Bloodstains and Shoeprints

The Musical Story of Jena Malone and Lem Jay Ignacio

It was November 2013, and while in the cinema watching the second instalment of ‘The Hunger Games’ series entitled ‘Catching Fire’, I recognised the actress playing the part of Johanna Mason. Who is that? I couldn’t figure it out during the film. An internet search later that day told me the actress was Jena Malone, and I had previously seen her in ‘Contact’ (1997) and ‘Donnie Darko’ (2001).

What I also read is that Jena Malone is a musician, and soon after I became hooked by the free and poetic expression of her artform. Here we’ll chart the story of Jena’s solo work as Jena Malone and Her Bloodstains, followed by the incredibly moving music made with Lem Jay Ignacio as The Shoe.

This article includes a never-before-seen freestyle video recording by the duo, a jam that later evolved into their song ‘His Shirt Grew’ from their debut album ‘I’m Okay’. As well as this, new and exclusive interviews from Jena and Lem Jay help to tell the story alongside historic quotes, taking us from the mid-noughties right up to 2021.

Jena Malone and Her Bloodstains - Live at the Gramercy Theatre, 31st March 2007. Image courtesy of Jena Malone.

Jena Malone’s film career began in the mid-90’s. Following her appearance in Contact, Jena would play the lead role in TV movie ‘Ellen Foster’ (1997) and star alongside Susan Sarandon and Julia Roberts in ‘Stepmom’ (1998). The New Millennium saw Malone appear in ‘The Dangerous Lives Of Altar Boys’ (2002), in ‘Saved’ (2004) with Mandy Moore and Macaulay Culkin, plus the English language dub of Studio Ghibli film ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’ (2004). In 2005, the Joe Wright directed ‘Pride & Prejudice’ cast Malone in the role of Lydia Bennett with Keira Knightley as Elizabeth.

Jena Malone spent several months in New York during 2006 appearing in the Broadway play ‘Doubt’. This was where Malone began experimenting with music, eventually forming a band called Of Wild Animals And The Loss Of Her Sister. Though it wasn’t a musical outlet that suited Jena, it inspired her to strike out on her own.

2007 was a busy year for Jena Malone. As well as seeing the release of the Francesca Joseph film ‘Four Last Songs’ and the biopic of Christopher McCandless called ‘Into The Wild’, she also released her debut single as Jena Malone and Her Bloodstains.  

‘I feel like when I first started, it was very much just for myself and to create and it wasn’t about being a good singer or wasn’t about making good music. It was just seeing what kind of came out of me.’ – Jena Malone (Google Hangouts, 2014)

‘Tested Dry’, a seven-inch single backed with ‘Green Eyed Monster’ was released on New York label The Social Registry in May 2007. Co-written with Harper Simon, whose other credits include working on Lady Gaga’s ‘Joanne’ album, Tested Dry also features Simon on acoustic guitar. The raw take is intimate and bluesy in style, the only other instrument being Malone’s voice. Immediately, Jena’s poetic lyrics that are central to the beauty of her later work are present here:

‘I tested positively, negatively, absolutely dry. You held my hand, my wrist, my heart and I watched you cry. You drove for days, for weeks, for years before you left my side. I tested absolutely, positively, negatively dry.’

‘Bloodstains For Sailors’ album artwork. Image courtesy of Jena Malone.

Both Tested Dry and Green Eyed Monster would be a part of the debut album for Jena Malone and Her Bloodstains entitled ‘Bloodstains For Sailors’. Holing up in South Lake Tahoe, California for a few months with minimal equipment and exploration in mind, it’s here she completed the rest of her released Bloodstains music.

Bloodstains For Sailors would include more collaborations similar to Tested Dry. Green Eyed Monster was co-written and performed with Louis Schwadron, whose other credits include working with David Bowie, Radiohead and Elton John. Jon Spencer Blues Explosion drummer Russell Simins co-wrote and contributed guitar to ‘And I…’ as well as ‘Hi How Are You?’ whilst ‘My Mimic Head’ featured lyrics by director M Blash. The latter would cast Jena Malone in films called ‘Lying’ (2006) and ‘The Wait’ (2013). The liner notes for this album list ‘Lunch Box and Memory’ as a co-production and co-write with Nicole Lombardi of Spalding Rockwell, though Jena remembers this as another collaboration with Louis Schwadron.

‘My mom was a singer and she would sing to me all the time. I think that's how I learned. I used to wander through the forest and build forts and just be alone with my imagination for hours when I must have only been six or seven, singing to myself the whole time.’ – Jena Malone (Nowness, 2014)

Lunch Box and Memory is the final track on the seven song Bloodstains For Sailors, and runs in an entirely different direction from Tested Dry. Gone is the blues sound of acoustic guitar, instead the backing track is driven by programmed drums, synthesizers and distorted vocals.

Based on elementary school, it’s difficult to make out the lyric in its entirety, though some snippets are audible such as ‘I’m responsible for my heart and my love’. The song would finish with Jena counting off the classes; ‘First grade, Second grade, Third grade…’ as the backing slowly deconstructs, finishing with the Twelfth grade, and words obscured by vocal delay.

Interestingly, Lunch Box and Memory would exist in two released versions. The version on Bloodstains For Sailors is less produced with minimal instrumentation. The version included here is one I found on the internet in 2013 with more musical layering and brighter mastering.

‘A-Newt: Emotional Nutrition’ album artwork.

Bloodstains For Sailors wasn’t the only collection of songs Malone created during her time in South Lake Tahoe. ‘A-Newt: Emotional Nutrition’ is the second album and more than twice as long as the first. Across twelve songs, Jena collaborates again with Russell Simins writing and drumming on ‘This Pain’ with Lennon Rex co-writing and playing bass on ‘Where Were Your Friends?’ ‘Strong Medicine’ features writing and guitar from Sam Rollins, with keyboards and a co-write on ‘Moonlight Bloodshed’ from Lauren Haggis. There are moments of more autobiographical lyricism on A-Newt: Emotional Nutrition from Jena Malone, including ‘Father Song’ and ‘New Year Come’.

“I created this one song called ‘New Year Come’ when I was like 23, and as I was writing it and the song was kind of coming out, I had asked this violin player to come and I recorded him. I felt like it was so professional and I was like ‘I should probably start taking this a bit more seriously.’ And the song that came from that was sort of this autobiography kind of song, and I thought it was really special and I thought I could maybe do something with music.” – Jena Malone (Google Hangouts, 2014) 

Different again to previous Bloodstains material, New Year Come follows the a cappella poetry of ‘Apple Orchard’ early on in A-Newt. The instrumental backing here is sparse in keyboard chords and intermittent lead synth, but everything works in support of Malone’s storytelling. Largely based on Jena’s family life, her childhood and alluding little to her career in film, this song is about how ultimately Jena followed her own path.

‘New Year Come, new year go, gather round my son, listen to what I know… We moved around like a whirlwind, but lord we never lived so fine… I hid my heart in all the boxes I learned to carry around… My life was always lived in hallways. I live for the dawn and the dusk. I knew once I found my way, I could give you my wanderlust.’

New Year Come is one of the most beautiful pieces released by Jena Malone and Her Bloodstains, co-written with Christian Zupanskic, whose violin playing goes hand in hand with Malone’s vocal styling on this track. Often shunning the regular order of verse-chorus-verse, Jena’s stream-of-consciousness lyrical style is born out of freestyling. If a recorded piece isn’t the original freestyle itself, it’s often close to what occurred in the moment. Despite Malone’s lyrics being created this way, they convey emotion in her melody and phrasing. New Year Come is a great example of this, with this repeated line being my favourite:

‘Even when I was lost, I was not afraid.’

Malone continued composing beyond her work on Bloodstains For Sailors and A-Newt: Emotional Nutrition. Released only on her Myspace page, ‘Crowded Fire Scenes’ is a stand-out piece in Jena’s Bloodstains journey. Driven by bass guitar and a close vocal from Malone, this song is haunting and atmospheric.

‘The crowd changed. People I’d forgotten, the day the fire burned down. The landscapes she was caught in when she moved from the town for the forest in my hand. The forest of man. I’ll eat my eggs, I’ll eat yours too - now I’ll have a child with you.’

Crowded Fire Scenes shows Malone’s growing confidence in editing, with the constant subtle noise beneath the guitar and vocal vital to making this song as unsettling as it is. Jena utilises more production technique here too, with pitch-shifting and reversed sound effects leading up to new vocal passages, of which some are doubled or harmonised. The change in pace towards the end of Crowded Fire Scenes too shows Jena’s growing potential in songwriting and arrangement.

Hand-drawn Bloodstains albums, arriving in a hand-drawn parcel.

