The first (and best) cello-based rock band, Rasputina, formed over twenty years ago in Brooklyn, New York. Based around founding auteur Melora Creager, the band has seen many members come and go over the years and had more drummers than Spnal Tap, but has maintained a consistent vision throughout. Their songs focus on Creagers obsessions: historical oddities, fantastical theories, and the strength of women. The whole is tied together with her handmade aesthetic into an artistically unified production: from their album art to their stage performances (called recitals) to their music. Rasputinas most recent album is Great American Gingerbread, a collection of demos and other rarities. Melora and I spoke recently about her songwriting method, her proudest moment, and how she keeps Rasputina fresh after two decades in the music business.
Keith Daniels: What made this the right time to put out a rarities collection?
Melora Creager: I had the idea a long time ago. I picked all the material, got it mixed, reworked some things, and then I forgot about it for a while because I was touring a lot, probably. Its been a decent amount of time since the last proper album came out, so it seems right.
KD: Most of the songs on this are from the last ten years or so. How many more of these collections could you put out?
MC: I would say at least one other really good group [of songs]. Im excited about that because my earliest demos are on four-track cassettes. I havent heard them in decades, really. I got a four-track machine and cleaned them out recently and found all this strange old stuff. It was really interesting to hear how I learned how to write songs because I was just beginning on those tapes.
KD: What did you learn? In what way has your method changed?
MC: I think when I first started I was so excited to have a pickup on my cello that I always recorded direct, so it was a really awful, grating cello sound [laughs] with a lot of effects. It sounds like a keyboard. Ive learned a lot about recording. You can hear the passage of time. At some point I figured out how it sounds good to mic the cello and lots of other things.
KD: My favorite thing about Rasputina is that you have a complete aesthetic. Its not just the music and the costumes -- everything you do is integrated. Has that developed over time, or was that always the idea?
MC: That was always the idea, probably because I come from an art school background. So its like a project or an assignment. I majored in photography, so its like a living photograph with sound and something that I would set up with characters. Im glad I had that idea that day twenty years ago.
KD: In a column you wrote last year you said my naivete was a huge help in the beginning. What were you naive about, and how did it help?
MC: I was never tempted to play a guitar even though thats pretty much what all bands were made of back then. I never thought what I was doing was strange or didnt have a chance. I was even kind of pissed off when I first started doing press because all everyone wanted to talk about was, The cellos! The cellos! I was like, Whats the big deal? I didnt think it was that interesting. I was just playing what I knew. It all seemed obvious to me. I thought everyone knew about the subjects that I wrote about, but people dont necessarily know about all those historical characters and situations.
KD: In the beginning of Rasputina you were on Columbia. You were getting lots of attention not just for your music but for your connections to Nirvana, to Nine Inch Nails, to Marilyn Manson. Was there ever a moment when you thought you might make it big in the traditional sense?
MC: Yeah, for sure. That time in the 90s there were all these bands in New York City that we played with or hung out with -- all those bars like Brownies full of bands -- and everyone expected to get signed. It was a time when big labels just signed everything, because of Nirvana. So yeah, I thought I was on the road to fame. I never cared about the riches. [Laughs]
KD: You also said in that column that you think of Rasputina as subversive. What is the establishment that you would like to subvert?
MC: Oooh, that sounds very interesting. I wonder what I meant! [Laughs] I would say pop music; pop meaning popular. I mean, were not that popular. I guess the artistic and political ideas that Im presenting as normal.
KD: Such as?
MC: The role of women characters in my songs. Theyre always overcoming adversity. To be very feminine, but strong. People often ask me, How can you have funny and sad, both those emotions in the same song? I think human beings are that way. Musicians limit themselves in so many ways because [theyre] trying to be popular.
KD: One of the most interesting songs on this record is On My Knees, the soundtrack to the short you were in about Hannah Cullwick. What appealed to you about that story?
MC: I thought it was really interesting how she just reveled in her low position. She was really into getting dirty. She was really into how physically strong she was. Those things werent popular at the time.
KD: Rasputina has always been very much your show. What are the advantages and disadvantages of trying to do it yourself?
MC: Its a huge challenge to work with other people, but that is something that I always wanted to do. The live band, playing with a group, I always wanted to do that, but to make that happen is hard because these relationships arent meant to last that long. When Im writing songs and often in recording, my brain is just firing off and Im totally on the right-brain. Thats not an interactive thing; thats just me. Its like making a painting or something, just expressing stuff thats coming out of the subconscious. That doesnt really involve other people.
