D: Welcome Mia. The new album ‘Parking
Lots’, congratulations it’s a ripper.
M: Thank you very much, I’m glad you
like it. I had a good time making it.
D: It must be about three years
since your first album ‘Cold Water’?
M: It’s almost exactly 2 years to
the day. We brought out 'Cold Water' in 2003 in about March, and 'Parking
Lots' we put out in 2005 in April.
D: That’s pretty good turn around
time…
M: I think two years is a good amount
of time to write and record an album. I think that’s my average. I’m not
a real prolific writer but two years gives me enough time I reckon to write
enough tunes.
D: Yeah it’s quality over quantity…
M: Absolutely, that’s what I tell
myself when I can’t write any songs.
D: You must have been kept pretty
busy on the heels of 'Cold Water' because that was very well received, and
you certainly did a lot of traveling around, a lot of gigs in the intervening
couple of years.
M: Yeah we did. It was quite a surprise
to have it well received and it was a great time for me. I learnt a lot in
the intervening two years with the touring and playing with different players
and getting to see different bands and support different artists. So it’s
been a bit of a blast frankly.
D: It seems to have been a bit
of a different process recording this new album. There’s a lot more production
on it and I notice you’ve got some fabulous gospel sort of backing vocals
on a number of tracks and there’s this real sort of gospelly, bluesy soulful
feel to the album in lots of places.
M: Yeah I think, even though it’s
not like there’s strings or all these different parts to the album however,
compared to the first one I spent a lot more time thinking about the arrangements
and deciding exactly how I wanted the songs to be, rather than leaving it
up to chance at the last minute. Both ways work I think. I’m much more confident
with this album and I was rapt to be able to get the players and the singers
that I had to come and perform. I was convinced of their brilliant talents
and abilities so it was just such an easy thing. Having met these people
over the years…just to ring them up and go ‘Do you mind coming in and singing
for me or playing for me?’ It’s a lovely thing to be able to have friends
that are fantastic musicians that I can just call up.
D: You had a fair bit of help from
Matt Walker?
M: I did, I did. I’ve always been
an admirer of his, and seen a lot of his gigs and that song ‘Rivers Wide’
which you played …I was struggling with the arrangement, it just wasn’t working
for me, and I tried lots of different things, and for the first time I thought
I really should get someone else’s help with the arrangement. So Matt was
the first and only choice and he did wonders for it. He turned it into something
that I really liked.
D: Your songwriting, I guess it’s
a process of maturation for anybody writing songs. One of the songs in particular
‘Roll Me Out’ has a fairly interesting background to it?
M: You probably have heard I spent
some time in the Deer Park Women’s Prison (not as an inmate!) as a performer.
Some friends of mine organized for us to go and perform there once a month
for about 18 months, around the time I was recording 'Cold Water', and I
got to meet and perform with and in front of the women in the prison, and
got to hear some of their life stories. Certainly that song is an amalgamation
of some of the stories I heard, and about one woman in particular. And for
her it’s about what I consider to be getting a really harsh sentence for
a misdemeanor, and then learning the criminal life and continuing that way
for the next 30 years, in and out of prison.
D: I suppose it’s the impact it
has on a person’s life. We’re supposed to be offering some form of rehabilitation
but it doesn’t always happen that way does it?
M: I think, and I’m not sure of this
cause I’ve only been into Women’s Prisons, but I’ve heard that women’s prisons
in particular lack proper Mental Health facilities and rehabilitation. It’s
really a case of putting all sorts of women, with different criminal backgrounds
in together, and of course people who maybe could have just got a bit of
punishment and gone back out into the world and become citizens again become
addicted to prescription drugs, or even hard drugs in the prison, or learn
the criminal trade and then become criminals when they weren’t criminals
to begin with. It’s a tragedy.
D: It can be a fairly brutalizing
process I think.
M: Absolutely, and anybody who thinks,
you know I hear, it’s almost the opinion of the right wing, that prisons
are like holiday camps. But if you ever go to a prison you realize that regardless
of a swimming pool or a television, your freedom is taken, and that’s pretty
much the worst thing that can happen to you.
D: I would think so, I’ve always
thought that. Because there’s this interesting nexus between punishment and
rehabilitation and what it is we’re supposed to be achieving and what we
are trying to do. I don’t think as a society we’ve ever decided that clearly.
M: No, I think there are a lot of
people who really think it’s going to serve the community to really punish
people and make them live and be useless people, which doesn’t really make
sense to me. I know we’ve got to protect the community from dangerous people,
but I also think we have an obligation to make sure that people with mental
health issues or perhaps addictions and poverty issues aren’t just made to
be punished in the same way that serious criminals are.
D: It’s certainly a very vexed
issue. That sort of material, is that something that you are particularly
attracted to when you are writing your music, because there is certainly
the blues, soulful element to this album in particular, more so than the previous
one, and I wonder whether those sort of topics lend themselves to your style
of songwriting. Is that the case for you?
M: Look, I think it’s more a case
of things happening by chance. I finished performing out there a long time
before I wrote the song, and with writing the songs for ‘Parking Lots’, none
of them I set out and thought yep that’s a topic I want to deal with, or
that fits in to my theme of the album. I really didn’t have any themes or
concepts or visions for the album in it’s entirety, I think I was really inspired
by Bonnie Raitt the day I wrote ‘Roll Me Out’, and
it’s more like, musically I was thinking of a really strong rocking song .
