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April March
231 Plays3 years ago
For the 150th Episode of the show we have the fabulous April March!
In a former life April March must have been a rockier fairy than Tinker Bell and like a cat, she has already had several lives. An animator trained by Disney, she has animated for Pee-wee Herman, Ren & Stimpy, Madonna, worked on Archie Comics, assisted Spiderman creator Steve Ditko and even assisted the legendary Harry Smith who occasionally brought Allen Ginsberg in tow to mentor her. She entered the NYC music scene with her garage girl-group The Pussywillows, which Ronnie Spector of The Ronettes, promptly hired to record and perform with her. A year into her music career, she landed on stage with Ronnie Spector at a completely sold out Madison Square Garden. Over a large plate of chicken back stage, Bo Diddley said to her, “Welcome to Rock and Roll.”
Next she joined The Shitbirds and The Haves, finally settling into the driver’s seat as April March. A Francophile from a tender age, she re-introduced an international audience to the French pop heritage of Gainsbourg, Françoise Hardy, Dani, Gillian Hills and many others. She cut her teeth in self production on a slew of popular to very obscure covers and adaptations of songs the French themselves had forgotten. Quentin Tarantino plucked “Chick Habit,” her adaptation of Gainsbourg’s “Laisse Tomber Les Filles,” to feature in his film “Death Proof.” She recorded “Chick Habit” with the help of Andy Paley who introduced her to Brian Wilson. This began a nice stretch of recording on and off with Brian for the next couple of years subsequently giving her a priceless education in both arrangement and production. So when Alexander Payne couldn’t reach Brigitte Bardot on the phone he hired April instead to write and produce her own Bardotesque song for his film “Election.” Next she met the modern day French Phil Spector — Bertrand Burgalat (just as talented, but a lot less dangerous). She made two albums with Burgalat, the first of which “Chrominance Decoder,” was chosen as one of the top ten albums of the year by The New Yorker and in the top 100 of all time by the seminal French magazine Rock et Folk. Burgalat introduced her to the great Aquaserge which led to an album and two films directed by Marie Losier landing her performances at The Centre Pompidou, MOMA and PS1.
April March has recorded with Ronnie Spector, Brian Wilson, Jonathan Richman, R.L. Burnside, Andy Paley, Bertand Burgalat, Tony Allen, Yo La Tengo, LL Cool J, Alain Chamfort, Darlene Love, The Dust Brothers, Laetitia Sadier (Stereolab), Maya Rudolph, Sean OHagan, and Aquaserge. After such a list of credits, certain artists would have rested on their laurels to the strains of “The Afternoon of a Faun,” but this Franco-American ringleader is a horse of a different color, preferring to go forward rather than look over her shoulder, which brings us to the latest. She has just been cast alongside Gerard Depardieu and Vanessa Paradis in a feature film. After having published a children’s book with Jack White called “We Are Going To Be Friends,” she’s recorded an E.P. with Olivia Jean in his private studio which he released March 5th with a Video following on March 17th on Third Man Records. She’s releasing a new album with the amazing Fugu featuring Tony Allen of Fela and Gorillaz as well as Marilyn Wilson of The Beach Boys and American Spring on July 17th with Record Store Day. The cherry on top? It’s another new album with the dazzling duo Staplin who, according to Radio France,“compose with talent music where pop sunshine melodies of the sixties dance on trip hop beats, psyche rock rubs shoulders with cosmic flights of evanescent synths, and repetitive orchestral music stretches to festive groove storms.”
https://www.aprilmarch.com/
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:02
Speaker
You are listening to something rather than nothing. Creator and host, Ken Zalante. Editor and producer, Peter Bauer.
00:00:18
Speaker
This is Ken Volante with the Something Rather Than Nothing podcast and a special guest here for episode 150. A talented artist, musician, April March. April, welcome to the show. So glad to have you on. Thank you. It's nice to be on.
00:00:37
Speaker
Yeah, and we'll be talking about music and art with April.
Early Artistic Influences
00:00:47
Speaker
I first encountered some of your music, well, recently, some of your recent releases,
00:00:56
Speaker
in a French pop style, the track all on C, which we'll be playing in a little bit. But prior to getting into the music and all that, ask a general philosophical question about your propensity to be an artist. And when you were young, I mean, were you an artist? Did you see yourself as an artist? Were you doing artful things?
