Tell me about your synth journey, since that’s what we’re looking at right now.
The synth journey started when I lived in New York and I shared a practice space with Michael Cera. Our agreement was he could use my drums and I could use his keyboards, and it was very lax. He was one of the best roomies I've ever had. He had a [Roland] Jupiter-4, and I was learning, on a simple [Universal Audio] Apollo x4 interface, not how to just demo, but to be able to create usable tracks in order to share them with other people who could make them sound better. I started experimenting with the Jupiter-4, not having any idea how it worked, and I ended up writing the beginning iterations of my song, “Jupiter 4.”
You have a background of having gone to MTSU for recording. What motivated that choice?
I didn't know that many people that wanted to go to school for recording. I was in theater and choir in high school, and I know that I freaked out my parents by saying that I wanted to pursue music outside of school, but my mom's mode was always, “Have a backup plan. Music should be your backup plan. It shouldn't be your job.” [laughter] But I did some research, and I talked to my music teacher, who did madrigals with me and also did my AP Music Theory class my senior year, and he said that someone a year ahead of me went to Middle Tennessee State, who was also in choir and theater. My mom was also a teacher in my high school, so she trusted this pathway of there being some curriculum outside of music. Also, it was one of the fastest-growing cities in the South at the time, and I could get in-state tuition because they didn't have recording as a major in my home state of New Jersey – they called it “in-state out-of-state tuition.” That was what first attracted me to that school. To be honest, I went there for a year and I didn't get to take any music classes my first year, so that kind of dissuaded me from loving it. But I talked to people that got through the program, and they told me that what they learned was that internships were actually a faster pathway to getting an education, and that deterred me from continuing school. I had a friend that got through the program and went to Ba Da Bing Records in New York from her experience at the school, and she was the one that initially hired me as an intern at Ba Da Bing, which was my real education in the music industry. I never had hands-on experience at MTSU.
Oh, man, that's interesting.
But during that time, I did have a job. After I let go of school, I got a job at a venue, and that was my early education in more of the DIY scene, touring bands, and learning how to book and promote shows.
Huge education. People push sports on kids, but navigating being in a music scene really prepares you for life.
Yes. A big thing is finding your people as a kid, finding what your support system is, and just finding that thing that makes you passionate about something. Especially at the time that I grew up – I was born in ’81, so being a teenager in the ’90s – it definitely wasn't anything my parents had ever heard of being a thing that people pursued seriously, but now it feels like something everybody does, almost? [laughter]
Well, I think that’s a better world. Your vulnerability comes up a lot – it's one of your greatest gifts as a songwriter – and something that I've been personally grateful for has been your openness in sharing about your insecurities and growth in the world of recording, production, and collaboration. What has that looked like or felt like for you?
Learning how to write songs, learning how to share them with people, finding my audience, slowly opening up and letting people help me expand my sound, and learning when to ask for help in certain situations – that took me a long time to learn how to do. I feel like I've not only expanded my sound, but I've also learned a lot as far as the humility of admitting that I don't know how to do something and learning how to ask or let somebody do it that does it better. My kid is a skater, but sometimes he'll stop doing something because he's not the best at it. One of the best things to do is to put yourself in a room with people that are better than you, because that's the best way to learn and achieve and aspire. So, even though it can be intimidating, and I'm not always in that kind of spirit, I feel like every time I push myself into these uncomfortable positions – knowing that I don't know something – I take away something in the process.
And you've collaborated with some amazing people: your bandmates, John Congleton [Tape Op #81], Aaron Dessner [#141], Brian McTear [#92], and Daniel Knowles [co-producer on We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong]. What are some of the things that you've learned from people you've collaborated with?
