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Fisher
album True North
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STARPOLISH: Did the DJ just
love the song?
FISHER:
Yes -- and that was our most popular download on the entire Internet.
If we had two million downloads, one million of then was for “I
Will Love You”. I mean, that song, for whatever reason… I mean,
they always tell you that you never break an artist with a ballad
because drive-time radio won’t play it. And I believed that, because
they’d pushed it into my brain all these years, and it finally
sunk in, so I felt like, “Oh, that makes a lot of sense!” And
then this radio station grabs this ballad, and people are crying
in their cars on the way home from work. Some people are crying
because it makes them think of people they love, some people are
crying ‘cause someone just died… I mean it was like this broad
thing.
STARPOLISH: Did you and
Ron think that song was your strongest? I’m trying to remember
how that was originally released – was it part of an indie CD?
FISHER:
Yes, we had an indie CD first.
STARPOLISH: And did you
think of that as the strongest song?
FISHER:
No (laughing), not at all. I mean, it’s so simple, so stripped
down. In fact, when Ron put it up on the MP3.com site, it was
like he knew he wanted to put up three or four songs and he figured,
“Well, I better have a mid-tempo and an up-tempo [song], and what
the hell, let’s throw this ballads on it.” And people just responded
-- maybe because it’s so simple. People like clean-cut simplicity.
But it was a total fluke. We always thought the first single would
be “Hello, It’s Me” or “Anyway”.
STARPOLISH: It’s funny
how it works out sometimes.
FISHER:
Absolutely, in terms of we couldn’t get arrested. It took us more
than 10 years to get a record deal. And in that regard, to the
Internet [community], we were are an Internet success story, because
we had utilized other ways of marketing. And think I discussed
this on the [conference] panel where you and I met -- we would
license anything to a TV or film company for a dollar, just for
the exposure and the connections. We had done all the sacrifices,
so the Internet for us was like, “OK, can we build a fan base
from here, because we are not going to do it in L.A. playing the
Troubadour.” Who knew? So it was an experiment, and it was enough
to get our fan base up enough to sell our indie CDs, and to legitimize
us to a label. And we never, ever, ever looked to the Internet
as a way to replace the labels.
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"We never, ever, ever looked to the Internet as a way to replace
the labels." |
STARPOLISH: For the label,
do you think your Internet success took some of the risk out of
it, where they were able to see some kind of quantifiable thing
to justify signing you?
FISHER:
Yes -- they always need something to justify their risk. And you
can’t blame them, it’s business and there is a certain amount
of logic to it.
STARPOLISH: In a way it’s
like getting a loan – you almost have to prove you don’t need
one to get it. If you desperately need a loan, you’re not going
to get one.
FISHER:
Exactly! You have to have some collateral. And that was our collateral
-- it was like, “Hey, we’ve attracted all these people and they’re
coming to get our music.” And I’ve said to people who have been
cynical, “You know what? I agree with you. We still need to prove
ourselves in the big arena, you know?” Yeah, we’re successful
when we’re for free and we do need to prove whether we do have
music that’s good enough for people to actually open up their
wallets. It’s a long journey ahead, so we are in no way cocky
about it.
STARPOLISH: You mentioned
getting your songs on soundtracks -- how important was it to get
on Great Expectations? And in Message in a Bottle, did you actually
get a song in that, or did it get cut out of the movie?
FISHER:
Actually, both “I Will LoveYou” and “True North” were inspired
by that script. And Darren Higman, who was responsible for getting
us on Great Expectations, gave us that script to submit and said,
“You guys should take a crack at it.” And basically it was a thing
where one person loved it and one person wanted a male singer.
And I think they attempted [to use] it in the film, in the end
scene where he drowns, but I guess the test audiences were just
too devastated. It is a pretty sad song in some ways, and I guess
they didn’t want people killing themselves as they were walking
out of the theater. So they changed it to more of a melodic kind
of thing. But it inspired the song and we have a great relationship
with Darren, and eventually we’ll do another film with him. But
it’s tricky because he’s [with] Atlantic. For example, we were
up for Julia Robert’s film America’s Sweetheart, and the director
loved the song, Darren loved the song but…
STARPOLISH: Label politics?
FISHER:
Well, it’s an Atlantic soundtrack. They have eight new artists
they want to break and there’s only room for 13 tracks. They’re
not going to pick up an Interscope artist.
STARPOLISH: You just have
to hope that your record company is also a movie studio?
FISHER:
(Laughing) Yeah, I know – Universal doesn’t really have an active
soundtracks department, so to speak. The Moulin Rouge soundtrack
that just came out was basically championed by the head of A&M
-- it was his project. But it’s interesting -- the labels are
giving less and less support for [soundtracks]. The people I know
who are in soundtracks say to me, “You know, it’s amazing -- they
want to pay less and less for these soundtracks in terms of promoting
them, but they want hits on them.”
