Edith Frost: A Wonder Wonder of a Voice

Edith Frost’s finest asset is her voice. No, not the husky, supple one that belts in an alt-country twang with Liz Phair slackness — though that is one of the first things you notice when listening to her music. We’re talking instead about the distinctive perspective that comes across in Frost’s original songwriting (i.e., her writing voice). Frost’s diverse life experiences, including a Texas upbringing, years spent struggling in Brooklyn, and flourishing in windy Chicago, have supplied the singer/songwriter not only with the seeds for good songs, but also with plenty of angles with which to approach that material. The resulting tunes, which appear on two full-length albums, a handful of singles and EPs, and now a stunning new record, Wonder Wonder, have made Frost a critic’s darling and an underground favorite.

Elements of all sorts of music seep into Frost’s tunes, though not in the conspicuous genre-hopping mold of Beck, Ween, or the Beta Band. Her approach is more seamless. Frost’s early adulthood working at Austin, Texas’s finest head shop exposed her to that city’s hallucinogenic music cross-pollination, from Butthole Surfer punk to old time country and western to early ’80s goth. In New York, Frost worked for a few years at Muze, a large music database, where she spent hours going through huge stacks of discs, cataloging who played trumpet on David Byrne’s third solo album and who engineered the first Mercury Rev record. Beyond overloading the music trivia storage tanks of her brain, the job gave Frost the opportunity to listen to a wide range of music, as well as interact with a creative bunch of future music critics and musicians. That may explain the wisps of Will Oldham’s country dirges, Patsy Cline’s torch songs, or even psychedelic pop in the twelve cuts on Wonder Wonder.

It was while in New York that Frost decided to send an unsolicited package containing some of her four track demos to Drag City Records, mainly because she liked some Palace Brothers records she had heard on the label. Surprisingly, Drag City wrote her back and wanted to work with her. With her marriage coming to an end, and an excellent first record, Calling Over Time, about to be released, Frost took the leap and moved to Chicago, Drag City’s home base. There, she has become an integral part of the scene, appearing on albums by the Mekons, Jon Langford, Kelly Hogan, Songs:Ohia, and Gastr del Sol (who also supported her musically on her first album). She has even become integrated enough into the Second City’s musical history that one of her songs appears in John Cusack’s High Fidelity. In the movie, Frost’s "On Hold" is a song attributed to Lisa Bonet’s character. "I’m the voice of Lisa Bonet!" Edith was happy to tell us. "I was living off that money for six months, so I was glad to let her pretend it was her own."

Like many talented artists, Frost works hard to make a living as a professional musician. Musictoday caught up with the singer as she was preparing to head out on three week U.S. tour in support of Wonder Wonder.

Musictoday: Are you still doing Web design for a day job?

Edith Frost: No, no. The only HTML I’m doing is my own site. Up until the end of ’98 — when I first moved out here [to Chicago] — I had a job at a part time thing, at a Web boutique that did other Web sites. It’s just kind of a pain in the ass.

Mt: So you do everything for your site?

EF: Yeah. Well, I don’t take all the pictures and all, but I do all the coding. Everything that’s changed is by me, you know? I gather material, as far as photos, press materials that other people have written. Nobody touches that thing but me!

Mt: Are you making a living off of being a musician now?

EF: Well, not a very good living. Last year was easier, because High Fidelity came out and I got a chunk of change from that, which made me not want to do shows for a while [Laughs], ’cause I was able to be at home and work. No, I really don’t [make a good living] at this point. It gets a little better every year in that regard, and the more I tour, the more it helps in every way. It helps in record sales and cash, you know?

Mt: Obviously, the end goal is to become self-sufficient off of that, correct?

EF: Well, s**t yeah!

Mt: What can people expect from your live show, in terms of musicians and such?

EF: I get whomever I can, basically. I just find out where and when I’m playing, and then I know all these people, so I make phone calls. I don’t like going out without at least Ryan Hembrey, who is the bass player. I just pick whoever is available from that point on. I hate — I won’t go out solo.

