Megan Hickey doesn’t want to challenge someone to a lap steel duel, but it’s not because the singer-songwriter and lap-steel guitarist thinks she could take anybody down.
“I don’t know how to play the thing, honestly,” she says. “I just play by sight and by ear for the most part. I would bet against myself.”
For a self-taught lap-steeler, Hickey hasn’t done too bad. As the one permanent member of shimmering, twangy indie outfit the Last Town Chorus, she’s played to crowds of more than 2,000 in the U.K. and seen loads of praise in U.S. publications, including the Village Voice.
Before embarking on her first North American tour in support of the March release “Wire Waltz,” Hickey told us about her love of the lap steel, her warring impulses and the power to make men cry.
It’s been said that you have the voice of an angel and play lap steel like the devil. Do you ever feel like you have one on each shoulder?
I really feel like that every time I perform. I feel the push and pull of good and evil. It’s like a wrestling match . . . people that come to shows expecting an hour of prettiness and preciousness–I’m probably disappointing them.
What should they expect?
The look of the show is a bit peculiar. Yes, there’s transfixion, but I shred my lap steel guitar a lot harder live than on the album, so in between [being] transfixed sometimes people are making the sign of the devil or screaming. It kind of goes between a church session and an Aerosmith concert in the same show. It has that dynamic swing, which is fun. I don’t have to be in full-on rock mode the entire time, and I don’t have to be a sensitive, twee singer.
Are people really moved to tears?
Yeah, definitely. Multiple, multiple times people have come and told me after the show that they cried. Every single time it’s been a male, which is kind of cool. It’s hugely cathartic for me to play live, and I hope the catharsis is mutual.
Why is it only guys?
Women wouldn’t confess to crying because they do it all the time. When men cry, it’s a notable life event that they seem to want to share.
What’s cathartic about the lap steel?
There’s a strong tugging feeling about the sound of the lap steel. With other instruments, the sound is sort of abrupt, and with the lap steel, with the effects that I put it through, with the sound that I get from it, it’s watery. There’s nothing abrupt, and there’s lots of mystery in the sound, so I’m forever intrigued by it. [It’s] the perfect expression of yearning. For completely understandable reasons people really attach country or Western connotations to it because that’s the genre in which it was popularized. It doesn’t sound Western to me. I’m going to need a lot of therapy if somebody else introduces me to the lap steel with the same kind of effects on it because right now it feels like my own little piece of the sonic universe. My own little acreage in an otherwise very crowded neighborhood.
Are you a little bit country, a little bit rock ‘n’ roll?
I would say that I’m a lot country, and a lot rock and roll. I really don’t care for what passes as alt-country. I love straight-up, overproduced, natural country music, irony-free. And I love the rock. I love the Hendrix and the Zeppelin.
The Last Town Chorus
When: 10 p.m. Friday
Where: Schubas, 3159 N. Southport Ave.
Tickets: $12, 773-525-2508
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MPAIS@TRIBUNE.COM