STARPOLISH: I can’t say
I’ve understood a lot of the major-label thinking.
FISHER:
You know, its back to the bank thing. [Labels] are banks, and
we couldn’t have toured without them. We could certainly keep
making records without them, but in the grand scheme of things
we’d like to try to reach as wide an audience as possible, so
it’s a gamble we signed on for. And you learn a lot. We learned
a lot in the first year. It’s like, “OK, we established these
relationships at the label, but we forgot to establish those relationships
with the label,” and “OK, next record we need to work harder at
these relationships, and what outside relationships do we need
to bring in to make us stronger?” Someone put it to me in a really
funny way: Every artist, everything that’s hot, is like a soccer
ball, and the people at the label are the little kids on a soccer
team. If you ever watch little kids play soccer, there’s no teamwork
-- they just always follow the ball. There’s no one saying, “I’ll
set it up back here.” Knowing that, you go, “OK, what can I do
to make myself that ball?” “Who do I need to hook up with?” “Is
there an indie person who is in this specialty or that specialty
that can make my cause stronger,” so that the label will go, “God,
you know even when we ignore them, they get another film cut or
they just got a car commercial.” For example, we did a theme song
for the Seattle Mariners that got a write-up in the Seattle Times,
because we’re always looking for things to be involved in.
STARPOLISH: I guess when
you first start out, it’s all about the music. But then you realize
that music is only part of what you have to do
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"There are definitely, definitely female quotas... The woman
with the biggest balls was getting the deal -- and God bless
her." |
FISHER:
That’s what I was trying to explain to people at the seminar.
The media always glorifies things. Artists always appear like
they wake up and just be creative and drink wine. But the successful
ones learn to hone their business skills as well. I don’t think
Mick Jagger gets up every day and waits for people to run his
life for him. There is a reason why he is still out there… aside
from the immense talent.
STARPOLISH: Before you signed
with Farmclub, you had some very bad experiences with labels,
if I remember correctly. What happened earlier, and has it been
a different experience with Interscope?
FISHER:
Well, the biggest problem… when we did the soundtrack, the problem
with Atlantic was that the person that we met with said, “Well,
we really like you guys, and I love the song, but I’m not sure
if we want to sign you. Let’s put you on an option deal. Keep
writing, keep submitting, we’ll see how it goes, and then we’ll
tell you if we want to sign.” Plus, they were considering releasing
“Breakable” as a single. It was in line as the sixth single, and
they only got to five and stopped. But the most frustrating thing
with any label is the lack of communication, and with Atlantic
we would submit all these songs and the guy would never listen
to them and never call us back. It was just so insulting… you
know, just call me and tell me you hate it -- I don’t care, I
can take that. But don’t ignore it, don’t tell us that you might
give us a life, or might give us a career and then do nothing.
It’s so insulting. Prior to that, though, the most frustrating
thing for me was the female thing, because it was always, “We
have two females on our roster, there’s no room for more.”
STARPOLISH: It’s like a
country club quota…
FISHER:
Yes -- there are definitely, definitely female quotas. But I learned
from that. I learned that the difference between the women who
were getting signed and me -- if we had equal talent down the
line, if you could level the field and say, “She’s just as good
as you, you’re just as good as her” -- is that she was probably
more of a hustler than me. You know, she was out there… maybe
getting in her car and touring alone with a guitar and getting
a bigger fan base, like Ani DiFranco. The woman with the biggest
balls was getting the deal -- and God bless her. So with us, once
we decided to stop sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring,
and to control what we did, and released the indie CD and found
ways to put the music out there, then we were viewed as the people
who were the hustlers. But -- you know Farmclub is gone, right?
STARPOLISH: Yes – and you’re
now on Interscope, right?
FISHER:
Yes, which is interesting, because with Farmclub it all comes
back to the hopes and dreams of the Internet, and they came into
the Internet world at the end of the rush. So they missed the
boat. Then they cut their losses in half, just like every other
Internet company. There’s like a two-percent survival rate with
Internet companies now. So basically, when we were on Farm Club
we were king and queen of Farm Club, because we were their poster
children. We were a big fish there, and we had the back-up support
of Interscope’s departments. Now that Farmclub is gone and it’s
just Interscope, we are so far down on the food chain -- and we
are so aware of that.
STARPOLISH: So it’s almost
like starting over again?
