SFTS: Hi-Fi Sky/Alexandra Scott

Hi-Fi Sky's Alexandra Scott has her priorities straight. "Find an apartment. Get my dog up to New York. Go to New Orleans and pack. Play a gig here in New York this Thursday. Make my life a bit more regular so I can start writing every day again, and cooking, and eating green vegetables. Get a winter coat. Emerge from the seemingly inevitable self-absorption of sadness and take care of the people in my life again, and do some volunteer work. Read Proust. Catch up on sleep."

Scott and her Hi-Fi partner, Tim Sommer, survived the tragedy and devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Fortunately, they have found the reserve to continue. That includes a solo effort entitled Spring, touring, and simply living life.
Back in the 70s, Batman aired as a television series starring Adam West. Joan Collins played a villain known as The Siren. She could put men under her spell simply with her voice, not to mention her sheer beauty. Consider Alexandra Scott a siren for our times, except that she doesn't lure listeners to their destruction, but to splendor. Her ability to sing in French suggests the lure Morticia had on Gomez Adams. I wonder if she has ever had men kiss her up and down her arm?

Hi-Fi Sky's recent effort is entitled Music For Synchronized Swimming in Space. Neufutur magazine recently wrote: "Simply put, Hi-Fi Sky has put out a disc that brings the listeners into swaddling and warm chests; nothing is lacking as each string plucked provides a vital step to the disc’s inevitable end." While Kyndmusic summed up the effect of listening to the music by saying, "All the while a reviewer slips silently off of his chair and disintegrates into the carpet, leaving only a headphone which sprouts magnolia blossoms and melts into white noise."

TGB recently exchanged emails with Alexandra Scott and asked questions about both HI-FI SKY and her solo career, as well as her literary endeavors.

First, and foremost, how are the members of the band personally getting along after the destruction?

I guess we're all okay. Everyone I know right now is measuring themselves against the people who are worse off - so my friend who lost his whole house, all his instruments, and so on, still feels guilty because his family is okay and they're not in a shelter. Tim, Sam and I are okay, but, speaking purely for myself, that doesn't mean there isn't a level of shock and pain and fear in our lives that is really staggering. It's interesting to see what animals we humans truly are; there's a terror that comes simply from having been driven out of your den, with winter coming - or at least there was for me, and I had options the whole time. We're not going to live in the same place anymore, and that's really hard to contemplate. Tim and his wife have moved to North Carolina. Sam and his whole family are in Tennessee, and I think they want to go back to New Orleans when they can, but for now Sam and his brother are in college, and his little sisters are in school. I'm in New York City, playing lots of gigs, writing songs, starting some new musical projects, writing my book and working. As much as we can say that we'll continue the band remotely, that's pretty hard to do unless you're already quite rich and successful. A lot of things that we all loved are just gone. Some of them are just farther away than they used to be, and some of them are truly gone. Our little musical community in New Orleans, which was pretty tight and worked together well, has been blasted apart, and even though maybe it'll be better for everyone individually in the long run, it's still a sad fact. But the fact that we are all alive and healthy and can even talk about how we might go about making music means that we are, indeed, okay. I hate it when people dwell on their sufferings. We'll be fine. We're all pretty tough people. Which is not to say I personally don't still feel really sad, on a level I'd never touched before.

You hear bands constantly talk about music first. Several performer have said things akin to "Music first, sanity second." Where do ones priorities go after an event such as a hurricane? How does one recover?

Um, well, I actually think that only a person who's never dealt with any kind of serious mental disorder -depression or bipolarity or schizophrenia - either firsthand or secondhand, would make such a jackass comment. All you have to do is look at Syd Barrett to see that losing your sanity doesn't help you make music. However, to get off my high horse and answer your question, music can be first when you have a place to sleep and food to eat and clothes to wear, but when you're busy trying to arrange for all those matters for yourself and the ones you love, I think it takes a backseat. That said, whenever there's been a moment of peace, I've written. I've gotten great comfort from singing and playing my guitar, or from getting to play someone's piano, because that to me is a home-like state - it's familiar, it's beloved, and so no matter where I am and how lost I'm feeling, playing makes me feel better. I have noticed one strange change in myself. I'm normally frightfully shy and self-conscious about playing, and won't ever play for my friends because it's almost painful for me, but a lot of people have asked me to sing or play for them since the storm, and every time, I've found that I've actually really enjoyed it, and found it rather uplifting. And I think that's really what music should be - a gift from the singer or the instrumentalists to the listener.

And the truth is that every single person with music in their blood will start thinking about how and when and where he or she is going to make music again, just as soon as it's possible to think those thoughts. If music weren't a compulsion, people would stop making it once they realized what a hard life being a musician really is.

