Bett Butler & Joël Dilley - Gracia (2022)

Bett Butler and her husband Joël Dilley have been featured in Bloggerhythms a few times in the past, separately and as a team.

Dilley is a bass player and composer who works in multiple genres including jazz, funk, R&B and Latin music. Butler, the more mainstream artist of the two, is a singer-songwriting pianist with a soulful voice who also works in many styles but appears to favor mainstream jazz.

I became familiar with Butler first. She recorded two albums of original jazz tunes followed by an album of covers from the Great American Songbook that features only her voice and Dilley's piano. Butler's last original solo work is the finest record in her catalog so far, a 2016 Christmas release, Songs For The Christmas Child. It is not a record for children.   

In 2020, Dilley wrote and composed a soundtrack to the politically influenced film, Wall In The Desert, with Butler assisting the multi-instrumentalist by reciting the famous poem emblazoned on the Statue of Liberty. He used his eclectic tastes to great effect, so Gracia - released late in 2022 - is not Dilley's first album exploring the new age and ambient worlds.

Gracia is a six track set that inhabits territory Bloggerhythms doesn't normally visit, but the impressive talents of this San Antonio couple have enabled me to appreciate musical works I would never otherwise explore.

As stated on the album's Bandcamp page, "In six ambient instrumental tracks borrowing from electronica, Americana, world music, meditation, and prayerful chant, multi-instrumentalist Joël Dilley and vocalist Bett Butler engage in a series of musical conversations exploring the surreal nature of life in a time of plague."

Below is a recent online question and answer session Butler participated in for Bloggerhythms that will provide you with good insight on this interesting album and the two artists who produced it.

________________________________________

C.R. Although you and Joel Dilley are jazz musicians you've both worked in the ambient/new age genres before, most recently on Wall In The Desert in 2020. So, What is the inspiration behind Gracia and why the title?

B.B. When the pandemic hit, we were thrown into a tailspin like everyone else, trying to adjust to a new way of living. And like so many other musicians, we retreated to the studio, hunkered down, and channeled all those conflicting emotions into music. It was a time of extremes, and we were aspiring to navigate that journey with grace —"gracia" in Spanish.

C.R. As you are both composers and musicians - and you are a singer as well - tell my readers how these tracks were put together. What did each of you contribute? 

B.B. Joël played all the instruments: keyboards, basses, guitars, drums, Celtic harp, percussion, and probably a few others. I contributed only the vocals. (Editor's note: All vocals on the album are wordless).

He would compose and record a basic orchestral track from the ground up. I'd woodshed on that, come into the studio, and improvise on vocals. He would then edit, revise, and perhaps add additional instrumental parts in response to the vocal improv. It was truly a musical conversation, but a conversation with pauses to allow for the development of theme and thought. Joël took his time mixing and mastering, with a lot of experimentation. We were fascinated at how the music grew and changed over the process.

And there were some magical surprises, especially when we would do a blind multitrack: i.e., record a second improv part while muting the first. When we would unmute both tracks, it was uncanny how often the parts fit together perfectly.

C.R. Did you use any outside musicians, and if so what were their contributions to the arrangements outside of playing the required notes?

B.B. This was during lockdown, so it was just the two of us.

C.R. The album cover is a painting by a Ukrainian artist. Tell us a little about her and how this work fits in with the music you've produced for this album?

B.B. It's an interesting story. Joël toured the Russian Federation in 2008 with classical/jazz pianist Valeri Grohovski and felt a real connection with the people there. When Putin invaded Ukraine, we were heartbroken. I was looking for a way to amplify the humanity and culture at risk there and began researching Ukrainian artists past and present, posting their work on Facebook; those images ended up getting shared widely. One painting that really resonated was Olesya Hudyma's "Angel of Peace for Ukraine," which seemed to embody hope and beauty in the midst of horror and despair. At the same time, we had tried and discarded dozens of images for the album cover, and suddenly this beautiful painting materialized and spoke very eloquently to what we were trying to express in the music. We connected with the artist, who is quite well-known in Ukraine, and licensed the image for our cover art. She was a joy to work with. Please check out her work at her website.

C.R. Where is Gracia available to listeners?

B.B. It's available on all streaming services and digital music outlets, but we like to steer folks to Bandcamp, whose policies better support independent musicians.

C.R. Is there anything you and Joel would like to add? 

B.B. Thank you, Charlie, for listening and asking great questions and sharing. And we invite your readers to visit our YouTube channel where we combine music, art, and poetry. We hope they'll find something there that's beautiful and useful.