My Ruin is the ultimate DIY band. Make that a NSD band. As in Never Say Die. The band, now and forever a duo, have endured more than their share of trials and tribulations since forming in 1999. Even when they've been on record labels they've ended up having to do all the promotional efforts themselves due to the ineptitude of slack-ass execs. While forever picking up the ball and having to run with it themselves, the band has usually found themselves on the back roads full of slow-moving farm vehicles rather than the smooth, traffic-free black top of the freeway, in order to get to their destination.

Yet an indomitable spirit powers Mr & Mrs Murphy and that Never Say Die attitude has served them well through their latest adventure. After hooking up with a new label, the band cranked out a smoking new record, Ghosts and Good Stories, in short order and was almost enroute to the home of their most committed audience, the UK. According to the Murphys, they found out that their new label owner had no intention of keeping his promises in regards to their band starting with the support & promotion for their September tour which they were forced to cancel last minute. Soon after this, they found out their record was not being released on any of the scheduled dates in territories they were told it would be which led to the band ultimately severing their relationship with Tiefdruck Musik and threw a monkey wrench into their best laid plans for the remainder of 2010."

While this would ground less experienced bands, Tairrie and Mick merely sighed and went back to the drawing board. They began the process of freeing themselves from the record company, waited until the record was available everywhere and then cranked up the machine again themselves. The pair have been basking in the glow of a river full of ecstatic reviews for the new record and a UK tour is scheduled for March. And as always, their rabid audience has remained steadfastly with them.

My Ruin remains one of my favorite bands and Tairrie and Mick are individuals that I truly respect so it was a pleasure to once again speak to the husband and wife team recently. There was so much to cover that we've broken everything down into a 3-part mini series. First up is my talk with Tairrie. In the coming days, you can look forward to the interview with Mick and a third part with the pair breaking down Ghosts and Good Stories track by track.

antiMusic: Correspondence from you following the 2008 UK tour hinted that you and Mick were debating the merits of keeping the band alive. What transpired that sent you into this down spiral?

Tairrie: It wasn't really as much of a down spiral as it was a self realization. We realized there were people very close to us who were coming in between us and dare I say, even working against us. We were burnt on the bulls*** and pretty much we had surrounded ourselves with. It all just came to a head after that tour so we decided it was time to cut the negative elements from our life and the band. Mick & I have been together now for almost 11 years and we've been through many highs, lows and in-betweens and over time we've also had to deal with an interesting cast of characters both in and around My Ruin. Many of the things we've had thrown our way would have made most bands run for cover and hang it up by now but we've kept on persevering. Shit happens and you get pissed off, you hurt, you regret, you vent and if you're strong then you move on and keep going onto the next chapter. This is our next chapter and we're happy that we recovered from our dark days to still be doing what we love doing and delivering the album we wanted to make. What we went through helped us to create something magical and more important to us than we ever thought it could be. It brought us back together musically.

antiMusic: While you were concentrating on your Blasphemous Girl Designs last year, a record contract came to you out of the blue from Tiefdruck-Musik. It sounded like it was unsolicited. Was it really or had you been quietly seeking label support all along?

Tairrie: To be perfectly honest, we weren't really thinking about recording a new album. Mick and I had gotten married in December 2008 and decided to take some much needed time off and away from the band. We wanted to focus on ourselves as a couple for a while rather than the vocalist and guitarist of My Ruin. I launched my new store and my first two collections for BGD and we just stepped away from the band & business. It was a refreshing change of pace and a nice stress reliever.

Then one day the mood seemed to strike us both to begin writing again and we seemed to have a record written overnight. The opportunity with Tiefdruck presented itself via the label owner Daniel Heerdmann who we began having conversations with and so did our attorney. He seemed like a nice guy who was a fan of the band and of me on a personal level going back in the day when he first saw me perform live in Germany when I was in Manhole. It all felt right and very natural to us when we entered our agreement together. However, soon after we announced our signing with Tiefdruck we were warned by a friend in another band who we had previously toured with to be careful of Daniel because he had his own bad dealings and horror stories about him and his label but we chose to base our relationship on the way he treated us rather than feed into the he said-she said gossip of someone else's business.

We recorded and delivered our album and up until that point everything seemed like it was great but once we delivered our artwork and the manufacturing phase began, this is also when the trouble began. Little did we know that everything we were warned about would quickly become a frightening reality for our band and we would soon discover what a dishonest, misogynistic man Daniel really was. It was shocking and very disappointing but all too typical.

antiMusic: Had you been stocking possible song material during the past year or did you have to start from square one for this new record?

Tairrie: We started from square one and began writing out of the blue. The record just began to take shape naturally and before we knew it we had 13 songs. That being said, Mick does seem have an unlimited supply of riffs in his head which always seem to fit perfectly with my lyrics whether we plan them that way or not.

antiMusic: The subjects of religion, betrayal and the objectifying of women are ones that you have touched on before but are revisited this time with more than a little venom. You also write more directly about the oppression of women in many Eastern religions. Your home of Los Angeles doesn't escape your pen either. Where does the title of Ghosts and Good Stories come from and are all of these afore-mentioned subjects part of a broader statement?

