ATLRetro

by Anthony Taylor
Contributing Writer

Eddie Owen presents Mary Fahl in concert Saturday, June 14 at the Red Clay Theater, in Duluth, GA at 8 pm. For tickets and additional information call (404) 478-2749 or go here.

Mary Fahl’s soaring contralto vocals first gained public notice with her debut album as lead vocalist and co-founder of October Project, with their self-titled album (“October Project”),  on Epic Records in 1993. The combination of Julie Flanders’ lyrics, Emil Adler’s melodies and Fahl’s controlled “banshee wail” created an unforgettable musical storm of an LP which spawned the hits, “Return To Me” and “Ariel.” October Project toured in support of Crash Test Dummies and Sarah McLachlan to positive reviews. The band’s second album, FALLING FARTHER IN, showed artistic growth and was well received critically, but failed to chart significantly. After a headlining tour of the U.S., the band was dropped by their label and parted ways. The band has since reformed without Fahl, and is now a trio with Flanders, Adler and original OP keyboardist and vocalist Marina Bellica.

Fahl went on to a solo recording career, releasing  THE OTHER SIDE OF TIME in 2003, FROM THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON in 2011 and LOVE AND GRAVITY in late 2013. Though she frequently plays in the northeastern states, Saturday’s show at the Red Clay Theater in Duluth marks her first performance in Georgia since her days with  October Project.

ATLRetro: October Project played a great show at the Buckhead Theater and had a memorable live performance on 99x radio in 1994. What took you so long to come back to the south?

Mary Fahl: It was logistics mostly. Atlanta is a long way from home and with the loss of 99X I was not sure I was getting any airplay in the region. 99X broke October Project in a really big way and that show at the Buckhead Theater was amazing for us.

Is your show on Saturday with a backing band, or a solo acoustic setup?

This will be a solo acoustic show.

Tell folks about your songwriting process. What comes first, music or lyrics?

In most cases, the music comes first. That being said, I keep notebooks all over my house just in case I hear something interesting or have an idea. Those notes often end up in my songs.

You’ve talked of your love for Dusty Springfield, Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan in the past. What new music are you listening to?

I listen to a lot of film score composers mostly. My current favorite is Alexander Desplat. As for singer/songwriters, I love Laura Veirs, Sufjan Stevens, Gillian Welch and Ane Brun. There are so many!

First Aid Kit seem to be influenced by you and by your own influences (their song “Emmylou” covers similar ground to your “Like Johnny Loved June”). How do you see your legacy asserting itself?

Interesting you should mention First Aid Kit. I just discovered them! As for any legacy, that is so hard to say. I suppose time will tell. Sometimes all it takes is one person who listened to you when they were young. My sound grew out of the British Folk sound of the ‘70s with Sandy Denny, Linda Thompson, that sort of thing. Nobody sounds like that now.

Youtube is full of videos of you singing with OP and solo singing covers and originals as well. What will fans see at your show at Red Clay Theater?

I will do some OP, lots of my own songs, some covers and of course some DARK SIDE OF THE MOON. I like to give my audience the performance equivalent to a full, rich meal.

How did you get involved with Anne Rice and THE WOLVES OF MIDWINTER? “Exiles,” the song chosen for Rice’s audio book of the novel, is on your latest album, “Love & Gravity”. What else should we know about the album?

Anne wrote me a letter two years ago after she discovered that October Project had hoped to get a song into the movie version of INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE. When my album was nearly complete, I asked her if she wanted a copy and she said she did. She was going to be in New York City, so I sent my publicist over with a copy. Afterward, Anne handed her a galley of  THE WOLVES OF MIDWINTER inscribed to me, with, “Tell Mary she’s in the book.” My publicist immediately volunteered me to write a song for the audio book version of the novel. Only later did I find out that I only had 10 days to get the song written, recorded, mixed and mastered. Needless to say, much nail-biting and nausea ensued, but Anne’s writing is so powerful and vivid, it made it easy for me to immerse myself in the world of the characters and the song kind of wrote itself. I was also fortunate to have John Lissauer as my co-writer/producer. I brought the lyrics to him and he came up with a fabulous, very moody and dramatic melody that perfectly evoked the mystery and sensuality of the book. I haven’t heard anything about a film version of the book, but I think it would make a fabulous movie.

As for the rest of the album, most of the songs came out of the life I was living for the past six years. They were songs that I had to be able to render with just myself and a guitar if need be. You have to realize, I write a lot of songs, but I shelve a good portion of them. Any song I do on a regular basis has to be one that has stood the audience test and I have to find something new in a song every time I sing it. A song has to get to me every time or it just won’t make the cut. That being said, I love “How Much Love.” It’s one of the few songs on the record I didn’t write. It was written by Patsy Foster.  I heard the song in a record store in Philadelphia 20 years ago and always wanted to cover it. It’s really special when you hear a song for the first time and immediately fall in love with it. I also love “Gravity: Move Mountains, Turn Rivers Around.” There’s a line in the song “I’ve seen you move mountains, turn rivers around, defy the force of gravity with both feet on the ground.” It was written for my husband, who, in the words of the wonderful author/healer Caroline Myss, “defies gravity.”

Time heals all wounds. Any chance of a reunion with October Project?

Time does heal, but a reunion is difficult to fathom. We’ve all moved on. I sincerely doubt they’d want it and me with all the wonderful experience I’ve garnered since OP broke up, could never go back to that kind of a situation.

Step into the time machine and give some advice to eighteen-year-old Mary Fahl.

Hmmm, “Believe in yourself – and practice your guitar!!”

