WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 709 - Joanna Newsom

Episode Date: May 23, 2016

Marc welcomes singer-songwriter Joanna Newsom to the garage, sadly without her harp, although it probably wouldn't fit. Joanna tells Marc how her musical style evolved from composing pieces influenced by American classical music to collaborating with some of the industry's most unique producers. She also talks about the benefits of being married to someone who makes comedy for a living. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction.

Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com. Lock the gates! Alright, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck buddies? Hi, this is Mark Maron. This is my podcast, WTF. How's it going? Nice to be here. Thank you for listening. I appreciate you hanging out. Here's something exciting. A new batch of WTF cap mugs will be available tomorrow from Brian Jones up in Portland.

They go on sale at 12 noon, Eastern, 9 a.m. Pacific on Tuesday, May 24th. You can go to BrianRJones.com to get yours. I also need him to send me some for the guests. You know, these mugs, which I'm drinking out of one right now, started out as only for guests. They were special, hand-thrown, ceramic, beautiful mugs just for the guests. So there's a lot of guests. They still get them, but now you can get them. And this isn't even a sales pitch it was just this weird thing that evolved so what's going on with me pow look out just shit my pants just coffee.coop joanna newsom's on the show today and uh she is um an angelic genius otherworldly very tight it's rare that you meet otherworldly talent. She's one of them.

I've only known a couple. Remind me to talk a little bit more about that otherworldly business. Obviously, she couldn't bring her harp. That would have been quite an undertaking. So if you want to check her out, you want to check her out before I talk to her, go right now.

Go to iTunes and look up Joanna Newsom. Almost anything. New album. Diver is pretty great. go right now go to go to itunes and uh look up joanna newsome almost anything new album diver is uh pretty great but uh there's all there there's like five or six records here took me a while to uh to uh lock in with joanna but uh once i did it was like now i now i'm the the spell i'm under the spell joanna Newsom is a spellcaster with her magical music. There's a documentary that I'm involved in. I know I'm in it. It's from our pals Graham Elwood and Chris Mancini

who do that Film Nerds podcast, but it's called Earbuds, and it's in the San Francisco DocFest. And the screenings are June 4th and 7th. You can go to sfindy.com and click on Box Office to get tickets for Earbuds. It's about podcasting. But I'll tell you, though, the feedback sometimes saves me. Because sometimes I'm just not clear on what it is I do and how it affects people.

And I choose not to process that. I choose to just decide that I'm not good enough. Then I get an email like this. And these are just surprising to me because I have no, I do what I do here and it has an effect. The subject line is Ali Wong. I'm listening to your interview with Ali Wong, and I had to pull over on the side of the road to write to you.

Hearing an interview with a woman conducted by a man, no less, it sounded almost word for word like my experience with motherhood was mind-blowing and emotional. The birth of my three-year-old was near exact to what Ali described. From the anesthesiologist to the torture and joys of breastfeeding, it brought me to tears. Hearing her describe the breastfeeding experience and hearing you listen to it brought back a joy I will never experience again.

I was unsuccessful doing it the second time around, and there won't be a third. So to hear her describe it was more enjoyable than you will ever know. Thank you for allowing a woman to describe new motherhood in a way that women only do with each other. Thank you for recognizing the transition in identity as something to embrace rather than be ashamed of. This is an interview I will listen to over and over again, Natalie, in Dayton, Ohio. You're welcome. I'm glad that you had that experience. It was a very new experience for me.

All of it. And I didn't think of any of it other than like well she needs to do this now and uh and i will bear witness and be present for it no prejudgment i was just sort of like here we go here we go so otherworldly talent otherworldly genius yeah otherworldly genius it's rare to witness sometimes you see it in comedy like i am a guy stuck on the planet i am a guy stuck in my shit i'm a guy stuck in my life i'm a guy that that needs to be grounded in whatever the hell it is to keep me in the world because i'll go off in my head i'll spend a lot of time in my head you know and and that's why i gotta stay engaged with shit you stay engaged with the

guitar with the people with the the comedy like so much of me getting on stage is about me saying like, all right, I'm here and this is where I'm at. Okay, please bear witness because if you don't, I'm mostly living in my head. And the thing about people that can create beautiful things, you know, either through music or dance or film or whatever they're doing, comedy, it's just other worldly things, things that are transportive.

People who can get out of their head and create almost an alternate landscape is something that I love, and it's something that you rarely see done in a way that is completely mystifying and beautiful. In comedy, Maria Bamford, who's got a new show on Netflix, Lady Dynamite, that's getting phenomenal reviews and that she deserves it, is a good example of that in comedy. This is a woman that struggles and wrestles and has real mental shit going on and then manifests it.

Through creating characters and voices. In another world. It's otherworldly. She's otherworldly. She's a gift. She's a gift. To the arts. Joanna Newsom.

Does another situation. Where you go and I saw her concert. And she's there with her giant harp. And these other musicians and people are moving around. It's all beautifully orchestrated and the sound is something like I've never heard before and I'm transported. I will be transported if I allow myself.

You can't fight the lift. You can't fight the the lift you can't fight the uh the transcendence you can't fight the transportation if you want to feel the joy of otherworldly genius my girlfriend sarah kane makes these paintings otherworldly where does it come from i don't know i'd like to learn how to play harp or do characters or paint maybe do some dancing that'd be fun maybe i should take a a modern dance class maybe jazz maybe i'll take a jazz class so i'm gonna i'm gonna move you into uh my conversation with um with joanna her her new album is called Divers. It's on Drag City.

I think in this conversation, I might have said nice things about the label Drag City. That was before they ostracized me and made me feel uncool and not good enough. Fueled the self-critical fire by their rejection of me. But she's on that label and there's a lot of great people on that label so let's go now to my conversation uh with joanna newsom and please go listen to her music and give it some time don't you know like there's so much going on there's so much there and it's intense i mean part of you of you might go like, oh, I don't know if I can take it.

But you can. You can. You're grownups. All right. This is me and Joanna. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category.

And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. on that. An epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel. To show your true

heart is to risk your life. When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. deploy. Newsome.

It's nice to see you, Joanna. Thank you. I am a little nervous. Same. You are? So nervous. What are you nervous about? Talking into a microphone for a period of time. For posterity.

Why am I nervous? Why are you nervous, Mark? Good. That was good. Good rally. Well, because your work is pretty transcendent and amazing and requires attention. I don't know if you know that. I mean, the first time I listened to it, I think Dan over at Drag City sent me a box of stuff, of various stuff.

So I get all of your records. Even just holding your records, it's like, wow, there's a lot of records in here. And there's artwork. And so this is a whole presentation. Yeah, I can see why you're nervous. Right. But my evolution with you has been interesting. You want to hear more about me and you?

Yes, please. Tell me about the evolution. Well, Andy brought you up when he was in here. And I'm like, I don't know her. And then people started emailing me like how do you not know Joanna and then people like you have to know her yeah I got a lot of pressure nice yeah a lot of fans of yours a lot of burner email accounts of mine that's you yeah just I'll get him he'll never recognize his name so my experience seeing you, having not seen you, and having you were friends with my girlfriend years ago in a scene that I knew nothing about.

