Who/what inspires your music? 

Well, this is all old music—I quit music a bunch of times, so these albums and songs I'm putting out for the next year are old tunes, and I'm excited to sort of unbury them and get them into the world in their best form, and see what that opens up for new music and new inspiration. 

 

How would you describe your sound?

 I don't have one sound, which is terrible for branding! But I originally came up in the folk scene, with a classical background, and my first album was very country-folk, but with longer melodies. This album, greedy pushy needy, I've coined "uptempo emo and lackadaisical punk." The next project is sort of...orchestral folk, operatic indie-folk. So there's lots of fun instruments on everything coming out this next year.

 

If you could open for any musician/band, who would it be? 

Um, dang. I don't really play live like I used to, so...I'm just going to go who I'd really like to meet, rather than who the current album would mesh with, and most of them are dead, but I'll just say it—Nina Simone and Cesária Évora. The NEXT next project would fit with them! 

 

What does making music mean to you? What got you into it/keeps you continuing? 

Oof. 

 

How do you keep yourself motivated and inspired - how do you deal with creative block?

I quit music! Ha. No. That's not why I quit. I quit music for health and trauma reasons, and the fact that the music industry is really tough, particularly if you haven't been appropriately diagnosed neurodivergent or have challenges building social networks. If I'm blocked on a single piece, in the middle of working on it, I seek help. I get an outside ear, an outside reader, run my ideas and concerns past them. I'm glad to have enough musicians and poets in my life I can do that with! As to larger blocs, it's true I'm not happy when I can't make art, so when the block is internal and not external, I'm not particularly happy. But I am also a poet/writer, and often I find if one genre isn't flowing it might be a seasonal time. A time to focus on another genre. A time to rest. I've gone through enough peaks and valleys and blocks with creation, with being fruitfully creative, to have faith that it'll always come back. I just have to make space for it. Eventually I'll get an itch, or maybe the start of what feels like an emotional breakdown. Like it's getting dammed up in me. An impending feeling of insanity. And I recognize it now. (I mean, I feel impending insanity a lot, but there's a particular flavor to the dammed-up song that wants to get out. That offers such relief in getting out.) 

 

Which song of yours was the most fun to write & make? 

This whole album was so much fun to make! I laid down almost all the instruments on greedy pushy needy and also learned more advanced sound engineering to track it all myself. Probably "Planned obsolescence" and "O my friends" rise to the top, because of the saxophones and, in the first one, the weird percussion. I played a washtub. Not a washtub bass, just a washtub. And I took apart a bunch of palettes and recorded it. I was thinking of Tom Waits' Mule Variations, though in the end I'm doing my own thing. 

 

What is your creative process like? Is it more organized & session based or more sporadic and fleeting? 

I'd say it's...varying! Too broad to narrow down! In the case of these particular albums, though, I wrote them all years ago when I was writing and touring. Then I had kind of an...order of operations for recording them a decade later. I did a bunch of pre-production versions where I roughed out the sound and instrumentation I generally wanted to head toward, and I also met with a producer friend to clarify and strengthen some harmonic changes and transitions etc. When it came to the album tracks, I laid down guitar and vocals, and then usually went on to ask my bass player for his support before revisiting and recreating the preproduction vision. I learned this way that each session is so unique—I could never nail the preproduction feels I had again, so I had to move in some new directions sometimes. And I love them both—the preproduction and the album versions! They're both creatures of the moment, in some ways. Honestly, if I had a Patreon or something, I'd be happy to release the preproduction tracks. Some of them got some rewriting before final production. The last thing I did in most cases was track drums, and I also learned why people don't do it that way. But it turned out great!

 

What is your current big goal? What does the future hold/what are you working towards right now?

 I'm trying to figure out if I can—or how I can—make the music industry work for my particular health and financial and social needs and challenges. So I'll definitely be putting out two albums and some singles, and hopefully then the NEXT next project...but I have to figure out how to piece together a sustainable approach, for the benefit of the music and myself.