{"id":3046,"date":"2011-08-03T14:25:00","date_gmt":"2011-08-03T21:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=3046"},"modified":"2011-08-03T14:25:00","modified_gmt":"2011-08-03T21:25:00","slug":"tift-merritt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2011\/08\/tift-merritt\/","title":{"rendered":"TIFT MERRITT"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"TIFT<\/h1>\n

TIFT MERRITT<\/h1>\n

After years of traveling, a singer-songwriter finds home<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Things could have turned out very differently for Tift Merritt. Five years, two albums, and one record company ago, she sat in the Staples Center in Los Angeles, hanging on five words: \u201cAnd the Grammy goes to \u2026\u201d Her 2004 sophomore effort, Tambourine<\/em>, had been nominated for Best Country Album. For a second, the Texas-born, North Carolina-reared\u00a0singer-songwriter stood on the verge of country stardom. Alas, such success wasn\u2019t to be. Merritt left the ceremony sans statuette, and in 2006 she was dropped by her Nashville record label.<\/p>\n

As it happens, both were fortuitous events. Merritt never quite fit the traditional country mold\u2014and now that she\u2019s linked up with Fantasy Records, she has more leeway to explore the folk, rock, soul and pop influences that have always informed her music. She traveled to Paris in 2007 to write her new label debut, Another Country<\/em>, the album that kick-started her career\u2019s second act. It also prefaced a series of major life changes. Merritt has since moved to New York City and married longtime drummer and collaborator Zeke Hutchins\u2014events that inspired her latest album, See You on <\/em>the Moon<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Produced by Tucker Martine (the Decemberists, Spoon, Sufjan Stevens), the record reveals an artist settling into her sound. Merritt\u2019s songs are honest, subtle and restrained, blending spare Americana instrumentation with slice-of-life lyrical imagery. We caught up with Merritt as she and Hutchins packed their bags for several months on the road.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve written albums in Paris and North Carolina. Does location affect your writing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think you absorb so much of where you are. It kind of flows back through you. It\u2019s a \u201cno man is an island\u201d kind of thing. I really love being isolated and away from normal running-around, day-to-day life. In North Carolina, I lived out in the country by myself. When I was in France, I was there by myself. I went off by myself to write this record, too, at least in the beginning. I really love being in a city when I\u2019m writing, because you don\u2019t feel quite so lonely. Everyone is living in the street all around you. You can walk around and spy on everyone and see what they\u2019re up to and glean information from people on the street.<\/p>\n

You play guitar and piano. Do you write on both? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not very good at either one, to be totally honest, but the piano is where I usually write the most. I started this record on piano, but it has a lot more guitar and really came out more on the guitar than Another Country<\/em> did, for sure. It\u2019s a trad-e-off, back and forth. Usually when I\u2019m writing, I\u2019m sitting at the piano with a guitar on my lap. At a certain point, one of them takes over. And once I work it up with the band, maybe it trades off again.<\/p>\n

What was your attitude while writing the new album?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was at a place where I wanted to write really directly. I wanted my writing to be like a strong right punch. Very straight-ahead, just as tight, tight, tight as possible. As much as I wanted it to come out that way, I wanted the process to be angst-free. I didn\u2019t want to put up with any nonsense from myself. I didn\u2019t want to freak out about it. I wanted to wring all that nonsense out of my writing process, and I think the material came from that.<\/p>\n

Did this process lead you to explore certain kinds of topics?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It did, accidentally. Having intentions when you sit down and write is such a dangerous thing. So all I was really trying to do was have an awareness of my own writing process and trying to go from there. I wanted to sit down and write and have no nonsense about it. I wasn\u2019t saying, \u201cI want to write an elemental record.\u201d A lot of elemental stuff was going on around me, and I was able to funnel that through the situation. I got married. My grandmother died. Two other grandmothers of our band members died a week apart from my grandmother. It was a lot of life\u2014different sides of the circle were opening and closing at the same time.<\/p>\n

How was working with Tucker Martine?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I really trusted Tucker because he\u2019s always going for an emotional, dark, rich, honest sound. I don\u2019t tend to over-engineer. I tend to think about things more from a perspective of musical choices and parts. If I hear something I don\u2019t think sounds right, I\u2019ll speak up. But I trust Tucker\u2019s engineering so much.<\/p>\n

How has marriage changed your working relationship with Zeke?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It has affected things. We still argue about whether the song is too fast or too slow. We\u2019re open with each other about our options. When he thinks I have a stupid idea, he\u2019ll tell me. I like being married, and I wasn\u2019t sure that I was going to. I wasn\u2019t sure how\u00a0it was going to make me feel. I wouldn\u2019t have gotten married if I didn\u2019t feel it was the right thing. It all goes back to that direct energy. Something is freed up in you. A question is answered, and it\u2019s the right answer,\u00a0and your energy can move on to something else. Where I maybe felt like I was giving up some individuality, I actually have\u00a0found solid ground, more individuality,\u00a0more strength.<\/p>\n

Is it touchy to show him a song that was written about him? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I have to give Zeke credit. I don\u2019t think he\u2019s looking for messages about how I feel about him in my songs. He gives me so much freedom and latitude that way. It would be distracting for both of us if we were looking for something that was missing in our relationship in my songs. He knows songs are about a very particular moment. Songs are photographs, and life is a motion\u00a0picture. No matter how personal my work is,\u00a0it\u2019s not a complete picture of everything. I\u2019m not capable of that. I\u2019m not going to retreat from the personal.\u00a0There is strength and\u00a0creativity in the personal, and that\u2019s where I take my work.<\/p>\n

Do you feel you\u2019ve found your identity on this album?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think that I have. I\u2019ve always made the records I wanted to make. I\u2019ve always been so fortunate and so lucky, and I\u2019ve learned\u00a0a whole lot, and I don\u2019t have regrets at all.\u00a0But I do feel like I know what I\u2019m supposed\u00a0to do, artistically, and it\u2019s not really up\u00a0for debate.<\/p>\n

What was it like being nominated for a Grammy?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was such a happy time. We drank champagne for a month straight. I think about that time in terms of the gift it gave my family and making them feel legitimate for supporting me and feeling proud for all the times it was scary. That was really special. It\u2019s nice when your record finds that warm reception in the world. But it wasn\u2019t a moment where we had a lot of commercial success. You just have to do what you think is right, and that\u2019s going to take you to the right place. It\u2019d be wonderful if that happens to us again, but that\u2019s up to the world.<\/p>\n

\u2013Kenneth Partridge<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TIFT MERRITT After years of traveling, a singer-songwriter finds home Things could have turned out very differently for Tift Merritt. Five years, two albums, and one record company ago, she sat in the Staples Center in Los Angeles, hanging on five words: \u201cAnd the Grammy goes to \u2026\u201d Her 2004 sophomore effort, Tambourine, had been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[80,970,438],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3046"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3046"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3048,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3046\/revisions\/3048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}