This interview was conducted by guest author Anthony Cusumano
Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Joni Mitchell, and, more recently, Taylor Swift. These renowned musicians have transcended what it means to be songwriters—they’re storytellers whose evocative lyrics intertwine with intriguing melodies that take listeners on a journey and imprint their music into our lives, consciously or otherwise.
Following in that tradition is Native American artist Sierra Spirit, currently on tour with Grammy-nominated “Babylon” hitmaker David Gray. This Sunday, the tour takes them to the Chicago Theatre, where Spirit will perform songs off her EP coin toss and the just-released “American Pie.”
I talked with Spirit just before she went on stage in Red Bank, New Jersey on Wednesday to get her take on performing for sold-out crowds, the power of vulnerability, and efficient pie usage while shooting music videos.
The first show of this tour with David Gray, you played to a sold-out crowd in a 5,000-seat theater. Walk me through that first minute before you walked on stage. What was going through your mind?
It was just really weird because I had walked out on the stage to do soundcheck and, looking around that room and looking at how big that room felt, I was like, ‘That room is just going to be full of bodies,’ which is just so crazy. I had no idea really how it was going to feel, especially that first night walking into a room full of people like that. I was a little spooked, but I honestly think walking out and just having such a happy, energetic crowd made things way more peaceful than I expected them to be.
Was there a moment in the set where you realized things were going well and you could relax?
It all felt really good. The crowd of people that's showing up to see David Gray admire him because he's a wonderful storyteller and they're really fans of his craft and his penmanship, his work, and so they were really receptive and very inviting and happy to have me, which was really cool.
It’s definitely a great match because your songs have really impactful storytelling. “Better Wild” has very cinematic lyrics. A lot of your lyrics are vulnerable and I imagine they lend themselves to an intimate setting nicely. How has it been translating that to bigger crowds?
It's been great because the way that David plays is, he's got this beautiful jam band in a very simple set and I think that's kind of the vibe that people are expecting. So being able to be out there, just me and my guitarist, and just be able to enjoy performing and being very present has been really cool. People are just happy to see that we're really enjoying ourselves.
Have you noticed any song particularly resonating with audiences?
I think we hit a really fun stride in the middle of the set. Probably the best audience response has been for “Bleed You.” That seems to be a favorite. “American Pie,” which just came out , people seem to really love. That one's really fun live with the electric guitar and the solo in it.
I was really getting into that one today. I saw the music video and have to know, how many pies were harmed in the making of that music video?
Just one actually. There was a sole survivor that was handed off to some of our crew that wasn't even touched.
So you're a one-take wonder. We mentioned vulnerability earlier, and you have the song “I’ll Be Waiting (Pug),” which is about your grandmother’s passing. What's it like sharing such a poignant song with the public?
I think it's something really beautiful because it's an unfortunate universal experience. We're all going to experience a loss like that and if I can turn something that was probably one of my worst and most painful periods of time into something beautiful that people resonate with and people really enjoy, it's really special. It's a really special part of human connection to bond over something so difficult and something that people seem to feel so alone in because it's hard to explain that type of pain to somebody. But when it translates over into something like music, it seems to resonate really well.
Is it just kind of natural for you to bring those feelings and those thoughts into that kind of poetry?
Being indigenous, a huge part of that is storytelling. I love coming into a room when I'm going to write a song for the day and tell a story of this moment in time and kind of telling where I was, what that felt like, what I was doing, what I could smell, what I could see, really highlighting every moment, every small detail I can remember. ‘Okay, well, how do we make this a song, how do we make it three-and-a-half minutes, how do we still make it mean the same thing?’
You also have music videos for all six songs on coin toss plus “American Pie.” When you're writing lyrics, do you instinctively imagine the visual component or interpretation that might go along with it?
I'm really lucky, my fiance actually has taken all of my album art covers, press photos, and directed and shot every video. So it's really cool to hand off a song to somebody that I trust so much and is so in tune with me, and letting them run with an idea and watching it come into fruition, seeing his end of what I'm doing is really cool and special and always ends up being something so cool.
I’d love to know some of your musical influences and also your non-musical influences, any books or movies or things that have impacted your art.
Huge fan of Phoebe Bridgers, I love Phoebe Bridgers. I grew up listening to a ton of Johnny Cash and I thought he was a really great, kind of gritty storyteller. I was influenced by him as a live performer, because one of his best performing albums of all time was his album At Folsom Prison, and it was a live album. It wasn't even a new creation of music but the energy that he brings and the general aura was something that was very influential to me and something that I really gravitated towards. He has his own energy and brand, and people are just tied into performers like that. I’ve also always been a huge fan of Cormac McCarthy because Cormac McCarthy can tell a beautiful story with very simple words. There's not a lot of fluff; it's very gritty and it's real, but it makes you feel something. And I love writing in that way where what I'm writing means exactly what you think it means and it still makes you feel something.
Who would you say would be your dream collaborator?
I think it'd probably be Phoebe Bridgers. I've been listening to Phoebe for almost a decade and watching her incline into the place that she's in in her music now has been really cool, from seeing that she was going around the country playing dive bars basically to what she's doing now. It's been a really cool thing to watch. Having connected with her music on such like a small and intimate level and watching it grow into something so universal, I’m just a huge admirer of her as an artist and as a collective image.
While you're in Chicago this weekend, do you have any plans of things you're gonna do when you're not busy opening for a Grammy-nominated musician?
Honestly, things are so hustle-bustle, but it's really cool to get to be in the venue earlier on the day and kind of walk around and see these stages that so many incredible legendary artists have played. And it's just a really cool thing to be in a new city and experience…these venues are the heartbeats of these cities, they've been around for so long and so many incredible people have come and played at these venues. Getting to walk around and be on the back side of those things that not a lot of people get to do is a really cool, special thing. So I'm excited to see that kind of special little pocket of Chicago.
What do you hope to take away from the show? And what do you hope that the audience takes away from your set?
I hope people can just realize that even a lot of the moments I write about are things that were really hard for me, and you can turn something like grief or heartbreak or depression into something beautiful and something that people can connect with because it's often that people connect to music, and it is kind of a form of therapy for people because it's really hard to find the right words sometimes, but this really special thing happens when you pair those words with all of these sounds and so much intention that it resonates and it clicks and it makes sense. So I hope that people can find comfort and have a sense of peace in processing some of these things that they maybe have not been quite able to get their head around it. And it's a really special thing to walk onstage as a stranger and then leave 30 minutes later and these people know basically everything about me. I think it's really cool.
What’s the impact for you as a performer to incorporate your Otoe-Missouria and Keetoowah Cherokee roots into your art?
I just think it's a really cool thing to be a present example of what native people are in this day and age. We are so much more than a story or the chapter that you get to read in your history textbook, and we are so much more than the depiction you get of us in an old Western. We are still such a vibrant, living, breathing entity and evolving into something so much more than something that feels like history, and it's a really cool thing to even be a little part of that.
Sierra Spirit and David Gray appear at The Chicago Theatre (175 N State St, Chicago, IL 60601) Sunday, February 2 at 7:30pm (doors open 6:30pm). Tickets are available online or by calling 312-462-6300 ($46–$126). All ages.