The Sit Down with Tift Merritt
Beloved, Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Tift Merritt has announced Sugar, her first album in nearly a decade, due out June 26 via One Riot. The album marks a defining new chapter for the North Carolina-bred artist, long regarded as one of Americana’s most influential voices.
Merritt stepped largely out of the spotlight following her 2017 album “Stitch of the World”, turning her focus toward raising her daughter, serving as a Practitioner-in-Residence at Duke University, helping shape the hotel reinvention of The Gables in Raleigh, NC and advocating for musician rights through the Artist Rights Alliance. That time away which was lived fully and on her own terms, quietly expanded her sense of purpose and laying the foundation for the songs that would become “Sugar” which fans in the UK will be able to hear live at a special album launch show in London at The Lower Third on June 28th which we looked ahead to when we recently spent some time with Tift over Zoom.
Hey Tift, how you doing? We’re excited for you to come back to see us later this month.
“I'm coming and I'm really excited. I can't wait.”
It's a super little venue where you're playing. The Lower Third is right in the middle of Soho, it's like downstairs kind of underneath the street, it's got a low stage and it's really fun. We like it there a lot and it's one of the good venues in town.
“That’s great. I'm so looking forward to being there.”
Are you are you just coming for work and push the record or are you here for a little bit and getting spend some time in town?
“I moonlight as an academic, so, I'm coming over to do several academic conferences in the UK and in France. I was hoping to do a few more shows, but it sounds like the World Cup is what everyone is focussed on in June, so it's not the time to do gigs.”
Well, football or soccer is like religion over here, but I take it that you enjoy coming over.
“I've got plenty to do. I've got my work cut out for me here, but I'm really pleased to be coming over, I love to be on your side of the ocean.”
Last year was the first time that you came to do stuff over here for quite a while and you played a tiny little festival when you were here.
“Yeah I did and that was really the first time I had toured. I guess I had done a handful of tours when I had been to Australia with Andrew Bird and I had done some shows with the mountain goats but I really have been focussed on raising my daughter.”
Merritt stepped largely out of the spotlight following her 2017 album “Stitch of the World”, turning her focus toward raising her daughter, serving as a Practitioner-in-Residence at Duke University, helping shape the hotel reinvention of The Gables in Raleigh, NC and advocating for musician rights through the Artist Rights Alliance. That time away which was lived fully and on her own terms, quietly expanded her sense of purpose and laying the foundation for the songs that would become “Sugar” which fans in the UK will be able to hear live at a special album launch show in London at The Lower Third on June 28th which we looked ahead to when we recently spent some time with Tift over Zoom.
Hey Tift, how you doing? We’re excited for you to come back to see us later this month.
“I'm coming and I'm really excited. I can't wait.”
It's a super little venue where you're playing. The Lower Third is right in the middle of Soho, it's like downstairs kind of underneath the street, it's got a low stage and it's really fun. We like it there a lot and it's one of the good venues in town.
“That’s great. I'm so looking forward to being there.”
Are you are you just coming for work and push the record or are you here for a little bit and getting spend some time in town?
“I moonlight as an academic, so, I'm coming over to do several academic conferences in the UK and in France. I was hoping to do a few more shows, but it sounds like the World Cup is what everyone is focussed on in June, so it's not the time to do gigs.”
Well, football or soccer is like religion over here, but I take it that you enjoy coming over.
“I've got plenty to do. I've got my work cut out for me here, but I'm really pleased to be coming over, I love to be on your side of the ocean.”
Last year was the first time that you came to do stuff over here for quite a while and you played a tiny little festival when you were here.
“Yeah I did and that was really the first time I had toured. I guess I had done a handful of tours when I had been to Australia with Andrew Bird and I had done some shows with the mountain goats but I really have been focussed on raising my daughter.”
Yeah, I noticed that it’s been a while since you put anything out too. “Sugar” is about to come out and that's gonna be the first album in nearly a decade so it sounds like life just has to take over at times.
