Everybody’s Favorite Shocker / An Interview with Peaches

The story of Merril Nisker is an anomalous one. Born in Toronto in 1968, Nisker attended a private Jewish school, enrolled at Toronto’s York University, and established the first chapter of her working life by coaching children under her own music and drama program at the local YMCA. By night, Nisker would take to the stage to hone an act that, ten years later, would emerge as Peaches — the wittily affronting, shrewdly lewd musician and performance artist whose fl agrant spectacle comes with lyrics even more explicit. And she’s a Swiss Army knife of skills: electro popstar, rapper, rock star, songwriter, producer, writer, and director for film and stage — it’s little wonder she’s the star of her own musical…

REBEKKA AYRES: Your first foray into music was as a folk artist. How did this transform into the act we know today?

PEACHES: Well, it was a completely organic evolution that stemmed from not understanding as a child that one could learn to be a musician. I picked up the acoustic guitar because it was around, and I ended up playing in clubs with one of my friends who played acoustic. All that happened before I even realized that I was going to be a musician. I kept learning and slowly expanding as an artist, teaching myself electric guitar and moving into electronics. And of course, constantly writing.

RA: You came to music relatively late in life. How do you think age has infl uenced the way in which people interpret your act?

P: Yes, Peaches came about later on, when I was in my thirties. I don’t know if that changed people’s interpretation of me… I think it was more about my confi dence and fearlessness at that point.

RA: You’ve been resident in Berlin for a number of years now. What role did the city play in the scheme of your career?

P: Well, I visited the city and when I went back to Toronto I wrote Teaches of Peaches. I was struck by the endless possibilities and the openness of Berlin at that time and channeled it through my own personal reawakening.

RA: Has Berlin influenced your work in any way?

P: I think more than serving to influence my work it’s given me the head space and physical space to let me explore whatever is going on with me at the moment.

RA: It seems to be a pattern for journalists to be somewhat taken aback when they meet you “off-duty” as Merril Nisker, rather than Peaches. Is there really a difference between your two identities?

P: Peaches is like the movie version of Merrill, where all the boring, mundane parts are edited out.

RA: Why did you initially decide to go by a stage name?

P: At the end of the powerful Nina Simone song Four Women, Nina shouts, “What do they call me, my name is PEACHES!” I loved the passion and anger in the way she sang the word “Peaches” and wanted her to be singing it to me.

RA: You’re considered a pioneer for your confrontation with gender politics. Do you recognize your influence in a new wave of artists?

P: Yes, I do.

RA: Who influences you most as an artist?

P: So many. To name a few: Annie Sprinkle, Cindy Sherman, Gilda Radner, Diamanda Galás, P. J. Harvey.

RA: Do you set out to push boundaries?

P: From the beginning, I set out to say what I wanted and to express what I saw to be a hole in mainstream culture.

RA: For many, you were possibly the least likely suspect to perform a one-woman staging of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar, as you have been doing since 2010. How did this idea come about?

P: I used to enjoy singing the whole musical by myself when I was fifteen. I loved that it was a modern style of opera that told the story solely through music — no dialogue at all. I also just wanted to find out whether I could actually pull it off and unleash my vocal gymnastics, which I’m not really known for.

RA: You self-wrote and self-directed Peaches Does Herself, which began as a stage show but has now been made into a feature film. What made you undertake such a project?

P: Peaches Does Herself was a rock opera musical that I created in response to jukebox musicals, which take the music of an artist and create an arbitrary story around it. The story has nothing to do with the original artist or why they made the music… So I arranged twenty-four of my songs into a story that could be told just through music — no dialogue — and actually included my iconography and meaning behind the songs. In effect, it was an anti-jukebox musical. We did two runs in 2010 and 2011; then in 2012 it became a movie that was shown worldwide at over seventy film festivals. It’s now available to buy or rent through Distrify and Vimeo, or you can buy a hardcopy through Cape Light Distribution in Germany.

RA: Do you see yourself pursuing more directorial projects in the future?

P: Well, I’ve always been involved in video directing so let’s see…

RA: How about fine art? A few years ago you exhibited an installation at La 5e Biennale de Montréal, and there’s such a visual aspect to your work — is this something we could expect to see more of?

P: I love installation and performance art. Never say never.

RA: What’s next?

P: My new album is finished and it’s being mixed as I write this, so new music is coming!