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CHICO, CA Growing Up: An Interview with Barbara Manning
The first time I saw Barbara Manning perform live - and, as it so happens, the only time - was at Tonic, a lower Manhattan club so hip that it has its own bookstore full of books so obscure that you feel bad for never having heard of them. The show was set to begin at 8 pm, but that time had come and gone, and still the doors remained shut. Finally, as the small crowd that had gathered pleasantly shuffled its feet, the door opened, and a head popped out: So sorry, it explained, but the soundcheck had gone much longer than expected, and the band would be ready any moment now, and how was everyone doing? And that was my first glimpse of Barbara Manning. The first time I heard Barbara Manning depends on how you count: I first ran across her voice as a backup singer for the Killer Shrews, the short-lived all-nobodies supergroup that included Jon Langford of the Mekons and Tony Maimone of Pere Ubu. I first heard a Barbara Manning song when driving down the West Side Highway, listening to Yo La Tengo perform on Vin Scelsa's epic freeform radio program "Idiot's Delight"; "This is a song by our friend Barbara Manning," said Ira Kaplan, and then launched into the remarkable "(Lately I Keep) Scissors." Which is probably appropriate, since in her nearly two decades in the music world, Barbara Manning has probably collaborated with more great musicians you've never heard of than - well, there might be someone else, but you've likely never heard of them, either. As a college student at California's Chico State University in the mid-'80s, Manning and then-boyfriend Cole Marquis (later of the Bay Area bands the Downsiders and Snowmen) formed 28th Day, a college-rock band that reissuer Innerstate Record would later sum up as "the Jefferson Airplane on crack." Within two years the band had exploded along with the relationship, but Manning's trajectory was already in motion: 28th Day gave way to World of Pooh, which begat the Tablespoons, which morphed into the SF Seals, which led to collaborations with seemingly every musician in Northern California and half those beyond. A flip through the liner notes of her singles and rarities collection "Under One Roof" finds Manning here recording a Hank Williams song with "Mad V. Dog, San Francisco's favorite singer" at her house ("we used sandpaper and a toy fire engine to embellish our recording techniques"), there with found-sounds guru Seymour Glass (under the name The Glands of External Secretion) playing a plastic organ on the Beatles song "Hide Your Love Away." The disc closes with an improvised song with various musicians, including Yo La Tengo bassist James McNew on drums - a song titled "I Can't Watch You Play Drums." It's also, despite being made up of B-sides and flexidisc remnants, as good a record as any she's recorded. I've tried to describe Barbara Manning's songwriting any number of times to the uninitiated, and always failed. (In one of my most memorable failures, I relentlessly talked up the SF Seals' "Truth Walks In Sleep Shadows" to a friend, and finally bought it for him as a gift, only to have him call me two years later to say, "Hey, I finally listened to that record you got me. It's really good!") The subject matter is generally the pop standbys of heartache and other personal demons - Manning has been subjected to far too many unfair comparisons to indie whine diva Liz Phair, who she has dismissed as insufficiently "introspective" - but with a twist that can only be described as Manningesque: sardonic but guileless, seeking not so much sympathy as insight. In Phair's hands, a song about the local object of attraction ("Every Pretty Girl") would probably come out an obscenity-laced tirade (in Loretta Lynn's hands it would be "Fist City"), but for Manning it prompts observations like "Even my mirror is her best friend, along with my boyfriend and all other men." Mixing self-effacement and self-affirmation is a common Manning theme: the SF Seals' "Pulp" launches with the sing-along line, "When you walked out on me, part of me wanted to walk out on me with you." By the mid-'90s, Manning was, if not an indie-rock star, certainly becoming well-known among music cognoscenti - though plenty of her fans still failed to recognize her when they ran into her at her longtime day job, as a clerk at San Francisco's Reckless Records. Then, one day in 1997, when preparing to release an album she'd recorded in New Zealand with her idols from bands like The Bats and The Tall Dwarfs, she was abruptly dropped by her label, indie-friendly Matador. By the end of the year, she'd also been dumped by her fiance, served an eviction notice from her apartment, and hit with an IRS audit. Leaving the wreckage of her old life behind, Manning fled the scene, first to Germany, then to the Sierra Nevada, where she took up residence in a trailer with no electricity on a small plot of land owned by her mom. Finally, Manning decided to undertake possibly the most uncool, freakiest decision of her life: To return to college in her mid-30s for her bachelor's degree. At Chico State, no less, the same school she dropped out of a decade and a half back as a fledgling college rocker. All the while, she's continued to make music, most recently with twin brothers Fabrizio and Flavio Steinbach, a pair of German-Italian fans who'd grown up listening to her music (their father owns a rock club outside Stuttgart), and who more or less adopted her during her post-Matador European exile, eventually emerging as a punky power trio called The Go-Luckys. For the last two years, Manning has toured the U.S. and Germany with the Go-Luckys during breaks in the academic year - while still finding time to sneak in shows here and there with classmates and other California musicians. A few hours before Manning's beloved San Francisco Giants were eliminated from the World Series, she took a break from homework to chat about life as an unexpected grownup. -Neil deMause
