Marianne Dissard is a very skilled lyricist, singer and filmmaker. She was born in France but has lived in Tucson, Ariz. for many a year. She is about to set sail across Europe and the US of A to support her splendid new album titled “L’entredeux” produced and co-written with Calexico’s Joey Burns. Miss Dissard was kind enough to answer some of my hard hitting questions regarding music and film.
Dry Ink: How did you get into filmmaking?
Marianne Dissard: I saw “Clockwork Orange” at 17. There is one shot in there, when the bad boys invade the house, they enter the frame onto the manicured lawn, the peace of the shot is disturbed… a visual way of telling the things that needed to be said to advance the story, like “OK, bad guys violate house sanctuary in this scene but how do I SHOW that so we can UNDERSTAND it.” I realized someone was having a lot of fun making these things up and that I wanted some of that fun. There and then, I decided to make movies. I moved to Hollywood, landed on La Brea and Sunset, at Howe Gelb’s house, roommating and hit the pavement looking for film jobs of all sorts until I got into film school there and kept pounding the pavement, working with and hanging out with filmmakers like Gregg Araki, Lodge Kerrigan, Jon Jost, Alex Cox, Jon Moritsugu. The best of the indie film scene from the early 90’s.
DI: Who are your film influences?
MD: I like Kubrick, also Jon Jost, Lodge Kerrigan and Luis Bunuel, the great documentary filmmakers like Robert Kramer, who I worked with. Always awed by Godard.
DI: What chain of events led to your new album? (which I adore by the way)
MD: I came to Tucson to make a documentary on the band. I stayed there afterwards. I met this french guitar player, Naïm Amor, who came to visit me in Tucson and stayed. We wrote two albums together, first for Amor Belhom Duo, then for his solo project, Amor and Naïm Amor. I was writing his lyrics. We started working with Joey Burns of Giant Sand at the time, but shortly thereafter of Calexico. Amor, his drummer, myself and Calexico did a collaborative album together, called “ABBC/Tête à Tête”. Then I sang with Calexico on “Ballad of Cable Hogue”, their ‘hit’ song. One day, Joey Burns told me we should do an album together. My lyrics, his musics. There.
DI: In your bio, it says you made a mixed tape for reference for Joey Burns when you went to make the record… what sort of stuff was on that?
MD: Nina Simone, Nick Drake, Tom Ze, Soft Machine, Nico, Bashung, Bowie, Bardot…
DI: What non-musical things influence your writing?
MD: I don’t write music but I write lyrics, so I’d say I’m influenced, in my writing and in my performing, by dance, the great choreographers like Pina Bausch, by writers like Pierre Guyotat, filmmakers like the ones I mentioned earlier.
DI: You are getting ready for a big tour through America and Europe. Have you toured much in the past?
MD: I started singing four years ago. I tried to immediately play out as much as possible, first in Tucson then on small tours throughout the U.S. and Canada, but touring really cranked up a year ago when the album got released in Europe. We’ve been touring pretty much since then, with four European tours of a month or longer in that year, and North American tours in between. I really like touring.
DI: Can you talk about the process of co-writing/co-working with Joey Burns?
MD: Joey Burns is an amazing producer, as well as a great songwriter. I brought him my lyrics and he cranked out those wonderful songs, which he then took into the studio and fleshed out with his drummer, John Convertino and a few of our Tucson - and beyond - friends, like Rob Burger from New York, Mickey Raphael from Willie Nelson’s band. Naïm Amor also contributes three songs to the album, and sings and plays guitar on some of those tracks. The recording took place over a period of a few months, so we really enjoyed being able to have friends drop in for an overdub and took our time shaping the album.
DI: What is your touring band like as far as personnel and instrumentation?
MD: My band for the past year, since touring in support of the album release, has been, at the core, Clay Koweek on guitar and Andrew Collberg on drums. We have mostly traveled as a three piece, but have also added at times a violin and a bass. When we travel as a trio, Clay holds down the bass with his guitar, meaning he has worked out a way to put out those bass notes from his guitar, a trick shared by Naïm Amor, who was my first guitar player. My first drummer, when I used to tour with Naïm, is Arthur Vint, who is taking a break from touring to attend music school in NYC. But I’d say Clay has been my band’s .. “musical director”, for lack of a better word, for the past year and a half, following in the footsteps of Naïm Amor and Joey Burns. For the upcoming European tour, I will be playing with a Tucson band called Mostly Bears as my backup, with drums, guitar and bass. We will have a violin player too. So I’d say the lineup can vary, personnel-wise, but is centered around the guitar, then the drums, then violin and bass. On this West Coast tour, we have the trio plus a guy named Mark Growden on baritone sax and accordion.
DI: What music are you really liking these days?
MD: I gotta say I’m listening to a lot of mariachi and ranchera these days….new songs from 2008 by Vicente Fernandez, called ‘La Derrota’ - I love that song. Bonnie Prince Billy, still, for the past year. The new Shannon Wright and the new Dominique A.
DI: What is the worst and/or strangest question ever asked during an interview, not including anything from this interview ?
MD: Well, when this guy asked me to autograph a photo, that was in Vienna, this guy was writing a piece on fans. He was also making a video about the concept of ‘fandom’, the line that divides fans and the object of their attachment, what constitutes harassment, stalking and what is just ‘fandom’… at the end of the interview - boy, was he well informed! - he pulls out a printout of a picture for me to autograph. Mind you, not the usual pretty picture or album cover, but a picture he had, what, downloaded from the internet - or, I got the feeling, he had snuck it out from my computer, from deep inside, through some creepy tech wizardry.. the picture is one I took myself, of my cat, my ex-husband holding the cat and the three of us staring at the mirror. I couldn’t recall having put that picture online ever. I went from interview-friendly to cold-dead stone stare in a split second to hide the pangs of pain and anger. He had crossed the line.
DI: What is next for you? Do you plan to make more albums?
MD: I started working with an Italian composer named Christian Ravaglioli on the new album, which we plan on recording sometimes in early Spring 2010. I will be recording in Tucson, though, at Jim Waters’ studio there, with my friends and band mates from Tucson.
DI: Thank you, good luck. You are a gem.
This is great. Interesting.