“Yes, absolutely. I don't regret it for a second and she came on tour with me the last time I toured in the UK and in Europe besides last summer. I was on tour with Jason Isbell when she was about eighteen months old and that was when it was becoming clear to me that I wanted to give her something other than dragging her around from dressing room to dressing room. She needed roots and now she's old enough that she can come and it's really fun, or she can tell me what she thinks about the whole thing. Living on the road is not easy for an adult either, so there are lots of considerations to make.”
With the twelve songs that we've got on this project, obviously it has been a while since the record before. Were they basically just a culmination of songs that just came about during that time or was there a point where it was like, do you know what? I think it's time to make an album again.
“I mean, I've never stopped writing songs and I was working on an art project that was site specific to an asylum in my hometown that was being turned into a public park. I thought that was a place to go where big questions might live and you know, maybe somehow a creative response to the moment we're in now. So, I had been working on that for a long time in a more research based art project, sort of way and songs did come out of that. Then I had some things happen in my personal life that a bunch of songs came out of me and not long after that, I was approached by One Riot to make a record and at that point, I thought, okay, maybe I still have some things left to say. I sort of went back again to think about that finishing energy of if this is a record, what does it need? What's it missing? What do I need to do to get it over the line? So, it was floating around for a long time until it really got the intention that One Riot and my manager really said to me, you need to tell your story, it's important and that's not something that women hear very often in this business, so it meant a lot to me. I think that there's often a folklore about making a record that it springs forth fully formed overnight in some genius kind of way but I think it's always a process of inspiration and revision. Some things bubble up effortlessly and then there are things that you seek, you work at and you revise. Then there are things that you seek, hone and revise so, I'm really comfortable in that process at this point in my career. It just was extended over a few more years with a little more activity towards the end.”
With “Sugar” as the title track, was that one of the songs that you had a little bit earlier and it became the one you built around or the one that tied them together at the end?
“No, I don't think you can. You can't make a record knowing what it is, right? You can't name it until it's done. I mean, every once in a while, you know the heart of the record shows up, but you don't know until you go in the studio. I always thought that this record was gonna be called “I'm Trying to Sing All the Locks Off Your Heart” which is too long. “Sugar” is a song that I wrote when I had a period of writing where a lot came out of me, that was one that did and it really surprised me because in so many ways, it's a way that I earned my grit and my confidence from myself, addressing the fact that gatekeepers assign value to your worth as a person or an artist and it's really an interesting thing because they can't sing.”
“Yes, absolutely. I don't regret it for a second and she came on tour with me the last time I toured in the UK and in Europe besides last summer. I was on tour with Jason Isbell when she was about eighteen months old and that was when it was becoming clear to me that I wanted to give her something other than dragging her around from dressing room to dressing room. She needed roots and now she's old enough that she can come and it's really fun, or she can tell me what she thinks about the whole thing. Living on the road is not easy for an adult either, so there are lots of considerations to make.”
With the twelve songs that we've got on this project, obviously it has been a while since the record before. Were they basically just a culmination of songs that just came about during that time or was there a point where it was like, do you know what? I think it's time to make an album again.
“I mean, I've never stopped writing songs and I was working on an art project that was site specific to an asylum in my hometown that was being turned into a public park. I thought that was a place to go where big questions might live and you know, maybe somehow a creative response to the moment we're in now. So, I had been working on that for a long time in a more research based art project, sort of way and songs did come out of that. Then I had some things happen in my personal life that a bunch of songs came out of me and not long after that, I was approached by One Riot to make a record and at that point, I thought, okay, maybe I still have some things left to say. I sort of went back again to think about that finishing energy of if this is a record, what does it need? What's it missing? What do I need to do to get it over the line? So, it was floating around for a long time until it really got the intention that One Riot and my manager really said to me, you need to tell your story, it's important and that's not something that women hear very often in this business, so it meant a lot to me. I think that there's often a folklore about making a record that it springs forth fully formed overnight in some genius kind of way but I think it's always a process of inspiration and revision. Some things bubble up effortlessly and then there are things that you seek, you work at and you revise. Then there are things that you seek, hone and revise so, I'm really comfortable in that process at this point in my career. It just was extended over a few more years with a little more activity towards the end.”
