“Sometimes I wish I didn’t feel things so deeply,” Marissa Nadler confides, soft-spoken yet assured, “but it does make it easier to write from a place of feeling.”
It’s a telling revelation, suggestive not only of uncommon honesty and candor but, as well, of insecurities that often accompany such insight. For the 32-year-old singer/songwriter, who is currently recording her next full-length studio album, the qualities that largely inform her aesthetic are also those which reveal her at her most vulnerable.
Consider her most recent works, Marissa Nadler and The Sister, released in 2011 and 2012, respectively, on Nadler’s own Box of Cedar Records. Containing some of her most inspired and affecting songwriting to date, these companion works—“They were recorded in the same studio,” she notes. “Some songs were recorded in the same session.”—illustrate Nadler broadening the scope of her craft and refining signature distinctions that have underscored her music now for nearly a decade.
Nadler, a native of Massachusetts and alumnus of Rhode Island School of Design, was already a seasoned visual artist in multiple disciplines when her debut, Ballads of Living and Dying, was released in 2004. Evoking folk’s acoustic properties (though not necessarily its most traditional or rigid song structures), the album was enriched by the nimble flow of epic poetry with the sort of narrative sweep found in short fiction. Such isn’t to suggest that Nadler’s subjects are contrived, however. As well she insists, “Pretty much everything is very autobiographical stories about people I know.”
In composing the songs for Marissa Nadler and The Sister, Nadler sought new ways of making her music accessible to as many listeners as possible. For instance, she says, “I kind of only recently have discovered the art of the bridge, of things that happen just once in a song to have this really memorable moment. I don’t think I really understood what a bridge was before because I didn’t go to music school. I was a self-taught singer and guitar player. So I just kind of called a song done when it was done.”
As her skills have improved so too has her confidence. “I know some more about music now,” Nadler explains, “and realize how effective a key change or a bridge can be to give a song a little bit more momentum and a narrative arc. I definitely feel that these songs have more of a build, [in] trying to keep people compelled throughout the song.
“I want my music to affect a lot of people,” she continues, adding that her songwriting during this particular period was often inspired by artists whose music had resonated with her in a similarly universal way. “I’d been listening to a lot of records, like Tammy Wynette records and old-school country. I like the mixes on those records where the vocal is really up front.”
Manifested for the most part on the eponymous album, a song like “The Sun Always Reminds Me of You,” for instance, with its steel guitar lending an air of bittersweet nostalgia, wouldn’t sound out of place in some roadhouse honky-tonk pouring out of a Wurlitzer otherwise stocked with George Jones and Loretta Lynn laments. Likewise, “Baby I Will Leave You in the Morning” conjures an air of earthy, flesh-and-blood eroticism not unlike what Bobbie Gentry was producing in her prime—or even of Kris Kristofferson’s most intimately informed classics.
While the same vocal lucidity is preserved on The Sister, the album is sparser and more ruminative by comparison. In fact except for a few select embellishments—the snare shots that punctuate “Constantine,” the swirling ebb-and-flow effects that surface throughout “In a Little Town”—Nadler sings with scarcely more than her own acoustic guitar as accompaniment.
Regardless of their musical context the songs on both albums evoke a visceral sense of immediacy, of a moment, as if borne out of a burst of inspiration. Nadler infers as much, describing her songwriting process as one that seems prone to distraction. “I won’t write for a couple months,” she explains, “and then I’ll write all the songs in one sitting. I generally wait until I have a lot of emotions built up about something. Then I sit and write a whole collection of songs all at the same time.”
The emotional transparency of her storytelling makes Nadler all the more susceptible to scrutiny, though, especially when she steps before a live audience. “It’s really painful for me to get up in front of crowds,” she concedes, adding that embarking on a full-fledged tour never ceases to be a nerve-wracking experience. “It takes me four or five shows for me to get into the zone where I’m not just petrified or nervous and sick all day, because I’m worried I’m going to fail.”