Tairrie: I tend to write about the subjects that have either affected me personally or interest me on a humanitarian level as a woman. On our new album I decided to delve into a bit of uncharted territory with the song 'Eyes Black' which I felt was a statement I needed to make after becoming much more aware of the circumstances surrounding women who are being forced to live basically unseen due to the submissive aspects of certain religions and cultures.

As for Los Angeles, I've grown up here and while there are many things to love about this city, over time it has also become a bit of a graveyard for me metaphorically speaking. One big paradox. 'La Ciudad' represents my feelings about my surroundings. While many talented artists and musicians live in LA, this town is also amplified with more name droppers, narcissists and people out for themselves than any other place I've ever been to. It's a very phony place that tends to transform people into monsters. I've watched it happen time and time again and it's gotten to the point where this city has lost a part of its beauty to me.

While there are places that will always be special and a part of my heart within LA, at the same time I've become very distrustful of human nature and motives of almost everyone I meet in this city because so many people we have come across seem so full of s*** and void of integrity.

The title of the new album was inspired by something that actually came from a place that is completely opposite of LA. One evening I had read these 4 words written by a good friend of mine from Knoxville, Tennessee. They just sort of jumped out at me from the page because they seemed to embody a very classic Southern Tennessee Williams's vibe. Soon after, I felt compelled to call the album this based on everything Mick and I had been going through leading up to the time we began our writing. It was very descriptive of what our recordings meant to us in regards to our life and I couldn't seem to get the phrase out of my head.

I guess you could say the 'Ghosts' represent the people who are no longer with us in the metaphorical sense but seem to continue to haunt us by six degrees of separation in this city and the 'Good Stories' represent the interesting true life tales which inspired the lyrics.

The black & white photo on the album's cover is a vintage shot of my great-grandparents from the early 1900's in front of their home back in Michigan. I came across it in an old wooden box filled with old family photographs when we were writing. I remembered having seen it years ago and never really giving it much thought but when I saw it again it really spoke to me as the image that illustrated the album title because I could kind of see myself and Mick within it, in some otherworldly way. The story of My Ruin is much like the story behind that photograph, rich with history and a colorful past, very fitting.

antiMusic: Without a doubt, this is your strongest record so far. As with anything you do in life, if you do it long enough, you should become better and better at it. Do you feel that the "band" is clicking on all cylinders now, even though it's just you and Mick? Or is it because it's just you and Mick?

Tairrie: Thank you. I feel the same way. I think Mick & I have always been clicking on all cylinders as far as our past recordings have gone but there is something special about our latest album that does set it apart from the previous ones. The fact that we scaled things down in the studio is definitely part of the reason the new album sounds the way it does. Having it just the two of us was a lot less stress for obvious reasons. I prefer it this way. It was far less time consuming and complicated and Mick did an amazing job with the production and musical performances.

antiMusic: How exciting has it been to watch the evolution of Mick Murphy who started as your guitarist/songwriter and has blossomed into multi-instrumentalist and producer as well as somebody that has a pretty developed sense of the marriage between melody and heaviness?

Tairrie: It's been great. Mick was always a killer guitar player but like you said, he has become so much more over the years. I can't imagine My Ruin being the band it is without him. Watching him write and demo songs over and over to get them perfect and exactly how he envisions them is an art in itself but what he does in the studio is a whole other story. He plays each instrument effortlessly and I have to be truthful and say that at times it can get a bit intimidating because it comes so natural for him but it also makes me work that much harder at what I do so it's very inspiring to me as an artist.

antiMusic: I thought that Throat Full of Heart contained some of your most ferocious work to date with songs like "Ready for Blood" but you raise the bar with this record. Your screams on songs like "Excommunicated" could scare the devil himself. Apparently time has not eroded your vocal abilities one iota. How have you managed to channel such aggression into your delivery and make your instrument even more deadly?

Tairrie: Thank you once again. 'Excommunicated' is one of my favorite vocal performances in years. When I first went into the studio to start tracking I had a few fears and wasn't completely sure how to approach the album as a whole because I had not performed in a year nor had I been in pre production rehearsals or demoed my vocals. Every song was born very much in the moment and I think that is the beauty of this particular album. I just sort of do what I do. There is no real way to explain it. I'm happy that my voice has become stronger with time and I appreciate people's positive reactions to the new album.

antiMusic: My Ruin has never been and never will be an MTV band. You've been vocal about your refusal to roll over and beg within the industry the way other bands have been forced to do. You won't see My Ruin on Ozzfest and your records won't be declared platinum. At this point in your career, how do you quantify success for a new My Ruin release?

