The way I go about writing records is that I make a calendar date to start the new record, so I have nothing. I don’t have a bunch of notes that I bring into the office, I start with nothing at all.
I’ve always done a lot of research and stuff around the songs that I write so there are pages and pages of writing and you can kind of see these songs emerging.
It’s always a risky business inviting somebody on stage. You never know what they’re going to do. I try to avoid letting people join me onstage because it can be very distracting, and overly theatrical.
When I’m singing “Deanna,” for example, which I sing pretty much every night, it brings forward a kind of imagined, romanticized lie about this particular person, which I find really comforting and exciting to sing about.
We are still struggling with people who don’t feel comfortable going into museums. As a visual artist I ask how artists can be part of enacting a change.
