Winging it with Mary Lucia
Since 1994, when she debuted as an on-air DJ at the short-lived alt-rock radio station Rev-105, Mary Lucia has been an unabashed booster for underground and local music—particularly during the last half-decade, as one of the most recognizable voices at Minnesota Public Radio indie-rock outpost at 89.3 FM, The Current. In an age when music on commercial radio is largely locked down by rigid formats, The Current's playlist is marvelously eclectic, heavy on indie big-hitters like Neko Case and Wilco, but also with a hefty complement of Minnesota musicians, and spiced with the occasional dip into Jerry Lee Lewis or Howlin' Wolf. Though The Current has never reached the ratings heights of mainstream-rock giants like KQRS, it has been (along with smaller left-of-the-dials like KFAI and the U of M's Radio K) hugely important in giving exposure to underheard music, helping drive up audiences for deserving musicians, local or otherwise, that would otherwise be ignored in favor of another spin of some Tom Petty song. Mary Lucia embodies the station's approach—freewheeling and affably conversational, she's clearly a fan of music, and as enthusiastic about turning her listeners on to something new and great as she'd be with a close friend. In advance of The Current's fifth-anniversary show at First Avenue Jan. 29—featuring a stellar all-local lineup including Solid Gold, P.O.S., Mason Jennings, Lookbook, and The Twilight Hours—Mary Lucia talked with The A.V. Club about the beauty of mistakes, the pains and pleasures of winging it, and how she got revenge on She Wants Revenge.
The A.V. Club: The Current still has a series of blog posts online from the days before the station had even launched. You made an interesting comment just after you'd been hired by the station: “Listening to my esteemed new coworkers talk today about how music should transition from song to song with a cohesive flow, it suddenly became clear to me; mistakes are such a huge part of my life that I've learned to relish the flaws.”
Mary Lucia: Right. I do the absolute cardinal sin in radio, which is draw attention to my mistakes. I always have. It’s one of those things where, maybe more so in commercial radio, but they always tell you if you fuck something up, just keep going, you know—no one’s going to notice. But for whatever reason, I tend to draw attention to it, and I also feel that human element of “dead air” occasionally. To me it just personalizes the whole experience. There’s something called voice tracking that a lot of people do in radio, where they write their songs down on a piece of paper, and they go into a room and all they do is record their breaks. They’re not actually listening to the music, they’re just saying “and that was this, that was that, coming up we have this.” I know a lot of people who do that because it saves money and you can get it done [quickly], but it’s impossible for me because I have to be actually sitting in real time, listening to the music. I don’t know if I’m technically a moron or what, but I’ve always made mistakes and I’ve come to realize that that’s what I like about radio. I can do that, and it doesn’t have to be perfect.
AVC: It doesn't seem like that would be a great fit with a more mainstream-commercial station, though.
ML: I don’t think they’d want me! I don’t think I could get hired by one of them. It’s weird because I’ve done this now for 15 years in this same market, and I had thought before the Current that I was kind of done with radio altogether [after Rev-105 went dark]. I mean, this was 2001, 2002, where all of a sudden "alternative music," whatever that means, became Blink-182, and the Fred Dursts of the world were taking over. I just felt like something in the cosmos was telling me I was done.
AVC: You also take a very casual, conversational approach when you're interviewing bands.
ML: If you and me were going to go have a beer after work, I wouldn’t call you the night before and tell you, these are the things I’m going to ask. So I kind of approach it like that. My first day on the air at Rev-105, I was so green. I had never done this before, never done radio before, and they threw a band at me. We were two blocks from First Ave., and they said, "Some touring band is here!" It was my first night. I almost passed out. It was so crazy to begin with [that]. But I feel like it launched a certain style of interview that I have, which is, if I don’t know anything about you, if I haven’t had time to research all this stuff, then we are just going to have to talk and have a conversation, just like we would [off the radio]. That’s not to say that I don’t do some preparation. [But] there are times when bands that are so new or so young, they just don’t have time to have acquired any real band-oriented stories. Then we just have to talk. When it works, it’s really awesome, and when it doesn’t, it just sucks! No one needs to tell me when I suck. I’m the first person to know when it sucks. Sometimes it’s like trying to catch a rolling tire down a hill; it’s so out of your control and you know it the whole time. But that’s kind of what’s fun about it, too. When it works, and you’re firing on all cylinders, and the person is game—I love people who are good sports.
