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Flagpole Magazine
October 23, 1991
No cheese in this Danish
Wanna rock yer guts out? Ready for an
audio landslide? Three guitarists, two fe
male singers dueling rock n' roll style with a
powerful rhyjhm thump in the background.
Six band members make up Mary's Danish
—Julie Ritter, guitars and vocals; Gretchen
Seager, vocals; Louis Gutierrez, guitars;
James Bradley, Jr. on drums; Chris ("Wag")
Wagner, bass; and David King on guitars.
Recently signed to Morgan Creek with their
first release Circa faring well on alternative
charts, the band is off on a 7 week tour
around America, complete with tour bus
and ali the amenities. Mary's Danish will
play the Georgia Theatre on Saturday, Oct.
26 Julie called from 100 degree, smoggy
L A to inform us about the Danish, the
business and being a female rock 'n roller.
Julie Ritter: I’m going to leave [Los
Angeles] as soon as possible. I think we’re
going to all move from here as soon as
possible, that’s the goal. Just be able to tour
for 6 months out of the year and record for
3 and live wherever we want, that’s what we
want.
Flagpole: Where would you choose to
live?
JR: I’m going to Ireland. I’m going for
Christmas.
FP: [sigh of envy] I love Ireland I'll crawl in
your suitcase.
JR: I don’t know if I’m going to make it!
We’ve never toured Europe before until this
record. This record wilt be released in
January/February in Europe, but the other
one was only released in the states and
Canada and Australia.
FP: That's odd Australia but not Europe
JR: I know, it’s very weird Who knows how
distribution runs
FP: You switched from Chameleon to
Morgan Creek How are they treating you?
JR: They’ve been really great. The only
thing is we wanted to get a simultaneous
release but since they're a new company
they're trying to establish who their distribu
tors are going to be in England, which is
why there’s been a little bit of a delay. But,
everything else we've been really happy
with. We have virtually 100% creative con
trol so we can’t complain about that.
FP: Morgan Creek also produces movies.
Did they help you along with your video?
JR: No. because there is a cross-over point
where, we got invited to the preview of
Robin Hood, you know, things like that and
the artists are encouraged to submit songs
for soundtracks. But as far as creatively,
they don't cross-over too much. We had a
lot of people there [at Chameleon] who
were very much behind the band and
understood it and then there were a lot of
people who couldn’t facilitate what needed
to be done, and that was a problem. It’s very
frustrating when we’re working as hard as
we can and we’ve made a lot of changes —
management, labels and finally I feel like
everyone that's working with us has caught
up to where we are. At that time I felt like we
were being dragged down. We had 36
songs for a new record we were doing pre-
production on and we couldn't get into the
studio because they didn't get their record
deal together. We gave them more time on
good faith and they gave us money to
record the record on good faith and there
was still no deal. So, the record was re
corded and we couldn’t release it. It was
very frustrating.
FP: You 're talking aboutC\rca?lt was ready
a year ago.
JR: Yeah we re
corded it for Cha
meleon and Mor
gan Creek
bought it from
them.
FP; Are you
bound to Morgan
Creek to do a lot
of albums for
them now or are
you shopping
around for a big
ger label?
JR: Oh no We're
bound to Morgan
Creek. But it's a
good thing. We
don’t consider it
terribly binding
because we’re
happy with them
FP: Would you
ultimately like to
be on a bigger la
bel?
JR: To tell you
the truth, no, be
cause I think that Morgan Creek has all the
positive sides that a major label has. They
have the backing that's required for you to
feel secure in your position there and the
people that work for them have as good a
reputation, if not better, than those at a
major label. They've all been at the majors
for years and years, they’re all veterans.
David Kershenbaum...they have a really
small roster. They were scheduling one
album release a month from June, July.
August, September. You have a company
like Geffen that probably releases like 20
records a month, so we feel very much a
priority there.
FP: You mentioned David Kershenbaum,
the producer?