FISHER:
We are starting over. Our record was gaining ground in AAA, but
then the priorities were Blues Traveler, the third U2 single,
blah blah blah…so we were sacrificed. We realized our status,
we realized how and why it happened, so we said, “Let’s get some
other things going on, lets get another film cut…. lets rev it
up. Lets go over to Holland in September and kick some ass.”
STARPOLISH: (Laughing) Thank
god for Europe…
FISHER:
(Laughing) Yeah, thank god for Europe.
STARPOLISH: I recently did
an interview with The Village People, and they said they would
have starved to death if it weren’t for Europe.
FISHER:
God bless them…they’ve got a lot of joy.
STARPOLISH: I talked to
them about dealing with the loss of a band member, because in
the interviews we do we really try to talk to people about the
different things you confront as an artist -- and losing someone
who was so highly recognized is tough. But the strange thing was
that in that group, the character was famous, not necessarily
the person. So they had to find someone who sort of looked like
his character, who could wear the outfit. So it’s not like The
Beatles, where when you lose John Lennon the band is unalterably
changed. But it was extremely difficult for them -- Glenn was
one of the founding members. Music seems to be a business where
people often have to deal with that more than they should have
to… Anyway, another question for you -- you were just talking
about being one of three female artists on a label, and yet Fisher
is actually a duo…Fisher is a band. Some people may not even know
that.
FISHER:
I think we are getting it out. We realized that we made a marketing
mistake. Ron was always concerned that he would get in the way
--it was not me going, “It needs to be about me!”
STARPOLISH: Well, obviously
you are an attractive female, and you’re on the cover, not Ron.
I always wondered if it was your decision
FISHER:
It was his decision….
STARPOLISH: He’s a pretty
selfless guy then, in some ways.
FISHER:
And it sucks then. There are articles that will say – for example,
the Mariners thing -- “Kathy Fisher wrote it.” And it’s like,
wait a minute -- I wrote the words, Ron wrote the track and the
melody, and his name isn’t mentioned here.
STARPOLISH: But somehow
it seems that he’s OK with that?
FISHER:
Well, the funny thing is that Ron has come out of his shell in
the last year. He was always incredibly shy. He used to have hair
down to his butt, and he used to hide behind it on stage. But
it’s interesting, because he would say, “You’ll do all the talking
on the radio and you’ll do this and you’ll do that and I’ll stay
back here.” He didn’t even want photos taken of him for the CD.
And I’d say, “Let’s just have a small one of you on the inside
so people know what you look like.” But he’d say, “No, no, no,
it’s just not going to work.” So we start doing the radio promo
stuff last fall and winter and I would be on air having a great
time with the DJs and laughing and talking, and just go in and
have a blast. And he was like, “Um, I want a mic.” So then he
started realizing how much fun it was and he started talking on
the radio. Now, when we were out with Duncan Sheik, he wanted
his own stage mic to chit-chat. So he’s totally gone come out
of his shell. And we realized that instead of pushing the fans
away by alienated them with “They’re a couple!” people LIKED it.
STARPOLISH: Was there a
concern that if your fans knew that you were not only a duo but
personally involved, that it might lessen the appeal?
FISHER:
Yes – you know, like Bono…you never even see pictures of him and
his wife.
STARPOLISH: You would never
know he is married
FISHER:
And they just had their fourth kid together. They’ve been together
since they were 19…they were high school sweethearts.
STARPOLISH: And I think
there would be more pressure on the female. There’s always that
fantasy of hope…
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Kathy
Fisher
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FISHER:
And it wasn’t that we were trying to lie about it. We just didn’t
want to put it in people’s faces. And also as a female artist,
it’s hard enough without people going “She’s nothing with out
him. She’s just his puppet.” So I needed to have a certain amount
of independence established that I was just as valuable to the
duo as he was. So in a way it worked the other way, where he got
pushed out and not credited as much. Then people call him Ron
Fisher. He realizes it’s so much easier to be Fisher than Ron.
‘Cause people are calling out Rod, and Rob and Wasserman. So now
we’ll get to a restaurant and he’ll just say “Fisher”.
STARPOLISH: They probably
think he’s the guy doing the duets albums.”
FISHER:
Yes, they think he’s Rob Wasserman.
STARPOLISH: I hate to admit
this, but when I first saw the piece Ron wrote for StarPolish,
I was like, “Oh, I have an album by him.” Then I read his bio
and saw he was in Fisher and realized it wasn’t him.
FISHER:
(Laughing) Yeah, someone said to me, “I’ve met your stepchildren!”
Uh, I don’t have any.
STARPOLISH: So how was
it touring with Duncan Sheik? I guess when I saw you in New York
you were on that tour.
FISHER:
Yes, we did five and a half weeks with Duncan, and a week with
David Grey.
