iNTERViEWED
BY BRiAN LUSH
With the release of their third album ‘AS IT TURNS OUT’, the
MEL FLANNERY TRUCKING CO go beyond what one expects from a
New York
based jazz trio. The band’s lead
singer and namesake MEL FLANNERY is a honey-voiced chanteuse that is
not about
to be overshadowed by her solid backing (LEE PARDINI on keyboards, MATT
ARONOFF
on bass and DANNY SHER on drums). The jazz sound that the band was
founded on
shows folkier leanings as well as irresistible grooves – a testament to
the
writing partnership of FLANNERY and PARDINI. A soulful, Memphis-styled
groove
is established on ‘YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO’ with FLANNERY purring like
she’s DUSTY
SPRINGFIELD. ‘SOMETHING ABOUT YOU’ boasts a bossa nova shimmy as
FLANNERY packs
her bags and gets away from an old boyfriend, confident that she can do
without
his “smell sight and sound”.
The
whimsical
balladry of ‘GONE’ has FLANNERY sounding eerily like ROBERTA FLACK, but
the
album’s stand out moment is the gay rights-themed ‘WE’RE STILL HERE’.
Its
BACHARACH bounce makes for a righteous protest song that doesn’t get
one-upped
by its good intentions. For my whole life, I’ve wanted to write a
protest song.
As it turns out, it is the hardest thing in the world to do – to write
a decent
protest song that doesn’t sound like “
Wah!
Wah! Wah! I want things!” I’ve always been a huge fan of JOAN
BAEZ and
WOODY GUTHRIE and ANI DIFRANCO. I grew up listening to that kind of
stuff and
never got how one can say something meaningful without being really
irritating.
We wrote it right before we were going out to
California for
our first tour. This was
right after PROPOSITION 8 had happened and I was furious…Everyone
should’ve
been furious…I refuse to be tolerant of intolerance.”
ROCKWIRED
spoke with MEL FLANNERY of the MEL FLANNERY
TRUCKING CO over the phone. Here is how it went.
How
do you feel about
‘AS IT TURNS OUT’ as a whole now that all of the work that had gone
into it is
behind you?
I’m happy with it. We didn’t plan for it to come out how it
did. We kind of let things happen, which sounds cheesy but it’s true.
We didn’t
try to write it in any specific vein but we’re really happy with what
came out.
So you went into the
recording of this project with no ideas whatsoever or did you go in
with ideas
and were just surprised that what came out was different from what you
had
intended?
We had the songs but we went into like ‘Okay,
let’s see what comes out!’ It wasn’t like we were going ‘We’re going to put a shaker on this track or
a tambourine on this track.’ We didn’t plan any of that out.
We didn’t have
any background vocals written out. Most of those parts were made up in
the
studio. I improvised a lot of the background vocals. The whole process
was an
organic thing and I’m really happy with how it worked out ultimately.
So the title – AS IT
TURNS OUT – is pretty apropos then?
Exactly! It really is. We’d be writing a song and would
think “Huh! I suppose this is a mish mash
of BACHARACH and WEEZER! How about that?”
AS IT TURNS OUT is
your third album. What’s different this time around?
It’s always like an evolution. My very first record was
recorded when I was still in college and I was around a ton of jazz all
of the
time and you could hear all of these really strong influences that are
primarily jazz. I only wrote half of that album while the other half
was
jazzier versions of pop songs, which was a great thing for me to start
out with.
I got to play a lot of brilliant songs that I could never write but was
able to
perform them in a way that rang true to me. As we moved along, ‘WHITE
FLAG’ –
the second album – was still definitely jazz influenced pop. As far as
I was
concerned, ‘AS IT TURNS OUT’ isn’t really a jazz album at all although
we
happen to be jazz musicians. It’s more of a groovy kind of hybrid album
that
steals from all different kinds of cultures and genres at-will.
How did music begin
for you?
I’ve been singing and writing since forever. My dad was a guitar
prodigy – like a finger-picking, bluegrass prodigy. He was always
playing
around the house and then we would start playing together. He would
play and I
would sing and we would do little gigs around my hometown. In my
hometown, I
was really, really fortunate because my hometown happened to have a
really
great music conservatory so I got to do a lot of classical stuff. I was
singing
contemporary classical things at a really young age. I had a teacher
that got
how much I really cared about the music and let me run away with it. I
was
really, really lucky to be supported and surrounded by music and
musicians and
people who wanted me to do well in that. I’m really grateful for that.
Where do you think
the need to express yourself musically comes from?
It’s so much a part of me that I just think that it’s my
human nature. There is nothing that separates me from wanting to be a
musician
and wanting to do that in front of people. I’m more that than I am a
girlfriend, a sister or anything like that. At my very, very core I am
someone
that wants to do music in one form or another.
Talk about the
genesis of the band.
We’ve been playing together – in some incarnation or another
– for about seven years now since I was a sophomore in college. MATT –
the
bassist – is the one who has been with me the whole time. He was the
first one
to be like “You know MEL, obviously you
have what it takes to play some shows and have a band and do stuff”
and I
was like “Are you sure? Am I good enough?