Mt: You don’t go out solo anymore at all?

EF: I do shows here and there. But it’s just so much easier to play with other people, you know?

Mt: It’s the collaboration?

EF: Yeah, and the moral support. You know? I remember doing the Knitting Factory [in New York] solo — I think it was a CMJ [Music Marathon] thing — and I arrived at the show alone, and I left alone, with my guitar. That’s no fun at all!

Mt: In terms of collaborating, it’s always interesting to see who’s playing on your records, and who you’re playing with on other records. How does that come about?

EF: Luck of the draw.

Mt: Do you just see who’s around as you start a session?

EF: Rian [Murphy] has been the one — at least for the records — who has handled that, except for Telescopic, which was produced by Neil Hagerty [of Royal Trux]. On that one, we had a few extra people — which was mostly Neil’s doing — like the violin player, and Amy [Domingues]. That’s how I met Amy, the cellist. Rian, on the first album, Calling Over Time, he was the one who, you know, rounded up all those guys — the Gastr del Sol guys [David Grubbs and Jim O'Rourke].

Mt: So they were his contacts? He introduced you to them?

EF: Well, I was living in New York. I had no idea who these people were when I [was just getting started with Drag City]. When Drag City first sent me a pile of CDs, that was the first time I had heard Gastr. So, I knew who they were. And it was kind of the same thing with Neil. I had heard Royal Trux. In that case, it was Neil who approached Drag City and said, "I want to do Edith’s second record."

Mt: With that first album, did you go in with skeletal songs that were then fleshed out?

EF: Yeah, I had had the demos, and at that point, I was living in New York, so it was all by FedEx. Playing songs over the phone. All I really had were these four track demos that were just guitar and voice. And they might have had harmony or maybe a little keyboard part, but nothing fancy at all. I didn’t imagine… I always try to think of the next song and move on to another one.

Mt: Once it’s on tape, you move forward?

EF: Yeah. I don’t know; I feel like I’m not a bass player, so I don’t want to have to be the one to think about what’s going to happen in the area of bass. I know somebody else could do it a lot better, so I don’t worry about it. On the demo, that is.

Mt: So you do leave a lot up to your collaborators once you’re in the studio?

EF: Yeah, it’s pretty obvious. There’s big gaps in the songs and I just say, "Go to town."

That collaborative process has resulted in another fine record, Wonder Wonder, which was released in July. Frost’s musical supporting cast includes Archer Prewitt (of the Sea and Cake), Glenn Kotche (from Wilco), and Rick Rizzo (formerly of Eleventh Dream Day). Produced once again by Rian Murphy, this time with the celebrated indie pioneer Steve Albini engineering in his own Electrical Audio studio, Wonder Wonder shows off Frost’s talented songwriting, which really does sound like few other artists’ work. While "Cars And Parties" fits in with retro-minded groups like the Ladybug Transistor, songs like "Easy To Love" and "You’re Decided" really do make an argument that Frost should be considered the alt-country Patsy Cline.

Mt: There’s definitely a big difference in the arrangement between songs on the new album. "Cars And Parties" and "Wonder Wonder" both sound like ’60s pop versus the more alt-country tunes.

EF: We played around a lot. But it’s amazing, cause it’s so compact. It took only maybe one day longer than the other studio albums did to record.

Mt: How long was that?

EF: Calling Over Time was six days for recording, overdubs, and mixing. I’m pretty sure Telescopic was, too — six days; five or six. We did that one all in Virginia. This one we did in two pieces, a month-and-a-half apart; one was around Thanksgiving of this past year, and the other was in January. Something like that. In the first go around, we did all of the basic tracks, and we were able to sit on it, and listen to the dirty mixes. We hadn’t done any overdubs at that point, so we had time to think about what was needed — what needed help. A whole lot of what you hear on this record is in the basic tracks. We had the big room at Electrical, which is Steve Albini’s studio. I think it was just because he had it free. I’m not sure. At any rate, we had this giant f**king room; it was amazing. He just had all the gear — we had eight or nine musicians playing at once.

