Interview: Lockdown With Tami Neilson

As part of New Zealand Music Month, the 13th Floor’s Marty Duda checks in with Tami Neilson to see how the Canadian/Kiwi singer is dealing with lockdown.

With a couple of youngsters, a hubby who is working through the crisis, and her own career to worry about, Tami has her hands full. In addition to holding down the household, Tami has been producing an on-line series called “The Tami Shows. Click here to watch the  episodes.

And here’s Marty’s conversation with Tami, beginning with Tami’s thoughts on the current crisis:

T: In the beginning it was just like you know, how I think every musician felt. It was just like watching the bottom drop out of everything, your entire career and kind of like having to go through that grieving process for a couple weeks at least or a month. But then on the other hand I’m so grateful to be home and that I wasn’t in the States already, I was supposed to fly a week later, but I’m home with my kids, tucked away safely that we’re in New Zealand and not in the States right now.

M: Tell me about it, my family, every time we talk to each other, which is fairly regularly, we’re constantly congratulating ourselves for having moved here.

T: Well done us!

M: Exactly, it’s hilarious. Anyway, I’m sure you feel the same way.

T: Oh for sure, yeah.

M: And I’ve been watching your Tami Shows, they’re very Impressive and very entertaining so congratulations on those.

T: Thanks. Yeah that’s, ok so we’re in lockdown, you can’t even order anything off the internet, you just have to make do with whatever you have in the house basically and Jay and I were just …. cause he co-produces it with me and we were just laughing and I said, we have to do an episode where it shows all the behind the scenes shit that happens. It’s just like, if people knew the shoestrings we were running this on.

M: It’s amazing what you can do these days though with just a little bit, a little technology it’s great.

T: Yeah, it’s true.

M: I’m very impressed with the way they look. So Jay’s in Canada right?

T: Yeah he’s in Toronto.

M: And how’s he doing over there? What’s Canada like as far as, you know you hear all about the U.S but you don’t hear much about Canada.

T: Yeah that’s probably a good thing but it’s really bad, that’s when you hear about it. Yeah, so they have relatively, you know for the size of the country, have had relatively low numbers. Their lockdown hasn’t been as strict as ours is but it’s starting to, like they shut down restaurants, they shut everything down like we did but there’s still some things like they can go through drive-throughs still, they can drive distances still. So it’s funny cause when you talk to different friends in different countries and they say they did this thing and you’re like you got to do that? And they’re like ooh, and then you’ll talk about something and like, you get to do that? So it just seems like it’s different restrictions…

M: So are you doing anything musical wise? Are you writing songs, are you thinking creatively while this is all happening?

T: Yeah, I mean at the moment it’s been kind of pouring all my focus and energy into creating the Tami show stuff so that’s pretty all-consuming because I’m home with the kids of course so having an eight year old and a five year old twenty four seven, leaves very little time for anything else and so the time that I do have and because it’s different cause some couples are both at home with the kids so you can kind of spell each other off and tag team it but because I’m married to an essential worker, Grant’s with the police, he’s been going, it’s business as usual for them and so he’s gone all through the week so the only time I really get to do anything of my work related is on the weekends when he’s home and he can watch the kids and so yeah, that definitely puts a lot of limitations on what I can accomplish and because so much of it is filming you know you can’t do it while the kids are home because every little noise and interruption and yeah and the dog like it’s just yeah, it’s next to impossible. So it definitely been challenging to figure out and that was kind of part of the reason why I came up with that concept just because everyone and their dog was doing livestreams and first of all, I joke about my wi-fi but it literally is, we’re in a total, we’re in a dead spot so you just don’t know when it’s gonna work and when it’s not. And when I send files back and forth to Jay like these little segments, I film them, I edit them and then I send them to him to make them master cause my wi-fi is so bad it takes three days to upload anything to YouTube.

M: Oh no.

T: Yeah it’s that bad so even when I send him these like one and a half minute segments to ass to the show, I press send at ten pm at night and let it go all night and sometimes when I wake up, or the kids wake me up, at six thirty it’s still going for one and a half minutes.

M: You need some new internet.

T: Oh my God tell me about it. Like we’ve looked into it but the fact is they just haven’t laid the cable out here, we live out in the country. At the beginning of our road they have high speed internet and at the bottom yeah , like we’re kind of midway and it’s just one of those things that you can’t control and so normally I could go to the library in Kumeu or somewhere and upload big files there or even not big files. But of course everything’s shut so it truly is like I said to Jay, however we just, you know I’ll put this show on a USB stick and tie it to a pigeons foot and I bet you it’ll get there faster.

M: That’s fantastic.

