Amanda Palmer (Dresden Dolls) Interview Edit

A lawyer like, you know, like that. Your overall experience on a major good one or was it more like disappointing? I don't think I can generalize. It changed, you know, that's like asking someone w...

A lot again and again and again and again with everything it entailed, including, like me setting up the gig, you know, us having to find a place to park the car, us having to find a place to sleep...

Album was pretty good. The our experience on the second album was not good. You know, they sort of wanted us to go in a in a line of progress that where they saw more sales and more money. And when...

All the female touring musicians of all time and how they have and haven't dealt with having kids. Like I was just like, where is that? I want that book? And then I thought, well, maybe I need to. ...

And anytime I made an album, I just used whatever songs I had. I didn't write those Dressing Dolls records. They were just collections of the best of my songwriting up to that point. And Brian and ...

And asked if I could do a like totally. You know. Built from scratch music independent study where I would actually get school credit for just making music and composing 'cause I think I must have ...

And at the end, I was really happy with the record and I had put a lot of my own work into it. It had been recorded in six different studios with a ton of different engineers, sometimes me producin...

And do y'all understand that that's not a mad department not paying her musicians, That's Amanda Palmer asking people to volunteer and then people volunteering, which is fine 'cause they volunteere...

And financed our ability to go out on the road and not necessarily really make dough, but everything that happens, like, from T-shirts existing, like, we sat there and drew the design and like, too...

And had all of these real conversations with women and men and went, Oh my God, this stuff is happening all around me. It's just no one's been talking about it. And that actually inspired me to wan...

And he said, yes, sign me up. And then it ambiguous. Then I was like, holy shit. Ben Folds, who's famous, is gonna produce my record and has invited me down to his studio in Nashville with his nine...

And he was, I think, 4 years older than me. I was, I guess I was 15 when he was 19. And he came in like an alien visitor from another planet to the small town of Lexington. He had grown up in Berli...

And he? Opened my eyes to all of this music I had never heard of and all of these bands I had never heard of because they weren't played. On any radio station that I had access to. Actually, if I h...

And I also let my management kind of bully me into doing what they thought the best move was at the time, which was to make the controversy go away by just offering to pay the volunteers. And I was...

And I did, yeah. Oh, they had the right of first refusal, basically. And so they, I paid for it, they bought it, they put it out. They did a terrible job promoting it. And at that point I was like,...

And I didn't meet Brian until I was 2425. So there was like, yeah, there was about maybe two or three years in between college meeting Brian and starting the Dresden Dolls. And I spent those years,...

And I left. I gave up the whole ride. And I moved back to Boston. Ditched my stuff at my parents house, moved in with my boyfriend while I looked for an apartment, found a housemate and got a job a...

And I mean, as far as women in music, I, I don't think you can look at women in music and not just look at women in on earth and women on earth. You know, we still have a ways to go. But.

And I mean, I think it's a pretty rare weird ass outsider, probably pretty broken and needing like the deep therapy of art artist who makes a piece of art. And it's like, it's not important that an...

And I moved to Germany and I had that summer, I had fallen in love with a guy in Boston, Jonah, who was a cello player. And after about two weeks of being in Heidelberg, I looked around and I was l...

And I moved to upright piano into that space and composed a bunch of the stuff that would wind up on the Dresden Doll's first record. And then I moved into this incredible collective called the Clo...

And I remember going to see that Dresden doll show because it was at the Green Room in Providence. I don't know. And I remember I talked to Brian afterwards who I just I was like, this is the most....

And I remember my first five or ten records, it was Prince and Cyndi Lauper and George Michael, the Miami Vice soundtrack. The stray cats, Madonna. And Prince. And like, I just remember.

And I think they were just like, that's how it's done. Yeah. You know, well-rounded individual learn lots of things. And there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, you know, I think in a certain sen...

And I was almost sort of ashamed of being a high school student. I was like, yeah, his people. Sorry, they're young. And I. I continued writing and I and I wrote a lot. Those were actually pretty p...

And I was but, and, and summer school only lasted 3 weeks and I was like, OK, am I willing to give? Or maybe it was four weeks or five weeks, I don't remember it. I was like, am I willing to give u...

And I was given a free apartment and free tuition to grad school, and I can study anything I wanted. They just wanted an American there to, you know, use the scholarship money. And I packed up two ...

And I was incredibly happy. All of a sudden, I was like, this was what I was talking about. This kind of life, these kind of people, you know, are 24/7 living with, living with weirdos. This is wha...

And I was into. You know, it's into the music that kind of. Fell into my consciousness because who knows how it got there, you know, it came through MTV or it came through the radio or it came thro...

And including like flying out to LA and getting a super expensive, super fancy ass string arranger and going to the Capitol Records building and getting them a list 40 piece string, you know, orche...

And it took four years of that before a major label finally took enough notice to say, OK, here's a deal. And even then, it was a shitty deal. Because I think you know, even though we got really we...

And it was also still important to me that sort of settle the score because I had felt so yelled at for so long about my choices, even my choice to crowdfund, you know, I get yelled at for that. My...

And it's like, well, yeah, sure. But mostly that isn't what music is. And. You know, I don't trust anyone making music saying this is not for you. Like, of course it is. Who else is it for if it's ...

And like in no way shape or form does it come out of nowhere. It just comes from all my influences. And there you have it. And Brians influences like he was into metal and jazz and you hear that al...

And like, my music listening habits are still kind of like that. If I find something and I like it, I'm like, why do I need any other music? I just, I like this. I'm gonna listen to this album for ...

And no one stopped us. The label didn't stop us. Our manager, our agent didn't stop us. No one could really see how taxed we were. And. Do you like have to do that in order to make a living really ...