Mt: So you cut the basic tracks live then?

EF: Basically, yes. You can tell where, in the middle of a song, clarinets pop up — that was an overdub. The vocals: I did scratch vocals during the basic tracks, and then went back and redid them.

Mt: Are there any songs that you approached differently when you went back and redid them?

EF: We didn’t redo any tracks. There were a couple of tunes that we had cut basic tracks for that we ended up blowing off, just because we didn’t feel like the version was good or the way we had intended. That was the same thing for the other records, too. You record a couple more, just in case one of the songs turns out to be a dud. The song "Further" we recorded for Calling Over Time; that was one of the songs that got cut, because it was just a feeble version that we did. It just didn’t come out right. Now, we got it right.

Mt: Is there still a lot of material you are recording solo in your house?

EF: I have to do that to write it. I mean, I ended up buying a digital eight track, a Korg thing. It’s nothing fancy, other than the fact that its digital, but it’s really small, no bigger than a laptop. I have a little more capability than I used to, a couple more tracks I can play with. Other than that, it’s almost the same — I’m using the same microphone I had fifteen years ago. I’ve always preserved those demos. I’ve never been able to improve my own personal recording quality. But it’s good — every couple of years, I can record an album, get into a real studio, and I don’t have to worry about it [improving home recording quality].

Mt: Do you pick out the best songs to record yourself?

EF: Rian has all my tapes, and every time I write a new song, I’ll give him a tape of it — or a CD now. We do it together. For each record, there’ll be a list of the 25 we’ve got to do, and we’ll cut it down to the 15 we should really try to record. It’s a process. Usually, there’s some tunes that Rian’s all psyched about and I’m just like, "Oh God, no!" A couple, he’s won me over in the end, like he’s got some arrangement in mind that I didn’t foresee.

Mt: What’s one like that on the new album?

EF: "Hear My Heart." I had written that one back even before I worked at Muze. To me, it sounds really childish. I can hear how young I sound in that song. I sound — I don’t know — really innocent.

Mt: But you like what he did to it?

EF: Oh, yeah. I was kind of iffy about "The Fear," because it’s kind of like a nursery rhyme or something, so I thought it might sound a little retarded. But we did it dramatically enough that it overcame the extreme simplicity of the lyrics. I’m so critical. With "Honey Please," I was like, "It’s so normal! It’s a normal country song," and Rian was like, "but the title is so saucy. We’ve got to do that one." That one came out really good with the violin.

Mt: It’s an interesting sequence on the album. There’s a lot of slower material at the front, and then it ends with three songs that are the most country-esque on the record.

EF: I labored on the sequence. On the other albums, I pretty much let Rian do it. I was like, "I don’t know." I had ideas about what songs I wanted first and such, but he pretty much had the concept. But this time, I started thinking about song keys, how you couldn’t have this one next to the other one, because they’re both 3/4 and you don’t want two songs in a row like that. You have to spread everything apart. There are two songs with bass harmonica that we didn’t want right next to each other. But I think they ended up that way anyway ["Cars And Parties" and "Wonder Wonder"]. I asked for everyone else to make a list of what they thought their dream sequence would be. I promptly threw all those away. [Laughs] Just kidding. Another thing that affected it was that some songs had really long dovetail vocals at the end, that had to fall at the end of a record, or the end of a side at least.

Mt: So you still think in terms of record sides?

EF: Yeah.

Mt: Is Drag City putting out vinyl for this album?

EF: Yeah, yeah. I still feel like it’s only real when I can put that needle on a record. Anyone can make a CD. But to press something to vinyl, that’s, like, major to me. I buy CDs, but I still collect vinyl. I have about fourteen feet of vinyl.

Mt: So who is going to be on the road with you in September?

