On the beauty of ambiguity

You’ve spent the last few years getting your masters in music therapy. How do you find that that’s influenced your songwriting?

Because I work with a lot of people who are non-verbal, you really just have to be in the music with them, and that’s how you’re in conversation with them or in communication with them. So I’m able to enter that music-only zone and really immerse myself in it in a way that I’ve never been able to do before. I’m not self-conscious when I’m improvising with people anymore, because my job involves a lot of improvisation. I was always worried that I wasn’t skilled enough as a technical player to do that, but I’m finding that I’m stepping into the music experience intentionally and I’m bringing that home with me, which is good.

I feel like I am also more keenly aware of the neurological processes of entering flow state. I’m finding that I’m able to create an environment in which all is conducive to going into that. I have such limited time. I became a mother, and I have these very short bursts of time and I feel like I’m able to maximize it now, which is cool.

When you have a block of free time, how do you maximize that and force yourself into the flow state?

If the inspiration’s not coming, I can’t force it. I kind of just walk away. But I think my new thing is that I open myself up to more opportunities to let it overtake me. I think my heart is just more open and I’m a better listener now that I’ve been doing this work in music therapy. It’s very spiritual, where you see music as this amazing way for us all to be connected. So I think that I am just embracing music in a way that I haven’t before.

Have you noticed your songwriting change since you became a mother?

I feel like I’ve grown a lot as a person, kind of like the Grinch at the end of the movie, when his heart expands. I think my openness and my empathy has increased massively, and also [because of] the work that I’m doing. So I think I’m able to be more open and maybe censor myself a little bit less, to be kinder to myself, and to welcome all these crazy experiences and feelings. I’m also just getting older, so I can’t really tell what it is, if it’s just age and wisdom or if it’s motherhood that’s increased my wisdom.

Your new record is your seventh album in the last 15 years, and they’ve all been very autobiographical. How has it felt putting your life out there in your music and your listeners witnessing your life changing over that time? There are people who have grown and changed with you. Do you think about that a lot?

I think about it when people get in touch with me and they talk about where they were when they were listening to a specific record and how they were going through the same thing. I guess I don’t think about it enough. It is weird to have everybody know basically exactly what’s happening with me and how I feel at all times. But it’s also kind of beautiful because I connect with people that I’ve never met before, because they can put themselves right there [with me]. When I meet fans or people who like my music and have for a long time, it feels like we’re old friends, even though I don’t know them at all and they have just an idea of me.

Late Great in particular is incredibly personal and I find it very painful to listen to sometimes. I actually find myself having a hard time getting through it. How do you feel in these days right now, right before the release, knowing that soon everyone is going to hear something very heavy that you wrote?

I think I was trying not to think about it. I was like, “Oh, it’s fine. It’s just a record.” But it’s really intense! I’ve been thinking about it more lately and I’m pretty freaked out about it. But what are you going to do?

What part of it freaks you out the most?

I don’t know. I just worry. I tell stories very vaguely and I want to keep it that way. I worry that people are going to try to get more out of me than I put out with the record. People are going to have questions. And that’s what freaks me out, because it is about my life, but I also wrote about my life, so I was kind of putting myself in that position.

Do you feel like people’s perception censors you as a songwriter? How do you balance wanting to be honest in a song versus maintaining real-life relationships with people?

There are some writers [for whom] the matter-of-fact details of everyday life is like beautiful poetry. But for me, I find that it takes a little bit away from the beauty of something if you can’t paint it in your mind the way you want to see it, if it’s all written out for you. So I prefer to be a little bit more interpretive. There have been songs in the past where I was like, “Oh, I better not say that because that’s obviously a clear finger-pointing at a specific person.” But I actually think it’s more personal for me if I can see all the imagery in my mind and am just drawing the outline of it.

Your touring schedule has decreased over the years with your school workload, becoming a mom, and with it just being increasingly prohibitive for anybody to tour now. Is the live performance aspect of being a musician essential to you? Where does it fit in with your career as a musician?

