Interview

Over two days during Summer in West London, we spent time with Terra just talking about a whole range of stuff that varied from how she got started to her experience of moving to London from LA.

The resulting interview will be appearing here in instalments over the next few weeks. The first of these follows here....

Musical Beginnings

“My musical origins are classical based. I started singing when I was a baby but started to learn piano at four and then French Horn. I started singing in choirs and at one point I was in six music groups at school. I was playing French Horn in one orchestra, piano in jazz band, singing in choir and then this special choir called ‘The Studio Singers’”

“It was kinda ridiculous, I was doing music all the time but it was cool. I always know I wanted to be a singer but I didn’t know what kind of singer or how it would happen. I also read a lot of poetry but throughout school I never really wrote songs, I never combined them. It was like music on one side, and poetry and writing and art on the other.”

“I went to this performing arts summer camp and I had a teacher, a really well known vocal coach for opera singers. He came by to do a masterclass and I was one of the students that attended. He said ‘you should be singing opera and you come and study with me’ and he taught at the University of Michigan. I was like ‘well er Ok I could be a classical musician’ but it didn’t really suit my lifestyle at the time.”

“When I was younger through to High School I was a real over-achiever, really excelled at everything. I was really hard on myself, a real perfectionist. But in the last couple of years of High School I got really rebellious at the same time so I was leading a kind of double life. I continued that at college singing Opera but I was also a heroin addict, hanging out in Crack Houses in Detroit at night. Eventually I stopped going to class but in the morning’s when I did go I would pull up to class having been up all night, sit in the back, sleep, then do whatever I had to do to get through school. I maintained that the entire time I was in college. I don’t really remember it but I did graduate with honours!”

“I did other things like singing at the Aspen Opera Theatre Workshop in Aspen, Colorado, which is like a big classical music thing and the whole time my boyfriend at the time was sending me drugs in the mail! It was crazy, just so weird, like two completely different lives.”

“After college I realised I had to stop and clean up and realised that classical music wasn’t right for me. I loved singing it and like listening to it sometimes but it wasn’t a passion. All my friends were in bands and that was really what I wanted to do.”

“I moved to Manhattan, started writing songs and playing in little shit dive bars and waiting tables. That’s what I did for a few years. I guess I booked my first tour like four years ago and that’s where I met Paul Fox, who is my producer and co-manager now, and he was the one that got me to move to LA.”

So was Terra’s musical talent a result of some family gene, were her parents musicians?

“Not really. My Dad is musical but he never pursued it. He does have a good voice. Actually my Dad’s whole family are pretty musical and artistic. His generation were not allowed to really indulge in that, you had to be a Doctor, a Dentist or a Lawyer. So he was a Doctor, his older brother was a Dentist and his older Sister a Lawyer. Their family status was not quite financially secure, in America we call it ‘Middle Class’. Here (in England) Middle Class probably means a bit more ‘posh’ than America. So their family were kinda in the middle and he and his brother and sister weren’t allowed to indulge in any artistic passions but all three of them are pretty musical and artistic. The kids, my cousins, one’s a film-maker, one’s an artist and one’s a photographer plus I’m a musician. So his side of the family are quite creative. My Mum’s side are creative but not really musical at all”

What about their music tastes and possible influences on the younger Terra?

“They had been hippies but they were never really into their music in the sense that it was never the kind of household where you would come home and there would always be music on. My Dad would have played music a lot more but my Mom would prefer peace and quiet. The stuff that she would listen to was like James Taylor, and she liked ABBA. I remember when we were young she would always make us listen to James Taylor, ABBA and John Denver so kind of an odd mix. My Dad was a lot more rockier, he liked The Rolling Stones, Chicago Blues and stuff. He also liked old Country. His tastes probably influenced me more because he was much more into it. He is really into music, he likes Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Patsy Cline and so on. Those were definitely influences. Some of the soul stuff too like Wilson Pickett.”

“I think my musical influences probably came a bit later when I was in college like Nirvana, although I had heard Nirvana when I was in High School. That was probably the first cool band I liked. I liked the Sex Pistols also. When I got to college I learned about David Bowie, Lou Reed and The Pixies. I heard older bands that were cool.”

“It’s really weird, when people ask me who my influences are, I always forget. I’ll say David Bowie, Lou Reed, Joni Mitchell then I’ll forget. Then I’ll hear a song and think ‘that influenced me’, like the Pixies or some band I haven’t heard for a while but obviously influenced me”

Moving to London

At the end of March, Terra upped sticks from LA to move to London. How is she finding the transition?

“I love it. I absolutely love it. For the first five weeks I lived at the K West Hotel, Shepherds Bush. After the third week that I was there I had just stepped out of the shower when the fire alarm went off. I was sitting there wrapped in a towel and it kept going on so I rang down to the lobby and said “Hey, the alarm’s going off, can you guys fix that?”. I was a little cranky too because the K West is like a rock’n’roll hotel and I kept getting woken up by bands every night at 4am. So they said ‘It’s not an alarm, we’re evacuating the hotel, take what you need for tonight and be down in five minutes. There’s a gas leak in the area and the whole area is being evacuated”. I thought ‘Oh my God, where am I?’ (laughs) but I do love London!”

