Beth Bombara
Beth Bombara has been making music for more than a decade. But with her new album It All Goes Up, the singer-songwriter feels like she’s finally gotten comfortable — with herself, with her craft and with the journey she’s on.
“I’m a very haphazard gardener,” Bombara says via phone, nestled among the peppers, squash, eggplant and tomatoes in her St. Louis backyard. “I’ll randomly throw seeds in the ground and forget what I planted.”
Perhaps her approach to gardening is a release from her methodical approach to her work. It All Goes Up was primarily written during COVID lockdown and finds Bombara exploring a range of guitar-based genres, all held together by a meticulous layering of sounds. Thematically, the album focuses on loneliness and connection, though Bombara feels the songs’ meanings will change with time and road-testing.
“Obviously, when I write I’m inspired by the time and place that I’m in,” she says. “But I also am a nonspecific writer a lot of times, and that has allowed the songs to take on a different life and absorb a little more meaning.”
Bombara takes this approach by design.
“I like that about songs,” she says. “Yes, there’s probably one original intentional meaning, but depending on where the listener is when they hear the song, it could impart a different meaning.”
As she collected songs during quarantine, Bombara revisited an old friend: the classical guitar she had studied in college. Bombara hadn’t touched it in 10 years, but dug it out of the back of her closet. Writing on the instrument opened new paths for Bombara, who typically plays electric or steel-string acoustic guitar.
“When you play the classical guitar, you can’t use the guitar pick,” she explains. “You have to play fingerstyle, which lends itself really well to different chord inversions and different rhythms. That helped paint the first sonic draft of those songs. They ended up being more emotive and moody. Feeling that instrument in your hand and having it sort of guide you is a really cool thing.”
Bombara had studied classical guitar for only a few months before putting it back down, but giving it another shot with an extra decade’s worth of other fingerpicking styles allowed her to explore.
“I was trying to challenge myself,” she says, “and to give myself space to say, ‘What if this song has less lyrics? What if I do an instrumental bridge and there’s no lyrics?’”
Creating this spaciousness gave Bombara the opportunity to capture the pain of early 2020 while embracing positivity.
“I was also looking ahead and saying, ‘I’m gonna make the most of this moment,’” she says. “‘My life is not bad. Things are hard, but there’s a lot of positivity to look forward to.’”
Bombara brought that sense of adventure to the recording studio. Typically, she prefers to record live, but this album required more structuring. The rhythm tracks were recorded live, then Sam Golden added layers of guitar and strings, and Bombara added more tracks of her own on top.
“We were really going for those jangly, layered guitars.”
Other songs, like the hard-hitting “Give Me a Reason,” developed a bit more organically. The band recorded five takes, then chose the version with their favorite guitar solo. The end result is a fearlessly exploratory album, with Bombara testing the limits of her heart’s — and her guitar’s — potential. She and her band stop in East Nashville on Thursday at The Underdog, where she is eager to see how the songs have changed on the road.
“I love playing with my band,” says Bombara. “It’s so invigorating, and nothing is the same every night. Different stages, different audiences — and even unexpected things, like technical difficulties — it’s a little bit different every time. Sometimes I worry that I’ll get tired of playing these songs live. And that’s a possibility. But right now, they’re still new and fresh, and I’m very excited.”
Bombara & Co. will play WMOT Roots Radio’s Finally Friday at 3rd and Lindsley on Aug. 25 before they leave town. They’ll be back in Music City for an official showcase at AmericanaFest, playing Sept. 23 at The 5 Spot.
“I’ve been self-releasing records for a long time, and it’s hard to keep putting your art out there. But I feel like with this record, I’m finally settling into this feeling that I’m gonna be doing this my whole life. I love doing this, and I’m going to keep doing it whether I’m on a record label or not. It’s been a pleasure working with Tulsa-based Black Mesa Records to put out this new album. It doesn’t matter how many other people are validating it. Writing this record for me has helped me fall in love with the process and become the most comfortable in my own skin that I’ve ever been.”
