Carrie Brownstein is a name you probably recognize most from the Emmy- and Peabody-award winning sketch series Portlandia, but she was also a hard rocking riot grrl as a band member of Sleater-Kinney and is a critically acclaimed memoir writer. Carrie joins Sophia on the podcast to talk about having that "fight" in you to survive, the lens through which she views the world, and the genre-bending film she wrote and stars in, THE NOWHERE INN.
Executive Producers: Sophia Bush & Rabbit Grin Productions
Associate Producers: Samantha Skelton & Mica Sangiacomo
Editor: Josh Windisch
Artwork by the Hoodzpah Sisters
This show is brought to you by Brilliant Anatomy
Hey, everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome back to work in progress. Where do the New York Times bestseller list, rock and roll and award winning comedy intersect Wherever today's work in progress guest happens to be. Carrie Brownstein is a name you probably recognize most from the Emmy and Peabody Award winning sketch series Portlandia, which she wrote and starred in alongside Fred Armison. But before and after that, Carry has done equally groundbreaking work and an entirely different artistic areas. She was a hard rocking riot girl as a band member of Slater Kinney and a critically acclaimed memoir writer. And now she's written and starred in a genre bending film called The Nowhere, in which was released in September. I think Carrie is a really fascinating individual. I am such an enormous fan of her work and her brain, and I am betting that as you get to know her better over the course of this interview, you all will feel the same. So let's get to it. How have you been, How how's your how's your pandemic year and a half gone? Uh? It's been okay, you know. I feel lucky. People in my family were safe and no one really got too sick, but you know, it was also hard, just a lot of experiences becoming sort of muted and strange, and then this search for the return to normalcy, but then realizing that perhaps that's sort of a fallacy, like just normal as a concept seems to be slipping away, and then also like what of normal do we want to hold onto. I just feel like I went into the same or similar existential crisis as anyone. But I also I'm an introvert. There are things about it that aligned with how I am as a human in terms of just the insularity. So that was nice after a while, Like after I you know, when we got past the point of thinking like, well, we're all done for then I was like, okay, I guess certain parts of this are good for contemplation. Yeah, um, what about you? I think what was interesting for me. I'm kind of a community animal. I always joke that, like I'm a puppy, and my best friend as a cat, she is she's like up on the shelf, leans back, checks things out, it's very quiet, observes, and I like, I want to be right in a pile of all the bodies cuddling, and I've really I realized I'm actually much more introverted than I understood. And I think I think I I love community, you know, and in some of what we do and making stuff with other people, I love the collaboration. And I actually think I need a lot more quiet time than I've ever realized because I'm always on set. And so I've been like, I love this, this is what I'm the best at. And and I spent so much time at home, and there was I'll never forget a week where my partner looked at me and he was like, hey, honey, I don't think you've been outside the front door in five days, and I think maybe we should go for a walk. And I was like, oh, I'm really I'm hermiting hard, aren't I. Okay, let's go outside. Yeah, you can definitely go into the other stream. But I do agree because so much of the work we do is collaborative, and I think I have gotten accustomed to that kind of communication and togetherness where it's very productive, we're all working towards the same goal. But then at the end, I feel at the end of the day like very sort of fulfilled and edified and socially as well as creatively. But I think that's actually my preferred mode of socializing. I realized it doesn't have to be work related, but when we're all like kind of working towards something. So maybe I like structured, structured activities like like just an kind of like an aimless Like I get social anxiety around like a dinner party that's not close friends, you know where I'm just like, I don't know what the expectations are, and those things all went to the wayside during the pandemic, So I haven't been to an awkward dinner party or event. In many industries, including ours, there's things called events, which not everyone has, like not every industry has an event, but many do. And I'm like, oh, I haven't had to do an event, Like what is an event? You know what I mean? Like it's just so much pageantry, like all these things that I kind of do not miss. I get such terrible anxiety at those things. Yeah, for sure, So there has been some clear it's been clarifying. I guess to just think, like who are my people and or this is the kind of interactions I want slightly more, slightly more intimate or just like, I don't know, not a bunch of superfluous things where I have to navigate all the unknowns, which makes you sound adverse to like new experiences, which I don't think I am. But I definitely get more anticipatory anxiety around new experiences. I get that. I mean, I don't know. I'm not a doctor. I