“Will you take me as your mistress?” asks singer Inara George in the opening track of her solo debut “All Rise.” Sure, it isn’t your typical love song, but then again, George is not your typical singer-songwriter. Luckily for Eugene, she’ll be making an appearance Sunday at John Henry’s.
Growing up in a home full of music in Topanga Canyon, Calif., George had decided early on to not take the road set out in front of her. Her dad Lowell George, the late legendary front man for the rock band Little Feat, had set a path for her that could have easily been taken, but she decided to explore her love of classical theater instead.
“(Because of my dad), there was a bit of me that didn’t feel like going that route because it almost seemed that the path had already been forged for me,” George said. “So that was my resistance, and I wanted to take the road where there was least resistance.”
So George packed her bags and headed across the country to Boston, where she focused her studies on classical theater, having been influenced by her own performances in Shakespearean plays at Topanga Canyon’s Theatricum Botanicum. But one summer home was all it took for George’s life to completely change. On a whim, she and some friends from high school decided to start a band, which they called Lode. They were quickly picked up by Geffen Records and spent the next two years touring. That was twelve years ago, and that’s when George realized that music was simply in her blood.
“I kind of just found myself in this scenario,” George said. “When I was 18, I joined a band, and I had never played in a band before. I wasn’t really completely 100 percent excited about it. And then, when time went by and I had better experiences and more fun, it sort of seemed like the thing that I might be better at than other things, so I sort of just stuck to it.”
After the implosion of Lode, George found herself tangled in another band, Merrick, with which she put out two CDs. When Merrick called it quits in 2002, George decided it was time for her to do things on her own.
With the help of producer/guitarist Michael Andrews, who has composed scores for Donnie Darko and Freaks and Geeks, George found herself back in the studio. This time, she was doing it on her own, but she had a team of musicians to back her up every step of the way, That team included keyboardist Greg Kurstin, who has played with the likes of Beck and Ben Harper, Greyboy Allstar bassist Chris Stillwell, former Cake drummer Pete McNeal and of course Andrews backing her on the guitar.
Although George’s home life provided many different avenues of influences, George, who describes her music as “indie/folk/pop,” doesn’t like to credit anyone specifically for affecting her music. Instead, she prefers to listen to many different types of music and enjoy them like any other fan.
“I think throughout my life, I’ve just had certain (artists) that I like,” George said. “(On the road), we’re doing this thing with my iPod where we’re just playing all of the songs alphabetically, and when the songs come up, I’m like, ‘Oh, I forgot I had that on here.’
“Right now, we’re listening to Tom Waits, and I love him. I love Leonard Cohen, Nick Drake, Joni Mitchell, BjÃ