Last Updated Sept 30, 2005
Hotel Utah, SF, CA 12/16/98. ©1998 K Luce. Do not copy, modify, distribute or use without written permission.
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Last Updated Sept 30, 2005 |
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Hotel Utah, SF, CA 12/16/98. ©1998 K Luce. Do not copy, modify, distribute or use without written permission. |
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Review of Melissa Ferrick's Plus One
Reprinted Without Permission
On a more traditional folk-rock vibe is "Melissa Ferrick +1" (What Are Records), her first release since Atlantic dropped her from its roster. Meant to hold fans over until her next studio album, +1 was recorded live at three recent performances in L.A., Boston, and Santa Monica. As a concert album, its quality is impeccable: her vibrant guitar-work is crystal clear, the audience applause is subtle, not distracting. It's an unplugged extravaganza, and previews several previously unrecorded Ferrick compositions -- most memorably "Asking For Love," "Heredity," and "Alone" -- and a few spirited "best of" renditions, including the title tracks from her 1993 debut "Massive Blur" and 1995's follow-up "Willing to Wait." Without liner notes, your attention focuses where it should -- on Ferrick's impassioned vocals and furious strumming. It's what has always set openly lesbian Ferrick apart from the folk masses --her emotional intensity, her brutal honesty, and her forceful, skillful guitar-work. Here again, those qualities shine through, making +1 one of those rare live recordings worth having. (B+).
Under the "Hot Licks From Cool Chicks" section (p.36)
Reviews of Melissa Ferrick's Plus One and Michelle Malone's Beneath the Devil Moon
By Rachel Pepper
Reprinted Without Permission
Melissa Ferrick used to be called "The Other Melissa" by some who compared this much more forth-right gal with our now not-so-cagey Melissa Etheridge back in days before her Yes I Am proclamation. Ferrick's been working hard to inch her way towards the top, and much the same could be said of Michelle Malone. Malone is a close friend of the Indigo Girls and often gets included in the same breath as those two well-knowns (who, by the way, will be gracing our next cover). Anyway, Ferrick's Plus One is an acoustic album recoreded live in Los Angeles, Boston and Santa Monica, and contains many of her more popular songs as well as newer material. the album has htat "recorded live" feel - raw and rough, but still enjoyable home listening, with songs such as "Asking For Love," "Somebody Help Me," and "To Let You See Me." Malone's got a bigger rock bite, and is more of a personal favorite of mine. Hers is a studio recording with full band and some vocal backup on songs like "In The Weeds," "Medicated Magdalene" and "All My Lifetime." Both these gals are worth a listen, so check them out at major record stories or in the Ladyslipper catalog, (800) 634-6044.
Time Out New York, Aug 21-28, 1997
Article on Melissa's upcoming Aug 27, 1997 show at Tramps
By Karen Iris Tuckerr
Reprinted Without Permission
Melissa Ferrick's croaky vocals don't appeal to everybody. The oddly compelling songwriter mutters and sputters, mixing confessions about intimacy and stale relationships with rage-filled proclamations. Ferrick spits out the kind of angry humiliating stories you might whisper in confidence; it's just her self-deprecating humor that sets them apart. "This is it you fool/You're gonna be with this one until you're dead," goes one singular tale of love and devotion. As a guitarist, she is more of a furious strummer than a color-chord chick. Many of her songs climax in a wailing acoustic frenzy, while Ferrick chants "abuse me" or some other jarring snippet that is sure to cut right through a brew-filled barroom crowd.
Several years ago, somebody at Atlantic Records must have recognized Ferrick's brand of charisma. She was signed, but after relesing a couple of critically acclaimed albums, she was unceremoniously dropped from the labe. Ferrick has her own insight regarding this. On her recent live CD Melissa Ferrick +1, she launches into a version of her second album's title track, "Willing To Wait." As the crowd claps appreciatively, Ferrick postulates, "See I tol them that this should have been the single. If this had been the single, I might not be looking for a deal right now.
When I saw Ferrick perform an acoustic set at Brownies a few years ago, I marveled at her disinterest in who was watching her and how many people were there, and at the fact that she wasn't afraid to spit a little on the microphone. As she says on +1, "I walk like a woman, I talk like a man/I am who the fuck I am." Whoever that may be, she'll make my night if she sings the self-doubting "To Let You See Me," and the ever-poignant love song "Till You're Dead."
Under the Artswatch section (p.92):
Reprinted Without Permission
Out Loud is a new CD to benefit the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. What's on it? The rock-godliness of the Indigo Girls, Throwing Muses and U2; some hot new musicians like Melissa Ferrick; and songs about freedom, dignity, and honesty. Available in record stores or by calling (800) 462-6654.
Entertainment Weekly Sept 8, 1995
"Selling 'Out': Pop Culture Loosens Its Straight Jacket"
Reprinted Without Permission
THE NEW FRONTIER: (p. 42) More gay artists are coming out *before* they've established themselves as stars. While artists like kd lang and Elton John came clean years into their careers, this new wave -- including major-label singer-songwriters Gregory Gray, Stephin Merritt, and Melissa Ferrick -- never spent any time "in". In independent rock, there's an entire subculture of instantly out bands -- those who've chosen to make homosexuality the central issue in their music. Those thrashing groups -- Pansy Division, Tribe 8, and Team Dresch -- have found fans who are eager for more.
