And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan - Ep. 139: Suzanne Vega

Episode Date: August 2, 2021

Today’s Grammy award winning singer-songwriter, musician and record producing guest emerged as a leading figure of the folk-music revival of the early 1980s when, accompanying herself on acoustic guitar, she sang what has been called contemporary folk or neo-folk songs of her own creation in Greenwich Village clubs. Since the release of her self-titled, critically acclaimed 1985 debut album, she has given sold-out concerts in many of the world’s best-known venues. Known for performances that convey deep emotion, Vega’s distinctive, “clear, unwavering voice” (Rolling Stone) has been described as “a cool, dry sandpaper-brushed near-whisper” by The Washington Post, with NPR Music noting that she “has been making vital, inventive music” throughout the course of her decades-long career. Her songs have tended to focus on city life, ordinary people and real-world subjects. Notably succinct and understated, her work is immediately recognizable—as utterly distinct and thoughtful as it was when her voice was first heard on the radio over 30 years ago. Widely regarded as one of the foremost songwriters of her generation, our guest released her latest album, An Evening of New York Songs and Stories, on September 11, 2020. And The Writer Is… Suzanne Vega!Artwork: Michael Richey White Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey guys, welcome to Ann the writer is. I'm your host, Ross Golan. I've written with hundreds of artists and writers over the years, and my favorite part of each session is the first hour when we catch up about life, the industry, politics, composition, whatever. So this is a journey of learning why people write songs, how people write songs, and most importantly, who the people are who write the songs.

I'm producing this with the Great Joe London, big deal music publishing, and Mega House Music Management. If you want to listen to the songs we discuss in this podcast, follow us on our socials, find out about special live events, or buy that merch, aka that hat I always wear. Go to our website www.andth, and the writer is.com. Welcome to And The Update is. I am your host, Paige MacDonald,

and this is your weekly music industry update. Tencent Holdings and its majority-owned music arm, Tencent Music Entertainment, has been ordered to relinquish any exclusive deals held with global labels in China. China State Administration of Market Regulation carried out this plan issuing the exclusive deal ban as well as a fine on last Saturday. Instagram is expanding their insight data to 60 days, providing more analytical capacity. Indian rapper Badshah signs Global Deal with Universal Music Group. The multi-year agreement

is the artist's latest effort to cross over internationally. Jack Harlow, alongside his manager, Chris Thomas, has signed with range media partners. Spotify subscriptions has grown to 165 million in quarter to. This shows a 7 million growth compared to the previous quarter. Alice Beale has been promoted to managing director at Sony Music UK label Insanity Records. UMG ranked in $4.5 billion in the first half of 2021, showing a 17.3% spike. Universal Music Group has signed a licensing deal with Singapore-based video sharing app in TikTok rival, Lomotive. Lori McKenna, one of country's most prominent songwriters and our previous and the writer is guest,

has sold her catalog to Concord Music Publishing, which will work in partnership with Creative Nation and Pulse Music Group going forward on her music. Sally Boy has signed with Loud Robot at RCA Records, making him the second artist to be signed to the imprint since moving from Capital to RCA. Capital Music Group and Virgin have launched a new label partnership with Range Media. IHeart Media has striked a multi-year deal with NBA for 20 podcasts. FNMika, also known as the robot rapper who has nearly 10 million followers on TikTok, has just signed to a major record label in China. The music licensing and publishing company North Star Media has acquired a portion of the Shrek score royalty rights for $2.2 million. Warner Chapel is expanding into Vietnam.

and Vince Cobbler will be the first general manager. Simon Cowles, the X-Factor, is canceled in the UK after 17 years. The music tech company, VNUE, is acquiring online concert platform, stage it. According to a statement from VNUE, the deal will add over $9 million in revenue and hundreds of thousands of live music fans in complementary technology to VNUE's portfolio. Jesse Willoughby and Stephanie Cox have been promoted to new roles at Cobalt. Cox has become the GM of Cobalt's Nashville office and Willoughby has taken on the role of SVP of business development. Primary Wave music has acquired the publishing catalog of songwriter and producer Steve Kipner.

