Tori Amos on In Times of Dragons, Democracy, and Finding the Fire Inside Silent All These Years

0:00 [SPEAKER_02]: It's easy to hear your favorite artist on WFPK from wherever you are. [SPEAKER_02]: Listen on your smart speaker, live stream from our website at WFPK.org from Louisville Public Media. [SPEAKER_01]: Sorry we're a little late. [SPEAKER_00]: and welcome to another edition of Kyle Meredith with.

0:30 [SPEAKER_00]: It's the interview series presented by WFPK at WFPK.org. [SPEAKER_00]: Consequence and the Consequence Podcast Network. [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for making your way here. [SPEAKER_00]: Check it out. [SPEAKER_00]: If you're not already, please do hit that subscribe button. [SPEAKER_00]: You're going to get new interviews just like this one.

0:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Sit your way every single day. [SPEAKER_00]: Also helps out my metrics and analytics, honestly. [SPEAKER_00]: You can find us at Spotify, Apple Podcast, NPR, WFPK.org, Consequence, YouTube for the video versions, anywhere you get your podcast from. [SPEAKER_00]: You can subscribe to Kyle Mearneth with, please to give this series a rating, and leave a review wherever you're listening from, because those also help out to our analytics.

1:05 [SPEAKER_00]: But maybe more importantly, I do mean this. [SPEAKER_00]: I like hearing from you. [SPEAKER_00]: I like hearing what's working I like hearing what you listen to what you like to Reviews wherever you can do them. [SPEAKER_00]: We've had some great guests on lately just talk with Jane Kezmarrick You know her as low as for Malcolm in the middle [SPEAKER_00]: Joel Courtney and Andy Delaney were here to talk about the movie, Forty Dates and Forty Nights.

1:27 [SPEAKER_00]: We hang out with Jerry Beckley of the band America, Suki Waterhouse for her new record Love Land. [SPEAKER_00]: Dell Tron 3030's Dell the funky homo sapien and Dan the automator, John Gallagher Jr. from the show The Newsroom. [SPEAKER_00]: He's got a new EP called Almost Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: Bella Thor and Chloe Cherry and Isabelle Paxod to discuss the film, find your friends on shutter.

1:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Tony Hale, Old Parker, Tatiana Maslani, Jake Johnson, Murray Bartlett, Tom Kavanaugh, just an example of what you can also get when you subscribe to the Kyle Mirth with podcast. [SPEAKER_00]: That's me, Kyle Mirth. [SPEAKER_00]: Today, catch an up with the Incomparable Tori Amos. [SPEAKER_00]: We get, she's back with a new record called In Times of Dragons.

2:06 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a concept record. [SPEAKER_00]: that she built out of democracy cracking in real time, of dangerous men behind the curtain of Celtic gods and witches and daughters and the younger self, her younger self, who wrote silent all these years also makes an appearance here. [SPEAKER_00]: She also gets into writing fast, bringing Matt Chamberlain and John Evans back into the room.

2:27 [SPEAKER_00]: How her daughter Tosh helped unlock the daughter's role in the story, and why older records like strange little girls can sneak back into the cupboard when the songs need just the right ingredients. [SPEAKER_00]: It's heavy stuff, but it's always a pleasure to talk about it with one of the greatest.

2:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Let's get into the record in times of dragons. [SPEAKER_00]: It's Kyle Meredith with Tori Amos. [SPEAKER_01]: Hi Kyle. [SPEAKER_00]: In time of dragons is just incredible. [SPEAKER_00]: And I know I say that about every album and I mean it about every single album, but the story that you're telling and this whole concept and I don't know documenting everything that's happening around us and the constitutional crisis.

3:09 [SPEAKER_00]: But you've done it through this myth, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And we hear about lizard demons and Celtic gods and transformation. [SPEAKER_00]: What was it like to put this story together? [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm asking in the sense that this could have been a book, this could be a movie, and you've made just this incredible concept album.

3:26 [SPEAKER_01]: A lot of anxiety went with it. [SPEAKER_01]: No question. [SPEAKER_01]: This time last year there was no record. [SPEAKER_01]: So I was aware, the tour was booked. [SPEAKER_01]: So I was aware that I was already behind. [SPEAKER_01]: And I knew where I needed to get to. [SPEAKER_01]: I knew I needed to get to 23 peaks.

