Introducing: Tift Merritt (Interview)

American singer-songwriter Tift Merritt is set to perform at Auckland’s Tuning Fork on Wednesday, April 23rd. Born in North Carolina, Merritt now lives in New York City and has released her fifth album, Traveling Alone, in 2012. Her voice and her songwriting have drawn comparisions to the likes of Rosanne Cash, Emmylou Harris and Mary Chapin Carpenter. The 13th Floor’s Marty Duda spoke to Tift Merritt recently and found her puttering around her kitchen, cooking up songs for her next album.

Click here to listen to the interview with Tift Merritt:

Or read a transcription of the interview here:

MD: So you’re touring Australia first with Jason Isbell and then coming to New Zealand for one show, is that right?

TM: Yes.

MD: Excellent, alright. And the show that you’re doing here is solo?

TM: Yes it is, I have to send my guitar player back to the States for a different gig. So I’m going to come do recon all by myself.

MD: [laughs] So when you approach a new territory like New Zealand, where you haven’t been, and where folks aren’t probably as familiar with you as they are in the States, do you change the way you approach your show to adapt to that situation?

TM: No, I don’t think so. I’m always sort of a heightened version of myself on stage and I think wherever your music is at a given point in time, you try to have a conversation with the audience that they can translate and you can translate. I don’t there’s something more that you have to understand. You shouldn’t have to have any back-story to understand – you know what I mean?

MD: Uh-huh. Speaking of where you are musically, your Traveling Alone album came out in 2012, so I’m assuming you’ve probably moved on from what you were doing on that album and possibly writing new songs. Where are you musically at this point?

TM: How’d you guess?  I was on tour for a really long time so I’ve just been home for three months and the only reason that I’m leaving my house is to come to New Zealand. I’m definitely working on some new things. I’m also playing with Andrew Bird and his band, so that’s taken up some of the space in my ears. But I am working on some new songs and I’m really having a good time playing guitar these days, I’m playing in open tunings and enjoying that. Other than that it’s too early, I have to see– I can’t make sense of it to myself, let alone anyone else yet. [laughs] But I’m enjoying being in the kitchen.

MD: I see. Yeah, well that’s interesting, ‘cause one of the things I did when I was researching to get ready to speak to you, is that I realised you are on Twitter. And Twitter isn’t something that I deal with on a regular basis, so I was looking through your Twitter feed  which I kind of felt uncomfortable doing, ‘cause it felt like I was reading through somebody’s email, for one thing—

TM: Really?

MD: –yeah, it’s just because I don’t do it myself. But then I thought, oh, this is really cool, it seems like it’s like an interesting way to a: find out what you’re up to – ‘cause I found out you needed a soldering iron, and you were working on making guitar straps, and you were making beef stew, which is all very cool – but also that you seem to have these ongoing conversations, relationships with these other musicians, like, Mary Chapin Carpenter was there, and Over The Rhine and Caitlin Rose and people like that. So I was wondering if the Twitter thing affects the music thing at all, other than just keeping in contact with all these other folks?

TM: Well, you know, I certainly think it’s nice to feel like you’re part of a community. I am very wary of social media in the way that I’m Southern; you know, I feel like what I had for breakfast isn’t really that interesting. So I really try not to just say nothing when I say something in the world, even if it’s just on Twitter. I think it’s one thing to sit down and have a friendship with somebody where you can touch their skin and look them in the eye – whereas Twitter is a lot of noise. But at the same time it’s really fun to cross paths with people in the ether and have a laugh. I really enjoy… Twitter is much more accessible and even slightly poetic, much more so than having a blog. I’m really a perfectionist; I don’t like to write something that I haven’t really thought about, and then when people used to say, “Oh you should blog once a week”—I mean, that took me six hours! So it’s nice to twitter if you have something to say.

MD: Right. And it seems like there’s quite a community going on in New York City, musical stuff happening, so does that affect your music as well? Are you able to kind of collaborate?

TM: Yes it does. And I would say that what really affects my music is that there are so many artists in New York City. New York City is a place where everybody is really serious about what they do, and I have friends that are painters, I have friends that are classical musicians, I have friends that are writers – and just to sort of stumble into a community like that is so wonderful, because most of everybody here is a musician or artist and I love that; I feel at home.

MD: And the other thing that seems to put you in contact with other people is, I know you were doing a radio show called The Spark, so is that still happening?

