Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside: Finding Rockability

There was a time in the not-too-distant past when soliciting an interview with Sallie Ford could have been as simple as walking up to her at a bar on Upper Hawthorne Boulevard in Portland, Ore. She’d have been visibly flattered, a little giddy, certainly smiling with her eyes behind those librarian-chic spectacles. And you’d have felt like you weren’t imposing. Upper Hawthorne was, after all, Ford’s turf, and nary a jukebox could be found that wouldn’t have held her debut album Dirty Radio behind its dusty cogs.

That, however, is the Sallie Ford of around 2010, at the time still somewhat of a regional draw, unencumbered by the racket of the industry, the pressures of promotion, or the insistences and analyses of critics all over North America and Europe. But while Ford still maintains her jovial disposition and one of the most affecting laughs you’ll ever hear, there are signs, though be they few, that the patina of semi-stardom has begun to stake its plot in Ford and her Sound Outside’s retro pop-rock fortress.

“People seemed really uncomfortable in Europe with us not being really specific about what we [sound like],” says Ford from her home in Southeast Portland. Ford and her band—drummer Ford Tennis, bassist Tyler Tornfelt and guitarist Jeffrey Munger—have recently returned from a string of sold-out theater dates in France, where Ford’s music has resonated remarkably well, a fate she determines stems from the European romanticism of American music. That romanticism is ironic considering that the overarching subject matter of the band’s new album, Untamed Beast, is mostly about sex. Romance, while perhaps a tributary, is buried within an album’s worth of raucous country-rock dust-ups, fun first-wave rock ‘n’ roll and Ford’s empowered feminist snarls.

A quick perusal of the tracklisting on Untamed Beast—the LP’s title itself a nod to Ford’s quirky-sexy duality—provides a modicum of insight toward the thematic motif: “Bad Boys,” “Shivers,” “Do Me Right” and “Roll Around” all sum up a restless, sexual soul. But if by virtue of those perusals you conjured a collection of innuendo-laced pop, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Case in point, “Bad Boys” showcases ribald missives like, “I can fuck, I can drink and I don’t care what you think/you may think of me as just a little girl you met, but I am here to prove you wrong.” Similarly, “Shivers” finds Ford less-than-subtly lusting after an unnamed partner, regaling, “I never knew something so good could be bad, and what you’ve got is the best that I’ve had/So you won’t you please show me again and again. Make my head twirl, make my head spin.”

“I’ve always been fascinated by blues music that women have sung that’s kind of sexual innuendo,” relates Ford. “But any time I’ve tried to write that, it doesn’t really come out as innuendo; it’s more straight-forward and blunt.”

The dichotomy of Ford’s musical and personal personas provides an additional texture to her tale, along with an invitation to be a reluctant role model for women who are tired of metaphoric dalliances with their sexuality. Still, Ford’s off-stage shyness is evident.

“I definitely enjoy singing about it on stage more than talking about it,” admits Ford. “I think people expect me to be a certain way if they don’t know me. It’s hard to show that person that I feel like I am when I sing and I’m talking about these personal things. I wouldn’t say that that person isn’t me though; it’s just not gonna come out to every person. That is a lot of pressure, but I don’t really care. It’s about the music. I’m not gonna be anything anyone wants me to be.”

Added to the already abrasive, sock-hop-on-speed aesthetic of Untamed Beast is an undercurrent of rebellious abandon made all the more prevalent by the Sound Outside’s whip-sharp, vintage rockabilly rhythms. “Rockabilly” became something of a four-letter word for Ford in the months after the release of Dirty Radio—a timeframe that saw the band touring to clubs and festivals across the States, overseas and performing on The Late Show with David Letterman.

“We’ve been called rockabilly, but that’s fine, whatever,” says Ford. “Now that I think about it more, I don’t know why it ever pissed me off in the first place. There’s good rockabilly music, and I think there is a lot of that in our music. Maybe I don’t wanna do that anymore. I just wanna do something that’s a little grittier or that has a little bit more depth to it than just old country songs.”

The French in particular seemed to be obsessed with pigeonholing Ford’s infectious tunes within the rockabilly canon, inadvertently provoking the song “Rockability,” a punk-rock diatribe aimed at the band’s disillusionment with the genre game. In the song, Ford barks “Can’t wait to see the day when all the genres melt away. So sick of being in the box. Won’t you come unlock me?”

“We played on this French TV show and the people doing the show were speaking English, but this woman obviously didn’t know what rockabilly was so she was saying ‘rockability,’” remembers Ford. “I really liked that, because that is sort of what we go for in music, it’s just to rock. You can rock to all sorts of types of music.”

“Shivers,” notably, is given a lullaby pastiche, like the proverbial spoonful of sugar to help the manic sexual bravado go down. By Ford’s account, however, her autobiographical honesty wasn’t all libido and liberation.

“When I’m really happy or in a relationship, I get bored and can’t figure out what to write about,” says Ford. “My being single and going crazy is a lot of what that record is about. There’s a lot of anger for me, too. I’m not really scared to reveal anything about my life, but I would feel bored to just write sex songs over and over again; there’s only so much you can say.”