News From The Great Beyond

Tara Key & Antietam

If you google Tara Key's name, you will find biographies on VH1, CMT, and a few other outlets. Considering how prolific a songwriter she is, this should come as no surprise. She is one of the busiest women in music, and she is still able to hold down a 9 to 5 job.

It's been fifteen since since Antietam debuted the current lineup, and, according to Tara, the fire is still burning. She also keeps busy with several side projects. Let's not forget that she and her husband, Tim Harris, are also bandmates. Through all of this activity, Tara Key was able to sit down and drop TGB an email to give us the lowdown on Antietam and herself.

TGB: What is the status of Antietam?

TK: I always feel a little like a defensive willow mock-shouting in the forest with my fist in my mouth when I protest "Antietam never broke up!"--as was postulated widely on the occasion of our last release---despite the fact that it took a few years to make Victory Park. We were always practicing (jamming, beering, playing darts) as regularly as ever and playing shows around New York, even though we didn't do a full scale tour for almost 8 years. In a stretch slightly prior to that we had released 4 records in 4 years in one form or another (a live record, 2 TK solo records and Rope-A-Dope). Concurrent to the time we were writing for Victory Park, Tim and I made an instrumental record with Rick Rizzo.

It's interesting being in a creative partnership for this long (15 years since Josh joined Tim and I), because what starts out as a juggernaut of us (small guerrilla unit) against the world (brass ring) simply evolves into family. So we do what we do when we do it, but we always get around to it!

We all have other outlets too, musical, visual and scriberly. More activity breeds activity and I believe you bring good things back to the band when you stretch in other ways. I am working on another Rizzo/Key record with Rick and Tim. Josh is playing and writing with Tralala as well as Antietam and it's been fun to have new girls and guys to hang out with and listen to.

We had such a great time doing the touring around Victory Park last year. And we will do more when a new record is out. It was so great to play with some old friends (Barbara Manning, Chris Brokaw, Tara Jane O'Neil, the Ass Ponys, Eleventh Dream Day) and to have the time of my life going out with Yo La Tengo for 3 weeks of living the jamming life as intensely as the taste of a perfect reduction sauce--I'm thinking one of red wine and raspberry atop Valrhona mousse topped with fresh whipped cream infused with vanilla.....that's what that tour was like.

Since we can't be on tour as often as I would have it, I struggle with how to make folks younger than us know we exist (because there is primal timeless rocking at hand) and at the same time get our peers to take note--I know they still like to rock, but they don't necessarily go to record stores to browse that often, read music rags or take a chance on going to see something live they don't know about already--(I guess that's where The Great Beyond comes in, ehhh?!)

It was a long layoff prior to the release of "Victory Park." Is there new material in the works, and, if so, when can we expect it?

We will be in the studio this fall starting in 3 weeks, I hope, to catch the current pop screeds while they are not dry on the wall yet. It will be a combo of tracking on site in the studio and off site DIY this time. I'm not sure when it will come out, but next year sometime. We sure are lucky to have the support of Patrick and Julia at Carrot Top. It feels like a big laden ripe mulberry tree at the moment because there are, classic-band/trio wise, things we wrote last week, things we wrote this summer--nothing more than 9 months old. And, in addition, there is also a collection of sonics and recombinant pieces that we all play on , but that are not Antietam trad. Without saying more yet, let me just say I am very excited about what shape this is all going to take. More later.

From all indication, it's been about 10 years since you've released a solo album. Do you plan to record solo in the future?

Those two solo records were important for me in the sense that each of them presented a direct challenge from myself to myself. When Tim and I started out in the Babylon Dance Band in Louisville, I could imagine nothing further afield than my insular punk rock unit--because it was a strange miracle that we all had the nerve to say we were musicians when we could barely play and we were fueled by this bizarre calling that we had to drop everything that was "planned" for us and just rock. And be loyal.

The idea of having a band was remarkable in the first place and tended to create a life raft mentality in the band, especially when under attack by "real" musicians, not to mention the controversy implicit in trying to convince Louisville circa 1979 that they didn't need to listen to Aerosmith alone and that the Clash were awesome.

So, of course, the longer we were musicians and met others we respected---not always of the same background and tunage as us---it made sense to grow and jam outside of the auspices of the main unit. Bourbon County was me trying to do that, as well as presenting a forum for me to use to play with a lot of the folks I loved---and that were now part of the family I refer to above.

Ear and Echo was a challenge to me to go a little further in busting out of the electric, aggressive, cocksure chaos that had become my pigeonhole, because it rested on a bed of acoustic guitar and melancholy and vulnerability. The idea of the records being trademarked as "me" never was the point and, honestly, ended up making me feel a little uncomfortable, since I was drafting my friends for one and my band plus a couple of guests for most of the other. So I could care less about a solo career, since we all participated in both of those records and they just ended up making Antietam the band grow. We folded the different sounds we made under those conditions back into the cake batter. I am more comfortable as part of a crew and now Antietam is the catcher's mitt for many different impulses....

Several publications have highly praised your guitar abilities. Does acclaim like that tend to scare you, humble you, or a combination of both?

Well, 25 years ago, since I started out being a shy oddball looking for a tool to make a noise in the universe with, good press was pretty important to me. I was a painter when I joined the Dance Band and the idea of making a splash in the "ART WORLD" was (and is) more terrifying (oddly) than doing so in the music world. The guitar was the thing I always turned to back then for relief from accomplishment anxieties. I had no expectations from it; I just knew I loved it and the way it felt against me and that it seemed to say things I could not verbalize.

I was lucky pretty much right out of the gate to get reinforcement press wise and fan wise that I was onto something, so the press saying the things they did when I first started playing, if anything, gave me confidence to go a little further, especially in the sense of forging my style. I got a few important early nods that said, yes, my style was weird, but it was unique and it resonated. That was empowering. I, sadly, have always craved pats on the head.

Being the overanxious student I have always been, when the teacher gave me props early on I got a big shove to ignore the way things are done on guitar and follow my heart. I never felt like I had to sound like anything that had happened before...yes, I am a collagist and grew up a bona fide fan and you can separate out the Ronson and Neil and Bowie and Allman and Monkees and Raiders from my DNA and ID it, but I also folded sirens and jackhammers and regret and the way it would sound if I were stabbed in the heart into my guitar playing too.

When folks started writing about me it actually made me bolder, because, although I am a ham and like to wear the metaphorical 10-league boots and hop around onstage like a cartoon character version of myself on confidence steroids , the fact that most writers didn't say I looked like an idiot doing it was important back in the day. These days, I'm glad they still care! But I can't say it's ever scared OR humbled me....just assured me that I was getting through.

Plus, the Guitar Player and Guitar World profiles were way fun to flash at the boys at the guitar shops for a cheap thrill for a while!