Actors taking turns at being musicians are often met with skepticism (see Hasselhoff, Bacon, Lohan). On occasion, they’ll surprise you with genuine talent. Minnie Driver has proven she’s one such actor-cum-musician, save for the fact she was a musician before her acting career took off. Accepting what would be her breakout role in Circle of Friends, Driver put her music career on hold for nearly a decade. Having released her solo debut in 2004, Driver has returned for her sophomore effort with help from Ryan Adams, Liz Phair and warm production from Marc Dauer (Pete Yorn) and a stellar mix from Jim Scott (Wilco, Lucinda Williams).

Of your first album, you said it was one you’d been dreaming of making since your teenage years. Were there any dreams in relation to SEASTORIES?

It was more like stuff needed to get put into focus and the idea of doing a record is such a brilliant way of doing that. I had been collecting songs. I wasn’t really thinking of making another record at that point and then… it wasn’t as clear cut as the last one. It suddenly appeared.

Is the songwriting process a fairly quick one for you? Do you go back and revise much or is it fairly set once it comes out?

Once it’s out, it’s rare that things change radically. Maybe a word or line or two but it’s funny they just… if I know what I mean enough, I’ll sit down and I probably won’t get up till the song is written.

What’s the quickest amount of time you’ve ever written a song?

It’s the last song on the new record. We were hanging in the studio with Jim Scott who mixed our record in California. While he was mixing I picked up this guitar and I started playing it and I was like, “What is this? Why does this sound so amazing? What is it?” It was just a guitar that had Nashville tuning on it which I’d never played before. And he said, “Oh, take it into the studio next door which has just been redone, it’s going to sound wicked in there.” So I went in and it sounded amazing. I wrote a song in probably a minute and half and it’s that song. It honestly just sounded so amazing.

Given your acting background—that you’ve lived deep inside certain characters—why aren’t there more non-personal narratives? Do you find them harder to write? 

“Lakewater Hair” is really the only song on the record that was an absolute narrative. I was swimming across a lake in Connecticut last summer and I was looking at all these kids playing and realizing that they were all going to be falling in love for the first time. It was a massive swim, like five miles. And I was just thinking about it and I wrote the song while I was swimming. But it was more daydreaming about the past and I would like to do more of that because I think that’s when you reach the next level of songwriting when you can genuinely separate; you can be the observable. It’s less completely rocking yourself every time you write something. Because that’s so personal, these songs, and I’d quite like to be able to create a bit of distance. I hope that’s where I’m headed because I think a lot of songwriters have said once you start being able to do that and you can imbue that with the same passion and emotion when you’re writing words you’ve actually experience, that’s when you really become a storyteller.

Speaking of songwriting storytellers, I know you’re a Springsteen fan.

I remember standing in my knickers and a T-shirt when I was so miserably sad at school and this older girl at my boarding school gave me a copy of The Riverentire record and it was one of the most profound moments, musically, for me. When I listen to Wilco or watched Ryan [Adams] play when we were writing and doing stuff in New York, I had the same feeling. It’s good because it’s very pure. It’s very pure and very child-like in a way. and she said just put that on and listen to it. And I remember standing, I was 11 years old, standing in front of the record player. I just stood there watching the record for the

Would you say that Everything I’ve Got in My Pocket and SEASTORIES are thematically linked?

Yes, I would. I think SEASTORIES is a lot more upfront. I think I stopped being afraid; I just sang out more. I sang bigger and didn’t mind if people heard it. I was halfway there with Everything I’ve Got in My Pocket and I needed to write the songs and have them out there but I didn’t have the confidence yet to really deliver as I would have liked. I think I’m getting there, I’m getting closer because I hope to keep on writing and writing and writing records as long as Rounder will have me.

I hear one of Ryan’s songs, “Answering Bell,” in your song “Mary.” The melody is quite similar.

Oh, wow. [Sings the melody] I listen to a lot of The Band, a lot of Ryan Adams, a lot of… Ryan never really liked that song much. He’s like, “It sounds like ‘The Weight,’ it sounds stupid. I don’t want to do this.” He did a version of it that was so hideous and horrible, he loved it. It was a late-night mix of that song that would have required a completely different melody, lyrics, everything. There’s a bit of Ryan in a few of those songs but there’s not much left of him because that’s just how it worked out. The ghost of Ryan is definitely in there.

