Cliche Magazine Oct/Nov 2014 | Page 118

PRESS PLAY | SKYLAR GUDASZ

GETTING
PERSONAL

SKYLAR GUDASZ opens up
about her music career and
her dream collabs.

Where do you get your musical inspiration from?
Everywhere that lets me. Big Star, of course, old Appalachian
ballads, Rachmaninoff, Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, Duke
Ellington, John Coltrane—all a manner of things from the
Kinks and Neil Young to the Replacements to Neko Case and
Gillian Welch to Cat Power to Lauryn Hill to Ashanti to Jack
White to all of the great rock bands and songwriters that are in
the North Carolina music scene right now, like Josh Moore and
Ryan Gustafson (to name a very, very few)!
Where do you get your songwriting inspiration from?
Coffee, landscapes and places, whiskey, people trying to
connect with each other, bad poems, good books, being alone
at night with a piano, being alone at night with a loud amplifier
and an electric guitar, and the ocean.

©Marie Killen

How does that feel to release music on vinyl?
It feels amazing and very satisfying because there are all these
tiny details on a very tangible 7 inches of vinyl. Jefferson Holt,
head artistic king at Daniel 13 Press, who released “Car Song”
and “Dream Lover,” convinced me that there’s really nothing
like it. It’s a piece of artwork you can hold, and listen to, and
look at. There are little secrets all over it from the grooves to
the etched messages.

S

kylar Gudasz’s voice is hauntingly beautiful and
a bit of an anomaly. You can hear traces of oldies
rock, 20’s jazz, and folksy blues within seconds of
each other. Maybe it’s the Appalachian roots from
this North Carolina native, or maybe it’s what she
grew up listening to. Regardless, it’s a unique voice and one
you won’t forget. BY ANJELICA OSWALD
Cliché: When did you first start playing music?
Skylar Gudasz: I started playing the flute when I was five,
but I was always around music. My whole family played
instruments and sang. I was lucky when it came to that because
playing music was just one of those given things you did in my
family, like speaking or learning to read or eating dinner. We
lived out in the woods, and oftentimes, my brother and I would
be out exploring, alone, and I remember singing songs if I was
afraid or in the dark or to the trees or the lawn mower.
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What’s your dream collaboration?
The Antarctic Artists & Writers Program. I want to be on a
plane to McMurdo station. Or actually, preferably, I want to
be getting off the plane once it has landed. The NSF has a
small number of grants they give to artists to live and work on
projects in Antarctica. I would like to do that. Also, I’ve been
so lucky to collaborate with such amazing musicians as part
of tour-life with Big Star’s Third, that has been many dreams
come true. Jody Stephens, Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow,
Norman Blake of Teenage Fanclub, Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo,
Sharon Van Etten, Kurt Vile, Ken Vandermark—very dreamy
to work with all of them.
What’s next?
Hopefully Australia! We just got back from tour earlier this
year over there and I’m plotting a southern hemisphere return
ASAP. Until then, I have a full-length record I’m finishing
up with the amazing producer and petty thief Chris Stamey.
It’s piano and strings and some very personal songs we got
to track live at his studio, and Mitch Easter’s fantastic, glitter
naugahyde and fuzz box equipped Fidelitorium. I’m a lucky
lady.