The works of Jena Malone and Her Bloodstains would be released on the self-made label of There Was An Old Woman Records, facilitated by Malone’s mother. The CDs were run off on a home computer by Jena’s younger sibling who was given an allowance to print the cover and liner notes before sticking them into cases with tape. The CDs themselves all feature hand-drawn artwork, and it’s unknown how many were made or the extent of the different designs. Indeed, when I ordered my own copies at the end of 2013, they arrived in a similarly hand-drawn parcel, pictured above.

Jena Malone with Louis Schwadron. Image courtesy of Jena Malone.

In an attempt to perform these works live, Jena gathered together a band of professional musicians which in addition to Russell Simins and Louis Schwadron, included Chris Maxwell and Adam Crystal. Though the band would play several dates in conventional venues during March and April 2007 (even some dates supporting Deerhunter), it wasn’t the interpretation of her music she was looking for.

“I wanted to make an instrument I could kind of live out of, like 'The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe.' It is my shoe. I can carry it around with me, and it is everything I need. I can hide inside of it.” – Jena Malone (Refinery29, 2014)

Returning to South Lake Tahoe, Jena envisaged a way she could perform her songs alone. Packing a steamer trunk with a keyboard, amp, microphone and all manner of pedals – which she dubbed a ‘Shoe’, she set off for Los Angeles in late 2007 where she hoped to freestyle her music in public spaces. It was here Jena met Lem Jay Ignacio for the first time. In a livestreamed Q&A from 2014, Lem Jay recalls both an earlier encounter, and the one that led to their musical pairing:

“Answer A is at a K-Mart in the fourth grade. We were both in the fourth grade at a K-Mart and we met, I think it was aisle 23. And then the other answer is at a Christmas party, six or seven years ago. And we met on stage, we were- She was singing a song called ‘Winter Wonderland’ in complete gibberish, but also known as mythical Portuguese, and that’s where we met.” – Lem Jay Ignacio (Google Hangouts, 2014)

The Shoe. Image courtesy of Jena Malone.

‘I was born in New York. I also did a lot of musical theatre when I was a kid. I kind of, you know, played piano and acted and sang when I was in elementary school and then in junior high school. A lot of musical theatre! And then I studied music in college, just – music, music, music.’ – Lem Jay (Google Hangouts, 2014)

Composer and keyboardist Lem Jay Ignacio has created music for global brands such as Pokémon, Nike, Honda, Mini Cooper and MTV. Aside from his work in The Shoe, he’s also played piano for Zooey Deschanel, Bijou Phillips, Kelly Osbourne and Kate Hudson. In 2021, we wrote about Lem Jay’s musical collaboration with all-round creative force Charlyne Yi, an eleven-track album entitled ‘The Ghost’.

Lem Jay Ignacio - Los Angeles, 2008. Image courtesy of Jena Malone.

‘For the first live show, we played six different shows consecutively around Los Angeles and built a kind of treasure map to allow people to follow us around to street corners, alleyways, and mini-marts. Before that, we did a little test run on a street corner on Fletcher right next to the L.A. River kind of next to the 2 Freeway. It was on St. Patrick’s Day and we brought our generator out and played on this abandoned, crappy hill that just had a billboard in the middle. We were selling little bottles of Irish Luck whiskey in brown paper bags and I think we were selling cupcakes. We invited a bunch of our friends and played and it was a lot of fun.’ – Jena Malone (AV Club, 2014)

The Shoe - Los Angeles, 2008. Image courtesy of Jena Malone.

Jena Malone’s plan of spontaneously performing her music in public never occurred as a solo venture. Instead, her ‘Shoe’ gave its name to the duo’s new band and became ‘The Shoe’. Her idea of performance remained the same, and in May 2008 the two played in multiple locations around Los Angeles. The stops on the tour were emailed out to friends on a treasure map, dubbing the shows the ‘Treasure Map Tour’. This later included a run of performances The Shoe planned on the back of a napkin around New York in July. Of the varied parks, rooftops and street corners, I asked Lem Jay if there was a stand-out memory from this time:

‘That year blurs into other years where we were performing in lots of odd places. Jena was always scouting places around Los Angeles that were surprising and would make me laugh. Like a place I’d never heard of here called Happy Valley or a liquor store parking lot or in front of a laundromat. I think Fletcher Drive in Frogtown brings back good old memories. It’s this patch of semi-dry grass on a corner lot and like always, we’d tell people at the very last minute that we were going to do a show and friends and strangers would show up to hear us play. Those early shows felt super spontaneous, unrehearsed and totally improvised. It was half busking, half pop-up performance.’ – Lem Jay (2021)

The Shoe - Silkscreened cloth, 2008. Artwork by Yarrow Earth Hock.

2008 also saw the release of The Shoe’s first EP, ‘At Lem Jay’s Garage’, which along with a silkscreened cloth, the duo would sell at their early shows. The liner notes of the CD list Jena as performing ‘vocals, the shoe and only the shoe’, whilst Lem Jay contributed ‘piano, keys and heart spells.’ Though these CDs were printed, Jena chose not to break from tradition and included artwork by her younger sibling as the EP’s cover.

The six-track EP featured original songs by The Shoe, as well as a cover of ‘Stupid Girl’, a track by Neil Young and Crazy Horse, released on their ‘Zuma’ album of 1975. ‘Nymph, Nymph’ is a Bloodstains leaning track co-written and featuring drums by Yarrow Earth Hock (credited on the EP as ‘earthock’). The collection finished with a freestyle entitled ‘Landslide’, a six-minute example of the twists and turns the duo take when improvising a piece. ‘Lover’s Dust’ is the EP’s opening track.

The shortest song in The Shoe’s released works begins with drum machine and a darting shake of tambourine before Ignacio adds layers of keyboards and piano. Lem Jay is joined by Jena in a double-tracked vocal almost throughout, making this production the most conventional and considered on the EP. Malone is as poetic as ever, the duo stripping out all but the drum machine and vocal for the chorus, ‘We were turning our love into dust, turning our days into rust.’ Lem Jay explains the origins of Lover’s Dust and The Shoe’s first EP:

‘That was actually one of the first songs we ever worked on together in my garage studio. It was the only song on that EP that Jena had worked out by herself already. It was an idea of hers left over from Jena Malone and Her Bloodstains. All the other songs on that record were written side by side. I remember she looked at books and magazines from my house for inspiration during those recording sessions, including a vintage educational children’s book that inspired “Shaking Hands”.’ – Lem Jay (2021)

“The first song we wrote together was called ‘Shaking Hands With Presidents.’ I had been to a thrift store and found all these old children’s books. When I freestyle, it’s nice to have books because if I get lost or can’t think of something, I can open a book and riff off that sentence. ‘Shaking Hands With Presidents’ was a children’s story about this class president election, and all these children were voting for who they wanted to become president and some of the votes got blown away in the wind. It was kind of silly, but yeah. That was the first song we ever wrote together.” – Jena Malone (AV Club, 2014)

After the fuller arrangement of ‘Lover’s Dust’ and the experimental nature of ‘Nymph, Nymph’, ‘Shaking Hands’ is more centred around Jena and Lem Jay as individual players. Ignacio can be heard in an arrangement of electric piano with touches of organ and upright piano, brilliantly presented across its mix by engineer Noah Passovoy.

The lyrical method of Shaking Hands is a direct storytelling style: ‘Twenty-six children voted on a Tuesday for class president. Three voted for the teacher ‘cause they liked her, seventeen voted for Suzie ‘cause they wanted her. Three also voted for Sam, they liked the way he shook their hand.’ As the song reaches its conclusion, it morphs into a chant with Malone mimicking Ignacio’s refrain, adding layers of backing vocals and a rare showing of live drums on the EP.  

Following the intimacy of ‘Shaking Hands’ and ‘Stupid Girl’, ‘Raccoon’ is more of an audio exploration. Featuring reversed sound effects, the buzz of digital percussion and the twinkle of treated upright piano, Raccoon is one of The Shoe’s most unique songs in their catalogue. Malone’s lyrics are ambiguous, and likely improvised, ‘Well I jumped inside of it before I fell in love with it, I said the jump was the one of my life.’ The evolving sound of Raccoon shows the duo’s growing writing capability, with Lem Jay later driving the piece in a style not unlike his and Charlyne Yi’s ‘The Ghost’.

Raccoon would also be the band’s first official music video, and the only one from ‘At Lem Jay’s Garage’. Premiered on Nylon Mag in March 2011, the video directed by Yelena Zhelezov used a spy camera to capture scenes inside a make-shift doll’s house with projections of The Shoe performing inside of it.

The Shoe - May 2008. Image courtesy of Jena Malone.

Following their launch in 2008, a period of relative inactivity followed. Not only would the small stopgap include the release of their music video, but The Shoe would play its first motel room show in 2011 at the Tropico in Glendale, Los Angeles. The one-off performance would feature video projections from Yelena Zhelezov and a visit from the LAPD. That year would also see At Lem Jay’s Garage uploaded to download and streaming services for the first time.

