In my imaginary Venn diagram of All Things Awesome, singer/songwriters Kate Pierson and Sia Furler occupy two giant circles, and the new album which these ridiculously talented and staunchly individual ladies collaborated on, Guitars and Microphones, occupies the utterly epic place where the two circles intersect.
Billed as Pierson's debut solo album, from a songwriting perspective the release is very much a collaborative effort between the inimitable B-52s band member and the erstwhile Zero 7 frontwoman. However, featuring wonderfully quirky melodies and grooves, and Pierson's unmistakable uplifting vocals, sonically the album is very much a child of the B-52s - the iconic Athens, Georgia retro-futuristic genre-defying outfit which Pierson co-founded in 1976 with cohorts Fred Schneider, Cindy Wilson, Ricky Wilson and Keith Strickland.
I recently caught up with Pierson by phone to talk about Guitars and Microphones, which hits stores on February 17, 2015.
Nicole Powers: I was so excited when I found out you'd collaborated with Sia on this album, which is a vortex of awesome. How did that come about?
Kate Pierson: Well, my partner Monica and I have been friends with Sia for a little while and I've wanted to do a solo album for years. I started doing one a while ago, like 10 years ago - I've done other collaborations and some side projects - but just when I was ready to put out a solo record, the B-52s started doing Funplex and...that was all consuming.
So Monica mentioned to Sia, "Kate's always wanted to do this..." And she said, "Well let's just do it." Her manager helped set up these writing sessions. We would fly out to LA with our dogs...It was really fun. Each session was different with some people that Sia had worked with before, some of her favorite collaborators like Nick Valensi [of The Strokes].
NP: When did you start the writing process?
KP: I think it was 2012.
NP: So this album has been two years in the making.
KP: Yeah, it's been a while because we took a while to write. That actually was the quickest process. Then we came back to LA and recorded. That didn't take that long either. But then, the longest process was getting it mixed. The first mixer we had sort of couldn't do digital and had a little bit of a hard time with the equipment and everything. So that was a delay of maybe six months. Then we got Steve Osborne to mix. Then there was just a period of figuring out how to put it out...It was such a long process, it was frustrating... Finally, when the album was announced, I had such a sigh of relief, like it's out - finally!
NP: When you and Sia were writing, how did that process work?
KP: Well, the B-52s, we write everything collaboratively and with Sia it was a similar process, but it was much quicker. She does not waste a minute...[For] example, with Nick Valensi, he's like, "Let me just fool around with the bass line." He said, "I didn't have anything prepared," which is fine, it's supposed to be spontaneous. So he just started playing this bass line...and I had the "Mister Sister" lyrics and we started with that title and some of my lyrics. He was like, "Don't worry about the lyrics right now...we want to go 'oh-de-bop-de-be-de-boo.'" I used some of the lyrics and we started jamming and we came up with, okay this is a great verse melody. Okay, now we got a great bridge. Now we got a great chorus, in whatever order, you know. We would just record it on Garage Band and just then learn that part. Then Sia really helped shape the lyrics that I had to the melody. One of her genius methods is not to worry so much about trying to fit the melody to the lyrics. You know, get the gist of the lyrics, but then really fit them and then retrofit them, and maybe reduce some of them to fit that melody. That's the most important thing, the hook and the melody. Then Nick added some other instrumentation...We got that song done really in a day.
NP: You say that the melody is important, I do agree with that, but there's some pretty important lyrics on this album with some pretty important messages. With "Mister Sister" being the first single, you've spoken publicly about that song and how it's supportive of the LGBT community and about how what you see in the mirror doesn't always reflect what's inside. [A portion of the proceeds from the track will go to the Sylvia Rivera Law Project which protects the rights of those dealing with gender identity and expression issues.] Can you talk a bit about how those ideas bubbled forth?
KP: Yeah. It's actually a lyric I had written a long time ago - I don't even know when. I have lyrics that I just put in the note section of my computer. When I get an idea, I just put it down. That's something that was rolling around in my head for a while, about what so many friends of mine expressed when they were growing up...And also parents who have kids that they don't know if they're gay or if they're going to be gay or what. Just the whole process of gender boundaries that are at least being talked about now. It's so important. Having a lot of gay friends, and I'm gay and my band is mostly gay, knowing this process of growing up and when do you know that you're gay...My friend Tangella...we used to call each other Mister Sister. So it seemed a fun term that encompassed that gender ambiguity...And also the pain of anyone who can't really be themselves. The B-52s motto has always been: don't be afraid to be who you are. We always felt like we were outsiders and just kind of encompassing people who feel like outsiders and so it's really for them...
