Margaret Cho has a long list of titles – comedian, actress, director, producer, writer and now musician – but for fear of missing something, I just refer to Maragret as an artist. It doesn’t matter what medium she is working in, one thing is certain; Cho always delivers quality entertainment.
Margaret recently took the time to answer some questions on her career, her sexuality and why she worked with so many gay women on Cho Dependent.
AfterEllen.com: Stand up comedy is what you are best known for but you are also an accomplished actress and now have branched into music – how did that happen?
Margaret Cho: I’ve always been an actor, along with a stand up comic. Most comics are great actors. I think that doing stand up is just the same as acting: You are performing in a character voice that may be close or distant to who you really are. So I’ve been working as an actor as long as I’ve been doing comedy.
Music is fairly new, although I did take piano lessons at a very young age. I didn’t start playing the guitar until recently, and only discovered my singing voice. Although I’m doing music now, I still consider it stand up comedy. It’s jokes in song form.
AE: And you are all set to release your next full length stand up record called Cho Dependent on August 24, where you have taken all your jokes and turned them in to songs. So how did you make the decision to do this? How did you come up with the idea to make a musical comedy album? Did you have any reservations about embarking on such an ambitious project?
MC: Yes I’m excited about this album. It was a long journey to get it all made. I’ve wanted to incorporate music into my work for a long time as I have a lot of affection for guitar comics and novelty bands as well as for all the incredible songs by Weird Al Yankovic. It was just the right time to make my own.
I learned how to play guitar and sing and got lots of lessons from the amazing people I collaborated with. It was a lot of work and a lot of traveling. The album was written and recorded in Nashville, Austin, Atlanta, New Orleans, New York, Vancouver and Los Angeles – pretty much everywhere music happens. I had some reservations and insecurities because I was such a newbie to recording, but everyone made me feel really safe and taught me so much. I’m so grateful to all the musicians who helped me. It’s an incredible project and they all made it shine.
AE: You collaborated with a lot of queer women on your record. In particular, you worked with Megan Toohey and Garrison Starr on a song called “Gimme Your Seed.” What is the story behind that song and how did you begin working with those two women?
MC: Garrison is a really close friend of mine. I have been a fan of hers ever since I heard the song “Superhero” in 1999. I used to be a runner – I know, weird – and I would listen to that song constantly while I was running and it helped me go faster. I wrote a number of songs with her before and during the album writing sessions – one which is available for download on my website now called “Mazeltov.” We have a great connection creatively and she is an extraordinary artist and someone I have learned a lot from. She introduced me to Meg and together we wrote “Gimme Your Seed,” which they produced.
“Gimme your Seed” was Meg’s idea. She thought of the concept and I wrote the lyrics and the demo was done overnight. I used lyrics from an existing song that I was going to bring to Jon Brion called “Semen” that I didn’t end up showing him because it was just too rude and I was embarrassed. Sometimes I get really shy about my own crude sense of humor when I am not actually performing. Anyway, the lyrics blended in seamlessly with the new song – “Ha ha, semen is never wasted especially among lesbians.”
I love “Gimme Your Seed” because it is very different from the other tracks. It’s a club banger which I love – a really great dance song. It’s a hit!
AE: You recorded a track with Tegan and Sara in Vancouver. What was it like working with them professionally? How did you meet them and why did you choose Intervention as the track to work on with them?
MC: I love, love, love, love, love Tegan and Sara. They were my first choice when I was putting my wish list of musicians together. I met Sara a long time ago backstage at a show and then got to meet both of them at their show in Los Angeles after we had started corresponding via email about our song. I love their music and their style and the song turned out so amazing that I had to make it the first track.
I have long had an obsession with the idea of getting an intervention – even before the television show, which has made interventions very chic. It just seems like the worst thing that can happen to you. The only thing worse would be a surprise party, and essentially they are the same thing: All your friends and family talking behind your back in order to get you to do something. Just awful and embarrassing!
Anyway, I wrote the lyrics and sent them – they wrote the music and sent me a demo – then we got together in Vancouver to record. I was really jetlagged as I had just come from Morocco where i had gotten a mild case of head lice and some dysentery. I felt so disgusting, especially around these impossibly beautiful rock stars, but I must have sounded OK because the song came out amazing.
It was so great that you were there too, Lindsey, because you got to capture all the incredible images! I loved working with Tegan and Sara and hanging with their whole rock family. It was a blast and the song is so gorgeous I cannot wait for everyone to hear it.
