Despite life’s obstacles, Jo Serrapere sees the beauty in herself and the world around her.

The Dearborn singer-songwriter shares that hopeful mindset on her latest double album, The Beautiful Ones, Volume I and Volume II.

“The whole record is about beauty and about seeing beauty through light and dark and the good times and the bad times. It’s most fulfilling to write from a personal [perspective] and try to help people,” said Serrapere, who’s a clinical psychologist and U-M alumna.

“It’s [also] coming to that realization of where I want my music to go. I could just sing in my bedroom and that would be fine … but the whole point is to try to touch other people in the process.”

Serrapere includes 22 tracks that explore her emotional struggles and the growth she’s experienced along the way. Those personal reflections also prompted her to take a more autobiographical approach to songwriting for the album.

“I joke that I’m at an age where I’m going to write my autobiography,” Serrapere said. “I wanted a personal record and all these songs fit in that genre.”

Serrapere features a variety of genres—including folk, blues, rock, and country—along with honest lyrics and emotive instrumentation onThe Beautiful Ones, Volume I and Volume II.

“With this record, I wanted to pay tribute to a lot of those people who raised me. Probably the one person that’s not on there is Tom Waits—even though he’s my favorite—because all of my other records have a lot more Tom Waits on them,” she said.

“I have a little Nirvana, a little R.E.M., and The Cramps, but also the folky stuff. I became a songwriter when I was going through my folk phase, but I was raised on The Cramps and The Beatles.”

I spoke with Serrapere about the album ahead of a November 30 show at The Ark.

Q: You started playing guitar at age 23 and writing songs while completing a degree in clinical psychology at U-M. How did your musical journey progress from there? 
A:  It was after college and I had already graduated from U-M. I saw at Washtenaw Community College that Shari Kane was giving guitar lessons. This is when I was struggling with trying to get over this person I was with and I thought, “I need to become a musician.” I saw that and I took her class and that was the beginning.

[Shari] was an inspiration and I love her to death. When I started playing with Shari, I started getting into Delta blues because that’s what she was into. I fell in love with the blues era where the Delta guys came up north and plugged in. I said, “I’m gonna be a blues player,” and I threw myself into it.

And then I got tendonitis badly and I couldn’t even hold a guitar. I thought, “I finally found what I wanted to do with my life and then the universe took away my arms.” It was good because that’s when I said, “Well, I’m not gonna stop, so I might as well do something … and write songs.” I started writing instead, and I think I’m probably a better writer than I ever would have been a blues player.

Q: How does being a clinical psychologist provide you with new and different perspectives as a songwriter? 
A: Well, it’s like how I’m wired at this point—I’m wired to know my own self. To be good as a psychologist, you have to know your own self enough to not let it interfere with your clients. You have to know where you end and they begin. Self-discovery is front and center all the time, so that shapes my writing, too.

Q: What prompted you to write, record, and release a double album this time? 
A: I had enough songs where I thought it would be a double album. When I looked and saw that I had 25 songs, I thought, “Well, I guess that’s a double album. How am I gonna deal with that?” People don’t even buy single albums anymore, let alone double albums, so that’s why I split them up into two individual volumes. I was raised with the concept of listening to the whole experience.

Q: “Don’t Know Who You Are?” acknowledges a shared fear of uncertainty and a collective desire to connect with the larger world. How did writing this track bring you some comfort and clarity? 
A: It was right at the beginning of the pandemic, so the whole country was shutting down. In the same two weeks of the pandemic, my mom started coming down with dementia and then we had to try to get her out of her house.

It was all this loss at one [time], so I needed to write myself a lullaby. I ended up recording it and putting it on Facebook for my friends. It was for all of us and it was saying, “We’re gonna be OK. We’ll make it. We have to remember that we’re beings of light—we’ll survive.”

Q: “The Beautiful Ones” is an introspective look at self-worth and a longing to see the beauty within yourself. What was it like to look back and reflect on this internal struggle from your adolescence? 
A: I just thought that summed up the record. But the song is about adolescence and struggling with feeling and thinking, “Am I OK?” It’s also about the standard of how we judge ourselves and asking, “Are we lovable? Are we beautiful?” Being a teenager is brutal. I wrote that one about 15 years ago.

Regardless, it’s a lifetime battle, but when you’re a kid, you don’t have anything else to fight with it. At least now I can say, “Well, that’s just ego and beauty is much deeper and all that.” As a kid, I heard those sentiments, but I didn’t believe them.

Q: “The Deeper Part” calls for being your authentic self and understanding the people around you despite their differences. How does this track encourage listeners to examine people on a deeper level? 
A: Our world is so divided and everybody has such strong beliefs about things, especially now. They cling to this identity … but I feel like people are deeper than that. People aren’t just what their beliefs are. I’ll meet somebody who’s a Trump supporter, but they’re the sweetest person in the world. There’s something deeper there, [especially with] how they came up with their beliefs about things. I guess if I was in their shoes … I could have done the same. But their essence is deeper and it’s like dealing with people on that essence level.

