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Tiff Merritt's going places

By /Jenny Mayo
March 21, 2008

Tiff Merritt completed "Another Country "after returning to America from Paris.

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Tift Merritt has a way of selling a place, be it the Parisian apartment where she lived while writing her new album (February's "Another Country") or the house in Los Angeles' Laurel Canyon that she and her band rented while recording it.

When describing these and other spots she has enjoyed over the years, the singer-songwriter deals in images that resemble dew-covered daydreams and ponders new doors that have opened as the result of her staying at these locales.

The way she speaks or sings about a place, it's tempting to think that maybe, just maybe, they might be capable of curing all that ails us, too.

When we catch a few minutes with Miss Merritt in mid-March, the 33-year-old is at it again. It's the first day of Austin, Texas' South by Southwest music festival, and the musician is holed up at her "favorite hotel" in the world: the San Jose.

The highlight of the annual festival for her isn't the intimate performances she plays or attends or the creative inspiration that saturates the town; it's this hotel — "and this Negro Modelo that I have in my hand," she adds after a brief pause.

What exactly is it about the San Jose? Well, it's not the stylish rooms, hip lounge or trendy neighborhood. For the Texas-born, North Carolina-raised artist, this place is about friends, connections and opportunities. It was within the hotel's walls, for example, that the idea for her new monthly public radio show was born.

"I was telling my friend Liz Lambert, who owns this hotel, that I was very lonely being on the road so much," Miss Merritt says. She recalls mentioning her fascination with 80-year-old painter Cy Twombly and how she longed to chat with him about craft and the greater artistic world.

Not long after, Miss Merritt and the hotel proprietor were flying six hours down the highway to Marfa, Texas, to ask the town's National Public Radio station if the musician could have her own artist-interview show.

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