10 QUESTIONS - MEG BAIRD

I don’t actually know Meg Baird but after listening to her solo album ‘Dear Companion’ over and over again for the last few months I felt like I was qualified to force my nonsense on her. On ‘Dear Companion’ her pure, plaintive voice wraps itself around songs of death and longing and brings a peace upon me wherever and whenever I hear it. Meg is a founder member of Espers who also make very fine records indeed.

1. Where are you? Describe your immediate surroundings.

I am in my 3rd floor apartment in Philadelphia with all the windows open. It’s very peaceful at the moment, especially since there aren’t any helicopters flying overhead just now. I’m trying not to knock over my guitar, it’s leaning against the couch and I should be practicing.

2. My favourite article of clothing is a sweater I bought about six years ago. It’s Arsenic Grey with a slightly raised neck and the figure ‘29′ emblazoned
on the front. it’s gone at the elbows and, despite the care with which I tend to it, it smells a bit like my dearly departed Grandfather’s outside toilet.
It protects me from devils, evil spirits and the gloom that descends without warning on bleak Tuesday afternoons. I fear nothing whilst wearing it and
would wear it into any battle that I may stumble across. I told my eight month old son the other day that he would inherit ‘Old 29′. He was so excited that
he tinkled all over the couch. What’s your favourite article of clothing.

I have an inherited dad’s sweater that I wore it all through college. I don’t hold on to many clothes or things, but I don’t think it would be possible to give this up, even though it is pretty much retired from wearing now. I always have a favorite pair of jeans and boots, but I am too hard on my clothes to have the same favorites for long. I also have a youth-large hunting orange hoodie that I love. I do feel that it protects me from getting shot accidentally when walking through any wooded area, and keep it around all the time for that reason.

3. “She was not a woman given to recollections” Writes Dorothy Parker in ‘Big Blonde’ “At her middle thirties, her old days were a blurred and flickering
sequence, an imperfect film, dealing with the actions of strangers”.

I have a shocking memory, shocking. I forget names and faces seconds after I’ve met them, it makes life very confusing.
Last Monday I texted somebody apologising for texting on a Sunday and tried to rearrange an arrangement that I hadn’t actually arranged.
What is your first memory?

My first memories involve wood floors and hearing my mom’s voice from another room.

4. What is the one thing you and your sister fight about the most?

Who gets to play the piano.

5. My mate Corin in Boston maintains that he doesn’t like the band Boston where in actual, immutable, fact he is their number one,
all time, bestbandever, fan.

Which band do you outwardly deride yet secretly like? Mine’s Snow Patrol. I have all their lyrics collected in a Royal octavo with Secret Belgian Binding and their turgid, vapid, grandiloquence paints rainbows over my heart. I deride them. Or do I?

(I can’t actually answer this question and still have it a secret?)
Since I feel relatively uneducated about music, I try and never indulge these kind of secrets. I feel like my only way to keep any credibility alongside people who know so much is to at least be very honest about my ears. All the same, I recently way underplayed my love for Tom Tom Club’s “Genius of Love.”. I think this track is a joyful, strong hearted, downtown love-prophecy and a really cool piece of recorded music history.

6. You’re an American musician. What do make of Kaka going to Madrid?

Thank you for the research project.

7. I’m listening to ‘Illinois’ by Sufjan Stevens whilst typing this. It’s one of my favourite records although saying that I could live without a few tracks. Beautifully recorded,
great songs, amazing voice and poignant, singular lyrics. If you had the choice between singing and songwriting, what would it be?

Singing for sure, as long as songwriting is only applying to lyrics, not melody and sound. I’d take glossolalia over lyrics if I had to choose.

8. I’m making a mixtape at the minute, it’s great fun. I’m going to use your A Capella of ‘Dear Companion’ and add some beats, dubby bass and doubtless
a dangerously distorted Moog Bass (Modular Moog. 901b 8-Osc. Stereo Saw + Sub) until the only way they’ll be able to know what the song is will be by it’s dental records.
What do think about electronic music. Great musicians expressing their musicality through modern technology or geeky pocket fumblers, button pushing musical dwarves with operating
manuals sticking out their arse pocket?

No that’s great! Funny enough, the A Capella B-side was designed for this purpose. Tony Vogdes from Tequila Sunrise is a big fan of dance music, and this idea was meant to be a layer in that “album as object” type of thinking (not a concept I am so great at personally!). I wish I knew more about electronic music. Humans looking for new sounds is fascinating.

9. I thought Racism had begun and ended in the seventies and yet democratically legitimised Nazi hitsquad, The British National Party have just been voted overlords of Britain. Has there
been a noticeable difference in America since the end of the republican reign of terror and the dawn of Obama’s presidency?

Maybe racism seems more transparent and demystified…possibly making it easier to see problems with class, poverty and civil rights? But trying to really quantify things like mood just anecdotally–it feels almost superstitious. Of course there was tons of legitimate celebrating and relief to see Obama win and Bush leave. I would be even happier to see The Heritage Foundation go away. I remember seeing some kind of news or fiction or documentary piece about a clerk who worked there who began to shred the donations he was ostensibly processing, I wish I could find the source of this, maybe I have made it up by now.

10. My favourite food is beer and cake, lots and lots of cake. And beer. What’s your favourite cake and beer?

If I could have one favorite, I would.