Lem Jay and Jena commenced recording their next work on July 4th 2013 and continued working for four months. In November, The Shoe announced their return with a new single and assured fans their next collection of songs would be coming in the spring. At the time, Jena billed this as a ‘self-titled EP’.

‘I’m Okay’ uncropped album art. Image Credit: Neil Krug.

By March, the release would be pushed back to June, be retitled as ‘I’m Okay’ and become a full album with nine brand new songs. Pre-orders for the record went live in April, with both CD and vinyl editions available. Bundles would include signed copies, stickers and posters. The band also had multiple t-shirt designs and tote bags for sale in their merch store at this time. The first fifty people to pre-order the vinyl would receive a signed individual polaroid picture – a day later and due to popular demand, this would increase to a hundred.

Part of the album promotion included the duo recording sessions for online magazines such as Just Jared, National Post Sessions, Noisey Acoustic and Sessions X. The entire session for the latter would be released in 2015 as an EP available to stream and download. ‘The Shoe – Sessions X’ would include a freestyle and a cover of ‘20th Century Man’ by The Kinks. In May, The Shoe put together a Spotify playlist of songs and artists that inspired ‘I’m Okay’ which ranged from Molly Drake, Chet Baker and Fiona Apple to Natalie Cole, Lorde and Miley Cyrus.

On June 3rd, The Shoe played three performances at Hollywood’s Roosevelt Hotel as part of their release day. Beginning in the lobby, the duo moved through the hotel to the swimming pool, and then a private lounge at midnight. This performance would serve as a blueprint for The Shoe’s upcoming tour for I’m Okay. The album itself would begin with its title track.

‘I think all art and music is pretty personal, I mean if it’s truthful.’ – Lem Jay (Google Hangouts, 2014)  

‘I’m Okay’ is the most raw song on The Shoe’s album. It’s also the only one to feature just Jena and Lem Jay and has the sound of a freestyle with Malone’s vocal bare and Ignacio only playing his Casio keyboard. Softer in tone than an upright or electric piano, Lem Jay’s Casio is the perfect accompaniment to Jena’s sombre vocal performance.

“Well I didn’t even cry that day. Yeah, I just walked out straight and I said, ‘Well okay’. I got a big old story in me and it’s more than just a bunch of shit that you had to say.”

The story of I’m Okay centres around a break-up and the thoughts occurring in the character’s mind shortly afterwards. ‘So I just sat in my car and let it all out, and I pretended to text you what I wanted to say. But I thought I’d write this song instead…’ Ultimately, it’s seen as a positive step from the character’s point of view as they declare: ‘I’m Okay’.

‘I was kind of single and trying to think about what that was as a woman where you kind of want someone but you don’t want someone and thinking about trying to feel confident as a single woman but whilst still seeing people or dating. It’s sort of like this disposable paper cup that I’m just sort of this empty vessel that can just be filled by things and I don’t necessarily have to control them.’ – Jena Malone (Google Hangouts, 2014)

‘Paper Cup’ premiered on Nylon Magazine with the formal album announcement in early March. Featuring a full band line-up, guitar and bass is supplied by Wendy Wang whilst the soft drums are played by Adam Popick. Jena plays percussion frequently across I’m Okay, including the lulls between the band segments in Paper Cup. Lem Jay performs his parts mostly on his Wurlitzer 200A electric piano, lovingly named ‘Wurly’, along with the occasional use of piano.

The video for Paper Cup would be the last released for I’m Okay. Put together by OMG! Everywhere in Los Angeles, the non-profit organisation runs workshops on filmmaking for children. With stop-motion and greenscreen elements, Jena and Lem Jay starred in this video alongside the children involved in the July-August 2014 workshop.

One of the children was Ignacio’s son Lemy, who’s since become a talented musician in his own right. With Lemy’s musical endeavours frequently documented by Lem Jay on his Instagram account, I asked Lem Jay if Lemy was likely to appear in any forthcoming music from The Shoe:

‘Yeah, it’s funny. Lemy was around 4 when I met Jena. And he’s seen and heard a lot of what we do. I guess you could say he’s grown up around The Shoe. When he got older he started jamming with us for fun, he always has such great ideas and his young energy is inspiring. This next album he was playing guitar in some of the sessions where we all came up with ideas for the songs. Ha, one was a 7 minute cowboy blues about being 14. So yes, he will definitely be appearing on some future Shoe music.’ – Lem Jay (2021)

‘Well maybe my beauty was only meant to be seen by the man. A crow beside me, a scavenger king, my body – a savaged thing.’

‘Dead Rabbit Hopes’, the album’s lead single is co-written by The Shoe with Wendy Wang. The composer also known as The Sweet Hurt has written commercial music for Coca-Cola, Audi, Honda and Ford. Wang has also performed with Foo Fighters, Ry Cooder and Florence + The Machine. Wendy Wang joined The Shoe for some of their live dates in 2014 to perform the music from I’m Okay.

The Shoe with Wendy Wang - 2014. Image Credit: The Shoe.

‘I never knew the way you looked at me, I’d be this kind of girl, this kind of woman that only sees when she is free…’

Dead Rabbit Hopes begins with a looped percussive pattern, partly made by gently tapping a microphone. Wang plays acoustic guitar and bass, with Lem Jay on Wurly and piano. The angular sound of the Wurly is more evident here in contrast to Ignacio’s softer Casio used elsewhere on I’m Okay. The gentle sound of Dead Rabbit Hopes is accompanied by the lyrical journey of a woman who realises her beauty isn’t just for the observation of men, but her own shrine in which to celebrate.

This is reflected in the music video directed by Alia Penner with Nicolas Amato as director of photography. The video shows Jena Malone’s freedom of expression in art, body and movement. Speaking to Refinery29 in 2014, Malone explains more about Dead Rabbit Hopes and its music video:

‘I think it had something to do with the relationship that I was in. It’s about acceptance of your body, its beauty and its love. The reality of it and its lines and shapes. It’s all beautiful and it isn’t about dressing it up to make it something else. Just letting it be and celebrating what it is, instead of what it should look like. But, then the analogy in the video is a sort of funeral parlor kind of thing. It is a woman on her deathbed rejoicing in her own beauty.’ – Jena Malone (Refinery29, 2014)

The video, with hair by Clarke Phillips and make-up by Bethany McCarty, premiered on Stereogum in April 2014, gaining 70,000 views in just a few days. The video for Dead Rabbit Hopes would later inspire a lingerie look-book Jena co-created with fashion brand For Love & Lemons that summer.

In The Shoe’s online magazine performances, Dead Rabbit Hopes had the most frequent showing. It was also the track Malone and Ignacio would perform during their debut television appearance on BT Toronto, June 16th.

“Driving up the 395 to my childhood home of Lake Tahoe at sunset. A drive I've done over a hundred times. Felt new to me again. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of this stretch of desert. I started singing the main line to the song, ‘his gorgeousness surrounds me, and love thought I was insane. To keep walking down the same street. Calling out his name’ and I got my voice memo recording and basically wrote the whole song while driving north, heading home to the ones I love.” - Jena Malone (Facebook, 2014)

‘His Gorgeousness’ begins with electric guitar from Wendy Wang, with her bass playing lightly following. Though Malone is credited with percussion on this track, it would be more accurate to call it tap-dancing, which she recreated during The Shoe’s live performances in 2014. Here Jena holds one side of the beat down while Adam Popick layers bass drum, Malone later adding tambourine.

Lem Jay’s touch is not as prominent on His Gorgeousness as the focus remains on the guitar and vocal, though his soft Wurly playing can be heard concluding the track. For The Shoe’s session with Noisey Acoustics, the duo omitted the guitar altogether and stripped the song back to keyboard, vocal and tap-dancing.

His Gorgeousness became the third video for I’m Okay, premiering on Nowness the day after the album’s release. The video features the award-winning Celia Rowlson-Hall as Jena Malone’s co-star. Celia has choreographed music videos for Coldplay, Bleachers and Alicia Keys and directed her debut feature-length film ‘MA’ in 2015.

The beautifully vibrant film for His Gorgeousness was directed by Aliya Naumoff, who has made multiple humanitarian short films that led to her being a consultant for the Obama Administration and the U.N. Speaking to Nowness for the premiere, Aliya elaborated on the video’s shooting conditions:

‘We shot in Upstate New York at the peak of tick season. Jena was covered in bites and scratches, but kept performing nonetheless.’ - Aliya Naumoff (Nowness, 2014)

A change of pace arrives on I’m Okay with ‘Indian Giver’. Featuring a list of eclectic instruments not heard elsewhere on the album, Lem Jay plays a melody on glockenspiel whilst Wendy Wang strums banjo in addition to her bass playing. The song received a rare outing during The Shoe’s acoustic session for Just Jared, which saw Lem Jay amalgamating his parts on grand piano and Jena tap-dancing the beat.