D: I actually thought the ghost
of Lowell George was present on that song.
M: Oh you’re too kind. You just said
exactly what I wanted to hear. I’m a bit of a fan you may have realized.
But then it just came to me, like literally it just happens, it falls out
of the sky. I had this blinding idea to write a song about that experience
because I’d had some very direct experience or knowledge of these women’s
lives, and it just came to me that I should do that. But it wasn’t a forethought
thing.
D: Not planned, sort of a process
of osmosis I suspect. We’re all out there living life and we have all sorts
of different experiences, and they just filter down into our brains somehow,
and I assume with songwriting come out in a subconscious way.
M: Definitely, definitely. On the
one hand you kind of thinking what experiences can I have so I can get these
songs, but really, being a human and being alive is enough experience just
in what happens to you. I think things will come out of that, even if you
don’t go and perform in a women prison or whatever, life is so full of rich
things, rich topics and experiences.
D: You can’t manufacture these
things can you.
M: No you can’t and that’s why I don’t
really want to go looking for those things. I just want to leave it to what
happens, and I just happened to fall in with a friend who is an activist and
organized it, and I happened to come along for the ride. I was a bit lucky.
D: Now, the album has a lot of
light and shade in it and that’s certainly true of your live performance.
Some of the songs are quieter and melodic and on others you rock out a bit,
and get some pretty interesting sounds out of your guitar, particularly the
track ‘Down’ You get some pretty heavy sounds out of your guitar and your
voce as well. So you seem to have certainly tried to put that on the album.
M: Yeah I’m a fan of variety, I’m
a fan of having all those different flavours, and an album not just being
one theme. So really it was exciting for me. ‘Down’ the last song is a song
I’ve been playing live for a long time, it’s a song where you get to squeal
on the guitar and be silly, and make a lot of noises. That’s not something
I would want to do all the time but certainly it’s great to have a song where
there’s that sort of ‘let loose’ feeling about it. Certainly at a live gig
you want to go through a lot of different moods and emotions and styles
as well. I love the more introspective and quiet songs and then you come
out and play a song like ‘Down’ at the end of the set. I guess the album
flows on from what I’ve always done live, I like to have, it’s so clichéd
to say ‘musical journey’, but having over a set, your ups and downs and
a variety of moods for people to take in. I don’t like playing solidly the
same stuff.
D: Well I don’t think anybody likes
that, it’s boring to listen to, boring to watch, and must be boring to play…
M: (laughs) Indeed!
D: You’ve done some touring overseas
haven’t you? You were in Canada last year?
M: Yes, got to Canada and the UK last
year, unfortunately I couldn’t take my band cause I couldn’t afford it. I
did some solo gigs at Festivals and Showcases and some music conferences.
Got to see some great music, played the Edinburgh Festival and the Vancouver
Island Folk Festival, got to stay with some musicians as well, it was a bit
of a hop from one lounge-room to the next. It was great though. It was my
first trip for music out of Australia and I spent 3 months over there and
had a really good time. Even though I was doing small gigs and solo it was
great to be performing to an audience from a completely different country,
and have them get where I was coming from, and it not be specific to Australia.
At this point we discussed Mia’s
forthcoming album launch at the Prince Bandroom on 17th June
2005. I won’t include that stuff here.
D: you’ve done some other gigs
around town recently, there are few cohorts you have around town like Sime
Nugent and Jaimi Faulkner?
M: We’ve been having a ball, it’s
just incredible to watch and see. There are these great artists you watch
and admire from America and around the world, that you never, or maybe once
in your life, get to see live, then there are these fantastic artists in
Australia, not only in Australia but down the road from you, who you can get
to see as they evolve and be support for each other. It’s a pretty great thing.
D: Makes a little social network
doesn’t it?
M: Yeah! And certainly that wasn’t
something I had when I first moved to Melbourne to perform. It’s something
that takes time and it’s incredible to finally step back and go Wow! There
are these fantastic people that I’m surrounded by.
D: Some other talent you attracted
to the album? Carl Pannuzzo was involved…
M: He is an incredible musician and
singer. He actually played drums on the first album, and I just knew instantly,
I had a certain type of backing vocals that I wanted, and I knew that he
was the man. Not only to sing on it, but to arrange me and Simon with him,
so I got him in. Not only did he do the beautiful things that I expected,
he went beyond that. The song ‘No Other’ I hadn’t even intended to put backing
vocals on, but he just came up with this fantastic, semi-Doo Wop thing and
it just blew me away.
D: Renee Geyer was involved as
well?
M: That was an incredible stroke of luck. She was mixing her new album at the same time as me at ‘Sing Sing’ and we’d met a few times and she was aware that I was in there. So she wandered in to listen and invited me to listen to her album, and just said look if you want me to do any backing vocals I’m here. Of course I wasn’t going to say no to that, and we did ‘Parking Lots’ cause that was a song I’d thought about having backing vocals on, and she did it in about 10 seconds flat, and it was great. Bit of a blast having her on there!