I missed a lot of music. And it was this San Francisco thing that happened that you sort of were identified with. Yeah. Yeah. So I knew a little of that and she gave me one of your cds that i don't know if you want even on the face of the earth anymore i don't really i was very happy i thought like oh i got her yeah that is that is exactly like it's a piece of music or it's a recorded piece of a recorded piece of music

document that that makes me feel like someone got me. Really? Yeah. Which one do I have? I have, what are the two that you self-released? One was called Walnut Whales. That's the one I have. I have Walnut Whales.

I mean, I'm kind of kidding. I'm fine with them. But you didn't release them. No, I didn't release them. On purpose. On purpose. Yeah, they were were because i don't usually notate music because i'm really bad at it what does that mean notate like sheet music i

don't write sheet music out um yeah and so my way of remembering you know songs was always to record myself and um at that time in san francisco i was living with my then boyfriend Noah and he recorded some songs for me. And then we sort of put them on a, burned them on a CD-R and we're kind of like, I guess I sold them at one or two shows and then. Noah George. Noah George-son. He was your boyfriend. He was my boyfriend and now he's my friend and he's a great, you know, engineer, producer. He's like on all your records. I think. The relationship all your records i think the relationship continues the relationship the friendship continues that's what i mean yeah professional relationship and friendship yes that's good yes loyalty yes and you respect his talent very much that's good that

doesn't always happen no he also has a he has an extremely great understanding of what i like musically yeah that you know part of that i. And that, you know, part of that, I think, is just intuitive, you know, to people having a similar aesthetic. And part of it is time, you know, building up a knowledge of the other person. Well, that's sort of what, like, I kind of noticed, and I still want to start current and go back, but I don't know if we're going to pull it off. Is that, like, as I listen to all the records, unfortunately, you have a relatively small bulk of work in a way.

Yeah. Like I talked to people that have 30 records out and it's a real fucking problem. So like I was able to really sort of take time with the records, including the whale and the one you don't like. Yeah. And through the first Drag City record and then, you know, and then into, what do you call the Van Dykes Park record? Wise?

Is it Wise? East. what east what is that it's the name of a mythical sunken isle in brittany france no of course i mean i should have known that it certainly grew and you know what you were able to explore musically and poetically grows with every record do you feel that yeah i think i mean i definitely sort of with every record got interested in looking in a different side or or um writing with a different set of goals yeah or parameters or obligations or rules or did you become more aware of that because the first record is really just you and the harp yes definitely and and the i think it's also a little more i would describe it as a little more abstract in the sense that like or impressionistic or something that there are lyrics in the first record that don't 100 mean a concrete thing for me they mean maybe a feeling or you know I'm describing maybe an image from a dream right but I

definitely think that that shifted over time for me where you know partially because when I made that first record I wasn't really thinking in terms of very many people listening hearing it yeah and then I it's weird I don't really thinking in terms of very many people hearing it. Yeah. And then it's weird. I don't know why, but on the second album, I started thinking much, much, much more about the meaning of every single word. So you sort of started functioning as a poet in a way. I don't know.

You don't? I mean, I don't know exactly how poetry is defined. I don't write poetry that's not meant to be sung. Right, but do you start with writing? Usually I start with melody and very skeletal chord progressions. Really? Yeah, like I think of it as if you remembered a song and then you forgot it by degrees, like the last thing you would remember about the song, that's usually the first thing I start with when I'm writing, you know, this sort of like whatever the melody is that is

stuck in your head and you kind of hear the. So you're like summoning something that pre-existed you. Like I have a melody that I just barely have it, but I know it's all out there somewhere. That's how this last record felt. That was the first time I had that feeling. Well, that's pretty exciting. Yeah, I don't know if it'll ever happen again. It might be negative.

Right. Good point. It's sort of a fascinating, I'm sure you've discussed this in however many times you've talked about this, but to be, that harp's a big thing, man. Yeah, man. I mean, like, I'm looking at you up there and I'm like, holy shit, I've never seen anyone do that. Like, I've never seen a harp really, maybe once at a buffet or something when I was a kid. That might have been me.

But like, there can't be that many places that make the big harps. No. So like, you know, it's pretty much that's the way a harp looks. There's no one redoing the harp. Yeah. And it has a sort of ornate kind of like it's a completely impractical instrument and a completely singular instrument. You just don't see them around much. So what made you do that?

Well, I started with a really little one. There's a little harps? Yeah, a little like folk harps, Celtic harps. Okay. Were you compelled by a certain music? How old were you when you did that? I was like four when I decided that that's what I wanted. And it was because I had seen my future teacher, Lisa Straziin yeah um performing somewhere street fair or something in

our little town i grew up in nevada city you grew up in nevada city yeah that is like um that's like hippie style off the grid in a way yeah it there's definitely a strong element of that i was up there i did a show up there yeah at the movie house yeah i heard you did that you did who told you that like people every single person I've ever known who lives, you know, it's a big town. Yeah. Plus, it's a really small town. I mean, there's a lot of folks there now that I don't know, which is incredibly weird. The weed people?

Yeah. The weed people have taken over. Yeah. The legal weed people. Yeah. I didn't know there was this sort of weird roaming community of weed growers until I went up there. Yeah, it's weird. And it's always been, I mean, I grew up with friends whose parents made their living with like small cottage, you know, operations.

Yeah. And, you know, fed their beautiful plants like homemade yogurt and everyone had their special recipe. For weed? Yeah. And, you know. Hold on. special recipe and for weed yeah and and you know hold on your family had friends that grew weed and fed it special yogurt that they made probably or they got down yeah yeah i want that that is an accurate that is like one of the greatest um hippie memories i've ever heard in my life yeah

and coffee ground i mean you know coffee grounds is i know that one that's good for plants i've never heard yogurt this was one particular dude um who's still at it actually but anyway there was a there was a nice balance you know where like i think sort of the local law enforcement looked the other way and and nobody nobody's operation was very big everybody was just kind of yeah you know paying go growing their own stash and maybe get making enough just to break even or yeah i mean there were definitely people who made their their entire living selling pot that they had grown or you know providing it to people to sell it but it was like there was a coziness to it there was no there there was not there wasn't this like dark corona of weird vibes that right sort of now this thing has exploded to the point

where yeah there's weird vibes i mean i i love that i feel them i love that town i'll love it forever i i will always consider it my home but there is a slight shift there now. It's sad when even weed, such a friendly-seeming drug, once it goes big, drug people come. Yeah, man, because it's not the weed that's the drug. It's the money. Yeah, man. It's all big agribusiness now. But the subculture of growers, I think I talked to somebody. I don't know where I got this information. That they sort of move around sometimes.

They move around the country. Like they'll spend six months doing the harvest. Yeah. And then they'll move on. That kind of stuff. Yeah. And there's a lot of seasonal work. So like, you know, trimming season happens.

That's it. Yeah. And influx. And you know what seasonal work brings? Bad news. People like on the run from something. Got to move on. Yeah. Sort of like carnies. You something, got to move on. Yeah.

Sort of like carnies, you know what I mean? Yeah. But it's a problem. Like my mom works with the local food bank. Oh, yeah? And the local food bank kind of exists to service our local homeless community. Uh-huh. And during trimming season, it's just- Packed?

Picked completely clean. Right. From just like doofuses who are in town cutting weed and don't want to like. Cutting buds. Yeah, cutting weed. Yeah. That's how I talk. And don't want to like pay for food.

What do your folks do? What kind of, what'd you grow up in? What was the environment? They're both retired doctors. They both retired in the last few years. What kind of doctors? My mom was an internist and my dad is a hematologist oncologist. So your mom had like a general practice up there?

