Mr. Airplane Man
Putting Shame in Your Game
by Mike Baldino
Photo by Roland Ouellette
Guitarist/ vocalist Margaret Garrett and drummer/ vocalist Tara McManus are two very sweet, personable young women who get “it,” that “it” that Howlin’ Wolf knew and that Jeffrey Lee Pierce understood. They make ramshackle, hypnotic, punk-inspired blues-based music that sounds like the Fat Possum label’s take on the Nuggets box set, like the music Iggy Pop would’ve made if he’d stuck with the drums and backed Hound Dog Taylor instead of fronting The Stooges. Their live shows are amazing and their records are fabulous. Their lyrics are simple and honest: “Feel like a question/ Lookin’ for an answer/ Never gonna find it Never gonna get there;” “I need somebody/ drive me out/ out of this town/ I’m restless and I just wanna drive around.” In the past few months, Mr. Airplane Man released their second full-length, Moanin’, on the Sympathy for the Record Industry label (home to The White Stripes and other garage rock luminaries), and they’ve just returned from a European tour, during which they recorded a session for John Peel’s radio show. They’ve got a steadily growing buzz in the international music press, and their devoted fan base swells in numbers at every show. Tara and I hung out and closed the Abbey Lounge one night:
Tara: Margaret’s from Newton (Tara grew up in Westboro and Natick), but we met when we were little kids at summer camp up in New Hampshire. We lived in different towns, but I always used to take the bus, like this Route 9 bus that’d always take me two hours to get there, and we’d spend the weekend together and stuff. I didn’t have many friends, and Margaret and I had such a bond I used to stand there on Route 9 waiting for the bus for hours. I just lived to go away.
Noise: “I lived to go away” pretty much sums up the Worcester area.
Tara: Yeah, it got a little better when I was in high school; there was like five punks in my whole town, and I met them. They were all older, and they turned me onto hardcore and everything. We used to drive into Boston on the weekends to see all-ages shows and stuff, and that saved my life. My first show was at the Paradise seeing Jerry’s Kids and Gang Green or something, and it’s like “Oh my god, thank you!” I had a hard time in Westboro. I don’t know why. Just didn’t fit in or something. After high school I got really disillusioned with punk and didn’t really listen to anything for a couple of years. [Punk and “alternative” music] got really watered down and mainstream, and it just seemed that people were into things beside the music part; it got really regimented – I always think of punk rock being freaked out and really creative, you know what I mean, but I remember saying to people, “I really like the Minutemen and I really like The Meat Puppets,” and they’d say, “Oh, well you’re not punk, you’re a freak,” or whatever. Like, “What? I thought ” I moved to Newton at the end of high school, and there were like five of six kids who were into punk, and we were really all way into the records. When I moved closer to Boston, it seemed like people were more into the outfits and really taking note of whether your shoe laces were tied this way or that, and it was like, “Oh, God ” [laughs]. It was a real turnoff and really disappointing.
Noise: What was the record that clicked for you and made you realize you wanted to play music?
Tara: Every Tuesday night we’d [she and Margaret] go see The Hypnosonics, which was kind of a side project of Mark Sandman’s; they’d experiment with what became Morphine songs. They had a three-piece horn section, Mark played guitar, they had a bass player, and this drummer who was like, unbelievable. It was really inspiring, and that’s when I started feeling really itchy, like, “Okay, I really wanna learn music.” Whatever world they were in, I wanted to be in it and play the way they were playing.
Noise: So Mr. Airplane Man started out playing in the street-was it hard for you to get gigs?
Tara: We didn’t really have a plan; we just felt like total weirdos. We never thought we’d have a real band. I was just completely obsessed with Howlin’ Wolf and Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside. That was all I wanted to do. And I didn’t want to have to work all the time. We figured out that we could play on the street and kind of learn, and people would throw money in the thing and we could barely scrape by. We didn’t have to work, and we just played all day for like a summer. We got just barely enough to pay the rent but not to buy anything else, and it was awesome. We played, though, like four times a week in clubs and on the street, and we really burned out after a while on playing the same songs over and over and over and over. After a while, it was like “Oh God, not ‘Rollin’ and Tumblin’ again.” It was better to just get a job and only play once in a while. I’d rather just get on good shows with The Dirtbombs or Detroit Cobras, and they’ll only let you do it if you haven’t played in- you know how it is.
