The Fabulous Minton Sparks, Nashville-based Musical and Performance Artist
Fri Apr 12th, 2019
Interview with Minton Sparks
Welcome to our another AboutTally community interview, a growing collection of answers to questions posed to individuals in our community doing something special, in a unique way, and making a difference. We will respectfully entertain your suggestions of who YOU would like to be interviewed! We hope you enjoy and get to know these fascinating people a little better. Minton has come to Tallahassee for a few years now, bringing a perfume of days gone by in the South through her musical and performance art, displayed at the annual Word of South. | |
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Deanna | Word of South is a festival of literature and music which held its inaugural event April of 2014. April 2019's event features a unique blend of writers and musicians and an exploration of the relationship between the two. The festival features authors who write about music, musicians who are also authors, authors and musicians appearing together, and everything in between. One of the highlights for me a few years ago was getting to meet and see the performance artist Minton Sparks. |
Deanna | Her performance defies categorization, but once you've seen it, it will stay in your heart and stay in your mind and it's become a new bar for me in seeing performers in person. Do they touch me the way mitten did? Do I come away thinking about it? Did I learn something? Did I laugh and maybe even did I cry? This year we're fortunate to have met Minton Sparks join us again and she's been very gracious in giving us an interview this morning. She certainly embodies the spirit of the festival, if anyone does. Again, she's a performance artist, renowned for making her listeners smile and smile again while waiting to reach out and touch the characters she spins into their imaginations. Thank you for being with us, Minton. |
Minton | Hi. I'm happy to be here. I'm just sitting in the car on the way down to the festival. |
Deanna | I'm so happy to have you with us. Um, I want to just start off by asking you, I know you've been asked this in many interviews, but who would you say are your biggest influences that have gotten you to where your performance and your cd's and all of your art happenings are, are centered around today? What brought you to where you are influenced wise? |
Minton | Yeah, that's always a really hard question for me because I can't ... every person on the spot. I mean it's, uh, a lot of poets. I kind of think of myself first and foremost as a poet, so Adrian Brett, Sharon Olds. There's just so many poets and I have a sense that as having an influence on me. |
Deanna | Did you happen to know the late Gamble Rogers? |
Minton | You know, I don't know who that is, but I hear a reference to him a lot. I need to look him up because I heard he's a story teller, right. |
Deanna | He was a troubadour and storyteller that I got to see at Micanopy Festival in the Fall every year, and we went to a wedding recently too to hear in a biographer, outline his book. So I have a little thing for you that I'll hook you up with with Gamble. You need to know who he is. |
Minton | Yeah. I'd love to. You know lots and lots of musicians as well as singers/songwriters that are lyric based, uh, Patty Griffon and Darrel Scott... You know, it's hard to think of off the top of my head, but I've never can think who. |
Deanna | I understand well... I'm glad we started with the hardest question. Are you a Laurie Anderson fan? |
Minton | Oh, huge... huge fan of hers. |
Deanna | Yeah. I think she prepped me for you. |
Minton | Yeah, she's perfect. I got to see her a couple of years ago in Nashville. It was, you know, it was a dream-come-true that she, that, you know, I remember performance artists [audio lost], |
Deanna | You know, I know what we get out of seeing you and how much I'm looking forward to it. What do you get out of traveling as long as you are in the car today and attending events like word of south? |
Minton | Uh...I love acts of service... and after shows listening to people who want to tell stories that have happened in their own lives and that's thrilling to me because I think that's a lot of the reason people respond to this work and it throws them back into their own personal stories and um, you know, it's still really worth it. |
Deanna | Yeah. I always lead with the grandmother's purse smelling like juicy fruit... That totally took me there. |
Minton | Yeah. It's hard to find somebody that doesn't have some association with that kind of thing. |
Deanna | How did you get from teaching psychology to performance in storytelling and the art that you bless us with today? |
