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Annie Gallup Interview (cont.)
PM: So, this theater piece will be songs, I take it, with something to bring them together?
AG: Yes, it will be a lot of the story kind of songs I've recorded previously, and some new ones of that type, with instrumental or spoken word segues.
PM: I think the theater approach is a real stroke of genius. Your music is such that the more attention it's given, the better it is, I think. Complicated, well-performed music is more suited to a theater than a club.
AG: And at the theater you can also control the lighting, which is a big part of optimizing a performance. You bring focus to the important elements, and darken the extraneous ones.
PM: And your facial expressions will be so much more important. I really think the theatrical presentation of what you do could be a key to bringing it to the next level. So, where is the piece premiering?
AG: I'm going to show it at The Performance Network in Ann Arbor [MI] on July 19th through the 22nd. They have sort of a fringe series that goes on all summer, and I have a weekend run. We'll do the opening night with an ASL [sign language] interpreter.
PM: You do think of everything. What does the title Stay Me With Flagons mean?
AG: Flagons these days means flasks. But when the Song of Solomon was written, where the title is taken from, it meant little cakes.
PM: Stay me with little cakes, then?
AG: As in "Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love."
PM: Are you sick of love?
AG: Well, it's archaic language. Of in the sense of with, sick with love.
PM: Oh, I see. Then I withdraw the question. [Annie laughs.] You've been touring as a solo artist for about six years, I believe. We're interested in your thoughts about the folk scene, the solo scene, the acoustic scene, whatever you might call it, and how it's changed since you began.
AG: I think it's a lot more difficult than it was when I started out, especially for people who are just starting out. The scene is so flooded with players. It's the good and bad news of so many people now being able to make their own CDs of reasonable quality at reasonable cost. The good news is that people can now document their material indefinitely. The bad news is that the business can't possibly sustain the number of people who would like to try and make a mark or a living as solo or acoustic artists. The supply and demand is out of balance.
PM: Because the actual market for acoustic music, or singer songwriters, is not even as big as the one that exists for jazz. And there seems to be a lot more people wanting to be singer songwriters than there are people wanting to be jazz musicians. [This may be because the interviewer lives in Nashville.]
AG: And they all have CDs out. And they're all trying to do business, to do it as a business.
PM: And they're all trying to book the very limited number of gigs that are out there. Are there more or fewer venues now than when you started out?
AG: It's hard to tell, I don't really know the numbers. But I can tell you that people who are booking the clubs are pretty burnt out, by being inundated with so many performers and product. I was talking to someone the other day who said that, many days, five or six CDs cross his desk. Over a year, that's a lot of CDs. And the worst part of it, to him, is that most of them aren't too bad. They deserve to be heard.
PM: And most of them won't be, there's not a big enough audience to warrant enough venues.
AG: Which is the way the system works, I suppose. We all have to try what we want to try.
PM: You've been at it a long time, and keep getting better. What are your plans now?
AG: I'm not really one of those people that operates from a business plan. I follow opportunity, and right now the opportunities are on the rise. Things are a little better with every record and every year.
PM: And you're busy creating opportunities, as well. The theater initiative was a brainstorm.
AG: Actually, it was Eric Peltonieni from Red House [Records] who had the original idea. He came to a show I did about five years ago. He sat in the back with his head in his hands, and I thought, "Oh God, I'm boring this man to death." But at the end of the show he came up really excited to tell me about this great idea he had. He has a theater background, and basically he proposed everything it's turned out to be. I've been chewing on the idea for years, since 1996.
PM: How will the piece begin?
AG: I may start with a spoken word story, I was actually working on it when the phone rang, to set it all up. But I also have a scrap of a melody over a pedaled guitar part that I may use instead.
PM: I was wondering this morning why folk and acoustic music isn't more popular than it is. Any thoughts on that rather vague subject?
AG: I guess popular is what comes and goes, whatever's being promoted by whomever can make money on it. It doesn't really have much to do with what people think.
PM: More a product of promotion than the will of the people.
AG: And what's in style, you know.
PM: And since it is a product of promotion, hopefully vehicles like Puremusic will help make folk, good singer songwriters, and other music for grownups a little more popular.
AG: I think that folk has a kind of confused self-image. There's a war between the singer songwriters and the traditional folkies. Applying the label folk to both of those is kind of misleading. Most people doing singer songwriter stuff are not writing folk songs, are they? But unless we're being promoted as something other than folk by a label, folk is a convenient and friendly umbrella to get under.
PM: Singer songwriter stuff should at least be called New Folk, which it often is and has been. Or we should come up with something to call it.
AG: And then it could exist, like Alt-Country. Without that genre for everyone to hang their hat on, would Lucinda Williams have done as well? She'd been doing it forever, but till they put a label on it, she'd never had a big record.
PM: It didn't do Steve Earle any harm, either.
AG: Once you can label it something, it exists. We tried Folk Noir for awhile, I thought that was really good.
PM: Except that some people can't say it very easily. I guess it's up to some brainy singer songwriter like you to come up with some name.
AG: Let's think of something and run it up the Puremusic flagpole.
PM: I think that it's still easier for people to find the kind of books they might like than it is to find music they might like. Music suitable for grownups is not being marketed to them as such. Whereas, a person can just read the New York Times Book Review and discover a lot of breaking writers and discern likely candidates for their taste.
AG: Yeah, it's a funny business.
PM: What's your favorite room to play?
AG: There's a little room in Syracuse [NY], a club called Happy Endings that really is a little theater. They do theatrical productions there. Because it has the whole theater ambience and lighting, and great seating, I think that's my favorite setting.
PM: What do you like to do besides music?
AG: Besides music and walking my dog, you mean? You know, music is my business, but it's also my hobby. It's what I do with my spare time, too.
PM: I know you to be a voracious reader. What is it at the moment you're reading?
AG: Short stories by the notorious Irwin Shaw. The book is called Five Decades, it's a big fat book. I'm on page 477, and I'm not a third of the way through.
PM: And what might you be listening to?
AG: Tonight I picked up a Best of Bonnie Raitt collection. A bunch of older stuff, from Give It Up, and "Guilty," what a great song. Those songs really bring back a whole era for me, and all that was going on in my life.
PM: How do you feel about the music of today?
AG: I like being part of it.
•
[photo credits: red guitar by Talbot Studios in Ann Arbor, "girl with roses" (without dog) by Beth Hay]
print interview (PDF) listen to clips back to top
anniegallup.com fiftyfiftymusic.com