[For example,] Frank Black. He is brilliant, and he is so unpredictable. [This was in July] when Black Francis played at the Triple Rock. I was just mental for the Pixies, and I had interviewed him a couple of times [already], but I was still really nervous. We started chatting, we were rolling along—and we usually break [musician interviews] into segments, where it’s chat, then they play a song, then you chat, they play a song—and he was basing what song he played on whatever we were talking about, conversation-wise. And I didn’t have a list of prepared questions, so out of [our talking] he’d go, "Well, how about this," and then he’d throw some song out. So we’re starting to talk—again, if you’ve interviewed Frank Black, you know he’s really Mr. Tangent Guy, but he starts talking about this volcano and this place where these people are covered in fur, and I’m going along with it, thinking "Jesus Christ, where is this going?" And all of a sudden, he starts strumming the opening to “Velouria.” And I almost fell onto the floor! It was the coolest moment. [Hear the full interview on The Current's website.]
AVC: Any great disaster stories?
ML: Oh my god, so many. There was one occasion… Well, I’ll just tell you who they are, because they’re nowhere [now]. She Wants Revenge. It was basically two club DJs that had formed this band. They were hateful from the beginning. I normally can roll with shy people, [or] quiet people, reserved, but there’s a distinction between that and just being a total ass. I could immediately tell they had this really weird attitude, and I was in the mood where I just wasn’t going to have it. I’ve never done this before, but we started the interview, and it was horrible, just giant pauses a train could have gone through. It was just horrible. And at some point, one of them answered something real flip or real rude, and I almost lost my mind. I was like, "You know, I have a headache today, and if you don’t want to talk, that’s fine." It was just so confrontational, and I swear I thought someone was going to start swinging a punch! And I wasn’t sure who it was going to be, me or them! One guy got up and left in the middle of the interview. I was just like, this is lost. I remember we asked them at the end, "Is there anything you need?" And the other guy was like, "an exit." [Laughs.] But yeah, I’ve bombed so many times. I have had my share. But that was one where I remember one of the producers saying—because we archive all of the interviews on the website—"Well, should we just not air that?" And I said, absolutely we should air that! I would love to be in my car and hear this, to hear me bomb! You know what I mean? It’s just as interesting sometimes. Now, it would be kind of funny to me. I think as a listener, it’s just kind of real. Some people are just going to outwardly hate you. I still think that makes listenable radio. [Laughs.] Oh, it was just so painful, but it made for a really funny story that we still laugh about around here. It’s sort of the bar of how low something can actually go. Oh, and the guy never took his sunglasses off. [The full interview can be found here.]
AVC: The important thing about doing an interview, besides mentioning a new album or a show or whatever, is to try to convey a sense of the personality of who you're talking to. If nothing else, it sounds like that's what you got.
ML: I think so, too. That’s why I thought, "Hell no, we’ll air it!" You know? If people want to know what this band is like, this is what they’re like. Sure, it’s nice if you can throw a big, fat, slow softball at somebody and they can hit it out the park, that’s fine if that comes up naturally. I like to make someone look interesting. I like to think I can ask questions that do show someone’s personality, rather than just reading off their bio or Wikipedia entry. When it succeeds, it’s huge, and when it fails, it just flops.
AVC: Have you ever scrapped an interview?
ML: Never, no. Not even the worst ones. Again, you just can’t predict it. Sometimes you wonder with the biggest bands if they’re going to be really, really just over all this, but I interviewed Sonic Youth this summer and I had the greatest conversation. They’ve heard it all, there’s no question I’m going to ask that they haven’t been asked, but we ended up having a really fine conversation. And I was scared witless walking into that room to interview them. There are certain people that are so iconic, and so larger than life. I remember feeling that way talking to Billy Bragg. I told him, "I feel like I’m interviewing the Eiffel Tower."
AVC: Of course, Billy Bragg is the friendliest guy in the world.
ML: Oh, God! Yeah. [But] you get this idea in your head, I mean, if you’re of a certain age, in your 30s, and to meet a band that meant everything to you [when you were younger]—Christ! To be on the same stage as an actual member of The Clash. I almost died meeting Mick Jones. It’s like, I’m a fan, and I want to vomit before every interview, whether it’s somebody huge or somebody small, because that’s my personality. I always feel like "oh God, what am I doing," but then life turns on and you just close your eyes and you jump.
