After the breakup of Dahlia Seed in 1996 a lot of people including myself figured that Tracy would soar to new heights with either a solo project or a new band. In the ten years that would follow Tracy endured a series of  events that would kill a lesser person. In a short time she divorced, lost both of her parents to two separate fatal diseases and the death of her brother in a fatal accident. All of this while moving to a city where she knew absolutely no one. Through all this she was able to survive through writing and composing the music that would become Ringfinger. During that time she worked on and off in both conventional and unconventional manners with a number of gifted musicians from varied backgrounds. In the end penning twelve songs that would become the album Decimal her first self released solo album.  This September I had the pleasure of traveling to Richmond Virginia to join in celebrating her marriage. Shortly after we did this interview. For those of you who knew and loved Dahlia Seed the way I did and still do. Ringfinger and the album Decimal are quite different in it’s sound, technique and approach but it also has the heart, soul and emotion that made     Dahlia Seed so influential and loved. Thanks so much to Tracy for sharing both her special day and thoughts on the new release. JD 

James: Congratulations on your wedding It was such a blast driving down for it. Have you found a place for all the art you received?

James: That’s awesome. I’m glad you liked it. The morning we left we had breakfast at the Third Street diner. It  was possibly the best breakfast I've ever had. Are you familiar with the place?

Tracy: Yes - that is one of our few late night diners in town.

James: What led you to move back to the east Coast and why Richmond?

Tracy: The music distro I worked for at the time was looking to have a regional sales rep living in the DC area.  DC was too pricey so I picked Richmond. As fate would have it a friend there had purchased a home and was giving up her amazing apartment. I moved right in without the hassle of trying to find a new place to live in a city I didn't know very well. I was also going through a divorce at the time so to be honest moving out of NYC to a new place and starting over fresh was very appealing to me.

James: What do you like most about the area and how long did it take you to get comfortable?

Tracy: I still wonder if I am 100% acclimated to living in the South / the Confederate Capital. There is no denying that there is a hefty amount of conservatism here and after living in a city like New York- that kind of change takes some getting used to. On a good note Richmond is incredibly affordable compared to most cities and there is a fascinating history to this town. It probably took me a good five years to feel comfortable enough with living here to call it my home. I hardly knew anyone when I moved here so it took a great deal of time to feel settled no less build friendships.

Tracy: First I want to say I had no idea it was a Nine Inch Nails song so my solo recording name choice has nothing to do with Trent Reznor, ha! I have a funny relationship with words. I love how certain words sound and feel in the mouth when you say them and Ringfinger has a nice growling vibratory sense to it yet it comes across a delicate and bouncy too. Then there is the undeniable association of it being the finger that bares a ring that historically speaking has symbolized love and infinity. The 4th finger on the left hand was chosen in particular nearly 5,000 years ago because it was believed to be part of a vein system connected to both the heart and head.

James: I was also curious about the title of the record "Decimal". What's the significance of the word in regards to this album?

Tracy: A decimal is a number written using the base of 10. It took me 10 years to build up a catalog of my own material, record it, and finally release it.

James: We really hadn’t  been in touch in a long time. You know I had no  idea you were previously married.

Tracy: That isn't a question, ha! 

James: Well, I guess I was kind of caught off guard when I heard. I mean I wasn't invited to the wedding or anything. Maybe when you don't see someone for a long time you don't really picture them growing or changing. Maybe I still pictured you as that person in the blue dress on stage at Maxwells.

Tracy: My first wedding was a courthouse elopement sort of thing. Nobody was invited so don’t feel bad for missing it, ha!

James: You absorbed a tremendous amount of tragedy in a short time. Did a  lot of that emotion and pain go into making this record?

Tracy: Absolutely. I could go two ways with my grief, I could bury myself with it or channel it in some sort of productive way. I chose the latter. There were so many terrible things that happened over the last decade but it was losing my parents and my brother Chris all in about a three year span that pushed me to new heights of devastation and loss.

James: You mentioned writing this record literally saved your life. How so?

Tracy: I needed something to distract me from my sorrows and directing my grief in a positive direction was very important to me. Music is my happy place, even if it is born from a place of sadness first.

James: Has writing always been a saviour for you?

Tracy: The power of language and expression through art has always been a huge point of inspiration to me...as far back as I can remember. My parents were avid readers, huge music fans, and in general very active in the arts so I can thank them for guiding me towards being creative and feeling passionate about art. Be it mine or from others.

