Latest / Basic Folk / Kathleen Edwards: Making up for 30 Years of No Tears, ep. 328

Transcript

Kathleen Edwards: Making up for 30 Years of No Tears, ep. 328 · Basic Folk

0:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Hi, and welcome to Basic Folk, where we have honest conversations with folk musicians on the Bluegrass situation podcast network.
0:19
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host Cindy House.
0:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Hello, and thanks for finding us today.
0:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Very happy to say that Lizzie know is going to be interviewing Kathleen Edwards on the pond today.
0:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, man.
0:30
[SPEAKER_00]: New album, billionaire, so cool, a true, amazing, incredible Americana hero.
0:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is coming up momentarily, but first.
0:40
[SPEAKER_00]: have you signed up for the basic folk newsletter you can sign up for that at the link in the show notes it's a once a month email that lets you know who's been on the podcast recently who's coming up all of our like innermost thoughts, feelings and desires and again sign up for that at the link in the show notes or you can do it at our website basicfolk.com we are on social
1:07
[SPEAKER_00]: TikTok, YouTube.
1:09
[SPEAKER_00]: That's where we're at.
1:10
[SPEAKER_00]: We're a listener supported podcast.
1:12
[SPEAKER_00]: You can make a contribution at BasicFoke.com slash donate.
1:15
[SPEAKER_00]: There's also a link in the show notes to help pay for your listening to BasicFoke.
1:19
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't take a lot to make a difference, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
1:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Love you.
1:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
1:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I am currently on maternity leave taking care of a little tiny baby.
1:29
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope you enjoy this episode of Kathleen Edwards.
1:33
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a thrill to be able to set this up with Lizzie who has been
1:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Listening and studying Kathleen for many years, Lizzie made Kathleen Edwards cry in their conversation and we're frankly not sorry.
1:48
[SPEAKER_00]: It seems as though she is very easy to cry these days.
1:51
[SPEAKER_00]: The beloved Americana giant claims she is a cryer after not crying for the first 30 years of her life and the water works have been flowing a lot easier lately.
2:01
[SPEAKER_00]: In our conversation, Kathleen discusses her folk music roots which began at her bu college childhood summer camp where her camp counselor suggested that she could make a career out of writing and performing songs.
2:13
[SPEAKER_00]: She gives a major hat tipped ony to Franco, who she sights as a major influence in terms of musical and personal.
2:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Through ony's example, she learned that success in the music business meant being self-reliant.
2:25
[SPEAKER_00]: She also talks about overcoming clinical depression, her decision to take a hiatus for music to open Quidders Cafe, and how that period impacted her life in career.
2:34
[SPEAKER_00]: She also delves into the making of her latest album Bill Yenair, highlighting the contributions of Jason Israel and other collaborators on the record.
2:43
[SPEAKER_00]: She talks about the emotional significance of the album cover, photographed by a former cafe employee, and the intimate recording process behind some of the tracks on the album.
2:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Throughout Kathleen emphasizes the importance of authenticity, self-reliance, and the role of humor and vulnerability in her music and life.
3:01
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll take a listen to a clip from one of Kathleen's new songs.
3:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's a little red ranger, and then we'll get to our conversation with Kathleen Edwards,
3:20
[SPEAKER_03]: The Mexican blanket on the front seat It's old to you, but it's new to me Pick me up at the rose of earth Wind us down to door to door to door
3:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Girls up in the soup, all men that trip of you are kick it, we can't at the ring.
4:01
[SPEAKER_03]: You love the leaves even though they stink and you're driving your little red ring.
4:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Someday soon you're gonna call and tell us That you're gonna stay Bird in a tree if you look away Your message has to see it fall away You never met a pair of jeans
4:42
[SPEAKER_03]: I didn't fit you perfectly All you playin' in a bad, and you sure can drink Long round hair, your girl seems so sweet
5:05
[SPEAKER_03]: Always be that boy, listen to skates You miss every shot, you never take Big on smile, you've got a heart of gold And try to live the spirit of Rick Dankel's goals to your Driving your little red brainer, all the over-relate Some days soon you've got to call on to tell us That you're gonna stay
5:38
[SPEAKER_03]: You must have chance to see it fly away
5:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Kathleen Edwards, legend, dairy, songwriter.
5:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Welcome to Basic Folk.
5:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you so much for doing the pod.
5:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
6:00
[SPEAKER_02]: So a lot of pressure being called legendary.
6:03
[SPEAKER_02]: But you know, I'm old enough now.
6:05
[SPEAKER_02]: I call myself the Legacy Act.
6:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Even though I don't like, you know, sell enough tickets to be Legacy Act.
6:10
[SPEAKER_02]: I am in the demographic of a Legacy Act.
6:13
[SPEAKER_04]: That's a flex because your skin still looks great.
6:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
6:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
6:19
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just good jeans or good fucking locker, just less, more sleep, not having kids.
6:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know what this, I don't know what this secret is.
6:28
[SPEAKER_04]: I think those are the secrets.
6:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Enough chit chat.
6:30
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm ready with substantive questions.
6:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
6:34
[SPEAKER_04]: How would you define folk music and what was your introduction to it?
6:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh.
6:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Ooh.
6:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Man, I just had this conversation with the great Afe Yervenin who plays under the name Bahamas.
6:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And he, I sort of, I look up to him in sort of him being today sort of, most, I would say sort of most informed folk musician as an incredible guitarist and, you know,
7:12
[SPEAKER_02]: his knowledge base of music is so broad and we were talking about, you know, kind of our origin stories a little bit and I ended up relaying to him like my five big songs.
7:25
[SPEAKER_02]: which all happened because of summer camp.
7:28
[SPEAKER_02]: So folk music for me started at a canoe camp in Tamagami, Ontario called Wanda Patay.
7:36
[SPEAKER_02]: It is a canoe camp that, you know, kids from the ages of 12 till, you know, 18 go.
7:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And you go on these incredibly long remote canoe trips.
7:46
[SPEAKER_02]: They start short and they get longer as you get older.
7:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was one of the kids who just gravitated towards the campfire sing song.
7:54
[SPEAKER_02]: And so my song book started there.
7:59
[SPEAKER_02]: And in the sort of almost the cinematic and stereotypical Canadian
8:06
[SPEAKER_02]: summer scenery, you know pine trees and the Canadian shield and a canoe and a fire and tents set up nearby.
8:15
[SPEAKER_02]: So folk music for me was absolutely rooted in the, you know, not as early as say the Pete Seeger era or the sort of stereotype of that sort of era of American folk music.
8:27
[SPEAKER_02]: But actually
8:29
[SPEAKER_02]: mine were the sort of the the second generations, which is Johnny and Neil and James Taylor was a huge part of my song book and very unknowingly John Prime was part of my
8:44
[SPEAKER_02]: and my song book.
8:46
[SPEAKER_02]: I sang his songs before I knew they were his songs.