Considering the traditions of New Orleans music, where does Hi-Fi Sky fit in?

Well, in many ways it doesn't, but obviously we draw on a lot of Cajun music, melodically, and in some cases with whole songs. And if you've ever lived in New Orleans, I think you can hear it in the music in an abstract way that I'm not sure I can articulate, but it feels like, it sounds like, New Orleans. (At least Tim and I think so, and that's what people have told us.) And Hi-fi Sky is linked to a lot of great bands from New Orleans that nobody's ever heard of, because nobody ever thinks that there's music in New Orleans besides brass bands and jazz and funk. But there are bands like Chef Menteur - a brilliant and almost unknown band - and Mexico 1910, that we share influences andfavoritess with; and that community of abstract musicians is a real part of New Orleans, in the same way that the huge Vietnamese settlement -which nobody but New Orleanians knew about, really - was a part of New Orleans. One of the downsides of the tourist industry is that it simplifies the image of the city into a parody of itself. We live in New Orleans - or did - and we love it - and always will -and therefore this is New Orleans music. It was made there, it was written there, it was recorded there, our last show was the day before we allevacuatedd, on a beautiful hot day by Bayou St. John - oh, it was so hot, I almost fainted - so Hi-fi Sky is super-saturated with New Orleans. We grew out of the soil of New Orleans and became what we are, and what will be next. It was New Orleans' gift to us.

If you were teaching a cooking class, and Hi-FiSky _________ (fill in the blank) was on the menu, what ingredients would it contain?

Oh, god. I want to say we'd be Key Lime Pie. Or something sweet & sour. Maybe a good coconut green curry with kaffir lime leaves. Since I'm writing this, I'll say for sure that it's a vegetarian dish. It would be something that you could eat a lot of without feeling really sleepy and sick. One review once said we were like red beans and rice eaten with a Tylenol P.M. Does that work for you?

It sure does. Define your fan base. Who are the people who listen to your music?

Aside from the ones I know, I think we might have the world's weirdest fan base. There are regular oddball music kids who come to our shows, and then there are grown-up families who bring their little kids to dance to the music. A lot of massage therapists I know play the cd all the time. Modern dancers. My mom. A friend of my mom's stole it while she was recovering from surgery because it made her feel better. Our friend Peter puts his two-year old and his twelve-year old to sleep with it. Another friend calls it his get-some-nookie music, which is nice for everyone, though I kind of wish he'd left the details out when he told me that. I really hope that we can always be a band that is excited to see at our shows both indie-record-nerds and also the kind of people who love music but feel like they could never come to a 'show' - shy people, people over fifty, and so on. As Tim says, "It's a drone. Drones are good. Everyone loves a drone."

Describe the book you are writing?

Well, the Hi-fi Sky book, alas, got shelved. A woman who really likes Tim (but really dislikes me) offered to introduce him to her book agent but only if he would submit something I wasn't involved in, so after some pretty heated discussion, we just threw the HFS book away. So he's working on a novel that he's been writing for about five years, which I won't describe,as that's his prerogative, but it's quite good (I can say that much because I think I've read more of it than anyone), and I am writing a novel also (What a pair of eggheads we are, really!). Mine is a ghost story, and it's set in New Orleans - by which I mean my New Orleans, the way I lived in it until the day I left for the storm - I haven't been back and seen it otherwise yet - and though I've just written and deleted three sentences describing it further, it would appear that that is as much as I can say until the work is ready to speak for itself.

What crime are you currently working toward solving? Where are you in the investigation?

The only crime that I care about right now is the criminal neglect of the black citizens of New Orleans by the government that sought election in order to take oath to protect all citizens, of every colour, of this country.

Your solo is (obviously) a departure from Hi-Fi Sky. Was it important that the two be as distinct as possible?

I suppose it is important, but we didn't set out to make them distinct projects. They just are. My solo work, with Tim producing, came first; that's how we got to know each other; that's how I found Sam. I can't say how it is for the others, but for me, it's all music, it's all my music, it's all dear to my heart, so I don't draw lines between it or even let myself think much about whether other people do so. I think of all things in the world, music, especially, shouldn't have boundaries and distinctions, and, while obviously not many people agree with that, in terms of my own thinking about my own music, I just don't allow it. They're certainly different, in every way, and for sure in my own experience of them. Hi-Fi Sky is a kind of rapturous experience for me, and I think also for Tim and Sam, and because of our own delight in it, I feel pretty hopeful that we'll find a way to keep doing it.
What are your plans for near future?

Remember to be grateful and to be happy that I have my life, even if it seems unrecognizable or daunting nowadays, at times.

Hi-Fi Sky: www.hi-fisky.com
Alexandra Scott: www.alexandrascott.com