By Ken Davis
The South Bend Tribune | June 16, 1991
A spiritual pilgrimage. An odyssey in search of wholeness. Moving themes of love and loss.
These are the wellsprings Lisa Germano draws upon with her breathtaking first album, “On the Way Down From the Moon Palace.”
A member of John Cougar Mellencamp’s band for much of the ’80s, Germano last month released her debut recording on the independent label, Major Bill Records.
The Mishawaka-born singer, songwriter and violinist composed, performed, produced (and financed) everything herself.
The album’s title refers to an Eskimo fairy tale, about a woman so dependent on a man that she must live her life in “the moon palace.”
“I came across the idea on a tape of Robert Bly talking about this story and I realized that what he was talking about was what I had been doing in my life,” Germano, 33, explained.
“Anything having to do with the moon (traditionally represents) your feminine side,” she noted. “The moon palace is a place in your psyche where you live when you’re very dependent on men. You feel secure there, but you’re never really happy because you’re not a whole person. You live through your man or through your children and their achievements—rather than your own.”
According to Germano, “You have to question yourself to figure out what you want in life. When you come down from the moon palace in your mind, it’s scary—even frightening, because you’re alone and you can’t be dependent on other people and you have to make your decisions yourself.”
“It was the same thing for me with this album, because I wasn’t asking John (Mellencamp) or anyone for advice. It was all my decisions—so I could see what I could do—without needing to depend on anyone else.”
Germano’s violin graced two of Mellencamp’s best albums during the late ’80s. Although she’s not on his soon-to-be-released ne album, she will be touring with his band again beginning next fall.
She’s also toured and played recording sessions with talent on the level of Bob Seger, U2, Billy Joel, and Simple Minds. But Germano chose not to draw on her friends and fellow musicians for her folk and New Age-tinged album—beyond a rhythm assist on three tracks from Mellencamp drummer and longtime friend Kenny Aronoff.
The album’s influences include Irish and Cajun music. She played nearly all the instruments—including mandolin, zither, accordion, autoharp, and harmonica—on the prohect, which was recorded at September Recording Studios in Indianapolis with engineers Mark Hood and Paul Mahern.
“I can play violin, keyboards and guitar,” she said. “But I’m not really proficient on those other instruments, it’s just notes I play here and there. That’s why the songs work—I had to do really simple things with them.”
The album’s most accessible song (and Germano’s least favorite) is “Guessing Game.” To Germano’s dismay, it was the track that a major label—Private Music—liked best when it auditioned her work.
“Hanging With a Dead Man” is about trying to resuscitate a lifeless relationships and “Dig My Own Grave” is a mutant country blues driven by a giddy melody that lends irony to the song’s emotional lament.
Like Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks,” this album condenses a relationship into a few well-chosen lyrics and deeply felt melodies.
In a singsong refrain, picked out on mandolin, “Riding My Bike” encapsulates women’s often legitimate fears of men in an account of a childhood encounter with an exhibitionist. “The Other One” reiterates concepts of life’s duality: light and dark, joy and fear, it’s its picture of a doppelganger or dark twin.
This album speaks to women—and to men as well—who are living through a transitional period, a redefinition of traditional sexual roles, as they move toward an identity based on achievement, not merely gender.
Five of the album’s 13 tracks are instrumentals, and Germano said she was inspired in their composition by various mental images.
Germano had the idea for the title instrumental for a long time, but once she named it, she spied emerald, sparkling things in relationship to it. “Dark Irie” conjured even darker, lush green hues for its composuer.
“Sort of like the forest in the movie ‘Babes in Toyland,’ I still remember, as a child, it affected me when the trees came to life.”
She described the vivid scene behind “Screaming Angels Dancing in Your Garden,” a track with increasingly dissonant violins over brooding electronic percussion.
“My mom has this huge garden… and I had this image of these half-angel, half-devil… or maybe half-happy, and half-angry beings. In a way it’s like I’m a good person but I still get angry sometimes. I could just see these little gnomes dancing—and then stopping and screaming (their anger) out—and then dancing again. So I thought of this violin that starts pretty but then the harmonics get more and more ugly.”
“On the Way Down From the Moon Palace” is available on compact disc and cassette locally at Tracks on Edison Road, or can be ordered by mail from Major Bill Records, P.O. Box 30087, Indianapolis 46230.
Germano laughed as she recalled a recent appearance on the Bob and Tom radio morning show on Indianapolis WFBQ-FM.
“Tom asked me, ‘So what is the Moon Palace, Lisa?’ and while I was thinking this guest comedian says, ‘It’s a Chinese restaurant up in Mishawaka!’ And we all broke up laughing—but later I thought maybe that was the best answer because I tend to get so deep sometimes that it’s almost silly.”
Germano recorded some violin last year for Bob Seger’s new album, which she expects will be released in July.
“He was really sweet,” she said of the Michigan rocket. “Crystal (Taliafero) from our band toured with him, so he knew a lot of us in the band and I think he’d seen a couple of shows, but I’d never met him.”
Germano spoke of the frustration of waiting for session work. “I never get calls and I sti around going crazy and feeling like I don’t have anything to offer in this business and then—boom! So you just have to be prepared—you can’t ever give up.”
Germano played with Billy Joel on five shows from his recent tour, including the “Live at Yankee Stadium” video which aired on cable’s Disney Channel last month.