3:54 [SPEAKER_01]: The song hadn't been written as of yet. [SPEAKER_01]: Shush, the first song was just developing itself. [SPEAKER_01]: That was happening about this time last year. [SPEAKER_01]: So, I knew entry point and ending point. [SPEAKER_01]: And then now, the huge question is, where do we go? [SPEAKER_01]: How do we do this?

4:18 [SPEAKER_01]: And the most important, [SPEAKER_01]: voice that came through, I would say it's the music, would say you stay as close to what you know as you possibly can. [SPEAKER_01]: So the characters, the bears, the gay witch from Brooklyn, who is no Michael Sinover at the Huffington Post, who is a benevolent witch who casts.

4:49 [SPEAKER_01]: tight as you can to your reality. [SPEAKER_01]: The only suspended reality was not the lizard demon. [SPEAKER_01]: That's an amalgamation of real men behind the scenes, but it's that I married them. [SPEAKER_01]: That's the only suspended belief. [SPEAKER_01]: But you know, I did have options, Kyle, in the 90s.

5:16 [SPEAKER_01]: They weren't all rock [SPEAKER_00]: you've chosen wisely, I mean, how can I say that? [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you know, we choose our paths, right? [SPEAKER_00]: You seem to have ended up in the right spot. [SPEAKER_00]: I guess that's what I'm getting. [SPEAKER_01]: I ended up in a spot where I think I referenced him in the line, a damn good father.

5:39 [SPEAKER_01]: I think that he in the story is my daughter's real father. [SPEAKER_01]: but I chose there's a side to me that could have chosen a different life as in a life of luxury. [SPEAKER_01]: Those options were open whether I would have been an accessory to them in their way of thinking because some of these very, very, very, very wealthy men, whether it's finance or IT, they like to collect things.

6:14 [SPEAKER_01]: So, whether it's things they hang on their wall or whether it's something they have on their arm that is a sonic piece of art. [SPEAKER_01]: I did realize they like to collect things, and I thought that could be amusing for a minute, but it could be quite dangerous. [SPEAKER_01]: So I explore that in this story.

6:45 [SPEAKER_01]: I needed these real men that do exist, that are behind the scenes that are very powerful. [SPEAKER_01]: And I would consider dangers to have a personal relationship with them. [SPEAKER_01]: That was necessary for the story to drive. [SPEAKER_00]: What is so powerful and talking about that opening song [SPEAKER_00]: because yeah, I think the last time I thought maybe the last time, you know, like there's, there's, there's this little callback, you know, to, to silent all these years and then early part of your career, but you really get that callback on this song, you know, when I, when I hear that, it's like, you know, is, is, is the younger version of you, you know, is it a callback to that younger version?

7:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Are, are you trying to rescue that part of you, like, like, how did you mean for that to land? [SPEAKER_01]: Well, really, recognizing that I wrote that song, having been frozen from his threat, his threat of tyranny, that he's become not only obsessed with power. [SPEAKER_01]: However long they've been together, but there's now a cruelty, [SPEAKER_01]: Kingmakers behind the throne seem to have a detachment to empathy, any empathy, for humanity, and sort of a seduction with cruelty.

8:23 [SPEAKER_01]: There's some kind of flirtation, beyond flirtation, Potion, and that in order to combat that and to leave, in order to really fight that kind of power. [SPEAKER_01]: I needed something to so shake me and wake me, and to remember that I knew the girl that wrote style at all these years where is she, because she knows how to confront, and she knows how to put her head above the parapet and face danger.

8:59 [SPEAKER_01]: and transmute and do what she has to do. [SPEAKER_01]: And in that moment, I could see myself, you know, you leave the credit cards because they will find you within minutes and he's gonna track her down. [SPEAKER_01]: We investigate that in the next couple of songs. [SPEAKER_01]: Showfurt, her to be able to go whether she throws a few watches in her backpack and some jewels to just get her there and grab some cash.

9:26 [SPEAKER_01]: that wasn't the propulsion, the propulsion was the girl, the woman who wrote silent all these years is somewhere inside you, you better find her fast. [SPEAKER_00]: And we'll be right back right after this. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, come back. [SPEAKER_00]: It's Kyle and Mary with Tori Amos. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's it, right?

9:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Because because that very next song starts, the first line is where am I? [SPEAKER_00]: You know? [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: the sequencing and everything, how this album plays, like everything is sort of perfect, that how the story unfolds, you know, because that right there, like I think we as an audience as listeners, it's a gut punch when you hear those moments in Jewish and then suddenly, you know, just to be jolted awake with that very first line in the second time, it was like, where am I?

