Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Anaïs Mitchell

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Anaïs Mitchell · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Today we're hearing from singer, songwriter and playwright Annaeus Mitchell.
0:25
Speaker 1: Annaus Mitchell spent the past sixteen years building the world
0:28
Speaker 1: of Hadestown, a career defining stage musical. Hadestown is a
0:34
Speaker 1: Depression era retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus, euridice, Hades,
0:39
Speaker 1: and Persephone. It has grown from a low budget community
0:43
Speaker 1: production in her native Vermont to a concept album to
0:46
Speaker 1: a Broadway phenomenon in the winner of eight Tony Awards,
0:50
Speaker 1: including Best Musical and Best Original Score. But in March
0:55
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, when the COVID nineteen pandemic shuttered theaters, Annaeus,
0:59
Speaker 1: like so many others, moved back home to Vermont. She
1:02
Speaker 1: was nine months pregnant with her second child. The move
1:06
Speaker 1: and change of pace inspired her to start writing in
1:09
Speaker 1: d folk songs. Her self titled album, released at the
1:12
Speaker 1: beginning of twenty twenty two, is made up of those songs.
1:16
Speaker 1: It's produced by Josh Kaufman and was made with collaborators
1:19
Speaker 1: like Boni Vair, The National, and her own band, Bonnie
1:23
Speaker 1: Light Horseman. The project is a Nais's first collection of
1:26
Speaker 1: all new material under her own name in ten years.
1:30
Speaker 1: On today's episode, Bruce Hedlum speaks with a Naias Mitchell
1:34
Speaker 1: about her new album. Her experience is growing up in
1:36
Speaker 1: a small town and how Hades Town came to be.
1:40
Speaker 1: She also played some songs off her new album live
1:43
Speaker 1: for us. This is broken record liner notes for the
1:49
Speaker 1: digital age. I'm justin Mitchell. Before we get into the conversation,
1:53
Speaker 1: here's a Nus Mitchell's live performance of her song bright
1:56
Speaker 1: Star off her new album Bright Star. When I first
2:22
Speaker 1: laid eyes upon you, I was filled with such a
2:25
Speaker 1: longing to be with you in the dark, bright Star.
2:31
Speaker 1: Since I could not fly beside you, I would shine
2:34
Speaker 1: my own course by you, and I sailed by your light.
2:46
Speaker 1: Break Star. I have sailed in all directions. I have
2:51
Speaker 1: followed your reflection to the farthest foreign short bread Star,
2:57
Speaker 1: Bright Star. I have anchored in the harbor. I have
3:00
Speaker 1: brought my gifts to barter board drifters, bedding board, bread Star.
3:07
Speaker 1: I have drunk the wine of age in the company
3:10
Speaker 1: of strangers. We have sung in tongues of angels, and
3:14
Speaker 1: then stumbled on the pavement. And I understood my place
3:18
Speaker 1: and my purpose in relation to the young and ancient knights.
3:41
Speaker 1: Bright Star, I am home now from my roaming. I'm
3:46
Speaker 1: a lowe ni in the blooming with a ship's sod
3:49
Speaker 1: in the yard, Bright Star, there's a thought upon me, dawning.
3:55
Speaker 1: You've launched a thousand longings, and I don't know who
3:59
Speaker 1: you are, right Star. You have never been my vessel
4:06
Speaker 1: or the wind my sails are wrestling, or lands to
4:09
Speaker 1: a check travel or the friends with you my revel.
4:13
Speaker 1: There are lengths to it you'll never know. I went
4:16
Speaker 1: to be your lover and you love it and your sight,
4:29
Speaker 1: Bright Star. When I first laid eyes upon you, I
4:34
Speaker 1: was filled with such a longing to be with you
4:37
Speaker 1: in the dark, Bright Star. If I could have flown
4:42
Speaker 1: beside you, I would not have had the sight of
4:45
Speaker 1: you to guide me through the world. So why and
4:50
Speaker 1: bright So your self titled album? Why are self titled
5:00
Speaker 1: albums always late in people's careers? Now? I don't know.
5:03
Speaker 1: Tell me about making this album, right, It's funny to
5:06
Speaker 1: make a self titled record at this stage, but for me,
5:08
Speaker 1: if really appropriate, Like, I started out as a singer songwriter,
5:12
Speaker 1: and I you know, made a bunch of records when
5:14
Speaker 1: I was sort of in my twenties, and then I
5:17
Speaker 1: started working on this musical Hades Town in my mid twenties,
5:20
Speaker 1: and it just sort of took over my creative world.
5:24
Speaker 1: And so it had been a long time since I
5:27
Speaker 1: had actually been able to sit down with my guitar
5:29
Speaker 1: and write kind of what wanted to pass through my heart,
5:32
Speaker 1: regardless of you know, plot and character development and all
5:35
Speaker 1: that stuff. And so it felt like a return in
5:38
Speaker 1: a way. And also, the songs on this record are
5:42
Speaker 1: all actually my own. I'm the speaker in all the
5:45
Speaker 1: songs is me, and the stories are my stories, which
5:49
Speaker 1: I kind of had never let myself do, Like I
5:51
Speaker 1: always wanted to take on the voices of other characters
5:55
Speaker 1: and kind of tell other stories. It's a confessional, you know,
5:59
Speaker 1: confessional record, and so it felt right to put my
6:02
Speaker 1: name on it. You know, that's funny because I would
6:06
Speaker 1: have assumed that your early things were confessional too, And
6:09
Speaker 1: maybe that's just the unfair cliche about women songwriters that
6:12
Speaker 1: they're always just, you know, men are creating characters, women
6:15
Speaker 1: are just pouring out their hearts. Well, but your early
6:18
Speaker 1: songs were like that, that you were taking on character.
6:20
Speaker 1: I mean, there was a few heart poorer songs, but
6:23
Speaker 1: from early on I really was kind of interested in
6:26
Speaker 1: dressing that stuff up in different ways. But you know,
6:29
Speaker 1: my very first record was like quite political. Actually, it
6:32
Speaker 1: was influenced by like protest music and early early Bob
6:36
Speaker 1: Dylan and stuff like that. And I made a record
6:39
Speaker 1: later called young Man in America, which was, yeah, really
6:43
Speaker 1: taking out a lot of the voices of other characters,
6:45
Speaker 1: and a lot of me was in there. A lot
6:48
Speaker 1: of my feelings were in there, but I didn't have
6:50
Speaker 1: to stand there and sing it as if it was
6:52
Speaker 1: my own story. And I think I was maybe a
6:55
Speaker 1: little nervous to do a confessional sounding thing. I was
7:00
Speaker 1: afraid to be navel gazy in a way that I
7:03
Speaker 1: may be perceived in the nineteen nineties, like Coffeehouse World.
7:06
Speaker 1: I wanted to do something different than that. What is
7:09
Speaker 1: it like now to get up on stage and confess
7:12
Speaker 1: your inner thoughts to an audience? Well, everything is different now,
7:17
Speaker 1: you know. I think so many of us are just
7:19
Speaker 1: trying to figure out who we are and what is
7:22
Speaker 1: this what we do post pandemic and also for me
7:25
Speaker 1: post Haiti's sound, because that became my identity for so long,
7:29
Speaker 1: and so to actually get up and play my own
7:31
Speaker 1: songs and it feels familiar and also totally different. But
7:35
Speaker 1: I love what can happen with just kind of vulnerability
7:39
Speaker 1: of connecting with an audience. So there's something about opening
7:44
Speaker 1: your mouth really wide to sing that feels vulnerable in
7:47
Speaker 1: its own right, but then to also be trying to
7:49
Speaker 1: just kind of be as hard on sleeve as possible.
7:53
Speaker 1: That felt like the project for this batch of songs.
7:56
Speaker 1: Are there times you have trouble doing that on stage?
7:59
Speaker 1: There's times when it doesn't feel real, Like if it
8:05
Speaker 1: doesn't feel authentic, then it especially feels like a problem
8:10
Speaker 1: because the songs are so from the heart, do you
8:12
Speaker 1: know to mean? Like, if I'm playing a Haities sound
8:15
Speaker 1: song and I'm not one hundred percent feeling it, it's okay.
