Poe

Working from audio tapes recorded by her father before he died and incorporating bits of the epic novel "House of Leaves" by Mark Z. Danielewski (Poe's brother), the album is an eerie revelation of family secrets. It's a tale that was close to going unheard when radio programmers told Poe that they simply were "not playing women" these days. So Poe got creative and asked her brother to read portions of his novel over a remix of the the rocking "Hey Pretty." The rest, as she told Meridith Gottlieb, is a mix of luck, pluck and the good fortune of having met a weird English guy in junior high who turned her on to Depeche Mode.

MTV: "Hey Pretty" didn't get on radio via the traditional route. Can you explain that?

Poe: Radio was not interested. I called a few program directors, and they [said], "We really love the record, but we're just not playing women." This one [program director] in Portland, Oregon, said, "My station is basically in the same boat. Do some crazy mix that you think will fit this format, and I'll play it once." I go home, and I'm like, "They're not playing women? Fine, I've got a brother." So I called my brother, and I'm like, "You gotta come over and read a piece of your book in this song."

I wrote on [the tape], "Rough mix from Poe's house, unmastered — do not play." ... He played it and got inundated with phone calls. By the end of the week he had played it 25 times, which wouldn't have meant all that much because it's a small station in Portland. But the next week, KROQ in Los Angeles had it. ... The funny thing was that Mark writes his book, and he gets all these critical reviews — you know, the New York Times, all the good stuff — [and] still doesn't have a girlfriend. He's on the radio once, and every ex-girlfriend calls him. He's like, "Wait, I spend 10 years writing a book, and then I'm on the radio once and that's when everybody calls?" It gives you a little bit of perspective between the writer's life and the rock star. He's a rock star now. [Laughs]

"Hey Pretty" [RealVideo]

MTV: Doesn't your work have a history of interweaving with your brother's writing?

Poe: The way that my brother and I have shared ideas goes back so far. ... We moved around like crazy as kids, so we were in countries where nobody spoke English, and we had to be friends. We just couldn't fight — we couldn't afford to. My brother would write something, and I would get jealous and go, "God, that's so good." I would take an idea or a line, and I would write [something,] and then my brother would get jealous, so he would take a bit of that and incorporate it into a character in a short story. Later, [when] I started writing songs, we started to really like the fact that there was this long history to some of these characters. Even Johnny Truant, the major character in his book, references [my song] "Angry Johnny," which references something much older. That process intensified while I was making this album and while Mark was finishing his book.

MTV: There were a lot more female artists on the radio when your first album came out than there are now. What happened?

Poe: It got so extreme, and the pinnacle of the girl moment was Lilith Fair. To some degree, in my opinion, they made it exclusive. They said, "This is all girls," and the classic response to that is, "Fine, we're going to be all boys." I do have a bit of a disagreement with that. Lilith Fair should have included guys. It could have been put together by a woman and promoted by a woman, and it's not that I think women shouldn't bond together and be cool, but what we're talking about is music, and music has no gender. ... I think it's always a little dangerous to be gender-specific. I think that the reaction to that was for rock radio to go, "This has gone too far. It's not rock and roll anymore, it's too girly."

"Angry Johnny" [RealVideo]

MTV: How did your late father contribute to Haunted?

Poe: The record started with the discovery of these tapes [of my father]. ... I found a box of cassettes — labeled meticulously in his handwriting — of him talking to me. ... I can't even tell you what it was like to hear my father saying, "You know, I wanted to share a few thoughts with you," telling me things he never said when he was alive. It was the most intense moment of my life. So I threw it into the computer, and I cut up every phrase and labeled eight hours of audio and started to re-create this conversation with him that I couldn't complete when he was living.

MTV: Do you feel you've closed a couple of chapters of your life with this record?

Poe: Totally. At the end of making the record, I was working on the last song and ... I had this last little sample of [a] girl saying, "It's OK, you can go now." I just burst into tears and said, "I can't finish this song." And [my co-producer said,] "Why?" I was like, "Because when I do, I really have to let him go." It could have been just my complicated sense of who he [my father] was, what was uncomfortable and unresolved and tangled up. But whatever it was, it was gone, and for the first time in a very long time I felt like life is brand new — like I'm a blank canvas, like I'm starting over.

MTV: How do you feel about sharing a stage with one of your favorite bands, Depeche Mode?

Poe: I only saw them live once, and it was three years ago. I remember saying to my brother, "God, I would give anything to sit through a soundcheck of theirs." I always was amazed at how warm their music felt [even though] it was so electronic. You didn't get the feeling that someone was just playing to tape and singing. The first thing I thought when I got this tour was, "Man, I'm going to get to sit through every soundcheck and look at how they do what they do." When I was in junior high, this guy moved to our school from London, and he was taller than everybody and really skinny, and he wore black eyeliner and had spiky hair and had a Sex Pistols T-shirt and this long earring. He was this unique, interesting, badass guy, and every girl in the school had a crush on [him]. He was blasting this tape of Depeche Mode in his car, and that was the first time I heard it. I can remember every element of that moment.

MTV: Will your brother Mark be with you on this tour?

Poe: My brother, the writer, who sits in his room writing, is going to be onstage in front of 20,000 people at a time. As the little sister, I feel like I'm playing a cruel joke on him.