Acclaimed singer-songwriter-guitarist Margaret Glaspy returns to upstate New York to promote her new EP, “The Sun Doesn’t Think.”
Glaspy will bring her solo acoustic tour to the Center for the Arts of Homer on Sunday, May 5, and then to the Little Theatre in Rochester on Friday, May 31.
“The Sun Doesn’t Think” follows 2023’s “Echo The Diamond,” which drew acclaim from The New York Times, NPR, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and other media outlets.
In a recent Zoom interview with The Route, Glaspy talked about the current tour, her new EP, her long-distance running feats, and much more.
Q: Are you excited or nervous about going out on a solo acoustic tour?
Margaret Glaspy: Oh, I'm excited, I'm really excited. As a kid, I was a fiddle player when I was young and I played mostly acoustic music for a long time before I made records so it feels like the OG way. And I think it puts a little pressure on oneself to show up and deliver the goods, so I'm going to do my best. It's like a fun tightrope walk.
It’s just me and a guitar. I might gravitate toward extremes, but maybe I like things to be clear, too, and just distilled down. I'm excited to bring a show that has all that it needs in just those elements: my voice and the guitar. I've been moved by so much music that only has those elements to it, so this is my attempt to do that.
Q: Will you be playing songs from your previous albums, which were more “electric”?
MG: Totally. I'm gonna play songs from “Echo The Diamond,” songs from “Devotion,” and from “Emotions in Math,” so it'll be the total spectrum. I'm excited to interpret and not just play songs that are from my whole catalog and from others as well.
Q: Is there a connecting theme among the songs on the new EP?
MG: Probably the through line is that I wrote all these songs, for the most part, while I was on tour for my last record, “Echo The Diamond.” For some reason, it's evolved for me that when I write songs these days, it feels very environmental, almost like location-specific in my mind. And often specific to places that feel fictional – like I'm not in those places, I'm just there in my head.
So this one ranges from the countryside and visions of California for me, reminiscent of where I grew up, and then to where I’m like in a city in an alleyway – that's another place that my mind was fixated on for some reason – so they all pull on one or the other environment in some way.
And yeah, I think it was maybe refreshing to indulge in some narrative-based writing in some way and also just to be able to lean into the simplicity of the setup in terms of just having my acoustic guitar and singing it. I think it opens my world up even a little bit more because there's a lot of room lyrically and a lot of room vocally and all the things So yeah, those are probably the through lines for this EP.
Q: You’re a pretty hardcore long-distance runner, too. How does interact with being a musician? Do you think about music when you run? And what is a “pain cave”?
MG: I think I'm pretty static in my mind when I'm running. But there is the term “pain cave,” which comes from one of my heroes and one of the most skilled runners in the world, Courtney Dauwalter.
She is a masterful Ultra runner and has been setting records for the last five to 10 years very consistently. She has some amazing mind approaches in terms of mental clarity and pushing your boundaries and showing up, and the pain cave is one of those mind spaces that you can explore to broaden your horizons. So yes, I think that being an artist and an athlete, they do feel very connected to me. Approaching and attempting to do difficult things as an athlete, it brings up a lot of the same things of being an artist and the difficulties of that.
So when I wake up in the morning and my brain and my body say, “No, do not go for a run, this is gonna be horrible,” it's been a big learning technique to persevere even when your mind says something like that.
And I think it's very similar with art, where you wake up and your mind and body go like, “No, don't write songs when you have all these other things you should do,” but instead persevere and continue to make art so it becomes this radical pursuit. They each teach me to be able to be better at the other, I would say in my own experience.
Q: You also teach songwriting classes online – what inspired you to do that?
MG: Teaching songwriting, I think is a slight mystery to some when they hear about it because it's like, “How can you possibly teach songwriting?” It feels like such an almost mystical endeavor. But I love working with songwriters of all skill levels or experience levels from all over the world, and it has been a real treat.
Probably one of the really special parts about it is that I have gained quite a bit of experience as a nerdy songwriter so that we're able to endeavor into some topics that the average person wouldn't want to talk about. And that includes arranging, harmony, and lyricism and the history of all these topics in American popular music and otherwise.
That's the more skill-based technical part of it, but then on the other side, I think, for artists, and especially songwriters, it can be a lonely experience. It causes you to be alone and to think about things by yourself. And I think when you do that a lot, it can start to add up to having some murky cracks in the cement. People are struggling at times and I've been there quite a bit. So it’s a cool thing to connect with other artists and to talk about the mind state that these murky places can lead to, and learn about clarity of mind.
I come from Buddhism, and yet the topics we're talking about are completely secular and not really associated with Buddhism’s many ways. But they are often really connected to mindfulness in terms of just not suffering constantly when you're trying to write songs. So another topic that gets included is just trying to figure out how to identify what's actually going on in your mind – is this a terrible song? Or are you just associating with a thought process that thinks it wants to be terrible?
So yes, it really runs the gamut. And there's a lot that goes into those lessons in a very sweet community that I get to be in touch with really often these days, which is great.
If You Go
Who: Margaret Glaspy
When: 8 p.m. Sunday (Clint Bush will play a solo set in the Community Room at 6:30-7:30 p.m.)
Where: Center for the Arts of Homer
Cost: $34, available online here
