Petra Haden
Petra Haden Sells Out


For those of us who were disappointed by Todd Rundgren's pedestrian A Capella, Bjork's too-weird Medulla or any of Bobby McFerren's oeuvre, the though of Petra Haden's voice-only rendition of a classic Who album is likely to elicit shrieks.

But Petra Haden Sings: The Who Sell Out is more enjoyable than any of the above, at least to these ears. But maybe that's because she's done this kind of thing before.

Haden's first a cappella record is 1996's Imaginaryland. Her father, legendary jazz bassist Charlie Haden, had given her a four-track, and she wanted to test it out. "I don't play guitar. I play the violin, but I didn't have a pickup on my violin yet. So I tested it out using my voice, pretending my voice was a bass, writing songs," she said. "I just kind of wrote for fun little melodies without lyrics. That turned out to be my Imaginaryland record."

About four years ago, frequent collaborator Mike Watt suggested Haden use that same approach and re-record the Who's classic 1967 LP The Who Sell Out. To that end, Watt lent Haden an eight-track recorder with The Who Sell Out recorded on one of the tracks and the other seven blank, for her to fill up with her singing.

"I started it with 'I Can See For Miles,' because that was the most popular song and it seemed like it was the easiest to do, and the funnest," Haden said. "I started… just trying sing all the parts like what I heard—which was really trippy because I heard all these backward guitars and I was thinking 'How am I going to do that?' So I tried to make backward sounds with my voice."

Over the phone, Haden demonstrated some of the vocal contortions she had to go through to capture a guitar solo and added: "I remember thinking 'God I feel like a geek,'" she said. Truth be told, she kinda sounded like one too. But listening to the finished work, those moments of geekiness layered together created a real work of beauty.

Haden would work on it in spurts, with long breaks in between. But she found the process enjoyable.

"I thought it was fun, and the more I listened to it the more it made sense, like 'Wow, now I understand why he wanted me to do this.' It was kinda theatrical," she said. In fact, she's even considering assembling a choir to do a few shows

She's also experiencing a new-found love of the Who. "I didn't even have a Who record before, and now they're one of my favorite bands," Haden said.

The work has been well received. Pete Townshend called the record "exquisite." Watt, who first delved into The Who Sell Out with departed Minutemen partner D. Boon, wrote: "It was generous of her to take on such a thing, something alien to her but she seemed to enjoy the challenge of it. Me, I was curious as hell to see how such and endeavor would manifest itself – this is the power of music to make ideas come alive, to breathe life in little boy daydream pasts so far removed by time."

t was through her father that Haden first met Watt. The elder Haden shared a bill with Watt's Minutemen when Petra was 12. Watt later helped her brother's band, the Treacherous Jaywalkers, get signed to SST.

"He's just kind of like a family friend now," Haden said. "He's a good teacher. Sometimes before recording with him I get really nervous, and he has a way of making me less nervous—saying things like 'just think of spin cycles' and stuff. He's really funny."

Haden has appeared on Watt's albums The Secondman's Middle Stand and Ball-Hog or Tugboat. She has also worked with the likes of Beck, Green Day and many others. Throughout the '90s, she worked with the bands The Rentals and that dog.

Another new release by Haden is an album with guitarist Bill Frisell called, fittingly, Petra Haden & Bill Frisell. She said she hooked up with Frisell after a show she played in Seattle.

"After the show, he said he really liked it. We just kind of e-mailed each other, and eventually he asked me to record a record with him, and of course I jumped up and down," she said.

The two didn't have the time to get together to write material, so at Frisell's suggestion they recorded covers of songs they like. The result features songs by Stevie Wonder, Eliot Smith, Tom Waits, the Foo Fighters song "Floaty" and the standard "Moon River." There's also some Tuvan Cowboy Music and a Coldplay song on the  record.

"I was thinking maybe that's a little too soon," she said of the Coldplay cut. "It hadn't been out for very long. But once he played it on his guitar I just said 'OK, it's beautiful, let's do it.'"

The duo also recorded one of Haden's own songs.

"There's no words on that song because I'm kind of bad at writing words," Haden said. "I was so happy to record that with him because I just wanted it to sound like a real song, so he listed to it and he just played. 'I said Bill, just do your thing. Make it better.' And he did."