With a co-write given to Yarrow Earth Hock, both he and Jena Malone use a drum machine on Indian Giver. While only dipping a toe into the world of music, Earth Hock is a designer, fine artist and creative director. His artworks extended to images representing Jena’s ‘Shoe’ itself on at least two occasions. Earth Hock’s appearance in the music of The Shoe wouldn’t be his last as Yarrow would later perform on the band’s Christmas song, ‘Mary’s Xmas’, released exclusively to Soundcloud in 2014.

The highly rhythmic Indian Giver is propelled by Wendy’s constant bass guitar. The melodic banjo and glockenspiel parts are augmented by Ignacio’s Casio and Wurly. In 2021 I asked Lem Jay if he still had his Wurlitzer 200A that was used on these sessions in 2013:

“I still have my Wurlitzer or Wurly as people call that 1960s electric piano. We had this silly joke during recording. In some of our notes for the album we’d write or sometimes say to each other - ‘Wurly good’ instead of ‘really good.’” – Lem Jay (2021)

The Shoe - Live at Ibirapuera Park, São Paulo, June 1st 2014. Image courtesy of Jena Malone.

In anticipation of the album’s release, The Shoe would resume performing in March, with some private performances at Coachella in April. At the end of May, The Shoe visited São Paulo, performing for the Brazil Foundation Gala. Later that weekend, Malone and Ignacio played their own show underneath a water tower in Ibirapuera Park, drawing too much attention from fans:

‘She got mobbed and she left me alone in the park! I had no money, my phone wasn’t working, she got mobbed and just went back to the hotel. That was pretty crazy, like a fan helped me get back to the hotel.’ – Lem Jay (Google Hangouts, 2014)

Following the release of the album, The Shoe announced their tour in support of ‘I’m Okay’. The Takeover Tour was in partnership with Thompson Hotels and included their release show at the Hollywood Roosevelt and other stops in Toronto, Chicago and New York. Their only date outside of North America on this tour was at the Belgraves in London.

Fans were asked to register their interest for the gig on a Facebook event, then were given an email address to RSVP to. All the shows on the Takeover Tour were free entry and at the Belgraves, fans were admitted once their name was checked off a guestlist. The Shoe played around forty minutes in an open lounge area to twenty or thirty guests seated on sofas and the floor. Amongst their own songs, the duo played three freestyles, the last of which is below.

When performing in front of an audience Jena often took three words from the crowd to improvise a piece on the spot. There are examples of this going back to the Treasure Map tour on YouTube. The words given in London were: ‘beautiful’, ‘bloody hot’ and ‘schizophrenic’.

Malone and Ignacio also played some cuts from I’m Okay, including a rearranged off the cuff performance of Paper Cup and renditions of Dead Rabbit Hopes and His Gorgeousness, with help from backing tracks. The Shoe extended their performance of the latter, so much so that Jena’s iPod continued playing the next song after the backing track. A piece by Tom Waits was soon silenced by Malone yanking the cable from its socket without missing a beat. Closing the show with the album’s title track, Jena finished the performance by singing ‘We’re okay.’ Last year, I asked Lem Jay what he remembered about the London performance on July 12th:

‘I remember the electric piano (a Wurly of course) that was rented had a broken sustain pedal, which was frustrating, but I guess it doesn’t really matter. Broken things on instruments usually inspire other ways of playing it. It probably made me play more angular or jabby and not as pretty or floaty.’ – Lem Jay (2021)

The tour wouldn’t only include shows to members of the public. The Shoe were encouraged to explore each hotel, playing in the guestrooms, lounges, corridors and even rooftops for their own experimentation. With so many exciting possibilities across these dates, I asked Lem Jay if any of their shows have been recorded professionally:

‘The Thompson Hotel tour was video documented by Mariana Blanco, so all of those shows and a lot of footage of us just wandering around in all the cities we went to were recorded properly. It seemed like we were wearing wireless lav mics the whole tour. But yeah, usually it’s just Jena and me in some empty field or sand dune or motel room in the middle of nowhere recording with our iPhones. And in the early days we’d capture things in QuickTime on our laptops. She liked doing that because she could create feedback when she sang really close to the laptop mic.’ – Lem Jay (2021)

Made using the old Mac programme QuickTime, this freestyle video courtesy of Jena Malone is released here for the first time. It shows the beginnings of a piece the duo later called ‘His Shirt Grew’, started by Lem Jay improvising a melody with Jena freestyling the lyric and accompanying by tapping on the laptop they’re recording from. It’s an intimate look at their creative process, showing how a song can evolve from a brief moment captured like this.

In a previous conversation I had with Lem Jay, I asked him about unreleased music from The Shoe, to which he responded there was something like a hundred hours of music the duo hadn’t released. I asked him last year if any of that was likely to come out:

‘Well, it’s not really unreleased Shoe music. It’s more like 100 hours of sketches, jams and freestyles. And us talking or laughing when we forgot to press pause. Most of the time we get together we just press record and improvise for hours until I get tired and go to sleep. And then Jena keeps recording and when I get up in the morning I go to my computer and listen to all the things she’s recorded while I was sleeping. We’ve thought about releasing some of those pieces that turned out closer to complete ideas or songs. Jena wanted to name it “B-sides” but we never did.’ – Lem Jay (2021)

‘And there was pre-historic memories in his back, but he’s just this little boy packing his lunch sack. How could he know that carrots make him grow? How could he know that his love was there to find him when he grows old?’

On the album, ‘Indian Giver’ was followed by a fully realised band recording of ‘His Shirt Grew’. Lem Jay’s improvised refrain remains, performed on Casio and piano, as does the bulk of Jena’s freestyled lyricism. Augmenting the duo this time is Evan Slamka on electric guitar, making this the heaviest track on I’m Okay.

Some of the more interesting sounds in this song occur during the later verses, like distant guitar feedback whirling across the stereo mix. Bass is by Wendy Wang with Adam Popick contributing to the heavier element using open hi-hats - the whole band is blended together on this recording as if they were all in the same room.

Adam Popick is a full-time session bassist and multi-instrumentalist with experience as a supporting live musician as well as a mix engineer and producer. His career has taken him across the United States, studying at Berklee in Boston before migrating to Nashville and later settling in Los Angeles.

The comparison of the original freestyle to the released album version of His Shirt Grew is a marker of how truly many of The Shoe’s concepts are cemented on the spot. Though they used their time in 2013 to hone this composition, much of the framework already existed, pulled from thin air during their freestyle. With little information previously existing on His Shirt Grew, I asked Jena during our interview to tell us more about the song, which can be found at the conclusion of this piece.

‘Dying of yearning, dripping fucking wet, it’s so fun in the morning, leaving your bed, back to where I belong, with my giant Broken Hearted Love Song.’

Appearing across the tour setlist from São Paulo to the Hollywood Roosevelt and the Belgraves in London was ‘Broken Hearted Love Song’. This all-star piece features the same line-up as His Shirt Grew, but with the ensemble playing even more instruments than before. Lem Jay’s piano and clavinet are most evident in the song’s introduction, whilst Wendy Wang handles both bass and acoustic guitar. Adam Popick is back on drums for the last time on I’m Okay with Evan Slamka echoing Wendy’s acoustic as well as contributing his own electric guitar part.

Guitarist, keyboardist and vocalist Evan Slamka is the frontman for American indie band Marjorie Fair. Their debut album ‘Self Help Serenade’ was released in 2004 in the U.K., and 2005 in the States. Their follow-up ‘I Am My Own Rainbow’ came in 2016 whilst their forthcoming album ‘Distant Talker’ was expected in late 2021, though still awaits release.

Broken Hearted Love Song echoes a similar mentality to the album’s title track in Jena’s lyrics. The entire piece reads as if it’s a letter to a lover. The melody here is one of the best on I’m Okay, leaving a lasting impression on its first listen. The chorus especially is a highlight, lifted by Ignacio’s ascending chord change and the introduction of Adam Popick’s brushed drum performance:

‘And why is sex so easy, baby, when you’ve nothing left to say to me? And I wish you felt the same, and I wish I could run away, and live where I belong, with my giant Broken Hearted Love Song.’

Behind the scenes of the ‘Broken Hearted Love Song’ video shoot. Image Credit: Benjamin Kutsko.

This track was released as the band’s second music video during their album cycle, premiering on Elle in May. Directed by Benjamin Kutsko and featuring again the team of Clarke Phillips and Bethany McCarty on hair and make-up, this video echoes Jena Malone’s photography style of that era. Malone has shared her photographs across social media over the years, with her double exposure shots being particularly vibrant, often merging her appearance with the landscape around her as seen here. Broken Hearted Love Song was later included in the film ‘Lovesong’ directed by So Yong Kim and starring Malone in the lead role.

