Tori Amos

of her upbringing. In channeling her fears and rage, she gave voice to those struggling to find themselves in their place in the world and offered hope for redemption. Her latest album, due out October, took form amid an equally tempestuous emotional Maelstrom called Ocean to Ocean. It's a musical message in a bottle. Written during in forest isolation in her adopted home of Cornwall, England, amid the COVID nineteen lockdown.

Grappling with the globe crisis, political turmoil in her home country, and the recent death of her mother, she took solace in the songs, which are among the most soul bearing of her career. Whether she's using words or music, or speaking to human beings, trees, or the metaphysical beings she refers to as her muses, her skill for communicating strength and vulnerability remains undiminished and unparalleled. I'm so happy to welcome Tory Anus. Well, I don't even know where to begin.

I mean, your new album is absolutely astonishing. I guess my my first question for you is the last year and a half has changed just in in so many ways. How has it changed your relationship to music or has it? H Well, I I guess I was writing a different type of record if you were going to talk to me over a year ago, and um well, over a year ago, so a year and a half ago. But then it seemed as if the energy of those songs that wasn't where I wanted to go anymore. It wasn't

going to take me. It wasn't my sonic rocket ship that was going to take me into a different um well, I'm saying the word frequency, but just a different magical space that I wanted to be in. And so the new songs kind of started coming in in a strange way because I just said to the muses I need something different. And then they said, well, then you have to walk away from the old, handed over and then be receptive to the new and right from where you

are right now, which is you're grieving. So start there and let see what happens. And that was really the beginning with with Metal water Wood. What is it about songwriting that makes it such an effective method for for processing emotions and and also pulling you out of those dark places? Oh well, I think songwriting can be a

very lonely a place to be. It can be um a place where you have to kind of confront things, confront your part in things, look at sides to yourself that you might not really want to look at, and then you begin framing. Then you begin thinking, okay, so how do we want to tell this story? I understand some of the components, some of the emotions, but then

how do we want to convey this? Because we can bring characters in, we can bring people in, some that we know, some at our composites of people we know, so that we we tell the story. And then you're making choices all along. This is when you get out your skill set and your toolbox and your sonic paints and you start then really forming this and working with structure and and sometimes, um, you know, you find that

you're not crazy about that verse. You like maybe the middle eight, but you're not crazy about the verses, So maybe you keep this bit. And what happens is I come to the studio and I show Mark, who I've been working with for a long for a long time now in the studio. I happened to be married to him, and we've been making records since Boys for Plee together, and I'll show the song, and then that will be the beginning of Okay, where does this want to go?

You mentioned communing with the muses. How you write your work? How much control do you have over the process when you write? How much of it is thinking versus stepping back and kind of getting out of the way and letting it come through. That's a good question. Sometimes it seems like it's paradox because on one hand, you're trying to listen to what's coming through. It's sort of it feels sort of like you're being zapped, but zapped in a good way. Um, and then I record that and

then listen back. So sometimes it's a stream of consciousness and then In the listening back, I start to try and figure out, Okay, what is um bold dash and what is worth working with and what should I throw away because it was just getting me from one place to another during the stream of consciousness type of session. Have you ever finished a song and listen to it back and learned something else about yourself from it, almost like a really good dream analysis or something. Sometimes it's

horrifying what you learned about yourself. Well, because I think if you're listen, if you're honest, then you can kind of yes, you can have a chuckle, but then you go, oh, I'm a bit mortified that, Um, I don't know that I responded in a certain way or um I think sometimes there's you know, Gallows humor. The Brits are very good at that, and I have been surrounded by Brits, my friend. They they are everywhere because I've I've sort of been in exile here in England for eighteen months.

And the funny thing though about the Brits is that they're at their best, and I've said this for a long time, when I think things are at their worst, they find a way they go to their humor. That's that's what they turned to as a culture is their humor. And and when things are good, like if it's a beautiful sunny day and maybe it's like degrees within two hours, Brits are going to complain to you, I'm boiling. It's so bloody hot, and it's never it's never gonna be okay.