Yeah, more or less translated to general practice. Like she was the doctor, like the town doctor? Like everyone knew her? I think everyone does know them, but it's a little bigger than that. They have a pretty good hospital there. So there's a number. She wasn't like the town doctor with her little leather bag. The the doctor bag my dad had one of those oh the house call bag oh that's great yeah what kind of doctor is he uh orthopedic but i think that they were given those and back in

the day when house calls were still a thing maybe a medical or something medical school or something yeah here's your little bag go make a house call or two or two. I don't think my parents did house calls, at least when I was alive. And your dad was a cancer doctor? Yeah. Cancer and blood disorders. And they both retired? Yeah, they both retired within like a year of each other. How many siblings you got?

I think I saw two of them. Yeah, I have a younger sister, older brother. So that's it? Yeah. Those are the Newsome kids. Those are the Newsome kids. Those are the Newsome kids. All musical, apparently. All musical, yeah.

My sister is mostly a scientist, but she's very musical. She's actually probably the most naturally musical of all of us. Now, when I saw them... Annoying. Really? Yeah. Come on. When we were younger, she was definitely...

She's a cellist, and she was definitely the shredder of the family. Uh-huh. On the cello? On the cello. Yeah? Just, like, could kick ass? Yeah. Yeah.

But, so, did they tour the whole tour with you? My brother did. He played, you know, starting in October, and he also played on a few songs on the record. Yeah, I saw that. Yeah. My sister is in grad school, so she just a fun little last stretch thing that she did. Oh, really? Just the L.A. show?

No, two weeks. So she did the whole West Coast. And then what? You just got another cello player? No. Ryan Francesconi from my band. That guy's a wizard, man. Dude.

What the fuck? What the fuck? Yeah, he's incredible. Where'd you find that guy? I originally met Ryan at Lark in the Morning music camp in Mendocino, Redwoods. When you were a kid? No, I started going to that camp when I was a kid, but I met him as an adult. He was one of the shredders in the sort of Bulgarian camp.

There's a Bulgarian, you know, it's just world folk music and he is a... Wait, world folk music? Yeah. Wait, what is this camp? camp well it's called lark camp it was when i grew up it was called lark in the morning music camp and that's where you went yeah when you were a kid yeah world folk music was the was the focus it was at it was what i did every summer i mean i started at age what i think the first time I went, I was nine. Oh, my God. So you were exposed to all these mystical melodies from all regions of the world at nine? Yeah.

That's pretty astounding. Yeah, I was exposed to mystical melodies galore. Some of that stuff, some of the mountain music from certain areas is like, what's going on? Yeah. You know, actually, it's very important for me was that I met this teacher named Diana Stork yeah she's a Berkeley area teacher and she taught me West African she she basically played on folk harp music that she had transcribed from the Korra West African music that she had transcribed from the Korra and then she taught it to me and it broke my brain

into two pieces as like a i think i was like 12 or 13 so a folk harp is the smaller harp yeah yeah well really it's a lever harp so the main difference isn't just size it's the fact that with a pedal harp a classical harp you change the pitch of strings from natural to flat and natural to sharp by pedaling. And with a folk harp, you do it with individual levers that shorten slightly each string. Uh-huh. So West African, what region are we talking? Is that like Senegal?

Yeah, Senegal. Oh, so that sort of weird ethereal kind of like twang? Yeah. I mean, the thing that stood out for me then, and I think for Diana as well, and that she taught me was the idea of playing in multiple meters at once. So I had sort of learned polyrhythm, you know, which is like... Yeah, yeah. But the polymeter is basically, like she taught me this figure, this West African figure, where the right, sorry, the left hand plays in 4-4. Uh-huh.

And the right hand plays in 3-4. Oh, my God. And they come together every 12 beats. And if you play it syncopated, they come together every 24 beats. Uh-huh. And it was very. So you've got to wait a little longer for that one. Yeah, but you also have to think. I mean, your right hand is, thinking is the wrong word.

When I was trying to figure it out, I right hand is, thinking is the wrong word. When I was trying to figure it out, I was overthinking and I couldn't do it. Right. But you have to, like, actually break your brain into two parts so that one part of your brain is sitting inside of the 3-4 meter and the other one is sitting inside of the 4-4 meter. And you just have to, like, you can't think about it. You know, it's the patting your stomach and rubbing your head thing. So she taught me that. And you were young. I was young.

And it completely shifted the way that I wrote music from that point on. Wow. But tell me about that moment where you finally got it. Was it like learning to juggle? They're all up. Yeah, it was. It's weird. It's a little trance-like, actually.

You know, the figure, it just goes around and around and around and around. And when it finally clicks over, it's like, I don't know. You stop thinking about it. So that woman breaks your brain open. She broke my brain open. And then you meet this Ryan cat later. Yeah, that was like 10 years later. So let's go through it because it seems to me, and I'm just projecting that,

collaboration has really sort of evolved you as a musician and you seem to like it. I do like it. It didn't seem to happen for a while. Well, it depends what we're talking about when we say collaboration. I'll be more specific. Yeah, I put Diana in the teacher category. No, no, no, I know. So you're taking all this in.

Yeah. Because a lot of times you listen to music, and there's so many points of musical reference that I don't imagine that you necessarily contain all of them. I imagine that this guy, Ryan, brings a lot with his little world of instruments over there. He does. And also an important thing about Ryan is that even though he's incredibly masterful in the realm of Bulgarian music, that's not even his quote unquote main thing.

Like his, he went to school to be a composer. Right. And he is school to be a composer. Right. And he is also a classical guitarist. He's playing instruments I never heard of. I know. He's insane. And the whole band learned a couple different instruments just for this tour so we could keep it.

Everyone was jumping around. Keep it really tight. You know, everybody was running around. I like that element. There was like stagecraft to it. Just sort of like, oh, that guy's on the other thing. Yeah. Wow, look what happened. Yeah.

And it's also really fun to see Ryan play an instrument that he's not like the best in the world at. Oh, nice. He's got feel. He's got feel. Yeah. Yeah. He was on guitar and he played some banjo. Right.

And he played some other thing that has a weird name and another thing that has a weird name. Tambura, Caval, mbira. All those weird instruments from all over. What is the signature of Bulgarian music? What differentiates it? The meter is really interesting. You know, there's a lot of like nine, eight stuff, you know, and there's a particular scale. There's kind of modalities that are typical for Bulgarian music and the instrumentation, obviously. So he plays the tambura, which is very common, little almost mandolin like instrument. Yeah, that was nice. Yeah, completely its own color and timbre that isn't really like anything else. And cavall is another instrument, Bulgarian.

It's like a flute. Yeah. It's different. It sounds like its own thing. What other type of training do you do other than the folk music, world folk music camp? Yeah. Well, at that point, I was still working with Lisa Stein, my first harp teacher. So she taught me classical and some Celtic music, although I was pretty resistant at that age.

