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Cinderella Mann: An Aimee Mann Interview

It takes a lot to rattle Aimee Mann. Just consider her last show in Buffalo: her appearance at Thursday at the Square in August of 2003 coincided with the largest blackout in U.S. history. A nervous crew kept generators ready, anticipating that the massive power failure would soon hit downtown Buffalo as it had hit the rest of the Northeast (including nearby suburbs). But somehow the city lights stayed on and Mann played a blistering set before an enthusiastic crowd. After more than two decades as a touring artist, such snags fail to faze the 44–year-old singer-songwriter.

Aimee Mann

The veteran performer is currently spending three weeks on the road to promote her Grammy–nominated concept album, The Forgotten Arm, released last spring on the artist’s own SuperEgo label. The sixteen–city acoustic venture brings her back to Buffalo next Thursday (Feb. 2) for a performance at UB’s Center for the Arts.

On the phone from her studio in Los Angeles where she resides with musician–husband Michael Penn, Mann describes her preparation so far: “We haven’t started rehearsing yet,” she confesses, only a week before departure, “so I don’t know exactly what it is going to sound like.” Ever the professional, Mann sounds more casual than uneasy about this prospect.

Mann acquired this unflappable composure over a tumultuous career, which began in Boston’s punk scene (her first band, The Young Snakes, featured college chum Al Jourgenson, with whom Mann briefly played in an early incarnation of Ministry). The Berklee College dropout formed the New Wave outfit ’Til Tuesday in 1983 with then–boyfriend Michael Hausman. The band struck gold two years later with “Voices Carry,” a wrenching account of an oppressive love affair, whose video became an MTV staple. When management pressured Mann to produce more commercial hits, she fought to preserve her integrity as a songwriter. Critics praised the Mann’s darkly observant lyrics, but two subsequent LPs barely dented the charts. Mann finally dissolved the group in 1989 to pursue a solo career.

Her clashes with the industry continued. Mann’s introspective debut, Whatever, was released in 1993 to rave reviews but modest sales. Her follow–up, I’m with Stupid, was completed just as her label went bankrupt; the disc spent nearly two years in legal limbo. Her next label also demanded that she return to the studio and record a radio–friendly single. Mann again refused to change the album, and scored a minor hit anyway with the bouncy “That’s Just What You Are.” But following a corporate merger, Mann found herself shuffled to yet another label, which likewise declined to release her third album unless she tacked on more commercial material. The label eventually freed Mann from her contract, but retained the tapes of that recording, Bachelor No. 2.

Mann was so disgusted by the corporate landscape that she considered quitting the industry altogether. She took a small diversion into acting when a casting director pal offered her a cameo in The Big Lebowski, as one of the cult classic’s villainous German nihilists. “I was… sort of not having a great time in the music business,” she recalls with a laugh, “and I really would have tried anything—anything that wasn’t music, at that point, I would have done. It was like a three-second part, which is about my speed. And all in German!”

Mann’s next brush with Hollywood would prove more substantial. Boogie Nights director Paul Thomas Anderson, a close friend, heard Mann’s album demos while writing his next script. “I’ve just always been really inspired by Aimee’s music, and this was really a moment to be massively inspired—or massively rip her off,” Anderson told the New York Times. 1999’s Magnolia, a bleak day-in-the-life of nine intertwined characters in Los Angeles, incorporated Mann’s music into its stories and even its dialogue. Her songs became as integral to the finished film as Simon & Garfunkel’s music had been to The Graduate; in one remarkable sequence, the entire cast sings along to her ballad “Wise Up.” The companion soundtrack sold over half a million copies, and snagged Grammy and Oscar nominations for Mann’s haunting “Save Me.”

Bolstered by the film’s success, Mann bought back the rights to her third album and offered Bachelor No. 2 directly to fans via her Web site, still a novel practice at the time. “There really wasn’t much happening there; there was no iTunes and we felt like, ‘Well, at least people can buy the record over the Internet.’ That’s as much as we were really hoping for.” The model proved successful, and Mann has since independently released two more studio albums as well as a live CD/DVD package. In another bold business move, Mann previewed 2002’s Lost in Space—the entire disc—for free, a rebellion against the major labels’ priority shift toward highly-disposable radio hits, at the expense of cohesive albums. “You’d hear one single on the radio—maybe—and then you’d buy the record and it’s like ‘What? This is not what I expected.’ That sort of bait-and-switch mentality was just really prevalent.”

Her latest project, The Forgotten Arm, is another album intended to be digested as a whole. Set in the 1970s, the ambitious song cycle chronicles the rocky romance of John and Caroline, a drug-addicted boxer and the woman who slowly realizes that she cannot save him from his demons. After meeting at the Virginia State Fair (where Mann spent much time as a child), the couple take a road trip to Las Vegas, where their relationship disintegrates. Wryly packaged to look like a pulp novel, the narrative detail is reminiscent of Magnolia, and the characters share a similar despair (“Life just kind of empties out / Less a deluge than a drought,” observes one). But the story ends on a hopeful note, and its themes of love and loss are universal. Songs like “King of the Jailhouse” and “That’s How I Knew This Story Would Break My Heart” should cement Mann’s reputation among today’s finest lyricists.

Mann recorded The Forgotten Arm in just five days, with a brand new band assembled by producer Joe Henry. Recording live in the studio was a challenge for Mann, who typically takes a fussier, layered approach. On tour, Mann will continue to test her musical boundaries with the “unplugged” concert, which will force her to drastically rework most of her material. “The challenge with an acoustic show, or with just three people, is how to keep it interesting with just different sounds, because you’re so limited by what you can bring.” Her bass player’s “crazy ancient drum machine, sort of a ‘pre-drum machine’ drum machine” should help to keep the folksiness in check, and Mann plans to vary the set list, too: “I want to try to include a couple of older songs, songs I don’t usually do.”

For Mann’s “Acoustic Trio” performance at the University at Buffalo next Thursday, critically acclaimed guitarist Chuck Prophet, whom Mann enthusiastically calls “just a really great songwriter,” is along for the ride. Once the tour wraps, Mann will start work on her next release, but hasn’t yet decided whether she will attempt another concept album. “I have no ideas; it’s like a blank slate right now,” she says. And as usual, she isn’t remotely anxious about that.

Thursday, Febuary 2 at 8pm

UB Center for the Arts

(North Campus). $20-$27 through box office (645-2787) or Ticketmaster (852-5000).