Anthony Taylor is a writer and an expert on retro-futurism, classic science fiction and horror films and television, and genre collectibles. He is the author of ARCTIC ADVENTURE!, an official Thunderbirds™ novel based on the iconic British television series by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. His website is https://Taylorcosm.com

All photographs are courtesy of Mary Fahl and used with permission.

Photo courtesy of Sofia Talvik.

Singer/songwriter Sofia Talvik may hail from Sweden but she’s no stranger to America, with five full-length albums and nine EPs, having blown away audiences at Austin’s SXSW and holding the distinction of being the first Swedish artist to play Lollapalooza. In fact, she’s likely more popular here than in her native Scandinavia. Her current two-year American tour rolls into the Drunken Unicorn this sat. Jan. 21 where she’ll be opening at the release party for Divine Isis‘s new EP SCREAM, with Pocket the Moon also on the night’s bill.

Photo courtesy of Sofia Talvik.

You’ve been compared to Joni Mitchell, Nick Drake, Belle and Sebastion, The Cranberries and Aimee Mann, but who do you consider your influences—especially more classic Retro performers (i.e. ‘60s, ‘70s or before)?

It’s hard to pin down influences I think. All the things you listen to and experience become your influence. I did listen to a lot of ’60s music when I was a teenager and I love Janis Joplin, but I don’t think anyone will hear her as an influence in my music. I actually started listening to Nick Drake – who by the way is one of the big 60’s artists – after being compared to him and I love his music, but he was way better at playing the guitar than I’ll ever be (laughs).

You’ve said you’ve had a stronger response to your music in America than in Sweden. What’s the music scene like in Sweden and how do you fit into it? And how does it compare with what you’ve experienced here?

I think mainly because Sweden is so much smaller than the US, there’s not enough people to keep the diversity going. If say five percent of the Swedish population listens to my music, compared to if five percent of the American population does, that’s a huge difference. That’s the difference that will make you being able to live off your music or not. I also think Sweden is more of a trend-sensitive country, so when something is in trend all the radio stations will play it, and if it goes out of trend, no one will care all of a sudden. Here in the US, everything goes on at once. You have radio stations that just play folk or just play pop here. There’s always an audience here for your music, you just have to find it, and that’s what I’m doing with this tour.

How does a Swedish artist come to write a song about “Florida”?

Well, in 2009, my husband was on an exchange program on his job and we stayed in Orlando,FL for three months. As Sweden is kind of a cold and rainy country, I was looking forward to coming to “The Sunshine State.” But the first two weeks when we arrived it rained constantly. My husband was working so I was basically just sitting in the apartment writing songs. “Florida” is like a diary note from those two weeks, and the forecast in the beginning of the song on the album is actually a real one from that time.

Is there any story about how you became the first Swedish female artist to score a spot at Lollapalooza?

I was part of an online music competition called Famecast and got to the finals in my genre. So they actually flew me over to Austin, TX where I got to perform for a jury and an audience. I didn’t win, but the booker for Lolla saw me there and I got the gig. Playing the Lollapalooza was one of the coolest things I’ve done. That festival is huuuuge!

You’ve got a VW bus on one of your posters and you’re traveling around the US in an Old RV. That sounds mighty Retro to us – how’d you score those wheels, where did you start, how long have you been on the road and what’s your favorite on-the-road Americana experience so far?

My tour is called Drivin’ & Dreaming, because it’s all about touring and living the dream. We actually don’t tour in a VW bus even though that would have been really cool, however, it would probably also have been a lot colder than a newer RV. My husband and I started out the tour in Florida in December where [we] bought this old Gulfstream Conquest from ’94 which we fixed up. It looked pretty good until we started tearing off the wallpaper and discovered it had water leaks all over. But we just tore everything out and now it’s really nice inside – our little home on the road.

So far the tour has been amazing. We’ve met so many wonderful people who invited us into their homes, for dinner and brunch, helping out with stuff etc. We’ve also got to see a lot. We were around Florida in December which was nice and warm and then we headed up to GA, SC and NC. Savannah, GA was wonderful and we stayed there for a few days. In Charleston, I woke up in the middle of the night because someone tried to steal the bikes we had mounted on the back of the RV. That was scary. But mostly it’s been positive experiences. One of the best things is that I get to do this with my husband. He actually quit his dayjob back in Sweden to come with me on tour.

You’ve also been described as emerging like a Lady of the Forest, the slideshow accompanying your current shows brings the mystical world of Scandinavia to life, and your Website asks “do you believe in fairy tales?”  Now that sounds like your music also has roots in the rich folktales and traditional music of Sweden or do you mean something else and more universal?

I think I’d label my music as a mix between the melancholy of Scandinavia and the mysteriousness of the American South. You won’t find me singing about trolls and elves or anything, but I guess my music does have a bit of that overworldly feel to it. I think you can definitely tell that I’m not American in my way of writing lyrics and melodies, even though I am singing in English.

What would you like to share about this Saturday’s show at the Drunken Unicorn? We’ve heard that you’re performing with an acoustic guitar and some 3D video visuals.

I’m really looking forward to playing there, and I hope there will be a big crowd that will be there for the music. I’m solo on stage, and my music isn’t crafted to overpower drunk people talking and watching TV (laughs). I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to play a lot of listening rooms and coffee shops on the tour, and I always try to make my show the best one so far. A girl with an acoustic guitar – you may think you’ve heard it before, but I promise there’s more in this show than that.

What’s next for Sofia Talvik?

My new album, THE OWLS ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM, will be released January 31 and is up for pre-orders on my Website now. My tour will go on for two years so that will also keep me busy. In February, I’m doing an official showcase at the Folk Alliance International Conference in Memphis, so I’m really looking forward to that too. In the nearest future, thoug,h I think we’ll have to find a campground so we can charge our house battery in the RV a little.