Fresh Air - Bluegrass Star Billy Strings / Laufey

Episode Date: December 27, 2025

Singer, songwriter and guitarist Billy Strings has one foot in traditional bluegrass and another in improvisational jam music. He has a new album, ‘Live at the Legion,’ and he brought his guitar to our studio. He spoke with Sam Briger about healing himself through songwriting.Also, Icelandic jazz-pop star Laufey spoke with Terry Gross about her classical training in cello, breaking out online during COVID, and her first arena tour. Her recent album is ‘A Matter of Time.’ Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Latin music has never been bigger, but it's always been big on Alt Latino. 15 years in, we continue celebrating Latinidad through a music lens, transcending borders through Ritmo. Get to know artists from La Cultura on a deeper level and throw some new Latin music wrecks into your rotation. Listen to Alt Latino in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. From W. H.Y.Y. in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Sam Brigger. Today we continue our series highlighting some of our favorite interviews of the year with singer, songwriter, and guitarist, Billy Strings.

Strings is one of the rare bluegrass musicians who can fill arenas with tens of thousands of fans. He's been working to get to where he is for a long time. By the time I could play guitar, you know, five, six years old, I was learning those tunes. I might have been able to play some of them before I knew how to tie my shoes or something. You know, it was like I was learning how to speak and talk and walk, and I was learning all these Doc Watson tunes at the same time, and it was just like a religion. Also, we hear an excerpt of Terry's interview with classical cellist and pop star Laveh.

That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. This message comes from Wise, the app for using money around the globe. When you manage your money with Wise, you'll always get the mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Join millions of customers and visit Wise.com. T's and C's Apply. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Dignity Memorial. When you think about the people you love, it's not the big things you miss the most. It's the details.

What memories will your loved ones cherish when you're gone? At Dignity Memorial, the details aren't just little things, they're everything. They help families create meaningful celebrations of life with professionalism and compassion. To find a provider near you, visit DignityMemorial.com. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Sam Brigger. If you ever find yourself at an arena concert where tens of thousands of fans of all ages are stomping about to the Bill Monroe tune Roanoke, or the classic bluegrass song, Old Slewfoot, chances are you're at a Billy Strings show. A singer, songwriter, and guitarist,

Billy Strings is one of the younger generation of musicians, carrying the torch for traditional acoustic bluegrass, even while his music incorporates excursions into exploratory improvisational jams and the occasional heavy metal guitar riff. And he's been celebrated by both audiences and the music industry. He's won two Grammys and Highway Prayers, released in 2024, is the first Bluegrass album in over 20 years to reach number one on Billboard's all-genre top 100 album sales chart. That album showcases his songwriting and his terrific band. Since then, he's released a live album with another ace bluegrass guitarist Brian Sutton called Live at the Legion. The duo performed in a more intimate setting than the arena's strings usually

plays in these days, the American Legion post-82 in East Nashville, playing a lot of music associated with Doc Watson. Let's hear the lead-off track from live at the Legion, Nashville Blues, originally by The Delmore Brothers. no hat, ain't got no shoes. These people here, they treat me fine. These people here, they treat me fine. Well, they feed me beer, and they feed me wine, and I've got the blues. Those Nashville blues, I've got the blues, those Nashville blues. I ain't got no hat, ain't got no shoes. That's Billy Strings and Brian Sutton on the new album Live at The Legion. Billy Strings, welcome to fresh air.

Hey, thank you so much. Good to be here. A lot of this material comes from Doc Watson, like some of these songs are songs that are part of his repertoire. You said that most everything you do comes from Doc Watson. Can you talk about his influence on you? Yeah, he's like the ground upon which I stand, you know. My dad played his music all around the house growing up,

and by the time I could play guitar, you know, five, six years old, I was learning those tunes too. I might have been able to play some of them before I knew how to tie my shoes or something. You know, it was like I was learning how to speak and talk and walk, and I was learning all these Doc Watson tunes at the same time, and it was just like a religion in my house, you know. His music is just, it's the best. I mean, that's what I was listening to on the way over here,

the Sonic journals, the Owsley thing that he recorded. It's just these beautiful recordings, and gosh, it was so good. Everything they were playing was just churning. I can hear some of his guitar playing in your playing, but what about his singing? Was that also influential? He didn't have a big range, but he was expressive. and he is singing, I always think of it as very crisp.