KD: What advice would you give to somebody who was just going in to the entertainment industry?
MC: I dont think anyone would want my advice. [Laughs] I can give them advice on how to express themselves and get a lot of satisfaction out of doing that, but as far as the entertainment industry goes, I think all the luck Ive had is kind of fluke-y. The business has changed so much that I dont know what people do or how they start out and get noticed.
KD: When youre up onstage and youre looking out at the first couple of rows, what are you thinking about?
MC: This is something that I learned with Nirvana. Pat Smear, who was a guitarist with them, said, Whatever you do, dont look at the people. Theyll blow your mind and youll not be able to play. I said, OK. I wont. I wont look at em. Its true. Even at my own, much smaller shows its just too distracting. Ill see people, Ill see personalities, and Ill get off track. You can make a mistake, so I dont look at individuals, but I am interacting. Im feeling the audience as a whole. Im able to multitask to a sick level. Already Im playing the cello and singing, and Ill catch myself thinking about a lot of other things: listening to what the other musicians are doing, well talk about it later so Im trying to remember all that. Sometimes I marvel that Im there, I cant believe Im doing this and that people are listening! Sometimes Ill catch myself thinking about unrelated things. [Laughs]
KD: I really like the song Coralineon here that you did for the Neil Gaiman tribute. Whats your relationship to that book?
MC: I have a close relationship to it. I havent read anything else by him or seen his work so much, but I read that to my daughter Hollis when she was pretty little, six or something. I never heard it said aloud, I just read it to her, and then when the movie came out later [I found out] its actually [pronounced] Coraline. I thought it was [pronounced] Coraleen. Id set all my rhyme schemes in the song to Coraleen. How embarassing!
KD: Oh, I wasnt even talking about that. Its all up to interpretation anyway.
MC: Well thats good to hear. [Laughs] We loved that book. We played a game called The Mothers Hand where Id shriek, the Mothers hand!, and make it crawl on Hollis, because theres a disembodied hand in that book. It was very fun for her.
KD: Did that character [Coraline] speak to you on any deeper level?
MC: No. I didnt feel that connected to it myself. It was more through my daughter.
KD: Neil has said that in his experience with that book that children are much braver than adults.
MC: Yeah, I totally agree with that. The spirit and the feel of being a child is really important to keep alive in me for my work.
KD: What have you learned from the way that your children experience the world?
MC: Theres a lot of that courage that you talk about, and an ability to go back and forth between fantasy and reality without a problem. Which is a cool aspect.
KD: What was your first favorite book?
MC: I liked The Phantom Tollbooth a lot. Its a classic -- a modern classic. When they would go into a third world I would find that scary, but I would get off on it too.
KD: Your oldest daughter goes to a Waldorf school, correct? Have you read much about Rudolf Steiners philosophy? [Mangles the pronunciation] Anthroposophy?
MC: Anthroposophy? [Laughs] I havent read his books. People at the school are into it at all different levels. Some people [just] think of it as a very picturesque private school, and some people are really deep into it. I might not agree with all the deeper stuff. He was making a lot of this stuff up in a different time; there were different needs. How nutty it is appeals to me. School is such drudgery. Theyre making people all the same, like a factory. This Waldorf school, which was actually invented for factory workers kids, is pretty crazy. I like it.
KD: One of your musical inspirations is Nina Hagen. Do you ever wish you could get out from behind the cello and be that sort of physically expressive?
MC: I dont think how about how much I wish I could. I think about how much I cant. Im, by nature, pretty shy. I dont know why I forced myself to do this for my lifes work. [Laughs] I do think about... I dont think I could ever even stand there without my cello. [Laughs] Its very protective, and Ive done it so long that its a real part of me.
KD: Like a shield in front of you, almost?
MC: Yeah! If I ever did... like, a dance move, or something with my legs, that would be so rad! [Laughs]
KD: I was reading your notes on here about each individual track. I noticed on one that you said a producer had warned you not to chase the demo. What does it mean to chase the demo?
MC: Thats kindof the story of the first part of my recording career, up to now. Ive had different producers who didnt want to recreate the demo, but theres a lot of magic in my demos! Maybe they just wanted to make it their own or get their own footprint on it, but how recording is now with computers and Pro Tools and Garage Band, demos are the finished product.
KD: So it means that theres something special about the demo, but no matter how many times you re-record it, it never recaptures it?
MC: Yeah.
KD: When I was a kid my music teachers always separated what they called serious music and popular music. Do you make that distinction?
