Close harmony

QUEER AS FOLK DUO Ferron, left, and Bitch met each other’s match.

They are not the most obvious musical pair: Bitch, a 35-year-old queer-indie hero known for fierce fiddling and political fire, and Ferron, 55, one of Canada’s most famous folksingers and a women’s-music pioneer. But look beyond Bitch’s green dreadlocks, Ferron’s old-school butch style and the 20-year chasm between them, and you’ll see the team-up is not so strange after all. At least that’s what Bitch believed when she set out to produce Ferron’s Boulder on her new Short Story Records label. For the album, she re-recorded the legend singing some of her favorites (plus one new Bitch original), then bulked up the tracks with backup music and vocals by both herself and the likes of Ani DiFranco, Amy Ray and JD Samson. The duo will be in town to play on Thursday 8, but first TONY caught up with them by phone to discuss their collaboration.

Ferron, when did you meet Bitch?
Ferron: I met B in Bloomington, Indiana, at a festival in June 1999. [Women’s-music legend] June Millington said there were these funny gals [Bitch and then-partner, Animal] who are very interesting, and I went up to her hotel room and I saw what I thought were two absolute nutballs.
Bitch: [Cracks up]
Ferron: Animal never stopped smiling, like as if she had just seen God. B was very funny and very big, and loud, and I was thinking, Oh, is this what’s coming? [Laughing] But let me tell you that since then, we’re just like sisters, baby.

Bitch, had you already known of Ferron?
Bitch: No, and you know who first told me about her was Ani. When I went on tour with her, it just came up in conversation that I didn’t know Ferron’s music. And Ani and [musician] Julie Wolf were both just aghast. They were like, “You have to hear this woman’s music! I can’t believe you’ve been on the planet this long without hearing her!” So it was soon after then that I made it a point to hear her songs. And I was of course blown away.

How did Boulder evolve?
Ferron: Somebody kept following me around saying, “I think you should sing and I should record it!” And I would think, Who is bugging me?
Bitch: I was so sure of this. And you always seemed willing, but also, yeah, like, I was bugging you. An annoying mosquito on a hot Texas day. [Both laugh] But I won’t take no for an answer! So I had convinced Ferron, and when I was living in the city a couple of years ago I said, “Okay, I’ve blocked off two weeks for you to come,” and we were going make it in my studio, and Ferron called me the day before and was like, “I’m not getting on the plane.”
Ferron: I was afraid to fly at that point.
Bitch: She was avoiding me! Finally, I was like, “I’m coming to your house.” So we recorded her at home in Michigan, under much resistance from her. But I felt like I owed it to the future people of the world to record her songs again, and I told her that. I went there in the summer, after Ferron and I played Michigan [Womyn’s Music Festival], and I was probably at the house for three or four weeks.

Why were you so resistant?
Ferron: You know, I’m not as trusting as I could be in the world. But what I realized when we were on the Michigan stage is that when B looks at me, she loves me. And there’s nothing menacing or malicious or competitive or anything, it just looks like love and friendship. And I finally got it. The thing about the Michigan concert was that it was so wholesome, and we, by then, had a friendship and a relationship and jokes and history, so it made the show really just so tender and sweet. I could see what was going on. I mean, the whole audience was weeping because they could see what was going on as well.
Bitch: It was intense.
Ferron: It was the refreshing reproduction of Sonny and Cher.
Bitch: God, I don’t even know what that means.

Bitch, how did you choose Boulder’s backup musicians?
Bitch: I just started making dream lists of how I was hearing the songs—if there was somebody’s ear I wanted to have. I also let people choose what they wanted to play on. Like Julie Wolf wanted to work on “Our Purpose Here.” She feels like that song kept her alive. I mean, people feel that intensely about Ferron.

Ferron, how do you respond to that?
Ferron: Oh you know, it just moves me. Because I know that when I wrote “Our Purpose Here” how lonely I felt, and how not connected to anything in the world—I didn’t even have a world yet. Every song that I wrote saved my life, and to think that all these years later a song like that saved another person’s life? I’m moved to tears.

What are some of those songs that moved you?
Ferron: Bruce Cockburn—early Bruce Cockburn—“Feet Fall on the Road.” Just certain songs where the way the person thought, or the way that I perceived that they thought, helped me. It’s hard to remember now.

What about you, Bitch?
Bitch: I have such a strange relationship to music, because my dad always had jazz on in the house, and then my mom was always singing show tunes. When my sister started listening to Crosby, Stills & Nash and Simon and Garfunkel once I was 12 or so, all of a sudden I had an understanding of how poetry mixed with music.

How did that one track that you wrote wind up on Boulder?
Bitch: That song, “Highway,” is one of my new songs on my new EP [B+TEC=]. And I wanted Ferron to do one cover for this album. So I said you can either sing one of my songs, or you can sing a PJ Harvey song. You choose. I played her some PJ Harvey and she’s like, “Oh, I’m not doing that!” So she picked “Highway.”

Bitch, it says on your website that you feel it’s “important to tune in to those who’ve come before us.” Why?
Bitch: We’re like one of the very few cultures in the world that has this attitude about our elders that they’re somehow dead, whereas I feel most civilizations that are truly civil revere the people who come before them. Because really, why not? Why wouldn’t you go for knowledge from someone who’s been living on the planet longer than you?
Ferron: If we don’t know where we came from, we’re orphans. And it’s really vital right now that we go back and forth and listen to each other. In my songs I talk about the opposite, which is the next generation, because you want to be responsible for something. You want to have an obligation. Otherwise, what are you? You’re just a selfish shopper.

Bitch and Ferron play the Highline Ballroom May 8, 2008. See shortstoryrecords.com.