Well, with Ryan and others, it seems to be a throwback; that once the songs are out there, they’re open to usage and interpretation. Like with Dylan and The Byrds or something.

I think that’s a really good point and I don’t think musicians should be scared of that or think that it’s somehow… Look, if you’re as prolific as someone like Ryan, and if you write songs on a regular basis like me—though obviously not like what he’s doing—of course you’re going to come across through tree lines and places where you comfortably feel those chord progressions or lyrically you express yourself. It’s just how it is. I think the mistake is trying to pass it off as something completely original and you’re fucking crazy if you think that.

You’re known for having a great skill for doing accents. Given such an ability to morph your voice, was it ever difficult to find your singing one?

Funnily enough, no, because I really have been singing since I was eight or nine years old. It was always what it was. Even in the crazy band I was in when I was 19. I was listening to some tapes the other day and while my voice is definitely a lot higher and sort of purer, it’s the same voice. I think that’s just by virtue of having sung for a long time. I’m very, very… maybe because of the acting as well… any kind of applied artifice, I just have a really hard time with: fake accents, fakery, it bothers me even though that’s what I do for a living. [laughs] It’s a little bit hypocritical.

You mentioned your earlier band, which was Puff, Rocks and Brown right? What’s the story behind the name?

It’s so awful. That wasn’t the name of the band. We didn’t actually have a name. We signed to Island under the Mylo Ross Band under this development deal that we had. It was a nickname that someone said at a gig once. It was just an awful drug reference that stuck and it’s followed me around. Puff is weed, rocks is coke and brown is heroin. Hideous! Absolutely hideous!

You’ve recounted the story of when you were eight years old and sang in protest to try and stop a 400-yea- old oak tree being cut down. Of that you write, “Music from that moment seemed like a powerful tool if you have something to say.” What are some of the ways you think that your experiences, whether with your music or others, have reflected that?

What I learned as an actor is that the reason people love actors and acting is because most of the time it’s too scary to go and feel those things but by yourself or in your life. Nobody wants the scene in Good Will Hunting where you’re sitting on the bed having been left by the person you love most in the world and you’re hysterically crying. Nobody wants to be in that place, so they love watching actors do it ‘cause then they don’t have to do it. There’s something in music where I learned not to be afraid, just to express my feelings. And I think if that’s the most that I do, that it’s real, and if I’m singing about love, there is some sort of shared experience that someone can go, “I felt that way and I can relate.” I think it’s kind of the same thing with movies. People can kind of relate but they don’t have to actually go through it themselves.

Do you ever wonder when you returned from Uruguay to meet with EMI and also got offered the role in Circle of Friends what would have happened if you went with EMI and turned down the role?

I’ve thought about it a million times; a million and one times. It was a proper crossroads and I thought, if I took that path, what would have happened? You can drive yourself mad doing that sometimes, if I hadn’t done that or I’d done this, this would have happened. That’s just how it went down. I know that I would have worked. I truly believe that, as a session singer or as a solo artist, whatever it worked out as.

You moved to the states just over a decade ago. You said, having just arrived, “I’m so glad to be out of England. I don’t miss how incredibly difficult it is to engender any kind of energy into your life there.” Do you still feel the same?

I got into so much trouble for saying that. [laughs] I was hounded by the British press for the next ten years. It was seen as disingenuous.

Was it?

I think that came out of a young girl being out of the place she had lived for the first time in her life really and experiencing all this exciting… I was living in New York, it was insane. It was like a shot in the arm. It’s leaving home for the first time—everywhere is better than home, everywhere. That’s just what that was—it was youth. That’s the one thing about celebrity, you say stuff when you’re just a kid experiencing stuff for the first time and it’s recorded and you’re judged on it. Whereas… I was 23 years old. I think it was just youthful hubris.

You’re a surfer. How, if at all, has surfing impacted your various artistic endeavors?

Of my god yeah, definitely. That’s what I was doing when I was writing my record—just surfing and playing guitar all day. I wrote a lot in Hawaii. I slowed down. I stopped the whole acting thing, really. It’s very meditative for me; paddling out I write a lot of songs in the water, by the water. It’s a huge part of my life.

Compare and contrast musical performance with acting; what does one offer that perhaps the other does not?

I can’t really separate them because they really do come from the same place. It’s interesting: The stuff I’m doing on The Riches right now is much more raw and transparent than the stuff I did before and I think a lot of that has to do with music. Like I said, there’s just no place for artifice.