Two New Albums

Amanda Kapousouz and Liz Durrett Intertwine Strings, Sounds and Stories

Tin Cup Prophette

originally published March 8, 2006

If you’ve already had the benefit of seeing and hearing Amanda Kapousouz perform live in either her violin-based, loop-heavy, indie-folk act Tin Cup Prophette, her Celtic folk solo shows, or even her foray into Celtic punk-pop with members of Jump, Little Children as The Dole, well, you can pretty much forget most of what you’ve heard. This leopard has all but changed her spots when it comes to the moody, darkly thematic Tin Cup Prophette debut album Liar and the Thief.

The album focuses heavily on layering Kapousouz’s resonant violin, which borders on the oriental for its pure solace and depth of pain, and which, on all but one instrumental track, is saturated with Kapousouz’s bolder-than-ever, alluringly rich vocals. The traits that won’t die are Kapousouz’s artistic strength and tremendous vocal and instrumental abilities, the former of which is even more remarkable when you hear her say, “I’m not so comfortable with my voice as yet” - a voice that stands out even couched among a wash of heady strings and synth worthy of a This Mortal Coil concerto.

Born of supportive Greek and German parents - her father was an engineer who met her mother while she was working as a can-can dancer at Disneyland - Kapousouz asked to learn the violin at age five and subsequently underwent 12 years of private training. It’s this background in the classic forms of violin and the input of her multi-talented co-producer Daniel Rickard (Suny Lyons, Phosphorescent, The Low Lows, Viva) that combine to give this polished album the kind of ethereal-string feel championed by Radiohead, as well as the distal guitars and ponderous keyboards of Portishead, and the quirky yet fulsome arrangements of Björk. Kapousouz also draws on the emotive and ethereal vocals of the aforementioned artists, and on the track “Until the Dust” even channels the vocal influence of ultra-lounge/ soul pioneer Sade.

Liar and the Thief, which Kapousouz says was nearly titled Compass Down, was recorded and edited over eight months by Rickard at Andy Baker’s studio in Athens, with post-production also handled locally at Chase Park Transduction. Rickard contributes heavily to this album, which bears a very strong sense of identity and maturity, and he deserves a good deal of credit for his role as co-producer and musician. Other contributors include guitarist Jesse Flavin (The Good Ship, Phosphorescent), cellist Will Hart (Hope For Agoldensummer), Brent Jones (Ave Nada, Phosphorescent) on drums and Michael Linhardt (The Ones) on drum samples, guitar and bass on track three “Going Numb.” Deb Davis, also from Hope For Agoldensummer, wrote the lyrics for opening track “Speak or Spill Down.”

Kapousouz also gives due credit to her husband Bain Mattox, an accomplished musician himself, for his support and guidance as well as musical and critical input.

The lyrical content of Liar and the Thief is heavy with symbolic and poetic imagery, and while Kapousouz says that she tries to keep her lyrics open to interpretation so that each may find something for themselves, some songs - such as the very Portishead-like track “80 Days” - display a strong narrative root. In this case, a classic journey-to-the-crossroads experience presents itself, describing a time when Kapousouz was approached while playing at the famed Paddy Reilly’s Irish bar in New York - her hometown of five years. During a show, she was handed a note bearing the lines “80 days - No boyfriend - 30 pounds.” It was an offer for an 80-day tour, if she could lose 30 pounds, and turn up with no attachments. The note was proffered by the leader of the backing band for the Hall & Oates reunion tour. “[He] was easily 250, 300 pounds,” says Kapousouz, “and had a long mullet.”

Also written on the same piece of paper was the poem that forms the first two lines of the song, which goes on to unload the retaliatory lyrics “Too much of you and I’d waste away / In 80 days, I’d waste away / No ties that bind you down are allowed on the offering table / The band’s waiting to play, and today, you don’t fit the gown / I’d rather sail around the world.” Kapousouz admits that while the offer may have been attractive, the caveats and the messenger himself were not. She declined the offer.

You’ll have the chance to decide whether the end result of Kapousouz’s decision to stay the course and move to Athens, after five years in Brooklyn, has born productive and creative fruit when she presents her bold new sound live at the 40 Watt with the further assistance of Daniel Rickard accompanied by Jeremy Wheatley (The Low Lows, Heidi Hensley Band, Je Suis France) and many of Liar and the Thief’s contributors.

