Cheryl Pawelski, Terry McDonell, and Stephanie Hsu on The Treat

The Treatment

KCRW

Arts

4.6 • 639 Ratings

🗓️ 17 June 2023

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week on The Treatment, Elvis sits down with Grammy-winning producer Cheryl Pawelski to discuss the new 7-CD set she curated, Written in Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos. Next, writer Terry McDonell joins to talk about his memoir “Irma: The Education of a Mother’s Son,” about his late mother. And for the Treat, Oscar-nominated actress Stephanie Hsu reveals the writer and activist who inspired her to keep up the fight.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment.
0:12.7	It's The Treatment.
0:15.4	I'm Elvis Mitchell.
0:17.0	There is an astonishingly beautiful box set, written their soul the stacks songwriter demos the person responsible for assembling this thing and it's only been a multi-year project for her is Cheryl Pavalski and she's here to join us she was the subject of a recent fascinating new yorker profile about putting all this stuff together. Cheryl,
0:38.3	thank you so much for being here. Hey, thanks Elvis. Thanks for having me. Let's start with
0:42.8	this one. I want to talk to you about the sequencing of all this because it's so well-puted
0:48.0	together. You start off with Carla Thomas. Well, she was one of the earlier stars on the label,
0:52.9	so that just felt natural, right?
0:54.9	Yeah, but she's also such an iconic presence, but that song that starts the set
0:59.9	come from me could almost be a companion to sue me.
1:05.7	Yeah, exactly.
1:07.5	Stax was such a family of artists working together, you know, like the publishing,
1:14.3	the record company, everybody was under the same roof. I think it's all interconnected. So,
1:19.4	you know, if you draw connections between those songs, I think that's just natural. Yeah, but, you know, it's, again, given how sort of stripped down it is, because,
1:32.5	sure, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's about the demos is the performances. You know, it's the essence of the song. So if the songwriter is performing, I think you get closer to the bone of the song. And yeah, just, you know, you've got the shimmer of Steve Kropper's guitar,
2:02.7	and then it's all Carla. It's beautiful. Yeah, it's, it's almost like them singing at a picnic.
2:07.7	There's no drums. It's just that kind of dialogue. But that count, you can almost hear
2:14.3	the breathing before the, before she starts to sing. And we should say,
2:18.0	here, as you just mentioned, these are all demos. Why were these songs not recorded and were
2:22.3	released as singles? Well, especially, you know, the last three discs are all songs that never
2:27.8	were cut. And I wondered about some of those songs. I think it would rewrite, you know, the charts from back in the day
2:36.4	if some of these songs had actually been cut and released. There's just so many great songs,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from KCRW, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of KCRW and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.