diff erent, and what’s surprisingly the same, about
performing with the Balls and performing with sym-
phonies?”
With symphonies, there’s much less swearing. It suits
me, and it suits the symphony, because there is a stodgy
cool-headed traditionalism that is thick in symphonies
around the country and the world. They kind of want to
stick with the dead Austrians and the classics. They tend to
be stuck in the way they think things ought to go. And here
comes rock ‘n’ roll sex thug Storm Large. I pay homage
to the classics, I sing beautiful showtunes and classical
numbers, but I throw in a little bit of stuff to break it
up. Maybe against their better taste, they enjoy it, and it
brings in a younger audience and new, fresh blood in to the
symphony that they need.
What’s similar is the joy of fi lling the room with the
vibrations of the bones in your face and your throat and
your head; evoking emotions out of other people just with
the vibrations of music.
Stephen Marc Beaudoin of Portland’s PHAME
Academy asks how you had to adjust your persona
to fi t Pink Martini? (Or do you?)
I do. I defi nitely hem it in. Thomas coaches me; he
gives me things to think about, like, I want you to perform
as though you’re in front of 8-year-olds or 80-year-olds. I
say, Thomas, those grandmas have been through some shit,
and they can handle it. However, Pink Martini is not my
band, it’s a collective, and it’s not about the singer, it’s not
about just the one, it’s about the entire musical experience
of the evening. I don’t feel like I am compromising my
authenticity by not telling fi lthy jokes or swearing or being
my cabaret self, but by being basically a pin-up chanteuse
and focusing on the material, the music as opposed to my
band, where I am the focal point, and I am the engine. I am
by far not the most important element in Pink Martini. I
am as important as the brass or as the strings. It’s a support
slot. And it’s fun; it’s so fun because it’s glamorous and
still really sexy in its own way, in a very mature way.
I feel like you’ve simply been hitting success after
success in the past fi ve or so years. What do you
want to do next? What’s scary?
Everything is scary right now — being an artist, I’m
constantly terrifi ed that I’m not really famous, I’m certainly
not rich, I’m just really busy because I don’t pigeonhole
myself as one thing.
I think I’m a better singer than a writer, certainly a better
singer than actress. I’m a horrible guitar player, horrible bass
player, horrible piano player. I’d like to learn to accompany
myself on guitar and piano, so I can play Tom Waits songs
and Nick Cave songs. So when I go to a hotel and get drunk,
I can be Tom Waits for a second, only with nicer boots.
I broke up with my fi ancé back in April. We still totally
love each other, it was absolutely for the best, but I think I’m
going to take a vow of celibacy to just focus on creativity
that really feeds me as opposed to sexual creativity that
really feeds me but has been a little distracting of late. I’m
going to focus on creating things other than orgasms.
STORM LARGE AND PINK MARTINI
PERFORM JULY 1 AT THE
CUTHBERT AMPHITHEATER
PHOTO BY JAMES CHIANG
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