With “Sugar” as the title track, was that one of the songs that you had a little bit earlier and it became the one you built around or the one that tied them together at the end?
“No, I don't think you can. You can't make a record knowing what it is, right? You can't name it until it's done. I mean, every once in a while, you know the heart of the record shows up, but you don't know until you go in the studio. I always thought that this record was gonna be called “I'm Trying to Sing All the Locks Off Your Heart” which is too long. “Sugar” is a song that I wrote when I had a period of writing where a lot came out of me, that was one that did and it really surprised me because in so many ways, it's a way that I earned my grit and my confidence from myself, addressing the fact that gatekeepers assign value to your worth as a person or an artist and it's really an interesting thing because they can't sing.”
Looking at the credits, you wrote eleven of them on your own and there's only “Someone To Watch The Band With Me” that you had a co-writer on and that was with Daniel Tashian. How did that one come about?
"Well, I met Daniel and Willow at a retreat in France, that was really my introduction to One Riot. They invited me to go to a writing retreat in France and to be honest with you, I don't generally co-write and I definitely don't enjoy co-writing lyrics, but if you ask me to go to France, I'm gonna go. So, I met Daniel in France and I was really thinking, okay, I'm gonna go to this and nobody's gonna know me or care about my work, and he was so kind to me. He was so kind to me and he was so supportive of the songs that I was writing, so we became friends in France. Then we did a sister event in Nashville and at that point, I was trying to book studio dates to record, so I knew that if there was anything missing on the record, it was something very specific. I just tried to think of something really direct from my own life that I could bring into a community, into a room of people that would make us laugh, bring us together and make us feel like we were in a band. Being inundated by slop content, being able to get any kind of anything that you really don't need on your computer, yet really not having that person to hold the hands with, watch the band and not knowing how to find that. Like, there's this kind of idea of connectedness that is so disconnected in our modern world and I wanted to find a really direct human way to sing about that. What I do find I really enjoy from co-writing is finding different rhythms, finding different groups and getting out of my muscle memory with my guitar playing or my piano playing and then in one morning, we kind of rocked that one out and it was really fun."
It's really fun, I like that one a lot. I think that's going to be a really cool one to hear live as well and I'm interested to see how you change that up and strip it back.
"Well, I really hope that I get to do some full band touring with this record because playing electric guitar on this record was really fun. Yeah. We had a couple of four-piece gigs and it felt great to get my electric guitar back out."
Hopefully doing the record with Lawrence (Rothman) gave you plenty of opportunities to play your electric. What made him a really good fit for you to work with as the producer for this project?
“Well, I met Lawrence on that same writing retreat in France and I actually, did a session with him and Daniel on the first day. As I was singing in this mobile studio, he was dancing and just being like when you go on TV, you're gonna have to throw your stuff off and he was so fun. I was like, why is this guy gonna have any idea about my work or care about it but he just was overwhelmingly kind to me, interested in what I was writing and enthusiastic about it. I’d been perfectly happy off stage, it really took some kindness and some coaxing to get me back and he was so enthusiastic. The other thing that is really important about what Lawrence sees and was able to hold in the studio is that he has this amazing rock and roll sensibility that is extremely inclusive of emotional vulnerability. He gets the fact that vulnerability is sexy, that honesty and rawness is really what rock and roll about is about. I think sometimes when you get in the studio and you have a vulnerable song, a lot of times, the assumption is that this is a woman that's a shrinking flower and this needs to be held with kid gloves and it's a flower that falls apart. When really, that kind of vulnerability and rawness is what rock and roll is all about. I was really appreciative of the space for the amount of honesty and rawness that's in this record, along with the energy, the joy and release of that vulnerability and rawness which I think is a really important combination.”