“I moved to Notting Hill as I had a friend who was looking out for a place for me and suggested that it would be an easy place to live and it is. It’s easy for tubes and buses. I love the neighbourhood, it’s amazing, but sometimes when I get back late there’s nothing open or happening. It’s nice and comfortable but I think I might look for something that’s a little grittier, where there’s more lively street stuff happening”

“I like Shepherds Bush, it was my first neighbourhood. It’s fun, it’s unpredictable. You walk down the street and it’s almost a little like a carnival at times, it’s cosmopolitan, all kinds of crazy people. On the days of the football matches (QPR), my friend lives down there we just stand in the window and watch the Police escort all the different fans down there and it’s crazy! It’s kinda scary as well, as there are so many people and they are all chanting and a little bit wild, and the fact that they have the Police around. I’m definitely noticing the difference between London and New York and Los Angeles.”

London is not renowned for being the cheapest place to live so how was she finding the cost of living?

“It’s ridiculous. It’s actually painful! I hadn’t experienced the actual physical pain of paying for things!”

“When I first got here I’d go to a bar and see something priced as 8 or 9, and so I think ‘yeah 8/9 dollars’ then I realise that it’s pounds and that the glass of wine I’m drinking is actually 16-18 dollars! That makes me a little bit sick but not enough to stop drinking though!”

“What freaks me out a little is that people here go to New York to do their shopping because it’s cheaper! When I lived in the States, New York – or Manhattan – was like the most expensive place but now having lived here even for a short while I can see that it is cheaper compared to London where everything seems to cost twice as much.”

“Despite that, I do love it here and I think that my ideal would be to have a flat here and a flat in New York so that I can go in between whenever I’m touring”

Fitting In (or not)

So where does Terra she herself fitting into the current ‘scene’?

“I don’t know, I never fit into any scene. It’s interesting to me that I came over here because it’s always been the story or a theme to my life, only as it happens more and more do I realise it. When I was in High School I was really unpopular and the whole growing up I was made fun of and just teased. A real outcast and loner. At Summer Camp I met a girl who lived in Connecticut and I went to her town to go and hang out with her and all of a sudden I was like the most popular girl in the school. It was like I had to leave my own town to actually be cool.”

“That is what has always happened so it makes perfect sense to leave the States and come over here. This is where I feel comfortable and where things are happening for me.”

Terra’s move to London coincides with a huge upsurge in the classic ‘singer-songwriter’ market. From the mainstream success of the Blunts, Morrison, Nutini, Meluas etc to the LDN scene of Kate Nash, Jack Penate, Remi Nicole to the deeper tones of the likes of Scott Matthews, it’s a vibrant if somewhat crowded scene. Terra’s ‘singer-songwriter’ status may bracket her within those same broad parameters but she stands apart from those already mentioned given her a unique vantage point that assures that she doesn’t get tied down to any sub-set of the genre.

Whatever your views on aspects of the genre may be, there’s no denying that it has to be a helluva lot more healthier to have organic talent that has developed naturally than that incubated under the spotlight of ‘audition TV’.

“It’s nice to see people like Kate Nash getting recognition. What she’s doing is like, yeah she has influences and you can hear them but it’s fresh and it’s musical and it’s creative, artistic. I love hearing that kind of thing on the radio it just gives me hope.”

“I don’t know where I fit in, I guess just in the sense of there being this organic scene of real people making real music over here and I think that’s where I fit in, not so much a genre of what I sound like but more where the music comes from”

“I lot of stuff that I hear in the radio, particularly in the US is like ‘Oh this?’. It’s just so uninspiring. Over here, there’s much more variety. People are more open to stuff they haven’t heard before. The question isn’t ‘Oh it doesn’t sound like what’s on the radio at the moment’, I don’t get that reaction over here. In the States it was more a case of ‘I love this but where’s it gonna fit on the radio?’ Good music should be about not worrying about where you’re gonna place it on the radio, but more on ‘well, if we put on the radio it will expose more people to it to get it’.

Being a child of the internet, is radio still important?

“I’ve got one foot in the future and one in the past. I love the idea of radio. I think the internet is becoming more important but it means a lot to me to be on the radio, for people to be driving in their cars and to hear my music. Driving in cars is where I always heard the most music. My Dad would always listen to the radio in the car and, like, when someone like The Doors came on and the keyboard part to ‘Light My Fire’ he’d be saying ‘who’s this?’ Kinda testing me and asking me questions on this sixties music stuff. One of my strongest memories is sitting in the car with my Dad listening to music”

“There are people on myspace with much bigger internet followings than I have, perhaps more poppy, but they’ve been successful. But whatever the style the song still needs to be able to stand up for itself so whether that’s through the internet or radio it doesn’t really matter so long as the song is good.”

“I think the two – radio and internet – can co-exist. There are still lots of people out there who do not download mp3’s at the moment, probably more that don’t than actually do. That will shift but for a lot of people there is still a need to have CD’s and radio. They like having a tangible, physical product.”

“I still like buying CD’s but I do also like to use downloads to get certain tracks rather than entire albums. It’s great to have that flexibility.”

Thanks to TerraNaomi.com for this.