Song of The Siren
By Zayne Reeves



It was a very happy accident that I wound up interviewing both Laura Cantrell and Robbie Fulks for Being There's July issue. If I could pick two artists to serve as ambassadors for the kind of country music that means just a little bit more than gloopy ballads or faux-hell raisin' paeans to Yosemite Sam mudflaps, I would be hard-pressed to find a pair with the ideal symmetry of Fulks & Cantrell. Brainy, articulate and not afraid to push their sound outside of the sometimes rigid confines of what some alt. country fans are willing to embrace, they seem to embody Gillian Welch's line about doing it their own way, even if it doesn't pay. Fulks self-financed three of his records so that he could make them without compromise while Cantrell put up with the hassle of taking her then day job at Bank of America on the road with her while she toured with Elvis Costello (even stopping by the office when they hit NYC) because the opportunity to go on the road with the original Napoleon Dynamite was too great to pass up. A life in music can be a hard way to go if you're not the darling of a major record label that's willing to spend the yearly budget of NASA on promoting your latest CD, but the tradeoff is that you will still be able to find a Cantrell or Fulks album in fifty years whereas most of the stuff that saturates pop culture now will have a much, much shorter shelf life. Doesn't help pay the mortgage but it does ensure that your name will be long remembered after you've gone to meet Hank and Hendrix. It's also tempting to juxtapose Fulks' persona as the sly, politically incorrect firebrand behind songs like "She Took A Lot of Pills (And Died)" and "God Isn't Real" with Cantrell's demure, dignified image as the classiest of the sweethearts of the rodeo gang. But that would greatly oversimplify both as Fulks probably spends more time thinking about taking the whole family out to see Madagascar than he does exploding a musical genre's bullshit conventions from the inside out and I'm sure Laura Cantrell knows her way around a dirty joke.

Humming By The Flowered Vine is Cantrell's third studio album (not counting her EP, The Hello Recordings) and it finds her sound getting bolder and her own writing even stronger than on her previous records. "Khaki & Corduroy," "Old Downtown" and especially "Bees" (cowritten with Jay Sherman-Godfrey) ache with longing while "California Rose" pays sharp-eyed respect to the great Rose Maddox, a seminal country artist who is all but forgotten today. It's not the first time Cantrell has stood up and demanded that attention be paid to country music's female pioneers, "Queen of The Coast" (off Not The Tremblin’ Kind) was a tough, beautiful song about Bonnie Owens, who was a country star in her own right before she married, then divorced Merle Haggard and yet stayed on as a backup singer in his band after their marriage crumbled. Like Emmylou Harris, Laura Cantrell also has an incredibly keen ear for the right song and her smart use of writers like Amy Allison, Dave Schramm and Amy Rigby recalls Harris' championing of Townes Van Zandt and Rodney Crowell. On "Letters" (a previously unreleased Lucinda Williams song), Cantrell balances the protagonists' yearning and desire with a toughness that would do its writer proud. Recently, I had the pleasure of interviewing Laura Cantrell via email while she was on the road touring behind her new record.

Being There: The title of the new CD, Humming by The Flowered Vine, comes from a lyric in your song "Bees." At the risk of sounding clueless, what is it about that particular line that held such significance for you?

Laura Cantrell: I didn't want to have another song title as the title of my record.  I thought that the line from “Bees” was very evocative out of context of the song, matched the image of the hummingbird really well and could be a metaphor for making a joyful noise.

BT: The lovely cover art was done by Fred Tomaselli. How did he come to be involved with this?

LC: Fred is an old friend from my Williamsburg days and a listener to the Radio Thrift Shop [Ed. WFMU radio show which Cantrell hosts]. I was so sick of having photos of myself on the album covers that I decided we should find another image. That Fred had the hummingbird available and let us use it was great

BT:  Flowered Vine has a real pure pop for now people-ish sound to it and yet it is clearly rooted in country and folk music. Do you feel that alt. country fans are starting to move past the hard country sound of 50s honky tonk and are ready to embrace records like this and Robbie Fulks' Georgia Hard?

LC: People should not think about or listen to music too narrowly. I know myself though that it is hard not to have expectations as a fan and a listener and sometimes the sound of records can put you off really hearing the music. But if I could encourage people to listen with an open mind, it would help us all!

BT: This is your first album for Matador. Have you found it to be a much different experience so far from when you were with Diesel Only?

LC: Matador has many resources that Diesel Only didn't have, and has coordinated the promotion to time with the release, etc. We had only limited ability to do that at DO. Also I'll get to go to the West Coast for the first time… a lot more opportunities with Matador backing us. They are a great label with a long history as an independent and I'm very proud that they wanted to release my music.

BT: On all your albums, you seem to have a stable of songwriters that you draw from, such as Amy Allison, Amy Rigby, Joe Flood and Dave Schramm. What is it about their songs that you gravitate towards?

LC: Well that list above is a good one, but those are all very diverse writers. I like the fact that they are all serious songwriters with a lot of experience and several AMAZING songs between them. So it wasn’t hard to gravitate towards any of them for material.

BT: Not to go James Lipton on you here, but your own songs are as good as those you cover. Do you ever see yourself releasing an entire album containing just your own compositions?

LC: I’d love to do that and am hoping always to finish more of my own work. I am a very slow writer so I don’t know if it will ever happen, but I’d love it.

