Amber Martin is an internationally acclaimed artist and cabaret star based in New York. Her new record, Unbreakable Heart, is out now.
Amber Martin is an internationally acclaimed artist and cabaret star based in New York; John Cameron Mitchell is an actor, writer, director, and producer also based in New York. Amber and John are longtime friends and collaborators (including on their live Cassette Roulette shows). John also features on Amber’s new record, Unbreakable Heart — alongside more friends like Rufus Wainwright and Scissor Sisters’ Jake Shears — which just came out on Friday. The other week, Amber and John got on a Zoom call to catch up about it, which incidentally took place the morning after the election. You can read their conversation below, and catch Amber’s release show at the Cutting Room tomorrow night in NYC.
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music
Amber Martin: Hey, Johnny, are you there?
John Cameron Mitchell: I am. Can you not see me?
Amber: There you are, I see you. I guess you and I need to first just start with the obvious elephant in the room, which is today fucking sucks.
John: Yeah. It fucking sucks.
Amber: The only good thing about today is the sunshine is happening.
John: Was the moon a reminder?
Amber: Yeah. Rufus called me today, and I was like, “For this nightmare that our world has become, your song is a little bit prophesying, isn’t it?” [Laughs.]
John: Yeah, it is.
Amber: As much as we’re not in a good mood, I can’t think of anybody I’d rather talk to right now than you. But I also thought you and I can conjure some love. In about a week’s time when this comes out, people are going to want something to bring them out of the darkness, because it’s about to get real gross for the next bit.
John: Yeah. It’s hard for me to see my way out right now.
Amber: I know, same. I’m numb. I don’t even know what to say. So we can just talk about other things.
John: What do you wanna talk about, baby?
Amber: Well, I have a record coming out. I also have an amazing friendship with you. I’d love to talk about the song that you wrote with Brett [Every] that I’m so fortunate to have on the record.
John: This album, Amber, is my favorite country album I’ve ever heard.
Amber: What?!
John: Yes. It’s truly chock full of classics. And it’s classic country — it’s not auto-tuned modern country. It’s not even ‘80s country. It’s classic country. You have created a very, very beautiful album with the help of a lot of great people, especially Brett Every.
Amber: I mean, right? Talk about an angel, man.
John: He is our Jimmy Webb, Paul Williams, Kris Kristofferson. But why don’t you talk a little bit about yourself, Amber, where you come from and how this album came about?
Amber: Well, there’s a few things where it came about. Our mutual friend Ryan Landry — I was staying the night at his house [in New Orleans], and I had just come in from Texas. I got to his backyard, and he was opening up a bottle of wine, and I was digging in my purse like, “Where’s my —? Damn it, I left my weed in Texas!” He doesn’t even smoke weed, so it didn’t really matter, and we moved on. And then the next day, he had written the lyrics to the song that spawned the making of the album, which is titled “I Left My Weed in Texas.”
John: It’s a great song.
Amber: I went down to Texas and got my boys who play with me when I do Janis every year.
John: And what are their names?
Amber: Jason Touchette, Ken Turner, Bubba Moore on bass, Frankie Randazzo on piano, and Steve Huelsman on guitar. And Ken Turner and Norma Touchette — Jason’s beautiful, mega talented wife — sang backing vocals with me. It’s funny because on my record, I’m the backing vocalist. No one else sings my backing vocals but me. But this is the one song that has other people’s backing vocals.
So we recorded it, and one of the guys, Bubba — who toured with Tracy Byrd on Reba’s tour back in the ‘90s — he said, “Damn, girl, you can sing country!” And I’m like, “Yeah, I guess!” I mean, I grew up around it. My great-grandfather was a fiddle champion, and my grandpa and great aunts and uncles each had an instrument, and they would all sit around in a circle in the old house in Louisiana and just jam. None of them read music, they just all did it by ear. And I was saying this the other night — when you’re little like that, you don’t realize how special it is. Then when look back and it’s gone, you’re like, Wow, that was something to be able to grow up in.
John: That is a great band that you put together. I saw you play with them in New Orleans, and they’re fantastic. So, your first album [2016’s A.M. Gold] had a lot of songs from Brett Every as well, and that was kind of a love letter to your youth — you know, ‘70s, early ‘80s vibe. And then this album is also going into your youth. When you were choosing the songs, how did you start?
Amber: After we recorded “I Left My Weed in Texas,” I pretty much was like, “Yeah, I think I’m gonna do this.” First of all, I happen to be friends with some of the most iconic songwriters around, yourself being one of them, and Rufus Wainwright. And Jake Shears is not a shabby little songwriter — those Scissor Sisters have some fantastic pop songs that they’ve written, and Jake is right there in that. So I called on them, and you, and of course I called Brett. I’d like to say something about Brett for a second: When we made that first album together, we had such fun. It was a love project. There was no fighting, no weirdness, no awkwardness. It was so perfectly wonderful. But it was a lot of work. So it took us, what, eight years to put out a new record?
