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Er_n athetic Connections: an interview
Wit songwriter Mieka Pauley

Reno Waswil
TECHNEWS WRITER

Union Board puts on a lot of great
events, but one that 1 look forward to each and
every time is the Hawks Coffeehouses where
we can enjoy the performance of known and
unknown artists from HT and from all around
in the backdrop of the evening-educed snug-
ness that rests on the MTTC Welcome Center
and free coffee and snacks; that’s always a plus.
The last performance I had the pleasure of see—
ing featured singer-songwriter Mieka Pauley,
who I also had the esteemed privilege to in—
terview after her fantastic show that Tuesday
night

Pauley has the distinction of having
won the title of Cosmopolitan’s Fun Fearless
Female Rock Star of the Year as well as domi-
nating such competitions as the Starbucks
Songwriter Competition and New York Song—
writers Circle Songwriting Contest and hav-
ing been featured on such programs as PRI’s
“Mountain Stage,” which I recommend every-
one look up on and listen to get the ‘full Pauley
experience} which is, I’d say, a very real and
personal one.

Her set list for that night had her pre-
forming a number of her own songs including
“All The Same Mistakes,” “Marked Man," “Nev-
er Fuck a Woman You Dont Know,” and“ Run,
as well as a couple of covers including Leonard
Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and the traditional folk/
blues song famously covered by Nirvana on
their Unplugged album, “In The Pines.”

In response to me asking about
whether she related to Nirvana front man per-
sonal Kirk Cobain’s critical lyrical style, she re-
sponded fidgeting anxiously with the wrapper
on her bottle of water, “I do feel like I’m pulling
on that same feeling of isolation, though Co-
bain was a lot more messed up than me.” She
comments on the fact that many of her songs
deal with recognition of the mistakes that she
has made in a similar vein to the confliction
that Cobain felt with his fame. Her real attrac~
tion to the song in question, which she would
more readily attribute to the folk/blues musi—
cian Led Belly, was its atmosphere: “There is
something so creepy about it, the song. The
girl. . .is probably going to be murdered.”

My interview began with me asking
her how she would define her sound given the
caveat that it had to be a genre she made up
for herself. She at first had expressed some dif-
ficultly at this as she has been so used to clas-
sifying her music on the well-trodden grounds
of main genres. “People want to know what to
expect,” she explains. After 10 years, she has
tended to fall into her indie-pop roots for the
sake of simplicity. After some serious consider-
ation though, she said that she would describe
her music as “art-writery folk alt-rock,” and as
someone that is totally on—board with making
up words and phrases as a means of demon—
strating one’s personal freedom of mind, I was
content with this answer.

As for her music, Pauley writes from

the heart, and, as she herself admits, her heart
tends towards the critical and depressing. “It’s
a lot easier for me to write hopeless songs even
when I’m in a happy place.” With songs like
“He’ll Never Quite Love Me Enough,” “We’re
All Gonna Die," and “All The Same Mistakes,”
it’s a claim difficult to refute. As she divulges:
“I’m looking for that empathetic connection,
I’ve tried to write happier songs but there’s
something missing in my own delivery, in my
presentation. 1 can’t deliver happy and have
that empathetic connection.”

That concept of empathy is definitely
a major player in the songwriting of many ‘in-
die’ artists and definitely one I share with her
in striving for with most of what I do. During
her concert, in the downtime between songs
when artists usually talk to their audience in a
very casual way, she felt compelled to ask one
of the students in the front row if he was draw—
ing sketches on his notepad. Whatever that
could possibly say about her personality and
her character, whether it is that she is naturally
curious or enjoys conversing with people simi—
larly artistically minded or is maybe just a tad
bit nosy, I like it.

Being an avid listener and practicer
of music, I think that there are often hidden
influences in artists based on what they listen
to even if what they listen to is no where near
the kind of music they make. Iohn Darnielle of
the Mountain Goats, a band which is not at all
known for its brutal energy, famously listens to
almost exclusively Death Metal, and I find that
sort of reveal very telling to the frame through
which a musician may be looking in the com-
position of their own music, like how a popu-
lar musician may listen to classical music and
treat their song writing process similarly to a
classical composer.

Instead of surprising me with lis—
tening to the most niche genre imaginable,
she voiced something common with seasoned
artists as herself, saying “The more I listen to
music, the less I listen for my own enjoyment.”
Now that I think of it, perhaps a musician’s in-
terest in genres that are not their own may be
something of a coping mechanism to deal with
that constant analysis that keeps musicians
from fully enjoying other’s music.

She did express interest in looking at
the sort of science of our enjoyment of music
and cracking why some songs can be so enjoy-
able. “Songs I’ve been trying to figure out why
they’re so catchy—I listen to them and try to en-
joy them in a professional way: Ryn Weaver’s
“Octahate” - I’m gonna dissect that shit and
write another one, Gautier’s “Somebody That
I Used to Know,” Sias “Chandelier,” Hoisers
“Take Me To Church;” I’m gonna dissect all of
those so you just wait; the next time I come to
Chicago, I’m gonna have the best songs.”

