With Tift Merritt revealing that she has an album of new material on the way after nine years without one, fans may have an instinctual reaction to the fact that it’s titled “Sugar,” as if to say, of course — because they’ve had a sweet tooth for what she has to offer that has gone unsatisfied for a bit.
There is piquant quality to what this North Carolina native has to bring to music that could not arrive at a more necessary time, and the new album, due June 26 via One Riot Records, is every bit as tender and tough-minded as what you would expect from the woman who brought you classic records like “Tambourine,” but possibly even more joyful. She rediscovered her own love of making music while working with producer Lawrence Rothman on the project, and that refreshment, combined with an acknowledgement of not-so-sweet times for many of us, makes for a record that is both bracing ly real and ebullient.
The first single and video, “Finest Feelings,” are out now, and the full album can be pre-ordered here.
Merritt sat down with Variety to preview the forthcoming album and discuss what brought her back into music full-time. Or nearly full-time: She is still involved in the world of academia, and devotes much of her energy to completing the renovation and restoration of a motor lodge near her home in Raleigh, the Gables, which will open this summer. (The public area of that motel even served as the setting for a recording session for a new song, as discussed below.) But “Finest Feelings” and other coming tracks make it clear that, as a singer-songwriter, Merritt is in her finest hour.
People are going to be so happy that it’s coming out and you’re doing this again. You’ve released archival projects lately, so it’s not as if people have not heard from you at all. But you’ve characterized this in something I was just reading as like sort of pouring eight years worth of stuff into this. What made you feel it was time to make a new album?
I came to peace at a certain point. First of all, I have a really wonderful manager who’s also a very close friend, and she was telling me that the stories I had to tell were worth telling. But I think the main thing is that I just was looking around the world going: I don’t know what to do. The only thing I know to do to help right now is put as much love in the world as I possibly can, and singing is the most urgent way I know how to do that. So that’s the reason why.
You haven’t toured widely in recent years, and did those two things go together for you? Like, if you didn’t really feel like touring was something you wanted keep doing regularly, then why would you make a record? Or that those things are somehow entwined or something?
Oh no, they’re definitely entwined. And I mean, a lot of the reason that I stepped away was to be a good mom. I dragged my kid around on tour for a couple of years, and she needed roots. She needed what we all need, and I wasn’t going to just drag her around because I had this crazy dream. But the truth is, I love being on tour. I love a theater and a crew and everybody having fun, and I love traveling and exploring. It just all has financial realities, so we’ve gotta figure out how the boat floats. But I’m always excited to play music and to be a part of music.
When it came time to make this record, did you already have a set of a backlog of material built up and ready-made to pour into this record?
Yeah. I mean, I never stop writing. I’m a writer first, and while I was stepping away from touring and/or stepping away from the music business proper in that form, I was doing projects that involved more research and were really object-based, and so some of what I was doing wasn’t fitting into a three-and-a-half minute song. But some of it was, so I’ve had songs hanging around a lot. And then a couple years ago, I had some things happen in my personal life that just sent me to the piano, and it just kind of reminds you about how much is inside of us, and that music is a place to put all of that. It just happened really naturally; there wasn’t some grand design behind it. But I think I was surprised that having this kind of good life off-stage seemed to make me sing better and write better. At first, I was like, “Oh shit, I’m gonna lose my chops.” But the more you’re steeped in the good stuff, the more good stuff comes out through your throat and your heart.
How was working with your producer, Lawrence Rothman, on this?
Lawrence is so dear — such a unique person and such a tender soul. I met Lawrence when we did a writing retreat, actually, in France, and I hadn’t really been around a group of folks from the industry in a while. Not that Lawrence is the industry. I’m not a big co-writer, either; I don’t write in a slick way. It’s super personal. So I went because I was like, “Yeah, I’ll go to France,” and I met Lawrence, and their enthusiasm for me writing and singing loud and rocking out, and just the joy that they take in that, kind of floored me. And I thought, “Wow, Lawrence is somebody that I could really work with,” because I kind of need that love to coax me back out. So I’m super grateful for our friendship, and it’s just a gift when you can talk intimately about what you’re writing and find some somebody who’s like, “Oh my gosh, keep going,” rather than “Huh? I don’t hear it.”
And Lawrence and I like to make records in the same way. Like, talking about making music is not all that valuable. You have to go make music. And so you never know, when you’re working in a new situation. But we really like to make records the same way, which is: Let’s go do this in a couple of takes. Let’s all deliver. Let’s lay it down. And so that was really fun, and that was really what allowed me to kind of unlock this. That was when I felt like, “Oh my gosh, eight years of stuff is coming out right now,” because I could totally go for it. I wasn’t gonna have to sing 12 takes. So it was a magical six days. I love making records. I do! And I had forgotten. I got back in front of that microphone and I was like, “Oh, this kind of is my place.”
