Regina Spektor talks new album and why she wishes a few of her songs were less relevant
Ed Masley
By Regina Spektor's count, she hasn't toured without a backing band in "many, many years," which makes the looming prospect of the solo tour she launched in Tucson on Oct. 20 "kind of daunting," she says with a laugh on the eve of her opening night. "And exciting."
Billed as "A Very Special Solo Performance," the concerts will feature the singer performing alone on piano – "and probably my little blue guitar too :-)," as she noted on her website.
"I’ve been touring with such amazing musicians," Spektor says. "And I have really loved playing a lot of the songs with many of the colors I would like to do. There’s something magic that happens when you’re in a group of musicians and you’re all listening to each other.
"And there’s something magic that happens when you’re just by yourself and completely free. You’re only sort of tuning to your own rhythms, to your own desires and thoughts. And I wanted to experience that again.
"Within my show, I’ve always had a few songs where the band leaves and I would just play by myself. And it was an interesting feeling. I really liked it. So I wanted to remember what it was like to play an entire show like that."
We caught up with Spektor to talk about the tour and the brilliant album she released last year, "Remember Us to Life," her first release since giving birth to her first child. Here's what she had to say in the course of a 16-minute conversation that was every bit as whimsical and charming but also reflective as one would expect from Spektor's records.
Question: You used the word free. Do you find that there’s more room for spontaneity when you’re performing by yourself?
Answer: Maybe. It’s funny. I feel very free anyway. And I compose all the songs. It’s not like I’m jamming or changing them from night to night. It might just be little things, like taking a little bit more time with a certain moment where yeah, if there’s a bunch of musicians, you’re not gonna stretch it out or else you’re just gonna trick them and they’ll come in early, you know? (laughs).
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But when you’re by yourself, you can stretch time in a different way. Of course, you can talk to me after these shows because maybe what I’m remembering is not even real. Our minds are tricky like that.
But it’s sort of like if you decide to invite a lot of people to a dinner party, it’s one kind of a night and then when you decide to invite just one person, it’s a different kind of night. And the fun thing is that you don’t have to choose. You can sometimes do one and sometimes do the other.
I’m kind of excited to take that trip and see what that dinner party for one is gonna be like (laughs).
Q: I read an interview you did with Rolling Stone where you said, “The fun thing about making records is that they sort of find water; they sort of find their own level.” Once they’ve found that level, are there songs that just don’t feel right when you try to scale them back for a solo acoustic performance?
A: Oh yeah, definitely. There are a lot of songs I wouldn’t do in a tour where I have the band, just because if it’s a solo piano song, I’ll feel like, “Oh no, I have all these incredible musicians here. I want to do the songs that I can’t do without them.” Like, songs that really require a big rhythm section or big drums or something.
I’m not going to be doing some of those songs on this tour. But at the same time, there’s these other songs that for the most part don’t get to see the light of day because they’re battling for real estate in a set — these more piano-y moments that I know just from being in touch with the listeners and fans over the years that they really want to hear.
I was pretty conscientious about bringing some of those songs in so that they could hear old friends that maybe they haven’t heard for 13 years or things that they maybe only heard recorded in a bar on the lower East Side and they only know it from YouTube, so that they get to have that time with that music. And I do too.
For me, it’s fun to rediscover these things that wouldn’t be part of a set on a band tour.
Q: So there are older songs you haven’t done in a while on the set list?
A: Oh yeah. I’ve been practicing really old songs that I hadn’t played in so many years. Some of them, I start to play and I’m like, “I don’t want to play this at all.” And so, I don’t relearn it because it just doesn’t feel right. And something else, I’m like, “Wow, I haven’t played this in 12 years and it feels so nice to play it.”
Q: You mentioned being in touch with listeners and fans through the years. What channel of communication do you have with your listeners?
A: It’s interesting. I’m not a person who is always in touch in the classic sense of the word. Some people are really, really in touch. They read everything and they respond to everything. I sort of go in and out of that because it’s just a little bit daunting for me, or overwhelming at times.
I’m terrible at correspondence. I plan to write back and then I never do (laughs). It’s been like that since I was a kid, actually. I had a really hard time writing letters from camp and all that stuff. But I love getting letters (laughs).
So I read a lot of the letters that people leave me at venues or that they pass to my crew or correspondence that ends up on the bus. And then, of course, when I do tune in, some gets to me through Twitter and Instagram. But I do try to stay on top of that as much as I can.
Plus sometimes friends will bring their friends who are fans so I get to know what people are thinking and feeling. It’s definitely special to get a glimpse.
Q: On your website, you say you’ll play some new and never-before-heard songs. Have you been writing with a new release in mind or are you always writing?
A: I’m always writing. It’s funny, though. The more that I’ve been practicing the old songs, the more I’m starting to feel like I don’t know if I’m ready to play those new songs.
A lot of the time, when I write songs, I hear production for them, and I feel a lot better playing them knowing that they’re on the record, so that my vision of them is out there first and all the re-imagining can happen afterwards. I felt like doing it but that’s the thing. I’m not super consistent. I change my mind a lot.
Q: Well, that’s healthy, to change your mind.
A: I guess. I guess it’s better than just never changing your mind. That’s kind of crazy.
Q: Last year, you released “Remember Us to Life,” which is such an evocative title. What appealed to you about calling it that?
A: Well, it’s actually a line from one of the Yom Kippur prayers. I had the title long before I had the record. Titles kind of sneak in and I start to roll them around inside my brain before I have a record, but in the end it sort of ended up fitting the music to me, so I kept it. I thought it was a really beautiful line.
I was in a synagogue with my mom on Yom Kippur and that particular translation, it’s funny because I was at a different service, many years later, and they had a totally different translation. So I was glad that I heard it in that translation, because I thought it was evocative.
Q: When you have the title first, does that then shape the writing of the record?
A: I don’t know. That’s a really good question. I feel like I don’t really think of it as writing records anyway. I think of it as writing individual songs that I string together. I don’t know how much it shapes it. Maybe it does. Maybe it kind of hovers as some kind of an overarching idea. It’s hard to know.
I think of it more as individual songs and when I produce them with whoever I’m collaborating with, we sort of look at “What does this song need?” and “What does that song need?” It sort of becomes a record during the sequencing process more than anything else.
Q: One of my favorite songs on the album is “The Trapper and the Furrier.” Does it feel as though the strange, strange world we live in may have gotten even stranger since you wrote that song?
A: Ooh, yeah. It made me feel like it was creepily prophetic and I didn’t want it to be. I feel actually like I would love for that song to become irrelevant. I have another song called “Ballad of a Politician” that I’ve been playing. But honestly, I wish they would all become irrelevant and I would never play them again.
It makes me really sad how real it is (laughs).
Regina Spektor in Phoenix
When: 8 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 25.
Where: Celebrity Theatre, 440 N. 32nd St.
Admission: $49.50-$125.
Details: 602-267-1600, ext. 1; celebritytheatre.com.
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