Worcester Telegram and Gazette July 9, 1995
"Melissa Ferrick Searches Her Soul On 'Willing To Wait'"
by Craig S. Semon
Reprinted Without Permission
Singer/songwriter Melissa Ferrick is willing to wait for the real thing to come her way. The question is: what are you waiting for? "Willing to Wait" - the refreshing, soul-searching follow-up to this young Ipswich native's masterly debut, "massive Blur" - is one of the most real and riveting albums we'll probably hear all year.
Ferrick is a visionary who reveals each layer of her emotions with the precision of a vertern astronomer mapping out uncharted galaxies. Constantly, she displays a bare-boned urgency that's not concerned wtih cutesiness or cleverness, just a therapeutic, ininhibited purging of her deepest feelings.
Her warm, matter-of-fact way of delving into her feelings is easy to relate to but, at the same time, exists with a unique richness and charm all her own. Alonewith her thoughts - often playing her acoustic guitar as her only means of musical support - Ferrick's intimate, passionate voice captures the honesty of each compelling, complicated thought on lust, love, betrayal and insecurity that she shares.
On the leadoff track, "I am Not", Ferrick reveals more emotional depth in two and half minutes than most recording stars do in their whole careers. Here, she juggles the uneasy task of keeping a safe distance from a would-be lover while trying to allow her desire to blossom. It is a shaky balance, but one which she feels is necessary to keep alive any hope of a genuine romance. With each trembling word, each telling phrase, each sought-out answer, Ferrick gives unique insight into herself as a woman and an artist.
A frantic, manic Ferrick wrestles with romantic uncertainties on "Faking". Worried that her lover feels pity instead of passion, she uneasily pretends that all her passion have been an act. Ferrick says goodbye to a toxic person in her life, disposes the garbage they left behind in her brain and builds her confidence to take on any foe on the swift, rocking single, "Falling on Fits". With gritty, venomous vocals, she wonderfully portrays a sneering, unforgiving woman who promises hell to anyone who betrays her trust or is foolish enough to underestimate her strength.
Sounding like a guitar-toting Tori Amos, Ferrick pulls no punches attacking prejudices, sterotypes and phobias on the unflinching standout, "Gotta Go Now". Featuring strong views on feminism, freedom of choice and gay rights, "Gotta Go Now", shows the absurdities of negative, narrow-minded beliefts. Never preachy, Ferrick presents her views by sarcastically delivering the conflicting views intact, without any insults, and allows the listener to decide what he believes. A fine example are the biting lyrics dealing with Ferrick's own sexuality - "Woman can work/As long as dinner is done/And if you let little girls play with trucks/Their sexuality gets all screwed up".
On the tile track, "Willing to Wait", a stressed Ferrick looks back on her recent life to try to pinpoint how loving couples become strangers. With a choppy guitar rhythm, she attacks, "'casue I am the one/Who makes you want me/ And I am the one/Who makes you need me/I am the one/Who lets you tease me/Deceive me/Now get down on your knees and please me/Abuse me, abuse me, abuse me..." Fears of falling in love are outweighed by the weariness of romantic longing on "I am Done". A spirited, anxiety-ridden Ferrick incomparably captures her yearnings in the lines, "I need a messy kind of make it up as you go along/I need a silence full of nothing/I need to love".
The sensual memories of sight, smell, sound and taste surrounding her lover's departure and the lack of tender touches haunt Ferrick on "When You Left". With vivid, painful recollections, she captures the feelings of betray, loneliness and emptiness through the song's unshakable images. Ferrick partakes of black coffee and burning cigarettes - the preferred breakfast of brooders - in "Trouble in My Head". Here, the listener feels Ferrick's frustration as she experiences the burden of a heavy heart and struggles to break out of her rut. And from the sounds of things, a rut is something that will probably never happen in her recording career.
"OUT LOUD: Benefits Lesbian and Gay Human Rights Around The World"
The International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission
Reprinted Without Permission
June 28, 1995 Attn: Arts & Entertainment Editors, Music Editors
U2, The Indigo Girls, and Throwing Muses are among the artists contributing on the compilation CD, OUT LOUD, an album in support of the human rights and freedom of lesbian and gay people. Released on the label Knitting Factory Works, the CD will be released September 20, 1995 with record release parties in New York City and San Francisco.
The OUT LOUD compilation CD brings together an eclectic mix of major label artists and up and coming artists stepping forward with powerful recordings about freedom, dignity, and honesty - all to benefit the International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC). With seventeen tracks (thirteen previously unreleased) OUT LOUD is a necessity for all fans interested in collecting recordings from artists like U2 and Throwing Muses, among others, that can only be found on this benefit CD.
Highlights include Kristin Hersh's haunting vocals floating over hard driving accompaniment on Throwing Muses previously unreleased live remix version of Finished, a rare find as it has never been released in the US in any version. With striking harmonies and profound lyrics, Indigo Girls Amy Ray and Emily Saliers add a fierce intro to their live acoustic version of This Train Revised. U2 joins the benefit compilation with a brilliant, previously unreleased remix version of Cole Porter's standard Night And Day, with a new techno backbeat that moves the song from its Red Hot & Blue origins to the dance floor. British icons Everything But The Girl (I Don't Understand Anything) and Billy Bragg (Sexuality) contribute previously released songs that take on new life and power in the context of this compilation.
The entire album is solid with provocative, political, and entertaining compositions from The Gretchen Phillips Experience, Melissa Ferrick, Disappear Fear, the Mekons, Voice Farm, BETTY, The Billy Tipton Memorial Saxophone Quartet, Y'ALL, The Jazz Passengers, Girls in the Nose, Daniel Cartier and the Judybats.