And realized there was this other world of not, you know, beautiful listenable music that wasn't mainstream pop and, and, you know, and I didn't love all of it. Like certain bands really spoke to m...

And really going like, oh, like I've had the goods all along. These people, these people who get me. These are the people that I'm talking to. And I should not be talking over them or away from the...

And really insecure because I was at least chops wise. Instrumentally, I was always one of the least talented kids in the group. And I wasn't good at comping with my left hand and sewing with my ri...

And seeing how it feels, I'm going to do that. If it means just wearing a T-shirt and underwear on stage, I'm going to do that. If it means wearing a giant ball gown, I'm going to do that. And hope...

And she and I were like, oil and water. We didn't get along incredibly well. I worshiped her for a while and then, like, decided to cut off my, my, my, my House of worship and just, like, fled off ...

And that era would have lasted from about the time I was 13 to 15. And then around the time I was 15, I took another left turn into an even weirder, unknown realm of music that I hadn't known exist...

And that really left me with. You know, schools that were in Boston or like Bennington, Amherst schools, Smith schools that were in Brown. I mean, there was a pretty short list. And I kind of looke...

And that was the legendary Pink Dots. Swans Coil, Current 93. Death in June. Nick Cave. And then even weirder, more experimental electronic stuff, tons of it. And, but, and again, it was sort of li...

And that's the whole assortment. That's more than I thought. Well, I'm going to skip ahead to a quick question about your father. So you recently recorded an album with him. Were you even though yo...

And then came the next phase, which probably started when I was around eight or nine years old, where I had money and resources and I could buy my own music. And so I started building up my own rec...

And then everything happened very quickly because once we were signed, managers lined up at the door and so did booking agents. And so, you know, because they were like, OK, this is a man that's ac...

And then you wrote, you said that you wrote. What song was it that you wrote during that? Well, I started writing songs when I was 9 or 10. Bad songs. And I wrote a song when I was 15 called Slide ...

And then, you know, what you did in my family is, and not just in my family, but what you did in Lexington High School, because this is like a, you know, fancy suburban Massachusetts high school is...

And these bands were really like, it was all about, like, being authentically stripped down, like standing there playing your guitar with your hair in your face. And we were like, yeah, we don't do...

And to a certain extent, we now know a lot of that is true. But those artists were getting fucked. Because they had no idea who was touching the money outside the tent and that none of it was actua...

And two abortions, one of which I sort of had to go through because of medical reasons, one of which I chose until I finally sort of came to the decision that I wanted to be pregnant and I had ash ...

And two thousand 2001, 2002, 2003. We had no booking agent, no manager, no lawyer, no publicist, no sound guy. Most of the time. Like it was just us showing up at a club in my station wagon with dr...

And we like clocked our our punk ass Rd. miles that way for many, many years. And and and we had a pretty good division of Labor too, because Brian would like drive and get the car fixed and I woul...

And we met and I was like, alright, like, here we go. I've got a band. I've met this drummer. You know, we met at a party at my house. It's for the beautiful coincidence. I was just starting to rea...

And whatever it is, it's honest. And that was, that was the best way I could, I could, you know, that was my best answer to an impossible paradox. I still do it every day. I still find myself going...

And yeah, it was madding. Umm. But also really enlightening because. Umm. I can only assume, given everything else I know about the world, that I am not alone. And not only can I assume that, I can...

And you still this. So this is like where it's a little foggy to me and I'll probably just have you talk about it because I'm not, I don't know like specifically what you're doing, but I know you'r...

And you're on your merry way and all of a sudden, you know, you sort of get like landlined again and again and again. So, yeah, I mean, I've got no regrets about that either. There's moments where ...

And, and I followed all these tricks that my sister gave to me about making sure that I got my own single dorm room and didn't get put with a roommate. Like I put that I chain smoked and I put that...

And, and, and feeling frustrated because I loved the piano, but I didn't love it in this way. And I would sort of sit there with a piano teacher who was like, and we're going to learn how to sight ...

And, you know, and if Ted is calling and a book publisher is calling, I'm totally happy to take a chunk of my life out right now and explain to you guys. Who I am and what I think and. And set the ...

And, you know, and that sort of went through its own crazy, circuitous thing because Ben was going through a divorce, and his life got messy, and he had to stop working on the record. And then I wa...

And, you know, at the very beginning, I was kind of in heaven. Like my parents drove down with me. They dropped me off. I moved a ton of my shit into this room. And I closed the door and I was like...

And. And I found myself sort of like firmly planted in the The Cure Depeche Mode, you know, and I loved the songwriting and I loved the, you know, the like, authentic emotionalness of it and the po...

And. Math. I was going to say math. Yeah. And I dropped all three of those classes. With the caveat that I would make them up that summer at summer school, Stupid school or the summer school was ac...

And. Well, yeah, it probably helped me from feeling, but I don't know if that's good. I mean, it's possible that if I hadn't got on that medication, I would have just left and found a organic way o...

At the time that we met and with our synchronicity, like and you know, the bands that we had in common, like we both loved the Cure and we both loved Nick Cave and we both loved Swans. And there wa...

Band and I was like, all right, let's start tomorrow. The best drummer ever. And he just happens to be the best drummer ever. I was really lucky. Thanks, Sean Sataro, for bringing Brian to the part...

Because all of a sudden I was also like, committed to a relationship. And that sort of started the era of like me getting myself off the label, which is a long sordid story which I won't go into. B...

Because I've already done all the groundwork up here, and I've already come up with a bunch of answers up here. But why? People would misunderstand this and how people feel about art and how people...

Because there was a piano in the house and for that I will be forever grateful. My my mom really wanted a piano in the house because she had grown up with a piano in her house and my mom played bas...

