Locally based actress Sissy Spacek had eight years of film and TV experience under her belt before her Academy Award-winning turn in Coal Miner’s Daughter. How long before her daughter, 26-year-old Schuyler Fisk, gets her due as a musician?
Starting today, she gets a pretty high-profile shot. Fisk’s first full-length album, The Good Stuff, hits iTunes today, where it will be sold exclusively (to be picked up later by other websites). Fisk took some time to answer a few questions via e-mail about her new album, her folks’ musicial influences and touring in an RV she describes as "a total lemon." Interview excerpts after the photo.
Schuyler Fisk on Virginia: "Any excuse to come back to C’ville is fine by me. I just need to get on a tour that is routed through there."
On early musical influences:
"I remember my dad [production designer Jack Fisk] playing The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and I thought, ‘Wow, this music is really good. Hey, my dad’s pretty cool!’ My dad also introduced me to jazz and the incomparable Billie Holiday.
"With my mom I listened to a lot of Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. My mom loved to harmonize to everything on the radio. She taught me how to listen for my own harmonies to songs."
On which songs made the cut:
"There are all originals on my record (except the one cover of "You’re Only Lonely"), but not all the tunes I played at my last Charlottesville show made the record. Because I write so much, we had a really hard time picking what songs to put on the record.
"We ended up recording about 18 songs in total, but only 14 made this record. I am so sad about the 4 that didn’t make the record that I’ve decided to release a ‘B sides’ to this record in a few months with all the extra tracks, so keep a look out for that!"
What’s on her "eclectic" iPod:
"I have everything from Ace of Base to the Dixie Chicks to Frank Sinatra to G. Love to Herbie Hancock to Imogen Heap to Bob Dylan to the soundtrack for Rent."
On interesting tour experiences:
"The funny thing about this tour is that we’re traveling around in a RV that is a total lemon. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. The day we picked it up from the rental place, we didn’t even get off the lot before we had a flat tire. We went 5 days without heat in freezing Canada (in February!), and once we got that fixed, our generator broke. It’s kind of gotten to a point now that it’s just hilarious when something else on here breaks."
On her split with Universal Music:
"Everyone at Universal had the best of intentions for me and my music, but it just wasn’t the right place for me at that time. They were gracious in letting me out of my deal and I feel so lucky that I got to make this record on my own—exactly the record I had been wanting to make."
Read Feedback in next Tuesday’s C-VILLE for more on Fisk and The Good Stuff.
