September 15, 2000 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

'I just have to'

Michelle Malone makes music just to cope with a crazy world

by Janet Macoska

Celebrating her fifteenth year in the business of making music, singer-songwriter Michelle Malone can't remember a time in her life when music wasn't the primary force and reason for her existence. Her grandmother sang opera. Her mom was a pop singer and her stepfather was a jazz pianist. Michelle began singing in the cherub choir at church at the age of four.

Malone's music is her own unique hybrid melding of all the diverse musical styles she's been absorbing during her life: a blend of country, jazz, pop, blues and rock. Gutsy, direct and very personal, her material is uncompromisingly reflective of her soul as a songwriter and performer.

Having just completed a tour with the Indigo Girls, Malone is currently touring with a three-piece band in support of her seventh CD, Home Grown, the first release on her indie Strange Bird Song label. She will be appearing in concert at Pride Night at Kings Island near Cincinnati

Friday, September 2

and at the Grog Shop on Coventry in Cleveland on Saturday, September 23.

Touring on weekends, she has been

spending more time writing and working in the studio on her next recording, due out next spring. She spoke with this writer by phone from Atlanta.

Janet Macoska: Your web site had a couple different bios and articles indicating your age. I just wanted to set the record straight. Are you 33?

Michelle Malone: I'm 34, but you know, one thing I get pissed off about is that it seems like every time I read about a woman, they always have to print her age. That doesn't happen when I read about a man. I think that's a crock. And the women end up lying anyhow. I don't think you really need to know a lot of things like that about the artist. Labeling takes away from the art itself.

Well, I just had the experience of seeing my age revealed to the world at the Akron Art Museum, where I recently visited a photograph of mine on exhibition there. It was a bit of a shock to see my age on that little card, but it's just museum policy to list the artist's age, just as it's a journalism practice to be factual and report someone's age when you're writing about them.

Besides, knowing one's age can be interesting in the respect that, for example, if you wrote a song when you were 21 versus when you were 34, the tone or theme of the material might be markedly different at those different ages.

I'm sure if someone could see your work, or listen to mine, over the span of 15 years, they would know the difference.

Someone can listen to my first record where I sound like I'm 12, and my newest record, where I don't sound 12 anymore, and know the difference without me having to tell my age.

People have always focused on my age. First, because I was so young when I started. Now, its because I've been in the business so long. Either you're making good art or you're not. And you should be pissed about that as well.

Because they have my age listed on the photo at the museum?

They may as well list your sex and your sexual orientation and everything else on that card because those facts are just as irrelevant and just as intrusive.

Your music appeals to straight as well as gay audiences, but the press does often refer to you as "lesbian singer-songwriter Michelle Malone."

My music has nothing to do with sexual orientation, and I tell people that all the time. The press doesn't refer to a "heterosexual singer-songwriter." I don't see the relevance. I don't sing about sex. I don't sing about gay sex. I come from a writer's perspective, not even as a woman, but as a human being on this planet. It's a little annoying, but that's the way that some people relate. Some people are stuck in a little box and some people aren't.

I understand that you began singing very early on in life. When was the moment when you absolutely knew that you had to be a musician?

It wasn't even a decision. I grew up in a family of musicians. It just was. There was a period of time in college when I had other ideas, other aspirations, but those quickly fell to the side when I started writing songs and playing in bars and got a record contract.

What did you almost veer off and almost do with your life?

For a long period of time, I was really enthralled with medicine. I'm not sure where that came from. Even to this day, when I get really down and out about my job, I say, well, I'm just going to quit and go be a paramedic or something. They don't have to go to school for 12 years. But that will never happen. I know that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

You've talked about growing up in a musical family, and obviously, they were a big influence on you, but were there other artists who specifically influential to you early on?

Well, Kermit the Frog. Always a favorite of mine.

I was influenced by everything I've ever heard, and that was an awful lot.

My grandmother sang opera, my mom sang pop, my stepfather was a jazz pianist. I soaked it all in. I've heard so many genres of music that somewhere it melded together

and that's what comes out of me.

I've had the same influences that every young kid or teenager has had in music. Up until the age of 10 or 11, you're just listening to the crap on the radio that they feed you. After that, you start stealing your brother's records and listening to underground stuff for the next ten years because it's cool and rebellious. After that, you don't listen to anything because it all sucks.

No, if you're a musician, then you go make your own.

Yeah, you know, I don't listen to mine either. I make the music because I have to, to be all right with the world. I have to do it for my mental health, but I would never sit around and listen to it.

But you have to every night when you play it.

I'm not really there. It's so Zen. Half the shows I don't even remember. For enjoyment, I mostly listen to jazz and jazz singers. I'm really big into vocalists, and I don't mean Mariah Carey. She's really annoying. I'm pretty stuck in the '70s with my music. I don't know if it's because that's when I grew up, or if it's just because it's better.

You do pull from all these different influences in your life. . . folk, blues, rock, jazz, country, and this comes out in your music. Do you think this diversity contributed to the difficulties you experienced being on a major record label and finding radio airplay? Because they just couldn't figure out which little box to put you in?

There's a basic conflict between artist and employer. The artist is doing it for the sake of art, or they should be, and the employer is doing it to make money. I've never been the kind of person who can purposefully write and record something so that it will sell a lot. I just do what I do because I have to. It's an instinct. I have to get it out of me. It's how I keep my sanity.

Record labels are all about making money. If you go in knowing that, and you're fine with that and you can fit in the puzzle, then that's great. I never fit in the puzzle.

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