Because there weren't many people studying German in America, and certainly not in Connecticut. And there was money set aside by some place in the sky, and I was offered a full ride. So I took it. ...

Being in New York City, but like as a as a baby, but my dad stayed there. I moved because my parents split. My my mom. Moved up to Lexington because she met a guy and they.

Bitchy 15 year old. I was like, you can't make me go to school. What are you gonna do? Like literally chained me to a desk and they were like, Jesus, this 15 year old is serious. So I think they we...

Boston indie rock scene, because the music was really different and generally the Boston indie rock scene was like, we are cool, we play guitars. You know, the Dresden Dolls do this kind of campy, ...

Britney Spears is just like a set of 29 things that you do. Like you do your hair and you do your makeup and you do your tits and you do your heels. And the opposite of that is you just do none of ...

But all I remember about early piano lessons, which I guess I took piano lessons consistently from the time I was like 8 or 9 to maybe. 12 or 13? And I just remember dreading them. It's not enjoyin...

But back then, I cared a lot. Yeah, Yeah. And now I'm like. You can hate me. It doesn't matter much. You seem to be doing OK. Yeah. And I'll tell you, like when I started this project, I can't coun...

But do you just think that like, once you reach a certain level of not even success, but if people perceive you as being successful, it's just no longer acceptable for you to ask for help? Because ...

But it just didn't do it for me. You know, I could see my friends and 6th and 7th grade, you know, we're into Def Leppard and I was like, yeah, I don't really like it. They don't seem cool, you kno...

But it was also it. It was a real victim of like, classic Internet. Hysteria because it wasn't like a lot of people were complaining about this. It was one thing that went viral and like a lot of t...

But it's maybe no coincidence that the first great song that I wrote was when I was 15. So that was part of your of this compromise, which I had no idea. And that's pretty cool and interesting. Did...

But on the other hand, there was nothing local that spoke to me. And you know, in the same way, I kind of felt like I got gypped out of a cool college experience. You know, I listened to other frie...

But there was also a like. A negativity and a kind of like selfishness that people associated with music all of a sudden, which is just like, you know, I'm making this, but this is not for you and ...

But they both had record collections. My dad had a big record collection in his apartment in New York, and I would pour over it and look at it, and I remember looking at the police and the rhythmic...

But what was the? OK, I'm kind of this happens sometimes too. So I'm going to like kind of cram a couple questions together. But like what you were doing at the time. I was I was kind of like in th...

But yeah, like I don't have anything against labels. I had something against that label at that time because they did a bad job. But you know, if that doesn't mean I don't like labels the same way,...

But you know, unfortunately there, there wasn't much available. Like we lived in this cute suburb and there wasn't a variety of hundreds of amazing piano teachers to choose from. And it's not also ...

By around 8th grade when I was 15. I discovered the world of what you know in those days, which would have been like the late 80s, they were calling alternative music. And and I realized I really l...

Call the club and get directions and print out MapQuest and like do all the things you did in 2002. And, you know, and we toured further and further outside of Boston. Like first we played New York...

Came with her, I think she had the records that she brought from the divorce and she put them in our living room in Lexington and I never remember her buying a record after that. It was just that s...

Can I just ask you, you brought this up at the beginning and I think about it a lot when? I feel like a lot of like really successful musicians. It seems like they started a band and then like what...

Carl and Lisa. And Carl was like 6 years older than me and Lisa. I think 9 years older or maybe 7:00 and 9:00. And they were around a lot when I was a kid. They moved to, they lived down the street...

Conclusion In terms of my music audience, I was like, I'm not making music for the angry hipsters who really hate Amanda Palmer. I think I think about it. It was just it was all like my kind of hip...

Creating a compromise and the compromise which the guidance counselor helped us with because we spent a lot of time sitting in the guidance counselor's office. The deal was I could drop the three c...

Desire to continue to stay grassroots. People were just like, you don't do that. You don't be big and act small. And I was like, you can do whatever you want. I like my fans. I want to do this craz...

Did you end up going to college because it was something that was just kind of expected of you or? Yeah, That's the only reason. Yeah. Yeah. Did you finish? I don't know if you finished. I did. I d...

Didn't really have any friends, but, but we didn't have any friends together. And, and we blew right by all of those bands, all of those bands who were sort of like were too cool, too cool for scho...

Done seen the Pixies. I just didn't know that I and I didn't have a friend who was like let's go see the Pixies like we're gonna get on a bus like I just didn't have access and this was pre Interne...

Drove me down a path of presenting myself, as you know, very, at least in certain terms, masculine. Like I am not here for you to admire. Like I am not going to put on pretty makeup and do this and...

Facilitated my ability to make friends and has opened up a lot of doors as I've you know. Achieve an understanding of myself. I look back at that 17 year old and I'm like oh man, I just did such a ...

Fell into like a clinical depression and didn't know what to do. Didn't know what was happening to me. Looking back could actually. A lot of it does make a lot of sense, but at the time I was just ...

Find my whatever. My voice was like muffled enough. Cotton of chemistry that I you know, the stars did not align. I think I wrote maybe 22 songs the entire four years I was in college. But luckily.

For help with your record. Like why were you the person that was being attacked? I feel like a lot of people do it, yeah, I think. I think I pushed a button, You know, inadvertently, I think I push...

For my principles and I wish I had because it would have made a stronger statement. And none of my none of the volunteers were asking to be paid. In fact, some of the volunteers when I paid them we...

Found my milia in the theater department and I loved my drama teacher and I loved my Latin teacher and I loved my French teacher and I was actually closer. You know, in terms of friendship, I felt ...

German noise music. Because it's all just music. And. And all the while, like through my teens, I was also really into good songwriters, Leonard Cohen, Elliott Smith, The Smiths and Morrissey.