8:19
Speaker 1: But if it's you know, a heart poem and I'm
8:22
Speaker 1: sort of out to lunch, that doesn't feel right. But
8:25
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say that it's scary in terms of like
8:28
Speaker 1: to share the feelings. I love to do that. When
8:32
Speaker 1: I sat down to listen to the record, the first
8:34
Speaker 1: song is Brooklyn Bridge, and I think, oh, this is
8:36
Speaker 1: going to be because you were out of New York
8:39
Speaker 1: for the pandemic, I thought, Oh, this is just going
8:40
Speaker 1: to be a New York record I'm missing it. I'm
8:42
Speaker 1: missing it. It's not but the first song is this
8:44
Speaker 1: very romantic song about being in New York. Did you
8:47
Speaker 1: miss it? Yeah? I totally missed it, so right. The
8:52
Speaker 1: backstory is I was right about to have our second
8:55
Speaker 1: baby in March of twenty twenty and made a really
8:59
Speaker 1: like eleventh hour decision to pack a car and drive
9:02
Speaker 1: to Vermont, which is where I was born and raise
9:05
Speaker 1: and that sort of time of stillness. Up there, I
9:08
Speaker 1: wrote a bunch of songs, and Brooklyn Bridge is actually
9:11
Speaker 1: when that I had I had tried to write when
9:13
Speaker 1: I was living in New York. I had the idea,
9:16
Speaker 1: and I almost like I wouldn't let myself write it.
9:18
Speaker 1: It felt like overly romantic, and even like the word
9:23
Speaker 1: Brooklyn I didn't want to use. And then finally when
9:27
Speaker 1: I left the city, I just kind of let myself
9:29
Speaker 1: feel the feelings of romance that I always have felt
9:32
Speaker 1: about this town. I was commuting to Manhattan a lot
9:35
Speaker 1: from Brooklyn when I was working on Haiti Stone, and
9:38
Speaker 1: there are some really special rides that I had with
9:41
Speaker 1: Rachel Chapkin, the director of the show. Sometimes, like after
9:45
Speaker 1: a really long day and a long night of like
9:47
Speaker 1: tech and rehearsal, and then a meeting at the bar
9:49
Speaker 1: about the show, and then we'd be in a cabin
9:52
Speaker 1: riding over the bridge back to Brooklyn and kind of
9:55
Speaker 1: all of our hopes and dreams for the show, and
9:57
Speaker 1: some of that is in that song. So tell me
10:00
Speaker 1: now about Bright Star. So I had landed in Vermont,
10:03
Speaker 1: had the baby one week after we got there, and
10:07
Speaker 1: then literally I could see the star again. I moved
10:10
Speaker 1: back to this family land, which is a sheep farm
10:14
Speaker 1: that my parents bought and like the seventies, and my
10:16
Speaker 1: parents have a house there. My brother's family as a house,
10:19
Speaker 1: and when my grandparents were alive, they had a little
10:21
Speaker 1: house on this same land, and that's where we moved to.
10:24
Speaker 1: And the stars are just thick up there, and so
10:28
Speaker 1: I was seeing that, and also I think, you know,
10:30
Speaker 1: we were all in that just strange time of stillness
10:34
Speaker 1: after so much activity, and it was really the first
10:37
Speaker 1: time I'd stayed in one place for as long as
10:39
Speaker 1: I could remember, the gaining of like a little bit
10:42
Speaker 1: of perspective on all of that restless pursuit of whatever
10:48
Speaker 1: it is, you know, whatever it is you're chasing, and
10:51
Speaker 1: kind of a feeling of making peace with it. That
10:56
Speaker 1: to me is what that song's about. Was it strange
11:00
Speaker 1: living with your parents again, or living around your parents
11:03
Speaker 1: and your family? It was amazing, really, Yeah, it was amazing,
11:07
Speaker 1: especially having a little newborn to just be in the
11:10
Speaker 1: family kind of fold. And because everyone was locked down
11:13
Speaker 1: and quarantined at that time, and we had a whole
11:15
Speaker 1: farm full of people. You know, one person could go
11:18
Speaker 1: shopping for us all and we'd have like dinners together,
11:21
Speaker 1: and you know, I mean the other side of the
11:23
Speaker 1: stories that we've ended up staying in Vermont, like we
11:26
Speaker 1: haven't moved back to New York. And then you know,
11:29
Speaker 1: it became Okay, I'm going to be in proximity with
11:32
Speaker 1: my parents, my brother, my old friends, my like ninth
11:37
Speaker 1: grade English teachers. I'm going to run into on the
11:38
Speaker 1: street because in this small town where I grew up,
11:41
Speaker 1: and that had you know, all kinds of feelings that
11:43
Speaker 1: came with that, Like I was a little scared to
11:47
Speaker 1: confront that stuff. But it's been pretty special and like
11:51
Speaker 1: healing in a way to like re establish myself in
11:55
Speaker 1: that community, Like I'll here I am now at this
11:57
Speaker 1: point in my life. Well, because you've got great songs
12:00
Speaker 1: about growing up there, but almost from this from this
12:03
Speaker 1: adult perspective, back Roads and a Little Big Girl. Yeah,
12:08
Speaker 1: there there's a lot on this record that was inspired
12:11
Speaker 1: by returning to my home place and having a lot
12:14
Speaker 1: of memories about growing up there and also seeing it
12:17
Speaker 1: with the new eyes. I think that is the thing,
12:20
Speaker 1: especially like it's a super small town, but I didn't
12:23
Speaker 1: know that growing up. You know, how big is it? Um,
12:25
Speaker 1: that's a question I never know my answer, Like populations, demographics,
12:30
Speaker 1: I don't know. But but the town I went to
12:32
Speaker 1: high school in essentially there's one main street, there's a
12:36
Speaker 1: there's a pizza shop, there's like a coffee shop, there's
12:41
Speaker 1: a bar, and that's pretty much it. What was growing
12:46
Speaker 1: up there? Like what was it like in your home?
12:48
Speaker 1: Is there a lot of music in your house? So
12:49
Speaker 1: my parents are not musicians, but my dad can carry
12:53
Speaker 1: a tune. My mom can't. And my dad was and
12:58
Speaker 1: is a writer. He wrote novels when he was young,
13:01
Speaker 1: and then more kind of nonfiction stuff when he was older,
13:04
Speaker 1: and he became an English professor at Middlebury College, which
13:08
Speaker 1: is right near where I would grew up. And he
13:10
Speaker 1: also loves music and had a great record collection, and
13:14
Speaker 1: it lived kind of in the library with the books,
13:16
Speaker 1: and he loves lyrics. He would sing along to stuff
13:20
Speaker 1: and he would know every word. And this is kind
13:22
Speaker 1: of a special thing for me to witness as a kid.
13:25
Speaker 1: So certainly, like I grew up in a house with
13:27
Speaker 1: a love of words, and I wanted to be a
13:30
Speaker 1: writer of some kind. And then it turned out like
13:32
Speaker 1: my way was to write songs. What was his record
13:35
Speaker 1: collection folk revival stuff, so it was Bob Dylan and
13:38
Speaker 1: Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell and then some kind of
13:41
Speaker 1: psychedelic rock like the Grateful Dead records and what are
13:44
Speaker 1: they called Love It Underground. Yeah, you don't want to
13:49
Speaker 1: forget that. Yeah, no, No, in New York they're not
13:52
Speaker 1: going to let you back in more. Sure you're gonna
13:55
Speaker 1: have to leave. Yeah. I mean it's all if you
13:57
Speaker 1: think about it's all very lyrically interesting stuff that he
14:00
Speaker 1: was into. My parents were like hippies. They grew up
14:04
Speaker 1: in the suburbs and they bought this farm as part
14:07
Speaker 1: of the kind of back to the land movement, and
14:09
Speaker 1: that that's where they went, was to Vermont, And I
14:11
Speaker 1: was raised with my older brother there on this farm,
14:14
Speaker 1: and no television. My mom was anti television, so there
14:17
Speaker 1: was a lot of just wild running half naked in
14:21
Speaker 1: the woods and making up games and stuff like that.
14:25
Speaker 1: They were pro sheep anti tell yeah you got it.
14:28
Speaker 1: When did the guitar start? Yeah? My first instrument was
14:31
Speaker 1: a violin that I studied from age seven. I loved it,
14:35
Speaker 1: and also I hated it and I didn't want to
14:38
Speaker 1: practice it and things like that. When I finally let
14:40
Speaker 1: go of that, I picked up the guitar and I
14:43
Speaker 1: took like a few lessons, very casually from a guy
14:46
Speaker 1: who would essentially just teach me to play the songs
14:49
Speaker 1: I wanted to learn, which was a great motivator for
14:52
Speaker 1: actually learning how to play the guitar. And I guess
14:54
Speaker 1: I was maybe fifteen or sixteen. What were those songs?
14:56
Speaker 1: Annie de Franco was a big one. Yeah, Mary Shaping Carpenter.