8:48
[SPEAKER_02]: So those were kind of the foundations of my relationship with folk music.
8:54
[SPEAKER_02]: And then as I became a 13, 14, 15 year old and those songs became part of my DNA.
9:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I discovered Oni DeFranco and I still believe that Oni DeFranco is truly the the most sort of iconic and influential voice and songwriter of contemporary folk music and she was a huge influence for me.
9:18
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's that's how that is my sort of connection to what I perceive as
9:27
[SPEAKER_04]: That makes a lot of sense.
9:27
[SPEAKER_04]: We had Oni on the pod earlier this year, it was like a bucket list moment.
9:32
[SPEAKER_04]: I was like, how are you all that you are?
9:35
[SPEAKER_02]: I got what she say.
9:36
[SPEAKER_04]: I didn't ask her that question, but she had so many great, she had so many great insights on everything from like,
9:44
[SPEAKER_04]: where in your menstrual cycle is most productive for songwriting, like how she thinks about love now, like her many like iconic hair styles and looks, it was just, it was a life changing.
9:58
[SPEAKER_04]: It was a life changing experience.
10:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
10:01
[SPEAKER_02]: I've actually never really, I've never spoken to Oni, but I wouldn't be sitting here right now talking to you.
10:10
[SPEAKER_02]: I wouldn't be, she changed my life.
10:14
[SPEAKER_02]: She was very, and you know, the other thing she really did besides the music was, I think this is partly just my character and you know, the circumstances of our, you know, family lives
10:27
[SPEAKER_02]: She also, it somehow I understood that it was hugely important to be self-reline and independent in this life, but also in music, and so I've never, you know, I've always had really amazing people in my corner, and I cannot do what I do without help, but I've also been hugely self-reliant, and I think I learned that from her.
10:53
[SPEAKER_04]: So you were introduced to folk music as like a contemporary experience like it's all around us were in the woods.
11:02
[SPEAKER_04]: When did it occur to you that you were a songwriter?
11:06
[SPEAKER_02]: It was the first person who ever suggested that I could be a songwriter was actually at that very summer camp.
11:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was the last year that I was there as a as a as a camper 17.
11:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was, you know, I was the I was the traveling, you know, I was the member of the group who brought a guitar on our canoe trips.
11:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was
11:31
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, the, the, the musician every day singing songs, leading songs, et cetera.
11:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it was my camp counselor, Nick, who actually said to me, you know that you could play songs for a living if you wanted.
11:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't know if that's exactly the words he used, but he suggested that I could very well do my own music and that it could actually be a career.
11:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like,
11:58
[SPEAKER_02]: That sounds insane.
12:00
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think my songwriting was born of just me playing other people songs and then having enough of a songbook in my own, you know, in my own cover song, songbook to sort of attempt.
12:15
[SPEAKER_02]: to delve into trying.
12:18
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, I was very much like an an audience of Franco rip off.
12:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I mean, I just I emulated her because that's all that was such a huge part of my, you know, sort of my inspiration to put out music just as a performer.
12:35
[SPEAKER_02]: So, I emulated her a lot at the beginning and then, you know, as you
12:41
[SPEAKER_02]: as you kind of sort through how songs go and what it feels like to write some things and then play them in front of people, you kind of hone in on that stuff.
12:54
[SPEAKER_02]: And Whiskey Town and Wilco played a huge role, Amy Mann, songwriters like that.
13:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I was a huge Natalie Merchant fan and Paul Cole fan in the late 90s and all of those influences just kind of,
13:09
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, music and I was an acoustic guitar with words and so I really believe it was sort of rooted in in the folk genre originally they were all just me working out sort of my angst and my own sort of insecure existence as a teenager and as a as a woman in young woman in early 20s.
13:32
[SPEAKER_02]: So that was sort of my folk music was sort of my vehicle there.
13:36
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's all that area of my life is a bit gray in its details.
13:41
[SPEAKER_02]: But I was obsessed with music and any chance to play a few songs, any chance to listen to music.
13:49
[SPEAKER_02]: I took, which I think is probably how a lot of people feel.
13:53
[SPEAKER_04]: I want to talk about your sound, which is difficult to describe.
13:57
[SPEAKER_04]: But I think undeniably influential all across folk and Americana.
14:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, God.
14:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I mean, are you conscious of it?
14:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
14:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah.
14:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And sorry to sound like a broken record, but I mean, on you played a huge role in that.
14:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I, the first song I learned strumming technique was closer to fine by the end of co-girls.
14:21
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like that was a hard song.
14:23
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, that's a that's a hard song to learn.
14:24
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're just learning guitar and it's snappy.
14:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and you really have to know strumming to or learn strumming to play that song because the the guitar is such a huge part of the song, I mean you can't play it without learning the guitar part and then on he was a huge
14:42
[SPEAKER_02]: influence.
14:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And I most of my first record failure, which was really my gateway to actually having, you know, playing for people and touring and being on TV and all that stuff that came and being able to play make more records after that, that whole record, many of those songs are an alternate tuneings and then, of course, when I started to tour it live, you're with a band and you have two guitars with you and you can't spend five minutes in between songs.
15:07
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, changing tuning.
15:09
[SPEAKER_02]: So I just played those learn to play those songs in standard tuning, but my guitar playing really evolved when I was young.
15:17
[SPEAKER_02]: I was really percussive like on me and I learned to play her song.
15:20
[SPEAKER_02]: So I learned to play that way.
15:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I became quite, you know, much more methodical.
15:27
[SPEAKER_02]: I became the rhythm guitar player in, you know, essentially my music.
15:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And then as things have evolved, I become much better at finger picking.
15:37
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think what I'm really good at is a guitar players.
15:41
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm a really,
15:42
[SPEAKER_02]: consistent, I have a, I have a built in sort of meter within my, my playing style.
15:49
[SPEAKER_02]: So when I go into the studio, I have, you know, I generally do play rhythm guitar, because without me playing the song sort of doesn't have its, have its anchor.
16:02
[SPEAKER_04]: The engine is you.
16:03
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
16:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
16:15
[SPEAKER_04]: moment of personal revelation.
16:17
[SPEAKER_04]: The first song that I learned to plan guitar was in state.
16:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my god, what?
16:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And who?
16:26
[SPEAKER_04]: I am such a massive fan.
16:28
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm just going to try not to freak you out with my huge fandom.
16:31
[SPEAKER_04]: Something that sticks out to me about that song, even today, is it's so sharply observed.
16:38
[SPEAKER_04]: And you are somebody who has a Mac for reading people.
16:42
[SPEAKER_04]: Sometimes like very critically, it's often really funny.
16:46
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm sure that's not a skill that appeared
16:49
[SPEAKER_04]: at the age of 17 or 18 when you were writing songs.
16:53
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, have you always been someone who's been observing and reading people and like how have you sharpened your skills of describing other people and yourself?
17:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think at the beginning I was, I was the,
17:05
[SPEAKER_02]: the two opposite ends in that I was so incredibly earnest and vulnerable in my, like, please notice me, please let me play a show.
17:18
[SPEAKER_02]: But also, I had very early on established a very,
17:25
[SPEAKER_02]: a very protective armor.
17:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And my armor, like most people, is their self-deprecation and their humor.
17:35
[SPEAKER_02]: They use humor to diffuse the intensity of feeling vulnerable.
17:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And so those are my two personas.
17:42
[SPEAKER_02]: That's who I am, but those are my two personas.
17:55
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm a little spicy and a little bite.
17:59
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a bit of a bite and that's my sort of like aha.
18:05
[SPEAKER_02]: I just want to fit in here and I'm sort of elbowing my way up to the podium.
18:14
[SPEAKER_02]: And at the same time, I'm the first person
18:22
[SPEAKER_02]: sense of importance by kind of deflating myself at the same time just to feel like people don't think I'd take myself so seriously.
18:29
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's that humor of that kind of off the cuff thing, and I think it's because I just my parents were in the foreign service.
18:37
[SPEAKER_02]: I was thrown into big social situations at a very young age and I just learned to always be able to talk to
18:50
[SPEAKER_02]: that that was just something that I learned to do.
18:52
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think I was in adult conversations at a very young age where I learned that if you were kind of funny and mature in your humor, it garnered, you know, indierment from people.
19:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I've always used humor and sarcasm and to sort of add a quick jab at the end of something else feels natural to me.
19:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Not at all.
19:21
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not severely introverted, but I, someone saying the same thing to me the day, like, I am really at home with myself.
19:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I really used to being alone.
19:34
[SPEAKER_02]: I like being alone.
19:36
[SPEAKER_02]: I like making meals for myself.
19:38
[SPEAKER_02]: I like nights where it's just me.
19:40
[SPEAKER_02]: I will say I've gotten used to having a dog in the house.
19:43
[SPEAKER_02]: So if it was just me with no animals, I would feel profoundly unsatisfied.
19:50
[SPEAKER_02]: But one of the reasons I think my husband and I are so, well, suited for each other is because we're very independent people and he's very comfortable being on his own and I'm very comfortable being on my own.
20:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And I really need
20:05
[SPEAKER_02]: alone time, not just to create and to be a writer of whatever it is I do, but being on, it sounds, I don't mean to sound like this is fake, it's not fake.
20:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm very show up burnously and I always try and be myself, but being in music and being on tour and being
20:32
[SPEAKER_02]: doing interviews and talking to people after shows, like, I have to be on.
20:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And that doesn't mean that I'm not me, but I have another gear and that other gear is like, I just want to be alone and I don't want to fucking answer emails and I don't want to talk to people and I just want to go for a long walks and be in a garden.
20:54
[SPEAKER_02]: I do things, my creative habits outside of music are pretty solitary exercises.
21:01
[SPEAKER_04]: I want to learn.
21:02
[SPEAKER_04]: How did you get into quilting?
21:04
[SPEAKER_02]: I also wanted to learn and so I found a place near where I was living at the time where you do a little course and you go once a week and they help you
21:15
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, if you want to have a sewing machine, they help you understand like how to even just thread it and how to set it up and then you just start with like a couple of stitches and a couple of pat like a little you know a pat a simple pattern and it you you're taught how to measure and how to cut and then from there if you kind of have the basics, you can kind of teach yourself and you know mistakes or part of learning anything and so you make mistakes and you kind of figure out how to fix them and.
21:43
[SPEAKER_02]: I find it like, I love puzzles, I love puzzles and quilts and that's sort of my, for some reason, my brain really enjoys that type of active sort of or inactive activity, I guess I don't know what it's called.
22:04
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like spatial math where you can make your own world.
22:08
[SPEAKER_04]: I want to jump to a moment in your history as an artist and person that I think a lot of our listeners will be curious about the 2014 Ish Quitter's Café era.
22:22
[SPEAKER_04]: Can you talk about what went into the decision to leave music behind for a period of time?
22:27
[SPEAKER_04]: And how did the challenges of running up Café like sit with you after years of being on the road?
22:34
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, how was your brain operating differently during that time?
22:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, my first job was working at Starbucks in downtown Ottawa, and it was in the late 90s when the machines were all manual still, and Starbucks was kind of the cool coffee shop, but it really was actually, even though it was, you know,
22:59
[SPEAKER_02]: it still didn't have this sort of big corporate chain feel.
23:02
[SPEAKER_02]: It was still very much like came in and people were excited because it was good coffee and it was a company that was really actually nurturing the neighborhood coffee shop culture.
23:14
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I had such a positive experience with that that it felt and hospitality and serving was something I really enjoyed doing before
23:27
[SPEAKER_02]: It was a great job and the people who were part of my life really took me under their wing at those early years of my life.
23:37
[SPEAKER_02]: I credit them for helping me get on my way where I was going.
23:42
[SPEAKER_02]: So when I was really burned out from music, I had gone through, I'd put out a record called Voyager in 2012.
23:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And the truth is, I think around the time that that album even was released, I was already experiencing clinical depression, which I didn't know.
23:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And I, you know, is still just trying to move forward.
24:02
[SPEAKER_02]: And I had
24:04
[SPEAKER_02]: for years I'd been playing with my then husband Colin, who was always on stage with me.
24:10
[SPEAKER_02]: He was a huge part of why things felt stable when I was in these new sort of very intense, highly pressured in circumstances, like playing on the Letterman show five times.
24:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, playing let like just he was there going like, you know, he was sort of the steady hand.
24:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And when we split up, I think it
24:32
[SPEAKER_02]: But the end of that relationship was much harder than I was giving it credit.
24:41
[SPEAKER_02]: for.
24:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And so when I put out for your, he was no longer my husband and we weren't speaking because we, you know, had broken up.
24:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And I became clinically depressed and, and so taking a break from music, I got through that album cycle, but I felt generally quite awful about myself.
24:59
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't feel good about my work.
25:01
[SPEAKER_02]: I always felt inadequate.
25:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And
25:05
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, the truth is I was also in a relationship with somebody whose career could not be more like it was blowing up to the point where I was dating a guy named Justin Vernon and he was in a band called Boni Verre, he is Boni Verre and you know, it was very hard to manage my own expectations of my own trajectory, but also.
25:34
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, not feel poorly when your boyfriend calls you and he's just played in Melbourne to 15,000 people.
25:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And you're like, I'm in Santa Barbara and I'm playing a venue that holds 800 people and only like 90 people showed up.
25:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, it was a tough,
25:53
[SPEAKER_02]: It was tough to bounce at, because on one side, of course, you're thrilled for that person if you couldn't, but your own cup is sort of like running a little empty and you're like, what am I doing wrong and I am I just not very good, maybe this isn't maybe I'm just not very good at this and I, you know, when you're not well, those those voices are very, you they're very easy to, they consume you and they they can take over.
