Annahstasia

25:48Experience amazing at your Lexus dealer. be kind when you wrote the song how how done was it or how much of that work to strip some of your ego out of it did you have to do since you brought that up as an example you know not much because i was i was quite humbled at that point um by my life experiences i had just moved back to california after trying to live in new york for a few years and New York just destroyed me mentally, destroyed my health. Like I was not good. No. I was not well. And I had run back to California with my tail between my legs. And, yeah, I was sitting in the quiet of a valley home and the sun coming through the window and gentle breeze of spring and just such a sharp contrast to where I was, the noise and the bustle and the grit and the smog.

26:54And I don't know, the song just came out. It came out. And the front half came out because I was just trying to purge that experience. And then I literally said to myself, I'm like, okay, stop complaining. And then the second half came out. But in the same city, though. In the same city. Yeah, I usually write my songs in one sitting, two at max, but not in any large swath of time between the two. Because it's like when it's coming through, you have to catch it. It's kind of like catching fish. They're slippery and they might not come around again. So you got to, when it comes through. What does practice look like for you?

27:35You said a lot of your writing comes from just out of practicing. When do you practice and what does that look like for you? You know, practice is a funny thing for a musician who's become a professional musician, because then it's like you actually don't have time to practice anymore, which is what even got you there in the first place is all the practice. So now I have to like carve out time and I haven't been so good at it, which is why I haven't been writing that much. um but what it just looks like is is practice it's like just exploring the neck of the guitar seeing different finding different chords finding different tunings finding different voicings different melody lines and then for me the when i find a new melody line or find a new chord progression that almost directly inspires language um it's like almost like a synesthesia but with words like hearing a sound and it reminds me of like a memory or a moment or a color and And then I just follow that.

28:33I start describing it. And then it's just like pulling the thread. Is there any songs on the album that you found the melody on the guitar before you found the words, before you found your voice around it? Well, it all happens at once. I write all my songs on the guitar by myself in my room. Yeah, all of the songs were already written before I went in to record the album. And then I just taught everybody the songs, and we worked on the arrangement and recorded the band arrangement. But every single song that I write or put out is written in that way. It's me in this moment of practice with my guitar, and they dance together.

29:20The melody in my hands and the words and the lyrics, it's not linear. the process. And sometimes there'll be like holes that need to be filled, um, where I'm not quite sure what I'm trying to say. Like villain was one of those. Like when villain came through, I was, I wasn't just in a very angry place. And that one, it came, the lyrics never changed. It came through like that, done. But when I revisited it, I was like, okay, wait, this isn't actually about my anger actually this is this is about something else and then over time the meaning of the song evolved and that changed how I sung it wow and how I performed it because at first it's like this angry song like just I don't want anything that you left it's kind of it's kind of like you know all your stuff is in the closet take it and go um was the energy of when I wrote the song but by the time i tracked it over a year later it was like oh actually the song is about taking accountability for the shadow parts of yourself and the way that you hurt others in the process of trying to love them and that there's a lot of forgiveness there for yourself and for for the other person because it's not that there was an effort it's just that you didn't have the tools right and and we like to craft all these narratives about who did someone wrong and and who's the villain and who's the hero who's the victim and and who's the the um aggressor and it's like well it's actually quite most often very nuanced and and we we exist in these polarities And sometimes, like, you choosing to be the victim is a type of manipulation.

31:11And, you know, vice versa. And when you, again, when you zoom out, you're like, oh, if that actually freedom from this cycle is being okay with having done harm and taking accountability of that. But that is not where I started when I wrote the song. That is not where I was. I was fully in petty zone. Like, you know, I just had nothing good to say about this other person at that time. And that's an example, I think, of how the songs, like, they come to me, but they teach me as I'm living with them. Sometimes I don't even know what I'm singing about, but the words are there. The song is there. It's done.

31:52And the lesson I learned from it comes much later. Wow. The songs are teaching. the evolution of the song is evolution of your thought process of the thing that you're going through yeah have you written a song maybe not on this album because it's it's relatively new but do you have any songs that you've written that x amount of years later or now that you've you don't feel so connected to or you don't you're like ah that was yeah all the time for one that hasn't been sitting right with me has been power um which is funny because like People want me to sing that one all the time. And I think it's because the song was at a point in my life where I was playing the victim all the time.

