51. Corrina Repp

Corrina Repp is a critically acclaimed musician and actor and longtime Portlander.

• The Beast Lives in The Same Place
• Tu Fawning
• Search For Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe

The Interview

Kandace:

Today we have Corrina Repp on the Job, thanks so much for coming in and making time for us before you leave Portland which we’ll talk about later but I’m not even ready to discuss yet –

Corrina:

I know I’m not either.

Yes so I know you as a musician and also for through some of the acting work that you’ve done so that’s probably a lot of what I’ll be asking you about but to start out with just a little bit about where you’re from: where did you get your start? Where were you born, grew up?

I was born in Salem, Oregon –

No!

Salem general hospital, 1973.

Really? Ok.

Yeah. And then when I was six my parents were tired of the cold and the grey and the rain back when it used to be cold and grey and rainy all the time in Oregon.

Right.

And we moved to Hawaii.

Wow.

And then from there I moved about every two years through the midwest to the east coast, back to the midwest, until I was fourteen and then I landed in Indiana and went to high school there for four years and when I was living in the middle of nowhere I decided I wanted to be a marine biologist and –

In Indiana.

What did you sing? Or was it like a song of your or…

No, it was, back then I was a huge Cowboy Junkies fan, I mean mind you this was in ’93 or something like that and I was a huge fan of Whites off Earth Now and Trinity Session, those are beautiful records, and I sang this song called Mining For Gold, it’s an acapella song that they had done or she had done and I decided to sing that song at an open mic night and I remember Brian telling me you could hear a dog fart in the street that the room was so quiet.

That’s romantic.

The room was so quiet you could hear a dog fart in the street and that was my first taste of performing and from there on out –

You were hooked?

I was dust. I was hooked.

Yeah. How long did it take you to stop studying marine biology after?

Oh I was already like one foot out the door and also they gave me the curriculum and there was just an incredible amount of math involved and I had no idea and I’m horrible at math and there was no way I knew I could keep pursuing it. Plus I knew singing made me feel like nothing had made me feel before. So I was like “Well that was a nice go of things but this is AWESOME – must do this.”

Yeah nice. So you started making music and you were solo for quite awhile?

Yeah for, I mean I started off pretty slow I mean I think it took me a long time to find myself as a musician, I feel like some people can come right out of the gate and kind of have their identity and the confidence and all this stuff but I was much more heady about it I think I think I had a lot of hangups and I think it took me a long time to get over those but yeah I started making like cassette tapes and then I met Chad Crouch from Hush Records and he put out my first EP in ’98 I think? Something like that and so I put out an EP and then a record on Hush Records and I did that for a few years. 2001 made another record put out on Hush, 2004 another solo record and then 2006 another solo record that was on Caldo Verde Records which is the Mark Kozelek of Sun Kil Moon and Red House Painters and he put out my record in 2006 so… yeah.

And then had you come to Portland by 2006 or what got you to look here?

I had been, basically music I had decided I wasn’t going to be a marine biologist and so I moved to Portland in ’95.

Oh ok yeah.

So I keep trying to figure out if it’s ’94 or ’95, I’m trying to figure out this timeline I graduated form high school in ’91, ’92, ’93, I think I was here in ’94/’95 and got a job at Music Millennium, got a room at a house up on 60th ad Burnside and I think I paid like $170 a month for my room? It was a huge house.

One of the first houses that I lived in in Portland was like 47th and Hawthorne and it was like a bunch of people in the house, maybe $200 a month we were each paying it was beautiful.

Yeah the cheapest actually was out when I was 24 I lived in a house with four other people and my rent was $117. And I was working at Oasis Pizza. I call those like my teenage years.

Those are beautiful years in Portland, you can like waitress, do your art on the side and still kind of go out to eat all the time.

Oh yeah, $117 a month for rent, that’s crazy.

That’s like a dinner out now. It’s like so ridiculous.

I know!

I don’t know what’s happened. Yeah.

So yeah I’ve been here for 20 years. I celebrated my 21st birthday at the La Luna balcony, there’s the upstairs of La Luna, I celebrated my 21st birthday up there.

