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Barbara Manning, Run-On, Harvester, Hochenkeit
"I really like
Barbara Manning has long had a love affair with music from New Zealand, and she is currently having a love affair with an actual Kiwi man. |
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GERARD COSLOY |
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Alone Again, Happily Seal of Approval: Barbara Manning, on her own againROCK PREVIEW"I think I just need to be satisfied with the little niche I've made for myself. And when I look back on it when I'm older I can feel, oh, proud of those days," says San Francisco singer/songwriter Barbara Manning. Since 1983, she's been on the music scene in one capacity or another, writing startlingly sincere and provocative songs. Yet while Manning has earned glowing critical acclaim and established a core group of fans, true fame and fortune have eluded her. The 32-year-old musician has been a member of obscure but notable indie-rock bands including 28th Day, World of Pooh and Glands of External Secretions, though it was her work as leader of the SF Seals that gave the world the best glimpse of her musical talents. With two albums on Matador, Nowhere and Truth Walks in Sleepy Shadows, the SF Seals managed to gain a footing in the often shaky music world. Spin even named Truth Walks the eighth-best album of 1995. But just as it seemed the Seals were about to move into a bigger arena, the inevitable break-up occurred. "It's kind of like you are the mom in a Cub Scout troop," Manning explains. "You have to pick everyone up and make sure they all have their lunches. It was pleasurable, but at the same time I felt like there were times when I wanted to be catered to, and so now, I just take care of myself and it's easier. I feed myself when I'm hungry. I drive myself where I have to go." Manning's best work has always been the stuff she's done on her own. Her two solo albums, 1988's Lately I Keep Scissors and 1991's One Perfect Green Blanket (Lookout has combined the two onto one CD), are now indie-rock standards. Manning's latest album is likely to join their ranks, although she did have some help this time around. 1212--the title refers to her birthday--was recorded with bassist Joey Burns and drummer John Convertino, who have served as rhythm section for Richard Buckner, Lisa Germano and the Friends of Dean Martinez (the two also have a standing gig with Giant Sand and recently released the debut album from their own band, Calexico). Manning says she wrote some of the music for 1212 with Burns and Convertino in mind. "I always visualize who I would like to play with [while I'm writing]," she says. "For what I'm writing now, I've been thinking of it being a solo album--what instruments I can play and what kind of arrangements I would be able to do. I want to make the next album as close to my soul as possible, and almost get away from a lot of instrumentation." Besides her own songwriting skills, Manning has a knack for pulling off unbelievable covers and making them her own. 1212 features her versions of songs by artists as diverse as Richard Thompson, the English psychedelic band Bevis Frond and the noted krautrock outfit Neu. The first third of 1212, however, is an 18-minute-plus conceptual mini-opera entitled "The Arsonist Story," which Manning says happened almost by accident. "It wasn't preconceived, like, 'I'm going to write a suite,'" she says. "But for years I wanted to write something that incorporated fire engines. I never thought about it seriously until I started thinking about the story of a woman watching a television set and seeing a rash of arson fires, and then her troubled son comes home looking very disheveled, and she starts to put it together." Manning will have to re-create such ambitious songs without the aid of a rhythm section on her current tour, although not entirely by choice. "My ultimate fantasy would be to have a group of friends that are available to play or go on tour whenever I want them to," she says. "I don't know if I would necessarily go solo if I had a band that was reliable. The only way I could tour with 1212 was solo because John and Joey are so busy, and so I knew that it was either me doing it by myself or waiting forever." Given the recent success of songwriters like Jewel, who are making music that is not too stylistically dissimilar to a lot of Manning's work, the time may be ripe for Manning to make it big and headline mega-events like the Lilith Fair, with or without a backing band. Even having spent so much time on the fringe of the spotlight, she's understandably cautious about stepping into the center of it. "I can complain about not being rich right now or not being able to support myself with my music, but you have to be careful what you wish for," she says. "I'm much happier feeling like people respect me and won't pass by my record because they think, 'Oh, she's sold out.'" |
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