Joanna Newsom
Joanna Newsom
Joanna Caroline Newsom is an American harpist, pianist, vocalist, lyricist and actress...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth18 January 1982
CountryUnited States of America
years years-ago harps
I started playing harp about fourteen years ago.
america want
I want to make music that somehow connects to the things that I love in America music.
song writing thinking
I wanted to write songs which I think is a different thing. I wanted to write music that is informed by folk music. The chord progressions are obvious references.
classical-music relation experimental-music
I am not doing something that it is experimental music in relation to classical music.
writing always-trying trying
I am always trying to write.
healing light grows
We deserve to know light. And grow evermore lighter and lighter.
blue whales voice
The very first Walnut Whales recording was recorded just a few weeks after I had started singing, out of the blue, started singing. And the voice, you can hear how uncomfortable I am with it, and how terrified I am with it.
song simple thinking
I recorded harp first or singing first. I recorded it all together. Part of the reason is that I don't know how to play the songs without also singing. I forget how they progress. I don't think that any of them are verse, chorus, verse, and so on. They are not simple.
twilight thorns thistles
I wasn't born of a whistle or milked from a thistle at twilight No I was all horns and thorns sprung out fully formed, knock-kneed and upright.
ideas delight lines
Lyrics are very different. There is a clear line between that and a poem. Something that has been a source of great excitement and delight for me is this idea that I get to rhyme.
school math rhyming
In high school, we studied a lot of poetical forms. I was really interested in the math that was involved and the strange live break ups. That gave me a great amount of respect for a rhymed stanza.
morning sky looks
There are some mornings when the sky looks like a road.
trying sound corny
I am consciously trying not to make it sound Celtic or African.
school years obsession
I did spend a year in high school being obsessed with Fleetwood Mac.