‘Don’t you look good, don’t you look right. Don’t you look good, don’t you keep me up at night.’

A piece cemented by Ignacio’s Wurly playing, ‘I Guess This Is My Man’ is absent of a drummer like ‘Dead Rabbit Hopes’, but the rhythmic void is filled by Jena using electronic drum pads and live percussion. Based around a relationship, the protagonist in Malone’s lyric is resigned to the fact that this is her man, and they’re growing old together in sheer mediocrity: ‘I guess he was the one, I guess he was the only one that will…’

An essential element tying the percussion and Wurly playing together is Wendy Wang’s bass guitar. Though Lem Jay also plays clavinet on this track, the Wurlitzer sound is the most prominent here on the album. In our interview, I asked Lem Jay if there were other favoured instruments in his keyboard arsenal:

“I love my Wurly, it’s definitely one of my favorite instruments. I like how it could be super subtle and also do the opposite, show off a bit. I don’t have a new favorite instrument, but I do use my old clanky upright piano a lot. While we were recording The Shoe I had tacks on all the keys, brass thumbtacks on the felt hammers, which is an old prepared-piano trick that makes it sound like it’s in an old-timey saloon. You could hear that piano on ‘Landslide Freestyle’ and ‘Broken Hearted Love Song’. When Jena and I jam, I’m usually playing my Wurly, upright piano or a portable Casio keyboard.” – Lem Jay (2021)

The concluding track on I’m Okay is entitled ‘Harry Barry’ and was featured on the soundtrack for the 2017 film ‘The Dinner’ starring Richard Gere, Steve Coogan and Laura Linney. The stripped back sound of Harry Barry is the only song on the album where Lem Jay can be heard playing a Rhodes electric piano and synthesizer. Each part is easily discernible, from Wendy Wang’s sparse bass playing, to the cyclic Rhodes melody, atmospheric synth chords and distant piano notes. Though its unlikely to have been performed on the Takeover Tour, The Shoe did include Harry Barry as part of their set for Sessions X, later released in 2015.

‘Swallow you down, deep ditch dug out, I swallowed you down, deep dark dirty ground, I swallowed you down…’

Originally conceived by Jena as a spoken-word piece, Lem Jay considered that vein of writing more in the style of Malone’s Bloodstains work and decided instead to rework the track with a sung melody. On The Shoe’s Google Hangout Q&A in 2014, I asked the duo what Harry Barry was about:

‘Harry Barry was written as a poem, as a conversation between this man and this woman. Basically I was thinking of this very old world kind of cowboy-ish older man talking about what he wanted from a woman in his very traditional way of thinking about it. It’s funny because only his side of the poem made it into the song, well no actually hers came in a little bit. So basically it was this poem between these two very traditional man and woman of maybe of an older understanding. Maybe like 1940’s, like what that was like to get married and what a woman was supposed to be and what a man was supposed to be.’ – Jena Malone (Google Hangouts, 2014)

The Shoe - Takeover Tour, 2014. Image courtesy of Jena Malone.

With Jena Malone announcing her pregnancy and birth of her son in 2016, The Shoe would reconvene in May 2018. The duo led a small number of performances on Vashon Island, Washington and later in Napa Valley, California at a winery called Ashes & Diamonds with poet Johnathan Rice. The Shoe also teased new music, with short freestyles posted across the band’s Instagram accounts. They continued to work together throughout 2019 and even explored parts of Europe, though without any arranged live performances.

Despite this, ‘I’m Okay’ remains The Shoe’s latest officially released material. Jena Malone has continued to post poetry as the written accompaniment to her photography on her Instagram account. She also has occasionally posted solo vocal freestyles and in early 2019 assured fans more Bloodstains music was coming. Malone supported cellist Lori Goldston at a house show on Vashon Island during this time.

The Shoe - Amsterdam, 2019. Image courtesy of Jena Malone.

Lem Jay Ignacio remains active as a writer and performer, assisting his son Lemy with recording while exploring collaborations outside of the band. The Shoe’s Instagram bio assures their fanbase they are currently working on their third album. In March 2020, Jena posted a freestyle with Lem Jay entitled ‘We Are Okay’, billed as a reinterpretation of their album track, plus a kerbside performance for friends the same day.

With the emergence of new Shoe material remaining elusive, in my final question I asked Lem Jay what the future holds for the duo:

‘I’m not sure. My relationship with Jena, both musically and friendship-wise is hard to explain. It really does blur the lines between life and art, as corny as that sounds. I think when I first met her and we were trying to figure out what this was, she always had this attitude of, it doesn’t matter, let’s just do it, let’s just hang out and jam all night in my garage or on the side of a hill while ants were eating our legs. It’s really not a band to me, ha, even though she calls me her band husband. It’s something we just naturally do together. She sings and spews out words and I catch them and chase and hold them with my piano. I guess the future is just more of the same. The constant making of music and not worrying about what anyone thinks.’ – Lem Jay (2021)

Continue reading for our Zoom interview with Jena Malone, conducted in May 2021. Jena explains her early musical journey in her own words, plus imparts memories of The Shoe’s live performances in 2008 and beyond. She also discusses the possibility too of releasing new Bloodstains music and material from The Shoe. All this and much more below!

The Shoe - France, 2019. Image courtesy of Jena Malone.

Jena Malone: It was really magical, the moment we got to spend together in London that time.

Teri Woods: Yeah! So I was reading- because I’ve kept a concert journal for about ten years- I was reading that back over earlier and it was like ‘Oh I forgot about this and oh all these little tiny-’

JM: I forgot about many of it too! A lot happened, because it was such an exploratory day, I feel like when you get to lead with exploration, multiple things happen, it’s not just like having a reservation for dinner where you show up at eight, the band goes on, and then the band is off. It’s a much more exploratory space, particularly that hotel show, you know?

TW: So at that point I hadn’t really experienced anything like it, I’d gone to a lot of conventional concerts, but there was nothing quite like this. So your early Bloodstains material was created in South Lake Tahoe with a small amount of equipment, what led to you basically saying ‘I’m gonna get some equipment and I’m gonna try and make some music’? How did that idea come together?

JM: Ok so all of the freestyling started in Majorca, I was working on this film there called ‘Four Last Songs’ with Stanley Tucci and Rhys Ifans. It was an incredible cast, but everyone was moderately miserable, ‘cause it was not the film we wanted to make, we sort of lost faith in it pretty soon, but we were there for so long. It’s funny because it’s such a non-linear story, but I have to tell it this way because I feel like there’s something to how exploratory it was, like I was so into wild failure, right?

So, I started being into photography. When I was about sixteen, I studied it a bit in LA, and I went to Lake Tahoe when I was eighteen and studied it and really fell in love with it, and then when I was I think twenty? I did ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and while I was there, the photography started mutating into video stuff. Like, wanting to capture video and then very quickly, those videos sort of turned into wanting to add sound design to them.

But I was in Majorca and I was continuing doing like weird little video sketches and I was working on Garageband and I started just making songs there? Then from the videos I was like ‘I wanna do sound design.’ So I started just singing a little bit, and then I started singing all the time. It was like all the video stuff kind of fell to the side and all I wanted to do was do sound design projects, by using the only instrument I knew how to use, which is just my mouth. Like doing breathing, I remember I got so into it that I started asking all my castmates if I could bring them in.

And so I asked Rhys to do- he’s really good at whistling and he also sang me a Welsh tale, which was really cool. But I asked him to do this whole like melancholy whistle. He’s like ‘how could you even do- what is that even?’ So I have this whole song of his, where he’s just melancholically whistling, I was thinking I should- I’m trying to assemble a bunch of stuff right now where I might be releasing a bunch of old, weird, things.

So that was that, and I was really into it, but I also had a very undeveloped voice. It doesn’t mean it was good or bad, it was just like I didn’t care if it sounded good? I remember I would freestyle all the time to doing, like, ‘You Are My Sunshine’. So it’s like in different languages. (Jena sings a part of the melody) Like just gibberish?

And then from that, it got me into doing more worded freestyles and after I did Four Last Songs, I went to New York to do a Broadway play. And I was in New York for almost nine months, and it’s there that the freestyle/making music just took off. So I had a little tape recorder and I would just be in the back of taxicabs, non-stop freestyling. Like people thought I had- like I thought I had singing Tourette’s, you know? That’s how I could describe it to people, ‘cause it made them feel really weird right? I instantly could tell, like ‘oh this makes people feel strange, it hits them in a very strange way, they don’t know how to receive it’. And so, from that, it kind of made me even more excited, ‘cause oddly I like when people have a hard time sitting with something? I notice that vulnerabilities come out? I even tried to do freestyles in taxicabs, I’d be like ‘I’ll freestyle for you if you take me like and not pay, the five dollars?’

