The Michigan Daily - Friday, pril 1, 1994 - 9 Despite hurdles, Ferrick lives out fantasy By TOM ERLEWINE Considering the media's expansive recent cov- erage of female singer-songwriters, it's no won- der that some talented artists have gotten lost in the shuffle. Because female musicians are still treated as an anomaly, many artists aren't given the exposure they deserve and Melissa Ferrick is one of those artists. Her debut album, "Massive Blur," was released in August to considerable critical acclaim but almost no sales. Fortunately, Ferrick is still on the road, playing in coffee houses across the country. Because of her coffee house tour, it's easy to assume Ferrick is a folkie, which is inaccurate. "I've already been pigeon-holed as a folk singer," she explained. "I think that it's very interesting that a band like the Smashing Pumpkins are con- sidered alternative and they play with cellos and acoustic guitars and I have a four-piece rock band and I'm considered a folk act. I just think of myself as a singer-songwriter that has a band, just like anyone else. I consider myself a struggling artist, you know? Just 'cause you're on a major label doesn't mean that you have a nice car and a big house:" For most artists, the road to a major-record label is rough. Ferrick, through a series of bizarre coincidences, received a blessing from Morrissey and was catapulted to the level of major industry buzz. "I wasn't nervous until the show at Madison Square Garden," Ferrick said, "that really flipped me out. Having a roadie say, 'You must be ner- vous - you're the youngest unsigned act ever to play Madison Square Garden.' I was like, 'I'll just try to pretend I'm just sitting in the living room with my friends.' And he goes, 'Well, you have 15,000 friends tonight.' I got really nervous then and that was also when I realized that Morrissey was also the lead singer of the Smiths. I was a huge Smiths fan and I didn't let myself consciously understand that when I was on tour with him, because it was so important to just keep my head about me." Through her exposure on the Morrissey tour, Ferrick gained a record contract. "When I played the Garden, you could sink a ship with the amount of industry that was in there," she explained. "But the great thing was, I left for the U.K. immediately so when I got back any record label that still remembered who I was and still wanted to talk to me, I was interested in talking with." With its powerful folk-tinged rock, "Massive Blur" fulfills the promise of her early perfor- mances. Despite the fact that the album has not sold more than 5,000 copies in the States, Ferrick has received a massive amount of press; much of it was generated from her frank comments on the music industry. Although she doesn't regret any- thing she's said, some of her remarks have come back to haunt her, especially a quotation from her press biography - "Sometimes I play guitar like I have a dick." "It was a joke," she explained, "and it turns into this whole quote about not being judged as a woman and all this bullshit." The quotation and others like it give writers an easy way out - instead of focusing on her songwriting, they concentrate on her sex. "You know the day the press stops writing 'female singer-songwriter Melissa Ferrick' is the day some- thing has really happened," she said, "because it's obvious that I'm a woman and they don't write 'male singer-songwriter Michael Stipe.' It's opened some doors for me, being a woman, be- cause there's less of us in the industry. But it also closes doors because you've got situations where radio stations that will only play two girls an hour and they're saying things to you like, 'It's not that we don't like the track, it's that we're already playing two females. Maybe when we come off the Victoria Williams track we can add your record.' I mean, that's discrimination." It was that sort of discrimination that gave birth to Ferrick's most notorious number, "The Juliana Hatfield Song." "It was a dig at the label and it's not a dig at Juliana," she clarified, "and she knows that. I actually sent it to her to ask her if it was OK if we put it out and she laughed hysterically about it. And I know that she's being misquoted in 'Spin' and I'm being misquoted everywhere or half-quoted." Still, Ferrick is surviving very well in the rough music industry. "I still own all my songs, which is another thing I'm quite proud of," she said. "I haven't signed a publishing deal. I'm holding on for as long as I can and living off my per diems, which is great. It's just like it's always been, but the only difference is that I'm in a position where probably a million 18-year-olds wish they could be which is I actually have a record on a CD, it's in some stores and I'm sitting in a very large office right now with platinum' records all around me. This is the fantasy, right?" MELISSA7FERR1CK will be at the Espresso Royale on State Street at 8 p.m. tonight. Naturally, it's free, so get there early. Isn't Melissa Ferrick cool? Of course, anyone named Melissa must be cool. Little Sister's lead has a By BRIAN GNATT -When a band's musical influences range from Aretha Franklin, Elton John and Bonnie Raitt to Tool, it is difficult to imagine what the end prod- uct will employ. Regardless, when yqu listen to Little Sister's debut EP "Free Love & Nickel Beer," a smid- gen of almost every style of music can be.etected (butTool is still a stretch). 'i.think people are going to get a bigger and better idea of where we're coming from.' -Patrice Pike, vocalist, Little Sister "When I was growing up, my par- ents were musicians and listened to a lot of Motown stuff, Stevie Wonder, Led Zeppelin, early Elton John, the Beatles and just all that stuff," lead vocalist Patrice Pike said. I got into somejazz in high school, because I went to a performing arts school with Darrell Phillips, our bass player, but as I got a little older I just stuck to my roots more or less. The band is like Aretha Franklin, Led Zeppelin, Elton John and Carlos Santana all having a car crash, and everybody waking up in the '94s." The foursome's debut sounds like an explosion between genres, and is well justified. The diversity of the album, and also in live performances keeps the band's brand of hippie funk rock fresh and exciting. Recorded live at Club Da Da in Little Sister's native Dallas, Texas, "Free Love & Nickel Beer" shows the group's talent, funk and spunk that could only be captured live. }'The live show is our most impor- tant part. That's why we recorded a live album. It's the best way to repre- sent the band, the best way to get our point across. There's a lot of jam tunes on it - extended kind of songs that people normally wouldn't do on an album unless they were old cats that have been around for a long time and can get away with it," Pike said. The 5' 2", 23-year-old Pike may be small, but her rich vocals and espe- cially bluesy wailing are anything but tiny. "People at shows come up and ask me how old I am, and there's always bets going on in the bar. They think I'm like 16," Pike said. "People think 'Oh, Little Sister - that's the band with the really small girl.' People always talk about how can I have such a big voice and be so small." Songs like "Drift Away" sizzle Texas-style with hardy funk and blues, lyrically, musically and especially big voice vocally. Others like "Everybody Got Da Funk" a.k.a. "The Marijuana Song" demonstrate the improvisa- tional and jamming talent of the band and highlight Pike, Darrell Phillips, lead guitarist Wayne Sutton and drum- mer Sean Phillips. Little Sister's first studio album is due out early next year. "The band is real excited about doing the next al- bum because it is going to give us the opportunity to take on new and differ- ent styles and songs - some more mellow tunes that we can't really pull off all the time in a bar because it's so loud with beer clanking and people talking," Pike said. "In the future I think people are going to get a bigger and better idea of where we're coming from." 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