Laura Jane Grace: Punk Guilt
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Laura Jane Grace is the lead singer/songwriter for Against Me! and author of the recent memoir Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout. She’s been powerfully open about her own experiences with gender dysphoria, transitioning, imposter syndrome and – most interesting to me – what it means to be truly authentic in this world. Our conversation went all over the place, as you’d expect, from how we write songs and deal with “finishing” things, to how we deal when the head-weasels come scurrying.
Episode 4 of The Art of Asking Everything: Laura Jane Grace: Punk Guilt is out now wherever you get your podcasts.
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https://forum.theshadowbox.net/t/laura-jane-grace-tranny-discussion-thread/5894
Show notes:
Description
Amanda Palmer presents an intimate conversation with Laura Jane Grace. Recorded March 15, 2019 in Austin, TX.
Laura Jane Grace is the founder, lead singer, songwriter and guitarist of the punk rock band Against Me! They’ve come out with 7 studio albums. Grace is one of the first highly visible punk rock musicians to come out as transgender and has become an outspoken advocate for transgender awareness. Her column Mandatory Happiness was published by Vice for years.
Her autobiography is entitled, Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout.
Her debut solo album “Bought to Rot” was released in 2018. Her new album “Stay Alive” is out now on Polyvinyl Records.
We talk about enjoying music as an individual, musicians working in cycles, the relationship between speed and creativity, and punk guilt.
Stay Alive:
https://www.polyvinylrecords.
Bought to Rot:
https://www.bloodshotrecords.
Against Me!:
https://www.againstme.net
Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout:
https://againstme.myshopify.
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CREDITS:
Thanks, of course, to my guest Laura Jane Grace for doing this wonderful interview with me. It was recorded by Jessica Gardener, who was also filming a documentary on my entire SXSW experience. You can actually watch that documentary online.
The theme song that you are listening to right now is Bottomfeeder, from my 2012 crowdfunded album Theatre Is Evil. For all the music that you heard in this episode, you can go to the new and improved amandapalmer.net
Many, many thanks to my podcast assistant, social media helper, and additional engineer Xanthea O’Connor. This podcast was produced by FannieCo. Many, many thanks to my team at AFP worldwide: Hayley, Michael, Jordan, and Alex, I love you guys. Special thanks to Nick Rizzuto, Brittney Bomberger, Allie Cohen, and Braxton Carter.
This whole podcast would not be possible without patronage. I have about 15,000 people supporting me and my team so that we can do this podcast without ads, sponsors, or censorship, so that we can just do what we want, and say what we mean. And on that note, I would like to give very special thanks to some of my highest level patrons. Bernhard Reebok, Simon Oliver, Saint Alexander, Birdie Black, Ruth Ann Harnisch, and Leela Cosgrove. Please, go to Patreon, become a supporting member, and that will also give you access to the live follow-up chats that we have been doing with almost every podcast guest.
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Amanda Palmer
For anyone who has no idea who you are, what your background is, I know it’s really irritating, but can you summarize?
Laura Jane Grace (LJG)
Sure yeah, well, I’m 38 years old. I’ve played in my band called Against Me since I was 17 years old. I grew up in a military family. So I’ve kind of moved all over the place. I moved to Florida when I was like 12 years old and lived there till I was like 18. And then since then I’ve lived in LA, lived back in Florida again, lived in Chicago for like past seven years. And I’m transgender. I’m an activist. I wrote a memoir. I have a nine-year-old.
Amanda Palmer
I thought it was interesting. You didn’t mention as much music. Do you feel like other things in your life like the activism or the parenting or whatever, do you feel like any of that has created a need to compartmentalize music? Is music not as big as it used to be in your brain’s landscape?
LJG
No music is so all encompassing in my landscape. My daily schedule is wake up in the morning, take my daughter to school and I have a studio space right by her school. I drop her off I go into my studio space and I sit there until three o’clock when it’s time to pick her up. And all day long, I just sit there and work on music. And then we go home and do it all again the next day. And the only time I’m not doing that is when I’m on tour. So maybe not mentioning music as much as just because it is so all encompassing.
Amanda Palmer
It’s the water we drown in?
LJG
Yeah.
LJG
Maybe it feels like it doesn’t need to be mentioned as much. But yeah.
Amanda Palmer
Are you on tour right now?
LJG
Yeah, this is the start of the tour. So it’s like, lasts till the end of April. But I haven’t been on tour since October. So it’s been a nice break. But yeah, this is the start of the tour here at South by Southwest, which feels kind of almost like, not that I play sports or like sports but like swinging a weighted bat before you go out and actually do the thing, you know?
