Shepherdess puts Hilken Mancini in the lead
By BRETT MILANO | September 10, 2007
PEAKING: Shepherdess establishes Mancini once and for all as one of the best songwriters in town. |
If Hilken Mancini’s ego were bigger, her new album would be billed as the career breakthrough, the big statement she’s worked up to after being co-singer/guitarist in one well-liked band (Fuzzy), playing guitar in another (the Count Me Outs), making a duo CD with a fellow local hero (Buffalo Tom’s Chris Colbourn), and becoming a small local celeb (with friend Megan Jasper) by masterminding Punk Rock Aerobics. But Mancini’s ego is rather modest, so the new disc — the first to feature her as the main singer/writer, lead guitarist, and defining personality — is instead the homonymous debut of a new band, Shepherdess (on Kimchee). The other players were all around for her previous incarnations. Winston Braman is the top-flight bassist who was in Fuzzy before joining Come and Consonant. Drummer Mike Savage was in the Count Me Outs (and the Philly band Fudge beforehand); violinist Emily Arkin played with Mancini during her short-lived acoustic phase. And Mancini is . . . well, to hear her tell it, she’s an okay songwriter who wound up with good bandmates.“I’m just lucky to be playing with these guys,†she says during a group interview at the Independent in Union Square. “I don’t think I’ve made that much of an impression on the local scene. Hell, I’ve been around for a while. If I was that good, I would have had a hit or a publishing deal by now. I’m always going to write songs — it’s just what I do and I can’t help it. And somehow these awesome people want to play with me.â€
Her bandmates see things differently. “I think she’s hitting a real peak in her development as a songwriter,†offers Braman. “She’s finding her own voice — not that she didn’t have one before, but I think that now you can hear one of her songs and know right away that it’s her.â€
“Yeah, whatever,†she shoots back. Turns out that another writer lately referred to her in print as a “warhorse,†a term she didn’t find complimentary. “Rock is a young man’s game and I hate it, but I still love songwriting. I’m not very musically inclined; I write songs that are emotional more than I know what I’m doing technically. What’s really great is when you can write a good hook and you can convey emotions, and you can do both of those things at the same time. Take a song like [Buffalo Tom’s] ‘Taillights Fade’ — you hear that song and you think, ‘That’s it, I get it.’ Have I reached that level yet? No way.â€
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