Tift Merritt Revisits ‘Tambourine’ Album And Its Demos On New Companion LP

When it came time for Tift Merritt to record her second album more than 20 years ago, the expectations from her then-major label were high. Her 2002 debut album, Bramble Rose, was a critical success that elevated the profile of the North Carolina-based country-folk musician. “There was a fair amount of pressure on me,” she recalls today, “be it real or what was being translated to me via a record label: ‘You have to have a hit.’ And I’ve sort of learned to duck when someone says that.” (laughs)

Merritt stayed true to herself with the release of 2004’s Tambourine; not only did the album receive widespread acclaim, but it was also nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Country Album category. For its 20th anniversary, Tambourine was reissued this past Friday on indie label One Riot Records as a vinyl release.

“I think back on that time when I was on a major label and jumping through a lot of those hoops,” she says, “and how much I loved working with [producer] George Drakoulias and what a friend and ally he was. In so many ways, that was an absolute musical dream come true that I really had to fight for.”

Musically, Tambourine was a departure from the introspective tone of Bramble Rose, drawing predominantly from alt-country rock and Memphis soul influences. That extroverted nature can heard on such tracks as “Good Hearted Man,” “I Am Your Tambourine,” “Stray Paper” and “Wait It Out.”

“I just was kind of bored with introversion,” she explains about the shift heard on Tambourine. “I felt like there was an energy to what I did that I wanted to capture. And I also wanted to challenge myself. I think what I have always admired about soul music is that it can have the introspection and depth of folk music, but it never lacks for energy and vivaciousness.”

Merritt remembers coming off the tour for Bramble Rose and starting to write what would become Tambourine. “I went home, and I threw myself at it,” she says. “And I didn’t throw myself at writing a hit. I threw myself into writing with intention and trying to write the very best that I could.”

“The writing was challenging,” she adds. “I think it was probably more to do with where the label was at that period of time. I was somewhat of an afterthought. It would come down the pipeline as like, ‘There’s no hits here.’ So that was a long year of writing that record with a lot of throwing myself into things that were not very well received.”

One major factor that contributed to Merritt’s vision for the record was Drakoulias, whose production credits included the Black Crowes, the Jayhawks and former Lone Justice singer Maria McKee. “I remember that I was playing in a bar in North Carolina by myself, and somebody walked up to me and said, ‘You need to check out Maria McKee.’ Of course, I fell in love with all that she did, but in particular [her 1993 album produced by Drakoulias] You Gotta Sin to Get Saved. And so I had always wanted to work with George.”

McKee guested on Tambourine along with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell and keyboardist Benmont Tench, as well as the late guitarist Neal Casal and drummer Don Heffington. “This was probably the first time I met George,” Merritt says. “I went out to L.A. I hung out at his house. We played songs. And we went over to Mike Campbell’s studio. I don’t remember what we did all afternoon, but I remember playing “Ain’t Looking Closely” for him on a Wurlitzer, and he played along. Then it was over, and he was like, ‘Cool tune.’ And I was like, ‘What?’ It was really dreamy.”

Tambourine went on to receive a Grammy nomination for Best Country Album, which totally surprised Merritt. “That’s one of those moments that’s really for the people that support you when it doesn’t make any sense to you. You take that to them and you say, ‘Remember when it seemed so crazy that I said I wanted to be a singer, and you believed in me? This is for you.’ So that was a really sweet family affair.”

But there is more to the Tambourine story 20 years after its initial release. In addition to the album’s vinyl reissue, Merritt has simultaneoulsy unveiled a companion record, Time and Patience, which features demos of several Tambourine songs mostly recorded in her North Carolina kitchen in the early 2000s. While it is technically an archival compilation, it sounds like an original studio album in its own right. The release was prompted by One Riot Records asking her if she had any material from her vault.

“I had some archivist friends at Duke who helped me digitize the things that wouldn’t play in the CD player anymore and started going through all that stuff,” she says. “I hadn’t really thought back on that time in a long time. There was still so much intention and integrity there, and it was such a surprise…It was such a quiet vindication.”

Fans of the songs from the Tambourine album may be pleasantly surprised to hear them in their early acoustic incarnations on Time and Patience. “I’ve always believed that a song is a good song if you can sing it stripped down by yourself and then also add a bunch of music to it. That’s what a good song can do. Those demos— some of them are just one take.”

“It’s really sort of this different experience of when you write something, and when you’re writing, you just want to take a picture of it and move on to the next song,” she adds. “You’re just trying to document, ‘I wrote it. It works. Let’s go!’ So a lot of times, you just learn to play it, and it’s usually slower than it ends up on a record. But there’s an intimacy to it that.”

In addition to the demos, Time and Patience contains a number of original recordings that were left off Tambourine’s final tracklist–among them the rocking “Last Day I Knew What to Do,” whose lyrics were based on a real-life experience from that period from 20 years ago.

“At that point, I was making trips out to L.A. Quite frankly, I was really struggling because my songs weren’t good enough. My band wasn’t good enough. I really was at my wits’ end about how to hold my integrity and all the sort of things that were being asked of me, probably much more flippantly than I realized at the time. I was very earnest. And meeting George was the unlocking of the key to that time. So that was definitely about making that record.”

The album’s title track, “Time and Patience,” was recorded in a cabin with her band. “I had all these new songs, and we had our pedal steel player, Greg Readling. His family had a cabin up in Black Mountain [in North Carolina]. Somehow, we ended up having a party up there. We were like, ‘Let’s go woodshed together.’ We just had a wonderful time together. I was so glad that one found the light of day.”

Despite revisiting the archives for Time and Patience, Merritt says she’s generally someone who looks ahead rather than back. Outside of her music, she’s been immersed in other endeavors, from serving as a practitioner-in-residence at Duke University to developing the Gables Lodge, a creative residency center in Raleigh that looks to open next year.

Merritt’s last studio album, Stitch of the World, came out in 2017. “I’ve never stopped working on music,” she says in response to the hiatus between studio albums. “I would say that this time away from the road was really good for me. I had never had a time as a grown-up when I was off the road for seven years. And that was a really surprisingly rewarding thing. But I’ve always been writing and working on songs. So I’m making some plans to get in the studio and throwing it out where everybody can see.”