Amanda Palmer
Absolutely. I’ve been using that metaphor for the last couple of days because especially when people see you in this kind of motion, and they’re standing still and they’re asking like what’s that like, what that’s like? The best thing I can come up with, it is like it is like being an athlete.
LJG
Mm hmm.
Amanda Palmer
It’s a physical job to get up in the morning and do this set of activities and use your body this emotionally and then collapse and get up and do it again. It’s still a physical job.
LJG
Sure, and I find I train like an athlete too like I go running every day. I like really watch my diet, make sure hydration, vitamins, all that stuff like leading up to a tour, but it never feels like enough.
Amanda Palmer
It’s never enough.
LJG:
I always feel like, maybe if you practiced in a sauna, it would like be comparative to what you’d need, but otherwise, it’s just like you can’t recreate. Maybe it’s the mix of adrenaline too, and stuff like that. But you can’t get that on your own. You know?
Amanda Palmer
Yeah, well and neither can athletes. But it’s so interesting that they have like, there’s so much more structure to get ready for a thing and in music you’re just totally on your fucking own to figure this stuff out.
02:47
LGJ
Right? Well, that’s what it is too is that you’re on your own. It’s not as much of a team effort and if you had teammates, maybe it’d be more motivating, but I don’t even live in the same city as any of my bandmates. So it’s not like I can have a weekly practice or anything like that. It’s all just like you have to be self-motivated.
Amanda Palmer
Well we could both go back to like early days of like touring in cars and vans. Like you did have teammates, right? You had like you had, but everyone was fucking clueless.
LGJ
Yeah.
Amanda Palmer
And drinking, and probably not doing a single healthy thing all day, which was.
LGJ
You’re young though you can do that a lot more easily, you know?
Amanda Palmer
Oh I mean, I couldn’t, and I did and I couldn’t. It never feels like enough. And I’m also just like, one of the things that’s been occurring to me a lot in the conversations that I’ve been having since I got here to South by Southwest, especially with other musicians, especially with other female musicians is not just what no one teaches you, but what you have no idea is getting in your way until you’ve kind of accidentally run through all these gauntlets of the recording studio of how it is to tour, how it is to be around all these people, especially if you’re an emotional songwriter, performer and what you do is really emotionally legit. No one tells you how to do that. You get up one day thinking like here I am in a band or I finally have a gig or whatever and you just sometimes you fail spectacularly, but you’re just making fucking everything up and you’re doing it in a really often really often, really hostile environment.
LGJ
Right and also the time allotment is totally flipped where at first, I don’t know about you, but the first record I ever made was recorded and mixed in a day.
Amanda Palmer
Yeah
LGJ
Whereas like you know more recent records maybe you spend a month or something.
Amanda Palmer
You don’t need as much time now because you’re way better at it.
LGJ
Right. And so you walk into the studio and you’re like so intimidated because I don’t know what any of these things do and I have a sound in my head, but I don’t know how to get that out of this equipment. And same thing with like shows or tours where like you go on tour and like you’ve got this one shot, get it right as opposed to like later on in your career where you’ve got time, soundcheck is yours. Yeah, you can you can choose the venue, you know what you’re doing more, so it’s really like luck in a lot of ways. like that. You know?
Amanda Palmer
So just because this is like my current obsession, do you remember, like those early studio sessions or those early gigs? Because also like your music is not unemotional and you were up there transmitting a lot of confusion, pain, hardcore, like real emotion. Do you remember what it felt like to be at soundcheck in the studio with these random people populating your environment while you stood there and tried to do that?
LGJ
Of course, yeah. Mm hmm. I remember all those first experiences. I remember like vividly the first time in a studio going for a vocal take, you know, young punk, just screaming my head off and also like not doing it properly, even in the sense of like, not even holding a guitar so you’re not singing in the same way. And then like getting through the take and the engineer being like, Alright, I think I’ve got the level set. Let’s do it for real.
Amanda Palmer
Yeah, I’ve been there! I’ve been there. And weeping
LGJ
And you’re like that was it.
Amanda Palmer
And I’m like and I did it. And I’ve got my take. And I’m so proud of myself. And I bet everyone in the studio is weeping with me. And then you look in and they’re just like, yeah. Can you do that again?
LGJ
You’re like that was it!
