In the leafy tree-lined residential streets of Inara George’s neighborhood in Los Angeles, I am lost. Her house number doesn’t exist on the street I’ve turned on and reception is patchy. I call her anyway and she tells me she’s standing outside and can’t see me. I realize I’m on the wrong street and shout, “Stay there!” as I careen over to the next block. There she is, fresh and lovely and welcoming in front of a gorgeous two-story home. Once we settle at the dining table, she informs me that she lives next door, but that she and her filmmaker husband, Jake Kasdan, use this house as their office.
To call Inara and Jake nepo babies would be deeply unfair considering how noteworthy their respective accomplishments are, but she is quick to mention it. Jake (Jumanji, Bad Teacher) has Star Wars pedigree with his father, Lawrence, penning four of the scripts. Inara is the daughter of Little Feat’s Lowell George, who died shortly before her fifth birthday. She jokes that their three children are nepo grandbabies and I point out that it’s from both sides, which makes her laugh even more.
It’s these lovely children that have kept Inara busy for the last few years. She has an amazing run with the Bird and the Bee, her project with super-producer/songwriter Greg Kurstin—whose birthday dinner she’s attending after this interview. The Bird and the Bee released nine albums in 15 years, the last one in 2020. Interspersed with those, Inara released solo albums and a cross-section of collaborative material. Earlier this year, she released Songs of Douglass & Littell with the titular musician/composer Eliot Douglass and lyricist/librettist Philip Littell. The album features jazzy reimaginations of songs written decades ago.
“To be completely honest, I was very active in my music career, and then I had kids, so I have been making records here and there, whenever it came up,” she says. “My realization was, if I’m going to do this, I want to do something that’s fun and interesting. I’d been reconnecting with my friends Eliot and Philip, and we had gone through these old songs that we’d all sung together, and I thought, somebody has to hear these songs because they’re so gorgeous.”
The album’s songs are from theater productions. Inara had done with Eliot and Philip, primarily the early ’ 90s AIDS crisis work, No Miracle, A Consolation. The songs were never recorded or heard by anyone other than attendees of those performances—or friends of the writers. Inara had the idea of approaching the songs with a jazz bent, pulled a band together, and booked a show at the intimate venue Healing Force of the Universe in Pasadena a couple of years ago. Producer Mike Andrews attended and suggested recording them. They played a few more shows to tighten up the songs, Jeff Babko wrote the orchestral arrangements, and they were ready to go into the studio. They very quickly completed the sessions without giving any thought to where the product would land or how it would do commercially.
“Life is too short for that,” says Inara. “You just make the record that not only that you want to make, but how you want to make it and who you want to be with. The only things you should think about are: What is it going to feel like? Are you going to challenge yourself? Is this totally out there? Mike wanting to do it gave it validation and I thought it would be a fun jaunt in the studio, which it was. Super fun.”
This month, Inara is playing select dates across North America, including two nights with two performances each at Los Angeles’ Blue Note with Van Dyke Parks. “Someone told me recently that you think about a record as adding four more songs to your set,” she says. “If you are a working musician, and you tour a lot, and you have a real fanbase, people will always come out to see you. When she said that, I thought, ‘I don’t have to change minds with this record if I have enough people that will come to the shows.’”
If you spend some time on her social media, Inara is easily winning audiences—at least virtual ones—over. She’s a natural with the front-facing camera, performing her own songs, covers, chatting, unboxing, and other influencer-type content. She takes it beyond the virtual with postcards she’ll mail to you on request, vinyl you can purchase, street teams you can join, and nonprofits she partners with in every city.
She’ll be performing songs from all her projects, including the Bird and the Bee’s “Again and Again,” which has had a viral moment. She asked fans what they’d like to see her perform and got a range of requests, including some obscure songs, which she’s come up with some inventive version of and assures me, “I got Greg’s blessing. It’ll be my Eras Tour.” She says to expect four selections from Songs of Douglass and Littrell, four from her catalog, four Bird and the Bee numbers, and a couple of surprises. She has musicians from each town joining her on stage, making each performance unique.
Her children will be joining her on tour as it is their summer vacation. “It’s really cute because they wanted me to go on the road, and they wanted me to take them. They think it’s really cool,” says Inara.
“It’s fascinating how quickly you became the main hub for the kids,” she continues. “Kids change things, and it sort of rolls back the clock. The way that we raise children—especially in America—it is not a one-person job, and it’s made into a one-person job. It’s lonely and it’s frustrating. When I had small kids and I would see a woman do something horrible, there was this little part of me that totally got it. There are times where you are losing your mind, and you could see how someone who was not mentally stable could just lose it.”
The switch from full-time musician to full-time mother was not seamless for Inara, although you would never know it from the complete dedication she has to her offspring. “When I had my first kid, he would say ‘Mom’ to me, and I’d be like, ‘Me?’” she remembers. “It took a minute because music is not my hobby. Music was who I was. There’s also a guilt thing, especially being a woman, that whatever I’m doing has to be useful. I think of it now as I get to be creative.”
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.spinmagazine.com ’
