Chicks Rock' n Rule

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

By Jake Nichols

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-The dream of Susan Jones has come a long way from the glorified open mike night for girls in 2002. Now in its sixth year, with Seadar Dodson at the helm, the event has blossomed into an evening of entertainment at the Center Theater featuring Grammy-nominated recording artist Tift Merritt.
“Susan always had the idea of bringing in a headliner and stepping up the event,” Dodson said. [Jackson Hole] Music Experience was ready to really push it to another level and raise a lot more money.”

JHME uses proceeds from the Women of Jackson concert series to fund programs like Rock & Roll Camp, Friday Live, and various jazz workshops. Musicians interested in getting involved with JHME classes and programs can fill out a scholarship application in the lobby the night of the concert.

Dodson said she believes the music scene in Jackson is fairly healthy and women are well-represented but she would like to see local musicians exposed to more positive and successful women role models.

“We have a tremendous talent pool in this town as far as women musicians,” Dodson said. “I think Jackson’s really unique being a small touristy mountain town, people tend to have a lot of ambition and they go after their dreams.”
From the Miller Sisters to Margo Valiante to Anne Sibley, local songstresses now have someone they can look up to … if only for an evening. Dodson said a committee worked hard finding the right artist to represent her ilk.

“First, we wanted someone who could perform solo and was charming on stage and relatable to the audience,” Dodson revealed. “We wanted someone who hadn’t been to Jackson before. Tift ended up at the very top of that list.” Dodson said Merritt’s ability to accompany herself on either piano or guitar was also a plus. “And we knew Tift could not only do slow, bring-everyone-in kind of stuff, but she could speed up the temp too and have a good mixture of both.”

The committee also considered Jenny Lewis (Rilo Kiley) and Joley Holland (The Be Good Tanyas), but in the end, Tift was unanimous. “She blew all of us away,” she said. “We all thought, ‘We really need to get her here.’” PJH


CONCERT
Center for the Arts - Center Theatre. Friday, September 26. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Valerie Seaberg & Thomas Turiano open the show at 7:30 p.m. Ann Sibley and Margo Valiante will perform together following Seaberg and Turiano. Merritt will close the show after an intermission. Cost is $25, $20 for JHME members. Tickets are available through the Center Box Office at 265 S. Cache St. or online at www.JHCenterForTheArts.org.

TIFT MERRITT
Catherine Tift Merritt is not one to draw attention to herself. So it would be easy for the demure southern singer-songwriter to get lost in the cogs and crannies of the music industry. Radio hasn’t quite figured her out, MTV couldn’t spell her last name, and record stores aren’t sure where to stock any of her three releases.
And don’t ask Merritt what she sounds like. “Maybe a little like if Creedence Clearwater Revival had a girl singer who loved Dusty Springfield and Bruce Springsteen and old French movies and played a real warm summer night right after a thunderstorm,” she states on her website. “But really … I’m pretty sure I just sound like me.”

Tift seems content, however, with the realization she will probably never find a predictable placard in record stores. “It’s so horrible,” said the singer who has always gone by her middle name. “I get put in ‘country’ and I think ‘Oh my gosh.’ But some of these things happen to me from the choices I make artistically, and I can’t apologize for that.”

And remaining true to her muse has worked so far. The 33-year-old has been a critics’ darling since her debut release in 2002, Bramble Rose. Time magazine called it one of the top 10 CDs of the year. She was nominated for a Grammy in 2004 for the follow-up, Tambourine. Appearances on Leno, Letterman, Austin City Limits and the Grand Ole Opry followed.

Now, Merritt is touring her third release, Another Country, on Fantasy Records, which has already yielded a video for the single “Broken.” The 11-song album was written during her sojourn in Paris, France last year. Planet JH caught up with Merritt in North Carolina, where she was preparing to hit the road in support of her newest release.

Planet Jackson Hole: You live in New York City now. Do you ever think of Paris or North Carolina anymore?

Tift Merritt: I love New York. I don’t think I will be there forever, but there’s so much energy and so many artists that it’s really nice. North Carolina and New York City mean two very different things to me. And France is somewhere I sort of identify with for reasons unknown.

