Maggie Rogers

00:00:15 Speaker 1: Pushkin, Maggie Rogers has never been one demns words. Aside from her powerhouse voice, one of Maggie's superpowers is her ability to write pop songs fueled by radical emotional transparency. And while it's thrilling when an artist bears their soul, that level of constant vulnerability can be unsustainable. In twenty nineteen, after releasing her Grammy nominated debut Heard It in a Past Life and then touring the album relentlessly, Maggie was desperately in need of time away from the spotlight. Just before the pandemic, She retreated to her parents' home in coastal Maine. There she began writing and recording her follow up album, Surrender. Maggie also started to think deeply about her role as a pop star and the relationship between herself and her audience. In twenty twenty one, she enrolled in a master's program of Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School. There, her studies focused on the spirituality of public gatherings and the ethics of power and pop culture. On today's episode, producer Leah Rose talks to Maggie Rogers about how comforting it was for her to become a student again. Maggie also recalls the time she took motorcycle lessons to rechannel the massive amounts of adrenaline she experienced on her first tour. And We'll hear the song from Maggie's new album that she says is the perfect distillation of where she is now as an artist. This is broken record liner notes for the Digital Age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's Leah Rose with Maggie Rogers. What's going on. How are you feeling. I'm good. I'm so excited to be back in the flow again. I took August and September to sort of more in the release and sort of recover from a big summer, and things are feeling really exciting again. And work two weeks from going back on tour when I've only really played three or four shows since the pandemic started. So I'm just so excited for that. And in the heat of all of the planning and fun goodness, band practice starts next week, so I'm feeling really excited about it. All excellent. So the show is called the Farrell Joy Tour, and that for me personally, I feel like that's like a high bar to hit every single night. So how do you muster up Farrell Joy night after night? How do you get to that place where you're just able to give that on stage Farrell Joy? To me, it's not just pure happiness, So you're asking about how do I conjure that on stage? It's not like going on stage and being the happiest girl you've ever seen, although playing music often makes me that person. It's about being present, and so much of playing shows, I really think is a practice of presence and you let the show unfold. And the thing that I love about shows is that it's really is uncontrollable and it's something that you can't repeat because each setting, each crowd, each single person in that room makes a real difference for what that show feels like and how that show unfolds. So the pressure of conjuring something each night doesn't feel so high because on stage is the place where I feel the most like myself and the most free, and I really am able to just let go, and I often have very little memory of being on stage because I am in such a flow other state. Yeah, So it really is just about letting the music come through and really enjoying it after not getting to do it for the last three years. When did you discover that that on stage is the place where you feel most like yourself? How old were you, like, when did that realization come to you? I think it's more that when I'm singing, I feel really present, because this idea of performing or entertaining never really felt right to me, and I always felt really shy from it because it has this sort of connotation of putting something on. And when I'm singing, I just feel so connected. I mean, when you tell someone how you feel, you can use words to explain it, but to me, when you sing and you have that real resonant frequency, you can physically show someone how you're feeling. For me, I'm just a person that feels a lot of things a lot of the time, and when I sing or when I'm on stage, it's a real space of expression. It's a space where I can let it out somewhere in a real constructive way and like connective way, because I think when you feel that much, it can often be kind of isolating. But the thing that music does is it it brings people together and reminds people of their central human qualities. Everybody knows what it's like to feel sad or happy, you know both, or have a crush or fall in love maybe, or have that like first Butterfly. So I think when I write down my innermost feelings and put them out there for the world, it also means a lot live when other people sort of say that it resonates with them too, because it makes me also feel like a part of a community. What happens after the shows, like where does that adrenaline go? And when you're not performing regularly, is there a way that you can replicate that feeling off the road. No, there's nothing like the adrenaline from a show, but I think that there are things that can touch it. After my first tour in twenty seventeen for my EP now that the Light is fading, I went to motorcycle school and was using motorcycles as a way to moderate my adrenaline when I was off the road, because I found that if I fully crashed like you're when you're getting an input of adrenaline every night, you start just living on this sort of other plane. And if you can normalize that, it can