JR: Yes He produced Tracy Chapman
FP: Any plans to work with him in the future.
JR: I'd be interested in working with him,
but as far as the next record goes, we re
really talking about producing it ourselves
because we co-produced our last record,
think the two songs we did as demos by
ourselves ended up being on the record
and that's ''Nevada- and "Yellow Creep
Around." We were happier with the demo
versions that we had done than the studio
versions. But to be able to have someone
like David Kershenbaum and to be able to
work with him I wouldn’t pass that up Also
Peter Asher, who's our manager, is an
unbelievable producer.
FP: He's worked with 10,000 Maniacs
JR: He’s produced everyone...he was a
musician in the
’60s and has
done Linda Ron-
stadt, James
Taylor, Julia
Fordham, in fact
he just did a
Posie’s song with
Ringo Starr, they
recorded
“Golden Blun
ders."
FPr That's funny 1
Is he reaching
out for things
now?
JR: I think he
found it to be a
pun on "Golden
Slumbers" so he
took a liking to it
and recorded it
I was talking to
Ken m the Posies
and he said, "I
can't believe the
one person that's
inspired me, a
member of the
most inspirational band of my life, is record
ing my song!’ It hasn't sunk in yet
FP: I can imagine.
JR: ...to have one of the Beatles record
YOUR song! He’s 22 years old...
FP: How did your version of Jimi Hendrix s
“Foxey Lady" come about?
JR: It was a song we were playing one day
in rehearsal, just fooling around. We just
started singing it and liked the way it
sounded. For a guitar player to do Hendrix
it's kind of intimidating and David said, “no
way, no way, we're not doing it" but it just
turned out to be fun and we did it in our own
way I think we maintained integrity about
the song because we very much respect
Hendrix
FP: Yeah, it's cool how you do it. though it's
funny to hear females singing the song — n
gives it a different twist.
JR: That way we felt like we weren't trying
to rob anybody from doing it. we did it kind
of tongue in cheek.
FP: You guys rock out on it. Now how v/ith
6 people in the band do you come to terms
with producing your own stuff, are you all
pretty much in agreement?
JR: A lot of the times, yes, and then a lot of
the time...I mean we’ve had huge flareups
when we were recording the album. When
we were in the studio we've been split down
the middle...we’ve had three/three, we’ve
had two people who were the co-writers of
the song at each others throat saying this is
not the vision I had of the song, and often
times we came down to Dave Jergen [pro
ducer] and he would say, “well, I think you
should leave that part out" and we respected
that. It’s hard, but I always compare it to a
marriage or a relationship. You have a lot of
people and it takes a lot of maintenance, it's
very much a democracy and everything
comes down tu a vote.
FP: I know you and Gretchen began writing
poetry together, but how did that form into
the band?
JR: I had played in bands in high school,
and the true thing that I wanted to do was be
the guitar player, so it turned out when this
band started...Gretchen and I had trans
ferred from Berkeley because we were
unhappy ..
FP: You were unhappy with Berkeley?
JR: Well, not academically, I mean now I
regret the transfer because the education I
was getting at Berkley was so much more
superior than what I got at UCLA
FP: It's such a beautiful town.
JR: Well, for some reason both of our state
of minds LA is our home and at the time
I was going out with David King, who’s our
guitar player, he was living in L A. and you
just make those decisions in your life based
on what’s happening. I regret certain parts
of it and I've always said if our band was not
successful and I had made the transfer I
would be upset. Up until that point my
education was the most important thing to
me...
FP: What were you studying?
JR: French Literature. That’s howGretchen
and I met, we were both French majors. So,
we were unhappy about it and we moved
down here, in fact, a lot of the songs that
never made it onto the first record were
about that... So. we came down here and
David had been playing in a band and he
wanted to be in a “rock" band. He wasn't
interested in having women sing. His friend
Wag, who’s our bass player also didn't want
women singing. We said, “listen, we want to
be in a 'rock' band too I’m not interested in
s
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