Sydney Agee from WME has joined the concerts team at Live Nation as a global tour promoter. There has been a massive boost for touring in festivals as vaccinated American and European travelers will not have to quarantine. Ingrove's music group has expanded into Denmark. Company has hired Anne Sophie Jeremysen as its new country manager in Groves, Denmark. WMG's independent label and artist services arm ADA worldwide has expanded into Russia and Italy. The Canadian rocker Brian Adams, who contributed to many kids' lives in the 80s with hits like cuts like a knife in summer of 69, has inked a deal with BMG to release his next album. Zizi Topps bass player Dusty Hill has sadly passed away at the age of 72.

A big thank you to Haley Evans of Mega House for gathering today's news. Now stay tuned for this week's episode of End The Writer Is. Welcome to End The Writer Is. I am your host, Ross Golan. Today's multiversital guest is one of the more unique humans we've had on the podcast. The spiritual guru is not just a Grammy and MTV winning artist, but is a Peabody Award-winning radio host and a Drama Desk-nominated playwright. Her platinum success comes.

from inorganic sound and what might be one of the most singable and most identifiable melodies of my lifetime. All the way from the upper west side in New York City, this woman is an artist in the realest sense. And the writer is Suzanne Vega.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Welcome. So, you know, what I really like about your career is that you've made choices as an artist to be creative in so many different spaces you know

you have the skill set to do any one of those things but you you've sort of chosen to partake in so many different kinds of art obviously having done nine studio albums and whatnot music being the main focus, but you've always branched out into so many things successfully. So I'm excited to hear your story. But I want to start from the beginning, Santa Monica, California.

You're born here. Tell me about your family. Well, let's see. It's true. I was born in Santa Monica, California. I have very few memories of that first part of my life. life. My mother was quite young when I was born. She was 18. She was married to my birth father for a little while, but that didn't last very long. She met my stepfather, Ed Vega,

and they moved to New York City when I was two and a half. Did they play music? Yeah. My birth father, who I didn't know about until I was about nine, and then I met him later on in my 20s, he plays piano. He also plays guitar. He's quite musical. And so I found out all of this stuff much later. I mean, I was probably, yeah, I was 28 years old when I learned about that side of the family. My stepfather played guitar and my mother at some point did sing and kind of. But my mother is mostly a computer systems analyst. Did you wonder where that skill set was coming from as a musician where, you know, it's your father that you didn't have a relationship with?

But before that, did you have any idea that that's where that skill set was coming from? Kind of. My mother, my mother very rarely talked about my father. So she did say that he played the piano. So I remember thinking, oh, maybe I can play the piano and trying to take piano lessons probably seven times. Never mastered the piano, never got the gist of reading music. It was always, always about the guitar for me.

So I guess I didn't really think about it that much, but it really became obvious once I met him and I saw how much he loved music. And then when I got the story of the rest of his family, he had been adopted at birth. He didn't know his own family. So before I found him, his brothers and sisters had found him.

And it turns out that his parents were touring musicians in the vaudeville circuit in the Midwest in the 1930s. So my grandmother was a drummer and my grandfather was a trumpet player. And that just kind of blew my mind. I mean, at that point, I just, you know, I had just finished a world tour to promote Luca, the song Luca. And so to find out that my grandparents were touring musicians and that I was a touring musician, that really kind of blew my mind. So whatever suspicions I had when I was growing up, that was nothing compared to what happened once I made contact with the family.

