Ilana: What do you do with your free time?

Meredith: (laughing) Free time, let's see? It doesn't seem like I have much free time, but what I try to do is spend time with my family members. I'll fly somebody to see me, and then I'll hang out with them. I have girlfriends. I'll give you what my normal day is like, Ok. I get up everyday, around 8:30am or 9:00am depending on if I've been in the studio really late. If I go in really late then I don't get up till I'm not tired. Whatever time I get up, I have coffee, I read the newspaper, pet my cat. Then I go downstairs and get on the bike, and I bike for about an hour, or go to the gym. Then I go do all my e-mails, usually visit the board. And this is only when I'm at home, I'll give you my tour schedule too. Right around noon, I start my writing sessions, I either write by myself, or someone comes over and we sit in my home studio, which as soon as the web site is up, you guys will get to see. I write 'til about 4:00pm or 5:00pm, and then usually I grab something to eat, and either I go over to David Darling's studio and we record for a bit, or I take a break, go run some errands and come back, and work a little bit longer into the night. And then I usually take an hour or two, and read at night. Unless I'm really inspired, and then I stay up all night and keep writing. As you can see my day's usually completely full. When I have a little time I try to spend it with my friends at a lunch, or going to a movie, that's my favorite thing to do.

Ilana: Any movies you can recommend?

Meredith: Not recently. I haven't seen anything I really liked, for a long long time. So there is nothing good out.

Ilana: And how is your day when you're on tour?

Meredith: Well, that's pretty insane. I get up and try and make sure I have my mornings to myself, so that I can do yoga, or my exercise of whatever kind, but I always fit in my yoga and meditation. That's another thing I do before I start my day, is my breathing and meditation. Then if Beth is on the road with me, she'll help me get my schedule organized and I usually start around noon with interviews, that go 'till five or six, and then I go to a sound check. And then have some dinner, come back to the venue, play the show, do a meet and greet, and I always stay after and sign all my autographs. Usually 'till the very end unless I have to get on a bus or plane. But I try and stay for at least an hour. One of the other things that changed last year, is I started letting the AMP people from the high schools sing with me on stage. Instead of signing autographs afterwards, I would do an AMP program with the kids that came and sang. And then if anybody was left over after that, then I would stay and do their autographs.

Ilana: Yeah, that's really nice of you.

Meredith: You know, that's what we're all there for. I don't even look at it as a job, I look at it as a pleasure.

Ilana: Yeah, I saw a concert on TV, and you even took pictures with your fans.

Meredith: Oh yeah, which concert did you get to see?

Ilana: It was in Germany, I think.

Meredith: Oh right, wow that was clear back in the beginning. That was fun.

Ilana: I even have it on tape if you want it.

Meredith: I think I've got a copy, thank you so much.

Ilana: How many guitars do you own?

Meredith: I haven't counted in a long time, but I think it's somewhere around 22 or 23.

Ilana: That's a lot.

Meredith: I don't play them all, some of them are just crummy guitars, but they have a certain tone that I'll use when I want to get a really, what I call a "stupid sound" ,on my record. I want a bad sounding guitar on my record, I'll pull out one of my kind of funky guitars.

Ilana: Who had the most influence on you? Whether positive or negative, that lead you to where you are today?

Meredith: Musician wise or....?

Ilana: Music wise I suppose.

Meredith: Well, guitar wise, I think who had the most influence on me was first my sister because she was eight years older than me, and it always seemed like I was in touch with her music. So she encouraged me to start playing lead guitar. Then what happened was my very first boyfriend, Richie Horner, he taught me a lot of Beatles stuff. I think we had our first band in the seventh grade, so I just continued from there. I think what was really my inspiration was that I was from a small town, I was board, I was pretty fast and smart as a kid, so nothing really interested me of what my friends are interested in. Music was the only thing that kept my attention, thank God or I probably would have been in more trouble than I already was.

Ilana: Yeah, I think you have a lot of fans in high school even. I met some people who were in the same school, and they had only fabulous things to say about you.

Meredith: Oh wow, that's great.

Ilana: Do you have any tour plans?

Meredith: You know, this is the part that I hope all my fans read and understand. I would love nothing more than to tour. But, because my label did not continue to market my record, for me to go out, is very very expensive. Unless I go out and just play an acoustic guitar, which who knows I may even do that if I get to that point. I would even love to play a small club tour, and I asked my label to send me out, even on a small club tour. And there's a lot of changes going on there, and now that I'm where I'm at in my career, my label has a lot to do with how I go out, how I'm marketed, if I tour, when I tour, and that's something I'm really trying to change. When I put out this next record, I will start it with a tour. I am not going to wait to see how it does, before I go out. I'm just going to go out. So until then I'm not going to be able to tour, because now I'm already into the next cycle of making a record. That's something that I really miss doing, I really wish I was out there. If the record had gone to where my label deemed it was enough sales, then I would have gotten the support to go. And that's kind of it. So far I've kind of been at the mercy of my label but I'm not going to let that happen again, that's for sure. If my label doesn't support me I'll get support from somewhere else and go out.

Ilana: What is going on with your official site?