This is gonna last a long time. So I think they're very they are more comfortable when they're being challenged, and I think they're humor did help me through this time. There there's no question about it. And I have no idea what I'm saying to I'm just rambling. Oh you know, It's It's funny because what you said to me really resonated with me because as I was listening to your album, for some reason, the Churchill quote popped into my head.

If you're going through hell, keep going, and I that was something that really that struck me while listening to your music. I mean, that's something I've always loved about your music because your your honesty and your vulnerability, and so much about ocean. The ocean is your willingness to sort of you give us permission to sort of not be okay. And because in the last year and a half. We've all had those moments when we haven't been okay, and you've been willing to sort of meet us in

that place with these with these songs. And I think that that's that's so valuable and I'm precious right now because I think that's something we all need. We all need that kind of compassion. I do think we need compassion. You're spot on right there, and and sometimes sometimes I think that's it's like gold when somebody has it, just holds a space, just holds a space for you to be where you are in that moment. And the record

I wanted to do that. It wanted to also reflect what I was getting from the Earth once I started going outside and it was cold, and it was the winter, and it was and you know cornwall, so you know what that can be like. Even though it's beautiful, it can be really traumatic and freezing and wet and all those things. But at the same time, it was invigorating.

It was like, Okay, so we've been under house arrest and yet Mother Earth is regenerating and at the same time dealing with a huge crisis with the fires on the West coast in the States and with the flooding in Europe and other places, and and yet in Cornwall it seemed to be her finding um the balance going

from winter and spring. And I watched that evolution happening before my eyes, really seeing the change that happened in the transfer Asian and things being reborn again, so that there was a death that was happening, and that's something that I was going through. I was having to let songs go and let my mom, you know, go, except that she has passed to the other side and um, and yet now step into the rebirth energy and that that's quite you know, it's a process. And the whole

album is really exploring that process. And I got the impression that your mother is a major presence on the album and the first single you release, speaking with Trees, I think it hits anybody who who has dealt with loss, which unfortunately is you know, pretty much all of us. Um intensely personal song, and it didn't realize. Took me a moment to realize that the lyrics in it, which I thought were metaphors, were in fact very literal. Tell me more about that song. It's it's really for me.

It's one of my favorite tracks on the album. Well, I was when I was going outside, it seemed as if I was guided to just sit and listen to the trees and the rhythm um. And then at the same time I started getting books and reading about, um, how trees communicate with each other. Um there there there's a book out by Susanne Simard. If I'm I hope I'm saying her name correctly, and if not, I apologize because her book really talks about the network underneath the trees.

Made up a fun guy and again not a scientist, so I'm not gonna explain this correctly. But how it made me feel was this amazing world, a lot of

it underground that is interconnected. And so just the alchemy of that, the alchemical idea concept of what is really going on down there, got me all very excited and and put me, I don't know, in a state of um collaboration with nature and and wanting to be a student of Earth mother and watching her deal with everything at one time, and of course that's the paradox that was going on there, with the climate crisis happening on different in different countries around the globe, and then her

rebirthing herself as well. That must have been a really special because I of traveling has been such a huge part of your life since you know, you were with thirteen on going on tour, and also you you have your your home in Florida, so kind of being on the move a lot, being stationary, weill. I'm sure it's hard for a million different reasons. Being able to sit and see that process take place that really requires you

to be to be still. Uh, must have been a nice silver lining of what I must, you know, imagine as being a very difficult time. M At first, I don't think my patience. I didn't have a lot. I didn't have the amount of patients that I found I needed in order to really observe like we're talking about, I needed to discipline myself a bit and stop the chatter, the inner chatter that we all have, and and really observe. You know I've said before, list and with ears size

of Kansas, really listen. And and to do that you have to to stop the inner voices, the inner critic, the mur mur mur will you know? And that took some effort, if I'm honest with you, and it did take some time. It took time, and then I was going down to the little vege patch in the garden, and I really found that so rewarding. These things became huge, joy joyful moments for me. I know there was some

slightly less joyful moments with nature. I I know. You just released the song spies uh the other day, which was about some uninvited winged guests coming into your home during during lockdown. Can you tell me a little about the background of that song. Yeah, the background the the windows in the old farmhouse. So it's very hot. It was very hot in July, even hot hot for Britain.

