Simply SIx: Ladies of Sport

1. For many artists, they cite a defining moment for themselves when they knew they wanted to be a singer.  For many it was the appearance of Elvis on the Ed Sullivan show, to another generation it was the Beatles’ appearance on Sullivan half a decade later.  Is there such a defining moment for you?

If there was one, I don’t remember it.  It might have been in the time when a kid is sentient but not making memories yet. My parents tell me that when I was 3 and a half I’d play my little toy drums and sing along to their records at the top of my lungs.  There was always music on in the house:  James Brown, Elton John, Ray Charles, Billy Joel.  Good singers to learn with.  I was always a singer, I think.

2. When you’re not creating music what are you listening to?  Who are some of your favorites?

My listening runs the gambit, but has been very rock-centric these days.  My current top five is hard to list, but let me try.  In no particular order:  The Walkmen, St. Vincent, Ryan Adams, Neko Case, and Andrew Bird.  There are also things that I’ve been listening to for years that I keep coming back to.  Tribe Called Quest always finds it’s way to my ears once a month.  Same goes for Aimee Mann, Refused, Ben Folds Five, and Paramore.  As you can see, my taste is hard to pin down. 

I’m also a producer and engineer, so many times I’ll love a record just for how it sounds.

And, in general, I listen to five times more comedy than music.  I’m a huge fan of stand up.  Louis CK, Patton Oswalt, and Patrice Oneal are my current favorites.  Marc Maron’s Podcast, WTF, is amazing if you love comedy.  It’s almost always an interview with a comedian talking about his or her craft. It inspires me so much to hear how an artistic mind works..

3. What would you say is your greatest moment so far as an artist, either on record or live?

The last song on our Debut Record Empires Fall. “For Mary,” was played completely live on the first take.  No edits or overdubs.  It’s a very emotional and personal song, and there is nothing like the first take for capturing that kind of emotion.  By the time you’ve gotten around to the third take you’ve had too much time to think about what you’re doing, and you start doing the things you THINK you should be doing instead of what your instincts tell you to do. 

4.  Do you believe music can change the world or is just something to listen to?   How much can music influence current events?

If it brings someone joy, enjoyment, release, or any other emotion, then it is changing the world in some small way.

That said, in the 60s, when people actually got up and fought for what they believed in…that time brought music to match the times.  Dylan, The Beatles, Joan Baez; these artists weren’t changing the world, they were just writing the soundtrack for the people on the front lines.  Does anyone with any real power give a fuck what Bono has to say?  I think probably not. The best you can hope for as a musician is to touch an individual. But is a song going to convince a racist to love everybody?  Is it going to convince a politician to serve the people instead of himself?  That’s not reality.

5. How has technology affected the music industry?  How has technology affected your career as a musician?

For me, the music technology revolution has been a wonderful thing.  The means of production and distribution are far more accessible than they once were.  The Ladies of Sport can have an idea, record it, mix it, master it, put it up and have it in our fans’ ears in 12 hours. As an indie artist, you can’t beat that. 

That said, I have years of shitty recordings that precede the releasable ones.  It took me a lot of work, study, and practice to learn how to make stuff sound great.  The stuff I put out in those early years was stuff I did in a studio with people who knew what they were doing (which is also a great way to learn).  If an artist wants to be taken seriously, he should probably practice recording for a few years before he starts trying to self release.

Look at Cake’s latest record.   I’m a huge fan, and I’ve always thought their records sounded great.  They recorded this one themselves…It is un-listenable.  Bland, flat, lifeless. I can’t listen past how unprofessional it sounds. Don’t take a good engineer with good gear for granted.
6.  Now for my Barbara Walters question:  If you were a pair of shoes what type of shoes would you be?

A beloved and well-worn pair of Adidas.  I may not be pretty, but I’m comfortable, classic, and easy to wear. 

Spotlight: Krista Detor

There is a woman who operates at the crossroads of poetry and circus, con men and wholesome Midwesterners, between transience and the hearth. Her name is Krista Detor and her new album, Chocolate Paper Suites (Tightrope Records; September 21, 2010), brings together her signature brave Americana and indie sounds in a lush, heady set of interwoven songs. They dance from Lorca to Darwin, from Tom Waits to Aimee Mann inspired by Detor’s own big-top life.

Detor’s suites, extending past the standard folk four minutes, expand the individual songs emotionally, ripe with big ideas and big heart. “The format has struck some folks as ambitious,” Detor states, “but it allowed me to explore a longer trajectory with better hang time. To make a longer musical statement.” 

The ambitious choice of form suits Detor’s rich subjects. Lorca’s vision of a gown made from chocolate paper, a burst of ephemeral beauty meets imagined letters to Darwin (“Darwin Songhouse Suite,” written in the scientist’s hometown of Shrewsbury). Hints of Tom Wait’s poetic vision of American life mingle with the starlit ghosts of Hoagy Carmichael and Bessie Smith (“Night Light”). It’s all darkness and sweetness, and Detor, in her wandering, has embraced plenty of both.

“If you pick up the theme of circus, it’s just so easy to just set it upon my life. It has been very circus like,” Detor explains. “I had a quirky birth family and plenty of unusual events in my life, things that look pretty strange on paper.”

Teenage parents gave her up for adoption at birth, and Detor was raised by a hard-working Indiana family with a strong moral compass. Then, unexpectedly when she was 30, her birth parents re-emerged, her biological father having been in a federal penitentiary for counterfeiting 72 million dollars in the Caribbean. 

“When he and my birth mom found me, he had been straight for ten years and ran a swimming pool contracting business.  But for most of his life my biological father was a con man, with his own traveling medicine show.”   Though his ethics were questionable, his sense of freedom was magnetic.  “His perspective changed me.” Krista recalls.  One month after meeting him, she had quit her career in commercial real estate and was living in a house on the water in the Florida Keys.

The moment she decided to abandon the life she knew for something new is captured in the song “Oranges Fall Like Rain.” “I wrote the lyrics sitting at my job in an office building, contemplating my future. I was looking down on a man who was selling bags of oranges. I imagined the whole street scene changing and then me chucking my computer out the window,” Detor recalls. “I saw myself sprinting down the steps and running into this Andalusian place, where the scarecrows sing and butterflies are everywhere.”

With this latest album Detor has found new paths to tread, new ambitions sparked by the bright images of poets like Lorca and Dylan Thomas, as well as by her own wild and wooly experiences. These vivid worlds shine in the colors and contours of the suites. “There is a context that sits in your brain for poems you are enamored with,” muses Detor. “In a way, you get into that zone, but with your own viewpoint. I can find enormous inspiration from other peoples’ world view, especially someone from another culture. It’s a whole different palette.”

Detor matched this lyrical approach by developing a new musical palette to pull from, listening to everything from Tin Pan Alley chestnuts to Italian café music. She worked with brilliant and eccentric musicians she encountered on her travels—everyone from an aerialist/bass player, a fiddler steeped in Middle Eastern traditions, and an old-time mandolin master. She found inspiration in unexpected new locales, including her days as part of the Darwin Songhouse, writing music about Darwin’s loves, life, and profound losses.  All coming to fruition in the ambitiously lush and dark Chocolate Paper Suites.