Proceeds from OUT LOUD directly benefit the work of the International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC). IGLHRC, founded in 1991, advocates for a world in which the most fundamental rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgendered people, and people with AIDS and HIV will be respected. Part of this mission is to redefine the global battle for human rights to include the rights of these people.
As the music industry often serves as a prominent voice for social issues, OUT LOUD was naturally a project for siblings Julie and Michael Dorf to join efforts on. Julie, the executive director of the IGLHRC, and Michael, owner of the Knitting Factory label and club, teamed up in June of 1994 to produce the Out Loud benefit concert series, held at the Knitting Factory, to benefit IGLHRC during the 25th Anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion. The OUT LOUD CD evolved from this concert series and is the latest Dorf project supporting social issues through the music industry.
For more information or to request pre-release cassettes for review and/or album cover artwork, contact Russ Gage at 415-255-8680.
1360 Mission Street, Suite 200, San Francisco, CA 94103 USA Tel. 1-415-255-8680 Fax 1-415-255-8662 email IGLHRC@igc.apc.org
"Melissa Ferrick: Girl On The Verge"
By Holly Gleason
Reprinted Without Permission
In the increasingly bloated world of pop music excess, Melissa Ferrick - the critically aclaimed 24 year old songwriter who'se opened strings of shows for Marc Cohen, Paul Westerberg, John Hiatt, and Dwight Yoakam - is as minimal as it gets. Touring with just a bass player and a van, she's the anti-thesis of the 90's multi-bus modern touring aesthetic. "We wanted to do it in a car, but we couldn't get all the equipment in the trunk" she says, almost apologetically. "It's only three amps, five guitars, a bass, two suitcases - and the two of us! It's not like it's that much stuff, but those road cases you have to put the equipment in, they're three times the size of what they are storing."
And this logic-driven stripped-down aesthetic defines "Willing To Wait," her second album for Atlantic. With a voice that ripples like a well-sculpted bodybuilder, Ferrick and her guitar tackle songs that are fairly pointed. The mix is evocative enough to capture the listener by the gut and leave them, sorting through their own emotional laundry. "Falling on Fists" is about internal resolve in the face of physical abuse, while "Cracker Jack Kid" is an anthem to the first rule of surival: "I, me, mine." Not that every theme is so turbulent. "Somehow we Get there" deals with arrival and "Til You're Dead" tackles the reality that while love is less than perfect, it can last forever if you'll accept that fact.
"The difference is that these songs were written in a specific period of time," the critically-acclaimed brunette explains. "The first album was Melissa Ferrick's 14 Greatest Hits from 17 to 23. Now I am 24 - and this is the work of a woman in a specific place in her life." Her focus extends to her sound as well. While Ferrick wanted to create an album that she could tour without a huge gap between how it sounds on record and how it sounds in concert, she was also looking to get closer to making the songs closer to what she heard when she wrote them.
After having met with Larry Klein - known for his work with Joni Mitchell and Shawn Colvin - to talk about working together, Ferrick found herself re-thinking the notion of arrangements and performances. "It's not about anger in your face," she says, "but intensity through honesty." "When I met with Larry, I was playing him 'I am Not' on my acoustic guitar. I was just sorta singing it and thn when I got to the chorus, I started really wailing. He was like 'Wait! Wait! What are you doing? How come you got so much louder...' and I was saying, 'because it's the chorus'." "Larry looked at me and he said, 'You need to hold that line of 'I'm about to lose it,' but then not lose it. That's what Shawn does and Joni. Take people to the edge and then just let them hang there - that;s what creates tension and that's what creates drama.'"
Though Klein did not ultimately produce "Willing To Wait," Julie Last - a colleague of Klein's and the woman who poduced Ricki Lee Jones' "Traffic from Paradise" joined Ferrick and bass player Marika Tjelios for the project. Though thte idea of three women in a studio is hardly standard issue, the album they created is rich with emotion, and full of interesting, if minimal arrangements.
"We hired Julie because of the work she'd done, not because of her sex," Ferrick says flatly. "Traffic from Paradise" was an amazing record. She'd worked with Brian Eno and some of those Aerosmith records early in her career. So, I called her up and said, 'You wanna make a record?' and she said 'Sure.' Then I asked, 'You wanna make a record in a few weeks real cheap?' and she was like, 'Sure.'"
"Julie was very in synch with what we wanted to do - and we were all very serious about making this record. It was a very dangerous record to make, because it was basically a trio and the intensity came from ythe dynamic of the three of us: me and my guitar, Marika's bass, and the drum parts." Ferrick, though, would rather have the consistency of what she does, which allows the songs to stand out. If that means streamlining and touring in a van with no support, staying in Best Westerns and Motel 6's, she's fine with that. At 24, she's got plenty of time and a lot of focus, so she'd rather build a career properly and make it last. "With the first record, so much head trippy stuff was going on," she recalls and laughs. "The record didn't work here, so I went to Europe where it hit. Then I came back and toured here for a while. But then I went back to Europe...then back here. It seemed like I was never anywhere according to plan."
"For this album, I'm touring here for six months first. I'm headlining mostly and doing some opening dates. That's what it's about." And even if vanning coast-to-coast-and-back-again isn't the most glamorous way to tour - especially when you're leaving the driving to yourself - Melissa Ferrick doesn't mind. "Other than not really being to sleep in the van - as opposed to having a bunk and lounge to sit in and drift off - this is okay. Sure, you drive four hours; you sleep in a bed that's not real comfortable and makes your back ache. When you get to the club or the theatre and you're doing the sound check, it's just so much more satisfying, because you know you're working for it."
