Scout Willis has always been musical throughout her life, but she didn’t know she would end up focusing on music in such a big way. Choosing to do a solo record was a big decision, leading to her first self-titled album, Scout Larue Willis. On this episode of LaunchLeft, Scout shares with Rain about the art of creative collaboration, her earliest musical memories, and excitement about performing her new songs in front of an audience. 

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LaunchLeft Podcast hosted by Rain Phoenix is an intentional space for Art and Activism where famed creatives launch new artists. LaunchLeft is an alliance of left-of-center artists, a curated ecosystem that includes a podcast, label and NFT gallery.

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IN THIS EPISODE:

KEY TAKEAWAYS: 

RESOURCE LINKS

Scout on IG

Scout on Twitter

Scout on YouTube

Scout on Soundcloud

BIO: 

Imbued with wistful melodies and eloquent, eccentric arrangements, Scout LaRue Willis’ self-titled debut is an unflinching chronicle of hard decade, a coming-of-age album that turns this young auteur’s darkest fears into hurt yet distinctly hopeful songs that both soothe and catalyze. 

From her first lonely notes on “Blue Moon” until the final rowdy sing-along on “Red Road Home,” she comes across as an artist who grounds her music in vivid inspiration as well as honest experience; In the exquisitely simple and authentic expression of Patsy Cline, in strange dreams half remembered upon waking, in old cowboy trail songs, in the 1960s classic rock passed down by her father like an heirloom, in the everyday challenges of being a human and in the operatic way Roy Orbison delights in his voice. Willis constantly marshals her resolve as she conveys hard truths in her graceful rasp: “And I will pass this test, ‘cause I know I am strong,” she declares on the anthemic “Woman at Best.” “I won’t call out your name, I’ll just sing out this song.”

While it’s immediately apparent that she’s an original voice, it took her many years to find the courage to share it. After harboring tender, childhood aspirations of being a musician, she felt discouraged by certain experiences in high school and all but suppressed the dream.  It wasn’t until she started writing songs and singing as one-half of the duo Gus + Scout while at Brown University that she realized it was something she could really pursue. In between classes they managed to tour and record a 2012 EP that mixes early rock and doo-wop sounds. “We’d go away for the weekend, play a little festival and then have to come back and finish papers.  It was thrilling getting to run away and moonlight as a rockstar for a little while.” The pair paused musically upon graduation, and Willis spent years believing she couldn’t pursue music as a career. “Somewhere between fear and misperception I had this idea that I shouldn’t and couldn’t pursue music full time. My reasoning was based in self judgement, that I needed a ‘real job’ and that especially coming from privilege, music didn’t fall into that category. Later though, I realized this was just a very clever way to hide from the deep, unconscious fear I had around sharing myself and my art with the world” This safety net led her to a number of other jobs in the interim, all the while continuing to first teach herself to play guitar and then starting to write music on her own for the first time. 

In February of 2016 Willis played her first ever solo show and began writing prolifically.  After a number of years of feeling lost with her work, this was a moment of rededicating herself wholly to music.  Though she knew she wanted to make an album, the songs she wrote during this period were also a means of processing the intensity of her emotions, “I’d have feelings that were so enormous I thought they’d destroy me, and the best tool I had at my disposal was music, so I would just start writing. I wrote ‘Love Without Possession’ in the throes of massive love addiction. I wrote it in real time, as it was all happening, and performed it live the day I finished it, as a means of communicating with the person I wrote it about. I was nearly crying onstage, such high drama! Even with all of the emotional ups and downs, it was such a beautiful and growth provoking time in my life!” 

Even as she compiled a poignant and honest catalog of songs, Willis made little progress towards recording and releasing them. “In my conscious mind, I really wanted to get my musical career off the ground and share my work, it always felt like there was a wrench in the machine though and nothing was happening.” She says of the period between 2017 and 2019 especially “Ultimately, I came to realize that I was unconsciously holding myself back, which made sense because of course music is the thing I am most proud of in the world, it’s my heart laid bare and if I were to finally share that and still be found lacking somehow, either internally or externally, it would feel like death! After this realization it became much easier to be compassionate towards the parts of myself that were terrified to wholeheartedly pursue the thing that matters most to me. I came to see how this old story and the protective mechanisms around it had been running the show, enabling me to find a million different reasonable excuses to put it off” Understanding the subtle workings of her inner world proved to be the key because within a few months of that epiphany, Willis was in the studio recording her debut solo record.  

Working with Producer Greg Papania (Snoop Dogg, Gwen Stefani) at Lucy’s Meat Market, an intimate studio in Highland Park, California, Willis set about searching for the ultimate version of each song—the version that would most effectively and deliciously deliver the truth of her lyrics. The songs are all centered around her unique voice and inventive guitar playing, with imaginative flourishes of strings and theremin. “I wanted every song to be its own episode, its own ride.” “Do You Trust Me Enough” marries the playful, skipping melody seamlessly with the heart wrenching lyrics. “Oh, I’m in love with your potential, but what of the man that you are,” she sings among the fluttering birds. “And oh, we’re addicted to each other, and that can only take us so far.”

Anchoring these ingenious arrangements are sounds you won’t hear, but you’ll certainly feel. “In addition to recording the entire album in 432 tuning, we embedded specific tones in each song,” she says, “396hz clears fear, guilt, shame, anger and self-loathing, 417hz helps to release trauma.”  They added those tones underneath the tracks although they’re largely imperceptible to the ear. “For me music is a healing modality and Greg’s insight into 432 tuning and the use of these tones helped me to take that as far as it could go. I am really excited to hear about people’s response to the music and whether they can feel it as well as hear it!” 

Scout LaRue Willis is, ultimately, a record of personal growth. It’s both an ode to the relationships that have helped her grow and to the relationship she has developed with herself. Even on “Last Night” the most recently written song on the album that Willis says, “is the first out and out love song” she’s ever written, there is a sense that it’s about the mirror her relationship holds up to herself.  Over a delicate finger-picked guitar and a sympathetic mandolin, Willis sings, “I think it was the first time, I started to believe, that you could love me, even when I’m a mess, that you could love me, with all the feelings I possess.” She could be singing to herself just as easily as to a lover. This album is a love letter to not only her triumph, but to her pain as well, to music as a healing force, and it offers her a vantage point to see how far she’s come. “Looking back through the lens of this album and my own personal growth work, I’m in love with every experience that inspired these songs, every moment of challenge, heart break and victory, because each of them conspired to get me to this exact moment and I’ve never been more in love with myself and my life than I am right now.  I feel like I am singing these songs to the girl I was—that young, thrashed, courageous version of myself who just kept making art no matter what. I feel so grateful to finally be at this point, ready to send these stories out into the world to have a life of their own”. 

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