feel like that's pretty normal. I think for me, it's part of the reason that I've leaned into this medium because I really love, Like, the thing I love about a dinner party is that you can sit for hours and talk to someone I don't know how to do the the events small talk. I'm like, what are people here talking about? What? What's on your insides? What do you believe in? Not an appropriate event question? Okay, see, like I don't know. So I think I've I've laved into this because they're even through a screen, being able to sit with someone and really dive into their thoughts and what makes them tick and why they make the things they make. It feels so luxurious and and yeah and safely intimate in a way. Yeah, well, there's sort of a it's boundary. Still, this this small talk thing really makes me anxious, Like I I wish, and I think everyone, even people that are good at small talk, just wish there was like a little button or something that you could like, I don't know how to extricate myself where you just you're like, okay, we've talked whether sports, whatever else, I think these categories, and then you're like we're done. Usually I'm just like I'm gonna go, and I always say like I'm gonna go to the bathroom, I'm gonna go get a drink. And then you just it's a taskit agreement that you're never going to come back to that person, which is so awkward and it's not about them and people have done it to me, but you just you don't know how to like start or end those things. At the end of those nights, I come home and I'm like, did I talk to anyone? Like it's just such a blur. Yeah, so yeah, this is better. Well I'm glad. I I think of this is the proverbial At the party, you find your friends in the corner with the tequila and you're like, we're good. Yeah, you know. The thing we all hung out in Austin was kind of like that. It was like, oh, hey, you're new, but we're in the corner and you're good. Yeah that was That was fun and a little more like friend base than well it's a birthday party. Yeah. So Carrie, I'm so curious to to kind of dive in with you. And I realized we're just chatting and there's people at home being like, we have questions and I feel like I should get to some of those, but I always I like to go back with people first, because you know, I would imagine that for your fans who are listening to this. I know that for me as a fan, Like when I first met like Oli Riscaracout, she's so cool. Um, you make you are you really are. You're you're such a talented performer, and you're a writer, and you're a director, and you're a musician and and you have such a like fascinating story. But I think the thing that has always really made me curious about the way you work is the way that you also tell other people's stories. You know, you you've really created this like delicious world that's so rich. There's so many um kind of textures in your work and whether it's Portlandia, you know, winning a Peabody or Slater Kenny or your book. I I'm curious for all of us who look at you now, is this woman with this amazing kind of laundry list of accomplishments and projects? Where did the creative process begin? Like, like, was Carrie as a little girl an introverted and curious person or were you totally different? Yeah, I don't know if I would call myself an introvert. As a kid, I think I was a little more outgoing. Well, I'll just say I think often what happens as you get older, as you sort of if you have sort of a performer side of yourself, which I do and obviously you do, like you, you kind of compartmentalize that, you know a little bit, because there's certain energy that you use for that. And so I think I love being on stage or doing things like that, or doing a reading or something. But then I think in the rest of my life I feel a little more not closed off, just like private. But as a kid, I really I loved that as a way of performing, as a way of interacting with my friends, Like I was always trying to get them, like rope them in like the neighbor, you know, before you get to middle school, where you just kind of if you live around in a neighborhood where you hang out with other people, it's like you just just kind of a group of like ragtag neighborhood kids. And I would always be like, we should be putting on a play and everyone would be like yeah, and then I would like assiduously like sit down and start working on it, and like two hours later everyone else was like, wholl We're bored. Like people would lose interest, but I'd be like always sort of the ringleader of let's put on this talent show, let's put on this play. And I'm sure it was a little bit annoying but for like them, but I really enjoyed it as a way of being around other people. So yeah, I think it started as just a way of, yeah, of relating and interacting in a way that felt um like more not even in control, because I think that's something I ascribed to it later, taking a slightly chaotic childhood and figuring out a way of like navigating it. But I think at the time I wasn't conscious of that. I think I was just like, this is a way of being in the world that I feel comfortable and can kind of step outside myself a little bit. So it was it was that first and then and I also really liked writing as a kid. Did the interest in writing come from being a big reader. I wasn't really actually a big reader until college. Like I read, but