Get the right producer put together the Kickstarter and put together a new management team and record and tour and you know, it all looks good on paper. But I made a lot of, you know, I don't want ...

Given all the people who I spoke to, who spoke to me candidly about their own fears and regrets and ambivalences and. Miscarriages and abortions and more miscarriages and more abortions and more ab...

Got together straight away and they stayed together. They're still together 40 years later. And my dad stayed in the city and immediately started another relationship to remarried. Did you have any...

Have you started playing piano yet? And was piano your first instrument? I started playing piano when I was three or four. But by playing piano I mean like I started touching the piano.

Here and there there were a couple of sort of like minded bands, but there wasn't a scene. We were the scene, you know, we just kind of made it up and and tried to create it and, and if anything, w...

How people talked about Nirvana or something. I felt like you just influenced just so much of what was happening around you, especially on the East Coast and like the amount of. Bands that sort of ...

Humble. So Amanda Palmer's solo piano. Here's the next thing. And instead, right around that time, Ben Folds called and said, I want to produce. And I want to produce the Dresden Dolls. And I said,...

I ask everyone who's like a mother that that question to you that I've interviewed so far. So there's like so many different answers. It's really interesting and how it's, it's sort of that questio...

I can't just be a man. Like, and literally, you know, wear those clothes, have that haircut. I carry myself that way because I'm not a man, I'm a woman. And if I do that, you know, I I I don't know...

I didn't know we all thought this way, You know, Why did this happen? Did this all happen because the recorded music industry? Did this happen because of Blockbuster media? Did this happen because ...

I don't even think it's anything they probably ever discussed, it just happened. And. So I had that first phase of life like I remember being 6 and like figuring out how to really use the stereo an...

I don't want to be in Heidelberg. I've I just fell in love. I don't even really want to study anything. I'm only here because I'm scared to, you know, I was sort of scared to say no to the free mon...

I feel like the minute you start giving a shit about that, you give up your importance to history in any way, shape or form. And I I feel like that is someone else's job. My job is to make music an...

I had a very difficult time. Really deeply difficult time deciding whether or not I wanted to have a child. And it took me through a few years of hell.

I had no like I had, I had no thrust like I didn't really have any goals that I was there to achieve. So I really spiralled down. Did you make any friends when you were there or were you really not...

I had really no idea what I was doing and no guidance or if there was guidance, I didn't know how to how to read it. So all I knew is that all of a sudden people were saying, OK, it's time to apply...

I have a sister, Allison, who's 3 1/2 years older. And then when my mom remarried. She married a guy named John and he had two children from his recently broken up marriage.

I knew I wanted to make music, but I didn't really know what that had to do with college and and I also didn't know myself very well. If I if I could go back and advise that 17 year old, I'd be lik...

I looked, I was looking down the barrel at the of the year and I didn't like the classes and I didn't like the teachers and I didn't really have any friends and I was just like. Fuck this place. I ...

I really dealt with being like embarrassed by the pop music that I had. Like, it took me until like well into my 20s where I realized that I could encompass everything that was totally legit to lov...

I really struggled. Because I didn't know. What it was going to mean and what it was gonna do. And I knew that I loved my life and I didn't want it to change. And. I I.

I remember the amazing feeling of like, incredible limitation of like, these are my 7 records and if I want to listen to music, like should I listen to that one or that one? Like I have this experi...

I see what you're saying. The way we look at artists and, you know, the whole, you know, like God bless Nirvana and Kurt Cobain was really pretty incredibly rad.

I still want you to take me seriously. And, you know, a lot of my positioning was looking around at all of the men in the world of music who were getting the props and the respect and the criticism...

I wanted friends desperately, but I was not good at making them and. It sounds like I mean you. You describe yourself as anxiety in high school and then college, depressed and had a hard time makin...

I was always and still am, but especially in the early days, like at 2425, super aware of my sexual energy and whether or not and where my personal gauge of how attractive am I trying to look? How ...

I was born in New York, but I actually moved to Lexington when I was still Pretty Little. I was a year old year and a half, like under 2, and so I I have almost no memories at all of.

I was pretty unhappy. Uh, with the exception of the year that I went abroad to Germany, where it was kind of like a get out of jail free card and I got to just shed my personality and like fly off,...

I wasn't excited to go. I was excited to finally be able to live alone. And my sister had gone to Wesleyan as well, and so had my older stepbrother Carl, which is actually part of why I applied. I ...

I would be psyched, like, yeah, I thought it was AI. Well, and while all this was happening, other bands were doing similar things in Green Day, were having volunteer guitarists come up on stage ev...

I would have conversations with indie bands who are like, well, we could never really ask anyone to buy a ticket to the show. Like that would be weird. That would be awkward. Like someone else has ...

I would think that you're like very. Extroverted. I was extroverted back then. I was flamboyant, like in dress sense and my personality was like one of an extrovert, but I kind of don't really beli...

I, I got comfortable enough in high school that like, by my senior year, I was relatively happy. I was still pretty angsty, but you know, I had sort of found my spot. I, I didn't feel small and ins...

I'm gonna just have to figure it out. OK? Yeah, that's different, yeah. OK, You went to you went to college though. I did so. So you hated high school and you brokered this deal and you finished Umm.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna make sure I send you all the signals so that you understand that I don't wanna be Britney Spears, but at the same time I want to feel empowered. In some way where it it's not l...

Image and like you know. You saw magic and you saw like, artists being artists and then assumed that there were like lots of underlings running around going like, come on into the show, like lots o...

In Boston and so I discovered the radio as something that I liked to listen to and got very excited to turn put it on in the car or put it on on my little plastic stereo system in my bedroom. And I...