I like it now. But when I was younger, I, for some reason, I think just because it was such a typical thing for folk harp to play. And I was really interested in. Breaking it open. Breaking it. Yeah. From age 10, you're like, I got to take this somewhere. i was really interested in breaking it open breaking it yeah i was from age 10 you're like i gotta take this somewhere i was really cool yeah i was like you know rebel harpist yeah um and you are kind of well you know

no i don't know well i play that how's the harp community feel about you joanna well it's interesting i i definitely get a wonderful support and love from a lot of harpists yeah um and then like there are some people like you know i told you about how we hire a person to tune my heart before the set because i'm doing other stuff and in most towns like when the promoter will call someone to try to hire someone maybe not most but let's say say like half the time someone will be like uh harpists tune their own harps actually you know like really pissed off about it which is true like harp is doing their own harps i tune my own harp you know i'll do it during the set but

like we've got the timings on the day of are really like so there's a judgment there there's a heavy judgment are they like i'm not gonna do that. Let Joanna tune her own harp. Yeah, that's kind of, that's definitely it. That's what they say. We'll pay you. We'll pay you for the work. Yeah, yeah. That's who she needs to learn. Yeah.

But that said, I've met amazing, wonderful tuners who will come. I mean, harpists who tune the harp who will say hi and, you know. Yeah, yeah. Say they dig my shit, you know. Yeah. Okay, so when do you start, like, kind of,, you know. Yeah. So, okay. So when do you start like kind of, so you weren't at a sight read, obviously? Barely.

Really? I'm to this day a terrible, like I basically coasted, like when I, how old was I? Maybe like 12 or 13 when I started playing the pedal harp. And I started studying with my classical teacher, Petsy Pruitt. And she insisted that I start not learning everything by ear. And then I played in a few youth orchestras and began this elaborate ruse of trying to convince everybody that I was

reading music when I, it was still all by ear. So I was like, I was mostly keeping up. Yeah. Depending on how, um, I did better when things were a little less dissonant, you know, when the hard part is just like completely dissonant, weird, um, stuff that is, that doesn't stick in your ear as much. It really would have helped for me to be a better, a stronger reader. And I didn't really read properly until I had to take, you know, music theory classes in college. And even then, I read well enough to, like, you know, when you're, like, working on diatonic harmony and counterpoint or whatever,

when you're, like like looking at musical scores, you're not doing them. And, or I at least wasn't looking at them in real time. It wasn't like I was playing a piece to speed with two hands. I could not sit down, put a piece of harp sheet music in front of me, two hands and just play to speed.

I couldn't even play at half speed. I would, it would be very embarrassing to try to do that at this stage of my life. Yeah. And I sort of really badly want to learn, you know? Yeah. Like, buy some software or whatever adults do and, like... I know.

Just go on YouTube. Yeah. Yeah, I... I'd like that. It would be so useful to... Well, you could. Yeah? Sure.

I'm trying... I want to get better at guitar, and I just, like, I've been stuck in the same place for years. And it's okay, but I'm bored. So I went on YouTube the other day just to like finger picking. I want to learn how to finger pick a little bit. And there's a guy right there. Here's how you play the boxer by Paul Simon. And I just did it a little bit.

I didn't stick with it. But I'm like, this is helpful. But it's out there. So I'm just telling you. Shit. I up to, it was weird. I brought you up today in a meeting. Oh, you did? Yeah. With whom, regarding what? For some reason, I went into, I went to a general meeting at Disney Animation. Oh, very cool. And they're talking about like, they're doing these big musical projects. And then like towards the end of the meeting, the guy goes, do you sing? And I go, yeah, I like to sing.

I wouldn't call myself a singer, but I do it, but not professionally. But, like, I like it. Why? For the musical? He's like, yeah, there's, like, so many unwritten parts. I'm like, you know who you got to get who would just be perfect for this, for singing cartoons. And then they're like, don't say cartoon. I'm sorry.

For a musical animated feature, it's Joanna Newsom. Check her out. And the guy wrote your name down down so you might be a turtle or something yeah you may have changed my life would you do that yes definitely i mean particularly a turtle yeah so when do you start so your parents are into it they're like all right she wants to be a harpist yeah well i the thing that started happening when i work be when I started studying with Lisa, I started writing. Yeah. And writing, I say, I wasn't writing it down. I wasn't notating most things, but I was composing.

And I wasn't singing. Music. I was composing music. I wasn't singing. It was just all instrumental. And who were your influences? What were you pulling from? At that stage, certainly.

What are we talking? What were you pulling from? At that stage, certainly. What are we talking? What age? Well, I started writing as soon as I started playing. Lisa was such an incredible teacher. She said you should write music. Yeah, and improvise as well, which is, you know. You love this lady. I love this lady.

She's still around? Yes, she is. Does she come to your shows? She does. All right, so you're writing right out of the gate. Yes, I was writing out of the gate. Who were your influences early on? I mean, I don't think I would have even known

who my influences were at that stage. I think when I got a little older, it was, I was very into, when I started studying classical music, I was very into French Impressionists. I loved Debussy and Ravel. And then when I got a little older than that, sort of like 15, 16,

I got more into like Terry Riley, Philip Glass. Philip Glass, compositionally. I kind of can feel that a little bit. There's a momentum to it. Yeah, and he does a lot of polyrhythmic and some polymetric stuff as well, I kind of can feel that a little bit. There's a momentum to it. Yeah. And he does a lot of polyrhythmic and some polymetric stuff as well, which is very interesting. Yeah, yeah. And then kind of when I got into college was when I got more into other more American earlier 20th century composers.

Like Ruth Crawford Seeger was a big one for me. Yeah. I don't know anything about most of what you're saying but but I but no but it gives me something to learn I know there's this whole world of American classical composers that sort of because most of us don't know a lot about classical music so we only know like 10 names yeah and we probably couldn't identify a symphony that they did or anything that they composed but you know some of the bigger ones the same with jazz and me yeah but i know like you know there were these like copeland was a big american composer yeah and they're and i but i i sort of know a little bit of what he sounds like but i'd have no idea what what classical music

was in america at that time what did? Well, she was part of a crew. It was like Ruggles, I forget his first name, and Charles Ives. And actually Seeger, Charles Seeger, her husband, was part of this group, I guess. And Henry Cowell, he's actually my favorite. He was an amazing piano Irish-American dude. group i guess um and henry cowell he's he's actually my favorite he was amazing piano irish-american dude um and they they basically were trying to come up with an american

classical music that was not just a derivative of european music. And much as early American classical painting and visual art found its roots in landscape and the ruggedness and the rawness and the idea of pioneerism. So also did this musical movement find its roots in trying to illustrate craggy mountains and canyons. And obviously, especially Copland had this go west sort of like, you know, we... Here we go. Yeah.

Well, what this reveals to me that I noticed about your music is compositionally, it's certainly not pop music. I mean, there are some songs that seem like, you know, kind of, you know, compositions that I understand. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Yeah. But like a lot of the music is composed in a classical way. I just feel like the best I can do. Yeah. In describing my influences. Yeah. Listing a series of the things that I've liked. Sure.

Over the course of time. Right. But I get really, I start losing track of it when i try to describe how if at all they've those influences have actually manifested but see they have manifested and it's not on you to explain it because like i can hear elements of something that i would identify with copeland in terms of like there are points and i don't know what record where you're like, this is sort of a American sound. It's almost like, like Randy Newman, some of like stuff on Sail Away, where you're sort of like, there is definitely a tone to American classical music that, you know, you can hear it immediately. I don't know what, you know what I'm saying?

I do. Yeah. And certainly depending on where and when you use a banjo or when, you know, that there are points where you can hear that reverberating through the music. And then there are some that are more exotic. And that would make sense with some of the stuff you've been talking about. Yeah, definitely. You'll sign off on that? I will. I mean, I think the only thing I would add is just it's not that I don't care about hooks.

