A Conversation with Alicia J. Rose (continued)

PM: So back to Miss Murgatroid for a second. How and when did you hook up with Petra Haden for your landmark record, Bella Neurox?

AR: Oh, God, I want you to hear the new one, it's so crazy.

PM: Oh, can't wait!

AR: It's called Hearts and Daggers.

PM: I heard just a smidgen of it on Myspace, and it sounded really beautiful. [Click here to visit their myspace.]

AR: That's all that's out there right now because we've been keeping it under wraps until we figure out what the hell we're doing with it, which may be sorted soon, happily. I can't reveal all the details, unfortunately. But okay, Petra Haden is a genius, period.

PM: Uh-huh.

AR: We were releasing records on the same label in the early '90s, called Win Records, out of L.A. She was in That Dog, which I became a big fan of. She came through Portland a couple different times, and we just pal'd out. We had dinner, we hung out; we just connected. And then she got into a rough bike accident a year or two later, needed a vacation and some headspace and decided to come and visit. She came up and stayed with me for two weeks. We had a blast.

In the first week we went and saw a bunch of movies and went shopping. We are both good-natured Southern California mall rats. We just hung out and chilled. She had brought her violin up with her though, so by the second week I broke out the accordion and we started playing together. I don't really know how we did it, but we wrote the beginnings of an album in five days--maybe six days, during her visit.

PM: Wow.

AR: We made this first batch of eight songs, and pitched our pals at Win Records to release it. Lucky for us, they were stoked, and Bella Neurox was born. The record came out, and it did quite well--for an accordion/violin/vocal duo record! We actually had a lot of fun with it. But then things kind of changed, and we kind of just moved past the project. I was in my own career trajectory with music distribution and photography, club booking. She was on hers, playing with the Foo Fighters, Beck, Bette Midler!!

And then this guy approached us in 2003, a mutual friend, a children's book author. I can't really give you his name, but he's a very popular children's book author. He wanted to buy copies of all of my albums. I obliged personally, even though a couple were by then out of print. So I gave him all five albums plus Bella Neurox. I guess he fell like head over heels with Bella Neurox. He told me that he wrote two of his books to it, as inspiration. And he wanted to know when the new one was coming out... [laughs]

PM: Wow.

AR: Turns out he really wanted to help. First he asked me just to make songs for his project/website. But then it turned very quickly into more--this was actually in 2003 right when my Histrionic show happened. He came to the opening. And at the opening he told me, he goes, "Alicia, what would you think about me executive producing a new record with you and Petra?" I looked at him and I said, "Well, do you know what that means?"

PM: That means you pay for it, dude.

AR: Yeah, exactly, he said, "That means I pay for it." I replied, "You got it." It was awesome. I said, "Okay, you really want to pay for us to make a new record? She lives in L.A., it's complicated--are you sure?" He insisted, "I want a new record." So we worked it out. It was a crazy project. We made a new record. He got some new music to inspire him hopefully. The most amazing thing was that he let us own and maintain all of the rights.

PM: You own the masters?

AR: We own the masters.

PM: Hell yeah.

AR: But because of that, because there is no label expecting anything--Petra and I are typical musicians used to delivering a record after recording it--our momentum got headed off at the pass. We even played four shows at South by Southwest in 2004 to get things going, find a label. We were going to do it. We were even close to management. We had a booking agent. The works. It was going to be the next step in our musical co-evolution. Then--all this bad stuff happened. My grandmother passed away while I was at South by Southwest...which derailed me personally. Also, we'd both broken up with boyfriends during the recording of the record. There was a lot of heartbreak in it.

So I think we needed to take a step away to really appreciate what we had made. We put energy into the record that was as intense and heartbreaking as it was beautiful and stunning. I learned so much making Hearts and Daggers, it was incredible. I honestly think that for me it's the best thing I've ever created musically without question. I think that it's up there with Petra's accomplishments too, especially because it's one of the few things she's ever actually written herself.

PM: It's so big when two people make a record, and both people are in a similarly heartbreaking situation.

AR: Oh, you have no idea.

PM: I know that situation, and that's really amazing.

AR: It was beautiful, and painful, and wonderful, and almost more than we could bear. And to be honest, that's part of why it's never seen the light of day, because it was that crazy. It's like that letter you wrote to your now ex-boyfriend that you never sent.

PM: Yeah, wow.

AR: [laughs] So that's what happened. And in the meanwhile, we kept growing. I hooked her up with the Decemberists, she became a member of the band for a while, and worked with them--

PM: Right.

AR: --and wound up being on their record and touring with them for a while. And I wound up working for Doug Fir. That takes a lot of my energy and time.

I did, however, photograph her album cover for The Who Sell Out. I don't know if you saw that. That was a fun thing that we did together more recently. She needed a photographer, and couldn't afford any she knew in L.A. So, I told her I would try to fake The Who Sell Out cover. Why not? I'll try it in my friend's garage. Sounds like a plan, right? Uhhhh.

Well, so we did it. Made our own Petra-fied version of the album photos from The Who Sell Out, and it actually looks pretty damn good, if I may say, for how much I knew at the time. And as for having to fill a bathtub full of beans, which is not easy in any way, shape or form--which we did--well, there are some clever tricks. Maybe there can be a "how to fill a bathtub full of beans for a photo shoot" subarticle to this.

PM: [laughs]

AR: That's a story in and of itself, because that's a long one. But it's a good story, and it's fairly entertaining from beginning to end.

So Petra is a magical person. She's had a lot of challenges in her life. But ultimately, I sort of have always equated her to the magic harp. If you understand how to relate to her and how to work with her as a musician, there's no end to the brilliance that can come from that woman. She is just absolutely one of the most talented individuals I've ever met. She's also very chaotic and unbridled, and she's not the most--you can't sit her down and simply be like, "Okay, now play for six months." She's got a very artistic personality, it's who she is. I have so much love and respect for her. After all, we're both SoCal mall rats born in the '70s, who also play accordion and violin and can make neoclassical pop music. But we have such a rich collaboration when we get to it.

I took photos of us for the record which never came out. I mean, this whole record is literally ready to go. There's artwork that was done two years ago. There are photos that were taken two years ago. The master is done. Everything is finished. It just has to come out. It's the weirdest thing. I just couldn't handle it at the time, neither could she. We had to take a step away. But I think we're both in a better place now. I know I am. Creatively, I can find my joy in playing music again. I couldn't for a little while. I was done. I had lost it. And I think part of it is that I lost my joy in my career, too.    continue

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