https://wickedspinsradio.org/wsr2012

Ruthann Friedman Interview For Wicked Spins Radio

After 40 years without releasing music Ruthann Friedman came out of retirement releasing her wonderful new album Chinatown.  Its wan amazing album that has a few emotions at its heart that flow through to your ears and pluck your heart strings as you listen.Windy is the song that everyone thinks of when they think of Ruthann Friedman, Wicked Spins Radio got chance to catch up with Ruthann and discover the wonderful lady behind the music.

Thank you so much for giving Wicked Spins Radio this interview, can you tell our readers a little bit about yourself?

Ruthann -My pleasure.  I’ve been alive since 1944 so there are many stories I can tell; I had numerous adventures ending well or badly… I came into the world at the end of WWII. Everything was changing at an astonishing pace.

Penicillin had just entered the world of medicine.  Men were coming back from the war and pushing women back into the role of domestic worker. There was the creation of the Levittown developments with affordable housing in suburban neighborhoods outside of the city. TV and radio…relatively new inventions. We got our first TV in 1949.  My mother was a first generation American born in 1911; she died a year ago at the age of 102…My father was born in Russia making 1/2 first- generation.

The worst thing that came into being at that time, in my estimation, was advertising… look at us now, constantly bombarded by information created by people who want to manipulate us into giving them money so they can create more and bigger billboards.

We moved to Los Angeles in 1954. I grew up in the San Fernando Valley. The first sprouts of Rock and Roll had poked their heads up.  Always sort of a loner, I played my guitar and sang songs which led me to where I am today.

WSR – Chinatown is your first new recording in over 40 years, what was it about now that felt right to release new material?

Ruthann -I had been writing and playing new songs. I enjoyed them and so did other people so it was natural to want to get them recorded.  I am ready to record another album right now. Some of the most rewarding musical experiences that I’ve had were in recording studios. It’s a fantastic learning experience. Usually sitting on the periphery, the studio was all about me.  I had to let go and do the work.

WSR – What is the foremost emotion throughout Chinatown?

Ruthann – I think the songs run the gamut of emotions. I had Fun with: “That’s What I Remember” and the “IPOD Song.” Depression in: “The End.”  Anger in the “Tides.” “Chinatown” is a mysterious song; I have no idea how it came to be. It arrived in my mental mail box and I thought it must have been a mistake — it must have been meant for someone else but  I put it into my guitar and voila! a new song came out.

My songs reflect myself. Anything you want to know about me is there in my music. None of us are one-dimensional unless we are in a coma.

WSR – Friends helped you with Chinatown, of all the people who did help you who is the oldest and dearest of friends?

Ruthann – They are all dear friends. Any one of them knocking on my door will be greeted with a big hug. But I suppose that the oldest friend to work on the album is Van Dyke Parks.

We were young together. He has always helped me get from point A to point B. He is going to play a few songs with me at McCabe’s in Santa Monica on September 28th.

I am very excited about that gig.

WSR – What was the reason for you coming out of retirement?

Ruthann -I received a call from Water Records in San Francisco asking how I’d feel about a reissue of my debut album Constant Companion. Pat Thomas came down to L.A. and we met and got along famously. Unbeknown to me there were a lot a fans of Constant Companion who wondered where I had disappeared to.

Devendra Banhart called me one day and asked if I would like to play at a festival he was organizing in Echo Park.  That put in motion a great push to relearn my songs… I hadn’t played them for forty years. I was amazed that once I found the first couple of chords, (thanks to Kit Alderson who led the way) the muscle memory took over.

That was the reawakening of my pleasure in music.  The previous 30 years had been raising kids and then going back to school.

Now there are three reissues of Constant Companion. WARNER BROTHERS released it in Japan about a year ago and Cherry Red Records in England just released it along with a flock of unreleased tunes. They also released an entire album of all my studio work called Windy: a Ruthann Friedman Songbook.

WSR – When people mention your name you kind of automatically think of your hit “Windy,” did you ever think “Windy” would be so huge?

Ruthann -Never dreamed it.

WSR – Of all the songs you have created, if you could choose a song that would be the one that was the to get you truly recognized when you were younger then which song would it be?

