Interview: Skipping School with Margaret Glaspy
Margaret Glaspy is a California-born, New York-based singer-songwriter headlining this year’s Ladybug Music Festival on May 30 in Wilmington, Delaware. From her early days skipping school to run around with folkies and bluegrass bands, to sneaking into Berklee College of Music facilities with her student ID even after she stopped attending, Glaspy has always carved her own path.
She signed with Dave Matthews’ label, ATO Records (home to Alabama Shakes, Hooray for the Riff Raff, and Brandi Carlile), and released her debut album Emotions and Math in 2016 after a string of self-released EPs. Since then, her passion and wild Aquarius spirit have taken her around the world, sharing stages with icons like Norah Jones, Spoon, and more.
Talking with her in person, her calm, reassuring nature gives no hint of the amazing things she’s accomplished. Read on to see how Glaspy’s creativity and curiosity have shaped a fulfilling career and catch her live on the Main Stage at The Ladybug Music Festival on May 30 at 9 p.m.
When did you first fall in love with performing music?
I was playing music at a pretty young age. I was kind of a nerdy theatre kid when I was in high school. I loved acting, it was my first real “in” to performance. I did a lot of theatre and community theatre in high school and that was really where I first started to feel like “woah performance is like a thing” and that it’s really this exchange between an audience and a performer and it felt pretty profound. There was an element of being shy for me but getting attention on stage was really a thrill. I think in other places it felt unusual but it felt cool that you could want attention and have it be appropriate on stage. The spontaneity and risk factor was really cool to me and I feel like that when I make records.
When did the focus switch to music?
I was acting and doing theatre stuff but all the while I was really making music in a pretty serious folk scene in Northern California. It was very fusiony, a lot of acoustic instruments but not everyone was necessarily playing folk music. For instance a mandolin player could be playing jazz, everyone seemed to be striving for some deeper harmonic situations. I was musically raised by a couple musicians who brought me into this profound music scene. I would miss a lot of school and attend fiddle competitions (I was a total fiddler!), folk music festivals, and spent a lot of time rolling around in a minivan engaging in this cool bohemian scene. At about 16 or 17 years old I stopped playing fiddle and picked up the guitar. My brother was an incredible guitar player and I learned a lot from him.
After high school I applied and was accepted to Berklee College of Music. I went for a semester but once my scholarship was done I didn’t want to take on a bunch of debt. I don’t come from a crazy wealthy family so I just wanted to take it for what I could. I still had my Berklee ID so I would hang around all the time!
You write songs by yourself but you play in all kinds of iterations. Do you have a favorite?
I think that I need all the ways in order to feel satiated in some way. These days I’m kind of digging on playing solo but trio has been the dominant way I like to play and it’s a thrill. It kind of feels like walking a tight rope. If one person stops playing it is obvious you really got to keep your end of the bargain. So it’s this constant exchange that I really dig.
It’s really fun to jump into someone else's world like sitting in with a band or singing. We were on tour with Spoon for a little while and getting to sit in with them was really fun. Getting to be the lead singer for a song with Spoon was a real thrill. Ten out of ten recommend. I went on a triple bill stadium tour with Andrew Bird and The Lumineers and every night I would sit in with Andrew and it was amazing. It’s fun to have a band behind you that’s not yours but excellent. You get this download of their whole mentality and what they’re into for this stunning moment. You haven’t had to do the work of creating the vocabulary or scheduling rehearsal!
Setting this interview up I noticed you have a lot of women on your team. Is this by design?
I’ve worked with kind of everyone under the sun as far as my actual crew. It's interesting working with women in the music industry because they are fewer and far between unfortunately. The music industry has been dominated by men for a lot longer than not but we’re working on it. My booking agent is a female and my attorney is a female. There’s so many brilliant women doing brilliant things. Overall everyone just wants to work with competent people who are great at their job and having it be women is like this cherry on top. You see it, you respect it. Women have super powers.
I practice Buddhism and was talking to someone recently from a Buddhist context. The hardships that you can internalize can expand your ability to relate and conceive of the world in a different way. If you’ve been subject to any kind of horribleness in the spectrum of oppression, it can open your eyes up to when you are working in the world you see things in a different way and have a different level of empathy. Women are where it’s at! It’s truly a pleasure to work with brilliant women.
As a brilliant songwriter how do you keep coming up with consistently and undeniably well written songs? Do lyrics come first, music, and how do you move it from beginning to end?
There’s kind of a core action on my part on how songs get down that’s pretty common. I often do it all at once. I usually sit down with a guitar for about 15 minutes straight, it’s not 15 minutes of thinking about songs but playing. I hit record on whatever device I’m using and I play and kind of act like I’m playing a song I already know. It sounds short and it is short but to lock in and continue making a song after 1 to 5 minutes can feel very fatiguing. It triggers a lot of voices that say you’re an idiot this is bad why are you trying this is stupid. I like things that invite those voices. I like to hear my mind say really evil things because it lets me practice not listening to them. Part of it almost feels like a little bit of a meditation in the sense that you're kind of sitting and doing one thing and seeing what comes up. By the end of those 15 minutes without fail I have something. From those 15 minutes I take something that I like and then I do another 15 minutes. You can only do about one of those a day but when I’m working on a record I’ll do a lot of these. Promising myself to sit down for like 3 hours becomes impractical but 15 minutes I can find that.
Do you have any advice for musicians, writers, bands working in the music industry?
Everyone’s purpose and “why” are so different so I couldn’t speak to anyone else’s experience but I feel pretty blessed to not have grown up and been inundated with social media. I feel like a big recommendation for myself is to put your phone away. I know that it sounds kind of old school and annoying because the best way to circulate music is through social media and the internet so I can feel a little bit backwards to say that but I think to really offer original thought it has to be non algorithmic, ya know?
David Sedaris said in an interview that if you want to make things that reflect the world, keep your eyes up and look around you. I’d like to make things that are a part of real life rather than from the feedback loop of a certain display of life through that lens.