be somehow sustainable. But the second you come down, your body starts to crash, and because you're exhausted, your adrenals are shot, adrenaline burns through everything you've eaten that day. It's essentially a panic response. And so it would be really really hard if I had like a week off of tour, if I came all the way down and then had to push all the way back up. So I started looking for ways that I could in some sort of healthy or safe way. When I'm talking about motorcycles, I'm writing like with full gear, helmet pads and like thirty miles an hour on a back road with no one on it. Like I'm not in Los Angeles on a motorcycle, but like full leather, like had to doe motorcycle gadding. Yeah, I will protect it here, and I will say, like it's not really a part of my life anymore. But when I was learning to tour, when I was like twenty two to twenty five, it certainly was Wow, we'll see what happened. I guess. I haven't really been on the road since then, though, so we'll see what happens in this chapter. Yeah, I think it's just really nice to go do something else, to put myself in a new situation, or go learn about something or be around a group of people that have absolutely nothing to do with music. It makes it like really gratifying when I come back to music and I'm like, oh, I actually really know what I'm talking about here, or like this is the space where I've worked really hard over a lot of years to know this stuff. It makes me appreciate my skill set, I think. But it also reminds me that there is a world outside of music, because I think for the people that sort of treat it like a religion and eat, sleep, breathe it every day, there is quite a bubble. And you know, one of the best things about grad school was like realizing that most of my best friends at school listen to music like in the background when they were cooking, and they didn't think about who wrote or produced it, And I think, I can, I'm so insular, like who played that guitar and what preempt did it run through? And like it was really nice to remember that the way that other people listen to music, and there's no like good or bad or hierarchy out of it. I think that for better or for worse, there is a bubble, and there's a lot more happening in the world than just who produced that record? Or what's the top song on Spotify, Like it's nice to sort of zoom out a little bit. I read an interview with you on the Harvard Divinity site and it said that you want to be in school forever, which is something I totally agree with. I want to be in school forever too. There's so much to learn about, Like the world is crazy and humans have existed for a long time. The earth has existed for even longer. It's also worth saying, like I don't think that going to school is the only way to learn, you know, there are so many other ways to access information or to do that kind of study. I also really thrive in environments with the structure, and I am a little bit type A and like do really well with homework when somethings do you know, even on like a major label system, like the record is still do at a certain time, and art deadlines have the sort of like necessary push and pull. Yeah, but yeah, I just I love school, and it was really nice, Like I think at the end of that past life cycle, you know, I really went to school to think about touring and to think about my career and think about what it means to be an artist and to put some structure to that and really spend some like deep deep thinking time really figuring out what I believe about music and what it means to be an artist and what does a great show look like and what is the quality of that connection and how do you bring that to people. But it was also like, at the end of that heard it of past life cycle, my life felt really public and it was really nice. You know, the first day of class, I'd be like, why are you here. I'd be like, well, I made a record about reincarnation and that would be like an interesting fun fact for like four minutes. And then the lack of knowledge that everybody collectively had about the subject we were there to learn was this amazing equalizer and I got to be just part of class. Yeah. I think it's safe to say that most people, you know, you finished, you've put out your first album or your first major label album, you've done your first tour cycle, whatever it is, all the promo or the press marketing. Most people to learn more about the business if they were so inclined to do that. Most people might study old concert footage of you know, artists that they really admire or watch a bunch of documentaries. How did you get the idea to go to Harvard Divinity School? Like why go the scholarly route? That school in particular was there's like one program in the world, and I was in its first class, which was a Masters of Religion in Public Life, And it's for specifically people who don't work in religion and don't intend to, with this idea that a greater understanding of religion is a pathway to just peace in the world. And so it was like a peace and justice program in that I applied to the summer after Black Lives Matter, like it doesn't like the pieces line up fairly easily, and like it existed in one place in the world, and like I was really lucky they accepted me. There is an inherent power dynamic when you're on stage, like you're on a like elevated platform with a microphone, Like it's like and no one else has a microphone, so you're in charge. And I found that like I naturally have