Diva
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Butch Iraland/Dally Nebraskan
Lori Allison
Fame not on Guns' lead singer's mind
By Scott Harrah
Senior Editor
Lori Allison, the New Brass
Guns’ lead vocalist and resi
dent diva, sits in a tree on
Centennial Mall and slides on a pair of
black sunglasses. She giggles as she
deftly picks a leaf from a branch and
sticks it between her teeth.
She sits back nonchalantly, throws
her head forward and starts spinning
the leaf’s stem around in her mouth.
“I’ve been twirling leaves in my
mouth since 1981,” she says, chuck
ling as she jumps down from the tree.
'I like the emotion -
concerning vocalists.
I like it when a song
makes me feel.*
- Allison
A guy walks by and says hello to
her, asks her about the gig she’s play
ing this evening, then ambles away.
Another guy passes by, recognizes
her, mutters an emphatic “Hi, Lori”
and moves on.
She contemplates her relatively
new fame, then shrugs it off and sits
down on one of the worn wooden
benches that face the State Capitol.
“I don’t know if I’m that crazy
about fame, but I like the song... the
one David Bowie did,” she says.
She utters something about
fame not being that impon
lant as she stretches out on
the bench and breathes in the balmy
Indian-summer air.
A bag lady carrying a sack full of
old clothes, tin cans and dumpster
paraphernalia totters by on outmoded
cork wedgies from the early 1970s.
“My family has told me I’ll eventu
ally wind up being a bag lady,” she
says with another giggle, tossing back
her blond hair as the white porcelain
skin on her cheeks turns a soft pink
But the music world has bet. r
plans for her. Allison, with her 1 !a
mous arsenal of thrift-store oudits,
may sometimes dress like an aristo
cratic bag lady, but those who have
heard the tortured, whimsical instru
ment that is her voice know she’s
headed in another direction.
Off stage, Allison is hardly the
emotionally detached, delicate siren
whose eerie lyrical metaphors and
soaring octaves have seduced many
audiences.
In person, away from the guitars
and cigarette smoke that surround her
on stage, she resembles the girl who
first fell in love with music when she
listened to a Judy Garland tape in her
grandparents’ car on the way to Colo
rado.
Allison s voice may not re
semble Garland’s, bui it’s
certainly reminiscent of the
legend’s tragic, moody vocal acumen.
All of Allison’s idols — experimental
British chanteuse Kate Bush, Debbie
Harry, Suzanne Vega and David
Bowie—seem to have influenced the
caustic, curiously beautiful spirit her
voice projects.
“I like the emotion — concerning
vocalists,” she says. “I like it when a
song makes me feel.”
Much of her emotional stance can
be attributed to the songs she writes,
all dark ballads in the Sylvia Plath
Anne Sexton vein of victims having
their world antagonized by demons of
reality. Allison’s lyrics vacillate be
Butch Ireland/Dally Nebraskan
Allison
tween uncontrolled love hallucina
tions and fierce ambivalence aimed at
the characters she creates.
Her material comes from personal
experience.
5ne says mat aiinougn many oi me
situations in her songs are fabricated,
she’s able to inject her own emotional
data into them.
“Even if it (a song) is made up, I
still know what it’s about and I know
what I want it to feel like,” she says.
When she was a child, Allison
yearned to be a big band
singer. Sometimes, she ex
plains, she’d invite friends over after
school and they’d all pretend to be
glamorous rock stars. Although she
sang in elementary- and high-school
chorus, the thought of one day singing
professionally seemed too far-fetched
and impossible.
“I don’t think I ever thought it
would be real,” she says of her life
today. “I never realized that it’s not
even that hard to be in a band — to get
to be in one, that is.”
When she entered college, she
started singing with the Go-Bats, an
obscure, amateurish band that played
irregularly.
‘‘The Go-Bats was just kind of a
fun, silly thing,” she says. ‘‘My voice
has definitely changed for the better
since those days. The goals of the New
Brass Guns seem to be more serious, I
guess. In the Go-Bats we didn’t reaJJy
have goals.”
In less than a year, Allison and the
band have evolved into one of the
most inventive, successful local acts
in years. A locally produced New
Brass Guns tape was one of the top
sellers in Lincoln a few months ago,
and their shows usually fill bars.
The resonant guitar work of Marty
Amsler and Doug Hubner and Brian
Barber’s drums create a textured
backdrop tor Allison s songs, out asic
anyone who’s familiar with the Guns
and they’ll agree that it is Allison, with
her voice evoking a warehouse of
images and chilled spines while some
how remaining deadpan, who makes
the music transcend mere bar-band
jamming.
She agrees. The spotlight is hers
because she makes it hers.
“They just stand there,” she says of
the rest of the band. “But Brian’s kind
of goofy sometimes — lighting his
drums on fire.”
One problem she says she en
counters is unfair labels
placed on the band because
of her gender.
“I don’t think about the New Brass
Guns as male-female, but other
people seem to because that’s why
people compare us to 10,000 Maniacs
so much — and I’ve never even heard
them,” she says.
She’s studying to be a high-school
German teacher, but says she’ll con
tinue to sing with the Guns if they keep
moving up.
But she won’t be devastated if the
band never gets a major recording
contract and goes mainstream.
“It’s not like we’re wailing for that
to happen,” she says.
In the meantime, besides school
and singing, Allison will continue to
indulge herself with her favorite
things: thrift-store clothes and her
Pink Panther record player.
On stage, she likes to dress down,
wearing simple things like Girl Scout
uniforms, cat-eye glasses and dowdy
dresses last seen on Sunday-school
teachers in 1962.
Her tashion philosophy — an1
obligatory element of any
diva’s lifestyle — has
changed since the Go-Bats broke up.
“When I was in the Go-Bats, it felt
Iiks I could wear more fancy things,’’
she says. “With the New Brass Guns,
it doesn’t feel right to wear real nice,
fancy stuff — unless it’s a special
thing, like when we opened for the
Flesh tones.”
When she has spare time and wants
to take a mental hiatus from the band,
she says, she heads for the nearest
cemetery to get away from people.
“I like cemeteries because they’re
so peaceful and a good place to relax,
she says.
But a misanthrope she’s not
People are also part of her favorite
things.
“They’re the best thing I’ve ever
encountered,” she says, sliding on the
black sunglasses once more.
