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Hosting a Party: An Interview with Gretchen Phillips
05/19/2009 Whether or not you know her by name, or as a member of the many bands she’s performed with - or at all - Gretchen Phillips has been re-configuring rock music for 24 years. Since 1984, Gretchen has been involved with bands such as Meat Joy, Two Nice Girls, Lord Douglas Phillips, Girls in the Nose, the Gretchen Phillips Ministries, Phillips & Driver and The Gretchen Phillips Xperience, not to mention her own solo work. With radio hits such as "Sweet Jane (With Affection)” and “I Spent my Last $10 Dollars (On Birth Control and Beer)," Gretchen's music has ranged from experimental avant-garde, to electro-folk, to country/gospel. Some of her songs are re-contextualized covers that shine a fresh light on the meaning of love and pleasure - how it could be had, and who can have it. Her original songs display a songwriting skill that's both frisky and earnest. Her lyrics are not disguised by taboos, rather they are confident, open and unashamed in the face of a music industry, and society, that would have them muted. In addition to recording, Gretchen is also involved with the Michigan Womyn's festival, a week long event that showcases women working in the arts. After 24 years, seven bands, and nine albums, Gretchen Phillips has become an icon for lesbians in rock music. A long time member of Austin Texas's renowned local scene, Gretchen is a pioneer for indie music. Not only visible as a lesbian making music, her sweetly inviting voice resonates a perspective, an experience and a comfort that has opened the doors for a whole new venue of identifying oneself. Fresh off the heels of her latest album I Was Just Comforting Her, recently recuperated from surgery, and preparing for fall classes in furniture making, Gretchen was kind enough to grant us an interview. You can catch her dynamic performance live at the Mondohomo festival, Thursday May 21st in Atlanta along with Athens's own Athens Boys Choir. AE: What can we expect from your latest album I Was Just Comforting Her? GP: My new album is rich and varied. These songs were written over the course of several years and are all stylistically different. Quite a few of them were originally composed on a little Casio and then arranged in the studio to recreate the Casio tones using "real" instruments. That said, there's also a lot of actual Casio (and Yamaha DJXII) on the album still. AE: Trish Bendix's blog "After Ellen" raises some interesting questions about the title of this new album. I Was Just Comforting Her, is it an explanation? An apology? GP: Thematically the album deals with loss and hope. How do I approach life's difficulties, i.e. getting dumped by a girl, a President I don't like getting re-elected (Bush in 2004), my brother's alcoholism, what I perceive to be the relinquishing of responsibility that belief in the Rapture engenders, etc? Also, how do I write about the redemptive power of love, desire and hope? Those are the main themes that thread this album. And I call it an album because it was conceived as a thick, sonic slab of humanism meant to be heard in its entirety and in order. AE: Creatively, how did you approach this album? GP: I still buy lots of vinyl. I still listen to records in context. I still look for continuity in any given album, rather than listening to songs as discrete iTunes downloads, if you know what I mean. I think there are two approaches to listening to music: the jukebox or radio model, and the album in its entirety (or at least one side) model. I don't think that one is more correct than the other by any means. But I did conceive of I Was Just Comforting Her as the album in its entirety model. That said, I do believe that each song can stand just fine on its own. But there is meant to be a cumulative effect as the album progresses. AE: You’re an artist who deals in a variety of performances or projects other than your own solo music making, what all do you have going on now? In the near future? And what’s your attraction to seek out or create a variety of performances? GP: I work on many different creative projects simultaneously. I always have because I get so easily distracted and I have so many different ideas and different ways that I want to express myself. I'm currently in a very popular band entitled A Joy Division Cover Band, here in Austin, and we just do Joy Division covers. Our drummer, Thor Harris, is also in Shearwater and so he tours quite a bit and we don't get to gig as much as we'd like. But people love this band and it is utterly dreamy for me to be able to sing and play guitar on those excellent songs. I also have a disco improv band entitled Gretchen's Disco Plague (It's Infectious). That's a loose assortment of co-horts and we just round up some instruments and hopefully some go-go dancers and I start playing the Yamaha DJXII. I hit "start" and we make stuff up until our time runs out. Very liberating, super fun, audience participation, joyful experience. Dave Driver and I, Phillips & Driver, are hard at work mixing our sophomore album, Disco Dance Party, which is chock full of original disco anthems for middle-aged queers. Such songs as "Hey, Did You Ever Try to Buy a House" and "The Reluctant Butch." Not sure when it's going to be done, but that's going to definitely be a nice album. I continue to shoot footage for my YouTube webisodes of Tribute Album. That's improvisations on the theme