Yeah. And have you been here this whole time or did you kind of come and go?

Yep. I mean I’ve never, I mean I’ve toured but I’ve never, I’ve always, yeah. Always lived here.

So that’s probably the longest you’ve ever stayed in one spot?

Oh yeah, I mean when Joe, my ex and I we lived together we lived on Ash street for seven years and that was the longest I lived in any one place for my entire life, ‘cause I had grown up moving around every you know, every two or three years and yeah, so seven years in the same house. It’s unheard of for me.

I had that same kind of, I mean I probably moved more like every five years but when I realized I’d been in Portland I think eight years I was like, “Oh my god this is the longest I’ve ever lived anywhere in my life it’s amazing.”

Yeah so how long is it now eight years? Or more?

I think it’s been about 13? Yeah.

yeah it’s still good here right?

Still can’t call myself a Portlander yet, no I do but you know there’s this idea that –

Don’t you have a Subaru?

Prius. It’s pretty much the same.

It’s true. We had a Volvo before that like an old ‘70s one and it started getting moss growing in it and we were gonna move to a little more environmentally friendly… So I read a couple interviews from you from back in the day and one of the things I found really interesting was you did that one the “Don’t Quit Your Day Job” short video and you talked about part of the love was music but also part of the love is touring and do you think that you, through moving around when you were young you just got really used to that and excited about that or what is it about touring that’s compelling to you?

Going places.

Yeah.

Going someplace new and like everyday you get to be in someplace new. I mean in the states it’s one thing, the states for me is not as exciting as it used to be I remember I took my first road trip with a boyfriend when I was you know 22 years old and we took a month and drove around the United States and that was incredible but you know touring especially in Europe is pretty amazing ‘cause you’re in someplace new every day and you meet new people and part of, it’s part of my personality but also part of growing up and having to be in a new social situation as often as I was I’m really good at meeting new people and I love meeting new people. So it’s kind of the combination of being in a new surrounding everyday and then also getting to meet new people everyday and make new friendships and –

You are good at meeting new people! I will have to say that whenever I run into you you know at friends’ parties I always remember you as the person that said hi and chatted and like “That lady is so nice.”

I don’t know where I – I don’t know if it’s my personality or if it’s just the force of being in yeah a new social situation all the time but I love people. I love meeting new people. Like if I could do that and make a really good living at it I would just go and talk to people. I love it, and that’s why I’ve been a waitress for as long as I have because there’s nothing I love more than, of course it’s not, not every table or person but you walk up to a table and you’re like, “Hey, let’s talk.”

Yeah that is something I actually really miss about waitressing. I waitressed all through college and it was like, you were just joining people in their evenings and kind of guiding them through it and it was fun-

Giving them a great experience and being natural and making them feel good, I love that and I’m good at it. But I just, I love talking to people and meeting other people.

And that’s another thing that you mentioned is that you have a ton of jobs besides the touring and –

Yeah well when I made the record, when I started to make the record last year I had to kind of pare down but after Tu Fawning quit touring I was in significant debt and so I think there was a time I had four or five jobs. I worked at a restaurant I worked at a plant nursery I worked for a vintage poster restoration, my friend Jason Leonard, I did merch for the Decemberists I did merch for Pink Martini and I would spend my week going to all these different places to kind of make enough money to make ends meet. But also I love going to, I love doing something different every day, I could never, no offense to anyone who does it but I could never sit in an office for 40 hours a week, I couldn’t. And i learned that very early on that I couldn’t have an office job because I had tried and I as not happy so that’s when I you know discovered working in a restaurant and that was kind of, you know I was whatever, 24 and I started working at Fellini, worked lunches at Fellini and that was when I was like, “Ohhhh, I see.”

And it’s a great way to learn about food also, like my, the first restaurant I worked in was the Bread and Ink here in Portland –

Oh yeah on Hawthorne right?

Yep I learned how to – they made all of their own sauces and their own dressings and I had no idea you could make a dressing from scratch or how to emulsify or all these things that it’s like – they made their own ketchup for god sakes, it was amazing to see, yeah.

