Downtown Money Waster :: Features :: Spider

Brooklyn based singer songwriter Spider's album The Way to Bitter Lake is a delicately hushed beauty. The quiet intimacy of her voice, dreamy lyrics and bare acoustic guitar transport the listener gently as the other world beckons. I sat down with Spider (aka Jane Herships) in Williamsburg Brooklyn where she shared her love for teenage pranks, Jimi Hendrix feedback, and the need to run off into the woods.

Growing up in Maplewood New Jersey, what elements did you take away from growing up in suburbia and how did it shape you?

Growing up in suburban New Jersey- well the one thing that was different about it is that we had New York right there, obviously. Being that I had pretty reasonable parents I was allowed to travel into the city by myself with friends, at a pretty young age. Probably around 14 or 15.

That's the age! Go to The Village?

Go to the Village, take the train. But when we didn't have the money or didn't have anything to do in the city we'd go to Hoboken a lot. I guess we'd go to Maxwell's, which was pretty cool. I actually saw Ween play there once!

Did you!?

We'd go to shows in this church in Chatham. I went to private school- I went to a school in Summit. I went to Camp Place. So I hung out with a lot of kids from Summit and Chatham. I didn't know anyone in Livingston though I don't think! I guess we just did normal things- we'd go to South Mountain reservation, we'd go up to the woods. It wasn't like the woods like if you live in Vermont. It was this tiny little woods with a waterfall, we'd walk around and kind of light fires and drink beers.

On South Orange Ave?

Yeah, and kind of like drive and let off fireworks. And we'd kind of do slightly, you know not really bad kid stuff but…

Slightly rebellious?

There was this abandoned mine shelter up there somewhere and I remember we tried to blow off the door once. We couldn't do it! We brought a blowtorch and someone had quarter sticks of dynamite, but we couldn't get in!

Why the name Spider?

Because um, well I was playing music with a friend when I first started playing these songs. We were just thinking of band names and he once mentioned that if he had a kid or a dog that he'd name them Spider. I was like "Oh let's call the band Spider!" It just kind of stuck. But I'm actually…or I used to be really afraid of spiders.

Really? So you're confronting a fear in a certain sense?

It's a lot about that. I mean it kind of just became the name but then after awhile it's like "Oh!" it just kind of made sense to me. I guess it reminds me to not be afraid.

There are a lot of elements on the album having to do with the dark- The darkness, the center of the sea- that would generally evoke some kind of fear. But I feel like you're saying that you're almost looking for that person in the dark- and there's a connection, there's almost a positive element to it. You're confronting those primal fears- fears of spiders, of the dark- being in the middle of the sea and the sea is uncontrollable! But yet these are places of calm, of peace and serenity.

Yeah, you know being vulnerable in these certain situations. I mean they're all completely fabricated you know-- its all fantasy. None of it has any basis in reality whatsoever. But they're all images. There are all evocative images or phrases or feelings or emotions where you'd want to be able to reach out ask for help, and be like "it's okay, you're okay now".

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"I'm dying to go to the woods! I want to live on a mountain in the middle of nowhere. It's been a dream of mine to get a cabin with a piano and just go! My old apartment had a garden. We had a fire pit in the backyard and we'd have barbecues and play songs. You wouldn't even feel like you were in New York."

-Jane Herships
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You said these characters- Maggie, Alice…

Well Maggie's actually my best friend, and the first time I played her that song she's like "Oh, that's my favorite song now!" So I said"Oh! we'll call it "Maggie's Song". Then her cat died, and her cat was named Alice.

Midnight on the Nile…

That song is a pretty deep song. The line "They said they were the darkness/and they were here to finish us" was actually a line I saw in the news from a woman in the Sudan. I added, "In sorrow I'll believe" not that you believe in sorrow, it's that, amidst sadness you'll go on, you'll continue. But also the beginning of the song is just a boy and a girl hanging out in Egypt. The idea of hope. Normalcy and human emotion continuing on amidst complete and total hell and fear, I guess.

The song I really found going into some darker emotional areas was "The Bitter One" which I kind of thought as the centerpiece of The Way to Bitter Lake. Was that intentional?

No, it wasn't intentional it just kind of happened. The Way to Bitter Lake- I bought my friend Maggie a little notebook in an antique store and in the back of it said, "What is the way to Bitter Lake?" or"How do we get to Bitter Lake?" There's a couple of Bitter Lakes that actually exist- it's like a beautiful lake maybe like Lake Woebegone or Golden Pond-- I saw that movie recently. I don't know if it's a fictitious place or one that actually exists. And obviously the word"bitter" evokes a lot of imagery.

Is your inner world very important to your writing? All these things come from within basically...

I write in a journal. It's more like fiction writing than anything…I think my songs are more like poems set with the intention of a song. Because I write the music and the words simultaneously so a lot of the time I write the music first but then I'll go back to my journal and look. I'll find lines that fit the music so it completes a story. But they do really hit home to me. They do have meaning- they're not completely just arbitrary fictional things. I do identify with them, yeah.

They kind of come out of their own and you look at them later and say "oh well this really strikes me"?

Its not like "I've had this experience and I'm going to write about it now". No, I don't do that. Maybe its something I can aim towards in the future- people call songwriting therapeutic. Maybe it's happening already and I don't realize it. In bits like I'm dreaming, the subconscious.

A lot of the album is very hushed and quiet. The last track in particular is one-minute song, completely electric, there's feedback yet it fits in with the rest of the album. I like the fact you use it as a contrast.

I just wanted to sound like Jimi Hendrix "National Anthem" I don't know why. That's how I heard it. I love playing electric guitar; I've played electric guitar in a number of projects in the past with other bands too. I just wanted to be able to incorporate it.

When did you play in your first band?

I played in my first band five years ago. We practiced for 2 and a half years and played like 10 shows then broke up. Then I played in another band together for about a year, played about 5 shows and broke up. I play in a pop band. We haven't recorded anything yet we've only had about 4 or 5 shows. I love collaborating.

How do you find playing shows compared to doing this record and being in the studio?

I started playing shows playing live about 3 or 4 months before I started recording. I started doing open mics…I'd never really done it before. I was scared to play shows and wanted to practice. So I started doing open mics and people were like "we like this!"

The album cover, the name Spider and a lot of the imagery in the lyrics evoke nature. How do you feel being in a city atmosphere here in Brooklyn and also being attracted to nature? Do you yearn for the peaceful quiet of nature?

I'm dying to go to the woods! I want to live on a mountain in the middle of nowhere. It's been a dream of mine to get a cabin with a piano and just go! My old apartment had a garden- it was awesome. We had a fire pit in the backyard and we'd have barbecues and play songs. You wouldn't even feel like you were in New York.