32:38And to be fair, there was a lot of shit going on that was really unfair. And I was being exploited by multiple industry factors. And I didn't feel like I had any power. and especially as a black woman just like seeing the way that I was being treated when and then looking at my peers who were not black women and being like I don't see a difference in talent so what's going on here and feeling powerless in that dynamic that's where I was writing that song from but when I sing it now because I'm not in this place of that type of victimization, self-victimization I'm in this place of like what is for me is easeful and I don't need to fight for it.

33:22I don't need to prove myself constantly. Like I know who I am now. And I wrote that song when I was like 20 years old. I'm 30 now. So it's just, there's been so much time since that thought. And now when I go to sing it, I'm like, I'm just like, you're so silly. You're so silly for thinking that. And I don't even want to finish the song. so it's like i don't i don't really relate to it anymore but i understand how for other people it's like they really need to hear that because everyone's been in that position where they just feel like they cannot get a grasp on their own power their own like free will yeah a lot a lot of powerless i mean there's a lot of powerless people out there you know and it's an illusion it's an illusion that you're powerless often so often so i think you're right i think you're You certainly seemed to have figured out how to arrive where you wanted to probably go most of the time.

34:21I don't know a ton about you, but you did get signed kind of early. Maybe you can just tell the story. I don't know. Yeah. I was discovered at school, in high school. Performing arts high school? No, just a regular high school. College prep school. I had a lot of bougie people going through there. Um, but it wasn't a performing arts school. And, um, I was standing outside in the carpool lane waiting for my folks. And I was just singing to myself and somebody's parent came and was sitting next to me. And I kind of noticed him cause I was like, he's sitting weirdly close. Um, but I might, I was minding my business.

35:05I kept singing my song. And after I was done singing, uh, he came up to me and he was like, do you want to be a pop star? I was like, what? Who are you? I was like, stranger danger. Who is this man? And then he started asking me questions. He's like, do you dance? How's your fashion sense? What kind of music are you into? Do you like pop music? And I was like, you should talk to my parents. A little weirded out. Yeah, a little weirded out. He was like an old man. And so he talked to my parents. and he was very serious about tracking a song with me. And I went over to his house with my parents a few weeks later and tracked the only song that I had written at that point.

35:55What was the song? It was called, what was it called? I think it was called Something. Something you don't know about me Is that I'm older than my bones I've been here before and you know me sadly they own the publishing on that and it's never coming out we won't pay them

36:25and yeah that was the only song that I'd written at that point and I tracked it and he produced it and then the label was super jazzed about it they're like whoa this voice, whoa this girl oh she's only 17 oh shit okay here we go and uh did he was it was it like a had he built a pop star like what was no it was like it was an imprint and yes he kind of had he he was like a big producer for all that era of disney that was like the cheetah girls hillary duff like he was on all of that he had done all that this is a look sometime later so he removed from that but that was his okay okay that was his like claim to fame um and uh they had another big artist on their on their label at that time um who had done quite well for herself as well and so it was legit like it was a legit thing it wasn't some like garage label you know they were they were fully backed and it was all a thing um but i you know didn't have money for a proper or lawyer and you know I fell into that trap of like oh well we'll cover your legal fees like it's all good you know we got you your friendly neighborhood label um and I let them do that and ended up in a contract that was really really suffocating um and and quite quite intense and should be illegal um and I didn't really it didn't turn sour till about two years after that point I I was learning to write.

37:59I was writing with all of these amazing top liners and a few Motown folks who were still around. And every day we would just sit at the piano and write songs. And that's how I learned how to really craft a song very meticulously, a pop song. And you would bring an idea? I would write it. You would write it? Yeah, I would write every song. Okay. But he would help me craft melody and hook and all these things and turn them into traditional pop songs. Was that interesting to experience at that time? Yeah, it was. It was cool to get a lesson in that and to have that mentorship and to really stretch my ability in that way.

