STORYTELLER
Halifax Daily News - Marilyn Smulders
Sunday April 14 2002
Amanda Marshall’s got a confession: she doesn’t have a snake tattoo and her tongue isn’t pierced. And she’s only been drunk a grand total of once. “It was on my birthday (last August),” says 27-year-old bluesy-voiced chanteuse.
“I was on the road with my band and they were astounded that I had never been drunk. So I got drunk. I threw up and went to bed. End of story.”
That doesn’t stop her from imagining a hedonistic fantasy ride in the very funny Sunday Morning After — the big radio hit with the infectious “Omigod” chorus. It’s one of a passel of new songs written to show off her sassy side.
“What it was really, was that we were sitting in the studio — my collaborators Billy Mann and Peter Asher — and we were working at a feverish pace. I don’t know … it was really really late and we were all punchy and we were outdoing ourselves trying to make each other laugh.
“Out came this string of ideas about the worst morning after ever — first she wakes up, she’s got a tattoo, her tongue’s pierced too, and we needed another ‘ooo’ rhyme and ‘who the hell are you?’ just fit.
“It just got more and more outrageous.”
Perceived as a very serious young woman on the basis of songs on spousal abuse (Birmingham) and race (Shades of Grey), Marshall really lets her hair down — and there’s a lot of it — in the platinum-selling Everybody’s Got a Story.
The album has Marshall exploring hip-hop and funk sounds overtop beats laid down by the unknown Bronx DJ Molecules, whom Mann met through a janitor at his health club. Known for her passionate, hair-waving shows, the album comes close to replicating the energy of those raising-the-rafters live performances.
“I wanted to catch the vibe of a live show and make an album as equally funky and cool for people sitting in their cars in traffic at nine in the morning,” she explains.
Of course, on top of it all, is Marshall’s big, big voice. It first caught Jeff Healey’s ear back when she was just 17. The Canadian rock-guitar god invited her to open for him on his national tour — an unknown singing before thousands. A record deal with Columbia came next, but at the age of 19 she backed out, and signed with Sony Music Canada a few years later.
Then, with word from Elton John that he loved Marshall’s song Dark Horse, her career went into the stratosphere. Her 1995 self-titled album sold two million copies worldwide and spawned seven top-10 singles in Canada. But still feeling wobbly as a songwriter, she credits John Mellencamp for his encouragement to sing her own stories.
“He was a huge, huge hand up,” says Marshall of Mellencamp, with whom she toured. “He’d pull me aside and made it clear he thought what I had was something special.”
Compared to just three songs on her debut, Marshall co-wrote every song on Everybody’s Got a Story.
“When you’re 19 or 20 years old, what do you know? You don’t have a lot to say,” says Marshall. “But I think I’ve really found my voice as a writer, and as a person. I’m more comfortable showing myself to the people who buy my records.”
Everybody’s Got a Story is groove-laden fun, from the title track urging people to look below the surface, to Brand New Beau, in which she finds out her lover is gay — “I thought I was your queen,” she sings. She’s introspective too; on the song Double Agent, Marshall, whose father is white, her mother black, talks about the pain of racism.
“My hair is light blonde, my eyes are blue, and looking the way I am, I have been privy to conversations that have hurt,” says Marshall, who adds she’s had a staggering amount of mail on the topic from fans.
“We all have things — whether we’re gay or have been in prison — that make us who we are that isn’t exactly visible to the eye.”
________________________HOME_______________________________________________