Lauren Turner
on community, meditation, and improvisation
When I connect with songwriter and poet Lauren Turner, our conversation gravitates to the topic of creating in both solitary and communal spaces. Being in writers’ workshops. Meditating in the garden. Hosting house shows. Making bedroom recordings with a 4-track cassette recorder.
Lauren has managed to strike a creative balance, grounding herself in collectivism in her projects both as a solo artist (performing as Lou Turner) and with experimental outfit Styrofoam Winos. Her most recent solo record, Songs for John Venn, released in April 2021 by SPINSTER Sounds, showcases Lauren’s ability to own her voice as an artist and thrive in collaboration. Named after John Venn, who pursued the priesthood before becoming a mathematician, Songs for John Venn explores themes of connection, impermanence, spirituality, and secularism.
”Hearing everyone’s singular voice blend into a whole is a magical thing.”
Lauren grew up in the church; her earliest formative experiences as a musician came from being in a worship band as a teen. She says that while she doesn’t identify as a religious person anymore, she continues to identify as culturally Christian. “It had a huge impact on my worldview. Of course, now I’m at a point of straining out what I want to keep and what I want to throw away.”
On one of the record’s standouts, “Will The Circle Be Unbroken,” Lauren recites a poem and sings an interlude from the traditional hymn, selecting a verse about singing secular songs after a childhood of hymns.
“You remember songs of heaven
Which you sang with childish voice.
Do you love the hymns they taught you,
Or are songs of earth your choice?”
“I think a lot of the spirituality I felt in the church was grounded in the music. Hearing everyone’s singular voice blend into a whole is a magical thing, and that’s something I feel the same way about.”
In the place of church, Lauren has found her home in Nashville’s experimental music, DIY, and songwriter scene. “It feels good to have a community based on music and have access to a collaborative spirit of artists and neighbors in these non-religious spaces.”
That community didn’t always feel possible to Lauren, who initially moved from Texas to Nashville to study songwriting at Belmont University. Lauren later graduated with a self-created degree plan she called ‘Community Development in the Music Industry.’ “When I first moved here, I felt intimidated by how everyone was a musician. Everyone had EP releases every week.”
“I didn’t make much music in college. I didn’t feel like my voice added to the collage of music that I was hearing at Belmont. People I was around seemed to be in it for some kind of marketing or money-making situation, and I was afraid the whole city was that way. As I continued to get to know people, started hosting house shows with my friends, and met Trevor [Nikrant] and Joey [Kenkel], I got to know this huge underbelly of supportive and kind musicians. There’s a lot of free jazz, improv, DIY music here. It feels really good to be welcomed into that.”
When asked if she feels at home in those musical spaces, Lauren says the answer is complex. “I feel at home making music in a rock context, but I feel like a guest or student in free improv, which is historically a black tradition. I’m a student and a listener of it. It feels important for me as a white person to take stock of what is actually mine to access and respect the traditions I am playing within and am informed by. I think there’s a way to do that and give credit where credit is due.”
“It might be goofy or orchestral, but we’ll see what happens.”
Songs for John Venn is rich with improvisational and jazz elements informed by those traditions, most notably Lauren’s use of flute throughout the record.
“I played the flute in sixth grade band, and then my family moved to Austin and my new school didn’t have a band. So I stopped playing. After I graduated from college, I moved into a house with some friends, and when I was going through my old stuff, I found the flute. At the time I was also listening to some blues records that had flute on them, like Henry Thomas, Duncan by Paul Simon, and some Nick Cave records. Also, as I got into more free jazz and Alice Coltrane, I started to notice that were just flutes everywhere. I thought it would be interesting to start layering with it and see how it sounds. It might be goofy or orchestral, but we’ll see what happens.”
Lauren started experimenting, first adding flute to a demo track for Protagonist with a Tascam 4-track recorder. “I would use the headpiece by itself and make these pitch-bending sounds, or sort of palm it to make percussive noises.”
