Pieces of a Masterpiece: Ida’s Liz Mitchell on revisiting ‘Will You Find Me’

Sitting on the cusp of the dreampop and slowcore scenes in the late 90s, New York indie four-piece Ida made moving music rich in atmosphere, wrapped in melody, and built on strong songwriting bones. This year, the band’s fifth studio LP Will You Find Me turns 25 years old, and it’s celebrating the anniversary with an expansive five-LP vinyl box set (out April 25th on Numero Group), as well as a spring tour alongside scene peers Tsunami.

The reissue gives the Pet Sounds treatment to Ida’s masterpiece, drawing on a bounty of archival material: demos, outtakes, live versions, cover songs, alternate mixes and more. It’s truly a delight to dive into the building blocks of the record, and before they went out on the road, Ida’s Liz Mitchell joined me on What’s The Frequency: The Music Of The 90s on WXPN to break down some of the project’s highlights, and also give us an idea what to expect on their spring tour with Tsunami.

Listen to the interview in the player above, and check out some highlights from our chat down below. Ida’s “Coin Toss” tour with Tsunami continues this week with a gig Thursday, March 27th at The Black Cat in D.C., followed by a Philadelphia concert Friday, March 28th, at Underground Arts. Full dates can be found here, information and tickets to the Philly show can be found here.

…on what it meant to tour with Tsunami in the 90s and early 2000s, and what it means to be on the road with them again today.

Honestly, it means everything to do shows with Tsunami. Ida wouldn’t exist, really, without them. We wouldn’t be who we are now. They put out our first album Tales Of Brave Ida on their label Simple Machines back in 1994. Daniel [Littleton, of Ida] and I were living together in Brooklyn and writing songs, making cassettes, and giving them to our friends. We gave one to Jenny [Toomey] and Kristin [Thomson, of Tsunami] cause they were old friends of Daniel’s. And they really encouraged us to be more confident and share our music more widely.

…on revisiting their classic album at such a granular level.

It was wild. That era for Ida was very specifically sprawling. For the first time, we had a budget and we had resources. And we wanted to use every inch and really explore every possibility, chase every idea that might come up for these songs, to find what felt right at the time. And it’s all archived on little DAT tapes that are very indicative of the Y2K time it came from. So there was a lot to draw from, and Numero were extremely open to whatever we had, and whatever way this tribute was going to manifest. So it’s a lot. It’s not really for the casual fan; we tried to think about the project as if there was a band we loved — we’re all music nerds that go deep and hard into exploring the work of the artists that speak to us — what would we want?

… on “Maybelle”

I love this song. It has moved me since the day Daniel wrote it. It’s a good introduction to this record, this body of songs. I love singing this song with Karla [Schickele, of Ida], and it’s also one that…our daughter Storey is 23 now, and it’s interesting to see her and her peers starting to discover Ida, and it’s often a song that I’ll get a text from one of her friends with a screenshot of this song, and they’ll be like “What, I didn’t know you had a band!” It speaks to them, it moves them somehow.

… on “Shrug (The Woo Mix)”

We had the crazy honor of recording this song with the great Bernie Worrell. … Listening back to the final mix that ended up on the album, I really felt like I just wanted to hear Bernie and I wanted to mute everything else. I was like “why are there other instruments on this song? Why are we not only hearing Bernie, or at least hearing him more?” So we had this amazing opportunity: we still had the two-inch tapes, we went back to the studio where we recorded Will You Find Me, Dreamland Recording. It’s owned by Jerry Marotta, the great drummer, who’s our friend, and he said sure, come on in, put the tapes up, remix it, do whatever you want. So we did, last summer. It was such a wild experience to go back into that room, put the tapes up, and mute almost everything else, put Bernie front and center, and see how the song felt.

… on “Black Thumb”

This was written by the great songwriter Lori Carson, who we met when we toured with her in 1996. It was one of those times when you’re paired with another artist for a tour you’ve never met before, you sort of know their music, but there isn’t a lot of direct connection. And within two and a half days, you’re like “how did I ever live without this person?” You just become soul mates and realize they were a missing piece in your life. It happens sometimes on the road, it’s a really beautiful thing about touring. “Black Thumb” was a song she wad doing on that tour, and it’s from an album that was about to be released called Everything I Touch Runs Wild. It’s a really beautiful record, it had a harmony on it so I would sing harmony with her on tour, and it never left me, I always wanted to sing that song.

… on “Past The Past (alternate full band demo)”

We were doing that thing bands do where you make demos to send to producers. It’s a funny process, and maybe a circuitous way to figure things out. When I heard it back for the first time in 25 years, I loved it. The version that ended up on the album I also really love, and it has its own amazingness, but this one is a little more first-thought-best-thought to me. It really sits in a very grounded place when I hear it.

…on the actual coin toss that starts each show.

This was Jenny Toomey’s idea, she’s always got some idea that will raise the stakes and make things even more fun. You can’t just do a tour, you have to do something extraordinary. One side of the coin says Ida, one side says Tsunami, and whoever wins the coin toss gets to decide “tonight we want to go first,” or “tonight we want to go second.” It’s going to happen onstage. Both bands will be standing there, drumsticks in hand, ready to go. Our whole setup is shared, the setup can accommodate either band jumping up and getting ready to play their set. There has to be suspense, excitement, it’s a little like an action-adventure movie, this tour. We don’t know what’s going to happen.