15:01
Speaker 1: I mean, I was into a lot of female songwriters
15:04
Speaker 1: that were kind of blossoming in that era. Dar Williams
15:08
Speaker 1: was one. Tory Amos, although that's sort of piano bassed,
15:11
Speaker 1: so I didn't really learn those. But yeah, you have
15:14
Speaker 1: a very particular guitar playing style you Travis pick, but
15:18
Speaker 1: it's not the kind of usual. Yeah, and Travis Pick,
15:22
Speaker 1: where did you? How did you get that? I don't
15:24
Speaker 1: use a pick? I really only put with my fingers,
15:26
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's bizarre. The guy that I learned from
15:30
Speaker 1: justin Purdue is his name was like a jazzer and
15:33
Speaker 1: he played with his fingers and he was double jointed
15:36
Speaker 1: in his hands and he could play these beautiful, you know,
15:39
Speaker 1: fingerstyle stuff. And I later, Yeah, I learned kind of
15:43
Speaker 1: certain finger picking patterns when I was kind of my
15:46
Speaker 1: early twenties, like just getting going, and then I feel
15:48
Speaker 1: like you just kind of you learn a few and
15:51
Speaker 1: then you just are off to the races with them.
15:53
Speaker 1: And that's that's kind of been where I came from.
15:57
Speaker 1: I did. I was We were saying before the interview
15:59
Speaker 1: that I recently started playing an open tuning, which I
16:02
Speaker 1: never did before. And that's it's so amazing because you honestly,
16:06
Speaker 1: like could play with just one hand, smoke a cigarette
16:10
Speaker 1: with the other hand. She sometimes do you take your
16:12
Speaker 1: the person I know it takes her hand off the
16:14
Speaker 1: fretboard sometimes. Yeah, yeah, it's liberating. Yeah, you see that
16:17
Speaker 1: with pianist they'll lift one hand off. I've never seen
16:20
Speaker 1: somebody just let the guitar go for uh huh did
16:23
Speaker 1: go into open tuning? Did that change the way you wrote?
16:26
Speaker 1: So I started to play open tuning in the context
16:29
Speaker 1: of this folk rock band, a man called Bonny Light Horseman,
16:32
Speaker 1: which was really like when I was in the kind
16:34
Speaker 1: of most intense part of rewriting Haiti Sound, because I
16:37
Speaker 1: worked on that show for on and off for thirteen years,
16:40
Speaker 1: and then as we were sort of it became clear
16:43
Speaker 1: that we were heading for Broadway, it became, you know,
16:45
Speaker 1: it was my sole focus and no regrets coyote, Like,
16:50
Speaker 1: I loved working on it, but I also was like
16:52
Speaker 1: completely overwhelmed by the stress of it. And I found
16:56
Speaker 1: that Bonny Light Horseman was kind of like the one
16:58
Speaker 1: other creative thing I could do at the same time
17:01
Speaker 1: as working on this show, and it ended up being
17:04
Speaker 1: the kind of antidote or like medicine for me that
17:07
Speaker 1: I needed, which was early on. Our first record is
17:11
Speaker 1: all kind of re workings of traditional texts, and so
17:15
Speaker 1: there was something really nice about like being able to
17:18
Speaker 1: draw from that well and like rest in that music
17:22
Speaker 1: rather than the act of writing. Town is very text
17:25
Speaker 1: focused and having to come up with a lot of stuff,
17:28
Speaker 1: and so there was that. And then also just from
17:31
Speaker 1: the get go, we played open D tuning and it's
17:35
Speaker 1: just so wide open. It feels so epic and like
17:38
Speaker 1: expansive and spacious, like you just want to let the
17:42
Speaker 1: chord ring out, put your hand in the air. So
17:45
Speaker 1: that became the kind of the antidote to Haities sound
17:49
Speaker 1: for me. And then I remember like at times I'd
17:51
Speaker 1: finished playing with Bonnie Light and I'd have to tune
17:53
Speaker 1: back up to standard tuning, and I'd feel like I
17:56
Speaker 1: was putting on a corset to go back to standard.
17:59
Speaker 1: Standard is also great. At this point, I'm ready to
18:01
Speaker 1: go back, but it's yeah, it's been a revelation to
18:03
Speaker 1: play open You know, you use a lot of color
18:06
Speaker 1: tones in your melodies, use a lot of ninths, You're
18:09
Speaker 1: not just sticking to chord tones, and I was kind
18:12
Speaker 1: of wondering whether the open tuning sort of facilitated that. Yeah,
18:15
Speaker 1: I think you're right. I mean, it's that kind of
18:18
Speaker 1: I associate it with like British Isles folk music and
18:24
Speaker 1: the kind of ornamentation that you hear with like Irish singers,
18:28
Speaker 1: the way that they're grace notes and the way they
18:30
Speaker 1: bend things, And I just find it really infinitely fascinating
18:34
Speaker 1: how you can just have one drone chord almost and
18:38
Speaker 1: then the just infinite number of notes you could sing
18:42
Speaker 1: over it and they'd be compelling in different ways. It's
18:46
Speaker 1: sort of like very simple and also sophisticated. I feel
18:52
Speaker 1: that about Irish music. We'll be right back with more
18:56
Speaker 1: from Bruce Headlam and a Nias Mitchell. After a quick break,
19:04
Speaker 1: we're back with more of Bruce's conversation with a Naias Mitchell.
19:09
Speaker 1: So you mentioned Hadestown and we do have to talk
19:12
Speaker 1: about it great. You're like, yeah, I only worked on
19:16
Speaker 1: for fourteen years. Where did the idea come from? It
19:20
Speaker 1: kind of came out of nowhere, but it was right.
19:23
Speaker 1: I was driving in my car kind of early on
19:26
Speaker 1: in my career as a as a singer songwriter, driving
19:30
Speaker 1: like a super long distance between two gigs for like tips,
19:34
Speaker 1: and I got this just melody kind of dropped into
19:38
Speaker 1: my lap, which was the chorus of that song wait
19:41
Speaker 1: for Me from the show, and there was lyrics that
19:44
Speaker 1: came with it. It went way for me, I'm come
19:47
Speaker 1: in in my garters and pearls with what melody? Did
19:51
Speaker 1: you borrow me? From The Wicked Underworld? And that was
19:55
Speaker 1: the lyrics that came with it, that just came to
19:57
Speaker 1: you in a car. It came in the car. Yeah, Now,
19:59
Speaker 1: did you pull over and write it down or you
20:01
Speaker 1: don't know what I would have done. That might have
20:03
Speaker 1: been pre iPhone. I don't think I could have recorded
20:05
Speaker 1: it on my phone. But there was something about it
20:08
Speaker 1: that the la which obviously none of those lines ended
20:10
Speaker 1: up in the show except for the first one, but
20:13
Speaker 1: the underworld and the kind of it felt like there
20:17
Speaker 1: to see an ortheis story, and I thought, I think
20:20
Speaker 1: I was hungry to work on a long form thing,
20:23
Speaker 1: just like to see what could happen. I've always been
20:25
Speaker 1: into storytelling as a songwriter. I love like the ballads
20:28
Speaker 1: the British Isles, like really long ballads, and I like
20:31
Speaker 1: the Texas like Raconteur, you know Texas songwriter things very
20:36
Speaker 1: like short story within a song, and just the idea
20:40
Speaker 1: of writing a bunch of songs that had to lean
20:42
Speaker 1: on each other and that you had to hear them
20:44
Speaker 1: all in order to get the full story. I also
20:47
Speaker 1: was like I was right out of college, and I think,
20:52
Speaker 1: you know, I was a kind of young and idealistic
20:54
Speaker 1: and naive and creative coming into a world where, you know,
21:00
Speaker 1: just coming up against the way the world is, you know,
21:02
Speaker 1: politically at that time, and also and now you have
21:06
Speaker 1: to pay the rent and things like that. And there
21:09
Speaker 1: was something about that coming of age or that story
21:14
Speaker 1: that felt inherent to the Orpheus myth. You know, he's
21:17
Speaker 1: this optimistic character who believes he can do an impossible
21:22
Speaker 1: thing and then he comes up against you know, the
21:25
Speaker 1: way the world is. And so there is a way
21:27
Speaker 1: in which like that story was a catch off for
21:32
Speaker 1: like a lot of things that I was going through
21:34
Speaker 1: at that time. Did you see a film like did
21:36
Speaker 1: you see Black Orpheus or something? What made you think
21:39
Speaker 1: of the Orpheus? Yeah? I always had known that myth.
21:42
Speaker 1: I remember I read it in a children's illustrated book
21:45
Speaker 1: of mythology, the Dolarus book. My son has them all, Yes,
21:49
Speaker 1: I got them from my kids too. Yeah, there's an illustration.
21:54
Speaker 1: And the story is just so beautiful and strange that
21:57
Speaker 1: it doesn't have a happy ending you expect it. It's
21:59
Speaker 1: all set up for a Hollywood ending. You don't get it.
22:02
Speaker 1: And the hero is a musician, an artist. And then
22:07
Speaker 1: I did because I was curious. Yes I did. I
22:10
Speaker 1: watched Black Orpheus, and there's a Cocteau film laur Fee.
