A Conversation with Laura Veirs (continued)

PM: So to songwriter friends and aspiring writers, I point to your songs as superior examples of flexibility and a freedom of expression. You seem very unfettered as a writer, to me.

LV: Yeah, so far so good. I haven't really struggled with very many writer's block issues.

PM: Yeah.

LV: Struggled with the performance more. But now I'm finally getting over that. I was so nervous from the beginning. I think I took it too seriously in the wrong way. I don't know, I was just really uptight for the first few years and very anxious about performing. But since I've just worked through that anxiety I've become so much more comfortable. But I didn't start writing songs to perform. I started writing songs to write songs. And that's the hard thing for some songwriters: they realize that in this day and age mostly songwriters become performers--at least in the place where I live, in the Northwest. It's not like Nashville, where you actually have people who are just writers.

PM: Right.

LV: So yeah, the performance was harder to come to for me to feel comfortable. But I really feel more and more so, just relaxed. The writing thing, yeah, I just sit down and stuff comes out. And I have to work on it, but--

PM: But it's kind of a pure approach. Probably because you started writing songs just to write songs, it remained kind of a pure approach, and you just let whatever is coming out come out, and you just nurture it to the end.

LV: I just try to write a lot. I haven't written a song since I wrote my last record, so of course now I'm getting anxious about that. But I have been touring so much, and I moved to a new city, so it's okay.

PM: Yeah. And it will come all in a rush, the way it does.

LV: Yeah, it will, once I make the space and time for it. But yeah, it's fun for me. I really like it. It's a challenge each time to sit down and come up with an interesting song. It's a tough thing to do well, I think. But I find it really enjoyable when it starts to work.

PM: Yeah. I was just talking to a friend who was in the halls of Congress yesterday trying to protect the rights of songwriters and this and that. And he said that Rivers Rutherford, one of the very mega-writers of this town, had been talking to Trent Lott. And you know, Rivers himself is a Republican, and was a supporter of Lott's, and was kind of running down the American songwriters dilemma, and how his rights are being compromised all over the place, and they're trying to protect them. And Lott's basic take on preserving this very American heritage of writing R & B and country and blues was, "Well, maybe y'all just need to be doing something else."

LV: Really?

PM: [laughs]

LV: Basically just change jobs?

PM: Yeah, like maybe you ought to get a real job.

LV: Yeah, maybe you should be a carpenter, or something, with practical skills.

PM: Yeah, really, really sad.

LV: That's like telling like a cobbler to just stop making shoes. You know?

PM: Yeah, right, maybe you should be a mason. Really sad. Do you pay attention to the business stuff at all, like airplay and retail versus bandstand sales, or promotion or any of that? Do you get involved with any of that?

LV: Well, I have a helper. I don't have a proper experienced music business manager. But Clyde is my very dear helper. But so we're kind of in this funny place of trying to pay attention but not knowing exactly what to pay attention to, and asking the label about sales, but not really knowing what that means. And seeing that it's on the college charts and say, "Well, that must be good." But what does that mean?

PM: Right. And who's working it.

LV: Yeah. I mean, I know the name of my radio plugger, and he's really nice. It's very important to me to know what's going on, but there's so much going on that I just can't track it all. So it's kind of trying to decide along the way what is worth asking about and figuring out, and what is just worth letting them do, because that's their job, the label.

PM: Exactly. Yeah. It's hard to know how to insert yourself into the process in a way that they know you're vitally interested, without getting in the way. I dig.

LV: Yeah, exactly.

PM: How is the relationship with Nonesuch going, and are they pleased enough with how it's going?

LV: I don't know if they're pleased enough, because they haven't renewed my contract. But they seem pleased, but not in the sense that they have said, "Okay, let's sign another contract." So my contract is up with them. But they seem optimistically enthusiastic about things.

PM: Good.

LV: So who knows? To be honest, I'm considering all the different options open to me, too. It's a strange world right now to be a musician and try to make money, to make this a business.

PM: Definitely.

LV: It's just changing so fast. Everybody is talking about it. Everybody is trying to figure out how to make it work with the new digital era. So it's interesting to follow things that other people are doing that are completely free of labels altogether. And I'm not saying I'm going to go that route, but I am just taking everything into consideration as I look at the next step, because who knows what's going to happen, for me, and for the record industry at large.

PM: Yeah, because some people are going even beyond the labelless route, and going the productless route, saying, well, I'm not even going to make CDs, I'm just going to be available as downloads, and that's the way it's all going to be in a little while, so I'm just getting to it.

PM: Yeah. There was a really interesting article in the New York Times recently about a guy who's just doing just that, and basically selling a song a week online. And he's gotten tons of people interested. And then he'll just take a query and ask people, "Well, where is the most interest?" And they're like, "Over here in this small town in Pennsylvania. Come play a show." And then he'll go play a show and come home with thousand bucks. And that's great for him. He's a beginning songwriter.

PM: I saw that article. That was very, very interesting.

LV: He doesn't have anybody helping him. I mean, he was lamenting the fact that he's spending his six hours a day on the computer. That's the other thing.

PM: Exactly. Well, that's what happens.

LV: Saying he didn't get into songwriting to sit on the computer talking to fans.

PM: Right. And then instead of having a radio promotion guy, you have a person that does that six hours on the computer for you.

LV: Right. Unless it's you. I mean, he was doing it, in the case of that guy. He was writing the songs and talking to the fans six hours a day, and doing all the promotion, etc. It just sounds exhausting.

PM: More and more I hear people say stuff like, "Put down that mouse and pick up your guitar."

LV: Yeah, right.

PM: Because people are spending so much time--

LV: You mean networking and just hanging out on myspace and--

PM: Right. Even research and doing constructive things on the computer. But musicians, more and more, are saying to each other, "Dude, put down that mouse and pick up your guitar."

LV: Yeah.

PM: Because it just wraps up your whole day if you let it.

LV: Oh, it will. It's amazing. I've noticed that, like myself, just checking e-mail, I'll sit down and think, oh, I'll just check my e-mail. And then I'm there for like two hours.

PM: Yep.

LV: I didn't even notice the time go by.

PM: Yeah. And you have a good time. You're creative, but still, you could have been playing.

LV: Yeah, right.    continue

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