Giant step

Erin McKeown comes of age on Distillation

by Bob Gulla

Erin McKeown, student and scholar, singer and songwriter, has a peculiarly profound insight into her art.

"I have a voice teacher and she has a theory on woman's voices. She says your voice between the ages of 18 and 23 is incomprehensible to you as a singer. At that time, experimentation and imitation go on and then, as you get older, you rise out of it and your voice matures. Part of it is physiology and part of it is age."

McKeown, now at the outside of that age range at 23, remembers a time in her career -- just recently, in fact -- when she opened her mouth to sing and didn't know what would come out. "It didn't matter whether I warmed up, ate dairy before the show, or felt a certain way before singing. But in the last three months, my voice is coalescing into the sound I want. It has a more open quality that I've been noticing, and when you're feeling comfortable singing, everything else follows."

No question about it, special things do happen when Erin McKeown straps on her guitar and steps up to the microphone. Though at first sight she may recall the classic folk music stereotype, that image dissolves when she opens her mouth to sing. On McKeown's impressive indie debut, Distillation (Signature), you'll hear a rare performer -- a talented artist with a sublime versatility that allows her to resemble no one but herself. In an attempt to head off the inane and futile attempts at journalistic description, she offers her own, albeit wryly, which reads: "A cross between Django Reinhardt and G Love." It is precisely that kind of stylistic reach -- that nothing-will-get-in-my-way, no-one-will-determine-my-sound-but-me attitude that makes her emergence on the national pop music scene an important event.

Four years ago, McKeown had just begun attending Brown University. Her guitar, light and full of possibilities, held within it a key to her future. Not content to approach the instrument conventionally, she explored it, turning it backwards, upside-down and inside out, wondering how to twist a musical cliche into a personal, soul-baring statement.

It didn't take long. Audiences responded quickly to Erin's enthusiasm. They cheered her smart charm and quick-witted honesty. She rose fast through the ranks of the untried. To date, her two cassette-only releases have sold nearly 6000 copies, almost exclusively at gigs. Awards followed, including the Best Folk Artist nod in Providence Phoenix's BestMusic Poll and a Boston Music Award nomination in the New Singer/ Songwriter category. She gained a finalist berth in the Rocky Mountain Folk Festival, showcased at NEMO and the Philly Music Conference, and has shared the stage with leading songwriting lights like Luka Bloom, Jules Shear, Martin Sexton, Dar Williams, and Jonatha Brooke. On her own, she entertained SRO crowds at high-end folk hang-outs like the Iron Horse and Teen Angel. Erin McKeown was just beginning to discover the astonishing breadth of her art, as was her flourishing audience.

Written and recorded over a period of six months, Distillation begins an appropriate explanation of that flourish. "I feel lucky that this record came out of the last four years of my life with a specific sound and aesthetic," she says, "even though it's all over the place." Despite the wide-ranging McKeown oeuvre, Distillation, well, distills that sound into a unique voice and style. "I was happy to be able to focus enough to make this kind of record. I'm happy with this destination in sound."

The entertainment on Distillation comes early and often, from the toe-tapping opener "Queen of Quiet" and the erotic allegory "Fast As I Can," to the haunting electric blues of "Blackbirds" and the jazzy, Billie Holiday-ish chestnut "Didn't They?" Every song on the disc illuminates different emotional and stylistic hues. In the process, she bops, strums, swings, rocks, and struts her way through a remarkable collection of songs culled from a rainbow of idioms: pop, jazz, funk, folk, and Tin Pan Alley.

Q: This is an important time in your career. Did you spend a lot of time working to set this album up?
A: I actually took all of August off. Come September I knew life was going to get hectic. When I go back to school, I have to pare down my life. I divide my week up. I spend Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday here in Providence, going to class, getting work done. On Thursday I shift and get outta town to work. The fall is always an adjustment period, but I'm doing OK.

Q: How far do you travel on the weekends?
A: It's anywhere from a couple nights in Boston to going down to DC. Weekends next year I'll probably be making trips to the West Coast and Canada.

Q: Is your record company subsidizing your travel?
A: I get no tour support from Signature. It's basically done on a good faith basis. Any money I make on the record or money the label would normally spend on tours will be reinvested in radio and publicity. Touring supports itself for me.

