Jane Siberry interview (165 lines)

[Tippi Chai <chai@utcc.utoronto.ca>]

I tried mailing this to siberry@bfmny0.bfm.com but it bounced right back.
So here it is...

THE QUEEN OF QUIRK
Jane Siberry places the final brick in her ethereal wall of sound

JANE SIBERRY REACHES THE SNAPPING POINT
By Perry Stern, _Network_ Magazine (Sam the Record Man), April/May 1993
[...] Editor's notes.  {...} Tippi's notes

    One of Canada's most creative divas faces booing crowds, 
    is cheered on by Brian Eno and learns the meaning of freedom

In the first fresh weeks of the new year, Siberry is still
completing an album she started working on more than two-and-a-half
years ago.  It's an unusual amount of time, though not unheard of, { HA! }
and one can't help but wonder if trouble is dogging the steps of
one of Canada's most intriguing artists.

The album, still untitled in January (in contention are _When I
was a boy_ and _Tyger, Tyger_, the latter referring to a William
Blake poem found in the Book _Songs of Innocence_), was recorded in
Vancouver, Toronto, and London, England, was re-written twice and
has been the subject of much industry gossip with each new
incarnation.  The final touches were meant to be applied now, here
in Toronto, with acclaimed producer Michael Brook finishing off the last
track before returning to England where he's producing the new
Pogues album, but Siberry is unsatisfied with some vocals and vows
to mail him a completed tape when her "throat chakra is centred"
(in Eastern beliefs, chakras are energy centres in the body).

It's not that Siberry is difficult to work with - Brook calls her
"an amazing person, very focused on her work and very deep inside
it emotionally" - and it's not as though her record company (she's
signed to the U.S.  Warner Bros. label) was unhappy with the earlier
versions of the album.  "They never rejected it," she explains, "but
it wasn't hitting them in the heart.  It's just that the album has
not reached the point where she can close the book on it.  She's
waiting, she says, until she can write at the end of this chapter
in her life that the album is, "the best I can do, 1993.  Love, Jane
Siberry."

Siberry has a reputation for being enigmatic in both her
songwriting and in conversation.   Words don't flow out of her mouth,
they tumble - sometimes in great long paragraphs of images and
metaphors, sometimes in slow, deliberate sentences that paint a
picture rather than explain a situation.  Getting her warmth,
sincerity and conviction down on paper is almost impossible.  Her
eyes bore into yours as she speaks.  Her hands flutter in the air
like hovering humming birds.

"I think she's trying to speak as clearly as possible," laughs
actress Rebecca Jenkins, Siberry's close friend and backup singer
for the past eight years, "but Jane is always a poet first." Yet,
Jenkins has noted a change in Siberry.  "She's more concerned now
with communicating and being as good a communicator as possible.  I
can hear it on this album.  She's less concerned with being a
mystery."

In the three-and-a-half years since the release of _Bound by the
Beauty_, someone took Siberry's red wagon and placed it on
precariously at the apex of a massive roller coaster.  There have
been glorious highs and perilous lows.  Fascinating vistas have
unfolded before her as she raced between the peaks and valleys.

Probably the highest moment came along with an invitation from
Peter Gabriel to participate in what amounted to a giant jam
session for some of the world's finest musicians at his Real World
studio in England.  The lowest point came when she was chased off
the stage by several thousand booing boors during a concert in
Scotland.   {More on this later.}

It's ironic that at the same time Siberry was struggling to come
to terms with what she thought was a levelling off in her career
(after steadily improving sales of her first three albums, she
seemed to hit an invisible ceiling with the last two), she was
beginning to be, in the words of her manager of 10 years, Bob
Blumer, "embraced by the musical intelligentsia." Besides being
chosen by Gabriel to be among 30 artists and producers invited to
his studio last August (others included were fellow Canadians
Brook, Daniel Lanois and producer Bob Ezrin), Siberry developed a
friendship and collaborated with legendary producer/composer/
renaissance man Brian Eno and had a song, in part, written about 
her by up-and-coming U.S.  singer/song writer Shawn Colvin.

