Maree Sheehan Drawn To A Close

Rip It Up, Issue 220, 1 December 1995, Page 14

Maree Sheehan Drawn To A Close

In the unruly world of show business, plans Don't always go according to plan. For irrefutable proof, just ask Maree Sheehan. For well over two years she's been waiting to launch her Debut album, but several setbacks have delayed the arrival of Drawn In Deep, until now. With a newrecord label providing a jump start, during the past six months all Sheehan's goals have come to fruition.

Born in Christchurch, Sheehan was never really interested in the piano lessons her parents insisted she take as a child. It wasn’t until her teens, when she began writing poetry and building tunes around the words, that she began to approach music with something more than reluctance. Sheehan enrolled on an 18 month Polynesian Performing Arts course where she recorded her first demo. She says the skills she learnt there remain invaluable to this day. "That’s where I learnt the basics of writing music, and those will always continue to be with me. If I didn’t have that, I probably wouldn’t be where I am now.” After graduating, Sheehan made the decision to make music her career. She left her home town in November 1991, and shifted north to Auckland. “I decided if I was going to get anywhere in music, I had to be in Auckland because that’s where the industry was. That first year in Auckland was pretty hard. I didn’t know anybody and I was going on a dream, an ideal that I wanted to do music.” In January the following year, Sheehan was invited to join the now defunct, Black Katz. Playing drums in the band was former Wellingtonian Neil Cruickshank, who at the time of Sheehan’s arrival was toying with the idea of starting a Maori record label. Sensing an opportunity, Cruickshank signed Sheehan, and two months later her debut single, ‘Make You My Own’, became the first release on Tangata Records. A string of singles followed over the next twelve months, including the divine ‘Fatally Cool’, while simultaneously, Sheehan was recording songs for an album at various studios around Auckland. But somewhere along the line it all went sour, and although Sheehan won’t discuss the details, she says she felt continually second-guessed by Tangata until her departure from the label in November 1994. “With Tangata Records... we just didn’t see eye to eye about what was going to happen with me as an artist. I don’t think they really believed in me as much as I needed them to, financially, and as an artist, and as a writer.” In the interim, Sheehan was snapped up by the Auckland branch of Australian based Jabel Roadshow Music. “In some ways I felt like I had to start all

over again to prove myself to this new record company, and I think people out there were like: ‘When is she ever going to put out an album?’ But this year things have moved so quickly with Roadshow, and the album’s done.”

Drawn In Deep was recorded in eight weeks during July and August, in Sydney, with Aussie producer Peter Martin at the controls. Though Sheehan is undoubtedly happy with the result of her partnership with Martin, she says, she was initially more than slightly wary. "I had to work with a producer who would take in my ideas. It’s too important to me to allow somebody that just knows me, to take over and control my musical creativity, and the way I write and sing. Peter’s an older man, and he’s a Pakeha, and I’m the complete opposite to him — I’m Maori, I’m a woman, and I’m young. So it was like, are we gonna get on, are we gonna be going to be able to make good music together? We were just lucky that we did, and I feel that finally my voice has been produced the way I’ve always wanted it.” Sheehan believes Drawn In Deep solidifies just exactly what her ‘sound’ is. Previous singles have leapt from soul grooves, to hip-hop beats, to dance rhythms, whereas the album on a whole presents a more focussed, unified feel. “I was experimenting a lot when I was with Tangata, now I think I’ve matured so much, and found what is my music. It’s a process of finding yourself, and what you want to be, and what you want to sound like. I’m aiming this album at a maturer audience, and I want it to be a stayer, I don’t want it to come in and go out.” Another aspect of Sheehan’s new-found sense of self reckoning, is her decision not to take past criticisms regarding her nonpolitical stance on board with this album. "There are times when it can be really difficult for a female in the industry, but I’m not really a crusader. I think there are a lot of people out there who think Maree Sheehan should be writing in the reo, and she should be using certain political points of views. For awhile I did start asking myself the same questions, but now I’ve decided I’m not here to write music for other people or other people’s opinions. In the end it’s me who has to live with it."

JOHN RUSSELL