That’s the part that I like the least. I like writing. I don’t even like recording, but now that I work with John [Agnello, producer], I do, because we have a beautiful friendship and so it is really nice. But I have to work really hard to make playing shows feel good. So, I sometimes just have to very carefully listen to the way the room is and get lost in the music. I just don’t like people watching me. And that’s the job! If I could be invisible, that’d be cool.

Has it gotten better or worse over the years?

I can’t tell. I go through phases. When I was little, I was in A Christmas Carol. I was one of the angels in the angel chorus. So I was in a thing that was performed at Madison Square Garden, because my elementary school had a good chorus, so we got picked to be the chorus that goes in. I remember not being scared at all, because I was in a chorus, so nobody was looking at me. There were bright lights but I could just exist and play and sing and experience it and not even think about the people watching me, just be in the music. I loved it. So I try to bring myself back to that, because when I start thinking about everybody watching me, then I start thinking about how I’m going to make a mistake. And then I inevitably make the mistake. And then I get in my own way and feel super self-conscious. I’m a human being. It’s awful to stand in front of people. I can’t public speak at all. I get so nervous public speaking, it makes me feel awful and I freak out. I think music is a good thing to try to get lost in, to forget that people are watching you. But I’m not a person who is looking at people in the crowd and trying to hand them the microphone and Bruce-Springsteen it.

What, for you, is the greatest motivation for releasing new music? Is it internal or external?

It’s very singularly interpersonal. It’s the very small connections that I make with people over the music and the fact that it can help people get through stuff, individuals. Just having those little interactions at the merch table really makes me want to keep doing it. That, for me, is the most important thing. And that’s why I got into music therapy, I guess, because making even just the slightest difference in one person’s life is important.

My supervisor was talking the other day about that parable about the starfish on the beach. There’s a thousand starfish that washed up on the shore, and there was a guy who was throwing them back in, one by one. Some guy came up to him and he was like, “You’re not going to be able to help all these starfish. You’re not going to be able to make a difference. What are you doing?” So then he throws one and he says, “I just made a difference for that one.” The little individual connections are good.

I feel like you have all but given up on social media. What was it about social media that was rubbing you wrong?

I was just getting lost in it and it was always making me feel bad about myself. When I was really still doing music, and that was my only thing, I just felt like a failure all the time. It made me feel like I wasn’t doing enough and nobody cared. I was doing a lot of comparing myself to other people and that was yucky. And then it started happening to me with parenting stuff. [My daughter] was born during COVID, so I wasn’t leaving the house. There were a lot of experiences that she didn’t have. I was seeing other people doing things with their kids, but I was not doing those things because I was too scared. And then I started second-guessing myself as a mother and feeling bad. So I was like, “Nothing can poison this. I can’t allow anything to poison this experience of having a little person. I don’t want to have any sort of negativity coming from the outside world about that.”

Do you ever get ideas from your daughter? I feel like when I’m around my nieces, I carry a notebook because they will drop a one-liner that comes purely from their ids.

She does ask really beautiful questions and we have to talk about death and life and why death happens and if it hurts. It’s heavy. You want to make it developmentally appropriate, but she asks existential and beautiful questions and it kind of reminds you how special life is. You get so caught up in life and having to go to fucking Target, and then she’s like, “Why does a butterfly fly?” It gets you back to just thinking about how wonderful everything is or just having a sense of wonder.

I don’t know that I’ve ever met someone whose music bears so little resemblance to the personality behind it. Your songs are so beautiful and delicate and intimate, and then in between songs you will drop the goofiest one-liner or joke on an audience. Do you think of Laura Stevenson, the musician, as a different person? Does Laura Stevenson behind the mic say things that you would not normally say? Is there a separation?

In life, I’m the same. I can’t be sweet. I can’t just be sincere without making a joke. I can say something that is the most vulnerable thing in the world, but I have to punctuate it with a joke because I’m an idiot. I think it’s just being afraid of your own vulnerability. But humor has always been a defense mechanism. I don’t like to be serious, but I also have big feelings. When I’m playing live, if I had a slide whistle on stage with me at all times, I feel like that would be a perfect way to end every song.