00:01:22
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. I was drawing a lot and I was, we had like a little toy reel-to-reel tape recorder that you just recorded over and over. So anything you recorded just erased the other thing. So I was doing that a lot and drawing and painting and, you know, making things. Yeah,
Pursuing Music in New York City
00:01:46
Speaker
yeah. And about music, was there a certain point you saw yourself
00:01:52
Speaker
being a musical performer and singing as a primary outlet for art? Yeah, I think probably right after high school, I was living in the city in New York, and I started to see that it could be possible that I could have my own band. So that's when it sort of gravitated towards that whole idea. Yeah, yeah.
00:02:22
Speaker
What about the influence of French pop and it's a style that maybe some Americans are used to, Sir Gainsbourg and French pop from a bit ago. I've always been really
00:02:39
Speaker
attracted to the sound and dancing to that music and trying to sing along the best that I can. So like what for, you know, 2022 here, American listeners and they hear, as far as French pop goes, how did you encounter it and what do you dig about it?
00:03:04
Speaker
Well, I mean, I encountered it, you know, at home, because my mother had a few records. But after that, you know, again, when I moved to the city, like after high school, I was working briefly at a record store. And my friend that also worked there had, she had the first C.V. Vauxhalles album that I guess her
00:03:33
Speaker
father had brought back from a business trip. So that's when I started to just look for French records beyond, you know, the things that my mother had had, like, and it was impossible to get them. So I would like hitch rides up to Montreal and my friends were playing up there and buy them up there. And I think what I liked about it, I mean, the very first CB Vartan album is actually
00:04:03
Speaker
produced by Mickey Baker, who was Ike Turner's guitar player. So there is an American sound a little bit. It's one of her more sort of rock and roll records. But I think what drew me in the most was it was just a completely different
00:04:27
Speaker
style and sound, which, you know, you know, as I spoke to people, and I did actually end up speaking to Mickey Baker about it, just the fact that, you know, in France, the musical tradition doesn't go back to, you know, blues and country, it just doesn't, they have a whole different, they're much more apt to be going back to classical or jazz as their roots.
00:04:55
Speaker
And then there are things like they didn't really have vocal groups, like they didn't have duat groups or girl groups, like the whole idea of that type of group just didn't exist. So then their pop music is just coming from a different set of ingredients. And then it's hugely influenced obviously by
00:05:20
Speaker
the UK and the US, but the sort of bedrock is not gonna be kind of, you know, blues or country, which is more what we have. Everything kind of stems from that, because that's American music. Yeah, yeah. I think that's what I liked. It was just a completely different feeling. And then, you know, it's very Latin, it's very,
00:05:49
Speaker
totally different sensibilities. Yeah.
Dual Careers: Music and Illustration
00:05:54
Speaker
One of the things I'm very interested in about you as an artist is that obviously with the audio and music is one form of expression, but I know you've done illustration
00:06:15
Speaker
work as you know in the past and I think I'm really interested at those who are extremely proficient like yourself at both the visual the illustration and depiction and also sound. Do you feel when you're entering into those different realms that your art practice is radically different or is it just kind of a different way of
00:06:44
Speaker
of expressing what you want to do artistically. Yeah, I mean, I think it's just a different form of expression. You know, I sort of started, you know, my art career really is rooted in animation. I was an animator for many, many, many years. And, you know, all the Warner Brothers animators and the Disney animators like in thirties and forties and pleasures, they were all
00:07:12
Speaker
they they were jazz musicians, too. So, you know, it's there's a similar thing with animation and music because you're really you're dealing with rhythms and I don't know what it is, but so it didn't it didn't feel like any really kind of departure, like all the studios that I worked in, people were often also musicians.
00:07:41
Speaker
and like very proficient ones too. So yeah, it just sort of felt like it was kind of swimming in the same waters. And then, you know, more recently, you know, after I stopped doing animation, because I was trained to do like traditional
00:08:02
Speaker
2D animation with pencil and paper. And I tried to train so that I could do computer animation. I just don't have the brain for it. So when I did switch over to illustration, I don't know if I had a book come out, the children's book in 2000, I guess it was 2018. And Jack White wrote the text. It was the text from one of his songs.