PJH: You’re hardly ever home, anyway; touring, playing on television and all that. What was it like playing on the late night talk shows?

TM: I was on Letterman as Emmylou Harris’ backup singer before I did my own spot. So she made sure everyone was really nice to me (laughs). I played “Morning is My Destination” on Letterman last June and “Broken” for Leno in March. Those shows are really fun. They are so ‘pro’ because they do it everyday.

PJH: What about the Grand Ole Opry with Charlie Louvin?

TM: That was great. He’s, like, your grandfather’s age yet he’s so full of spunk and definitely flirty.

PJH: The music business is going through changes now. Artists are less like indentured servants to their labels. Are there still pressures on you, though, to be a commercial success even while you enjoy more artistic freedom?

TM: Absolutely. It’s not one thing or the other. I’ve been doing this for 10 years and I think it’s a question of being true to yourself, but also being smart. If you ask me: “Do you need success, or radio, or MTV? Well, do I need to pay my band and get them health insurance? Yes.” So at some point it has to become a financially viable thing just so we can have the ability to keep doing it.

PJH: Your songs seem so personal, so intimate. How do you keep that when you hand them over to the band?

TM: Fundamentally, even though I’m trying to write something that has a really intimate personal thing going on, it’s not something that will fall apart in your hand. To write a good song, I want it to stand all alone on its own. But I also want it to have enough backbone – no matter how fragile or intangible or intimate the message – that it can hold a bunch of music. So when I take it to the band, it’s not going to get stomped on or fall apart or something.

That’s why I think of Carole King as such an influence. You take the songs from something like “Tapestry,” and they are extremely intimate, but you could have a whole symphony playing them and it wouldn’t feel forced.

PJH: How was it working with George [Drakoulias]? (Drakoulias is a protégé of Rick Rubin and has produced records for The Black Crowes, Tom Petty, Low Stars, Jayhawks, Screaming Trees and others. He produced Merritt’s last two albums.)

TM: George is great. I was really excited to work with him again. I’m definitely of the mind that when you work with someone the first time, you are sort of learning each other and scratching the surface. [After Tambourine], I felt that we had more work to do.

PJH: He’s worked with one of my favorite singers: Maria McKee.

TM: Maria sang on Tambourine. I was able to meet her. She is certainly one of my heroes. She’s amazing. Her voice is like a force of Nature. She is so intense, I was looking at her singing for me and thinking, “What am I doing making a record? This is the person with all the talent.”

PJH: Your styles are different. Your voice is more delicate, but I hear the intensity there without you having to over-sing like some of the vocal gymnasts you hear on American Idol or something.

TM: I hate that stuff. I come at singing from the point of view of a writer. And I don’t really think that over-singing or vocal acrobatics is … it’s like a writer using too many adjectives.

Also, I come from a really interesting place, musically. I learned about music from my dad and his record collection. The main things he had that he would listen to were Bob Dylan, Dolly Parton, and Percy Sledge. He would figure them out on piano or guitar and play them to me. That, to me, is a very modern idea of a folk musician, playing by ear from my dad.

PJH: I love the Memphis soul stuff you sprinkle in on your albums. Where does that come from?

TM: It comes from singing about sincerity. On one hand, there’s this kind of singer-songwriter thing that says sincerity can sometimes fall apart in your hand, but soul music is such sincere music, and it’s so strong that I gravitate to it as a singer and as a band member. I just remember coming off the road from Bramble Rose and saying, “I’m really tired of playing all these wistful, quiet songs.” I want to keep the sincerity, but I don’t want that to mean that it can’t be strong.

PJH: Your new video for “Broken” is cool. Real artsy.

TM: That’s directed by Martyn Atkins (Depeche Mode, Sheryl Crow). We wanted to make a very small French film. People ask me, “Where did you shoot that?” We did it in downtown LA. Isn’t that funny? We didn’t have the budget to go to France.

It was a lot like making a documentary. I really enjoyed making the record and I’m really happy right now where I am with this record label. You don’t have to have someone from Hair and Makeup telling you what to wear. You don’t have to do any of that stuff. So it was me and a very small crew. It was very natural. I really enjoy that. And I think that it is very much a truer representation of the kind of music I do. It isn’t about being perfect. As a woman, visually, it’s not about being anything but yourself. And I think that’s a really good thing.

