Michelle Billingsley

Michelle Billingsley is not your typical folk singer. For starters, in her own words, “Folk music does not talk about f*cking.” But she does. Billingsley sings about a whole lot of subjects considered taboo for polite women. Though you might not catch it on first listen—she wraps her charmingly cutting lyrics in boisterous acoustic strumming, her dryly dark sense of humor and a (whip)smart-assed vocal delivery. It all sounds a bit like Emmylou Harris went through the looking glass.

Billingsley’s new debut album for Western Myth Records, Not the Marrying Kind—produced by her friend, multi-instrumentalist Matt Brown—is an Americana gem. Out of the gates, Brown made the sage choice of putting legendary producer/engineer Brian Deck (Modest Mouse, Josh Ritter, Iron & Wine) behind the boards—and the drum kit—for the sessions. The resulting record is genuine, irreverent, unique and fearless. Its spare, moody vibe draws you in close with your guard down, and once you pause long enough to get your head around the songs, the depth of Billingsley’s talent comes sharply into focus. It’s a deceptively heavy record, yet somehow it’s still undeniably fun—fantastic whimsy mixed with black comedy and brisk little melodies that make the journey all the more powerful, human and affecting.

As fully formed of an artistic statement as the record is, it’s hard to believe Billingsley had exclusively been performing other people’s music until she started writing Not the Marrying Kind. Her work was the culmination of much romantic and artistic frustration. “I remember walking down the street because the CTA rush hour buses come every 25 minutes,” the Chicago-based artist says. “I was thinking about how hard it was to find something to sing in my range, and then this bubble burst in my head and I thought, ‘I can write songs and say whatever I want.’” 

Many of the songs from this period deal with the dysfunctional relationship Billingsley was caught up in for more than a decade. “I think, ‘I’m great, I’ve moved on,'” she says. “Then I’ll flash wide awake at 3 a.m.—‘How could I have been so stupid for so long?!’ But then I take a breath and I remember, ‘That’s how I got where I am now, and now is good.'”

Billingsley is refreshingly unguarded, and this openness extends to her lyrics. She sings her heart out about emotional abuse, fear of commitment and, of course, sex—all with a wink and a smile. Standout “Mom Jeans” is indicative of her uncanny ability to take a difficult subject—in this case a complex and strained history with a parent—and turn it into a moving yet comedic vignette. “My mom and I are good now, but we did not get along growing up,” Billingsley says. “I wrote ‘Mom Jeans’ looking in the mirror, noticing the parts of me that were my Mom’s—and her mom’s—and it drove me nuts because nothing was mine. There’s that line, ‘Sometimes the apple falls far from the tree / but boy this one hasn’t / Inherited her eyes, her smile, her nose, her boobs and her bad habits.’ It’s an upbeat song, but it’s really a laundry list of inherited features I saw in myself every time I looked in the mirror.”

The chorus of “Mom Jeans” almost leaps up from the music, sad, hilarious and all-too relatable: “I got a short fuse, rotten luck / Another man incapable of love / And yet I keep staying / ‘Cause I can’t come unless my heart’s breaking.” That tail end of that simple but potent last line, in all its self-deprecating honesty, gets at the heart of Billingsley’s brilliance. She can make you sing along, dance, laugh and cry—sometimes all at once.

Along with alt-country icon Emmylou, Billingsley namechecks Leonard Cohen as another major influence. She’s learned much from studying Cohen—a master of subtly tucking some of the pithiest, most caustic barbs into the most gorgeous of songs—and she’s not afraid to channel it while turning the mirror on herself. Consider the unflinching self-assessment of album-opener “Portia,” which features titular lyric “not the marrying kind.” “You just have those days where everything feels like a Jacob’s ladder of things you f*cked up. You wish you could stop, but maybe it’s worse than that—maybe it’s just who you are. With this song, I was trying to think of the worst things I could say about myself to other people before they could say it to, or about, me. And how far I could take that—’Her unformed vowels / conspire to reveal a parade of flaws.” I hate the idea of using a song for therapy—that’s too much to ask from a song. But it’s so dang cathartic to see people dance and have fun while I’m listing off secret insecurities and no one notices.”

Growing up in small-town Michigan, Billingsley was the eldest child—with two younger brothers—and the only girl on her street, which was a dead-end road. Their house was a log cabin with a wood-burning stove, and she spent her days playing by herself, out in the barn with the family’s farm animals exploring the inner world of her mind and making up stories.

Later, in her early 20s, she explored musical- and street theater, then took a detour to Los Angeles to try TV and film acting. It wasn’t for her. “I hated L.A.,” she says. “I had a miserable experience. My boobs weren’t big enough. Nothing was right. I saw the writing on the wall.” After that, Billingsley found her way to Chicago, where she still lives today. It was there she started singing in piano bars, though she was never quite comfortable doing it.

“I never knew what to do with my hands,” Billingsley says. “There are only so many minutes you can hold onto the microphone stand or hide them behind your back. So I was like, ‘Screw this,’ and I got a guitar and marched over to the Old Town School of Folk Music and said, “I’m gonna stand behind something bigger than a microphone.” Thanks to her mother, Billingsley had already played piano since age six, and after learning how to play guitar, she  also picked up mandolin and fiddle, which is how she met Not the Marrying Kind producer Matt Brown.

Billingsley chose to work with Brown—who plays fiddle, banjo and guitar on the new record—because he had been a teacher, a friend and someone who’d shown support for her other projects. He was fairly new as a producer, so he thought it’d be a good idea to enlist a veteran like Brian Deck on the project. Together, with a cast of musicians that included bassist Ethan Jodziewicz (The Milk Carton Kids), they recorded at Chicago’s Narwhal Studios, formerly Engine—the same space where Deck helped bring to life a multitude of indie classics, including Iron & Wine’s Our Endless Numbered Days.

The sessions involved plenty of spontaneity and collaboration, informed by Billingsley’s improv-comedy background. Despite a supportive team that gave her complete freedom to mold her songs, the process was still unnerving at times. “You’re so emotionally and creatively vulnerable in the studio,” Billingsley says. “You’re seeing these songs put together and sometimes you’re not quite sure it’s what you want. Then one small idea breaks everything open, and suddenly what you thought was the song flips 180 degrees and now it’s telling you what it wants to do. It’s a wide open frontier, and you can create as you go along. There’s so much growth. Really, the only way to get through making a record is to grow from it.”