Aoife O’Donovan Brings Her Stunning Song Cycle About Women’s Suffrage, ‘All My Friends,’ to Concert and Symphony Halls

Chris Willman
·15-min read

Pop quiz: When were women guaranteed the right to vote in the United States? … If you’re like a lot of Americans, your instinct might be to imagine that had to have been early in American history, in the 19th century, if not the 18th. Even those who paid better attention in history class may still be startled to recall that it was just barely over a hundred years ago, as impossible as that may seem in a moment when the country may be about to elect its first woman president.

The relative contemporaneousness of the passage of the 19th amendment in 1920 has come to the fore in one of 2024’s best albums. That last word is not a misprint: Singer-songwriter Aoife O’Donovan’s “All My Friends” is a bit of a history lesson (don’t worry, only a bit) as well as one of the year’s richest and most beautifully realized records.

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It started off, though, as a concert commission, for a symphonic piece that was to have been performed four years ago, to tie in with the centenary of women getting the vote. Due to the pandemic, that timing didn’t quite work out, but an even fuller fleshing out of the material resulted in O’Donovan, a favorite in the Americana music world, releasing “All My Friends” earlier this year, followed by a current tour that has her performing concerts alternately with a small, rootsy ensemble and full orchestras.

The more stripped-down version of the tour reaches the L.A. area with a show Wednesday night at the Wallis Performing Arts Center in Beverly Hills, where O’Donovan will be backed by the string trio Hawktail. (Tickets for the Wallis can be purchased here.) The remaining shows are with symphonies, including a gig Friday night in La Jolla, Calif., and a high-profile concert Oct. 22 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., with the National Symphony Orchestra and the band Bonny Light Horseman. (Scroll down for the full itinerary of remaining shows.)

O’Donovan Zoomed with Variety from her home in Orlando (which will also play host to a forthcoming symphonic show, conducted by her husband) to talk about the tour, the album and a new EP that offers more minimalistic arrangements of the songs.

Do you feel people are surprised at all in learning more through your piece about what era the fight for women to have the vote took place in, and how it all went down?

Yeah — as I’m sitting here at my desk, I can look across and see my daughter’s elementary school, the building next to my house, and I just think about these kids. I think about my daughter who, when I was writing this record, was sort of learning in real time about this piece of history. We were in London over the summer and the wax museum had Emmeline Pankhurst, a great British suffragist. My daughter is so indignant that she will just stamp her feet and be like, “It’s not fair. Why? Why couldn’t they vote?” There was some sort of local election a year ago, and I said, “Do you wanna go with me to vote?” And she was like, “Do you think there will be women there?’ And I was like, “Yes! I hope actually there are just people there” — because it was a small local election and really, sadly, people don’t show up for those. But I want the next generation to grow up with that indignance and that disbelief that there ever could have been a time, and such a recent time, where equality was not a given.

You were working on this during a previous presidential election cycle. Did that influence your line of thinking at all? And what’s it like now that you’re performing it live in the midst of another election cycle?

I think it was important for me to bring a sense of the present day into it. Two songs in particular are heavily reliant on historical text and on (American suffrage leader) Carrie Chapman Catt’s direct words, speeches and quotes, without paraphrasing. There are moments in the record where I’m singing these words that she wrote, and I want them to sound current. I want them to sound like, “Did somebody just say that? Was that a pundit? Is that somebody standing with a megaphone shouting this?” I found that fascinating, to uncover these texts and be reading them and thinking to myself, “Wow, this is so relatable.” There’s one song in the song “America, Come,” where she’s talking to old politicians and saying, “Some of you are old. Are you willing that those who take your place might blame you for not keeping pace? Is there any gain for the nation to delay?” Like, I just feel like that could have happened. Anybody could have said that exact sentence two months ago about President Biden. We’ve always been dealing with these sort of issues and the way that our political system works and people not stepping aside. It’s food for thought.

And yes, of course, it was really powerful in August, after the Democratic nominee had shifted and Vice President Harris is now the nominee, to get up on stage and sing the last lines of “Crisis” where I’m singing lines that, again, are historical quotes from Carrie Chapman Catt: “The woman’s hour is struck, the woman’s hour is now, the woman’s hour is here.” And when I sing that line … there’s a real palpable shift (in audience response). And I’m looking forward to doing this tour on the west coast because, especially with the shows in San Diego and San Francisco where I’m gonna be getting to do that part with 20 young teenage girls, it gives me chills to think about sharing the stage with that generation and saying these things.