Have you always felt that good in the studio before? Or was it an uneven set of experiences prior to this?
The studio is always pretty great. The gatekeepers beforehand can be tough, and the gatekeepers after. There are gatekeepers, and there are soul partners. And the soul partners are usually in the studio. I think that’s one thing I like about having some time and experience under my belt is that I’ve built the muscle where, if I’m not putting what’s really knocking around inside me out, I don’t feel like I’m risking enough. I don’t feel like I’m doing my job. But also, after a while, I don’t expect everybody to get it, or maybe you don’t need them to.
I don’t know. It’s been a funny thing to kind of put myself out there again. I’ve had more nerves than I suspected about returning — not to music, but to the world where people say stuff about what you made, or whether you get a show or you don’t, that kind of stuff. I appreciate my grounded little life that that doesn’t have to navigate that.
The title song, “Sugar,” suggests that what you have to offer the world is sugar in some way, which is a proud statement and, literally, a swet one.
Yeah, it was. I mean, it was funny because I had a period where a whole bunch of music came out, like I couldn’t stop writing. And when that happens, that’s such an amazing thing, you just do a victory lap around the house. It doesn’t happen that often. I’m more of a regimented person: You sit down, you do what needs to be done. So when it’s just flying out of you, I’m grateful and kind of giddy. There are just times where you’re not doing the driving. But when that song came along, I think on one hand I was like, “Oh my God, I’m writing all these songs. I’m gonna have to go back to that place that I don’t know.” And then on the other hand, I was sort of earning from myself or taking for myself that there are things that I have to say and places only I can go and things that only I can sing. And I’m a Southern woman, so I’m not supposed to say nice, stand-my-ground stuff about myself … or “go to hell.” But that seemed like a very important thing for me to inhabit — an important door to walk through. Also, as a writer, I think the spaces in-between are really where I live. I live in a lot of interdisciplinary spaces. I live off the map, I make my own way, and there’s a granularity to that that I really love. And that’s what I try to put into my work, that sort of granular joy. So it’s hopefully sugar not in a sacharine way, but sugar in the really sort of low-down, good way.
You start the song off with a little bit of reluctance. You say, “I didn’t really want to be here tonight. I don’t need you looking at me.” But then in the next verse, upi sau you “Something told me there’s something you need that’s down inside of me. And it’s down inside of you too.”
Right? It’s down in both of us. And I think it’s so important, among all of the noise that we’re all going through these days, to be sort of doubling down on touching base with that deep-down part and reminding yourself to feel, and reminding other people to feel. To really be a messy human is really important.
To talk about the first song to come out, “Finest Feelings”: It’s one of these songs that could be for one person, in a relationship, but then they could also be for you with an audience or you in society. The sentiment of “show me your finest feelings” could be about art or it could be more conversation, or it could be about…
Or sex!
Or that!
No, I think that’s right. I think when you sit down to write, you don’t think, “I’m gonna write a song about this.” At least for me, I don’t sit down to write with some overarching, large idea. You know, I’m starting real small. But I think this idea that we all do have really fine things inside of us, and that art reminds us of that, and that love reminds us of that, and that kindness reminds us of that, and that we can remind each other of that … that’s something that feels really good to say.
There are a couple of songs where your daughter shows up in the lyrics in some fashion. And then you’ve got the broader song where you’ve got a whole group of women singing, called “Everyday Singing.”
Yes, yes. It was really funny. That song based on some letters that I found in an archive that I work in, between two single moms in the 1960s and ‘70s. They were both raising children and protesting as second-wave feminists and anarchists, and their letters really read like, “Oh my God, this is how my friends and I talk to each other. This is amazing.” But I went on tour last summer really for the first time that my daughter Jean came on tour with me. It was in Europe, and she’s old enough now that she could be like, “I’m not into this.” So far, she likes it, and “Everyday Singing” is her favorite song. And she would sit and sing along with it so loudly that sometimes I thought people could hear from off-stage, and it’d just kill me. I mean, she won’t always think my music is cool, but she knows that this fun is about us.
And I’m working on this motel collaboration where we’re restoring an old motor lodge in my hometown. I wanted to get women together, especially women whose research had been affected by recent events, and it turned out that all these women wanted to come. So we filled this empty hotel and everybody was like, “We don’t know how to sing!” And I’m like, yes, you do. And we had the best time, everybody just singing at the top of their lungs in this under-construction motel and remembering that nobody can take our voice away, and that we have each other.
