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09 October 2010
Seattle resident Laura Veirs (www.lauraveirs.com) has a sound which is individual and atmospheric. Art country, rather than alt.country, her hauntingly beautiful songs have caught the attention of growing numbers in Europe and now the USA, where a well-deserved record deal should mean a wider audience for her distinctive work. Barry Jones spoke to her at the very picturesque Telford’s Warehouse in Chester. Interview date: 7th March 2005
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It’s been two years since we last chatted, (Laura Veirs 2003) apart from a few brief words at Spydafest 2004, but since then Carbon Glacier came out, and I believe you’ve now changed record labels, will you tell us a bit more about that? Troubled By Fire came out in 2003 and then Carbon Glacier last year? At the time of Troubled By Fire, when we spoke, you were very keen on Bella Union, what was the change around there? But Bella Union are still dealing with PR for you while you’re over here? How will the new label affect your output? Will you still record in the same way? Will you use Tucker Martine again? You’ve been managing yourself I understand, will that continue, or will the label look to appoint someone to help you? Nonesuch are part of Warner Brothers. I don’t really deal with many people on major labels, so I was just wondering how that might affect your output? Or don’t you know yet? I’d read that you don’t really follow music press very much, or read what people say about you, also that you have doubts about your music sometimes. “It could be better, maybe it isn’t that good,” is the quote that I’ve got. I was wondering if your concerns about the music press were that they might confirm those fears, when the reality is that they’re generally very supportive? OK. I’m not sure it’s just because I know your background, but Carbon Glacier seems to me to have been written by a geologist. Some people have interpreted it as emotional distance, all those ice and river images, and yet you’ve described it as hopeful. Are your current songs using the same sort of themes or have you moved on to a different sort of theme? I was wondering if you’d written the songs as a batch for Carbon Glacier, or you thought, “These songs have all got an ice and a river theme, I’ll put them altogether.”? I mentioned Tucker Martine before; with Troubled By Fire you gave him a lot of credit for the additional music and the sound ambience. Does he get involved with the stage sounds as well, or is that a completely separate entity? It was more the idea of the loops and samples that you use on stage. Within the Americana and acoustic field, some people are a bit uneasy about using loops and samples, have you found that at all? No I understand that, and I suppose it is a fault of the press to want to pigeonhole you, but I was thinking more in terms of festival line–ups, and how people book you for particular festivals? I thought that Spydafest was a particularly eclectic mix anyway, I thought it was a great festival, it’s a shame it’s not on again. You’ve been compared with people like Lucinda Williams, which I just can’t see at all; I don’t know where they get these things. There certainly seemed to be a few similarities with some of Bjork’s output, I mean would you see that? Would you listen to her work? It’s probably a dreadful word, but it has a quirkiness about it which Bjork shares, I think. Well that’s alright then. Where do you see yourself in the next couple of years? Will it be more Europe, or are you likely to concentrate on the US market? You do seem to have been over here a lot, does it get tedious, travelling in the middle of winter, or are you still enjoying it? OK, and what have you been listening to recently? OK well thank you very much for your time, thanks for the update, and I wish you the very best of luck with the next album. Oh, OK.
Yeah, Carbon Glacier came out in February 2004 and that was in Europe and it did really well in Europe and the UK and then it got picked up.
That’s right, so then Nonesuch records picked up on it in the States, and they put it out in August, and then they’re going to put out my next record in August.
Well, I still am really keen on them, but the problem was that I couldn’t stick with them and go with Nonesuch. I needed to go with Nonesuch for the world, otherwise I couldn’t have gotten my record out in the US, because feasibly it was Nonesuch who was the main label that was interested, and if I’d said no to them I could have stayed with Bella Union, but I wouldn’t have released my record in the US. So it was kind of a struggle, because I wanted to stay with Bella Union in Europe, because I really like them, but I had to make a decision about what I had to do in the States and that meant signing with Nonesuch and it came along with that that I had to go along with them for the whole world.
They are still doing PR for my current stuff, because they have just re-released my first album, The Triumphs And Travails Of Orphan Mae, so they’re doing PR for that, and then they will probably stop I guess after this. I hope that they can stay involved because they do have three of my records in their back catalogue, and I really love them as people, and I hope that we can continue to have a relationship, and I think we will.
Yeah, we just finished our new record. We used the same band, and Tucker, and it sounds great.
