Growing up in the ’60s and ’70s, Gail Ann Dorsey had plans that, to her mom, “were very different than anything she could imagine,” as Dorsey puts it now. “But she was a very tolerant mom and very cool and very supportive of me, despite her not really understanding. If something didn’t make sense to her, she would just kind of shake her head and say, ‘Well, you know, it takes all kinds to make the world.'”
The sentiment stuck with Dorsey, who used it for the inspiration and title for a song she put out last month, her first solo work in 21 years. A key member on bass and vocals for David Bowie’s band, as well as a collaborator with Lenny Kravitz, Tears For Fears, Joan Osborne, Thomas Dolby and other major artists, Dorsey will include the song on a new release in April or May.
Dorsey, who lives in Kingston, NY, recorded in nearby Bearsville with drummer Jerry Marotta (Peter Gabriel), David Spinozza on guitar (Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, James Taylor) and percussionist Mayra Casales, whom she got to know when both toured with Sophie B. Hawkins. Looking for a Carole King sound, she added piano by Michel Amsellen, tracked in Paris.
“I’ve been working on it, trying to get an album finished. I’m still writing a few pieces,” she says. “I have about four songs that are done, and I just thought it’s time to start introducing some of the music to the world, and I’ve given myself a deadline to get the album, or if not album the EP, out by the spring.”
The new material serves as a sequel of sorts to her second album, 1988’s “The Corporate World.” The new record, she says, will be called “The Appearance of Life.”
“It’s kind of turned into another kind of theme album, like a part two of ‘The Corporate World.’ Not so much looking at the machinery itself, but what has happened to humanity in the wake of years and decades and decades of our lives being run by by corporations.” The second single, “Maybelline,” is about suicide. “And then there’s the song called ‘Lost in the Wind,’ which is about the loneliness factor,” she says. “You know, everybody wants to find love or be loved or understand love at some point in their life. And I think it’s something that, in the wake of the way that we exist in the world today, it’s sometimes hard to understand what that is.”
Sonically, she says, “I’m really trying to give it the aesthetic of the type of songs that really, really resonated with me when I was younger, which is more of the ’70s singer- songwriters — Carole King, Helen Reddy, the Carly Simon-type of sounding records, which I think is so organic and so interesting in terms of the use of instruments.
“I think that’s another thing that I feel like in popular music now, as we’ve gone so digital in the world, been forced to work so much in isolation and send files, and we play with musicians we never even see or never even meet. So I’m trying to make this record as close to something that is something where I can work with the musicians all in the room as much as possible and get the vibe that I happily achieved on ‘(It Takes All Kinds) To Make the World.'”
On Monday, Dec. 1, Dorsey, Elizabeth Ziman (Elizabeth and the Catapult) and Jenna Nichols will perform at City Winery in New York in a performance billed as Mavens of Melody. She’ll also perform at Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock on Dec. 20 for The Sounding Joy, an annual benefit for The Washbourne House, a local domestic violence service. She’ll join a cast including Natalie Merchant, Kate Pierson of the B-52s, Amy Helm and Marc Benevento.
Dorsey had not met or worked with Bowie when he tracked her down at the house of Tears For Fears’ Roland Orzabal in England, where she was working with him on new music.
She joined Bowie in 1995 for his Outside tour, when Bowie was performing with Nine Inch Nails. Dorsey says she never assumed she would be asked to continue with Bowie, but six weeks “turned into many years.”
“One thing I came to know of him, not only would he call you if he hired you, because we had a few different guitar players during my time there, and there was different drummers and people, and if he fires you, he would call you in person. That to me was one of the most admirable things about him. There were times I’ve worked with other artists, and if someone got let go in the band, of course the manager did it or the producer; it’s not the artist, they don’t talk about it.”
Working with Bowie and other A-listers, Dorsey says she learned about the boundaries of her role. “You realize you’re not their best friend,” she says. “You learn how to make them feel comfortable with having you around. I think I learned that very early on. And it’s OK, because at any other job, you’re not going to be your boss’s best friend. It depends on how much they offer (of themselves). I wouldn’t say I was his best friend, but I was definitely his friend.”
Warmly recalling Bowie, who tasked her with singing Freddie Mercury’s part on the Queen classic “Under Pressure” on tour, she adds: “I could call him or send him a message if I needed to, and he would call me and tell me about a book I should read or a great movie or ‘what are you watching?’ or ‘let’s go have lunch.’ He had a place where he kept all of his records and books and videos and things, and we would go there and just have listening sessions and we’d talk about music. We had some nice times together in that sense. I don’t interfere with his personal life. I’m not interested. I have my own.
“It’s just so much fun to work for him. He was a mentor for me. He taught me a lot about performing and about being comfortable on stage, but just presenting yourself, and it was just so great to kind of learn in his world. It was a learning experience every day. It was like getting paid to go to school.”
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