26:19
[SPEAKER_02]: So I moved back to my relationship with Justin and did.
26:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And I moved back to Ottawa where my family was.
26:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was able to buy a nice little bungalow and...
26:35
[SPEAKER_02]: I thought, you know, I'd take some time and just recover and get well.
26:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was on my way to being well again, and thanks to a great doctor and anti-depressants.
26:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And then shout out, yeah.
26:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, look, we can make a whole lot of that out to mental health.
26:53
[SPEAKER_04]: I am a firm believer and evangelist for.
26:57
[SPEAKER_04]: we have to take our mental health as seriously as our physical health because it's all, yeah, interconnected.
27:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Sure is.
27:05
[SPEAKER_02]: We could have a whole other podcast episode about that.
27:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
27:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, so every time I picked up the guitar to kind of take in some time, I moved, I was better, and every time I picked up a guitar to try and quote unquote right,
27:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I was kind of back in those few years around that Voyager record and sort of, because you, you know, you roommate, your songs are, my songs are drawn from, you know, what has transpired in my life in the sort of most recent memory.
27:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just was like, well, I don't want to write about this.
27:48
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to get better from this.
27:49
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to go back in there.
27:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it just made,
27:53
[SPEAKER_02]: It made it pretty easy every time I picked up the guitar I was like, I, this feels like territory that I, I am working very, I am very happy to say I'm on the other side of and I don't want to go back there.
28:05
[SPEAKER_02]: So the coffee shop.
28:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Just felt like an easy thing like I, I don't know.
28:12
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a very bad relationship with risk, which is that I don't worry about risk.
28:17
[SPEAKER_02]: I, those conversations don't come into my head.
28:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And this beautiful little building that I drove by when after I'd moved to Stitzville, Ontario, had a forensic sign out front one morning, like six months after I'd moved there.
28:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, that's the building.
28:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, that's where I would put a coffee shop and I called the number.
28:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And before you knew it, I was doing it.
28:40
[SPEAKER_02]: that would be in May of 2014 and in October of 2014, we opened our doors and and then began eight years of building an incredible business and building a different life and the things that I learned from running that, sorry for the longest answer of all time.
28:59
[SPEAKER_04]: no, I'm loving it.
29:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
29:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Was that that I really loved hospitality.
29:05
[SPEAKER_02]: I really knew how to do it.
29:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was standing back in the place that I was when I first started my adult life, which was I was in a coffee shop and I was this time the person, you know, taking other people under my
29:29
[SPEAKER_02]: play good music in the in the store how to how to curate a place how to work hard and and be accountable all things that I had people show me and so I felt like a bit of a pay it forward moment owning that coffee shop and I was I was really every day I walked into that business and I felt deeply proud of what I had done.
29:51
[SPEAKER_02]: It was hard work you know seven days a week open at seven a
29:58
[SPEAKER_02]: it becomes everything.
29:59
[SPEAKER_02]: In the same way music was, so it was just a different kind of everything, and it was really fulfilling.
30:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you for talking about that time in your life.
30:08
[SPEAKER_04]: I just want to reflect back to you that like, I know you were just making the best decisions for your life at the time, but for myself and especially other female songwriters that I have come up with, the choices that you've made have been such a beacon of like a woman's songwriter claiming,
30:24
[SPEAKER_04]: her own journey and setting boundaries and choosing your own life over the expectations of the industry.
30:32
[SPEAKER_04]: So I'm really grateful for the example that you've set in the way that you've managed your career.
30:55
[SPEAKER_04]: But I want to get into total freedom because that album was like just such an incredible comeback record and I remember when it was announced you were going to be making another album, how did you know it was time to come back?
31:06
[SPEAKER_04]: What did it feel like to be performing again?
31:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I mean, I have to credit Marin Morris and Ian Fitchock for being the gateway back because she, her manager called out of the blue.
31:21
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't know Marin and I knew she had a, you know, I knew the, notionally I knew the, the big, like,
31:27
[SPEAKER_02]: my church song because it was everywhere.
31:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't know Ian Fitzgerald and I was asked if I would come down to Nashville and write for two days.
31:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was something I had not had in my life.
31:38
[SPEAKER_02]: I was not a co-writer.
31:39
[SPEAKER_02]: I wasn't part of like a Nashville writing experience.
31:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And I thought, well, what do I have to lose?
31:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Like we try stuff and it doesn't work out.
31:46
[SPEAKER_02]: So,
31:48
[SPEAKER_02]: I took a little weekend break from the coffee shop and flew down there and just ended up having two days of feeling like I was in a like I was back in the nest a little bit like the exercise of writing music was really.
32:05
[SPEAKER_02]: easy and a natural state of being and incredibly satisfying.
32:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And interestingly, one of the songs that, you know, when you, I guess when you show up to corridors, like, well, what do I have to offer?
32:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I actually got out notebooks from around the time that we just talked about when I was trying to...
32:25
[SPEAKER_02]: continue to move forward from a very difficult and dark period of time for me.
32:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And they here were these pretty dark, you know, I don't know, like attempts at, you know, working through my depression in lyrics.
32:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And one of them was a song called Good Woman that I had written.
32:48
[SPEAKER_02]: I hadn't
32:53
[SPEAKER_02]: In my broken hearted state, the worst break, heartbreak I'd ever had, I wrote this song about like, the the truest love I had wanted to be in and like what I was prepared to have given to this relationship that didn't work.
33:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I brought that song because I just thought, well, this, I know this is good writing, I just can't do it, like I can't do it.
33:18
[SPEAKER_02]: And
33:19
[SPEAKER_02]: I ended up being a song that Ian and Marin were happy to work on and she made it hers and it flipped the switch of this being a song that was rooted in a really painful time to like a song about like celebrating being in love with someone and like it working and it being you know a happy story so it felt like a real
33:43
[SPEAKER_02]: like a really nice perspective shift and so when I came home from Nashville that week I was like I think I'm ready to start trying to write again and so slowly I tried to you know remove myself a little bit more from the coffee shop because you can't do both I mean it's just so full time to run a business like that and I started writing and the first one of the first songs that
34:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was the song that I really needed to write to kind of what's the word to wipe the slate clean where I got to write a song about Colin and about you know how life.
34:27
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you turn all these pages and move all through all these chapters of your life, and then you look back and you realize, holy moly, like, I'm in such a different place than I was five, 10 years ago, and you've realized some of the things that were really hard were also the things that you cherish the most because they were things that you got through.
34:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And when you tell stories about, you know, with I'm sure you can relate to this,
34:57
[SPEAKER_02]: the adversity of being on the road is the thing that also binds you for for the rest of your lives, you know, there's always a hilarious story about like something that was really hard and unfortunate and the worst case scenarios are always the ones that you end up recounting and laughing about.
35:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
35:19
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's that's where that song showed up from and
35:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I got to sort of in a song, tell Colin how much I loved him and how grateful I was that he had been in my life when that was all happening because I couldn't have done it without him and then that just sort of set me on my way and you know I've written a lot of songs since then that I realize aren't that great but at the moment you're writing you just feel so.
35:47
[SPEAKER_02]: like you're pouring your heart out again and you're finding that place for something just resonates in your stall and and so that that's been my food of late.
35:58
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm very thankful, you know.
36:02
[SPEAKER_04]: I love that.
36:03
[SPEAKER_04]: I also love the song where the the title track, I guess, which is birds on a feeder, that chorus, which changes as it repeats goes, I got total freedom, no one to need and then it changes to I've got total freedom, no one to need me.
36:18
[SPEAKER_04]: What is your relationship like now with being dependent on others, having other people like closely interconnected with you, what's that like for you now.
36:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Mmm.
36:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Goof.
36:29
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a good question.
36:30
[SPEAKER_02]: She's girl.
36:31
[SPEAKER_02]: You really listen to that fucking song.
36:33
[SPEAKER_02]: I really do.
36:37
[SPEAKER_02]: God.
36:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, maybe this is the way to answer it as, you know, when I quit music, I kind of, you kind of take a part in your brick house, brick by brick, and...
36:52
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're not out there working, you can't afford to have an agent, you can't afford to have a manager.
36:59
[SPEAKER_02]: You have people who help you every day on the road, like a sound person and a guitar player.
37:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, all these people are part of your team and when you stop doing it.
37:13
[SPEAKER_02]: the team, all of your little bricks have to go and find other ways of finding purpose in their own lives.
37:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And so you have to build that up again.
37:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And there is it is true.
37:26
[SPEAKER_02]: I have felt in the last year to like it's daunting making the leap into having to rebuild your fortress because
37:40
[SPEAKER_02]: You're dependent, you become dependent on other people to do this and they are also making a commitment to you, both in their, you know, financially and in the time that they are spending either away from their families or the hard work they put in at their desk every day and it's, it's, it's, you know, we all are here because we obviously love doing something and you don't,
38:10
[SPEAKER_02]: There's, there's no formula.
38:11
[SPEAKER_02]: You just have to go and try things to know if it's going to work or not, but like, you know, I worked with Jason as well on this last record and one thing that I realized very quickly was like, this guy has a lot of people in his team and he needs them because he's playing a lot of shows and he's doing a lot of projects and I was like, oh my god, am I.
38:34
[SPEAKER_02]: am I rebuilding that for myself, not at his level, but in my own way.
38:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's a lot of responsibility and pressure to carry when you're like, but I just want to play songs.
38:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, yeah.
38:47
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, the birds on a feeder thing is like, my freeman in Paris, like, you know, it was, I remember this is hilarious.
38:56
[SPEAKER_02]: The day the last day quitters was open.
38:58
[SPEAKER_02]: We, you know, we announced that we were handing the keys over to a new, new owner.
39:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And the last day, you know, I was really exhausted.
39:06
[SPEAKER_02]: It was a hard couple of years running a business through the pandemic.
39:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And oh yeah, the last day, we had sort of invited all these people to drop in.
39:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And it would be like an open house and thanks everyone.
39:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was sitting in my driveway and I put on a free man and Paris.
39:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was just was like,
39:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I'm doing the right thing because I, you know, I was having I was living that song in that day and birds on a feeder is kind of the same thing.
39:36
[SPEAKER_02]: It was my it was my like I've exited the pressures and commitments of of this music life.
39:47
[SPEAKER_02]: that is a great privilege and a joy, but it requires a substantial amount of commitment and you have to commit for the people who commit to you.
39:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
39:58
[SPEAKER_02]: So that song means a lot to, I really still love that song.
40:02
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't play very often, but it's actually one of my favorite songs I've ever written.
40:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Because it's a great song.
40:06
[SPEAKER_02]: It really captured me in that moment.
40:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
40:09
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I do want to talk about billionaire starting with the album cover.
40:14
[SPEAKER_04]: It feels like a brighter, more electric look than you've had in past album covers.
40:20
[SPEAKER_04]: How did that photo come about?
40:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh my god, you have crazy questions.
40:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like you've looked into my brain and you know that there are stories in there.
40:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so I have the incredible, I have this incredible guy that works with me and a guy named Mike Mike done and Mike incredibly also lives in Orlando, Florida and I had moved to St.
40:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Petersburg and he just came up to me one day at a show and introduced himself and took a picture of me and He said I can make videos for you.
40:54
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we've been working together ever since and we shot a bunch of photos for the new album.
41:00
[SPEAKER_02]: And there was just something in the pictures that I did not see my album cover, you know, I didn't know what it was, but it wasn't there might take some great shots of me and I was, you know, we worked, you know, he's he's incredibly good at his job, but I just didn't see the album cover.
41:18
[SPEAKER_02]: And out of the blue, a young woman named Riley, who used to work for me at Quitter's Coffee, who was a photographer, aspiring photographer, and did actually did a lot of photos for Quitter's for our social media and stuff like that.
41:35
[SPEAKER_02]: She reached out to me at a blue.
41:36
[SPEAKER_02]: She said, I'm in town visiting my mom who's here for the winter.
41:39
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd love to see you.
41:44
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't want to put any pressure on her.
41:48
[SPEAKER_02]: I just thought I wonder if she could take my picture and it was actually Matt Sussich, your friend Matt Sussich, our friend.
41:53
[SPEAKER_02]: That's too much.
41:54
[UNKNOWN]: Ooh.
41:55
[SPEAKER_02]: I talked to him and I was like, I just, I'm so bombed I, I'm about these photos because I just, I, I love what he did, but it's not there and he was like, don't you just have a friend who could just take a couple super casual photos of you?
42:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like,
42:11
[SPEAKER_02]: My friend Riley just came to town, maybe I should just, he said, just ask her like, what's the worst I can happen?
42:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we ended up hanging out for an afternoon and I took her to a beach near my house and she just shot those pictures in 20 minutes.
42:26
[SPEAKER_02]: She shot those pictures.
42:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And and she sent them to me the next day and I was like there it is there's my album cover like it was so easy to see it you can feel the spontaneity in the image I think it's really energizing as an introduction to the album now cool and one of the things that she said she said I just want you to move like just walk.
42:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, twirl, she's like, I know it's silly, but just twirl, like, let's just, let's just be at the beach together and it worked.
42:56
[SPEAKER_02]: It took 20 minutes and I played her on the camera.
43:02
[SPEAKER_04]: You're welcome to cry.
43:03
[SPEAKER_01]: I, before we took the pictures, I played her, that song billionaire, yeah, which is about our dear friend Amanda, she is Riley remains.