I mean, I think his range was really kind of something to behold when you think about it. He had this great low baritone, and he could also yodel and get up into that really high falsetto. And, you know, but with Doc, it was always just spoken. It was always the information of the song came through and the conversation of it. You know, people like him, people like Willie Nelson, people like Dolly Parton, these really, great storytellers. When they're singing, you know, if you see Dolly Parton on TV singing and you press mute, it just looks like she's talking to you because she is. She's telling the story, you know, that's one big thing that one of my vocal coaches that I've been working

with, one of the big things that I took from some of those lessons was just give me the information, you know. I get on stage and I sing and I'm so worried about the pitch. Is it in my sense? singing good? Is the tone good? Am I singing right? How's my timing? This and that? It's like taking the kids to the park and you're scared to let them go down the slide because you don't want them to get hurt. It's like, geez, let them play, you know? And so if you focus on the story and telling the words and, you know, it's just like, I know where the pitch is. I just need to tell the story. So you're doing that more? Trying to. It's easier said than done. All this stuff, you know all the music kind of zen kind of mindful stuff that i've been getting into it's kind of the

inner game uh inner game stuff you know i mean i'm high strong i'm i got a lot of anxiety and stress and um i'm moving around a lot i've been really busy the last several years and i've got a lot of my own personal stuff that just haunts me on a daily basis and i try to i try to do a everything I can to just be cool and get my nervous system to chill, but it just seems like I don't know what I can do to calm it. I do the best I can, and I'm doing okay, but it's a daily kind of struggle to just stay on the ground. Does playing guitar help, or is playing guitar caught up in all of that stuff, because that's what you do for a living? It depends on what kind of playing guitar, you know? If I'm on stage, that's where the joy is, you know. That's where the

where the fun is if i'm i kind of ride myself pretty hard about practice offstage well bill if you wouldn't mind um doing another song for us that's one of your favorites i could do uh told you on the way over here i was listening to that bears sonic journals doc and merle t michael um and man they were sounding good and they were doing this number here it's called the browns furry blues Hard luck up coming back is walking cane. Lord, Lord, I got them brown, fairy blues. Well, he trotted away and he went to town to see a little woman and now he's down. Lord, I got them brown, spary blue.

Hard, but pop, you're getting too tight, Tranking and you be high as kind. Lord, I got them brown, fairy blue. Drink a block and tackle kind. He can walk a block and tackle a little lion. Lord, I got them browns fairy blue. Well, I walked up to my girls' old man and I asked him from my true love's hand. Lord, Lord, I got them brown's fairy blues.

Said you, la, la, little colloose that I hurt him and got his foot. Lord, I got them grounds very blue. Hard luck pubs, The world was corn, you couldn't buy grain Lord Lord, I got the grounds fairy blue Walk around and sick a new coast And smell of his feet wherever he goes Lord, Lord, I got them browns fairy blue

That's Billy Strings playing Doc Watson. He'll be back after a short break. This is Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Sam Brigger. Our guest today is singer, songwriter, and guitarist, Billy Strings. He has two recent albums. Highway Prayers is a collection of his original songs, which he plays with his long-standing

bluegrass band, and Live at the Legion, a bluegrass guitar duo album of more traditional songs with Brian Sutton. Well, Billy, some of your songs deal with some pretty heavy subjects that you've dealt with in your life, including, you know, losing friends to suicide, family and friends who are dealing with addiction, you know, feeling neglect when you were a kid. when you write songs about that stuff is it helping you process those experiences is it easy to sing about that stuff

once you've written the songs sometimes it's hard sometimes it is definitely it's how I felt when I sang on stage the night my mom died it was cathartic I've had songs that I've written about something totally different

that I didn't really I realized I wrote for myself until a month later. I write these words thinking that I'm giving some information to some people that might, could hear it. Really, I'm the one that needs to hear it. And I wrote that for myself so that I could heal. And now I go sing it on stage. And there's also been songs, Stratosphere Blues,

and I believe in you, you know. The other night I was singing that on stage. And, you know, like I said, I wrote that before my mom had died, had died and now singing it after is just different. It's like I knew something or something, you know. I'm sorry about your mom passing away. She died this last June. Would you mind singing a verse of that?