So I’d be doing a lot of freestyles about taxicab drivers’ moms and love and heartbreak. So I started singing all the time and I met this musician, Nicole Lombardi and Russell Simins who was a drummer from The Blues Explosion. And we started freestyling together, jamming, and we recorded like eight or nine songs, which was really cool, and that band was called Of Wild Animals And The Loss Of Her Sister. Which- I mean it was totally weird, punk rock, it was me learning how to freestyle and then being ‘Oh this is cool’. But I didn’t love it, it kind of got me into like ‘I think I can do it, I think I can get by Pro Tools.’

So after I finished that, I went back to Tahoe and got my whole set-up, and that’s when I made both albums of The Bloodstains, and that took about six months or eight months or something. But yeah, so that’s how Jena Malone and Her Bloodstains first started. It kind of had a little bit of a longer entry point I guess.

TW: Your first release was ‘Tested Dry’ on The Social Registry. How did that come together? How did you get in contact with them and how did that release happen?

JM: Well I finished the tracks and I was like ‘Oh I really wanna do something with this. How do I get it to the world?’ And so I just cold contacted like ten people. I remember I had some contacts through The Social Registry. I think I just randomly contacted them via their website, and then I contacted some people from the Windish company. Didn’t have any full connects, like wasn’t introduced to anyone, and no one really got back to me except for The Social Registry, which was really cool. And then actually Tom Windish did end up getting back to me after The Social Registry said that they wanted to release this single.

So they had this whole thing where they released all these seven-inches and they really liked ‘Tested Dry’ and ‘Green Eyed Monster’, which had come from me just jamming out in New York with different musicians and then taking what they had played and editing it and making my own freestyles based on it. Though Green Eyed Monster was like what Lem Jay and I did where it was free on piano, free on vocals, both captured at the same time. But Tested Dry was just a free guitar piece that I recorded from my friend Harper Simon, and then just came home and edited it and put the stuff on it together. So it was really cool, they wanted to release it.

Jena Malone and Her Bloodstains - Live at the Gramercy Theatre, March 31st 2007. Image Credit: Rachael Darmanin.

Once that happened, I was like ‘Oh I should probably go play these songs.’ And so I went to New York and was talking to Russell Simins who I worked with on Of Wild Animals And The Loss Of Her Sister, and kind of got this dream-team, like five incredible musicians, erm, Louis Schwadron was also on that who did Green Eyed Monster with me. He was great, he used to play for the Polyphonic Spree. And it was like these five men, very talented, very opinionated, trying to reinterpret my deep, weird, bedroom songs, that I don’t even know what key I was playing in. Or even, I don’t know what key I was editing from a guitar, you know? So it was very weird and a lot got lost in translation and we recorded almost a whole album, like five songs I think? And we played some shows with Deerhunter, Tom Windish helped us set up some shows, we played Mercury Lounge and like five or six shows. We went kind of on tour with Deerhunter and it was really cool!

But it was really not the songs I wanted, I was never really happy with them, it was very hard for me to take these bedroom songs and sonically turn them into something with five other men in the room. Not that they- like they were all cool. It just soured my want of doing that. And also like playing the traditional shows, (Jena sighs) I could just tell there was things that I wanted to do that I couldn’t do with a band. I couldn’t be free, I couldn’t freestyle, everyone had to know where they were all at and it felt very linear and not that exciting. So I was sort of like ‘I don’t wanna do that again’.

And so, I went back to Tahoe and was like ‘I think I just have to play these songs, even though I don’t know how to play music’. So that’s when I built The Shoe. I was looking at this steamer trunk that held all my underwear and socks and stuff and I was like ‘Oh – that’s it’. So I tried to build this whole instrument, I remember going to Home Depot a bunch and freight supply stores and I bought this little rolling cart, that I was gonna make an actual shoe. It was gonna be like a performance thing, and then eventually once I figured out I could just use the steamer trunk, I was like ‘that’s it’.

I set it all up, plugged it in and played it for the first time, and it was so fun! I think immediately I packed it all up, I had to go down to LA and I took a road-trip down to LA and it was right after my birthday I think? Around Christmas, and just had it in the back of my car, sort of was waiting for the courage moment to just set it up and play somewhere, but that didn’t happen, what happened was I met Lem Jay at a Christmas party, and we like freestyled. We’d never met each other, and then I never ended up doing it alone, you know?

The first time I went over to his house, I was like ‘can I bring my Shoe?’ And he’s like ‘Uh, yeah!’ and I was like ‘Are there stairs?’ And he’s like ‘Erm, no? Maybe?’ Because I had a whole dolly, it was a giant thing, it was not like my suitcase. When Lem Jay and I used to play shows out in LA, I would go and just pick up guys at Home Depot to come and help us set up and bring the things, because I had like a generator and this whole thing and a bunch of shit. I’m glad that we really stripped down- I love that it’s gone from that to just a carry amp. It’s so fun to just have that little carry amp, you know?

The Shoe - 2008

Image Credit: Yarrow Earth Hock.

The Shoe - 2014

Image Credit: Yarrow Earth Hock.

TW: Yeah I saw the pictures of the earlier version of The Shoe, and it is a lot bigger than what you even took on tour in 2014.

JM: Yeah it just kept getting smaller and smaller. ‘Cause I realised that it was just too hard for me, once I had to travel it, I was like ‘I just have to create travel Shoes.’

TW: You actually mentioned Nicole Lombardi who you made ‘Lunch Box and Memory’ with. What was that experience like?

JM: Oh no ‘Lunch Box and Memory’ was with Louis Schwadron. She didn’t produce it. She did like an edit or something on it. I guess maybe I did give her a credit. No I think it was just Louis Schwadron and I, and ‘Lunch Box and Memory’ was also another complete freestyle.

TW: It sounds a lot more produced than a lot of the other stuff that’s on ‘Bloodstains For Sailors’.

JM: Yeah ‘Lunch Box and Memory’ I think even had a Garageband backing- like we were playing other Garageband music in it, you know like drums and other stuff.

TW: Ok! I think it sounds great. The second record was called ‘A Newt: Emotional Nutrition’. It’s a superb album title, so-

JM: (laughs)

TW: Where did that come from?

JM: I don’t know! I’m such a word weirdo, I love writing poems and I think it was just something I had written down while I was recording it, and it felt like ‘Emotional Nutrition’, to me, you know? It was really- it was really fun. I can’t wait to get back into that, it’s so funny. I feel like time goes so fast and I haven’t had that time to deeply dive into something, because that was like nine months of me not working as an actor and just being outside of LA, and it was really easy to kind of dive into that space. And I literally have not had that time again, since that.

TW: Another one that’s on that particular album is ‘New Year Come’ which I think is a beautiful song, there’s beautiful strings on that. So it’s quite autobiographical, that song. If you were to, perhaps add a verse to it now, what sort of things would you add to that in your story?

JM: Oh gosh, I mean, so many. Probably a lot of chapters of motherhood and stuff, you know? I could totally add a bunch to that, that’s an interesting exercise.

TW: There was another track, it was my favourite from the Bloodstains era and it’s called ‘Crowded Fire Scenes’?

JM: Oh yeah I never released that!

TW: Yeah I don’t know how I found it! It was out there somewhere!

JM: No, awesome! I know I put it up on Myspace once. It was gonna be part of a third record for Jena Malone and Her Bloodstains, there was a couple other songs on it, I think I only had four and then I met Lem Jay and we just started doing that stuff, and I never did anything. I love that one. I made that one when I was shooting ‘The Ruins’ in Australia, and one of the actors came over and laid down some bass and I did a similar thing where I just made him freestyle for me. Took all of that, and then created a track with it. Yeah I really like that one, I’m so glad you like that. I feel like I should have done more with finishing that, but, fuck.

TW: (laughs) Do you remember what the lyric is about or is that more of a freestyle too?

JM: Yeah I remember it being about a woman that comes and burns down a town. Sort of like, the risk of being a woman with a past, you know? And then there was also a lot of fires that were happening at that time? I think there was a really big fire in Lake Tahoe, and I was thinking about my friends, and reading it on the news, like how horrible that is. But then how that also just ends? And then something else comes in, like the new news story.

It was kind of a combination of that and then casting that as like a woman with a history, very similar to environmental disaster as a female with a past, you know? But I think it’s funny, I think even in ‘Crowded Fire Scenes’ it was about a man! (laughs) But I was definitely thinking more as like a woman.

TW: You’ve mentioned that you’re perhaps putting together some older music, so, is there a plan? Like could that end up on Bandcamp perhaps, because that seems to be more the way that people are going now?