And that's an American telling you it's really hot. That's not just the Brids complaining about it's so hard and you're kind of going, this is sixty degrees are you

kidding me? But no, it was hot. So we had the windows open, and the bats we're getting in the house like in the middle of the night, and our daughter would be texting us it's saying, there are bats, and then you'd hearse this running around power upstairs, and and so Tash camped out downstairs, not in her bedroom but in the living room, and she was really not overjoyed with this. That situation. Now, why they didn't come find me because I love bats, I really I adore them,

but she does not. So I figured in order to get her back into her room, it looked like almost ten days. Um, she needed a lullaby. But to write a lullaby for year old is very different than when I would write for a six and seven year old. So I thought, okay, let's listen to some drilling bass

and let's make spot let's make this happen. So they're benevolent beings from Cornwall to London, through the through the British isles in Ireland that are tracking the scheming meanies so that children can actually get to sleep at night and get some shut I that's a wonderful song. I you mentioned earlier about the communication between trees and all the different ways that that elements of nature communicate. I mean bats with you know the ways that they communicate.

And there's articles about how dolphins communicate and um, you know the secret life plants and stuff. I'm wanna ask you a question about communication. How much of your your desire to write, your impetus to write, comes from a desire to communicate versus exercising something inside of you. If you were on a desert island somewhere. Would you would you continue songwriting? Huh? I don't know. Probably probably because I think it's a it's a compulsion. It's something that

wants to happen when it wants to happen. Now, my husband would like it to happen sooner than it happened this time. I mean the words divorce a tory. We're probably close to his lips and his and on his brain because I was, I know, I was driving them all kind of mad. We I was still writing while we were mixing, and that is something that you never want to put put the musicians and the mixers through, that's for sure. But that's just what happened this time.

That's just how it was. Because he would be like, can't you make those muses move any faster? I said, you try. Good luck with that. They come when they come, they leave when they leave, and you know they don't need a passport. They show up when they want to show up. And I really know when they show up, because it's a totally different thing when they're around than when I'm doing it myself. I'm not kidding you about this. I'm not weaving a tale here. I can write a

song a day. I don't think it's necessarily anything anybody should listen to. But when there's this collaboration happening, then kiss met, something can happen that that has a little sprinkle of magic to it. Oh. I absolutely believe that. Is there an element of superstition in a way that is there something that you can kind of do to to coax them to come in these music or is it purely on their own, on their own time? M hm. You know they're not gullible. They're really not coaxing them.

I think they know every trick that every songwriter has had for thousands of years trying to get them to hurry up. So I you know, it's hard, it's it's hard to fool them, and I think it's best to just surrender to it and and then and then you might find that they are there. I just have to listen a bit harder. I just have to steal myself and be open. Because another thing to this is that sometimes they want to go some where that I'm I'm

resisting going there. Resisting very different than the word resistance. I don't see the word resistance as a pejorative, which it gets used all the time. I mean, if we're saying I have a resistance to creativity, well that then that is negative. But a resistance to tyranny, which is what you know, I wrote the book Resistance about that's a very different thing. So I've had to monitor am I being open to where they want to go? Or am I digging my heels? And because I want them

to go somewhere else? Well, then if I need to surrender and surrendering, they know when you're just pretending to surprender. I speaking of resistance, I I think you meant you mentioned this before about being inspired by by artists who use their medium in this case long to to to reflect the time around them. People like Marvin Gaye, Nina Simone, um, who are some people who who did that for you? Sort of pointed you in that direction of what you could use your your art form for m Well, well,