Q: Does being in school now help or hinder your career?
A: Mentally, being in school helps me, keeps me focused. I could always do more work, but right now I just condense my tours. I really don't enjoy hopping out of Providence every weekend. With writing papers, doing projects, going to class, it's a strain. But like my friend Peter Mulvey, who's also an academic, said to me recently, "All this is just a greasing of the wheels."

Q: What classes are you taking?
A: As an ethnomusicology major, I'm taking one class that's really interesting called "Music and Modern Life," where we talk about the role music plays in society and how people use music. It's interesting because as a professional musician I have my views and I've already had conflicts with my professor. I spend a lot of time keeping opinions to myself in that class.

Q: Does studying help you write songs?
A: I can never work enough, never write enough, but that's suffering right now. I take an enormous amount of time to write songs. I keep a book full of ideas and concepts and occasionally a song will pop out of that book. But the time required for those ideas to sit and stew is more difficult to come by. Emmylou Harris went to the beach for a month, wrote an album, came back and took another month to record it. I'd love to be able to do that myself, but it's not the way I'm able to work yet.

Q: Then how do you get inspiration for writing?
A: It's getting tougher. I need to go out to dinner with people more often. I need to hear people talk. I need to continue going to the theater. How do people view the world? How do they articulate what they see? What are the words they use? I'm interested in that because it helps me see things differently. It re-contextualizes my own experience. Where do my words fit surrounded by everyone else's personal experience?

Q: A lot of women come to your shows. Are you worried about being trapped by your audience?
A: In the past three months my audience has changed quite a bit. There are more boys coming, and more people who don't get their music the same way I get my music -- people who hear me on the radio. Some guys came up to me, they said they were Ben Harper fans, and said they heard me on Napster. That stuff is different for me. It's not just a female niche audience.

Q: So you don't worry about being pigeonholed?
A: There's a certain fear that exists between me and that type of audience. But that fear fights with the immense respect I have for them. My nature is to be impolite and deal with the issue frankly. Don't get me wrong -- I would never complain about someone coming to see my show. If someone gets joy out of it, I'd never turn them away. But I guess there's the specter of being trapped. The best thing I can do is to play the kind of music I'm enthusiastic about, and keep the neurotic stage patter to a minimum. I'm there to play songs and set up the songs, and not talk about my car accident or the kinds of ice cream I like or any of that other intimate stuff people don't need to know. Because of that, I'm happy to say I get very little fan mail.

Q: What's the key to a good performance?
A: First, let me say that there's already an impulse out there for a band to be inaccessible to its listeners. Some performers feel the impulse to say, like, "There are things you'll never understand about me." I find that annoying. Onstage, I try to walk a fine line between talking about my CD and underwear collections and singing a really obscure song. I'm open for people to relate to my art. When I watch people play or when I watch a theater performance, what I'm drawn to is confidence and enthusiasm on the part of the performer. I hate watching shows where the performer is not having a good time. The enthusiasm I like to see is catchy. I hate serious shows. There's a skill to being able to play serious shows, with acts like Bette Midler and Sleater-Kinney, who have the right mix of laughter and seriousness.

Q: I can imagine that you're already thinking about your next project. What do you know about it so far?
First, let me say that Distillation is defined by the limits of my musicality. My musical partner Dave Chalfant and I are both guitarists and bass players, so each of us had to reach out and play all the keyboards. That'll be something to avoid on the next record. I'm honing in on a better idea. The next record, there will be more horns; I'll take some time to write really good horn arrangements. The guitars will be crunchier this time through.

I really want my music to sound like pop music, only in a different way. In my opinion, pop is more a sensibility than a sound. Pop doesn't always mean bad music and silly boy bands. So my new record will be pop music the way I think it should sound.

Erin McKeown's CD release party is on Wednesday, October 18 at the Met Cafe.

WANDERING EYE. On Saturday, October 21, the Rhode Island Songwriters Association will present a seminar with hit songwriter Jason Blume, who has penned hits for Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears, among others. He's also the author of 6 Steps to Songwriting Success (Billboard Books). The gig is at the In the Square Coffeehouse at the Church of the Messiah in Providence. Seating is limited; the fee is $45 for RISA members, $55 for non-members. Send checks to RISA, 159 Elmgrove Avenue, Providence RI 02906. Also available on a first-come, first-served basis (for an additional $35) is a 30-minute private session with Blume on Sunday, October 22. Slots are limited to 12, so register early.