38:41And I think that training is what still informs a lot of my practice. Like, I've since, like, broken a lot of the molds that I was taught. But with that knowledge, you know, I think it's good to learn your basics and then explore from there. So for me, that was my basics. And, you know, it was fine up to a point. And then when I started to come into my own as an artist and realize, like, oh, here's what I want, here's the da-da-da, that's when there was this deviation. with the label system. When you were ready to move past the basics, break some rules. Exactly. Find your own voice. Right. Then it's like, then it became a problem.

39:25And I was shelved and I didn't know what that was. I kept coming to them with new music and new stuff. And they were just, they wouldn't even tell me it was shelved. They would just keep being like, oh yeah, you know, we'll submit it. We'll see like, maybe we can get you something, a budget, or maybe we can put it out. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe. be. And they just kept pushing my boundaries. Like they were like, oh, you need to drop out of school if you want us to think you're taking this seriously. So I dropped out of college. So you need to, you need to be in sessions every day. So I was like working three jobs on top of going to sessions till 3am.

39:57Like I was, I was so exhausted at one point that I remember coming home and I was living with my parents and crying. And my mom and my dad were like, you know, this is supposed to be fun like music is supposed to be fun yeah life and the arts is yeah it's like and it doesn't look like you're having any fun and um for me that was that your realization point but i was still so young and i was like okay well maybe i need to make pop music again because that was the last time this was kind of fun so that i did that and then the final straw was getting offered like a even somehow more predatory deal um for for the album cycle and um i took one look at that my mom took one look at that and even as not being lawyers she was like there's no way you're going to survive this if you sign this deal i'm afraid you might off yourself because you're already so depressed and you're so you're unfulfilled you feel trapped and then you're going to sign a 10 album deal no yeah no you're getting on a plane and you're going back to college tonight literally that day i went back to to boston to go back to university and i called the label from there and i was like i'm quitting wow and then they were like okay well if you're quitting music then there's no need to let you out of your contract i don't um so and i didn't have any, any rights to, to, to fight that.

41:25So I just ended up having to wait till like, like, you know, while. So that's a weird experience, a weird way to have your college experience. Like, that's just like a, what, what was, and you, you graduated college, right? So you did political science and political science. And were you just like, did you at a certain point imagine that that music as a career was behind you? Yeah. I mean, when I went to school, it was like I kind of just accepted that I stopped playing guitar. I would sing occasionally in college bands and stuff. But I just was like, okay, this is a hobby. I don't know how I'm going to get out of this deal.

42:14I don't know how. Like they just completely cut off my my hands in a metaphorical sense to be able to make music in a way that would even be sustainable from from as a job or as like a livelihood. So it was off the table for so long. So that's how I got into my other mediums and other things I was passionate about. Sculpture, papermaking, cinema, photography, painting. I had so many other creative outlets that music for a while being on the back burner was fine but it was something that kept like knocking at the door and I never stopped making music I just I just was constantly readjusting my goals yeah and then by the time I was out of that contract I I was like okay I'm gonna do this independently and see how far I can go because the major label system is so corrupt and so fickle that for what I'm trying to build, it doesn't make sense to engage with it at all.

43:19I knew at that point that the type of music I was trying to make was the type of music that would be considered a classic in 50 years. And that kind of music wasn't going to survive in the culture climate of the 2010s. It just wasn't. The pop music of the 2010s was not going to produce. No. Yeah. No. And it's like, maybe in 50 years, we're going to think of, I don't know, Pink Print as a classic record. I don't know. I don't know. It's a good record. But it was never the record you were going to make. No, it's not the record I was ever going to make. It's a good record. And it's fun. Exactly. And it's like, maybe when that comes on, when like, we're all, you know, super old and crusty, we're like, you remember this back in the day?

44:09I will for sure be doing that. Back in my day. I promise you. I already do that. But I think that's a little different than like hearing a Bill Withers record or hearing a Nina record. And maybe that's just like future nostalgia kicking in. That's not the goal of, you might get classics in the pop industry these days, but that's not the goal. you know it's incidental it's incidental it's not like it's not the goal that's a good point yeah it is so you were you were smart to like observe that and remove yourself from it yeah disengage yeah and you know it's like short-term gains over over long-term legacy it's not the music industry this these days is not really in for a long-term legacy they say they are yeah but yeah the function of what you see in the back end right is that's not the that's not the case at all So, and your parents both were in fashion.