"Music: The Other Melissa"
By Peter Galvin
Reprinted Without Permission
Singer-Songwriter Melissa Ferrick will tell you right off the bat that she's been inspired by Melissa Etheridge's courage, passion, and success. But Ferrick also makes it clear that she has not come out publicly just to sell more records. "Melissa Etheridge and k.d. lang were in very different situations when they came out," says Ferrick, nursing a cafe latte at her favorite caffeine haunt in West Hollywood. "They had a serious base audience. I'm lucky if I get 200 people at a club. My first album sold 10,000 copies. The main reason for coming out in the press is that I don't want to go out there to represent my new record and get into situations where I'm not being truthful. It's just not fair to myself-or to my fans-to hide anymore."
Ferrick's second album, which hits stores in April, is the spare, acoustic Willing to Wait (Atlantic), a searing suite of coming-of-age songs that details the struggle to achieve a fulfilling spiritual and physical relationship. Less commercial than the slickly produced Massive Blur, her debut, the new disc is more emotionally mature, as illustrated by "Till You're Dead," a song about romantic commitment, and "Gotta Go Now," which skewers bigotry and stereotypes.
That the 24-year-old Ferrick now comes across as a confident artist rather than an affected bohemian is in part due to the stabilizing effect of her relationship with her lover, video producer and director Nancy Bennett. "When I first came out, I used to see if I could get girls to like me," says Ferrick. "Watching what girls would go through when I would lure them emotionally and physically and then drop them was a sick but powerful turn-on. But with Nancy, because she's 12 years older than me, I had to show her that I could be responsible enough to have a relationship." The pair-have been living together in the videomaker's book- and CD-cluttered West Hollywood house for almost a year now.
Ferrick, a native of Ipswich, Massachusetts, has taken to Los Angeles like a celebrity to sunglasses and is fascinated by the lesbian-chic in-crowd that she finds herself rubbing elbows with on occasion. "When I first met Melissa Etheridge, she said, 'Oh, you're the other Melissa.' We went off in a corner and talked about everything," beams Ferrick. "The first time I met k.d. was at a Fourth of July party. She was surrounded by all these beautiful women. I don't think she was impressed with me."
Ferrick is refreshingly realistic about her ongoing emotional development. "Even though I'm coming out, she says, "it doesn't mean that I am perfectly secure with who I am in terms of my masculinity and femininity. Those things are still tucked up inside me. Fixing yourself is a lifelong pursuit.
Peter Galvin is a contributing editor to Interview and has written for The New York Times and Rolling Stone.
"The Other Melissa"
By Chastity Bono
Reprinted Without Permission
Sometimes I think if I were straight, I would still be doing the samething," says Atlantic recording artist Melissa Ferrick "Then I think, No, I wouldn't. I probably wouldn't play guitar the way I play guitar, and I probably wouldn't sing the way I sing or write the things I write." With her second album, Willing to Wait out on April 11, the 24-year-old singer-songwriter thinks it's time to set the record straight, so to speak. I never thought it wasn't OK to talk about it," says Ferrick about her sexual orientation. "lt's almost as if because I never got asked outright, I started to doubt my own sexuality," she adds, laughing "Don't I look like a dyke?"
Although Ferrick has never denied that she is a lesbian, she feels a need to discuss it openly now for the sake of her music and her fans. "Because my music is so goddamned honest, I think it would be really horrible of me not to be totally honest with my fans," she explains. "They're listening to me sing about things that are sometimes really hard to take, so how could I be shut-mouthed about the fact that I'm gay?" Ferrick's need to be honest is not Iimited to her sexuality. Her music is the tapestry into which all of her experiences and emotions are woven. Whether you're elated or disturbed by her songs, you can't help getting caught up in the intense emotional experience her music evokes. It is this same musical intensity that brought so much critical acclaim to her 1993 debut, Massive Blur.
Besides being the critic's choice, she is also very much a musician's musician-with such well-connected fans as Bob Dylan, Michael Stipe, and Morrissey. Aside from being one of her biggest supporters, Morrissey was the one who gave Ferrick what she calls "the shot of a lifetime" when he enlisted her as the opening act for his 1990 tour.
At the time, Ferrick had just moved back to her hometown of Boston after trying unsuccessfully to make it in the New York coffeehouse scene. When Morrissey's opening act, lesbian folksinger Phranc, had to leave the tour because of the unexpected death of her brother, Ferrick got the most important call of her life. Concert promoter Jodie Goodman phoned and said, "You're opening up for Morrissey, and you have to be at Great Woods [in Boston] in 45 minutes."
Although Ferrick was totally unprepared, she rose to the auspicious occasion and gave such a good performance that she was asked to finish the tour. The next thing she knew, Ferrick was at New York City's Madison Square Garden singing to a sold out audience. "It was one of those moments where it was like, OK, if I never get signed and I never ever make a record, I don 't give a shit," she recalls.
Later, when she was unwinding in her dressing room, R.E.M. lead singer Michael Stipe came in to tell her how much he had enjoyed her set. "I had just come offstage, and I had eye Iiner everywhere," she says. "My parents were there, and I had just opened a beer when he came jumping up and down into my dressing room. And I'm thinking, like, Oh, my God, it's fucking Michael Stipe!"