22:15
Speaker 1: There's the Tennessee Williams play there. There's a French version
22:21
Speaker 1: that I think was translated. Maybe Richard Burton was in it.
22:25
Speaker 1: Oh cool. Yeah, a lot of people have been inspired
22:28
Speaker 1: by it. You know, Oh, Sarah Rule. There's an amazing
22:31
Speaker 1: play by Sarah Rule called Eurice. I think it's a
22:34
Speaker 1: myth that's just contained so much raw like potential energy
22:41
Speaker 1: in it that it kept the wind in our sails,
22:45
Speaker 1: you know, mine and everyone else who worked on it
22:46
Speaker 1: for so long, and it always felt like as much
22:50
Speaker 1: effort as we all were putting in elbow grease like creatively,
22:55
Speaker 1: it also was as if we were unearthing a thing
22:57
Speaker 1: that already existed. Like I thought a lot of times
23:00
Speaker 1: about that idea of the sculpture in the stone. You
23:04
Speaker 1: know that the sculpture is already there, Yeah, and he
23:06
Speaker 1: just chipping away at it, and then it occasionally you'd
23:09
Speaker 1: be like, oh that you know this, that orchestration choice,
23:14
Speaker 1: that choreography thing, that costume piece, like this set piece
23:20
Speaker 1: that like, that's the sculpture in the stone, Like you
23:22
Speaker 1: sort of would feel it. I think we all would
23:24
Speaker 1: probably feel the same way about it that it revealed
23:27
Speaker 1: itself to us. Now. At that point, you were a
23:29
Speaker 1: young songwriter, and I imagine had you said to your
23:34
Speaker 1: record label or anybody else, yeah, I want to do
23:37
Speaker 1: a musical about orpheus, A lot of people would say,
23:40
Speaker 1: just put out another album, just tour. Was it hard
23:43
Speaker 1: to say to people, this is what I want to
23:47
Speaker 1: their credit? I was. I was working with Righteous Bade
23:51
Speaker 1: Records at the time, Annie to Franco's record label, who
23:53
Speaker 1: put out my kind of second singer songwriter record, and
23:56
Speaker 1: then I started working on this piece. And before we
24:00
Speaker 1: made that record, he began in Vermont where I was living,
24:03
Speaker 1: as is like diy community theater project. My friend Michael Chorney,
24:07
Speaker 1: who's like the original orchestra of the piece and who
24:10
Speaker 1: continued all the way to Broadway, was arranging the songs
24:13
Speaker 1: for his like little band that he had at the time,
24:15
Speaker 1: and there was an early director, Ben Machtick, and we
24:18
Speaker 1: put up this kind of ragtag version of the thing.
24:21
Speaker 1: It was, you know, not there's half as many songs
24:25
Speaker 1: or maybe a quarter as compared to it's on stage now,
24:28
Speaker 1: but there was something about it that felt really viby,
24:30
Speaker 1: and I remember the label sent a couple of people
24:32
Speaker 1: and they saw it and they said like, yes, we'd
24:34
Speaker 1: love to support this, and Annie said she would sing
24:37
Speaker 1: the role of prosephone before anyone else was on board,
24:42
Speaker 1: so it was really they were actually very supportive. And
24:45
Speaker 1: then it became this record with these other sort of
24:48
Speaker 1: more famous guest singers, and those guys are an important
24:51
Speaker 1: part of the story because I don't know that it
24:53
Speaker 1: would have caught the ear of as many folks as
24:55
Speaker 1: it did if they hadn't been involved. And then I
24:58
Speaker 1: did a lot of touring around with it as just
25:01
Speaker 1: a concert piece, and finally moved to New York City,
25:06
Speaker 1: decided I wanted to develop it further, met the producers
25:11
Speaker 1: and Rachel and that was almost like the halfway mark,
25:14
Speaker 1: and then six or seven more years of development. Did
25:17
Speaker 1: your enthusiasm ever flag for it's such a long process?
25:21
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah? Would you ever think? Am I crazy? That? Yeah?
25:27
Speaker 1: And I thought, would I ever make another record of
25:29
Speaker 1: my own songs? Whatever? I'd say, Like, the toughest thing
25:32
Speaker 1: was the amount of kind of banging my head against
25:36
Speaker 1: a wall in a small writing space in Kawana, so
25:39
Speaker 1: I was living trying to rewrite the stuff again and again.
25:43
Speaker 1: But when I was in the room with my collaborators
25:47
Speaker 1: and you know, with the actors who are able to
25:50
Speaker 1: just pull rabbits out of hats all the time and
25:53
Speaker 1: you know, make you see the work in a different way,
25:56
Speaker 1: that always was like really inspiring. And there is that
25:59
Speaker 1: thing of a musical is a really collaborative form, and
26:03
Speaker 1: you've got to show up for people, you know, show
26:06
Speaker 1: up for the people you're working with, and vice versa.
26:10
Speaker 1: And I was inspired by the folks I was working with.
26:12
Speaker 1: I wanted to show up for them. What's terrifying, though,
26:15
Speaker 1: is if this thing bombs and I don't want to
26:19
Speaker 1: give away the ending, but it doesn't bomb, people are
26:22
Speaker 1: out of work. And did you feel that kind of weight? No,
26:26
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I just was fixated on I
26:31
Speaker 1: wanted it to be as good as it could be
26:33
Speaker 1: when it got to Broadway, And the fact we got
26:36
Speaker 1: off Broadway was a miracle in its own right, you know.
26:39
Speaker 1: And then to have landed on Broadway at all was
26:43
Speaker 1: a miracle because you toured with it after off Broadway, right,
26:47
Speaker 1: you went to Edmonton. Yeah, we did development, Yeah in Edmonton,
26:51
Speaker 1: and then we went to London to the National Theater there. Yeah,
26:53
Speaker 1: at this point where you saying, God, how long does
26:55
Speaker 1: it take to development of musical Yeah, for me, I
26:59
Speaker 1: needed all that time. I mean I think we needed
27:02
Speaker 1: it because I am not trained in this world, in
27:06
Speaker 1: this form, and so there was just a big learning curve.
27:10
Speaker 1: Like I you know, I know how to write a
27:13
Speaker 1: song writer song that's three and a half minutes long
27:17
Speaker 1: and it's got three verses in a chorus, maybe a bridge,
27:20
Speaker 1: and that's part of writing for the stage. But there's
27:25
Speaker 1: you know, this whole other element of drama and how
27:28
Speaker 1: to make a satisfying drama and songs needing to have
27:33
Speaker 1: results at the end of them, or you know, revelations.
27:37
Speaker 1: It's got to move the plot along exactly, yeah, or
27:39
Speaker 1: it's got to build character. Do you remember there were
27:42
Speaker 1: things that your director here's told you that. Did she
27:45
Speaker 1: say you got to go home and write a song
27:46
Speaker 1: about X because that's missing from this show. Yeah, for sure. Well.
27:53
Speaker 1: Rachel is a very inspiring and kind of hardcore person.
27:59
Speaker 1: She's kind of tough love, which I needed, you know.
28:01
Speaker 1: When I first started working with her, I remember, like
28:04
Speaker 1: the very first table read that we did, she kind
28:07
Speaker 1: of followed up afterwards this like laundry list of things
28:10
Speaker 1: that she thought could be improved, and I was like,
28:13
Speaker 1: you gotta understand, I've been working on this already for
28:16
Speaker 1: you know, seven years, six years. And she was like, well,
28:19
Speaker 1: if we're going to work together, you'll have to find
28:22
Speaker 1: a way to move past your fatigue. And I was like, wow,
28:26
Speaker 1: you know, ladies serious and I needed that. And it
28:30
Speaker 1: wasn't just her. We worked with an amazing drama turg
28:33
Speaker 1: named Ken Chernelia, and also our producers, especially Mara Isaacs,
28:39
Speaker 1: were very involved, kind of dramaturgically, like you know, meeting
28:42
Speaker 1: on a regular basis about stuff. I loved it in
28:45
Speaker 1: a way. It's nice to have people to show up
28:47
Speaker 1: for and it's nice to have a kind of accountability.
28:50
Speaker 1: And my work for like the development of the Broadway
28:55
Speaker 1: show coincided with me having my first kid, and there
28:59
Speaker 1: was something about the discipline of like, all right, there's
29:04
Speaker 1: gonna be a reading in this many weeks and so
29:07
Speaker 1: I had to carve out this time that felt like
29:11
Speaker 1: very grounding for me becoming a new mom and you know,
29:14
Speaker 1: your whole schedule is upended. I wasn't able to go
29:17
Speaker 1: about things the way I would in my songwriter world,
29:21
Speaker 1: where I'm like, well, when when inspiration strikes, all work
29:24
Speaker 1: on this. I mean, we can give away the ending.
