A Conversation With Tift Merritt – HuffPost 5.28.10

Mike Ragogna: How did it feel being a Grammy nominee?

Tift Merritt: It definitely came out of left field. Nobody expected that to happen, and the best thing about being nominated for a Grammy is that you get to share it with your family and it’s sort of a validation for them for having supported you when it really didn’t make sense. And when you’re nominated for a Grammy, it gives you a great feeling. It’s a really, really nice thing to share with your family. But it was definitely unexpected.

MR: Speaking of family, you grew up in North Carolina right?

TM: Yeah, I did grow up in North Carolina.

MR: What were those years like?

TM: I grew up in Raleigh and I went to school in Chapel Hill, and that’s where we started our band. I lived in and around Chapel Hill for many years. I think growing up in North Carolina would probably be like growing up in a lot of other places in that it was when places had a real identity. You know, I do a lot of driving through the United States right now. When you reach the outskirts of a town, you hit a Walmart. So, Chapel Hill was pretty special for a small town. But we also had a nice amount of culture and a great community of people who had a similar background and who knew your parents. Information was shared at a much slower pace, and life really was so different from the people around you.

MR: You also played music as you were growing up.

TM: Yeah, my Dad taught me. He played piano by ear, and he had a really pretty voice. He plays guitar–he finger picks, plays harmonica. He played Bob Dylan, Percy Sledge, Dolly Parton…that’s how I started.

MR: How old were you when you started playing small clubs?

TM: I started playing small clubs by myself when I was in my late teens. I was all by myself, and I didn’t really know drunk people. I tried that for a while, and then I said you know, I don’t think that this is for me, this is pretty weird.

MR: You also were in groups like The Carbines, right?

TM: Well, right away, I was off trying to play clubs, trying to be an artist. I didn’t think any one could teach me that. It ended up I got a job through a friend in New York and was there for a little while. Finally, I realized that I was being a waitress more than anything else, so when I did start school, in my first class, I just happened to meet a drummer. I had kind of decided that playing in clubs was a little tougher than I was. It took me a little while, but I eventually got the nerve to give him a taste of my stuff. He came back the next day and brought drums and a bunch of LPs, and I said, “What are you doing?” and he said we have to have a band. He’s now my husband.

MR: You were signed to Lost Highway. How did that happen?

TM: I bumped into Ryan Adams, and he told his manager about me. I was starting to play around the South, and this manager picked me up, and he knew a slew of amazing people. I felt really lucky to be there, and within a few months of managing me, he started Lost Highway. He is one of the founders of Lost Highway, and he sort of took his whole roster to Lost Highway, so I got to go too.

MR: When you did your first record Bramble Rose, it got a lot of accolades. Considering it was your first album, did all of its positive reviews surprise you?

TM: Well, I think we were just happy to be noticed and playing at that point. I mean, I tried to make a point to not get too carried away with press, and I just tried to stay on my own compass. We were making music, and we got to work decent gigs, travel all over the country. You know, it was just one of those times when you see your dreams set in motion, and we were just so super excited about that. And we were also learning a lot. I learn a lot now, being in the music business, but back then, every club, every city, every night was truly something new, and that was a really awesome feeling.

MR: Did a lot of those experiences translate into songs that made it on to your albumTambourine?

TM: I know there was a fair amount of pressure on Tambourine. It was kind of before the music industry fell apart. But most of all, our band had always been like this very energetic band. I mean we always wanted to be more than just a bar band, and we were all full of energy. I just really wanted to make sure that we went into the studio after touring for this really introverted record. After six months I was like, “I really want to burn something down on stage every night.” It was really an exciting time.

MR: In addition to being nominated for a Grammy, it was nominated for three American Music Awards in the Americana category–Americana Album of the Year, Artist of the Year, and your song “Good Hearted Man” that hit #60 on the country charts. That had to be a nice high coming off of all that.

TM: It got a lot of critical acclaim, and I think that everyone was surprised that the Grammys took notice of it. I mean, I believed in it 200 percent, but the country world didn’t embrace it at all, and it didn’t really sell to what anybody thought it should have. We were dropped twice after that.

MR: Yeah, major label luv. A recurring theme.

TM: It was really, really amazing to see the world embrace that record and to have worked with people like Mike Campbell. But it just wasn’t embraced by the country world though it was sometimes painted that way, you know what I mean?

MR: It probably seemed like a logical market to the label. Whatever. You then moved on to the Fantasy label. How did that come about?

TM: Well, I took some time off in Europe, and I wrote a record which was a big accident too. I was sitting in Paris where I rented a flat with a piano. I came back with these songs, so when we were dropped, there was already a record in existence that I really believed in. Robert Smith at Fantasy called me, and we started talking about Eudora Welty stories and Robert Franks photographs and on and on. I started to think this could be my home for this new little record that I’m working on, and so it came about very naturally.

MR: That was your previous album, which brings us to See You On The Moon. This one seems like a very personal record to me. I could be wrong.

TM: No, no, no!

MR: Then I would say this is your relationship record, right?

TM: Yeah. I think that there is a lot in this record. The story is a lot more in the music than in the framing of it. I really wanted to make a direct record. I wanted the writing to be really strong and direct and not try and expunge anything superfluous in the writing and the writing process. But you know, I think all my records are very personal, and hopefully are going further and deeper with each one, so yeah, it’s more personal.

My grandmother died while I was writing this record and I think are some personal losses in this record that maybe weren’t in the other ones. But in a lot of ways, I made this record without thinking…just by feeling and doing and trusting in a way that I can get beyond and get further than I did before.

MR: Well, what is sweet about what you just said it that it’s the process used by most great artists when creating their brilliant albums. It comes from a place that just flows, you have to get out of its way.

