It's one thing for an artist to finance a record, but when an artist lays out thousands of dollars for a world tour of sorts, that, as the expression has it, is a whole 'nother smoke.
Yet Lene Lovich is opening up her own purse to pay for a four-month jaunt through North America, Australia, Japan, Thailand and India. [Note: Concerts in Thailand, India (Bombay), Hong Kong were scheduled, but eventually did not take place. There had also been plans for 1983 concerts in Yugoslavia, Rome, UK, but these did not happen either.]
"I've always been attracted to self-made people," Lovich says by way of explaining her strategy. "I'm self-made myself. You know my record label (Stiff) has no more offices here, so I'm totally independent, and it's up to me to take care of things. Right now, I'm here because I want to play in America, I want to thrill myself with music. There's no other reason to be in this business, is there?"
Lovich, who hasn't appeared in the States in some eighteen months, is, by economic necessity, keeping her shows simple.
"We don't do videos, slides, special effects," she explains, "it's a very direct, personal show. I want the audience to know me, and I want to see their faces."
Her current band - guitarist Les Chappell (her writing partner), bassist Ron Francois, drummer Steve Goulding (from The Rumour) and keyboardists Ben Barson and Lindon Connah - is strongly rhythm-oriented, while Lovich's vocals continue, in the artist's words, to "pick up certain frequencies and bear down on them."
She seems reasonably happy with the response to her recent LP, No Man's Land, and expects the tour to revive interest in the record, but the best she is hoping for "is not to lose money".
"What's important," Lovich says, "is that I plan to stay around, and at this point I've never felt more ambitious about the future, never felt more on top of things. I remember as a child growing up in a non-artistic family and being told I couldn't sing. But I kept at it. It's important for all of us to make something happen, to make our mark on the world."
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