Debaser Margaret Stutt of Pezzettino

People are always asking us to help plug something of theirs—an upcoming show, a new record, some book they wrote. Because we’re not in the pandering business, we think there should be a trade-off. Debaser allows these folks to plug whatever they want, with one caveat: They also have to tell us something embarrassing about themselves. This week, accordion-playing singer-songwriter Margaret Stutt of Pezzettino talks about her new record Lion—celebrated with a CD release show tonight, April 18 at Shank Hall—and pretending to be a volunteer in post-Katrina New Orleans in order to get out of a crappy office job.

Decider: Okay, plug your album. Why should people check out Lion?

Margaret Stutt: It’s a break-up album, so if you want to say “fuck you” to somebody, this is where it’s coming from.

D: Whom are you telling to go fuck themselves?

MS: [Laughs.] I haven’t done a count of how many people I’m saying it to, but there’s at least three. One of them includes myself.

D: You went through a bad break-up, and even called off a wedding. Are these songs about your ex-fiancé?

MS: I don’t have any songs about that guy. You would think all these songs would be about him, like a “I broke up, called off the wedding, and now I’m saying fuck you to him” sort of thing. But all this stuff is based on everything that happened after that.

D: Are all of your songs based on your life?

MS: [Laughs.] Basically, each song is a letter to a specific person. Sometimes they know it, sometimes they don’t. If they do know, and I did send it to them, it’s kind of weird. [Laughs.] But it’s my spastic way of communicating. I have a hard time communicating where I’m really coming from sometimes. That’s how I do it—through a song. It’s not supposed to be a big deal. What am I supposed to do? Write you an email?

D: How did you end up playing the accordion?

MS: I wanted to join a band in town, and they had an ad for a drummer. And I was like, “I don’t play drums, but I play piano.” And they said, “Well, how about an accordion?” So, I just fiddled around like I knew what I was doing. But my dad played accordion, and there’s a keyboard on the side, so it was familiar enough. After the first two weeks of picking it up, I really started identifying with it. Because when you play it, it’s right over your chest. The noise is actually coming off of your heart.

D: All right, we let you promote your album. Now it’s time to for an embarrassing story.

MS: After college, I couldn’t find a job. So, I took a temp agency job doing data entry at a local insurance company. It was pretty demoralizing. It was like Office Space—just horrible. I’d go home crying every day. My friend and I would spend most of the day writing emails to each other, talking about how shitty it was because the actual work would take 15 minutes of the whole day. So one day, I accidentally I sent the email to my boss. And in the email, I had written all this shit about how my boss was incompetent and all this harsh stuff. I sent it to her because I was thinking about her so much!

So, I jumped up, left the office, and took a three-hour lunch. I came back with a cookie, and I felt bad because I bought myself a cookie and not her, and I just sent her this really mean email. I went to her cubicle and said, “Sorry I was so mean,” and gave her the cookie. And then a week later, I quit because Katrina had just hit, and I said I really wanted to volunteer and do something good for my country. But that day I went to Beans And Barley to work at the deli counter, and a week later my boss saw me working there instead of in Louisiana.