I could try. Let's see. Couldn't help but wonder why you threw yourself away. Come on out from under and just take it day by day. It's true. I believe in you. I took a walk to wonder and I'm going to Took a walk to wonder

And I wandered on a thought It's kind of hard to get through All the things we ain't been taught It's true But I believe in you After all the years of medication Feels good to get you get your life on track

as long as you live I'm sorry to tell you you never get that monkey off your back what yeah something like that anyways you know that's a beautiful song

thank you for playing that Billy when your mom died I think you heard in the morning and you had a gig that night you decided to play it You got on stage and you made, you know, obviously an emotional announcement about it, and you said that your mom would have wanted you to go on.

She wouldn't have wanted you to cancel the show. Why is that? The only reason she died is so she could, you know, space travel and be there. She was at all the shows, you know. She was always in the mix, right up front. She'd show up in New Orleans or Seattle or somewhere, and I wouldn't even know she was coming. She freaking hitchhiked there, you know?

I was like, what? She walks in my green room. What? Hell, you didn't even tell me you're coming, you know? She was just a wild one, and she was really living her best life in this last little bit. She had become quite involved with a lot of my friends and fans, you know, that go to every show and go out in the lot and stuff,

and she became really close to a lot of these people. And I was always had mixed feelings about that. um what do you mean well i wanted her to go have fun and and be doing you know whatever she wanted to be doing but um i worried about her running into the wrong people or you know she's been an addict my whole life and um had short stints where she was doing pretty good you know and i love to see her out there hanging with all the fans but at the same time i was leery of them you know i would go over to visit my parents' house and there would be like the fans there that I see in the front row of my concerts all the time. People you knew or did it or just knew as fans? Mostly I just

recognize them from the crowd, you know, and then I get to know them because they're hanging out with my parents or something, but, you know, and who, what am I supposed to say? Like, don't do that. I don't know. They're grown people, but I don't know. She was getting older and I kind of just had this vision of her in my head that I wanted, which is stupid. It's not really. realistic to try to come up with somebody else's life in your brain. But, like, I just wanted her to have a garden. And my dad, 70 years old, she was 64. I was like, man, you guys should, like, be settling down, you know, don't you think? Instead of raring and tearing and going and eating all these shrooms and going to all these concerts. And then she did get wrapped up in the wrong

stuff. And that's why she's not here anymore. I'm sorry, this might be too personal, but did she overdose? Is that? Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's messed with me in my whole life and now it's going to mess with me for the rest of it. You know, I have complex post-traumatic stress and I have anxiety and depression and I have for years tried to deal with this stuff just that happened to me when I was a kid. You know, it wasn't just being neglected and they're not being food in the house and, you know, my parents being strung out and I miss them even though they're sitting right in. front of me is like while they were partying and you know stuff like that I was around the corner being molested you know before I was 10 years old and all that stuff you know and it's a really hard thing because there's such beautiful people and they taught me so much about music but yeah their addiction has been really hard on me for my whole life and and it still is and um really triggering

to lose her in this manner you know well I'm sorry I'm I hope Talking about it is not triggering any hard feelings for you right now. I got to talk about it because it's like my whole life I've had to keep a secret in order to try to not make them look bad, you know? Like even when I was in high school, I spoke to a counselor one time. I mean, I was in 10th grade, but I was couch surfing. I didn't live with them. You know, I moved out when I was like 13 because the house was no longer a home.

They were strung out. and it's a wonder I was even going to school, and one time I got pulled into a counselor instead of the principal's office, you know, and they said, what's going on, you know, and I finally just, they told me anything I say is between them, and it won't leave the room, and I said, yeah, my parents are on meth, and I don't even live there, and my house got raided right after that. You know, that same day, five state cops came up,

raided the house. I almost sent my mom to prison because I opened my mouth, and from then on I never said, to anybody about anything. I've just, it hurts me, but what hurts me is I've always just been worried about them, you know, and I've always wanted them to be good, and when I say be good, I mean, to be well and happy and have some sunshine in their life. You know, a few years ago I was able to buy them at home, my parents, and stuff was good

for a while, but it just, yeah, it really breaks my heart that it went back to this, and now she's gone. So I think my duty here is to continue doing what I'm doing for one thing, use all that beautiful energy that I get from her, that crazy wild streak. I got to use that and, you know, honor her in that way. And I feel a great kind of duty as far as just writing down these words, making these songs for people to heal from. And also, you know, who knows, maybe someday I'll actually be able to help kids,

that are in the situation that I was in. Maybe I'll be able to help their parents, you know, like open a rehab or something or something like that to just to help combat this because it's really hard, you know. Yeah. Are you taking some time for yourself right now? Like, are you able to take some time off the road? And you have a young family now. That's also, that's at home.

