Anaïs Mitchell

She was like, I know, it's crazy. Why don't you tell me? She's like, I don't know. I just thought I'll you'd wait for you. Amazing. Hello, I'm Mini Driver. Welcome to The Many Questions Season two. I've always loved Chruz's question at It was originally a nineteenth century parlor game where players would ask each other thirty five questions aimed at revealing the other player's true nature. It's just

the scientific method, really. In asking different people the same set of questions, you can make observations about which truths appeared to be universal. I love this discipline, and it made me wonder, what if these questions were just the jumping off point? What greater depths would be revealed if I ask these questions as conversation starters with thought leaders and trailblazers across all these different disciplines. So I adapted prus questionnaire and I wrote my own seven questions that

I personally think a pertinent to a person's story. They are when and where were you happiest? What is the quality you like least about yourself? What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you? What question would you most like answered, What person, place, or experience has shaped you the most? What would be your last meal? And can you tell me something in your life that's grown out of a

personal disaster? And I've gathered a group of really remarkable people, ones that I am honored and humbled to have had the chance to engage with. You may not hear their answers to all seven of these questions. We've whittled it down to which questions felt closest to their experience, or the most surprising, or created the most fertile ground to connect. My guest today on many questions is musician and multiple

Tony Award winner Anius Mitchell. Anius wrote the extraordinarily brilliant musical Hades Town, which won eight Tony's out of fourteen nominations, including Best Musical and Best Original Score. She is, by any standard of musical bloody genius, and her curiosity, her talent, and her spirit feel like they permeate all aspects of her life. Hadestown is a telling of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Euridiccy through jazz, folk rock, and pure Americana.

And if you know the story of Orpheus and Euridacy, Orpheus to sends into the underworld to rescue his love Euridiccy, and when Hades, king of the Underworld, allows him to take her back to the world, his only instruction is that Obvious must not look back as they are ascending up into the world. And you were to see us walking behind him, and in this moment of what I have always thought of as sort of thick headed hubris, although as sees it differently, Ophous looks back and you

were to see is lost to him forever. It's a sad miss but Hades Town is full of the kind of raw, soulful joy that makes even this sad love story shine with magic. When and where were you happiest. Yeah, when and where I was the happiest. This one is so tricky. There's so many different moments and eras of my life, and I feel like immediately I'm like, oh, I should talk about birth of my children. I should, you know, things I should say. But the one that

just popped into my mind first is this moment. I was like, I was twenty seven years old, and I was coming out of like a kind of a stuck time in my life, like creatively socially, just feeling like everything was inching along and not and then never like coming to fruition, and it just felt kind of stuck. I guess it was my saddern return, right, kind of classic for that. So the first thing that happened was I read Eckert Totally's book for the first time. Have

you read those books? Oh yeah, oh yeah? Did you read What the Power of Now? It was actually A New Earth was the first one I read, and I probably wouldn't have read it except someone I really trusted kind of said here, if they saw me in my sadder Return moment, They're like, here, you should read this book.

I've reread it since, but it was the first time it really packs the wall of for people that haven't read it, all about being present in the moment and kind of detaching like your experience of life and being in the world from all of the names that we put on it. So I'm reading this book and I'm like, I'll read a few pages and then just put it down and feel so alive and jrful. And at this moment, I was offered a gig opening a tour in Europe for a band, a big, much bigger band that I

didn't really know, but I came to really admire. And so it was me opening solo acoustic tar for this big, beautiful band and riding on their bus, you know, in Europe, and we were kind of like stay up all night we played the gig, We'd stay up all night listening to music. What was the thing before the iPhone, the iPod, right like pass around the iPod and everyone would get to choose music, and we just were so in love

with music. And I remember this one morning that we woke up we had a day off, and we were in Paris and we were rolled out of the bus and there's a little cafe and started to drink beer, you know in the in the daylight, like these tall French beers, and then just like coming out of this cafe and the sun was shining, was kind of cold day, the sun is shining, and I looked across the street and there was the Louver, and so I went to the Louver and the art was hearing like a thousand

times as hard because the Eckert totally and the beer, yeah, and the friendship, the camaie and just being out there doing what I wanted to be doing, and so that was like a moment for me that was a very

happy time. I love that. You know what's funny is like the idea when we think about happiness, and it's certainly in having talked to loads of people about it, the idea of there being a sort of a purity in anything that it is on a Lloyd, that there isn't a confluence of things happening at any one moment that creates these moments like it's I feel like we're extraordinarily binary and going, well, if I'm doing this, I

will be happy this one thing. Whereas it's really totally and it's beer and it's light and Paris and opportunity and probably a certain return it's all these things. Yeah, that makes total sense. Again and again I come to the realization at like the big moments I'm often not as present for like the winning of the Tony or whatever. It was like in a fugue stick, you know, like