No, you have hooks. And I like them. I like them, too. Yeah. I mean, I like, there is music I would consider very poppy that I also think is quite genius. Not mine, I'm saying. Yeah. You know, music I like to listen to that is very poppy, and it just entered my brain a lot later.

Like, I didn't really listen to records as such until my late teens. And I didn't really until my 20s. What were you doing to entertain yourself? What was going on in the house? I mean, I was my my friend Jamie, who was originally friends with my sister. Emily has told me the story of how like she came over after school in high school to see my sister emily and i was working on i was playing i was writing something i was working on composing or whatever playing harp in the family room how old uh i'm gonna say 15 or 16 yeah maybe 17 and um they like went out and saw a movie and did something else and came back and I was still playing.

And then they went on a walk down to Gochi, which is the street like the end of our street, and then came back and I was still playing. And then it was time to go to bed and I was still playing and I didn't stop until like Emily came down and was like, you're keeping us awake. And I didn't stop until Emily came down and was like, you're keeping us awake. There was a stretch. I wasn't a great, I wasn't super committed until I was about 13 or something. But then after that, kind of all I did was- So you were like a full-on harp nerd. I was a full-on harp nerd. Because that's intense focus.

Yeah. And it was consuming. Yeah. And I did some other extracurriculars and stuff, but I didn't. I was, like. Like what? Theater. Yeah.

I was a little. But, like, a weird, like, the nerdy version. Like, I went to, like, Shakespeare camp and. You went to World Folk Camp and Shakespeare Camp. Mm-hmm. It's all making sense to me now. Yeah. And you liked acting? I liked acting.

You were in a movie. You were in Paul's movie. I was. All right. So let's get further up. So now you're a full-on harp nerd and you're 15 and you're living and breathing harp and composing music. And then after high school, where do you go with your music? Oh, I went to Mills College, Like, where do you go with your music? Oh, I went to Mills College, which is in Oakland. And you studied music? I did. I started by studying composition, and then I changed my major. And for a little while, I was trying to do a self-designed major in ethnomusicology,

focusing on Senegalese music. And then I changed my major again to creative writing. And then I dropped out. Okay. So how many years did you get through? I got through one semester. Then I dropped out and spent a year back in Nevada City. Yeah. And then I went back to school for, I think, three years. And then dropped out because one of those little home recordings I had made had found its way to Dan

Koretsky at Drag City and he was like let's make a record really yeah how did it get there via Will Oldham Will Oldham saw you how so you Oldham had played in Nevada City yeah at Magic Theater right um and my friend Adam Klein yeah had given him one of my home recordings and had written my email address on it. Had you been playing out? Had you been doing gigs? Had you been... No, not at that point.

I didn't start playing, basically playing shows until if I have the timeline right, I think it was after Dan had reached out to me about making a record. And I think my then boyfriend Noah was really close friends with Devendra Banhart. So he did my girlfriend. Yes, he did your girlfriend.

But also, so I knew him just we were friends. Devendra and Noah and everybody? Yes, Devendra and Noah were very close. And they were in San Francisco? Yes. And Noah was, you met Noah how? He's from Nevada City. Oh, you grew up with him?

I didn't know him growing up, but he was around. He was a little older than me, and I met him. And we ended up, for one stretch of time, I was an undergrad at Mills Mills and he was a grad student at Mills. He's a music guy. He's a music guy. But engineering mostly. Well, at that point, I mean, he's a composer also.

He got a composition, a master's in composition, but he also is very strong on the engineering side. Okay. So between Will Oldham and Noah and your stuff got to Drag City. Yeah, yes.

I mean... Did Noah help you with those home recordings? Yeah, I mean, he set up a microphone and press play on his computer and left the room. They weren't... I mean, I think he would say as well that they were no... That's the one I have, the one he would say as well that they were no. That's the one I have, the one that Sarah has that you gave to friends or whatever. Yeah, there was no forethought given to mic angles. Just like, here, get your stuff out. Yeah.

Like a demo. Well, no, honestly, at first it was here, record this so you don't forget this song that you just wrote. And then the next step basically was like, you're playing a couple of shows. So here's a thing that you can sell at the shows. It's interesting. The difference between you and Will is that he seems to put out everything that he does. I feel like that guy puts out a record every couple of months. I get a new Bonnie Prince Billy record. It's like, what?

There's more? What is this guy? Just put one record out and then just start the next one? I'm very envious of that actually are you but but look wait but not to discredit anybody but i got to assume in listening to your your music and into these records i mean a lot goes into it you know you have to orchestras have to put to be put together there's a lot of stuff you're not just playing guitar and it's like who wants to drum on this really right i mean okay so now we're now we're in it so you do the first drag city record with dan yeah who loves you i love and you are you know you're uh i think a big act for them uh yeah

yeah sure yes i can't like it must have just been mind-blowing to people who had never seen it before. Just this, like, this woman comes out with this giant harp and sings in this amazing voice with these completely unique, because it's so gripping, Joanna. You come on stage with a harp, people are going to be like, what the fuck is happening? And then, like, then the sound of a harp is like, what, what, what, what? Yeah. I mean, that's true that's why i the first person i saw who played the harp you know i was a little kid and i was like what is that i need to do that that's i mean and that's any any harpist you see i think will will oh yeah even if it's in a cheesy environment i don't know why it's been like i think it's been a long time since it's been associated

with, you know, brunches and, you know, sort of passive playing, hasn't it? I mean, I imagine that still exists. I mean, that was how I, you know, paid my car insurance for the first like. Playing what? Brunches. You did do the brunch circuit. Yeah. The hard brunch circuit.

You know, Loomis and Sacramento, Rockland, a lot of these places have country clubs. And I used to, in high school and during that year off after I left Mills, when I was just like working at a coffee shop, I would go play Mother's Day brunches and Easter brunches. What was your set list? I mean, like standards, all instrumental. You know, a little little classical easy listening classical some pachelbel's canon some beatles songs some pop classics yeah yeah you learned by ear well yeah although i would have charts you know like not charts exactly but i would take the sheet music and i would write the um chord you know like just write the letter G above it so that I wouldn't get lost.

And then I would just kind of just improvise on them, play them straight once and then play them like 18 times longer. Right. Spacing out and just playing weird little noodley stuff with my right hand. And everyone would be like eating their eggs benedict. It's brutal. Yeah. It's a little brutal as a musician to be background or you just you get lost in it no i wouldn't say it was brutal and i wouldn't say that i got lost

in it i would say it was better as a job goes than a lot of jobs sure so you put out this first record and you know drag city and bonnie prince billy's a fan and you've got you know this unintentional alignment with this style of music that's going on in San Francisco at that moment. But somehow or another, you know, Van Dyke Parks. How does that happen? That was, you know, a couple years later, I was a big fan of song cycle his record and i had this album i had written and i knew i wanted it to be an orchestral record so i was looking for someone to work with on that um so you reached out to him i did i wrote him a letter and he met with me in Los Angeles at a hotel.

It was the Roosevelt Hotel before the Roosevelt Hotel got like- Redone? Redone. It was kind of trashy. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I could afford it. I was staying at the Roosevelt with my harp.

