Music |
The Dreaming Fields
Matraca Berg
By
Published: May 17, 2011
Category:
Country
A disc jockey once explained to a journalist why his country music station didn’t play Emmylou Harris. It wasn’t that she’d moved beyond country into some other category. It was this: “She sings too well. After you play her, everyone sounds off-key, second-rate.”
Matraca Berg has the same problem — she is, as they say, too good for the room. She’s a songwriter’s songwriter, the way James Salter is a writer’s writer. And a singer’s singer, like Emmylou and too many of the industry’s discarded women.
Matraca Berg started young, hit big as a writer, hit resistance as a singer. She took a long break. Wrote songs for others. And left her cadre of fans cherishing songs like this:
Now she’s back. And if it’s okay to defer critical opinion to an expert, may I simply quote Kris Kristofferson: “I don’t listen to a lot of music at all anymore, but I just heard a great album that Matraca Berg did. It’s the first one in a long time, 10 or 12 years. It’s really good — ‘The Dreaming Fields.’ She’s one of the best singer-songwriters now." [To buy the CD of “The Dreaming Fields” from Amazon, click here. For the MP3 download, click here.]
I was touched in unfamiliar places by these songs. Heartfelt, tender, wry — she touches all the bases, but from unexpected angles. It’s ridiculous that X and Y, with their great hair and cool boots, have sucked up all the oxygen for female singers who happen to come from Nashville. Matraca Berg deserves better. So, hoping to help, I asked to interview her.
Jesse Kornbluth: What does it feel like to be 18 and have co-authored a #1 Nashville hit?
Matraca Berg: Terrifying. I felt like an imposter. Not ready for the attention. So I high-tailed it to Louisiana and played in a cover band.
JK: What happened when they noticed you were at another level?
MB: That happened very quickly — because I sucked. I had total stage fright. Eventually I was pushed to the back to play keyboards.
JK: I’ve seen the photos. At 18, you were exceptionally pretty.
MB: You didn’t see my perm. They wanted me to look like Prince’s girl.
JK: How long did it take to work out of the imposter phase?
MB: A slow process. In the end, I missed my mom, I missed Nashville.
JK: And you went back and…
MB: I got a deal with RCA before I was ready. I was pushed along by the machine. I had no idea what was happening, but wheels started turning. By the time I’d figured it out, my label folded. Now I had time to myself, I just wanted to go home and think about what happened.
JK: How did it feel to be on the sidelines?
MB: I was annoyed I wasn’t invited to the dance. Tricia [Yearwood] and Martina [McBride] and Faith [Hill] and I –– we all started together. I was too much of a square peg, and I kind of knew it. When my record company went out of business, I sat at Harlan Howard’s feet and drank. He put his hand on my head and said, “Kid, you’re not a country star. You need to make records like Lyle [Lovett] and Nancy [Griffin] — don’t try to do this stuff.”
JK: How did months turn into years?
MB: [long pause] A whole series of things in my family –– dysfunction and tragedy and ill health. Jeff and I trudged through that for a few years. My friends Kim Carnes and Marshall Chapman knew I had stage fright, and they’d take me out to play. They’d book little shows and insist I show up.
JK: When happened when you sang your new songs?
MB: The musicians would go crazy –– and I’d think, “But are the songs really any good?” Eventually I decided I’d get this CD finished. I thought: “This is what I am, this is what I do.” Then I sat with it and mind-fucked it for a few years.
JK: The reception of “The Dreaming Fields” — nervous?
MB: Heart in throat — very much in throat. This has my hand all over it. Before, I could hide behind a producer. Now, if it sucks, if it goes down in flames…
JK: What will it take for you to feel okay?
MB: Having enough success to make another one.
JK: The title — what are “the dreaming fields?”
MB: [very long pause] Fields that lie fallow. Also — forgive the attempt at metaphor — things that are no longer. And you dream you’ll wake up again, and they’ll be back. You find those fields in the yearning for something to return.
JK: This is heavy stuff for a country record?
MB: This isn’t a country record. Someone called it “a dope smoking country record.” Another person said, “It’s country but what country?”
JK: And yet you write country hits for other performers.
MB: Hey, Kenny Chesney and Grace Potter are recording “You and Tequila.” That should help me go on the road and lose money for a few years.
JK: What comes easily?
MB: Playing with my friends. Best thing in the world.
JK: Why not make the record that way?
MB: I did. We did one song, and I knew I had the right group of guys.
JK: In all that time away, I have to think you wrote more songs than are on this CD. Got enough for another?
MB: I do. I’m not sure how it’s going to pan out — I’d like to make a really country record, with songs at the level of “Help Me Make It Through The Night.” I have a few of those — that’s music I grew up on, music that it feels like home to sing.
I believe her. But I equally believe she’s at home on “The Dreaming Fields.”
