musictalk4u.net | Interview mit Martha Wainright

Martha Wainwright I Know You're Married But I've Got Feelings Too (VÖ 30.05.2008)
Oft hat man es als keine Schwester von mehreren Geschwistern echt schwer. Die Eltern behandeln dich wie das Nesthäkchen und die Geschwister passen so sehr auf dich auf, dass du selber gar nicht mehr zum Zug kommst. Manchmal hat man aber auch Glück und die Familie ebnet einem den Weg, sei es man erbt viel Geld – was jedem gerne widerfährt - oder auch ein Talent. Martha hat das Talent geerbt und macht wie ihre beiden Eltern Loudon Wainwright III und Kate McGarrigle im weitesten Sinne Folk Music. Auf den Trichter hat sie außerdem ihr mittlerweile berühmter Bruder Rufus Wainwright gebracht, bei dem sie als Backing Focalist angefangen hat, bevor sie die Nase voll hatte und sich selber in die Musik Szene stürzte.
Und das erzählt sie uns mit ein bisschen Abstand von der Familie so: Your whole family seems to be artistic, even your grandfather was a writer and editor at Life magazine. Do you remember him? Martha: Yeah, I remember him a little bit as a very warm and wonderful man. While I was at college I took a photography course and the teacher was an older man who was interested in my grandfather more than anybody else. Whenever I took photos he would say: “How could you not do this better? You’re the granddaughter of this man who worked for Life magazine!” He put all that pressure on me to be good. (Laughs) Did you ever think of becoming something other than a musician, maybe a journalist? Martha: I thought about that a lot! It seemed to be very unoriginal to be a musician. I went to acting school and I also studied art history, but as soon as my brother, Rufus, started to play music I was invited to be his backup singer. We played a lot and I really liked the attention of being on stage and singing. At that point I thought, well, let me see if I can write a song and so when I was about seventeen I began to write a couple of songs secretly, in my room. They were pretty good actually and already had a style and so I thought, well, maybe I’ll start playing and so that’s how it happened, slowly. It gave me the confidence to be a musician and feel like I, too, had the right to be one around these people who were very talented. Didn’t you study drama at Montreal’s Concordia University? Martha: I studied acting but at the same time I also started to do little shows and people became interested …
Both of your parents, Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle, were folk musicians. Did they influence you in any way? Martha: Yeah, I think they did, absolutely. You can hear Kate’s influence, for example, the harmonies and the upfront style, the solo with the guitar, which I often do … my brother and me have both been exposed to a songwriting style, that’s what my parents always did. In many ways, listening to their songs about each other was my only experience of them together. So for me, songwriting and listening to songs was a way to define my life. When I started writing songs I was right away ok with being heavily autobiographical and exposed, because for me this was normal. Although I’m very influenced by my parents I think the other thing that I recognized right away was the importance of having your own sound and also doing something that is completely connected to yourself and the honesty that is connected to your interior self …
I once talked to your father, who has a fantastic sense of humor. Your music is much more serious. Do you think you’ve inherited certain characteristics from your parents? Martha: Yes and no. I think that he’s very ironic and very funny and also very good at writing topical songs, which I’m not very good at. What’s interesting is that Rufus and I and many artists have our own style. What’s very important is to be different and not to follow trends… I think… in the end it’s really about finding your individuality. When did you start to write your own songs – the ones that you performed in clubs and coffeehouses around Montreal? Was that later? Martha: It’s like I said, I was about seventeen. I wasn’t that young but because I had already started singing with Rufus I really just wanted to see if I could make it with my songs and I was sure that I could. Do you think it has helped you in any way that Rufus is now kind of famous? Martha: In one way I watched him accomplish things that I still want to accomplish today.
So in many ways he’s kind of a mentor or an inspiration. In other ways I also got to see the things I didn’t want to do. I recognized your own family couldn’t necessarily give you support. It helps to do interviews because a lot of journalists like to have a story but in the end the music has to speak for itself. I think a lot of people were wondering things like: “Oh, is she any good? She’s the daughter of … the sister of … Will this make her any good? It’s probably gonna be crappy because so many people in the same family can’t all be good. ” So in many ways… it’s really about finding a thing that separates you, but also the beauty that can come out of singing together.
Your brother began touring with your mother at an early age. Did you do that too? Martha: Yes, when we were children we all went together in the summertime, when we weren’t at school. We toured festivals in the US and in Canada. So how come that you now live in Brooklyn, NY, seeing as you grew up in Montreal? Martha: I grew up in Montreal but Rufus and I were born in New York, so we were able to go back to America without needing a green card. I moved to New York because Rufus was becoming very popular in Montreal and when the first record came out I just wanted to get away from my family… I thought it would be good for my career to be in New York, although so many bands now are being signed out of Montreal. In many ways it’s easier to be from a smaller town. I just needed to escape and be in a big city to lose myself and to experience things.
But what was it like to grow up in Montreal? There’s a strong music scene there now… Martha: I know! I should have stayed and my success might have been greater. It’s a very interesting place to grow up in because you go to school and learn French and some people don’t speak English at all. But to me it seemed very normal. It’s very cold – that’s what I remember most! It’s very magical. Québec is such a different place from other places in North America. What did you do as a child? Did you go skiing?
Martha: Yeah, we did a lot of downhill and also cross-country skiing, played hockey; we could actually ski to school – something that our grandmother would have told us to do – because there was always a lot of snow If you compare your life then in Montreal and now in New York, what do you enjoy most about living in New York? Martha: In New York, there’s an anonymity that is great. You can lose yourself completely in the city and walk around for hours and not run into anybody if you stay out of your neighborhood. What’s great about living in New York is… it’s still always exciting for me to fly into New York and see the beautiful cityscape, which is always kind of pretty and original. It always seems to be new to me because I travel so much and it’s fun to come back there ’cause it’s kind of amazing looking. I also like to eat a lot and there are lots of great restaurants. That’s a very good reason to stay there. Do you work with lots of different musicians there, like your brother, who worked with Joan Wasser, for example, or with Antony and the Johnsons? Martha: Oh yeah, I remember when we were hanging out in the same scene and so I worked with all those people, too. There’s so much music and so many bands to see. Every night you could go and see five different shows, so incredible, in many ways almost too many … Well, you know, but there’s also a lot of crap, or there can be. Well, journalists say that you music is folk music, but on your myspace site you sing chansons in French – you speak the language … What do you think about playing folk? Martha: I don’t think about folk music in that way, because I think the new folk movement, anti-folk, is very aware of itself as being folk. It’s very kind of subconscious in that way. Folk music is something that I grew up with. For me, folk music is about expressing feelings that people can put into words, so it’s our job as songwriters to do that and not to want to become folk a musicians… That’s how I understand it and my music has a folky element just because I’m able to play an acoustic guitar, which enables me to do all the songs solo. I also write them just on the guitar. In that way it could be considered folk. But … I love so many different kinds of music … for me, my music is not just folk: there are rock elements, there are pop elements, and jazz elements too – all the different kinds of music that I listen to. My new album is more edgy then the first one, it’s different! AngieBlack 2008