FolkWax Sittin’ In With Lise Liddell
A Discovery of Love and Loss

July 7,2005

By j. Terrill
It was with these words, “Break my body, but heal my heart/Vodka on ice in my astrology chart/Razors your sound can drown/Blood letting I’m homeward bound…/If I could smoke you away/Drink you away, sex you away/It would be worth the price I’d pay,” that I immediately became interested in the music of Lise Liddell. Her album, In the Wake, came into the FolkWax office just like any other, but the moment I heard those words a metaphorical sledgehammer came out of nowhere and slammed me against the wall. It was surprising to hear such bold words come from such a charming and pure voice, but the hard truths she sang yanked at the heartstrings while the lull of her lullabies kept me hooked till the very last note.

It was fortunate when I had the opportunity to meet Liddell in Austin, Texas, and merely a few days before her May 27 album release party at the Firehouse Saloon in Houston. Upon our first meeting I was shocked at how different she sounded when talking. In place of the sweet yet sad sound from her music was a jubilant and energetic woman with a distinctive Texas drawl in her speaking voice. We talked throughout the evening while she showed me the sites and sounds of Austin.

j. Terrill for FolkWax: I want to know about your transition, because I know you were working as a banker at one point.

Lise Liddell: Yeah…

FW: Oh, that sounded kind of sore.

LL: (Laughter) Well my family – my father especially – is real business oriented. He’s a big time businessman. He basically told me I was gonna get a Masters in Business and so I did it because I didn’t know how to tell him “No.” So I was then a banker for two years and I was so miserable and one day I just quit. I said that was enough; I don’t know what I wanna do, but I’m not doing this.

FW: Did you do anything with music during that time period?

LL: Not professionally, but growing up I was always, always singing. I would try to find any excuse to sing a song or to perform somewhere. But I didn’t really start writing until I quit the whole banking thing. I joined a theater company and I got a guitar and started writing. I was also an undergrad English major and I love to read. So I think all of that kind of worked together to help me out. But yeah, I had no business doing all of that business stuff. Although it has helped me to run the music thing as if it were a business, I will say that.

FW: So are you supporting yourself with your music then?

LL: No! (laughter) I hope that I will be one day. But no, I saved money and then my grandfather left me something that I have been spending all on making records. And so I better make money one day or maybe I’ll have to go back into banking.

FW: I hope not.

LL: I know, I know. But I do make money, but not enough to totally support myself.

FW: Do you know how widespread your fan base is?

LL: It’s probably mainly Texas at this point, but I am gonna go on tour starting in August. My producer from Australia [Michael Flanders] is coming over here and we’re – we performed two weeks ago in New York City and it went great! And I felt like I just need to get out of – I mean, I love Texas. I was raised here and it’s a great scene, but I just need to get out of Texas and expose myself to other audiences.

FW: And go to Iowa?

LL: Iowa! (laughter) We really might because we’re just gonna get in a van and go. We’d definitely love to get up there. But yeah, I think my fan base is usually people that like things a little bit more complicated. Somebody that wants to go with your Britney Spears is not gonna want to go near me.

FW: Which is interesting, because whenever we’ve talked you always seem so cheerful, but when I listen to your lyrics I just…want to cry.

LL: Well I’m doing a lot better. I’ve been in therapy for a lot of years. (laughter) I do have a cheerful personality, but then there’s the other part of me – the space I go into when I write this stuff – and some of my friends have told me I’m both an introvert and an extrovert. When I’m out there, I’m really out there, but when I need time alone to write or read I just shut off everything. I don’t want to talk on the phone. But that kind of helps me – I don’t know, I just kind of need both of those things. I need the people; I need to be out there, but then I also need to retreat and that’s when I get most of my writing done anyway.

FW: I want to ask a personal question, if you don’t mind. From your earlier album, Lover’s Moon, is the song “The Marriage.” Did you go through a difficult marriage?

LL: You can ask me anything. I’ve never been married, but that song kind of came out of – my parents had a really terrible marriage and to this day they say they hate each other. And they’ve been divorced for twenty years. I’m like, “Can’t you give it up? The war?” I just believe when two people – if they still think they hate each other that much that underneath it there’s a love there and if you bring three children onto the planet than it’s kind of like, if you really didn’t love that person in a certain way then why do you have such emotion toward ‘em? Like, if my mother is in the hospital, my father’s on the phone going, “What’s wrong with your mother?!” And vice versa and I’m like, “You mean that person you hate?” That song really came out of the space of trying to say to my parents or anybody that’s going through a divorce, like in that line, “I’ll wish for you a sweeter tune,” even though I’m in this pain and instead of being ugly and mean to you I’ll just wish you could get over the hard time too. That’s kind of where that came from.