So, how's school going? I'm having a really hard semester. I'm doing really well in German, which is the only class I seem to pick up fast. But chemistry and trigonometry and biology are a different matter. Chemistry especially, the math - you're supposed to understand it after you read it and get a lecture, and it takes being repeated over and over for me to get it. But I'm just determined to try harder. This is for a degree in environmental science? Actually, I'm going to officially change my major from environmental science to biology. It's less math, and also I want to study forest diseases. I just saw a seminar on Friday from a doctor from Berkeley who talked about sudden oak death, which is the biggest worry, outside of fire, where my mom lives in the Sierra Nevada mountains. And it was so exciting - I felt like I was seeing a band I wanted to see, hearing this doctor give a seminar about the very subject I eventually want to be getting my masters in. It was a long process to decide to go back to school. The only way I knew I would is if I could get a job that I could work outside in the field, and not to have a boss breathing down my neck. I knew it would probably require more than a bachelor's degree. I know a large number of people from my cohort who have had a long break in their college careers. It seems like something that's easier to do once you've had some time away from it. I don't know if it's easier, but you're probably more receptive to information than you are as this hormone-surged young person. One thing that I was tripping on was that 17 years ago when I was a student here at the same college, my passion was my social life, and my band, and the people that I was hanging out with. And it had nothing to do with school school - it was sort of why I could be there, but that wasn't where my interests lie. Lew? Lee? Lie? Llll... lay. I just got out of doing my German homework. Hoo boy. So I don't know how some of these students manage. Their lives seem to be a little more busy than mine, and I feel like all I do is go home and study. But they do it. Is it weird going from being an international rock and roll star to being a college student, back and forth? Only very rarely do I ever, ever have any fact that anyone would know that I was a musician. But it does every once in a while happen. Just the other day, my biology teacher greeted me as Barbara, and I said, "That's pretty amazing you'd remember my name, because I'm in a class of like three hundred students." And he said, "Well, I remember your name because there's this musician..." And I didn't believe him - I thought he was teasing me. Turns out, no, he knows who Yo La Tengo is and who Pavement is, and he was more shocked I think that I turned out to be who I am than I was shocked that he would even know who I was. I had a big smile the whole day because of that. It's hard. I mean, I'm not turning out to be this excellent student. I'm working hard at it, and it's pretty much all I do Sunday through Thursday, but gosh, there's brilliant kids out there. They must've just come out of biology in high school, because they seem to know it. Me, I'm still trying to figure out the difference between the Krebs cycle and the Calvin cycle. I had my chemistry lab the other day, and I'm the one who ended up making a weird potion that didn't turn out to be at all what was supposed to happen, and when you added the little indicator droplets to mine it turned a different color than it was supposed to. And the teacher's trying to figure out what I did, and I had just flasks everywhere... My technique in the laboratory has a lot to improve on. I think, though, I'm lucky enough that I'm just being myself. Before when I went to school, I felt like I was the nerd of the class, and now I feel like I'm just me. The teachers tend to like me and the students tend to like me, so it's different from last time, when I just thought I was the ugly duckling, you know? Now I don't care. I'm 17 years older than everybody else. So it takes a lot of the pressure off of worrying about peer pressure, because I don't have it. I just have the pressure of wishing that I understood it better. It doesn't feel natural, for sure. I would say I'm much happier in a tour van than I am in this classroom. There are times when I feel like 'What am I doing?' In order to survive my math class, even though I'm signed up for the 11 o'clock class I go to the 8 o'clock class as well. So I'm getting up at 6 o'clock every morning to go to a math class twice! That doesn't seem normal! If you had told me back in the year 2000 that I would be doing this I would have laughed. Why