of my feeling that if there was only a tribute album of my songs, a project that would properly pay me homage I would "feel better." It's very fun to show the darker, insecure and pettier side of show biz. And I'm studying furniture making at the community college. My fall semester will consist of a class that is only offered on Saturdays from 9am to 2pm, so I fear that that will cut into my touring somewhat. But it's worth it to learn how to work on hardwood (rather than all the plywood projects they've given us so far) and to learn to make the classic dovetail joint. AE: You recently digitized a lot of VHS footage from over the years. Did re-watching your career as it has progressed stir any thoughts? GP: I think what I mostly learned from watching old VHS footage in order to put it up onto my YouTube channel was that I was actually cuter back in the day than I thought I was at the time. And what a waste! What a waste to find myself physically unattractive as a youngster when I can see now that there wasn't really anything wrong with me. Quite frankly it's making me put my current aging process into perspective. In the future I sure don't want to look back at footage of myself now and think, "God, what was your problem? You looked good and yet you walked around thinking that you didn't." It's a waste. My experience of being a performer is very wrapped up in my looks. For better or worse, that's the way it is with most of the performers I know. Our physical selves are on display. And that can be challenging. As a feminist, I always want to question cultural notions of physical normality or attractiveness or whatever. Obviously this culture is completely fucked up in regards to people's feelings about how they look. And however much I may fight that, I'm still susceptible to it. But please, let me learn from the fact that hindsight is 20/20. If I looked just fine at the age of 25, I might look just fine at the age of 45. I also learned from watching that old footage that I've been putting on a fun show for a long time now. And that's a good feeling. AE: On the note of your career... 24 years! How did you do that? How are you doing that? Especially as a musician who has always been an "indie" performer. GP: Yes, this question of my longevity as a performer and how I've done it. Well, this is the question that was soooooo vexing when I was recovering from my surgery because I felt bad, like what sort of future do I have. But I realize now, hell, we don't know the future. As the Bible says, "You don't know the first thing about tomorrow." It's true, we don't. Shit happens and plans get thwarted. But how did I do what I've already done? What's been my guiding spirit? Fun. I like to have fun. I was a fun-loving child; I'm a fun-loving adult. Being a performer is also being a hostess. I essentially put on events to bring my friends together all the damn time. I make up an invite (a flyer), I plan the proceedings, I schedule a venue, and then the people who come for that performance are the people who make up that party. It's always different. And events serve different functions. It's amazing to me how useful I find it to have a party and have friends come and have their experience and what I learn from that. Then, as far as recording is concerned, I just believe in making a record and sending it out there into the world where it will hopefully affect people's lives. Hopefully my songs become part of the soundtrack of their lives. I think it must make me feel a bit immortal to have the idea that someone could pick up a record of mine used for $1 somewhere because they find the cover and/or the titles of the songs intriguing, and then take it home and like it. All I've ever really wanted to be is a good thrift store find. Just as Bobbie Gentry, Dick Hyman and Dory Previn were a good thrft store finds for me. Making a record is like making a bunch of children who I send out into the world and I pray that they find their way into people's homes and their lives and that they are loved as much as I loved them. I have no idea whether this is what really happens to them, but that's my goal. AE: In one of these videos – the 1989 "self" interview – your Two Nice Girls bandmate asked: "Looking back over the past couple of years, where you’ve been personally as a musician and where you'd like to be... Tell us a little bit about reflections of the past and hopes for the future what are you looking forward to this next year?" Can I re-ask you this question in 2009? GP: I don't know how much "success" I'll see in my life. I had a really good run of it back in my twenties when I was in Two Nice Girls. And I still have a whole lot that I want to say and I still have my dreams about "making it." However, the musical landscape is extremely different than it was twenty years ago. Digital technology has meant that the cost of recording is no longer out of reach for most struggling musicians. Which is awesome, look what Leslie Hall is doing with Garage Band! Also digital technology means that albums are dead and that former source of revenue is dwindling. Lots of people no longer feel the need to actually pay for music. That has a very real effect on a person's musical career when merchandise sales drop 30% each year (as they're doing for many of my friends). So now, more and more people are hitting the road in an attempt to make up for that lost revenue. So the road is glutted. At the same time, there are more and more activities