James: You worked with so many gifted musicians. Can you tell me how you met  them and a little bit about your relationship with each of them?

The rest of Team Ringfinger comes from all over the place. Meason Wiley of Dead Waiter has been an old friend reaching back to my days of Dahlia Seed in the early to mid 90s. Aaron Turner of Isis was first introduced to me through Stephen Brodsky but we have also had a working relationship in the late 90’s when I was selling his label’s records (Hydra Head) through my distribution job at Caroline Distribution. J Robbins with whom I recorded the vocals for two of the tracks is perhaps my oldest friend in the bunch. Jawbox was the very first band to stay at my first ever home away from my parent’s home in 1991. Rex Ritter of Sunno))), Jessamine, and Fontanelle is probably my second oldest friend on “Decimal” as we became friends while I lived in Seattle 1994-95 through the Engine Kid guys who were on C/Z the label I was a sales rep for at the time. Barry London (Jah Division, Knoxville Girls and well...my ex-husband to be more specific) and I home recorded quite a bit in late 90’s / early 2000 and it was from these sessions that “Miss Me” came to be. It saddened me that none of our songs ever saw the light of day so when I had the chance to rework an old demo version of the song I jumped at the opportunity. It was then placed in the hands of Alap Momin (Dälek) who completely dissected and rebuilt the song from the ground up. Alap and I, both from the same post hardcore community of the 90’s in NY/NY, worked together in the mid 90’s when Dahlia Seed recorded our final material at his studio. Nyles Lannon of Film School and N. Lannon falls into the newest friend category. I was a huge fan of his debut solo record and introduced myself to him at local show he played a few years ago. We hardly new each other at the time but I had one track that screamed for his addition. I shyly asked him if he was interested in adding his talents to the mix and lucky for me he said yes. It is such a complicated tale but ultimately my relationship with 99.9% of them was based around a friendship first and me asking them to play on my record came second, much much later.

James: Can you give me a background on the cover photo? I remember talking to you about it at the wedding reception. There's something kind of lonely and haunting about it.

Tracy: The cover art is a picture my mother took of me as a child. I was a model for a photography class in the mid 70’s so even though the image is of just me on this giant hill, there was actually about 20 people along side my mom also shooting me. I have about 15 or 20 variations of me in black and white on that same hill in town I grew up in. The weird part is that hill is now a super expensive neighborhood packed with million dollar homes. There is no more tall grass and that big tree has since been bulldozed.

James: The song "Waving Good-Bye has a similar haunting feel to it. Can you tell me a little bit about it?

Tracy: It is about the doomed polar exploration ship The Karluk in 1913. I went through a phase a few years ago where I obsessively read books about polar exploration. I was really struck by the Karluk story and the tale of survival that goes with it. In hindsight I think I deeply connected to and felt inspired by any tale where people were pushed to their limits and somehow persevered. It was also fascinating to read stories about brutal Arctic environments that were nearly impossible for man to prevail yet even under these harsh conditions the explorers were still in awe of the stunning majestic beauty of their landscape -massive sparkling skyscrapers of ever shifting snow and ice. When I described the back story to Aaron Turner who was working on the song with me he took the shimmering cracking sound of a ship trapped in ice slowly sinking and sculptured his guitar sound around it.

James: Will you have the opportunity to perform these songs live?

Tracy: In a perfect world, yes. I spoke to Stephen last night and we have tossed around the idea for a late Spring early Summer performance in NYC next year.

I don't have any plans to tour but it would be amazing to play these songs live at least once.

James: Your live performances have always been a roller-coaster of emotion. I don't know if I ever told you this but one time you were performing with Dahlia Seed at Maxwell's and I was seriously getting the chills. At one point during "Milk" the hair stood up on my arm. I'll never forget that moment. I would imagine performing songs from this album, songs that carry such emotional wait could be very painful. Do you think you still have the ability to put it all out there like in the past? I would imagine it would be extremely draining emotionally and physically. (There's a question in there somewhere.)

Tracy: I suspect it will feel like it did in the past. It can be incredibly awkward and difficult to sing about personal things from my past each night yet it is also can be wonderfully cathartic because not only am I getting it off my chest, I am doing so to a roomful of people. A big part of moving on and putting the past behind me was finishing Decimal. I hope that within creating that closure I would be also able to sing about it in a live situation and feel more detached from it rather than feeling like I was still in the middle of it as I was in DS.

