Melissa Ferrick makes music on her own terms
By most people's standards, Melissa Ferrick is having a backward career. She started out on Atlantic Records at the age of 20, moved to an indie label, and now releases her own records. Most people would say this is not the optimal trajectory for an aspiring musician.
But Melissa Ferrick is not most people. And a major label deal, once considered the rock 'n' roll Holy Grail, is of dubious use these days for an artist offering something to the left of insta-superstar salability. One would be hard-pressed to describe a career that with every step toward sovereignty has become healthier -- look no further than her bank account, her body, and her soul -- as moving in the wrong direction.
Ferrick -- raised in Ipswich; schooled at Berklee, the New England Conservatory, and in the sunny mean streets of LA; and now happily ensconced for the rest of eternity (she likes it that much) in Newburyport -- is a model for the new independent musician. She's a fierce road warrior who's cultivated a devoted national fan base, and the founder of Right On Records, which she runs out of her home.
Ferrick wrote, produced, engineered, and played all the instruments, including her long-neglected childhood trumpet, on her eighth studio album, "The Other Side." She owns this music and collects 100 percent of the money her songs make, which may seem perfectly logical to someone unfamiliar with the way the music industry works. Suffice to say it's something of a revelation, and Ferrick, 34, will celebrate the record's release with a show tonight at Sanders Theatre, accompanied by drummer Billy Beard -- who will have had the luxury of exactly one rehearsal prior to their first show.
"There's no tentativeness on her part," says Beard. "She goes and you go with her."
The stage is Ferrick's cosmic spot. She writes perfectly soulful folk-rock songs and makes one acclaimed album after the next, but put Ferrick in front of an audience and something bigger and weirder happens, something that seems to involve the passing of supercharged electrical currents from one human form to a bunch of others. Her right hand thrashes furiously at her guitar strings. Her clear soprano seems to spew from somewhere down low. She's a fiery performer and a first-class chatter, and Ferrick's performances find her toggling between intense rock chick and talk show host. She is -- in conversation and concert -- fabulously unexpurgated.
"I'm totally different onstage than I am in my life," Ferrick says. "It's the only time I don't think, and that's why I love to play. It's the only time I'm not figuring things out and it's like a time of rest for me. I have moments of being aware that people are having fun, but when I'm singing I don't really know what's going on. I had another musician say to me that the only reason he plays music is to bring joy to people. I was, like, `Really? I don't do that at all.' "
All performers have to navigate the sometimes confounding divide between their personal and professional lives. Fans turn artists into heroes, and heroes -- especially those with a hard-core, well-defined following -- are not encouraged to change their tune. Ferrick has a large lesbian following, and throughout her career she's been identified as a lesbian artist. But in the last few years Ferrick has experienced what she describes as a progression in her sexual identity. It began when she encountered a shockingly intolerant culture at the Michigan Women's Festival in 2001, and deepened when she fell in love with a man.
"Men weren't allowed to play at the festival," says Ferrick. "My drummer, Brian Winton, had to stay in a hotel off the land. The biker girls were in this corner and the gay RNs were in that corner and the bisexuals were over here. I didn't like the clique-iness of it. I was like, `You know what? This isn't queer at all. This isn't liberal and accepting at all.' I want to live and let live and love people because they're individual. And I certainly had a lot of feelings for Brian.
"I'd had boyfriends before, and I think I was more scared of the implication on my career. That's what really made me look at myself. Would I even think to suppress my feelings for a man because I'm scared of losing fans? Ani [DiFranco] and Michelle [Shocked] went through it. Brian and I never had a sexual relationship, but it was intimate. It opened me up to having men in my life and changed my perspective on everything I've been taught by this invisible lesbian bible. I may still be pigeonholed in some people's minds as far as my work goes, but I'm not in my life. I feel very at ease."
All of this comes out on the new record, which chronicles Ferrick's familiar search -- a person to love, a place to fit in -- but does so with a newfound sense of liberation. Long embraced for her raw guitar playing and angry love songs, Ferrick explores eclectic new textures here, performing not with less intensity but with a lightness of heart -- check out the buoyant first single "Beijing" and "Anything, Anywhere," a delicate, waltzing show of devotion -- that's eluded her in the past. It doesn't come easily.
"I'm writing it out, writing it out," Ferrick explains. "When I sing `The Other Side' I feel the same freedom I felt when I first got sober [in 1996]. If feels like a happy song. When I sing the line `I don't know what I'm doing,' I sing it with a smile on my face. But the desire for a sense of fulfillment, the desire to be loved, is something I come back to. There's no mistake that I've chosen a career that's all about being clapped for and that I stand up there and can't really feel it. I remember one time after a show a fan came up and touched my face with her hand, I can feel it right now; it was so intrusive. I almost started crying. She broke my bubble barrier. I'm not really like that, unfiltered."
But Ferrick is nothing if not determined. Empowered by her newfound business savvy, the record company president proudly ticks off a list of smart decisions she's made concerning advertising and CD pressings and record store placement. She's got a team -- publicist, radio promoter, distributor -- working on the album, and she was featured on a recent cover of Pollstar, the touring industry trade magazine. Ferrick happily considers potential radio singles. No indie-purist, she's been dreaming about a hit song for years. WXRV-FM (92.5 "The River") is spinning her new songs and presenting tonight's concert; the station has also asked her to coheadline its Christmas show at the Paradise in December.
The magic key to her career, according to manager Jim Fleming, who also works with Ani DiFranco and Dan Bern, is simple. Put Melissa Ferrick on a stage.
"She can do the same set in the same city six months later, and it's a completely different show," Fleming says. "That's the reason people come back and bring their friends. There's a sincerity and dynamism in everything she does, and people are absolutely absorbed by that energy."
Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com
Melissa Ferrick performs tonight at 8 at Sanders Theatre in Cambridge. Tickets are $22 and $26, available at the box office or by phone at 617-496-2222 or 617-931-2000.
