Saturday, 25 February 2006 07:57

“A lot of it is about travel and movement, transportation and transcendence,” Veirs says. “I wrote the ideas on the road and then I crafted the songs at home in a quiet space.”

 

 

SXSW is more than just a music festival for Laura Veirs; it’s a vacation. She’s trading in the North’s record amount of rain this season for the South’s record lack of rain.

Veirs, a native of Seattle, is in need of sunshine. “It’s been completely painfully cloudy up here,” she says, “so that’s the number one thing, just getting outside, playing music outside, and just relaxing a little bit in the sun.”

Veirs’ first and only previous appearance at SXSW was in 2003. Since then, she’s been occupied. 2005’s Year of Meteors on Nonesuch Records, her fourth release, was one of the smoothest female records to come out last year. Many of the lyrics reflect her tour life.

“A lot of it is about travel and movement, transportation and transcendence,” Veirs says. “I wrote the ideas on the road and then I crafted the songs at home in a quiet space.”

Veirs will just be returning from a European tour when she appears at SXSW. She spends her free time on tours exploring the cities and jumping rope.

“We jump a lot of rope just to keep us from going crazy,” she says. “It’s exercise, stress relief, and band bonding.”

Bonding is something Veirs is good at; she’s very successful at being intimate. Her poetic lyrics and trinkety hooks capture your attention, then she sprinkles on extras that showcase a unique personality, such as a recorded voice message to her producer/drummer at the end of Year of Meteors, and a amazing music video for her latest single, “Galaxies” (www.territimely.com).

For someone who is compared with all kinds of other female artists, it’s hard to know what to expect from her.

“I don’t have any limitations on myself as to what kind of music I want to play or what kind of person I feel I am,” Veirs says. “So that leaves things open for me to explore and I feel like that’s a good way to be.”