would I do such a thing? But I am. It's like all those years that I was getting by on a little money but not having to work every day, now I'm being punished for it. Did you choose to end that lifestyle, or were you forced out of it? I know you've talked before about losing your label and your apartment the same week, wasn't it? Yeah, that year was hell. No, I didn't choose it - I mean, yes, I did choose it. I could be doing a million other things and not be here. If I could have my way, I would have a lot of successful records, and I'd be able to take a couple months off in between tours, and the tours would be not killing me. Like that last American tour, I think I drove half of it, and you don't really sleep much, and you're sleeping on floors half the time, and you're barely eating. I don't even hardly drink on tour in America, because it's just too hard. Those are the kind of tours that you feel so triumphant afterwards: I did it! I got across America and back in one piece! But ultimately I always feel like I can't do it again. But if I was in a nice fancy big nightliner or whatever, and I was getting fed well, and I could sleep eight hours - I think I could handle it. But it's not working out that way. I guess it's never that way for most people. Yeah, it doesn't work out for most people. I just wonder if it's getting harder to - I mean, obviously as we all get older it's harder to live that sort of marginal lifestyle. But also - there's a piece in HERE #6 about how there used to be neighborhoods you could go and live in for cheap. Everybody I know used to work part-time. Get by, yeah. You could read pretty much any rock biography - or even pick up the new Newsweek and take a look at Kurt Cobain's diaries, and see that he was planning a janitorial service. So in a way, he was also acknowledging that he had to find a way to make money while he was doing his music. That's every artist's dilemma - writer or painter or whatever. You either have a significant other as a partner who's willing to support you while you're doing your artwork, or you have to take hotel cleaning jobs to support yourself. I kind of came face to face with the fact that record-store clerk wasn't going to manage me any longer. And obviously no big label, either, so. But I kind of have a plan. I'm learning German, and I'm getting a little bit good at it, second year. I figure I keep working with that, get my master's in biology and maybe get into a master's program, be fluent in German, and maybe I could actually end up moving to Europe, and doing my music on the side while I'm making good money as a botanist. That's really a long ways off, six seven years away, but it's at least some plan. Would you rather be in Germany right now, if you could? I'd rather be out of America right now. I don't feel particularly comfortable in America. I personally think this is going to be the next front. If there's a gonna be a war anywhere, it's gonna be here. There's going to be dozens and dozens of disgruntled, angry people for their various reasons, wanting to lash out somehow, and it's going to come up in such unexpected ways. We're like a big sleeping elephant. We think we're so big and so scary, but so open to attack in so many different ways. Were you here or in Germany when 9/11 happened? I actually had flown to Germany on September 10th. It was probably good to be in a different place, because I got the news angle from Europe, rather than America. People asked me a lot of time my opinion of everything, and I got a little scared, because I feel like anyone can talk around my arguments. Were people in Germany weirded out by the way the U.S. was reacting to the whole thing? Everyone seemed to be expecting that we would say "Bomb 'em! Nuke 'em! We're game, we want their oil!" It just seemed normal, that's what our Republican hierarchy here is: wipe 'em out, start over again, and let's take their resources. Which is the way people fight wars throughout history - the big conquerors coming in to say "Well, we don't like 'em anymore, we're going to squash 'em, and take what gold they have stored in their pyramids." We're just a big bully. I'd rather be wrong and be hurt, than be wrong and hurt someone. I would rather be the victim than the perpetrator of a crime. Is Germany easier to live in as a musician, as an artist in general? I was just discussing this with a friend of mine today, that there's a bunch of musicians who live there now: Like, Chris Cacavas lives there now, he has a German wife. Nikki Sudden has been living there for quite a while. Some New Zealand artists, Graeme Jeffries has been living there for years. Terry Lee Hale, he's living in France. And I've lived there kind of on and off, sort of wink wink, nod nod, not getting my passport stamped. And I was living there in the guise of this - basically, I was having a real childhood and teenage years like you always wished they were: you're living in a happy family household where all your needs are met, and you have a few chores but they're easy to do, and you're loved and adored by your parents, and you don't have to worry about money. I wasn't kicked out or anything, but I came to this conclusion that I am an older woman who has no income to speak of. I can't just become a parasite onto a family that suddenly loves me so much that I'm taken in as if