45:03Mm-hmm. You also work in fashion? I used to, yeah. You used to. Not anymore? No, I quit modeling in 2022, technically. It's like for myself, I just stopped submitting for jobs, stopped doing the casting, stopped doing the whole scene of it. um occasionally things come through and and if it if it makes sense then i'll do it but it's not like i'm no longer engaging with fashion as a model like just a face if somebody wants to engage with me as an artist great i'm there awesome but um fashion from as a model and from that industry side i just outgrew it is that what was your relationship to fashion as a kid, like with your parents being in it, was it like you admired that they were in it and you wanted to participate or was it a bit just that's their thing?

45:58No, I actually wanted to be a fashion designer. And my dad was like, no, flat out, he was like, no. And what was his reason? He's like, this is one of the hardest careers you could ever choose for yourself. So just, I don't want that for you. And then I chose music, which is - The second hardest. Which is maybe the first hardest, I would say. I don't know. I think they're maybe neck and neck these days. But yeah, very, very tough industries to be in fashion and music, because, you know, there's a there's this aspect of scale that you need to to be, quote, successful in both. And I don't, growing up, like, I was just so enamored with my parents' work and their work ethic, their creativity, their ability to, like, sculpt the body with fashion and create something from scratch to, like, beauty and how they manufactured beauty from their own vision.

47:02And it was something that, yeah, I just knew that I wanted to be a part of. Like, I knew I wanted to manufacture beauty as well. I wanted to pluck it out of our existence and show it to people. However, I was going to do that. And it wasn't clear as a kid, but because I had fashion designer parents, I was like, oh, I'll just be a fashion designer. Like, because that's what you guys do. And you're like, no, be a doctor, be a lawyer, be anything but this. And yeah, I'm anything but that. but yeah yeah no it's but you did but you did circle you did come back to it at a certain point then i did yeah is that like during college your college no it was by accident it was by accident i didn't i didn't set out to be a model um i was working at a gallery i was an intern and um randomly i helped i got called that day to help a friend like with a shoot she was she was shooting for her brand she's like hey a model dropped out like could you just jump in like it's just a few shots so I told my boss and I was like hey is it okay if I leave early today she's like yeah yeah fine go so I I went over to her house I did this shoot and at that shoot there was this makeup artist who was saying that Nike had been looking for musicians for an ad and um i was like oh i'm a musician like i could do it and um she's like okay yeah i'll send i'll take a photo i'll send it over she sent it over um and then i got booked street cast off of that and um nike's notorious for street casting people and underpaying them um so i think i got paid like 500 bucks for the shoot which at that time was crazy money to me because i was like in cafe jobs and making$500 every two weeks.

48:49Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was like, one day,$500? Crazy. That's rich. Rich, yeah. And I was like, yeah, of course, I'll be there. So I did it, and it was a really fun shoot day. I had a great time. That ended up being an international billboard campaign. Yeah, yeah. The severity of which I was underpaid is, like, criminal. $500 for international. Yeah, yeah. I don't know a thing about anything. Yeah. But I know that that sounds really wrong. They really took advantage, for sure. And I was, like, in every subway, multiple billboards across New York, L.A., Paris, London, Turkey. My mom was an Australian.

49:36She has a picture of me literally, like, 20 feet tall, like, everywhere. Everywhere. My face. Nike. 500 bucks. But, you know, it launched my modeling career. So you did get more jobs based on that. So they kept hiring me, actually. Nike was hiring me for, like, years after that. You renegotiated what that was. And I renegotiated once I learned what the actual going rate was. Because I was doing it independently, because no modeling agencies would sign me. Yeah. They just didn't see the vision. Right. And I wasn't going to force it upon them. I was like, whatever, I'm booking jobs directly, it's fine.

50:17um but eventually i did find agents and then that became my main source of income it allowed me to to stay in the music game as long as i have because like there's no money in music there's no if you're an artist and a singer you're in like one of the worst positions because you can't really play for other people you can't like like you're you're so specific it's like you can only do your thing explain that what do you what do you for me at least it's like i i don't i don't produce traditionally um i don't like i can use dawgs but i don't like using them i'm not the best at it so it's like i'm not doing that for other people and i also don't want to give the time to doing that for other people um i'm wouldn't call myself a guitarist in the sense that i can go and play other people's music with like two hours notice and learn everything that quickly not a pianist i don't play any other instruments to that level of competency um i could write for other people, but I am such so personal about my writing that I don't really enjoy it.

