"She was so down, look at her now," sings Erin McKeown
on the first track of her new album, "Grand." The
lyric is hard to believe, considering the sparkle and glee that
helped her earlier album, "Distillation," stand
out from the crowd. While a familiar, whimsical McKeown drives "Grand,"
several songs uncover more intimate sides of the singer-songwriter-musician.
The album's June 10 release kicks off a tour which will bring McKeown
to seven Northeast and Midwestern states before exporting her to
England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland.
Grand defies categorization. McKeown's distinctive rock 'n
tin-pan-alley shares the stage with pop, punk, folk, New Orleans
jazz, and trance-groove. While many of her songs seem inspired by
an earlier sound, they also play to her modern-day audience. "My
natural impulse is to sing on two levels," said McKeown, speaking
by telephone from her Massachusetts home. "But occasionally, I get
out of my own way." Indeed she does on the heartbreaking track,
"A Better Wife." With a wordless refrain and rueful tone,
the song is surprisingly straight. Playing it live has proved to
be "not so much a musical challenge, but an emotional challenge."
McKeown's songs explore mostly interpersonal politics, but "Civilians"
and "An Innocent Fiction" address the bigger, broader brand.
Inspiration for the latter came from an Arthur Miller short
story, The Performance, about an American Jew who
tap-dances for Hitler in a performance that ironically might be
the greatest in his vaudeville career. In that song, a hushed waltz
builds into a frenzy as the lyrics' images stagger from "midnight
confessions / of deputy prussians" to the "applause cascading from
one set of fingertips." In notes available at erinmckeown.com,
McKeown writes, "I was trying to make the choruses as over-the-top
as possible, the ignorant and exaggerative boasts of a has-been
dancer." The song captures the intoxicating effect of power, as
well as its hangover. "What's important to me," said McKeown, "is
there's a story besides the politics."
Presiding over the album in spirit is the late, great Judy Garland.
After referencing Garland in several songs, McKeown offers up a
slo-mo version of "Lucky Day", which was originally sung uptempo
by Garland, accompanied by Nelson Riddle and his big band.
Like Garland, McKeown vocally holds onto her optimism even as everything
around her falls apart. "I think my fascination with her grew out
of my fascination with vaudeville."
McKeown researched the history of vaudeville, musical theatre, and
blackface minstrel shows while a student at Brown University. "There's
a fallen grandeur aspect to it that I find appealing," she said.
"Vaudeville is the poor man's version of musical theatre."
In addition, vaudeville provided a lesson in structure. Toward the
end of vaudeville's days, McKeown said, a phenomenon emerged which
was called "'continuous performance,' where the show went on all
day and you could come in whenever you wanted. Nothing ever stopped...
I thought it was important to understand about entertainment today."
"In my mind," said McKeown, "a lot of Grand is about different
ways to be a woman, different ways to be a wife, and a lover." While
she was exploring this theme in her music, she realized that almost
her entire business and management team consists of women. "It wasn't
planned that way," McKeown said. "It wasn't something I realized
until later." All female are her manager, publicists, product manager,
A&R person, lawyer, as well as the general manager of Grand's
label, Nettwerk America.
McKeown signed with Nettwerk after parting amicably with Signature
Sounds, the label that released Distillation. That album
did well on independent "WFUV-type" radio stations, and McKeown
now hopes for more air time. "Radio is the most fucked up part of
the music industry," she said, but it's the way to get folks to
her shows. "My whole picture with this side of my career is, 'Give
everything a try.' And try to get it to as many people as possible
without having to change my art."
Creating songs is not a speedy process for McKeown. "If I have a
musical idea, I can be stuck on it for months," she said. But she's
learning quicker ways to get the job done. "When I need to write
something now, I know what I have to do." To start, she puts down
a drum machine track. And she conserves her work. "I don't throw
away songs," she said. "And I don't keep around songs that I don't
play."
As for recording, seventy-five percent of Grand was completed
in just two weeks. Unlike Distillation, which was recorded
over six months on weekends away from Brown, Grand received
McKeown's undivided attention. Abstaining from gigs, she was able
to record all day and go home at night.
"I like to hear all the parts of a song that are moving," said McKeown.
"I like to hear the bass player playing and the drums on the ceiling."
So when she and producer David Chalfant were recording Grand
at Longview Farmhouse Studio in North Brookfield, MA, they
put mics in places like the ceiling. "On a couple songs, we were
working at night with the windows open." The goal was an open, natural
sound.
"I don't really like a lot of outboard effect," said McKeown. Instead,
she relied on an array of instruments that included flugelhorn,
B3 organ, and newspaper (used in place of a snare by drummer Brian
Jones).
Also in attendence were accoustic, electric, parlor, and slide guitar;
accordian; tenor and baritone sax; and trumpet. "Grand is
more of an orchestrated and collaborative record," said McKeown,
who plays most of the instruments on the album. "It's written as
a collaborative exercise."
McKeown's arrangement skills will be tested on tour, when the instrumental
smorgasbord must be reduced to a number manageable by three musicians.
"We do a lot of switching," said McKeown, and that bodes well for
improvisational opportunities. With her on the road will be Jason
Crigler, juggling electric guitar, baritone guitar, and bass,
and drummer David Berger, with his "creative and strange
kit."
For most of the overseas leg of the tour, McKeown will play solo.
Distillation is just now being released in the U.K. and she
thinks "it would be confusing to bring a band." (Grand arrives
in the fall.) In August, after supporting Richard Thompson,
she returns stateside to play Bonnaroo NE in Riverhead, NY,
and the Newport Folk Festival. |
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