Interviewing SXSW: Keeping It Indie with Liz Phair

Yeah, and it's also fun just to be around where all of the young music is kind of starting out. It's like an energy that, as someone who's done it a bunch of times, it can be really invigorating to go and be with people that are still scrapping. There's always fresh talent that impresses and I find it very inspiring. It helps me go back and write better music.

Does it remind you of your earlier days--coming up in the Wicker Park music scene?

It does, it does--it reminds me of that, and I don't ever feel that far away from that. Inside of myself I still feel like I'm scrapping every day. Just, staying alive and afloat. But it's different, that beginning period. You're kind of cool, like, “I still smoke.” It’s something. It's the scene, that's what it is.

The older you get and the more established you are--you still work with extremely awesome, talented people. In fact, a lot of times, you work with people you like better--but you don't have that scene thing anymore. Everybody’s got their families; they're doing this as a job. There's something about festivals and SXSW that feels like they live, eat, breath and sleep music. These are the people that I find really inspiring.

As far as the “scene”--the independent music-making scene and the music industry in general--what changes have you seen throughout your career from the early 90s until now?

I think there's a lot that will never change because why people do it isn't just trendy reasons. Like indie to me always meant we just get up and do it. You don't need to involve tons of people, you don't need tons of equipment. You have a vision and you wanna make it happen. You gather your friends and you make it happen. That's always to me been what indie was about, it wasn't about a certain sound, or a certain style, or a certain group. It was about making music you know, without a lot of funds, you do that as passion, and that I think has stayed remarkably consistent.

Obviously, the music business has changed a lot since I was coming out. There was a much greater distinction between mainstream and indie. There was huge money in mainstream, which I guess in some areas there still is. I think the biggest difference I've noticed is with Internet, indie has a lot more weight and power than it did before. You know, we sort of had to wait back then for someone from the mainstream to come down and tap us. It [the indie scene] was more almost like training grounds for the big leagues. And now it seems like you could be indie and stay indie, and it's a legitimate business choice; and you might be doing just as well as you would if you tried to go for more mainstream success, and maybe even better.

Do you have anyone that you're going to try to see while you're down here--artists that you're intrigued by?

I don't know who's playing. I have three friends that are going to be down there that know exactly who's playing, who's cool, and what they're doing. I've just booked them as my official tour guides. I know that they're going to take me to all the best places in my allotted time slots that I have free. I'm delegating the responsibility of being cool to the people that I know are cooler than I am. I'm like okay, we're hooking up here and I'm going to go where you're going. [laughs]

For a lot of people coming for SXSW, they're playing some of their first shows ever. Do you remember your first show?

I remember it vividly. I don't remember the name of the venue, but I don't even know if you really want to call it a venue--it was really just a bar that people could stand in. It was on Division Street in Chicago. My record [Exile In Guyville] was already made before I'd ever played my first live show. Matador had it and it was about to come out.

I remember my roommate, that I was fighting with at the time, John Henderson, he was so excited and laughing because he knew what I was about to experience. He's like, “You're so fucked. You better go play live because it's a benefit you know, like Adam Rich.” I'm thinking, “Shit, okay. I'll do it, I'll do it.” And my knees are knocking. I'm wearing this little pleated skirt with little white socks and clogs--don't ask me why, but I thought that was really cute at that time--and I just remember playing like six or seven songs on stage by myself. It didn't go as badly as I thought, but it was definitely kind of shocking to be playing my first show days before my record was coming out.

Do you still ever get that same nervousness? I mean obviously, you've played a whole lot since then, but is there ever anything that makes you nervous about performing?

Yeah, if there's a big event where the pressure is sort of on for me to nail it, I will get intensely focused. I don't know if you wanna call that nervous, but like, I'll rehearse it in my head a million times. I won't be able to really listen to what you're saying to me because half of my RAM is being used to stay in that space.

I think the hardest thing for me, the closest that I get to that feeling of being inadequate or unprepared is when I switch from being sort of my introverted stuff, when I'm not touring, when I'm not putting records out, when I just become like a mom and a person, and I just stay in my own little world. And then having to flip the switch to being an extroverted person that does perform and stays sort of public ready; that can be super grueling because I feel like I don't know, like I'm going to go to the guillotine or something.

Then when I get on stage about three songs in I'll just have this epiphany and be like oh, I like this, this is fine, I know how to do this. Then it's fun. Then I can totally do it.

You've had kind of a tumultuous relationship with your record labels over the past few years. Do you feel happy where you are right now? What lessons have you learned or what advice would you have for other up-and-coming musicians to watch out for and to learn from your experiences?

I feel like for the last ten years every time I sign to a label, halfway through my record the president will be fired and the whole thing will take a shakeup. I feel like that's happened every single time. The stability just isn't there, and I don't know if it ever was.

Obviously we see the whole business folding up--almost telescoping in reverse, it’s getting down to fewer and fewer and smaller and smaller. So, I don’t even really rely as much on labels. I feel like I am my own business and I think that’s good advice. You have to do at least fifty percent yourself. I would say, just get it going on your own and then people will always want to join in.

With Funstyle, what was the connection to Girly Sounds? What prompted you to re-release the Girly Sound tapes with that?

It was something that I actually read in some early reviews [of Funstyle]--people were like, “What the fuck is this sound? What the fuck is she doing?” Then a couple people were like, “You obviously don’t know the Girly Sound stuff.” Because I was sort of wacky and zany and tried different voices and did style mash-ups on that too. I thought, “Exactly. That’s exactly right. That is what I was kind of doing with this. It [Funstyle] was a much smaller thing to put out and I put it out independently. It was very much sort of a Girly Sound 2010, you know?

I put the albums together to give them a context. It was just a nice idea having the juxtaposition. I like contrast, it’s something that artistically is very attractive to me. I thought that was a meaningful contrast.

Do you feel a reconnect to those early days in what you are doing now? Kind of the do-it-yourself style?

Funstyle was about using the skills I learned from my TV scoring jobs where you can basically pull up full orchestrations at the touch of a button, and the kind of humor we would have late night--getting slap happy in making up these scenarios--that musical experience in the studio. The other half was born of my recent habit of dropping in on friends who are in the studio and making music with them. Like, if someone’s recording, instead of going out to a bar or something, I would just go stop by and either sing back-up or jam. We’d just grab instruments and make something. So Funstyle was a combination of those two fun-styles of music making.

How did you get involved in the TV scores? That’s a kind of a new project that people wouldn’t foresee for you, I’m sure.

My friend Mike Kelley, I went to elementary school with him. He knew I was totally fucked over by my record company and that I felt really helpless and frustrated. He was like, “Come score this TV show, I wrote it about our home town.” [The project was Swingtown.] I didn’t even know how to score, so I got two friends that did know how and we became the best threesome. I loved it immediately--the marriage of visual and musical components. It’s all about emotion.