EF: Well, there’s been a last minute change or two. I was going to have Steve Dorocke, who plays pedal steel on the record, but he can’t come now. There’s Jim Becker, who we’ve done one or two shows with — you can call him the new guy, though — he plays guitar and violin and keyboards. Ryan Hembrey is coming; he plays bass. He’s also been starting to do some backing vocals, which sounds really nice. I’m so psyched. This is the first time [I've had someone doing vocals with me on the road]. For this album, me and Archer [Prewitt] were doing some of those vocals at the ends of the songs, and Kelly Hogan was supposed to be there, but we were having a blizzard and she couldn’t get out of her driveway, so we only had two people. We wanted this chorus thing and we were like, "Ryan, come on, come on, you gotta come out here!" And he did. I think that was the first time he had ever opened his mouth on a record and now he’s getting less shy about it. The drummer is Adam Vida; he has a band called Central Falls, who is due to release a record in February. He’s also a guitarist. He’s a really talented kid. And last but not least, Amy [Domingues] is coming, which I’m really excited about. She also plays keyboards and Ryan plays keys, so we’re going to bring at least one keyboard with us. Everybody plays multiple instruments.

In "Cars And Parties," Frost sings "everywhere I go reminds me of some place down in Texas." For a songwriter so in touch with her roots (both musical and geographical), it does seem surprising that she would be based in Chicago, the home of the Smashing Pumpkins’ alt rock, Tortoise’s progressive jazz-rock, and electric blues. Just as it works in her music, however, Frost’s life in Chicago seems ideal for her. Texas, though, still obviously plays a role in her psyche.

Mt: How does Texas seep into your music?

EF: I’ve always listened to all different types of music, and when I grew up, I wasn’t really into country music and none of my family really was either. I didn’t hear it very often, in fact, unless I was out. I had a really bad attitude about it, so I can’t say I was brought up, you know, loving this thing. It was really later, in my late teens, where I started hearing old time rockabilly and that led me into female country and old time things like the Carter Family. On the other hand, when I was learning to sing and play the guitar at the same time, the easiest way for me to do that, and get my sea legs, was country songs. They’re easy to play — they’re three chords, they’re fun, they’re catchy, easy to remember, and for some reason, my hands naturally fell into that swingy, clippity-cloppity way to play. Now, it’s hard, because that’s how I’ve learned to accompany myself, so it’s hard to get out of that swing. I have a few songs that are really hard for me to play, because they have a straight beat.

Mt: Do you feel like you are part of a scene in Chicago?

EF: It’s a small town in Chicago, in that regard. Everyone knows each other. I think it’s similar in Austin. I didn’t find it to be that way so much in New York. [Chicago is a place] where everyone knows each other and everyone has collaborated with each other at least one time. It really does work that way here. I don’t know why, but it’s just very conducive to that here. We have very good audiences that actively go out to see live music, and that’s the starting point. You have a lot of places to play and really supportive owners and booking people, who don’t segregate very much, as far as "We’re not the country bar." [They'll book] any kind of music, anywhere, almost. In Austin, it’s not really like that. Everything tends to go to its own club: the indie bands play at Emo’s, etc.

Mt: Are you making it back to Austin this tour?

EF: Yeah! I’m playing at Stubb’s, the Barbecue place.

Mt: Is that a good place for you to play?

EF: I don’t know — I haven’t been there yet. We used to eat Stubb’s when the owner was alive. He used to operate out of Antone’s club, and it was the best barbecue ever on earth, and I miss it terribly.

Mt: So, are you going to comp Stubb’s to death when you play there?

EF: I’m going to get a cooler for that s**t!

Whether Stubb’s will be prepared for Edith Frost’s cooler is unclear at this point. In the meantime, anyone into smart, complex, and hummable music is recommended to pick up Wonder Wonder; or better yet, catch the singer on the road in September. If all this is not enough, later this year, Drag City will release the Drag City Supersession, which features Neil Hagerty, Bill Callahan (of Smog), and Edith Frost working together on originals and covers (Edith sings two of her own songs, along with material by Lou Reed and Randy Newman). Once again, Frost proves she’s unafraid to tackle any material — as long as it’s interesting — and when Edith Frost is involved, it’s bound to be good.