TM: It’s actually sort of in the behind-the-scenes stage, but yes it is still happening. I just took a little break from it because I was touring so much, I couldn’t handle all my homework. That started because I felt like I needed a community of musicians around me and I felt like I needed to talk to more people who were making their own way and learn from them. So I think I’m always seeking that community. And with everybody running around in the world these days, making their own way, it’s really important to stop and sit down and have that conversation. I think it’s a wonderful excuse to go visit other people and other artist’s studios.

MD: When I was listening to Traveling Alone, which came out, like you said, a couple of years ago, it really reminded me of the latest Rosanne Cash album, which I love – I think it’s like the best album that’s come out in the last couple of years or so. It’s seems like the two of you, you’re both from the South and you moved to New York City or away from the South, and you have a similar kind of thing happening. So for folks who may not be that familiar with you I was hoping you could kind of give an idea of what got you into making music. What influenced you when you were growing up in Raleigh, North Carolina?

TM: The first thing was that my father and I would sit and sing and play music and that was how I spent time with my dad. He really loved songs, and songs with a point of view, and songs that had an emotional validity to them. So I just sort of naturally had that. And then I really wanted to be a writer… he was really my biggest hero. I feel like the stories I would hear from my cousins and my relatives and, you know, the crazy people in our town and all the characters—you know, it was a very particular sense of place and a really particular point of view. So for me that’s always been there – you know, what’s really interesting to me about being a musician is having a point of view and telling a story that is really rooted in… is steeped in itself, and it’s coming from a particular place. So this is all before the internet. I like that sense of place. I want my little songs to feel like worlds in and of themselves and transport you somewhere that you might not have looked otherwise.

MD: I think it’s amazing that you can hear songs that come from a place, say in southern United States, and folks in New Zealand or wherever in the rest of the world can relate to them on some kind of level, whether or not it’s the same level that you’ve written them on; it may be a different thing, but–

MT: Well I don’t think that that– I think my job is to put it out there as directly as possible, but how people react to them or what it evokes in them, it’s not something you’re trying to force. It’s something you’re trying to invite. I think good art is evocative, not something that’s stuffed down your throat. [laughs]

MD: [laughs] Right. When I was reading about your radio show, I noticed you had done a collaboration with someone named Simone Dinnerstein who is a classical pianist. I saw the video you did of I Can See Clearly Now and I thought that was amazing, that there was this sort of confluence of these three musical worlds: Bob Marley and the classical pianist and the southern musician all coming together to make that thing.

TM: That was a really interesting project, and Simone is– talk about a consummate artist. She is so amazing and I’ve learned a lot from collaborating with her. I was very hesitant to do it in the beginning because I felt like I would be kind of overwhelmed by the classical music’s authority and I would only be able to turn to her and say “I don’t think that’s how it should be, because I just think so, and it’s not cool”. Which is kind of what rock’n’roll is, you know, rock’n’roll has a lot of mysterious rules that are just about being cool and coy and they’re not exactly written in a book somewhere. But we had such a wonderful time together and I think that that project was really a challenge for both of us musically, but on a lot of levels it was really a beautiful extension of our friendship.

Watch the video with Tift Merritt and Simone Dinnerstein here: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPQ_NuQDtHs]

MD: Yeah because most rock’n’roll musicians, at least that I’ve found, don’t even read music.

TM: Yeah, I know a little bit of theory and I can read music, but I certainly can’t do it the way that Simone can. I can’t look at something and play it. I can look at something and plonk it out, in a really ugly way. So I actually recorded all of our practices. We had about a week or ten days with the project to really rehearse before our first show, and I would tape the rehearsals and then go home at night and practice them by ear because I just couldn’t keep up with what was on paper. I think it was great for my ear to do that, and it was great to do that, but it was scary too. [laughs]

MD: I can imagine. So getting back to what we can expect to hear from you when you come to New Zealand, are any of the new songs that you’ve been working on in any kind of state that we might get a chance to hear them?

TM: I don’t know! That’s a good question, I don’t know. I really have just been holed up in my studio working, and these will be my first performances since I’ve been just mixing things up in the pot. So I’m travelling with some really wonderful musicians – a steel player and guitar player named Eric Haywood, and I’m sure that he and I will be practising some things and trying some things out. But really, at this point, I can’t tell you what’s going to happen. You have to have this period of non-judgement on your new saplings and I have no idea what’s going to gel and kind of pop to life when we sit down, or what’s just going to want to remain hidden. So I always like to be moving forward, so hopefully something will be in there.