Amanda Palmer
Yeah. But that’s also why I don’t think it’s silly that there is a difference between the idea of engineering and the idea of producing and also just having had a baby, there is a great analog for this in childbirth. The midwife has this job to just get the baby out of the birth canal. That’s the midwive’s primary function. And the midwive’s job is not to give a shit about you and your needs.
LGJ
So would you say the midwife is more like the producer?
Amanda Palmer
No, the midwife is the engineer. Get the sounds. Get the correct sounds, make sure the mic is working. Just make sure the sound is going to get from A to B. And then the doula, the doula’s job is to be like, and do you need water? And are you remembering to breath? This is about you, the mother also exists. And it’s actually really good to have a team of two people or one person who actually knows how to do both of those jobs, which is what I got on my last record. John Congleton was an amazing midwife doula. He was like sounds, sounds, mics, mics, feelings? Thank you, sounds have feelings.
LGJ
Continuing with that metaphor, I would say that the actual hospital staff when my daughter was born were more like the major label A&R people and coming and being like, alright, we’re out of time, we’re gonna have to actually circumvent this process and do it our way now.
Amanda Palmer
Do not get me started about western medicine and birth and very evil alliance with the major label system feels real, not unsurprisingly, driven by the same system. They’re both profit driven systems and not actually put in place to take care of what they’re supposed to take care of. Just like human beings, making soulful art.
LGJ
100%.
Amanda Palmer
It makes everything not work.
LGJ
Um hmm. My daughter was born in LA too so.
Amanda Palmer
Did she come out with sunglasses and a jewel?
LGJ
Totally. iPhone in hand too.
Amanda Palmer
These are the sorts of things that have sort of been rattling around in my brain, that I actually have never really analytically looked at. What was happening when I was 27? And I was in the studio, knowing very little? One of the things that I keep coming up against is like, oh, right, like I didn’t, I mean, I didn’t know what I was doing and I was blowing my voice out. And I was like, there’s my one take, and I just didn’t know how it worked. But I also didn’t know that I could ask for things. I actually thought that like, my job was to just go in there, do it right and that breathing was very cut and dry. All of my engineers were men. I didn’t have a single female engineer. I don’t think I’ve ever had a female engineer in any of my records.
LGJ
I can’t say I’ve ever yeah.
Amanda Palmer
And we know the statistics. The music industry’s is 95% male. So there is this really weird thing of performing this emotional music for an audience sometimes of one or two or three. Sometimes the least emotionally invested in the music. They’re invested technically, they’re getting paid, they’re doing their jobs, they kind of care.
LGJ
Right.
Amanda Palmer
Like you’re at your most vulnerable with all the wrong people.
LGJ
There is a valuable tool, though, that I find in that and that it’s something that I use to this day where like, when I’m finishing something, I really do like to test it on an audience. Because I know immediately when I play something, or share something with somebody how I feel, where if I feel uncomfortable, then I know like, oh, well, this lyric needs to be changed or this is what’s wrong with this. Something’s wrong with this and I need to address it. I think it’s from that process of being like, you know, no one is giving me any feedback here and I’m like, bleeding my heart out, so I need to be really confident in what I’m doing, you know?
Amanda Palmer
Yeah, and I toured all of these songs on my new record, before I took them into the studio, and actually, you know, a couple of the songs I, one of the songs in particular, which was just sort of like this long stream of consciousness rambling about motherhood, I never, ever would have thought was gonna make it past just the point of this song is kind of a novelty joke. But then I started playing it for people. The one time that I thought I would play it live as its novelty joke, and I watched people really respond and respond emotionally. You know, I really had to admit that the material that I found possibly, like kind of hokey and embarrassing if it worked, and it resonated, I was like, well, I guess my fucking opinion doesn’t matter. I’ve never really understood how as a songwriter, you could make a bunch of songs, never play them for anyone, and then put them on a record and deliver it. That just seems terrifying to me!
LGJ
It can it’s oftentimes disastrous because songs need to age in that way, but I’ve found that there are like, there’s sometimes too far of aging, like a song where like, it kind of spoils.
Amanda Palmer
It’s too the late.
LGJ
Yeah. And that was like the record that I just did, that was the theme behind it, the idea of bought to rot. And this may sound cheesy or whatever, but it really came from buying fruits and vegetables, because I will go to the grocery store and I flip out if there’s really good produce and good fruits, and I’ll buy it and then like-
Amanda Palmer
It will rot.
LGJ
Yeah. And then you’re like, oh, that that went to waste and it was good. It was perfectly usable. So sometimes you do need to really like take something and just get it out there and use it.