43:16
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the people I'm still most tethered to from my coffee shop days and this incredibly all these incredible young people came and worked for me and they all went on to do these beautiful things in their young adult lives and Riley Riley and Amanda the person who the song is about had driven down in 2019 to see me play at the rhyme in Nashville and so there's a picture of the three of us backstage at the rhyme in which was like one of the true
43:44
[SPEAKER_02]: truly satisfying moments in my adult life where... I'll talk just a bit about it.
43:52
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
43:55
[SPEAKER_04]: take your time.
43:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you so much for sharing this.
43:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Or I was in this place that is so huge in it's musical relevance and to be there and playing was, you know, such an honor.
44:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And to then have these two young women who worked for me in my coffee shop life, drive down and witness it and to
44:17
[SPEAKER_01]: just to see that that was part of my life too and to feel like they were a part of my world in that moment was so satisfying.
44:28
[SPEAKER_04]: And then to have incredibly powerful song, it's very powerful song.
44:33
[SPEAKER_02]: And then to have Riley end up taking the picture that that was the cover
44:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I'm just so emotional because it's the release day today and it's so thankful to all these people who have seen me through difficult times and who also make me feel like I have played an important role in their lives too.
45:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And when Amanda died, it just reminded me how
45:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe tomorrow will be my day and I will be so thankful to the people who showed up for me and I hope that they know that I showed up for them.
45:26
[SPEAKER_02]: I hope they feel that way too.
45:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And, uh, and that's the story of that cover.
45:31
[SPEAKER_02]: There you go.
45:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Aren't you glad you asked?
45:33
[SPEAKER_04]: I am, but I'm sorry that I made you cry.
45:36
[SPEAKER_04]: But it, I was okay.
45:37
[SPEAKER_04]: It's, it's a very inspiring image.
45:39
[SPEAKER_04]: I did not, I did not, I did not cry.
45:40
[SPEAKER_02]: I did not cry for the first 30 years of my life.
45:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I'm just making up the last time that I catch a very, very comfortable with it now.
45:54
[SPEAKER_04]: I wanted to talk about the title track anyway, because there's such a potent metaphor.
46:01
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a lot about the history of your smile and kind of storing things in someone else's cloud.
46:07
[SPEAKER_04]: It feels very relatable that feeling that technology is starting to take some of the things that are important to us.
46:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Was this song kind of an attempt to reclaim those intangible things
46:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe a little bit.
46:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I remember writing in Glenn Furn, the this line for the song about how to go and and the online street view used to crack a stop.
46:34
[SPEAKER_02]: It was used to adding in your slippers and with the sign of me's cat with the sign of me's cat and then I wrote and it's not up there anymore and someone came to show their like actually it is you can go back into the thing and I was like don't fucking ruin it for me buddy
46:52
[SPEAKER_02]: No.
46:53
[SPEAKER_04]: Someone that wants to come to a show and and prove you wrong.
46:56
[SPEAKER_02]: No, no.
46:56
[SPEAKER_02]: It was very, it was very good intention.
46:59
[SPEAKER_02]: It was actually hilarious.
47:01
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, I know you're right.
47:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Just cut it out.
47:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I was like, I went home.
47:06
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, I should look that up.
47:09
[SPEAKER_02]: There he was.
47:11
[SPEAKER_02]: I think writing that in my old life like before quitting I would have never.
47:16
[SPEAKER_02]: It was like, well, that's like, you know, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's new country where you talk about like, you know, and you were all ticked all gay, you know, looking at a profile.
47:27
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, I wouldn't have to write a lyric like that.
47:29
[SPEAKER_02]: But then I just was so uninhibited by like, you know, these, these things.
47:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And so for billionaire.
47:39
[SPEAKER_02]: I just thought it was a kind of a beautiful metaphor, and yes, it was, you know, yes, it's a reference to the fact that
47:45
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, my friend Amanda had all these pictures of her life and they were, you know, they were not, they're not sitting in boxes as prints that you got made, which was, you know, how someone my age like 47 like my parents have boxes of photos sitting somewhere like her photos are up in the sky somewhere.
48:04
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, they're not in the sky.
48:05
[SPEAKER_02]: They're in a data center, but, but the cloud.
48:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but they're in the cloud and and I think mostly I was trying to.
48:15
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, figure out where are all these things of hers so I can feel close to her.
48:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And I know that's how her family feels too, that that's how, you know, when you've lost someone and you need to be feel close to them, you just hang on to these things where are they?
48:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And so for Amanda, there's a lot of photos of her living in a cloud.
48:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, you've already mentioned that you worked with Jason Isbel on billionaire.
48:43
[SPEAKER_04]: What is his process like in the studio?
48:46
[SPEAKER_04]: What was the vibes?
48:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I learned a tremendous amount from Jason in a very short period of time, which is that
48:56
[SPEAKER_02]: He does not, and maybe this isn't true about him making other records, but he doesn't have a minute to spare and waste.
49:02
[SPEAKER_02]: He's like, we're here.
49:03
[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to record.
49:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's get this done.
49:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And I, I've always been a sort of a tinker.
49:09
[SPEAKER_02]: I need to, you know, take time to hear things.
49:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And he was kind of like, no, we don't listen to things between sessions.
49:16
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't do pre-production.
49:18
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't need
49:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And that made me uncomfortable many times and not because it tested me in my comfort so much as, well, it has to be perfect and it has to be exactly the way that I imagine and if I'm not hearing things the way that I think they were supposed to sound like we have to go back to the drawing board and he first of all does not have the time to do that a hundred times.
49:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And also what was so great about that was it really pushed me to go, no, no, all of the things that are imperfect about maybe a delivery are perfect.
50:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Like this is you, and stop trying to
50:05
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, find the the most perfect thing like you wrote the song.
50:10
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a great song.
50:11
[SPEAKER_02]: We're all here.
50:12
[SPEAKER_02]: We're all we're all going to support you.
50:14
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm really thankful because you know, I felt very vulnerable going into a studio with
50:22
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, eight people that I never met before and they all knew each other.
50:25
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, all the members of foreigner unit had played together and I didn't know anyone.
50:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it was initially hard.
50:36
[SPEAKER_02]: But the experience was like watching those guys do a take and sometimes no click track
50:50
[SPEAKER_02]: that is rooted in a lot of the values or musical sort of values that I thought I had.
50:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And he brought those back into my orbit and I'm incredibly thankful for the people that he brought to the studio to support me and is playing unbelievable.
51:11
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, many times those were just one single past live off the floor.
51:16
[SPEAKER_02]: There was,
51:17
[SPEAKER_02]: not a lot of, if any, fixing or so, this, impressive.
51:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that's wild to me.
51:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Can we zoom in on one particular song?
51:28
[SPEAKER_04]: I believe Little Pink Door was all a one take.
51:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
51:33
[SPEAKER_04]: How did you set up for that recording and what was the experience like making that like really intimate track?
51:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, Gina Johnson, the co-producer, she and I had tried to record that song with me just solo acoustic in the studio.
51:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And because I had written that song and basically recorded it immediately to like my voice memo app,
51:59
[SPEAKER_02]: There existed a version of it that had been the only version I'd ever known.
52:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And obviously, I'm not going to record an album at Sound Emporium in Nashville, and then just add the voice memo from my phone.
52:09
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I guess you could.
52:11
[SPEAKER_04]: But I think a lot of musicians get attached to demos in that way.
52:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah.
52:14
[SPEAKER_04]: I've been warned against demoitis, but I like that.
52:17
[SPEAKER_02]: No, chasing the demo is a real thing.
52:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And actually, that's why Jason also said, like, let's not, we're not listening to stuff in between because you get attached to something that is, that's not worth getting attached to.
52:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you don't have to.
52:33
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was also a huge learning experience for me.
52:38
[SPEAKER_02]: I still needed to hear some things.
52:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And it helped me kind of go I'd like to record this song like to root and we did and he was very generous and making time to do that.
52:47
[SPEAKER_02]: But we I just found it very hard to just sit in front of a microphone and just try and do a version of that song that captured the same intimacy and magic in my mind that was there when I just wrote it and.
53:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Then Gina suggested she said, let's set up you in one spot and Jason and Jen Gunderman on keyboards and you guys can just play it and then it became easy.
53:14
[SPEAKER_02]: I think I just didn't feel so self-conscious that I wasn't playing it well because they had I could play it like I was playing it live.
53:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Well I played it live and it's just a single pass and yeah and it just
53:28
[SPEAKER_02]: It was like an exhale, because I love that song, but I, you know, you don't want to, you want to, what's the word?
53:35
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't want to hit something over the head and buried into the ground, like trying to take all those sort of intimacy and magic of the, what's the word I'm looking for.
53:55
[SPEAKER_02]: thinking something for the first couple times, like that's where the magic is and and the hard and sort of the like excitement of this new song that you're excited to play and and so Gina five stars five gold stars she she she got she got me there which is great.
54:14
[SPEAKER_04]: I want to come back to a phrase that you said a few minutes ago that I think is on the record trying to find something perfect.
54:22
[SPEAKER_04]: In the song when the truth comes out, the second verse is like a kind of Christopher Columbus metaphor and please correct me if I'm overeating.
54:30
[SPEAKER_04]: But what I took away from that and found very relatable is that being...
54:35
[SPEAKER_04]: a woman visible in the public eye to any degree can feel like being a new world for other people to discover.
54:44
[SPEAKER_04]: Does that resonate with you?
54:45
[SPEAKER_04]: And do you feel like it is a struggle to reclaim your personhood at times?
54:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Mm.
54:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Gosh, big question, let's see.
54:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Sorry.
54:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Whew.
54:59
[SPEAKER_02]: I think if I were younger,
55:04
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel less so today, I think it's maybe it's an age thing, but I know that I have always shown up in as authentically a way as possible in life with people.
55:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I most certainly have gotten a lot of things wrong.
55:30
[SPEAKER_02]: But you can't get things right if you don't know what wrong looks like and chasing a version of perfect.
55:40
[SPEAKER_02]: is something I think we all catch ourselves trying to do at times.
55:45
[SPEAKER_02]: We see a picture of ourselves on stage and we're like, do I really look like that?
55:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah.
55:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And then you always want to picture that to you seems the most flattering.
55:55
[SPEAKER_02]: That's normal and natural.
55:57
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think that's a bad thing.
55:59
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's normal.
56:00
[SPEAKER_02]: We want people to see us in our best light.
56:02
[SPEAKER_02]: And getting older, you just, you,
56:08
[SPEAKER_02]: You care less about somebody mislabling you and maybe making false assumptions about you, because we've all been guilty of making false assumptions and the older I get, the more I'm prepared to go, you know, if you're prepared to hold a garage or,
56:30
[SPEAKER_02]: think ill of me or have a sort of some righteous sort of judgment about either a photo or the last time we saw each other when who knows what was going on, have at it because, you know, life's short, we get a lot of things wrong, and I really believe in the end.
56:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Everyone's doing their best.
56:54
[SPEAKER_02]: No one's no one's really an evil person, and there are some exceptions.
56:58
[SPEAKER_02]: No one is really a needful person, generally.
57:00
[SPEAKER_02]: They, um, and, and I care so much less about, you know, somebody reviewing something of mine poorly.
57:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, that's happened.
57:14
[SPEAKER_02]: That's happened many times.
57:15
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not going to kill me.
57:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And somebody, you know, thinking I'm an asshole, it's not going to kill me.
57:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I'm sorry that happened.
57:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sorry, we had a shitty exchange, you know, whatever.
57:32
[SPEAKER_02]: So I guess I know that I have shown up to do things in earnest in my life, even when I was having a bad day or when I didn't feel like I had time for someone or I took too long to pay an invoice or your email got lost, but ultimately like,
57:55
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm pretty sure my track record is I can take a lot of pride and I think most people could probably do the same for themselves too and it's not about entitlement, it's just about like, oh, you know, you know, they'll carry that with you and I'm I think that's letting letting people go letting expectations go.
58:15
[SPEAKER_02]: and understanding that disappointments are part of life.
58:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And the sooner you can work through, just not letting them hold you hostage, the better off and the better your life will be.
58:27
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
58:28
[SPEAKER_04]: Hell yeah.
58:30
[SPEAKER_02]: That's my answer.
58:31
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a good one.
58:32
[SPEAKER_04]: On that note, if you could sit down for a cup of coffee with yourself on your first album cycle and tour,
58:42
[SPEAKER_04]: Is there any advice you would give yourself?
58:44
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, pay more attention to this and let that go.
58:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Ah, or like, this is what you really want to be focusing on.
58:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, God.
58:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, of course I would.
58:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Many things.
58:56
[SPEAKER_02]: But I also couldn't have done anything.
59:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I shouldn't have done anything differently, because that's just the, that was the, that was the hell I had to climb.
59:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think,
59:11
[SPEAKER_02]: My, some of my early regrets are just, you know, now I know I have like, you know, someone diagnosed me with ADD, you know, adult ADD.
59:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's, that's something that I've realized I did have many times in my life that actually made some things more challenging than they needed to be because I didn't have that sort of tool in my toolbox of knowing that.
59:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I would say maybe that was something I wish I'd known earlier because I think I would have been a lot more forgiving of myself and I would have realized the reason I was bad at certain things or drop the ball on certain things.
59:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Having that awareness really helps you realize like, oh, this just requires a lot more effort from me than it does certain people and I can not be myself up about it.
1:00:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And also, it's part of my superpower, you know, and it may have actually contributed to, it may have actually made my my period of clinical depression easier, but also, I was saying this to somebody the other day, like I'm so glad I went through clinical depression, it was the worst.