In Germany, whether it was art or music or language skill or whatever, every single credit counted as a German credit. And so I came back from Germany and my faculty advisor was like, oh, well, you...

Incubating in my own weird way. So again, like no regrets. Whatever happened, happened and I wound up where I wound up and. And by the time it was 2000 and Brian and I, you know, where Brian was 23...

Independent music study with Jeff Leonard, who like barely spent anytime with me. He just let me Dick around in the practice rooms and I tried to be disciplined and, and work on my songwriting. And...

It doesn't matter. I didn't write anything for four years though. So now I know you mean, and I've heard that creative people who, yeah, I had enough presence of mind to hate myself all four years ...

It just wouldn't really be on the list. But. Why not? I would ask them, I just should start a Men of Rock collection and ask them all about being fathers. That's my next thing. OK, last two questio...

It took a couple of years out of my life, but I needed some industrial strength cleaning supplies to to to wipe off the like toxins and the dirt from that year of 2012. You know where I cried mysel...

It went viral and it created its own. Narrative and the narrative became Amanda Palmer doesn't pay her musicians, which just wasn't true. You know, I had AI, had a full time band who were salaried....

It's a good person, yeah. And and so there was this, this era of listening to just like pop music. And Thriller was in the collection and I just remember, you know, between the ages of about 7:00 a...

It's a random. It's a random run, dude. Jack White, I don't know. I don't think that the dude would be saying like in like clearly it's like every time I talk to a dude, this comes up. But like, wh...

It's like punk. Yeah. And we went and everyone that I brought was obsessed with it to the point that, like, they didn't start incorporating piano into their bands. But it was really influential to ...

Just loving and listening to pop music and watching a lot of MTV and really being drawn to Michael Jackson, Prince, Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, like they were my. That was my tribe and. And there was a ...

Kind of varies generationally. And then how do you feel about your place in rock history, music history? Well. I feel like. My most important job. Is to not concern myself with my place and rock hi...

Left Boston pretty quickly, like we caught on fire and within two years we were like signing to a major label and touring the world and going off to Europe and going off to the West Coast and going...

Like before you discovered punk kind of with your peers or at school, What kind of student were you? I was always a really good student because I was too afraid to be a bad student. There was too m...

Like I hadn't even thought about it. 'Cause I wasn't thinking straight. And so I applied to two schools that looked pretty good and seemed to have OK Music departments. I applied to Wesley and I ap...

Like interviewed and interrogated every. Person I could find who had had children, who had not had children, who had an opinion about it one way or another. You know, I spent like three years of my...

Like they're losers and I keep sort of going in there like hoping that they will love me and hoping that, you know, I can change them and hoping that, like, I will save them from their drug addicti...

Like, follow your career the whole time. I mean, I saw you in a club in Providence with like 20 people there. It was like a really early dress and doll show and. Well, that's kind of I don't want t...

Like, thank you for helping my daughter. Like the whole. I just think everyone should watch that before they write the long. Like angry, but it's why, But it's why I did that. Yeah. Well, it was gr...

Love this instrument and want to do it. You need to take lessons. And I just argued that, you know, all I wanted to do was sit there and commune with the instrument and bang on it and play by ear b...

Made a living as the major Living as a living statue. Had you started a band yet? No, I didn't start a band until the Dresden Dolls. Oh, that was your very first? That was my band. Yeah, it was my ...

Material and and and a bit of it was pretty ballady and I found myself thinking like it's probably a good time to just put out a solo piano record because I have songs like The Point of It All and ...

Metal as fuck and punk and we were shameless. And we also, like shamelessly wanted to have a good time. And we were, you know, we were weird and silly and and and hippie and, you know, wanted every...

Money exchange. And people don't get that if you go back a few thousand years that there was none of that in music and that we made music to be together. And a lot of that, you know, also affected ...

Mostly we make art because we want it to be seen and heard, because because it can forge connection in some way. And you know, that was the weird paradox of certain kinds of like. That kind of indi...

My musical phases from, you know, say ages like 5 to 20 into like 4 distinct phases. Phase one was my mom's record collection, and that was just the music that I had. I didn't really listen to the ...

My teenage years, I would say the vast majority of them, I was alone. You know, I remember just feelings of absolute serenity and bliss, you know, being all alone in my bedroom making mix tapes or ...

Myself so much or asking people for interviews or asking. I mean, really, musicians need to see it the same way. You're not asking for money so that you can make music, you're asking for money so t...

Not irritating way for for you to go into it a little bit like how how did that happen? Yeah. Well, that didn't happen instantly when I say like, And then all of a sudden we were assigned to a majo...

Of a chapter where my senior year I wound up majoring in German studies because I didn't know what else to major in. I was going to ask you what you majored in, random. I basically, you know my bec...

Of asking. And that leads you straight into your question about the art of asking. Because once I did the Ted talk and sort of preached my, you know, philosophy of, of asking, especially when it co...

Oh, you do. So, And that was really the beginning of the creative explosion in my life that was within a year I met Brian, I started throwing huge art parties. I met Michael Pope, who would become ...

On a, you know, Saturday fall afternoon, like dropping acid and going to the woods and drawing, like I was really happy in those moments. And and I've changed like my, you know, my own.

Or hey, I bet you don't know how to plug in your own shit because you're a girl like I. I feel like I was more or less afforded the respect of a professional doing a professional job. That being sa...

Path of personal growth from that teenage girl to this 41 year old woman and all of the work that I've done to understand myself and the world around me and how I interact as me with the world arou...

People do have tendencies. It's always a mix and it always changes, and it changes depending on context. So I was an extrovert, insofar as you know, I loved the idea of communion and parties and ev...

Plaid and denim like we were everything that Plaid and denim stood against. But also, I think people were psyched because a lot of people were like Plaid and none of us boring. Like how much platin...

