Jenny Lewis
With the Watson Twins and Jessica Pratt. At the Citi Wang Theatre, 270 Tremont Street, Boston. Sept. 13, doors at 7:30 p.m. Tickets: $35-$45. (617) 482-9393, www.ticketmaster.com
For indie-rock icon Jenny Lewis, revisiting the past often means artistic gain at the cost of emotional pain. And yet, when it came to marking the 10th-year anniversary of “Rabbit Fur Coat,’’ the former Rilo Kiley frontwoman couldn’t think of a better way to honor her most personal record, written in what she calls one of the toughest periods in her life, than by taking it on the road – in its entirety.
“It’s almost like one continuous song, a meditation,’’ she says of the show she’s currently touring, which includes that album, and then after an intermission another set that traverses her discography. “It’s very fluid and focused, and reserved at times.’’
Ahead of a Sept. 13 stop at the Citi Performing Arts Center, Lewis spoke with the Globe about the tour, the innate intimacy of her art, and moving boldly toward new musical horizons.
Q. What’s it like to play “Rabbit Fur Coat’’ in full for modern audiences, from the perspective of the present?
A. It’s a very thought-out show, doing a record from start to finish. . . . It’s unlike anything I’ve ever taken on the road before, and it really puts me back in the space where I was when I wrote the songs, which is such a unique thing. When you intersperse older material with newer stuff, the songs do tend to take on new meaning. But when you present something in the order you intended it – which is very deliberate for every record – it’s a really cathartic experience.
Q. Is there an element of nostalgia?
A. No, it doesn’t feel nostalgic – it feels strangely very current, thematically. I guess I’ve always been a bit of a clairvoyant in my songwriting, so maybe writing it I was projecting a decade or two into the future. But it feels very theatrical, almost like a musical, especially because we take a break, then do another hour of music from all the records.
Q. In embarking on the tour, what’s surprised you the most about this material?
A. How well it works as one piece. I’ve never done that before. I’ve never had the courage to play something in its entirety. Making a creative decision like that and following it will be, I think, really informative for what I do in the future.
Q. Is there something particularly striking about drawing so much material from one specific artistic period?
A. It’s so amazing to return to the moment when I became a real solo artist. The twins [the Watson Twins, who recorded “Rabbit Fur Coat’’ with Lewis and join her on this tour] are there with me, but that was the first batch of songs I didn’t share with my bandmates in Rilo Kiley. They felt very personal and private.
Q. Many of those songs were born out of a very specific period in your life. Do you feel like you’re reliving it in revisiting them?
A. I don’t really think about the past except for when I’m on stage, reliving my life through song. I just keep it rolling, and then when we get to the second set, putting some new songs in there, it’s about that forward motion you have to have as an artist.
Q. How does the first half of the set, all off “Rabbit Fur Coat,’’ compare to the latter half, which bounces around your discography more freely?
A. It’s all connected; the through-line is that they’re all my songs. It’s the story of my life in some ways, and I find that it works out where it in some ways mirrors what the audience is going through as well. Maybe we [as artists] go through that stuff so listeners don’t have to. You know, all the pain, but all of the joy as well.
Q. The nature of this tour has me wondering – at home, are you exclusively a record person, or do you listen to a lot of singles as well?
A. I’m a record person. I have actually limited myself at home to vinyl and cassettes, with a cassette player in the kitchen and a cassette player in the living room, because I want to listen from a record front to back with a little breather in the middle. That’s how the sets have been for this tour, too. You come back after a break refreshed for another hour of music.
Q. For you, then, what’s next?
A. I’ve got a bunch of new songs, so I hope to make a new record sometime this year or next year. . . . If you think about the way bands worked in the ’70s, you’d go on the road for a year, record a record, and put it out. Now, so many bands are limited, and those creative processes are stunted, because you’re waiting on the label. . . . I hope to shorten that part of things, and get to where the music flows as it comes. That’s the most exciting time to play a song, when it’s new.
Jenny Lewis
With the Watson Twins and Jessica Pratt. At the Citi Wang Theatre, 270 Tremont Street, Boston. Sept. 13, doors at 7:30 p.m. Tickets: $35-$45. (617) 482-9393, www.ticketmaster.com
Isaac Feldberg can be reached by email at isaac.feldberg@globe.com, or on Twitter at @i_feldberg.