BT: You also have some very cool friends playing on this particular record, including Joey Burns & John Convertino of Calexico and Mary Lee Kortes. Did you find that their participation changed how you looked at these songs and how you thought they should sound?

LC: I was just so excited to have these folks working on the record. I knew going in that we'd get a sound that would be interesting and cool and all we really had to do was play music together and not overthink anything. I was very happy with the results.

BT: There's a recurring theme of loneliness in the big city running through the CD. Is that something you were conscious of while you were making the album? You sound homesick in places, particularly on Lucinda Williams' "Letters."

LC: I was conscious of the theme of having left home and the sense of yearning that can give you sometimes. It is a very old theme in country music itself, from "Rank Stranger" to the present.

BT: "California Rose" is your ode to the great Rose Maddox. Why do you think that, out of all the great early female icons in country music, she seems to be somewhat forgotten next to a Kitty Wells or Minnie Pearl?

LC: Because she was California-based as the industry really took hold in Nashville.  Maybe she was part of a family group and that overshadowed her a bit as a solo artist.  Maybe she didn't have the best manager and a presence in Nashville sort of working for her over the years, its hard to know. But she was certainly very accomplished.

BT: John Peel was one of your earliest and most enthusiastic supporters. What are your thoughts on his legacy as well as his impact on your career?

LC: John was the most important DJ in the world and one of the most influential single broadcasters of all time. His impact for me was twofold — professionally he helped me build a significantly larger audience in the UK than I would have been able to do on my own, and personally I was awed by his completely intact enthusiasm for music after forty years of being of DJ. It was an amazing gift to get to know him.

BT: A lot of artists have day jobs but we usually think of them slumming away Bukowski-style, while you were the Vice President of the equity research department at Bank of America. Was that something that was hard to give up in order to pursue music full time?

LC:  Well I never wanted to have a corporate job in finance with tons of responsibility, but after being with that organization for many years it was hard to avoid. However, I found people there to be extremely supportive. And when I left I had a real sense that I was leaving friends and a routine behind that I had enjoyed on many levels. So there was some difficulty in leaving just on a personal level while at the same time, I was not regretting at all taking a chance to pursue music full time.

BT: When Elvis Costello invited you to tour with him in 2001, you got permission from the head of your department at Bank of America to go on leave. Do you think your life would be different now if she had declined that request?

LC: Actually my boss, a woman about my age who had been an Elvis fan herself in college, said “seize the day.” I had been prepared though to quit my job if they declined my request, it was too great an opportunity to pass up.

BT: Along with Elvis, you've also toured with Joan Baez and Ralph Stanley. What do you learn about the business when you work with artists of their caliber?

LC: Well, the biggest lesson I learned is that to be really good, you need to focus your entire energy on it, no coasting. All of the artists you mentioned above have played music their entire lives and are gifted to begin with. So while I didn’t feel in their league, it made me take my own work more seriously.

BT: Your great, great aunt Ethel Park Richardson was a songcatcher who collected the murder ballad "Poor Ellen Smith" (covered on Flowered Vine) for her book, American Mountain Songs. Do you think that the work songcatchers like your aunt did is fully appreciated today for its enormous impact on American music?

LC: I think there are some like Carl Sandburg and the Lomaxes that are recognized as their books have been more widely available. But I think the public at large is mostly clueless about the work that folklorists did in this country in the early 20th century and how that work found its way into our popular music.

BT: “When The Roses Bloom Again,” the title track off your sophomore album, has also been tackled by Sally Timms, Billy Bragg & Wilco as well as Johnny Cash. Why do you think this song continues to endure long after it was discovered by A.P. Carter?

LC: Actually I think it is older than AP’s discovery of it.  There is a Tin Pan Alley version copywritten in 1902 by Gus Edwards and Harry Hilliard. Gus Edwards was a very famous Tin Pan Alley writer who wrote “In My Merry Oldsmobile” and “By The Light of the Silvery Moon.”  But I think there are probably even older incarnations of the song. I think the setting and the situation depicted in “Roses” are very classic and relatable to all cultures, classes of people. Its archetypal — if I can use a big word!

BT: Along with Radio Thrift Shop and your career as a recording artist, you also worked for a time as a tour guide for the Country Music Hall of Fame. Do you feel a responsibility to music lovers to help articulate what real country music is since it is often bastardized and co-opted by people who have no interest in its history?

LC: Well, I feel more like a resource. If you’re interested in country music but don’t know much about the records or where they’re available etc, then my show is a good place to hear “new” old music. I answer a lot of e-mail about how to find certain songs and albums, and it is always a pleasure to do that. I feel that if people are discovering music that they like, then we’ve transcended the negative stereotypes of country music already. I do try to play those artists and records that are timeless in some sense even if they’ve been discarded or forgotten. But that doesn’t mean I’m driven by some higher purpose, often I’m just enjoying the music I’m playing and am happy spending a few hours spinning records with an audience.

BT: I always ask every DJ I talk to this question.....is Payola indeed alive and well?

LC: No personal experience with Payola on my part. Maybe you should ask someone who actually gets paid to be a DJ!


Check out Laura's excellent website, www.lauracantrell.com, for merchandise, downloads, photos, tour updates and much more.