When Lisa Loeb arrived on the music scene eight years ago, adjectives like "geeky," "innocent," "girlish" and "quirky" often accompanied her name in print. Set against the backdrop of grunge and the Riot Grrrl movement, the everyday insecurities expressed in Loeb's music made her seem out of place, but then so were the millions of listeners who made her the first unsigned artist to have a Number One song: "Stay," her debut single from the Reality Bites soundtrack. Loeb's quirkiness became a major statement in its own right turning her first album, Tails -- which included "Stay" and the follow-up hit single, "Do You Sleep?" -- into a gold record.

Loeb released her follow-up Firecracker, in 1997, scoring another hit single with "I Do" and a Grammy nomination. She was also apart of the inaugural journey of the Lilith Fair, and would remain on the bill for the next four years. By the time Loeb began work on her third album, in 1999, singer-songwriters were scarce on the pop charts and record industry mergers left Loeb shuffled among divisions of Universal Music Group. It wasn't until Ron Fair, the executive producer of the soundtrack to Reality Bites took charge at the Universal label A&M Records that Loeb found a home for her work, and, after nearly three years, she's confident Cake and Pie -- on which everyone from Glen Ballard, to Randy Scruggs, to boyfriend, Dweezil Zappa collaborated -- will enjoy a receptive climate. "The music that I make, played by real people and real songs, was not necessarily the most popular thing over the last three years," Loeb says. "Now I think that people are a little more open-minded again and ready to hear that music. I think people want to hear a story -- they want to hear something that sounds true at least."

During the three years between writing the songs and the eventual release of "Cake and Pie," did you have any concerns about fitting into the pop music scene?

I never really asked that question, because I know I don't fit in with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. I like hot pants, but, you know, I don't necessarily wear them in the same style as they do [laughs]. I didn't even listen to the radio at all between 1984 and 1994 when I had a song on the radio. The music I listened to was classic rock; right now I listen to mainly Mexican radio called Banda. Last night we were listening to Henry Mancini, the Beatles and the West Side Story soundtrack [laughs]. Even though everybody ends up on the same music charts, it's almost like we're in a different profession, different category of entertainment. Even if a fan likes both kinds of music or all kinds of music, there's enough space in the CD rack for everything.

As one of the mainstays of the Lilith Fair and one of the early female singer songwriters to break out was it frustrating to imagine you might not have a place anymore in the pop scene?

It's funny before the whole Lilith Fair extravaganza happened I never considered myself a woman's musician. In fact, going to a girl's school, I always avoided being sort of categorized as a woman's musician. At first I didn't want to do Lilith 'cause I didn't want to be part of a woman's music festival. I'm a feminist and proud to be a woman, but I'm not a "woman musician." And yet the women on the bill were great musicians who I would have loved to play with: Aimee Mann and Patti Smith and Sarah McLaughlin, Patty Griffin -- all kinds of cool people. I realized that you know I was looking at it in the same way that I didn't want other people to look at it. It was really about music and musicians.

When "Stay" first came out, every article seem to mention your appearance -- did that bother you?

I was always performing as a kid, so it's just a part of being a performer, getting attention and talking about what you do. I think it's flattering, but it can be frustrating when people take you out of context and represent you in ways that you don't feel are true to you, or when they make quick judgments based on one photograph they see. People didn't look for humor or a sense of irony. Like if you weren't a young girl yelling about something, you didn't have a point to make. Elvis Costello didn't have to yell about something to make a point. He could make music with interesting arrangements and lyrics and wear glasses and it was no big deal. It was just people taking him as a musician. So I don't like being brought into people's pettiness. In a record review, I don't want to read about my glasses. I don't mind reading one in a lifestyle piece.

I hear you've been baking pies onstage -- how's that been going?

Really, really good. It works out perfectly. Especially when you're making a fruit pie that cooks in the oven for a bout about thirty, forty minutes.

Did you get to eat any of the cakes and pies in the album art?

I ate all of them. I had two of each pie and each cake, and during the shoot I ate a little bit. And then after the shoot I took home a piece of every single thing. They were incredible. The art director guy got the best-looking cakes and pies.

The coconut cake is my favorite.

The coconut cake was incredible. All of my childhood memories are like, "Remember when Ernie and Bert were on Sesame Street and they had that ice cream cone where they had forty flavors of ice cream. Remember that time they were eating pizza and grape juice, remember that book about the train that took the piece of chocolate cake up from the old lady's kitchen to the old man's kitchen" [laughs]. Like every single memory I have from books and TV is some food memory.

The title Cake and Pie is interesting because it suggests all of the expressions that use "cake" and "pie," all of which has to do with something being very easy. Yet nothing is really very easy for the women on the record.

