“Absence makes the heart grow fonder” is a popular idiom often used by people in describing how being separated from a person or thing bought them to find renewed appreciation for it.
For singer-songwriter Laura Burhenn, who has toured under the moniker The Mynabirds since 2009, a hiatus from writing and recording her own music taught her how much of a medicine it truly was.
Following the release of the group’s 2017 album Be Here Now, Burhenn found herself growing discontented with music creation as a means to support herself. In addition to not being as financially supportive as it once was, she felt creatively tapped out. Fortunately, she found inspiration through her work as a producer and media creator, helping other musicians.
Through her production company, Our Secret Handshake, she’s produced music videos, commercials, and concert films, including Paramore’s Hayley Williams, The War On Drugs, Animal Collective, Phoebe Bridgers, The Rolling Stones, and Ringo Starr.
Following a series of personal losses and the knowledge from collaboration, she started writing and recording her own material. On November 7, The Mynabirds released its new album, It’s Okay To Go Back If You Keep Moving Forward via her label Our Secret Handshake.
Each Mynabirds release has its own sonic personality. Her debut, What We Lose in the Fire We Gain in the Flood, drew from Americana and roots music, followed up with the fiery folk-pop of Generals, the synth-drenched tenderness of Lovers Know, and the anthemic pop-rock ballads of Be Here Now. It’s Okay To Go Back If You Keep Moving Forward is her most intimate yet, as it strips her sound to the core. It’s mainly just her voice and piano, with minimal additions.
The album features three original songs as well as stripped-back acoustic versions of seven Mynabirds favorites. It was recorded at 64 Sound and produced by Rilo Kiley’s Pierre de Reeder. Burhenn tracked grand piano and vocals live in the room, joined by musicians playing without overdubs, autotune, or digital instrumentation.
The album is accompanied by the reissuing of two acclaimed Mynabirds albums that were out of print: Our Secret Handshake released a limited-edition colored vinyl 8-year anniversary reissue of Be Here Now, and Saddle Creek Records reissued Generals.
You can stream and purchase all three albums below:
In addition to music, she continues to work as an activist to support the rights of musicians, as well as those of immigrants, queer individuals, and environmental and human rights causes.
SWT caught up with the songwriter to discuss how she regained her love for creating music and how it has empowered her both within and outside of music.
You’re releasing your new album on your label, Our Secret Handshake, which has been a pretty personal undertaking for you. Could you discuss the label and its significance in supporting you and others?
Our Secret Handshake is actually my production company that I started in 2018. So, it’s seven years old, it’s about to be eight. And I started that entity when I needed to take a break from music for a while. And under that umbrella, I’ve produced tons of music videos live for late-night performances. We did all Phoebe Bridgers’ live performances for her record that came out during the pandemic, live concert streaming concerts. And we did some work with Haley Williams of Paramore for her hair company, Good Dye Young, which was cool. And I always had this vision that Our Secret Handshake would be not just be a production company, but creative services and a means of bringing people together to make art, whatever that is. I love the idea of big concerts where artists come together with an intention of raising consciousness and changing the world through music. So, when it came time to put this out, I talked to Saddle Creek, which has been my record label since 2010. And even before that, I had a band called Georgie James, and we released a record with them in 2007. And it was just like, does this make sense to put this out with Saddle Creek? It’s a small record; it’s a very intimate project.
It’s not necessarily something that requires a whole huge marketing machine behind it. And I think for me, it just made sense to do it very personally. And I get to work with Undertow. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with them, but they’re a management company, and they also book living room shows across the country. And they work with artists like Pedro the Lion, Flock of Dimes, and tons of other fantastic artists that are looking for more meaningful ways to tour in a time that is pretty dominated by Live Nation. And it’s like big corporations that are coming in and taking huge cuts off the top. And what does it look like for smaller artists to tour, and what are the models that we can use to bring live music to different towns where people can actually have very meaningful interactions with one another?