always cared about human issues because I'm a human, and those human issues to me are no gun violence or reproductive rights, or equality, clean drinking water, really basic, making sure everyone has food and shelter and access to rest. But I also find sometimes that that like platform, being on stage, people were asking me these sort of like unconventional questions about what I believed, like what did I believe about immigration policy? Or what did I believe was the right way to like break up with someone, or like these questions that you would like ask a religious figure or a political figure. And I studied like music engineering and production, so I sort of realized that I, like, like we do often look to musicians culturally as mystics sometimes for having these these answers to these bigger questions, And I think you can really only answer for yourself, because that's what I specialize in. Like maybe it's a little narcissistic, but I really specialize in being able to notice and communicate how I'm feeling, with the idea that like the most personal is often the most universal if you can really be honest about it. And I think it's cool too. That was the thing that I really realized being around these classmates who are just so stunning and brilliant and all very different. I realized the thing that I'm good at is really talking about how something feels. And luckily I get to do that professionally. I read part of your program was to do a live performance component, and then that was your Coachella performance. No, the record was nearly finished except for one song before I went to school. Oh okay, So school didn't impact the creation of the record at all, got it? Because the record making feels really private and really personal and really introspective. Lot of what I was doing was taking time to investigate the more public sides of my life or career, which are putting music out into the world and then touring it. And so I'm in this phase right now where I'm starting to integrate everything I learned in school and bring it into this tour that I'm on right now. And then I'm just like so excited for the next record I make because it will be you know, that personal component will be influenced by all of that growth from that year. But now school like became a really it's interesting, It became a really like fun headline for a lot of people. But it was a very quiet personal process as thinking about what you believe often is right, and it doesn't have a ton to do with the record directly. That makes sense, Although I will say I will say, actually, maybe the thing that it does have to do with the record is while I was making Surrender, I sort of knew I was applying to grad school and knew I was going to do it. And I think a lot of Surrender I made really feeling divorced from any form of career goal. It was really about the artistic practice and my artistic goals. And like I'm realizing as I'm talking about this that like there's definitely a part of that knowing that I was about to go spend a year outside of music that I think maybe even could have empowered my creative process a little bit more to stay outside of any sort of commercial or success goals. Like I knew I was on my way out, and I didn't know if i'd come back. You know, that wasn't like set in Stone. I knew i'd put the record out, but I don't know. I find a lot of this business to be really disheartening. And I love making music, but in thinking about what I believe and what makes me happen, it's also thinking about the structures around these things that I love and whether or not it's necessary to do it commercially or not. As far as like what's going to make me the happiest in the long run. What's your favorite part of your job? Considering everything you have to do as an artist as a public person, what's your absolute favorite part of it. I love making stuff, Like it's my favorite thing in the whole world, whether it's writing songs, being in the studio, getting to play shows. I love playing other people's shows. Like my favorite part of performing is guesting what other people shows because it's so much fun and so much less pressure. But I'd say my favorite part is probably being in the studio. It's probably the part I get to do the least. Yeah, we have to take a quick break and then we'll be back with more from Maggie Rodgers and Leah Rose. We're back with more from Leah Rose and Maggie Rodgers. When it came to starting Surrender, what was the world that you envisioned in your mind that started to come together and you started to realize, Okay, this is the direction I want to go in, this is the world I want to create. How did that all start to come together for you? So I started this record like I have started all the records, which is with the mood board. It was really visceral feeling like there's a smudgy red lipstick and a lot of leather and silver, and but also a lot of images of people sort of like in the middle of some form of ecstasy or release. And that's sort of common to other, you know, mood boards or records I've had, but heard it in a past life. Was a lot of like people in motion. There's a lot of like dancers in motion. I like, whoever's listening to this, I keep making this movement like I'm like, I keep sort of overzoom, like reaching out my right hand and sort of like looking up to the sky as I'm saying in motion, which is a little bit ridiculous I heard in the past. I've also felt very like airy and deserty and through California, and