I mean, that's an incredible story. Do you now have a relationship with those relatives, you know, the aunts and uncles and whatnot? I do. I never got to meet my grandmother and I never got to meet my grandfather. But I did, all of my aunts and uncles are now have passed on. But I got to meet my two aunts and cousins. And so I have a relationship with them and I still see them. And the photographs are amazing. They're really fantastic. Obviously, you know, lyrics are a huge part of, and words are a huge part of your music. You know, I wouldn't think of, I know a lot of people who are lame and ask, do you write lyrics or do you write music first? but knowing some of your music, I would assume that you were always writing poetry.

Did you start being a poet or did you start being a guitarist? Oh, I started with poetry. I started writing little rhyming things when I was six or seven. I always had an interest. You remember poems? Yeah, I had them written down. I had these little books that I my stepfather was a writer so he always had paper around and so I don't want to tell you what they are. I'd rather not read them right now but you know they rhymed and they had good meter and it was something I was really interested in.

When did you start putting them to guitar? I started playing guitar when I was 11. Did you immediately start writing songs? No, no, I tried. I thought this is something I really want to do. I want to learn to write, I want to learn to write songs. It took me three years to write that first song. So I have no drafts or anything of what I had been working on from those years from 11 to 14,

but I have that first song at 14 and a bunch of ones that came immediately after that. Is that when you knew you had that you wanted to be a musician and a songwriter when you finished this song? Did you start playing it for people? Yeah. The first song I wrote was kind of a country song about my brother, Matthew, and about how he would get into fights and how I loved him anyway. I was really like a country song. I was into country music for like six months.

It was exotic to me because I came from New York City. And so it had very little to do with my actual life. So I thought it was interesting. So I remember playing that for him and playing it for my parents. And that song got an okay response, but the one that really got a good response was my second song, which was this narrative ballad. Even I...

Yeah, I was sort of... I really thought, wow, I think I've got something here. you, did you start playing in New York? I mean, how does somebody who's at 14 years old start, I mean, I guess I don't really know when between 14 years old and, you know, when the first, when your first album comes out on, you know, at 1985 at that point, what happens between 14 and then? I mean, you went to school in New York, you went to Barnard, you know, um, How does somebody in their teens and in high school pursue being a musician in New York City? Well, I went to the high school of performing arts, which was a great place to go to school.

I went actually in the dance department. So I started in the ballet department and was moved to the modern dance department. And that's what I loved. I studied the Martha Graham technique and really just. was passionate about it. But I had a guitar then, and I would bring my guitar to school and play it at lunchtime and play it at home room,

and I had a lot of friends. Most of my friends were in the music department. So I think it was one of the musicians for one of the classes had given me some advice. And he said, just buy the village voice and look in the back pages, and you'll find these announcements for like a church basement or the coffee houses and he said go and play there

you know try and see if you can get gigs playing there he said don't try and go into the music industry but so I followed his advice I started to play in a church basement when I was 16 by then I'd had a bunch of songs probably 40 50 songs maybe um Eventually, I started to go down to the village and try and get a gig there. I was turned down for a couple of years by the bitter end. But then when I was 20, I started to go to Folk City, which was, you know, the club where Bob Dylan had gotten his start back in the 60s. So everything kind of opened up for me after them. New York traditionally is really, it's on the forefront of different kinds of music.

What's interesting about a lot of your songs that they have, you know, they have this roots in almost like a folk sense, but they have, but it never feels necessarily fulky. It feels more, you know, Velvet Underground-y kind of, you know. That era, there's a lot of great music coming out in New York. You know, who was influencing you at that point? Was it fellow New York musicians or was it classic musicians? Who's influencing you? So that depends on which era you mean. Because when I was 14, as I said, I had that little flirtation with country music. And then after that, I listened to a lot of jazz. I listened to a lot of the Brazilian composers like Antonio Carlos Jobin.

And so that influence has kind of stayed with me over the years and has come out more recently, I'd say. I did see Lou Reed in 1979, and that was a huge influence on me. And interestingly, a lot of his songs, the first album I bought of his was the Berlin album, and that is a very acoustic album. He's playing acoustic guitar all the way through it. So the only instrument I play is the acoustic guitar, and so I played by myself. So the way that I wrote back then was that. I would write ideas on the guitar. So sometimes it might be a bass idea or it might be a rhythmic idea.