Tairrie: Success means different things to different people. For us, success is the ability to still write and record albums that we are proud of which are relevant and stand the test of time. No, you won't see us on MTV or playing Ozzfest because we do not have a major label or big management company pumping money into us but as long as we have the ability, fire and passion to make music we will continue to do so on our terms and this is how we quantify our success.

antiMusic: Earlier this year, you were approached to do a song for the Metal Hammer AC/DC tribute CD (MIGHTY impressive by the way). Why did you choose to do "Have a Drink on Me" and even though you're not strangers to covers, how much fun was it to do something like that outside of the norm?

Tairrie: It was great to be asked by Metal Hammer to be a part of their tribute CD and we had a blast recording the cover. We submitted a list of AC/DC songs we were interested in doing and "Have a Drink on Me" was our first choice because it was non gender descript and something we felt suited us musically. It's always fun to step out of our comfort zone and put our spin on someone else's song and we got a really positive response to our version & video which Mick filmed & edited.

antiMusic: In another direction, you released a song under the moniker of Death Work Professionals which was a cover of the Ice Cube/Dr Dre song "Natural Born Killaz" which was just amazing. How did this song come about? Any other plans for further material?

Tairrie: As many people may or may not know, I used to be a rapper back in the day before I started my first metal band [Manhole] in 1993. Eazy E signed me to his label and I released my first album 'The Power of a Woman' on Comptown Records/MCA. I've always been a fan of old school and classic gangster rap. The idea to do DWP was something Rhiis Lopez from the band Ana Kefr and I came up with one night as a fun side project collaboration.

We decided to cover 'Natural Born Killaz' because the track is sick and I've been itching to rock a rhyme for a while. The song was originally recorded in 1994 so we changed a few words here and there to make it a bit more timely and personal to us as vocalists. We just switched it up a bit and put our style to it. Fans of both our bands seem to really enjoy it and we had a great time recording it but I'm not sure if or when we'll be recording another DWP song. We're both pretty busy at the moment in our bands. We do have it available as a free download at www.deathworkprofessionals.bandcamp.com for anyone interested in checking it out.

antiMusic: OK, you were on a new label. The record came out overseas and a tour was lined up for this fall. Everything seemed great. Then you announced that your record was not coming out where and when it was supposed to and no answers were forthcoming from the powers that be. What happened?

Tairrie: The label owner misled us on every level. He made many promises he had no intention of keeping and his actions forced us to cancel the tour. It was the first time in our band history that we cancelled a tour and it was very upsetting for us to have to do this but we had no choice. This was the final nail in the coffin for us in regards to Tiefdruck Musik.

antiMusic: Where do things stand currently with your contract with the label?

Tairrie: There is no longer a relationship between My Ruin & Tiefdruck Musik at this time nor will there be in the future. Other than the fact they released "Ghosts and Good Stories", we have washed our hands of the label and owner due to the fact he has been extremely unprofessional in regards to My Ruin and disrespectful to me as a woman. He has caused us great duress and has done very little to promote or support our new album. We have not spoken to him in months other than via our attorney. The best thing that has come from our signing with that label is our relationship with our new publicist Mona Miluski of Platinum PR who is no longer with the label herself. If it wasn't for Mona, our record would have died a fast death but she has worked hard to make sure it got the coverage it deserved in the press and helped us promote it.

antiMusic: Do you have any faith left in the music industry after everything you've been through or do you just feel that it has always been skewed a certain way and you just naturally run counter to it?

Tairrie: My Ruin are misfits in the mainstream metal world, I guess we're also kind of like a dark horse in a way because even when people write us off, we always seem to come back and prove them wrong. We've been doing this for a long time and we really haven't got much faith left in the music industry these days. We've learned first hand that it's a very dirty business filled with many shady and deceitful people who simply cannot be trusted to keep their word or do their job. I suppose it's the faith we have in ourselves that keeps us going because some days it's really hard to continue to be a part of an industry you really don't respect. There are so many clowns running labels, managing bands and behind the scenes at magazines or doing publicity, tour managing whatever the case may be and most of the time it's just a big suck off fest. Everyone's kissing everyone else ass to get what they need for themselves or their band while talking s*** behind each other's backs and that's where we just don't fit in. We refuse to play that game. We never have and we never will and that's probably a big part of the reason why we have remained so underground. We prefer to say things to people's faces and we've never been able to fake it.

antiMusic: With the band essentially a twosome now, will you have a rhythm section for tour purposes only?

Tairrie: Yes.

antiMusic: With the record out now (hopefully) in most countries, what are the plans for 2011 for My Ruin?

Tairrie: It's been a weird situation having released our album then being forced to cancel our touring plans for this year due to circumstances beyond our control with Tiefdruck Musik but while we were home it actually gave us the unexpected opportunity to quietly work on something we will be spilling the beans about in January. We have also just announced our first tour to kick things off in March. We will be playing 10 dates in the UK which will also include our rescheduled London show as well as an appearance at Hammerfest III which we are both excited about and looking forward to in the New Year.

Morley and antiMusic thank Tairrie for taking the time to speak with us.