Minton | I worked as a psychologist probably ten years and taught women's psychology at divinity school and dropped out and then I ended up having a guitar teacher. I was taking guitar lessons forever.... not getting very good at it because I was writing poetry in the middle of all that. Um, we just stared, sort of, trying to figure out how you put music behind it somehow, but still couldn't quite figure it out. Then, later down the road I met John Jackson and he knew all kinds of genres of music and we sort of figured out how they go together more like a song. |
Deanna | Can you tell us a little bit about your partner? You just mentioned him. How did you meet him? Hello? I assume you are in the car as well? |
Minton | Yeah. He can't hear you. He's driving. I met him through another mutual friend and knew of him personally. [Minton to John Jackson] how did we meet? I can't remember. Oh that's right! Tracey Hackney, a dobro player, who said you got to meet John Jackson because he knows all genres of music and he played with a million people before I met him... Bob Dylan for years and Lucinda Williams, Shelby Lynne... and just had a lot of musical influences... |
Deanna | It's a pretty exciting partnership. Who have you yet to play with or perform beside that you bet you aspire to? |
Minton | Wow.... Tom Waits... |
Deanna | Yeah. No kidding. He's my favorite. |
Minton | Yeah, that would be, you know, the thrilling thing of all time. I mean, we got to open for the Punch Brothers a couple of years ago, just since their musicianship is exciting, you know, but Tom Waits, I think, it's the one, I think of. |
Deanna | Well, you and me both, we're got both going to just think about that and manifest it because that would be a dream. Um, yeah, we noticed that you treat your characters in your story with such affection and you offer your listeners a chance to smile at them while still respecting the people they might be based on. Have you ever ruffled feathers with your stories? |
Minton | I'm sorry? |
Deanna | Have you ever ruffled feathers with the origin of your stories? |
Minton | Okay. You know, I have a very strange family... They like to be reported on, which is strange because that is, you know, the whole ethical issue that... but a lot of them [the stories] are true. |
Deanna | Yeah. |
Minton | All right, I have to say all of them are true, but I too come from a clan of people who liked to, you know, they, they'll call me and say, "Oh, you're not going to believe it. You know, your aunt has divorced for the eight time," and you this going to be a great story... and, uh, and they're excited to see what comes up around that. So, and you know, my grandmother, when the very first record came out in 1999, it's a lot about her and the difficulty of her family and she loved it. I remember sitting in the car with her and playing them [the stories] for her, and I don't think she felt violated in any way. She sort of felt like, oh, thank goodness somebody, you know, it hasn't been forgotten. |
Deanna | Well, it's pretty cool that you're speaking a voice for your family. Your legacy work is the story of your family. Um, much like Rick Bragg who was here last year and we got to talk to him and I've been a longtime fan of Rick's. Um, but I see that being very similar. You're, you're, you're leaving the legacy story of your family and all southern families. |
Minton | Yeah, that for me is sort of the hope around that. |
Deanna | What, what do you think that is true about the South that makes it so ripe for storytelling? |
Minton | Uh, I think historically the South was land-based. Right. You know, so... it was late to the intellectual party... not that there's not tons of intellectuals in the South... I didn't mean to say that... you know, but it was land and farming and family. I think that's thrilling... uh... I don't know if it's ritual or story. I'm hesitating because I was talking to woman the other day who told me one of the most beautiful stories I've ever heard about her, uh, aunt having a stillborn baby and how this family knew how to ritualize that. The story of it is a beautiful on a level that is, you know, hard to hear in some ways, and I think that's one thing in the South that there's still a knowing about rituals. and their rituals are passed around and it's sort of a bedrock of culture, and that seems [attractive] to the kind of people who will spend time in the South as writers, trying to get a whiff of that. |
Deanna | Instant Flannery O'Connor's... |
Minton | ...right. Um, did you say... |
Deanna | Yeah. Instant Flannery O'Connor's. |
Minton | Oh yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah. |
Deanna | Um, can you describe your role in this place in time? In one word, where you are right now in your life. Is there a word that pops up for you? Kind of like the word of the year that a lot of us meditate on for what we want to manifest this year. Can you think of a word that describes where you are? |
Minton | Ah, it's the visual. It's not one word. It's sort of the way through the edge of the past and present that is... electric. |