And so that’s what I’m doing with this record, and I’m really excited about it. Actually, just before I got on the phone with you, I was in the middle of researching different immigration support services in each city. One of the things I want to do, which is sort of highlight people who are doing good works to help immigrants and refugees, particularly now in this era of ICE rage, and troops being deployed against American citizens. And what are the ways that we can really support one another and come together in community?
Over the last handful of years, you’ve spent most of your time working with others as a producer and doing music videos and films. What drew you in that direction? What were the biggest lessons you learned from those experiences?
Well, so in 2017, I put out a record called Be Here Now. And I worked with a director who directed a couple of my music videos called Jason Lester. And I was really just tired of being on the road. I was tired of touring. I decided I needed a break from the music industry. So, I asked him, “Do you ever need a producer?” And he said, “Sure, you can help me on some stuff.” So that’s how I got my start. I started helping him, and I had so much fun making music videos. It feels like being in a recording studio with a bunch of people who are making it; it’s the same feeling. You’re all working towards this one creative vision, and everybody plays their part. And so that was why I started doing it. And the biggest takeaway for me is how it’s kind of like the connections that I made through that.
I got to work with some incredible artists over the years, and some of them I had known for many years through music, like The War on Drugs and Animal Collective. I’ve known those guys for a really long time. But to produce a streaming concert for The War on Drugs was really special. I was like, “Oh, I know how live music works.” And going into the edit, it was easy for me to help the editor edit the guitar solo. I’d be like, “Oh, wait, that take is not what he’s playing.” As a musician, I can see that visually, but it’s also, I think my biggest takeaway is how much bigger something can be when you make it collaboratively with other people. I am lucky that I get to put out records. And for this new one, it was a very small group of musicians. I’m the only person who wrote these songs. It was just me and my piano and I, but when you just get a group of people together, it becomes a choir of voices.
During that time when you were working with others, you shied away from playing piano and writing your own songs. Why did you feel that you were creatively tapped out at that point?
I think as an indie musician who started making music, I put my first solo record out in 1999. I self-released a CD that I recorded during high school, and I have watched the music industry change a lot in what is now 25 years. And to watch it go from an industry in which musicians sold CDs and then LPs came back into the business, which was cool. And you go from a model where you’re actually selling physical copies of albums to streaming services, you’re watching money, the payouts from those streaming services or album sales go down and down and down. But yet, and payouts from playing shows are going down and gas prices are going up, and manufacturing costs are going up. And it’s just impossible to figure out how to make a living as a musician these days. And it’s not even small artists at my level.
But the other day, Shirley Manson from Garbage they were playing in Denver, Colorado. And she said, “This is our last time we’re going to play in Colorado. We can’t afford to play the middle of America anymore. We can only afford to play the coasts.” So, when you have a legacy band that’s as big as Garbage, saying that we’ve got a real problem. And so, for me, I think I just needed to take some time off to say, this is unhealthy and it’s unsustainable, and what are the ways in which maybe I’m done with music, maybe I had a good ride, and that was great. But I think what happened was last year I realized music for me is medicine, and I need it for my own personal therapy. I need it to survive. And actually, that’s what the world needs right now. And we don’t need music as a commodity and music necessarily as entertainment that numbs us or that takes us away from what’s really going on in music.
There is a beautiful tradition of people who have used their voice to stand up for civil rights and to stand up for one another and to actually use it as a force for good to change the world for the better. And that’s what I came back to, which was like, “Oh, right. The ways in which I have felt maybe I failed as a musician because I didn’t sell a certain number of records.” I was like, “No, no, no, I’ve succeeded because I’ve actually created really beautiful relationships with people around the country and around the world.” And in 2017, I recorded a song called “Be Here Now” and had a choir of refugees and new Americans from Omaha join me and to help amplify their voices. That was big, that was a success. And we got to sing that song on NPR’s Tiny Desk, and that was incredible. So that way that music can work as a force for good and as a source of energy, that’s what I want to engage in. And that’s what I was missing over the past years, and that’s what I want to help bring back into the world.