Amanda Palmer
That’s how I do this all the time, too. And I actually just thought of a really great name for it: Aspirational Produce Shopping. (Laughing). Because you’re standing there in in the market, and you’re so aspirational. You’re like all of the things I will make with all this kale! I’m going to be this person.
LGJ
And it’s coming from the best place of like this will be so good for me. This will be so good for us, you know? And then like.
Amanda Palmer
And then it rots?
LGJ
Um hmm. And you wasted your money and you wasted something that grew.
Amanda Palmer
And you destroyed the world.
LGJ
It’s all your fault.
Amanda Palmer
And then you’re holding it about to compost. Well so what’s the musical metaphor? Do you go back and reuse old stuff? Do you ever find old bits and pieces and think like maybe you’ve fomented enough?
LGJ
If I’ve hit a block creatively, then sometimes I’ll get in the mentality of like, I should go back and I should finish these loose end ideas, but it’s rare that I, will do that. And then one of those ideas will feel like oh, that was totally like way awesome and way worth it. It’s just like, I’m glad I did it. I’m glad I finished it, but you know, it’s still a B side.
Amanda Palmer
Yeah, I feel the same way. I actually, before I had a child, I used to have this really dark metaphor, which I still really believe in, which is if you have a fetal song idea, and it doesn’t matter how good it is, it has this half life. It is sort of like giving birth to a baby. You can’t just put it in the closet for six months and expect to come back and it’s still alive. You have to actually tend to it. Part of the problem is that if certain inspiration hits you, like it’s almost all chemical, it’s the you of that moment that captures that song, that metaphor, whatever that you can contain. And once you’ve moved around, all the light has changed. That moment will never be recapturable, even if the idea survived.
LGJ
Right. Sure. And specifically, lyrically, I find that like I have trouble reconnecting to the motion behind the lyric with that, you know? And there’s something too to be said for like having ideas and especially if I start to get like a couple songs together, or like, I won’t want to share them with people too early because it’ll spoil it if I share it with too many people early. And I’ve gotten like more and more paranoid in this day and age specifically with cell phones where like the idea of you know, you’re talking about something. And then the next minute you pick up your phone and there’s an advertisement in Facebook related to that. I’ve started thinking, what happens when they start listening in on your cell phone? And to your song ideas, into your melodies and then they start picking out your melodies and just using your melodies and all of a sudden…
Amanda Palmer
back to micro cassette and four track.
LGJ
Seriously, yes.
Amanda Palmer
That’s the only solution.
LGJ
I have my like little, like, cassette player recording device or whatever that I still lean on and use.
Amanda Palmer
Yeah, I kind of want to go back to mine. Do you write faster than you used to? Do you have anything you could say about sort of like your growing relationship with art and speed, and the speed at which you like to do things versus what or you know, or what works? What doesn’t work?
LGJ
Yes and no. After I came out, it was such a like, breakdown of an emotional wall that I felt so like, able to do and talk about anything and to write like freely, but I’ll go through phases where like, I’ll complete a body of work. And then I’ll feel kind of dry and it’s almost like I need to like reset. Right now I feel very much in this period of like, I need to reset and rebuild, and also just like, figure out where the plot is now, maybe that accurately describes it. I don’t know. But I’m at that phase now where I’m like, fuck, I’m never gonna write again. I’m shit.
Amanda Palmer
I know that thing? I was just talking about that with Ben Folds and how like, once you’ve been through that phase 15 times, it doesn’t hurt any less, but it feels like a familiar pain.
And you’re like you again. I just gonna have to wait. Before we started the podcast, we were talking about ear exhaustion. I read a study where your ears get literally physically exhausted when you make really loud music all night and you spend your life doing that. So it didn’t surprise me when I learned that that when I started the Dresden Dolls, I stopped listening to music for pleasure. And I thought that that was maybe just emotional exhaustion, but it was actual physical exhaustion. My ears were just telling me like stop, rest, silence, like I need to rebuild my cilia. And I think it’s the same way when you expend an enormous amount of emotional and physical effort to make an offering in the form of an album and a tour, we could easily look to the natural world and be like, you have to rotate crops, like you can’t just keep pulling, and harvesting. There has to be this fallow period in order for the whole fucking thing to continue to work.
LGJ
Right, which is the natural part of like musicians working in cycles, that separate from like the business idea of it of like, of like record a record, put out a record, go on tour, like I need that touring period to move on as a person and to become someone new and to have new life experiences. And I think there’s also something really to be said for like, I’m the type of person where if I write a song on a subject, I did it. That’s how I feel about it. I don’t need to tell you again or say it in a different way, which is why it’s always so frustrating doing interviews when someone’s like: can you summarize this for me? I know you like spent months.