you know, the late sixties was the time of huge revolution. Um. I was having to relive it today for for another conversation about and I was five at the time, and I just remember how music was affecting people, how songs

were affecting people. I just had been accepted into the Peabody and the conservatory, the prep and I was surrounded by teenagers, and I was watching how they were being motivated by this music, whether the Beatles, Marvin Gay, Simon, m Garif and Golden, all the Motown artists of Wreath, Franklin, Um, Yes, Nina, Nina Simone, and and the list goes on, of all the all the bands and artists that really, um, what do you uh? Got a generation to stand up and

questioned the Vietnam War. During that year we lost Dr Martin Luther King he was killed, and we lost Robert Kennedy who was killed. So it was such a time where music was crystallizing for me how important it was and what songs could do. It could start off, it could start a whole new well revolution really and that's

and that's what it did. I think noticing over over the course of our discussion talking about muse it coming from inner life and the music coming from you know in the world, you derive more inspiration from looking outward or looking inward. M hmmm mm hmm. I think I think that's the for me. The key is finding the balance in that because one it gets the other. So observing I take I would take pilgrimage a lot before

this pandemic. I would go somewhere wherever that was, the desert, wherever that was, I would go and observe, and my senses were different. And it just in doing that activity alone, you're breaking a pattern. You're breaking your own routine, which then puts you sort of in a different It puts me anyway, in a different space of Okay, I'm I'm in a different place where my senses now are heightened and I'm able to push myself into hearing and seeing

and feeling different things. So when that wasn't offered, when that was off the table because of the restrictions that we've all been under, then I had to find other ways and that that has been a challenge, but it's also been really eye opening because this record wouldn't have happened without everything happening the way it happened in the last eighteen months. What were some ways that that you you challenge you sort of take a trip mentally, I mean,

was it through reading or meditation. What were some ways that in lieu of travel that you were able to to take yourself out of your familiar mental space and and try other things. I'm going to be really honest with you. I am the crappest person to meditate. You don't nobody wants to meditate with me. I'm auntie and a pain in the ass. It's just not what I'm sorry,

it's not what I do. However, hanging out if somebody's lighting a fire outside and you're wrapped up in blankets and um, you know Oliver Tasha's boyfriend puts on Oliver's tracks and you know, whether it's some great jazz that uh is being written by some of his friends, or or drilling bass which he's a fan of. And he turned me onto that from the nineties. That's how that's kind of how I roll. That's where I get, That's where I was traveling. That's how my imagination got fired up.

Is and have in conversations and sharing music uh tash showing me documentaries UH different through different art forms, and and then a whole new world starts to open up to me. How gardeners were approaching you know, the VEGGI the veggie patch. That was a whole new world for me. Because I do not have a green thumb. I would just go and sing to the tomatoes every day. So I was singing. I'd go down there and I'd sing.

I talked to the plants. I sing to them, and I think they I think they're making songs with me in my mind. I have quite a relationship with the vedge patch. Oh that's a real thing. I've absolutely heard about music therapy for plants that that farmers and gardeners do. I've I've heard quite a lot of good things about that.

While I was taking my show down there, my repertoire, the new songs that I was testing them out on the squash and seeing how we were going, and then if the squash started to grow within a few days. I mean sometimes this the squash cut really big pumpkins and it was okay. I think that song is a keeper.

