i realy want to be in the real game

I want to be in the real game' - San Diego Union Tribune
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Tift Merritt strolls toward New York's Hudson River in her quiet West Village neighborhood. Having moved here just a few months earlier, the North Carolina singer-songwriter is a newcomer to this tree-lined street with a century-old bohemian heritage.

Generations of artists and performers have gravitated to New York, some to live in a cultural mecca. Others come with larger-than-life dreams, the 8 million-to-1 chance of being discovered, for reinvention or escape.

Merritt's reasons were more pragmatic than dreamy. With her third album, “Another Country” (Fantasy Records), a national tour that brings her to Anthology in San Diego's Little Italy tomorrow night, and a new monthly public-radio show, New York simply made more sense than North Carolina, her home base since childhood.

There's the irresistible confluence of only-in-New York energy. Merritt had barely arrived when she found herself on the “I'm Not There” Bob Dylan tribute concert at the Beacon Theatre in November with Joe Henry, My Morning Jacket, Yo La Tengo and other alternative-rock stars.

Of course, Merritt got plenty of love from her old hometown, especially after she earned a Grammy nomination for “Tambourine,” her 2004 album. She advanced from selling out local clubs to such prestigious engagements as opening the North Carolina Museum of Art's summer concert season and performing with the North Carolina Symphony.

When: Tomorrow, 7:30 p.m.

Behind the scenes, however, were struggles with her label, her manager and the industry itself. She abandoned music, went to Paris and finally found herself in the place she needed to be.

At a small cafe near her studio apartment, Merritt settles in over coffee and croissants and talks about the decline that began, as all declines do, at the top. Her Grammy nomination, for country album of the year, felt like validation and fuel for a commercial breakthrough. But the breakthrough never came.

From a distance of 2-½ years, she can see the honor's downside. “Tambourine” (on Lost Highway Records) didn't sound Nashville enough for country radio. Yet with Grammy branding it country, other formats ignored it. Sales stalled at 68,000 copies – 11,000 more than 2002's “Bramble Rose,” but well short of expectations.

But Paris turned out to be what she needed to rediscover her voice as a writer.

Most of the songs on “Another Country” emerged during several stays in Paris. The lyrics sound like the musings of someone in crisis, with song after song about loneliness, longing, trying to connect. “Broken,” the first single, concludes with a murmuring coda that could be the theme for the project: I think I will break but I mend. The title track likens love to a faraway country because sometimes you have to go a long way to find what you're looking for.

Nearly all the news about “Another Country” has been good, including a four-star rave review in Paste magazine. Whether the album gets any further than “Tambourine” or “Bramble Rose” is still up to the fates. But Merritt is ready to do her part.

Along with recording “Another Country,” Merritt and Zeke Hutchins, her business partner as well as drummer and boyfriend, struck new deals with Fantasy/Concord Records – label home to John Fogerty – and manager David Newgarden, whose clients include Guided by Voices, Cibo Matto and other rock acts. Newgarden says he hesitated to take on Merritt until he learned that she wanted to move away from country music.

Merritt was somewhat miscast as a country singer, and “Another Country” should move her into the “pop” category for good.

Merritt recorded the album in Los Angeles with “Tambourine” producer George Drakoulias and the core of her regular band: Hutchins, bassist Jay Brown and keyboardist Danny Eisenberg. If “Tambourine” was Merritt's “Dusty in Memphis” blue-eyed-soul move, “Another Country” would sound at home in Laurel Canyon, somewhere between Carole King and Bonnie Raitt.

A move to Los Angeles would have made sense, given the album's West Coast laid-back vibe. But Merritt decided New York was a better fit.

She doesn't know how long her New York sojourn will last, in part because she'll be on the road most of this year. She thinks about children, and she'd like to go back to Paris and live there awhile, too.

Whatever her mailing address, there's little doubt about where home remains.

Home Imp.

Jene Duffer is a prolific author who specializes on alternative views on a variety of topics.