So when this country record idea came about, like I said, I reached out to [Brett]. I thought, “How fun to have an album that’s similar to the Urban Cowboy soundtrack?” So each song is danceable on a honky tonk dance floor, like Gilley’s — for the people reading this that don’t know Urban Cowboy, get it together. It’s really still one of the greatest movies, and the soundtrack is outstanding. It’s Anne Murray, Boz Scaggs, the Eagles, Joe Walsh, Johnny Lee, Bonnie Raitt. I feel like Emmylou’s on there. Linda Ronstadt’s on there. Every song is unique, different tempos. So I thought, “How fun would it be to create all original songs sung by me, but have it seem like a soundtrack where every song is different?” And one way to do that is to have different songwriters. And that would be where that idea fell into place.
John: And what about your most unexpected writer?
Amber: My mother.
John: How did that happen?
Amber: She’s a singer. She taught me how to sing, and she knows tempo, she knows rhythm, she knows—
John: Harmony.
Amber: Oh, harmony for sure. That’s her strength. She taught me to sing harmony before I even really learned how to sing lead. Isn’t that funny?
John: It’s metaphorical.
Amber: [Laughs.] I guess. Which is actually a nice thing to have in my heart and soul… But she is not a songwriter — she has never written a song. She is a songwriter, as it were. When she prays — she’s a Christian woman — it’s almost like a little poetry. You know how some Christians pray very straight up, same prayer every time, almost like a rite or a spell? When she prays, she just has a little talk. And she thinks of everything. I believe she’s at her most clear when she’s praying. So I told her, “If anybody knows the structure of a classic country song, it’s you, and if anybody could do it, you can do it. Just think of it like a prayer.” But it’s not a prayer. It’s a sad song, actually. It’s the title track, “Unbreakable Heart,” and she did it. Brett helped her — Brett composed it. She composed it too, but I think the chorus, Brett kind of jumped in and gave it more structure.
John: Well, he’s really good at that. We worked together on “Call Me Joe.”
Amber: Is that the only one y’all have worked together on?
John: We worked on a song called “Wait” for my upcoming podcast series Cancellation Island, which comes out February 9, with Holly Hunter. Her character creates a rehab for canceled people, and one of them is Mary Testa playing a character kind of based on Joan Rivers — who, of course, would be canceled today by everybody. But lovably canceled.
Amber: Oh, my god.
John: We loved her. But she was not to be censored! And so we wrote a song — Mary’s character is dealing with cancer, and so she’s like, “Wait a minute. I don’t have much time. Let me say what I need to say.” Which is, of course, what we’re all feeling like lately. There’s a sort of short-on-time feeling in the world.
Amber: Amen to that.
John: An awareness of mortality, or an awareness of a certain amount of bad behavior, bad intent, selfishness, insularity, us-versus-them — for some, it really makes you want to hide away with your friends. And for others, they get very depressed. Digital culture doesn’t necessarily help that. Getting people into the same room is the only thing I can think of to calm things down, as well as the ultimate antidepressant, which is creativity.
Amber: That’s why I wanted to do this today. When I woke up, I felt defeated, and like I just wanted to shut everything and everyone off. I really said, “Get up. Check in with John. Take a freaking shower, get cleaned up, and create something. Make positivity out of this.” Because what else can you fucking do?
John: Yeah.
Amber: You also said something that, I don’t know if it was your quote or someone else’s, but… I’m not going to have children. Children are not part of my equation. And creativity — that is my legacy. And you mention that in “Origin of Love.” I believe you were talking about queer culture but, I don’t know, I fit in there too. Because… I don’t even know where I fit in, to be honest. I mean, everywhere, nowhere — I don’t know.
John: Well, you’re a category of yourself. You’re definitely queer. We have things we’ve learned from being different, things that have been very painful. But then we wouldn’t trade it for conformism and for fitting in. The joy that we’ve felt, the connections we’ve made, the insights we’ve had because of our otherness is what makes us who we are. It’s freed me from a life of servitude, in effect, to other people’s ideas that don’t make sense to me. And so I thank the dead god every day that I was different, that I was, in my case, gay. It’s allowed me to question all kinds of things, but also to hold on to the things about tradition and family and the good things in our upbringing that can be combined with what we now know about being different.
This album is, in some ways, traditional country, but it’s also getting back to the heart of what we love in music and community that is exemplified by people like Dolly Parton. Willie Nelson, Mavis Staples, Stevie Wonder — people where love and music are synonymous. To others, music is for purging yourself, or purging your fears. And that’s great — certainly David Bowie had a lot of paranoia, and his music was a way of dealing with that. You could say that Prince’s music was about negotiating god and sex, which didn’t always go together. He was working things out in his own way. Those people evolved artistically, Bowie and Prince and Lou Reed. But then the ones who are spiritually evolved, who found a peace, who radiated love, who radiated goodwill, like Stevie Wonder, Mavis Staples, Dolly, Willie—
Amber: Joni.