Wah! Wah! Wah!” He was actually the catalyst for me to get
off of my ass
and actually do something. As LEE and I had just started to meet at
that time,
he was just writing arrangements for me on the first album and for the
‘WHITE
FLAG’ album, we started writing together. The title track was the first
song
that we ever wrote together and it was so magical. We wrote it so fast
and
easily. It was such an organic experience to write with him. On this
new album,
only two of the songs were written without him. I’m really lucky to
have found
such a great partner-in-crime. Drummers have been what we have changed
up the
most but now I’m really fortunate to be dating my favorite drummer.
DANNY SHER
is actually my boyfriend. He was actually my boyfriend before he was my
drummer. He really is truly my drummer because he is the man who best
suits the
job for sure. There is no bias just because he happens to be somebody
that I
hold hands with.
Explain how
songwriting works between you and LEE.
It’s really silly and it’s never consistent. Usually it
starts with one of us doodling around. This last record, we wrote
almost
entirely on guitar which is different because neither one of us plays
guitar al
that well at all. None of us would every play guitar publicly, but we
both like
to noodle around and I think that we wanted to take the album and
writing
somewhere else. The process usually starts with one of us noodling
around. LEE
is a lot more harmonically minded. He’s got a real ear for arrangement
and
chord voicing whereas I’m a little more melodically minded and am
usually
thinking about the lyrical content. He’ll start figuring something out
on the
guitar and I’ll come up with a melody and I’ll have him stop until I
think of
something to say. We just do it all at once. We go section by section
until we
are done.
What do you think
each member of the bands brings to the table both musically and
personality-wise that makes it work?
They are three of my favorite people in the entire planet.
The only other people that I like as much as them are my mom and dad. I
live
and die for these boys. I think that is part of the reason why we can
get away
with hopping into studio with some very primitive charts written out
and come
out three days later with a full length album. LEE is my partner in
crime. I
often turn to him to interpret things for me. When I’m trying to say
something
to the band but I’m being too much of a creative bimbo to find the
words to
communicate that to people in English. He is always right there to pick
up
where I leave off. He is the other half of my brain when it comes to
music.
MATT is the practical one. He is the one who will tell us when we’re
getting
carried away with ourselves. He is the cleaner upper and DANNY kind of
drives
the train. He keeps everything happening. He brings this groove element
to the
band and he keeps it funky and moving along.
In listening to the
album, the song that stands out for me the most is ‘WE’RE STILL HERE’.
Please
talk about it.
For my whole life, I’ve wanted to write a protest song. As
it turns out, it is the hardest thing in the world to do – to write a
decent
protest song that doesn’t sound like “Wah!
Wah! Wah! I want things!” I’ve always been a huge fan of
JOAN BAEZ and
WOODY GUTHRIE and ANI DIFRANCO. I grew up listening to that kind of
stuff and
never got how one can say something meaningful without being really
irritating.
We wrote it right before we were going out to California for
our first tour. This was
right after PROPOSITION 8 had happened and I was furious.
So was I.
Everyone should’ve been furious. Maybe that isn’t a P.C.
thing to say but I refuse to be tolerant of intolerance. It’s such a
shame and
it’s the kind of thing that I was comfortable with simply going about
my
business. I felt like I needed to say something. This was a song that I
started
writing on guitar. LEE came along and kind of hashed the rest of it out
with
me. I had no idea that this was going to be a song that people would
like aside
from it’s message and I’m thrilled for that. The more people that the
message
reaches the more I feel like I’m doing my job as a person who gives a
shit. The
other thing that was important to me was for people to consider that
gay rights
is not a gay issue. It’s a human rights issue. Not a single member of
my band
is gay but we all give a shit because it’s our brothers and our sisters
and our
moms. This is the civil rights movement of our generation and we can’t
just sit
around and watch MTV. The time is now to say something and do
something. With the
current administration, it is possible to get some work done so let’s
do it.
What other songs off
of this album resonate for you the most and why?
I love ‘GONE’ because we had so much fun recording it. It
was so much fun to see the boys singing. It was so cute watching them
try so
hard. Watching instrumentalists sing is probably my favorite thing in
the whole
world – that and puppies and kittens hugging each other. I like ‘YOU
KNOW WHAT
TO DO’. My whole life I’ve listened to so much MOTOWN, soul and funk
and was so
thrilled that we could write something in that vein that didn’t feel
contrived.
It felt organic and it felt really right to be writing that funky of a
song
considering that we are four kids that made that song the booty shaker
that it
is. It isn’t typical of a traditional jazz set up. I really love that
song and
I have a blast singing it and I think the band plays their asses off on
that
one.
Talk about touring.
Do you love or hate it?
I love it! I wake up everyday on the road just tickled.
Everyday I get to wake up and play music for people and feel like it’s
the
greatest day of my life. I never get sick of it.
What
would you like
someone to come away with after they’ve heard this album?
I would like people to remember that there is fun,
accessible, good music that has more than three
chords and doesn’t have auto
tune in it, is not played to a click track, and that isn’t
mass-produced. And
that we should legalize being gay.
FEBRUARY
23, 2010
BRiAN
LUSH (FOUNDER,
EDiTOR-iN-CHiEF)