Amanda Palmer
Why did you write this song?
LGJ
Yeah, but can you like, take something you’ve worked really hard on and tell it to me in a really like shitty way? You know?
Amanda Palmer
Yeah, it’s funny like, I’m just starting the press right now for this record. And this is that skill set, where I figure out the clever things that I’m going to say in summary, and it’s going to take me until my 15th interview to have economized that thing that I’m going to say and deliver it to you kind, nice journalists who like has no idea how annoying it is to do this for the 19th time.
LGJ
iI like, becomes a soundbyte, but at the same time, it’s true. Then there’s no other way to say it. Yeah, you’re not gonna make up a new answer to it. You know like once you have the answer that’s the answer.
Amanda Palmer
I have had to confront lately the myth that I think I’ve carried around and that I know a lot of other rock musicians singer songwriters carry around that everything you say on stage has to appear as if you’re just thinking it up in the moment.
LGJ
Right.
Amanda Palmer
And when you tour, you know, even though you know that the majority of the people seeing the show tonight didn’t see it last night, didn’t see it the night before, for your own sick pride, you have to phrase it differently. And what’s ironic is we don’t feel like we have to play the songs differently every night. Those are allowed to be delivered like the way they work. But when it comes to our in between song banter, like we think we need to be very original and authentic and clever, and I thought about going to Hannah Gadsby’s show and watching her just throw down a scripted offering night after night after night of what it is like to be her and what it is like to be raped. And then I went and saw Bruce Springsteen do two and a half hours of scripted storytelling.
LGJ
On the Broadway show?
Amanda Palmer
Yeah. And I was like, why do we all think we’re not allowed to do this? Why am I not allowed to actually really decide what it is that I want to say? And actually almost do the audience a kindness by summarizing it and really thinking about it, planning it, saying it instead of just rambling slightly differently every night for 16 minutes and using about tonight, my thoughts about abortion. I’m like, I know my fucking thoughts about abortion. I could save us 16 minutes, script something really precise and tell you in two and not waste your time, but that’s very scary, because that feels like it flies in the face of being an authentic rock and roll stage performer.
LGJ
I think a lot of that comes from like the punk rock mentality.
Amanda Palmer
Don’t say it!!!
LGJ
That’s not very punk. But you know, like that was something that that’s like the punk guilt that I carried with me and it was something though that I took into consideration as we toured with bigger bands.
And it’s like doing arena tours and realizing like this is a production, but it also gets into just it being different crafts, like there’s your craft as a recording artist, your craft as a songwriter and your craft as a performer. And I do want consistency in performance every night because I think that people deserve that. And frankly, like, there’s some nights where like, I don’t feel good, you know, like, I don’t feel good physically. And I’m going to do the song the same, but I don’t want that to mean like, and now I’m going to be sullen and withdrawn in between songs. And I’m gonna say nothing to you. Cause I used to do that, like go on tour and say nothing in between songs,
Amanda Palmer
So did it! Yes, and be grumpy at everybody. There’s a word for this in most other areas and like we’re allowed to use it to it’s called professionalism.
LGJ
Yeah.
Amanda Palmer
You don’t think about professionalism when you think about punk rock.
LGJ
Right.
Amanda Palmer
But they actually can exist together. Those were really interesting lessons to learn. And it’s also like when you’re a teenager and you love punk because you believe in complete and fucking utter authenticity, I mean, unless you’re in the like total Henry Rollins school of thought, you’re not really taught that professionalism and authenticity can go hand in hand you’re sort of taught that professionalism is the antithesis of authenticity because it means you’re showing up for work and your disciplined and you’re a grown up and if you are in more of the like sloppy make it up as we go along fucking DIY, fuck everything, fuck rules, anarchic school of punk rock, that can be scary. And I definitely felt like that in the early days at the Dresden Dolls. And when I look back, it was a real paradox. And I’m sure that like, you’ve probably battle those things, too, which is like I was living in a paradox. I had to be disciplined. We had to be disciplined if we wanted to do the job of playing these massive shows every night getting from place to place and not sucking. I, and I can’t speak for Brian, and Brian probably actually have a lot to say about this and had a different point of view and probably still does, but I didn’t want to seem disciplined. I wanted to seem real and raw and fucked up and amazing and all the things that I wanted to appear when I was 25.