Nonetheless, she acknowledges, “Something’s still compelling me to keep doing it. I think it’s the desire to be sharing something with somebody else, or connecting with people.”
Even still, whatever sense of empathy or solace her songs offer listeners, they provide to her as well—perhaps even more so. “I’ve always been really sensitive,” Nadler concludes, “and I think art is the way I cope.”
—All photographs by Courtney Brooke Hall
For more information on Marissa Nadler, please visit the artist’s official website and follow her updates on Facebook and Twitter.
“I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do,” Delbert McClinton says with matter-of-fact indignance, personifying the maverick reputation that often precedes him while in the same breath suggesting how he may have earned it in the first place. “I’ve never really been a part of the record-selling industry because I haven’t sold that many records. But I do what I want to do. It makes me feel good, and that’s really all that matters to me. Especially nowadays, I’m not trying to impress anybody. I’m not trying to have a career. I’ve got a career.”
Indeed for more than five decades McClinton, 72, has patented his own brand of roadhouse blues, R&B, rockabilly, and country with a hellraiser’s exhilaration and a troubadour's introspective soul. An indefatigable live performer, he first hit the stage in the nightclubs of his native Texas, singing and blowing harp and even backing such mythic bluesmen as Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin’ Wolf, and Jimmy Reed on occasion. He got his first break—at least his harmonica playing did—by way of the 1962 Bruce Chanel hit, “Hey Baby,” but hitting the big time was no sure thing for the next several years. Still, while he produced some of his most definitive material during this rather tentative period—he penned songs like “Two More Bottles of Wine,” “Victim of Life’s Circumstances,” and “B-Movie Boxcar Blues,” while such artists as Emmylou Harris and The Blues Brothers rushed to cover them—it wasn’t until the dawn of the ‘90s, beginning with a string of albums (I’m With You, Never Been Rocked Enough, Nothing Personal) that McClinton truly found his groove.
As illustrated by his latest LP, Blind, Crippled, and Crazy (its title borrowed from an old O.V. Wright song), McClinton still has plenty of groove to lose. The album reunites him with fellow Texas singer/songwriter Glen Clark, with whom he recorded two pivotal albums, 1972’s Delbert & Glen and 1973’s Subject To Change. They’ve remained good friends despite each man having followed his own professional path in the interim years, and the way McClinton describes their palpable chemistry it seems they've just picked up where they'd left off. “This record feels good,” affirms McClinton, “and feeling good is a good thing anywhere you can get it.”
How did making this new album with Mr. Clark compare to the ones you made with him 40 years ago?
I think it was better. We knew more what we were doing this time. It all happened so naturally. Glen and I have always just been able to sing together, and I never doubted it for a minute that it would work because he’s the only guy that I’ve ever really been able to sing and do harmonies [with] that, I think… Well, it stirs me inside when we sing together—that’s the best way I could say it—and I don’t get stirred much anymore.
Was singing and writing songs always in the cards for you?
Well, I don’t know. I never thought about it until when I was about 24 years old, this girl I’d gone to high school with—she was married and had two kids, lived across the street—she said, “When are you gonna get a job? Are you still gonna be doing this when you’re 30?” And I said, “Well, if I’m lucky.” [Laughs] There are a few memories from my childhood I remember…
I was born in Sweetwater, Texas, and in the summertime I would go out and visit my favorite cousin, who was the same age as I was. His dad was mean, and he was especially mean when he drank. I went to visit him, and we had a bed set up in the back yard with an old mattress on it. We’d sleep out there at night; it was good weather most of the time there. This particular time I was there and I was singing an old song, “Hey Joe”—Hey Joe, where’d you get that pretty girl?—and my uncle came running out in that backyard and he said, “Who’s doing that?” It just scared the shit out of us. I said, “It was me.” He said, “Boy, that’s good!” He turned around and became my best friend, and all the time I was there he never got drunk [again]. He drove a milk-truck delivery, and we’d get up at three in the morning and go and deliver milk, but before we’d start out on the route all the truck drivers would congregate at the doughnut shop. He had me up on the bar singing, and all of ‘em just really, really liked it. I remember thinking, “Hey, I may be onto something.”
