Tess McKenna
Interview
We kicked off with ‘Falling into the Sun’
D: Well, if you like that I reckon you want to stay tuned for the next 20 minutes or so while we chat to Tess McKenna all about her new album ‘Boom Bam’. It’s not since 1998 that we last heard from Tess McKenna with her album ‘Take Me to the Place’ and I must say that I love the press release for this new album, there are some great quotes such as “Red hot with excitement, Boom Bam pulls up in front of you at the lights with tinted windows rolled up tight and the bottom end shouting and thumping to be let out of the boot”. It’s a bit of a change of style for Tess McKenna I understand, but it sounds great to me, and we’ve got Tess McKenna on line.
Hi Tess how are you?
T: Hi David I’m good
D: Congratulations on the new CD, sounds really good.
T: Thank You.
D: Been a long time between drinks for you…
T: Yeah I’m really very thirsty after 5 years. Just
seems to be this cycle I started about 4 albums ago. I don’t know why it
ended up being like that… but I’m trying to change.
D: Well that’s evident on the album, because you’ve
taken it in quite a few directions. There’s the pop kind of stuff, like
we just heard , and a very laid back and soulful rendition of the Blondie
song ‘In the Flesh’ , and some jazz in there as well with the track ‘Boom
Bam’ and you’re doing interesting stuff with rhythms. So you’re really exploring
all sorts of areas aren’t you?
T: Yeah well that’s true what you’re saying about ‘In
the Flesh’, I just wanted to add a kind of slow acoustic song, and I was
trying to find something to fit that, and something to write for it, and
I ended up going back into a very country feel like a really old Hank Williams
kind of thing, and to tell you the truth, it was just a little bit too sad.
I was driving to Melbourne on my way to speak to Andrew
Walker at Head Records, and I thought “What am I going to put there?” ,
and it’s a long story, I thought about lots of different things , and I
thought of Blondie, and I thought ‘In the Flesh’ would be perfect. I always
heard it like that, stripped back and really …acoustic guitar, with Shane
playing the acoustic guitar and just a beat box, really slow rhythm behind
it. Just sort of open up the album in that area and of course the one you
started with ‘Falling into the Sun’ sort of in your face…let’s go!…, and a few of the tracks
are like that. It’s got a lot of variation in it I think, or that’s what
I tried to put into it anyway.
D: Well that’s a good thing I reckon. It keeps you ‘there’, you’re sort of thinking ‘Oh I wonder what’s going to come up next?’
So, the genesis of this album?
You had been touring your previous album around and doing lots of acoustic
gigs, and then you ended up over in Austin Texas at the South by Southwest
Festival , where you got up on stage for the songwriters night and you just
felt like rocking out a bit?
T: It’s all coming rushing back to me now. Yeah it was
funny ‘cos I ended up going over there for the
….I think ‘Take me to the Place’ was the album I’d just brought out, and
they wanted me to do a showcase over there, and it was kind of a songwriters
night , people from all over the world. There was somebody from
D: Yeah, rock out…
T: Yeah, rock out… so I’d bought the guitar that day,
and I’d already hired an amp that night, so I just plugged in and went for
it, and I think the jet lag helped, and everything else that was happening
in the pub, and I just had a great time. I thought, look… I’ve come all
this way , I’m not going to play another acoustic
gig. I just wanted to get electric. So that’s what happened. And that kind
of came back with me to
D: They were doing such great stuff at that time
weren’t they…
T: Oh yes, yes, it was just before Acme
came out and RL Burnside, I’d never seen him live, I’d just
been listening to what they’d been putting out, you know remix stuff, and
it was just great to see him. It was like yeah, that’s exactly… I want to
keep that feeling going, and it was kind of in-between that with ‘Take Me
To The Place’, kind of getting in that area, but I wasn’t quite sure where
I was going, and that really consolidated it for me
, coming from
D: So is the road a big part of it for you Tess ? You talk about your FC Holden and doing long trips
in that, and I think on the cover of the new album there’s a photo that
may well be the bumper bar of an FC Holden?
T: You’re close, it was actually when I was in
D: I was trying to make out what it said, cos it’s in mirror writing of course.
T: (laughs) Yeah you can see some Texan boots, and some
guys sitting around a table outside, and there was this really old American
car, must have been an old Dodge or something, and I was there by myself,
and I was checking it out and I thought, they are fantastic colours, and I just wanted to get a shot to prove
to myself that I was actually there, cos I was
really feeling quite strange. So yeah it’s the chrome of a car in
But yeah I had used a few of those ideas in ‘Take me
to the Place’, and I suppose the FC has been part of what I’ve been doing
cos it did take me up and down the east coast,
and has been taking me everywhere. It’s sort of on its last legs now, I’ve got to get it back on the road again.