It all paid off when Atlantic Records signed Ferrick after the Morrissey tour. "They gave me $5,000 to go in and cut four songs," she says. "I handed them in, and that's when Danny Goldberg [now CEO and chairman of Warner Bros. Records] signed me." "She has a great voice and distinctive singing style," says Goldberg, who used to manage Nirvana. "Also she's very impressive as a person. It usually takes a few albums for an artist to emerge, and she's got an intense desireto be successful."
The opportunity to make a record was not the only gift Ferrick received from Atlantic Records. She also met her lover of two years, Nancy Bennett, who was a staff video producer for the label. "I was out here making my first record, and I had a meeting with my video producer," Ferrick remembers. "I'd also been told by this psychic that I was going to meet a woman named Nancy who used to be a musician and that she would be the love of my life." So when Ferrick had her first meeting with Bennett and spied a flugelhorn in her office, she knew it had to be fate: "First, her name was Nancy: second, she was totally cute: and third, she had a flugelhorn. So I was like, It's her, it's her!"
Their paths crossed again during a business trip to New York City. "I very carefully forgot to check myself into a hotel room," recalls Ferrick. "We went out to dinner and flirted all night. I ended up staying in her hotel room, and one thing led to another." The two women have been in a committed relationship ever since, and Ferrick couldn't be happier about it. "I don't have to play dyke drama anymore," she says. "I'm really happy where I am. I like having a girlfriend. I like having a home to go to."
Ferrick also likes making music, which she demonstrates most convincingly on Willing to Wait. "It has the theme of falling in love and being in love," reveals Ferrick. "And it has the theme of realizing that I just want to make records-and it doesn't matter to me how many I sell. I was really thrown for a loop about the first album just because it was so hyped within the industry." Instead, Ferrick has come to accept the level she's on: "I'd much rather be respected than have a million dollars." Although Willing to Wait has the lyrical angst of her first record, the production is very stripped-down. The driving forces behind the album are Ferrick's passionate vocals and her rhythmic acoustic guitar. "It's a combination of Tracy Chapman and Pearl Jam," she says. "It's so different that I'm worried people won't get it.
Fortunately, Ferrick doesn't have a lot of time on her hands to worry. With the release of Willing to Wait right around the corner, she is busy gearing up for a massive tour of the United States and Europe. Totally content with her life right now, Ferrick has this to say about her future: "I would like to maintain my relationship with my girlfriend for the rest of my life. I would like to have a kid or two and a house." And the glue that holds it all together? "I can't do those thing if I don't have the music," she says. "I don't know how to do anything else."
"Ferrick Goes Acoustic On 2nd Set"
Atlantic Singer Isn't Afraid of F(olk) Word
By Jim Bessman
Reprinted Without Permission
NEW YORK- It usually works the other way around, but Melissa Ferrick, whose 1993 debut album, "Massive Blur," was notable for its rockband sound, has turned down the volume for her follow-up, "Willing To Wait."
"I used to be afraid of the word, but this is almost a 'folk' record," says the Atlantic artist, whose new disc streets April 11. "Productionwise, it's obviously a lot less. I went in wanting to make a singer/songwriter record because that's what I am. So I wanted it very pared-down."
Ferrick's debut, which was produced by Gavin MacKillop, took three-and-a-half months to make and featured Ferrick's first work on the electric guitar. On "Willing to Wait," which took five weeks to record, Ferrick herself took control of the knobs, co-producing with Julie Last, an engineer whose credits include Rickie Lee Jones, Joni Mitchell, and Shawn Colvin.
"With Rickie Lee, [Last] engineered the best acoustic guitar sound I'd heard, which is the sound I wanted," Ferrick says. Ferrick's bassist, Marika Tjelios, also co-produced and is the main accompanist on the album, with percussion added on only a few tracks.
"I didn't want to completely lose that side of myself," Ferrick says of the harder sound of "Massive Blur." That's good news to Paul Marszalek, PD at San Francisco album alternative station KFOG.
"We played 'Happy Song' from the first album and had a moderate success that she could build on," says Marszalek. "It's interesting that she's gone back to an acoustic direction instead of rocking out more on the second album, but if they come with 'Falling On Fists,' they'll have a decent little run here."
"Falling On Fists" is one of the tracks on "Willing To Wait" for which Ferrick wanted drums. "I knew I wanted a real wild arrangement on it and worked on it solely for probably a month."
Atlantic also recognizes the song's potential for widening Ferrick's radio inroads. According to product manager Lisa Gray, a "Falling On Fists" promo-CD will go to album alternative stations; the cut also will head a promotional CD of several tracks that will be serviced to college stations.
Ferrick will return to the heavy grass-roots touring approach that helped support "Massive Blur." Additionally, a feedback card will be included in copies of "Willing To Wait" to gather a "solid database" for future contests, giveaways, and fan-club mailings.
Unlike Ferrick's debut, the new album will be marketed directly to the gay market, says Gray. While Ferrick does not address her sexual orientation in her lyrics or bring it up in interviews or press materials, she has recently revealed that she is gay in order to remain truthful to her fans and herself.
"She's an artist who happens to be gay-not a gay woman who happens to be an artist," says Ferrick's manager, Mary Stuyvesant. This fits in with what lesbian event producer Mariah Hanson calls "a whole new consciousness in the lesbian community-which is not to be primarily identified as lesbian in outreaching to the straight community for mutual acceptance."