Singing came as natural to you as anything.
It did. It’s as natural as breathing.
A lot of people think they can sing when they can't. Was there something that let you know you really could sing well?
Yes. It made me feel so good. It was an outlet for me beyond anything I’d ever known—and still is. I recognize that. I didn’t know what it was in the beginning, but I recognized it as something that sustained me, so to speak. I mean, during hard times I could pick up a guitar, go and get off somewhere by myself, play and sing and make everything better. I still can most of the time.
What drove you to go from solely being a singer to a songwriter? What was the catalyst?
I reached a point where… Writing a song is just where you make money, not singing other people’s songs. So I started trying to dig in a little deeper. Then when I moved to Nashville in ’89 I hooked up with a longtime friend of mine—used to be in my band—Gary Nicholson, and he and I started writing together all the time. That opened up a whole new avenue for me and it has just grown from there. It put me over a hump. I was coming out of a divorce and the IRS had taken my house in Texas, and I’d come to Nashville to try to turn it around. Because I knew more people from Texas in Nashville that I wanted to be inspired by and hang out with than I did in Texas. And there just wasn’t anything going on in Texas, not for somebody who wanted to do what I wanted to do. But in Nashville there’s a studio in every corner and all the publishing companies… You can write a song and put it right in the artist’s hand within 30 minutes of writing it. It seemed like a good place to be. So that’s where I moved, and I did turn it around. It worked. It’s still working. In fact, it’s getting better.
What drives you at this point to keep writing, to keep creating your own music?
The passion. The passion is still there. … The thing about songwriting is you have to expose yourself to it every day. Morning is the best time for me. I’ll get me a cup of coffee and I’ll even sit down with a guitar or piano, and just start musing, so to speak, trying to get something musically going that feels like something that I want to do. Or you’ll hear a phrase, you know, a three-word phrase, whatever. I’ll hear it and say, “Ooh, that’s a good line. I could use that somewhere,” and I’ll write it down. It’s just being aware and having the passion to do it. I’m not aware of much else. [Laughs]
I’ve spoken with songwriters who are actually reluctant to reveal themselves in what they write.
I’ve never thought of that. I do my best to reveal what I feel in songs. That’s the beautiful thing about words, man. There’s so many ways to use them, and I love words. I just love words. Words are music. There’s so many variables, you know? I’ve always been someone that does not necessarily use proper English. But proper English used properly is poetry. When I write songs I’ve always written the word the way I’m gonna pronounce it because, well, it’s just the way I talk and the way I hear it. It’s the accent, I guess, and I sing like I think.
Yeah, sometimes “ain’t got” works better than “don’t have.”
Yeah. Well, I’ve always used “ain’t” and never for a minute thought it was wrong—still don’t until someone points it out. It’s just part of my vernacular. Not that I try to sound like a hillbilly all the time, but everybody I know uses “ain’t” just like it’s a word. It’s especially good for expression. And who says it’s not a word, you know? Sure has been a word all my life.
Because you cover so much ground stylistically—rock 'n' roll, gospel, R&B, blues, country, folk—do you see what you do as blurring those distinctions or do you not pay any mind to such distinctions in the first place?
If I find a song—I don’t care what kind of song it is—if I believe I can do it, if I want to do it, I can do it. And it moves all through those influences that I’ve got. It just happened that way. I didn’t ever sit and think, “I’m gonna try to do this to that,” but at the same time I always get two visions of things. For example, an album I would like to make that I haven’t done would be “Jimmy Reed singing Hank Williams songs and Hank Williams singing Jimmy Reed songs.” That’d be fun!
To sing in those styles, you mean?