You began writing songs following a period of time where you went through a series of personal losses. Can you talk a little bit about the moment when you kind of had a moment of realization?
Yeah, so I put that record out in 2017, and I did a little touring, and then I thought, “I’m done with music.” I didn’t play, I didn’t tour. And then I got really busy with the production company, and it was in the middle of the pandemic. 2020 was hectic. 2021 was the busiest year I’ve ever had in my life.
So, 2021 was really, really busy, and we just had back-to-back shoots. And in September, one of my best childhood friends died unexpectedly. And then a month later, my dog Charlie died, and then my grandmother died, and I got COVID. It was like everything happened right in a row, and I physically just couldn’t do it anymore. And I was on the way back from North Carolina. I had just done a shoot with Animal Collective.
And when we arrived, it’s crazy because we arrived to Marshall, North Carolina. They had just had a huge flood. It flooded the school where we were shooting, and the town was having a mermaid parade. So literally, this town that had been flooded had all these people dressed up as mermaids walking through the street. I have pictures from that trip where I’m sitting in a coffee shop looking out on the main street, taking pictures of people dressed up as mermaids. And this past year when they had that huge hurricane in the flood, that whole town was underwater. So, it was almost like being there in 2021; I could feel it coming. It was literally, it felt like a psychic moment, and also just feeling like I felt like I was underwater, and I couldn’t do it anymore. And I was like, “Wow.” The ways in which maybe I felt traumatized from trying to survive as a musician in the indie rock world, I’m feeling it again as a producer, even though I’m technically maybe making more money and being more “successful.” I just felt like maybe I was actually kind of killing myself. So, I had to stop and evaluate what I am really doing. Is this healthy?
And that was entry, that was the awakening, where I was like, I think I need music again, and I need to figure out how to get back to it in a healthy way.
Having gone through the loss of my dad, I know that loss can really shift your perspective on life, and with the importance of a lot of stuff. I imagine it was similar for you.
I’m really sorry to hear about your dad.
It will be 10 years in next year in April. It’s kind of hard to believe it’s going to be 10 years.
Yeah, time. It’s wild that it passes so fast and yet so slow. Ten years is a big anniversary. Are you going to do anything special?
Maybe. I haven’t thought that far. I have been spending a lot of time with my mom. So, it’s been one of the things I’ve been thankful for.
It’s funny how it really does shift your priorities, right?
Yeah.
Yeah. I think that was another thing for me, which was just how am I spending my time and am I spending the time with the people that I love you, and sure I’m working and making money and making things I’m proud of, but what matters at the end of life?
You wrote the song “Ramona Patron Saint of Silence” as your kind of a letter of gratitude to the fictional character for keeping yourself and your voice alive. What was it like viewing yourself and those things through that kind of lens? Why was it important for Ramona to be the character?
Well, songs work in mysterious and magical ways. I can’t always pretend to understand it. And after being away from music for so long and having not written a song in seven years, I thought maybe I’m done. Maybe I’ve written all I need to write, and it’s time to just listen. And one day I had a copy of Audra Lord’s Your Silence Will Not Protect You sitting on my piano bench beside me. And I was really excited to read that book, and I thought, “Where is my voice?” And I wanted to read that book, and I felt like maybe if I read the book, it would remind me why I needed to speak. But then there was this, just all at once, the song started pouring out of me, and I started singing about losing my voice.
And about the fact that I knew how powerful my voice was. And if I spoke, I was worried that I would literally destroy the world with my voice. And I started singing to this person named Ramona. I didn’t know why. And I looked it up afterwards, and I thought, “Is she a saint? What is the significance of the name Ramona?” And in some ways, I thought also about Ramona. I dunno if you read those books as a kid, but Ramona was always kind of making mistakes and being very human and figuring things out as she went along. So, I think I had this. Sometimes when you don’t have anything to say, there is a real wisdom you learn in not saying anything at all.