I didn't become bookish until later. And then I went back and was like, oh, here's all the books that my high school English teachers just told me that I should read. That I was just skimming through in order to write the paper. But now I'll actually read these books. I think I was more interested in film as a kid, Like I loved movies, and I really I was very nerdy, like collect you know, remember there was this magazine, Premier Magazine. It was like the movie magazine like in the eighties, and you know, I asked my parents for a subscription to Premiere and I would why I don't remember if it was. I think it was called Turner Classic Movies. Even then, I would like VCR, you know, like we're having a Betty Davis film festival this weekend. Even like when I was thirteen or fourteen, I would record and I'd be watching like Dark Victory or something or like these weird old like Betty Davis movies, and I would get biographies of James Dean and and like Marlena Dietrich, like I just it was very anachronistic to what was actually happening in the you know, this was not what was actually showing in the nineteen eighties, and this is one of the popular music. But I really dove into this past, and so a lot of my writing I think came out of just this imagination that that films presented to me, and then later read some great literature and realized, oh, this is a vast world to explore. It's interesting thinking about that because when you talk about loving to put these plays on and kind of being the organizer, and I think fact what you were saying in the beginning, you know, even about what this year's revealed, how nice it is to just have an understanding of the expectation. I think about it as you know, you're either like dumping water on the floor or you're putting it in a container. I just love a container because I know what it is. And I think about this little girl version of you being like, here is the container for our experience and fun, and we will make a version of a movie it's so Tracy Flick. It really is. Yeah, It's like, why am I trying to like heard cats here? Like these are other kids? I don't want that, but I did. Yeah. I liked the formality of it. Like to me, it helped make sense of something and provide some structure. Ye, well, it gives you a structure. And interestingly, the structure allows you then to have a goal. You're not just playing, You're making a thing. You have a goal. And I don't know, I I get that. I am deeply relating to that in this moment. I think it's why I loved as a kid. I loved camp so much because we got to be a ragtag bunch of kids, but every day there was an activity. I knew what I was supposed to do. I knew what I was meant to achieve. I stayed there, you know, as I got older, and eventually, like you know, became a counselor in training in a camp. I love it. I loved being a camp counselor. I was like, this is the thing I am the best at. Plus there's a song like I still rememb a camp song saying I have my camp blanket from my five year I'm like, yeah, I'm deeply nostalgic for it. Where did you grow up? I grew up in southern California, but I went to camp up in the Sierra National Forest every summer and just amazing, loved it, loved it. What about you? Yeah, I grew up outside Seattle, and the camp I went to was on in the San Juan Islands, which are amazing, and it was on Orcas Island, and yeah, just very lots of things that I don't know if your camp experience was like this, but certainly a lot of things that kids today would not be able to do, like archery or also shooting rifles, just like a fifteen or sixteen year old camp counselor asking us all to lie down on these cots and then we would like load our little guns and shoot, and no one like thought anything of it. No one thought like, well, this could be dangerous. We just shot at the target and then went on our way and then went onto the next thing, which is like canoeing or making some kind of lanyard. But yeah, and I'm not romanticizing it, and I'm just certainly saying definitely different than camp right now, no one's shooting guns at camp. It is so different, and you think about the generational gap. I mean, fun fact, I started going to camp when I was nine. I loved rifle e and my dad grew up in Montreal, Canada, but literally spent every summer of his childhood on the family farm on the St. Lawrence River, And so my dad remembers when he got his first twenty two rifle when he was twelve. So I would like come home from camp with my little sharpshooter targets like, guys, look, I'm getting really good at this and um. And so I got a little twenty two rifle when I turned twelve from my dad. And I don't know if you'd be allowed to do that now, but I don't know. We we really loved it. That was kind of right thing. I think in other parts of the country. And if you have listeners that are in Montana or Wyoming, which I assume you probably do, they're probably like, oh yeah, because I feel like every once in a while, it's it's easy to like, you know, when we're on like the West coast or you know, in the big cities on the East coast, I think no one's out shooting, but it is traditional as like sport and hunting, you know, our I think our association with guns is obviously rightly so pretty dark, but there's sort of another aspect to it, like you're talking about with your dad. Yeah, that that's what kind