Playing any gig we could get ahold of, you know, at a gallery, at a loft, at a friend's birthday party, like anywhere. We could set up our piano and drums. We played, but there wasn't a scene in Bo...

Punk Cabaret. Were there people who are doing sort of what you're doing that you were influenced by, or was this something that you just kind of like developed and. Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, that's...

Reality in Lexington and we occasionally went down to visit him in the city, but not not a ton and we. My dad was a bit distant so it wasn't like we were calling every day and he was keeping up wit...

Robin Hitchcock. And Simon and Garfunkel, like, I just loved songs and songs where you could like, understand everything from beginning to end 'cause I was really a lyrics person more than a like, ...

See what it's like to record this as a solo project. But I was thinking it would be very small. I was gonna, you know, I was in talks with the producer of the second Dresden Dolls record, Sean, abo...

She came back and stayed in it. And, and in my freshman year of college, I threw myself at the feet of the school psychiatrist and said, like, I don't understand what's wrong with me, But I, you kn...

She was like, well, you basically already have a German degree because you now have a gazillion credits. You could just major in German. All you have to do is do a project next year and write a the...

Sit there as a jazz band and rotate instruments. You know, the piano players would take turns, the drummers would take turns, and you were taught the basics of Here's a chart. You know, here's how ...

So again, like I, I did that and it was really good for my, you know, musical development, but it was also really frustrating. And then in. The beginning of 10th grade, I quit school 'cause I hated...

So I just did it. And I don't want to. I don't want to skip over anything. But I know that we don't have tons of time. Was that so? Was this around the time when you? Met Brian and started doing dr...

So I know that I'm going to kind of try this and try that and give you and me a different answer every day. Because maybe if it's confusing enough, you will know that I'm not playing by your rules....

So I remember going on drives with her and her playing ABBA and the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack and. And I could tell, you know, I could see that my mom enjoyed music, but since my stepdad wasn...

So I was really proud of it and I. I saw myself and I envisioned myself as a songwriter and a performing songwriter. That's what I wanted to do. I sort of looked at Madonna and Cyndi Lauper and who...

So we've been trying to like this together for a while. You work constantly, you're all over the place. And now you have a son. I do. Do you remember? What did you think? Did you ever feel that you...

So whatever, you know, psychic barriers I had built up for myself about what college was and what it meant and how it was holding me back. I I gave myself permission to just. You know, get back on ...

So yeah, I just really loved a good song and I kind of irrespective of genre, I loved listening to good, clever, emotional songwriting no matter where it was coming from. That was a lot. Thank you....

So you could like acquire really practical skill and like get a job, but oh, that's not why she wanted it. That's not why my parents wanted it. I mean, my parents just believed in, you know, they, ...

So. You know, but again, it really like and now looking back at it. I, you know, I had to really sit there and think like, are people right? Am I really being greedy? Is this like, should I be reas...

Some of my, you know, peers from later days were like, that's what I was doing when I was 16. And I was like, damn it, I bet I could have been doing that. But I didn't really know where to go becau...

Still pretty young. I think I was like 7 or 8 when they moved. And Carl was a real role model. He was a musician and a painter. They saw it was more of a bookworm. And my sister Allison, you know, ...

Sunk. When you're on that particular ride and you're that successful, it's very, very hard to tour less because the show is back in the fans back in, the money beckons and we just kept saying yes. ...

Swarthy, dangerous drug dealing. Like angry young men who are super hot. Why? And like, it's not working. Like these relationships aren't good. So why do I keep doing this? And why do I keep wantin...

That she put on the piano that had markings on it and she looked at the markings and. They they led the music and I still can't do that. I don't read. I don't sight read. Did you ever take lessons ...

That was like my early doorway into listening to music. OK, so you described your relationship with your siblings. I'm not sure when you discovered punk rock yet, but I what kind of kid were you?

That's a choice. That's a bold choice. It's a choice I sometimes make, but it's a choice. It's a much bolder choice than putting on a T-shirt and a pair of shorts.

That's the job I want. I want to do that. I don't know how you do that, really. I don't know how you get from where I am to where they are in the mystical land of how you get into MTV. Like where i...

That's what I was told to do, so that I didn't disturb the rest of the household. And I would just sit there like and listen to the Doors record and The Beatles record and the Doors record and The ...

That's when I really started sort of full time St. performing. How did you, how did you decide to do to do St. performing? I didn't just I, I just did it. I just decided one day like, oh, that's th...

The Boston music scene was like kind of an indie sausage club. Oh, yeah. You know, there were not, there were not costumes. And there really wasn't a lot of humor either. It was all like, and it wa...

The Kickstarter worked on the surface, but also wound up really costing a lot of energy and money that was unanticipated. And and the Kickstarter also sort of like embroiled me in Internet controve...

The way I put myself forward on stage. Lives in that paradox of I want you to love me, but I don't want you to objectify me, So what do I do while you're watching it? I don't know what I'm doing, b...

The year I moved into the Cloud Club and met Brian and I lived in Boston in the early 2000s, and I remember hearing about that house, I think even before the dress and dolls had started playing, li...

There has to be something authentic. And what I always tried to find was, and the challenge that I set up for myself is I'm not going to decide. What I'm going to do is like every day I'm going to ...

There was a a fantastic teacher named Jeff Leonard who. Taught jazz improv classes and it was what it sounds like. Like you would go to jazz class and there would be 12 of you and a couple of piano...

There's a reason I'm here, like, by myself. Well, you asked me for this interview. Yeah. Yeah, You started there. Oh, no. Give yourself some credit. But I think I well, I read your book before I st...

There's there's this stuff, there's George Michael and Cyndi Lauper. And then the next phase was like, Oh my God, that stuff is so normal. There's the cure and Depeche Mode. And then like the final...