LGJ
Right. But how long were your setlists then?
Amanda Palmer
Long!
LGJ
Really?
Amanda Palmer
And ever changing?
LGJ
Because we would do like half hour, you know, like.
Amanda Palmer
Fuck you! We would play three hour shows and then we would sign for three hours.
LGJ
No no, no no no. See it’s a lot easier to do that when you’re doing like nine songs in a setlist and then it’s just an explosion. And you’re done you know, but I realized when you like.
Amanda Palmer
Oh no. We ran a marathon every night from the beginning of the Dresden Dolls. The only time we would ever play a 30 minutes set is if we were forced to at a festival and we would be angry because we would be just getting our boner up at the 30 minute mark and then that the plug would get pulled and it’s like, well, there goes that. My touring show right now is three hours. I would prefer it to be four because I wish I could add a Q&A.
LGJ
That’s crazy. How many songs is that?
Amanda Palmer
I don’t know. I mean it’s a lot of talking.
LGJ
Right.
Amanda Palmer
Like 15, 12, 15 something like that.
LGJ
We kind of reached this point where like, no matter how many songs we play, it’s an hour and a half. It could be 20. It could be 35. It’s an hour and a half. Like that’s just what happens.
Amanda Palmer
I’m jealous.
Amanda Palmer
I played a three-hour show last night here. And I was like, why am I doing this?
LGJ
I don’t understand where you get your energy from. I like to see it from a distance that I’m impressed by it. I like I’m envious. I wish I had that kind of energy. It’s like zest.
Amanda Palmer
I get energy from doing a three-hour show. And I think it’s because I get energy from being seen and heard. That’s the simplest way I could put it. It doesn’t exhaust me. It feeds me.
LGJ
Is that only in a musical context? Or is that in the other context?
Amanda Palmer
Fucking kidding me?
Amanda Palmer
Like period. I need to be seen and heard in line at the coffee shop.
(laughing). I wish you’d been at my show last night. It didn’t feel exhausting in the way that people might think because it felt like there was an actual communion and conversation going on with the audience. You know, it’s work and you’re doing your professionalism and you’re holding the space and you’re dealing with all of the many things that you’re dealing with and performing your songs. But to be able to look out at the audience and see them receiving, that’s like vital juice for my soul. You know it’s why I’m like I could ever handle just being a recording artist, and never having the gratification of doing this thing which feels so life giving and so life affirming and so relieving to me to be in like mutual recognition with other human beings. I leave a show like that feeling tired, but also much happier, much more relieved, much less alone. And I have to say how just done the gamut of South by Southwest for the last five days and just being on on on and talking one to one with a lot of people and doing this and doing that, those three hours last night were almost the most relaxing.
LGJ
I can see that in a South by Southwest contexture yeah.
Amanda Palmer
Yeah. Because I was like, finally, finally, the fucking point. This. Not talking about it, not selling it, not explaining it. Doing it. This I like. The rest of it feels like the dark side of professionalism.
LGJ
Right? I have trouble with that in that in the South by Southwest context of like, with the not getting the connection with the audience because I’m not sure who the audience is or why they’re there or if they’re actually receiving it or not.
Amanda Palmer
And that’s frightening.
LGJ
Right.
Amanda Palmer
And the more personal your music is, the more frightening that is. I’ve been thinking about my record. And also Nick Caves record. His last record Skeleton Tree is kind of a template of what is possible when an artist fully goes there emotionally? I keep thinking about context. I don’t think Nick Cave could have made that record without the understanding and the knowledge that he had a community out there, ready to receive it. I don’t think I could have made this record that I just made that deals with the most visceral personal death, grief, cancer, abortion, miscarriage. The reason why I could make a record that vulnerable is because I knew who was out there.
LGJ
Do you mean that in a conscious or subconscious way?
Amanda Palmer
I think one of the beautiful things about growing up as an artist, like when you come into yourself in so many ways, all of these things start to come together and you realize what you’re capable of doing. But you also have a relationship with these human beings. I feel like the reason Nick Cave could make a record like that is because he knew that there was an audience out there to actually hold it.
I would not have been capable of writing songs like this, if I didn’t think it was going to land safely in the arms of people who were going to accept it. This sort of flies in the face of what some people say about music. I’ve never thought I just need to write these songs and get them out.
Where they land and how they land and who they land on is irrelevant. I’m an artist. I’m the exact fucking opposite.
