Today we’d like to introduce you to Metal Mother – Tara Timberman.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Thank you so much for having me! I’m grateful for the chance to share more of my story after these strange years of isolated introspection. I’m originally from a small town in the Northern California redwoods, adjacent to Bodega Bay. My parents were hippie thespians who left their middle-class homes in the 1960’s in search of communal and liberatory lifestyles. Fun fact: my mom claims she and her friends invented the first veggie burger- “the love burger” at a Berkeley food coop. On a darker note, she is a survivor of the Jim Jones cult and had several friends die at Jonestown. Jim Jones actually held my sister when she was a baby! So yeah, I have a healthy level of skepticism when it comes to new age cults and charismatic snake oil salesmen selling enlightenment. But I’m also a true blue believer in the collectivist vision and annoyingly committed to dirt worship and compost poetics. I wouldn’t be me without the wild experiences of my childhood. One of my earliest memories is running between the legs of painted pagans as they danced naked around a bonfire under the full moon on one of the infamous communes in the area. I’ve seen a lot of scrotums and I have mixed feelings about that!
The defining event of my childhood was when my father died of a sudden heart attack when I was 4. After that, my widowed mom worked her ass off to feed us and keep a roof over our heads during the neoliberal hellscape of the 1980’s and 90’s. Oh the grief. By the time I was a teenager I was a feral animal. I dropped out of high school and left home to caravan around the country with a vagabond circus, between living on the streets of San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland. I got into a lot of trouble but it was worth the stories. This was the late-90s, and SF had a totally unhinged atmosphere. I was a devotee of the underground rave scene and the Grateful Dead, every step underscored by political angst. I went to some of the early Burning Man gatherings (when they were still anarcho-communist cyberpunk parties), went to support Julia Butterfly Hill’s tree-sit action in Humboldt County, and found myself at hundreds of legendary events including the Free-Tibet Concerts, and for a very sketchy reason, Woodstock ‘99. In the early 2000’s I was involved with the San Francisco anti-war protests and organized guerilla street-theater demonstrations in protest of the expansion of fossil fuel extraction and the Iraq War. These were formative experiences for me.
My performance background is based in warehouse culture, street-theater, and art-activism. I didn’t start making music until I was in my mid 20’s. In 2005, I was living in a remote cabin in the forest managing a weed grow trying to get funds to start a proper theater company. I had a lot of time to myself and started putting my poetry atop songs I was writing on a little keyboard someone gave me. I started getting good feedback and then gigs and recording opportunities. The theater company dream moved into the background and I fell in love with the transmutative process of writing music. Music could turn painful and confusing experiences into something that made sense to me. In 2007, I moved to Oakland and started performing and touring with a live band. I wrote and produced two albums (2011’s Bonfire Diaries and 2013’s Ionika), and co-founded a queer music collective called Post Primal, which pooled resources to support other emerging artists in the Bay. In 2016 I moved to Los Angeles, and in 2018 I
self-released an EP called Pagan Jazz. I’m currently finishing my third full-length album, which unsurprisingly has taken much longer than expected. It’s
co-produced by Samur Khouja and I think it’s my most personal work yet.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Not really haha. Besides the stress and tension we all face on this planet right now, being a self-supporting artist and activist is particularly isolating and alienating. It helps to know I’m not alone in feeling those things, that we all have our own unique baskets of struggles and victories. The music industry is still very male-dominated and I’ve definitely experienced misogyny and having to tip-toe around fragile male egos in order to make things happen. But more importantly, there are TONS of dear people who have supported, protected, and inspired me throughout the years, and I am truly grateful for the friends and family who have been there. As my friend Eddy Segal says, “it takes a village to raise an artist!” Music keeps us connected through the bullshit and brings joy when things are otherwise pretty grim. It’s really messed up that streaming services don’t pay us more, but I’m also grateful that it’s easier to make and release music right now than it ever has been. The world needs art right now more than ever before, because it gives us something to fight for in a time when nihilism is so easy to slip into. Making music is the therapy I can’t afford. I’ve been an uber driver, restaurant server, sex worker, barista, drug dealer, nanny, and whatever else its taken to pay bills and stay true to my art and ethics. I’m currently on a full scholarship getting my BA in Gender Studies and Environmental History at UCLA and plunging headfirst into my academic interests. As a 42 year old high-school dropout, it’s a trip. Being a musician in late-stage capitalism is not for the faint of heart!
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Even though I lean heavily into synths and midi programming, there’s this doomsday part of me that wants to be able to entertain people when the power goes out. Sing-for-my-supper kind of thing, like the old troubadours. I’ve devoted a lot of time to teaching myself piano and singing, which has been crazy hard but equally fun. I hope my piano playing makes the expression more articulate. While a lot of my material is influenced by artists like Arca, Fever Ray, Bjork, Lauren Bousfield, and Jlin, — it all rides on the foundation of traditional celtic music (my mother is from Ireland). It’s a little bit goth and a little bit moss.
I’m proud that I’ve continued to make music despite ongoing setbacks and despite the fact that life can feel like a pit of bottomless suffering. The music I make often circles around themes of grief, deep ecology, rebirth, and existentialism, and I hope it makes some listeners know they’re not alone.
What was your favorite childhood memory?
Gazing out the backseat window of my mom’s station wagon as she drove around the Sonoma county countryside blasting Bonnie Raitt and Joni Mitchell.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://metalmother.net/
- Instagram: @metal_mother
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/metalmother/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/mtlmthr
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@taratati2013
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/metal-mother
Image Credits
Erica Gilliand, Nathaniel Tofoya, Kristen Cofer, Heather Galpin