competing for the entertainment dollar any given night: Netflix, Hulu, video games, YouTube, etc. People don't go out to shows like they used to. And there's more music being produced than ever before because the cost of making albums has dropped dramatically. This is just how things are now. So, given that reality, what am I to do? I can just pursue my desires. I can just continue looking for what is gratifying for me as a musician and an artist, hence the furniture making. I will probably always play music because I think it's an essential part of who I am. But I can also imagine myself moving more into books (memoir), furniture, carpentry, producing other bands, preaching the good word, who knows? It would behoove me to learn a marketable skill because I've been essentially living off my professor girlfriend for a long time now and I'm getting tired of it. And one thing that might be smart would be to concentrate on making all of my back catalogue available, all Two Nice Girls, the Meat Joy album, and Girls in the Nose. People love that old stuff. And I'm always working on something new. But sales of that first Two Nice Girls album are far greater than sales of my new album, so I just need to face that fucking reality and should maybe consider giving the people what they want. AE: Speaking of Two Nice Girls, the band's biography begins by describing the female and lesbian climate in music during the 1980s. Your description states that female centered performances were "underground;" that lesbian musicians were at that time still closeted; and that the "punk women's world and the lesbian feminist world were rather separate." In your personal assessment, how have things changed? GP: In regards to lesbian music's stature in the world now. Hmmmmmmmmm, I'm really not sure. I think that a certain mainstreaming has taken place over the course of the last twenty years, which is very welcome. Another huge thing that's happened is that the internet, digital downloads, MySpace, etc. have allowed for a certain democratization of the music biz. An independent artist who is willing to spend hours and hours a day, can really market themselves for cheap. If you've got the time and the drive, you can really put yourself out there now in ways that were unimaginable back in the day. For example, Two Nice Girls sent out physical postcards to promote our shows to our mailing list. They were meant to be put up on the refrigerator in hopes that the person would remember to go to the show. None of this texting during soundcheck, sending out a reminder (for free!) to come on down! Cost of promotion has been greatly reduced. And information in general has been greatly increased. That can be a blessing and a curse. It's hard for me to sort thru all the various invites I get for perfectly worthy shows. It's a deluge. More than I'm good at sorting thru. But for artists who are really working these new systems of disseminating information about themselves and their proceedings, (blogging for example), it can be in inexpensive resource. So I see that there's still tons of lesbian music out there. And I would imagine that the cultural climate has changed and the public's receptivity towards the notion of a girl singing a song about another girl is more welcoming. But I must say, Girls Gone Wild was not what I was working towards back in the day. I Kissed a Girl and I hope my boyfriend don't mind? How fucking transgressive is that? AE: You also wrote that Two Nice Girls' project was to get lesbianism out of the closet, and give courage to those struggling with their sexuality. Does your current solo work continue this endeavor? How? GP: My work is always pretty lesbian-centric. But it's also really based in a desire for things to be better for men, too. My new solo show, Manlove, is all about my dreams of better possibilities for men. Because sexism is hard on them, too. Their options are pretty damn limited and it hurts them as humans. I feel for them. And I have some ideas for what might their lives better, ideas that I offer up in this show. Because I feel a part of the world. I do feel the oneness, you know? I think we're capable of so much more than we're asked. I believe in challenges. And I believe in togetherness. I feel that being a lesbian, being in a very happy relationship for 18 years with someone who treats me as an equal allows me to extend a certain equanimity towards the rest of the planet. This good foundation at home lets me then extend myself beyond its confines. Sexism really bugs me. I can't stand this tragic notion that men are inherently better than women. It separates and alienates us, makes us feel bad about ourselves and others and then we're totally compromised as far as all of the more interesting and better things we could be focusing on. Know what I mean? AE: At this point you're an undeniable icon, however, as you continue performing, what do you envision your legacy to be? GP: I honestly have no idea as to my legacy. I'm not sure that's for me to define. Although, I suppose, I wish I could. AE: Last May you delivered the keynote speech for the "Women, Rock! & Politics" conference and gave Athenians a sample of your music performance, any chance we’ll be seeing you again soon? GP: I'm going to be playing at Mondohomo in Atlanta on Thurs, May 21. Can't remember the details, they're on the website I imagine. Comments [post a comment]Comments are closed |
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