Deanna | Well that, that's a pretty great word. So coming from being a poet, performance artists and novelists teacher, psychologist, essayist... what do you aspire to next besides performing with Tom Waits? |
Minton | Um... I'm always in the middle of what I'm reading and I'm in middle of... sort of... backwoods mysticism... so that's really interesting to me.. |
Deanna | Oh, that ought to make some really fascinating pieces coming from you. |
Minton | Yeah. It's, uh... I hope so. |
Deanna | So we've already touched on what I perceive [as your legacy]... The gift that you've given your family and the legacy of telling their story through the ages. Do you have a legacy that you want to be known for? Not even when you're gone, but after you've performed for Tom and you've moved on in different parts of your career and it's gotten even more rich... what do you want your legacy to be? |
Minton | Wow, this is really good questions. Um, you know, cutting [criticism], I just think there's something that's leaning over the edge of what hasn't yet happened. There's sort of a letting go of the critic. And I think that in my teaching, that's the whole premise of teaching people is just sort of dwell on the unknown and leave the house of the critic and see who you are, and I think that's more of sort of being a teacher of that. |
Deanna | That's beautiful. Um, how's the way that you have manifested all of your characters changed how you view yourself as a woman or a female? As a woman, now, you're a young woman; you're a beautiful woman and through your characters you appear to be crone-ish or old, and in each your physicality is so manifested in the characters that you're portraying. Has it changed the way you see yourself as a woman? |
Minton | Yeah, yeah. Time collapses the history with the present with the future. And I think that sort of deconstructs a linear narrative of who I image I am. That's definitely impacted it because you a body, when you're performing... those time periods collapsing, I don't know, it redefines about how time [flows] through a body, |
Deanna | ...because it is fascinating to see you out of character and in character. Like I said, from afar you appeared to be a much older woman because you take on the countenance so well when you embody your characters. And then up close when we were able to chat and you were kind of pulling up your things [character elements]... it was obvious that I could pass you in the grocery store and not have that impression. You really take it all in and kind of trans-mutate through whoever you're representing. |
Minton | It seems like... I always think about my kids when they were around their grandmother or their great aunts and all that. They're kind of... you know... they're planning themselves inside the child the whole time they're growing up around them. It definitely comes back. |
Deanna | Right. If it's not one thing, it's your mother, right? |
Minton | Yeah... [laughter]... That's exactly true. |
Deanna | Do you see some of your characterizations coming out in the words or actions or pantomimes of your kids? |
Minton | Uh, do I see the characters coming out for that? |
Deanna | In them. Yes. Do you hear them make references that are not from their mother, but from one of her characters? |
Minton | Oh yeah, for sure. Yes. |
Deanna | I bet that's a hoot |
Minton | Yeah, they were always talking about us... not about people that weren't in the room, but that they were conjuring. |
Deanna | Do you ever see yourself performing alongside them or them alongside you at one of your performances? |
Minton | Um... not along side... but... they're definitely in the room. |
Deanna | Okay. Well, if this audio does not turn out to be clean, then I'll just transcribe it if that's okay with you. |
Minton | Okay. |
Deanna | And the last thing is what can Tallahassee do for you? How would you like to leave this festival feeling really feeling loved and completed and given whatever we have to give you here, what would make it a successful visit for you? |
Minton | I just love when people come to the show. You know.. open to something new that haven't seen before. |
Deanna | Well, know that you always have places to stay and be when you're here, considered it part of your extended network. There are many people who would just love to have you as a guest and would leave you alone and let you prep and just show you a good time. I hope you get to eat some good food while you're here. |
Minton | Okay, well I hope I get to see you! |
Deanna | Yup. I'll see you tomorrow. I'll be taking pictures. |
Minton | Okay. Thank you so much. |
Deanna | Thanks Minton, and I'm going to end this with some references back to your website and clips and things like that so people can easily find you. Have a safe trip. |
Minton | Thank you! |
Find Minton sparks
Website: Minton Sparks