JAN HELLRIEGAL

Rip It Up, Issue 167, 1 June 1991, Page 14

JAN HELLRIEGAL

Jan Hellriegal has gone over to the “other side”. From leading light of all-girl Dunedin indie group Cassandra’s Ears (she wrote the music and took lead vocals) she is now one of an infintisimal minority of local artists to get

signed to a major record label. In this case, Warner Music.

One year later she's got 16 songs pre-recorded and ready for vinyl, the demo’s been sent to Warners offices around the world and'it's been received enthusiastically but a recording date has still not been set at home. Although she describes Warner Music as “ultra supportive”, Jan says she’s getting to the stage where something either happens or she’s off. :

‘Especially when friends are writing her letters from Europe urging her to join them and her flat is breaking up because two of the residents (one half of Straitjacket Fits, in fact) are about to disappear

overseas. “I don't know what the record

company have got planned for me but | know I've got plans for myself. See, I've been waiting to ‘follow my dream’ though | sort of figured if's not every day you get signed to a major. But I'm not going to wait around till 'm 901"« We're sitting at a table amidst empty cupboards and half-packed boxes. “I'd really like to get the record done and go on tour round the

world. If everybody else can do it so can | I don't care if it's little gigs or whatever, 'd just like to go and see what it's like ‘cos everyone | know who's been on tour says it's really hard work but | don't care. I've never been overseas and | think

going around that way would be nedrs i

Jan Hellreigal is our very own version of that late 80s chart

phenomenon, the solo female singer / songwriter, but minus the feyness of, say, Suzanne Vega. In fact, her waif-like presence hardly prepares you for her voice, which is luxurious: rich, smooth and lower register a la Annie Lennox. Jan says she's always getting compared to Chrissie Hynde, which amuses her because aside from the odd single she’s never

listened to her music. In fact, she

doesn't listen to other female singer / songwriters at all with the exception of Joni Mitchell, who she considers “absolutely incredible.” Along with a major label signing comes high expectations. No doubt Jan is perceived as a marketable commodity inhabiting an otherwise unoccupied niche in the local market, but she declares herself oblivous to such targetting. ‘l'malot more relaxed now because I'm at the stage where | just don't care what people think anymore, | do it the way | like it and if they don't like it too bad, it's as simple as that.” What she likes is for people to listen to her songs rather than “worry about what the hell I'm doing up there on stage”. She’s not , interested in “boogieing around” and doesn't care whether people dance. She just loves to sing and she writes the kind of music where the chord structures are basic and her vocals carry the melody lines. What she doesn't like is writing love songs (“Going 'l love you babe’ is just not the way | work”) nor could she stand for anyone to alter her lyrics. So what does she write about?

“People fascinate me. | used to really like people but now | really don't like them and | think if's really fascinating. | used to try and look for the good in everybody but now I've given up. | must be getting old and cynical. | like to think of myself as a sociologist / philosopher.” Disarmingly matter-of-fact, briskly realistic, Jan Hellriegal might be a potential major label “star” who gets to go to dinner with Quincy Jones if she wants to, but she still works every day at her family’s panel beating business in unglamorous west

Auckland. Which puts paid to the notion that signing with a major

means getting a refainer and never having to work again. “Well, the thing about getting paid a retainer is that you owe them in the end, it all comes out of costs. | sort of figure if | was getting a

retainer I'd have to owe it fo them and | don't like owing anybody anything. So I'm working.”