Yeah, they're with me on the road. Oh, they go with them. you on the road. Heck yeah man so so yeah I got the whole the whole gang and and we're out there traveling and it's it's really cool. Earlier we talked about Doc Watson and I wanted to ask if you play a tune that maybe was one of the earlier songs that you learned as a kid. Yeah um when I was a kid I mostly just played rhythm so I'll give an example of that my dad he would play this. You know, that's the fiddle tune,

Beaumont-Rack. Yeah, and so I would play. You know, and so that's how I started, and that's kind of what I did for the first few years of playing. I was my dad's rhythm player, and that gave me a chance to just listen to how the songs worked, to just kind of stay there in the bass kind of notes, and listen to the melodies,

and listen to the harmonies, how the vocals worked together and that kind of bluegrass harmony just seeped into my ears I guess and um later on I got an electric guitar a little mini squire strat and a pig nose amp for Christmas one year I think I was probably nine or ten or so and that was my first time really trying to play solos and stuff like that but it was more I was getting into Hendrix and I was playing more you know Guitar Center stuff. When I got into middle school, I wanted to play with people that were my age. I'd always played with my dad and his friends, and some of them were much older.

And I just wanted to play music with people that were into the same stuff as I was, like skateboarding and video games, whatever, you know. And so the only thing that was really going on in my middle school at the time was heavy metal. And I went to a couple of shows, and I just hated it at first. It was like, this is not music, you know. I don't know what this is, but it ain't music. But I just fell into that friend group, and then next thing you know, I started, I acquired a taste for this music, and then I fell in love with it. But after my bands kept breaking up and falling apart, I kind of got back into Doc Watson at this time, and just bluegrass in general.

This would have been around the time that stuff was really rough around the house. I remember specifically stealing my mom's old Chevelle one day. How old were you? 14, 15, you know, because I'd go over to my parents' house and hang out with them and stay there and party, and it's not like I just totally left and disowned them. I just, once I realized stuff wasn't going to change, I mean, I didn't end up really moving back there, but I'd go there for a weekend and hung out there a bunch, but I didn't, it wasn't like my home. And so, yeah, I stole my mom's car one day when I was just sitting around getting drunk by myself. And that's how

bored I was and that's how kind of there was nothing to do in this town. I mean, there's 600 people that live here. There's nothing to do. So I was just getting drunk during the day and I stole mom's car and I went down Hayes Road, this old country road with cornfields on either side. And man, I put the pedal to the floor and I just

I was going and that corn was just a blur on either side. And there was a tape sticking halfway out of the deck and I pushed it in and I'm like, I wonder what my mom's listening to, right? and then this is what came on I was in those heavy metal bands and all this stuff and I hadn't really been listening to Bluegrass very much

but I was kind of heartbroken at the way my life was at the time and when I heard I wondered my home in the mountain. You know, Rank Stranger came on. That's what my mom had in her tape deck. And I just started slowing that old car down until I came to a complete stop

and I just pulled over on the side of the road and I started crying. And I was drunk, you know. But this song hit me right in my heart. In that moment, I was like, what am I even doing in these heavy metal bands? Bluegrass is where my heart is. This is the music I should be playing.

And at that time, I just, I started hunting for an acoustic guitar, you know, and my friend Zach had one, and one of the first tunes I learned how to actually pick. How to play the lead on and stuff is a thing called Nothing to it. It goes like this. A lot of the I don't know I'm a lot of

I'm trying to I'm going to I'm going to I'm a so I'm so I'm I'm I'm at a

I'm I'm going to Is that one of those licks that you're now tired of, or you still like it? Oh, I love it. Yeah, it's still the best. I mean, any of that Doc Watson stuff. your dad taught you how to play guitar. Have you picked out a guitar for your son yet?