T: But yeah, so it’s like it’s facing a lot of challenges and so because of that my live stream absolutely doesn’t work. I’ve even tried, I’ve kind of tested just doing a quick chat with fans and going hi, just testing my live stream and I was literally on for like thirty seconds and in that thirty seconds it froze like six times.

M: That’s just what you need and probably in the most flattering poses too.

T: Always, always. So I’m just like nevermind so live streams unfortunately are just, they’re not an option for me and I guess you kind of have to see…make positives out of, you have to make do with what you have and so I thought well what can I be doing that doesn’t involve all these obstacles and so that’s when I thought of pre-recording.

M: Well you’re doing an excellent job, I’m very impressed with it.

T: Thanks.

M: And how difficult is it to do your lashes in front of the computer? I was thinking you’re not really in front of a mirror are you? Or are you?

T: No, I’ve had to like, that’s the thing, I’ve had to rig up, that’s why I said I should take a photo of the camera to show, like hanging a little hand mirror from the camera and hoping it doesn’t knock against the microphone. And you’re kind of peeking it’s half covered and you kind of half see it so yeah, it’s definitely doing it a little bit blind at times. A lot of guesswork, that’s why I said, well came in handy that I’ve had to do this is a tiny compact mirror in the back of a tour bus many times.

M: Yeah, I imagine it’s pretty much the same.

T: Pretty much, yup.

M: And so I imagine you must’ve gotten quite a bit of feedback on these things cause I’m sure people are fascinated with how you do what you do.

T: Well for years people have asked me, you should do a beehive tutorial, I’d love to see your closet  or know more about your dresses and things and you always kind of laugh it off and go yeah who has time for that? As it turns out now we have lots of time for that so yeah. And I guess it was just trying to think of something that was unique as well because I was able to do one live stream before lockdown, and that’s cause I could drive in and I did the luck reunion festival which was Willie Nelsons, I was supposed to do that day live in … and so I drove in and we performed live from Southbound to come in their store and use their wi-fi and so I could do the live stream from there and it was one of the very first festivals I’ve live streamed and it was so incredible to be a part of this line up of Willie Nelson and Neil Young and Paul Simon and me.

M: That’s some serious songwriting power houses there.

T: It was ridiculous like I was on before Lucinda Williams, I’m like can I open for her now? Technically I have and it was live so it was really special and incredible to be a part of that so it was nice to be able to do it but then I really do feel you know, every musician had kind of, we’ve all been pushed online if we want to connect at all, and so I just thought the Tami Show was actually, hopefully a little bit, something a little bit different than the usual live stream, something unique that stands out amongst the sea of live streams.

M: So I’m curious, have you had any connection with other local musicians and have you guys talked about what it’s gonna be like when this is over and how the scene is turning out?

T: Yeah, I mean this whole time I’ve been in pretty regular contact with a lot of friends and as you go through different stages like ok now what? Ok now what? Each week seems to bring another revelation or challenge cause we’re all on shifting sands and so yeah, I’ve had lots of conversations with Delaney and Reb Fountain, Nadia Reid, Mel Parsons we’re all just always talking and we’ve talked about, at first Delaney and I were talking about oh let’s do some writing and all this stuff, well it quickly became apparent I had zero time and very different cause Delaney is by himself at his house with all the time in the world. But he was saying you know, cause I just said to him I’m sorry I’m just really running into the challenges of having the kids and I don’t have those blocks of time, those blocks of uninterrupted time and he said to be to be honest Tami, like even for me like even being by myself and not having anyone any dependents living with me, mentally it is so hard to pull yourself out of this heavy trauma that we’re all under and to think clearly enough to create and is a really daunting task almost and so I don’t know, I guess this, doing these little YouTube things I think, had been a really welcome distraction but something that I have to focus on, I’m like ok this is weekly, I have to get this done but I’m still being connected with my fans but not necessarily having to create new music because for me personally, the timing of this was really hard because it was exceptionally hard because my album came out two weeks before it all happened.

M: Just what you need.

T: Oh, it’s literally like this is the thing you’ve been working on for eighteen months, two years and it’s built and built and built and this momentum is just standing and spinning and spinning and it feels like you’re on the crest of this wave and then boom like the bottom just drops out.

M: I will say on the plus side, for me, I’ve had more time to listen to lots more new music now so that is a plus but I can see where you’re coming from there. Have you heard the new Lucinda Williams album?

T: Not yet no.

M: It’s pretty fierce.

T: I can’t wait to listen. And so for me personally I was like, almost the last thing I wanna do right now is think about making another album. I have a brand new shiny album that I’ve been working on for two years to release and it’s just dropped and then people are like oh are you gonna write a, you should write an album while you’re in and I’m like you know it’s just like the most discouraging thought at the moment.

M: So do you think it’s gonna be easy to pick up from where you left off once this is over?

