November
21
Set List Interview: Ute Lemper
Ute Lemper, the German-born singer whose repertoire extends from the cabarets of Berlin to tango to Tom Waits, took on the role of composer for her latest album “Between Yesterday and Tomorrow.” Of her 15 U.S. albums, it is the first to feature only her songs.
She had been writing for some time and eventually had a collection that was connected almost cinematically with stories about politics, her youth and places she has seen in her travels. A number of the songs were premiered four years ago at a small jazz bar in New York, where she figured she could get a temperature reading on the material from the crowd.
“I didn’t want it reviewed, but Stephen Holden gave me a great review (in the New York Times),” she recollects over breakfast at the Nice Matin restaurant near her Upper West Side home. “I said ‘OK, it can’t be total crap.’ Then we just started recording.”
And once the recording was finished, Lemper and her partner/producer Todd Turkisher left the music untouched for a year. She had another child and focused on motherhood, reduced the touring and focused on projects that would keep her at home, such as stints at Café Carlyle. The album has been released at various times in different countries over the last none months.
Lemper is performing two shows per night at Joe’s Pub on Nov. 22, 28, and 29, plays Paris Dec. 17-20, and will spend a fair amount of 2009 in Europe and South America.
“I like a little time off,” she says, noting she has increased the number of one nighters she plays and spends no more than two weeks away from New York at any time. “I have had the privilege to live my dream and once in awhile it becomes a job. The best part is always getting onstage, improvising with musicians.”
Lemper, 45, talked about her newly released album, why she loves interpreting the music of Tom Waits and her next record, featuring the words of Charles Bukowski, which is already in the can.
Q: Have you always written or is it something you picked up later in life?
A: I felt it was time. I had four songs on (2002’s) “But One Day…”. Most lyrics I write when I travel. I’m always looking at people. I’m interested in their fate — not faith, in fact the less faith the better. But I need to be at the piano to write music and I have to have an empty house. (“Between Yesterday and Tomorrow”) is a musical painting. It’s a conceptual album. The structures are very honest, almost like movements. Turn around and you see where you lived.
Q: You address 9/11 in one tune, a subject many people have avoided and it feels like that perspective is locked into that time.
A: When we recorded in 2004 we were so close to this trauma. Not sure if I would do it today. It’s a new chapter, a judgment about faith and patriotism. I do love politics.
Q: Since it is a concept album, do you see yourself performing it in its entirety?
A: I’m not sure. I only have a trio (for concerts) so I can perform at least three or four new songs. I’m singing (Bertolt) Brecht and (Kurt) Weill, some Yiddish, Piaf. Everything in the original language. The tango in Spanish. Audiences are always interested in getting the real thing. The more downtown you go, the more up for the game they are. They want to see you undressed and tortured.
Q: Which must have some appeal, seeing as you have expanded into Nick Cave, Tom Waits and Elvis Costello.
A: “Punishing Kiss” (released in 2000) brought in a new energy. It was time to bring in the contemporary rather than go into the museum. It was full of style and attitude. Most of all I loved the Tom Waits songs. I felt very connected to his words.
Q: As a fan of his, I wonder what do you have to do with his songs that perhaps you wouldn’t with others.
A: It’s ungroomed. You can’t sing it with a good voice. You have to forget about your craft and let the broken heart speak. You cannot stylize Waits – the simpler the better. It’s a close-up, like the kind the Coen brothers use. No big acting. It’s unshaven, a morning look – alcohol breath without makeup. Waits has more in common with Brecht and French poets (than other American writers). He’s an outcast in an American context.
Q: Would you do more Waits music or are there others you want to tackle?
A: Next is an album of (poet) Charles Bukowski. It’s his poems (set to music) that captures the spirit of his mind. It’s not jazzy. It’s urban, with things like backwards guitar. Nothing conventional. It has a haunted soul and some of it is tender; you see the fractured soul. I’m done recording but I have to wait a year to release it. It can’t be too close to this album.
Q: When you burst internationally 20 years ago, it was through Kurt Weill and Berlin cabaret, just as the Berlin Wall was about to come down. And for all the avenues you venture into, that part of you never leaves.
A: My first job was in “Cats,” which took me out of drama school. It was so unsatisfying — to do these cat movements in Vienna, then Berlin. It was a year of waking up. I was an idealist and “Cats” was a bucket of cold water: This was showbiz. The artist I wanted to be was part of a subversive culture. I found myself as an artist, aligned with Brecht and Weill. I was 22. It formed me. Suddenly, everything I sang made sense. And if you don’t keep doing (these songs), they will disappear.
Q: So true. Beyond Waits and Cave, are there other modern songwriters you find you can connect with in the way you did with Brecht and Weill?
A: There’s a big difference between the musicians of today and those of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Music is more like furniture, it fits stereotypes and is made for certain situations. Nobody speaks out like Bob Dylan or Marvin Gaye. With everything going on, where are the concept albums, the discussion of humanitarian issues, civil rights, privacy? Music used to be a tool.
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