I just I wasn't even there. And even my wedding, you know, which was like so beautiful, it felt like such a oh my friends and family, this culmination of so much in this commitment, and it was kind of like an incredible party that I wasn't entirely at, And so I just sort of had stuff looking for satisfaction and happiness from the moments when everyone's like, how does it feel? How does it feel? I think that is

exactly it. And as with most sort of like ruminations that I think we probably then forget about and get them with making the coffee, changing the diaper, it's like take your eye off the ball, like my dad used to say, when something was really bad, was one was really hard, stop looking at it, even though it feels overwhelming. To take your eye off it and get back into the sort of menut shy of what is happening, and you will start to metabolize your life again and weirdly

piggyback your better feeling onto that shitty thing. I think these in the same way that these huge moments they require almost too much for us to be able to quantify, whereas it's these tiny moments, these fragments that you patch together and suddenly that's where the explosion. Yes, that's huge, that's huge, And I feel like two things jumped into

my mind. One is like if you're doing a crossword puzzle, you know, and you get stuck on a clue and you just want to like bang your head against the newspaper to find this clue, yeah, or cheat, right, But usually like if you take a break, like you just got to take a break and put your mind somewhere else, and then the soft focus, Like a lot of things come out of that soft focus. That's too creatively, I think you when I'm writing and when it's difficult, I walk.

There was a whole thing neurologically that literally, when you are physically doing something else, your brain stops worrying at your right and left brain are sort of more balanced when you add in another activity. So it actually kind of makes sense. But I always find that the great

unblocking comes when I do something else. Yeah. Yeah. At one point when I was working on Hades Sound, I was living in Park Slope in Brooklyn, and I was kind of borrowing my friends studio, which was in Lefford's Cardens around the other side of the park as a writing spot. So I would get on my bike and I would ride around Prospect Park to get to the studio, and I would have all these ideas, like I'd have

ideas on the bike. Sometimes I roll around the park, the whole park, and then get to Leffords Guard and get to the studio, get to the desk, and then nothing, you know, nothing would happen at the desk, just as such an illustration of the app soft focus. And I even feel like in my life I've noticed side projects often are so magical and had son. You know, for

a long time it was a side project. I felt like my songwriter career was the main thing, and then this is this weird other thing I'm going to kind of soft focus on. At a certain point it became the main thing. But there's a charmed quality to those things that were not obsessing over how did you write? Because you wrote another record while you were writing Hadi's

time Bonnie exactly, Bonnie lad Horseman. But was that what you were talking about was that you had to take your eye off the ball and do something else or did you just owe a record and you had to write it. Yeah, that felt the same way. It was a side project. I was like, this is not my identity. There's not a lot of anxiety around that music at all, and it was easy as working with these two beautiful friend collaborators, Josh Kaufman and Eric D. Johnson, And it

felt easy. And usually I don't trust that, like I think it's got to be hard or it's not going to be good, but that band felt like, oh wow, it's it feels so intuitive and natural. And so it was at that point that was the side project that

was sort of giving me life interesting. I think my dad might have been a bit of an act cart Tolley, because I do think it's like, take your mind off the thing and put it elsewhere, and then the thing will work itself out and you'll get everything that you need to solve that problem by doing this other thing. As with most personal growth, it sounds counter into your type, which is probably why we don't do it enough, because it's like Wow, that sounds great. I'm not going to

do that right, Yeah exactly. The director of Haiti Sound, Rachel Chapkin, is like kind of a Jedi, yeah, Jedi creative person and she gets a lot of good ideas when she's napping. And she'll take these little naps where she's very good at falling asleep in the middle of the day, you know, anywhere, just kind go in the back room and lay on the floor and can make

herself fall asleep. And the way that she does it is she kind of she lays down and then she says she phrased the mind by thinking about like three or four things at once, like three or four things that she's interested in. She put her mind on him at once, and that kind of is like enough to knock her out. And I love she fries her own

circuit board. Yeah exactly exactly, And somehow the frying of the circuit board then leads to like these great ideas that happened in the Knap state, in the knap space. Well that's also her book now, it's called Knapsack. What quality do you like least about yourself? I am definitely someone who overthinks and second guesses a lot, and I think just insecurity that I feel like I've lived with my whole life and I keep expecting it to go away, you know, as like I get older, I'm like, when

am I gonna give less? Can I swear on the show or no swearing? Oh? Yeah, you can swear absolutely. I'll give you full permission, like not like, give no Fox anymore? If the fewer, you know, give fewer. I haven't arrived there yet. I just I care too much. Sometimes did I say something awkward? Is this song you know as good as it could be? Do I look bad?

