Biography
Megan Hickey, born June 26, 1974 near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, performs under the musical alias Last Town Chorus as a contemporary singer, songwriter and lap steel guitarist. Although music had long held her attention, she delayed any committed engagement with performance and composition until settling in New York City in 1999. “I grew up in a little town and my childhood was quite idyllic,” the redheaded singer says. “I like it more now, in the rear view mirror, but Pittsburg was a livable sweet city. In the '80s the steel business came to a halt and after years of glory as a center of winning sports teams and heavy industry the city declined a bit. Now it's reinvented itself as a high tech and service center. It's still a nice, hilly mellow place to live.”
Her older brother immersed himself in hip-hop, free jazz and soul, whereas she gravitated toward new wave acts featured on MTV such as Culture Club. Expanding curiosity later led her backward through Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, Ray Charles and reggae; during college she assembled obscure vinyl and revisited her mother’s classical recordings. “I willfully kept my ears open to a broad range of music,” she explains. “In sixth grade I was given a bass guitar and a used Fender amp. I have a picture of myself in my graduation dress holding a big bass guitar. I was always a huge music fan; I tinkered with the guitar while I was still quite young, and played a bit of piano sitting beside my mom. I always wrote the occasional song, but I was never thrilled by any sentiment I expressed to the point I was ready to change my life and start a band.
“I was the leader of the new wave kids in my town and hung out with the suburban punk rock wannabes. There were half a dozen at every high school in the city and we'd hang out together at radio station parties and dance to the Cure, Yaz, the Cult and hardcore electro-new wave music. I was a sarcastic cerebral alterna-teen and an honors student. I still straddle the light and dark sides. Musically my first real influence was Jimi. After I got my bass, I played along with him to learn how play and I'm still moved by powerful soulful music. I was a major Beatles fan, but for me influences happen by osmosis. I never aspired to be a ranking member of a generic rock band and hated alt county in particular.
“Mostly, I played along to cassette tapes on my boom box, never playing with any massive agility. I was a hack who played for the joy of playing. In college at the University of Pittsburgh, I tangled with poetry and painting and other creative pursuits while I studied a hodgepodge of cultural studies, anthropology and communications. I had two majors and two minors. I was a highly curious human being, but I didn't want to have a doomed life in academia. I didn't have the patience or the focus. Above all, I longed to have a musical outlet, but I couldn't find an instrument that allowed me to be expressive. I tried everything and collected a lot of instruments over the years. I have a 1978 Les Paul electric, Yamaha FG 441 S acoustic, Wurlitzer electric piano and a Conn faux pipe organ that I play at home and use to write songs, but I don't play any of them in public for the benefit of the common good. I wanted to find some magic in the music, the way Hendrix had a magic relationship with his six-string and Vladimir Horowitz had with his piano. I never had it, but I kept trying and looking.”
Toward the close of her university years she played bass in a rock ensemble, yet followed her brother to his Brooklyn apartment after he relocated to New York City. In 2001 she resolved to focus professionally and launched Last Town Chorus. Through a mutual acquaintance she encountered guitarist Matt Guy, exchanging messages before their initial rehearsal; he arrived carrying an Oahu “Diana” Lap Steel Guitar discovered in a pawnshop.
“I was intrigued by the sound of it and taught myself to play. I still don't know how to use it properly but it opened up my songwriting and my creativity. I never picked up the bass again. I sat for hours and played it through new wave era effect boxes -- mostly delay. It creates an expansive sound that's very oceanic and never ending. In the '80s, synth pop was rife with flanges, reverb and delay, so it was a sound I had an affinity for.”
The instrument dates from the 1940s or 1950s and originated with the Oahu Publishing Company of Cleveland, Ohio. Constructed of solid wood, it is typically amplified through a Line 6 DL-6 Delay that produces a lonesome, ghostly timbre rich in trebly overtones and dark, scratching bass notes, markedly distinct from the smoother, mellow character of pedal steel. Employed in country music during the late 1930s when electric instruments first appeared, the lap steel now sees limited application, largely confined to Hawaiian ensembles and a narrow segment of old-timey country; few manufacturers currently produce the instrument.