T: I don’t think so, no. I think that so many things are lost that you can’t get back. It’s lost opportunities. Again it’s like you can’t really re-create that momentum that you worked for years to build and just have it pick right back up overnight. I mean of course we all have hope. I don’t think I’ll ever pick up where I left off but I definitely have hope of building something new and I won’t be starting at the start. you know, I won’t be starting at the starting line, I’ll be hopefully starting a little further down the track because of the foundation that I’ve built but that momentum is definitely gone and yeah but I think we all have hope and everything is so unknown, so unknown right now and internationally I can’t even fathom.

M: It doesn’t seem like anybody’s gonna be here for like eons.

T: A long time and we’re not gonna be able to go anywhere for eons. But I think the positive to that again you know you have to put a positive spin on the situation you’re in and I think that my hope is the fact that obviously the first things that will open up is our local music scene and our national Kiwi scene and then hopefully Australia as well. So I’m hoping we’ll be our own little eco-system for awhile together but that’s still a way down the track. But my hope is that because people won’t be having these huge international for a while, that they will embrace the local musicians that they have. So many of the musicians that live in New Zealand are on the world stage, I mean we spend most of our time outside of this country playing for people around the world that beg for us to go to them whereas I think that it would be a beautiful thing to see, I think our fans embrace us here, I think we have, I’m not really talking about as much our audiences as I am kind of the mainstream media you know? How wonderful would it be to see radio play New Zealand music?

M: And not just kind of sandwich it off somewhere by itself and become a part of the thing.

T: Exactly have their little tick the box yeah like tick a box of a quota. But kind of get back to that golden age. I mean even look at the days of That’s Country you know? It was a live music show, they were played on radio, Patsy Riggir, Susan Prentice like all of these people were household names in New Zealand and that’s because they had the mainstream support of prime time television and radio broadcasting. And there were stations that played them and that is how those opportunities aren’t there any more for musicians in New Zealand.

M: Canada kind of sorted that out with their radio situation.

T: Yeah, their Canadian content.

M: And there’s a few decent Canadian songwriters out there that have developed long the way so there you go, it works.

T: Yeah, definitely.

M: The template is there it’s just a shame that more places don’t pick up on it. What are you gonna do? So when everything gets lifted, do you have a plan in place or are you still thinking about it or what?

T: Ah God, a plan and place….like any plan that I make changes in the next five minutes. I was just reading the article this morning about the Troubadour in LA.

M: Oh yeah I saw that.

T: Yeah and I just thought you know, cause their governor is saying that it doesn’t look like live venues or gatherings will be possible until the middle to end of next year 2021.

M: Crickey. oh my god.

T: Yeah and so you can have all these wonderful plans and then you read an article like that and go, ‘alright let’s just throw that plan out the window and get a new piece of paper out’. So I think that, for me, and I think for all of us whether you’re a musician or not, I think the healthiest thing for us all is to focus on what we can control and not try to plan around things we can’t.So you know, my management and my international team are moving forward as though things will happen and be lifted but with the knowledge that they won’t be. You know? Like almost with the acceptance like we’re gonna move forward and do the job but we pretty much know that’s it’s not gonna happen. But you have to just keep moving forward and with hope and in the meantime I mean, I’ve talked with my management and every conversation is if, if, if and if, if, if and you almost feel like well that was the most pointless conversation ever like ok, this is the plan…if.

M: Well, you’ve gotta have at least something going forward but it’s tough yeah.

T: And I think that when we move, for me personally, when we move to level two when my boys go back to school, things will start to shift for me. I will actually have the time to sit and think and plan for what I can control. My first plan always includes New Zealand cause I think that’s gonna be our first thing to open up. So I actually have to shift the way I think about touring and think more intentionally and strategically about New Zealand because in the past few years, it’s been I play New Zealand between my international tours when I have time to fit it in between overseas things. But overseas things have taken priority because I’m still building a career over there. Whereas, now it’s gonna shift and even things like. ‘Ok well do I do this big show once a year and nothing you know’? I know that’s not gonna work anymore so yeah it’s a lot of thinking through and being strategic and planning and being patient I think is a big thing, I think people can make decisions out of panic and  some of it’s out of necessity to try to make money when there’s no income especially for musicians. But, I think that, I’m very aware of the privilege that I have that I am with somebody who is still working who still has a job so that’s a blessing. And that I have a focus of people outside of myself, I have to. I have to take care of two little guys every single day and so that priority is always number one and the other things kind of fall into place after that. But I think once they go back to school then we’re already talking about the next project. Even if things were still going along as normal, I’d start to talk about the next project so we’re kind of in discussions about that and hopefully start writing for that and have a new focus and I think that’s the thing I can control.

M: There you go, exactly.

T: And everything else, we’ll see.

Click here for updates on all things Tami.