Do you plan to teach him the way your dad taught you? Well, he's already got one that he just bangs on the floor. I gave him this Martin Dreadnought Jr. Used to be my guitar. I just practiced on the bus and stuff. And I took tape and I covered up all the pokey parts where the strings are on top. And I wrapped him real good so he can't poke himself on that.

Yeah. So when are you going to start teaching him how to play the strings? Oh man like I said he's he's already gone he's 10 months and he's he's just banging on it but I sing for him all the time it's always the best I remember that first night when we got home the night of my 32nd birthday the first time I was able to be at home with my son and I held him and I sing this little song I'll sing a bit of it for you he went to sleep in my arms when I was singing this to him and it's probably the best moment of my entire life besides maybe just the moment he was born but there's this little lullaby

Sleep, pretty baby sleeping, close them pretty bad eyes. Listen while your daddy seems. And I sang that to him, and I sang that to him, and he fell asleep. That was like the best. Well, Billy Strings, I want to thank you so much for coming on fresh air today. I thank you for having me. Billy Strings' latest album is called Live at the Legion. This is one of the one of the one.

by the late great blaze folio it's called Cold Cold World I've tried for a long time but I think I can't win I'd do it all better if I could do it again Wherever I'm going, it's the same place I've been. Ain't it a cold, cold world?

Outside it was hot, but inside I was cold. The eyes of the young man, the eyes of the old. and what they were thinking I'll never be told Ain't it a cold cold world Then an old lady asked me about the new daylight time I said it don't matter

And she said, I don't mind. And the bus driver said you still owe me a dog. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Sam Brigger. Terry has our next interview. Here she is. My guest, Leve, is a singer, cellist, pianist, guitarist, and songwriter,

whose 2023 album Bewitched was the first album ever to top Billboard's jazz and traditional jazz charts in its first week of release. But is she a jazz artist? Only partially, her 2023 album, Bewitched, won a Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Album, and was named Crossover Album of the Year by Variety. Her music resembles her personal identity

in that both are hard to categorize. Her songs draw on her deep knowledge of classical music and jazz, as well as from pop and classic musicals. She grew up in Reykjavik, Iceland, and Washington, D.C., with a mother who emigrated from China and is a violinist with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. Her father is from Iceland, and Leveh grew up listening to recordings from his jazz collection. She started piano lessons at age four, cello lessons at age eight, and performed on cello with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra when she was 15.

She describes her music as taking inspiration from the past, with lyrics firmly rooted in the present. Her concerts are filled with listeners in their 20s, who may not know, or care much about jazz or classical music. Leve is 26. She started attracting an audience during the COVID lockdown when she began posting videos of her singing jazz standards and originals, accompanying herself on cello, guitar, or piano. She brought her guitar with her today to play and sing some songs, including music from her new album, A Matter of Time. Let's start with a track called Clockwork. It's an upbeat love song with an obvious jazz influence, so here's clockwork.

So I'd never do this again, think that I'm so clever I could date a friend, he just called me, said he's running late, like me, probably had to regurgitate, I know it's irrational, at least I'm self-aware, I'm shivering, maybe, maybe I'll see, Stay home, oh no, he's here my heart. It's a wild place. I've considered every way. Words don't forget, deeply regret, he'll run away. And nothing brings me fear like meeting with my destiny.

But like clockwork, think he fell in in love with me. Leve, welcome to Fresh Air. It's a pleasure to have you on the show, and thank you for bringing your guitar with you. We'll hear some music in a couple of minutes. You're so popular, especially among people in their 20s, your first music festival was when you performed at Lollapalooza and you brought an orchestra with you. What insights does that offer about who you are and about your music?

Well, thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure to be here. I mean, Lollapalooza was such a perfect moment for me of showing exactly who I am to the world. Because, I mean, Lollapalooza is a music festival that I would say is for modern music and for young people. I've never viewed myself as anything other than a modern artist. But I've always, of course, loved classical music and jazz music and had a love for all things a bit older. So to get to bring an orchestra and that sound onto such a modern stage. I mean, we had a K-pop act playing after us and a rapper before us on that very same stage.