29:27
Speaker 1: It won the Tony for Best Musical, you won for
29:30
Speaker 1: Best Original Score. You also wrote the book, though you didn't.
29:33
Speaker 1: I'm sure people along the way said, well, you're a musician,
29:36
Speaker 1: but you can't write a book for a Broadway musical.
29:38
Speaker 1: Did you always say Nope, I'm doing it. You know,
29:41
Speaker 1: it's a funny thing. I always have been very moved
29:45
Speaker 1: by musicals that are like sung through right. Lay Miss
29:49
Speaker 1: is one of my favorites, probably my favorite of all time.
29:52
Speaker 1: And I love Hamilton, I love Sweeney Todd. You know,
29:56
Speaker 1: I love a lot of these shows where there's not
29:59
Speaker 1: that moment of like the book scene that then becomes
30:03
Speaker 1: a song. There's that awkward transition, yeah, and just the
30:08
Speaker 1: suspension of reality. It's closer to opera that has entag exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
30:13
Speaker 1: And so you know, early on there was talk of like,
30:15
Speaker 1: should we bring in a book writer for this? And
30:17
Speaker 1: I felt nervous about what that would do to the piece,
30:21
Speaker 1: which really had its roots in the music world, and
30:24
Speaker 1: wanted to kind of remain sort of straddling the like
30:28
Speaker 1: world of concert in the world of drama. Eventually, they,
30:31
Speaker 1: you know, people stopped suggesting that after a few stars
30:37
Speaker 1: from you. Yeah. Yeah. It took a lot of kind
30:40
Speaker 1: of learning to figure out, like how to write that
30:44
Speaker 1: sort of recitative stuff. And the first thing we did
30:47
Speaker 1: was we created Hermes who was able to just speak
30:49
Speaker 1: to the audience and literally tell them what's going on,
30:52
Speaker 1: you know, a narrator figure. And then and so it
30:55
Speaker 1: felt easier to kind of write in that way. And
30:57
Speaker 1: then eventually I was like, Rachel, I think I need
30:59
Speaker 1: to just I need Orpheus and Eurialesy to speak to
31:03
Speaker 1: each other. And she said, yeah, I think you should
31:07
Speaker 1: do that. And I was like, but it's to rhyme
31:09
Speaker 1: and it's got to be you know, metered, and she's like, okay,
31:12
Speaker 1: and so that's you know, that's what Restit TV is.
31:15
Speaker 1: And it's yeah, it's very hard to write. I'll bet now,
31:19
Speaker 1: had you read a lot of poetry, is there's something
31:21
Speaker 1: that sort of guided you with that or that you
31:24
Speaker 1: just sit down and figure it out. Yeah, I just
31:27
Speaker 1: sat down and figured it out. I mean, I guess
31:29
Speaker 1: inspired by the musicals that use that. I mean, lemis
31:33
Speaker 1: is a great example. That's so incredible the way that
31:36
Speaker 1: those motifs kind of come back around in the stuff.
31:41
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean, I think the tricky thing about
31:43
Speaker 1: it is that it's like it's both a totally rarefied
31:47
Speaker 1: conversation going on, and also it has to kind of
31:50
Speaker 1: sound natural, you know, because it is, after all, like
31:54
Speaker 1: a scene between two people. Yeah. The other thing you
31:56
Speaker 1: do in this musical is you create a world, which
32:00
Speaker 1: which I often think, you know, when you see Broadway shows,
32:02
Speaker 1: you said, well, they're trying to convince me of this world.
32:05
Speaker 1: I'm not quite buying it. Would you create this whole
32:08
Speaker 1: underground that the America of long ago? But not really
32:13
Speaker 1: I'm not even sure where it is chronologically. It's affected
32:16
Speaker 1: by climate change, but it feels like twenties depression. Yeah,
32:20
Speaker 1: how did you conceive of that? How did you make
32:22
Speaker 1: that work? You're right, it's meant to not be set
32:25
Speaker 1: in a particular time or place. It's really, you know,
32:27
Speaker 1: this mythic space. But it takes a lot of inspiration
32:31
Speaker 1: from the depression era because of the themes I think
32:34
Speaker 1: there was in that era, like the dust bowl, right,
32:37
Speaker 1: and the kind of the dust storms that were created
32:41
Speaker 1: by this like industrial agricultural overreach, really like a man
32:48
Speaker 1: made natural disaster, just like what we see now with
32:51
Speaker 1: climate change, but on a smaller scale and sort of
32:53
Speaker 1: a more poetic and vintage scale. And also a lot
32:57
Speaker 1: of the music that I was inspired by, the kind
32:59
Speaker 1: of like protest stuff, the IWW like organizing labor, organizing songs,
33:04
Speaker 1: what do you gathrie? Stuff like that that I always
33:07
Speaker 1: found very inspiring. And those themes were very present in
33:12
Speaker 1: that era in terms of the sort of exploitation of
33:16
Speaker 1: labor and then the unionization of labor, and those are
33:20
Speaker 1: also themes that show up in our show. And yeah,
33:23
Speaker 1: you know, it was funny that I remember a really
33:25
Speaker 1: important moment in the writing for Off Broadway where I
33:30
Speaker 1: figured out that Hermes could just say don't ask where brother,
33:34
Speaker 1: don't ask when it was a road to hell, it
33:38
Speaker 1: was hard time, so it was a world of gods
33:40
Speaker 1: and men that he could actually tell the audience not
33:43
Speaker 1: to worry about what year it was or what the
33:47
Speaker 1: precise geographical location was. And then as an audience member,
33:51
Speaker 1: you're like, Okay, I'm not going to worry about that,
33:53
Speaker 1: you know. Do you remember coming up with that line? Yeah,
33:56
Speaker 1: I don't know, I just remember the kind of light
33:59
Speaker 1: bulb moment was seeing it come out of the mouth
34:01
Speaker 1: of the character at the top of the show, and
34:03
Speaker 1: the character who was playing hermis at that time, Chris Sullivan.
34:06
Speaker 1: And actually, you know, the roometurg I was mentioning Ken Chernilia.
34:12
Speaker 1: He sort of came from a different world than us.
34:13
Speaker 1: He was working for Disney at the time, and he
34:16
Speaker 1: was very into this, like just take care of the
34:19
Speaker 1: audience at the top of the show, you know, just
34:22
Speaker 1: establish like where we are so they're not spending the
34:26
Speaker 1: whole first act trying to figure it out. Something about
34:29
Speaker 1: letting people know they didn't have to worry about that.
34:32
Speaker 1: That felt like it did. It did an important thing.
34:35
Speaker 1: It makes them open to write the experience and then
34:39
Speaker 1: a lot of the orchestration, it feels very like New Orleans, Yeah, influence. Yeah,
34:45
Speaker 1: that's great. The dust Bowl thing makes me think you
34:47
Speaker 1: could have done sort of very sparse Western country, but
34:52
Speaker 1: it's got a different kind of feeling to it. And
34:56
Speaker 1: at Hadestown feels a little bit like it's got a
34:59
Speaker 1: little bit of French quarter to it. Definitely. Yeah. And
35:03
Speaker 1: Our Path, Our Path I think was quite different from
35:06
Speaker 1: other musicals in that, Like I mentioned Michael Cherney, who
35:09
Speaker 1: was arranging the songs way back at the beginning, you know,
35:13
Speaker 1: in this DIY version of the show. And when we
35:17
Speaker 1: made our studio record, Todd Sickafus produced this album. He's
35:21
Speaker 1: the basis for Rannie to Franco, so it was all
35:23
Speaker 1: kind of in the family and he produced it and
35:25
Speaker 1: then and began to also add arrangements at that time
35:29
Speaker 1: and then became a co arranger with Michael, and the
35:31
Speaker 1: orchestrations have all they basically have been baked into the story,
35:35
Speaker 1: you know, since the beginning, where I think a lot
35:37
Speaker 1: of shows the theaters like obsessed with text and they
35:40
Speaker 1: just you know, they're not music's like is that happen?