00:08:32
Speaker
Yeah, it's just, you know, and that's a good example. He's very, he uses a lot of art and images to go with the music. I mean, everything that he does. So I just, I don't really see a big departure between music and 2D art, really. I mean, it's sort of like film. It's just, I don't know, they kind of just all go together.
00:09:01
Speaker
Yeah, that song and book, I think we're going to be friends. I remember when I first heard that song, it's strange to hear like a really sweet song, just like a really beautiful and sweet song. So when I found out, you had illustrated that.
00:09:23
Speaker
I was just naturally attracted to the story that's behind that. And I think it's a beautiful song. And so really love that. April, I have a big question for you before we get too deep into art that I ask all my artists guests is what exactly is art?
The Language of Art and Personal Reflection
00:09:52
Speaker
I don't know. I mean, I suppose it's just like another language, perhaps. I mean, there is some saying that art decorates space and music decorates time or something like that. I might not be getting that right, but yeah, I mean, I just think it's another language or another form of expression. Yeah, yeah.
00:10:23
Speaker
about art itself, do you think it has a specific role for humans? Is art supposed to be doing something for us that nothing else can? Yeah, I think so. I mean, there's a really great James Baldwin quote, which I'm probably just, I'm just gonna paraphrase it, but he says essentially it's in the essay called
00:10:53
Speaker
artists struggle for integrity, which I think was like a, maybe like a, I don't remember what, why it was some speech that he gave. It might've been even to like a graduating class or something, but he was explaining that, you know, the role of the artist is to, is, you know, the artist is there to kind of describe the human experience or human
00:11:23
Speaker
condition and you know, it's it's it's a you know, it's your responsibility because You know only you know only an artist or a poet or someone with that type of No, I don't know what you want to say gift or sale it's the responsibility of those people that were born with that to to do that for other human beings because
00:11:52
Speaker
I can't remember, he said like something like, you know, priests can't do it, lawyers can't do it. You know, there's a lot of jobs where they can't sort of describe the experience of being human so much. Yeah, yeah. And I like, I'm thinking of James Baldwin in the context of, you know, being actually pretty prominent in
00:12:21
Speaker
French popular culture, intellectual culture as a writer. I know he lived there, but also I'm thinking about the connection to jazz. And I thought Baldwin is just a phenomenal public intellectual. He actually lived across the street from
00:12:43
Speaker
Ganzborg at one point. Did he? I did not know that. I don't know if they were there at the exact same time at the hotel that he was living in in Paris, directly across the street, diagonally across the street from Ganzborg's house in Paris. Yeah, I found Baldwin to be such a deep thinker and radical and ahead of his time. So I appreciate your mention of James Baldwin.
Exploring the EP "Palladium"
00:13:13
Speaker
Talking about your EP, Palladium, and as I mentioned, will be cut into a track, All I See, which is both the video of it and your collaboration with Olivia Jean, just such a wonderful energy
00:13:34
Speaker
great tune. And I know there's kind of the variations of a theme, having listened to Palladium. Can you just tell the listeners just about the project, what brought you to Palladium and just what you're trying to do there? Well, basically, you know, I had met Olivia and
00:13:57
Speaker
She was wanting to record that song for her album and she was having a hard time with the French. She doesn't see that French. And so I think actually, yeah, I think Jack had reached out to me to ask what was my advice on how to attack that song.
00:14:24
Speaker
And I just said pick another song. Not that one. Really hard song to sing, especially if, you know, if you don't speak French at all, it's like really hard. So and then we met, I guess maybe six months later or something, I guess.
00:14:44
Speaker
Yeah. And I said, you know, how's that song going? And she said, oh, you know, and I said, well, why don't we just take another stab at it and I'll do it with you. She was like, oh, I like that idea. So then we just decided to do that. And third man liked the idea. So they, you know, they put it out and everything. And we, but we couldn't, you know, cause it's a cover. So,
00:15:12
Speaker
um we had so many different directions, we wanted to go that they said it would be fine if we wanted to do three different directions and then make it six versions. So that's what we did we just did three entirely different directions.