JM: Yeah! Basically I wanna take some time and get back to that like twenty-one year old self, that was just like ‘Wah what is music? Where do you put it?’ Because I feel like so much has changed and so I’m kind of allowing myself the next month or two to look through everything. I’ve set up my studio for the first time in like five years, since I became a Mom. I have like a real studio now! I’m so excited! But I think that there’s gonna be a documentary? We’ve been working on using a lot of the footage that we have in creating something like that. I think there’s a lot of really cool stuff there, you know?

TW: So, is that more about the Bloodstains era or is that- because I know The Shoe were making a documentary-

JM: I think, yeah, there’s gonna be a Shoe documentary but there might be introductory elements to the journey of freestyle, which I think would include some of the earlier band stuff that I was doing. Maybe not necessarily footage but I do have some pretty wild footage! Like I was making music videos, I don’t know there was this one like ‘Jack Pail’ that was online for a while and that’s like me pretending to- I think I took it down- me pretending to, erm, I was like really stoned. Tiny, twenty-one, pretending to play guitar.

But, yeah I wanna do something with all that. And even if I don’t, I need to reclaim everything, organise everything, have everything in a place so that I can eventually, like if we do a Patreon page, where I wanna be able to give content that I have that’s older, newer, whatever. I just don’t have all of that organised right now, so, that’s kind of like where I’m at.

There’s definitely a Bloodstains album in the works, but I don’t know where or how that’s gonna take shape. It’s just been in an editing space, and there’s a new Shoe album for sure, that we have like thirteen songs we’ve just been sitting on and trying to figure out what they are and what we wanna do with them, so.

The Shoe - Pre-tour show experiment, 650 Hoover St., Los Angeles, April 2008. Image courtesy of Jena Malone.

TW: The first performances for The Shoe were in 2008, do you have a performance from that time that really sticks in your mind? And these were the performances that were really different from the Bloodstains ones, so there was no conventional space that you were doing it in. So do you have a favourite memory from that time?

JM: I mean all of them, they were such beautiful gifts, you know? I think our very first show was we just invited a bunch of people over to his garage and just kinda did it through Pro Tools, had other people play like James Valentine who works with Maroon 5 and a bunch of people did stuff, it was pretty cool.

When I did the Treasure Map Tour for the EP’s release for The Shoe, basically we played a couple of shows that were just testing- we were just like ‘let’s play here, let’s play here’. And then we played, I think five shows in a row for a week all around Los Angeles and built this treasure map and it was just the most magical time. I loved that. I mean we built what we do as The Shoe, because then when we went to New York, we did like a Napkin Tour where we just drew it on a napkin, and then the Thompson Hotel stuff sort of emerged from that where I was like where else can we play that’s sort of off the cuff, but still, you could sort of organise it a little bit better. Yeah I don’t know where we’re gonna go next. Trying to figure that out, like the next kind of fun thing to do within live stuff.

TW: From the first EP, you released a music video for ‘Raccoon’, who’s idea was it to use the projections onto the rooms of the miniature house? I think it’s a brilliant video.

JM: That was just a brainstorm technique between me and that artist, Yelena, who directed the video, she was an incredible paper multi-disciplinary artist, where she built that whole body, you know? And then we kind of brainstormed how we could use that and so we got a tiny little projector and we’re doing like projections into the body, it was cool. I wanna watch that again actually. That was a really fun one to shoot!

TW: You’re also a big Neil Young fan, but what made you choose ‘Stupid Girl’ as a song to cover on the first EP?

JM: I mean I’ve been debating- I think it’s like my shower thought, you know that’s very Gen Z like ‘what’s your shower thought?’ I think about it all the time of like the next, what I wanna cover with Neil Young. I think about it all the time. There’s several songs that I’ve tried, that I think about, but for some reason ‘Stupid Girl’ felt like the one that I should do at that time. ‘Cause it felt like a song that could’ve been written by a twenty-four year old woman, you know? It just felt right. It just felt really right! ‘Cortez The Killer’ is the one I’ve always wanted to do.

TW: So why didn’t you explore that one at some point?

JM: We did a little bit. We’ve explored a couple covers and haven’t done anything with them. I don’t know, sometimes covers just become an experiment that help you find tone and then it kind of pushes you into another song that you wanna write? You know I don’t know. Covers are great, but they don’t always end up being the finished product. Sometimes you dive into a cover and you realise you’re like ‘Oh no, I can’t do this one yet,’ or it’s not the right one, you know?

TW: Once ‘I’m Okay’ came out, there were, I think four music videos that came out for that album. But out of all of the music videos you’ve done, what was the hardest one to shoot?

JM: None of them were really that hard because it was all just like friends and pretty easy enjoyment. I tend to be pretty efficient with creative video projects so, I’m like an inner first AD as what I could’ve done if I wasn’t, you know, a weirdo actor. I guess probably the hardest one was the dance video, ‘His Gorgeousness’, because there were things to learn, there were locations, there was tics, it was hot, it was just a little bit of a harder environment. And there were more cooks in the kitchen because Nowness were involved and we had more of people having an idea of what it would be. But that one wasn’t hard at all because it was so fun to collaborate, it was just this magical group of women that all came together, it was so awesome and it was all really dear friends of mine. I love that video, I think it’s so cool.

TW: Is that one your favourite out of all of them?

JM: Maybe, just because it was the last. Everything we’ve done is pretty lo-fi, you know? Except for the Alia Penner video, that was a little bit more hi-fi I guess, because we were shooting it with 16mm cameras and it was a real setting. Everything else has just felt more like off the cuff and playful. ‘His Gorgeousness’ felt like a real like- You know there was animatronics, there was CG elements, they were painting it, it was like, more, it was cool! It’s cool when more people come together, it doesn’t have to be cool but it’s great when it works out.

TW: Is there a song that you wanted a music video for that never actually got one?

JM: There is a video that we still haven’t released for ‘I Guess This Is My Man’. I mean I should just release it, I’ve been thinking about, you know, where to do it. It’s really cool! It’s my friend M Blash, he directed it and edited it and all the footage is from all of the years of audition videos that I’ve done. So, when I auditioned for like ‘Into The Wild’ and for like this person and when I was nineteen and when I was twenty-four and when I was in Australia in a bathroom like having to do- I don’t know like all of my weird audition pieces that I’ve assembled, I gave to him and he used them with some footage from, er, he also had a lot of ‘B’ roll of me when we did that film together called ‘The Wait’. ‘Cause we did two films together called ‘Lying’ and ‘The Wait’, and he edited a whole video together, it’s kind of cool!

TW: He also contributed to ‘Bloodstains For Sailors’ as well!

JM: He did! I spent like two months with him in Portland, up in his attic, and he wrote the lyrics to ‘My Mimic Head’. I was like ‘gimme a poem and I’ll make it into a song’. So he gave me this poem and I was like ‘Ok, let’s try it and see what I can do’. I mean it was a hard one, a lot of the early work, I find I appreciate it, it’s very full of newness, but there are some things that are hard to listen to. I didn’t edit out a lot of the imperfections, which I tend to do more with The Shoe, you know?

One of a hundred unique polaroids included with the ‘I’m Okay’ vinyl edition.

TW: With the first hundred vinyl orders of ‘I’m Okay’, each one had a polaroid picture with it, so, I think over the years you’ve spoken about perhaps releasing a book with your photography-

JM: I know, I know. I wanna do it, it’s just I feel like photobooks are so dead to me, you know I look at them, I touch them, they live in a library. I don’t know I’m just waiting, I keep thinking that there’s gonna be something, a different way to present that type of work, and I think that I might be doing, like a ‘Her’, like ‘The Female Gaze’ on early Hollywood. And it’s a lot of the behind-the-scenes photos that I’ve done throughout my career, as NFT’s. And I was thinking that I could do some kind of weird things with releasing, and I’ll do pictures as well, like maybe it’ll be a postcard collection, because I think that feels more, like authentic to how I’ve always used images, you know? Like, nicely framed pictures are just harder to keep, harder to have, you know? I mean they’re beautiful and it’s awesome, but I was thinking about doing a release of- and maybe eventually it’s like a postcard book, you know? Like that could be that, but, yeah what do you think? Do you think that’s crazy?

TW: It’s really tough isn’t it because I think the world is changing so much and, for instance with the consumption of music and the consumption of film, everyone’s moving away from physical media in some respects. And then others, like vinyl, is seeing a resurgence, so part of me thinks that people would love the idea of a book because they think ‘Oh, you know, who buys books anymore?’ Because of Instagram or whatever. But I think prints would be a beautiful idea as well but that’s the thing, how do you make it unique and interesting?

JM: Yeah, and I just like the idea of a new commerce, you know? Like I think it’s cool that you can sell digital images into a point where you can make enough money to do a self-published book. Like I think that’s really cool. I think of it as like a form of crowd funding in a way, without the crowd funding, where you allow it to be like a multi-owned operation of a lot of different people that eventually they have shares in a physical work, you know?

