Megan Hickey is The Last Town Chorus and she has one of her favourite places, Australia, in her sights. Megan will be bringing her slide and some technology as a solo act supporting Ash Grunwald this month. These two fabulous performers on the same bill will ensure riveting listening and a great night out.
Megan caught up with me from my old stomping ground in Brooklyn for a brief chit-chat on the phone and a chance for her to escape from the home studio for a few moments. She is fairly focused on getting her latest release wrapped up and once I got my technology working we were off and running.
“I am pretty much in a recording vortex at the moment,” she reports. “I am developing songs and it is the first time I am using a sequencer as part of my work. It is an interesting uphill technical learning curve, but it is great. You’ve got to try and get three software programs and all this hardware working together. You know how hard it was to get your iPod working.
“I do most of my recording here in my apartment. For Wire Waltz, I did one session out of the apartment in the studio, where I can track drums and bass and violins and a bunch of stuff at once. But I have my home studio to the point where I can even track drums here. I think for this entire album the sessions will be here. Some are live band sessions and others are multi-tracked and I have built them up. I like working this way.”
Megan Hickey plays a marvelously emotive, mood-provoking slide guitar. Through the years, she has played other instruments, but the slide was a discovery for her that opened her soul. Her singing floats along with the steel, making for a perfect match. Influences are easy to hear within songs, but the music she produces is truly her own, since she discovered the lap steel.
“It was not something I pre-meditated, to make it sound like a crime,” she says. “But I was always a massive music listener and wanted to play many instruments, but just played them poorly. It was one of those moments of divine providence when I heard that instrument. It was really the sound of how I felt. It changed the course of my life for sure. I play very intuitively and I try not to learn too terribly much about it less I lose my relationship to the slide.”
Wire Waltz, the last release in 2006/07, is a gorgeous landscape of steel and vocals. Listen to the recording and production of the excellent Caroline, Boat and the reminiscence of a song like Huntsville, 1989 and you hear a songwriter/musician at a peak of their creative powers. Megan makes it easy to make a connection with her art and with emotions. Where do the ideas for her songs come from, do they just pop into her head?
“Usually it is that I will be walking down the street, and some little phrase will have a melody attached which is sort of the whole essence of the song,” Megan tells me. “I then call my voicemail and put it into my iPalm phone. Sometimes it happens in the studio, but usually it just knocks me in the head when I am walking down the street. I will flush out entire lyrics on the iPalm and it has a voice recording application and save it as a .wav file.” And don’t forget that astral cover of Modern Love to round off Wired. It is one of the best Bowie covers ever.
But Megan is looking forward to getting out of the studio and out of Brooklyn for a little while. The recording process has been weighing heavily in her life and she believes the time off will give her some perspective on the work. And who will The Last Town Chorus be on this journey to her favourite continent?
“Yes I am coming down on my own. I did a long tour with Kathleen Edwards here in the US and I tried out an experiment where I engineered all of my own tracks. So I just jumped on the tour bus with her and just the mixes of my songs and backing tracks and it was a hell of a lot of fun,” enthuses Megan. “I mean nothing beats being in New York and playing with a five-piece band, but it was great to be traveling and having the experience of being alone on the road in many respects. I was completely focused on the sound of my voice and my steel every night, instead of engaging with other people. It was a thrill and it seemed the best way to do the Australian thing as it is a short 14-day tour.”
Megan joins Ash Grunwald on the East Coast leg of his national tour. Catch them at the following venues.
Wed 3 Sept – Live At Lizotte’s, Kincumber
Thurs 4 Sept, Wollongong Uni Bar
Fri 5 Sept – ANU Bar, Acton
Sat 6 Sept – Metro Theatre (Licensed All Ages), Sydney
Sun 7 Sept – The Brewery, Newcastle
Wed 10 Sept – Station Resort, Jindabyne
Thu 11 Sept – Kinross Woolshed, Thurgoona
Fri 12 Sept – The Hi-Fi, Melbourne
Sat 13 Sept – The Gov (Over 18 Only), Hindmarsh