Listening to this album, I really felt like this could be a musical theater piece.

Well, I mean, it is essentially, although not my version of it — an incredible artist named Shaina Taub has a new musical on Broadway that opened this year called “Suffs.” It is the same (historical) people in her musical, which I haven’t seen yet. I’m dying to see it. Carrie Chapman Catt is portrayed as the fuddy duddy old guard, and I tied my piece into a little bit of a different approach. You know, these historical figures are not here to tell us exactly how they felt or how they would be in today’s world. So it’s up to us to interpret what they meant and give it life through our own art. But I’m a huge fan of Shaina’s and it’s really cool that her musical and this record came out in the same month.

Can you talk about how the project came about?

It started in Orlando, actually, before the pandemic, in 2019. My husband is a conductor of many orchestras, and his orchestra here in Orlando wanted to commission me to write a piece. It was something that a lot of orchestras were doing around the centenary of the passing of the 19th Amendment, commissioning female composers to create new works with very few guidelines other than it needed to be X amount of minutes and for a symphony orchestra. So I really had kind of a blank slate to draw on… When I wrote that initial piece, I came up with the demos of the melodies and the instrumentation as sort of the reductions. And I worked with an arranger, a woman from Los Angeles named Tanner Porter, who orchestrated these songs, with a lot of input from me. It was a really collaborative process, and her virtuosity in string writing and woodwind writing… I’m so blown away by how she was able to take these ideas that I would play on the piano or the electric guitar or Rhodes or humming and make it a voice in the orchestra. So I had the first five songs from tht. To fast-forward, the rest of the album came to be because FreshGrass, a beautiful festival up in Massachusetts, commissioned me to write a bunch more music that I tied into this project, and therefore, that’s what “All My Friends” is — the FreshGrass songs and the original commission all together.

You wouldn’t normally think of doing a concept album on your own, would you?

I think that’s sort of a funny term because everything you make is a concept album… I think especially in today’s world, you write a batch of songs and then, because of the way that the media is, you talk about it and you have to sort of tie the songs together and make sure there’s a story about each song. But I think at the end of the day, they’re just songs. And that’s always what I want, to just have songs that you can sing and that are beautiful and that connect with people lyrically and melodically and that I feel proud of, where I feel that the song itself has weight, no matter the context. It’s not the album version, it’s not the solo version, it’s not this performance or that performance, it’s the song. It has a life of its own.

I wish I could sit down and be like “I want to write a record about this,” but it’s more like I just sit down and write whatever is there, and I’m so impressed by people who have these sort of thesis statements before they set out to create. In this project, it was that, and it was handed to me as an idea and I had to really take my little fossil brush and brush away the sand to figure out exactly what it was gonna be. That part was really fascinating to me. I love historical fiction. I love the idea that you can have a character that is a real character and then make this totally new thing about them. One of my favorite books is “Libra” by Don DeLillo; I love thinking about the fact that this guy just wrote this book about Lee Harvey Oswald but it’s a novel.

The album isn’t entirely about Carrie Chapman Catt, though, right?

It was finding my way into creating a character who is the narrator of several of the songs, but who also is kind of a ghost in the others. It’s not purely her voice. It’s her voice but it’s me speaking through her — and me speaking to her as well. In other points… there’s a song that I wrote where I tried to imagine what it would’ve been like to be her mother. “Someone to Follow” is a song where I started writing thinking about what was her mother like, and what did she think when this child was born, and what was her early childhood like? What were any of these suffragists like as young children? Did their parents see their promise? Did their mothers champion their feminism? I find that just such a fascinating topic, and I really was able to relate that into my own life as a mother of a daughter.

It’s not a polemical work.

It really can be a nonpartisan moment. I don’t even have to bring my own politics into it, although obviously, it represents how I feel. But I think the beauty in this is my hope that suffrage is a nonpartisan issue. The National League of Women Voters is a nonpartisan organization. Really, it’s about women getting out there and voting. So I don’t mean to alienate, and I hope that people can really see it from that side as well.

