When you're little, first of all, everybody smiles at you because you're cute, so you think the world is great. And everything is so vivid. You know, you're not clouded out by anxiety, and you don't miss things.
I learned a lot from hanging out with Emmylou Harris. One of the biggest pointers she gave me was that if you don't know the words, drop the consonants: that way, you'll hide the sound.
I just started going into my room and literally going into my closet and singing into the clothes. Yeah, the Griffin are a really big family, and so I was trying to just sort of get to sing and experiment without bugging a lot of people.
I don't actually have to think very hard when I'm writing. I mean, there are times where it's a task, and you have to plug away and plug away. But then there are times when a song writes itself in 15 minutes, and you're just struggling to keep up with it.
I was brought up to express myself only when asked to express myself, and then to do so in a way that's pleasing to hear. But I've always had a need to make my presence known. I was just sort of born that way, I guess. It's my natural tendency.
Music doesn't have to be fancy. I work hard and enjoy the fact that people want to come to my shows. That's simple, but I'm pretty blue-collar about it.
I grew up Catholic, so I have these defenses about listening to anything with too much religiosity; some of the lyrics didn't sit well in my mouth. One of my beefs is the patriarchal setup. Having the 'he, he, he, God, God, God, king, king, king' stuff was hard for me.
It's occurred to me I need to laugh at myself more, and that I don't need to be some sad folk singer all the time. I don't want to be the queen of pain.
I was rejected for couple of adverts for sounding too sad. One was for Diet Coke, but it's a good thing it didn't happen because it probably would have been a big blight on my soul. It also happened with a fabric softener called Downy, and I guess the way I sang 'Only Downy' made people weep.
I was asked to sing with Mavis Staples on a gospel compilation called 'Oh Happy Day.' And, you know, other than being totally intimidated at the prospect of singing with Mavis, I was honored. I don't really have much of a background in gospel music.
I grew up as a Catholic, and there was so much that was beautiful there, and also so much that was troubling. The whole patriarchal thing, the whole male-dominated approach, really bothered me.
I'm going to be doing solo stuff. The idea is to do 'small' and 'off my beaten path,' or go back to an old, beaten path - do some smaller things that I haven't done in 15 or 20 years. Just to sort of get my feet wet, because I haven't done my own material for a couple of years - I've been doing a lot of other things.
There's an imbalance when if a woman goes out for a walk at 3 in the morning and something happens to her it was somehow her fault, and with a man that's not true.
Often I have to move my body in a certain way, like exercising, to begin to get into the right rhythm for writing a song.
God as 'He,' as a patriarchal thing, is offensive to me. It's standard fare for America, 'He, He, He.' Every time I hear that it's like another blow against females. It's very radical talk at this point for females to say this kind of stuff, but nationwide I still hear females referring to God as 'He.'
Everyone is tortured. Do you know anyone who isn't?
Studios are designed to pull out all of that beautiful ambience you get from singing in a room, and then the engineer puts it back in digitally or through whatever machinery you've got.
Along the way, I've had different advice from different music producers. I've been told to tone it down, that the quiet parts of my voice are appealing and there's harshness to the loud part of my voice.
From the age of 12, I had an understanding that singing was something I loved to do more than anything, and I did say to myself, 'Why not?' But there were definitely some doubts along the way.
Fame is a can of worms I haven't really had to contend with.