I'm one of theirs. That's okay, and beautiful for them, and beautiful for me, but it's not right. I need to stand up on my own, and be making my own money. There was a time when music did that, where I really did have an income, but it's not happening anymore. In fact, to totally take this on another tangent, but it's about music and money: My BMI royalties are not that much - theyre a few hundred dollars a year - but they are so much more from Europe than they are from America. And it's just unbelievable how small you get paid for every internet song you get played. I mean, I know internet radio is having problems, with the new law, but it still the internet pays so little already to the artists, that the idea of giving the internet free reign to play music in the guise of being promotional, I just think it's wrong. Still people are downloading songs and getting them, and you get paid *nothing* for them. The only ways that you can make money as a musician are either playing live, or the first time your record sells - because it can sell again and again used, and you never get anything from that. Or it's played on the radio or TV or somewhere. And those avenues are getting less and less and less. If you want to survive as a musician, make sure you have another job first. You've heard Sally Timms of the Mekons talk about how there should be patrons for musicians? Yeah. I forget the name of the artist, it starts with an M, but he did a record where he just went out and asked people to send him a hundred dollars and I'll write a song for you. He did this like 40-song album with each song with the person's name mentioned. And he made money to record the record. I don't want to do that. But I am kind of amazed that it really does come down to the musician not getting compensated for the song. You say you get more money from BMI in Europe - is that because the royalties are higher there, or because you're selling more there? I think because I sell more there, and I get played more. I have - let me look at this. I just got today two BMI checks. For instance, let's see, I made five dollars and thirteen cents off of a song off of the record I did with Stuart Moxham: "Martian Man," for some reason. And "Your Pies," the one I did with Chris Knox - that got five dollars and 69 cents, played in Switzerland. I made forty dollars basically from Switzerland last summer. But meanwhile, it looks like "Isn't Lonely Lovely" was played 188 times on the Internet in France, and I got six cents. Total. Did you make money on the tour last year, at least? We all ended up getting a pair of jeans out of it. I took us all to Levi's, and bought five pairs of jeans. And that was the profit. That was okay. We get to eat, and car gas and everything. I think a lot of people would be amazed at that, because it was a fairly successful tour as those things go, right? Well, not like the old days. I mean, I don't want to blow a hole in my throat with a shotgun by saying that I basically get paid - let's put it this way, less than $500 a show, usually. And I remember playing with Lou Barlow, he was making a thousand bucks, back in the early 90's. Now there's just no way. I think it's similar to the jazz bands losing their gig at the dime store after the juke box moved in. It's hard to have a band, and a p.a., and a security guy, and a door guy - bars would just as soon have a DJ, and some of the patrons as well. Here I am at school, and I'm turning to the one cool-looking guy in my class who's got spiked hair, and I say: "Last week, I was in Boston, I'm a musician, and I played a show with Sonic Youth!" And he said, "Who?" And I said, "Well, um... have you heard of Nirvana?" "Yeah." "Like, okay, see, well..." That's why I just about peed my pants when my teacher said, "You know Yo La Tengo, right?" I don't know if everyone feels this way, but I know I respond really well to reward. I'm like the lovable dog that will do anything if I get my treat at the end. And that's probably part of the reason why I do want more of a viable success that I can boast about. But whoo, I dunno. I got a lot of rewards out of it. I still am getting rewards out of it. So I can't complain too much. I still think, though, that I'm going to have some luck happen - I can't wait for it, because I'd probably die before then. One of these days, suddenly, I'll pop up in a movie or something, or maybe a VW commercial. (laughs) Something has to come around. Because I wouldn't be visited by the muse so much otherwise. Is it worth any less if it's just 20 people, but they really enjoy it? Oh, I get a lot out of people telling me how important it is. Like, a couple of years back I played this show in Holland where an American couple showed up, and they were just beside themselves with excitement to see me play. I just played a solo show, nothing too glamorous or anything. But for them it was important because they met because of me: She put a song on a tape, and he was this total music whiz but he had never heard me, and because of that, he started taking more interest in her, and it mattered a lot. So that's the success where you feel like somehow your actions had a trickle effect that was so large, it made a difference somewhere else that you can't even fathom. That's the most beautiful feeling. 
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