And Van Dyke and his lovely wife came and met me in my room and sat on the little chairs in the Roosevelt. And I sat, I think, on the edge of a bed and played the record for him. With the big harp? Yeah. I drove my big harp to... So you have to have a truck your whole life, right? No, usually vans.

Okay. Vans all my life. Yeah. You can fit it into certain wagons. I drive sort of just a wagon now. Uh-huh. But... So you sat there and played for Van Dyke and his wife.

I played him the record that ended up being East. I just played the songs sort of in the order that I knew they would be. Uh-huh. And they just sat there and listened. And then Van Dyke said a few really sweet things to me and I wasn't exactly sure like. If it was a deal or not yeah because he

because he was so straightforward and nice about it like what what did he say like just sort of like yeah I think this is gonna be a lot of fun you know that kind of thing right right and then and and he gave me a very nice compliment that I'm not going to repeat on the air because it just sounds like I'll be tooting my own horn. But it was like very nice and I held it very close for years after that, you know, and it was just like, you know, it was a really nice experience. And then we started just sending things back and forth. Music, like sound files? Yes. He, you know, would sketch ideas out yeah like on a on a really um quaint like old right program that he had i don't even know what the name for it was but you know where the little horn sounds would be like and like the violin sounded like you know yeah but it was enough for me to understand the

shapes and the harmonic things that were happening and the density and the you know rhythmic stuff and um I did the same thing with him that I've done with everything since every record since with collaborators which is just basically that I wrote like a long kind of essay about what I wanted each song to be in terms of what I wanted the arrangement to convey emotionally, what references or touchstones I wanted it to include, if any, in terms of actual sort of, you know, like, I want this to be a Copland-esque moment or like, You're that on top of all that. Usually, there are certain songs where I don't have as good of an idea. And then there's more

back and forth. And then there's, I will also do, I don't have as good of an idea, and then there's more back and forth. And then I will also print out the lyrics, and I'll write above individual lyrics what I want to be happening here. you know um a bunch of violins playing in unison so that they create an unviolin-esque almost synthetic sounding flat you know no vibrato or like these sorts of things and just notes or something less specific like i want it to get really big here i want everything to drop out here i you know i don't want any brass here i want want just woodwinds that kind of thing So you hear it all in your head? Not necessarily I mean for me that's still pretty non-specific

those are sort of textural sometimes I hear it in my head there were a few collaborations on this last record where I actually sent a sound file of me humming an actual part I wanted to be played or playing it on like a synth you know like this is the flute right you know counter voice I want here whatever but usually I don't hear it

so this is in lieu of being writing music yeah this is how you do it yes although that said I think that if I was you know a whiz at notation and I could orchestrate and write music perfectly, I still don't think I could have. I mean, that record East would have sounded different, you know, like these songs on this record would have sounded different. I think in the best case scenario, a good collaboration creates something that's better than, you know, like, I'm writing in a vacuum up until that point, and then I open the, like, aperture up or whatever a little bit, like, let in this sort of new element, and the conversation happens around the song, and then, like, I think there's always an order of operations for me

when I'm making a record where I start in a total vacuum I don't want anybody's opinion about anything and then slowly slowly slowly as I go along by the very end when I'm mixing I'll like play mixes for people and be like does this sound too buried to you or too tinny or too whatever so so you're equally as engaged and nerdy about the entire production process from the second it comes to you compositionally to all the way through. Yes. More now than I used to be. Like when I made that first record, when I made Milk, I'd Mender, Noah recorded it and mixed it. And I think I was only in the room to pick performances where I was like, I'm out of.

What was simpler in terms of what was involved? It was simpler in terms room to like pick performances where i was like i'm out of what was simpler in terms of you know what was involved it was simpler in terms of what was involved but if i were to make a solo harp and vocal record today i guarantee you i would be sitting there like with eight zillion comments uh it's like because the thing was are you nuts or are you like just a more mature artist about it? I am a little nuts about certain things, but I also just think like I didn't have an opinion when I was 21 and recording because I had listened to like six records ever. You know what I mean? How do you end up being so insulated? I mean, did you watch TV and go to movies? We didn't have TV. I went to movies sometimes.

But we, there was music being played around the house constantly. I mean, everybody, both like performative and like records were played. But like, I listened, my brother would have albums and I would listen to them. And like, you know, just whatever was like mainstream pop, you know, I would be like singing along to sublime or whatever you know like but i but i didn't purchase an album that i would put on when i was home alone of my own volition until i bought fleetwood mac rumors when i was 16 and listened to that basically like you know hermetically until college. That was my... So that album has to have influenced me like way more than anything,

but I couldn't point to where or how exactly that could be traced in any of my songs. But I didn't even get Tusk until I was like 21 or 22. How does Albini get involved with two records? I've talked to Steve, you know. You have? Yes. I love him so much.

How'd you get hooked up with Steve Albini? Because people associate him with a lot of music, but the truth is he records a lot of different types of music. But it seems like he, did he actually come out here to record you? He did. That's a rare thing. He's done it several times. He must love you.

We love each other. Oh, how'd you meet that guy? I met him, well, I didn't even, I reached out to him before I ever knew him. Because when I was working on Ys, I've sort of like always been really obsessed with the idea of balancing elements out, especially in collaboration so i was working with van dyke on these kind of like sumptuous lush cinematic um very romantic um and slightly copeland-esque arrangements orchestral arrangements and i it was really important to me that at the core of this record would then be a recording that was that basically sounded like you were sitting in the room with me like i didn't want to lose right intimacy and the immediacy of the harp and vocal performance. Yeah, yeah.

And I feel like Steve is the person who basically, it's almost, he delivers basically reality, but he delivers the, like, beautiful version of reality. Like, if it's a documentary, he'll deliver the version where, like, the lens is really beautiful and, like, you're lit really well, but it's still a documentary. He'll deliver the version where the lens is really beautiful and you're lit really well, but it's still a documentary. He records how the room sounds, but somehow the best version of how the room sounds. He angles everything exactly correctly. He makes sure the instrument is angled correctly so that the resonance, it just sounds warm and real and beautiful. He's just got a feel, huh?

He's just got a feel. So I wanted him to record it, but then I wanted Jim O'Rourke to mix it because then I wanted this third element because I feel like the way that Jim O'Rourke mixes records would be a strong reference to basically the Van Dyke Park's early stuff and Randy Newman early stuff and this kind of very early 70s way of treating an orchestra that doesn't happen very much now. Kind of the opposite of lush cinematic orchestral treatment, one in which the individual textures and voices and character of each instrument exists

and sort of rises up in these little vignettes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like very stylized, hyper stylized. And I feel like that's how Jim mixes. exists and sort of rises up in these little vignettes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like very stylized, hyper stylized. And I feel like that's how Jim mixes. And so I really wanted each of those roles to be fulfilled by each of those people. And I didn't really want any crossover, which is sort of what I did on this last record too. You know, the various, that the only, you know, because it was a five year process to

make this last record. Right. that the only, you know, because it was a five-year process to make this last record. And I wanted it to be the case that the only common element from step to step would be me. So that I could kind of like oversee it and sort it. And there wouldn't be too much emotional investment or ego on the part of anybody else involved. Where I could just kind of like take what worked and maybe shuck off what didn't work. So by working with these different people who are helping arrange and people who are helping sort of mold the sound, you saw them as just almost separate pieces that all sort of came under you

and you could use them however you wanted. Sure, although it wasn't even that. I mean, as long as in the moment in which that person and I were in a room together, we're on equal footing. We're not under me. It's just that the finished product from that phase of the collaboration is then something that I can work with on my own. Right. You know. Right.