51:21Yeah. So you've knocked off like any of the other income fields. Like the practical kind of things that you could do. Right. And it's like, I don't, I don't really play covers. So it's like wedding bands are out. Like there's just no, there's like no way for me to make money musically unless I'm doing my own thing. Yeah. And I was so dedicated to my own thing and to figuring out what that was that I wasn't interested in making a musical career out of doing other people's things. I just wasn't. And so making money from music and sustaining myself off of it, it's a dream I still haven't even realized because now even I'm not able to pay my bills off of music.

52:06and that's a reality of the industry that is separate long conversation but in the meantime like fashion and commercial work has like sustained me and allowed me to have enough free time to be an artist yeah in today's super competitive business environment the edge goes to those who push harder move faster and level up every tool in their arsenal. T-Mobile knows all about that. They're now the best network, according to the experts at an Ooclas speed test, and they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage.

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54:52Lexus is a company that believes in the importance of setting a standard, which I can appreciate as someone who holds themselves to lofty if not ridiculous standards, especially with the car I drive. The standard Lexus has set for themselves is to experience amazing. Lexus measures success by the feeling and emotions evoked in a driver, like exhilaration and joy. Amazing can only be achieved by knowing people on a deeper level. The standard of amazing results in a feeling in drivers that their car was built in anticipation of them. machines that make you feel more human because a car that doesn't make you feel something is a car that stops short of amazing experience amazing at your lexus dealer i was gonna ask how this plays i mean you probably just answered it but i would like to talk about i mean you're i didn't even really realize this until like i i'd seen it and then later i heard the mute and then i it took me a long time to put two and two together that you were in Kendrick's theater video.

55:51Yes, I was. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Super random. How did that happen? How did it happen? Karina, the director, she's a fan. And she came to a show I opened for Charlotte Day Wilson a few years ago. And she was at that show and she just remembered me. And she DM'd me on Instagram. She's like, hey, I don't know if you remember me. We met backstage stage for like two seconds, but I am directing this music video and I want you to be a part of it. And I was like, I don't really do other people's music videos. Like I'm not really a model anymore. She's like, no, no, no. Just like, please, like I'll send you the treatment.

56:31You sign the NDA. Like, I think you're going to love this one. You didn't know who it was. I didn't know who it was. No, she couldn't tell me. And so I signed the NDA and then, so then she can send it over she sends it over and i see it's for kendrick and i'm like oh shit okay um and i read through the treatments a beautiful treatment uh a film about you know intimacy and and connection and longing and yearning um and like wanting to show up for someone and not really quite knowing how yet but like wanting to give them the world and um i yeah i just love the concept and i love that I was being considered as a muse for that medium, that feeling.

57:15And then it almost all didn't happen because I was out of town and there was like scheduling conflicts. There was almost no way for me to get back in time to shoot it. And then the LA fires happened. The whole thing got canceled. Wow. Then a few months later, they were able to bring the production back up and they were like, hey, are you by any chance free and in LA? And I'm like, I am. They're like, okay, cool. Will you still be in it? Yeah, I'd love to. I like to just take on little side quests when I can and that just seemed like a fun thing to do. It was such a cool treatment and done so well that it's like, I get why you would take this.

57:56Beyond just the thrill of it's like Kendrick and the song's incredible and all that. It's a great treatment. It's really beautiful. I was really grateful to be asked to act and And, you know, it's something that I'm like softly looking into, not looking into acting, but like people have been asking me more and more and I'm open to exploring it now. So it was nice to do it softly in that way. Yeah. No words. How'd you prep for it? How'd I prep for it? I didn't prep for it. It was all pretty like natural. I mean, I come from a performance arts background in college. I had a company with a few other women where we explored dance and movement through silence and then using our own bodies to compose sound for the pieces as they were going on.