00:15:31
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And thanks so much for doing it. For me, I don't know, as far as the song itself, it felt like you can't always do that with the song, but it felt right. And I love the different versions. So April, we're gonna cut to that track. Listeners, this track is, I wanna see off Palladium by artist April March. And Olivia Jean. And Olivia Jean.
Cultural Upbringing and Family Influence
00:19:04
Speaker
I was dancing off camera in part. I was dancing off camera in part because I know like that song there's like those type of songs. There's these songs sometimes that if you know something like you hear a song played in an area and you say like this song is impossible to not dance to and you wonder why like nobody is dancing.
00:19:30
Speaker
You just love that track, love that EP. What I wanted to ask April is, and this is kind of like a question about influences or like how you become the person you are, but the question is who or what made you who you are, April?
00:20:00
Speaker
What do you mean? What made you who you are? It influences as an artist or as a person. I mean, sometimes people say, I saw this painting at the Louvre one time, and they got into that painting. Who or what made you what you became, your influences?
00:20:27
Speaker
Um, I don't know. I mean, I was born in Manhattan. So, um, I think I saw a lot of different cultures around me. And, um, yeah, so I think, I don't know. I think that just that sort of city life made me, um, feel like a, like a part of a very large world.
00:20:56
Speaker
And then I spent a lot of time also in the country, like in the woods and by the ocean and stuff like that. So yeah, I think, I don't know, just the largeness of what was around me is kind of what formed me. I don't know. And just a lot of curiosity. And then my household was very,
00:21:26
Speaker
intellectual. My mother was an art historian. My dad was a, um, editor at Oxford and then Yale University Press after that. So I grew up with a lot of books and records and, you know, that kind of thing. So. Yeah. Yeah. You're, you're, you're around it. You were around it, um, growing up, um,
00:21:54
Speaker
2022 here and just talking a little bit more about music. Have you listened to something recently that folks really need to listen to this music now? Is there anything you've run into recently that you're like, damn, this is... I know Olivia Jean's stuff is absolutely fantastic.
00:22:18
Speaker
Yeah, like, she's great. But like, what do people need to be listening to now? Like, what's caught your ear? I like Fishbok a lot. I like her new album. And let's see, I just this morning I heard Alton Ellis, who I hadn't heard. That was kind of a little bit mind blowing for me. I don't know. I just, um,
00:22:47
Speaker
having like a brain you know what's interesting no like seriously on the on that question here i you know i ask it once in a while and i think i suffer from from the same the same thing right if i'd like you listen to like 20 different things and but if you ask that a particular moment and be like it's all in the soup it's all in the soup of what i listened to recently
00:23:11
Speaker
Yeah, I just can't, I just, I mean, I think like that new album that I've been playing a lot is Fishbox new album, but then, you know, then I went back to her first album, which I love, but, you know. Yeah, I mean, that's the most recent thing that I got.
00:23:36
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. One of the things I like to ask guests is just as far as your connection to other arts. I know I had asked a question about video and audio as you saw them.
00:23:58
Speaker
you know, just kind of different manifestations of your thinking. One of the things that I've seen come about, or it's come about in discussion about the role of art now, and I think it's in that James Baldwin
00:24:17
Speaker
And it has to do with like that, that the artist does have a different role, potentially have a different role of being able to communicate certain things that maybe other groups, like you said, maybe the priest can't or others can't. But do you think that the role of the artist now, just in the face of, you know, things that are going on with the world where we're talking about, you know, the pandemic,
00:24:44
Speaker
or social inequities, climate change. Do you think that the role of the artist still remains the same in this
The Artist's Role and Current Listening
00:24:55
Speaker
day and age? Or is there something different about being an artist now? I don't think so. I mean, I think basically what everybody's been born with, whatever their God-given talents, they just should be concentrating on that. Yeah.
00:25:14
Speaker
because I mean, you know, there's been hard times all through the ages and everybody, I mean, everybody's roles are important. So whatever, you know, whatever you were put on the earth to do, you should be doing it. And that's your purpose. I think it's, you know, I don't really distinguish between which role is more important. It's all just,
00:25:44
Speaker
people should be focusing on what they do best so that they don't get into other people's business. Could allow a pause there for five to 10 seconds. Yeah, we're trying to subjugate or take over other people or whatever.
