By all Means

This singer/songwriter wanted MTV but succeeded in DIY

by Laura Kiritsy

Before singer Pamela Means even reached the stage she had aimed high. "When I was a teenager I just wanted to write pop songs and have a major record deal and be on MTV," she confides. But then she performed. "The first time I climbed on stage at an open mic, I was like, `This is really gonna take a long time.' " Just long enough for her to wake up before finding herself washed-up fodder for VH1's Behind the Music or as the opening gig on the Toni Basil Comeback Tour. Since that first foray onto a Milwaukee coffee-joint stage in 1990, her career has thankfully turned out to be less MTV and more DIY, and her massive toil has paid off. Lucky for us.

Her latest CD Cobblestones released on her own Wirl Records in 1998 brings Means's kamikaze guitar style (she's actually worn a hole in her instrument!) to center stage, along with her take-no-shit attitude, and she wraps both around her most personal and politically charged lyrics to date. The Cambridge-based artist, who has always considered herself a guitarist rather than a singer, lets it all hang out, busting out of the confines of the guitar-strumming folk genre.

"On the second album it's just me and my guitar so you hear it a lot better I think," she explains, comparing her recent release to her first, 1995's Bone Spurs, a stunning collection of more introspective, funk-folk tunes recorded with backing instrumentals. "[On Cobblestones] I wanted it to be in your face, totally. That's the way it was recorded -- turn the mics way up -- this is not guitar in the background, this is a second voice in the song, so get it up there."

Armed with the writings of the late feminist/poet/activist Audre Lorde and of cultural critic bell hooks, who has dedicated her voluminous writings to ending racism, Means (who appears this Saturday in Lancaster) matches her furious guitar stylings by unleashing lyrics that tackle such subjects as racism, gender issues, and sexual abuse. "I became more aggressive and outspoken in my lyrics; and my singing and my body followed with how I played the guitar." Growing up in "extreme conditions" of racism in Wisconsin, Means, who is biracial, admits she was "pissed off for a long time." Seeing her experiences reflected in Lorde's and in hooks's works (hooks's inspired the tracks "Difference" and the fierce "Truth"), Means was able to vent. And as she sings on the snarling "Fine," "I don't need your approval to stand up and sing about it."

Unconcerned with being dismissed as another "angry woman in rock," which thanks to the whitewashed gals of Lilith Fair has seemingly been reduced to corporate-music marketing shtick, Means digs deep, writing bluntly and honestly about her life, regardless of those who would try to discount her message.

"If any writer writes honestly, that material becomes universal because we all basically go through the same things and emotions," she says. "But if I just write whatever I'm going to write and I write it honestly, someone else is going relate to it -- probably a lot of people if they let themselves. I've had people react negatively to that stuff [songs about racism and violence against women] and accuse me of being a man-hater and being offended by that. I think I'm not, but if you feel such a strong reaction maybe there's something in your little bag that you need to take a look at. My job is to put it on the table so that you can maybe find a catalyst to look in your little bag, because that's what it's going to take."

And for the most part, to say the least, audiences have been more turned on than off. After getting her first big break by playing two sold-out shows on the legendary Neil Young's Harvest Moon Tour in the early '90s, Means went on to capture awards as 1995's Wisconsin Folk Artist of the Year and as 1996's Wisconsin Female Vocalist of the Year. She left the 1998 Falcon Ridge Folk Festival-goers in such a tizzy they voted her the new artist they most wanted to see back on stage at subsequent festivals. Means also made waves on the side stage at the 1999 Newport Folk Fest and has also opened for the likes of ani difranco, Shawn Colvin, and for Joan Baez.

A far cry from the days of singing for her subway fare in the Boston underground. After migrating east in 1994, Means forged her career on the local scene by following another local hero, Peter Mulvey, down into the trenches of the Boston subway system. The results were less than spectacular. "He'd have crowds of people watching him and he'd sell these CDs and make all this money," she recalls of Mulvey's popularity with commuters. "Then I'd play and they would leave and I'd and make three dollars and feel really horrible about myself."

But Means continued to work her ass off. Despite all the accolades, the bright lights of 2000-seat theaters and even her own T-shirts, she can still be found from time to time keepin' it real for the mass-transit commuters, but mostly for herself. "It's me totally stripped of all credentials, all ego," she says. "It's just me the little singer, my little guitar, playing my little songs for complete strangers who didn't pay to see me. They have no idea who I am. They're just on their way to somewhere else. And if they take a moment out of their day to pay attention to me, skip a train to listen some more, or throw in some little ching-chang or buy a CD, it's like, `Whoa, this really counts.' That totally builds my confidence and reminds me of why I do this in the first place."

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Pamela Means appears at 7:30 p.m. on April 8 at the Lancaster Coffeehouse. Tickets are $10. Call (978) 365-2043.