Gregory and the Hawk is music I recently became aware of while listening to an episode of Filmspotting. Gregory and the Hawk has a number of informative websites, and one had a contact for Meredith Godreau, the founder and core of Gregory and the Hawk, and she was quite willing to do an email interview with me. After being signed to FatCat Records, October 2008 saw the release of the band’s Moenie and Kitchi. How Gregory and the Hawk started is a fascinating read in and of itself, as detailed in this FatCat website excerpt: “The name Gregory And The Hawk was conceived in 2003, initially devised to avoid her [Godreau] being perceived or pigeonholed as a female singer-songwriter (though, perhaps ironically, when pressed for a list of influences Meredtih cites Nick Drake, Liz Phair, PJ Harvey). Meredith remained playing alone under that name for a few years, until she met Mike McGuire in New York in 2005. . .” Be sure to go to the website for more details on Gregory and the Hawk’s history. My thanks to Godreau for a delightfully insightful interview. I want to also apologize to Godreau for how wordy my questions were–fortunately her answers were far more direct and informative. I was just so enthused to interview her, I clearly suppressed the editor in myself.
Tim O’Shea: Do you remember when you first realized just how potent and effective your singing voice is? (I only ask this, because the first time I heard your voice, I was in my car in a parking lot, I had gotten to my destination and I did not want to get out of my car. The last time a voice struck me like that was years ago, when I first heard Sam Phillips).
Meredith Godreau: I think Ariel the little mermaid helped many women realize their vocal talents.
O’Shea: Other than the obvious benefits (such as increased market exposure and not having to burn your own CDs), what have you found to be the greatest benefit to your association with Fat Cat Records?
Godreau: Meeting musicians I admire, traveling to Norway and London and around the U.S. so far has been great fun.
O’Shea: Which do you believe to be your greatest musical asset–your voice or your songwriting ability–or do you not view your talents in such a manner?
Godreau: I guess I would rather have them disconnected. I like to write songs for other people to sing, and I would much rather sing somebody else’s songs than my own. So I’d say either if they were apart. Other than that, I try not to think about it.
O’Shea: What do you most appreciate about Mike McGuire and the qualities his talents bring to your music?
Godreau: Mike has a really positive feel for harmonies and opening up chords and hearing chord changes in a way very different from the way I hear em. That’s what I like most about playing with him, he just picks up nuances of changes so well and brings them out.
O’Shea: When you play live, how much does your performance feed off of the audience dynamics? Is the audience vibe different when you play an all ages show (as you will be doing in LA soon)?
Godreau: The open-mindedness of an all ages crowd is unbeatable. and usually when you play all ages shows they aren’t in settings like bars where – we have all been guilty of this at one time or another – drinking and bro’ing down sometimes surpasses your interest in a band you’ve never heard of before/don’t like.T here’s nothing quite like playing sober and having sober people listening, which is pretty much what I think of when I think of playing all ages shows. they’re nice.
O’Shea: In discussing your song, Voice Like A Bell, you wrote: “I remember a day I went into the studio after a couple weeks of letting him [Adam Pierce, producer] work on stuff by himself and he played me a chorus in ‘Voice Like a Bell’ and I loved it and he said “Great, I know what you like now!” After that, pieces just kept falling into place.” How early in the recording process did this occur? Do you hope to work with Adam on your next studio effort?
Godreau: Way late in the [recording] process.W e didn’t work too steadily, many months . . . started in October and then most work was concentrated and getting finished up the following April and May 2008. We butted heads on a lot of stuff, but I think came together with a mutual love for 1980s ballad type slow dance songs, which is how he described that VLAB chorus to me once. I’m sure we will we working together to some extent on the next official release.
O’Shea: How much touring will you be doing in 2009? And who will be in your touring band?
Godreau: In May I am opening for Mice Parade for a couple of weeks on shows including Montreal, Chicago, Gainesville, etc, and there are also plans for Europe and beyond in June and July, but they are unconfirmed so far. I have plans to tour with Mike on guitar again, but hopefully will be adding Susan Ambrose who played a little flute on In Your Dreams, and Saul MacWilliams who I’ve recorded with in the past. They are both great musicians and good friends who I’d love to travel with.
O’Shea: Will you be working more on Bob? How did that project come about?
Godreau: Bob is my shapeshifting garage band project that is up on the gath website for now. I vacillate between spending a lot of money releasing a nice vinyl with more instrumental things I like to work on, and just keeping them streaming for free.I make so much stuff I never release or play live because it involves improvised layering of things like viola, vocals, rattles, I dunno. Thinking about bringing that stuff into performance makes me want to vomit, so also I wanted to offer a stream on the site that I could update sometimes, something unofficial and fun.
O’Shea: Is there anything you’d like to discuss that I did not ask you about?
Godreau: Well, we may record an all acoustic version on Moenie and Kitchi with some bonus tracks on it this summer, so that could be fun to watch out for if it happens 
Recent Comments