your mama?’ I said yes, and the man says, ‘That’s the best song I’ve ever heard.’ And I thought, I’m going to keep doing this forever!” she laughs. A testament to the fashions of Music Row—that man who loved the song was songwriter John Hall, of famed group Orleans and co-writer on songs like Still the One, with wife, Johanna, who both convinced Mosser to keep writing.
Pointing to the challenges of songwriting, Johanna Hall shared what Janis Joplin once told her: “You’re a woman, a writer, and you have a story to tell—write it.” Out of that conversation between Hall and Joplin came the song Half Moon, the b-side to Bobby McGee and a radio hit. That was added encouragement for Mosser, whose looks and sound, incidentally, have been compared to Joplin. Mosser claims the comparison is a compliment but says, “I hope I sing with less gravel; her voice was raw power from deep pain.” She indicates her songs come from different places, and, as evident in this meeting, she can certainly bring personal emotion and experience into a song.
The vocalist has an obvious affection for America and free speech, as she has been a regular performer for Freedom Sings, the musical arm of the First Amendment Center in Nashville. “Where else can you say what you like; we have that freedom,” she says. Disenchanted by anyone “using a word as a weapon,” Mosser can accept that people “have a right to say it” but will add, “I have a right to disagree with it.”
Mosser’s love for music bloomed early on while singing alongside her mother, molding a style that reflects the influences of Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, and Billie Holiday. Her career has flourished around friends like Townes Van Zandt, John Prine and Leon Russell, though her soulful sound has been considered somewhat less conventional. Nonetheless, she has evolved as an artist with a long list of credentials, has entertained many audiences and lent her voice on numerous major recordings.
Faced with her share of doubters, she questioned herself at times. “I had so many people tell me, ‘You’ll never make it.’” She found inspiration from friend and songwriting legend Harlan Howard, who told her, “There’s nothing like you. Be that, with no apologies.” So while settling in Nashville to record and sing, she says, “I have grown to become myself.”
Her newest CD, Trust Yourself, was released earlier this year. “There’s a lot of me in it,” she says. It’s a stellar album with several original songs she wrote with John and Johanna Hall, surrounded by a brilliant band and backing vocals and led with one honest and compelling voice.
Before we go our separate ways, I ask for a few words to describe her adage in life: “Don’t let anything steal your joy.” Again she quotes Nietzsche: Now I am light, now I fly, now I see myself beneath myself, now a god dances through me. Thus spoke Zarathustra. I can tell that she loves the way those words sound and the way they make her feel. “Words like that feed me as songs feed me,” she says. A woman of compassion and mother of two, Jonell Mosser is truly an artist who has prevailed, with the passion and courage to seek and find her own truth.
by Rebecca Bauer | Photography by Anthony Scarlati
To sample Trust Yourself from Mosser’s newest CD,
visit www.jonellmosser.com