Yeah, Hank Williams in Jimmy Reed style, and Jimmy Reed in Hank Williams style. It’d be so much fun. The songs just work. Jimmy Reed’s music and Hank Williams’ music is the same thing; you just use a little different instrumentation and put emphasis on different syllables.
It's a popular notion that the great artists turn out their best work in their youth. Then there are those like yourself—Tom Waits and Buddy Guy also come to mind—who improve with age and experience.
Well, I agree with you, and that is something that I hold so incredibly dear. I believe that I have not only done what I’ve wanted to do, but done it my way and gotten better at it. That’s a great place to be. It just makes for a good life.
It’s also a testament to your talent.
Like I said, I’ve been a really lucky guy because I never sold any records until I was 53 years old. That part of my life was the beginning of the best part of my life. I’m loving this, going through the changes. Everybody should be lucky enough to live as long as I have and be happy.
Blind, Crippled, and Crazy is available now on New West Records. For more information on Delbert McClinton, please visit the artist's official website.
Right about now, Meiko is on the road—literally—en route from a gig last night at the Majestic Theatre in Madison, Wisconsin to the one she’s playing tomorrow night at the Walnut Room in Denver, Colorado. It’s quite a haul, but she doesn’t seem to mind. “The tour is going awesome,” she says without any trace of artifice or fatigue. “A couple of long drives, but it’s cool.” It’s her first as a headliner, but if the gains she’s made in support of self-titled debut are a portent of what lay ahead, it certainly won’t be her last.
Meiko—who was raised in the small town of Roberta, Georgia and currently lives in Los Angeles—has been ambitiously on the rise for the past two years, having independently released her enchanting batch of folk-pop confections in 2007. She subsequently signed with the Myspace/Interscope label, re-issuing Meiko in 2008 with one additional song, “Boys With Girlfriends,” which soon topped the iTunes Singer/Songwriter chart.
All the while, Meiko paid her dues, opening for the likes of Mat Kearney and Joshua Radin as well as partaking in the ever-popular Hotel Café tour with such artists as Rachael Yamagata, Erin McCarley, and Priscilla Ahn. Most recently, she collaborated with the Crystal Method on “Falling Hard,” the closing track of their latest album, Divided By Night.
“It’s been really, really good,” Meiko replies when asked how audiences are responding to her current live shows, but the same could also be said for how her career is progressing. In a conversation with music critic Donald Gibson, she discusses her ongoing evolution as an artist, including where (and from who) she finds inspiration to write as well as what she has planned for the future.
When you moved to Los Angeles, was it with the intention of having this career?
Not at all. I was in Georgia; I went to college for one semester and I was trying to figure out what I really wanted to do. And I decided to take a break and go hang out in Miami for a little bit with my sister. Then once I got there, she wanted to move to L.A. and I followed her.
Do you think living in Georgia, having come from such a small town, affected your songwriting or has an effect on your songwriting?
Probably [in] the simplicity of my lyrics. There’s a way I like to write, [of] things that people can relate to and things that I can relate to, usually. So yeah, I would say that probably has something to do with me coming up from a simple town, simple upbringing.
I’ve read where you’ve said your songs are autobiographical. When you’re performing them, do you have to revisit the circumstances in which you wrote them? Or can you sing them with conviction regardless?
I usually do think about how I felt when I was writing the song. That kind of helps it be not so contrived. But yeah, I do go back there. And I’m not bummed out or anything when I sing them. I’m just remembering how it felt when I was there.
One song that really strikes me is “Hiding.” From what I gather in the lyrics, it seems like you’re writing about compensating your own sense of worth, your own sense of who you are, to be with someone else. Is that an accurate description?
Not really. I actually wrote that song about my mom. I’d had kind of a strange relationship with her where I really didn’t know how to get in touch with her at a certain point. Originally the lyrics were, “Oh, now, Mama, you…” and I was like, “Well that sounds weird.” So I changed it to “baby.” I’ve actually never told anybody that before.
“Under My Bed” seems to be about, after a breakup, all you’re left with are tangible souvenirs.