John: Joni — you feel better about being human after you’ve heard it. I don’t always feel better about being human listening to David Bowie, but his curiosity and his joy in creativity is very inspiring to me. He’s probably the most inspiring artist that I know of.
Amber: You’re about to do an amazing Bowie show that I’m going to get to be a part of, which I’m so excited about. Kind of my dream come true, to be honest. I’d like you to tell me a little bit about that. Where did that idea come from? Because a lot of people have done Bowie. But this is your version of it. And, first of all, I’m fascinated with your song choices.
John: Well, Bowie has always been a kind of guide — but also a monstrous, scary figure when I was young, with his forwardness with his androgyny and his interest in challenging the status quo. He was reminding you that androgyny, that what we call “non-binaryness” — these things are natural states. We’re all non-binary. We all have energies that might be called “male” and “female,” and they shift. And if we ignore them — I talk about that in “Origin of Love” — it’s ignoring a part of yourself. Crushing, let’s say, what we call the “masculine,” or crushing your “femininity” — there’s hell to pay. It’s like an animal dying in your wall, and it’s going to stink the place up.
Amber: [Laughs.]
John: So, Bowie scared me when I was a kid, doing “Jean Genie” on Top of the Pops. And then maybe only six or seven years later, seeing him on Saturday Night Live doing “Boys Keep Swinging”—
Amber: With Joey Arias!
John: And Klaus Nomi. That really set me on my path. And my fear of him never went away. It was always fascination. Then I started seeing other sides of him, and meeting people who knew him. Now I’ve been touring a show called Black Star Symphony, with the band who made his last album with him, and that’s been beautiful. So I thought it was time to do my own — not interpretation of Bowie, because no one’s going to be Bowie — but to enter his song cycle and go for the deep cuts that always affected me most.
Amber: That setlist — I’m lucky I get to know what it is already.
John: It’s very deep.
Amber: It’s so good. I can’t wait to hear you do all these. And to be honest, my harmonies will be fun to do as well. I can’t wait.
John, I have a question for you. Do you remember the night we met?
John: I don’t.
Amber: I do.
John: Was that at Michael and Sean’s?
Amber: [Nods.]
John: Yes. Tell them about it. That was a beautiful night.
Amber: I have a clear memory because — well, I was excited to meet you. Our friends had a beautiful Chelsea loft, and they would do these salons. They’re part of the the Radical Faerie world, so they would bring in all these cool, weirdo, underground hippie artists and mix them up with New York City glitterati, and everybody was a mover and shaker. And somehow I got invited.
John: How did you get invited?
Amber: An old friend of mine from the Portland days — when I moved to New York, he was already in New York, and he was like, “I’m taking you out!” And he took us to the party. I met Justin Vivian Bond, I met Earl Dax, and I met you.
John: So you met a lot of people that night.
Amber: I did. And I don’t know what you and I were talking about — random shit, you know? And somehow I mentioned that I had moved here, and I moved all of my 2,000 records on an Amtrak shipping crate. You said, “Well, that’s interesting because my friend PJ [DeBoy] and I are about to start a party to save Julius’ Bar. Why don’t you join it with us and bring some of your old records?” And that was the genesis of you and me and PJ and Paul [Dawson] coming together and doing Mattachine at Julius’ — which is now probably 17 years old. I have reason to believe it might be one of the longest running, if not the longest running, regular parties in New York City at this point.
John: Except maybe The Loft, which still goes. But, yeah, Julius’ Bar is the oldest gay bar in New York. Amber, I, PJ Deboy, and Paul Dawson — who were the gay couple in Shortbus [John’s 2006 film] — started this party, and it still goes. Angela DiCarlo is a key part of it now in New York.
Amber: [PJ and Paul] only did a couple of years, maybe, and then they moved to Florida. And Ange jumped right in with you and myself. So Ange has really been a part of it just as long as anybody, really.
John: She’s holding it up. We have other DJs who join us, such as Sammy Jo and—
Amber: Fred Schneider. We also have Kyle Supley, and we’ve had Michael Cavadias, too — who co-wrote Cancellation Island with you. We’ve got a nice little family here in New York. Another good thing about today is that we get to be in this city. We will be safe, as the world encroaches closer and tighter upon our freedoms.
John: You know, I’m in New Orleans, too, and that has a lot in common with New York. They’re both cities of outsiders who are creative, who are questioning what they were taught, but it also has its own traditions. Of course, New Orleans — their traditions are extremely strong and very much about neighborhood and about celebration and about music and about mixture of races and cultures. As is New York.
Amber: Le bon temps roule.
John: Let the good times roll.
Amber: Well, John, thank you. You’re one of my heroes and one of my loves of my life, and one of my best friends.
You can catch Amber’s record release show tomorrow, November 19, at the Cutting Room.
