Abracadabra - interview with singer/songwriter Abra Moore - Interview

Interview, August, 1997 by Ray Rogers

THERE'S NO WAND IN SIGHT, BUT BLOSSOMING SINGER/SONGWRITER ABRA MOORE'S MAJOR-LABEL DEBUT IS CASTING A MUSICAL SPELL ON AN AUDIENCE WITH A WISH TO CONNECT

Abra Moore has a sweet, goofy, wide-eyed way about her - much like Edie Brickell, another starry-eyed singer/songwriter, whose charm and hippy-dippy ways took the pop world by surprise in the late '80s. Moore is fond of the phrase "You know?" and habitually cranes her twiggy neck out to flash her twinkling buggy eyeballs right in your face when something excites her - which is often. She's an expressive person guided by the whims of her emotions.

Nowhere is that moro apparent than on Moore's Arista Austin debut, Strangest Places, a record that tours the highs and lows of her heart's country and, musically, crosses many borders: Snappy pop songs are colored by country sway, folkie strums, and occasional steps on the distortion pedal. Maybe it's the climate of her current home, Austin, Tx., or all those years growing up In the Hawaiian mist, but either way the twenty-eight-year-old's upbeat tunes and breathy vocals have caught listeners off guard. "I'm just so happy people are responding to it," Moore says, a look of wonder on her face. "After Alanis and all that, I'm going in like, 'Hi, hope you don't mind another girl.'"

When Moore and her current band made their New York City debut, no one else was around to do the honors, so I ended up introducing them at the Roseland Ballroom, where they were the support act for Matthew Sweet and That Dog. Though the headliner wasn't scheduled to go on for another two hours and the hall was still sparsely populated, Moore played as If it were a full house and she were the main attraction - and if her "Four Leaf Clover" single continues to bring her good fortune, she soon will be.

RAY ROGERS: It was a pleasure to introduce you tonight. You sounded great, but I understand you weren't feeling too well. Something about some spider bites?

ABRA MOORE: Yeah, I got them in Vermont - the first time I slept without a shirt in a hotel bed. Usually I put socks on and have my little bed uniform for the hotel. [laughs] And I got attacked by the killer spiders of Vermont. The poison's just entered my glands. They're all swollen and my body aches and I had a fever, but I feel better at the moment. The poison's moving along, so I can say it's over here now - no, it's down here, or up here.

RR: This is actually your second record, right?

But it's your first for the world at large.

AM: Yeah, this is the first one that has a little spotlight on it. The one before it was titled Sing, and it had the songs that I'd been carrying with me from ten years back.

RR: What's different about this album? What is it that brought you to a new level?

AM: The difference is just where I am now. The first one was like that chapter in my life, tunes that I had written when I was eighteen. And Strangest Places is the next chunk. It's a constant transformation.

RR: You've traveled all over - busking on the streets of Paris, working at the Hard Rock Cafe in New York City, and now making your home in Austin. What was the thought behind the title of this record?

AM: It really expressed a side of me and the strangest places in my mind; how we get ourselves in situations that are also the strangest places - like going home with the drummer in the band, or waking up in some boy's T-shirt and wondering, How did I get here?

RR: Why do you think people are reacting to this bunch of songs?

AM: Well, maybe they're feeling some connections. Walking away from it, I felt very satisfied, like I'd captured some honesty and a vision, which is all you hope for.

RR: Your single, "Four Leaf Clover," seems to be speaking to a lot of people.

AM: Well, it feels like a hopeful tune, a positive message. I actually wrote that while making the album. I was feeling the wake of just growing up and being alive in the world. This feeling of "It's all just a little too much right now" landed on me, and the song was born: It feels like a really nice spring day.

RR: This record has several songs about contentment. What makes you an optimist?

AM: My childhood was very colorful, and I developed an optimist's sense of humor at an early age. There was a lot of loss and trouble in my younger years: I lost my mother when I was four, and I had an autistic brother. I spent a lot of time singing to him, trying to make him happy, and he cried a lot, so I guess maybe that's where the seed was planted.

RR: Is your brother still around?

AM: Yeah, Pepe Joe lives in Hawaii - he's great. We were both born too early and had to be incubated.

RR: Do you have an underdog spirit because of that?

AM: Underdog?

RR: Someone who's small and has to fight.

AM: Yeah, the struggle, you know? We moved to Hawaii when I was five. My father and my stepmom raised us all in an old house with no electricity that sugarcane workers used to live in. I grew up in Hawaii with a generator and a stereo - no TV - for the first several years of my life. So music just comes naturally to me. It was nothing I decided to be, just something I always did, always making up songs. I grew up with everything: Chet Baker, Billie Holiday, Stevie Wonder, Aretha, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan. All the '70s, '60s, the Beat era.