So I just tried to kind of get the ideas out in whatever way I could using the acoustic guitar. So I wasn't really taught. I was sort of self-taught. And I think that gave me a lot of freedom and leeway to write in whatever style I wanted. How did you go from an aspiring musician to A&M Records? What's the story with getting discovered? I had gotten a pretty good following by, say, 1982. I hadn't really gotten any press yet, but I had a little following. I played up at Columbia near Barnard.

I played at Barnard as well. So there were people who knew my name, and I used to keep a mailing list. So once I started playing down at Folk City, people would come down and see me. I had a manager. My manager back then was Ron Feirstein and Harvey Firestein's brother. And he came to hear me sing and he had lunch with me. And he said, where do you think you fit in to, you know, where do you think you fit into the music industry? So, you know, what record label do you think you belong on?

And I said, Flying Fish, maybe, or Rounder Records. You know, you could sell like 100,000 albums, which I thought was pretty cool. And he said, I think you could do better. I think you could get a major label deal. And the one that I would recommend for you is A&M Records, because they have real songwriters on there. They have Cat Stevens. They have Joan Armitrating. So that's what I'm going to go for.

I'm going to target them. And that's what he did. took two years and two or three attempts of sending our demo tape to A&M because they said no at first. I think we have all the rejection letters somewhere. And then one, then I got a really good review in the New York Times. And after that, I had both Geffen and A&M in a bidding war, which was a very nice situation. Funny that they now are one anyway. That's true.

At that time, and I feel like, you know, even what Kat Stevens was doing or what Talking Heads were doing, that there was still nobody doing exactly what the kind of music you were doing. How did an artist get discovered by the public at that point? You know, there's one thing where you get no, you know, you send, you finally get the record deal with A&M, you've done a lot of albums in your life. Was it your, how many, I guess, without looking at your discography right now,

how long did it take from getting that record deal to when people outside of the Barnard Columbia Circuit started noticing who you were? Surprisingly, it was right from the first day of that first album. I kind of knew that their expectations were very low for me. I heard somewhere that they were planning, they were thinking they would sell 30,000 albums.

And I was like, okay, sure, why not? And then they told me that the very first week, the first album came out, it sold 17,000. The first week. And I remember thinking, who are these people? Like, how do they know? And back then it would be released, and then you'd have a big burst.

And then it would continue, like week after week, every week I'd sell another thousand or another 2000. And so the album kept climbing the charts in America, but also in the UK. And then it started getting airplay. So it started to grow from the very first week of the very first album. It eventually sold, I think, a million worldwide, the first album. And then the second album came. that sold three million because it had the hit single. What were your expectations? Did you, somebody who's performing in New York doing the kind of music you're doing,

like you said, if they said 30,000, it seemed like you were okay with that, you know? Yeah, I mean, I had no expectations. I wasn't thinking in terms of like numbers or I was thinking, can I make a living at this? I mean, I had been working as a, a receptionist. Where were you good receptionist? It was a typesetting company called Alpha Type Burtold down in Penn Plaza. I used to answer the phones and all that stuff. Interestingly, I worked with Pat Dinesio of the Smithereens was my assistant for a while.

Because I knew him and he needed a job. So he helped me out for a while. So we both worked there for. for a little while. Did the people that you worked for, when did they figure out who was working at their company? Did they ever figure it out?

Yeah, they did. I'm still friends with my old boss, actually. And the people that I used to work for before I worked for Alphabet, Bertold, I worked for Crown Publishers in their publicity department. And everybody there knew that I sang. And in fact, when I switched jobs, my boss said to me, she was like, well, what are you going to do? She was like, well, you're not going to be a big star.

