Michelle Jia is a Toronto-based singer-songwriter who recently released her new album, To Name the Wind, via Deli Records. “Clouds of Iowa” is a standout offering from the record, a song that she wrote while on a roadtrip from California to Detroit.
It’s a warm tender slice of indie folk with some gorgeous vocals and arrangements, that channel some of the greats of the genre through a modern framework, reminding of some of the early work of Sharon Van Etten, Adrianne Lenker, and Angel Olsen.
Speaking on the writing of the song, Jia adds:
I wrote this song while on a roadtrip from California to Detroit. I was lying in the back of my friend’s RV and I looked up at the sky, the clouds floating by, in Iowa, and the melody and vibe of the song started to come to me. John Hanson, my producer and I, recorded the vocals and basic instrumentals in Detroit then we asked Davy Jones from Frontier Ruckus to play banjo for us. Once that happened the song “came together,” so to speak, and I started to see this lonely cowboy walking through the American landscape. Americana, dust, cacti, a moon. I asked one of my favourite comic artists, Theo Ellsworth, to draw the cover for me, of this scene. Finally we had John’s friends and family — Marie and Vanessa — to add their vocals to the chorus, in a kind of “Sufjan Stevens” moment.
Enjoy a listen now below.
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