Hanson's MT Productions puts on the annual lesbian-targeted Dinah Shore Weekend festivities coinciding-but not affiliated-with the LPGA Nabisco Dinah Shore golf tournament March 23-26 at Rancho Mirage, Calif. Atlantic will support Ferrick's performance at the event's concluding party; the label will also advertise in gay publications and utilize online gay forums in publicizing the event.
But Stuyvesant makes it clear that Ferrick's sexual preference is not fundamental to the label's promotional plans. "We have a running joke: If she plays, they will come-it doesn't matter," says Stuyvesant on Ferrick's gay following. "Girls know about her through word-of-mouth, or the grapevine, so instead of ignoring that audience we decided to acknowledge it and reach out to it. It's an audience that's very supportive of the arts, but should not be the focus of the campaign."
And, Stuyvesant says, "Willing To Wait" isn't gay-themed. It does, however, reflect "spiritual" changes in the two-year period following "Massive Blur," as the artist herself notes.
"The whole theme of this record is to make sure you know what's going on around you and don't give up," says Ferrick. "'Falling On Fists' sums it up, but 'Willing To Wait' is the perfect title: being content and comfortable with life and with where you are and accept where your life brought you, without losing aggression and the dream to move forward. The first record was very different, with more down-out, dirty, slit-your-wrist kind of stuff. This one's more about empowering yourself, rather that, 'Screw you! I can't believe you left me.'"
Ferrick, who was signed on the basis of her solo opening slot on a Morrissey tour, is eager to hit the road again "and never come off." She will perform at South By Southwest in Austin, Texas, prior to going on tour in April.
"I'll just go on the road with my bass player, give out stickers, visit radio stations, and sell records out of the back of my car!" says Ferrick, who adds that "Massive Blur" is selling more units now than when it was first released. "We'll play all those cities where people found my record and wrote and asked us to come and play. I don't want to lose that grass-roots thing, playing before 20 people in Des Moines [Iowa] and having them take you out for beers after the show."
Gray says that touring will specifically concentrate on the Northeast, since Ferrick, who resides in Los Angeles, is a Massachusetts native who attended Berklee College of Music in Boston and later lived and played extensively in New York. Noting Atlantic's in-house video production capability, Gray says that footage from Ferrick's South By Southwest show and a March 13 showcase at Brownies in New York will be used for electronic media coverage.
Atlantic will then wait to see which album track "emerges" for videoclip potential, Gray says.
"Well It's All In The Shoes And The Jeans..."
By J.W. Bersani
Reprinted *With* Permission
What follows is an article written for the Equinox, the College newspaper of Keene State College in Keene, New Hampshire. It was also printed in in the November 1994 issue of the Maudlin Order, published Maudlin Order Publishing, a Division of Raving Lunatix Promotions. The text that follows is from the later printing. The information contained in the article was compiled from the writer's research, with the help of Atlantic records, as well as a phone interview with Melissa in Dec. of 1993.
"Because it's all in the timing, and the placement of words..." is one way of describing the turn of events that have lead to the album Massive Blur, the debut release from Boston native Melissa Ferrick. I recently had the opportunity to speak with Miss Ferrick about her young career and what it's like to open for Morrissey.
Melissa Ferrick hails from Ipswich, MA, a suburb of Boston. At the age of five she approached her father declaring that she had wanted to play the violin since "before she was born". He gave in and started her musical studies. During elementary school Melissa took up the trumpet, and after a trip to China with the Youth Wind Ensemble in her senior year of high school, she started at the Berklee College of Music. Although her scholarship was for trumpet, it took all of one day for her to pick up a guitar in place of her trumpet and never find her horn again. Melissa gave Berklee two years, which she describes as "Hell", before leaving school for the New York coffee house circuit. She somehow ended up back in Boston and was sleeping on friends' floors when she received a call from a local concert promoter. That call, pardon the cliche', would change her life.
When Morrissey's opening act (Phranc) had to leave for LA, Morrissey's tour manager called Jody Goodman, a local concert promoter in Boston, and explained the situation. Goodman called Melissa and with no time to prepare she was the new opening act. "The only thing I remember about the Morrissey concert, was I forgot he was the lead singer for the Smiths, who were one of my favorite bands from high school. I remember meeting Morrissey, then I remember walking on stage, then I remember the end of it." Fortunately for Melissa the press at the concert didn't forget her performance, many of whom found themselves scrambling for any information whatsoever on this virtually unknown vocalist, who out of the blue was opening for a crowd of thousands of screaming Morrissey fans at Great Woods. "I knew that this was my shot." her performance at the first show lead to an opening spot for the remainder of the tour (17 dates total including many in the UK). "I just wanted to leave an impression, more so on the tour people and less on the audience, 'cause who goes to a show to see the opening act?" While touring Melissa had acquired her own little following. "When I toured with Morrissey in the UK, people wrote into the NME and asked about me." Information about the forceful twenty year old was not easily come by. "The NME called record labels asking about me; it's good to have them on your side and they hate everyone..." Impressions were made on the right people and Melissa signed with Atlantic Records.
The label had been through a rough time and had some important changes happening. "I signed on to Atlantic Records right when Danny Goldberg came to the label, and that was really why I signed with them." With a contract on the books Melissa was studio bound. "They have been really great to me; when they signed me they really didn't know what they were signing. It was a gut reaction for Danny. They had no idea that the record was going to sound like it sounds, they had no idea they were going to have a track to go to radio with...they were really surprised." Together with her bass player of five years, and eighty potential songs, Melissa went into the studio with her producer Gavin MacKillop (Toad the Wet Sprocket). "It wasn't an expensive record and I didn't want to have to recoup that much money, if things didn't go well." What emerged was appropriately titled Massive Blur.
