Interview Healthy White Baby's Laurie Stirratt: her brother is in Wilco

For nearly a decade, Laurie Stirratt played in roots-rock band Blue Mountain alongside her husband, Cary Hudson. When their marriage fell apart, the band followed suit, and Stirratt moved from Mississippi to Chicago in late 2002 to start over. Once here, she collaborated on an album with her twin brother (Wilco bassist John Stirratt), with whom she also started a label, Broadmoor. She took a job at The Hideout, where she befriended Danny Black, whose own long-running band, The Blacks, also broke up after his romantic relationship with a bandmate disintegrated. United by musical chemistry—and a vow to keep things platonic—Stirratt, Black, and drummer Ryan Juravic eventually formed Healthy White Baby, copping the name from a line in Raising Arizona. This weekend, the group (which now includes keyboardist Lena Yohey) will play a record-release show for its self-titled debut. Before the show, Stirratt talked to The A.V. Club about starting over, having a famous sibling, and dating bandmates.

The A.V. Club: You and Danny were in bands whose members were romantically involved. Do you think a setup like that can ever work?

Laurie Stirratt: It seems to work for some people; The Handsome Family has pulled it off for years. But I feel like it’s kind of an uphill battle, really. You’re basically spending 24 hours a day, seven days a week with that person. It gets really tough, so I wouldn’t do it, nor recommend it. [Laughs.]

AVC: Do you think you could have gone straight from the Blue Mountain breakup to Healthy White Baby, without the album you did with John in-between? Did that help you make the transition?

LS: I think it did. For a while, I was kind of unsure if I wanted to be in a band again, just to put all that work into something that could, at any time, just completely fall apart. So I think it was a really good way for me to get back into it and realize that I still wanted to do this, and that music was still the most important thing to me. I never had a big desire to do anything else, but I did have to get over a lot of frustration over, you know, putting 10 years into something and not having it. And then John is so great because he’s such a positive person, and it really did a lot for my state of mind and attitude. So I think the timing worked out really well.

AVC: Your twin brother’s in a really famous band—especially in Chicago—and the people who like Wilco may not know your musical background. Do you get condescending comments like, “Oh isn’t is sweet that Laurie has little songs, too!”

LS: The one thing that really used to drive me completely insane was when people wouldn’t be aware of my career and say, “Oh, so did you just start playing when Wilco got big?” [Laughs.] The worst thing in the world for me is to feel like someone thinks I’m riding my brother’s coattails. So I had to sort of learn how to handle that.

AVC: How do you handle it now?

LS: Not in a hostile way. I just say, “Yeah I’ve been playing for a long time.” Occasionally people come up to me who kind of know what I’ve done and ask me about it, and I can always tell when it’s going to be a lead-in to a Wilco conversation. You know they’re going to start grilling me about Wilco, and then usually I just say, “I gotta go.” [Laughs.]

AVC: You’ve said that writing is really hard for you. Is the setup for Healthy White Baby better for you, then, with Danny writing the songs and lyrics?

LS: Writing is definitely something that I can’t force, so when I feel it, I do it. But I used to put a lot of pressure on myself, like, “You have to write all the time, every day. You have to do this and become disciplined,” and it was a drag, you know? I don’t want it to be a drag. For me, I just do it when I feel like it comes naturally. Sometimes it’s just fun to play your instrument and get better at your instrument. I love Danny’s songs, so if the material were something that I couldn’t really get behind, then I wouldn’t put as much time into it, if any.

AVC: Do you write pretty quickly as a band?

LS: Yeah, Danny’s been writing a lot. He’s been really working on it and has a desire to do it right now. We’ve got another record, not recorded, but the songs are ready. He’s just really feeling it, so it’s going great. But we get together, and he plays a song, and then we all kind of work out our own parts. He’s not the kind of guy who says, “You need to play this or that.” We all work on the arrangements.

AVC: Is the newer stuff lighter? The album has such dark lyrical themes.

LS: Definitely. [Laughs.] The material’s a lot lighter. We never really discussed it, but I think there’s a part of him that was wondering if he could write a happy song. Some musicians or songwriters have this thing where they have to be feeling these horrible feelings in order to write. I think it’s really healthy that he’s been able to write really positive songs, because he’s been writing really depressing songs for a long time. [Laughs.]