And sometimes we don’t always know what it is we want to say. And so that’s silence that sort of holds us in that space until we figure out, until we get really clear on what it is we want to say. That’s a place of deep wisdom. And that was really the energy that I felt like I was working with. And so instead of feeling angry at myself that I had been silent, I grew up on Tori Amos, and she has that song “Silent All These Years”, and it is kind of like “gosh, I’ve been silent for all these years.” I always thought of it as like, “what’s with me? Why did I do this?” And it was sort of a chastising, almost. I mean, there’s a gentleness in that song, too, but this was really like, “Oh, I’m so grateful that I was silent.” I’m so grateful that I had this time to kind of heal myself and take care of myself, and I didn’t feel like I owed anybody anything to be in my grief, to be in my loss. It was really needed.
Sonically, the album is more stripped down compared to your past albums and really leans on piano and vocals. Why was it important to take that approach to this album?
The album is called It’s Okay to Go Back If You Keep Moving Forward. And for me, it was about going back to the place where I started writing music. And that was me at a piano late at night at 19 years old.
And I wanted this to feel like a return to that. And so, we recorded everything live in a room. The vocals were recorded at the same time as the piano, so you can’t separate them. Literally, they are tied together in that the piano bleeds through the vocal mic, and the vocal bleeds through the piano mic. So, you can’t auto-tune anything. You can’t fix anything. You can’t move anything around. It is what it is. And you are also recording the air in that room. So, almost the room is another instrument that we kind of recorded in there.
And for me, it was really important that it be super imperfect. I think in this time of high-tech AI where everything can be fixed and you can remove something you don’t want from the back of a picture, you can remove a sound artifact from a room a buzz, I wanted it all in there. I think that making a record of our flawed humanity is really important in this time. I think we are on the verge of losing that. We cherish perfection, but that’s not the beauty of what being human is about. It’s about the mess and the grief and the anxiety and all of it.
I imagine with the collaborators, you kind of have that in mind with whom you picked.
Yeah, yeah. Ben Bodine played on the whole album, and he toured with Mynabirds in 2010. He’s one of my favorite musicians. He’s actually a jazz pianist and a jazz drummer, and he’s one of the most prolific musicians that I know, way better, technically way better than I’ll ever be. So, he can get in there, but he’s got this skill of sound painting that I just find his tones that he comes up with. That’s my favorite thing that he works with. I knew I wanted Ben in there, and then Pierre de Reeder recorded it, and we recorded it at his studio in Highland Park. And I just went to him and said, “This is my vision. I want it to be basically untouched and as a producer for someone just to be able to listen to that.” And really, when I would say, “What if we added this? What if we added this?” He was like, “Nope, it’s good.” And I would say, “Well, this take isn’t perfect. I do this weird thing with my voice here.” And he was like, “No, that take is perfect. That thing you do with your voice makes the whole song. And even though it’s not what you intended, it’s what happened. And the record of that is what’s needed.”
Some of the songs on the album are older ones. What was it like shining in a new light on those in the strip down approach?
It was really fun. I made a huge list of songs that were possible to go on this record, and we recorded I think 17 total songs and some of them just didn’t work. I wanted to do a stripped-down version of “Generals”, I wanted to do maybe “Body of Work” or some of these songs that were singles from earlier albums, and they just didn’t fit the feel. There was something about the songs that needed to be really introspective. I think that was part of this.