I try to have many layers, which is also cake imagery [laughs], of meaning in what the title means in relation to the songs. By the time the album came out, it wasn't as easy as cake and pie -- it was a pain in the ass. But it was kind of like, I won anyway, because I'm able to put a picture of me looking like an advertisement about how wonderful everything is, eating in this perfect world of the Fifties or Sixties. Often I end up writing about what's going on behind the scenes, what you're really feeling thinking, what you're obsessing about. It's not necessarily autobiographical but that's what interests me. The closest I get to a topic-related song is "She's Falling Apart," which is about a girl with an eating disorder. It was inspired by one of the other writers that I wrote with. Yet I've never had anorexia or bulimia, but I have had, what felt like, horrible food problems. I don't now. I finally found a balance where I realized you can eat cake and pie, literally. Instead of dieting, don't diet ever. Just eat until you're full and stop.

The underlining of the "and" in the title is a statement itself because women are never supposed to ask for both cake and pie, or admit to an appetite for that matter.

Right. I always say I want cake and pie. I don't necessarily eat the whole thing, but if I want it, I get it. I went to an all-girls school for eleven years, and though it was meant to make us seem all the same, you could see the body differences more. You pay attention to those things. I've gone through body-image issues my whole life, like most women, and when I went on tour it became especially difficult because you're around a lot of guys, and guys can literally eat more than you can -- especially when you're 5' 2" and weigh 110 pounds, you can't eat as much as your 6' 2" guitar player who weighs 200 pounds. But you think you can, and it just gets frustrating. It's important to make it [weight issues] based on your sense of health, rather than, "Am I skinny as somebody else?" Because when it comes down to it, when you're friends with people, you don't think, "Oh my God, they're so good looking. Their ass is so small; I want to be friends with them." You don't think of that at all. You think, "Are they a nice person, are they fun to talk to, are they challenging me, is it fun to joke around with them?" Their looks have nothing to do with it. So you try to keep your values where they need to be.

Did you have any set goals for this album, as far as how you wanted it to differ from the previous ones?

I wanted to have as much variety as I could sonically and experience-wise. I wanted to work with a lot of people. I had only slightly worked with other songwriters in the past. "Kick Start," I wrote with Gary Burr, who's more well-known in the country world. We met in Cuba on this big songwriting trip. We just laughed a lot together we had lots of funny times. Every writing experience was different. It went a lot more quickly than writing my own songs by myself. I learned from writing with other people how to communicate more of a clear story because when you write lyrics, between the two of you, you have to figure out what you're actually saying in order to write one song and that makes it possible to be more clear for other people listening to it. Luckily I was writing with songwriters who are experienced and talented enough to have some form of poetry so it wasn't too straightforward.

How was it working with your boyfriend?

It was really fun. It wasn't like work. The first song we wrote was "You Don't Know Me" about his younger sister getting a boyfriend for the first time, and we just had a really good time and laughed a lot and wrote a lot of different little musical bits and lyrics. I wasn't going to work with him because I thought, "It's not good to work with your boyfriend." I'd done it before and it was really intense, but it was so easy and fun and so challenging. We challenged each other a lot. It was also exciting because he looks at music the same way I do. It's something that you do and though it's really great to have commercial success, you're not in the studio to make hit singles. You're in the studio to make songs you think sound good. It's kind of like when we're cooking we just figure out what we want to make, we start putting ingredients in and I taste what he's doing and make suggestions or usually don't because he knows what he's doing, and he'll taste what I'm doing and say, "It needs a little more sugar" and then we reminisce about how good it tasted and how much fun it was.

There are so many thank-yous on this record, everyone from Chris Isaak to Jill Sobule to Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne. What are all the connections?

I thanked Chris Isaak because I did some touring with him. He's very inspiring to me. He's very funny and he's very edgy and smart and business-minded, yet still has a sense of humor. I feel like we have a camaraderie because of it. I thanked Jill Sobule because I'm inspired by her. We did start writing some music but didn't finish. Hopefully we'll tour together. She just cracked me up and being able to talk to her about her experiences in the music business. The community really helps, probably in anybody's life, when you find out people are going through the same thing you are or might have dealt with it differently or have some suggestions for you. The same thing with Sharon and Ozzy. Not only did Sharon give me some advice about remodeling a house, but Sharon is a very tough woman who knows how to do business and it's just really helpful to have advisors like that. There were a couple of conversations I had with Ozzy where we were commiserating about making records, working with a major label, doing what you feel is right versus discussing what you feel is right with somebody else. It's also funny, just the concept of me commiserating with Ozzy on a first-class flight from New York to L.A. But it was very helpful and supportive.

Your first song "Stay" has become so closely identified to Generation X because of "Reality Bites" but the song has held up better than the film. How do you feel about it now?

I play it all the time in concert. I know that when I was growing up I always expected the musicians I love to play the song that I know. So I always make sure to play it. Musically, it's a complicated song to play; it has a bizarre structure and sometimes I feel like I skipped a part of the song but it remains a challenge. And it still reminds me of the fact that I was able to make something that I was proud of, that sounded like we wanted it to sound and that succeeded being itself. And I think that's something that all musicians should have the luck to have happen to them.

CHRISTINA SARACENO
(May 2, 2002)