STARPOLISH: I think our
readers would find it interesting to talk about the decisions
you have to make when you open for another artist who is a little
bit better known. I don’t know how generous the people you were
touring with were – I’ve heard some bands can be complete dicks
to their opening acts. But in general, I’d guess you have to shorten
your set when you open for another act. Does your set need to
be more hit-loaded? Does it matter who you open for?
FISHER:
It’s interesting, because I initially thought that the David Gray
audiences would relate to us better. Then with Duncan’s [fans],
we had two sets worked out -- we had one set where we would incorporate
loops more, and then we had one where we would strip down to just
guitar, vocals and piano. And we found after three shows trying
it either way that we sold more CDs at Duncan’s shows if we just
stripped down. So that’s what ended up doing -- except we would
be like, “Duncan , is it OK if we do ‘Dream On’?” because it was
kind of a departure, and we would throw the loops on and do “Dream
On” as our encore, as our last song. It was interesting because
we sold far more CDs with his audience -- there were nights when
we would sell 40 or 50 CDs with Duncan’s folks. And I think that’s
because as artistic as Duncan can be, he’s also in the pop structure
the way we are. No matter what song he’s doing, there’s a verse
there’s a verse, chorus, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, out. David
comes from more of the jam world – you know, the Dave Matthews
kind of world. It also depended on what part of the country we
were in. Texas was horrible for us, it was like things under my
fingernails. I would see these frat guys there saying, “What is
she whining about now? Bring Gray on.” However, when we did a
show in New Orleans at the House of Blues, it was a real mixed
international kind of audience, a real tourist kind of time, and
they were screaming for us. We felt hugely loved. It couldn’t
have been a better night for us, it was fantastic. Then we got
to Texas, and we were like, “What are we doing here?” It was interesting
because they are both introverted men. With Duncan, I can at least
sit and watch a movie with him, but David… I’ve never even met
him.
STARPOLISH: I’ve read that
he really paid his dues before he made it.
FISHER:
Because of that, I thought we would really connect, but we didn’t.
He didn’t welcome me to the tour, or even say hi, so I don’t know.
You have these expectations that you are going to hit it off and
be the musician’s new friends and it’ll be so cool. And maybe
Duncan will come up and sing with us, and we’ll go sing with him
and it will be one big love fest. But it’s like, “No, Duncan’s
off buying a new guitar at the store,” and David won’t come out
of his bus.
STARPOLISH: But if nothing
else, that experience should inform you and how you treat opening
acts when bands start opening for you.
FISHER:
But it’s already happened -- that’s why I was thrown. We were
headlining some clubs [last] January and February, and David Meade,
a very talented RCA artist, opened for us. And when I found out,
I went to his website, I checked out his music, and I checked
out his bio. And I thought, “Wow, he’s got a great voice. Maybe
we’ll connect, may e we’ll bond. He’ll sing with me, I’ll sing
with him.” Then we meet him, and he’s this really nice introvert.
He shows up when he is supposed to, he’s polite, he’s kind, and
he leaves.
STARPOLISH: (Laughing)
And when he’s interviewed, he’s like, “Fisher was really nice,
but she’s really pushy she kept wanting to play together…”
FISHER:
(Laughs) Well, you either naturally bond or you don’t. We bonded
really well with Duncan’s band -- not to say that we didn’t bond
with Duncan. One night, his drummer Matt jumped up and played
“Dream On” with us. And we loved all his musicians; we thought
they were great. We hope to do some work with his guitar player
in the near future. All of that is all well and good, but it’s
just not the fantasy. For example, I heard -- and maybe this is
just an urban myth -- that Bono, and I hate to keep coming back
to him, but he’s amazing, that whoever opens for him, Bono makes
a point of coming into the dressing room and greeting them and
welcoming them to the tour. And that’s how I believe it should
be. And I tried to create that with David, but he was just really
shy and he was just going to do what he was going to do, and that
was cool.
STARPOLISH: I think that
as an outsider, you think that it’s like the VIP room at a club
-- once you make it in there, everyone is best friends. We’re
here all here doing the same things, and we’ll all be great friends.
And then you realize that half the people just wanted to have
a drink in the corner and not be hassled – and that’s the reason
they’re in the VIP room.
FISHER:
Actually, I understand now why featured artists and opening acts
need their own spaces, because we had a dressing room in the House
of Blues in New Orleans that was the size of my kitchen and it
shouldn’t have qualified as a dressing room -- it was more of
a pass-through closet. And somehow, right outside, was the door
to the balcony for the VIP area. And that night was all these
Irish and English and Scottish people from Michael Flatley’s Lord
of the Dance were there.
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