I'm glad I was spending my first time in La and Surrender. It feels far earthier and maybe even a bit of fire, And it was certainly grounded in New York and in the foggy landscapes of Maine, and in the UK at Peter Gabriel's Real World studios, where I made a lot of this record. Too Cool. It wants to be really clear about what I wanted to make before I got anyone else involved, so I spent a lot of time gathering images and then also doing like research on my own, making demos, writing a bunch of songs. I wrote maybe a hundred songs for this record, and even like I basically made a sort of shittier second record that'll probably never come out, like I made like light On Part two, like fully produced, and then was like, okay, what else if that's the first step forward, what's the next step? And was able to sort of take that next artistically, if I think, because I had spent all that time sort of cleaning out what was ever in my brain. And then in Maine still I where I lived for a lot of the pandemic that summer, so it would have been summer of twenty twenty, the first song started to come that really felt like the mood board and really felt like the world. And that first song was Anywhere with You, And it was also like probably the last song we finished, too, because it's a long technical ride from a production standpoint, since so many of your songs feel so confessional, Yeah, do you I wonder this like I wonder this with comedians, like do you have moments in your life where you're in maybe like a passionate moment, an intense moment with another person, and you're like, this is a song, this is a pre chorus, Like this is all getting recorded tonight when I'm home. I don't, And I'm grateful for that because that I think if I was in like a fight with a friend and I was like, oh, this is going to make such a good song, I would be a psycho. Well, it's like Jerry Seinfeld. He's like always working on material, Like every conversation is material, Like nothing is personal. It's all material. When I get to really feel like an artist, I am that way, but like feeling like an artist feels like a certain type of sunglasses I get to put on, where like I'm noticing the light or the detail, or like the way something taste. Sensuality is a big part of this record, and for me, it's a big part of being an artist because it's just really being tapped into the senses and the way things feel. But a lot of my job I'm also like, like I don't know a business person or like an email intern or like you know, when you make your art your career, there's other stuff to just do. Yeah, But also what I would say is a lot of my music is also looking back. It's quite reflective, and I find like all art is reflective, but a lot of it actually physically is in the past tense, and I find when I look back, like I wrote the last song for a Surrender and Thanksgiving during school and I haven't written since then. It's been almost a year. And when I go to write again, I'll sort of like look back on that empty time and pick out there are just like natural moments that stick out in your memory from the last year if you can think about them. And I really think about making records as a form of archiving or cataloging. So great to have that and to have a slice of yourself preserved so you can look back and yeah, see yourself and you have it going back since when you're in high school. It's incredible. Yeah, I mean, it really feels like going and visiting an old version of myself, or like a childhood photo, where like you're looking at this photo and you conceptually know it's you, but yeah, it is a completely different person and it doesn't look or feel anything like you. Yeah, it's really bizarre. It feels like a snake shedding a skin, Like it feels like that, that sort of shell in a way you mentioned writing light on Part two. Yeah, do you remember anything from that? I would love to hear where that song went now that you have more experience in your career has progressed. I remember it like it exists. It's fully produced. I made it that summer of twenty twenty, like I made a whole record oh of like songs sort of like that, And then I was like, this is so boring, Like I'm going to die if I have to go tour this for another year. Was it just because it was sort of like melancholy or it wasn't reaching any new ground or what was boring about it? It didn't feel new, it didn't feel challenging. It felt like strong songwriting, but it sort of like it was a little sweeter, like I don't know. It felt very much like the character of Maggie Rogers in Hurt It in a past life, but it didn't actually feel like the person Maggie in the current moment I was in, and I sort of had to like outgrow and kill that character in order to like move forward and feel like myself again, so it didn't have the teeth, didn't have the smudge. Well it's not even about the teeth or the smudge. It just wasn't honest, Like it was what everybody wanted to hear from me, but it wasn't how I actually felt. And that's the thing that I've always sought to do, and my music is tell the truth, and that's something I just like, I'm a very direct person that can't hide a lot of motions for the better or the worst. But I also think that the second record is hard because people do have a real conceptual notion and of who you are, and you're not a product, You're a person, and you grow up and you change, and sort of being true to who I am or who I was when I was making this record, I knew would also alienate