And then she said, are you? And then she said, at least not right away. So I said, well, if I got a record deal, I'll be sure to send you one. And I did. I got the record deal and I sent her an album. And I ran into her in the street in 1986, the year after. And she told me how proud she was. gotten the album and they put it up on the wall and all this stuff. So it was it was very nice

moment for me. It's funny how small being a musician like the the world is really small and when you look at musicians from the outside they they have this aura about them and they must they must live in the world that you envision them in. But in reality you know you have this successful album. You send it to your old boss. It's like it's just like it's what anyone really. would do in that situation. I think there's such a mindset around musicians as being this like in another world.

Yeah. Yeah. Totally. I mean, we all think that even still when you look at an artist it seems so far away until you meet them and it's like, no, they're still talking to their boss and they still would send that album. Yeah, it was meaningful to me. Things really change

when solitude standing comes out. That's really like the game changer. Tell me about the recording of that album and what it was like to release that album. And obviously I would like to ask questions about Tom's Diner and Luca because those are just Evergreens. But when you wrote those songs, did you know that these were going to be the songs that would define the beginning parts of your life? No, no, not at all. I had written Tom's Diner years before we put it out.

Actually, I had written Luca a couple of years before we put it out. I had no idea that those two would be the songs that would stick around when I wrote them. No, no feeling in particular. Why did they? What is it about Tom's Diner and what is it about Luca that have stood the test? of time already. Well, with both of those songs, there was a lot of

attention paid to the production. Which I think is more important than people realize. You know, I remember singing Muka and you know, it's a pretty, it's a song about child

abuse and so it's kind of intense and it's also kind of oblique so people sometimes didn't know what I was singing about and then they'd figure it out. and then you could see it on their face that they would make them sad. So I didn't get a lot of requests for it or anything like that, just as a folk song, just as something that I played on my acoustic guitar. It wasn't until we spent two years on the production of the song that it went right to radio.

It went to radio and was immediately accepted. It just went immediately like top 10. You spent two, wait, how long working on that song? Well, the first album came out in 85. I had written Luca in 1984. We saved it for the second album. So they started working on it immediately. We started working on the production, the arrangement, the drum parts, the keyboard parts, and all of that.

So it took about a year and a half, two years. And it worked. It sounded really big. It sounded very contemporary. It sounded great on the radio. And the song is so simple. And then again, people started to see what it was about, started to understand what it was about and started to talk about it.

And the video, I think, also really helped with the message of it. And it was the same thing with Tom's Diner. Tom's Diner was just a little song that I had written. And it really wasn't until DNA did the big remix. with the beat and the chorus. And it suddenly had this like cool attitude. And it went. It kind of hit in the moment.

That's why it's called a hit because it hits and it's like it was everywhere. It's amazing that still to this day how much a really good, a really good remix changes everything. There was one of the biggest songs, I believe the biggest song in the UK last year called Super Lonely was a similar thing. It's an acoustic, you know, it's a ballad, and then it was remix, and it had this incredible feel to it.

And people started trying to create original music like that. I mean, I imagine people were emulating both these songs a lot after they came out. But that song, you know, Tom's Diner ends up being sampled in centuries by Fallout Boy, which ends up being a big song also. Yeah. You know, did it have any, did it mean something different as it would get sampled and used over the years? Every time it's used, does it feel like you just rewrote it?

Or is it sort of you're just so used to it now? No, no, I always really like it. Most of the remixes I think are really cool or funny or, you know, especially if someone has a particular slant on it. I was already a fan of Fallout Boy, so I was kind of thrilled that they used it, and I got to meet them, and that was cool. And all of that remixing and interpolation,

that started right after DNA did it. By the time a year had passed, I think I'd gotten so many remixes and interpolations and kind of parodies of Tom. Diner that I put them all out on a on a CD because I'd received so many copies of these other songs that people had written using it. So most of the time I'm pretty happy about it. Yeah, of course. When Luca gets, you know, nominated for all kinds of awards, but to get nominated for, you know,

song of the year and record of the year and best female pop vocal performance, there's sort of a different, it's jumping up to a whole other level of accolade and just sort of recognition. Did you start feeling pressure to repeat the success that you had with those songs?