If I’m going to say something really vulnerable or important, I’m not saying it for me. I mean, and I may be saying it for me because I need to do it because I need to express this incredible pain outside of me, but I’m not just doing it to pleasure myself or to cut off some malignant tumor. I’m doing it because I know that on the other side, it’s gonna land somewhere and as my audience has changed and become a steadier, more accepting, more intelligent, precise thing, I have become braver. In a weird way I’m able to risk more because it’s less of a risk to give it to an audience that’s there to hold the space for it. Which is why when I look back at my earlier songwriting, and I look at the fact that I did have a lot of tragedy and trauma in my early life, there was no fucking way I was going to write about it. Because the audience was made of strangers. It was too fucking scary, I could shroud it in metaphor, and I could kind of try and sneak it in there, but it was it was way too frightening. And I don’t know if you’ve experienced the same thing, and I know that your audience like mine has probably changed and morphed and grown and their relationship with you as a real relationship. But do you know what I’m talking about?
LGJ
I think when I’m successful in those situations, it’s because it’s subconscious. Anytime I start to think about what I’m doing, I find that it’s usually not good results, I think with like, talking about Nick Cave and stuff like that, for me and I don’t know Nick Cave or anything like that, but looking at that and looking at that process, it really speaks to the importance of practice knowing that he’s someone who goes to a room, sits there and writes and to have something happen traumatic that you then go through to lean then on your practice, and to like be able to go through your process, I think is definitely healing and that’s what I use art for, you know, personally, but I don’t know if it’s something that I can do, like, thought out consciously, you know?
Amanda Palmer
But I’m not saying it’s conscious. I think it is totally subconscious. But that’s why it works. I don’t sit down writing a song going like, I know what I’m gonna deliver to everyone to all of my lovely fans. Like, I don’t think about that at all because then it becomes a job.
LGJ
In second guessing.
Amanda Palmer
I don’t want to write shit for people really. Then I’ll feel like I’m manufacturing something instead of making something But now that we are being conscious, because we’re just sitting here talking about it, when you look back at like you 20, you 30, you now, do you see a difference in what you thought you were able to say then versus later?
LGJ
The negative reaction to me has always been as equally rewarding as the positive reaction.
Amanda Palmer
Yeah.
LGJ
So, you know, for better or worse or whatever, but knowing you’re doing something that’s going to get a reaction or is going to connect in some way, I think that that just is there. If you’re connecting with yourself, and you’re creating something that speaks to yourself and works on the one on one just like you alone basis, you know? But it’s being in touch with that feeling and knowing when you’re on that path is something that’s taken me a long time to come into. And maybe that’s just like emotionally being able to be in touch with myself, you know, and talking about like going into a studio and not really know what’s going on, being surrounded by people who aren’t giving you any feedback. Being in a band with people who aren’t in touch with their emotions and don’t want to talk about their emotions. And you’re like here, I wrote songs about my emotions. And now I want to talk about my emotions. Like it’s.
Amanda Palmer
I’ve been there.
LGJ
Yeah, it’s tough. You know?
Amanda Palmer
When you look out at your audience now, which is like an audience that’s either aged up with you or just found you, do you think you feel differently looking at that audience? I mean, clearly you’re different. But as this is like, the tone of that relationship changed from what you can remember from whatever, 10 years ago?
LGJ
Sure. Yeah. I mean, it used to be more of like a unfocusing my eyes when I was on stage, so I didn’t actually see anybody. Whereas like, last night playing, I looked for the one person singing and like I just made eye contact with them, and it was like that this is me and you, you’re dancing, you’re singing, we’re gonna have this moment, even if no one else is, you know, and in the past, that would not have been me.
Amanda Palmer
That’s your professionalism.
LGJ
But that’s rewarding, you know?
Amanda Palmer
Yeah. I think that’s also one of the things that you learn, the more you make music. At least I’ve gotten way better at understanding that it’s definitely not going to work for everyone on everyone. But when you find the connective threads to that person, to that listener, you get a lot better at just focusing on that, and ignoring the rest of the noise around you.
LGJ
I was talking about this a little yesterday where I didn’t really think about this until recently of how much like, I don’t actually like the live music experience. I don’t like going to shows. I have social anxieties. I don’t like being surrounded by a bunch of people.
Amanda Palmer
You mean being in the audience?
LGJ
Yeah, I love playing shows, but I don’t like going to shows as a spectator. And that was never what drew me to music initially. Like, I like the individual experience of listening to music on my own and connecting and it went that way. And you know, talking about like, ear fatigue and stuff like that, like, how is it even possible to absorb music in the same way in a live context when it’s coming at you in such a volume that you’re missing all the like.