You know? Things like that it's exhausting. Do you find that the achievements so as you're standing there with the hardware of a tony, like multiple Tonys in your hands, did you ever sort of consciously allow that to mitigate that other voice? Like, do you ever think back to your achievements and help them soothe those moments of insecurity?

I think no. The one thing I will say I feel a little bit more confident about now is that I've written enough songs that I know that at the moment when I'm like, I don't know how to write a song, there's no way I'm going to finish the songs. You know, I kind of can look back and be like, well, you did finish all those other songs, so probably it's going to happen. You know. That feels a little more sure for me. But in terms of like I'm meeting somebody at a party and I'm like, I want to Tony,

it doesn't cross my mind. You know, taking like a power stance and in the women's room, we certainly allow ourselves to be haunted by the shitty things that happened to us. Oh yeah, why didn't we allow ourselves to be beautifully haunted by those things that we've achieved. I wonder why we don't do that more. They're they're they're available energy and actually fundamentally tangible, like you did these things.

I do that sometimes with my son. I look at Henry when when things are not working out and go, I made a person. I made a person who is so funny and talented and kind and good, and give myself some sort of credit for that. Yeah. Kids do kind of change the equation a little bit because it's like your relationship with them has nothing to do with your creative accomplishments. You know, it's kind of like there's a foundation of family love that is going to be there.

However awkward you are at a party, it's going to be there. Yeah, exactly how old is your son? He just turned thirteen? Amazing. Wow, it is completely bananas because it's the same. It's the same feeling as when they were one and a half or when they were six months old. I'm seven thousand miles away from my son right now, and it's brutal. Yeah, even though I know he's totally fine and happy and doing his thing. It's just I don't think that ever goes away that feeling

of I need to be in close proximity. Yeah. I wonder what it's like for my parents now, you know, like an adult life, if you still have those vieelings or not. It's funny. I think they do. I just think that there's more space in between because that the letting go, which is what nobody ever tells you about about parenting. The very first thing literally physically that you do with your child is let go. Everything is more

letting go, and I think as you get older. I was very close with my mother, but I watched how she would foster those spaces in between because she knew that we had to go and do our thing, but I know now that it was active and conscious and probably quite painful, right, I know it's brutal, actually, I

mean it's beautiful. It's beautiful and brutal parenting because I would literally I would have Henry carry me around his book bag, like if possible, I just like get inside, back back, I'll stay here through double chemistry with you. I just wanted what relationship, real or fictionalized to find

love for you. I'm a kind of a romantic, like I always have kind of been a romantic and love to the idea of you know, love at first sight and a kind of twin souls, you know, and yeah, that idea that you meet someone I'm thinking of worth us and your reality right now, because it's that's what it was. Yeah. I remember, like a bunch of times in the sort of amateurgical trenches of working on the show, people with the dramaturg or like someone else would be like,

but why does you love her? You know, why does orpheus love you? Real Tocy and I would be like, because he's orpheous and she's your really, which is not enough for you know, a lot of people they need to see the kind of causality. But the idea of this, what's what is written in the stars. And oh another kind of fictional version of that that went deep for me is that Hemmingway book for Whom the Bell Tolls.

You know, just these like young revolutionaries like fighting fascism and their love and it's like the earth moves and all that stuff. And I feel like I've had an experience of that with my life partner. I've been went the same guys since I was nineteen. We were like not fully formed in our identities, you know, we were like wet clay when we met, and it wasn't full on,

you know, from the age of nineteen. There was kind of a courtship and there was some breakups and stuff, but there were a bunch of moments that felt like these star cross moments like oh my god, this is my person, you know, and almost like a scary terrifying because you see your mortality connected to it. It contains everything this idea of like the love at first sight.

