HOME > SOVO SCENE > MUSIC
COMMENTS |
| 
The cover of “In the Eyes of Strangers,” the new album by lesbian singer-songwriter Melissa Ferrick, introduces fans to Ferrick’s partner of the past 12 years.
“Her name is Moon. I’ve had her since she was a kitten,” Ferrick explains. Sometime during the photo shoot, which took place at Ferrick’s home, the anxious singer got tired of standing for photos and asked her manager to snap a picture of her and the cat. The manager liked the idea, and the photos.
“And it ended up being the album cover,” quips Ferrick.
Moon’s presence on the cover of “Strangers,” could be the last remnant of the Melissa Ferrick fans have followed since her debut in 1993. As Ferrick tells it, she is a musician on the move.
“You get to different places in your life where you say, ‘if this doesn’t change, I’m going to find something else to do because there’s no challenge in this,’” she says.
The singer admits to being drained after a grueling two years of touring in support of “The Other Side,” her 2004 CD that found her playing nearly all the instruments and settling the arrangements on the record by herself.
With “Strangers,” Ferrick brought in friends new and old for the recording process. And she says she’s ushered in a raucous new sound.
“It really helps separate me from the onslaught of female singer songwriters with guitars,” she says. “There’s so many singer-songwriters around, especially women, you kind of get slotted into this idea in people’s heads.”
Ferrick celebrates the release of “Strangers” with an Atlanta concert on Dec. 9 at Vinyl in Atlanta Live.
“It’s really hard to say to people, think Pete Townsend instead of Jewel,” she continues. “It just seems like it’s easier for guys to be seen as in a band instead of girls.”
But Ferrick is not complaining. She acknowledges that much of her career unfolded in pubs and listening rooms across the world, the stomping grounds of countless would be folk singing, string strumming, singer-songwriters everywhere. The new album is about differentiating her image from everyone else.
“That feels like what I’ve come up against, and its what I’m trying to define right now,” she says. “Inside my heart, I’m really a rocker and a band-fronter.”
Fans are quickly adapting to the new sound that’s a natural extension of the music that built her solid fan base, she says.
“It’s an interesting place to be in when you’re a musician,” she says. “My younger fans, who seemed to kind of dwindle in the last couple years, like to dance and stand up, and they show up to the bars and the theaters. My older fans who come to the listening rooms want to sit down and hear the music.”
With her band support, Ferrick is aiming to break into venues that will accommodate fans of all ages.
“I hope that this record and this tour help me break into those theaters. Getting into larger rooms helps sell tickets,” she wagers.
Even with a band behind her on stage, Ferrick has firm foothold in the direction of her own career, and remains focused on growing. When major and indy label sponsorship fizzled, she started her own Right On Records in 2000. Six years later, she’s confident that she’s got the hang of balancing the roles of artist and record executive.
“To be completely honest, it was really a tax situation, where I needed to incorporate,” she says of forming the label, on which she is the sole recording artist.
And any jitters about failing to secure space on record store shelves are gone, she says.
“Now, six years later, I have national distribution that I’m really happy with,” she says. “Every year that goes by, it seems less and less of a need to be with another label.”
No doubt, her confidence was boosted by fans willing to invest in a new Ferrick record before a single disc is pressed. She says fans donated about half of the $20,000 recording budget for “Strangers.” The rest she financed on credit cards, though she is careful to expediently repay those debts.
“Every time you sell 20 albums on the road, you’ve got to send that back home,” she says of her strategy. “I’m almost out of debt, I’m happy to say.”
“In the Eyes of Strangers” was recorded over 11 days in a studio in Boston, close to Ferrick’s home base of Newburyport, Mass. The title of the album hearkens a sentiment Ferrick says most artists experience at ...
| 