some of the people that fell in love with the artist I was on the last record, and I had to just sort of like let that go and really commit to making something that I love and I'm really proud of, and that's what I've always done, but it was it was a different thing this round, or it just took a couple weeks to sort of put myself in that headspace in a different way because I had to really like it was a bigger skin to shed because more people were holding onto that skin. It wasn't just me anymore. What's your relationship with your perceived audience in your mind? When you're writing songs, they don't really exist because music is really for me to process my life. When I get into recording were when I'm writing with someone else, maybe that's it. Like a lot of music are at alone, and a lot of this record I got to write with Kid Arpoon, which I just I love him so much. And it's really a different thing to write with someone else because it becomes social in the same way that playing music is social. And even though I'm still writing all the lyrics in the corner, I have a friend to push me, or there's a friend to dream with, and suddenly you get to the bridge and you're like, oh, this is such a good thing to yell at with the crowd, or like on stage, it'll sound like this on the record, but on stage we can do this whole lot other thing and it can open up, like you sort of get to plant these doorways in the record that you know, like in six to eight months, you're going to get to open and the whole song is going to blast open in this other way. Now that you've experienced more success, you're a little further along in your career. How are you feeling about the relationship between success and happiness. I think it really depends on how you define success. For me these days, is success is happiness on a day to day basis. I mean, I think in light on, like you're talking about, that song is really about something I referenced earlier in the conversation, which is the sort of like strange thing that happens when when you commodify your own human emotions, which is what it means to be a professional artist. And it's a really really bizarre thing. Even though I'm like so grateful to do it or to have the opportunity to do it, it's a it made me feel really bad a lot of the time. It was really dehumanizing, and I think now I just have different boundaries with it, and if my success is my own happiness, like I feel like, specifically in a lot of times in the communities that I exist in, which often our New York in LA in the music world, there's this like insatiable feeling that nothing is ever enough. You know. It's this very like capitalistic, forward looking tendency if everything needs to be bigger, better, and like if you sold this many tickets, it needs to be that many next time. And I think the thing that I really felt so grateful to feel a lot during the pandemic, which was such a time of pain and also reflection and grief and all this other stuff, is that I really have enough. I think you feel successful when you feel like you have enough, and I feel like I have more than enough all the time. And so once I could really define success for myself and feel like I had enough, I got a lot better at saying no to stuff I don't like to do. And that's great. Yeah, it's really awesome. It means I might not like be the biggest pop star in all the land, but I'm so much happier and my life Mammy is certainly better for it, and that looks like success to me. We'll be right back with the rest of Leah Roses conversation with Maggie Rogers after a quick break. Before we jump back into Leah Roses conversation with Maggie Rogers, let's hear Maggie's first single off her latest album, Surrender. Here's that's where I am. I find reason cuff cut start on days, could do this for mistakes that we made you we were just friends. You could be waiting and I hated you. That gave it a few years. You sat on your dance. But I never gone over secrets. I gain all out in the Wherever you Go, That's where I am. Boulders turned into sever you go, that's you do, Coven Flowers. I think, m then you want to see really show first. She shea to Guessten, go shriek little food, signing that me moders to see you. That's okay. Let's talk a little bit about the first song you released off the album That's where I Am. Where did that song come from and why was that the first song that you wanted to put out in the world. I think in every record there is a song that feels like it is the like perfect distillation, the like bulls eye of everything you're shooting for esthetically, and that song is that for me. When I listened to that song, it just sounds the most like me I've ever been able to distill into a recording. And I wrote and produced that song with Kid Harpoon at Real World. It was the first song we did in our second day and it was fast. I mean it was. It reminded me of writing Alaska that like ten minutes start to finish, like the words just like in chronological order themselves down. It has every bit of my like little bit of edge, has that like twelve string guitar nostalgia for all of the like sixties seventies music I love. It's got these big synths and sort of like wink to dance music that is also such a part of the music that I love and my musical DNA. Yeah, it just sounds like the sort of adult version of who I am and what I sound like on paper. And the song is like every other song I've ever wrote, like a story about some form of like love in my past, but it also