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Margrit Eichler talks “Black Swan,” her Jewish roots and being the lesbian frontwoman of True Margrit

Margrit Eichler is the heart and soul of San Francisco power-pop group, True Margrit, and while her band name is a nod to the gruff Western made famous by John Wayne (and now made more famous by the Coen brothers), she might be one of the most personable people you’ll ever speak on the phone with. We spoke about her upbringing in a small town in East Tennessee, her love of piano and the thin line between cheese and authenticity when it comes to writing music.

AE: Tell me a little bit about your background and your childhood. Did you grow up in Knoxville, Tennessee?

ME: Actually I’m from Oak Ridge, Tennessee – have you heard of it?

AE: No, but I’ve been to Nashville. My mom lives there and is a professor there.

ME: Oh! That’s funny – my ex-stepfather was a professor of philosophy there! But I grew up in Oak Ridge, and it’s a pretty strange place, you know, the Manhattan Project was there so they used to have these signs and it would be like, “Home of the Atomic Bomb!” [laughs] It’s a very strange small town, but everyone has a PhD. I thought about this a lot actually, my mom was a classically trained pianist and we had two friends who were concert pianists and I think that’s kind of a lot for a small town.

AE: Yeah! So then did you get your love of piano from your mom?

ME: Yes, definitely. My mom has this nice baby grand that she got the year before I was born and so it was always there. It’s funny because she taught piano lessons and — I must have heard them right? I would lie under the piano and kind of hum and correct the wrong note but I never took formal lessons from her. We were always saying, “Yeah, we’ll start lessons tomorrow.” But it never happened. My family was just super cool and let me learn the hard way of trial and error. I started writing my own music when I was ten. My first gig was when I was 14.

AE: Oh wow! So I’m assuming you weren’t playing your first gigs at a bar though, right?

ME: It was actually at a coffee house in the Unitarian Church.

AE: Did you belong to the Unitarian Church or was that where all the good concerts were?

ME: Oh yeah, it was a really groovy place to be. Actually I’m Jewish which is a pretty interesting thing to be in small town Tennessee.

AE: Me too!

ME: See we have so much in common! Yeah, it was interesting being the only Jewish kid in east Tennessee because my teacher would always be like, “And now Margrit’s going to teach us all about Cha-noo-kuh (Chanukah).”

AE: That’s always fun, trying to make your friends jealous of our eight days of lighting candles and opening presents. But then no one gets jealous when you tell themabout Yom Kippur.

ME: Definitely not.

AE: So, it’s interesting because for as small of a town as it is, it sounds like a really progressive and open artistic community.

ME: It even has a little community playhouse and I used to be an extra in the plays. My mom would write some songs and we had this friend who was a full-blooded Cherokee Indian, who would perform them. He actually just passed away a few years ago — I dedicated my album Sea-worthy to him. Jarrett Washington, he was an amazing pianist. But yeah, getting back to the town, it was a very artistic community. Progressive and unusual for East Tennessee.

AE: So I guess this works well with my next question — at what point did you come out as a lesbian?

ME: I came out in San Francisco. I moved out here with a boyfriend and I was very very very bi-curious. I was in a long relationship with a guy and when I told people from Tennessee that I was moving out to San Francisco they were like, “You’re gonna start eating sushi and become a queer,” and damn if that didn’t happen! [Laughs]

AE: Well once you sit down and order a spicy tuna roll, there’s no going back. Spicy tuna made me gay. Do you write your songs based mostly on your own life experiences?

ME: I think the core of what any writer writes is — there’s always some emotional truth that is personal. With that said, I like to write about my weird obsessions. Like, when I wrote Sea-worthy I was really obsessed with reading Mutiny on the Bounty so there’s a bunch of nautical references and references to the actual story, but I’m using them more as metaphors. Then with Juggler’s Progress I had gotten really obsessed with thinking about how Shakespeare and literature are so persistent and how it can affect people. But again, I can think about it and use it as metaphors but music is all about emotion. Like poetry is all about trying to capture a moment and say some kind of emotional truth, like, “I feel s—-y” or, “I’m in love with this girl but I don’t know how to say it.”

AE: Well, I’ve always been one to trash my own poetry because it always seemed so cheesy to me in the end. But I find that there’s a thin line between cheesy and authentically deep lyricism. How do you walk the line with that? Are you ever like, “Oh God that was so cheesy.”