Noise: Why did you guys decide to be a two-piece?
Tara: We just couldn’t find anybody. Margaret and I have such an intense thing between us, it’s really hard for someone else- we’re like twin sisters or something. But it seemed like everybody was really into the whole Stooges thing, or they were really into blues in a corny way. In the last few years, I’ve felt like we’ve met people we could play with, but now it’s just like we do what we do. You talk to so many people and they’re like, “Howlin’ Wolf, he’s so great, he’s so great,” but there are so many different Howlin’ Wolf records, that maybe the stuff we’re into about Howlin’ Wolf is different than what they’re into about him.
Noise: Like they could be into [Howlin’ Wolf guitarists] Willie Johnson or Hubert Sumlin, who are totally different.
Tara: Yeah, or that stuff he did with The Yardbirds or whoever backing him up.
Noise: The London Sessions.
Tara: I hate that album. It’s really hard to find somebody who wants to play something drone-y and repetitive without all the guitar stuff; you know how that whole blues scene is.
Noise: Your drumming style reminds me of Spam (a drummer who has appeared on many of the Fat Possum label releases). Every time I see you play, I’m like, “That’s a Spam fill!”
Tara: Totally! He’s a huge influence. And that kid Brian who plays behind T-Model, too, I think he’s great. People freak out like, “Why do you have this young white kid playing behind you? That’s not authentic!” Well, he’s from Mississippi and he plays really cool shit-why is that a problem? People are so weird. They think about things too much. The whole history of the blues – like, Howlin’ Wolf, one of his biggest influences was Jimmie Rogers, who was this white country-western star. Things went back and forth a lot more. I hate when people get hung up on whether someone’s white or black, because there are so many cheesy black musicians that make you wanna barf just as much as white guys. People think, “Oh, only black people have soul.” That’s not what blues is-I don’t know. It’s a weird thing to get caught up in. [We have a long talk about how lame the modern blues scene is.] I hate the whole “blues” thing so much. I love blues music, but the blues scene is such a drag and so horrible.
Noise: Do you feel like you fit into any scenes? You’ve got this garage rock kind of thing happening
Tara: No, I think we forced ourselves into that. When we first started, we got this huge buzz going about how we had this feel for the blues that was really different and special or something; then we started doing all these shows at The House of Blues with, like, Koko Taylor, who is great and everything, but it’s this real contemporary feel-good showbiz thing. I hate that shit. I don’t want to be playing shows like that. We went through this period where we were getting approached by labels, but it was this really icky thing. No way are we doing the Newport Folk Festival-fuck that shit. We opened for Susan Tedeschi, and that was it. That was it! I was like, “That’s it-I’m not doing this anymore.” And then we stopped for a year and took a break and we wouldn’t take any shows. We kept getting calls from House of Blues.
Noise: You had that stigma attached.
Tara: It took a while to shake it. Everyone was writing about us like, “Oh, soul sisters, they play the blues ” and we were like [makes vomiting noise] and cringing. We’re not trying to be some “blues sisters” we were just rockin’ out. Maybe we were really corny and like that at first? I don’t know. We were just super-into the blues and we were copying it ’cause we were trying to learn how to play. I didn’t want to get stuck there. I hate that fucking blues scene-I hate it! People are like, “Oh, they’re into the blues,” and I’m like, no, it’s just rock ‘n’ roll, it’s not a big deal. I mean, Iggy Pop told this story in Please Kill Me about how he’d never done drugs and he ran away to Chicago and he was studying all those blues players, and he was playing drums with them. Then one night, someone gave him a joint and he went down to the river and he finally realized that he loved the blues, but it’d never be him completely, it’s not in his blood and it’s not his culture, and he had to be natural and find his own way. That’s why the blues is so great: it’s about people being natural and being who they are.
Noise: I don’t think of you guys as a blues band or traditionalists or anything like that.
Tara: That’s good. Thank God! It’s really just about rock ‘n’ roll and being creative. Since I was a kid, going to see live music is what really got me through. Going to see rock ‘n’ roll bands is like going to church, and it keeps me going. It makes me forget everything, and I love it. I just want to be in one of those bands that makes people feel the same way and makes them get lost in the moment.
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