So once you do, once you've sort of executed your collaboration and vision for the vocals and the harp and then for the orchestra with Van Dyke and then with Jim you're going to do the mix. Your relationship with each one is balanced and collaboration and then you can sort of like, thank you, now we're going to put it all together. Yes, that's true. Although the one thing I will say is even the mix on East, on that record, which Jim did, I still hadn't got to the point where i am now in terms of mixing where i need to be in the room like overseeing and right and almost directing like every move like at that stage i still allowed myself to be dismissed from the room for you know

five hours six hours straight where i was just like lying on a couch outside while jim were you dismissed or did jim, all right, I got it. No, it was kind of like, get out of here. But the way that he works, which I respect, is that he basically wants an opportunity to give his take, his complete take. Like, this is how I would mix it. And then I can give notes. I've only listened to, I don't really know who he is,

but I got one of his solo albums, maybe from, is he a Drag City guy? He is, yeah. So that probably came through there. And I remember playing it and thinking, like, this guy's a real guy. Primarily because of the production. Yeah, he's an incredible producer. It's almost Beatles-like, right? Yeah, sometimes.

I mean, the range of what he does and can do is pretty astonishing he he he is also very classically trained dude but he you know like for for east in his mixing of that record he did a final pass basically on the arrangement where he he was like and it was very reverent towards van dyke's compositions but he he would he just sort of decided like this particular section now that the record exists as a complete thing i can i just feel that this moment needs to go away you know so he would like edit it was like a final phase edit of the arrangements which is something that i now do myself and did with divers but at that point wouldn't have felt the confidence to do and also you learn new things

from these people i would imagine yeah i also i learned so much about mixing from from jim like the way that he just sort of carves things out and rides yeah the vocals you know like the vocal volume is modulated so much throughout you know where it sits in the Even spatially, it sometimes moves over the course of a song, depending on what's happening instrumentally. Wow. I learned a lot from him. And from Van Dyke, what'd you learn? Van Dyke, I mean, I'm a huge admirer of his.

He was incredibly collaborative with me on East. I think that's maybe not necessarily as much how he works normally. Like he, he, I think traditionally actually is more of a, like, this is my take on the song. Well, I think we all, most people who are just regular mainstreamy people know him from working with Brian Wilson, right? Yes. On Smile.

Yeah. And that seemed to be kind of a collaboration, a strained collaboration. Yeah. Ours wasn't particularly strained. Well, he's older. But I mean, but I think, you know, we've talked about doing stuff since then and ruled it out basically because the way that he now works is not the way that we worked then right like that like it's no longer an option for me to send

five passes of notes about think what i need to be oh yeah he doesn't want to deal with it i mean i don't want to speak on his behalf i don't want to word it differently than how he would word it. Sure. But he, you know, he tells the best stories in the world and he's a gentleman and a delight. Yeah. Well, good. So on like, now Anis was,

did you, when, and I know I'm getting sort of specific, do you see all these records, you obviously see them as whole records. Yeah. And do you see them as having a story do they have a story in your mind only only in the broadest definition okay so each song is separate but

you are thinking in terms of the record well it depends which record we're talking about but like it juan is it seems like you know even this construction of the cover and the way that it's laid out and even the the the painting the riff on that kind of symbolic kind of renaissancey yeah whose style is that what's that based on that painting oh um what frau filippo lippi yeah i think like there's something that demands that you reckon with this as a whole piece and as as that is all one thing. Yeah, that's true. And definitely Ben Verling, who painted that piece, he and I worked for a long time on figuring out sort of the allegorical stuff.

Like every element in that painting is representative of something in the tradition of a lot of Renaissance painting, and it all connects back to the record. So you were all part of that, and it was very specific work. Yeah. And the way the text is and the sort of Renaissance-y feel of all of it, you're all on top of all of that. Yes. And then we get to have one on me where it's almost like this kind of like 1920s Theta

Bera cover. Yeah. And the images that you chose to put into the records were something very different, something modern, something sensual and something. What was the intention? Basically, with each record I've done so far, the narrator of the record has been some version of myself. It hasn't been a pure, unedited version of myself,

but it's been sort of a, you know, the story, the songs have elements of autobiography or, you know, speaking to my own experience, and they're united by some common character and that character is you know an exaggerated and or edited and or stylized version of myself and the way in which that character is portrayed in the packaging and the art is meant to basically illustrate like this is the narrator of the record and so in the packaging and the art is meant to basically illustrate like this is the narrator of the record right and so in the case of have one on me well let's say with east it was a much more

um well i don't want to i don't want to say too much about it because i sort of want to leave it open to interpretation but there but there's sort of a different um uh like archetypical uh identity to the narrator on each record and have one on me obviously is more of like the maiden you know archetypically speaking and like it's it is much more physical, much more, the songs speak a lot more to very sort of physical life stuff, like drinking and eating and like, you know, being a woman. Yeah. You know, like more, there's obviously more like romantic stuff on that record and more just sort of like. And it's compositionally different. I mean, there are songs that are, you know, they're beautifully produced and orchestrated,

but they're like, there's a, you know, the repetitions of chord patterns are a little more accessible on some of those. They are. Yeah. It's, it is, it's a much earthier record all around. Like more grounded, more earthy, more grounded in like body and. And also like hooks. Yeah. It's true.

There's some of those. There's some of those. I think that like the melody and chord structure that I start with generally happen around the same time as me having like I don't think I would have the desire to write the song in the first place if I wasn't thinking about this group of things like they're there I've got like a cloud of sort of ideas in my head that feel like they're probably connected and I want to I have a compulsion to to spread them out and make the connections clear to myself, there's a general idea or collection of ideas

that I have preoccupying me. Like the idea of, or questions about permanence or impermanence, monuments and lionization or erasure, culturally speaking. What it means to be remembered remembered like what that actually means and um and then i think what happens is when i'm preoccupied with all that stuff which is basically to say death you know like then then when i encounter things that are interesting to me that that might in some way to that, then they just sort of take root more, and I read more about them.

And sometimes I reject them, like, this doesn't really apply. Right. And then other times I don't reject them, and I feel like I want to know more, and then that'll send me tangentially down some other direction. And then usually, like with a song like this one, you reach a point where there's this like electric thing that starts happening where you turn up information that's too perfectly connected. You know, it just circles back in a way that you just start seeing the song actually form itself.

And it's and it's things are doubled and tripled. Like the same you see the same word, but it means three different things. And they all have resonant truth in the story you're trying to tell within that song. And then it just, there's a velocity. It picks up and picks up and picks up, and by the end it's just sort of writing itself. And then all you have to do is find the right words

because they have to adhere to a particular rhyme pattern or whatnot. But that's just... Do you do things for fun? I was... One of my really good friends who lives in LA, Anna, she and I go on walks and go out to lunch and stuff. And she and I were, like, like walking recently last fall after my record came out and she was she was like kind of mad at me not mad but she was like i just don't understand

you haven't talked about this at all like but you know i was working on the record for like three years three years no i weren't well i worked on the record for five years but three years of that around i was hanging in. and walking with her and having lunch and stuff. She's like, you never once talked about it, ever. You know, we would talk about, like, pillow fabric for our houses and, like, you know, restaurants we wanted to try and whatever. Like, I mean, we talk about whatever. She's a great friend. We talk about the gamut of things.

