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Independent News of Southern Humboldt. Volume 2, Number 4 April, 16 1998

Roots In the Natural World

An Interview with Alice Di Micele by Bob Doran

Alice DiMicele is a passionate person: passionate about life, about love, about politics. She describes herself as a "contemporary acoustic singer/songwriter with roots in the natural world", but also admits to being an "activist". Joined by drummer/percussionist Janelle Burdelle, DiMicele will perform a benefit for the Trees Foundation at Beginnings in Briceland April 25. The night before (4/24) she'll be in Arcata for a show the HSU's Kate Buchanan Room singing songs from her new album, "Demons & Angels" released on her own label, Alice Otter Music based in Oregon where she makes her home. When she called the other day we began by talking a bit about Ashland, (she lives right in town) then looped back to where she came from.

Q: You started out life in New Jersey. Why did you leave there?

Alice: (laughs loudly) No one has ever asked me that before.

Q: I suppose people just assume, who would want to live in there?

Alice: There are actually some nice places in New Jersey, but I didn't grow up in the nice part, I grew up in the pit of industrialism. In my town we had Exxon, GM, Cyanamid, BP, Merck, and TONS of other factories all over the place. People in New Jersey are wonderful but I just couldn't stand the pollution. I left New Jersey the day of my high school graduation and I haven't lived there since. I didn't want to live there with all the factories, plus I needed to get away and find myself and all that. It was time for something different, so I moved out to Santa Cruz and then back to New York where I went to school upstate for a couple of years, then on to Hawaii and from there to here, Oregon.

Q: Did you start playing music in high school?

Alice: I've been playing music my whole life. I've been singing my whole life, playing flute and other instruments, but I started playing guitar in high school. I used to be in a rock band as the singer.

Q: White Rabbit?

Alice: Yeah, and Eon Ocean, we had two names. That was really fun, but I wanted to play my own music. Back then I was little miss party queen. I didn't want to be dependent on these guys, I didn't just want to do Rolling Stones covers, I wanted to branch off in a whole different direction.

Q: What direction?

Alice: I wanted to be on the road and cruise around and not be stuck in one place. Having a guitar and being able to play made life a whole lot easier.

Q: What direction were you going musically ?

Alice: I've always been sort of a jazz fanatic, but I didn't know what I wanted to do. I had never really heard of folk music, but of course the minute I got a guitar, people said, 'Oh you're a folk singer.' I'm like, 'Huh?' I had heard a few songs by Joan Baez and Neil Young, he was my idea of awesome, but he wasn't considered folk. Then it was, 'If you're a girl and you play guitar, you have to hear Joni Mitchell.' So I went through that phase, but it's like, why would I want to do that? I came from New Jersey, a very different world from a Joni Mitchell world. I loved gospel and jazz and blues, you know, big women with big voices. Joni doesn't have that kind of voice, and I have a naturally big voice. I think Joni is great but I couldn't pull off that style, and I got tired of trying to. I started incorporating other stuff, the music I loved. As I got older I started hearing people like Bruce Cockburn and I got into politics and putting that into my music and he was great at that. It all seemed to blossom from there.

Q: Do you consider yourself an activist?

Alice: Well yeah. I think the music is activism in a lot of different ways. It's funny, I've had some activists go, 'Oh, all of your songs aren't activist songs.' And I'm like, 'Well I don't care.' They want to know why I sing about love and personal stuff. I'm like, 'Cause I'm a person.' (laughs) I'm a person, and that's part of what people do, sing about their struggles and all that.

I sing about life, about experience, and part of that experience is being utterly disgusted... at times saddened, and angry, all of these emotions around what's happening to the environment and how we treat the earth. And about how we treat each other as people of different races, of different sexual orientations, and whatever; all the different prejudices that are out there. All of that creeps into my music. It's not like I sit down and say, 'I'm going to write a protest song, or a song about this or that.'

For instance, when Judi and Daryl got bombed, I didn't sit down and say, 'I'm going to write a song about this.' I read about it in the paper, and I was driving somewhere, the song (Like a Picture) started coming to me and developed on its own. That's the way it works, when something happens that affects me and touches my heart, I write about it.

Q: On your new album Demons & Angels, you have a song about the salmon...

Alice: Chinook Blues. That's another example. I did not sit down to write a song about the salmon. I was driving home from Eastern Washington and I passed where Sililo Falls (sp??) used to be. It was a place on the Columbia that got dammed. It was a sacred site for the native people there, a religious place, their fishing place. Their culture is suffering now because they do not have that sacred site. I had heard all about the fight and going past it, it all came up and started welling. I pulled over and jotted some things down, and it brewed from there. A while later I was taking a walk up the creek here in Ashland. I came to a spot where a friend had told me she saw one lone salmon trying to go spawn. This creek used to be loaded with salmon, the old-timers talk about when you could cross the stream on their backs and keep your feet dry, jokes like that. All of the creeks used to be full of fish, and now they just are not. Thinking about that one salmon and wondering what the fish was thinking, it came out as this blues song. It's totally quirky, but I love it.

Q: It's a funny song.

Alice: Funny, but serious, about a serious issue and I hope I can raise people's consciousness without hitting them over the head with it. Being an activist is hard work and it's easy to get depressed and think, 'Why am I doing this?' So it's important to add a little humor.

Q: Didn't you record the album here in Humboldt County?

Alice: I did. It was at Bob Figuerido's Big Bang studio down in Loleta.

Q: And it's on your label Alice Otter. Do you plan on staying independent and doing it on your own?

Alice: I've been doing it by myself for ten years and I plan to continue. I'm not really into the corporate thing. I don't want to get bought out by some corporation and then have to answer to them. I'm into it for the music, that's what it's about. It's about doing music the way I want to do it.

Q: How do you do it?

Alice: I want to be able to create and produce the way I want. I want total artistic control. I also really want to create some right livelihood up here in Oregon. I feel like this fits. I think if the music is growing and changing and more people are hearing it, then maybe the music can support me and a couple of other people.

Q: Do you think music can bring about change in society?

Alice: Oh, totally. I think that music is the most healing force on the planet. At least for me it is. Stevie Wonder changed my life. Billie Holiday changed my life. Their music touched me in such a deep way. I think music is what changes my world. That's why I'm so committed to getting the music out there, and doing it in a way that doesn't add to the corporate culture. That's why I'm into doing the independent thing, creating something that will get my music out there. So far I haven't achieved the level of success of someone like Ani DiFranco, but I feel like I have reached people. I say if one person is moved in some way when I do a show, if someone in the audience finds something that helps them become the person they want to be, then my work is done. That's what it's about.

Q: What is it you want to say to people?

Alice: Just that life can be a lot simpler than it is. We have all of our financial struggles and our stress. You just have to take a moment and just breath. Sometimes I have to sing in order to do it. Sometimes I'm just going a mile a minute, but when I sing, I have to take a deep breath. I encourage people to sing because you have to breath, and if you breath, everything feels better. It's this oxygen thing. For me singing is like praying and breathing, connecting with nature, with my higher spiritual source. I want people to find that connection, find their own muse. That's what it's really about: finding what we want to do with ourselves that feels right and is healthy for the planet.