But are are you going to be giving your endorsement this year, or keep that to yourself?

You know, I’m a private person. I think my endorsement is pretty obvious, if you follow me. I don’t have the kind of pull… I actually really appreciate Taylor Swift’s endorsement, and this is how I would give my own endorsement, which would be, “I’ve done my research, I’ve made my choice, and I encourage everybody to do the same.” And, yeah, so of course, Kamala forever. I mean, that’s very frank. I did have my first political sign on my lawn this past August for a school board election here in my town. And that felt like a moment for me, because as I said, I live next to the school, so it’s prime real estate. And in Florida, you know, those school board elections are very important.

You have so many great players involved with the album., from Sierra Hull to Dawes’ Griffin Goldsmith… and the orchestra. Are the songs all arranged pretty differently for the tour?

Yeah, and we actually just released a new version of the record in September, with Hawktail, a string trio, where these arrangements are sort of reimagined and completely reworked. It’s been really fun to find new ways around these songs with Hawktail, who are three of my really close friends and colleagues of many, many years. We have a looseness on stage because we know each other so well … With an acoustic quartet, you know, two guitars, a bass and a fiddle, it’s my comfort zone, for sure.

Are there any shows that you’re most looking forward to?

I am especially excited about the Kennedy Center show because it’ll be a double bill with Bonnie Light Horseman, who are dear friends of mine. Anaïs Mitchell [of “Hadestown” fame, and a member of that group] sings on the record on a song called “Over the Finish Line.” I’ve known her for years and years and just any time you can run into friends on the road and get to do a show, especially a show at the Kennedy Center… it’s something I’ve been looking forward to all year.

The Orlando show be great too, because my community here will all be coming out in full force, and we’re working with a children’s choir here … I love living in this town. It just has a really vibrant community, incredible people, just very supportive and loving. And I’m so happy here. The orchestra rehearsals are about a mile away, and my husband often rides his bike to work. The chorus rehearsals are literally three blocks from my house, in this old historic neighborhood. It’s going to really feel like a community show, especially to bring it back and do a proper show. Because the commission was performed initially in May of 2021, so it was still deep COVID. We were outside; the entire orchestra was outdoors and masked, with tape six feet apart. So it’ll be nice to get to do the music in a venue with a great sound system and all that.

Prior to this, you put out your own version of Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska” album and toured behind it. Did you receive any feedback from the Springsteen camp about it?

I did. I’m actually about to do a “Nebraska” show with Emmylou Harris, at one of her benefits, which will be really special. Danny Clinch, Bruce’s photographer, came and sat in and played harmonica with me at a show at Newport, and he said he sent Bruce the album, and I think the quote was “She sounds great,” or something like that. I love that record, and getting to take that show on the road and the feedback that I got from people, and the interest in the vinyl of this completely random live recording I did of it… It’s a very live, raw record, the original record, and trying to stay true to that sort of trance-like storytelling zone and getting into these characters one by one… I would walk off stage after doing a “Nebraska” show and I would feel like, “What (happened)? Really?” Like, I don’t know, I just did something intense!

People loved the album you did in collaboration with Sara Watkins and Sarah Jarosz as the trio I’m With Her back in 2018. Could there be a sequel from I’m With Her someday?

Well, if anybody’s been paying attention to social media, they will probably have their answer to that, because we’ve been teasing a little. We have been spending a bunch of time together, so stay tuned.

The remaining shows on Aoife O’Donovan’s “All My Friends” tour:

October 1 – Musical Instrument Museum – Phoenix, AZ (with Hawktail)
October 2 –– Wallis Performing Arts Center –– Los Angeles, CA (with Hawktail)
October 4 – Epstein Family Amphitheatre – La Jolla, CA (with the La Jolla Symphony & Chorus)
October 12-13 – Dr. Phillips Center For the Performing Arts – Orlando, FL (with the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra)
October 22 – The Kennedy Center Concert Hall – Washington, DC (with Bonny Light Horseman and the National Symphony Orchestra)
November 15 – Ferguson Center for the Arts – Newport News, VA (with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra)

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