I worked at Beast for five years and that’s like that you know super fancy French restaurant and before I was working there I knew nothing about wine, very little about cheese or what a salsa verde was, all this stuff I had no idea and I would just ask a lot of questions and watch and observe and I still I guess I still continue to do that but yeah.

Yeah, handwork. So now you are coming out with a new solo album yes?

Mmmhmmm.

And this is the first one in ten years?

Nine.

Nine ok.

Don’t – I – don’t ask me how why it’s been so long. I mean I was doing something else for a big chunk of that but I’ve never been one to, I’m not a super prolific person, like I’m very thoughtful and methodical about when I make a record and when it’s time to make a record. And it’s a much more thoughtful emotional process for me than just churning stuff out. I wouldn’t mind you know, getting more to a place of consistently writing instead of feeling like I have some sort of emotional purging because that’s often how I feel like I make solo records.

That’s what I was going to ask about your process, like were these songs that you’ve been working on for you know, five, six, seven years or was this like, I have something to get out and I’m just going to purge it all. Because it feels, the one song that I’ve heard which, the Beast Lives in The Same Place, I was like what is it, I saw you play that at Holocene and it just felt so raw and so emotional and people in the audience had tears in their eyes it was just like “holy shit what has she been through,” you know that kind of thing, and I was thinking about that and like that does not feel like a song that you were writing slowly over time it was like “I have to get this out.”

It’s really touching yeah, it was really exciting to see that show and then you have another show, your last show in Portland is coming up? Is that true?

yeah well I play in Astoria I play Bunk Bar the following weekend and then Sou’wester, i’m playing a solo show at the Sou’wester on the 23rd so I have three shows coming up in the next week and a half and that’s it until I leave.

And then what? What are you you’re leaving Portland?

I’m leaving Portland yeah, and I’ll tour in Europe in the fall and then if stuff comes up I’ll do it but you know, I don’t feel the need to push the boulder up the hill anymore so if I can keep it as fun and pure as I can the happier I am you know. Like I want people to hear the record but I don’t want to go bang my head against a wall trying to make people do so you know? I don’t, you know, whatever Pitchfork or Stereogum or whatever website I can get to pay attention to me, I just don’t care anymore, I just can’t, it’s just too much, it’s just too much. It just took a lot of the fun, it just took a lot of the fun out of it and Tu Fawning we worked so hard and I don’t mind working hard, I just there’s never been any sort of financial sustainability with it and that can be really frustrating, again when I have five jobs and I’m trying to tour and we release a record or right a record or what have you like it’s always been, it’s been challenging but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I wouldn’t mind it being a little more sustainable but it never has been.

Do you think you would be happy if you were touring and making music full time? I mean is that something that’s…

I’ve thought about that too and I’m not totally sure, like even when Tu Fawning was really really busy and touring all the time you know the rest of it became really challenging except for that hour when I was on stage performing. And i think a lot of touring musicians would maybe tell you the same thing, that you know, that hour or hour and ten minutes or what have you that your on stage, is the reason. Like that’s the joy and that’s the pure heart everything else is just you know getting from point a to point b, you know but it just becomes hard, it just becomes more of a machine with Tu Fawning it definitely became more of a machine and I didn’t love the machine, I didn’t love all the stuff you had to do you know photo shoots or interviews or like acoustic sessions in the park an hour before you actually had to go perform, all this extra stuff I didn’t really enjoy so the performing, that was the good part.

Yeah it’s like your face lights up when you talk about performing.

Oh it’s so great! It’s so great. Especially with Tu Fawning because it was the first real me really tapping into a pure, energetic performance. And really kind of being a conduit for something that some nights I didn’t know what was gonna come through me and come out of me.

Yeah. Does that happen when you’re playing solo as well or is something different?

It does but it’s been a long time so I’m not really sure I mean this show on Friday at the Voodoo Room will be my first real show, solo show, since 2007 probably, and it is, it will probably be – even just having rehearsals lately and getting to play loud and I have that electric feeling that kind of pulses through you but the music is not as rambunctious as some of the Tu Fawning stuff was so it’s, it will be maybe a little bit more of an internal exploration as opposed to this jumping up and down thing, you know.