I think it's so beautiful that all of these different styles of music can exist in one. And what does it say that you'd never been to a music festival? I mean, I'd been to Newport Jazz Festival, so that might answer your question. I guess, I mean, I grew up in Iceland, so I just wasn't very close to that culture. We had our own smaller festivals. Let's talk a little bit about your musical origin story. Your mother plays violin in the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. What did you learn about music from hearing her practice at home?

I learned a couple of things. I think hard work is really, really important, and it's something you need to keep up. I mean, my mom has been in the orchestra for almost 30 years, and she still practices every single day for every single concert. It's not something you shelve after you grow up. But it also has taught me that it's something that never really leaves you growing up in a musical family. I mean, my grandma's 80-something now, and she still plays piano every single day, just like as she did when she was seven. So it's taught me that it's kind of this thing that can follow you forever. but my mom always talked about especially like the beauty of music and and how it has to come from

your heart and I think that's been such an important through line with with my music no matter what genre it's leaning towards. Did you grow up backstage? Oh absolutely. I grew up on stage. I think I have stories of my mom playing some contemporary Icelandic composers and it was really loud and every break she would like check her tummy like I have a twin sister. So the two of us were in there, and she was like, are they still moving? Like, did we silence them? When you started taking music lessons, would your mother ever holler from another room? Wrong note.

Every single day. Really? Not from another room. The same room. Oh, yeah. Did that make yourself conscious practicing with a pro with an airshot all the time? It was like having a teacher every single day. I would practice piano while my sister was practicing violin.

and then we would swap and she would practice piano and I would practice cello and my mom spent the entire afternoon just drifting back and forth from the piano room to the string room to the string room to the piano room to the string room and it was very disciplined but I'm so thankful for that and my mom still tells me if I'm playing out of tune and I'm so thankful for her for that and I think it's one of the reasons I'm I'm the musician I am today so you listen to a lot of jazz growing up because your father had a big jazz collection. What era or what songs or singers particularly influenced you? I think Ella Fitzgerald was the very first singer that I really felt that I vocally resonated with. I think she just sounded like a cello, so I immediately was like, oh, I want to

sound like her. And I was having trouble finding songs in my range to sing, but Ella, range, though more than, bigger than mine, still, her singing style, I seem to fall most naturally into that kind of style. Same with Billy Holliday, and I also loved Nat King Cole and Julie London and Peggy Lee and Doris Day. It was kind of, you know, that type of era of mid-century singing that I really was drawn to. would you play a standard for us that you particularly liked yeah do you want to do it could happen to you yes and let's mention here that this is one of the things that kind of put you on the map because you recorded this on your phone during COVID and I think it's the first and one of the first

videos that you put out on YouTube yes um COVID started and I had a what I thought would be a two week break. So I thought I'd use that time to just post videos of myself singing online. And it started with a lot of jazz standards. And I was playing the jazz standards on cello and singing along. And yeah, I did a cover of It Could Happen to You. And also of the song I Wish You Love and the two of those kind of hit the algorithm or whatever you say. They kind of definitely were the first things that I think people were like, what? Why is this girl, this young woman playing cello and singing? It was like multiple things they hadn't seen combined together. Yeah, and Chet Baker has a great recording of this. Yes. Yeah, that's my favorite Jack Baker album. It Could Happen to You One.

Okay. And this is Levei. Hide your heart from side. Lock your dreams at night. It could. happen to you don't count stars or you might stumble someone drops a sigh and down you tumble keep an eye on spring run when church bells ring it could happen to you All I did was wonder how your arms would be And it happened to me Thank you That was Leve singing and playing guitar

And she has a new album called A Matter of Time So you grew up in two extremes You grew up in Iceland But you also spent a lot of time in Washington, D.C. what were you doing there? What was your family doing there? My father was working for the Icelandic government there. But my mom would sub with a Baltimore symphony when she was there. So I kind of got to be a little bit of an American kid for a bit,

which I think having a childhood in America is really where I fell in love with a great American songbook. What was your father doing in the government? He was working for the IMF. The International Monetary Fund? Yes. So two extremes, like Iceland is like remote. It's a small country. It's very cold. Washington, D.C. is one of the capitals of the world, not just the capital of the U.S. And it's so busy. What was it like growing up into pretty opposite worlds? It's certainly a lot warmer and swampier than... Certainly, yeah. Than Iceland, yeah. I think it's one of the most important experiences that I've gone through. I had a very...