FW: So would you say most of your songs pertain to things from your own life or is a lot of it from things you’ve experienced through other?

LL: Both. There are definitely songs that I’ve written about other people, but their situation was something that affected me – I didn’t just write it from afar. I’m not the person who reads a magazine and writes a song about something in the newspaper, which some people do and that’s fine –

FW: Have any of your past relationships been an influence on your songs?

LL: (Thoughtful pause) Yeah, but I can’t think of a specific song –

FW: Is it sort of an amalgamation then?

LL: Yes. There are definitely relationship struggles in my songs, but they’re more oriented toward the struggle of the soul in general.

At this point we pulled up to the Continental Club to see local Austin legend Tony Price perform. Look for the show review on July 21. We had a wonderful time dancing and grooving to Tony’s acoustic Folk-Blues.
After Tony’s first set ended we went to a Mexican restaurant across the street for a quick bite and margaritas. As we walked we talked about our favorite bands and Lise talked about flying out to New York just to see Tori Amos perform at Radio City Music Hall. Then we went into her early music inspirations.

LL: I was a real nerd when I was growing up. I mean, literally my friends were listening to the bands you were talking about [sadly I had brought up eighties hair bands…don’t ask] and I was listening to stuff like Linda Rondstadt, Elton John. I was listening to more – I don’t know what you call it. And I love Barbara Streisand. I’m not into the stuff she records now, but her old, old tunes. She had a record called The Way We Were, which didn’t have anything to do with that movie she was in, but it’s really a beautiful record and it cracks me up because my brother really liked it, too.

FW: When did you write your first song?

LL: I don’t know where that first song is. I was in college and I had a crush on this guy who I did end up dating for several years. I wrote this song – he never heard it because I was too embarrassed to play it – but I do remember it had something to do with his green eyes. Before that I’d written a lot of poetry and stories.

FW: Before you ever really got into music?

LL: I was always into singing, but I hadn’t transferred the fact I could write poetry as songs.

FW: So that transition happened after you got out of banking, right?

LL: When I was in banking all that kind of got pushed to the backburner. It was during the end when all the banks in Texas were going under – like they’re getting ready to do again – but my bank was getting ready to go under and I worked so much I hadn’t had time to write a song. But I wasn’t cut out for that business. I didn’t find meaning in it, not that there isn’t for other people. Frankly, we all have our own things that bring us meaning in our lives, but that was not something meaningful to me. Very depressing, actually. When I quit I was very confused, but joined the theatre and started doing some acting and started writing some songs.

FW: Do you remember the first song you wrote during that time period?

LL: Yeah, the first one I kept during that time period is on my Lover’s Moon record, which is the “The Sand Song.” Which is definitely a philosophical song.

FW: How does it make you feel when others get something from your lyrics?

LL: That makes me really happy. That’s where my heart lies and what I suffer over - the lyrics. I love to sing, but the lyrics I work really hard on. I can torture myself over whether it should be an “and” or a “but.”

FW: So do you agonize over that more than the music itself?

LL: Yeah. The melodies kind of come to me and the lyrics and I get an idea for a melody and then I have to fit it all together at the same time making the lyrics as unique as possible without being completely vague, but also giving people a chance to decide what it means for themselves as opposed to a lot of what’s on the radio like, “Baby I love you!” There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not what I do.

FW: You seem to be into the poetry of behind the music. What poets influenced you?

LL: Well, Leonard Cohen, before he started recording anything wrote tons of poetry, which he turned some of them into songs. I’ve also read Wordsworth, Blake, and all the classics. That was my undergraduate major. I love Sylvia Plath; she’s extremely dark. In relation to Tony Price those are two women who have put all their pain out there, but they do it in a way that encompasses other people; because all of us have experienced pain in life to some degree. Well, maybe some people coast through it, but I think you get left out of life if you don’t experience some pain. I think it does mature you in a lot of ways and it’s also the flip side to joy. You can’t have one without the other.

After some more talking about spirituality and the egos of politicians, we went back to the Continental for Tony Price’s second set. There wasn’t much talking at all as we grooved to someone else’s laments of pain to a groovy tune until sadly it all had to end. We drove around some more and talked a bit until Lise had to call it an evening.

A few days later, Lise Liddell and her band put on their performance at the Firehouse in Houston and all reports say it was a highly successful release party. Right now she’s on the tail end of a European vacation and then comes the great American van tour. If you’re looking for music that will fill your heart with sadness and longing with just a dash of hope then this is the lady to whom you should turn. She’ll gladly see you down lonely lane.

article source:
This interview originally ran in FolkWax's Ezine 07.07.2005

j. Terrill is an associate editor at FolkWax. j. Terrill may be contacted at folkwax@visnat.com.

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