Yeah I read somewhere your music described as quiet music and I thought that was –

My solo stuff?

Yeah, I thought it was kind of interesting.

Yeah I mean in the old days it really was though, it really was, it really was like really quiet.

Oh so it’s a little – ‘cause I was thinking, I’ve seen you the one live show so I was thinking that that’s not how I would have described it, even though at times it was quiet there was so much energy and yearning about it that it didn’t feel, like even if you were quiet it felt like you were about to like explode so you know –

Yeah ok I can see what you’re saying there that’s actually really nice to hear.

Yeah so I’m excited to see what you come up with next.

Yeah well I have a band and I have a bunch of singers who are gonna sing with me and yeah so I made the record without knowing how I was gonna play it live so it’s been an interesting couple of months –

Like putting it together –

Putting it together yeah that’s so finally getting to perform on Friday will be fun.

I was at Game of Thrones night –

On Sunday right?

Yeah.

My bandmates, we practice a lot on Sundays and they always take off on Sundays and go.

Yeah and I was you know, like right before it started I pulled up Instagram and I was like, “I swear that guy standing right next to Corrina is in this room right now!”

You were at Madeline and Lee’s house!?

Yeah totally – like “Is this you!? Did you leave band practice to come to Game of Thrones night?!”

Did you really do that to him? That’s amazing.

I was like, “Seriously?”

He totally does. I love it.

It was great. So you’re playing soon, do you think you’ll start playing out when you move? What’s the…?

I probably won’t right way, I mean I was mentioning this to someone else I’ve heard Rebecca Gates is gonna be in town in Virginia in September for work and that she mentioned that she was gonna play some shows so if I’m in town I was gonna write her and be like, “Hey let’s play a show together,” but I know the music, like I don’t know anyone there.

Why are you moving?

For love.

Oh.

So the guy that I told you I took, I did the month long road trip with when I was 22 years old?

Yeah?

We reconnected recently.

Oh.

And he now lives in Richmond, Virginia and I’m moving there to be with him.

Wow.

Yeah.

Well can’t say no to love.

I’m sorry I don’t know if I can curse.

You can swear yeah.

And I had also, I’ve done dating, I’m done, I’m just gonna, I’m cool, I’m good, this is not…

That is when you always meet, I mean I think I felt in that same place when I met Ray, I was actually about to leave the country and wasn’t really sure that I wanted to come back and two months before meet like the love of my life. It’s like, “really?!” You know? Now when I’m pretty determined to sort of do my own thing that’s when it happens.

Yeah it’s interesting too because I’d just moved out of my apartment I’d just moved in with a friend of mine I’d just been working at a restaurant I have the record coming out, the only thing that I really had to take care of was my fish, and he had just died and it was all really interesting timing to have this surface into my life, there wasn’t really, besides all of the people that I truly love here dearly, there wasn’t really anything keeping me here and I was really, had been reaching a point of frustration with how the city is growing and changing and was really feeling the need to step outside of it for a minute and see what life is really about instead of feeling really focused on how much this place that I’ve grown up in is moving and changing and shifting.

Remember how to make it here.

Yeah and I’ve been struggling financially quite a bit making this record like I said I was kind of not working as much and the last you know eight months have been the most broke I’ve ever been in my entire life and so that has also been frustrating like how do I make this thing that I love to do sustainable – it’s just not. So yeah, I’ve been asking myself a lot of questions like what else am I gonna do, where… how else am I gonna make a living, how am I gonna get out of this bubble so to speak. And not necessarily Portland but just –

Well Portland is a little bit of a bubble.

It is and you know living here for as long as I have you know it, it has become a bit of a safe bubble for me, and that, there’s something really great about that but there’s something really, when you get to a certain age you know, I’m being in my 40s now and you really start asking yourself, “What do I want my life to look like? What do I want the rest of my life to look like?” And what do you really want to work towards?

Where does acting fit into this? Like you’ve been, I’ve seen you sort of pop up in a lot of places, is that something you’re passionate about or is it kind of come about from people that you know or…?

