Martha Wainwright - Interview

Martha Wainwright’s family trade is music and with the release of her self-titled debut album, the singer-songwriter follows father Loudon Wainwright III, brother Rufus, and her mother and aunt, Kate & Anna McGarrigle to make it hers.

With a lineage of such distinction, the pressure to produce was intimidating, but songs like “Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole,” introduce a songwriter who’s ready to soar. And when you grow up in a family who communicates openly and intimately about their lives through song, it becomes the most natural form of expression.

“I guess I’m just not a very embarrassed person,” says Wainwright about her vulnerable songwriting. “I probably should be more (laughs). I probably paid the price in many ways. But there was something that was explained to me early on by my aunt who’s a songwriter…She said ‘as long as it’s connected to a truth inside of you.’ I guess I just went with that. What interested me, especially at the beginning of writing songs, was my life—the people in it, including my family members, and love and how I truly felt about things—so I always sought out that kind of open thing…Being a little child of divorce it was really nice for me to know that my parents had a relationship by listening to their music. It made me feel better about everything I think. It allowed me to experience the time that they were together. Some of its pretty harsh, but some of it is not harsh at all and I think that explained a lot to me about what happened…I appreciated these details. I’m really into these kinds of details now, at least emotional ones…I think it’s also made me probably think too much about myself (laughs). The record is sort of navel-gazing and self-absorbed for that reason. But I think that’s also really common for people in their twenties. These songs that I wrote were a real reflection of a girl in her twenties and that’s my excuse!”

With parents who were respected wordsmiths, the bar was set pretty high for Wainwright.

“I think Rufus and I have always been aware of that fact,” says Wainwright. “I’ve heard him say this, and I think that it totally makes sense, ‘Every kid has the belief that they can usurp their parents in some way.’ Whether you do it or not it doesn’t really matter. The point is to feel that you’re not totally crushed by their success or whatever, which I think is one of the reasons I think Rufus and I have been able to make music. Our parents were not overly famous. We didn’t have to live completely in this huge shadow and we could strive for bigger, better things if we wanted to…I knew that I was going to be majorly judged. The whole thing’s been intimidating, but it’s great to have finally made a record.”

One of Wainwright’s favorite songs to perform live is “Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole.”

“I think it’s really fun to sing because it’s no longer about me,” says Wainwright. I think it’s really become anthemic for people…It’s my sing-a-long song. It makes me feel like a twisted version of Pete Seeger.”

Martha Wainwright performs at Webster Hall on April 6 and 7.

Originally published in The Aquarian Weekly (3/29/06).

Martha performs "Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole" on Jools Holland.

The Magic Numbers - Michele Stodart Interview

Beginner’s luck? A slew of award nominations and a prime opening slot for U2 later, two sets of brothers and sisters totaling The Magic Numbers enjoy their charmed debut as they embark on a spring tour and ready to follow up their successful self-titled album.

The Magic Numbers enjoys platinum status in the UK where the band, Romeo (vocals/guitar) and Michele Stodart (vocals/bass/keyboards) and Angela (vocals/Melodica) and Sean Gannon (drums), first formed in 2004. Nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, Mojo (winner of best new band 2005), NME Awards and the Brits, it’s safe to bet this sibling reverie will continue to add up to more than chance.

Romeo and Michele moved to New York from native Trinidad during their teens and later made England their home. Destiny introduced the Gannons.

“The first time we started making music together we never really pictured ourselves as a band,” says Michele Stodart. “It kind of fell together accidentally. Eventually we couldn’t stop fighting anymore and we realized we had to be in a band with our brothers and that was it (laughs)…It works out well. Being on the road is hard at times so traveling with family and friends you’ve known all your lives relieves that.”

The band’s formula sparks with chemistry, but at the end of the day, it’s the music’s spell that lingers. Even members can’t help but become fans.

“His writing just makes me cry sometimes, to be honest,” says Michele about Romeo’s songwriting. “It really moves me and sends me somewhere that I like to feel. It can make me happy and it can bring me down. There are songs I can’t listen to. ‘This Love,’ on the record, is particularly a hard one for me to hear because of the words. It’s one of my favorite songs of his and one of the best written songs, I wouldn’t say ever, but definitely close to. To be related to someone like that and to be in a band with someone like that, it’s pretty special and it’s an amazing feeling to do this thing together.”

There’s brilliance in songwriting that kicks around life’s darker emotions whilst leaving you uplifted, a sense many absorb from The Magic Numbers’ harmonies. Michele feels it too.
“I think when the four of us come together, we bring a new element to the songs, and to the band in general,” says Michele. “There is a sense of hope and a sense of happiness and the music adds to it. When you put the two saddest emotions in the world, ‘sadness’ and ‘happiness’ together, you’re left not really knowing how to feel or what to draw from. But it’s something that everyone goes through and I think that’s why the record is so honest. I think that’s why it’s very personal to us.”

The road’s been faithful to The Magic Numbers and they reciprocate. The members “spend most of their days in the nighttime” lately, according to Michele, and even when they’re on their last legs, they’ll take another gig.

“I think we’ve been through a pretty mad ride so far,” says Michele. “We forget somehow all the craziness that’s happened to us over the years and we’ve made certain dreams come true that we weren’t cheeky enough to even imagine.”

The Magic Numbers perform March 28 at Webster Hall.

Originally published in The Aquarian Weekly (3/22/06).

The Magic Numbers perform "Love Me Like You."