James: You had an unorthodox approach to building the songs. (Mailing tapes  back and fourth and such.) Did that make the process harder?

Tracy: The process was complex, there is no denying that. I would write something at home, work on it for months or sometimes even years. The song would then be transferred to Cam's Pro Tools because I didn't have a home computer no record on, just an old 4 track. From there I would have to re-record my vocals and it was at that point it was all about finding which friend wanted to work on which song. That process alone took a good year! Once that had all been decided I would mail the computer tracks to them and each friend would do as they pleased with it. Eventually - again sometimes up to a year later, the song would be mailed back to me in a semi finished state. The final step was to record my final vocals which were done at a ton of different friend's houses and studios. The last key to the project was working with Alap AKA Oktopus from Dalek to mix it all together. I didn't want it to sound clumsy like a thousand pieces of a puzzle had been shoved together. I wanted a coherent record that flowed gracefully from track to track and I think we managed to pull that off. It wasn't easy but I think in the end, as difficult as it was to manage and keep moving ahead, I have no regrets. 

James: Didn't you have a similar approach during a period when you were in  Dahlia Seed and living in Seattle?

Tracy: Indeed. I would record a song I had written on a crappy cassette and mail it to the band. They would in turn bring it to their practice space, work on it and eventually mail me back the mutated expanded version of my original piece of music. It was very exciting to send off a blueprint of a song and have it come back to in a completely new and magnificent form. Decimal worked very much under that same principal. Great question!

James: One of the things that really caught me off guard is the disc has a  real electronic feel to it. The reason I say this is considering your  own musical background and that of the musicians you worked with. (Any thoughts?)

Tracy: Electronic music is something I don't know a great deal about nor do I follow it as a genre very closely. I was given a drum machine 6 years ago as a Christmas gift and when I hit rock bottom, was in a city where I had very few friends, I turned to the drum machine and started playing with it every spare moment I had. I have to wonder. If my gift had been knitting needles or a hockey stick...who knows what I would have ended up doing rather than make a record.

James: Another thing I was curious about is you're releasing the record independently.  Considering your reputation and the fact that you've  been around music for so long. I would think you would have more options. What was behind the decision to release it independently and when can we expect to see it.

Tracy: This goes back to a lack of confidence about my music and my lack of interest in trying to sell myself to a label. I don't have it in me to pitch my music. I sell music all day for my day job and since the music industry is my 9-5 business the last thing I want to do is apply that to my art. I feel like a very small fish in a very very very big pond. The task of fishing for a label among such fierce competition and in such a crowded market feels like a daunting task. Ultimately it seemed like less work to just self release it in a digital format and if that goes well I would like to eventually produce a limited run of CDs. As far Magic Bullet pressing LPs for me, it was such an honor and a genuine surprise they wanted to do it. I sent a CDR of my record to Brent just to share my music with an old friend and much to my surprise he liked it enough to ask about putting out my record. It's comforting to know that occasionally there are happy endings out there.

James: You know I find it surprising you mentioned a lack of confidence. Considering you've worked in and around music most of your life and the influence Dahlia Seed had on so many bands and people. Till this day I am still  slipping Dahlia Seed tracks onto mixes I send people. Where do you think that lack of confidence stems from?

Tracy: This is a nearly impossible question to answer without sounding self loathing. I am very proud of the music I make but I have never had the ego or drive to shove it out in the world and scream about it from rooftops. I have always been more about just doing what I do, making music for me and if people like it, awesome and if not that is okay too. I have never felt like DS was some hugely influential band in the greater scheme of things. It isn’t that I don’t believe it is possible; it just has personally never been an aspect that I cared to focus on. Being popular or famous isn’t what making art has ever been about for me so I guess that crushes the momentum necessary to get-my music out there in a big way.

James: When can we expect the release and will it be available on both vinyl and CD formats?

Tracy: I hope to self release Decimal on CD next Spring. I would love to press some now but I simply can’t afford to do that right now. No street date on the LPs from Magic Bullet yet but I believe we are aiming for January. JD

(Interview and live photos James Damion.  DJ’ing image provided by Tracy.)

http://www.myspace.com/teamringfinger

http://www.dahliaseed.com

http://www.myspace.com/dahliaseed 

Related Interviews:

Dahlia Seed

next >

< previous