The first single from Massive Blur was a track entitled "Love Song". "We released 'Love Song' first on purpose; we didn't want to come with 'Happy Song' right away, because it seemed, first of all too risky or dangerous, and second, for fear of it actually getting a lot of air play. We didn't want it to go that quickly." Whether it was planned or not Massive Blur didn't get the radio play, but it made up for that in the amount of press the record received. "We went for the press and we got a ton of it, we turned this record into a little press baby." The record was also extremely well-received in Europe. "It's going really well in Germany, I've been there twice in the past 3 months." When it comes to the good ole' USA, "Everyone takes off on Christmas break, and you worry that they're gonna forget about the record, but I have a verbal promise from the label to work on it after break." Part of the fuel in the promise to promote the record after the holidays was the release of an EP, affectionately titled The Juliana Hatfield EP. "Juliana and I went to Berklee together; the song is a dig at the record label." The story behind the first track from the EP surrounds the turn of events that transpired after Melissa completed her record, and how promotion of the record was handled in comparison to the promotion of the new Juliana Hatfield 3 record, also on Atlantic Records. The EP also contains tracks from Massive Blur as well as a new track.
Massive Blur is a very college-format oriented release, but most of Melissa's success appears to be in the newest radio format known as Adult Album Alternative (AAA). "They (Atlantic Records) don't know what to do with me; AAA has been good to me." An artist with the vocal power and lyrical essence of Melissa Ferrick are often hard to place, and the addition of such emotion only makes it more difficult. "Most of the time when I write I've gone through some sort of emotional turmoil and I just start writing." Although not everything becomes a song, Melissa is writing all the time.
"I tend to write a song the night before I do a show, and I always play it at the next show. It drives my manager crazy. I have to play the most new thing I have, in order to see the reaction of the crowd." Crowd reaction at concerts has been a rare commodity as Melissa has been grasping at touring opportunities. "I toured with Marc Cohn, three weeks after the record came out, and I opened an Urban Outfitters, so I'm doing the mall thing; I don't feel like Debbie Gibson, but... I've been stuck doing solo gigs because it costs so much money to put a band on the road." Melissa hopes to tour soon, she said she'd like to tour with Toad the Wet Sprocket or even Morrissey again, but she'll settle for anything, "I don't care if I'm playing clubs, I just want to tour."
I concluded my conversation with Melissa over our common love of the city of Boston. "The day I can move back to Boston is the day I don't have to pay off y student loans... Boston is Home!"
"I just can't face it, cause all I see is a Mas-sive Blur." Melissa Ferrick's debut album Massive Blur is available from Atlantic Records at most local record stores.
"Life's A Blur"
By David Sprague
Reprinted Without Permission
Considering the pace at which Melissa Ferrick's life has moved these past few years, it's appropriate that her remarkably rich Atlantic Records debut bears the title "Massive Blur."
The 22-year-old Boston native-- who studied violin for 11 years before switching to trumpet, on which she received a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music-- moved from ivy-covered halls to smoke-filled rooms just three years ago. A scant few months later, she reached a major turning point. On an hour's notice, she replaced a canceled opening act before 15,000 Morrissey fans at Boston's Great Woods.
Ferrick's performance impressed the mope-rock king so much that, despite her near-total anonymity, he requested that she do the entire tour. "All the training in the world couldn't have prepared me for that feeling," Ferrick says. "I mean, this was somebody whose music I'd loved for years!"
She also drew the attention of Atlantic's Jason Flom, who brought her to the label in late 1991. Ferrick presented Atlantic with more than 70 emotion-wrenched songs she'd written in four years.
"People say, 'How can you have gone through so much shit and only be 22?'" she says. "I'm not saying I've gone through everything that's on the album... I don't think I've ever really felt love. But these are things I _want_ to know about. That's why I write."
While her demos were no more than voice and acoustic guitar, Ferrick, who cites Joan Armatrading and Chrissie Hynde among her seminal influences, says she always envisioned them fleshed out by a band.
"We all felt from the beginning that Melissa was more than just a female singer/songwriter with an acoustic guitar," says Atlantic A&R executive Tim Sommer. "We knew there was a way to make a rock record with real intimacy."
To do so, Ferrick picked up an electric guitar for the first time and recorded her debut in just over two months, assisted by producer Gavin MacKillop and guitarist and ex-dB Peter Holsapple. With its mixture of brassy pop, folk-tinged strumming, and art-rock whimsy, "Massive Blur" seems to have the same genre-crossing appeal as her similarly mercurial label mate, Tori Amos.
"The comparison to an artist like Tori is valid, in that she survived and prospered without [immediate] MTV or radio play," Sommer says. "That's why we made a very conscious decision not to fly out the door with one of the pop songs. I'm very much an advocate of an audience finding an artist... to a point."
To that end, Atlantic is working the first single, "Love Song," only to college and commercial modern-rock stations. The next single, "Happy Song," will go to album rock and top 40 as well. A video is being shot for that track.
The low-pressure approach agrees with Ferrick, who says she'd prefer to reach her audience the old-fashioned way. "It seems like I'll be touring for the rest of my 20s," she says. "But that suits me just fine."
