T
ift Merritt may never become the world-conquering star she was once forecast to be. But the North Carolina expat has discovered that the world is a lot more inspiring when experienced on your own terms. Critics are lauding Merritt’s fourth studio fulllength, See You On the Moon, as her best and most mature work yet. Much of that praise centers on Merritt’s return to the Triangle — and her choice of Durham’s Overdub Lane studio — for the recording sessions. And while old saws about home cooking and familiar stomping grounds apply, that’s just one piece of this record’s puzzle, and only one stop along Merritt’s ongoing journey. “Making a record is always this balance between your home — where you live, musically and in your heart — and also making your world bigger by pushing to new places, literally and figuratively,” Merritt says. Now more than a decade into her solo career, and having weathered both major label expectations and indifference during her tenure at Universal’s Lost Highway Records, Merritt’s made her world a lot bigger since her days fronting The Carbines and guestsinging on Two Dollar Pistols songs. She recorded her first three records in Los Angeles, now calls New York City home, and for See You on the Moon and 2008’s Another Country found inspiration while sequestered in Paris, sometimes for months at a time. She’s also proven to be musically restless. Her 2002 debut, Bramble Rose, was her first of two Lost Highway releases and fit snugly with that label’s roots rock roster. The Americana crowd rejoiced at the prospect of another potential Emmylou Harris or Roseanne Cash, but Merritt was hardly done growing as a songwriter. Nor did she want to make the same record over and over. So she moved on to a brassy, Memphis soul-meets-Nashville twang effort with 2004’s Tambourine, backed by luminaries like the Heartbreakers’ Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench, Gary Louris of the Jayhawks and Maria McKee. Despite heaps of critical kudos, record sales didn’t match the expectations brought by Tambourine’s Grammy Award nomination. Audience-size remained modest, and Merritt drifted into afterthought-status at Lost Highway. By her own accounts 2005 was a difficult, why-get-out-of-bed year during which she felt more “like a monkey than an artist,” as she later told the Independent Weekly. She even considered quitting the music business, but rebounded in a surprising way: a long-time Francophile, she rented a flat with a piano in Paris and began writing the songs from which Another Country emerged. Despite some initial interest in the demos, however, Lost Highway dropped Merritt in 2006. Undaunted, she eventually released the record on Bay area-based Fantasy Records, a label once known for its jazz roster but also the home for Creedence Clearwater Revival’s string of late-60s hit records. Another Country charted well, and in retrospect sounds and feels like a debut — or at least a new beginning. Much of that has to do with the freedom Merritt insisted on — and received — with her new deal. The narratives weren’t trope twang like Bramble Rose, but highly personal portraits and detailrich vignettes instead. The music embraced folk, soul, country Left: Photo by Jason Frank Rothenberg This Page: Photo by Bryan Reed
and even an en Français piano ballad, but eschewed the broad strokes and big names of Tambourine for subtle shadings and familiar bandmates. Merritt and her long-time band — bassist Jay Brown and drummer Zeke Hutchins, as well as newcomer and ex-Two Dollar Pistols’ guitar ace Scott McCall — toured hard behind Another Country, laying the foundation for the recording of See You On the Moon. Merritt hasn’t closed the circle by holding the sessions on familiar turf, but instead passed by the starting line on her way to making her musical world even bigger. “Some days I feel so glad that I’m not green anymore,” she says. “I’m always looking forward to putting that to use, and being a better, smarter home for the work that comes my way in the future. But I think it’s all about having my own voice and my own point of view and cultivating that. I think that this record is a good signpost.” Yet the script for See You On the Moon would have read differently if Merritt had recorded on the West Coast to accommodate her new producer, Portland-based Tucker Martine. That consideration was in the mix, but Martine instead suggested coming East to immerse himself in the band’s territory. That dovetailed with Merritt’s wish to “take this record back to North Carolina” and “build a fort in our backyard.” Three-and-a-half weeks of 12-hour studio days followed with the band building on Merritt’s demos. But that, too, was just part of the story. Their families might still live in North Carolina, but for Merritt and Hutchins, who’ve been partners for a decade and were married shortly before recording began, the sessions evolved into a more nostalgic homecoming. Time away from Overdub Lane was often spent ferrying Martine around to the band members’ most cherished local haunts, with everything from the local elementary schools they’d attended to preferred bars and hamburger joints on the itinerary. »
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