That’s exactly what it was. When I moved to L.A., I moved with my sister, but my boyfriend that I had in Georgia eventually moved to L.A. with us. I ended up breaking up with him, of course, because everybody does that. You go to L.A. with somebody and try to make it work and then break up. And I just remember moving all my stuff out and going through all these things that had kind of morphed into each other, mine and his. I just remember thinking, “Should I take this? Do I want these pictures of me and him?” Of course I took them. And I moved into [my] new place and didn’t really know what to do with them. I put them in a box, stuck them under my bed. Eventually I acquired a few more boxes from a few more relationships. And I haven’t gone through them since. I probably should throw them away at some point.
On “Piano Song,” where you sing, “I try so hard not to show this side of me,” are you saying you don’t want to reveal any vulnerability to someone who you may be attracted to?
It’s [about] not wanting to reveal to someone how much I miss [him]. I wrote that song when I was waiting for somebody to come back home and I didn’t know when… That’s where the “counting down the hours and counting up the days” [came from]. I didn’t have an exact date…and I didn’t want [him] to know how absolutely dorky I was about [him]. It was a new relationship where I was trying to be the cool one, but totally obsessing behind closed doors. And I wrote that song on piano. I was house sitting for friend[s] and they didn’t have any guitars. I was really inspired to write and I just sat at the piano. That was the first and last piano song that I ever wrote.
You haven’t written one since on a piano?
No, no. [Laughs] I don’t play piano at all, obviously, with those simple clanking of the keys.
But that’s what makes it so endearing. You don’t come off as Rachmaninoff; that’s what makes it appealing to people. Are you working on anything for a subsequent album?
I’ve been writing a lot lately. And when I’m not touring, I go back home and kind of get in my studio and record with my friend. We have about six or seven songs recorded. I hope that, by the end of this year, to get in for a good month or so and maybe try to finish up something, either an EP or a record. I’ve been playing a few new songs in my live shows and I’m excited to get them recorded. I think a lot of the true-blue fans are kind of ready for me to hurry up and put something out.
How do you measure your progress as a songwriter?
I look at the different topics that I write about. It’s not like I try to write about different things, but when I do write a song that’s not just about being pissed off at some guy or some guy’s girlfriend, I know that I’m kind of moving on to a different level.
And I also look at the way I play guitar. Because there’s a hole you can get stuck in, playing the same kind of rhythm or playing the same kind of chords. Expanding my knowledge and trying to learn—and trying to learn other ways of playing guitar—is another part of it.
When I was little, when I’d just started playing guitar, I would learn a couple of chords and I would just write. I would instantly write a song. And then I’d learn a new chord and I’d write with all those chords. And then I got to the point where I knew, pretty much, all the guitar chords that I felt like I needed to play. Now I try to learn something else because usually that inspires me to write something new.
So you’re still trying to expand your knowledge.
Oh, yeah. Even getting a new guitar will [inspire] me. I went to Spain for New Year’s and I got a Flamenco guitar. So then I started playing a lot, picking a lot, finding different picking styles.
How did the track you have on the new Crystal Method album come about?
It was really random. I was playing a show and the guys from the Crystal Method were just in the audience. They approached me afterward and asked if I’d be interested in writing a song with them and I was like, “Sure.”
You wrote the lyrics?
Yeah, they gave me a couple of songs without words or anything and I really liked that one; it was the slowest one.
You mentioned on your blog once that, while you were waiting in line at a store, a girl’s cell phone rang with your song, “Boys With Girlfriends,” as its ringtone. That had to have been surreal.
It was. A lot of weird emotions were happening. I was really excited and I wanted to be like, “That’s my song!” but then I was also totally embarrassed at the same time. I just kind of…giggled about it.
That’s a lot better than hearing your music in an elevator.
Yeah, totally. [Laughs] Or an Applebee’s.
For more information, including upcoming tour dates, visit Meiko's Myspace page.
Posts
