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Talking with Rasputina
> Interview with Melora Creager of Rasputina
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Melora Creager sings with Rasputina Oct. 12, at the Metro in Chicago. Creager began learning cello in Emporia at the age of 9.
Photo by JJ Duncan
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Rasputina has become sort of an underground phenomenon.
Since it was created in 1991 by cellist and singer Melora Creager, Rasputina has seen its fan base grow in size and devotion, but not many people know about where Creager comes from.
At 36, Creager said now she has spent just as many years in New York as she did in her hometown of Emporia, Kan., where her parents encouraged a musical education. In New York, starting in 1984, Creager attended Parsons School of Design for art before quitting after four years and pursuing music. I met up with Creager Sunday, Oct. 12 backstage in the Metro of Chicago, sitting down with her, her band, and her sister, who now lives in Chicago.
When exactly did you become involved in music?
I had a really musical family. We were all encouraged -‹ practically required ‹ to take music lessons. I started the piano when I was five, the cello when I was nine and my sister played the violin. Everybody played an instrument, and we would play together like an ensemble.
Would you say that it was an environment that fostered music?
To say "I'm bored," was like saying a curse word. We were told to do something creative, and that was ingrained in me.
When did you start to see the cello as something that could be used beyond classical music?
I had pretty rigid training when I was a kid. I studied hard and practiced hard. It wasn't until I was in art school that I got involved in bands, and people in these bands heard that I played cello. So I brought my cello to New York and started playing in bands.
Did you have any formal training in music beyond high school?
No, and I had even quit music in about 8th grade, so all through high school, I just focused on the visual arts.
And how much do you focus on the visual arts now? I know that you still design, but do you paint or draw?
No, things for me tend to go in big cycles. Like, it's a songwriting time. It's design an album cover time, and I get more into drawing and all aspects of the visual stuff. Everything's really cyclical. I just do one thing at a time.
So is the visual art you work on now more utilitarian?
It's just design for the band, but if I think of an excuse to draw, I will.
How did you get back into music?
A lot of times art schools and bands in the music scene are pretty closely affiliated, and the late '80s were an exciting time in New York. Some friends asked me to play, and I wasn't technically that good at the cello when I picked it back up again for them, but then, bands like that don't really require you to be.
I did some performance art type of stuff. People would just get me to do things. Like I hung out with like a gang of drag queens that started Wigstock, and they would come up with crazy ideas, like oh, play a Bach cello suite in pasties and a stripper outfit, and I was like "okay." I would do whatever they thought up. Like we did Christmas songs in a classical arrangement with operatic voice before something like that had been done. That was a neat project. The '70s weren't popular in the '80s.
That was around the time Keith Herring got popular and Andy Warhold died then?
Yeah.
Did that pop art culture have any effect on what you were doing at the time?
All that stuff was really important to me as a teenager.
Is that why you went to New York?
Yeah, and I couldn't wait to get out of Kansas. I couldn't stand it when I was there. It was a really exciting time because those things were so possible. Andy Warhol was still alive. He was just down the street from the dorm. And everyone thought they could get something going in that way.
And right when I finished college and I was playing in bands, I was on a band on the 4 A.D. label in England, and that was an exciting time for that kind of music. The Pixies and Throwing Muses were our peers.
What band was that you were in?
It was a band on 4 A.D. called Ultra Vivid Scene, and we opened for the Pixies and Throwing Muses and all that. That was my first glimpse of professional rock musicians, and it just seemed really possible to do that. And it seemed really easy. These people had just sent tapes to this company and it seemed really easy.
At that time were you writing music for the band?
No, I was singing back-up vocals, playing keyboards and cello. That was very much a one-guy thing. It wasn't really a band.
In Kansas, do you still have people that come see you?
We play there so seldom. We did an in-store at Kief's last summer, and I had gone to music camp at KU when I was in Junior High, and people from the camp came and were like "We're from the camp," and that was cool. I don't know a lot of people in Kansas anymore. My family came.
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