AE: Well it was amazing to be there! You mention feeling disgusting around such beautiful rock stars and it is so leading to this next question about your own sexuality. People love to make assumptions and I was wondering if you want to let AfterEllen.com readers know how you define your sexuality, I mean do you? Do you consider yourself queer, straight, bisexual?
MC: I consider myself queer although there are times when I’m into women more and times when I’m into men more and it sounds cliche but it always depends on the person. But I’m all about androgyny and I’m all about butch, whether its female bodied or not. So I’m kind of everywhere, kind of nowhere.
AE: When have you been more into women?
MC: I’m not really sure I can say when specifically – it’s just part of who I am, and who I am in a relationship with. It just depends, but my lifestyle is very queer. Almost all my very close friends identify as queer, and so do I.
AE: Does this new album address those feelings of being “everywhere and nowhere”? What was the driving force and inspiration behind Cho Dependent?
MC: I think the album does have a touch of being everywhere and nowhere, yes. The inspiration to make this album was very sincere in that I wanted to make a musical comedy album with songs that had enduring power beyond the jokes. I love song parodies but I felt like that wasn’t the right direction for me. I had some old friendships/fanships with different musicians that I wanted to explore, so the album came to be in a very pure way of wanting to achieve something creatively yet not being able to accomplish it myself. I needed help and, fortunately, I had access to the best musicians to help me in the world.
AE: How did you decide on the album title? Besides the fact that it is obviously bad-ass, did the title have a deeper meaning or significance to you then the obvious pun?
MC: The title comes from friends of mine, Amos Mac and Rocco Kayiatos, who were telling me they had become “Cho Dependent” and that was the perfect thing. Many of the songs are about addiction and dependence – not just to drugs but to people, heartache, even violence. I even made a commitment to myself to stay completely sober throughout the entire experience of writing and recording.
It also had to do with the rigors of rock and actually being the instrument you’re playing. My voice couldn’t take drinking or smoking and recording. I had to be very careful with my voice. I couldn’t even eat chocolate or lie down completely flat on my back! That’s too sober in my opinion!
AE: You are one of the busiest people I know. You have completely uprooted your life and have been living in Atlanta, Georgia for the past six months working on the television show Drop Dead Diva. What is your driving force? How do you do it and why?
MC: Well, I don’t try to be busy but it just ends up happening. I really hate getting up early too. Ideally, I would like to sleep about 14 hours a day. My favorite place is the bed and not even for sex. I do love laziness and just not moving at all although this is very rare for me.
I suppose my driving force is that I just like to be able to put projects behind me and I try to finish everything I start in earnest. It’s fairly basic.
AE: You seem to have a lot of projects on the go and you are at the head of your career, making all the decisions and funding these projects yourself. Have you always been that way? Why self publish?
MC: For me self-publishing and financing was a pattern that I developed with my first stand up comedy film, I’m the One That I Want. I financed that film entirely, and it was just out of necessity because I didn’t have the time to look for backing – I had to make the film while I was touring and if I wanted to do it then I was going to have to finance it, and it all worked out extremely well for me. I got very used to being my own boss; I really enjoyed the freedom it gave me. So I ended up doing the same thing with all my stand up films, and now with Cho Dependent. I’m just very used to working in a DIY fashion. It’s punk rock but also practical if you want to retain full control of the project.
AE: You belong to three minority groups and discuss all of this in your routines, but in all seriousness being Korean, female and queer which one has been the hardest to overcome and why? Has it changed throughout the years?
MC: I think the most difficult hurdle is not being white. But I also don’t know what it would be like if I was. So much of my work is informed by my racial identity it is hard to say what kind of performer I would be if I wasn’t Asian American, so ultimately, I’m unsure about this. Is my work as a comic more valuable because of my outsider take on things? Maybe it is. Then my ethnicity isn’t a hurdle at all.
AE: I just saw the Joan Rivers movie, A Piece of Work, and it seemed that one of her biggest fears is getting bad reviews. Do you relate at all to that fear? Are you holding your breath anticipating the reviews of your record? If not, what is your biggest fear career-wise?
MC: I guess I would relate to that fear if I read reviews. I don’t read reviews at all so I have no sense of them. They’re not part of my world. I’ve never read them because then my judgment and ability to create is impaired by what someone else thinks it should be, and that’s not productive for me.
My fears about my work have more to do with my physical ability to do it – am I going to be able to do all this traveling and performing when I’m older? And Joan Rivers proves that it’s completely possible at 75!
Cho Dependent arrives in stores on August 24.
