Category: interviews & columns

margaret white: the chickfactor interview

above: margaret while touring with belle and sebastian (nice sideburns!)

margaret white is an all-around great gal who happens to be an extremely talented violinist and singer. we met as bandmates on a sparklehorse tour in 2001. it was a zany year, and bonded us forever. since then she’s moved from chapel hill to brooklyn and has become an in-demand multi-instrumentalist, touring the world and recording with some pretty fabulous bands: the comas, cat power, belle and sebastian, portastatic, calexico and many, many others. recently she’s done a record with a band called ghosts I’ve met, singing beautiful boy-girl country duets that are so pretty that her dog likes to sing along. interview: kendall meade

chickfactor: who are you playing with now? all the a-listers, no doubt…
margaret: oh, but of course! I guess the ones that are kind of the constants right now are portastatic, kevin devine, jennifer o’connor, ghosts I’ve met, and of course mascott. and then there are always the random shows I get called in for – a few weeks ago I played with calexico at lincoln center and had a blast – and I’m hoping that there will be many more of those kind of things. they keep me on my toes! makes my life a bit crazy and scheduling can be a bit tricky at times. especially when you factor in the day job as well…but luckily all the people I play with are extremely understanding so if I have to miss shows I don’t get in too much trouble!
what are your favorite cities to play in/visit?
hmm, that’s a tough one because there are so many that have their individual good memories or friends or places, ones that are walking-friendly are definitely a plus since I usually don’t have any other transportation on tour! the ones that immediately jump to mind are portland and seattle (probably mainly because I was there last week). I have friends in both of those so it always makes it fun, and the cities themselves just feel really comfortable and friendly. chapel hill is a given because I lived there for 11 years so I have tons of friends and I still think of it as home since I can walk anyplace and probably know at least half the people there. and athens feels like home since it’s the nice southern college town and I know where to go for the good veggie food options. oh, and london and dublin are filled with friends and there have been some great shows in both, plus I’ve gotten to actually spend more time in those places! I always smile when I think of edinburgh because of that carousel you and scott and I discovered on the sparklehorse tour, best pound spend on that tour!
please tell the world about your singing dog.
he’s the best! he’s so talented. I think I’m going to have to bring him on tour with me and we can sing duets. maybe when ghosts I’ve met goes on tour. samson loves singing to those songs… I got him last january from one of the shelters in new york and he was somewhere around 2 1/2 or 3 years old. the first time I heard him sing I thought I was imagining it because it was just really briefly when I was getting ready for work one day. I think he was feeling shy since we didn’t know each other well so once I noticed he stopped. it was probably another month or so before it happened again. the first song he really got into singing was sloop john b from the beach boys pet sounds (of course) album. now he’ll sing to tons of stuff. not everything – he’s selective – but a lot. countryish songs, or really anything with harmonies. and the other morning he was singing along to opera on npr. it sometimes makes it difficult when I’m trying to learn songs (like for the calexico show the other week) because, though he doesn’t sing all that loud, he blends in well so it’s harder to pick out the parts I need to learn… he’s just amazing because he actually has really good phrasing and sings pretty much in tune! I took a little video on my phone a couple weeks ago and played it to musician friends, in part so they would believe me, and everyone was duly impressed with his talent!
north carolina vs brooklyn?
right now I’d have to say brooklyn. I really love north carolina and am so happy that I have reason to go back pretty regularly since portastatic is based there and pretty much any tours through the south go to the triangle area (raleigh, durham, chapel hill). it’s great to see everyone and I have so many amazing friends down there, and I do still think it feels like home a little more than brooklyn. but I love it up here and really have no desire to move back south, at least right now. plus so many friends are moving here from north carolina and other places that sometimes it feels like chapel hill here, and of course there are way more of the random recording and show opportunities here for me. with touring it never really mattered where I was living since it’s all traveling anyway, but for one-off gigs and whatnot it definitely helps to be in the big city!

margaret and kendall playing a chickfactor gig (mon gala papillons) in london, 2004.

margaret and interviewer kendall out on the town.

photographs: courtesy of margaret white; alistair fitchett

the legendary jim ruiz is one of the classic chickfactor singer-songwriters. his swoon-worthy songs, his gentle jazzy guitar moves, his humble ways, we love the guy. the only thing to complain about is how little music he has generated over the years! that is all going to change now that his fans have a way of contacting him (via, you know, the internet). I gave a copy of sniff to a handsome man in 2006 and it didn’t do much good, but if I were handing out valentines tomorrow I’d be sure to put the lovely legendary jim ruiz tune “be my valentine” in there too. pam interviewed the legendary jim ruiz group for cf back in 1995 or something, so we figured it was time for an update…