Ruthann – That’s a hard one… there are three I still love to play, “Hurried Life” which became the title of a group of unreleased recordings issued by Water Records, curated by Pat Thomas. “Piper’s Call” which was a song written in the early sixties when we were all experimenting with mind altering concoctions. And “Looking Back Over your Shoulder” a song about ending a relationship and the end of a dream.

WSR – They say with age comes wisdom, what do you feel is the greatest thing that age brings?

Ruthann -I don’t know.  I don’t think I’m wise. I’m not stupid but I have a great deal of respect for those philosophers who spend their lives gathering truths around them like a flock of sheep. I tend to step into the same puddles that I tramped through when I was young.

Some things I’ve learned it are that you must accept your own shortcomings and those of people you love if you want to be happy. Know that all we have is today… yesterday’s gone and tomorrow may not come. These are things I keep in mind.

Age also brings wrinkles, arthritis and any number of physical/mechanical difficulties not all of which are fixable.  In my head I’m still in my thirties…

WSR – What is your favourite saying?

Ruthann -I have a couple or three.  The first is “Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream…” then there’s “any port in a storm…” That’s all that comes to mind right now although I am a cliche queen.

WSR – One thing I have always wanted to ask, when your music gets reissued do

you get any royalties from it or is it just the record label who gets something from it?

Ruthann -According to My old record company I still owe them money for the recording I did. I do not have the cash to go after them. I get performance royalties and publishing royalties, but as you probably know, since the advent of streaming artists and writers’ royalties have hit bottom.

WSR – Who actually owns the intellectual rights for your early work, is it you or the record label?

Ruthann –Some is mine, complicated but true, and the publishing on “Windy” (which is the only song that brings in any money) is owned by Universal music.

WSR – Would you please tell us about The Easy Writer Portable Stationary Kits fame and what happened to it?

Ruthann -I don’t remember how it came into my mind. It was the early 70s and we were all a little bit busy. My friend Alana Coghlan wanted to start some sort of a business. I came up with the box design… it need to have a compartment for envelopes and pull out like rolling papers.

It was a puzzle that I really enjoyed working on. Alana was a graphic artist and did the paste up work. What we ended up with was a brown box that looked like a giant EZ wider rolling paper packet. We added a white one with wheat colored paper and The Easy Writer Portable Stationary Kit was born. We sold a lot of them in head shops and college campuses but the rolling paper people took out an injunction against us and we were forced to stop.  The best part was our name.  We were the Writing High Stationary Moving Company.

WSR – You were born in The Bronx, the overall image that anyone not living in the USA  is one of a very rough place and that of a hard way of life.  What was The Bronx like when you were born and what do you feel is the most amazing thing about The Bronx?

Ruthann – I was born into a very unexciting Jewish neighborhood. It was where many middle class Jewish families who had not yet left for the suburbs or Florida or California lived.  I don’t know the Bronx now.  I have been there once on an adventure to see our old apartment but no one answered the door to apartment 3G.

WSR – You thank your dear sister for introducing you to Bohemia.  Bohemia to me is a part of the Czech Republic, a place of wonder and beauty that has the most amazing city in the world at its heart Prague.  What is Bohemia to you?

Ruthann -Bohemian’s were the precursor to the Beatniks who were followed by the Hippies… My sister went to the University of Chicago at the age of 15. She would bring her friends home on school breaks, They came with guitars and banjos and sang Woodie Guthrie songs. I was five and that’s what started my musical life. The coffee houses of the 50s were inhabited by poetry readers and folk singers and chess players. Black turtle necks… severe hair… political involvement…

Here’s the wiki definition:  “Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional life style, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic, or literary pursuits…”

WSR – To me being alternative isn’t just about the way I dress or the music I listen to, its a way of life and having respect for all kinds of people no matter what shade of their skin or what they believe.  What did it mean to you being a hippy?

Ruthann -I never thought of myself as a hippy. I was a songwriter and musician. I had gone over the hill long before the flower children hit Haight Ashbury.  I was playing music that hippies liked to hear.

WSR – Thank you so much for giving Wicked Spins Radio this interview.

Ruthann – Again… my pleasure.

http://www.ruthannfriedman.com/

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