I’m looking for a manager. It’s getting a little bit overwhelming, to be honest, and my partner Peter has been really helpful, but he’s at his wits’ end, so I’m looking for a manager and I’m being pretty careful about that, just because I want someone that really I can trust, and who really seems to be a fan of my music and is interested in my best interests, instead of just like some kind of business operation.
Well so far nothing’s really that different. We made our new record, and they liked it, and they’re putting it out in August, so hopefully it will just be a bigger... I think we’ll have a bigger audience for sure, but I don’t imagine... I mean who knows what can happen? But I don’t imagine it will be like any huge leaps forward or anything.
Yeah, I don’t know, I’m not really concerned about them one way or the other, I just don’t want to read my press because I just don’t… I have enough people in my life telling me what they think about my music, and they’re really careful about it, and they’re my band mates, my partner and my producer, and I think that’s enough for me to feel like I have a critique system set up, and I don’t want to give too much weight to what the press says because I see other artists being really influenced by that, and changing their work related to it, and I want to speak from my heart; I don’t want to speak from the outside.
Well they’re not about ice and snow at all on this new album. It’s more about summery stuff like lakes and beaches and sailors, and it still has a lot of nautical and natural imagery in it, and it’s brighter. But it’s not summery though, because that implies that it’s like “Beach Boys happy” and it’s not like that. It’s like the dark melancholy kind of summer sound…I don’t know, it’s hard to describe.
I just write songs and then I don’t really think much about them, because I write them all the time, so I’m not very attached to them. So… and because I’m writing so much, I have a sense of fluidity about it, so… but I do like to collect them onto records, so what I do is, after I have a batch of twenty songs, I’ll look at them and start to examine what’s going on and take a more critical eye towards them and think “OK, well what are some themes running through here?” Because I don’t direct them, like when I sit down to write, I’m not directing anything, I’m just letting it come through, and then if I find themes I get excited, and then I exploit them, and push them, and then try and make a record that has a cohesive feeling.
He does play drums with us occasionally, and he’ll be playing with us in the Fall I think, which will be really great, but I don’t know how much live sound processing he’ll be doing. I think it’s just mostly going to be drums.
He doesn’t really play with us very much, so it’s more like Karl (Blau) (www.kelpmonthly.com) does that now, because he… we like put different drum beats from the record and some other things into Karl’s looping pedal, and now I have a looping pedal, so we’re both now starting to play around with that.
Ah well I don’t really follow what people are saying or what... I just play whatever and if people like it I’m happy so I mean... I don’t like to think of myself as Americana actually, so… I just like to play music and not pigeonhole myself into any particular style.
Well, I mean we played Spydafest, we played the Fleadh, and different festivals, but I think certain Folk festivals probably aren’t booking us for that reason, but I don’t know because I don’t really talk to my agent about it, I just like go where he tells me to go.
I liked it too, it was fun. I mean it was a torrential downpour, but yeah.
I never really listened to a Bjork album, but I really like what I’ve heard on the radio, and little samples here and there, and I’ve read interviews with her, and she seems great, so if they want to compare me with her that’s fine, but I’m not very familiar with her work yet. I’d like to become more familiar, but I don’t have any of her albums.
Right, yeah? Well that’s a good word to use; I don’t mind that word.
I just go where the interest is, and it’s been slower to pick up in The States, but I am interested in playing there, because it’s my home country, and it’s easy to get around, but I just really have followed the easiest path through this music world, and that has led me more often to Europe, and if that continues to be the case I’ll come over here more and more, but I would like to have kind of an equal growth in both areas.
I do enjoy it. I mean we don’t have a tour manager, or a manager, or a driver, or anything yet, so that makes it kind of… over and over, when we do it, it gets pretty gruelling. But that said, we feel like real appreciation here that we don’t really feel as much in The States, and so we’re really happy to get that real listening attention.
Well we’ve been listening to Juana Molina (www.juanamolina.com), she’s an Argentinian songwriter who’s amazing. I’d love to tour with her some day, and she does a lot of loops and beats and amazing, beautiful melodies, and a very soft voice, and Bright Eyes, I’ve been listening to both of his albums, which are great. And The Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs, and let’s see, we’ve been listening to some different Nonesuch (www.nonesuch.com) bands, because y’know I can get free CD’s from them. Emmylou Harris (www.emmylou.net), and some different African instrumentalists, and some Bulgarian Folk women singers, and just everything under the sun. And Four Tet, Rounds is really good too. Four Tet (www.fourtet.net), he’s a London based guy, I’m not sure, he’s a British fellow and does electronica
Thank you, I hope that you like it. It’ll be different it’s more drums, keyboards and feedback.