chickfactor: hi jim, what happened to the legendary jim ruiz group?
jim ruiz: I wasn’t sure myself, but then I was hitchhiking in glacier national park with my girlfriend laura and this older couple picked us up. I noticed a guitar and started talking gear with him. his wife asked if I was in a band and I told her I used to be. when she asked me why I quit, I blurted out “I guess I ran out of songs!”
where are the members?
they have gone on to find success in their various fields. allison is in the owls and they are about to release their second album. chris is still going strong at the minneapolis public library. he found love, he’s been with his boyfriend jeff for over a year now. stephanie has released a couple of cds and I hear she’s thinking of moving to england. danny sigelman is working for the current, a public radio station devoted to playing non-commercial modern music and he also DJs events. charlotte is married and has had two baby girls, sally and jane.
what are you doing?
I’m still working at the public library and I am also the president of my neighborhood association, the west bank community coalition.
where is the next album?
after a couple of years doing practically no music, I bought a 16-track digital recording thing. that really became my band and I’ve been working songs out on that. I’ve been fortunate enough to get help from friends and people who I would call “old jazz guys.” so my goal is to have 10 songs that I’m really happy with, I’m recording #9 now and writing #10, although I have some options for #10.
do you have a website? blog? etc.
it’s funny you should ask, I’m in the process of getting my new myspace page up and running. although it’s not even finished, I just shattered the 100 hit mark yesterday! I’m using a picture you took as my signature picture.
is minneapolis still a great pop town?
if it’s not at the moment it certainly has the potential to be. okay, we took a hit when grimsey left town but minneapolis is a musical place, it’s part of its culture. there are a lot of really great musicians around here. I think it’s only a matter of time before something happens, and now we have a radio station that will play local music that goes to the whole state; the conditions are favorable for a pop explosion.
didn’t prince leave town recently?
I would be surprised if he didn’t live here at least part of the year. his house is in minnetonka anyway, I think that’s mentioned in his movie.
what music still resonates?
I can now say with a great deal of certainty that my favorite jazz vocalist of all time is lee wiley and that the album that is the pinnacle of that genre is her west of the moon album with ralph burns. with the exception of the track “limehouse blues,” it is perfection. in fact at this very moment I am listening to her night in manhattan album that I just received in the mail today. it’s amazing, what an amazing voice, buy, buy, buy! everybody should own the mose allison sings album. he’s like an undiscovered ray charles; he should be a thousand times more famous than he is. the first two françoise hardy albums, yeah, yeah girl from paris and in vogue are still magical. I’m more and more impressed by the maturity of the would-be-goods songwriting, I just put the morning after on the other day and I think that the album has high points that haven’t been reached since the 80s. bossa nova as a genre, particularly as more brazilian stuff becomes available – an ongoing project. 60s soul music, now I’m cheating I suppose. georgie fame playing “yeah, yeah” live on ready, steady, go (1965) on youtube gives me heart palpitations. the smiths were in retrospect much better than people gave them credit for at the time, myself included. live at the star club 1962 continues to be my favorite beatles album. I have to acknowledge that in retrospect the jazz butcher/max eider alliance at a pivotal moment made me think “hey, I could write songs like that,” causing me to throw away my life on a useless dream.
what is the news on max eider?
coincidentally, I’ve been in touch with max eider and he is about to release a new album that he is self-producing. he is considering playing a couple of shows in the u.s. and let’s just say I feel like we’re in the running for a chance of warming up for him. in any case I’m putting a band together for the first time in 6 years – just in case.
do you feel like writing songs?
I always feel like writing songs, finishing them is the real problem.
when are you coming to london?
once I get this next cd done, invite me and I’ll do my best. cf

photograph: gail o’hara

they get no respect in this town, their hometown of london, but we still think they’re one of the best local bands around. they debuted some new songs from their forthcoming album at st giles church smack in center of london last weekend, that’s the album that’s out 8 may with a tour sure to follow, strings by louis philippe, recorded in nashville TN by mark nevers, mixed at bark studio with brian o’shaughnessy. alasdair “al” maclean is practically a member of our family so we forced him to answer some questions for a silly mini-interview. do read on please…
what was it like recording in nashville?
we flew there from new york at the end of a 6-week tour, which had culminated in everyone going on the rampage in an almost unprecedented way, to the point of me getting the horrors and swearing never to leave my front door again, so it was good to recuperate mentally and physically. the main thing I remember from the sessions is watching a lot of watching ‘touche turtle’ in the back room and living in a little travel tavern, where however banal and hungover we were the staff considered us the most charming and intelligent people they had ever met, just because of our accents. I had comparatively little to do with the way this record was arranged and recorded and I think it worked out better as a result.
what’s it like working with louis philippe? Is he like a headmaster? I imagine he makes you do takes over and over.
on the contrary he’s very laid back and pleasant. If it isn’t working he’ll just move on, come back to it later. when you try to sing in key and you can’t, a headmasterly approach only makes things worse. and he’s full of ideas, it’s great just to watch him spin.
what’s the album called? what does the cover look like?
it’s called god save the clientele and the cover is a collage of painted, coloured card that I made over the course of three days lying on the floor with a paintbrush, it depicts owls, rabbits, leaves etc. all coming together in a mysterious sort of conflagration under a moon made of gold leaf.
how does it fit in with your other albums? is this your tribute to the monkees? or what?
everything we’ve ever released is a tribute to the monkees. I don’t understand why people sneer at the monkees, for me they’re the greatest band of all time. if I could be a tenth of what the monkees were I’d die happy. does that answer your question? probably not, so i’ll add that this album is happier, poppier, funnier, faster and slower, simpler and yet infinitely more complex and recorded with a sound that is truly magical. and yet there’s a strange undertow, this feeling of total failure.
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photograph: gail o’hara