But I don’t know, I’ve talked to publishing places before or just casually. Like meeting someone at a dinner party or something, and, I have a lot of images that I’d love to share. But I also find it really interesting to just share them for free, you know? Like I love just taking a new photograph and being like ‘Oh I’m just gonna post this on Instagram and as I post it I’m gonna freestyle write about whatever this image means to me.’ I don’t know, I like that photos can become a way of journaling for me. It feels very intimate and kind of sweet that it’s not monetised. Or directionalised, like it’s not a career. It’s much more free, but then when I’m not working and I need money, I’m like ‘Alright Jena, you should probably try your hand at other things’. You know?

TW: (laughs) I’ve always loved your double exposure photography as well, you posted a lot more of those images years ago, perhaps not so much recently, but I’ve always thought they were very beautiful.

JM: It’s just a different artform, you know? I mean the transition into parenthood really- I’ve gotten to do a lot of other types of exploratory activities, but not as many in music and art and photos, but it feels like a resurgence. Like my son’s old enough now where he does more things on his own and I have more time to kind of daydream. And it’s having more time to daydream that allows me to have more space to want to create for myself and with myself again. That’s not like a, someone else created the work and they’ve presented it to me like a film or this or like that- that is an easy thing to say yes to. But the work where it’s self-exploratory like photographing, writing, making music, I need a certain amount of daydreaming pre-that, which is just time on my own in my own space to help me figure out what that will be. To get excited about it or something, and I’ve only recently had that space, and I swear the past two months has probably been the most amount of time I’ve had that space in five years, you know? It’s really cool! I’ve been doing a lot of daydreaming, which feels nice.

TW: Well going back to some of the stuff on ‘I’m Okay’, one of the lesser documented songs, because I know that you’ve spoken about perhaps the ideas behind some of these songs, but one you haven’t really spoken about is ‘His Shirt Grew’. So what inspired that song? Or where does it come from?

JM: Lem Jay and I went and did a road-trip piece where we called it ‘Video Music’, where we captured, erm, I used to do a lot of QuickTime recordings with The Shoe. I found there’s a way to record QuickTime that records natural reverb, so you can get really interesting live improvisational songs using only QuickTime, and so we did a whole, kind of video album. One of the pieces was ‘His Shirt Grew’ and it was a freestyle we did in Bishop, California, in this weird little hotel room, and it was just- I mean the freestyle we did is way better than the one on the album! But, what ‘His Shirt Grew’ was for me was that it was such a good freestyle and it was so weird- and it went absolutely nowhere. It was just not a good song, but it felt really beautiful to me.

And so I was like ‘I really wanna try to redo this.’ And, I don’t think I did it as well as the initial freestyle, but it was cool to just go through the process of trying even to let it be something different. That song kind of haunts me, if I went back to do that song again I think I would do it differently.

TW: It’s really interesting because so much of that is really similar to what you hear on the album, and the way that it starts, and it’s like you’ve recognised straight away what is so atmospheric and good about the song, and gone ‘Do you know what? Let’s not change that, and let’s pull that straight into the album track.’

JM: Yeah!

TW: And the lyric is almost identical as well.

JM: Oh no I just wrote it directly from the freestyle. I edited it a little bit because I made a lot of mistakes in the freestyle but I didn’t even know what I was singing about, it was sort of about this little boy and sort of like the hardship of deformities and mental disabilities and like how the world just doesn’t suit different bodies and shapes and sizes.

TW: So what does the phrase ‘His Shirt Grew’ mean when you sing that?

JM: No idea! It just came out of my brain, it’s just what happened and I went with it. I guess I just didn’t apologise for it not really making any sense and so then I tried to build a whole narrative around what that meant. Like as his shirt grew, he grew, or he outgrew it, you know?

TW: And when does that video date from?

JM: Er, gosh. I don’t know! A long- probably 2008?

TW: One of the things that I was gonna ask was about the Thompson Takeover Tour in London, which you played a lot of different spaces in. What was the most memorable part of playing the Belgraves that day?

JM: I think it was when we got to all hang out and we got to explore the whole building together. That was pretty fun. I liked being in the boiler room and then up to the roof. There was that cigar area, right? At the Belgraves, wasn’t there like a cigar bar, later on in the evening we did a show out in a little cigar room?

TW: Yeah from what I understand, I wasn’t actually there for that part.

JM: Oh right, yeah, that was one of my favourite parts actually. It got very intense and sexual and strange, and it was just kind of all close up in there. That was pretty strange, but no, I loved that tour.

TW: I read that the cigar bar, you could only get about ten people in that room!

JM: Yeah and it was like, you know very indoor/outdoor in the middle of the building. It had an energy for sure.

The Shoe - Takeover Tour, 2014. Image Credit: Elias Tahan, courtesy of Jena Malone.

TW: Well after 2014, The Shoe didn’t actually return until 2018 when you started playing some shows again, and you were teasing new music then as well, what happened? Was it put off? Or did you just think it’s just not the right time?

JM: Well 2015 I got pregnant, so that sort of just derailed everything, like I said I had not had any space to do anything creative for five years, so. Creative in a very singular way. I’ve been doing other, like, abstract parenting, you know, awakening type of activities. Or exploratory, but in a different way.

We had a bunch of stuff that we wanted to do, but you know, probably right now, if we don’t do anything, we have at least three albums worth of Shoe material that could be a thing. Like we have so much, we’ve just never either finalised it or it didn’t become enough songs for an album, or it seemed like two different albums. We kept putting all these songs in baskets, and none of the baskets like fully came to fruition.

And then I got pregnant and they’re all just sitting there, you know? And I wanted to put it out and I kept saying I would, but then I sort of would get scared or nervous ‘cause I didn’t have the energy to really put it out in the way that I would want to, and also I did not feel creative, you know? I just didn’t wanna play shows.

TW: What about that feels scary, in just releasing something? Because you don’t necessarily have to tour or play any shows, but does releasing something feel scary, or?

JM: No, but you know it’s like putting a baby out. It doesn’t have to be anything, but I don’t like just putting a song out, like I want it to be a thing. Or I want to play some shows around it. I like the celebration of new music, you know? Yes, we could just put it out and do nothing, I don’t mind doing that with my freestyles or early content, but like, new songs, you get excited about. And they need like a birthing ritual process, you know?

TW: I’m not sure where you travelled to in 2018 with The Shoe, were those good experiences?

JM: Yeah, that was all when I was living up North, some of them were in Napa with my friend, who has an incredible winery. Some living room stuff that was really cool, I did a Jena Malone and Her Bloodstains performance in the living room which felt really liberating. I was like ‘Ok! I’ve never done a Jena Malone and Her Bloodstains show, ever!’ I just freestyled.

TW: That must have been pretty scary, to commit to that, you know?

JM: Yeah! I wanna do more of that, ‘cause it feels really cathartic and scary. I think that’s where the next Bloodstains stuff will go. Lem Jay always jokes, he’s like ‘I’ll just produce your Bloodstains.’ And I’m like ‘Great! I’ll produce your solo stuff,’ because Lem Jay’s also an incredible singer. I don’t know there’s a way to do it where I feel like I incorporate the Bloodstains stuff into The Shoe all the time, you know? Like, it’s funny to separate them, but there is a different thing that happens when it’s just me on my own. It gets much weirder (laughs).

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It’s taken almost two years to put together the writing in this article, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the involvement of the artists themselves.

A special thank you goes to The Shoe for giving their time to answer the questions posed in this article. To Jena for organising and supplying many of the photographs featured here, and for impulsively sending the freestyle for ‘His Shirt Grew’ over during our interview. To Lem Jay for taking the time to read this piece prior to publication and for correcting a couple of points. Thank you, you’ve both made a big fan very happy.

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References (uncredited quotes are published in this article for the first time):

Ignacio, L. J. and Malone, J. (2014) The Shoe X Google Hangout: Let's Hang! Originally streamed on Google Hangouts, now hosted on The Shoe’s YouTube channel

Malone, J. and Naumoff, A. (2014) Jena Malone, The Shoe: His Gorgeousness published on the Nowness Official Website

Kaye, C. (ed.), Ignacio, L. J. and Malone, J. (2014) Jena Malone Is The Rock Star You Think She Is published on the Refinery29 Official Website

Eakin, M. (ed.) and Malone, J. (2014) Jena Malone on Susan Sarandon, Ani DiFranco, and The Shoe published on the AV Club Official Website

Malone, J. (2014) The Shoe – His Gorgeousness Facebook Update

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Although the music of Jena Malone and Her Bloodstains is currently out of print, the music of The Shoe is available to download and stream in all the usual places.

Follow Jena Malone on Instagram @jenamalone, Facebook @jena.malone and on Twitter @malonejena.

Follow Lem Jay Ignacio on Instagram @lemjayig.

Follow The Shoe on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter @theshoeperforms.

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