It's like youthful infatuation and beauty and then also you know you're gonna die with this person, like you you see the whole thing, and it contains all of it, and and so there's a way in which it's almost like it's tragic even if it's not ortheous in your Idacy, or or Romeo and Juliet. It's like, even if you're married for seventy five years and then you die in

each other's arms, it's still like a tragedy at some level. Right, Wow, the span, I think that's pretty amazing, Like you hold the paradigm that is pretty massive at the idea at nineteen to be able to be with someone that kind of love and the love. Now are you in your

like late thirties, like around I just turned forty. Look at that, like that twenty year span, Like that's incredible to be able to see the end and to not let it derail then now, to see it as tragic, to see it as beautiful, to see it as never ending. I mean, no wonder you love the Greeks. Really. I work up this morning thinking about Orpheus and euridacy because the last thing this person that I he was my best friend and I loved him very very very much.

We were together for a long time and then it ended horribly. The most helpful thing he ever said to me was don't look back. And I've always linked it to orpheous and euridacy. I've always linked it to that moment of just don't look back, Just don't. I know what happens if you do. You know what happens if you do. Just don't do it. I think about those gifts that you get from people that have hurt you, and I wondered if he got it from orpheus. He loved the Greeks too so, and but I don't look

back for you? Was it to not doubt yourself? Was it? The idea of like, don't look down almost is literally coming back to the Eckhart totally idea of it is a complete illusion to look back, to look back and feel that that is going to have really any relevance.

And I know that's sort of a bold statement, but the now, this moment, trust this now, to trust that all of the ideas that you think, like, if I look back, I will get this if I look back and I pick over the bones at this thing, if I look back because I'm frightened, it will somehow make

mine now better. And that that is a fallacy. It's such an extraordinary gift that he gave me because I think it often, particular, when I start being frightened about historical stuff that I'm worried is going to play out again in this now, I shriek it at myself Sometimes this morning I was shrieking it orvious, like just don't just don't look. I just keep walking, Just keep walking, and it's going to be fine. Like trust you can't hear anything, you can't see anything, you don't know anything.

Trust this very moment and you will be all right. Oh man, Yeah, a cosmic thing that kind of happened with our orpheus and you're to see I think I'm allowed to tell it's quite public at this point, but our actors that play orphous and you're to see totally film love you know they really that's amazing. Yeah, And I thought, oh, you know, when I saw that that was hapening, I was like, I hope they can keep

it together because it's not going to be easy. You know, six months down the line, if there's a breakup and they're like trying to play these start cross lovers and but they're still together. They made it through the pandemic. They're like got a dog, Like it's beautiful and they're so beautiful together. It's crazy because it's a story that the people know how it ends, but there's still a gasp like when he turns around, it's like, how did

this happen? That's exactly it. We want to change the ending of the story, maybe like seeing the repetition of that over and over again, it's like you, you can't change that story, but you can take the piece that you're shrieking about and you can bring it into your life and go, I know how that works out? Yeah? Yeah.

And there's also something about like you're saying that this sort of this X of yours gave you this piece of wisdom that you have carried on in your life, and that there's a way in which, like I'm like, you light someone's candle with your candle and then or their cigarette with your cigarette, and you keep a flame going. And that's kind of I think in the Orpheus story, at least the way it plays out with Hades Toun is like, well, okay, we still celebrate Orpheus because he

kept the flame and now it's someone else's turn. Got that such a beautiful image, like the relay of love? Yes, and we judge the tragic part of it, the part of it not working out. But actually, as you just said, like in your own life, it's part of the whole. The tragedy is always there, present in the joy and

the wonder. It doesn't diminish your takeaway or fears. Seeing you really to see in the forest or wherever it was that he saw her and falling madly in love, and the very short time that they had to love each other, or the short time that I had to love this man. It's not diminished by how it ended up in a way, but it's hard to hold that in your heart that all can be true. Poor humans, we're given certain tools that we just don't use. What

would be your last meal? From my best meal, I would like it to be a sort of like this is your life meal. You know that I could return to some dishes that were You know how at different times of your life you just do one dish a lot, and then maybe you're sick of it and you don't do it again. But then if you were to have it again, it reminds you of this era. And so

here's what I'm gonna do. This is okay, it's a few things yes, okay, okay, So from my childhood, I'm going to have So I grew up on this sheep farm, and my parents they spent a little time on this Greek island when they were young hippies. Then like they carried the kind of romance for this Greek island with them, I think in my childhood. And so my mom she

would make like a marinadd lamb chopped. It was all about just like marinade them like crazy with the family marinade, and then broiled them like really fast on both sides. And also I think like she would make these Greek potatoes they had lemon and garlic, and so I associate that with this sort of special family meal that we would have, like if people came over for dinner, it was all like we're gonna have lamp. So I'm going

