MELISSA FERRICK

Was Massive Blur your first album?

 Yeah.

How did your deal about originally with Atlantic?

 I got a last-minute slot opening for Morissey in 1991 on his 'Kill Uncle' tour in Boston. I ended up doing the Northeast with him and then he asked me to go to England with him and do the U.K. and I did that. When I was in New York, we did our show at Madison Square Garden, which was really cool, and there were obviously a lot of music executives there. So it was really cool, because I went away to England and I figured whoever forgot about me, I didn't want to work with. Atlantic was the label that remembered, so I did a demo for them and in January of '92, Danny Goldberg came to the company and he said, 'Let's sign her, what are we waiting for?'

So you're from the New England area, is that it?

 Yeah, I'm from Ipswitch which is north of Boston.

I was wondering if it was your decision to switch to a new producer on this album?

 Ummm, I actually wanted to work with Gavin again, because I was very aware of what kind of record I wanted to make this time. I wanted it to be a lot more pared down, I wanted it to be mostly just acoustic guitar and vocal and bass. There were really only four songs that I wanted drums on, which are the four that have drums. So I called Gavin and we talked for a while and he said, just for multi-political reasons, he didn't want to do it again with me. I think there were some expectations with the first record that weren't met as far as sales go and stuff like that, so he said it was probably better to go and find somebody else. So I decided to go and search for a producer and, in the mean time, we figured out that we pretty much had everythnig done anyway. We didn't really need anybody to do anything to them, because we didn't want anybody to, we just wanted to record them really well. We all went and listened to records and tried to find what records had a really great acoustic guitar sound on it and Ricki Lee Jones 'Traffic For Paradise' won and that was Julie Last was the engineer.

Is the paring down of the music the main change between the two albums?

 Well, that and I think, thematically, this one is a little bit more cohesive, just because of the fact that the songs were written over the period of a little bit less than a year. Whereas, the first record was the very best 14 songs out of 80 that I got signed with, which ranged between me being 16 years old and writing them and being 22 years old and writing them.

Do you write most of your songs from personal experiences?

 Yeah, they're all very personal, defintely. Mostly.

How old were you when you first started writing stuff?

 Probably about 16 or 17 when I started to first fiddle with a guitar and I started writing pretty daily when I was 17 years old.

Has your songwriting changed over time?

 Oh god, yes, definitely, I think that they make a little more sense than the ones that I was first writing. Also, structure-wise, they make more sense. Melodicly, I think I'm getting more interesting. This record is about me learning more how to empower myself. Willing To Wait just seemed like a really appropriate title for my life because I feel really confident and really centered. What I really want to do is go out on the road and what we're literally going to do is sell records out of the back of our car and just play for whoever wants to hear us play. This is really about building a base from the ground up. That's what we started on the first record and we just want to take it anohter step farther wit this one.

On the new record, you seem like a really strong person. Do you feel like a strong person?

 I think I do, spiritually, like within myself. I don't want to sound all new-agey and stuff, because I'm not. I feel like I kind of know what I want to do for the next eight months. With the first record, it's so hard because as much as they tell you what you're going to have to do, you think you get it until you do it and then you're like, 'Shit...this is really fucking hard.' Also just like the let down where there were situations where I really believed I was going to break and you can get really sucked into that in this field and it really got to the point where I asked how many radio adds and how many records I'd sold, where it really almost gave me a nervious breakdown. I've kind of been through a finding myself again and why am I doing this, you know, that kind of a thing, for this record. So I really , honestly, don't give a shit about that. All I want is to be able to express myself artistically and I'm so thrilled that I had the opportunity to do that by being able to make another reocrd with Atlantic. It was really, really cool of them to pick up my option and let me make another record with them and support me. They put me on the road, gave me money to tour.

Do you do a lot of reading?

 Yeah, I read a lot of poetry. I don't really read that much books and stuff like that.

What kind of poetry do you read?

 Baudelaire is like a favorite and T.S Elliot is a favorite. Anne Sexton I really like a lot on really dark and depressing days. I have books like Major American Poets with all sorts of stuff in it. I'm kind of an old-schooler about it, but I really don't know that much about any contemporary poets these days. I kind of stick to the books I've had for ten years and I just read them over and over and over again.