These things aren't separate, like if my job is to be a musician. And I want to sit here and say, like, there's a core reason that we be artists and be musicians. And it's to connect everyone. It r...

They really, they worked hard and they, they put us on the map in Germany and the UK and Australia, you know, and one could argue like that would have eventually happened if we had just stayed Indy...

They're in tune. You know, it's, it's, it reminds me of like my taste in men. It reminds me of realizing at a certain point, like, Oh my God, I keep being attracted to all of these, like, like, you...

They're similar. Do you want to ask them both? Yes. OK, OK. What are your thoughts on the visibility of women in rock music and history in general? Is there still a gender discrepancy? And then? We...

They're solo piano songs like I, you know, they would, they would live just fine without drums. So and I'm really burned on touring with Brian and having to discuss everything and having to, you kn...

They're the ones who are not interested in judging me and looking for the flaws. They're the ones who are just openly paying attention to what's coming out artistically. And fuck all these people. ...

Think deeply about what my job was as an entertainer, as a performer, as a writer. Because I had gone into this gigantic philosophical. Contemplation of.

This was the shit. This was the shit that I was supposed to know how to do and learn if I wanted to have a relationship with and a future with this instrument. So I sort of slogged on with a combin...

To get good grades, you know, you just have to do the work and I, you know, I was. I found a lot of school really boring, like I just didn't enjoy it, but I did it because the alternative was be th...

To send me the lessons and so I started going to lesson, you know, cute neighborhood piano lessons when I was probably six or seven, but I really hated it. I really hated piano lessons and and my m...

Took a course in, you know, postmodern performance art. I took a course in German filmmaking from the 60s and 70s. Like I really, I gained a lot of deep knowledge about the world and especially the...

Tour spot on the map. And since Boston hadn't shown us a lot of love and we didn't feel like this was our crowd and our music scene and our venues who we loved with all our friends, we didn't feel ...

Turned into the entirety of me, so I can't knock it. But you know, even thinking back on those years at at Wesleyan, it's, I get a very like cold and sad feeling. And I was lonely because I didn't ...

Umm, and I think my mom did make a mistake. Making it, she's just set some parameters and rules for my sister as well, but for me. I wasn't allowed to go to an art school or a music school she wanted.

Umm, but you know, I was also. Introverted because I love spending time with myself and I loved. You know, going into a hole and being creative and making my own choices and writing music and liste...

Under that umbrella of alternative music, from Midnight Oil to the Sugar Cubes to the Red Hot Chili Peppers to 9 Inch Nails to, you know, whatever was the like, alternative act du jour of 1987 or 8...

Was like 200 grand, like it was just massive. And I breathe out and I was like, all right, my awesome fucking record. I took it over to the label and they were like, OK, yeah, we want to put it out...

We're just really, really influenced by what you were doing to the point that they kind of changed what they were doing because it was so different and it was like so creative. What was the music s...

Well, it does kind of drive me up a wall that if you were a dude and I were a dude and we were sitting here and you were doing this for Harvard and I was. I don't know. I'm trying to think of some ...

What does everyone think this is anyway? Why are we? Why do you think I'm doing this? Why do you think they're doing it? Why are you listening? What's this all about? And. And really like looking a...

What I'm doing, it doesn't make any sense to me. You know, the world is not the way I thought it was. And, you know, feeling deeply misunderstood is the worst, especially when you know, when you th...

When I graduated. I left all of that behind and and you know, when I look back at my graph of happiness, like it starts the minute, starts the minute I left college and was like, OK, now I get to l...

Where people couldn't square. My success. And especially what they saw, and often times wrongly if you actually netted it out my financial success. With my.

Which I thought was great and kind of felt like any questions that I ever asked. But you know, why is she doing a Kickstarter? Seems to be doing OK. I mean, getting all of that like background info...

Which is pretty amazing when you think about it, and pretty awesome of the school and pretty awesome of the guidance counselor. And, and so that was the deal. I, I spent my sophomore year taking Fr...

Who I was, understanding who I was in relation to my family. And, you know, it was all really overwhelming. So unfortunately. You know, while college wasn't like terrible, terrible, like, I didn't,...

Who sort of, you know, demand a certain kind of acceptance or a certain acknowledgement of what they are doing. And the exchange isn't monetary or, you know, all these sort of things where I was li...

Who was really nice and I. You know, I, I, I can't imagine going back, you know what particular fork my musical path would have taken if any single thing had been different. So I always look back w...

Who's much younger, so my dad remarried. Was in a relationship for 10 years, didn't have any kids with that woman and then remarried again a third time and with his third wife he had a son Alex, wh...

Why did all that stress kind of contribute to you guys going on hiatus? Yeah. Like the not for sure. OK. And when you say hiatus, you had not, like, broken up or did you just. No, we didn't break u...

Why? I don't really know. But my parents, they didn't play music in the house. We didn't have a radio that was ever on or you know, one of my parents throwing on a record or or anything. The only t...

With one other person or like a teammate or a partner, No. It's interesting, like a lot of things in my life and career. I didn't sit there and make a pronouncement or a decision, like things just ...

Won the was that like well before you won the rumble that was all that moment Oh what oh people didn't like you around that time Oh yeah there was like pushback I mean there wasn't pushback no one ...

Wrapped up a relationship that I had been in the run up to that record, met Neil and started my relationship with Neil when all that was happening. And yeah, by the end of that era, Neil and I got ...

Yeah, I would see that, too and think that she was an asshole, but that wasn't what was happening. But because Internet, you know, that was sort of the meme. And I couldn't really fight the meme be...

Yeah, there were, you know, there were some helpful things here and there, but there was certainly no like handbook on how to have a great abortion. There was certainly no collected book of wisdom ...

