SS: How did you start writing songs?
MR: I started when I was little, making up my own words to the melody of songs I heard on the radio or at church. Because I'd really like a melody, but not know the words, or not feel moved by the words.
I wrote my first finished song when I was around nine. It's the hidden track on my CD, here. My dad recorded my little brother Mark singing it. He was 4 or 5 and he really liked trains, so I wrote him a little kids' train song and taught it to him. Now his son, my three-year-old nephew, sings it, complete with a Bronx accent.
SS: What were your early influences?
MR: I think having both my parents be Presbyterian ministers influenced my songwriting. They were both great preachers, not fire and brimstone but articulate and intelligent. Their preaching had this sing-song quality, like good oral storytelling, that stuck with me. And, being a ministers' kid, there wasn't a lot of space for me to be my authentic little creative self. So I channeled my feelings through music.
In terms of music that influenced me, when I was growing up there was Carole King, Peter Paul and Mary, Cat Stevens, Bob Dylan, Steven Schwartz (Godspell) Karla Bonhoff, Bernie Taupin, Don McLean, James Taylor, Dan Fogelberg, church hymns and camp songs, and old folk music like "500 Miles" and "I've been Working on the Railroad."
Later on, there was Bruce Cockburn, Jim Page, Bill Davie, Tracy Chapman, Cheryl Wheeler, David Wilcox, Stephen Fearing, Jonatha Brooke, Deb Talan.
SS: What music are you listening to lately?
MR: I love listening to local and independent artists that I meet at festivals or through songwriting groups. I've stumbled across the most amazing songwriters at festival campfires. Lately I've been digging songwriters who push me in new directions to think outside my own habits vocally, rhythmically, texturally. Kym Tuvim is someone I listen to to bend my ear around new guitar rhythms, and Peter Mulvey.
Nancy has introduced me to some great Canadian artists like the Wailin' Jennys, Marilyn Lerner, Lori Freedman, Veda Hille, and Kim Barlow.
SS: How do songs usually come about for you these days?
MR: I almost always have a journal with me and jot down things people say, or things that happen, or thoughts that occur to me during the day, and often they end up in songs.
I'll have a feeling or an idea I want to articulate, and I'll be always writing about it and collecting images and words. Then one day, I pull out my guitar and noodle. I just start singing whatever words come to me. I don't look in my journal at that point, but later when I do, I'm often surprised at how much of my lyrics came from there almost verbatim.
I just recently finished a song about my experience with my dad's death last January from pancreatic cancer. I'd written so much about it and it's still so fresh that I had access to great detail. It also exemplifies for me the way that I use songwriting as a means of having my say. The song for me is a story I would have liked to have told my dad, so that he could understand me better, but I don't think he would have been able to hear it. So I get to put it out in the universe and feel heard, and maybe, in some way, he gets to hear, too.
photo: Karen MoskowitzSS: Many of your songs exemplify that ideal of "finding the universal in the particular." They have an almost conversational sense of intimacy, yet they never feel self-indulgent, and always leave room for the listener's imagination. Do you work consciously to achieve that? How do you know when you've got it right?
MR: I think writing is about paying attention and noticing what it feels like when I am moved, and trying to stay close to that. I write or I noodle on the guitar until I get chills, and then I narrow down what exactly is moving me. I don't have to understand it, just notice it, and then I try to leap from there, staying with the emotional truth of it as I'm feeling it.
I'm more interested in the story that is revealing itself to me than I am in making the story fit a certain shape. For example, in my song "Reinventing the Wheel," working on cars becomes a metaphor for working on relationships. I didn't choose that, my partner at the time was an auto mechanic and I started writing about our life together. I began to see the connection between working on cars and working on relationships. The images and details were all from my experience -- I didn't have to make anything up.
I also think it's important to be clear but not to overstate things. Songwriting is like storytelling or standup comedy -- timing is important. You don't want to use too many words or you lose your listener, but you need enough to get your point across. Sometimes there's just one right word that the whole story swings on and you have to find it.
SS: Tell me more about teaching poetry and songwriting. How has that experience influenced how you view and approach your own songwriting?
MR: I've been teaching writing and poetry at El Centro de la Raza in Seattle to high school and middle school youth. I have to come up with writing exercises for each of these age groups once a week. It generates a lot of material for me, both the exercises and the process of teaching.
Teaching is very humbling and it keeps me fresh, keeps me inventing new ways of digging into the truth. Everyone is different, every writer has a different way of expressing, finding the right word. I like the challenge of coming up with exercises that open people up.
One of my favorite experiences is when a student breaks out. It's a shift from writing for some kind of external audience to writing from this place of knowing. I don't really know how to describe it but there's this kind of happy freedom, even if what they're writing is angry or pissed off or accusatory, there is this joy and confidence that shows up when they're communicating in this way.
SS: What's your sense of what a song is "for?"
MR: In some grand scheme of things, I don't know. But in my "little big picture," songs are for communicating an emotion, a story, a truth. The combination of music and words seems like a powerful, direct channel to some part of our heart/brain and, when done well, the whole of it communicates much more than the sum of its parts.