"Well, I met Daniel and Willow at a retreat in France, that was really my introduction to One Riot. They invited me to go to a writing retreat in France and to be honest with you, I don't generally co-write and I definitely don't enjoy co-writing lyrics, but if you ask me to go to France, I'm gonna go. So, I met Daniel in France and I was really thinking, okay, I'm gonna go to this and nobody's gonna know me or care about my work, and he was so kind to me. He was so kind to me and he was so supportive of the songs that I was writing, so we became friends in France. Then we did a sister event in Nashville and at that point, I was trying to book studio dates to record, so I knew that if there was anything missing on the record, it was something very specific. I just tried to think of something really direct from my own life that I could bring into a community, into a room of people that would make us laugh, bring us together and make us feel like we were in a band. Being inundated by slop content, being able to get any kind of anything that you really don't need on your computer, yet really not having that person to hold the hands with, watch the band and not knowing how to find that. Like, there's this kind of idea of connectedness that is so disconnected in our modern world and I wanted to find a really direct human way to sing about that. What I do find I really enjoy from co-writing is finding different rhythms, finding different groups and getting out of my muscle memory with my guitar playing or my piano playing and then in one morning, we kind of rocked that one out and it was really fun."
It's really fun, I like that one a lot. I think that's going to be a really cool one to hear live as well and I'm interested to see how you change that up and strip it back.
"Well, I really hope that I get to do some full band touring with this record because playing electric guitar on this record was really fun. Yeah. We had a couple of four-piece gigs and it felt great to get my electric guitar back out."
Hopefully doing the record with Lawrence (Rothman) gave you plenty of opportunities to play your electric. What made him a really good fit for you to work with as the producer for this project?
“Well, I met Lawrence on that same writing retreat in France and I actually, did a session with him and Daniel on the first day. As I was singing in this mobile studio, he was dancing and just being like when you go on TV, you're gonna have to throw your stuff off and he was so fun. I was like, why is this guy gonna have any idea about my work or care about it but he just was overwhelmingly kind to me, interested in what I was writing and enthusiastic about it. I’d been perfectly happy off stage, it really took some kindness and some coaxing to get me back and he was so enthusiastic. The other thing that is really important about what Lawrence sees and was able to hold in the studio is that he has this amazing rock and roll sensibility that is extremely inclusive of emotional vulnerability. He gets the fact that vulnerability is sexy, that honesty and rawness is really what rock and roll about is about. I think sometimes when you get in the studio and you have a vulnerable song, a lot of times, the assumption is that this is a woman that's a shrinking flower and this needs to be held with kid gloves and it's a flower that falls apart. When really, that kind of vulnerability and rawness is what rock and roll is all about. I was really appreciative of the space for the amount of honesty and rawness that's in this record, along with the energy, the joy and release of that vulnerability and rawness which I think is a really important combination.”
Lastly you mentioned that you took some time off stage for a little while and right now, a lot of my friends are in Nashville for CMA Fest where they are spending far too much time down on lower Broadway and the amount of people that are opening their own bar down that street is crazy, but I think you're the first person I've spoken to that's gone much bigger. Why settle for your own bar when you can have your own hotel? How did everything with this eighteen-room boutique hotel fall into place?