NP: You talk about the pain, did you experience that growing up? When did you realize that you were gay? And how were you able to come out to your family and your friends?
KP: Well, actually I'm bi. I'm someone who was with men until I met Monica eleven years ago. So I had an unusual journey. I always had this feeling that sexuality was a spectrum. I was with men before, but to me, the transition to loving Monica was really not a big deal. It was just I fell in love with Monica. Thank God, now society is more open and you're able to talk about these things, and people are - for the most part - accepting. I just feel so lucky that society is different now. So I feel like I didn't have to go through an incredible, painful coming out to my parents. I mean, I have friends who still haven't come out to their parents, which seems amazing. They're just going to wait for them to die...
I guess the most startling thing for me, is how surprised people were. You know, like, "What? How could you? How can you be? That's not normal...You have to be one or the other." That was the most surprising thing to me, that people really want to pigeon hole you. It's very easy to fall into these patterns...and stick to your identity. It's not a team...for me, it's just being a human being.
NP: I also find this idea of normal really strange, because the more you get to know people, the more you realize that no one is normal. And this idea that people should aspire to be normal, that's a really sad thing to aspire to be.
KP: Yes. I've never aspired to be normal.
NP: You do not normal spectacularly well. I've always admired your look and your spirit, even your voice has a certain joie de vivre that no one else has.
KP: Thank you. I just was lucky to be born an optimist. Because some people have a very optimistic viewpoint naturally, despite any upbringing. My dad was very optimistic, just had a happy disposition. So I think even when bad times have come, I just feel that I have an optimistic viewpoint and maybe that comes across in my voice.
NP: Definitely. So let's talk about some of the other songs. On the first track on the album you sing about protest songs, orange pills and secrets you'll never tell - what's that about?
KP: That's "Guitars and Microphones." That is from my childhood. That's a lyric I had too. It's pretty autobiographical because I had a protest band when I was growing up called the Sun Donuts. There were three of us girls...we each had a guitar and we wrote our own songs...[The song] was just about the break-up of that childhood. We all lived near each other in this neighborhood in New Jersey and we were all into music. I always knew I wanted to be a singer from when I was born practically. I always sat on my dad's knee and he would play his guitar and I would strum. He was in a big band when he was young and then he gave it up to work in a factory. Then later, when I went to college and took the orange pills, [which] are orange sunshine or acid, was when I broke off from my family. I traveled to Europe and just did all these adventurous things. So it's just very autobiographical. It was the breaking up of that. It's really about the breaking up of love and people you will probably never see again from your childhood.
NP: Another song that I really, really love is "Crush Me With Your Love." That's got me singing at the top of my voice around the house. In that song you sing about pinwheels in hurricanes and squirrels in your head. What's that about?
KP: That's a song Sia wrote specifically for me. My girlfriend Monica came up with that title. Sia, when she writes, she'll ask somebody, what are you thinking, what are you feeling? We told her that title and she just came up with the most amazing lyrics. I think one of the most amazing lyrics is: You're a raindrop drifting south towards a child's mouth. I just think the lyrics in that are just beautiful...
She was referring to Monica too...Her nickname is butter. She's someone who's just always doing so much. She actually did the CD cover and the booklet. She did the cover art and she did the photographs, and she's helping manage me, and she does pottery, and she runs Lazy Meadow and Lazy Desert - so stopping the squirrels in her head, that's one of the lines that I think is referring to her.
NP: Right because you also have your guest houses don't you?
KP: Yes, we have Lazy Meadow, which is down the road here in Mount Tremper, New York and then we have an Airstream hotel near Joshua Tree called Lazy Desert.
NP: Are you going to be touring with this album?
KP: Yes. This actually comes at a time when the Bs aren't touring - we haven't toured that much in a whole year. We're doing some very limited shows this summer, maybe three every month. So I'm hoping to do a showcase show in New York and maybe Chicago. Then I'm hoping we're going to do some touring...I really want to play these songs live. One of the reasons I called it Guitars and Microphones is that Monica and I have been playing the whole winter and practicing. I used to play with the B-52s. I used to play parts on "52 Girls" and "Hero Worship" and I used to play all the keyboards and bass parts up until Cosmic Thing. So I wanted to get my instrumental chops back and I really want to be able to play guitar and accompany myself.
We just did this John Lennon tribute where I played guitar and it just felt so empowering to be able to work out my own arrangement on the guitar and really figure things out. It gives you this power and makes you one with the song. When you're singing and playing, it really digs you deeper into the song. So that's one of the reasons I wanted to call it that, because it's this whole obsession now I have with guitars.
NP: It's an interesting journey that you took. Most front people start as singers, and then they might start picking up the guitar, but you were always a multi-instrumentalist and you moved away from that to just stick with the vocals. Why was that?
