Moxie interview

Edith Frost is a singer/songwriter extraordinaire and a real down-home gal. She recently migrated from the Big Apple to the City of Big Shoulders, but she still calls Austin her home town. Frost’s self-titled debut EP was released last year and her first full-length album is due out this spring. She also has a web site all about cowgirls.

What’s your first musical memory?

EF: I think, Do you know the song, "Those Were The Days?" The really old one. That one, I think. I remember hearing that when I was about four years old on the radio. And also we had these records, Disney records. I remember Burl Ives singing "Lavender Blue, Lavender Green." I really dug that song. The first group I got heavily into was the Carpenters. I bought every album I could. I was probably 10 or 11 — maybe a little too old for that. My friends didn’t like them at all.

What were your friends listening to?

EF: We’re talking ‘74 or ‘75. I don’t know, heavy metal stuff.

When did you start playing music?

EF: I had various music lessons when I was a kid. I never got enough lessons or practice to get good at any one thing, but my mother started me really early, taking piano. And I took cello, I took chorus in school. So really, since I was a tiny kid.

Did you like any one instrument more than the others?

EF: I remember disliking cello because I couldn’t get the hang of it. It was too cumbersome. I took music in college and really enjoyed that. But I got an acoustic guitar when I was 14. That was when I lived in Mexico.

You lived in Mexico?

EF: My parents got divorced when I was five. We lived in San Antonio then. We moved to Austin for three years. Then there was this sort of custody thing and we moved to Mexico — my mother, my sister and me. Actually, I think the custody fight came a year later. But my mother married a violinist who was invited to be the concert master in the Guadalajara symphony. I was in 4th grade.

How long did you live there?

EF: A little over six years, six and a half years. I went to the American School in Guadalajara. I kind of know Spanish, but not too well.

What was your favorite part about living in Mexico?

EF: I guess my friends.

Were you old enough to appreciate living in a different culture?

EF: No! You see, the whole time I was there, I was into American music and American culture. My dad would fly us to San Antonio for visits. I really was jealous of the kids who got to live in the States. I collected records. I really just wanted to be here, but it was great. The school I went to had 114 kids in the whole high school section so it was really tiny. When I moved back to Austin, there were 750 kids in the high school. The very first day of Austin High, I was playing Bombardment, which is like Battleball with basketballs (because it was raining), and I got hit in the forehead and had to go down to the nurse. I had these weird pimples coming up on my forehead. That was day one.

Did you celebrate any Mexican holidays? Day of The Dead?

EF: There is a really great parade for Day Of The Dead, but you have to get up at 6 A.M. to be on time. I refused to get up that early. My whole life I have not been a morning person. So I missed all of those parades. But it was all over the place, the imagery. I don’t know about in New York, but in grade school in Texas they teach you square-dancing. Well, in Mexico, we learned Tapatío dance, the big skirt dance. We had classes in the Mexican Hat Dance! In Mexico, if you were a girl you could get away with not taking P.E. by taking typing or Home Ec. So I took typing for three years straight.

You must be a good typist.

EF: Yeah, I’m a really great typist. That’s what I do for a living now. It’s paid off very well. But when I came back, I owed the rest of my high school career in P.E.

What were your musical inspirations? Did you idolize Karen Carpenter when you were a kid?

EF: I thought she was just so cool. I didn’t know about all the bad stuff. But gosh, this is really embarrassing, I thought it would be cool to be sisters with Karen Carpenter, to sing together.

Do you have any sisters or brothers?

EF: I have a younger sister, who’s 18 months younger than me, Lucie; then I have a younger half brother and sister, named John and Lilly, and they’re teenagers.

Did you ever sing with your sister?

EF: Well, when I was a kid, I tried. Lucie. I tried to get her to sing. We would attempt it. I remember trying to coach her. I would say, "You stay on the melody and I’ll do the harmony," and she would jump back to the harmony. She could probably sing if she wanted to… really put her mind to it… same genetics as I do. But it didn’t work at the time.

When did you start playing your own songs?

EF: Probably nineteen. The first song I wrote was called "Rom." You know, the comic book. There was this comic book called Rom about this cyber guy, who almost died. It was kinda like the Six Million Dollar Man. It went, [sings] "Skin of cold steel / Mostly machine." My boyfriend at the time was a musician. He was really into synthesizers and drum machines, so he had some sequenced songs that I did vocals for. We did a few things together, but I didn’t really start cranking with songs until I moved here. When I worked at the ad agency, I was the business manager in the music department. I worked for music producers and one of them was Stu Kuby who was the creative head of music. I gave him a tape. He was the first one who said, "This is really good shit. You should have a band." At first I was like, "Naaah." He told me I should have a band. But right after that, I showed up at the Ship’s Mast in Brooklyn and started doing open mics with this guy Wild Bill. He would play like he was Johnny Cash and I was Patsy Cline. I did only country stuff. I did an original tune really occasionally. The first real gig I had doing only my own material was opening for the Palace Brothers [1995]. I had a country band and a rockabilly band for a long time, but I’ve never had a band together for more than one gig doing my original stuff.

You had both a country and a rockabilly band?

