Tara Jane O’Neil holds tight and lets go

By Jennifer Kelly
Published: May 5th, 2009 | 4:30am

On stage, Tara Jane O’Neil plays with unremitting focus; her brimmed hat is pulled low, her hair is cascading across her forehead, and her eyes are locked down on the frets and strings of her guitar. She sings with an inward-looking intensity that seems to draw the world into a small circle bound by her guitar, voice, and body. Although she plays with a drummer — and sometimes invites volunteers from the audience to pick up tambourines and shake percussion instruments to accompany her — she seems to work essentially alone, giving form to the dreamlike guitar textures and floating vocals she hears in her head.

Although O’Neil is unusually self-directed in her performance and has had a high degree of autonomy in her nearly decade-long solo career, she says that independence is no more important than collaboration and that too much control is not always a good thing. “Sometimes control belies the whole point of letting people in and trying to open up the structure,” she comments. “Sometimes I’d like there to be a little more openness and a little less control.”

O’Neil began her career in music as a teenager with the influential post-punk outfit Rodan, moving on to other musical projects Retsin and the Sonora Pine in the 1990s. In 2000, she released her first solo album, Peregrine (Quarterstick). Five full-lengths and three EPs have followed under her own name, as well as collaborations with artists like Papa M, Ida, Mirah, Michael Hurley, and Jackie-O Motherfucker.

O’Neil’s latest album, A Ways Away, balances inner vision with collaboration, drawing on the sounds and ideas of an eclectic group of fellow musicians — Jana Hunter, Mirah, New Bloods’ Osa Otoe, and others — to flesh out O’Neil’s songs. Recorded in a free-standing “mother-in-law house” at O’Neil’s Portland, Oregon, residence, the album began with just O’Neil, a drummer, and another guitarist laying down basic versions of songs she had been exploring at live shows.

Then O’Neil called in friends to contribute, often leaving them alone while they sang or played along with the basic tracks. Jana Hunter, who had toured with O’Neil, came in to sing on “In Tall Grass,” the album’s second track. “I didn’t really give her any direction,” O’Neil admits. “Usually I’ll invite people who I think [are] awesome in whatever way and just let them have a few turns at whatever they feel like putting in.”

In her own writing process, as well, O’Neil tapped into different modes of inspiration and influence for this album, for the first time working out song structures through live improvisation. During a spate of shows in 2006 and 2007, she began trying out new melodies and ideas on stage. “After a couple of days of playing the same songs, I’d need to do a little improvising to mix it up,” she explained. “Some of these songs were born as little sketches, little figures that kept coming up at shows. Pretty much anybody who saw me from the fall of 2006 until last summer got to watch me put together these songs.”

These songs, conceived live rather than in solitude with notebook and guitar, are linked by tone and melodic elements. “To me, they seem to come more from a sonic place than from written words,” says O’Neil. “There’s a definite timber running through the lyrics and the music, a pulse and certain melodic figures. It’s more of a song cycle, rather than each song being an entirely different kind of experience.”

With A Ways Away out on K Records soon, O’Neil continues to extend her personal capabilities through work with other artists. Whether touring as a member of Mirah’s band, putting together improvised noise rock with Japanese singer Nikaido Kazumi, or composing the soundtrack to a documentary on Pearl Harbor, she remains open to inspiration but committed to her own vision.

“I just happen to keep writing songs and I like to record them the way I hear them,” she says. “But at the same time, I love collaboration. It’s one of my favorite things to do. It opens up the songs in ways that I can’t do by myself.”

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