35:43
Speaker 1: Is music happening? Okay? Great? They're so focused on what's
35:47
Speaker 1: happening in the text, and this show like necessarily it
35:50
Speaker 1: couldn't be that way because it was just sort of
35:52
Speaker 1: turned upside down, like it had come from this really
35:55
Speaker 1: musical place. And those guys are both you know, jazz
36:00
Speaker 1: influenced and Michael and Todd and also kind of art rock,
36:05
Speaker 1: indie rock influenced. And there was also something about the
36:09
Speaker 1: New Orleans sound that felt right like New Orleans feels
36:14
Speaker 1: like a mythic city, right, and it being kind of
36:18
Speaker 1: right on the front lines of a lot of this stuff,
36:22
Speaker 1: the kind of poverty and the climate stuff, it felt
36:27
Speaker 1: like the right place. You started writing this before the
36:31
Speaker 1: financial meltdown? Yeah, did that influence you at all? And
36:34
Speaker 1: they're kind of the sudden people out of their homes
36:37
Speaker 1: and the sudden upheaval in the country. You know, it's
36:41
Speaker 1: been so wild with this show because at different moments
36:44
Speaker 1: what was happening in current events seemed to be speaking directly,
36:47
Speaker 1: you know, through the songs in a way that they
36:49
Speaker 1: the songs hadn't been intended that way. But I remember
36:53
Speaker 1: that song, wedding song, you know, times being what they
36:56
Speaker 1: are hard and getting harder all the time. I used
36:58
Speaker 1: to play that in my songwriter shows, and I would
37:01
Speaker 1: introduce the song by saying like, this is from this
37:04
Speaker 1: folk opera I'm working on. It's set in a post
37:07
Speaker 1: apocalyptic American depression era. And people started to laugh, like
37:12
Speaker 1: really hard when I would say that, and I was like,
37:15
Speaker 1: what's going on, you know, And it was that they
37:16
Speaker 1: were feeling the connection between the yeah, the financial breakdown
37:22
Speaker 1: and that song. And then later obviously that song while
37:25
Speaker 1: we Build the Wall, which was written also in like
37:28
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, started to resonate really hard with
37:31
Speaker 1: the stuff that our former president was staying in his campaign, right,
37:35
Speaker 1: And the lyric is, yeah, why do we build the wall?
37:37
Speaker 1: My children? My children? You know, we build the wall
37:41
Speaker 1: to keep us free. The enemy is poverty, and we
37:44
Speaker 1: build the wall, and the wall keeps out the enemy,
37:46
Speaker 1: and we build the wall to keep us free. And
37:48
Speaker 1: that's another one that I played in my songwriter shows
37:50
Speaker 1: for years, and I never expected it to feel new again,
37:54
Speaker 1: and then it did. Okay, Now, I'm sure a million
37:57
Speaker 1: people have asked you, but I have to ask you anyway.
37:59
Speaker 1: You've been working on this for thirteen years, and it
38:01
Speaker 1: must have seemed like a pipe dream at many points.
38:06
Speaker 1: You see it on stage, which I'm sure you get raptures. Review.
38:09
Speaker 1: First of all, what was that like? You see it
38:11
Speaker 1: in old movies like Betty Davis waiting to see what
38:14
Speaker 1: the morning paper says about a performance? What is it
38:17
Speaker 1: like to actually sit around and wait for a review
38:20
Speaker 1: from the newspaper? Right? Oh, It's so funny in the
38:23
Speaker 1: theater because the reviews come out like right after the show,
38:29
Speaker 1: and everyone's at a party, do you know what I mean?
38:31
Speaker 1: You're like having some champagne at like a party, and
38:33
Speaker 1: then someone will like pull out their phone in the
38:36
Speaker 1: women's room and there's the New York Times review. Yeah.
38:40
Speaker 1: I was a deer in the headlights. I mean, when
38:43
Speaker 1: I think about it, I was so kind of exhausted
38:47
Speaker 1: from the effort of the rewriting, and I remember just like, yeah,
38:52
Speaker 1: I think it was opening night. I got to go up,
38:55
Speaker 1: you know, with Rachel after the with the cast and
38:57
Speaker 1: sort of take a bow, and someone handed me a
39:00
Speaker 1: big bouquet of flowers. You didn't know. I didn't know
39:04
Speaker 1: what to do with it, so I just put it
39:05
Speaker 1: on the ground. You really are new to the theater.
39:11
Speaker 1: It was very awkward for me, and but but mostly
39:14
Speaker 1: just because I was completely overwhelmed by the experience. I
39:16
Speaker 1: didn't have a way to process it in the moment
39:20
Speaker 1: or feel proud or relieved or any of those things.
39:23
Speaker 1: You know. It was actually pretty powerful too. After the
39:26
Speaker 1: long shutdown. It was shut down for a year and
39:28
Speaker 1: a half and then we reopened. We had a reopening
39:30
Speaker 1: night where I'm like well rested, well hydrated and got
39:35
Speaker 1: to really enjoy that, you know, experience of seeing the
39:39
Speaker 1: show again and also seeing the like coming back to
39:41
Speaker 1: life of the theater and of New York City and
39:43
Speaker 1: the culture, you know, in general, that felt really powerful.
39:47
Speaker 1: But the main thing I think I'll say about that
39:49
Speaker 1: time was like, yeah, I remember one time, I was
39:52
Speaker 1: staying in Manhattan, so I was working on the show
39:55
Speaker 1: as much as I could have. Didn't want to commute
39:57
Speaker 1: back and forth to my apartment in Brooklyn. I couldn't sleeper.
40:01
Speaker 1: I was up early, and I went for a jog
40:04
Speaker 1: around Midtown in the dark, and I jogged past the
40:07
Speaker 1: theater and there was like these kids were camped out
40:10
Speaker 1: outside the theater waiting to get tickets. I don't rush
40:12
Speaker 1: tickets or what. I'm not sure what the situation was,
40:15
Speaker 1: but and some of them were dressed up cuss playing,
40:18
Speaker 1: you know, our characters. And that was a moment where
40:21
Speaker 1: I was like, I have no idea what this show is, like,
40:24
Speaker 1: I don't know what it means too. I'm never going
40:26
Speaker 1: to know what the relationship is of these kids to
40:29
Speaker 1: this show. It's not mine, you know, it's its own animal,
40:33
Speaker 1: and it's like living in the world now doing its thing.
40:36
Speaker 1: Powerful and strange feeling. And then on Tony Night. Now,
40:40
Speaker 1: you didn't win a lot of Off Broadway awards that
40:44
Speaker 1: played an off Broadway. So did you go into the
40:46
Speaker 1: Tony saying I got nominated, that's fine, or did you think, oh,
40:50
Speaker 1: maybe I don't remember. I remember. I did have to
40:54
Speaker 1: sort of prepare some remarks just in case. Yeah, I mean,
40:58
Speaker 1: let's the awkward thing about the awards thing, since you
41:00
Speaker 1: have to you have to get like all nervous and prepared,
41:03
Speaker 1: even if then nothing happens. Yeah, it was an extraordinary night.
41:07
Speaker 1: I was so amazing to see so many people on
41:11
Speaker 1: our team win Tony's Andre you know, Andrea Shields gave
41:15
Speaker 1: that incredible speech and Rachel and Yeah, it was an
41:18
Speaker 1: amazing night. You want to eight overall? Yeah, Best Musical.
41:22
Speaker 1: David Byrne gave me my Tony. It was very special.
41:25
Speaker 1: And then I walked with him to the press room
41:28
Speaker 1: like you didn't put it on the ground like the flower. Yeah,
41:33
Speaker 1: right now, is there going to be a movie? I
41:36
Speaker 1: would love that. I'm not in a rush for that
41:39
Speaker 1: to happen, but I'd love that to happen. Yeah. Yeah,
41:43
Speaker 1: you would have to be animated, wouldn't it. Oh, it's
41:45
Speaker 1: so interesting that you say that because I've thought that
41:48
Speaker 1: a bunch of times. It's tricky to know, Yeah, I'm
41:51
Speaker 1: really in a space of like there was a lot
41:53
Speaker 1: of kind of talk of it right after Broadway, and
41:56
Speaker 1: it felt to me like, hey, I gotta take a
41:58
Speaker 1: break from this thing. I can't even look at it
42:00
Speaker 1: anymore and be like I really want I really wanted
42:04
Speaker 1: a film adaptation to be its own animal and not
42:06
Speaker 1: feel like it was imitating what what was happening on stage.
42:10
Speaker 1: And it's tricky because it's not, as you're saying, not
42:13
Speaker 1: setting a particular time or place through it's easy for
42:18
Speaker 1: it to be done kind of wrong if it's live action.
42:21
Speaker 1: I guess we'll be right back with more from Bruce
42:24
Speaker 1: Headlam and Annias Mitchell. After a quick break, let's hear
42:33
Speaker 1: a live performance of Annas Mitchell's song Revenant off her
42:37
Speaker 1: latest album where'd y'all Letters All Again? Coffee rings in
43:08
Speaker 1: a book, point pen, tear stains every known Then I
43:15
Speaker 1: remember what they meant. Revenant, come on back again, Come on, Revenant,
43:23
Speaker 1: come and take my hand, Revenant, come on back in
43:41
Speaker 1: her box under the stairs, found the lock of a
43:46
Speaker 1: child's hair. Suddenly I saw you there rainny eyed in
43:54
Speaker 1: a wooden chair, ran outside. I hede your face in
44:01
Speaker 1: the wild. Queen Anne's lace, green and white around your place,
44:08
Speaker 1: wave and the win. Revenance, come on back again, Come on, Revenance,
44:16
Speaker 1: Come and take my hand. Revenance, Come and let me
44:22
Speaker 1: hold you in my arms. Come and give him my shoulder. Wedding.