The song “Good Medicine”, I had never actually had that come out physically. It’s only been released digitally in 2016. And we thought about just putting the original version on the record, but it didn’t work. It stuck out. It felt too polished and pretty. And when we re-recorded this version, there was something about it that felt very up to the moment. It was like that original version was talking about the Syrian refugee crisis. It was talking about Brock Turner and his case at Stanford of sexually assaulting a fellow student, and him getting free on his charges. And since then, we’ve witnessed so many men in positions of power escape freely from justice following the traumas that they have enacted on whole populations. And yet, and we have refugee crisis crises everywhere and genocides and wars. So, to sing it again, it’s like all of those things I think came through the voice, sung like Buffalo Flower. I wrote that for indigenous people living in Omaha, thinking about the Indigenous Women of the Plains. And then now to kind of see how that storyline continues, it persists, and everything that has kind of been revealed since that song was first recorded in 2012. And I feel like it’s like the voice gets to carry the continuation of the stories, the chapters that have been added to those stories since they were originally recorded.
Where did you get the idea for the album title?
It just came to me in a flash. That first album is called What We Lose In the Fire, We Gain in the Flood. And it felt like a little mantra, like a little roomy poem or something. And the same thing with this one, I think it just came to me one day, and it’s been really nice to have that as a mantra. Because as I’m getting ready to release the record, sometimes I’ll freak out and think, “Oh God, this isn’t going well, or this isn’t right, or is this a failure already?” And I have to think, right? But the whole point is to go back and to allow it to be small, to allow it just to be songs in the dark of the night and to trust that that’s what I need to move forward. Hopefully, that translated to a need for that as well.
Going back to what you were saying earlier about supporting different events and causes, why do you feel it’s important to be involved beyond just the creative process? How did your upbringing and experiences boost that mentality?
I was really raised on civil rights. My mom encouraged me. I was really raised on all the abolitionists throughout the course of American history for sure. And Nina Simone, for example, is one of my favorite musicians ever. And hearing the ways in which she used her voice to support the Civil Rights movement and to fight for people’s rights and humanity is something that has always inspired me. And that’s a thread that’s very alive in the punk tradition. And growing up in D.C. around Discord Records and Fugazi, for example, it is the same thread that runs through everything. So, it’s always been very much alive in my songs. And part of the reason why I wanted to come back to playing music is sort of recognizing that we need that desperately in this time, and that there are a lot of people who are suffering, particularly right now in America, we have immigrants who are suffering.
Because of American taxpayers’ dollars that are funding so many wars abroad, now at home, we have troops that are being sent into American cities to sort of fight Americans, which is crazy. And what’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank with our tax dollars, and what happens just as a result of where our money goes, that is harmful to people in the Congo, for example, through technology and things like that.
It’s like we are in the midst of another great human rights revolution. It really is just a continuation of what we saw in the sixties, but it’s like new technology, and these problems never go away. They just kind of shift shape and change names. And I think that it is often an artist’s duty to help tell stories around that and help us make sense of it, help us see it, and help us find creative ways to fight against the destructive forces that are trying to kill us all. And I think, recently, following Jane Goodall’s death, it is very clear to me that we are an animal species. We are just like humans. We are just animals, and we are in a precarious place. And I think that anything we can do to come together in community and collaborate in a way that will ensure our survival is important; it feels that dire to me.
In addition to the new album, you’re re-issuing a couple of your previous albums on vinyl. Why was it important to revisit those two?
So, both Generals and Be Here Now are being reissued. They were out of print last fall after I did a tour. Generals, I wrote in 2012, and it’s kind of like a thesis. The thesis question was “Why do we fight, and is there an answer?” And it was a concept album, and the answer I came to was “love is the answer.” And it sounds really silly, but I think it’s really true. And I think it’s not like love on a Valentine’s Day card. It’s like dirty, messy love that gets in there and runs towards the fire when the house is on fire because it loves whoever’s inside of that house and wants to, will risk its life to save it, and then be here now was a protest album I wrote in 2017 when Trump was first elected and being again at him being elected again. And here we are in the second term of his presidency and witnessing so much hate and violence and destruction.