10:17 [SPEAKER_00]: It's an incredible listening experience it really is and and and and even looking at that song again and thinking of it like from a point of view of a woman in the world of a woman from the south, but also as a mother who has a daughter and and tashes on here, you know, you you cool right whether we hear her voice stronger together of course that incredible first single that we heard.

10:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Um, how did, if at all, like, how did she change the, or challenge, I should say the, the emotional logic of the record? [SPEAKER_01]: Well, she had these three seemingly ideas that we had been working on months before that I know I know Kyle, why, where was my brain? [SPEAKER_01]: I don't, I don't know.

11:04 [SPEAKER_01]: Um, but she reminded me. [SPEAKER_01]: And she said, you know, mom, you might want to just check out these seedlings. [SPEAKER_01]: They're just seeds. [SPEAKER_01]: So we need to develop and figure them out, but I think they've got a place in this story. [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, of course, they do because you're the daughter, because you're in the story.

11:26 [SPEAKER_01]: And so once that pivot was clear, and I hadn't written in times of dragons yet the second song. [SPEAKER_01]: Just was being written, the concept of 23 peaks, meaning the story I knew we were going to end up there through the medicine man. [SPEAKER_01]: based on an elder that I've known since the late 70s who worked the in-met program in North Dakota where my sister went as a for medical school.

12:00 [SPEAKER_01]: So one of the elders, [SPEAKER_01]: who had been at Haskell University, the only native American university who's been such a guiding force for me and a teacher for me and he really holds. [SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't identify as a medicine man himself. [SPEAKER_01]: He's an elder who knows the medicine man and who has called upon a medicine man to do ceremony with me when I had written Scarlet's Walk.

12:28 [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, he's known me since I was 15 years old and he's very much in angel shark. [SPEAKER_01]: He's very much the person that I go to for guidance who sends me to 23 peaks that can forth dimensionally tap into the ancient order of the dragon. [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, they're not on 3D.

12:50 [SPEAKER_01]: This isn't a drastic part, part 12 type of thing. [SPEAKER_01]: So, anyway, I understood that, but then the pivot moment of the daughter then things started to line up. [SPEAKER_01]: But I knew the weave had to be tight. [SPEAKER_01]: That's the thing about song cycles. [SPEAKER_01]: You have to make sure every stitch, everything is stitched in.

13:15 [SPEAKER_01]: Even if people don't get it at first, if they go back on the 50th time, it's like, no, Lewis planted. [SPEAKER_01]: Lou of the long arm is planted in Stralberry Monies there. [SPEAKER_01]: So when she says I invited you in, his story is planted. [SPEAKER_00]: just all the way there. [SPEAKER_00]: And it is one of those repeat lessons, right?

13:34 [SPEAKER_00]: It's repeat lessons. [SPEAKER_00]: But luckily, it is so enjoyable. [SPEAKER_00]: And there are moments there, maybe unintentionally, too. [SPEAKER_00]: Like gasoline girls, I was doing some reading on the fan sites, too, and everybody sort of, I think had the same first reaction beyond the lyrics, like something classic sounding about this.

13:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Like this feels like a song, literally, that's part of the story now, that's from the story now, but maybe musically came from an older room. [SPEAKER_00]: Whether that's intentional or not, you know, it's how we hear things. [SPEAKER_00]: But are you even conscious when those things happen?

14:06 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, if I'm being honest, I don't know if I'm conscious about it. [SPEAKER_01]: It's things started to get where I was having to write really fast after sitting on some ideas in the culture and for years and years and years and years. [SPEAKER_01]: the music to flood has been knocking around only parts of it in pieces of it for well over 15 years.

14:35 [SPEAKER_01]: So I don't know about how conscious I am sometimes that something is a throwback style. [SPEAKER_01]: especially when I'm playing with Matt Chamberlain and John Evans in a room together, we hadn't been in a room together playing music since 2009. [SPEAKER_01]: So there was that going on too with Mark recording at the home.

14:59 [SPEAKER_01]: And so it would be the four of us. [SPEAKER_01]: And [SPEAKER_01]: We would push each other, which was fun because when you're in a room together it's very different than when you're sending ideas to each other's studio. [SPEAKER_01]: It's a very different kind of collaborative spontaneous search and.

15:23 [SPEAKER_01]: And. [SPEAKER_01]: sometimes you, it's not about logic. [SPEAKER_01]: You're not just sitting around what style do you think gasoline girls should be? [SPEAKER_01]: It's just grab an instrument and start jamming. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, sometimes it's really about feeling our way into something and jamming, you know, the jam side of this.