I mean, that's a great response to your music. I mean, when you when you are playing for for for humans, I'll say, what is the best thing that's someone that you can hear from someone who's listened to your music. Is there a response that you can hear from somebody where you think to yourself, Okay, I know all the pain that I went through and lost that went into this song, but that response really made it worth it

for me. Is there something that anyone can say that can make you feel that well, I have to tell you, I'm very fortunate to have people come to the shows that are open that aren't really you know, they're open to having an experience, they're open to traveling together and kind of saying, I don't know where we're going to go tonight, but you do need to know Tory that this happened in Chicago over the last week. So there's

sort of informants. They're like boots on the ground in my six For me, that's my relationship with them, and so we then share this information and then the show becomes collaborative, And so there isn't one saying that somebody can say, because honestly, I'm open to to what they think. And amuses have always told me their response to a song is just as valid as your response. It just

so happens you're part of the channeling process. Um, But that doesn't mean that their relationship with the song isn't isn't as valid as your relationship with the song. So why wouldn't Why wouldn't you want to know what somebody's experience with the song is. I find it really fascinating when when they talk to me about their relations ship with a song, What is your relationship like with with

your your prior songs? Do you feel a sense of ownership over them or are they you know, sort of what Once you let them go, they're free to roam. Oh they're roaming, my friend. You're kidding? You think I have any say no, They're out there doing what they're doing. And that's why the time before the mastering is finished, it's it is always bitter sweet because we're done or we're almost done, and we know, okay, this is this

is leaving Marshan Engineering, this is leaving within twenty four hours. Uh. And the mastering is done down here with John Astley, and I know it's going and I kind of have this moment, this last little moment with the song gals, and I'll just tell them all go bye and and have a nice life. And some of them, you know, they go off with a vegan muff and some of them always one with a bottle of tegila, trust me,

and and you just wave. I have a tear in my eye when they skipped down the lane and pass the cows and the sheep and the tractor and it's like see you t and then they're gone, and then they're not mine anymore. And that that is a moment where where it's bitter sweet because you want to share them, you want them to have a life with other people, but kind of as there, I don't know their gal pal.

I have to hand hand them over and let them go. Yeah, I mean, I hear many artists talk about their songs being their kids, and their kids are growing up and are going to make their way in the world. Now. Yeah, No, I feel that it's funny during the during the pandemic. I I've derived a lot of souls from what I call musical comfort food, like music that I haven't listened to in fifteen twenty years and suddenly I find my

way back to it. Um, have you been finding any other music therapeutic other than the act of writing it yourself? Has that been as music comfort food been a thing for you? Oh? Yeah, in different ways. We talked about Oliver's tracks, which was, you know, a lot of it I had never heard before, so that that was a new experience. But there was a moment when Mark and I went back and just just traverse that Beatles catalog.

I'm sure, I'm not the only one that did that, um, because that music is what it is, and it has um so so many facets to it. Just getting lost in one of the one of the albums at a time, just saying Okay, let's just really dive into this one for a few days. That's something that we did. I love doing that. I love revisiting certain catalogs. I consider those albums friends of mine. I know that may sound funny, but those those records. I don't know if you can see.

I have a a in store advertisement for Rubber Soul framed on my wall behind me. They mean a great deal to me. UM understood, Yeah, understood. There was a quote you gave UM when you first announced Ocean the Ocean, where you said that that you were in in a powerless place when you first began. If it's not too presumptuous to ask, I wanted to ask, are you feeling

more empowered now? I went on this journey with the songs, so they they changed me, and they the act of writing with them, writing out of this power or less place into a place of surrender to Earth Mother, into a place of her becoming my teacher in a way, and then um, watching here while hearing some of the I've called it a bit of a sonic elixir, so no difference than some people are making something in the kitchen.

We were trying to create this something delicious sonically for people that would would give them something, not exhaust them, but give them relief. Um be mana manna feed them. And and that was that was what the songs did for me. So I'm I'm hoping that it can do that for other people. Well I know it certain they did for me. I think that's a beautiful note to end on. Although I could talk to you all day, Tori, thank you so much for especially your music and your

time today. It's been such an honor and a pleasure. Thank you so much. Well, I really enjoy this, I have to tell you, but I've really enjoyed talking with you. You asked great questions, So thank you, Oh, thank you. That means that means so much to hear. I I have admired your music. God since I could hear all be thank you. We hope you enjoyed this episode of

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