Mieka Pauley
Beauty In The Business Of Toughness
Apr 11, 2009
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
Sound engineering by Mike Gentry
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Welcome to Daytrotter
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We're All Gonna Die
unreleased
The band & I are in the studio now with producer Mike Mangini (thanks to Cosmopolitan...), and we're planning on having this song on the new demo .... anyway, about the song -- my husband Baratunde Thurston is a social and political comedian, and he makes a lot of things funny that are actually pretty much absolutely not. So you'd get to see him do stand-up, and laugh, and leave feeling like "things are messed up, but it's cool," whereas I get to hear all about it before it becomes funny. So I'm often just left rocking alone in my room trying to come to terms with, for example, the theorized massive death count after oil runs out.
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When I Get My
original version appears on unreleased Noam Weinstein cover from the album Probably Human
This song is by my friend Noam Weinstein. He's a brilliant writer, and he has claimed every last good song idea. Every time I feel like there's nothing left, he always finds something else brilliant to write about. He doesn't know it, but he actually wrote this song for and about me. It is my Theme Song.
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All The Same Mistakes
original version appears on Elijah Drop Your Gun
My guitarist/music-director/partner-in-crime Brian Cassagnol produced my last album, Elijah Drop Your Gun -- this song was what led to that collaboration. You're obviously hearing the acoustic version here, but it's amazing, the soundscape that Brian heard and overlaid for the album version. I fell head-over-heels for his brilliant musical mind, and subsequently entrusted the entire album to him ... the result being #1 his long list of titles after "guitarist" and #2 an album that, although not my first recording, I consider the foundation of my art & my career .... About the song. This is a very personal song to me, and I don't like to talk about that kind of stuff all that much (especially publicly), so I'll just say it's about fucking up, now and forever, amen.
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Marked Man
unreleased
I'm hoping this song will be on my next album. It all depends on whether we can capture it correctly in the studio. I had a strange/amazing time recording this one in yall's studio, thanks to a group enthusiasm for experimentation and to all the random beautiful shit lying around your place ... can't wait to hear if this recording *actually* translates, hmmmm .... about the song. The chorus of this one materialized during one of my overnight drives from show to show. I was already feeling pretty dark, but something about being alone on an empty highway in the middle of the night just solidified it, and I started singing the chorus like a chant, over and over. Thank god I thought to record it, I'm not sure if it would have stuck with me. I came across it almost a year later when I was in a more stable state of mind, and I was able to write the verses from a clearer perspective. It's funny that when you're in the middle of something, truly experiencing it, you can't actually express it as well as when you look back from a better time and rationally address what happened to you.
Do it bravely, Mieka Pauley sings on her latest record Elijah Drop Your Gun, and the words come at you like blunt force. It's the beauty she puts into the words, that are supposed to just kiss, supposed to just be a mantra for the silent leagues, for when not all of the world is listening. They are for her and by her, originating from the chambers and the inner sanctum of her chest. They are the words of affirmation and strengthening, that are to be whispered into one's own ears, should a body be able to contort in such a way, to rearrange itself to be more helpful and believable. They are meant to be comforting in that not everything works out (actually, most things do not), some things just splatter after the leapt of faith, but there's no harm in actually dropping and that's where the bravery that the New Yorker has abided by for her entire career comes from. It's not an overwhelming sort of "pick yourself up by the bootstraps and brush the dirt off of your ass" kind of frequency, but instead one that just emphasizes the need to be your own army, muscle, therapist and keeper of the karma. It's okay to fly blindly into the teeth of every storm you see even if you know nothing about the storms, so long as you're able to read all of your own vital signs. Pauley, who has recently been Twitter-friended by Rivers Cuomo-dueting Rainn Wilson and championed by Cosmopolitan magazine of all things, forms a kind of bluesy-folk rock and roll that doesn't pander to any easy clichés or dialogue, as that sort of music so often does. She feels the world whipping around, getting dizzy from the lashing and the tantrums that it spurts out in disgust and exhaustion, barely able to find the energy to stand, but then the words kick in and up she stands, able to survive, live to fight another day off (read: make the most of it). The only promises that she believes in are the ones that aren't already spoken as those are the most genuine, the less flimsy. Her tough woman, gentle soul take on the world is similar to the story about a young boy who's father wanted to teach him a life lesson, telling him to fall backwards and he'd catch him. The father let the boy fall to the ground and warned him to never trust anyone, not even his father. It's a harsh lesson, and likely a little too extreme for it creates a lonesome countenance and a heavy burden, but it's always brighter to be guided by the devils and the angels rummaging through your own head - the ones who are with you during those late nights driving through the dark back roads, unshakably warning and suggesting whatever kind of swill or stabilizing thoughts they can put into words. She brings words to her tongue that don't feel to be of difficult conception, as if they are the particles that have just been swishing around her canals and veins for all of her eternity, which is the only eternity that matters much. They are the pieces of her that she's never going to get rid of and it comes out as music that will make you feel minty and it will make you feel misty and just the right temperature - where the sun's blazing down on you on an otherwise chilly day. She takes fate on a day-to-day basis and that could be the smartest thing anyone can do. You carve your own way or whittle your own coffin.
Mieka Pauley Official Site
Mieka Pauley MySpace Page