"A group of some of the world's most highly regarded musicians are
turning around and regarding her in the same way they
{themselves} are being regarded," Blumer contends.  "If those
people, who the masses adore, adore Jane, then you know that she's
doing the right thing."

The Eno connection came out of the blue.  "He wrote a letter to
Warner Brothers saying that he felt BbtB was an amazing record and why
hadn't it done better," Siberry explains with a half smile.  "Then
he wrote me a really long letter about my demo tape because it was
sent to him to see if he was interested.  It was very in-depth and
amazingly wise and loving.  His comments were very astute and what
he liked about me is what I like about me, and the things he found
were weak were things I felt unsure of, too."

Eno's letter, written in January 1992, is endearingly fan-like,
filled with words such as "classic", "overwhelming" and "great".  It
has criticisms too, and they were even more convincing than the
praise was for Siberry.  At the time she was telling people she
wanted to make a commercial record, one that included danceable
songs along side her more experimental pieces.  "I am aware that you
are trying something new." he wrote, "but my advice is to follow
the path of most feeling and least resistance.  This sounds like
weird advice, the opposite of what you might have expected from me.
But, so often we are frightened of our own ideas, either because
they pop out so effortlessly, or because they seem too familiar to
us." It was the kind of encouragement Siberry was starved for at
the time.  The end result of the correspondence was that Eno
produced or co-produced four of the album's tracks.

Although Eno's primary advice for Siberry was to continue writing
the metaphorically and musically complex songs that he found so
engaging in the past, one of the songs he worked on is the most
straightforward tracks on the album.  "The Temple" is taunting,
aggressive and perhaps the most overtly sexual song she's ever
written.  "You call that tough? Well, it's not tough enough," sings
the usually demur Siberry.  On the other hand, "Sweet Incarnadine",
with its invocations of ancient Persia, is among Siberry' s most
lyrically opaque and complicated.  Sonically, the album is
consistent with previous releases due to the continued presence of
musicians such as guitarist Ken Myhr and pianist/vocalist David
Ramsden.

Unfortunately, the crowds in Edinburgh last November didn't share
Eno's enthusiasm for Siberry's music.  Tapped by her British label
to open the bill for the debut of Mike Oldfield's _Tubular Bells
II_, she admits the event was a nightmare.

"You know in native Indian cultures you have initiation rites?"
Siberry asks.  "Well," she smiles, "that was my version of it. It
was the worst thing I could have imagined happening to me." After
finishing five songs of an intended six-song set (accompanied by
ex-Blue Rodeo keyboardist Bobby Wiseman) she succumbed to the
crowd's jeers and surrendered the stage.  "They were just rowdy,"
she concedes, "and it was freezing cold and they didn't want to
hear songs from some strange singer who was doing weird things with
her voice.

"I was dumb struck.  I came back to Canada and went up north {to
the countryside} and cried for two weeks.  Then something snapped. I
took all the power back that I had put outside myself trying to
please [others].  The worst show of my life has become the best show
because it's given me the ultimate freedom to care about what I
think is really good.  How my career does is secondary. But, I have
a feeling that because of this attitude it's going to do better
than ever." 

Siberry seems to have taken on the passion for life and its simple
pleasures that is usually the preserve of people who've had a
near-death experience.  A smile lights up her face as she leans
forward and says, "I'm in the greatest space.  Now I know I will
never stop, I will never be motivated to stop or not by the outside
world.  I've unlocked totally from the machine which is reflected in
me all of a sudden getting all this creative juice.  All I care
about is I'm going to make these little films, do songbooks and
write stories.  If I see someone beautiful, I'm going to do whatever
I like, and, as an aside, if I do well commercially, that will have
its rewards, too.  But it's not the point of my motivation."

What now is most absent in Siberry's work is self-consciousness.
Over a period of creative turmoil that might have crushed a weaker
spirit, Siberry has emerged stronger, more productive and more
self-confident.  Her new album seems destined to herald a new phase
in her career.