Meredith: What happened is, I hired a team of people who didn't finish it. They walked off the job, they just didn't accomplish it. I tried to use some people that needed a break, like "here do my web site." They got paid and everything, but they weren't like an official web building company. So what I wanted to do was kind of complicated, and they knew how to do it, even though they didn't have the experience in doing it before. It took way to long, and then I guess the team dispersed. And it's taken the last couple of months to find someone to save what I did do, because it was a little complicated using animation and flash. It was hard finding someone who would keep what was done, without having to get rid of all of it and start over. So we finally found somebody, and as of yesterday, I just found out, and they are working on it, making it so it sound be able to be up pretty soon. But it's a complicated site and I wanted to do things in it like a friends section, and links, and I want video on it. I want a lot of things on it, so in order to get it built and not spend $30,000 getting it built, I would try and use companies that needed a better start. It turns out I've just had to hire someone who is really good. Sometimes giving people breaks works like in Beth's situation. You give them a break and they take the opportunity and run with it. Sometimes you give people breaks and their not ready for their own success. And they just don't carry through.

Ilana: So do you have a lot of input on the design of the site?

Meredith: Oh yeah. What I've done is taken pictures, and film, and music that no one's ever see or heard before, that I kept documented through the last three or four years, including me being on tour. And from recent shows that I have done. I put all that up, I've got my AMP stuff in there, I've got songs that people haven't heard, I've got actual animation of my studio so you can literally walk into my studio and see it. And other things, which I don't want to give everything away, but this has been the problem. It's my fault in a way because I believe in mentoring people, I believe in sponsoring people, and giving them a leg up in life. Sometimes my lesson has been they aren't ready for it, their not ready to succeed. It was kind of too bad for my fans, and it was too bad that I said anything early. I probably should have just waited and when it was done surprise everyone.

Ilana: Yeah I think we've been mainly disappointed because you took off the old site, and there was this message that the new site would be here soon.

Meredith: Right, and the old site was from the original people who had built it before, and they were making the changes, and then they got really busy, and popular, and famous, and they stopped working on my site. Which is why we were removing it in the first place. But they removed it way to soon, and they weren't suppose to remove it. There isn't that much information on it anyway. The Capitol, the hollywoodandvine site, is kept updated and it's the best site for now anyway. I feel that it's a much stronger site than what was there on my Meredith Brooks site.

Ilana: You're right, it wasn't updated that often.

Meredith: Yeah there was nothing to it, and that was the problem. That's why I left them in the first place, they weren't keeping up on it. So I think my manager's gotten all this worked out. It's been quite a learning lesson about web sites, and the business of web sites. Now some of these web type builders have managers, and their becoming such the big thing to do. So, when it's up, believe me you will be the first to know, and help us spread the word, so we can get lots of people on it. It's a way I want to keep in contact with my fans, while I'm making the next record, and I'll do the same thing I did last time, I'll let people hear samples of songs, some videos, things like that.

Ilana: Yes, that was a pretty long question, I will ask you something more simple.

Meredith: Ok.

Ilana: If you could be any animal, what would you be?

Meredith: Is this one of those jokes where when you figure it out, it's gonna have a sexual meaning to it? I've always pictured myself very cat-like, and a panther is the thing I've always related to the most, like a black panther.

Ilana: That's cool... What did you do for a living before becoming famous?

Meredith: I played clubs, for a long long time. I was a maid in a hotel when I was a kid. When I was really young I baby-sat, and that kind of thing. And when I moved to Los Angeles I got a job in a health food store for a while. And then I taught guitar lessons for a while. But mostly I just played clubs, trying to earn a living. I kept my expenses incredibly low, and looked for favors to record my music wherever I could.

Ilana: Do you think your fame has changed you?

Meredith: It's changed the way I live. What's changed me is not my fame, but my knowledge of handling my life. I work with great teachers that help keep me grounded, and teach me what my purpose is when I forget. And when the business feels to overwhelming, I go back to the places and the teachers and the families that remind me that my job is a service job. It's to be of service, and hopefully put out music that bottom line, makes people feel good. That's it, I don't care if they get a lesson out of it, or anything. It's just something to take their mind off their troubles for an hour, if they choose to listen that long.

Ilana: Yeah, that's great. Can you give any inside info on the songs you are working on these days?

Meredith: I can't talk about them to much. All I know is that one song that I have is getting a lot of attention. I have certain people I take things too. I think what's happened is that I'm willing to even be a little more intimate in this record. I'm willing to write a little more about relationships. I think I'm always gonna be that solution oriented songwriter, and I think I come from a place of strength. And so all that is still going to be there, and a lot of it is just about...., I keep seeing the theme of survival in this writing. I'm still here and I'm not going away, and that's kind of what my songs are like right now. It doesn't matter what people think of me because I'm just going to keep doing what I do.

Ilana: It's good that you can live without taking bad things seriously.

Meredith: Yeah you have to, because if you take this business to seriously, or if you ever believe what people say good or bad, it will crush you really fast. So I'm still a big believer in not letting people's opinions hurt my feelings, because they're so subjective. Everybody's got an opinion and everybody want's to give it to you if you let them, that's for sure.

[ Home | Last | Next ]

...