But the point is, like, I kind of compartmentalize. When I'm working, then that's how I work. And when I'm not working, then I don't really go to that place in my brain. And I just... You can do that. I do that. I have to do that. I would be insufferable to myself if I didn't do that.

Well, when did you learn the lesson? Because I imagine that given that experience as a child where you locked in and might not have gotten out, was there a point where you had to learn how to get out? I honestly think it was more like a social insecurity or social anxiety thing. I think I knew pretty early on that the same part of myself that um would compulsively sit and work on harp music for like six hours straight

wasn't going to be a hit at nevada union high school you know like and you know so you had to like sort of tend to that other part yeah i gotta go talk to the people yeah and i wasn't good at it then and i'm not good at it now like i still to this day have sort of tend to that other part. Yeah. I got to go talk to the people. Yeah. And I wasn't good at it then, and I'm not good at it now. Like, I still, to this day, have horrible social awkwardness and anxiety. And, like, you know,

we'll walk away from conversations being like, why did I say that? You know, like, but I think at some, there was just a split from an early age where I have, like, private self, and then the way I interact with people and they don't really intersect very much. We certainly, you know, like married a dude that, you know, it comes with a full history of social stuff. I mean, you know, marrying into the SNL family, you know, that, that must've been a crash course. And, you know, well, those kinds of people,

I think, fortunately knowing lots of them, you don't have to talk much. No. That's very true. That's very true. You can just sort of hang out and get some laughs. Yeah, that's true. And listen to them talk. Although, like, I don't know.

It's surprising to me how many comedians, comedians actually want to talk about things besides comedy. Oh, yeah. No, they're all very... They have a full range of... They're thoughtful people. But you're also totally right. I mean, there's many a dinner where I've just sat there watching the SNL anecdote, like ball pong from person to person across the table.

Well, he... I don't... He's... Andy, my only knowledge of him is when I talk to him in here. Yeah. And he seems like a very sweet and sensitive, decent dude. He is all of those things. Many times over.

Well, that's good. Yeah, he's the best. Yeah, when I saw him, you know, sitting up there watching you, like, because, like, as a comic and as somebody, you know, who does a certain thing and, like, you know, you know my girlfriend. She's a painter. Yeah. And you are a very, you know, special and specific artist that, you know, really knows what they're doing. And this is what you do. And, you know, it's completely different than what I do.

And, you know, I don't understand where her paintings come from. So when I, I'm getting choked up for some reason, but when I saw him just sitting there watching you, like with this kind of like, oh my God. Like that there's a tremendous, a real kind of beauty to a mutual respect between creative people, you know. I think that's very true. And it's so fortunate that you're from totally different disciplines.

Yeah, that's true. Because then I can be, I'm very awestruck by what he does. Right. And it's a very special thing. And they just don't cross. They don't. You know what I mean? And like I just, you know, it must And it must be just healthy in a way.

I think that's true. And the last song, Time as a Symptom, as a poetic idea and as a love song or an exploration of love, you can see you maturing and getting older on your records. Right? Can you? Yeah. I think, yeah, you can see me like, I think that you can see my relationship with time and death shifting lyrically.

Uh-huh. And do you find that, you know, sort of, you know, creating this poetry, and like, you know, like I somehow made a note here that, you know, that when you start to really engage the possibilities of music as you get older and more sophisticated with it, if these things are something that you kind of meditate on and are, you know, somewhat terrifying, you know, mortality and love. Yeah. I mean, do you find relief from fear through the music? To some extent. I think it feels good to be doing something. I don't mean in the sense of distraction. I mean like taking an action.

Mm-hmm. I mean, like, taking an action. And obviously this record in particular is asking unanswerable questions, so it's not like it's complete once the questions have been answered. They're not going to be answered. But I think there was like a sorting process that happened for me as I went through writing the songs, where I was at least breaking down the questions and reordering them somehow

in my mind in a way that made the unanswerability of them less unbearable in my life that I could be more comfortable with the unanswerability of the questions in general in general and maybe sort out one or two that felt answerable to me, like a sliver of a question or a half question. But like in the sense that, like as you move through these records and the creative process and then the final pressing, are they sort of documents of your coming to grips with these different parts of yourself?

I mean, like when you say unanswerable questions are you more at peace after this record i think so but you know it's like you know like in the most vague sort of simplistic sense it's like you can ask you can have a song that asks like what's the point of everything? I don't know. Okay, so why do you keep doing things? I don't know. But then if you zoom in small enough, like, at some level, on some level of detail, there's some question that you can answer. And so you just have to hold on to that one.

That's a great place to end. i think that's true yeah are you do you experience like um like are you sad i mean do you have darkness i do have darkness i was a very sad child and I was somewhat depressed at times as a teenager. For reasons or just because? When I was a child, I was sad for reasons, but, you know, comical like, you know, like nuclear war and AIDS and starvation and Somalia and just like, you know, the wash of terrifying. We're all going to die. Yeah, we're all going to die. My mom was a member of a group called, I think, Doctors Against Nuclear Disarmament or something.

And they used to meet in our living room. And I was so little that I think that nobody thought that I was taking it in, but I really was. So I was terrified of nuclear war when i was a toddler and you know things like that and then i i took a chill pill as it were and stopped thinking about those things quite as much the chill pill being decision no no no i think i just sort of um turned when you're really when you're that little you haven't quite built up the defense to learn how to turn away from something that's frightening. You know, you just look straight at it like a little baby that doesn't bit how to meter them out and um break them into doses

that are considerable and don't just paralyze you with fear and sadness compartmentalize yeah a little bit yeah so I did that as I got older and then I don't know it's really long-winded answer your question but I think I'm actually probably a very like very happy person I don't know I feel happy most of the time if I check in with myself I get stressed and freaked out in traffic and stuff but other than that I'm pretty yeah because I feel like your your music and how absorbed you can get like just seeing you perform live it's almost like you know when you're in it you know and the and the other instruments are playing and you're at the center of this thing you know can you know it's sort of completely engaged in your music as somebody who's watching it it's it's something that is happening you know

we're watching a performance but but, there's something happening on stage that is so unique and specific and, and not quite, we're connecting with the sound, but there's, you're almost feeling like, God, they're like, so into it. That's true. Yeah. And, and, and then when you come out and you're just sort of tuning, you're like, oh, she's human. Okay. Good. There's people, there are people that, that person is not some alien being. Right. It's a good thing. It, they're people. That person is not some alien being. Right.

It's a good thing. It's a good thing. Yeah. I definitely think that qualifying it in any way in terms of myself is and the thing that I'm doing. Like all the fake shit or the learned shit or the fear shit or the social shit. It's just in the moment of playing shucks away, and then as soon as I stop, it just gloms back onto me. You feel that, and that's exactly what you feel.

And that's an amazing thing you do. You're a very special artist. Thank you. It was good talking to you. So good talking to you. Take it in. Take it in. Take it in. Just having a conversation whether it does not do her justice.

Go listen to Divers and the album before too. Pick whatever record you want. Tour dates. I'll be at the Trippany House Tuesdays. I don't know how many of them are sold out, but judging by how I feel right now, there'll be something to watch. I've got to put earplugs

in now because my ears are going. Thank you. Boomer lives! It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5pm

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