Ben Gerrard

Ben Gerrard

Two New Albums

Amanda Kapousouz and Liz Durrett Intertwine Strings, Sounds and Stories

Liz Durrett

originally published March 8, 2006

Just before Liz Durrett left for a recent tour with Tin Cup Prophette and Hope For Agoldensummer, she and her longtime partner Ben McCormick got hitched at the Athens-Clarke County Courthouse. They didn’t take time off for a honeymoon, opting to go on tour instead. Some new brides might object to a working honeymoon, but most haven’t created an album like The Mezzanine.

Honeymooning or not, Durrett finds touring a welcome interruption from her day job, scoring Georgia high school essays. “I felt like I was going to lose my mind if I had to read one more essay about high school kids and curfews,” she says.

It was when she was a high school kid, though, when Durrett’s folk-rocking uncle Vic Chesnutt gave her her first guitar. It’s the one she still plays. “I used to buy cheap 3/4-size classical guitars from Chick Piano and put a pickup in them,” remembers Chesnutt. “They would only last a couple of years before the intonation would warp too much for me to use them, so I just gave her one of my old ones. She of course said something like, ‘Oh, you can’t give me that,’ like it was some precious thing that she didn’t deserve.”

Durrett immediately proved her worth by putting Chesnutt’s guitar to use, writing several songs which would eventually be released on last year’s debut album Husk. “They were recorded in high school by me and Tina and Vic,” she says; Tina is Tina Chesnutt, who often drums for husband Vic and niece Liz. “We never planned to put it out. Vic recorded some in the garage behind this house,” says Durrett, talking in the house owned by the Chesnutts in which she currently resides. “I used to come to Athens as a teenager and stay here.”

Vic remembers those visits. “I think Liz was 13 when I first met her,” he says. “She was such a meek little scrawny thing, and I knew she had taken violin and piano lessons. I remember that she came to Athens to spend the night with Tina and me and I was a little freaked out, thinking, ‘What the hell am I going to do with this kid around here all day while Tina’s at work?’ So we recorded on my four track. She played violin on some stuff, and we even made up a song together. It was really fun and kind of successful. She was a cool kid. I could tell that the wheels were turning.”

When she was 14 years old, Durrett contributed violin tracks to Chesnutt’s second album West of Rome. After she completed high school, Liz attended the University of Georgia for a year in the ’90s, but wasn’t focused on academics. She played a few shows, but ended up eventually graduating from Georgia State in Atlanta. Soon after, she and McCormick moved to San Francisco so he could attend the San Francisco Art Institute. “I knew so many creative people working horrible jobs that didn’t leave them time to do their art,” she says. “We were hemorrhaging dollars every day, living in a tiny apartment in Oakland.” Luckily, the apartment had an attic which with the addition of a Tascam four track became a makeshift studio. While there, she wrote half the songs that make up The Mezzanine.

When she moved back to Athens in 2003, Durrett began playing violin in The Good Ship with coworkers Rob Lomax and Jesse Flavin, overcoming her stage fright in the process. “Playing with them helped me feel more comfortable on-stage,” she says. Durrett also finished writing The Mezzanine, recording the lot with Andy Baker. “It’s mostly me playing electric and sometimes acoustic and singing,” she says. “Vic added extracurricular sounds in his studio, distorted guitar, singing into a hand-held tape recorder run through a distortion pedal. Who the hell knows what he did in his attic?” She laughs, continuing, “He was also very careful about not overdoing it. He was very considerate, making sure that I was okay with what he was doing.” Whatever was done in the many attics, houses and apartments, it was done right. Sparse arrangements highlight Durrett’s throaty voice. She confronts the collusion of Christianity and politics in the track “Little Ascendant,” singing, “Your birth was a mystery / your life was exposed / they took it and twisted it / and made it their own.”

Depression sounds almost appealing with Durrett crooning on the title track “In the yard / small things beat you down / til you cannot / leave the house.” Her voice resonates with a challenge to Bible Belt precepts in “Cup on the Counter”: “Why try to lie to me? I’m not a child / I know what I’ve seen.”

“I feel like I really came to terms with being raised Southern Baptist while I was making this record,” she says. Taking a brief break from touring, Durrett is focusing on what she enjoys: making music. “I love that living in a small town like Athens means that making money to survive doesn’t necessarily have to be the focus of your life,” she says. “I love being surrounded by people who are doing what they want to be doing.”

Deirdre Sayre

WHO: Tin Cup Prophette, Barbez, Liz Durrett

WHERE: Saturday, March 11

WHEN: 40 Watt Club

HOW MUCH: $5

Deirdre Sayre

WHO: Tin Cup Prophette, Barbez, Liz Durrett

WHERE: Saturday, March 11

WHEN: 40 Watt Club

HOW MUCH: $5