Last Town Chorus commenced as a duo, occasionally augmented by friends, and issued its self-titled debut in 2003 on the artists’ own imprint with limited regional distribution. The recording featured modest bass and organ overdubs yet remained essentially a lap-steel-and-guitar duet distinguished by Hickey’s singular technique and forlorn vocals. In January 2005 Paul Smith, director of England’s Blast First imprint known for extreme music by acts such as Sonic Youth and the Grey Area, encountered a track on a compilation and reached out; he reissued the album on the newly formed Blast First Petite subsidiary, prompting widespread acclaim in the British press through four-star, half-page notices. Hickey and Guy toured extensively across the U.K. until Guy relocated to Japan; Hickey thereafter performed with a rotating roster of musicians, earning further positive coverage for sets that shifted between ambient, dirge-like passages and intense bursts of primal noise, unified by her expressive singing and introspective lyrics.
Having established a foothold in the U.K., Hickey returned to record and produce the follow-up, Wire Waltz, primarily within her Brooklyn apartment. “I love having the freedom to evolve the songs as they're recorded. I can try out concepts and ideas and explore sonically, but by the same token, I like to put it aside at times and focus on my performance. For the next album I'd like to have a producer and work with my regular touring band. Too much freedom and too much constraint, in life and music, has its dangers. The trick is finding a balance. Making Wire Waltz was like being a divorcée. I needed to make an album where I was in complete control of every dimension, but now that I've done hundreds of live shows and played with a real band, I'm eager to share the reins with another person.”
Wire Waltz appeared in England in October 2006, after which Hickey and her band revisited the country to capitalize on prior momentum. The album’s tracks flow continuously, generating an overarching haunting, melancholy atmosphere. Shortly before its American release in 2007, ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy featured her interpretation of David Bowie’s “Modern Love,” markedly enhancing its commercial prospects. She intends to issue the subsequent Last Town Chorus album in spring 2008. Regarding the project’s cryptic designation she remarks: “It's evocative of the spirit of the project. Two people at the edge of a small town, a dusky sundown desert kind of feeling. The chorus is the spiritual aspect; we had the idea of being a core of two with a choir of people drifting in and out.”
Her older brother immersed himself in hip-hop, free jazz and soul, whereas she gravitated toward new wave acts featured on MTV such as Culture Club. Expanding curiosity later led her backward through Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, Ray Charles and reggae; during college she assembled obscure vinyl and revisited her mother’s classical recordings. “I willfully kept my ears open to a broad range of music,” she explains. “In sixth grade I was given a bass guitar and a used Fender amp. I have a picture of myself in my graduation dress holding a big bass guitar. I was always a huge music fan; I tinkered with the guitar while I was still quite young, and played a bit of piano sitting beside my mom. I always wrote the occasional song, but I was never thrilled by any sentiment I expressed to the point I was ready to change my life and start a band.
“I was the leader of the new wave kids in my town and hung out with the suburban punk rock wannabes. There were half a dozen at every high school in the city and we'd hang out together at radio station parties and dance to the Cure, Yaz, the Cult and hardcore electro-new wave music. I was a sarcastic cerebral alterna-teen and an honors student. I still straddle the light and dark sides. Musically my first real influence was Jimi. After I got my bass, I played along with him to learn how play and I'm still moved by powerful soulful music. I was a major Beatles fan, but for me influences happen by osmosis. I never aspired to be a ranking member of a generic rock band and hated alt county in particular.