15:46 [SPEAKER_01]: And then going, okay, that jam didn't work. [SPEAKER_01]: So let's try this one. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, come back. [SPEAKER_00]: It's Kyle and Mary with Tory Amos. [SPEAKER_00]: And there are, you know, it's neat to recent, like the mood of that song is so good talking about the jamming and everything and finding those sounds.

16:04 [SPEAKER_00]: And I know we only had a couple of minutes here, but, you know, whether, again, unintentionally, for me, there's also the listening experience of also getting the the anniversary edition of Strange Little Girls this year. [SPEAKER_00]: and sort of starting to play with that in my head of how those two could talk to each other, you know, just that they sort of won re-erives at the time.

16:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Even that title, strange little girls, you know, I don't think Kismitz, the word I'm looking for, but it's something in that area, if that makes sense. [SPEAKER_01]: Sure. [SPEAKER_01]: Sure. [SPEAKER_01]: I think, you know, records can affect each other [SPEAKER_01]: having to be forced to listen to it to approve it, you know, after not having listened and listened to it for a while, then I opened myself up to, oh, I forgot about that.

17:00 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I forgot about when we did that. [SPEAKER_01]: And you go, oh, okay, that's something I need to recall. [SPEAKER_01]: tools are at the ready, maybe it's more like herbs that you can put in the sauces that you're making on the stove. [SPEAKER_01]: That because you have collected so many great ingredients, that then it's about the choices of what ingredients go in.

17:35 [SPEAKER_01]: But remembering what you have in your cupboard, [SPEAKER_01]: really important. [SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes when you've made so many records for so long, sometimes I can be forgetful and go, oh, right, right, right, right, right. [SPEAKER_01]: All right, let's let's be open to that style.

17:53 [SPEAKER_01]: And [SPEAKER_01]: And that's how it's placed, sure, on this record with different songs. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I cannot wait to see how, you know, these are brought to life live. [SPEAKER_00]: I've been keeping up with the set lists, uh, set lists that you've been doing on the tour, and just the deep, cut you've been pulling back out, and of course we'll see you in August.

18:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Back here in Louis. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and why will you must come back and say hi. [SPEAKER_00]: I absolutely will. [SPEAKER_00]: I've never missed a chance to see the show, especially, and Tories Seriously in Times of Dragons is such a magical record that you've given us once again, so thank you so much as always.

18:30 [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for listening everybody. [SPEAKER_01]: See you out there. [SPEAKER_00]: My thanks to Tori Amos in Times of Dragons is out now and you can find many more of my conversations with Tori in this podcast as well. [SPEAKER_00]: Big thanks to you for checking out the episode, do hit that subscribe button before you get out of here to keep up with all the interviews that we put out every single week at Spotify, Apple Podcast, NPR, WFPK.org, consequence, YouTube for the video versions or anywhere you get your podcast from, you can subscribe to Kyle Meredith with.

19:02 [SPEAKER_00]: And after that, head over to wfpk.org. [SPEAKER_00]: It's right to show Monday through Friday. [SPEAKER_00]: It starts 6 p.m. Eastern every single weekday. [SPEAKER_00]: It's 4 hours of classic alternative and indie rock Americana. [SPEAKER_00]: You get the best in new music. [SPEAKER_00]: You get bonus interviews.

19:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Lots of music and film news as well. [SPEAKER_00]: One of my recent shows featured some classics and favorites. [SPEAKER_00]: From the Lannus Morrisett, the Warren Treaty, Coca-Cola, Roko, sold a sold a Pixie's Simon Garfunkel, Tom Petty, Chapel Roan, Alejandro Escavado, Noah Khan, Gillian Welch, Grace Cummings.

19:37 [SPEAKER_00]: In my interviews with everyone from Desi Latic of the Daily Show, David Allen, Greer, Mary Stewart, Masterson, Felicia Day, Judith Light, Nick Offerman, Rod Stewart, Cindy Lopper, just what you can now hear every week night when you tune in, starting 6pm Eastern at WFPK.ORG. [SPEAKER_00]: Consequence has your music and film news, you can also find me on any of the social media sites it's always at Kyle Meredith, please do like follow along, that does it for another edition.

20:04 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Kyle Meredith. [SPEAKER_00]: Consequence podcast network. [SPEAKER_02]: It's easy to hear your favorite artist on WFPK from wherever you are. [SPEAKER_02]: Listen on your smart speaker, live stream from our website at WFPK.org from Louisville Public Media.