MC: I dont, because I take everything equally. I listen to a lot of modern classical music on the radio, and I just love that. Thats very influential [for me] for sounds and harmony styles, but I dont know the names of the composers, just like I dont know the names of all the David Bowie songs I love. I know that classical is very... they keep themselves separate. They dont know, dont care about what I do.
KD: Would you like to some more scoring work? What are some of your favorite film scores?
MC: Yeah, I think I would. Michael Nyman is one of my favorite composers. Hes one of the modern classical composers Im talking about. He did, I think, all of Peter Greenaways movies, and the music for The Piano. I am presently collaborating with my good friend Joseph Bishara. He was the music director for Repo the Genetic Opera, a movie that I also played in. Joe does lots of horror scores. Currently out is Insidious, in which he also plays the lead demon! He sent me a bunch of Halloween snapshots from the 1920s and 30s. They are very weird pictures. I made a story out of them, we wrote songs to them together, and we're recording it next week. We hope to have it released for Halloween 2011.
KD: After 20 years of Rasputina, what are you most proud of? Is there anything you feel you have yet to accomplish?
MC: I might be the most proud of the Sister Kinderhook album, because it seems like finally, after all these years, I made what I meant to [make]. Often an album is like, Oh, thats not what I meant to do. Thats not what was in my head, somehow it got diluted, or switched around. But [Sister Kinderhook] is really what I intended, and Im really proud of it. I would like to do more visually related things. I guess youd call it a video.
KD: What do you have in mind?
MC: Its hard to express. I keep a notebook of all these ideas. Im not going to tell you now! [Laughs] I met a fabulous painter, also named Melora. Melora Kuhn. She does these cool historical portraits with disasters going on in the background. We recently brainstormed on what 'Melora' project we could do. That project has just begun, but is ripe with possibility. Something like a film of her painting my portrait while I'm playing the cello, both of us costumed.
KD: How do you combat the tendency of any long-running institution toward routine and stagnation?
MC: I think, because the people in the band do change, they contribute different attitudes and different energy. As time has gone on those people have gotten younger and younger. That definitely helps me.
KD: So you take these fresh young things and drain them of their essence to stay young. [Laughs]
MC: [Laughs] Yeah. Yeah.
KD: Are you planning on recording a new studio album this year?
MC: Im writing now. I will be writing through the summer before we tour. But it takes time to come to fruition. I would say next year. Next week in Joshua Tree I'm recording a Robert Johnson song for a charity that gives blankets to homeless people.
KD: Are you going to announce any summer dates?
MC: I just gave a first draft of the tour to my email list yesterday.
Find out more at Rasputinas official website.
Keith Daniels: What made this the right time to put out a rarities collection?
Melora Creager: I had the idea a long time ago. I picked all the material, got it mixed, reworked some things, and then I forgot about it for a while because I was touring a lot, probably. Its been a decent amount of time since the last proper album came out, so it seems right.
KD: Most of the songs on this are from the last ten years or so. How many more of these collections could you put out?
MC: I would say at least one other really good group [of songs]. Im excited about that because my earliest demos are on four-track cassettes. I havent heard them in decades, really. I got a four-track machine and cleaned them out recently and found all this strange old stuff. It was really interesting to hear how I learned how to write songs because I was just beginning on those tapes.
KD: What did you learn? In what way has your method changed?
MC: I think when I first started I was so excited to have a pickup on my cello that I always recorded direct, so it was a really awful, grating cello sound [laughs] with a lot of effects. It sounds like a keyboard. Ive learned a lot about recording. You can hear the passage of time. At some point I figured out how it sounds good to mic the cello and lots of other things.
KD: My favorite thing about Rasputina is that you have a complete aesthetic. Its not just the music and the costumes -- everything you do is integrated. Has that developed over time, or was that always the idea?
MC: That was always the idea, probably because I come from an art school background. So its like a project or an assignment. I majored in photography, so its like a living photograph with sound and something that I would set up with characters. Im glad I had that idea that day twenty years ago.
KD: In a column you wrote last year you said my naivete was a huge help in the beginning. What were you naive about, and how did it help?
MC: I was never tempted to play a guitar even though thats pretty much what all bands were made of back then. I never thought what I was doing was strange or didnt have a chance. I was even kind of pissed off when I first started doing press because all everyone wanted to talk about was, The cellos! The cellos! I was like, Whats the big deal? I didnt think it was that interesting. I was just playing what I knew. It all seemed obvious to me. I thought everyone knew about the subjects that I wrote about, but people dont necessarily know about all those historical characters and situations.