Personally, I think the world.. Let me rephrase that -- the United States -- is in desperate need of some quality content in movies, newspapers, TV shows, and songs! I mean, I want to hear some interesting songs.. Tell me something I don't already know, make me feel something new, surprise me! We don't have enough protein in our songwriting diet!
SS: I love the soft-spoken, pure, plaintive quality of your voice. Tell me about your development as a singer, and what influences have shaped your voice.
MR: I have always had a battle with my voice. I love/hate it. I've had to work very, very hard to get to where I like it at all. I took private voice lessons in high school. I've studied singers I like and listened to what I like about them. I have sung in all kinds of choirs and practiced, practiced, practiced. I envy people who sing well because they were born that way.
On the other hand, I've spent the last few years trying to undo all the training because I want to have a more emotionally textured sound to my voice, and I've been working on my lower register. So my sound is a little different these days, and I'm not sure how I feel about it; I'm still "working" on it. I guess I'm always working on something.
Marjorie Richards (right)
and Nancy Reinhold.
photo: Nicole ChampouxSS: Much of your performing now is with your partner, Nancy Reinhold [formerly of the Wyrd Sisters], as Reinhold & Richards. How has this collaboration made you hear and see your songs in new ways?
MR: Nancy has a tremendous amount of experience. Her former band toured all over Canada, played all the major festivals in Canada, made several videos and performed with different symphonies, and all three of their albums were nominated for Juno awards (the Canadian equivalent of the Grammy). She has played with all kinds of instrumentation and voices and worked with some phenomenal players.
Nancy's a really good listener. She listens with the ears of a reader, and a poet. She listens with her heart and her head and she gives me really good feedback. She also can find guitar voicings better than I can, and has interesting harmony and instrumentation ideas. She hears things I don't hear, which pushes me in new directions.
When we first met we discovered that we'd written songs that had similar themes and words, and felt like our songs had been talking to each other. We went for nearly two years after we met when we had no contact of any kind, and when we reconnected, we discovered that again we'd written several new songs with very similar themes. It felt like our songs had been having coffee together without us.
SS: You've placed highly in more prestigious songwriting competitions than most people ever enter. How has that whole process of participating in contests been for you?
MR: I've met some amazing artists doing competitions, I've gotten to play at some great festivals, sell lots of CDs, and perform in front of people I might never have been heard by otherwise.
Overall, I found competitions very painful. I'm not so much shy as overwhelmed by the intensity of competing. I have to take my time and warm up to an audience on my own terms. It's hard for me to walk onto a stage and "wow" judges in two songs. I've fared much better when I've been in a showcase where I just got to do what I do. And I've done much better at contests (won first place) when I had a band with me.
SS: Any advice for songwriters considering entering contests?
MR: Competing can be expensive. I've played contests in Florida, California, and Colorado, to name a few places, all of which required plane tickets, hotels, rental cars.
It might be worth the investment if you have a new CD and want to broaden your audience; if you're touring near where the contest is; if you want to meet songwriters outside your local area. Even just being a finalist can look good on your promo, especially if you're planning to tour nationally.
But don't gamble your savings hoping you're going to get your big break. It just so rarely happens. Most of the winners are established artists. In fact, very often contests (even though they say they're for "emerging" artists) attract many well-known touring artists. You'll be up against some tough competition.
If you can, start by entering a local contest to build up your chops and confidence.
SS: What's your greatest challenge as a performing songwriter?
MR: My sensitivity... what I think makes me a good songwriter makes performing challenging. I feel everything. I've had to learn to shut things out. When I get on stage, I have to shift from being a sponge to being a river. I have to let the music and words come out of me and not be thrown by energy coming back at me. Also, because I tend to write songs that are close to my heart, when I perform I'm telling my story to a room full of strangers, and it's a little weird. But I'm learning a lot about when/how to turn that on and off, and I've worked very hard on different performing skills that have helped me.
SS: As independent artists, we often have to define and create "success"
on our own terms. What represents success for you in your writing and performing life?
MR:
Success... I'll let you know when I get there. :-)
I find myself redefining that on a daily basis. I don't really have any of the things that our culture uses to define success for women: marriage, children, or maybe a good career. Success for an artist supposedly is fame and fortune. And even though the cultural myth is that the artist is supposed to struggle, we're still expected to rise above it all, and if we haven't, we must be doing something wrong.
Even though I carry all that in me, I don't want to define myself that way. For me, success in my writing and performing life is about small things: writing a new song, learning a new rhythm, meeting someone whose music moves or inspires me.
It is particle and wave. Success is the moment and the overall experience of staying awake.
SS: Any plans for a new CD?
MR: Yes. I just don't know when... it's a money thing really. I've just gotten out of debt from the last one. I'm excited about the kinds of music Nancy and I are doing together.
[ back to top ]
More about Marjorie:
Marjorie's song, "Facing South"
www.marjorierichards.com
www.reinholdrichards.com
buy Marjorie's CDs online
|
.gif)