Well it’s, I actually did it a little bit in college and there was a handful of months I was really torn between pursuing music and pursuing theater and I had done this 20 minute monologue of Lilly Tomlin’s Search For Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe and I did this monologue and it was so profound, and it was at Humboldt State, I actually performed this monologue and it was so intense and profound and took me to a place that really surprised me at a moment where I would consider pursuing it instead, instead of music. And I had at that time the head of the film department approach me and say “You need to come back, this is what you need to be doing.” And he was really supportive and I was kind of shocked and taken aback and thought long and hard about it and had to choose really, because I was – if you’re gonna, for me, if I was gonna do music I needed to just do that and hone my craft and being self taught too, I had to practice everyday and write and learn to write and listen and just take it all in and so obviously I chose music but the funny thing is that it just, acting started surfacing and I think one of the first things was Somedays Are Better Than Others and had a small role in that and then the Portlandia thing happened, I met Simon Maxhill, he’s the one that casts for Portlandia. He had Joe and I come in for an audition for some film center piece and maybe that’s how we came on his radar, I’m not really sure ‘cause I think from there I think Joe started getting more stuff and then I had started getting more auditions and then Portlandia came around and I auditioned in the first season to play a drunk girl and got it and went on set, filmed it and it ended up getting cut and I think that they liked me enough that they kept me in mind for the next season and then the next season and then it eventually just became a no-brainer that they had me on every season and then the movie with Brian Padian, that also came up completely randomly, like I have not, I have not pursued acting in anyway.

It seems like it’s pursuing you though.

A little bit –

Following you around a little bit.

I wouldn’t mind doing more of it but again you know it takes up a lot, and I have had moments of, “Well maybe I should get a real role and try to get an agent and maybe go for it,” and I started taking an acting class, and was thinking maybe that – but this was also during a time when I wasn’t playing music and was thinking maybe I should be doing more acting – but then I don’t know, I just keep doing music. And if the acting stuff happens that’s great, I would love it. I would love an opportunity to have a more like singular one-on-one role in a film where I could actually really really dig in and perhaps not play a completely depressed person like in Brian’s movie, that was really hard. Because I was already really depressed and then I had to just dig in even deeper to maintain my sadness.

Yeah I don’t think that house will ever be the same for me.

That house?

Yeah.

Yeah I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go back there.

I’ve stayed there a couple of times and then I saw the – just seeing the preview I was like “I have never found that house to be so disturbing,” like I will never stay –

I had to be staying there too it was really sad and it was also cold all the time because they always had to keep the doors open to run cables through and stuff and so my room would literally have like cables and so I’d crawl into bed at night just shivering.

He was just purposefully keeping you in that space like, “No fun, no joy.”

I couldn’t fun and joy, everyone else got to have fun and joy. It was nice to have Joe, Joe V on that because he was hilarious and there were times I was like, “Joe you’ve gotta stop making me laugh ‘cause I’ve gotta be serious and sad.”

Well and that film – is that film coming out soon right? I mean I know that it was on the film festival…

He just had it at the Seattle… his first real screening in Seattle I think it went really well and he was so happy to finally have like it shown to the world you know because he’d worked so hard on it and it’s been done for awhile now so…

Awesome.

I did get to do some music videos that was fun. SO I did one with Jay Winebrenner and then with Scott Ballard, yeah. That was really, that’s fun acting.

Oh yeah I saw some of the Instagram’s of that, of the music video and like typing by a lake?

Yeah that’s Scott Ballard and then there’s the Jay Winebrenner with the Cheerio faces yeah those will be coming out soon.

Awesome. Well we should probably wrap up, I know you have a ton to do. I mean you’re probably running non-stop until you leave –

I am a little bit yeah but Nick from Virginia is coming in tomorrow, it’s his birthday so tomorrow is my, our sanctioned day where like, “This is our day,” and then from that you know I have the show in Astoria.

Where are you gonna go? Do you have like a list of Portland…

He has a taco truck that he’s obsessed with and then I’m gonna take him to DOC for a birthday dinner, yeah. He’s turning 45, I found a man in my age group. When I was dating I was like, “I don’t think there’s anybody out there who’s my age.”

