“Let all the fruits fall down,” a chorus intones. Then a firm piano chord, and a strong voice sings: “Moving through the orchard / you strode through the grove / arms grabbed apples of the sun / trunks were strong, you thought ‘love.’” Something in the voice suggests an emotional complexity, signaled by a single bell. “Came back next spring,” the singer continues. “stripped the branches clean / Earth there for you to devour or protect / you come off gentle, wind up mean.” The song picks up momentum until it hits the chorus, lush with strings, pounding drums, hands clapping. It’s the arrival of a new collaboration of talents that already encompasses New Haven, New York, and Australia, and promises more.
The song, “Orchard,” features lyrics written by Binnie Klein, a New Haven-based psychotherapist, DJ, author, podcaster, and now songwriter. The music is written by Melbourne-based musician Tartie, with whom Klein connected thanks to her long-running WPKN show, A Miniature World.
“As a DJ I get hundreds of solicitations and entreaties from all kinds of musicians to play their music. It’s a lovely feature of having a side job in addition to the day job,” Klein said. She has far more solicitations than she has room to play music on her show. But “when I can, because I’ve been supporting indie artists for decades, I try to give a listen” to what artists submit.
“Right before the pandemic,” Klein said, “I got an email from Tartie.” It was a very simple email — no sales pitch — that suggested Tartie’s music might be a good fit for A Miniature World. Klein checked it out, and “fell in love” with one of Tartie’s songs, “Winter’s Girl.”
“Her voice really affected me, and I thought, ‘she should be more famous,’” Klein said. She played “Winter’s Girl” on her show, and she and Tartie “somehow got to talking. We wound up arranging a Skype meeting after figuring out the 14- or 16-hour difference. Something clicked. She was extremely sweet and sensitive. And I guess I screwed up my courage.”
Klein had been writing songs, as a “new endeavor,” she said. “I said, ‘I have some lyrics.’ And she said, ‘send them.’”
Courtesy WPKN
Klein.
In addition to DJing on WPKN, Klein is a psychotherapist in private practice who has also been a lecturer at Yale. But “I’ve noticed in my life that I’m sort of a minor-league George Plimpton. I throw myself in,” she said. “Or as my late mother-in-law noted, ‘you always pick really hard things.’”
Several years ago, one of those things was boxing. That led to a memoir, called Blows to the Head: How Boxing Changed My Mind, which came out in 2009. “I took up boxing, I didn’t think I was going to write a book. Then it became a dream that I needed to realize,” Klein said. In 2018, she produced another memoir in podcast form called Ten Days in Newark, about “first love, first heartbreak, and the radical politics of the 1960s.” In the course of doing that project, Klein “went down the rabbit hole of memory. It was very immersive and very, very painful. And writing, I was in touch with people I knew when I was 16 or 17. I don’t recommend it. It stimulated so much memory, longing, contact with people I used to know.”
One effect of that: “I think I was suddenly writing poetry again,” Klein said, and “suddenly I’m looking at poems and I’m thinking of them as songs.” The problem was, she wasn’t quite a good enough musician to realize them as she wanted. Her first songwriting collaboration was with New Haven-based composer Istvan B’Racz, who encouraged her to continue her foray into collaboration. So when Tartie asked Klein to send lyrics, Klein was ready. She sent Tartie several possibilities. Tartie picked one piece, called “Orchard.”
“After a while, she said, ‘would you like me to give it a go?’” Klein said. Klein enthusiastically said yes. Shortly thereafter, Tartie sent Klein a demo of the music she’d written to Klein’s words.
“I was blown away,” Klein said “The resonance I felt between the music and the lyrics — I was absolutely delighted, amazed. The demo came out almost perfect.” Though, she added, “It didn’t start the way it starts now.”
“Orchard” continued its journey because, with a song in the works, Klein wanted to know more about how to get the music to the public. With Tartie in Australia, she couldn’t just go out and perform it at a New Haven venue. “Then what does one do?” Klein said. “You start asking people who have worked in the industry.’” A fellow WPKN DJ and music industry veteran “gave me an hour of his time, and it was very depressing. He said, ‘you’re going to be a pebble on the beach. The industry’s changed. You don’t have a band.’” But “he gave me a few ideas.” And then Klein remembered that “I knew a producer” — David Baron, who has worked with the likes of the Lumineers, Shania Twain, Meghan Trainor, Lenny Kravitz, and Lana Del Rey.