Pauley does elaborate that instead of
from other music, she gets most of her inspira-
tion from books, explaining, “In my car I listen
to a lot of audiobooks,” ascribing a great deal
of importance to the “phrasing” of words in
literature. This interest in phrasing is a factor

of her vocal style I definitely picked up on dur-
ing her performance. I told her that something
that I think she shared with folk artists like Bob
Dylan was mindfulness about her lyrical flow
and rhythm, which could be heard particularly
her song “.”Run

To this, she responds that it was in-
teresting that I bring up Bob Dylan' in the first
place because, as she explained, there is some-
thing innate to Bob Dylan that does not work
with her vocal style: “I cannot cover Bob Dylan
or Joni Mitchell.” I remarked how similar it was
to the emphasis of the artist’s ‘unique’ person—
ality of rappers, Hip Hop being something
I think of as being a folk music in its purest
sense.

With this, I couldn’t help but see
how she felt about a music culture theory I
have been forming for a while detailing my
distinction between the motivation for writ-

ing music as existing on a spectrum, the ex;

tremes of which I refer to as folk motivations
and classical motivations. Folk artists in this
theory tend to focus on the artists who writes
the music and/or performs this music whereas
flassical artists focuses on the music and illu—
minating something akin to an objective truth
or grand concept, and from this follows many
of the characteristics and ‘problems’ recogniz-
able in much of music.

To this, Pauley responded favorably,
agreeing and open to expanding it, adding an-
other dirnension to this spectrum which would
make the distinction between the personal and
the group consciousness with regards to music.
It was an idea which I had, to be honest, been
toying with myself. We both agreed that she
sits on the folk end hedging strongly towards
the individual level, which fits perfectly in line
with the similarities I drew between her and
hip-hop artists, which resist perfect covers.
Particular about Bob Dylan, Pauley complains,
“I don’t like hearing other folk musicians with
Bob Dylan’s delivery and accent, it’s just so
awkward; that’s his, get your own." That is a
truer summary of folk music than I could ever
come up with myself.

Enough about my stupid theories
though, what kind of interview would this be
without getting to know the path that brought
Pauley to her current state of success? When
I inquired of her musical beginnings, she tells
me that as a youth, her training in music was
limited to studying classical piano, which led
her to attempt to write classical piano pieces of
her own at a young age, albeit classical from a
kid’s perspective. She explained how she used
to give her compositions names in other lan-
guages not realizing that classical songs were
named in different languages because those
were the composers’ languages of origin.

Apart from that, most of her musi—
cal prowess was self—taught, besides a few vo-
cal lessons she did take in her formative years,
and even those were of little consequence to
her now besides having helped her with breath
control and placement to some extent. She says
this because earlier in her career, she ended up

getting a condition called vocal fold nodules
(which, if you don’t know, is a swelling tissue
growth on vocal chords that manifests in the
reduction of one’s vocal abilities), which she
reassures me most singers in popular music
gets to some extent, but had caused her clas—
sical vocal training as a soprano to become al—
most completely nullified. Her instrument of
choice though, the guitar, was self-taught.

As she grew older, she started writ—
ing bad pop songs, but she wrote them more so
she would have something to sing, not think-
ing too fully about the complexity of their
composition or anything like that. It wasn’t un-
til high school when she started writing for the
sake of writing, but even then she could hardly
say she had found her voice, Still, those years in
high school were when she started cutting her
teeth as a performer in clubs and coffee houses
and where she got her true passion for the art.

In college, she started street pre—
forming and started focusing on writing and
preforming for herself instead of as a member
of one of fifteen bands on any particular night
doing a gig. When she graduated, she saw that
she could actually make enough money street
performing to do it full-time.

She takes a pride in being where
she is today having never studied music above
those piano lessons, saying that it kept her
from being jaded. Above all, she expressed in-
terest in trying to find music in all the busi-
ness, and given that most of her major releases,
chiefly her 2012 LP “The Science of Making
Choices,” were done independently, one would
think that business proficiency plays no small
part in her work.

After 30 minutes or so of chatting,
we had to start wrapping up, so I finished off by
asking her what she had planned the future of
her music career, particularly‘if she was work-
ing on or planning to record any new albums
anytime soon. She told me that it has been
hard to write lately and that she has had writ—
ers block for about four years now. “I've been
trying to figure out a bunch of different ways to
write. I might be getting closer; a lot of writers
block is anxiety, so the closer I get to writing it
the more I panic.” It seems the same propen-
sity for anxiety and unrest which she expresses
so well in her music was actually keeping her
from writing; I love it.

I’d like to thank Mieka Pauley for the
interview and I want to encourage anyone in-
terested to keep up with her releases and tour
dates by go to her website where you can find
links to take you to where you could purchase
tickets to her May I show happening at Un-
common Ground in Chicago.

Also, for a good evening of music,
check out all future Hawks Coffeehouse events.
The next one is planned for Tuesday, April. 7,
(the day this newspaper drops) at 7pm in the
MTCC Welcome Center and will feature IIT
student and fellow TechNews contributor T)
Ayodele and it sounds awesome. Hope to see
you all there.

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