Yeah, well, what should we talk about? It was, it started out really good. The label did a fantastic job on our first record and they really helped us a lot. They got us over to Europe. They they d...

Yeah, you know, let's work on a band that's going to make money, which was heartbreaking to us 'cause as far as we were concerned, we were doing really well. But, you know, we weren't, we weren't g...

Yeah. And there's a couple people actually, one person in particular from college who I wasn't like besties with at college, but who I've stayed in touch with. And we've actually become quite close...

Yeah. Oh yeah. It was 15. What did your mom, your parents say? They were not pleased. They tried to start like force you to go, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a two week argument. It was a knock down...

Yeah. So why not like, and you sort of stand there going like, well, there's that, which always sucks. And then there's that which is kind of wonderful even if this one didn't quite work out, and g...

Yes, and The Cure and The Cure became like the band that spoke to my soul. And so there was this an R.E.M. and there was this period of about like. Maybe two years where I stepped out of like the w...

You are asking people to come see your band. You are asking people to support your music. What else are you doing? You know, like, if you think that's not what you're doing, you're living in a fict...

You could write songs. Was it something that like you? Kind of had to do or was. I don't know how to make it not sound true. Yeah, I knew from the time I was like 13 that that's just what I wanted ...

You know family of performers. So I brought a bunch of my crazy Australian friends with me and I had a blast but I also was just like shooting in the dark going like I don't know do I do this? Do I...

You know her kids to go to like a goodwill rounded liberal arts school. And she insisted that we go to school within 500 miles of Boston so that we were close to home, which really narrowed where w...

You know you're a theater kid or your your musical capabilities or inclination. Well, I wasn't very close with my dad. He stayed in New York and my sister and I moved into a totally, you know, subu...

You know, all this other stuff. So I sent then all the demos and like, pretty quickly it had been big and into a, you know, I'm going to go down to Nashville for as long as it takes and Ben and I a...

You know, and I think it's it's a weird ego thing. Yeah. And especially because, you know, we grew up, we grew up in an era where everyone did the marketing for you. Like you never saw Michael Jack...

You know, and like, of course, I have an ego like any other artist or musician, and I wanna feel relevant and I wanna feel important and I wanna feel appreciated. But it's certainly not my job to m...

You know, and singing them and our fans loved what we were doing, but, you know, we weren't like, all of a sudden The White Stripes, which made the label sad. And as soon as I sort of saw how fair ...

You know, and then I find myself thinking as long as I'm OK with those decisions and I don't feel like I am putting, I'm putting on a costume that's uncomfortable. It feels totally bullshit, then i...

You know, coaxing and encouraging me in my art. He was sort of like a world away. But we didn't have a bad relationship, we just didn't have much of a relationship. And my dad definitely like influ...

You know, exchange how I feel about compassion, how I feel about all these things where where like at every turn, I feel deeply misunderstood. And I'm tired of feeling misunderstood. And I want to ...

You know, feel the energy of being in a city and see what a city has to offer. And if it can't be New York, just pick another city. You know, pick Philadelphia, pick Boston, pick anything. You know...

You know, I didn't find my people. And that was the big disappointment because I always sort of worked on that fantasy assumption that like going to college, I would find like my tribe. And I didn'...

You know, I didn't have that. I had a few experiences seeing live music in high school and college, but very few. I saw the legendary pink dots and that was kind of life changing. And I went and sa...

You know, I thought that everything I was doing was really normal. Am I weird? Am I different from other musicians? Am I different from other people? Like, like a lot of like. Large thoughts careen...

You know, if I can manage to carve out the time sometime in the next 20 years, I'd love to write about that because in my flailing research to find an answer to the Should I Have a child question. ...

You know, it is nice that within music. You know, I never felt like walking into a club in 2003 with Brian, and maybe with Brian as part of the reason that things were pretty comfortable, but I nev...

You know, like, I'm making music, but it's not for you and I'm not even going to look at you. And like, let's not make this weird. There's such a paradox there because there you are on stage saying...

You know, shouldn't I be braver than that? But then also, you know, everything is context and everything is costume. So, you know, I do it and when I do it, I do it with that mantra of like you're ...

You know, so we lived kind of in a parallel universe to whatever the rest of the Boston music scene was doing. And while the Boston music scene didn't like shun us, it, you know, it, it, it, it was...

You know, that's just awful. I don't want to be, you know, I, I, I don't want to look like your standard off the shelf woman either. So where does that leave me? What's authentic? And, you know, th...

You know, we kept working our jobs. We both worked at the ice cream store. Oh, he worked there, too. Yeah. And meanwhile, those years I was stripping and did some dominatrixing and also worked for ...

You know, we're not gonna, we're not gonna commit to buying this record, but let's see what happens once you've made it. And I was like, great, the more I spend on this record, the less they're gon...

You know, we're not sure what that is and we're not sure if it's cool, so we're not sure we want to touch it. So name an indie label from Matador to secretly Canadian to like go down the list of 20...

You know, went and ate lunch with them instead of eating in the cafeteria and stuff. I enjoyed their conversation more. And I also had my boyfriend Jason. We were really, we stayed together and we ...

You know, you just could not imagine a lot of those guys. Yeah, and it's L7 wasn't doing it. They were like, come see your show. We're the best rock band in the world. Right. So yeah, I'm like, yea...

You take a little bit Nick Cave and you take a little bit Doors and you take a little bit Cyndi Lauper and you take a little bit Beatles and you take a little bit The Cure. And like, you take a lit...

'Cause I really, really don't wanna do that, but I want you to love me so fuck like. What do I do? And, you know, and a lot of the like. Paradox of my choices. You know, with my appearance, my hair...