In her own words
Issue #29
Amy Millan spills details on the making of her first solo release
By Kristina Francisco
Published: September 1st, 2006 | 12:00am
Through her work with Stars, the Montreal-based quartet that released 2005’s regarded Set Yourself on Fire, Amy Millan has proven herself to be a capable vocalist. With her solo debut, Honey from the Tombs, Millan takes a different turn, penning and singing a few country-tinged tunes. Here, she explains that it’s an album that’s been in the making since Millan was a teenager.
Hanging from a subway bar, after much underage drinking at a bar called The Misty Mug, I fall hard, my body heavy with booze. My leg is broken, operated and opened, screws, plates, pins, and all things metal. I am bed-bound for five weeks.
I am 15, miserable and hung-over. My mom says, “Make yourself useful,” and puts my dad’s old guitar and a chord book in my hand.
I suppose there is always a beginning.
It was the G chord that led me into the basements and bedrooms of boys who held mandolins and dark ladies who hid behind pianos. I realized I could get quiet revenge when suffering from mild or catastrophic rejection with a simple turn of phrase and a chorus. I got hooked on controlled, sing-song endings. That was the beginning of Honey from the Tombs.
With the help of neighbors, thieves, and high-school friends, we gathered together in the late nights and early mornings to multi-track my past. Ian Blurton, the producer, and the one I call “The Beard,” likes to start his day with a cold four-sugar triple espresso. He always snaps the ends off his cigarettes to make them smaller, so I remember lots of loose tobacco spilled onto amps and old studio magazines with names similar to Out Board Wire and the like.
I didn't have very much money, but I always made sure that there were hot sandwiches and cold beer.
We recorded “Baby I” at 5:30 in the morning as all the studios had been booked during the day. Dan Whiteley, Jenny Whitely, Joey Wright, and the kid, Mark Roy, were toxic soldiers and we were able to lay the groundwork for four songs that night.
I later brought in the three broken KC Accidentals who obviously have an agreement with the wounds of space. Pole star keyboards and distorted monster base took “Skinny Boy” out of the barn.
I had other weapons; the bluegrass number “Blue In Yr Eye” came from the band sitting around only one microphone. The banjo player, Chris Quinn, had to tuck himself into the far corner of the room and leap forward when it was his solo. I wanted the record to sound like the basements I grew up in. I wasn't keen on cotton-candy overdubs.
It was left to The Beard and me to bring it all together. We had 18 songs on three different formats: two-inch tape, quarter-inch tape, and ProTools. It was a mess. "Wayward and Parliament” was a song I hated in particular. The Beard kicked me out of the studio while he mixed and matched it, and in turn, it became one of my favorites songs on the record.
After all the hovering summer nights alone on a porch and the winter days when I would cross my fingers on an old futon, I finally finished the record.
To twist the things that tear you down into a 12-song jewel case sends you to the next chapter.
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