to have that. And then so my husband, my life partner, he is a farmer of vegetables, and there's a couple of kind of vegetable dishes that I associate with him in different times of our life. And so I'll get his vegetables and I will make like a kale salad. You massage the kale with you know, the salt in the oil, and then maybe it's feta and lemon and like maybe some toasted seeds and they're all like finally ribboned, ribboned up, and all right, what else was I think? Oh? Yeah, okay,

so Haiti's town. I've worked on Haiti sound for so long, and I spent a lot of time with Rachel Chapkin, the director, and our music director, Liam Robinson. And there's a whole era where we were working on the show out of town, and so we would be put up in these little flats and a lot of times, like late at night, we come back to the flat someone's flat and we would fry some Halloomi cheese, like we

all got into halloom me at the same time. And now if I taste the Halloomi cheese, I picture this like really joyful time of like in the trenches with those guys eyes working on that show, which is really like a third of my creative life was like working on that show. So I have the Halloomi. I don't have a meaningful dessert really, so I might just have like a chocolate moose. You know. There's a thing that I always like, don't let myself have it. So I

would have it. Wow, I really like that. There's a kind of Dickensie and let's go back and revisit the ghosts of meals past. Yeah, it's like Proust. It's like the Madaline and the Teeth. That's a way better analogy. I love that because it does it. It lights up those parts of our life. So it really just becomes

the illustration of memory in such an immediate way. And food can do that like and and actually, I guess the sense of smell really does that in a way that you know, you smell like a product, like a perfume that your boyfriend wore when we're like fourteen or something, and it's just like a complete body slam of memory. And music is that way too. I couldn't agree more. But if I listened to Elliott Smith, it's so painful

and it is so beautiful. I was in the studio with him while he was recording Exo and when he was layering these vocals, and it was it was so funny, like watching somebody build something which is still standing now he's gone. It's incredible. It's like experiencing the strongest moments of him. It's so interesting how there is music. It hits you on every single level and kind of takes your breath away. It's so physiological, like you really feel

it in your body. And I look at a person I get like obsessed with one song, almost like I can't breathe, like I need it, you know, like you get in the cards like quick, get it on, like get it on the stereo like I need it, and just listen again and again and again to one song or one album from one artist at a time. And then if I hear that song, it takes me back. Yeah, it's feeling right, it's getting having permission to feel again.

Poor sweet humans, we can't marshal all of the stuff that there is to synthesize and feel in this life. I think music is a way of doing that. As his food, as his love, I suppose. Yeah, music is very calming for me. I find like if I'm at home and like, you know, the boredom of children, A small children, Yeah, yes, small children. They're just like they want to read the same board book a million times. And if I have music on, I don't mind. You know,

if you're cooking something, they go together. If you're cooking something, you smell that thing cooking out of the kitchen and you've got the music on, everything is okay, you can sort of be cool. Yeah, it's absolutely true. Certainly with the children thing. It gives you a place to sit on that is above the grinding repetition of small children, which is obviously how they're learning. They need to repeat

all that stuff. But it doesn't like you in saying, but listening to phole records, I must say, I love doing that. My son's just started doing that and going, you know, because these children, they've just been indoctrinated with like a single or like a song to playing him albums. He came running in the other he just listened to Inner Visions and he was like, Mom, it's connected, the whole thing. It's connected. And doing something else. I said,

what do you mean. He's like the songs it's connected, like if you listen to them one after the my sweet friend who's like born into the world of like infinite shuffle, like there's no connectivity. It was so brilliant his little face when he saw that music could be written, you know, all the way through in the an A side and a B side, Like there was a reason that those five songs there, the other five songs were there,

and how they connected. Yes, I love that. Well, first of all, I love your accent, your son, whatever you're impression in him. You know, he gets very annoyed because he doesn't really talk like this anymore, but he did his whole life. I have video to prove that. He always sounded like a tiny bookie from the Catskills. Amazing, amazing. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. With the sequencing of an album. I completely lost my mind trying to sequence

this record. But yeah, I took months. It took months, and it ultimately cut a couple of songs. That's the hardest thing. That is like killing something you love. Yeah, you know what I mean. Nowadays, like you can put them out and put them out as a couple of songs, so it's not a big deal, but it feels like maybe it's a thankless job. With its bonny light Horseman music. We're we're all like obsessed with the album and the A side and the B side and you know, how