EF: Well, this guy Tom Schmitz who works at Ear Wax, which is the record store on Bedford in my neighborhood, introduced me to this guy, Jeff Ragsdale, a guitar player from Austin (though I didn’t know him from before). This is ‘92 and he is an amazing country guitar player. He has that flowery, country, finger-picking kind of thing going on and we started getting together and playing old country songs. I’m really into Jean Shepard and Bonnie Guitar and Skeeter Davis and, of course, Patsy Cline and just all these country women — but old-timey stuff — and Loretta Lynn, old Loretta Lynn. So he would show up to the open mic, too. Jeff came up with the name Edith and the Marfa Lights. Marfa is a town in Texas, which I haven’t ever been to still. They have these weird lights in the trees. There are lights where there shouldn’t be any, because there are no people there. They say it is the lanterns of the ghosts of the settlers or something like that. That was the country band. We played mostly at the Ship’s Mast and a couple of times in the city. The rockabilly band was one I joined. They had lost their singer. I answered an ad in the Voice. The ad was so tempting, because it said something like "Rockabilly cat or kitten needed. If you’re into Wanda Jackson and Janis Martin and the Johnny Burnette Trio…"

What about the Holler Sisters?

EF: That’s me and my friend Deborah Moore. Deborah’s from Houston. She came to one of my Marfa Lights gigs at the Ship’s Mast and she came up to me and said, "You played a Lefty Frizzell song. Oh my God!" She went off to Houston right after that, but the second I met her I said, "I’ve got to be her friend, ’cause nobody knows music like that in New York." I sent her a tape in Houston. Almost as soon as she came back, we started singing together. I think we did an open mic at the Right Bank. We did poetry nights. There would be one or two poets and we’d sing. We only do covers. We don’t have any originals. It’s all Louvin Brothers, Coon Creek Girls, Stanley Brothers, Davis Sisters, anything with a lot of harmony. She plays ukelele and I play guitar and it’s just old-timey harmony stuff. We’re talking, like, 20’s and 30’s country more than anything else. She plays accordion too. She’s amazing. She turned me on to so much country music. I mainly just knew my 50’s country.

Tell me about your cowgirl web site.

EF: I started that in ‘95. As soon as I got online, I went crazy learning things and exploring. I immediately knew I wanted to have a web site. And of all the things I’m into, what could I do? I have lots of cowgirl artwork and junk that I’ve been collecting since I’ve been in New York. My mother asked me as I was leaving, "What do you want me to get for you? What do you want me to be hunting for you?" And I just said it, "Cowgirls." But I told her they have to be cool, old-timey. I figured that was broad enough that she wouldn’t be sending me too much of anything. So I have lots of old magazines, Japanese figurines from the ’40s, beer signs… just different things.

Who’s your favorite cowgirl?

EF: Well, it depends on your definition. I have a very broad definition of the word cowgirl. It’s more like an ideal. The American pioneer spirit embodied in a woman, but you’ve got to have the outfit, too. No, not necessarily. I’d say Patsy Montana. She was the first woman in country music to sell… well I don’t want to get my facts wrong.

Did she have the outfit?

EF: Oh yeah. She had a lot of good outfits. I picked the subject at random.

Was that your first web site?

EF: Yeah.

Did you teach yourself how to do it?

EF: Mainly, though I had a lot of help from a few people who I would e-mail and pester with questions. There is a guy named Clay Irving who runs the NYC Beer Guide and the NYC Reference, which is an all NYC site. I would bother him with questions. Soon after I learned, I got a freelance job at a web shop that does them for other companies. And I learned a lot as I did it. That’s still how you have to do it. If there’s something new to be learned, which there always is, you have to just find somebody who knows how to do it and read as much as you can. There is information on the web you can look up. It’s a lot of hours on the computer.

What’s your favorite of the web sites you’ve done?

EF: Right now I have the Palace one… I have added an Edith section. Before I had information of myself folded into the cowgirl site, but I thought there was more and more of stuff about Edith on there. I really wanted to separate the cowgirl stuff from the me stuff. Then, I have so many links. I have something like 400 links on my page, different sections, different categories. It’s all hooked together through this front page.

What made you want to do the Palace site? Are you a fan?

EF: I was campaigning Drag City. I really wanted to do their web site — just for the hell of it. And they had somebody they thought might do it for them. So I was frustrated. So I said, "Fuck it, I’m gonna do one about Palace." ‘Cause it’s my favorite band on Drag City. It’s the reason I sent my tape to Drag City to begin with. I’m a Palace geek. It’s almost embarrassing. I’m such a fan; he [Will Oldham] just bowls me over. He’s not a real talkative guy. I’m sure there will come a time when I get to break the ice, but I’m still just…

What would you like to have a conversation with Will about?

EF: I don’t know that we have all that much in common. Even just thinking about it I clam up. I don’t know. The last time I saw him, he was reading an autobiography about George Jones. You’d think I’d be able to talk to him about that, right?

Have you read the book?

EF: No, but I love George Jones. I’m stuck in a Hank Williams biography.

Which one?

EF: It’s the Colin Escott one.

Who’s your favorite author?

EF: Philip K. Dick. I collect his books. I have 40 some odd books. He had a total of 55 that he wrote. A few of them are out of print. I’ve read so many of them. There’s no way I could even tell you the plot lines of them all. A few of them stand out.

What do you like most about his books?

EF: I love science fiction, the hard-boiled, technical stuff. He’s not like that at all. You couldn’t even almost call it science fiction. It’s in the future, maybe, not even all of them. It’s usually just tripped out. It’s very psychological. There’s always this Everyman figure and shit happens to them and they just keep going no matter what strange things are happening to them. I don’t know why I identify with him. It’s kind of scary to think that I identify with a man like that, but I do.

Were you ever a Girl Scout?

EF: I was a Bluebird. Isn’t that the baby Girl Scout? It might be something else.

Campfire Girl?

EF: Yeah. That was first or second grade. I couldn’t do it. Ugh. I’m not big on that group stuff. Uniforms and all of that. It makes me shiver. My paternal grandmother had done a lot of work for the Boy Scouts. She even had a certificate on the wall.