Kathleen Edwards - Interview

It’s been one year since Kathleen Edwards released Back To Me following Failer, the debut album that launched her to critical darling-dom in 2003. Since then she's performed with The Rolling Stones, AC/DC and Bob Dylan, seen rock royalty like Roger Daltrey attend her shows, and had another hero, keyboardist Benmont Tench (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers), lend his hands to her songs. No wonder Edwards is more confident than ever as she wraps tour support for Back To Me and begins her next record.

The Ontario-born singer/songwriter has discovered a circular path in music-making that starts with people and ends with people, no matter what happens in between.

“It’s funny because I think I’ve always known it’s the people you meet in the end, but I think it can take a back seat sometimes,” says Kathleen Edwards. “You realize that so much of playing music is being part of a community and not necessarily like a community in one place, but just having friends who share the same kind of experiences that you’re having as well. I found with my first record it was hard to digest a lot of stuff…I didn’t have time to really connect with anyone and have relationships with anyone other than my band. And this time I met people like John Joe and Jim James from My Morning Jacket and the rest of those guys. I realized that it’s really nice to connect with people and have these personal relationships to carry you through what can be a roller coaster-type of experience in the music business.”

Industry unpredictability makes Edwards particularly appreciative of the “here and now” and mental re-tooling keeps her head level.

“You keep your expectations very low and then everything else will be fantastic,” says Edwards with a laugh.

Edwards tries to free herself from routine practices during the creative process. It's downtime that consistently drives her to her guitar.

“A dry spell really helps,” says Edwards about inspiration. “I’m certainly no Ryan Adams. I don’t sit around and write ten songs…I can’t write on the road so I have to be home and I definitely need a few days or at least a week to decompress from the rhythm of moving constantly…It’s hard for me to talk about my process because I don’t really feel like I have one…I feel like I’m just starting out, so I’m trying not to look at how I’ve written a song every time or think, ‘How do I recreate that experience?’ I don’t want to put pressure on myself to think that it has to be the same kind of experience every time…I find on Back To Me, the one song that I’m really proud of, because I took that mentality and thought, ‘I don’t want to write ten more fucking relationship songs’…is ‘Pink Emerson Radio,’ which is a song about objects and memories associated with personal possessions and the potential loss of all those memories. I was really happy that I was able to write a song that I love as much as a song like, ‘Copied Keys,’ which is a song, for me, that’s really a relationship song about geography and moving ahead in your life and reminiscing. I found it really rewarding to know that I could write a song that wasn’t always about boy, girl, sex, stars, drink, country, road, highway, driving, all that.”

Kathleen Edwards performs at Joe’s Pub on March 23 & 24.

Originally published in The Aquarian Weekly 3/15/06.

Ola Salo of The Ark - Interview

The son of a preacher man, The Ark’s flamboyant frontman, Ola Salo, was raised in an environment where things like ascensions, apocalypses and magic legends were as natural a part of everyday Rottne Sweden life as the music of outrageous performers like David Bowie, Queen, Kiss, Roxy Music and Sly and the Family Stone. Salo’s epiphany came when he realized that his father’s Sunday pulpit was a stage and he formed the belief that every great performer needs to serve his audience to deserve his time in the limelight. Together with bandmates Sylvester Schlegel (drums), Martin Axèn (guitar), Jepson (guitar) and Leari (bass), Salo found his calling with The Ark, reaching for nothing less than a miracle each night through charismatic performances. As the band finishes up a tour with The Darkness to support its third album, State Of The Ark, its glam rock is beckoning new legions of listeners with messages of love and lust trussed up with a sarcastic sense of realism and showmanship.

“I think I partially got it from my father who’s a preacher man,” says Ola Salo about his performance instincts. “Being a preacher man is very much about having a sense of theatricality. It’s very important to really reach out to people…If people invest their time in looking at you, they deserve to get something back in the form of some ecstasy or euphoria…You’ve got to give them some kind of magic…Otherwise they have wasted their time on you and that’s the only sin of a performer.”

The artists who always appealed to Salo were those who pushed borders. He never really understood “down-to-earth performers.”

“The pulpit or stage is not a normal place,” says Salo. “It’s not a place for being down-to-earth because it is a pedestal. The thing that happens on that pedestal should be something apart from everyday life. I always thought there was something very phony about performers who try to act out an image that they are on stage the same way as they are in everyday life because of course they are not. In everyday life they don’t stand with a spotlight on them and have all the focus in the room on them.”

Salo’s religious upbringing also directed his mindset that he was destined to do special things.

“When you call your band ‘The Ark,’ your ambition can be no less than changing the world or saving it in some way,” says Salo. “But I think there’s another aspect of the symbol of The Ark, that it’s a vessel…Growing up in a dull, small, industrial town in rural Sweden I think that as much as we wanted to save the world, we wanted to just get away from that place…It was the idea of going around the world with your friends in a vessel which could take aboard all of the other people you wanted to hang out with…If we create this kind of collective where we’re more open-minded and tolerant and loving then the rest of society then perhaps we already have sort of made the world better in a partial way. Maybe that’s enough?”

While The Ark has mistakenly been simplified by some as an “Oh why can’t everyone just be friends and hug one another” kind of band, according to Salo, that’s only a partial picture.
“I have, shall we say, a belligerent side, sort of a side that not at all wants to be friends with everyone,” says Salo. “[The album’s] also about realizing that to find real love and friendship you have to sacrifice fake and phony love and friendship.”

The Ark performs at Bowery Ballroom on March 23.

Originally published in The Aquarian Weekly 3/8/06.

The Ark perform "One Of Us Is Gonna Die Young."