“Mostly, I played along to cassette tapes on my boom box, never playing with any massive agility. I was a hack who played for the joy of playing. In college at the University of Pittsburgh, I tangled with poetry and painting and other creative pursuits while I studied a hodgepodge of cultural studies, anthropology and communications. I had two majors and two minors. I was a highly curious human being, but I didn't want to have a doomed life in academia. I didn't have the patience or the focus. Above all, I longed to have a musical outlet, but I couldn't find an instrument that allowed me to be expressive. I tried everything and collected a lot of instruments over the years. I have a 1978 Les Paul electric, Yamaha FG 441 S acoustic, Wurlitzer electric piano and a Conn faux pipe organ that I play at home and use to write songs, but I don't play any of them in public for the benefit of the common good. I wanted to find some magic in the music, the way Hendrix had a magic relationship with his six-string and Vladimir Horowitz had with his piano. I never had it, but I kept trying and looking.”
Toward the close of her university years she played bass in a rock ensemble, yet followed her brother to his Brooklyn apartment after he relocated to New York City. In 2001 she resolved to focus professionally and launched Last Town Chorus. Through a mutual acquaintance she encountered guitarist Matt Guy, exchanging messages before their initial rehearsal; he arrived carrying an Oahu “Diana” Lap Steel Guitar discovered in a pawnshop.
“I was intrigued by the sound of it and taught myself to play. I still don't know how to use it properly but it opened up my songwriting and my creativity. I never picked up the bass again. I sat for hours and played it through new wave era effect boxes -- mostly delay. It creates an expansive sound that's very oceanic and never ending. In the '80s, synth pop was rife with flanges, reverb and delay, so it was a sound I had an affinity for.”
The instrument dates from the 1940s or 1950s and originated with the Oahu Publishing Company of Cleveland, Ohio. Constructed of solid wood, it is typically amplified through a Line 6 DL-6 Delay that produces a lonesome, ghostly timbre rich in trebly overtones and dark, scratching bass notes, markedly distinct from the smoother, mellow character of pedal steel. Employed in country music during the late 1930s when electric instruments first appeared, the lap steel now sees limited application, largely confined to Hawaiian ensembles and a narrow segment of old-timey country; few manufacturers currently produce the instrument.
Last Town Chorus commenced as a duo, occasionally augmented by friends, and issued its self-titled debut in 2003 on the artists’ own imprint with limited regional distribution. The recording featured modest bass and organ overdubs yet remained essentially a lap-steel-and-guitar duet distinguished by Hickey’s singular technique and forlorn vocals. In January 2005 Paul Smith, director of England’s Blast First imprint known for extreme music by acts such as Sonic Youth and the Grey Area, encountered a track on a compilation and reached out; he reissued the album on the newly formed Blast First Petite subsidiary, prompting widespread acclaim in the British press through four-star, half-page notices. Hickey and Guy toured extensively across the U.K. until Guy relocated to Japan; Hickey thereafter performed with a rotating roster of musicians, earning further positive coverage for sets that shifted between ambient, dirge-like passages and intense bursts of primal noise, unified by her expressive singing and introspective lyrics.
Having established a foothold in the U.K., Hickey returned to record and produce the follow-up, Wire Waltz, primarily within her Brooklyn apartment. “I love having the freedom to evolve the songs as they're recorded. I can try out concepts and ideas and explore sonically, but by the same token, I like to put it aside at times and focus on my performance. For the next album I'd like to have a producer and work with my regular touring band. Too much freedom and too much constraint, in life and music, has its dangers. The trick is finding a balance. Making Wire Waltz was like being a divorcée. I needed to make an album where I was in complete control of every dimension, but now that I've done hundreds of live shows and played with a real band, I'm eager to share the reins with another person.”
Wire Waltz appeared in England in October 2006, after which Hickey and her band revisited the country to capitalize on prior momentum. The album’s tracks flow continuously, generating an overarching haunting, melancholy atmosphere. Shortly before its American release in 2007, ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy featured her interpretation of David Bowie’s “Modern Love,” markedly enhancing its commercial prospects. She intends to issue the subsequent Last Town Chorus album in spring 2008. Regarding the project’s cryptic designation she remarks: “It's evocative of the spirit of the project. Two people at the edge of a small town, a dusky sundown desert kind of feeling. The chorus is the spiritual aspect; we had the idea of being a core of two with a choir of people drifting in and out.”
Albums
Singles