Yeah, I did a bit. But on the other hand, I knew that I hadn't written them. It wasn't like I had control over it. It wasn't like I wrote them with a team of people who were going to deliver me a product that was going to get me there again. I felt like, well, I mean, I'm a songwriter. I'm very idiosyncratic.

I've got my own way of doing things. So I would have been happy to have another single, but it just didn't happen. The album that came out after that, Days of Open Hand, was very obscure and the songs I think the things I was writing about were sort of more obscure. So it just never happened in that same way again. And I was fine with that. I made peace with that. And I basically kind of go where my enthusiasm and my imagination takes take me. Yeah, I said this in the intro, but I do think that that's the mark of a real artist, is somebody who's not necessarily isn't chasing a certain...

You could have gone in a different way. You know, you could have done everything in a remix sort of way. You could have done everything trying to sound like... Or pop. Yeah. Did you actively start making... It's almost after this, it becomes a lot of poetry. You know, were you actively pushing your lyric

and music boundary almost away from the pop world? Was that intentional? Or was it just sort of, if people wanted to play it cool, if not, fine? It was more like that. I think I always tried to have a song or two on each album. I mean, back in those days, that's how you did it. You had your album and then you had like one or two singles to appease the record company. And I had an open door with the record company.

I had a very open relationship with them. I could walk into the record company president's office and say, what do you think? And they were great. They were all through the whole 99.9 Fahrenheit degrees campaign. They loved it. They loved the album. They thought it was really groundbreaking and entertaining and cool and artistic.

And it was successful in a way. That album went gold in the U.S. and Blood Makes Noise got some, it was like number one at alternative radio for a while. So, you know, I had my own kind of success, which was great, and that suited me, and that felt right.

You pursued so many things outside of music, you know, and I don't even know which thing to start with, but by doing things like, you know, I guess even the playwriting stuff comes so much later. Unless were you writing short stories, were you writing plays?

Were you writing things along the way outside of lyrics? It's a good question. It seems like what were you doing in the, you know, with all these you, it just sort of there's a, their blips evolve of all of a sudden all these different kinds of art forms, but they don't just,

things just don't happen. They, you evolve into that, you know? That's an interesting question. So to answer you, when I went to Barnard, I majored in English literature, but I minored in theater. And one of the courses that I took was a course called the dramatic monologue. And both Luca and Tom's Diner are in a way examples of dramatic monologues. you know, Luca is the point of view of a small child. I describe him when I talk about the character as a boy.

So I use that simple language that he would have used, and I have it from his perspective. And it's the same thing with Tom's Diner. I had sort of written it as a kind of point of view song from a friend of mine who is a photographer. He's a male photographer, and he said to me that he always felt that he had seen his life through a pain of glass. And so I thought, oh, this will be cool to write a song from his perspective.

And I did write a play when I was at Barnard. That was my senior thesis was the first draft of that play about Carson McCullors. It was like a half hour play with five songs. So that was back before I'd even graduated. So there's your answer. my whole career in a sense was kind of encapsulated in those classes and courses that I took at Barnard in the theater. But, you know, you didn't really, you couldn't really see the fruit of it until later on in my career. I basically went back to what I had loved previously.

It's so interesting to try to explain to the people who listen to this podcast tend to do songs. And writing songs, you know, except for the one, the first song that you wrote that took you three years, usually songs take, you know, a day, two, three a week, two weeks maybe. But when you try to explain that plays or musicals take 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, and that's not unusual. Yeah. So hard to explain that to people. Yeah. I are, why are you patient enough? Where does the patients come from? Most people give up. I mean, it's hard to go back to something that you wrote in college that you really like. I mean, I guess,

you know, we hadn't gotten there yet, but that play ends up becoming a drama desk nominated play that you do years later, right? Isn't that one that you did? Yeah. I have three versions of the same play. So the first draft of it was in college. The second draft was in 2011, and that was nominated for a Desk Drama Award. The third and final version of it came out in 2018 and had its premiere at the Alley Theater in Houston, Texas.