KP: I think because after Ricky [Wilson, the band's original guitarist] died, Keith [Strickland] didn't want to play drums anymore, he wanted to move on to guitar. Then it just seemed like we wanted to expand the band. We got a bass player instead of my playing keyboard bass, because we wanted the sound to be more modern and more full. I mean, we always had this idea that our sound would be full when we did the first record, The B-52's record. It sounded really rinky-dink, but that was part of the whole genius of it. But now we wanted to make it sound full. So I think with adding the bass player and a drummer and Keith on guitar, we just needed a fuller sound. And I felt constrained in a way by playing all those bass parts and singing. I felt like it would be fun to just be able to dance and move around the stage. I still played on some songs, but, you know, I really miss that.
NP: On this album, how much of the instrumentation did you do?
KP: Very little actually in the recording process. One of the reasons I wanted to work with the producer Tim Anderson [Ima Robot] is he's a multi-instrumentalist and I knew we could just do it all in-house. I felt like I could've asked so many people, you know, friends to be on the this album, but I just wanted to keep it simple. I didn't want it to be that kind of record where it's like, so and so and so and so and so and so is playing on it. I just really trusted the parts he played. He always played stuff I liked. Our tastes were very similar...I played some keyboard, I played a little bit, this and that on it, but I didn't play guitar because I hadn't really started practicing until this album was done. That's when Monica and I started practicing every day. The first learning song was the "Matrix," which all the chords are flat. That was our re-learning the guitar template.
NP: What's the "Matrix" about?
KP: That's another Sia song. She wrote it with Sam Dixon who plays bass with Adele and used to be in her band. She called me, or texted or something, and said, "What are you thinking? What are you thinking?" I'd been talking to Keith Strickland in the B-52s and he was talking about this Tibetan monk...I can't remember the quote exactly but it was something like, we're all free falling but the good news is, there's no floor, there's no ceiling, there's no bottom feeling...I was feeling that way. I was feeling like I just didn't know quite what direction I was going in, and what was going to happen next, but I felt good about that. I felt that I was heading in a new direction, but I didn't know what. So she just took that and ran with that and wrote that song. To me - even though she writes with the melody first - her lyrics are genius.
NP: The last song on the album is very different from the others on the album. It feels almost like a cabaret style torch song. The lyrics are powerful too: "The prison is your skin, but you shed it tonight." Can you talk a bit about that?
KP: I wrote a lot of the lyrics for that for a friend who was in trouble, a friend of mine who was very depressed and feeling suicidal. I was listening to a Moby instrumental song and I wrote the lyrics just listening to that. I didn't write a melody, I just wrote lyrics. Then we just sort of shaped that...We wrote that with Dallas Austin and it kind of had this gospely feel by the end. Our Lady J played piano on that who is a trans-woman actually, so it sort of shaped into this gospely thing at the end with layered vocals. So that was just based on this poem to a friend.
NP: It an absolutely beautiful song and it shows a very different side of your voice too.
KP: Well, thank you. Yeah, I've just never done anything like that....I just never pictured myself writing a song like that, but because it was personal, and was for someone I love, it really rang true for me.
NP: Yes the soulfulness and passion comes through.
KP: I'm glad that comes through that way because I felt it.
NP: Because you're such an optimist, I can imagine you're probably the kind of person friends come to for advice and to be cheered up. Is that the case?
KP: Well, I'd rather not give advice. But I think I really have worked a lot on listening. I just try to listen as much as I can...Because I find a lot of advice backfires. Unless it's advice about flooring or paint chips, or something like that - I have lots of advice about kitchen appliances and stuff.
NP: So if I need interior design advice, I can come to you?
KP: I'm all there for you.
NP: But, if my heart is broken, then no.
KP: Then, I'll just listen. Because at Lazy Meadow, we renovated all the rooms. We worked really hard on doing that...the design and everything. And also the Airstreams, working with friends we've hired...I know a lot about different tile colors and all that kind of stuff. Have you ever seen Rehab Addict? It's a reality show that were watching. I could easily see myself doing that, wanting to renovate houses and stuff like that.
NP: I could absolutely see you doing a renovation show which specializes in your retro style.
KP: Well I love to collect stuff....I love shopping for tchotchkes, especially artwork, and going to auctions and stuff. I can't really do it much because it's pretty much filled, Lazy Meadow, so I can't really get my shopping Jones on much anymore. But when we were doing that, it was just a license to ill as far as shopping and getting stuff on the road. Fred [Schneider] and I would go junking and get stuff and send it back and so all the tchotchkes and stuff there are handpicked.