By Jon Young
Musician | August 1993
“I’ve never been a good player,” insists rockin’ fiddler Lisa Germano. “I can’t come up with hot licks and jam. I have to write my parts.”
This alleged shortcoming hasn’t stopped John Mellencamp from making Germano a mainstay of his band, while U2, Bob Seger and plenty of others have tapped Ms. G’s talents in the studio. Lately, Germano has been self-employed, constructing eccentric soundscapes for Happiness, her second solo album. Delivering angst-soaked tunes in a breathy voice she compares to “whispering in your ear,” Germano could be Indiana’s version of Kate Bush. Oh yeah, she plays mandolin, guitar, piano and accordion as well we violin, but you shouldn’t be impressed. “I just picked up those things because I wanted an ugly sound,” Germano shrugs. “Violin’s the only thing I can really play.”
Hard to believe this fearless advocate of the do-it-yourself approach was a shrinking violet until recently. “Before I worked for John, I was controlled by my fears and limitations. When I played with a symphony, I had a panic attack during a concert once and had to walk offstage. I used to be afraid of fainting, but John would say, ‘Shut up, go ahead and faint, and get back up.'” Although Germano’s nervous early days in the rough-and-tumble Mellencamp band were marked by frequent crying spells, she credits the tough-love atmosphere with forcing her to stop being a wimp.
Similar accounts of psychic torment set the tone for Happiness, with strung-out tracks like “Puppets” and “Everyone’s Victim” documenting the varieties of self-deception. “It’s all about me. I make fun of myself all the time,” Germano admits, adding with a wicked grin, “Maybe I should call the next album Manic Paranoid Schizophrenic Girl.“