Minnie Driver - Here & Pregnant
Following on from her critically well-received debut album EVERYTHING I’VE GOT IN MY POCKET, Minnie Driver has just released the excellent Americana styled album SEASTORIES to prove once and for all that her debut was no fluke, and that she has the credentials to be known as a singer-songwriter in her own right. In fact you only have to look back into her youth to find that she was a singer before becoming a top actress. I discovered this when chatting to a heavily pregnant Minnie during a hectic European promotional visit that included such high profile TV shows as Graham Norton, Jonathan Ross and GMTV.
“I have been singing my whole life, you had to play a musical instrument at my school. So I did a little bit of piano, and then I was signed to Island when I was nineteen and kind of developed my deal with my band who were very Massive Attack-y. I wrote the choruses and melody lines, but that didn’t work out and then my film career took off, but I constantly wrote and played, working around musicians for the whole of the fifteen years that it took me to write my first record. I taught myself to play the guitar so as to write my first record. I don’t play that well at all, but I play well enough to write and play rhythm when we are a full band, and for my friends at home and stuff. It is hard to play when you are pregnant though because I have to stand up to sing, and the bump pushes it at a funny angle so I’m not playing tonight. So that is sort of my musical history.”
Minnie had mentioned her school being musical, and I wondered which one she went to? “I went to a school called Beedale’s, which is very progressive, a boarding school. A really wonderful place, with an amazing music section. You were really encouraged to evolve musically, whether you are musical or not, which I think is a great thing for kids, to help express themselves that way.”
To read the full story turn to the latest issue of Maverick Magazine - Issue 73, August 2008