TM: That is exactly the phrase that I use, get out of my own way.

MR: And you’re also a photographer whose Other Countries exhibit had a run in Raleigh’s Mahler Gallery.

TM: I did. And you know that was a really, really sane thing for me to do because I have always had this fantasy that I’m a visual artist rather than an artist that is on tour all the time.

MR: As a photographer, how do you get inspired?

TM: When I took that time off in France, I was by myself and didn’t really know anyone. So, when I was writing and really needed just to stuff my own head, I would walk, and I came home with all of these journals and pictures that, to me, felt like a part of that time and part of that record. I wanted to find a way for the photos to stand on their own rather than just be in a box under my bed. I’m always careful to not be a dilettante, but that was just an important part of that process to me, I don’t pretend that I’m a photographer. I’m a hack, and I do it when I can and I love it. But this was really about trying to make something stand on its own and speak for itself, and I was very proud of it.

MR: So, See You On the Moon. One of my favorite tracks is “Mixed Tape” with those moody seventies strings and a sound reminiscent of…

TM: …Bill Withers!

MR: Man, I swear, I was just about to say “Ain’t No Sunshine,” but said seventies strings instead. What inspired “Mixed Tape”?

TM: Yeah, well, the first thing was that I had a huge suitcase of tapes that I’ve been meaning to go though. I have some tapes that my high school boyfriend made me, and some from a friend who had great taste in music. By the time I was around 19 or 20 years old, I had a collection with all of this really great music on it. That was my introduction to it, and that’s when music became really, really important to me.

I first remember reading into every single song and there was the emotional charge that every song gave me, so I had to translate that. I remember making tapes for my friends and wanting them to be perfect, even making the cover and tearing it up and trying it again. It was at least a one day process if not a four day process. I guess I think there was so much sweetness in that, and I don’t think that making as CD playlist and burning it in 35 seconds is equivalent.

MR: Yeah, the process of making them always was terrific. CD burns probably appeals to that instant gratification thing we all seem to need now. Creating a mix tapes always seemed intimate to some degree. Very personal.

TM: I just think that hand made, home made thing really takes time, and you do it with your hands. I think that’s still where my heart lives.

MR: Beautiful. Tift, on the song “The Things That Everybody Does,” I don’t really want to do any of them. Are those truly the things that everybody does?

TM: (laughs) No. Those are the things that I did, and that I am feeling with everybody.

MR: Tell me what went into your list?

TM: It’s a very personal song. When I wrote it, I got married, and I was kind of a little scared about it. It’s about what everybody feels when they do it, and it was also singing about a time when I was a loner. I lived with my dog by myself on a farm trying to be a writer, and it was a very pure time. But it was also a very lonely time. I just never totally got in a place that everybody around me seems to get to. I think that as I have grown older I have started to understand a little more what it is that I was talking about.

MR: “Feel Of The World.” You’ve got good ol’ Mr. My Morning Jacket on there, Jimmy James.

TM: Yeah, he did such a wonderful job with that. I’m talking about my grandmother dying, and it wasn’t about her actually dying. I wrote it while she was dying, and I feel like my grandfather–who is not around–I feel like it was more his song than my song. My grandmother was very old, and it was time for her to pass. But you know you can feel the impact of someone’s life passing, and in the mystery of that passing, you also feel a sense of tactile life. So I was just really thinking of her.

MR: Beautiful. So of all the potential songs by other artists to cover on your album, why did you pick Anne Murray’s hit “Danny’s Song”?

TM: It’s so funny. We love seventies music, and I was wearing roller skates around the studio. It sort of brought us around to this conversation about seventies singers who wore roller skates which went into seventies singers who got haircuts. It just went from there, and somebody said something about Anne Murray not being cool. This huge argument broke out in the studio because Anne Murray is cool.

MR: I think before she recorded “You Needed Me,” she was considered one of the great interpreters of lyrical songs. Paul McCartney commented that he thought her version of “You Won’t See Me” was his favorite.

TM: So, we started watching all these videos of her singing “Snowbird” in 1970, and we’re all in our thirties. “Danny’s Song” totally made us tear up and had us thinking when it came on of when our parents had it on. So, we just started fooling around with it, and Tucker said go on in there and cut it, you’ve got two takes. It was never intended to be recorded, it was just sort of this moment that was really sweet and true and we couldn’t shake it.

We played it for people and they would say you’re not putting it on the album. So, then I thought my gosh why don’t we. It was just really natural and sweet and fun and something that kind of resonated in our lives. When you start thinking about it…we don’t have a lot of money, but we’re happy and its good. It was just a sweet song for us.

MR: Is “After Today I Never Thought I’d See 18” a true story?

TM: Yes.

MR: Ouch.

TM: This song is definitely not through my eyes. I sat next to a public defender for juveniles on an international flight. He told me about his job defending kids who, by the time they’re 16, 17 years old, are facing a death penalty or life in prison. After I heard that, I just knew I needed to write a song about that.

MR: So did this turn out to be your dream come true album?

TM: Well, every album that you make is your dream come true album if your doin’ it right.

MR: Good answer. Are there any issues in the news that concern you?

TM: You know, I think about food safety, big agriculture. I am a huge advocate of small farmers, and there is so much in the news right now. The oil spill is breaking my heart, and it’s just really hard for me to read the news sometimes. The decision making processes that happen don’t really make any sense to me, and I don’t know how to change them.

MR: One more question. What is your advice to new artists?

TM: It’s so simple. I think you have to love what you do, and you have to do the things that feed life to you. I don’t think there are any shortcuts. I think you have to be true to yourself, and I think that’s really hard because there are a lot of people telling you that you should be something more convenient for them. It’s really not so complicated. You just have to love music, play music that you believe in, and try to do the right thing.