PJH: You don’t get ‘dolled up’ enough from what I read on the Internet.

TM: Did you ‘Google’ me?

PJH: It’s called research and, yeah, I did. I found out from www.AskMen.com that …

TM: [Screeches] Oh No. I’m actually at my best friend’s house right now, and she got really upset ‘cuz she saw it on there. I said, “Kristin, don’t read that. Don’t tell me about it.” What did it say? They wrote that I wear too many clothes, right?

PJH: Yeah, they rated you a 71. They said you look like you have all the curves in all the right places; it’s just hard to tell under all those clothes.

TM: I think that’s so funny.

PJH: My point is, they rated you a 71, but the readers rated you 84. So AskMen doesn’t get you. Just like your music, which can sometimes be overlooked by industry programmers, critics get it. Listeners get it. How do we get the whole world on the Tift Merritt train?

TM: I don’t know that I really care that AskMen doesn’t get me. Maybe it’s really important that they don’t. I think I am aspiring to be ‘not disposable.’ I aspire to be a career artist and [I hope to be] doing this 20 years from now. It isn’t like I have to convince “Entertainment Tonight” that they have to keep talking about me. I just have to keep doing good things and grow steadily at all times.

PJH: You better dress warm for Jackson.

TM: I’m excited. I’ve never been to Jackson or Wyoming. I’m bringing my dad. He likes to go fishing.

PJH: Are you bringing the band?

TM: No. Some people think, “Oh, that’ll be boring.” I don’t know. There’s a real emotional intensity to playing solo. The Arts Center has a really beautiful piano from what I understand, so I’m really excited about that.

Women of Jackson

ANNE SIBLEY
Sibley is one-half of the husband-wife acoustic duo working as Anne & Pete Sibley. Sibley and her spouse sang together in their high school choir before developing an onstage persona at the local hootenanny. The duo began recording in 2004, and they play regularly at folk/bluegrass festivals across the nation.

Seadar on Sibley: “Anne was actually one of the first women that I was blown away by when I moved to town. She has this almost pure innocent quality to her voice. I have a much lower voice. I really love when I hear people sing in this almost angelic way and can hit it really well. She’s phenomenal.

“And she loves what she does, with every part of her. She loves being a part of music in every way she can. Her and Pete taught at the bluegrass camp last year, and they are all about supporting the town and supporting music in this town.”

MARGO VALIANTE
Valiante gets noticed as soon as she opens her throat. Fronting the local band Boondocks, the Skidmore College music grad can convincingly cover a lot of ground between jazz, country and rock. Give her a blues number, though, and you’d better give her room. “She can really belt it,” local musician Sarah Carlson once said while watching Valiante absolutely destroy a Susan Tedeschi cover at the Fireman’s ball last year. Valiante seems equally at home with a brooding Gillian Welch song or handling the halting jazz style of the late Eva Cassidy.

Seadar on Valiante: “Margo moved to Austin this month and is going to try and pursue her dream there. She has been playing the past couple of years with Boondocks and they have been doing really well. Margo just finished her solo album New Blue earlier this year.”


VALERIE SEABERG (w/ THOMAS TURIANO)
A chance meeting between hitchhiker and driver spawned the burgeoning career of Tom & Val. No one is sure who picked up who, but the two Wilson residents fell into easy harmony.

The pair debuted professionally in the spring of 2007, playing wedding gigs and private parties. They mine the vein Tuck & Patti reveled in for years. Their material often includes Rory Block, Bonnie Raitt, Maria Muldaur, Joan Armatrading, Natalie Cole and Ricky Lee Jones.

Seadar on Seaberg: “This is the first time that they have been in Women of Jackson. We wanted some new blood in there. Ever since they started going to open mikes, they were killing it from the very beginning. She has a very jazzy, soulful voice and they do really well with some of the older cover songs.”

SELF PORTRAIT PHOTO by Tift Merritt

PERMALINK:
Chicks Rock' n Rule | Planet JH News Article: Cover Stories

Leave a Comment