by Jane McCarthy
When I first saw singer/songwriter Liz Pappademas, she was onstage at Bordello with marching band collective, Killsonic, wielding the accordion with such gravitas, I was charmed. Then I discovered her solo lp, 11 Songs, with its beautifully sad, painterly tracks, and I was smitten. She’s now got a concept album, Television City, on the way. It’s based on a fictional game show, “Who’s Your Neighbor?”, a bit more pop than piano-led 11 Songs, and its aces.
I got to sit down with Liz at the Casbah Café a few nights before Christmas to chat with her about ballads, A Chorus Line, and seeing LA through amber-tinted glasses.
Jane McCarthy: I saw you at the Hotel Café at the end of 2007, and you were singing stuff from 11 Songs.
Liz Pappademas: That was one of my first shows in LA.
JM: You told this anecdote about a teacher you had at Berklee who said, “No more dirges, Liz.” LP: I believe the phrase was, “STOP WRITING DIRGES!” It was very direct. You’re making him sound much nicer…
JM: What attracts you to dirges?
LP: As far as 11 Songs is concerned, I don’t know, I just play what I feel, and I guess I was feeling kind of slow tempo…It wasn’t really any kind of conscious choice to be like, ”I’m only going to write funeral tempo songs.” That’s just what came out. And you know, I love Elliott Smith and I love Gillian Welch. It’s powerful. I think if you can deliver a slow tempo song, that’s almost harder than beating out a pop tune that’s more veiled... And it sounds good. I like songs like that.
JM: I do, too. I love hearing a slow piano song.
LP: I’ve always loved the ballads on records. I seek them out. It’s not that I’m a sad person, per se. I’m a pretty upbeat person. I’m not generally depressed, but if I’m thinking about something, or I’m worried about something, or working through a problem, that’s when I’m going to sit down and write a song. Not when I’m having a great time, thinking, “Oh this is so awesome! I’m having so much fun! Let me write this down!”
But the (teacher’s) criticism was good at the time. You can get stuck in one type of writing and fall back on what’s easy for you or what comes readily. So when I did this new record, I did try to limit that a little bit. Just for the challenge of it.
JM: So the forthcoming LP is Television City, and it’s a concept album about a fictional game show called Who’s Your Neighbor?... Do you feel like you kind of did a musical?
LP: I kind of did, yeah. It’s funny, last night I was watching a documentary about A Chorus Line, and Television City is a lot like that- all these different people telling their story around this one event. With A Chorus Line it’s the audition for the musical and with this, it’s the game show…I did sort of think of it as a movie, in terms of characters.
JM: Did you think of Magnolia when you were writing this?
LP: I did. I’m a huge PT Anderson fan. And I really liked that storyline with the kid and the game show. Also, PT Anderson is a huge Robert Altman fan. So since finding out about that, I went back and watched a lot of Robert Altman to see what about Altman, PT Anderson pulls from and also, how he kind of weaves all the different stories in.
JM: Does the game show take place in a certain time period?
LP: I was thinking seventies, late seventies. Kind of that uncertain time after the summer-of-love sixties hippiedom but before the scary eighties. Still kind of amber-colored Hollywood. I watched a lot of game shows to write this. They started around the fifties and then in the sixties, there were some scandals around certain shows and then in the seventies, they kind of had a resurgence with the more color TV game shows like Let’s Make a Deal, those fun audience participation shows, and that’s how I saw this show.
The seventies has always been a fascinating era to me. And moving to LA, I saw things in a different light. In San Francisco there’s a certain light… it’s very windy and very clear and sharp. In LA, everything’s kind of clouded, hazy, and this might be totally off the wall, but the sunglasses I got right before I moved here are amber, so driving around LA, everything has this amber tint to it. It seems silly but if you’re driving around with that kind of filter, it inspires interest in that, you can identify with that era.
JM: I wanted to ask you... What you were listening to in 2009?
LP: I recently got this compilation album of Panamanian music, Panama! 3, so I guess this is the third one in the collection. It’s old stuff they’ve re-mastered. And it’s so cool because of the Panama Canal, there are all these different cultures there, and all of this different music passing through…all of these different genres mixing together. And it’s all like sixties, early seventies which is a great era for music anywhere.
I mean, I love older music. I love some of the stuff that’s going on now too, but I’d rather find those musicians’ influences and listen to the beginning of that chain. You know, I like Jack White, but I want to hear Loretta Lynn and the people he was really influenced by so I can sort of figure out what makes up this great person now.
JM: You want to see the thread.
LP: I want to see the thread, and I want to go back to the beginning and follow it through, and then also appreciate this current person. It’s a fun way to learn about new music.
JM: Would you say you know your own thread?
LP: Ahh, I don’t know. I’m sure somebody else could pick it out better. But I hope it’s not too obvious, you know? Some people you can point to and say, “I’m sure they listened to that person, and that person, and that person.” I don’t like that. But look at somebody like David Byrne- he has a million influences. It’s not as easy to pick out his influences…
I guess I’m trying to develop my chain and make it very broad. In fact, when I was writing Television City, I went through all of my stuff and thought, “What have I not really listened to? What’s stuff that I’ve had but haven’t really looked at?” I listened to game show music too. And to Dean Martin who I hadn’t really listened to much, and then I became a huge fan. I tried to find ways to integrate all that stuff into my songs.
JM: You want a very diversified stew.
LP: Yeah, because it tastes better.
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Photo by Michael Webb.
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