KD: In the beginning of Rasputina you were on Columbia. You were getting lots of attention not just for your music but for your connections to Nirvana, to Nine Inch Nails, to Marilyn Manson. Was there ever a moment when you thought you might make it big in the traditional sense?
MC: Yeah, for sure. That time in the 90s there were all these bands in New York City that we played with or hung out with -- all those bars like Brownies full of bands -- and everyone expected to get signed. It was a time when big labels just signed everything, because of Nirvana. So yeah, I thought I was on the road to fame. I never cared about the riches. [Laughs]
KD: You also said in that column that you think of Rasputina as subversive. What is the establishment that you would like to subvert?
MC: Oooh, that sounds very interesting. I wonder what I meant! [Laughs] I would say pop music; pop meaning popular. I mean, were not that popular. I guess the artistic and political ideas that Im presenting as normal.
KD: Such as?
MC: The role of women characters in my songs. Theyre always overcoming adversity. To be very feminine, but strong. People often ask me, How can you have funny and sad, both those emotions in the same song? I think human beings are that way. Musicians limit themselves in so many ways because [theyre] trying to be popular.
KD: One of the most interesting songs on this record is On My Knees, the soundtrack to the short you were in about Hannah Cullwick. What appealed to you about that story?
MC: I thought it was really interesting how she just reveled in her low position. She was really into getting dirty. She was really into how physically strong she was. Those things werent popular at the time.
KD: Rasputina has always been very much your show. What are the advantages and disadvantages of trying to do it yourself?
MC: Its a huge challenge to work with other people, but that is something that I always wanted to do. The live band, playing with a group, I always wanted to do that, but to make that happen is hard because these relationships arent meant to last that long. When Im writing songs and often in recording, my brain is just firing off and Im totally on the right-brain. Thats not an interactive thing; thats just me. Its like making a painting or something, just expressing stuff thats coming out of the subconscious. That doesnt really involve other people.
KD: What advice would you give to somebody who was just going in to the entertainment industry?
MC: I dont think anyone would want my advice. [Laughs] I can give them advice on how to express themselves and get a lot of satisfaction out of doing that, but as far as the entertainment industry goes, I think all the luck Ive had is kind of fluke-y. The business has changed so much that I dont know what people do or how they start out and get noticed.
KD: When youre up onstage and youre looking out at the first couple of rows, what are you thinking about?
MC: This is something that I learned with Nirvana. Pat Smear, who was a guitarist with them, said, Whatever you do, dont look at the people. Theyll blow your mind and youll not be able to play. I said, OK. I wont. I wont look at em. Its true. Even at my own, much smaller shows its just too distracting. Ill see people, Ill see personalities, and Ill get off track. You can make a mistake, so I dont look at individuals, but I am interacting. Im feeling the audience as a whole. Im able to multitask to a sick level. Already Im playing the cello and singing, and Ill catch myself thinking about a lot of other things: listening to what the other musicians are doing, well talk about it later so Im trying to remember all that. Sometimes I marvel that Im there, I cant believe Im doing this and that people are listening! Sometimes Ill catch myself thinking about unrelated things. [Laughs]
KD: I really like the song Coralineon here that you did for the Neil Gaiman tribute. Whats your relationship to that book?
MC: I have a close relationship to it. I havent read anything else by him or seen his work so much, but I read that to my daughter Hollis when she was pretty little, six or something. I never heard it said aloud, I just read it to her, and then when the movie came out later [I found out] its actually [pronounced] Coraline. I thought it was [pronounced] Coraleen. Id set all my rhyme schemes in the song to Coraleen. How embarassing!
KD: Oh, I wasnt even talking about that. Its all up to interpretation anyway.
MC: Well thats good to hear. [Laughs] We loved that book. We played a game called The Mothers Hand where Id shriek, the Mothers hand!, and make it crawl on Hollis, because theres a disembodied hand in that book. It was very fun for her.
KD: Did that character [Coraline] speak to you on any deeper level?
MC: No. I didnt feel that connected to it myself. It was more through my daughter.
KD: Neil has said that in his experience with that book that children are much braver than adults.
MC: Yeah, I totally agree with that. The spirit and the feel of being a child is really important to keep alive in me for my work.
KD: What have you learned from the way that your children experience the world?
MC: Theres a lot of that courage that you talk about, and an ability to go back and forth between fantasy and reality without a problem. Which is a cool aspect.
KD: What was your first favorite book?
