By Marc Allan
SPIN | January 1992
On her first tour as John Mellencamp’s violinst, Lisa Germano cried constantly.
“I still call it the ‘Scare Lisa’ tour instead of the Scarecrow tour,” she says. “I cried probably every day, because it was really difficult. John had never been around anyone who cried all the time. He didn’t know what to do.”
Germano laughs and fires up a Marlboro Light as she tells the story, too busy to cry now. Over the last three years, while waiting for Mellencamp the painter to ease away from his easel, she took the Coug’s advice and developed her own material.
The result is her brilliant, self-financed debut album, On the Way Down From the Moon Palace, a magical mystery tour of moody, moving tracks. The styles range from the otherworldly music box sounds of “Simply Tony” to the drunken country sing-song of “Dig My Own Grave” She named the record for the fairy-tale place where women live to please their men. The disc has sold about 2,500 copies in limited release in Indianapolis, where she shares an equipment-filled apartment with her black cat, Miamo-Tutti.
Germano plays all the instruments on Moon Palace—violin, guitar, mandolin, piano, accordion, and autoharp—with the exception of drums and bass on three tracks, and she sings in almost a little girl’s voice, usually about heartbreak and devotion. (Her most recent composition, “You Make Me Want to Wear Dresses,” is more hopeful.)
During Germano’s other non-John time, she played on the latest efforts by Simple Minds and Bob Seger. She’s not on Mellencamp’s new Whenever We Wanted, but plans to tour with him next year. She also contributed two songs to the soundtrack of Falling From Grace, Mellencamp’s directorial debut due out in February.
“I’d have never finished a song in my whole life if John hadn’t said, ‘Why don’t you write a song for my soundtrack?'” Germano says. “That’s what gave me my first real direction.”
Featured Image: Lisa pictured during the Moon Palace photo shoot. (Photo: Andrew Scalini)