is about a lot of things at once. Those are my favorite songs that like are more about a feeling than they are about one thing in particular, and they sort of that feeling is like this big magnet that draws in all these smaller moments in my life that to coalesce into one thing. And the thing that I'll say about that song is. It's crazy. The first time we played it live, not even with the crowd, just the first time we as a band got to put it together. It felt like such a testament to how much I've grown as a songwriter, and also with Tom too. I mean, I can't really talk about this song without talking about our partnership. We wrote light On together too, and I think watching us grow as a songwriting and production duo also is a part of it. The song just drives better. It's like if I was making a pickup truck before. This is like a sports car, like it's crazy with a band, it just drives really, really well. And that's a thing when you bring a song to a band, you really find that out. Because I remember bringing There's a song on my EP called Better and it was sort of like a last track at the beginning of my career that sort of like rounded off that EP. And it has always been really hard to play with the band, and it's because it was like a bedroom pop song and it wasn't really made for a lot. It was made for headphones, it wasn't made for the stage, and so much of this record I specifically made to play live, and that has been the whole other like best part of it. It's such an exhilarating song. It does something crazy to me, Like I listened, I was taking a walk the other day and I was listening to that song and it just like I have such an emotional response to it because I can so deeply feel what you're talking about, and it's a it's a raw nerve. It hits a raw nerve. It was pretty raw when I was making this whole record. I actually wrote Tom a thank you note just to be like, yo, I know, I was very intense we were making this record and whatever needed to come out of me, Like I'm a different person now. Yeah. I mean it's great that you have someone you can be that open with. Yeah, totally. He's the best with the song, Like that's where I am? Is that? Do you get closure by writing that song from that situation because that has to be a real situation. Yeah. I get closure from writing always. It's like once I can externalize it, it doesn't need to live inside of me anymore, and that feels really powerful. Do you need the person to hear it and then do you need to know the person's reaction to the song? Oh? No, no, no, no, no, no, okay, it's not about anyone else. I mean, I've always used the pronoun you because I always found gender and songs to be limiting. I don't use a lot of he or she because I find gender really limiting and songs. But no, I don't care if people hear it or not. It's not really for that. If I wanted to tell someone something, I would just call them. This is not for like some sort of very mature Yeah. I told you at the beginning. I'm a really direct communicator. That's someone to know something, i'd call them. I wouldn't like weird confess it in the song. Oh, I would be like, this is the easiest way to get this off my chest. And I hope that persons Oh man, well, hey I have some work to do. Yeah we all. Would you ever consider doing like a dance album, like an electronic music album. Yeah, I'm really hungry for it right now, and I'm sort of actively seeking it out because there was a lot of electronic music at the beginning of my career, and it feels like now what I'm really hungry for. I guess we'll see how it all turns out, and it ends up being about how much time I have off the road. It takes me a couple of weeks to come down from the road and get my brain back. And because it's touring is so body heavy, whereas recording is so brain heavy and also very like spiritual to be completely honest, so it takes a little bit while to like come back down to earth and integrate. So again it depends on sort of like how much time I'm left with to get to be in the studio. But yeah, that is sort of where my brain is at. Actually, how would you say your taste has evolved over the course of your career. My taste has evolved largely with the way technology is evolved, I think because when I was growing up, like I grew up with tapes and then CDs and then like illegal streaming and streaming, and I think a lot of the way my taste has changed has had to do with the way technology has allowed access to music to shift. Other than that, I've always listened to a ton of music. I mean, especially in college or growing up, I listened to a ton of R and B, listened to a ton of dance music. Yea. Honestly, the last two years I really just listened to ambient music. I think that's a sign of the times more than anything. A lot of like Daniel Lanoir instrumentals, or Andrew Wassilik or h Hunt or John Carol Kirby or there's this organ record I love by this coming Callie Malone but nice yeah, or the Eno Brothers. But I'm like, I really just sort of do that. How did you first come to music? Was the banjo your first instrument? No, my first instrumance was harp, and then I played piano and guitar. But I like got really scary obsessed with classical music as a kid. Music was the only thing I ever thought about ever, Like I guess I was when I was When I was a kid, I also wanted to be a writer, and I wrote a lot of short stories, but that sort of like checks out, like yeah, yeah, I don't know. I was always really into music. My mom told me