Into Timeless Territory

During a week's worth of conversations surrounding the creation of her third and most adventurous release, Like, Love, Lust & the Open Halls of the Soul, Jesse Sykes and I have covered everything from her formative childhood experiences to her artistic aspirations and personal fears. However, what I really want to know about now is the necklace I've seen her wearing every day since we first met nearly eight years ago. You can't find a promo photo of her where she's not wearing it, and it's strangely difficult to imagine what she would look like if the ornate, antiqued medallion wasn't resting against the slope of her clavicle. "When I walk, I always go like this," she says, her slender fingers fluttering to the turquoise stones encrusting the piece. "Because I'm always waiting for the day a stone falls out. It sounds corny, but I think that'll be the sign from the universe that it will be time to change."

Coming from anyone else, it would sound corny, but coming from Sykes, it's right in character. The 39-year-old musician is prone to notions of fate, and her background as a visual artist shapes her relation to the physical world as much as it influences her earthy, intelligent approach to song composition. It makes perfect sense that she'd harbor a strong sentimental attachment to a decorative talisman.

"There's something about the ritual," she says. "I put this on every morning before I even wash my face, and something about it reminds me that I'm in this body and on some level empowers me."

Empowerment is something Sykes was sorely in need of when I initially encountered her at a summer party thrown by Hattie's Hat owner and No Depression magazine co-publisher Kyla Fairchild in 1999. At the time, she was visibly shaken from the recent disintegration of her marriage to then-bandmate Jim Sykes. The couple had been playing together in the Fairport Convention– flavored country combo Hominy, so she was not only dealing with the sorrow and disorientation of an impending divorce but mourning the loss of her musical outlet.

As, well, fate would have it, she had also just met former Whiskeytown guitarist Phil Wandscher, who was working in the kitchen at Hattie's Hat at the time. Wandscher was nursing his own wounds, having recently relocated from Raleigh, N.C., after being shoved out of Whiskeytown by the band's notoriously turbulent frontman, Ryan Adams. The pair's shared emotional hangovers led first to bitter commiseration, but eventually ignited a very passionate, occasionally tempestuous romance, and ultimately resulted in the most satisfying and successful collaborative relationship of their musical careers.

The rough road to Sykes' currently triumphant state is atypical on many levels. For one, things didn't really begin to take off for her until her mid-30s, after many years of paying her dues on the Seattle club circuit. Even more significantly, through very careful strategic planning and smart choices, she's managed to achieve a slow-burning level of self-sustaining success, driven purely by hard work and without the benefit of landing in any blogosphere buzz bin. She and her band, the Sweet Hereafter, have produced three albums in a little over five years, a relatively relaxed pace by today's turn-and-burn production standards. And while hardly living the lush life, she and Wandscher have largely been able to forsake day jobs. However great her creative accomplishments have been, the most impressive development I see in both Sykes and Wandscher is a previously unthinkable level of humility and centeredness. Where they once jointly lashed out at anyone who criticized them and frequently complained about the lack of attention they were receiving, the couple have found a space where professionalism and personal responsibility have moved to the forefront.

"I now so completely understand the mechanics of how things work in this business that I don't take things personally anymore," affirms Sykes. "I've never thought of quitting, but I've been kicked in the chest and let it get to me. The only difference now is that the anguish only lasts 24 hours. You realize that quitting is not an option. You don't have a choice."

This is not to say that their quirks, both irksome and endearing, don't still exist to a certain degree. Sykes is a disarmingly intelligent and verbose character whose reflections tend to be tangential and long-winded, regardless of the subject at hand. "Long story short" is a phrase she interjects into conversations with humorous frequency, and her fear of being misinterpreted pops out in her proclivity for editing herself (and occasionally Wandscher) midsentence. In contrast, he tends to have fewer filters, making no apologies for other musicians he doesn't care for or philosophies he considers foolish. He also is willing to admit that he's grown up a lot in the last couple of years, thanks to both life experience and the positive influence of Sykes.

"She's just very sure of herself, but not full of herself," he says, gesturing toward her as we sit in the couple's antique-filled Fremont apartment. "And that can really affect how you relate to people when you are playing music. I kind of started falling into that trap of being a shit to the crowd. I've learned that that's just not cool. Being a prick—that's not rock 'n' roll, that's just being a prick."