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TIFT MERRITT After Years of Traveling, a Singer-Songwriter fi Nds Home

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TIFT MERRITT After Years of Traveling, a Singer-Songwriter fi Nds Home JUNE 2010 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM Q&A Jason Frank Rothenberg TIFT MERRITT After years of traveling, a singer-songwriter fi nds home THINGS COULD HAVE TURNED OUT up with Fantasy Records, she has more instrumentation with slice-of-life lyrical very differently for Tift Merritt. Five years, leeway to explore the folk, rock, soul and imagery. We caught up with Merritt as she two albums, and one record company pop infl uences that have always informed her and Hutchins packed their bags for several ago, she sat in the Staples Center in Los music. She traveled to Paris in 2007 to write months on the road. Angeles, hanging on fi ve words: “And the her new label debut, Another Country, the Grammy goes to …” Her 2004 sophomore album that kick-started her career’s second You’ve written albums in Paris and effort, Tambourine, had been nominated act. It also prefaced a series of major life North Carolina. Does location affect for Best Country Album. For a second, changes. Merritt has since moved to New your writing? the Texas-born, North Carolina-reared York City and married longtime drummer I think you absorb so much of where you singer-songwriter stood on the verge and collaborator Zeke Hutchins—events are. It kind of fl ows back through you. It’s a of country stardom. Alas, such success that inspired her latest album, See You on “no man is an island” kind of thing. I really wasn’t to be. Merritt left the ceremony sans the Moon. love being isolated and away from normal statuette, and in 2006 she was dropped by Produced by Tucker Martine (the running-around, day-to-day life. In North her Nashville record label. Decemberists, Spoon, Sufjan Stevens), Carolina, I lived out in the country by myself. As it happens, both were fortuitous the record reveals an artist settling into her When I was in France, I was there by myself. events. Merritt never quite fi t the traditional sound. Merritt’s songs are honest, subtle I went off by myself to write this record, too, country mold—and now that she’s linked and restrained, blending spare Americana at least in the beginning. I really love being ‘I’ve always made the records I wanted to make. I don’t have regrets.’ 6666 M mag 4.indd 66 6/16/10 12:25:11 AM JUNE 2010 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM in a city when I’m writing, because you don’t How has marriage changed your But I do feel like I know what I’m supposed feel quite so lonely. Everyone is living in the working relationship with Zeke? to do, artistically, and it’s not really up street all around you. You can walk around It has affected things. We still argue about for debate. and spy on everyone and see what they’re whether the song is too fast or too slow. up to and glean information from people on We’re open with each other about our What was it like being nominated for the street. options. When he thinks I have a stupid idea, a Grammy? he’ll tell me. I like being married, and I wasn’t It was such a happy time. We drank You play guitar and piano. Do you write sure that I was going to. I wasn’t sure how champagne for a month straight. I think on both? it was going to make me feel. I wouldn’t have about that time in terms of the gift it gave I’m not very good at either one, to be totally gotten married if I didn’t feel it was the right my family and making them feel legitimate honest, but the piano is where I usually write thing. It all goes back to that direct energy. for supporting me and feeling proud for the most. I started this record on piano, but Something is freed up in you. A question all the times it was scary. That was really it has a lot more guitar and really came out is answered, and it’s the right answer, special. It’s nice when your record fi nds that more on the guitar than Another Country and your energy can move on to something warm reception in the world. But it wasn’t a did, for sure. It’s a trad e-off, back and forth. else. Where I maybe Usually when I’m writing, I’m sitting at the felt like I was giving piano with a guitar on my lap. At a certain up some individuality, point, one of them takes over. And once I I actually have work it up with the band, maybe it trades found solid ground, off again. more individuality, more strength. What was your attitude while writing the new album? Is it touchy to show I was at a place where I wanted to write him a song that was really directly. I wanted my writing to be like a written about him? strong right punch. Very straight-ahead, just I have to give Zeke credit. as tight, tight, tight as possible. As much as I I don’t think he’s looking Paul Drinkwater/NBCU Photo Bank wanted it to come out that way, I wanted the for messages about process to be angst-free. I didn’t want to put how I feel about him up with any nonsense from myself. I didn’t in my songs. He gives want to freak out about it. I wanted to wring me so much freedom all that nonsense out of my writing process, and latitude that way. and I think the material came from that. It would be distracting for both of us if we were Did this process lead you to explore looking for something certain kinds of topics? that was missing in It did, accidentally. Having intentions when our relationship in you sit down and write is such a dangerous my songs. He knows thing. So all I was really trying to do was have songs are about a very an awareness of my own writing process and particular moment. trying to go from there. I wanted to sit down Songs are photographs, and write and have no nonsense about it. I and life is a motion wasn’t saying, “I want to write an elemental picture. No matter how record.” A lot of elemental stuff was going personal my work is, on around me, and I was able to funnel it’s not a complete On TV’s The Tonight Show that through the situation. I got married. My picture of everything. With Jay Leno, February 2008 grandmother died. Two other grandmothers I’m not capable of that. of our band members died a week apart from I’m not going to retreat my grandmother. It was a lot of life—different from the personal. ‘It’s nice when your record sides of the circle were opening and closing There is strength and fi nds that warm reception at the same time. creativity in the personal, and that’s where I take in the world.’ How was working with Tucker Martine? my work. I really trusted Tucker because he’s always going for an emotional, dark, rich, honest Do you feel you’ve found your identity moment where we had a lot of commercial sound. I don’t tend to over-engineer. I tend to on this album? success. You just have to do what you think think about things more from a perspective of I think that I have. I’ve always made the is right, and that’s going to take you to the musical choices and parts. If I hear something records I wanted to make. I’ve always been right place. It’d be wonderful if that happens I don’t think sounds right, I’ll speak up. But I so fortunate and so lucky, and I’ve learned to us again, but that’s up to the world. trust Tucker’s engineering so much. a whole lot, and I don’t have regrets at all. –Kenneth Partridge 67 M mag 4.indd 67 6/15/10 11:41:33 PM.
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