Tara Angell
The singer-songwriter comes clean about the realities of being a critically lauded, financially unstable, and (possibly) misunderstood artist
By Cole Haddon
Published: May 23rd, 2005 | 12:43pm
"It's like a trap. I'm trapped," explains New York City singer-songwriter Tara Angell of the life she spends drifting between her Lower East side bartender's job and the stage where her heart yearns to be, even though her bankbook isn't quite ready to make that a full-time option. "I don't know how long I'll be able to keep doing this."
Balancing financial responsibilities with her musical goals is slowly wearing on her. Then, of course, there's the unexpected to be dealt with, like the week when her bass player decided to jet off to Italy with his other boss, Patti Smith. The sudden turn of events comes a week-or-so before the 26-year-old Angell's much-anticipated concert debut at the Bowery Ballroom. "That's the kind of life it is. It's like hectic, crazy, roll with the punches, think fast, you know what I mean?" she sighs, the frustration — or is it exhaustion? — evident in her voice. Her band are pros, though, which she's quick to point out. Everything will be fine she assures herself, but it's these "details" that she's having the hardest time with. "There's so much stuff that has to get done, that it's really hard cause I'm not a band. I'm a solo artist."
Her debut album Come Down (Ryko) has often been called dark, her voice sad, and her music reminiscent of Marianne Faithfull and Lucinda Williams (who is a fan of Angell's, as well as close friend). Yet, as often as her songs are "dark," they are not devoid of hope. Her breathy voice, while sad, penetrates and lingers like a beautiful religious service. Tara Angell is quicksand, easy to sink in ... but possible to swim through too. Life has presented itself to her in the same way lately. "It's hard," she says, her sleepy voice perking up with a subtle optimism that can easily be missed. "I'm handling it. I'm a survivor. I've survived a lot of hell in my life and this is just another step."
The New Jersey native grew up in New York City and now calls Brooklyn her home, her domestic world an Italian section where everyone knows everyone and life moves so slow that the people you see sitting on their stoops on a summer's morning will still be there when you come back that night. It is, however, the Lower Eastside that helped to bring Tara Angell the artist into focus — complicated, scarred, and a little lost as all great artists are.
"Since I was young enough to work, I was bartending in clubs [there],” she says. “It was always small music venues where you'd see five or six small bands a night. Eventually you get to know everybody. A lot of it was punk rock and that's not necessarily what I do, but those were the people I befriended." The community's art sub-culture became her spiritual home. "I can't tell you how that has affected my music to the extent that a person from Texas can't explain why they have an accent. It's ingrained in me. And I'm a sponge. [My music] reflects what I see around me and what I see around me, it's not necessarily pop music. I don't feel pop music when walking down the street."
Being so often labeled "dark" by music writers can take its toll and invite misinterpretations by people used to having the meanings of songs spoon-fed to them. "I try to kind of stress in interviews that people realize I am not the record. My spirit is in that record, but it's not an autobiography. There're characters in there. I used my imagination in a lot of places." But she doesn't shun the shadows she has swathed herself in with Come Down either.
"I did suffer from depression, but that's not going to surprise anyone," she laughs. The sound is so unexpected, perhaps even to her, her mood is momentarily lifted. "Once in a while I slip back into it, but it's pretty manageable. It's been a lot worse. But I think you don't just write these kinds of songs without having really intense experiences and I think I've just had a really intense series of experiences. I think to say I've had a horrible life would be a lie, because I didn't, but then again, I can't say it was easy either.” She hesitates, not out of uncertainty, but because she regrets being so cryptic. “There's things that have happened in my life that I'm not really prepared to tell the press and at some point I will, but I'm not really sure how I'm going to do it. I have to figure it out.”
For now, she's just trying to find a way to keep performing as regularly as she wants to, considering that she doesn't yet enjoy the overwhelming financial support from her record label Ryko that more successful artists would receive. She's still out there, proving herself, and that means paying for things any way you can, like the bank loan she took out to record the album with producer Joseph Arthur. “Sometimes I have these moments where I'm like, 'Is this really what I want to do? Is it ever going to get, you know, a little fun? You know, a little fun?' I've always been the bartender at these venues and always wanted to be the person on the stage and I kind of am now and it's not what I thought it was going to be.” Even greater commercial success doesn't offer her anything substantial to look forward to. “I don't think anyone ever makes it,” she continues. “I don't think there is such a thing. I swear to God, cause you could talk to somebody like Lucinda Williams and she'll tell you she's got the same problems I have. So maybe your paycheck is a little bigger, but you're still working your ass off. There's never an easy way. It just gets harder, I think, cause there's more shit that happens.”
But it's still the music that drives Tara Angell, which she's never been able to escape. “It's a 24/7 job. You can never take time off as an artist. You can't just stop thinking about the song. The only thing that could do that to me is if I was in a coma." She laughs at the aburdity she knows to be very much true. "If I was comatose, it would work.” Yet even the music would become something to get lost in if she didn't have fuel to keep her going and, since it's not money, she finds it somewhere else. “It's when people come up to me and say they love my album, that it never leaves their CD player — especially when a girl comes up to me and says that and I can see the sincerity in her eyes and she's holding my hand. I could just tear up right there. That's like touching someone's soul. That to me is what life is about. That's the real shit right there, you know what I mean? The fact that I have those moments keep me going. Those are the moments that I'm doing this for.
“And maybe I will be just a line in some fish wrap someday,” she points out, “but my music, no one can take that away. It's always going to be there. Unless there's a nuclear war — which might happen — I'll always have that. It will always be there when I'm gone.”
Photo by Traci Goudie
Issue #27
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