Amanda Palmer
Subtlety.
LGJ
Yeah, and the nuance of it. It’s a totally different experience, and it’s separate. And like I’m just very much more of the like, personal experience of listening to a record that’s music for me.
Amanda Palmer
You should join the nonprofit that I’m starting with Zoe Keating called Musicians for Less Music.
LGJ
(Laughing). I’m in! You have me.
Amanda Palmer
We have all these ideas. There’s just gonna be no music anywhere. Our big undertaking is to strip the whole world down to just 100 songs. No, no other songs allowed. We’re just gonna pick 100 and that’s all we’re gonna have.
LGJ
Do you need that many even?
LGJ
Yeah, maybe.
Amanda Palmer
Maybe 10 like a Beatles song.
LGJ
There’s only so many chords, you know?
Amanda Palmer
a Beatle’s song, a Beethoven, a folk song, like we just don’t need so much music. There’s so much. Why? Why bother? Do you have anything else you want to say? Talk about? Share? Pontificate upon?
LGJ
No, it’s really nice to meet you. And it’s really nice to talk with you. I’ve listened to you like literally every day for like the past year and a half. My daughter’s is absolutely obsessed with you. It’s really, it’s cool. She’s really jealous that I’m here right now.
Amanda Palmer
Aw, I hope that I get to hang out with both of you at the same time and I hope that she gets to meet Ash who is now getting to a more social age where he can hang with others and be interesting.
LGJ
It’s interesting though like seeing your kid absorb music especially when they reach an age that you can remember being and the way you felt listening to music like for me 7, 8, 9 years old was when I really started connecting with the music emotionally.
Amanda Palmer
I did too.
LGJ
And you’re that artist for my daughter. You are the first artist that my daughter has connected to on an emotional level.
Amanda Palmer
I’m going to cry.
LGJ
To be driving down the road and look in the rearview mirror and see her singing along to your songs is like really touching and special to me.
Amanda Palmer
Which songs does she like?
LGJ
My friends Problems with Winter. Um Ukulele song everyday for like the past 9 months. I swear to God.
Amanda Palmer
That’s awesome. That is about as rewarding as it gets for me.
LGJ
Drowning in the Sound. It’s like I’m going to South by Southwest right now. And I don’t think she really understands what South by Southwest is. But like she loves that song.
Amanda Palmer
I think I figured out what those brainiac lyrics were actually about on stage last night, explaining to South by Southwest this song, and I was like, I’m in that place that I’m singing about, I’m gonna have to sort of explain it to these people in a way that makes sense. And then I explained it to the audience. And I’m like thanks audience!
LGJ
See that’s such an immediate song, though. That doesn’t seem like a song that’s veiled in metaphor in any way. You know, it’s like such a direct message. And it’s interesting because I have a song like that called I hate Chicago, living in Chicago, that you play that for an audience in Chicago, and like, it’s rare to have a song where you’re like, kind of frightened where like, I may piss off everyone in the room here.
Amanda Palmer
Or you might be expressing their deepest feelings.
LGJ
Right, right. Well, that’s what I find with playing I hate Chicago is that people in Chicago are like, yeah, I get it. You know?
Amanda Palmer
I have a seed of a song in me called, I hate Boston that is just such a, it’ll be so brutal if I write it, and I’m like, I don’t really want to write it. I’m gonna get in trouble. People will hate me. But like, you know, if I wrote it right, it would be amazing. It would be a song that like the people in Boston would understand and have to love and have to contend with. But I’m also just like, Oh, yeah, that’s just gonna be exhausting. Stay there. But you will eat me from the inside like a tumor.
LGJ
You have to get it out.
Amanda Palmer
I have get it out. I have to surgically remove it like the malignant tumor that it is.
Well, I hope we get to talk again and again, and again, actually, I mean, what I’m realizing just in the last 48 hours is that the reason I’m doing a podcast is because I want reasons to get together with people that I like and immediately cut through all superficial bullshit and just talk about the things I want to talk about.
LGJ
That’s a good reason to do a podcast. You know?
Amanda Palmer
I think it’s working. It’s working like no chitchat and superficial needed. We get to skip that three hours of our relationship and just go right to the interesting shit.
LGJ
Yeah.
Amanda Palmer
Hurray! Thank you so much for doing this.
LGJ
My pleasure. Thank you.
Amanda Palmer
Let’s go play show!
LGJ
Cool!