deep understanding of how big the world was from a very early age, because I would still spend my summers in China. And the three are so, so, so, so different. I think from, what I really learned from Washington, D.C., I think especially, was just how multicultural it was. I mean, I went to a public school in D.C. And even within just my neighborhood school, I think 90% of my class was international kids. And I was such a naturally multicultural kid. It made me quite happy. I also loved all the museums. And I remember going to the ballet at the Kennedy Center and the symphony. And I just have very beautiful memories from growing up there. And like I remember moving back to Iceland when I was eight or nine. And I remember that it felt like the world fell dark for a little bit

because there was so much brightness in Washington, which sounds like a crazy thing to say right now. I think it really just opened my eyes up to how very big the world is, because Washington, D.C. is also such a unique city within the United States. Well, since you're half Chinese and half Icelandic, and you grew up in Iceland, not a lot of Chinese people in Iceland. So being half Chinese was probably considered unusual, maybe even, like, quote, exotic. But growing up in Washington, there's like lots of people. from China and other Asian countries.

So what was it like for you to be so unusual in such a homogenous place as Iceland? It was really difficult. I think Iceland is so small and it's lovely and I miss it every single day. But it was very hard as a kid to comprehend why I didn't look like everyone else or how my interests were different. There weren't many kids around me taking a competitive. pre-professional classical music route. There weren't many kids around me who had to go back home and practice every single day.

And I often felt like my voice wasn't being heard and I was ready to do anything to get my voice to be heard. And I knew that the first step to that was trying to get out of Iceland and see if perhaps my voice would resonate more in the big world where I wasn't an odd fish. I want to ask you to do another song for us, and this is Castle in Hollywood. Would you give us the backstory for the song? Yeah, this song is written about a friendship breakup.

I found that there are not many songs about breaking up with a friend, but it's a pain that can sometimes be more painful than breaking up with a romantic lover. So I wanted to write about this experience that I had, And I think, especially when women fall apart with women, there's such an interesting line of empathy that's between them. It's kind of like, I'll love you forever, but just not. Don't be around me. Still learning to live without you I wonder what you tell your friends Which version of our fairy story

The one where you walk out in glory Or the night I moved out in a hurry I think about you always Tied together with a string I thought the lilies died by winter Then they bloomed again in spring it's a heartbreak marked the end of my girlhood will never go back to the castle in Hollywood thank you that was levy performing for us and what was the castle in hollywood was that a

fantastic of what you wanted your life to be no I lived in a the first apartment I moved into was this English storybook house in West Hollywood that had a turret, and it was commissioned by Charlie Chaplin, actually, in 1928, I believe. Wait, the first apartment that you rented was one that Charlie Chaplin commissioned. How did that happen? Yeah. Pure internet luck, I think. It was definitely a little scary. It was very dark, but my bedroom was circular. It was inside a turret. And I had a tiny little window with bars on it, like a proper Rapunzel window.

And, yeah, it was a really, really weird apartment, but so charming and exactly what my storybook heart craved when I first moved to L.A. Since you have a jazz set in the middle of your concerts now when you're on tour, I'm going to ask you to play a jazz original that you wrote, and this is one of your early songs. It's called Valentine.

I've been playing much more swingy, version of this on tour, so it's going to be weird to go back to this version. But this is how I wrote it, so it is how it shall be performed. I've rejected affection for years and years. Now I have it, and damn it, it's kind of weird. He tells me I'm pretty. Don't know how. I don't know how how to respond. I tell him that he's pretty too. Can I say that? I don't have a clue. Every passing moment, I surprise myself. I'm scared of flies or I'm scared of guys. Someone please help, because I think I've fallen in love this time. I blinked and suddenly I had a Valentine

That's a nice song It's sweet It's very naive It reminds me of being 21 Folling in love for the first time Yes Well Levee I want to thank you so much

For talking with us And for doing some songs for us Thank you so much I wish you well on your tour And you know Thank you Thank you so much for having me It's been such an honor

Oh, my pleasure. Levy's new album is A Matter of Time. She spoke with Terry Gross. Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is a Audrey Bentham. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm Sam Breaker.