Laura Veirs : Rocks Still Get Me Off
Seattle based singer songer writer Laura Veirs is currently touring Australia ahead of the release of her new CD Saltbreakers in April. Saltbreakers follows the acclaimed 2005 release Years of Meteors. Laura, a geology major, talks to The Dwarf about the elements in her music, political agitators and how to feel good in turbulent times.
The Dwarf: You studied geology. Do rocks still get you off?
Laura Veirs: I do still notice rocks and I think about rocks and I put them and elements like minerals and oil fields and magma and volcanoes and mudflows in the songs.
The Dwarf: Do the themes for your albums revolve around aspects of nature?
LV: Yes I do always have a theme for the record. It’s often open to interpretation but for me to be able to write a record I like to have some kind of guideline. So what I’ll do is write about six songs and then flip them over and see if there are any themes developing and if there are I’ll take those and run with them and make a full album about that.
The Dwarf: What theme informed your new album?
LV: It’s called Saltbreakers. It’s another word for waves so it’s another ocean sort of theme record. So the main connecting thing is salt.
The Dwarf: Have you ever explored theme that wasn’t nature based?
LV: No, not really. I wrote one album in 1999 that didn’t have a theme. And then after that it was earth, fire, water, air and now salt.
The Dwarf: You are about to tour here with Jen Cloher and the Endless Sea, who were nominated for Best female Artist at our ARIA Awards. At the awards Midnight Oil made a speech that suggested that people were obsessed with get rich quick music shows and that artists were not writing about war like they did in the Vietnam years.
LV: I think that’s true at least in the type of music I’m involved in. I think people don’t know how to talk about it because they feel very much at a loss of what to do. We’re so enraged with our government but we also feel so powerless because they are very powerful and they’re very rich and they have so much control now. The new election of the Democrats getting power back in the House of the Senate was very uplifting to a lot of people. I think things are changing now for the better but I think in a lot of ways citizens in general and artists in this field feel at a loss at what to do. They feel very much like a leaf on the ocean, just drifting, like “What do we do?” “How do we find solid ground?” And I think I touch on the war in a symbolic reference way on my new album, Saltbreakers, in a couple of different songs but it’s very had to do well. And I think people are afraid, maybe even they don’t know how to do it. And I also think the war has to get even worse for people to really start digging into their hearts and souls and finding a way to talk about it in indie, pop and rock music.
The Dwarf: Do you think Americans would be able to feel it getting worse if it’s not happening on home ground like September 11?
LV: I would hope so. The 60’s in The States was a time of incredible social change in the whole US with the civil rights movement and the women’s movement and the anti-war movement so that time was just ripe for people to talk about everything in music and I feel like it’s not like that now. People feel scared. The government makes everyone very scared and the country feels incredibly divided to me. So there isn’t the sense of let’s rise up together and do something about this. There is in small pockets but people don’t know how to get together and make a movement out of it. I don’t know what it takes to get that to happen but I don’t feel like there’s a well spring of that type of underground activity happening. I wish there was and I wish I could be more instrumental in that. Something I tell myself to feel good, because it’s such a dark time, is that I am a different face of America when I tour around and we tour a lot -four or five months a year in different countries. And we, me and my band mates, talk to people wherever we go. We talk about the government and the people in America and the struggles that we have. And how we do feel very powerless to change things, such as the crazy government and how the election was rigged in our opinion and there’s corruption and white collar crime all over the place. But what we can do is be a different face and show that there are nice people in this country who care about other people and other cultures and the environment and things that are beyond the stereotype of Americans being very selfish and materialistic.
