Even as her career continues to expand, Tift Merritt maintains ties to Wilmington
By John Staton| Wilmington StarNews
If it says anything about the state of her career, Tift Merritt doesn't have time to get married.
Not that she doesn't want to. But since releasing her third album, Another Country, in February, Merritt - who played some of her first gigs ever while living in Wilmington in 1995 - has been on the road more or less constantly, a schedule that won't wind down until at least October.
So far this year, she's also been on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, played The Late Show with David Letterman twice and spent a month or so touring in Europe.
"We have too many gigs right now to get married!" said Merritt, who recently got engaged to Zeke Hutchins, her longtime boyfriend and drummer. "It's a little hectic but it feels great and I'm always happy to be working."
Merritt returns to Wilmington for a show Sunday at Greenfield Lake Amphitheater to celebrate the fifth anniversary of local radio station The Penguin, 106.7 FM. She spoke via phone from her apartment in New York, where she was spending some downtime during a recent, rare and brief break from touring.
"It was the first weekend I've had off since January, and it was really awesome," Merritt said. "I slept and I did home repairs and just wandered around New York like a New Yorker, so it was great."
"I went to the movies," she added in faux wonderment, sounding like she'd just seen the Northern Lights or something.
This time last year, however, it was far from clear that Merritt would be enjoying the success she's having today. She'd just been dropped from her label, Lost Highway, despite getting a Grammy nomination for best country album for 2004's Tambourine, which had success with critics but sales that were disappointing. Merritt considered quitting music, but got her second wind after a vacation in Paris inspired the songs for Another Country, which was released on Fantasy Records.
"I think from the outside the plot always seems a little more dramatic," Merritt said with a self-effacing laugh. "It's certainly been a long and laborious process, but we did this slowly and surely and hopefully in the right direction."
A critical darling since her debut in 2002 with the country-tinged Bramble Rose, Merritt's songwriting has gotten stronger with each record. Her sound has evolved as well, from the blue-eyed soul of Tambourine to the country, soul, pop and rock elements that populate Another Country, which evokes nothing so much as artists like Carole King, Carly Simon and Joni Mitchell.
Like those women, there's an earnest thoughtfulness and an inner strength to Merritt's songs, which are full of sentiment without being overly sentimental. They're anchored by her sweet, slightly husky vocals, which can range from a delicate near-whisper on the lovely Keep You Happy to the confident soul-shout of Morning Is My Destination. Lyrics are poetic meditations on the nature of love, loss and art, and the often mystifying intricacies that accompany them.
"I definitely try (to write) songs that are going to stand up and mean something to me a year from now or two," Merritt said. "I want them to be strong enough that it's not going to feel like a letter I put in someone's locker that I'm ashamed of now."
Clearly, Merritt takes her role as an artist seriously, but, somewhat unpredictably, she's not entirely self-focused. Since January, Merritt has been hosting a monthly interview show called The Spark (www.MarfaSpark.com) for the small but influential Marfa, Texas, public radio station KRTS. Merritt has interviewed a variety of artists, including the writer Nick Hornby; progressive bluegrass band Nickel Creek; painter Wolf Kahn; and, most recently, classical pianist Simone Dinnerstein.
"I think that artists really want to talk about the really human side of what they do," Merritt said. "I notice that your work is sort of held up in front of you and people think they know you from that. On some level, that's just who you are when you're ready to give your work to the world, but 90 percent of who you are is the process of making that and what happens in all those other moments."
These days, who Merritt is 90 percent of the time is a traveling musician. And while she said she's beginning to think about new songs, "It's like, in the shadows, on the periphery, in that space just outside of your peripheral vision ... Honestly, we're so busy right now it's just a physical game of making it through."
"The jet lag is hard," she said. "We went for like a weekend in Norway and then we went to Colorado. That was pretty tough. It was like, 'Why do I feel like crying?' "
As she makes that statement, however, Merritt lets loose a bright laugh, something she does many times during this interview in between making little jokes. ("We've been together since we were 14," she said of her fiance, before frantically adding, "I'm kidding!" when her interviewer expressed surprise.)
Still, busy as she is, it says something about Merritt that she's so generous with her time. She's done a half dozen or more interviews with area media outlets for her Sunday show, something that's unheard of for an artist of her stature in a market Wilmington's size.
But then, that says a lot about what the area means to her. Aside from living here in the mid-'90s, Merritt wrote much of Tambourine here in 2003 while living in a friend's Carolina Beach bungalow, where she also refined songs for Another Country. One of her friends from Carolina Beach joined her for the New England leg of her tour this year, and fiance Zeke's brother, Pat, lives in Wilmington.
"I miss the beach so much," she said. "I haven't gone in the water this summer and I really hope I get the chance to."
When Merritt plays at Greenfield Lake Amphitheater on Sunday it will be her fourth show here in as many years, and the first big concert at the newly renovated venue.
"Is there still Spanish moss there?" Merritt asked. "And turtles?"
She was assured that there were, and that alligators are sighted there regularly as well.
"Now this is a gig!" Merritt said. "If we got alligators, we got a gig."
John Staton: 343-2343
john.staton@starnewsonline.com