I tend to think that everyone is exactly my age I’m like “No we’re all that age.”

Aren’t we all that age? Aren’t we all in our 40s ish?

Yeah in my mind everyone is yeah. Until I bring up something that I listened to as a teen and realize that nobody in the studio knows what I’m talking about. And then I’m like “Oh, you’re all in your 20s.”

Yeah exactly, I know.

Which is fine. Well thank you so much for coming in and I’m really looking forward to your show.

You’re so sweet. You’re making me teary-eyed about that song –

I know I know sorry! It’s true.

What is it about that song for you?

I don’t know I’ve probably been there? Like you know it came from such a place of heart that I was like transported immediately back to probably being like completely heart broken and then there’s that part where you talk about just like raising your arm and going on and it’s like, we all do that and then we find something better –

You’re making me cry.

It’s a podcast no one can see us. But you know you go on and you find something so much better and I was just thinking about how happy I am in life right and how that was like a moment, you raise your hand and hope for better and then it’s like, “Oh my god I’m there.” And it just felt really like, it felt really good to hear that and just to think about that longing and you can long that much and then one day you’re good and yeah, it was really nice. Yeah it’s hard, for some reason it’s hard for music to hit me like that these days, I don’t know what it is, I was so shocked, I was so shocked to just feel like to hear something for the first time and just feel it so strong, you know it’s like awesome. it’s a good feeling but I feel, not jaded by music but like I hear music and like, “oh that was nice.”

Oh I feel the same way.

But it’s not often that I’m just like, like I think I literally just sat down and I was like, “Ok I think I’m gonna deal with this.” And I was there with friends you know and they were enjoying it and talking and it was like, “I’ll be back,” and just basically was like – and looked and there were like some younger people and they were all sitting down and I was like, “Wow we’re all, you know…” I just felt like there was a moment happened there and it was really nice. Yeah.

Yeah that was – it was – it’s been so hard because I fell in love right after, I was still with Joe when I fell in love with someone. And Joe and I had been done for along time but I had fell in love and that’s what like a lot of the record is about, this person that I fell in love with ands so, fucking messed up from my eight year relationship with Joe and I couldn’t, I could not love. And that for me is devastating because there was nothing wrong –

Like nothing wrong with that person it’s just, it was just sort of…

No I was just broken. And that’s the same thing of just like, gotta fight, gotta be strong, gotta push through this, gotta have hope, gotta believe in love, that’s what a lot of the record is just trying to just believe in love again and that it’s gonna heal and that the pain is, you’re gonna move through it.

And then you found love right as the record is coming out which is probably –

I know!

Maybe you had to get all of that out.

I did though.

It’s almost like you probably wouldn’t have been able except this either, yeah.

It’s totally, all of it there are moments I’m literally just like smacking my hand to my head like I can’t believe the timing of everything and what’s and it’s pretty incredible that you know, I have like some hippy in me for sure that like there’s some cosmic shit in the world and it can be a magic place. And you have to believe in it ‘cause –

Well I mean if you’re going that deep you’re opening yourself up to I think more of those things coming to you too yeah.

Trying. I mean it’s an interesting time I mean having a record come out and having these shows and having been rehearsing and then literally I’ve two weeks at the restaurant and then I have a week of packing and then I get in my car and I drive across the country. And that’s all happening in the next three weeks.

Jesus.

I know, I’ve been waking up so early every morning like I woke up so early this morning, I lay there going,”Ok this is what I gotta do today, I gotta do this I gotta do this and do this.”

I mean it’s sort of exciting at the same time it’s just frightening as hell but also like “Wow.”

Just gotta remember to just take a breath, like yoga right now is real. I’m doing yoga right now and actually in a little less than an hour and that’s my like my moment of the day to kind of bring all this in and keeping it cool. It’s like “I can do this!” but that moment’s like “I don’t know if I can do this,”

No you can do this.

Yeah, anyways, thanks for having me!

Yeah thank you this was really amazing and I’m glad you were able to do this before you left.

Yeah I’m honored!