MC: I liked The Phantom Tollbooth a lot. Its a classic -- a modern classic. When they would go into a third world I would find that scary, but I would get off on it too.
KD: Your oldest daughter goes to a Waldorf school, correct? Have you read much about Rudolf Steiners philosophy? [Mangles the pronunciation] Anthroposophy?
MC: Anthroposophy? [Laughs] I havent read his books. People at the school are into it at all different levels. Some people [just] think of it as a very picturesque private school, and some people are really deep into it. I might not agree with all the deeper stuff. He was making a lot of this stuff up in a different time; there were different needs. How nutty it is appeals to me. School is such drudgery. Theyre making people all the same, like a factory. This Waldorf school, which was actually invented for factory workers kids, is pretty crazy. I like it.
KD: One of your musical inspirations is Nina Hagen. Do you ever wish you could get out from behind the cello and be that sort of physically expressive?
MC: I dont think how about how much I wish I could. I think about how much I cant. Im, by nature, pretty shy. I dont know why I forced myself to do this for my lifes work. [Laughs] I do think about... I dont think I could ever even stand there without my cello. [Laughs] Its very protective, and Ive done it so long that its a real part of me.
KD: Like a shield in front of you, almost?
MC: Yeah! If I ever did... like, a dance move, or something with my legs, that would be so rad! [Laughs]
KD: I was reading your notes on here about each individual track. I noticed on one that you said a producer had warned you not to chase the demo. What does it mean to chase the demo?
MC: Thats kindof the story of the first part of my recording career, up to now. Ive had different producers who didnt want to recreate the demo, but theres a lot of magic in my demos! Maybe they just wanted to make it their own or get their own footprint on it, but how recording is now with computers and Pro Tools and Garage Band, demos are the finished product.
KD: So it means that theres something special about the demo, but no matter how many times you re-record it, it never recaptures it?
MC: Yeah.
KD: When I was a kid my music teachers always separated what they called serious music and popular music. Do you make that distinction?
MC: I dont, because I take everything equally. I listen to a lot of modern classical music on the radio, and I just love that. Thats very influential [for me] for sounds and harmony styles, but I dont know the names of the composers, just like I dont know the names of all the David Bowie songs I love. I know that classical is very... they keep themselves separate. They dont know, dont care about what I do.
KD: Would you like to some more scoring work? What are some of your favorite film scores?
MC: Yeah, I think I would. Michael Nyman is one of my favorite composers. Hes one of the modern classical composers Im talking about. He did, I think, all of Peter Greenaways movies, and the music for The Piano. I am presently collaborating with my good friend Joseph Bishara. He was the music director for Repo the Genetic Opera, a movie that I also played in. Joe does lots of horror scores. Currently out is Insidious, in which he also plays the lead demon! He sent me a bunch of Halloween snapshots from the 1920s and 30s. They are very weird pictures. I made a story out of them, we wrote songs to them together, and we're recording it next week. We hope to have it released for Halloween 2011.
KD: After 20 years of Rasputina, what are you most proud of? Is there anything you feel you have yet to accomplish?
MC: I might be the most proud of the Sister Kinderhook album, because it seems like finally, after all these years, I made what I meant to [make]. Often an album is like, Oh, thats not what I meant to do. Thats not what was in my head, somehow it got diluted, or switched around. But [Sister Kinderhook] is really what I intended, and Im really proud of it. I would like to do more visually related things. I guess youd call it a video.
KD: What do you have in mind?
MC: Its hard to express. I keep a notebook of all these ideas. Im not going to tell you now! [Laughs] I met a fabulous painter, also named Melora. Melora Kuhn. She does these cool historical portraits with disasters going on in the background. We recently brainstormed on what 'Melora' project we could do. That project has just begun, but is ripe with possibility. Something like a film of her painting my portrait while I'm playing the cello, both of us costumed.
KD: How do you combat the tendency of any long-running institution toward routine and stagnation?
MC: I think, because the people in the band do change, they contribute different attitudes and different energy. As time has gone on those people have gotten younger and younger. That definitely helps me.
KD: So you take these fresh young things and drain them of their essence to stay young. [Laughs]
MC: [Laughs] Yeah. Yeah.
KD: Are you planning on recording a new studio album this year?
MC: Im writing now. I will be writing through the summer before we tour. But it takes time to come to fruition. I would say next year. Next week in Joshua Tree I'm recording a Robert Johnson song for a charity that gives blankets to homeless people.
KD: Are you going to announce any summer dates?
MC: I just gave a first draft of the tour to my email list yesterday.
Find out more at Rasputinas official website.