44:29
Speaker 1: Come and show me what it is he wants. Oh familiar,
45:00
Speaker 1: Choose to draw as holds the mirror you've dressed before.
45:06
Speaker 1: Throw in shadows on the floor. I know you're behind
45:12
Speaker 1: that door. Light the lamp and turn the key. I'm
45:18
Speaker 1: standing out your vanity. We're as young as we liver be,
45:25
Speaker 1: oh as we ever been. Revenant, come on back again.
45:31
Speaker 1: Come on, Revenant, Come and take my hand. Evidence, Come
45:38
Speaker 1: on back again. Come on Revenant, come and take my hand. Evidence,
45:46
Speaker 1: Come on back. So if you sit down to do
46:09
Speaker 1: this album and then do those lessons from writing, characterization,
46:14
Speaker 1: moving it along, do they change your writing for this album? Yeah?
46:18
Speaker 1: I know, I know that I'm a different writer after
46:20
Speaker 1: Haiti sound, but I can't really put my finger on
46:22
Speaker 1: what that is. Partly I was I felt so free,
46:26
Speaker 1: I felt so free to write whatever passed through my
46:29
Speaker 1: heart and to be just me and the instrument and
46:35
Speaker 1: the words, and that felt really freeing. But yeah, I
46:39
Speaker 1: you know what, there's something that I did in that
46:41
Speaker 1: pandemic time that I never had done, never had allowed
46:45
Speaker 1: myself to do. All the people had mentioned it many times,
46:48
Speaker 1: which is this idea of just writing this song a
46:51
Speaker 1: day for like a week. And I did it with
46:54
Speaker 1: a group of other songwriters, and it was this beautiful
46:57
Speaker 1: and intense experience where if you if you fail to
47:00
Speaker 1: write a song on a given day, then you're like
47:02
Speaker 1: lovingly excommunicated in the group. Wow, you know, you don't
47:07
Speaker 1: finish the week. So that so again like a kind
47:10
Speaker 1: of a mutual accountability thing, and I found it so
47:13
Speaker 1: healing to have to say yes to whatever was wanted
47:16
Speaker 1: to come through and not second guess it. And a
47:19
Speaker 1: lot of the songs on this new record, actually that
47:21
Speaker 1: song Real World, I just wrote that in like an
47:23
Speaker 1: hour on one of those days, and a bunch of
47:26
Speaker 1: the other ones I sort of began in that time
47:29
Speaker 1: and then finished them on my own time. So that
47:31
Speaker 1: was a sort of I guess it was a kind
47:34
Speaker 1: of a discipline, but it also felt like just all
47:36
Speaker 1: bets are off and you're safe. To fail, you know,
47:40
Speaker 1: and that felt really good. But you couldn't not do
47:43
Speaker 1: it right. Oh yeah, yeah, maybe you need that kind
47:48
Speaker 1: of pressure a Broadway show angry songwriters like replacing the critics. Yeah,
47:56
Speaker 1: angry song Well, you know, I felt very free. I
48:00
Speaker 1: felt also like no one was watching and no one cared,
48:03
Speaker 1: which was important. I wrote the songs like more for
48:05
Speaker 1: me than anyone else, and then suddenly realized like, oh,
48:08
Speaker 1: I'm going to make a record out of these. And
48:10
Speaker 1: then I was like, I got to do this record immediately.
48:12
Speaker 1: I don't want to sit on them and think about
48:14
Speaker 1: them and try to improve them. So tell me about revenue.
48:17
Speaker 1: That's a song. I started in the song a day
48:19
Speaker 1: week and it was really inspired by my grandparents house
48:24
Speaker 1: that I was living in. There was a box full
48:27
Speaker 1: of my old journals and letter correspondences and I reread
48:32
Speaker 1: a bunch of them. I burned some of my old
48:35
Speaker 1: journals and some of them I kept, and there was
48:39
Speaker 1: a lack of hair and I had this just real,
48:43
Speaker 1: like visceral memory of being a kid in that house.
48:47
Speaker 1: You know, I grew up in my home, but I
48:49
Speaker 1: would run down the driveway to my grandparents house and
48:51
Speaker 1: it was kind of like my happy place. I could
48:54
Speaker 1: do crafting. My grandma was a quilter, and she always
48:57
Speaker 1: would have something on the stove. And I felt, yeah,
49:00
Speaker 1: in this way that you're kind of when you're a
49:02
Speaker 1: little kid, you're just become a party your surroundings, and
49:05
Speaker 1: you get you get upset about something in the house,
49:07
Speaker 1: and you sort of run outside into the garden and
49:11
Speaker 1: then you're just like one with the garden. That was
49:14
Speaker 1: the feeling that I think I was having in that house.
49:17
Speaker 1: And and that word revenant is so beautiful because I
49:22
Speaker 1: you know, it's sort of a phantom, but also I
49:24
Speaker 1: think it literally means like one who comes back, one
49:27
Speaker 1: who returns. And I'm not sure if that is me,
49:30
Speaker 1: you know, returning to that place of my childhood, or
49:33
Speaker 1: or my grandma. They thinking about my grandma, but it
49:35
Speaker 1: felt like I was encountering her. It's in some way
49:39
Speaker 1: and encountering myself, I think, is a thing at the
49:41
Speaker 1: age that I am that I am now looking in
49:44
Speaker 1: the mirror, you know, on her old bureau that I
49:47
Speaker 1: remember from being a kid. There's this old mirror and
49:49
Speaker 1: it's kind of you know when a mirror goes kind
49:52
Speaker 1: of dark, and see my face now, and I'm the
49:55
Speaker 1: age I am now here as young as you'll ever be.
50:00
Speaker 1: Tell me a bit about the song A Little Big Girl,
50:03
Speaker 1: which is a little political in points, but just tell
50:06
Speaker 1: me what inspired that. So that's a that took me
50:10
Speaker 1: years to write. I started that song in twenty sixteen,
50:14
Speaker 1: and I remember because I was on a tour with
50:16
Speaker 1: Patti Griffin and Sarah Watkins and the first verse of
50:19
Speaker 1: it kind of just drafted into my lap and I thought, Oh,
50:22
Speaker 1: this is gonna be easy, This is gonna be an
50:24
Speaker 1: easy one to write. And I tried and tried at
50:27
Speaker 1: various times, and I just couldn't figure out how to
50:29
Speaker 1: finish it. And I was also working on Haiti's sound,
50:32
Speaker 1: and it was hard to put, you know, the time in.
50:35
Speaker 1: But I think also I had to live some more years,
50:37
Speaker 1: you know, have another kid, be a little older, returned home.
50:42
Speaker 1: It's a song about growing older as a woman, and
50:46
Speaker 1: it's a little bit about my mom, about me and
50:50
Speaker 1: for my girls. And I think what made it hard
50:54
Speaker 1: to write actually is that there was times it was
50:57
Speaker 1: veering towards becoming sort of like a soapboxy thing, like
51:01
Speaker 1: me on a soapbox having it all figured out telling
51:03
Speaker 1: you what's wrong with the culture or whatever, And the
51:07
Speaker 1: truth is that like it's a song about not having
51:10
Speaker 1: it figured out, Like it's a song about arriving at
51:12
Speaker 1: this age thinking by now you'd have it figured out
51:15
Speaker 1: and you don't. And essentially like, yeah, the just the
51:19
Speaker 1: kind of like the tools that you gather as a
51:21
Speaker 1: young woman, the tools that work for you at a
51:24
Speaker 1: certain point no longer work for you, and the sense
51:27
Speaker 1: of like no one gave me the tools for now,
51:31
Speaker 1: or like how do I acquire this new set of tools?
51:34
Speaker 1: So is it a song? Is there a little bit
51:37
Speaker 1: of anger in the song that nobody gave you those tools? Yeah,
51:41
Speaker 1: but I wouldn't say it's anger directed anywhere but at myself.
