Quickies on Chris Pureka
Fave gay-themed TV show: "The L Word"
Last time she wore a dress: "Wow, OK, a dress? Or like (laughs) – I can't remember the last time I wore a dress. Sometime in college, I guess. That was a long time ago. Good Lord. Like a dress-dress? I don't even know. It was probably in college when my dad retired."
Cheesiest song written as a child: "I Wish, I Wish Upon a Star"
Biggest musical influence right now: Gregory Alan Isakov, a friend/folk artist from Boulder, Colo.
Last movie she watched: "The Simpsons Movie"
Favorite place to check out in Ann Arbor: Arbor Brewing Company
Dar Williams with Chris Pureka
8 p.m. Sept. 5-6
The Ark, Ann Arbor
http://www.chrispureka.com
Too bad Scooby Doo wasn't in Ann Arbor last fall when a Martin guitar vanished at The Ark. It was Chris Pureka's 10-year-old strung-out pal. Gone.
She'll return to the popular singer-songwriter performance spot as a special guest for Dar Williams from Sept. 5-6 and, she admits, it'll feel awkward. From her parents' pad in Connecticut, where she's staying temporarily until she hits the road for a seemingly endless string of show dates, the dreary-ditty musician unleashes a nervous laugh when considering her Ark return.
"I'd like to move on from it," Pureka admits, "but, yeah, I'm sure it will feel a little bit crappy."
With a fan-started money cache and a deal-cutting music shop owner in Chicago, Pureka, after playing a couple of shows with borrowed guitars, replaced her Martin. This time, she'll watch it like a hound guards its bone.
"My guitar already got stolen. I'm not going to get attached to it," she laughs. "If it gets stolen, it gets stolen. I'll get a new one." Sure, sounds easy enough. But Pureka's set list during a house show in Ann Arbor after letting go of guitar No. 1 showcased a woman very much in the beginning stages of grief.
Though Pureka's song catalog is chock-full of downers, she's not one to cry on stage – even if she witnesses others tearing up, or loses her dearest instrument. Her vulnerable debut, "Driving North," took ample guts to play in front of fans.
"That was harder for me, because I was like going through a break up basically," she says. "And I was singing these songs about it, and that was a lot harder than the songs on this most recent record."
Pureka will usually save delicate ditties, like "Cruel and Clumsy," the penultimate tune from her sophomore album "Dryland," for venues that aren't infested with drunks, or rowdy patrons, or cell phone whores. Songs with more punch, or ones that are more "sing-a-longy" as Pureka calls them, are performed at bars or soirees, like the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival earlier this month.
"It was very much like vacation," Pureka hoots in her dry drawl. "We basically just hung out and played board games and listened to music."
Pureka, who identifies as genderqueer ("I feel like I'm definitely a more butch lesbian, and that's not very common in the performer realm"), attended with a pal of hers, performed her own set and then hit the stage with progressive artist-activist Alix Olson. There was no cell phone reception. And no Internet access (which must have pained Pureka, because on the morning she spoke with us, the first thing she did was check her e-mail).
Before heading to Hart, Mich., she celebrated her birthday in Ann Arbor, where she and her buddy stopped in Ashley's Restaurant & Pub and then headed to aut BAR, where she ordered a delish Tempeh Reuben. She mentions this because while she's on the road, finding yummy vegetarian grub is like trying to order a "pop" in the South.
"It's hard to find vegetarian food in Middle America. As a vegetarian, you end up eating a lot of cheese sandwiches. It's hard to get like vegetables and protein and things that are," she laughs "necessary."
It'd be a helluva lot easier to go grocery shopping and cook dinner – something she misses doing regularly – but when she's living life on the road, that's nearly impossible.
The dizzying routine of rising, chugging coffee, driving, driving and driving, doing sound check, playing the show and then soaking up some Z's doesn't allow for seeking out healthy-food selections. Hell, it doesn't even give her time to write.
"It's like a really big problem for me right now, honestly," she admits, disappointed that she'll have no new material for her current outings. "It feels really frustrating right now."
Pureka just needs more hours in a day. Or perhaps more breaks, like a couple of months, in between tours, she says. But for now, she'll stick with tunes from her two albums.
"Luckily, I really like my old songs," she says, laughing.