"Well, I think it's important to just be super honest and say, none of this was linear narrative as my instincts never make any sense to anybody else. The Gables came out of happenstance, a moment of not knowing what to do next and a lot of friendships. When I came home from that Jason Isbell tour with my daughter, I knew that that was the last tour for a while, or maybe ever and I did not know. I had been living in New York and I had moved back to be near my parents to raise my daughter near family and I really did not know what I was gonna do. Somebody sent me a listing for this property that I'd driven by for the most of my life here in Raleigh and always wondered about. It was funky, interesting and I thought maybe that was where cool Bohemians smoked cigarettes or something but with price was slashed and it was obviously a complicated project. One of my best friends is a boutique hotel pioneer in Texas, her name is Liz Lambert and if you've ever been to SXSW, I'm so sure that you've had drinks or stayed at one of her hotels. I just called her and I said, I know people ask you this every day and I know you're gonna tell me no, but should I do this? She said, yeah T Bird, I think you should get off the road and become a madam. She had consulted on a hotel here in North Carolina and she said, I can't be your partner, it's too far away but you need to go talk to this man, Daniel Robinson. He had opened a hotel called The Durham and it's really a community pillar in that town, but he had been looking for something to do in Raleigh, which is an adjacent city, so he and I met, we had a bunch of mutual friends, a bunch of interests in common and we hit it off, then we got to work. Now, that was eight years ago, we’ve rezoned the hotel, we weathered a pandemic and we weathered a banking crisis so you know, we've been really patient and it was all a happy accident that this was all bubbling up at the same time. But, you know, I have a great love of easy conversation across disciplines, economy of motion and setting a table of people that you want to be with and make good things with so, it made a lot of sense with how much I've travelled and how I want to help be a place where there's a creative conversation and a really good dinner party happening at the same time."
The new album “Sugar” from Tift Merritt will be released via One Riot on June 26th and is available to pre-save HERE. Tift will play a special album launch show, with a Q&A and signing, at London’s The Lower Third on June 28th with tickets available HERE whilst you can learn more about all of Tift’s forthcoming dates on her WEBSITE or you can follow along socially on INSTAGRAM or FACEBOOK.
"Well, I think it's important to just be super honest and say, none of this was linear narrative as my instincts never make any sense to anybody else. The Gables came out of happenstance, a moment of not knowing what to do next and a lot of friendships. When I came home from that Jason Isbell tour with my daughter, I knew that that was the last tour for a while, or maybe ever and I did not know. I had been living in New York and I had moved back to be near my parents to raise my daughter near family and I really did not know what I was gonna do. Somebody sent me a listing for this property that I'd driven by for the most of my life here in Raleigh and always wondered about. It was funky, interesting and I thought maybe that was where cool Bohemians smoked cigarettes or something but with price was slashed and it was obviously a complicated project. One of my best friends is a boutique hotel pioneer in Texas, her name is Liz Lambert and if you've ever been to SXSW, I'm so sure that you've had drinks or stayed at one of her hotels. I just called her and I said, I know people ask you this every day and I know you're gonna tell me no, but should I do this? She said, yeah T Bird, I think you should get off the road and become a madam. She had consulted on a hotel here in North Carolina and she said, I can't be your partner, it's too far away but you need to go talk to this man, Daniel Robinson. He had opened a hotel called The Durham and it's really a community pillar in that town, but he had been looking for something to do in Raleigh, which is an adjacent city, so he and I met, we had a bunch of mutual friends, a bunch of interests in common and we hit it off, then we got to work. Now, that was eight years ago, we’ve rezoned the hotel, we weathered a pandemic and we weathered a banking crisis so you know, we've been really patient and it was all a happy accident that this was all bubbling up at the same time. But, you know, I have a great love of easy conversation across disciplines, economy of motion and setting a table of people that you want to be with and make good things with so, it made a lot of sense with how much I've travelled and how I want to help be a place where there's a creative conversation and a really good dinner party happening at the same time."
The new album “Sugar” from Tift Merritt will be released via One Riot on June 26th and is available to pre-save HERE. Tift will play a special album launch show, with a Q&A and signing, at London’s The Lower Third on June 28th with tickets available HERE whilst you can learn more about all of Tift’s forthcoming dates on her WEBSITE or you can follow along socially on INSTAGRAM or FACEBOOK.