51:46
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a really great line and it's set
51:49
Speaker 1: in a it's sexual context, but it has sort of
51:52
Speaker 1: this sort of wider meaning about let him have his
51:54
Speaker 1: way instead of saying what you want? Right. Yeah, I
51:58
Speaker 1: remember in the studio I was debating let them have
52:01
Speaker 1: their way versus let him have his way, you know,
52:06
Speaker 1: like let them have their way felt less pointed, I
52:08
Speaker 1: guess in terms of like gender stereotypes and whatever, And
52:12
Speaker 1: ultimately the other thing felt more true like it just
52:14
Speaker 1: felt more raw. But I think, yeah, you know, as
52:17
Speaker 1: a woman still like you learned to be sort of
52:21
Speaker 1: deferential and not to take up space, and so it's
52:24
Speaker 1: hard to learn how to do those things. You know,
52:27
Speaker 1: you wrote a massively successful Broadway musical, there must have
52:30
Speaker 1: been points in which you had to stand up for yourself. Yeah.
52:35
Speaker 1: I do stand up for myself, but I have a
52:38
Speaker 1: lot of feelings about it. You know, it takes a
52:42
Speaker 1: long time. Sometimes I have to like given to another
52:45
Speaker 1: person's idea and then realize I'm miserable, and then weeks
52:48
Speaker 1: later come back and say, actually I need to do
52:50
Speaker 1: this where Yeah, I wish there was less drama internally
52:54
Speaker 1: about that stuff. But it was actually really cool working
52:57
Speaker 1: with Rachel Chapkin, who's a total boss and yeah, very
53:03
Speaker 1: very assertive, and watching the way that she worked with people.
53:06
Speaker 1: I can remember like a time we were we were
53:09
Speaker 1: proofreading like the program for our show in London, and
53:14
Speaker 1: I wrote an email of something like, I don't know,
53:18
Speaker 1: what do you think about this? Maybe this could be
53:20
Speaker 1: a little bit more like this, you know, early deferential,
53:22
Speaker 1: and Rachel comes in. It's like what an is saying,
53:25
Speaker 1: is she wants this and you know it's powerful too. Yeah,
53:29
Speaker 1: she's good at that. So it's a little easier now
53:31
Speaker 1: to for you to say that, I guess. So, I
53:33
Speaker 1: guess it's a lifelong practice. Also, I do want to
53:36
Speaker 1: ask you a little bit about singing older songs. You
53:39
Speaker 1: did a whole really great album of child ballads, and
53:42
Speaker 1: child refers to the guy who collected the ballads, not
53:44
Speaker 1: actually children. You did your own version of Shenandoah. You
53:48
Speaker 1: did Hobo's lah blah by, which is the Yeah, wow,
53:50
Speaker 1: you did your research. Oh, it's all up here, and
53:55
Speaker 1: a lot of it seems to relate to Hadestown and
53:57
Speaker 1: that when you do those songs that almost kind of
53:59
Speaker 1: feels like the song's going through you. I don't know
54:01
Speaker 1: if that makes any sense, you know, that kind of
54:03
Speaker 1: experience of doing really old songs making it your own,
54:06
Speaker 1: but it's still it's like you're passing baton or some time.
54:10
Speaker 1: I guess what's the attraction for you to do those?
54:12
Speaker 1: Uh huh? It's so inspiring. I love traditional music, traditional
54:19
Speaker 1: text and mythology and old stories, and for me, like
54:26
Speaker 1: what I'm interested in always is the kind of like
54:29
Speaker 1: to be at the center of the ven diagram. Of
54:31
Speaker 1: like what feels true and real for me and emotional
54:35
Speaker 1: and sort of heart full and tearful and alive, and
54:42
Speaker 1: then what feels like it's epic, mythic, universal. The center
54:48
Speaker 1: of that is where I always kind of want to
54:50
Speaker 1: be because I guess it's like a way of locating
54:53
Speaker 1: myself in history. And also, yeah, the Bonny Light Horseman band,
54:59
Speaker 1: like our first record is all reworkings of traditional texts,
55:03
Speaker 1: and then we've just created a record that is original songs,
55:07
Speaker 1: but they're meant to be in conversation with the old stuff.
55:11
Speaker 1: And it really with that band especially felt like it's
55:14
Speaker 1: just a spectrum, you know, and that it's a relief
55:18
Speaker 1: almost to realize that you're not coming up with this
55:21
Speaker 1: stuff from scratch, Like we're all living in a world
55:25
Speaker 1: in which there's you know, there's eleven notes in the scale,
55:29
Speaker 1: and there's only so many stories. There's only so many
55:33
Speaker 1: words that you could tell those stories with, and so
55:37
Speaker 1: we're standing on the backs, you know, of the stuff
55:39
Speaker 1: that came before. And that's that's a I think a
55:41
Speaker 1: really inspiring and relieving feeling that you don't have to
55:46
Speaker 1: hold up the universe, you know, one of those ven diagrams.
55:49
Speaker 1: I love on your first album, you quote T. S.
55:52
Speaker 1: Eliott in the room, the women come and go speaking
55:55
Speaker 1: on their mobile phones. I'm not getting the crime exactly,
55:58
Speaker 1: but I love that. I love that sort of how
56:01
Speaker 1: you make that the stuff that feels more ancient and permanent.
56:05
Speaker 1: With this, it's just like contemporary reference. Thank you. I
56:09
Speaker 1: would like not write that line today. You wouldn't it
56:13
Speaker 1: would be sacrilege or I don't know. I just felt
56:16
Speaker 1: very literary. I've sort of maybe been running from academia
56:22
Speaker 1: since those days. I would have been like an undergrad
56:26
Speaker 1: when I wrote that. Pretty good for an undergrad, thank you. Okay,
56:29
Speaker 1: did your father approve he's the he's the professor in
56:32
Speaker 1: the family. Yeah, I'm sure. Okay, So this is a
56:35
Speaker 1: great record. What's next? So well, we just put out
56:39
Speaker 1: this new Bondy Light record. Okay, it's called Rolling Golden Holy.
56:42
Speaker 1: Just like last week, it came out and we've been
56:44
Speaker 1: touring with it. This year has been a crazy amount
56:48
Speaker 1: of travel because I've been touring this record as well
56:51
Speaker 1: as the Bonny Light record, and so I'm already like
56:54
Speaker 1: pretty psyched to go home and do some writing. I'm
56:58
Speaker 1: sort of desperate to do it. I feel like I've
57:00
Speaker 1: gotten some records out of my system which I really
57:03
Speaker 1: needed to do, and now you know, I would love
57:07
Speaker 1: if the right story came along to work on something
57:10
Speaker 1: longer for him to do. I have a dream to
57:13
Speaker 1: write a play that actually doesn't have music, and it's
57:16
Speaker 1: we'll see what happens. You have the story idea for it,
57:19
Speaker 1: or I do, but I shouldn't say it on the mic.
57:22
Speaker 1: You're not going to say it on the mic. That's great,
57:25
Speaker 1: thank you? Right, yeah, all right, well, thank you so
57:27
Speaker 1: much for coming in. It's been terrific night pleasure. Thank
57:29
Speaker 1: you so much. Album. You want to do one more?
57:32
Speaker 1: You want to do the short one? Um, yeah, let's
57:34
Speaker 1: do it, all right, let's do it. It's called the
57:36
Speaker 1: real world, all right. Yeah. I want to live in
57:52
Speaker 1: the real world. Weak out to real birds, singing loud
57:56
Speaker 1: enough to be really heard by us in the real world.
58:01
Speaker 1: I want to lie in the real grass, watch the
58:04
Speaker 1: real clouds rolling past the pastors, the ever lasting seals
58:09
Speaker 1: of the real world. I want to talk with my
58:23
Speaker 1: mouth full, pass around the vegetables with real folks at
58:28
Speaker 1: a real table a meal in the real world. I
58:33
Speaker 1: want to dance in your real grip, feel your real
58:36
Speaker 1: hands on my hips, and taste real whiskey on your
58:39
Speaker 1: lips when we kiss. In the real world, I want
58:43
Speaker 1: to cry on your shoulder, real feelings blowing over blow
58:49
Speaker 1: my nose like it really hold me close. In the
58:51
Speaker 1: real world. I want to live in the real world.
58:56
Speaker 1: We got the real birds singing loud enough to be
59:00
Speaker 1: really heard by us in the real world. Thanks to
59:34
Speaker 1: Mais Mitchell for coming through to talk about Haiti Sound.
59:38
Speaker 1: You can hear a new album and a playlist of
59:40
Speaker 1: other songs at broken Record podcast dot com. Be sure
59:44
Speaker 1: to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com
59:46
Speaker 1: slash broken Record Podcast. We can find all of our
59:49
Speaker 1: new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record.
59:54
Speaker 1: Broken Record is produced with help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrel,
59:58
Speaker 1: Ben Holliday, Eric Sandler, Jennifer Sanchez, our editor Sophie Crane.
1:00:03
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is Neia LaBelle. Broken Record is a
1:00:08
Speaker 1: production of push Industries. If you love this show and
1:00:11
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1:00:29
Speaker 1: us on your podcast app Our theme musics by Kenny
1:00:33
Speaker 1: beats On Justin Richmond