And the final version of it was called Love or Beloved. evening with Carson McCullors. So I guess it's a little crazy, you know, to spend that much time on something and to keep going back and going back until you feel you've gotten it right. But I really loved working on that project. I really had a deep sense of Saturday with Dave N. Selt, who was at the head of the Rattlestick Theater here in New York, his gift was that he would help playwrights. And so he really helped me to kind of find my way with that play.

And there's no other reason. There's no other answer except to say I just really got a kick out of every aspect of it. The acting, you know, the costumes, the playwright, the writing of the play itself. I mean, that said, I'm sort of happy to be taken a break from it. We've made a film now of the play. And so I did that last fall before the pandemic. And we'll see where that goes. You know, it's a tiny little film.

It's, you know, like, you know, very low budget. So we'll see what happens with that. But I'm happy right now to just, like, leave that project behind. It's an amazing thing that I love the idea that unlike a song where once it's out, it's really hard to do new versions of it. other people might do remixes of it, but once you release a version, it's kind of out there. Rarely do artists go back and redo that. But plays are just different.

You're allowed to go back. You're allowed to make it better. I just think that that world is so much, that's amazing to be able to edit four years and make it something different. I think that's cathartic. And then the plays part of your journey. Exactly. Yeah.

Very much. It really affected me, you know, in those years. I'm now aware of, like, the pauses between words. And, you know, it's great. I really loved it. It really helped me to come out of myself because I'm a very introspective person. So spending that time on the stage, both with the Carson McCuller's play and also with Bob and Ted and Carol and Alice, that character I was playing is very, I was playing like nine or ten characters. I don't know if you saw the play, but I was playing a book.

bunch of little cameos. And so it really was a stretch for me. It was a lot of fun. Do you describe yourself as a musician, an actor, a playwright, when somebody says, oh, what do you do for a living? I'm a songwriter. I'm a writer. Yeah.

And I sing to get the song out, you know, to get the song out of my mouth, that's how I, that's how I do it is. I sing, sing the words. But I'm basically a writer first and a songwriter in particular. Let's talk real quick about American public media, American Mavericks. You won the Peabody Award for Excellence in Broadcasting. That's as big of an award as, you know, that's the Grammys. That's the, you know, that's a huge award.

But again, it's something that's a little bit outside of the box. What inspired you to do it? And, you know, how did people get to know the, you know, get to know it? How did that become so successful? I was approached by the producer of the show. Tom, his name was Tom. I'm trying to remember his last name. It was a funny last name.

It'll come to me. He approached me and he said, here's my idea for this radio show. We think you're the perfect one to do this. We want someone who is accessible, but someone who also has the intellect to understand the concepts that are being discussed here. The idea of the American Mavericks

was that he had picked, I think, 13 composers who were American composers who were sort of the punk rockers of their day. You know, that kind of thing, the mavericks of the classical world. And I loved it. I loved the whole idea. I think he recognized me as a kind of maverick in my own world. So he, and he liked my speaking voice. So I would go, I get my script, and we'd work together on my delivery, and I just loved it. And especially as a modern dancer, you know, as a modern dancer, I knew some of this music. I had danced to it. It was great.

So it was very meaningful to me. The whole project was wonderful. And I think it got a really good response from the public. Who were the composers that you felt that you discussed that you were most fans of in that

series? I think the obvious one is Philip Glass. There might have been some earlier ones, but and also I'm confusing now because there was a later series called 13 days that changed music forever, and then

that was more international, and they had Bella Bart talk, and they had you know, just a wider version. So my memories are kind of overlaid with the two shows. But yeah, Philoplasts was, I was thrilled to be

to learn about his history and talk about his work. Because I've worked with him several times and he's always inspiring. He's always down to earth and funny and, you know, incredibly smart and so dedicated to his vision. One of the things that I can read about you is that you have a strong spiritual connection as a Buddhist. And I want to know more about that. Were you born that way? Was your family like that? Was your family booedars?

