Tift Merritt has always been one of the most thoughtful songwriters in roots music. After 20 years, the North Carolina-based musician is revisiting her breakthrough, Grammy-nominated LP, Tambourine, remastering it and reissuing it on vinyl for the first time in years. Additionally, Merritt dug up a 10-song collection of previously unreleased songs and acoustic demos titled Time and Patience, which serves as a companion piece to Tambourine, both of which are due out on August 29 via One Riot Records.
In between serving as a Practitioner-in-Residence at Duke University (where she finds and revives forgotten musical histories), developing a creative retreat called The Gables Lodge, maintaining her interview project The Spark with fellow artists, and a variety of activist projects, and touring in support of the reissue and new record, Merritt took some time to answer a few questions as part of No Depression’s “In The Deep End” series. Questions in this feature start easy and get progressively deeper, and Merritt's responses have been edited for style and clarity.
