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March 24, 2000
Lois Maffeo
By Gerry Belsha
After three years away from live performance, Lois Maffeo "the Grandmother of Riotgrrrl" has returned with her literate brand of punk folk, this time collaborating with Brendan Canty (Fugazi drummer, producer and independent television production scorewriter). On The Union Themes (Kill Rock Stars) the duo blend their respective talents to craft music that feels so natural, so easy going, so perfect. Maffeo, who began building her musical resume as a DJ of her own all-woman punk radio show back in the 80s, is at her best as a mood shifter, telling stories with a flare. With Canty she is finally able to create the complete songs and vision that her earlier work always hinted at. Finally, her songs have arrangements that are worthy of her tales of love and hate, and most importantly, worthy of her soulful voice. Always witty, hard-hitting and terse, Maffeo's music is also personal and up front - and like a great novel, with intriguing characters and plots, she can take you away to places with such ease you hardly notice that she has been singing about you and your life all this time. Maffeo, based in Olympia, Wash., recently spoke to Check This Out! about her new CD, touring, the media, stereotypes and other topics.
Check This Out!: I recently spoke with Dimitri From Paris and he talked about a whole bedroom culture of music and that the best music is being made by some kid in a bedroom somewhere. Elisabeth Esselink from Solex talked about the same thing when I interviewed her about her new CD, which was recorded in the basement of her record store. It seems as though Indies have their own private language, which in itself has a freedom and beauty to it, but also frustrations with being heard, do you find this true with your work?
Lois Maffeo: There's been a lot of homemade culture, bedroom culture that you talk about, in Olympia where I live, and it feels so normal to us here because I think as a small community (we are not necessarily isolated) but I think a lot of people here took the DIY process really seriously. So a lot of people have bought equipment and do home recording and put out records that range in sounds from something that sounds like a scratched warped 78 to really full-scaled multi-track recording. As much as I agree with Dimitri and Elisabeth, I also think it is also a spirit within and not necessarily a technological or anti-technology stance that an artist takes to create that kind of ambiance. Sometimes you have to disconnect your mind and your soul to get that sound, to strip everything down, to make it sound more honest. When you are sitting in your own home, there is a comfort there. I have moments where I am singing in the kitchen or something and think "oh I wish I could capture that." And that is easier if you have a four-track right there.
CTO: Katherine Spielman of Puncture magazine stated in an article that she felt Le Tigre and Sleater-Kinney were a big fight back against the fratboy rock of the past year and that a whole new polemics may be on the horizon, a feeling of taking over the stage, breaking down barriers. Do you see that and if so, is anyone listening?
LM: Well, in my world of music I wouldn't ever want to set up a dynamic of Korn versus Sleater-Kinney. Because to me I really don't want to give that much attention to boy rock or whatever, so setting up that kind of dynamic is the wrong way for a female band to harness their own personal power. I think the best thing is to do your thing and hope that people get to it. One of the great beauties of Sleater-Kinney is that they never really have gotten engulfed in any certain camp or idea or philosophy. They have just been very consistent, an excellent rock band. It makes pretty much every argument mute, because the proof is the pudding with that band. They are super powerful. Their songs really have a lot of gravity.
CTO: Tell me about your songwriting process and especially with Brendan. How was it different working with him.
LM: It's been really, really different with him. In the past it was more like, "ok I've written 10 songs, let's go record them." And bam bam bam it was done. And it had that kind of great quality - immediate, bashed out. But what was different this time, in the last three or four years that I haven't been playing or performing much, I changed my outlook on songwriting somewhat. I decided, as a challenge to myself to start writing songs from a different view point and perspective and introduce different voices and characters into my songs. Which was really great to do. So that was one difference. While my other albums weren't 100 percent autobiographical, my inspiration was much more of a personal nature than this one. The other difference this time is the amount of time that Brendan and I took on it. I learned how to arrange and be an effective collaborator and listened and learned from Brendan who has so much experience.
This is actually the first record that I actually demoed and I don't really have home recording equipment. My collaborator Brendan Canty has a home studio in his basement and so I would travel to his home and just demo these songs I had been writing. As a result of having this pile of demos sitting around, KRS heard some of them and asked "what are you going to do with these?" We recorded everything over the last couple of years and went to Seattle and did the whole recording.
CTO: You called this album your first fictional LP. Your music has been described as having very literary qualities. What do you attribute that to. Do you write much prose?
LM: I haven been writing fiction here and there. Also, I am a really avid reader, I am a nerd.
CTO: What inspires you lyrically?
LM: It can be anything. It can be listening to windshield wipers. Sometimes you will just have some chords and sing anything that will come to mind to see if a melody will work out with it. It will just take a train in your thought, in your mind and then it will come out at the end completely transformed. I try and actually write with natural rhymes. I don't generally try and make something rhyme. People that can actually write songs like that, like Elvis Costello, they are something really clever that really mean something on their own besides being part of a really witty whole. But I just try to have a little bit more naturalistic way of writing.