are they connected? Yeah, what's the narrative arc of things? Let alone, you know, here's the banjo on this one, and the syclophone and this one and this isn't key of C and this isn't you know, you can't have two sees following each other. Well, this one cap, but it's like, but it does go after that, Well it can't. Then you gotta put it in a different key because yeah,

all of those battles so tricky. But also nowadays, like because of the algorithms, like people may not hear the music in the order that you put it on the record. Like basically whatever is popular will then rise to the top, and that might be the first song people here it is. That's exactly right, that's what the algorithm does. So this whole notion of it really was like one, two, three, four five, Like that's the order. I do like doing that with people's records and seeing what they I've really

tried to do that with a new record. No, I'm the same, I'm the same. It's special when songs can speak to each other, and a lot of times they do. What person, place, or experience has most altered your life. The person that leaps to mind is my grandma. My parents had a house, and then my grandparents also when they were alive, had a house on the same land. And now this is in aside. But my brother's family has a house on this farm, and we have recently

left New York City and we're living in Vermontain. We're going to renovate my grandparents house and move into it. So it's kind of a full circle moment for us. But this house, my grandparents house, Like I spent a lot of time down there. It's literally my happy place. Like when I was getting ready to give birth for the first time, I did like a hypno birthing class, you know, and they're like, what is your happy place?

And I thought my grandma's house, And I'm picture myself like laying on the floor with like a son beam coming in like a carpeted floor, and the sun coming in the sliding glass door. My grandma was an incredibly creative woman that wasn't an artist per se. You know. She's a homemaker mostly and a sort of community member. And she was a quilter, she made quilts, and amazing cook, amazing entertainer. She wrote letters every morning. So in the pandemic,

we fled from New York. I was pregnant with our second baby. We had the baby on this farm, and then we moved into my grandma's house and I found a box full of old like letters from my grandma and read them and amazing eye for detail, like it was always so and so was wearing this type of fabric, you know, and the or dervs were like this, and like this type of bird is hanging out in the tree like really and eye for detail. But there are two ways in which she really set me on a path.

One was that she and my grandpa would travel a lot. My granddad was retired, but he was consulting. He was like a solar energy guy back in the day, you know before where it was cool, so he was he would be flying around. They go into like Europe, and they would go to China and Australia, and my grandma would go you know with him, and they would bring me back things from wherever they were, and there always was this value of like any chance you can travel,

you get to do it. Like they sort of instilled like a wanderlust that I think as I actually was pretty formative for me in terms of like becoming a touring musician. And the other thing they did is that they brought me home, I think from China this tiny size violin when I was seven years old. I had seen a woman in my elementary school in a beautiful dress. She came with a gown and she played the violin, and I thought, this is I'm going to play the violin.

And they brought home this I think one eighth size little red violin, and then they paid for my violin lessons as a child, and I would even go to their house in the morning to practice, like before I went to school. So eventually I gave up the violin and I picked up the guitar and I started to write songs. And you know, I don't think of the violin as any part really of my music reality now, but as a formative instrument, like just to be living with that kind of melodic music, it was pretty huge

for me. So I think the gift of that violin and the lessons in the space to practice it, because actually, no parent wants a kid to be learning violin in their house, you know, you're terrible for years. And then the travel, I think, like, certainly I became someone really just I wanted to tour around and play music, and so I thank her for that. Oh my god, how

lovely stringed instruments and wander lust that's pretty crazy good combination. Really, I cannot thank you enough for coming and answering all these questions so fun. What an amazing format. I'm like really impressed. It was totally fascinating to hear like Tony Blair and Alan coming, like just amazing variety of people and minds. And you know, I'm just at the beginning of doing a bunch of interviews for the record and putting out and it's like usually so boring, like this

is no way to get access to something fresh. You know, I'm dying to hear your next record. Amazing. So I'm so excited for this to be out in the world. I bet you are too. I mean, you know, you've been doing a lot of giving birth well done. Thanks and knows. His new self titled album is out now, featuring the song's bright Star, Brooklyn Bridge, and many more. You could also see Haydestown on Broadway Now or on tour.

Mini Questions is hosted and written by me Mini Driver, supervising producer Aaron Kaufman, Producer Morgan Levoy, Research assistant Marissa Brown. Original music Sorry Baby by Mini Driver, Additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Executive produced by Me Mini Driver Special thanks to Jim Nikolay, Will Pearson, Addison No Day, Lisa Castella and Nick Oppenheim at w kPr DE La Pescadore, Kate Driver and Jason Weinberg, and for constantly solicited tech support Henry Driver