Today we’d like to introduce you to Megg Farrell.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I started out as a songwriter in high school. I grew up in Jersey across the river from the city so my first musical experiences/performances were all NYC. I started performing in the village around 16 with my ukulele and my angsty songs. Before college I took a year off and moved to North Carolina to train as a white water raft guide, that was my first time experiencing the world of blue grass and country music and it was something that stayed with me. The rugged outdoor life felt good to me after growing up as an indie rock city kid. I continued as an artist into college where I had an anti-folk band called The Whiskey Social. We toured house shows and loft parties and were regulars at Pete’s Candy Store.
I wanted to move to France. I college, I realized if I went to this jazz school I could get credit for my university and I thought hey maybe this will be an away I could just stay. I had started going to France after high school after connecting with musicians out there and falling in love with a stormy Frenchman. Anyways, didn’t really plan on becoming a jazz singer, just wanted a visa, college credit and I thought jazz theory made more sense for song writing than classical. In Paris, I started getting hired by one of my teachers for gigs as I was the only singer who spoke English and he wanted to play the blues. That was my first taste of gigging culture. Prior to that I had made my money of street performing. I busked in New York growing up and was paying for my food and wine in Paris with busking as well.
When I moved back to New York from Paris I stumbled into the world of old time jazz via this bar called Mona’s. I was trying to have a normal life and not be an artist but I was always roped back into the gigging world. I worked marketing a few months, was a bike messenger, and then spent a few years as a genealogist for PBS, eventually it became clear I was going to be a musician no matter how hard I tried to stop.
So I went full time jazz singer when I was around 25 or 26, hard to remember exactly. I played clubs, hotels, private parties, Brooklyn warehouses, DIY patries (I ran a party space in bk for a minute as well) for years and then eventually broke out into touring. The more I toured south the more I got into country music and started dipping back into my roots of old blues and songwriting. Eventually Nashville hooked me and I started spending A LOT of time down there. During COVID I secretly moved down there and didn’t tell any of my regular gigs in New York. I basically flew to New York monthly and kept making money up there to pay for my life in Nashville.
Slowly I became full time Nashville and since then have dove fully into my original music, playing country, and living a life more aligned with the Americana world than my old life as a city jazz lady. Jazz is the ultimate ticket for a traveler and I still tap into my old life of packing up the banjo and picking up bar gigs to be wherever I want… but mainly I’m trying to focus on creating my sound and touring with it. I still go back to New York every once in a while and live the old jazz life, I still sometimes do the Paris one too but in general my life now is filled with writing sessions, honky tonks, driving through Texas, and lots of two-stepping… and I love it.
After moving to Nashville I also did a stint of years touring the world with Postmodern Jukebox and then was picked up by Cirque du Soleil, safe to say those were a couple of wild years.
About to start a new album and I’m stoked about it
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Are any roads smooth the entire way? No matter how many times they repave there is always a section with a pothole. For me I think the struggles were always financial at first. My parents area weird theatre people and so I’ve always been my own support and that definitely can get you down in a city like New York where there are so any artists who parents pay their rent (and their marketing budget). But that’s also life and I cherish the integrity that that grit has given me. Everything I have I’ve made on my own and I’m proud of that. I also know how to be poor and that is a good skill. On top of that my family instilled in me what wealth really is. Wealth can be defined by a dollar sign if you choose to define it that way or it can be defined by the richness of experience, by beauty, art, love, good conversation, seeing the world and in that I am extremely wealthy. Even now as ai write this, I’m in austin with barely any money in the bank sitting at SoHo House sipping on a fancy coffee because a friend of a friend was generous enough to take me in while I was visiting and give me a pass to this fancy spot. The struggles of finances are real and of course it would be lovely to have a big wad of cash to pay for my next album but I also appreciate what living on the edge financially has helped me to appreciate. When people are generous to me it means the world and it makes the sunset more beautiful, the pancakes a bit sweeter.
I definitely have dealt with a long history of substance abuse and self hatred and I can say that now openly because I on the other side of a long battle. I hated myself for most of my life, never thought anything I did was good enough and kept running at the speed of light searching for that gratification that always seemed to slip away, Along the road of that I picked up a dépendant on substance, I would say alcohol but it was really anything to keep me from a sober mind for too long. Mainly alcohol but I would mix the bag all the time to avoid dealing with accepting myself, drugs, booze, sex, pleasure. I’ve been through a lot of that and I’ve lost a lot because of that. I lost some big loves because of that and a lot of opportunities. My addiction to drugs and alcohol sky rocketed while traveling with the circus and when it ended I was a puddle. I was climbing out of that whole when my relationship with my long term partner also fell apart. All of this came to a head in January of this year and all the pain and struggle lead me to the ultimate a change. I’m now stronger than ever , I’m accepting myself and working hard on myself and I have been sober for a few months now. The struggles happen to everyone not just artists . It’s how you deal with them and learn, Mine were cyclical until this year and I finally broke the chain and am walking forward.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am a jazz singer who sings country. I’m a songwriter who plays jazz. I’m an athlete who learned music. I’m an Irish American fluent in French. Im dualistic and my music reflects that. I’m probably most proud of my albums Massive Negroni and My Window Faces the South. I love my original albums but I think the next one I create will probably be my favorite. I’m proud of my window because I think it showcases an idea I had beautiful and is the source material for how I’ve moved forward since moving to Nashville. My thought was taking the idea behind Western swing and creating an album of that, not a bob wills style album. Mix jazz and country of any era and make something, The record features New York jazz artists and Nashville country players.
Massive Negroni I love because it is us. My friends and I and the way we’ve played together live at silily gigs for years. We captured that sound in one day at a little studio in Catskills New York. It’s honest and true and a little glimpse of a moment in time that I cherish.
We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up?
Every July we would go up to Catskills to members weekend for Ensemble Studio Theatre which is a theatre in New York my family was interviewed with. All the actors of the theatre would be up there and any kids would come too. Every Fourth of July was the epic water fight. My dad was the king of driving the kids crazy. One year he helped us start the water fight with the drama it deserves. There was this huge field/hill next to the barn that was a theatre. the barn was the safe zone. This water fight was amongst anyone who stepped foot on the field. Water guns water balloons, buckets you name it. Anyways so one year my dad had all the kids line op on the top of the hill armed to the teeth with buckets, water guns, and ballooons for when the fighting got real serious. He got colored smoke bombs and lit them in a line. He blasted epic music I think from Braveheart and we all stormed down the hill through the plumes of smoke an charted the adults starting the most epic of epic water battles. It was a site to behold.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Sweetmegg.com
- Instagram: https://Instagram.com/sweet.megg
- Facebook: https://Facebook.com/sweetmegg
- Youtube: https://YouTube.com/sweetmegg