You know, where were you introduced to it? But, you know, who introduced you to? I was introduced by my parents, by my stepfather. When I was 16 years old, he had been to a meeting here in New York City. He thought it was interesting. He came home. He told us about it. He wanted us all to go to a meeting.

And I liked it right away. I have a Buddhist practice. My practice is that I do prayers in the morning and prayers in the evening. These days it takes probably three or four minutes to recite the sutra in the morning and in the evening. Used to take longer. So there's an aspect of it that's said out loud. It's very repetitive. You recite a mantra.

And I keep an altar. So I do my prayers in the morning, do my prayers in the evening. And yeah, for a while my whole family practiced. Everyone kind of has kind of gone in and out of practicing. I myself had stopped for a few years, but I've been pretty steady on for the last, I don't know, 15 years. Very cool. What are you working on next? This film, I'm really happy to kind of get that done.

and so we're kind of finishing up the final touches with the credits and the editing and the color correction and all that stuff. I want to start writing songs. We've been through a very crazy time as a nation and I've been taking a lot of notes and basically just trying to figure out what's going on. Obviously, I, like everybody else,

have been spending time at home. So I want to figure out a way to write about these things. things in a way that's meaningful in a way that feels like myself. I guess it's really been a while since I've really like written a whole new batch of songs. So at some point I'll be doing that. Cool. Well, let's go to this.

I'll list five things and tell me it comes to the top of your head. Let's start with your daughter, Ruby. Aw. I adore my daughter. She's fantastic. What comes to my mind, her little face. So, I mean, she could have been a musician, I guess, if she had wanted to, but she's actually, she's studying to be a biologist. She's getting her a PhD in biology, and her speciality is infectious diseases.

So she's doing some good in the world. This couldn't be more useful right now. I know. Yeah. Let's go with your mother, Pat. My mom. My mom is very tough. She struggles with Parkinson's disease, but she's very strong in her mind. And we talk several times a week and she's got a great spirit. Let's go with New York City. Oh, New York City.

I love New York City. It's, you know, been through hell and back, especially this year. But it still has so much beauty to it. It still has the Central Park. I mean, I really miss the museums. I miss going out drinking with my buddies. I miss that aspect of it. But, you know, you can kind of feel that it's going to come back.

I always have faith that it will. Let's go with our friend Duncan Sheik. I've had a long friendship with Duncan Sheik. He's also a Buddhist. And in fact, he used to practice in my mother's district, I believe, because she was always telling me how cute he was, how talented he was. And then he opened for me one day a long time ago. And we became friends after that, pretty much. super talented guy

yeah no doubt let's go with our final one the melody to tom's diner it was easy it was simple it was just something that popped into my head as I was walking down Broadway probably coming from tom's diner or Tom's restaurant as it's really called

it's just one of those things that was a gift It popped into my head just like it pops into yours and stayed there just the way it stays in yours. So I feel myself very fortunate that I was able to capture that and put it down. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for doing the podcast. It's very cool. You've done some amazing things and I'm excited to hear this next batch of songs that you're writing at home.

I know we could all use some real poetry right now. So I'm excited to hear it. All right. Thank you very much for having me. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of And The Writer Is.

If you want to hear music from this songwriter I just interviewed, be sure to check out our Spotify playlist or visit our website at anandtherwriter is.com. If you like what we're doing, please subscribe to us. You can also like us on Facebook and Twitter. And The Writer Is is produced by Joe London and published by Big Deal Music. A special thanks to David Silverstein from Mega House Music and Michael White. Until next time, this is Ross Golden.