Photo credit Jacob Boll
Tell us about your tour vehicle.
Currently I’m touring in an 2001 Sprinter. It looks like a work van. I love it. I built out the inside to be a secret dream tour situation. Bed, camp stove, sink. I designed a bed bug extermination company sign that I slap on the side to keep the riffraff from being curious.
How do you eat cheaply and/or healthy while on tour?
I’d also like to know the answer to this. The van helps. I can cook an egg and make coffee anywhere. I love the very occasional world class meal at a fancy big city spot. It’s fun to look like hell, all tour haggard, and get a table for one amongst the moneyed lovelies.
How many strings do you break in a typical year? How much does it cost to replace them?
I don’t change strings if I can help it. I love how a dead dirty string sounds.
Where do you rehearse?
I rehearse near windows as often as I can.
What was the title and a sample lyric from the first song that you wrote?
Song was called Green. “Green’s my favorite color until I learn to like blue just a little bit more.” What that means, I don’t know.
Describe your first gig.
One of the earliest memories I have of a gig where I was playing original songs on my own, was at a pizza shop in Tacoma. I was invited to play by someone who heard me practicing in a stairwell. Had no idea what the gig was, just had a date, location, and time. It turned out to be a Young Republicans meeting. I sang them earnest songs about my own existential issues of identity and the individual’s moral burden within a cruel capitalist society. It was awkward and fantastic.
What was your last day job? What was your favorite day job?
My last day job was teaching high school English. That was also my favorite day job by a mile.
How has your music-related income changed over the past 5-10 years? What do you expect it to look like 5-10 years from now?
From day one, I’ve always made absurd amounts of money as a touring folk singer. I have so much money that I’ve lost all sense of what money even is. I can buy anything I want. My children’s children’s children won’t have to worry about money. If you want some quick easy wealth, write some songs, play some bars, and get your music onto Spotify ASAP.
What one thing do you know now that you had wished you knew when you started your career in music?
I’m only just now beginning to learn how much freedom and joy there is in letting go on stage. And letting go alone at home as I’m writing. Or, maybe, I’m learning that letting go requires much more, goes so much deeper, than I thought it did. If I’m lucky, someday I’ll be able to write and perform with the same wild joyful abandon I had as a child. The ego is poison in the water, and sadly the music industry is drunk with ego. I want to be unabashedly real on stage, and I wish I had known when I started performing that all the real magic exists there.