Queer singer-songwriter, producer and activist Erin McKeown is back with a new batch of songs and a new tour for 2013, thanks to her latest album.
“Manifestra” is more political than any of her previous efforts.
“It’s certainly more directly political and the subject matter of the songs is more clearly political than anything I’ve done before,” McKeown said. “I’ve always had political thoughts and opinions, but I kept them separate from my music for a really long time out of fear of how bad music can sound when a political message overrides the musicality. So I was afraid of doing that for a long time and then it felt urgent to give it a try.”
McKeown has always incorporated numerous influences in her music, from folk and jazz to rock and pop and everything in between.
“Manifestra” finds her broadening her range with even more instrumentation and styles. “I used the same palette,” she said. “It’s nearly all the same instruments — some electronic drums, real drums, guitars, bass, piano, horn and strings, but it’s like I turned the distortion up.”
The album also features a songwriting contribution from journalist and TV personality Rachel Maddow.
“Rachel and I have known each other for a long time,” McKeown said. “I live in Western Massachusetts and she still lives here part-time and lived here for a long time. She was a radio DJ on our local morning show and we were admirers of each other. In 2005 she had me on her ‘Air America’ show and we got to talk a little bit of politics. As her career has gone on we’ve stayed in touch. I was asked to do a benefit for the World Wildlife Conservancy after the Deepwater Horizon spill. There was another singer-songwriter on the bill who was collaborating with Ira Glass, who was putting the benefit together. Ira asked me, since Rachel was going to be on the benefit, if I would mirror his collaboration and get Rachel to collaborate with me on a song. She said yes and then just because of our schedules we had to text back and forth. I took her texts and made it into a song.”
Maddow only contributed lyrics to the album. She didn’t perform on it — and for good reason.
“She doesn’t play any instruments and she doesn’t sing,” McKeown said. “She describes her voice as weapons-grade.”
(Now we really wish she would have sang something on the album.)
For “Manifestra,” McKeown decided to release the album through her own label, TVP Records, instead of through a record company.
“I’ve always had my own label,” she said. “My first release came out in 1998 on cassettes that I made. I didn’t believe in CDs at the time. I thought they would be a passing fad and I was actually right. But I put out cassettes on my own label and at the time I didn’t know that it was radical or different. I just thought, I want to make a cassette. I’ll pay for it myself and I’ll put my address on it and tell people about it. That’s essentially what a label does when you get down to it. I’ve always done that. I’ve made a lot of records for other companies because they gave me money and it just made sense for this record to keep it all in-house. The tools available on the Internet allow me to do that.”
Part of keeping things in-house included having the recording costs of the new album funded with contributions from her fan base made through PledgeMusic.
Enthusiasm for new music must have been high, because McKeown reached her funding goal much faster than she anticipated.
“I think we gave it two months and it was 100 percent in six days,” she said. “I am learning how much money it takes to put out a record. I got 100 percent of what I asked for in six days. Was that 100 percent of what it cost? No. But the whole project would be impossible without having that chunk of funding from my fans.”
McKeown said she isn’t completely convinced that programs like PledgeMusic or Kickstarter are here to stay in the music business but, for the time being, it’s working well for her.
“I don’t know if it’s a permanent solution. I don’t know how much capacity people have to be continually asked to donate to things. However, I have been really thrilled by how successful my campaign went and how excited people were. I have had people say they would do this again and again. It was great.”
One benefit of the fan funding is that it is allowing McKeown to film her first music video, which she says should be out soon.
“I was given some advice beforehand ,which was basically to just show up and do what they say,” McKeown said about making the video. “Don’t try to change things, give opinions or be an expert. I think that was good advice. There is so much that goes into filmmaking that’s beyond my experience.”
With so much experience in the music industry as a performer, artist and producer, it comes as no surprise that McKeown is involved with the Future of Music Coalition, a national nonprofit organization that promotes a diverse musical culture and tries to ensure that artists are compensated fairly for their work.
“I think a lot of issues of artists in the past have come up,” McKeown said. “I think there’s a myth that artists are too stupid or high to understand what is happening to them. I think there are a lot of people who have been opportunistic around that and maybe have taken advantage of people. But artists have certainly been complicit in it by not taking the time to become educated. We certainly are capable and we certainly have the time. An organization like Future of Music gives artists a place where they can go to get educated. They collect all the things that we should be paying attention to and put them in one place. They translate any jargon that is there so that you can go and read about what issues are going on and talk to other artists about it. They facilitate this way for artists to become involved.”
“Manifestra” will be available Jan. 15. Erin McKeown performs 8 p.m. Jan. 20 at Johnny Brenda’s, 1201 Frankford Ave. For more information or tickets. visit www.erinmckeown.com or call 215-739-9684.