In a recent interview with Jason Price of Icon Vs. Icon, MELISSA AUF DE MAUR discussed her recent collaboration with GLENN DANZIG on the song 'Father's Grave' which is featured on her latest offering, Out Of Our Minds. She also discussed what she had learned from her time working alongside

COURTNEY LOVE and Billy Corgan as part of HOLE and SMASHING PUMPKINS.

On working with Glenn Danzig:

Q: This project features a lot of collaboration. What can you tell us about that and specifically about your work with Glenn Danzig.

A: "Basically, the reason why I went solo as it were and make solo records and a solo project in this case, is because of my love of collaboration. The reason I make music is because it is all collaboration. I am not a Joni Mitchell singer/songwriter type, I’m a rock musician, so everything is about the drummer, the engineer, the guitar tone, the guitar player. It is my love of collaboration that fuels all of this to begin with. My first record was made by reaching out to all of my heroes and all of my mentors such as Josh Homme and Chris Goss, who was the co-producer of my first record. So it’s always been based on collaboration. Obviously, with this project as you see, comes down to the collaboration with the film makers, the illustrators and the players on the record. Glenn Danzig is the guest of honor and the most surprising guest, he has been a hero of mine since I was a teenager. He was sort of a mythological king that I looked to for inspiration and I never really thought that I would work with. It would have been anti-climatic to meet him as a fan and just say “Hi, how ya doing?”. So, for over fifteen years I’ve been a serious and devoted fan. I’ve worn my lucky Danzig sweat band throughout all of my touring and he is like this Viking type of man that I look to, to find the strength in side of myself to get up on stage. It started by me deciding that I was going to reach for the lofty goal to come together with one of my heroes. I wrote him a song, 'Father’s Grave', which is the duet where he plays the grave digger and I play a woman who has lost her father. Through this strange conversation in the song, she finds some healing for her loss. I decided to write him a song and invite him into my world through song instead of just calling and asking if he wanted to meet for coffee. [laughs] I did something that I’ve never done before which is, basically write a song from another person’s perspective. I know his music very well. So I basically closed my eyes and thought, “What would Glenn do?” To tell this story about this grave digger and this woman. The end result was that I wrote my first six minute blues/funeral duet. I sent him a demo with me singing his part and my part and a two page letter explaining the impact that he had made on my life and the story of the song. I sent it to his PO box, he doesn’t have a manager or an agent per-se, he does everything pretty direct. I sent it to what was essentially a fan PO box. Everyone told me that it would never happen because he had never collaborated on anyone else’s record. Six months later my phone rang and it was Glenn. He liked my song and I flew out to L.A. and we went into the studio to record his parts. It was amazing!"

Read the complete interview at this location.