Q: “With Your Eyes Closed” examines trusting your instincts and having a healthy sense of skepticism. What inspired you to write a song about following your intuition? 
A: It’s ultimately about faith—not blind faith. It’s about intuition and sometimes seeing deeper. Even if the stuff in front of you looks like it’s going to be horrible, have faith that it’s not. I have a couple of songs that I call my spiritual envy songs. They’re from the point of view of somebody who’s saying, “You’re so cool and spiritual and I am not.” This [song] is saying, “You can do all these things and how do you do it?”, and then I’m just struggling.

Q: “Let Your Dirty Ride” celebrates the beauty of imperfection and the freedom of abandoning unattainable standards in life. How did this bluesy track become a positive anthem for uniqueness? 
A: That’s what it’s about. It’s putting it all out there—dirt and all. It’s dirty, it’s a little sexy. Just be your authentic self once and for all.

Q: “This World Is Gonna Break Your Heart” is a reality check about the ups and downs of change and how it’s inevitable. How did your experiences with change inspire this track? 
A: There’s no way around it. There’s gonna be beauty, but nobody’s getting out alive. It doesn’t mean that life isn’t worth living because you suffer in it at times. I’ve had a lot of people say, “God, your music is depressing,” and I say, “No, there’s hope in there.” I get teased about that nicely. All of my songs are positive if you listen to them. I just don’t deny all the darkness that you have to deal with.

Q: Tell me about the creative process for The Beautiful Ones, Volume I and Volume II. What was it like to work with co-producer David Roof at Rooftop Recording? 
A: There are a number of songs on these records that I had written over the past 20 years, but they didn’t fit the styles of [previous] records that I was doing at the time. Maybe half of the record is new songs and the other half is orphans. By the time the pandemic hit, most of the songs had been written. I think there are only a couple of songs on there that I wrote after the pandemic. I spent most of the pandemic recording it with Dave [Roof] and it was finished at the beginning of this year.

Dave and I have very similar personalities in some ways, so we work well together. He’s talented and knowledgeable … [and] he’s good at listening to what I want, and he doesn’t push. I respect him and I’m open to his ideas. Most of the production was [mine], but I would still say, “How can we get this sound?”, and he would know how to do it.

Q: You collaborated with a bunch of musicians on your double album: David Roof (bass, guitars, sampler, piano, glockenspiel), Stuart Tucker (drums), John Devine (guitar), Dave Keeney (guitar), Mike Lynch (organ, accordion), Joel Jackson (pedal steel), Sara Gibson (cello), Andy Wilson (trumpet), Walter Prettyman (violin), Via Mardot (theremin, musical saw), and backing vocalists Sophia Hanifi, Jen Sygit, Julianna Wilson, Michelle Held, and Shannon Lee. How did they help elevate their respective tracks? 
A: They’re some of my favorite people and I wanted them on the record. Shannon laid down a harmony part … and I wanted Shannon on there. I wanted Michelle on there, so I had Michelle do a part. I also wanted Sophia on there because I always joke that Sophia could sing the phone book and I would buy it—she has the best voice.

I wanted Dave [Keeney] on there because he’s so tasty, and I always wanted to have Mike Lynch on a record. For years, we’ve been talking about recording and it’s never worked out. He’s always been on tour or something, but this was the one time he could.

Q: What are your plans for your November 30 show at The Ark? 
A: I’ve been getting ready going over the songs and trying to figure out the choreography of who’s coming on so half the show isn’t just people coming on and off the stage. That’s a whole nother art.

I want most of the people that were on the record—and that live relatively close—to be there. I have a lot of people on the record, and I have about 10 or 11 people who will be on stage with me at different points. The lineup includes David Roof (multi-instrumentalist), Stuart Tucker (drums), John Devine (guitar), Dave Keeney (guitar), Mike Lynch (organ, accordion), Joel Jackson (pedal steel), Sara Gibson (cello), Walter Prettyman (violin), Michelle Held (backing vocals), Sophia Hanifi (backing vocals), and Shannon Lee (backing vocals).

All the songs are off the two records, and I’m only planning selections from them. I think my encore is the only one that’s not. If people want an encore, I’m going to throw in an old, fun one.

Q: What’s up next for you after the show? 
A: The election has inspired me and I’ve written five songs in the last month or so. It’s like I’m getting my Bob Dylan on. I’m at an age now … where I’m asking, “What’s the purpose of getting up there with a guitar and singing to people?” And then I’m thinking, “It’s to bring them together and to try to make people feel better.” And that’s my day job, too. It gives me purpose. [The election] is a horrible outcome, but it also gets my activist hat back on.

Lori Stratton is a library technician, writer for Pulp, and writer and editor of strattonsetlist.com.

Jo Serrapere performs November 30 with Michelle Held at The Ark, 316 S. Main St. in Ann Arbor. For tickets, visit The Ark’s website.