I felt like both of those things needed to be said again. Number one was an emotional response of just being like, “I’m so angry, I don’t know what to do with it. I’m going to throw it all into song, and I just have to get it out there.” It’s like expressionism at its highest, and Generals is very much a “let’s think about this” philosophically, and let’s have an intellectual discussion that somehow results in love. And then you have this album that I made now, which is the, it’s like the feelings in the night, and how do you handle what’s happening outside of you, just in your internal interior world. So, to me, they’re like three points being a complete sphere of human survival, really. It felt important to put them all out together because to me, they’re part of one story of our human experience in that way.
You’re going to be touring across the country this year. What are you most looking forward to from this tour?
I’m excited to raise awareness around immigration and refugee support services that are happening in each city. Hopefully, it will raise awareness and get the community involved in that work. I’m really excited to see old friends that I haven’t seen in a long time. I’m really excited.
I’m playing D.C. I’m playing Arlington, Virginia, and my old bandmate, John Davis from the band Georgie James, is going to join me, and we’re going to sing a couple of old Georgie James songs. And it’s fun the way that life works, right? It’s like in that era of my life, in my twenties, I had that band ,and I thought, this is the world. This is going to be my life. This band is going to be everything. And it didn’t last very long, but both John and I have gone on to lead totally different lives and he just put out a book that he wrote and he runs the punk archives out of the University of Maryland’s library and he’s just such a cool person and has two beautiful kids and beautiful wife and I’m excited to circle back again, to go back to that.
It’s okay to go back if you keep moving forward, which is like we get to go back and revisit some of these songs that we made all these years ago, and that’s going to be so cool to celebrate that, to feel like this is deep, full circle. I’m really excited about that.
Who else is in the touring band?
It’s just me. Yeah, it’s just going to be me and my keyboard and my dog. He doesn’t play anything though, unfortunately. He’s outside. He’s standing outside watching birds and he has a feather stuck to his nose right now. I’m watching him.
Any plans for next year?
I’ll do a West Coast tour in the spring at some point, and it’ll be really nice to get back up the coast. I am sad I’m not going to be in Portland this fall. It’s wild to see what’s happening there with ICE raids and with troops, and I’ve been talking to a lot of my friends on the ground there, and just like, you just want to go hug everybody.
And at the same time, I feel like it is such a blessing that we see it and that it is so in the open, and as a result, people really want to help one another and to really invite in that kind of love and support and in community for people to say, we need that. We need that. Let’s stand up and help each other. That is really wonderful.
You can follow and listen to The Mynabirds via the links below:
Her website: Themynabirds.org/
Facebook: Facebook.com/themynabirds/
Instagram: Instagram.com/laurabird/
YouTube: Youtube.com/@themynabirds
Bandcamp: Themynabirds.bandcamp.com/
Apple Music: The Mynabirds on Apple Music
You can catch The Mynabirds at the following shows:
November 14 – Lincoln, NE @ Undertow Show
November 15 – Omaha, NE @ Undertow Show
November 18 – Minneapolis, MN @ Undertow Show
November 19 – Chicago, IL @ Undertow Show
November 20 – Fort Wayne, IN @ Undertow Show
November 21 – Cleveland, OH @ Undertow Show
November 22 – Philadelphia, PA @ Undertow Show
November 23 – Arlington, VA @ Undertow Show
November 26 – Shepherdstown, WV @ Admiral Analog’s (Free)
November 29 – Cincinnati, OH @ Undertow Show
November 30 – Nashville, TN @ Undertow Show
December 3 – Atlanta, GA @ Undertow Show
December 4 – Birmingham, AL @ Undertow Show
December 5 – New Orleans, LA @ Undertow Show
December 7 – Austin, TX @ Undertow Show
December 8 – Austin, TX @ Undertow Show
December 12 – Phoenix, AZ @ Undertow Show
Joshua is co-founder of Scummy Water Tower. He’s freelanced for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites, including: Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Guitar World, MTV News, Grammy.com, Chicago Magazine, Milwaukee Magazine, MKE Lifestyle, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, A.V. Club, SPIN, Alternative Press, Under the Radar, Paste, PopMatters, American Songwriter, and Relix. You can email him at josh@scummywatertower.com.