that classical music was telling stories and then I had to listen for them, and that sort of really piqued my interest. And yeah, I'd listen to makeup stories. And this idea that you could illustrate emotion without saying anything was so fascinating to me, and I still do that like a lot of this record, the arrangements, you know, I think about a song like Symphony, where my vocal is the like steady center to all of this swirling sort of more dance influenced instrumental that just keeps growing and growing and growing and getting more chaotic. And that song is about trying to like be the steady person for a friend who's sort of going through it. So I try and like mirror that sensibility in my work as much as possible. I'm curious about this. I have a four and a half year old who just started playing the violin. Oh my god, are you okay? It's the smallest violin, and oh my gosh, it's incredible. But how old were you when you start playing the harp? Like that's a huge instrument. How does that happen? No, there's a folk harp, So there's a small harp. Regular harps are fucking huge and you have all these pedals you move by your feet to change the sharps and flats, and like I played that in New Orchestra in high school, but when I was growing up, I played It's called a folk harp. Which is about three feet tall, and there are smaller levers on each string, so you change the sharps and flats individually, okay, rather than by your feet, so you sort of prepare the instrument. It's like a prepared piano in a way. You prepared the instrument before you sit down. But I mean, I haven't played harp since I was eighteen, So ten years, do you think you'd still be able to play it? I mean, I understand how it works, but like, I also like the craziest thing about becoming a professional musician is since I have done that, nobody has asked me to read a piece of music. So maybe I could play maybe not Like I would probably say no, so nobody asks me and puts me on the spot. Yeah. Was there anybody in your family who was musical? No? My mom played piano after we went to bed sometimes, and I think she played growing up. But she loved music and what always she was the one that like, she'd play me Alanis Morrisett or Lauren Hill or Eric bad Or. She loved outcast. Yeah, yeah, very sick. Shout out to Alice. She had great taste. She still does, she really does. Yeah, But yeah, other than that, Like nobody really liked played or work to music in my family. And when you say all you thought about was music as a little kid, like were you thinking about it technically or are you thinking about like how it made you thinking about it all that time? I was thinking about it all the time. Like when I got to high school, I used to DJ middle school recess and I was like obsessed with being able to hear a song on the radio and be able to tell you like all of the producer, songwriters, record label, what year came out like. It was really like a sense of identity also, but I was like just a I was the same that as I am now. It's just a big nerd. I was just really into it, and it was really all I thought about, like playing music, who was playing music? Thinking about music? But I was also really interested in like the business or what was happening, Like you know, I'd watch d H one Top twenty Countdown every week or yes, and then later I got Spin or Rolling Stone and would read that cover to cover and would look at all the charts and sort of then go do my homework about you know, what was on the college radio charts, and oh, I haven't heard of that record, so I'd go look it up or you know, nerds stuff. Yeah, I mean it seems like such a blessing to know exactly what you want to do so early. Yeah, I'm sure it was fucking annoying to be around. Shout out to my siblings or like anyone that was my friend during most days. Are they all just like, yeah, of course she is who she is now. Oh my god. Yeah. Yeah. And I remember when I went to college too. I was studying music production but also a lot of the music business, and really, you know, like so many people have at that time, being like, oh, these people are all all the version, the nerd versions of me, you know, from their high schools. That was special to start to find community around that. I was at a wedding this left past weekend and I saw some of my oldest friends from when I was like eight or nine, and they were like, yeah, dude, this is the least surprising thing and that has happened, Like this is a big duh. Yeah. Yeah. How old were you when you discovered your voice and your vocal range the power of your voice. I have a very concrete early memory of being my sister and I shared a bathroom, but it had two sinks. I have no idea how old I was, somewhere in between three and five maybe, And I remember suddenly singing and it sounding different like I had sang, you know, as a kid whatever, and something happened this one time I sang and I was like, Oh, that sounds really different, and oh, this is a thing I can do. And I remember my sister and I like having a conversation about it about like both of us being like WHOA, what was that like? And suddenly I could sing. And I didn't really figure out that I had like a big voice. I mean there were moments like I got asked to sing Aretha Franklin with the jazz band in high school and I pulled it off. But I still didn't like really figure out that I or like have the confidence to say that I was like a singer honestly until touring heard it in a past life. I mean, that song