It took a while — almost two decades — but Scott Prairie is finally seeing one of his musical dreams become true.
Prairie, a Taipei-based American musician best known as the cofounder of the world music troupe A Moving Sound (聲動劇場), has been working on a new project that takes him back to his roots as a singer-songwriter. He performs tonight with a new six-piece band at Riverside Live House (西門紅樓展演館).
What inspired Prairie, 41, to revisit his days as an aspiring pop artist in New York City in the 1990s was, of all things, 7-Eleven.
Photo courtesy of Scott Prairie
The convenience store giant recently used a song Prairie wrote 18 years ago, Julie Ann, in a commercial to promote its City Cafe brand of coffee drinks.
The song may surprise those expecting to hear something similar to A Moving Sound’s fusion of traditional Taiwanese music and ethnic folk: Julie Ann is a dreamy ballad, delivered by drum machines and synthesizers, that speaks to indie rock’s ongoing obsession with the 1980s and 1990s.
Julie Ann has drawn a fair amount of attention as the soundtrack for the 7-Eleven commercial, thanks in part to the ad’s star actress, Guey Lun-mei (桂綸鎂), a household name among hip 20- and 30-somethings. She plays a young woman who sits alone at a post office in a small town in Taiwan, reading a postcard that she sent to herself on a past trip to New York City (and of course, she reminisces while sipping on a City Cafe latte).
Photo courtesy of Scott Prairie
The clip (bit.ly/hpT3Mj), which aired in December and has attracted more than 15,000 views on YouTube, led Prairie to see “a wonderful opportunity” to expose some of his past material to a wider audience.
The commercial “lit the fire,” Prairie says. “It just kind of said ‘now is the time’ and just gave me [encouragement] to just go for it.”
He approached 7-Eleven with an unusual idea for distributing his music: a magazine with an enclosed five-song CD entitled Who Is Julie Ann?, which includes artwork by Prairie (he’s also a painter) and lyrics and stories behind his songs.
In the magazine, for sale at most 7-Eleven stores, Prairie also tells the story of his own winding path to becoming a pop and world music artist, which included stints as a classical French horn player at Carnegie Mellon University’s music conservatory and then as a PhD candidate in clinical psychology at Wright State University in Ohio.
While in Ohio, Prairie found his calling in songwriting and recorded demos with a band that included Don Thrasher, a former drummer with the Dayton indie rock band Guided By Voices.
Prairie then found himself in New York City, where he says his demos received a favorable response from major labels, including Island Records and Interscope Records. But a record deal never materialized due in part to his lack of experience performing onstage.
“I just had this weird fluke and went up really fast and mis-timed it, and didn’t really know what to do after that,” he said.
Prairie was left feeling “disenchanted” with two albums worth of unreleased music. But he stayed in New York for nearly a decade, performing with experimental music and dance troupes, and moved to Taiwan in 2002 after meeting Mia Hsieh (謝韻雅), his wife and cofounder of A Moving Sound.
Now that A Moving Sound is on a steady footing, with three well-received albums, a loyal following and an annual touring schedule on the world music circuit, Prairie says he’s glad to be able to dust off his solo material with a new band.
“This is the best presentation of my songs I’ve ever done,” Prairie said. “This is the group that should have played for Island Records ... the thing I’m most excited about is this group.”
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