Marla Hansen returns to her hometown of Madison next week for a performance at Cafe Montmartre on Tuesday, December 18th. She’ll be playing songs off her delicate and gorgeous release Wedding Day, which is currently easing my driving burdens with its gentle calm. We caught up with Marla on her return from a recent trip to Paris for our continuing 5 Questions with Muzzle of Bees feature.

You just returned from Paris, how was your trip?

Amazing! I got to travel a lot on this trip, I started out in Glasgow, I spent a week there hanging out with friends and played one show, and it went really well. Glasgow has this amazing community of artists and musicians, it’s a smallish city but has so much going on, I totally fell in love with it. Then I joined up with Clare and the Reasons for a tour of the UK, I played viola and sang back up for her. I love tea, and potatoes, so I had a great time running around england and didn’t even mind the food. We ended that tour in Paris, and I also did a show there of my own songs. I ate more cheese there in three days than I usually do in a month, it was insanely good.

While you currently hold down New York residency, you are originally from Madison, correct? What are some of your favorite places/things in the city and what are some must hit spots upon your return?

I am from Madison, and I definitely have some specific favorite things to do when I’m home. I always eat at least once at Chautarra, I get the Masala Dosa, it’s so good! I always make a trip to B Side, and I also love to go to Ambrosius Chocolates on the east side, they are some of the best I’ve had anywhere.

Could you lend some information on the recording process of Wedding Day? Where and how was it recorded, and were there any lessons learned that you’ll apply towards future recording sessions?

Wedding Day was recorded basically because my friend Sam Bair offered to engineer it, he had access to this amazing recording studio in NYC called Headroom, and we would go in whenever he and the studio were available, usually late nights and weekends, and worked for free at our own pace. It was very luxurious having all that time, and it allowed us to experiment with the arrangements. I learned a lot about arranging during the recording, I had never done it before, I’d just been playing the songs solo, so when we were recording I often just asked my friends to play whatever they liked. Sometimes I didn’t like things at first but they would usually grow on me, it was a good way to open the field up to ideas other than my own, and I think the songs are a lot richer for it. Sam and my friend Sebastian Krueger helped a lot with the decision making on the arrangements, and they often urged me to keep things I initially wanted to get rid of, and are now some of my favorite things about the record. I think for the next record I’ll do even more of the arranging and part writing myself, and try to be a little more experimental even, but will still rely a lot on opinions from my friends on what is working and what isn’t.

The internet has dramatically altered the way artists can reach an audience. With things like blogs/myspace/etc, what are your thoughts on the power of the internet in terms of helping (or hurting) your music?

The interweb is a good thing. I think it’s only helped. I have a myspace page that I try to update often, but it takes forever and I get very easily frustrated with it, so I often get behind. I like the blog that’s there though, it’s fun to be able to post a little blurb about whatever I have going on, that’s relatively painless. I have a website too, but it’s just a nicer way of presenting most of the same stuff from the myspace, and I think the myspace is much more useful in terms of people getting access to information about me. Or at least much more commonly used. My friends are all trying to get me to join Facebook, but I’m not going there. I’m busy enough deleting myspace comments about how some girl took her pants off at a party and can you believe I got pics, OMG! Maybe Facebook will do a music service? Then I’d think about it.

We just wrapped up our favorite concerts and albums of 2007, do you have any shows or albums that stood out as favorites for you this past year?

I saw a lot of really good shows, some of my favorites were Andrew Bird at the Pygmallion Festival in Urbana, I had never seen him live before, he performed solo and completely blew me away, I think he’s from another planet. Tim Fite at Union Hall in Brooklyn was also a revelation, he’s one of the best showman out there. And I just saw the Dirty Projectors at Nice n Sleazy in Glasgow, they were fantastically complex and beautiful. As far as records go, I’ve been listening to In Rainbows way too much, I can’t help it, it’s just really really good. I think it has some of their best songs ever, especially Nude, All I Need and Arpeggi. I’m not so excited about the last two tracks though, I listen to the first eight and call it an EP. I just love the Grizzly Bear Friend EP as do most self respecting Brooklyn hipsters, and I bought the Loney, Dear record last week and am loving it’s popiness. I like the new Jay-Z record a lot too. I’m behind on my record shopping though, I still haven’t heard the new Iron and Wine for instance, so I’m not ready to claim a favorite record until I do some more listening!

We highly recommend you check out Marla’s video for “New Zealand” courtesy of our friends at La Blogotheque.

Myspace: Marla Hansen