Beth Orton Wants to Write a Song With Tom Waits, and Doesn’t Want To Talk About Her Age

Folktronica artist Beth Orton is on the road. Her upcoming show Sept. 21 at Dallas’ Kessler Theater comes almost exactly one year from the release of her critically acclaimed album, Weather Alive, and will be Orton’s first Dallas concert in over 20 years.

Orton isn’t interested in talking about the past, though, at least not in any specific way. For her, getting older isn’t about dwelling in the past as much as it is about comparing the past to the present and seeing how much you’ve gained, how much you’ve lost, what there is to recover and what there is left to do.

“I think we’re expected to kind of talk about our lives in this very open way,” she says. “The ways that my life were difficult then, I don’t think I really want to talk about it in a way. I think there’s definitely something that happens between the ages of 30 and 40 and around that time that might take people by surprise. I think those years are quite hard for some people, and I think there’s this expectation that everything happens in this kind of growth pattern of, like, things get better.”

Life is full of stumbling blocks, though, and the unexpected lies waiting behind every corner, and when things don’t get better, it can cause some serious depression. This, however, is an opportunity for learning and growth.

“I’m interested in this kind of wisdom of youth versus the kind of wisdom of years,” Orton says. “There’s a knowing when you’re younger, like it’s just an innate knowing. You’re like, ‘Yep, this is how it is. Yep. This is fact. This is fiction. No one’s gonna knock me off this. I know what’s what.’ And you do. You do know that. But then life gets in the way, and then you actually have to experience the what. You have to live it, and lived experience is very different.”

With over 30 years in the music industry now, Orton has lived through a lot of “what” and is thinking a lot more about where she’s going.

“What’s interesting for me in writing is coming out the other side of that,” she says. “It’s an exciting time. It’s a fertile time. It’s a different kind of fertility … “

Orton pauses, keenly aware that for a woman in her 50s, talking about fertility can prompt some unwanted questions.

“I’m sick of people asking me about my age,” she says. “It’s bullshit. No one asked a guy like, ‘Oh, and tell me what it’s like to be an old dude in the music industry.'”

Orton started writing songs when she was 19 after leaving a Buddhist monastery. It was a 28-day retreat, living with the nuns and following their routine. She loved the experience so much that she ended up staying for another month.

“I found a peace and a space while I was in there that I’d never experienced,” she recalls. “I was kind of aware that I may never experience it again, which is why I stayed and did another two courses retreats, shorter ones, two 10-day ones.”

During her time there, Orton would sit three days and three nights without sleep, meditating the whole time, and it’s to that meditative space that Orton is always attempting to return when she’s writing music.

“As time has gone on, I’ve really respected that that is a space that I enter into and possibly even more so than ever on this last record, Weather Alive. I really started to understand that that’s more consciously what I was doing possibly. I think what happened on this record was I held onto that initial kind of essence, that initial feeling, and the musicians I work with as well, that kind of meditative feel remained. I’m really happy about that. I really love that that happened.”

There was a period after the release of Orton’s previous album, Kidsticks, an album inspired by her children, during which the songwriter remembers not writing very much at all. Much of the album had been finished before 2016 , and it wasn’t until 2018 that she really got to writing songs again.

“In that time, I moved countries. I moved house, twice. Life stuff, kids, schools, bullshit, you know, all that stuff that you do,” she says. “2018, this record started to bubble up. I didn’t know what it was going to be. I was just writing and I wasn’t really writing for a record particularly.”

You wouldn’t expect an artist of Orton’s caliber, who has spent decades on the outskirts of the music world recording with diverse artists such as electronic duo Chemical Brothers and English folk icon Bert Jansch, to really care about what critics have to say, but after seeing Weather Alive receive such high praise from critics around the world, Orton is immensely grateful.

“Well, I’ll be honest with you, that it really meant a lot to me,” she says. “It was really encouraging. And I think one of the reasons it was encouraging is because it just seems like people really got it. It wasn’t just good press, a lot seemed to understand the record.”

There’s no telling what Orton will do after she wraps up her tour across the U.S., but there will definitely be more songs to write and people to work with.

“I’d love to work with, well, I feel like if I say it, it will never happen,” she says with a laugh. “I’d love to write a song with Neil Young. I’d love to write a song with Joni Mitchell or Tom Waits, you know. It would be just so fucking interesting to sit in a room with them and write.”