Falling Water was such a massive moment for me. Understanding my vocal range, but also then having to perform that song every night really changed the way I learned or knew my voice because it really spans like my entire vocal range, and oftentimes we'd start the show with it, so it would just be like I would have to really be ready for it. And I think you can hear that vocal shift in this record. I mean when I listened back to Surrender, my voice just sounds big, and I really like, I know how to sing now and I know my voice better and it's really fun to use that instrument. How do you think about manipulating your voice while you're singing? Is that something that just is instantaneous. Yeah, It's not something I think about anymore. It's so much more about just trying to communicate emotion effectively. So cool, It's just like another yet another thing in your toolbox. It's it's my favorite thing. But it's also funny thing because singing, Like, at this point, I've spent so much time, you know, I took vocal lessons as a kid. I sang in choirs, I arranged for a cappella groups, I like, sang with the jazz band. I have played in punk bands and folk bands and rock bands and college and DJ and I've done all this stuff and now it's just like a thing can do. Like it feels almost like a party trick, like it doesn't take a lot of like, you know, I can sing, like in the same way that some people are double jointed. Like it's just a thing I can do. And you have no reservations about singing in front of people. You don't have any nerves or anything like that. No, I think, like you know, I have played like Radio City and the Sydney Opera House, and from there I know that, like, this is a thing that I'm good at, like not in like a cocky way, just like a I can sing, I'm a good singer. I know that I am a good singer, and it's really nice to do something that you know that you can excel at. I also think I've spent a lot of time in places where I was new at things or you know, wasn't great at things. And yeah, I know there's a lot of things in my life I'm still working on. But I know that singing is something I can do, and so I don't really stress about it. So you talked about New York City influencing in part Surrender. Do you see yourself ever going back and living in a rural place Since you originally grew up in a more rural area in Easton, do you ever see yourself going back to a rural place to live full time? These days, I sort of lived between LA and Maine, and my heart lives not in a city, even though I like love city energy, But honestly, I don't get to be home very much. And if I can be in a place that it feels like quote unquote home while I'm working and pick up a couple more days in a comfortable, familiar spot, I'll take it. So like La does not in any way and probably never will feel like home. It's never a place side in the map I would have chosen to be, even though I've come to like love things about it or have great friends or community here, But I have felt way more at home in New York City. Like New York, I'm an East Coaster, Like I just lived in Boston free year and I loved it, and I have. I always am like curious about like resonant places where people have resonance, not residents, but resonance, Like the places that really like resonate with you, like the way that the earth speaks. I think honestly because I grew up in the marshland at like one hundred percent humidity, LA's just really dry for me, Like I just like I'm not a desert girl. It's just a different vibe too. The people are different, it's a different culturally, it's very different. Yeah, and it's amazing too, and it brings different things out of me. But I'm also not thinking so much about where I live because I'm so excited to be on tour that that has been the most interesting thing to feel. Is that like being back on a tour bus or being on tour like that is the place I feel the most at home. It's the place that I had spent collectively the most amount of time in my adult life. And it has this magic thing where your sense of purpose on tour is so clear, Like you're with all these people who have all committed to this real, strange, alternative way of life in this real practice, and you form a community and every bit of your day is goes towards this moment that is about being present that you're creating with the audience and bringing people together and also being a part of something bigger than yourself. And that to me is I feel so lucky to call home. Well, thank you so much. I could sit and talk to you all day, I know you have to go. No, thank you. I really appreciate really thoughtful questions. I really appreciate it, and it's such a joy to be on this podcast. I'm just a really big fan. Thank you, best of luck on tour. I hope that you find home wherever you are and can't wait to see you play. Oh, can't wait, can't wait. Thanks again to Maggie Rodgers. You can hear a new album, Surrender, along with all of our favorite Maggie Rodgers songs on a playlist at broken Record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast. We can find all of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced with help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrel, Ben Holliday, Eric Sandler, Jennifer Sanchez, our editor Sophie Crane. Our executive producer is Mia LaBelle. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content an uninterrupted ad free listening for four ninety nine a month. 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