1:00:27
[SPEAKER_02]: episode in my life and it was suffering.
1:00:32
[SPEAKER_02]: The emotional pain that is associated with depression is true suffering and you wake up every morning hoping that the outcome will be different and it doesn't and to have gotten through that and to be well and to have that cloud lift and to be
1:00:55
[SPEAKER_02]: As soon as I turned the corner on it, I realized that I was so glad it had happened to me so that I could not only tell somebody how I got out of it in case it's useful for them, but also it just as equipped me for coping going forward because I was well and everything is much more manageable when you are well.
1:01:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I don't think I wouldn't change a thing.
1:01:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And yes, I wish I was better at accounting and I had kept to better, you know, I listened more when someone was trying to explain to me how publishing works and when the contracts that I signed, yeah, like, yes, I wish all those things, but that's not what happened.
1:01:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know,
1:01:44
[SPEAKER_02]: That's okay, because you can't get, you can't live life twice.
1:01:49
[SPEAKER_02]: You just got to hold on to the reins.
1:01:52
[SPEAKER_02]: And sometimes you got to let them go loose a little and just let the horse, like ride you into the fucking, I don't know, into the fence.
1:02:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, it happens.
1:02:02
[SPEAKER_04]: That is a beautiful and reassuring answer to here.
1:02:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Somehow we are coming up on an hour.
1:02:07
[SPEAKER_04]: I could pick your brain all day long.
1:02:10
[SPEAKER_04]: but I would like to wrap up with a lightning round if you're a game, just like a few super quick questions.
1:02:17
[SPEAKER_04]: There are not any sports questions, but I could go learn about sports quickly and then come back to you.
1:02:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Don't think too hard quick questions.
1:02:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, okay.
1:02:27
[SPEAKER_04]: What is your favorite pre-show beverage?
1:02:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Water, beautiful.
1:02:31
[SPEAKER_04]: Is there a beauty or skincare product that you cannot live without?
1:02:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, good.
1:02:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I don't, I, I buy these products, but I'm not a big, I, I, oh, I know what it is.
1:02:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Trader Joe's exfoliant scrub.
1:02:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, that is like cheap, cheerful, effective wizardry.
1:02:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, that's one of my favorites.
1:02:53
[SPEAKER_04]: What is an instrument you wish you knew how to play guitar base.
1:02:59
[SPEAKER_02]: The base is like Neptune to me.
1:03:02
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, how do you know it to play?
1:03:04
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so far, it's in another universe, the base.
1:03:08
[SPEAKER_02]: I wish I understood it.
1:03:10
[SPEAKER_04]: What is your favorite Tom Petty song?
1:03:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Crawl him back to you.
1:03:15
[SPEAKER_04]: What is your favorite Jason is, Belsong?
1:03:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Alabama Pines.
1:03:19
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a good one.
1:03:20
[SPEAKER_04]: What's your favorite thing about living in Florida?
1:03:23
[SPEAKER_02]: The Vitamin D. Yeah, the Sun.
1:03:29
[SPEAKER_04]: What is your bucket list vacation spot?
1:03:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Northern BC or Atlantic Canada.
1:03:36
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to go on one of those fishing charters where you go for two days and you catch like the most incredible salmon in one of the most remote rugged places and they
1:03:53
[SPEAKER_02]: They pack it all in ice free, they prep all the fish and you take it home and you have the most amazing fish for like two years that you can eat.
1:04:01
[SPEAKER_02]: That's my dream, one of my dream trips, a fishing trip.
1:04:06
[SPEAKER_02]: My drummers, my drummers thrilled about this.
1:04:08
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, we're going to go to gig somewhere in northern BC and I'm going to book us into a fishing lodge.
1:04:14
[SPEAKER_02]: And we're going to do two days of like salmon fishing.
1:04:16
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, I can see it.
1:04:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, that's my, that's my one of my dream trips.
1:04:19
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you have any secret talents?
1:04:23
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, yeah, that's a big one to keep things alive.
1:04:26
[SPEAKER_04]: And finally, what is a song you wish you wrote?
1:04:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I'm gonna say a song by Charlotte Cornfield.
1:04:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I love her.
1:04:37
[SPEAKER_04]: And I skateboarding by the lake makes me cry, even though I don't know how to skateboard and it's not really my life experience.
1:04:47
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to tell you which song it is.
1:04:48
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sorry that I know it's lightning around, but this is important.
1:04:51
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to get it right.
1:04:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Charlotte, cornfield.
1:04:55
[SPEAKER_02]: It's this one song at the end of this record.
1:04:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And when I heard it, I just felt like wow, it was so beautiful, walking with Rachel.
1:05:05
[SPEAKER_02]: It's such a great song truly.
1:05:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And my second pick would be cut and dry.
1:05:13
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that song and the same record of Kisharaka feels so good, but walking with Rachel.
1:05:18
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the song is so, it starts out and you're like, what the fuck's this about?
1:05:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And the second verse is like, oh, this is actually really really me in.
1:05:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And by the end you're like, this song is profound.
1:05:32
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so gentle in it's and it's approach, but it's so deeply profound.
1:05:41
[SPEAKER_04]: I would say the same about this new record billionaire.
1:05:44
[SPEAKER_04]: Happy release day.
1:05:45
[SPEAKER_04]: Everyone listen to this album.
1:05:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Every song has like a different aspect of what we love about a Kathleen Edwards record.
1:05:53
[SPEAKER_04]: It's so good and it's very fun.
1:05:55
[SPEAKER_04]: So thank you so much for coming on the pod on this very auspicious day.
1:05:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
1:05:59
[SPEAKER_02]: I appreciate having this amazing conversation about songs and music from somebody who's so thoughtful and caring.
1:06:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
1:06:06
[SPEAKER_02]: That was beautiful.
1:06:07
[SPEAKER_02]: I appreciate your time.
1:06:09
[SPEAKER_04]: You're a wonderful guest.
1:06:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Yay!
1:06:16
[SPEAKER_00]: This episode of Basic Folk was produced by Anthony Cabrera, Dietrich Strauss composes our music.
1:06:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Basic Folk is a production of the Bluegrass situation.
1:06:25
[SPEAKER_00]: You can find all of our episodes there.
1:06:27
[SPEAKER_00]: You can check us out on basicfolk.com.
1:06:30
[SPEAKER_00]: You can search for Basic Folk on the Series XM app.
1:06:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Look for us on folkalli.com or folkalli's mobile app.
1:06:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Or you can listen wherever you get podcasts.
1:06:41
[SPEAKER_00]: If you enjoyed this episode, perhaps you should share it with a friend.
1:06:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe that friend that left their high-pressure job to open their own business, and they are just love and life, send it to that friend.
1:06:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening all the way to the end.
1:06:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Tuck you next time.
1:06:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Bye!