CTO: How was it working with Paul Schuster on the Internal/External project? It seems like it would be an enjoyable process. The song "Hope"should be a hit on R&B stations or Urban radio or whatever it is being called now.
LM: It was really fun. He has this little upstairs room in his house full of gadgets and he showed me what he was messing around with, showing me what samples he was using. He made me a tape. I went home and listened to it and wrote this song called "Hope." It was really easy, two afternoons. I wrote the melody and the lyrics. Whatever kind of meager grasp on soul that I have, I kind of poured into that song. It is really fun to do. And when people hear it they say, "oh my god that's Lois?"
CTO: Your voice seems to fit that type of music perfectly?
LM: It would be really great to work with a really interesting producer who is really more familiar with that kind of world of music. But you know, there is a lot of time. My soul album might still yet come to pass.
CTO: Do you get tired of the way all girl singers/songwriters seemed to be looked at as a single entity?
LM: The Lilith crowd? The music press in our country really likes to put a tag on something. And perhaps it makes it easier for the public to access information like that. But there is really a big jump between Sarah McLachlan and Ani Difranco. It is funny because, personally I don't really like listening to female or male singer/songwriters, it is not my favorite kind of music,. Which is kind of ironic I suppose since that is what I do, what I am. I notice that a lot of people are starting to describe the album as having a Lilith Fair quality, as if Missy Elliot and Liz Phair, all these people who were on Lilith Fair are somehow the same. I'm sorry there is a big jump there. I think they are misreading what that whole concert was suppose to be about. It was to get people to stop doing that rather than to encourage them.
I think it is really important for women musicians, if they feel compelled to have a feminist message in their music for instance, then try to be comfortable with that and not to feel that the media or music culture is not going to respect it. I find it really interesting that on the upcoming Sleater-Kinney tour, they are bringing all girl bands with them. For them it is not a feminist message, but it just makes sense to them in their political outlook to try and encourage woman and help.
CTO: It's funny, I saw the dates and the list of opening bands and didn't even notice that. I guess because it seems so natural for them.
LM: Exactly, and I think that is really an effective way. Given my choice I try to help female sound people and photographers and writers to make that suggestion, pushing things forward, quietly, economically but powerfully when it all comes together. When people are going to notice is when they go to Sleater-Kinney and are totally blown away by Bratmobile and the Gossip, seeing all the female musicians, that is when it will really hit.
CTO: Do you like touring?
LM: I hate touring. I really love performing and communicating with the audience. Getting their feedback. That I really like. Driving I really don't mind. But just dealing with clubs, setting up, I hate that.
CTO: You've worked with so many different artists from so many different backgrounds. There seems to be this great sense of community in Olympia. Could that happen anywhere else?
LM: The slogan of the Olympia beer company was always, "It's the water." I wonder sometimes if that is something about Olympia that is really true. There are some really amazing and vibrate musical communities across the United States and that is actually one of the fun things about touring when you access those communities. But is Olympia different? I think in some ways yeah. There are some variables here I think that really make the community special. One is that there is an alternative college, Evergreen State, that really brings a lot of people with really creative minds together. It's radio station KAOS is a really great radio station. K, Kill Rock Stars and Chainsaw are all really great labels. I think that people are also really patient here about building a scene that had a long-term survivability. Sometimes music scenes just kind of come and go or when a certain key figure decides to leave town they collapse. But I think there is not only a really great influx of people but a lot of people have stayed and devoted a lot of there time and energy to making this really cool thing work.
I remember a band came through Olympia and the singer felt like she was having a really terrible show, but Olympia was so excited to see them that they really didn't care and were sort wooohoooo! and after the show she said "you guys will clap for anything." For her that was an insult, but to me I have chosen that as a motto for Olympia. Yeah that is kind of true, we will clap for anything.
CTO: Do you do any more DJ work on the radio?
LM: No, not in a long time. Sometimes I think I should go and start another radio show on KAOS but I have been so wrapped up in writing and recording. I spun a set of records at Yo Yo last year. I like doing that at parties. I love putting together programs of music.
Check This Out!: Were you involved in the WTO demonstrations. Are you active in politics at all?
LM: I only went to one of the benefit concerts that a lot of the northwest independent artists were a part of. Riots aren't my style. I was there. I certainly opposed the WTO. I grew up in a family that was very political. My parents worked with farm workers and the Democratic Party, labor organizing, all that kind of stuff. To me politics is just pretty much business as usual for my life. For me, radical actions are not something you necessarily have to seek out, you can do them everyday of your life. I think encouraging women to play music, is a radical act. Helping to raise money for the local shelters and women's reproductive health services clinic is a radical act. I certainly am not by any stretch of the imagination a radical activist, but my outlook on life is that you try and incorporate your politics in your life. If there is a restaurant in town and the owner has been harassing his female employees - don't spent your money there and encourage others not to or be a person who offers another option that is fairer and safer.
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