Your lyrics seemed a lot more deliberate on this record than on the first one and a lot more poetic...

 Yeah, I have been writing a lot this year. Writing, you know, whatever, not just songs. Deliberate probably is a good word for it. I think the lyrics are more thought out on this record and they are definitely a little bit more to the point. They don't stray in subject matter within a song as much as some of the songs on the first record did. The lyrics on this record just make more sense.

I like the first record to. I had a friend of mine who said, "You have to hear her record," so that is how I found out about you in the first place.

 That is really good to hear. The bizarre thing, it's not bizarre at all, it's so exciting for me to hear stories like that, because that's how about 80% of the people I've talked to that's how they found out about the first one. Either some friend of theirs taped it for them and sent it to them or called them and said 'I heard this record at a friend of mine's house.' Since January, in Chicago and D.C. and New York, we're suddenly selling records in those areas than we ever had before. It just goes to show you if you try to sell records it doesn't work. It's nice to hear that people still remember Massive Blur because I was really proud of that record and I still am.

Yeah, they are really different. They're similar, but really different.

 I know, I totally agree with you. Somebody else said that to me too; it might have been my dad. I was really nervous about the press and I called my parents and was like, I don't know...what am I going to do if everybody hates it. This record was a lot of work for me. I helped produce it and it's such a dangerous thing to do such a non-commercially oriented record, but it's really what I wanted to do. I wanted to be able to play live shows and sell my records and have people go home and hear the same thing they had heard live or close to it. And he [her dad] said, 'You know, Melissa, it's really not that different.' And I was like what are you talking about, it's completely different. And he said, 'It just sounds different, but if you strip it down to the song structure and your voice, that is all still there. Your songs are a little more cohesive, but that's because you wrote them over a year and your writing is getting a little bit better and your just in a different place in your life, that's all. You can still tell it's the same person.' And I was like, okay, good! That was a big sigh of relief for me.

I think the new album is really accessible, even more than the first one even though it is so stripped down.

 It was really nice being able to let go with "Willing to Wait," "I'm Done," and "Faking" too, but "Faking" in a different way because I always heard drums since I wrote it. What we did is we'd do it, just me and the guitar the whole song, and then we'd go, what is going to add to this song. If it didn't add anything, then we wouldn't put it there. I think the most amazing thing that happened to me was when I listened to the record for the first time once we had finished it and a couple of weeks had gone by, I sat down and listened to it in order with a cup of coffee and a cigarette, a few cigarettes, the record went by much quicker than the first record. When the record was over, it hadn't occurred to me that only four songs had drums on it; that I had just listened to eight songs that had basically nothing but a guitar and a bass on it.

What's a typical Melissa Ferrick day like?

 A typical day? When I'm not working? I get up at about one, about ten actually. I drink coffee until about four. And then I usually like to lay in the sun for a while, in my house, with all the doors open with lots of records. I just play records all day long. If I could have the best day that I ever would want to have, it would be a really beautiful day and I would just be laying in my backyard, drinking ice coffee and listening to all of my favorite records and playing with my cats. At four or five o'clock eat some dinner and then go out and see a band and then go out to a dance club and party and dance and play pool and then come home at about two or three in the morning and go to bed and then wake up again at ten and do it again.

How many cats do you have?

 Two. Cassius and Saxe. Saxe is actually Cassius' baby boy. We had four kittens and he was the run, so we kept him. He cries until you pet him. He's kind of annoying, but he's really funny. He's kind of stupid, but he's so soft. He's like mink or something, I don't even know, he's the softest cat I've ever felt in my life. And he has a really long tail. If you pull his tail back, it's further than even his head. He's really kind of funny looking.

What's the main emotion that moves you to write?

 I would say confusion. Is that an emotion? Definitely confusion or questioning. Like uh...duh...I don't know. And anger and loss.

I am sure Melissa is somewhere out there with her guitar and a car singing the songs off crowds everywhere she goes. If you haven't checked out her music, do so (this is a command), I doubt you will end up disappointed. Unless your favorite band is Green Day or something, and then you're already at a loss anyway. Her music is quite moving and honest. And hey, if you do get a chance to see her live, bring her a pack of Camel Lights in a hard-pack. Musicians don't only have to eat on tour, but if they're cool they also need to smoke.