“I’m not as interested in tone as I am in a percussive sound or texture. I wanted to use it texturally like a synth or a pad and not worry about being virtuosic. I like using it as this vocal texture that can act like a harmony. It’s been a really comforting way of accessing another non-lyrical vocal instrument in my music.”
“I think we all improvise more than we give ourselves credit.”
Lauren says her songwriting is rooted in the American singer-songwriter tradition...with a twist. “My songs typically have a pretty simple song structure within the country-Americana framework of, ‘Three chords and the truth.’ It’s in the same lineage as Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Leonard Cohen, but I want to approach it from an improvisational place.”
“I think we all improvise more than we give ourselves credit. Improvisation doesn’t just occur in performance. It’s about crafting this non-judgmental space and not setting an expectation around where you think the music is going to go or what it’s going to look like. The key to getting anywhere with it is being willing to listen and see what will surprise you out of your own meditative practice.”
Lauren’s improvisational abilities shine on her work with Styrofoam Winos, who she’s been a member of alongside partner Trevor Nikrant and friend Joey Kenkel since 2016. In February 2021, the trio released their debut album STYROFOAM WINOS "S/T” with Sophomore Lounge.
Trevor and Joey joined Lauren in rural Alabama in May to track the next Lou Turner album. Frequent Winos sit-in Ross Collier served as audio engineer. “I think a change of scenery was necessary–to hear new acoustics around us. It felt cozy, and we got to spend the week together cooking, hanging out, and recording. It was also really secluded, and there was a lot of space to experiment and play around.”
The record is in its final tracking stages; Lauren hopes to finish the album this fall and release it in 2022.
“Who can I be messy and tired around?
Lauren says when it comes to recording spaces, she’s less concerned about where it is and more concerned with who is in it.
“Who can I be messy and tired around? How can I feel relaxed and confident while making music? It’s important for me to be with people who I feel a certain friendship with. I’m really drawn to those collaborative environments where I can own what I’m doing, and also know that when we have conflict, we can give each other space when it’s needed. I feel lucky to do that with the group I hang with.”
As live music returns, Lauren says she’s felt grateful to reconnect with her community. “It’s been really great seeing friends come out of hibernation who I haven’t heard in the last year, and to see what they’re coming up with. It makes me excited to write in a new way.”
“Nothing exists in a vacuum.”
Lately, Lauren has her hands full as a first-year student in Randolph College’s MFA poetry program. “The nature of the program is that we have these residencies where we meet with other writers for 10 days, and then we go out on our own, while also checking in on one another throughout the semester. The beauty of it is that I can go on the road and tour if I want, and I think it draws artists like that into the program.”
“Writing is this solitary thing, but there is always an expectation of who is going to read it. Nothing exists in a vacuum. Having that collaborative experience of the program is really valuable. I can take what I’ve worked on and get someone’s feedback that may be informed by whatever they’re working on, and then return to a solitary space.”
Lauren’s chapbook, Shape Note Singing, published in January 2021 by Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, was also a result of connection. “I had been working on the poems in Shape Note Singing intermittently, and then last year, I enrolled in a writing workshop through this non-profit in Nashville called The Porch as a way to stay connected to other writers. That felt really grounding during the pandemic, and I worked on a lot of those pieces with that community.”
Lauren also found inspiration in her garden. “I would sit outside and do a meditation based on Pauline Oliveros’s Theory of Deep Listening and create a new work. The questions in ‘Ear Piece’ are all really similar, but they slowly push you to think about new ways in which you interact with your environment.”
“Lately, I’ve been doing my writing after being in the garden, and I use whatever I’ve harvested as a symbol or anchor to a poem. I picked some beans the other day, and each of them had eight pods, so I worked on a poem that had eight syllable lines. I’m really interested in taking cues from whatever is around me.”
Shape Note Singing and Songs for John Venn can be purchased on Lauren’s Bandcamp. A vinyl release is pending from Centripetal Force. Purchase Styrofoam Winos records on their Bandcamp.