"Melissa Ferrick"
Reprinted Without Permission
"I don't want to be classified by my sex; I want to be classified by my music and what it's trying to say. It's not like what I write is the result of the fact that I don't have a dick. Sometimes I play guitar like I have a dick, and sometimes I sing like I do."
If you're one of those people for whom the term "female singer/songwriter" conjures up the image of a shrinking violet hunched behind an acoustic guitar, Melissa Ferrick may be just the artist to eradicate that stereotype for you. Sure, this Boston native's a talented vocalist and songsmith, but a folky female crooning melancholy tunes she most assuredly is not -- a fact that can be quickly confirmed with an initial spin of her Atlantic debut album, "MASSIVE BLUR."
Ferrick is unafraid to ride roughshod over experimental terrain. "I really tried to approach each song as its own entity, rather than trying to create an 'album' of songs," Melissa explains. "Each one has its own feeling; they express lots of emotions, different sides of myself." Though "MASSIVE BLUR" explores a wide range of musical and personal dynamics, Ferrick's assured, distinctive voice draws the entire album into a focused, cohesive collection.
Joy, passion, anger, love, angst, frustration, and self-doubt all figure into Melissa's cathartic repertoire. The words, born of emotional turmoil, speak with an honesty that is disarming and, as some have already discovered, perhaps even a little difficult to face head on. "After I played a show one night, this girl came up to me and said that my lyrics made her really uncomfortable," Ferrick recalls. "She said it got to the point where she just wanted to get up and leave, get away from it, but he couldn't."
"Hello Dad," as a case in point, "represents friends and family members who can relate to the power of silence." Of the title track, "Massive Blur," Melissa says: "It's about the emotional sacrifices we make in order to exist -- these 'blurs' can stop your life from moving forward, and the longer YOU wait to accept them, the sooner your dreams die."
Not that Ferrick excels solely in the chronicling of "difficult" emotions. There is, for example, the tongue-in-cheek levity of "Happy Song," her aptly-titled response to those who claimed that she didn't have any happy songs. "Blue Sky Night" is drawn from a daydream about a couple Melissa saw walking down the street (and, she adds, "my sister Julie really wanted to have her name in one of my songs"). It is "Breaking Vows, " however, that is the songwriter's personal favourite. "I think it's the best thing I've ever written, lyrically. It's about as honest as I get about myself."
Despite the fact that she composed all of the music and lyrics and did the arrangements (with help from producer Gavin MacKillop), Ferrick is quick to stress that when it came down to recording "MASSIVE BLUR," it was, in fact, a "band thing." Ferrick picked up the electric guitar (for the first time), gathered a host of talented musicians around her (including Peter Hosapple and Toad the Wet Sprocket's Glenn Phillip, among others) and proceeded to give her songs the space to breathe, evolve, and metamorphose. The end result is an album that embodies both experimentation and confidence.
"I think my drive as a musician stems from a really deep sense -- some childish need to be accepted that was never satisfied. "
At four years of age, Melissa Ferrick announced that she had "wanted to play violin since before I was born." Her father obliged that revelation, and she played and studied the instrument for the next 11 years. In elementary school, Melissa also picked up the trumpet, and in her senior year she was invited to tour China for a month with the Youth Wind Ensemble -- an extension of the prestigious New England Conservatory in Boston. Meanwhile, she had started writing poetry with a vengeance (he still writes voraciously -- about four hours a day).
Upon graduating from high school, Ferrick received a trumpet scholarship to the prestigious Berklee College of Music. Her first day there she bought a guitar, "and needles to say went to another trumpet lesson again!"
Melissa gave school two years before escaping to New York to play the coffee house circuit. She eventually ended up back in Boston, where she opened for several major artists, among them Bob Dylan. Then, through a bizarre twist of fate, she found herself on stage as the opening act for Morrisey at Boston's Great Woods, on less than an hour's notice.
Ferrick was invited to finish the Morrisey tour in the U.S. and then continue on with him through the U.K. (17 dates total), despite the fact she had no demo deal, no record deal -- just an acoustic guitar and a parcel of songs. The experience, to say the least, was a heady one. Ferrick was only 20 years old.
"Before the Madison Square Garden show, there was a roadie standing there and he said to me, 'So, are you really, really nervous?' I said, 'No, I can only see the 5 or 6 people in the front row so I just pretend I'm sitting in my living room playing in front of my friends.' And he said, 'Well, you've got 15,000 friends tonight.' And at that moment I suddenly realized exactly what was happening to me," she laughs. "'My God,' I thought, 'I'm on tour with Morrisey, the lead singer of the Smiths, who were one of my favourite bands.' Michael Stipe was at the show, my family was there, and everything sunk in. But then it was boom, go, and they just pushed me on the stage. It all happened in about two seconds."
In the course of the tour, Ferrick managed to accrue her own little following, and it wasn't long before Morrisey's fans were offering her flowers on stage and chasing her for autographs as she left venues.
"If I come off the stage, and I don't remember anything that's happened, then I know it was a great show," says Melissa. "It's about a vibe; it's about people and their energy just feeding off you. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I'm 80 completely vulnerable when I get on stage. I'm 80 incredibly open that I could get really hurt. It's the only time I'm ever like that."
By the time Melissa was 21, Atlantic Records had offered her a recording contract and now, at the ripe old age of 22, she's finished her first album, the exceptional "MASSIVE BLUR."
"There are so many things that make me unsure in life. Music is the one thing I can do, the one place I can go where I'm sure. I always know where I stand."
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