58:50And a lot of that practice was intense, like, eye contact and staring into each other's eyes and, like, understanding intimacy between dancers enough to interpret each other's movements through prolonged improvisation. So it's like I have, like, all of these things in my life that have kind of prepared me to show up and just, like, stare into a stranger's eyes for six minutes in an elevator. It wasn't really like a large task and I didn't really care that this is Kendrick. It's like I was raised to believe everybody's just a human being. So, you know, I'm interfacing with him as not as this person who's done all of these amazing things, but just as another person.

59:32Yeah. And there's something so vulnerable about sharing, exchanging eye contact for that amount of time. It doesn't matter who that person is. Yeah. You really have to just be there with them. So I didn't feel like it needed much preparation aside from, you know, getting my braze redone and pulling up on time. Making sure you're on point. Yeah, no, that's it. So you really, that work in college allowed you to feel like, allowed you to be ready to, because it's an interesting thing. Like you're really having to express something really only through body language. Yeah. Which is like, that's like, that's, you know, way less tools than you have available to you as a singer songwriter or, you know, like.

1:00:18Kind of. It's all the same. It's all the same. The subtleties with which I make the choices to sing certain things are the same as how you show up in your body and convey with like, without words, with just eyes and a few gestures. It's actually all in the eyes. Most, most storytelling. really i think so even before you take it to the stage like before you like so even in the recording process are you are you aware of your body in that way yeah well with recording i i often when i sing i close my eyes because i'm so aware of my body i'm pulling it out of my body and i'm not performing from the sense of like being perceived or filmed or watched but from the perspective of trying to channel all of that that that um that aspect of our humanity that can like watch ourselves from the outside in yeah and i'm cutting that sense off by closing my eyes and i'm projecting it inward in order to deliver it with my voice just my voice um kind of like concentrating the energy it's incredible to go back to your trajectory a little bit um you had that weird experience with that label and you're in a weird contract you eventually start making some independent music it sounds very different still from what you've just um put out it was good um thinking of like sacred uh yeah sacred bull yeah um which is a really cool project but it's really it's just it's still not like was was Is the music you just made with Tether, was that what you'd been envisioning all along?

1:02:08Yeah, yeah. I remember with Sacred Bull, I was really frustrated because all these producers kept telling me that it was too expensive to make music with live musicians. They're just like, it's too expensive, it's too complicated, we don't have the right room. And they were right. There are certain things that you need to do that. And we had essentially a vocal booth in a closet and a bunch of computers and no money. So Sacred Bull was a beautiful product of a lot of hustle and grit. We were just making music with what we had. And I'm proud of that. But my voice couldn't come through because I was having to rely on these producers to craft the sonics and the sound.

1:02:56and there was so much in that collaboration that just got lost in translation and it didn't have enough room for my voice there was not I couldn't tell my stories how I wanted to tell the stories and when I was done with Sacred Bull and I did that tour with Lenny Kravitz when I did that tour um I brought a band I was able to bring a band and we did a we did all rock arrangements of sacred bull and i was like i was freaking right i was right like the music makes sense in this context when there's a band and there's room to like breathe and we can like push and pull and like the songs themselves come alive yeah so much more there was a live version that you i don't know if you really like it's out there band camp yeah and it's it's it's very different from very different yeah um like it actually it has yeah life in it and um that's when i was a shift for me i was like yeah i'm just not gonna waste my time with producer projects anymore like i i can't i can't exist on the grid i cannot yeah fit in the grid so everything that i do now it's free time it does there's no metronome the metronome is us we got one built in so we don't really need a metronome and um revival was my first like foray into producing from that perspective it's like okay what if i just teach real musicians in a real room songs and then we discuss our choices and then we go in there we take it a few times one track through one take through after one take after one take and whatever the best take is makes it on the record and it's my ears that's that's how they've been doing music for a long ass time until we had computers and all this fancy stuff yeah um and so even even there was just then from that point a process of refinement.

1:04:49Revival was like my first step in that direction. I was still kind of finding my voice again after so much trauma and psychological warfare and musically trying to find my confidence as a producer, as a leader. And by the time I got around to recording Surface Tension, which we recorded here at Shangri-La, that was like when we really honed in on the sonic world, which was just like the type of mic that we're going to use, the type of room that we're going to be in, the type of guitar we're going to use, have a mic on that guitar, like bread and butter. Just that kind of minutiae was the core.