ME: Oh I totally throw so much stuff out. Not to brag but I’m known as a prolific writer around my scene in San Fran, but there are hundreds of songs where I’m just like, “Blaaaaah.” For example the song, “Syllable,” had so many verses and I was just like “Yuck!” I think you have to wield that carefully, that critical faculty, because just like you can cross the line of being cheesy, there’s also a line where if you’re too critical, you don’t complete your work. So it’s important to have that. I’ve become very self-critical and re-writey. But yeah you don’t want to be cornball. We’re True Margrit, we want to tell the truth. I just totally ran off a cliff but – have you seen Black Swan?

AE: Not yet, I’m a bad lesbian.

ME: The reason I ask is because – I don’t want to give away spoilers – the lesbian scenes were disappointingly short. That one scene scene, it gets kind of hot and they start kissing and then they start doing this thing that instead of getting hot it turns into kind of a lonesome scene and I was like “S–t.” The reason I bring it up is because all of those things you were saying about cheesiness, I kind of thought Black Swan was cheesy. I know, everyone thinks it was great and I must be perverse.

AE: Well not everyone loved it. I saw some people on my Facebook feed saying they wished they could have unseen it. But I won’t judge until I see it for myself.

ME: It’s pretty unrelentingly sad and totally worthy of seeing. Darren Aronofsky is incredibly talented but sometimes he’s like, (screams) “I am using a metphor now!” [Laughs]

AE: Well I can’t wait to see it now! So, when I listen to your music, I hear definite comparisons to Ben Folds — definitely in your piano and sometimes even in your vocals. Have you been watching his a capella reality show?

ME: I haven’t! Wait, what!? Ben Folds has a reality show?

AE: Yeah, it’s him, one of the guys from Boyz II Men and that chick from the Pussycat Dolls and they judge this a capella competition – kind of like Glee.

ME: No, I’ll have to check it out. I love musicals and Glee is fun.

AE: It’s fun but it makes me uncomfortable when the characters sing to each other. The faces they make – make me really uncomfortable.

ME: [Laughs] That’s hilarious, it’s totally true.

AE: OK, so I’m not the only one who feels that way?

ME: No, but acting and singing at the same time isn’t really easy.

AE: Speaking of acting, your music is being used in a new film, The Stranger In Us. Your video for “Opposite Opposite Man” actually sold me on the movie; I immediately added it to my Netflix queue. Did you write those songs specifically for the movie?

ME: Oh yeah! Well because I’m a musician full-time and I need to make money, I produce bands and I do film scores. I’ve known the director, Scott Boswell, for a long time and he hired me to do the score for the film so I wrote music for the scenes, the underlying score, but he needed a song for the opening scene and the credits too so I was like, “How about ‘Opposite Man’ and ‘Opposite Opposite Man’?” and it weirdly fit the story. So it’s both, I wrote music for it and they used True Margrit music. I’m really excited for everyone to see the film. They’re kind of amazing performances by the actors. I haven’t gotten through it yet without crying, and I worked on it! It’s a very touching story about three boys in a love triangle.

I just realized I never got back to your comparison to Ben Folds — it’s funny I had never really listened to him and then when I heard him I was like, “Oh yeah, I guess we do sound like him. If Ben Folds were a Jewish lesbian that would be me!”

AE: Definitely! I mean the way in which you play the piano, which is really just incredible to hear — I mean I think now a lot of things are very guitar-driven, so when you hear piano-driven music, it’s just so different and when you hear it being done well, it showcases your ability really well.

ME: Well thanks! I’m here to support the piano and put it on its throne.

AE: You said that you produce some bands as well; what bands should we be listening out for?

ME: There’s a local band called, Sit Kitty Sit and they’re a piano/drum duo. They’re kind of an aggro-classical/pop-death metal. They’re amazing. I just did their EP.

I did this almost full-length album with this great band called Clair with Maria Stanford, an amazing rock vocalist. And today I’m going in to master something with my bass player, Gary Hopish, for this band called The Creak – they’re kind of bluegrass-ish. Two guys named Joe. What more could you want?

AE: Are you working on some new stuff for us to hear?

ME: Yeah definitely. We’re working on a new album but we also have a bunch of tracks that just didn’t make it on the album that we’re thinking of releasing online in case anyone just wants to hear more stuff while we’re working on the new one which is called “Super Hero Drugs,” which is one of our newer songs, it’s not recorded yet. “It’s a metaphor!” [Laughs] Sorry, just had a Darren Aronofsky moment.

AE: I think I’m going to be screaming that at my girlfriend from now on.

ME: The short answer is yes, we are working on a new album.

True Margrit’s fifth full-length release, The Juggler’s Progress is available now and the film The Stranger In Us is available for purchase on DVD.

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