As a DJ, Klein had noticed that Baron, in addition to working with high-profile acts, helped cultivate the sound of indie artists. “Through WPKN I had noticed a couple of the people he was producing,” and “I kind of liked all of them.” She had Baron send her some of that music to play on her show. And when she and Tartie began to collaborate, “I approached him to consider producing it. I don’t know where I got the cojones to do that.” She sent him the demo Tartie had made. “Yeah, this is beautiful. She’s very talented. How do you want to do this?” she recalled Baron saying.
Then the pandemic began.
Klein and Baron then worked remotely, figuring out what the tempo of the song should be. Baron had the idea to add strings (played by Alex Waterman). “He gave very strong ideas, responses, criticisms, suggestions,” Klein said. “Then we came up with choices we wanted Tartie to make in her next recording.” Tartie recorded new parts from Australia and sent them to Klein and Baron. “We had one or two sessions, long ones,” and “suddenly the idea came to begin the song with ‘let all the fruit fall down,’ which had been in the middle.” The song in its current form was born.
Baron suggested Klein make her new musical project “a collaborative group, featuring whoever I’m working with.” She decided to call the project In These Trees, after a line of poetry from Robert Bly (“The body is like a November birch, reaching into the heavens. In these trees, there is no ambition”) that she felt had followed her through her life for years.
She found an animator, Anikmhamud, through Fiverr to make a lyric video for “Orchard.” “We had ambition, drive, passion,” she said. “We came up with a storyboard and described it to him.” Baron then recommended that Klein connect with Margot Bennett, of the Brooklyn-based Margot and the Midnight Tenants, to help Klein with promotion and distribution, which Bennett was doing as freelance work.
Tartie.
Meanwhile, Klein kept working with Tartie. In Australia, “there are wildfires burning that are just horrific, and some of the musicians in Melbourne are writing ‘fire songs’ to bring attention to it,” Klein recalled Tartie telling her. Tartie had written one of those, which she sent to Klein. “And then I thought again, ‘I want more people to hear her.’” She landed Tartie a featured interview in Yale Climate Connections
“This has all happened in the past year,” Klein said. With “Orchard” out, she’s now turning to making more songs. Tartie is working with another set of lyrics, “Sky Ocean.” Bennett is working with another set of lyrics, “a new song. I just wrote it,” Klein said. The song deals with environmental concerns (its first line: “I lived through a storm, but the storms are stronger now”).
“I’m dealing with these two young women. We’re crossing this bridge of decades, multiple decades, and yet somehow working together in a way that I hope produces something beautiful.” She’s thinking of getting up to a four-song EP for another release. “But, the thing is, there’s more. There’s plenty more.”
What accounts for Klein’s creative move into songwriting? “The pandemic and the way the government defines things, I’ve come to learn that I am elderly, and therefore I’ve got some ambitions and dreams that I didn’t quite know I had,” Klein said. “I’m very eager because I see how long it can take to actualize one song. We all lost a lot of time in some ways. I feel time both slowed down and sped up, and I don’t feel anchored or grounded.” Though “I know if there’s some uneasiness during the day, I go over to the keyboard and it’s very grounding. And it’s very humbling! My work as a clinician, I’ve been doing it since 1984. I feel strong in it, and I feel seasoned.”
She’s seasoned with music as well in one sense. “Having been a DJ for an alternative station for so long, I know what I like,” she said. “I’m very picky when I put together a radio show. I have preferred sounds, and preferred rhythms, and qualities in voice.” But in writing music, “I’m a beginner,” and “it’s scary-great.”
“I’m one of those people that doesn’t feel older, doesn’t dress older. But I’m not going gentle into that good night,” she added. “In These Tress has been positive and life-affirming. Istvan, David, Margot, Tartie — I love them, truly love them.”
Visit the In These Trees website to learn more about the project and contact the artists.