D: Yeah you’ll have to. It’s good drivin’ music I reckon…which is a bit of a prerequisite
for me. You’ve got to be able to put good music on in the car and drive
along and enjoy it…
T: Oh I agree.
D: So you got together with Shane O’Mara at Yikesville to take it further?
T: Yeah, yep…I met up with Shane a couple of years ago, we did the Bob Dylan night that Brian Wise did
a compilation CD of. I don’t know if you remember hearing it?
D: Was that at the Continental?
T: Yeah we did a couple of nights at the Continental. That was really the first time I’d met up with Shane, but I’d heard him with Stephen Cummings and heard what he’d been doing with Rebecca’s Empire, and I just thought he was really perfect for the job…come in as co-producer, and get all the sounds. He’s just got such a great ear for production and as you can hear, the whole album just sounds really rich I think, it’s lush. And even though it’s pretty electric and sonic, like what we were saying before with ‘In the Flesh’, you just get taken back to this really beautiful, intimate dry sound, and then you get…cos we’ve got Steve Hadley in there playing double bass as well you get this, and Steve comes in on Boom Bam and as you were saying the jazz kind of pop feel, and Tony Hicks comes in with his baritone sax and bass clarinet. So we’ve got a lot of instruments happening and Shane is able to really take hold of the acoustic instruments as much as the electric don’t you think?
He just takes everything up with the same kind of beautiful
sound.
D: Consummate skill…with the instruments and the
sound that he gets.
T: Absolutely.
D: You were involved in the production too, together
with Shane, so you’ve got to take some credit yourself.
T:( laughs) Okay, just a little bit. Yep, we’ve got
to share it around.
D: I have to ask you about the track Boom Bam which
is a real jazz type track, and it’s got a very interesting beat. Is that
5/4 time? It really reminds me of Dave Brubeck’s
‘Take Five’.
T: Yeah…I really love 5/4 time. I think I first heard
it with Quicy Jones, ‘Mission
Impossible’. I was just mucking around with the bass one day and ended up
going into this jam with a couple of people, and I just loved the time,
the drums just jump out at you and you can do these really interesting jumps
and I held on to that for a while, that bass line and time, and just thought
well this is the perfect album for it. I hadn’t really been able to do it
before that and I’m really glad I saved it up.
D: And so are we. But it must be great as a vocalist
as well to do this different stuff. It’s like you’re exploring all sorts
of different aspects of your voice, your timing and phrasing too.
T: That’s what I really wanted to do. I suppose by the
third album you have a certain amount of…, you’ve learned from the first
two obviously, or you hope you have, and I just felt that right, I want to
do some different things I want it to be like the albums of old. I’m thinking
of
D: I suppose going back to that seventies time when
those sort of albums were around, you’ve done
a version of the Roberta Flack tune ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’
and that’s a great version.
T: Oh that’s good. It’s funny listening to that track
after, a friend of mine asked me to work it out for them on guitar, they
wanted to sing it for some reason, and in working it out you just end up
going ‘What a beautiful song’. It’s by Ewen McColl. I haven’t heard his original version, which
I’d love to hear if anyones got it out there,
but of course we’ve only ever heard Roberta Flack’s version of his. It’s such a beautifully written song, so simple, great
lyric, and I just fell in love with it, re-fell in love with it. That’s
the other thing, I wanted to do a couple of covers.
I think that’s important.
D: I think so too. For one thing, it says a little
bit extra about you in the tracks that you choose to cover but also I reckon
cover versions allow you to explore things in a different way. It’s sort
of … you can step outside your normal style, and you're not so self conscious
as with songs that are your own.
T: Exactly, it frees you up and you’re left with just
interpreting a song rather than being the person who's created or initiated
it where you’re stuck in your own bubble of writing. To choose a cover and
be able to relax and interpret it in the way you hear it is really freeing,
you’re exactly right. The feeling for me in this whole album is, I just
wanted it to be really fun in that way that’s sort of free, even though there
are things in there that are a bit more than frivolous, it is just a liberating
kind of album. I just did what I wanted to do, what I wanted an album to
sound like.
D: I guess the thing to say there is that there has
to be the basis of good musicianship to be able to have that.
T: Yeah, yep I see.
We then went on to discuss Tess’
forthcoming touring details and CD launch. Check out her album and follow
the link back at the homepage to check out her website.