00:26:06
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Major question, titular question of the show, April. Why is there something rather than nothing in this world? So what kind of something? I don't know. Why is there something like why are we doing these things? Why is there?
00:26:35
Speaker
It could, the universe could be, could be nothing, but yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I do these Vedic meditations and actually that was touched on this morning. And it's basically that, you know, this isn't a, the universe isn't just like a cold void. It's a human universe. It's full of humans.
00:27:02
Speaker
So that is the universe. Like we make up the universe. So that's the substance. There's humans and animals and plants and everything. So that's not nothing. I've been asking this question for guests over all this time and you had it in your Vedic meditation this morning, right? So.
00:27:34
Speaker
Little did I know, little did I know.
Music Accessibility and Streaming Challenges
00:27:38
Speaker
April March, where do people go to find you, to find your music, to find your art? How do you lead the listeners to encountering April March? Well, I think it's all on all of the streaming platforms. I mean, I don't have Spotify or, I mean, I think
00:28:02
Speaker
It depends, like there's a certain bunch of masters that are owned by me and I took those all off all the streaming platforms. So in fact, the song that I'm most known for is not available. It will be available, but just not for a little while. And I took it down just because a lot of it, you know, on YouTube and I don't know if people know this, things are just put up by other people.
00:28:32
Speaker
So I took everything down so that I could put it all back up and everything can come to me instead of, I don't know, a little cosmonaut somewhere. I don't really know. But yeah, so there's that. And it's always good to go to your local indie record store.
00:28:57
Speaker
I'm not sure if the Record Store Day release is still, if there's still copies out there, but there might be. Sir, I've searched in, at least in the Portland, Oregon area, haven't found, but I'm still on the search, so. But you can also, that Record Store Day release was released just a few months ago on, by Anavur on CD with bonus tracks. So that's very easy to find. You can find that.
00:29:27
Speaker
Awesome. I did find a Prince Waw Hardy album.
00:29:36
Speaker
Nice French one, yeah. Yeah, and just like groovy, groovy background. I will look for that. Yeah, and thanks so much for your music and art. Everybody should check out April March's music. Like I said, I love the video, your collaboration with Olivia Jean.
00:30:00
Speaker
very vibrant, very dance-worthy style of music I love. And it's just very uplifting and super poppy without apology, like just feeling it, just feeling it. I just adore it.
00:30:17
Speaker
April, thanks so much for coming on to the Something Rather Than Nothing podcast. It's been a great pleasure to meet you and to talk with you and to hear some of your
Conclusion and Appreciation
00:30:30
Speaker
music. We'll be going out with the track, Open Your Window Romeo, and that's off in Cinerama, your album. Anything you wanted to say about the groovy track, Open Your Window Romeo?
00:30:50
Speaker
I'm drawing a blank out just that you know that was that's from the album called Incinerama that just came out on omnivore records and that was released last year as a record story they release.
00:31:06
Speaker
But that's a really special album. And that song I wrote with a French composer, recording artist named Mettie Zannad. And he's incredible. And there's Tony Allen playing drums on that track, who was Bella's band leader and drummer.
00:31:32
Speaker
and invented Afrobeat. So that's. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it was inspired by a musician that I love named Julius Lester. And I remember when we were recording it, Tony Allen really
00:32:02
Speaker
We were, you know, we were all, I was singing scratch vocals while they were doing the backing track. And Tony Allen was very struck by the lyrics. He said, I've never heard that before. It's very unusual. So, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Thanks again, April March. Please keep making art.
00:32:27
Speaker
Thoroughly, thoroughly enjoy it and really appreciate your time and taking some time to chat with us. Really appreciate you. Bye now. Okay, thank you so much.
00:33:10
Speaker
Open your window, open your window Let my love come in Open your window, open your window Open your window, open your window Let my love come in
00:33:45
Speaker
He comes knocking just to lend a hand And he doesn't make a sound Close your head right around
00:34:44
Speaker
Thank you so much for watching!
00:34:54
Speaker
Feel your heart arising with the time Arising till your man is in your mind
00:36:27
Speaker
Na na na na na na na na na na na na
00:37:01
Speaker
This is something rather than nothing.