Ditching the bank job for music sounds like a fairytale, but Laura Cantrell's newfound freedom was a real shock, writes Tony Clayton-Lea
It's country music, but not as we might want it to be: in other words, if you're glancing in the general direction of Nashville-born New York resident Laura Cantrell for stark murder ballads, expressive tales of emotional abuse, rasping vocals, lived-in jeans with an FU buckle, and a history of alcohol and drug-related problems - something with an edge that could slice the soles off boots of Spanish leather - then you'd best look elsewhere.
The antithesis of the kind of female country singer whose first names just might be Lucinda or Shelby, Cantrell (tellingly, perhaps, the daughter of two lawyers) shouldn't be damned with faint praise just because she happens to be as straight and smooth as a sheet of glass. Rather, we should be grateful that there is a yin to the Lucinda/Shelby yang that doesn't in any way revert to the cliches of a Shania or a Leann.
Cantrell, then, is something of a throwback. Image-wise, think Julianne Moore in Far from Heaven - porcelain, prim and proper, dressed in a black trouser suit, with a green silk scarf draped around her neck, sipping Camomile tea. Think also a 1950s desperate housewife with Patsy, Loretta, and Kitty on her mind (and, the Lord forbid, not cheating, divorce, or murder).
The pristine corporate image isn't something dreamed up by a stylist or publicist. After graduating in American literature from Columbia University, Cantrell began working for Bank of America in New York. For years, she was clocking in and out, waiting until the evenings and weekends to pursue her passion for country music. Plotting her escape, in other words. Her music career started out with her playing any NY bar in which she could get a support slot, her status increasing through her radio show (Radio Thrift Shop) on New York not-for-profit station WFMU.
Up until last year, Cantrell was vice president managing the bank's equity research department. This year, she's ostensibly as free as a songbird, having quit her pensionable job for a rather more unpredictable life in music. She is now also signed to the reasonably heavyweight independent label Matador (home to, among others, the rather excellent Interpol), after spending two albums with Scottish-based cottage industry label Spit & Polish. Passion dictates what the heart if not the head must do, of course, but is the music business much of a change from banking?
"What I hadn't figured was that I thought I'd have all this free time to devote to working on music, but I found it took me quite a while to adjust to a new, somewhat looser routine. I'd been working for 11 years in a corporate environment where you had to show up at meetings on time. Removing that structure from my schedule and working to an 'as and when' thing - well, you have to feel comfortable with that. And it took me a long time to feel at ease; for weeks I kept cleaning my bathroom, thinking of errands to run. After a few months, though, I was fine."
Factors of confidence also kicked in. "In terms of having the corporate job - which I knew I was good at - what I found was that being faced with creative work I missed the confidence of knowing absolutely how good I was at doing a certain thing, of knowing what to do and how. At the bank, my performance wasn't questioned because I'd achieved a level of confidence, but I didn't always have that about my writing, or my singing voice. So because I never had a lot of time to dwell on these topics, all of a sudden the doubts were in front and at centre. Yet it felt natural to wrestle with that stuff."
EVERYONE HAS THEIR own struggles with certain things, says Cantrell. For her, making her new album Humming by the Flowered Vine proved that the means justifies the ends. Yet from start to finish, she implies, it wasn't all about ecstatic creativity.
"I found it interesting that even with my pragmatism I still had the image of the music thing being carefree, but it wasn't like that at all. I had to feel my way through it, and although I've come to the other side, I'm sure there will always be things I'm not confident about.
"Yes, I've achieved what I wanted to with this record, but there are still going to be times when doubts creep in. Whatever my talents are, however, I have very high expectations of my own self, and so it's interesting figuring out how far to go with that - whether you're right to doubt or whether you're being something of a psycho and torturing yourself."
With the safety net of a "real" job not being there any more, however - and having to rely on something as nebulous as consumer tastes - Cantrell's ambitions are by necessity realistic.
"Ambition means different things to different people," she says. "I'd be happy if I could stay working in a creative mode, improving my writing, as well as the quantity of it. I started more songs for this album, but I ended up finishing just the usual three or four. It's a struggle to let my songs go. Hearing people saying how great they are is wonderfully gratifying. Does it help when you start to write the next one? Not necessarily. When you're staring at the notepad, and the guitar is resting on your lap, wondering what comes next - that's not easy for me."
IT ALSO MUSTN'T be easy to be categorised, which will undoubtedly happen; Cantrell confesses to having inordinately high standards, and of being rigidly self-critical. You are bound to wonder what she makes of the sleazeballs operating at the lower end of the music business, let alone some of the corporate chancers in the upper echelons. Her family and career background will surely inspire as much disdain as diplomacy. And her music? Well, her music is simplistic and nice, smart and tasteful, and very much from the heart. But it's also something that could easily (if incorrectly) be sidelined by radio programmers as safe and predictable.
Be careful what you wish for, and all of that. Laura Cantrell is in a period of transition, then. While it's hard to see her ever travelling the Lucinda Williams route (although she is on tour with the country/roots slugger this summer, and has covered Williams's song Letters on the new record), it would seem that she might just have to get tougher, creatively as well as personally, if she is to survive beyond the standard settling-in period. Her unique selling point is her fusing of traditional country music tropes with urban observations; it might never be breathtaking, but it sure is pretty, substantial and genuine. And besides, banking's loss is undoubtedly country music's gain.
"I signed a three album deal with Matador," she says, breaking into a Cheshire cat grin. "I wanted to add to the palette this time, something with a bit of texture and depth. It was really fun to have the ability to do this - and not just at the weekend. With this record, unlike the previous two (When the Roses Bloom Again and Not the Tremblin' Kind), we worked at it until it was finished.
"At least I wasn't looking at my watch - and that was why I made the choice to leave my job. Also, the label didn't want to hear anything until we were finished. We have the Woody Allen deal!"
Humming by the Flowered Vine is on the Matador label