The late film producer Sydney Pollack who passed away not long after my conversation with Patty Larkin, once observed about her singing, that she has the perfect voice for motion pictures and that she sees visual images when she sings. Larkin’s film and television credits include, Evolution (Dreamworks), Sliding Doors (Miramax—Sydney Pollack was one of the producers), Random Hearts (Columbia Pictures—directed by Sydney Pollack), Men In Trees (television) and Homicide (television).
Larkin recalls the day that Sydney Pollack phoned her, “What a joy to have Sydney Pollack on the phone. (She jokes at this juncture at a possible response) ‘I can’t talk to him, because I am alphabetizing my CD collection.’ He had heard one of my songs on the radio while he was in his car, and then he went to Tower Records to pick up my CD.” Larkin’s song, “Tenderness On The Block,” made the soundtrack for Sliding Doors.
“Sydney Pollack’s comments are totally meaningful, because I feel the same way (about my singing). Early on, as a songwriter, while in my pre-teens and as a teen, I would think visually and I would think about film. I think that it is a compliment to come from someone who is a filmmaker. When I am writing, a lot of the time, I want to recreate the feeling of something that I have seen or something that I have experienced. Really, it is more of a visual thing. I go to that place. I imagine a physical place, and I write from there,” she says.
Watch The Sky, is Patty Larkin’s tenth album, so it would seem natural to inquire about what keeps her motivated as she continues to record and perform. At the time, she had just completed a lengthy tour. “That’s funny, because this is the first day of the rest of my life. I just got home, last night, after four months of promoting this record, and touring around the country. I feel this lightness and sense of, what am I going to do now. I have a couple of little projects that I am working on. I am tired, and sometimes I feel that I am just moving my body around the country, because the travel does promote wear and tear. I still have this creative hunger, and I want to get better on my instrument. For me the problem is when I don’t hear anything that I like or I am not exposed to music that inspires me,” she says.
Larkin recalls a recent event in her life, “I was at WFPK in Louisville Kentucky, a non-commercial AAA station which has a tremendous impact, because they are very eclectic. There are not very many radio stations like that anymore. They played a cut by a guy from England called Fink, and I thought that it was beautiful. It was just him and an acoustic guitar, bass and drums. It had some really evocative things in it that I liked. Recently someone gave me a Neko Case CD, and I thought, ‘Wow this is really adventuresome writing. The band Winterpills, from western Massachusetts opened up for me in Louisville, and I think that they have beautiful vocals and arrangements. They have a really full sound for five people. Their really high singing makes me want to go home and play some barre chords. It made me want to write some things that are not finger style, but just barre chords.”
There are also non-traditional sources of inspiration for Patty Larkin’s music; such is the case with her song, “Walking In My Sleep,” from her new CD Watch The Sky. The lyrics sound like fright night at the folk festival and Larkin’s explanation of what served as the catalyst for her songwriting soon reveals the reason why. “I wrote the song after staying at a haunted B&B (Bed & Breakfast). When I drove away from the B&B I got over my fright, but I thought that I should write a song about my experience. I needed a way in, and the way in was to sing it in a different voice. While I was recording it, I thought more of a Billie Holiday or a Macy Gray voice. Billie was where I ended up going. It was a different style for me to do.
Having a partner and two small children at home, has caused Patty Larkin to treasure even more, both the times with her family and the times she spends on the road, because of the sacrifice she is making when she is away from them. It serves as a further inspiration for her to ‘be in the moment.’ In watching Patty Larkin perform this past spring, there was no doubting that she was ‘in the moment,’ and that she continues to create masterpieces, while remaining true to her art as a balladeer.
Photo by Joe Montague protected by copyright ©
July 2008
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