Jackie Marshall Interview

By Em
16 July 2006

Soulshine interviews Jackie Marshall in the run up to the release of her latest album, Fight n Flight

Sunday 16 July 2006 Interview

Interviewer: EMILY BURTON
Interviewee: JACKIE MARSHALL


EMILY BURTON: You recently toured down to Melbourne, where you hand delivered your demos to venues on cassette tapes, the original musician's name scribbled out and JACKIE MARSHALL written over them in black texter. It's got to be a memorable way of doing things..what kind of response did that get from recipients?

JACKIE MARSHALL: Same deal as the onstage performance - appreciation for authentic engagement. Our new merch table has handmade cartoon porno artworks, keyrings made from recycled wool and guitar strings, mandarin jam my mother made featuring cloth patches designed and printed by myself - and we change our stock all the time, depending on what I feel like creating. Those tapes were a classic - I recorded a couple tracks from this album onto my Dad's old tape collection and re-artworked them. So plenty of Acker Bilk goodness on B-sides. It's just about fun. My rule in life is F-U-N.

EMILY BURTON: The very first time I saw you play live was at the Alley Bar. You certainly made an impact: by far the most outspoken musician on the night! That night, you said you were homeless and sleeping in your car. Two weeks later, I saw you again, and you started your set with.. "I've been sleeping in my car now for two weeks.." That pretty much won me over. Can you tell us what you learned from that experience?

JACKIE MARSHALL: If you're a good lay you can get free accomodation, meals and even cash and other fabulous resources. Female and male alike. Work it. It's lifestyle research. Write your expenses off to tax further down the track when you’re feeling a bit more mint. Sleeping-in-your-car is for people with un-maskable venereal diseases.

EMILY BURTON: On- and off-stage, you definitely project female strength. How difficult is it to be a genuine female musician when so many female artists with mainstream success seem to be sold more on the clothes that they wear (or don't wear!) rather than the music they play?

JACKIE MARSHALL: Look. I've got tits. I use them to get what I want just as much as the next titted artist. I use everything I've got to get exactly what I want. My breasts, my arse, my face, my clothing designer, my intellect, my network connections, my generous spirit, my hooker's heart-of-gold, even my music sometimes. The difference between me and the successful mainstream femme is merely opportunity-manifest. That being said, I really do use my assets the way I want to use them.

Compromise is an art form and I wholly believe that people can think for themselves, so I don't pretend otherwise, onstage or off; neither with the music I make nor the way in which I present it. Is it difficult to be a genuine female musician in the face of strictured and moneyed musical prostitution equalling mainstream success? Fuck no. Anyway they're all just as genuine as me. The art of manipulation, man, that's a real art. I'd be proud of those women if it wasn't 99% penis money talking trite. And then there's all the darling men...

EMILY BURTON: You work with community radio station 4ZZZ: can you give us a quick plug for community radio?
Community radio increased my zen percentage three thousand percent.

JACKIE MARSHALL: Everybody should do time in a community radio station.

EMILY BURTON: What comes next? You've been scoring some terrific support spots over the last year, as well as performing in your own right. If this was the Strategic Jackie Marshall Business Plan, what's the aim for the remainder of 2006?

JACKIE MARSHALL: Recording another killer album and letting the tracks do a bit of the legwork. This one will be recorded in Melbourne, Pottsville, Berlin, Ljubljana and a small hill town in eastern Bosnia. No shit. I'm using gypsies and New York jazz freaks and naturally a handful of the tried n tested cuntry lovers to Make the sound of this next one. I'm getting into male backing vocals BIG TIME, too. Nothing like a backdrop of pretty penises on which to paint yerself, I say.

EMILY BURTON: Speaking of those terrific support slots, has there been any artist that you've played with who you've really learned something from?

JACKIE MARSHALL: I've picked up some wonderful grooming and deportment tips from just about all of them. Very grateful.

EMILY BURTON: Part of your appeal on stage is that you say the things that other female vocalists don't. Indeed.. things that many musicians would never say on stage! It draws the audience in and gives a much more relaxed and friendly atmosphere. Is that your aim?

JACKIE MARSHALL: I'm no different onstage to how I am in real life. I've still got plenty of friends so I figure what the heck. Performance isn't television, I'm not into abusing a person's alpha waves for my own benefit. If I have an aim at all it applies to everything I do: to remain engaged in everything I do, and to engage the varied intellects of whomsoever I meet in as meaningful/provocative a manner as I'm fit to do at any given moment. For the world is a much more bearable place when people Think for themselves. Quite selfish really, but there you have it. I demand to be inspired by the company I keep.

EMILY BURTON: Jackie Marshall... 60 years from now, what do you want to be remembered as? More importantly, where will you be? Should we expect a photograph of you holding a koala at Lone Pine Sanctuary, alongside the Queen Mother, Pope Jean Paul II and Matchbox Twenty?

JACKIE MARSHALL: No, but I'll be holding photos of *them* all posed together in mutually compromising positions, and raking in the cash. I will be as dead as Elvis and happily sailing round the globe while the world mourns the loss of a great cultural leader.

EMILY BURTON: Sometime in the future, when Soulshine's raking it in financially and we're on a business schmoozing lunch, what drink can I get you?

JACKIE MARSHALL: Borovnica from Bosnia, but don't let my parole officer find out. I had a hell of a time getting out of going to AA meetings as it is.

EMILY BURTON: In your lifetime, which three people have you come to respect most, and why?

JACKIE MARSHALL: Queen Elizabeth 1, Alice In Wonderland, and the goddess Artemis. Look them up.

EMILY BURTON: You told me that a friend of yours was writing the foreword for your new album, can you give us a little more detail about that?

JACKIE MARSHALL: The liner notes to my forthcoming album are written by national Australian Magazine astrologer Mystic Medusa. I asked her to write an introduction to my work based on my astrological chart and the lyrical and musical and art content of the CD package. As I always suspected, I'll be running the southern hemisphere in about a decade. At least in a cultural sense. Which is not the least at all, in fact. However, one should stay on the subject at hand.

EMILY BURTON: If Jackie Marshall had never picked up a guitar, what do you reckon she'd be doing today?

JACKIE MARSHALL: Pirating yacht flotillas as they make their way up the Red Sea. And running drugs and weapons for neo-socialist enclaves. And heading up an international brothel-versus-cultural-community-gardens chain.

EMILY BURTON: You have some pretty awesome lyrics in your songs. Can you pick a one liner which is your favourite?

JACKIE MARSHALL: No faves of course but "When y'don't own nuthen, lovers, well nuthen can own you" springs to mind. I'm pretty sure I was channelling a Bob Dylan song when I wrote it but whatevs, I meant it at the time. From the track "See A Dog".

EMILY BURTON: What one sage piece of advice would you give to yourself as a four year old if you had the chance?

JACKIE MARSHALL: Use your tits. And always paint with a guinea pig in your lap.


JACKIE'S ALBUM "FIGHT n'FLIGHT" OUT 8th SEPTEMBER 2006 distributed by MRA Entertainment

http://www.jackiemarshall.com