1:05:33And then experimenting on what can we fill the space with, but very tastefully. um so that was surface tensions experimentation so by the time we got to tether and recording tether it was like all of that was so honed in that when we brought the band in it was like it wasn't easy there was still a lot of work and there's still a lot of wielding and like talking to everyone crafting it but this but the between jason and i the way that it was going to to be recorded and engineered was just locked. Yeah, Jason Lader. Jason Lader, yeah. The sound was found at that point. Yeah, I feel like your voice is first and foremost, the thing that's like, wow.

1:06:19The arrangement for sure is like the second thing that it's like, this is beautifully arranged. And like, whereas I don't know that so, like I guess maybe people think about arrangements and people probably spend time arranging the records, But the way this is arranged, it's just like, it's really thoughtful. You don't even notice it. But when you start trying to pay attention to it, you're like, it's really smartly done. It's so cool. Thank you. It's so cool. Thank you. Yeah. It's like not as much work as people think it is. It's like, it's a lot of me choosing the right people and then letting them do what they do best.

1:06:54Yeah. That's the way I like to produce things. Why do it any other way? It's just easier that way. It's like, I don't have all the knowledge. I'm going to go to the person who spent the last 15 years learning their instrument, not try and tell them what to do. You had Abe. Abe played drums first. I love Abe. Abe is amazing. He's my favorite drummer ever. He's actually ruined all drummers for me because if Abe isn't free, I just would rather not have drums. He's really good. He's a beautiful human on top of it. Yeah, he's so sweet. Want to play another song? Yeah, for sure.

1:07:46There's a pile of CDs in the corner over there Sharing the ground with the tree That's the saving grace For the surrounding poison air The hunger that I stare at this get-owned island I find it rare and different This pile of memories They're always lying there

1:08:28And I danced for three days, I danced for three days, I danced for three days in the arms of my lover. And I met in a growing face, holds on to my growing pace.

1:08:49And I deserve to rest In a California key bed And my arms outstretched And my dreams were leading from my end Into the sheets instead Oh, maybe I'm the chosen one You're lost in a rambling sign I'll leave You're standing in a land that I designed

1:09:22For a better hand

1:09:28I deserve a better hand

1:09:39You see

1:09:45I never learned to be kind

1:09:59But I hear you get used to the pain Of heartbreak again and again

1:10:29I won't be heartless So don't be heartless With me I won't be callous, so don't be callous with me. I won't be careless, so don't be careless with me. I won't be callous, so don't make me callous. I won't be heartless.

1:11:08So don't hang me callous

1:11:17Hold me callous

1:11:24So don't hang me callous

1:11:32Hold me kind

1:11:40If you'll be

1:11:48I'll be kind

1:11:55If you'll be

1:12:04If you'll be

1:12:19If you'll be

1:12:39This is a real magic in your... This is a real magic in your performances. It's unbelievable. You mentioned briefly, Lenny took you on tour. Yeah. Has he heard this record? Yes, actually. When we were in mastering process, I finalized the masters in his basement. Nice. Nice. So he has heard this record. and he was listening to it, and he just kept going, girl, what the fuck? Yeah, yeah. After every song, he was like, what the fuck? Yeah, that's the right response.

1:13:20It's, you're like a body hot listening, you know, and that's what I was experiencing listening yesterday too, and right now, it's incredible. Oh, thank you. And it's so different from, like, that Lenny heard something in you earlier, because, I mean, it's so beyond, you're so beyond where he found you you know yeah then this is it's just like whoa you know it's the only intelligible thing i have to say um other than thank you so much for for for sharing about yourself and your music and thank you yeah it's a pleasure thanks for your questions yeah in the episode description you'll find a link to a playlist of some of the songs we talked about in this episode and also to Anastasia's album.

1:14:07Be sure to check out youtube.com slash brokenrecordpodcast to see all of our video interviews. And be sure to follow us on Instagram at thebrokenrecordpod. You can follow us on Twitter at brokenrecord. Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Tolliday. 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 and ad-free listening for$4.99 a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcast subscriptions.

1:14:46And if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richmond.

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