of what I wish we could go back to. As were having these debates, I'm like, well, if we could take all the dark scarry and the you know, weapons of war out of it, I think kids at the range with their parents is great. I loved it. And and yeah, I think we forget you know, if you live in any version of a sort of dense city or town, you're not like in the backyard doing target practice with a rifle or a bow and arrow. But yeah, when you get out into you know, more rural zones, farm towns, I mean I could I spent half my childhood life in a town of five thousand people, like there were far more cattle than people in our town, and so that in southern California, in central California, and yeah, that was just like what we did big Friday night was like We're going to the creek to catch frons and it was so fun and I loved it and so I, yeah, of course, there's different different activities when you're out and about. I think about a kid in Seattle aside from the beauty of the Pacific Northwest and oh, my god, Or Island is the prettiest place I've ever been. But you talk about how your movie taste was very nostalgic for the past, despite the era that you were growing up in. Was was your musical taste influenced by, you know, the iconic era of grunge coming up in Seattle are different. No, it definitely was. I mean, I think concurrent with going back to the golden age of film. My musical taste in the eighties was squarely in the pop world, which was just you couldn't avoid it, you know, all Madonna and Michael Jackson and George Michael and just the biggest stars. But then when I entered high school and segued from awkward trying to kind of hang on to some identity that was never going to suit me, which was just like following around more popular kids, um, and just not knowing who I was. I was like, who are these much more interesting kids? And um, this is probably when I was fifteen, like ninth grade. Basically and they were called because it was before alternative was a word, you know, like alternative sort of came around, like with Nirvana, So all these different little niche groups had to kind of bond together. So you have like the goths, the metal kids. At my school, they were called bat Cavers, which is kind of an amalgamation, yeah, very much a vibe definitely an amalgamation of like goths and punks. So I was very taken by them because they just seemed super cool, and I had just started getting into first older punk music, but there was all this stuff happening in Seattle and kind of like Nirvana, let's see what they have exist They Bleach had come out, but there were sort of these earlier Seattle bands, like this band called Green River, which I think had someone from mud Honey in it, and there was mud Honey and this band called the fast Backs, and there was Yeah Skycris Mary or sort of like the local goth band. So that was all kind of percolating. And then at the same time, there's all this music coming out of Olympia. So one of my friends, who was a little more in the know, was like, oh, there's also this music in Olympia's beat happening in Bikini Kill, and so, yeah, all of a sudden, this whole region was like vibrating with a real urgency. And then I was completely on board and at the same time like going to record stores and being like, well, who are all the predecessors to these bands? And you know, discovering earlier forms of punk out of like New York or l A. So it was a real time of discovery for me. Oh that's so special. I feel like you need to hang out with my best friend Kenny. He's a photographer and he makes music videos and he literally grew up like you know, sixteen inch mohaw plane punk shows in the sewers of San Diego. San Diego definitely had a punk seen. The whole southern California scene was pretty wild. Yeah, it's pretty wild. And I just think about this sort of historical education, you know, in the ten plus years that we've been friends, like going through albums of all the old punk flyers and seeing the way people used to press their stuff, and I don't know, I I have a nostalgia for it, even though I didn't grow up around it. I just think it's so cool. I think young people especially figuring out where to put their angst and like finding an identity. You also in the corner. Maybe that's why I like it so much now, because I'm like, oh, I'm a corner person. I like to be in the corner, and I just I love this sort of energy of it and the high tension and the exploration of it. You've You've mentioned in some other interviews that you know, growing up, you like bounced around before you found your interest. You know, you tried this, and you tried that, and then you found the guitar. Was that also in this era or did that come later in school? No, it was in this era. So in addition to all this, so we were in the suburbs. We were like fifteen twenty minutes outside of Seattle, So you know, the big city. When you're in the excerbs or suburbs, it's just like this beacon of coolness and it's urbane and sort of forbidden, especially if you're young and your parents are like, no, you're not riding with a bunch of kids in the city. So there was just always this alure. So what often happens is kids form their own bands. So in my high school kids started playing music because we weren't fully allowed to engage with like Seattle, because we were right on the edge of being too young, or we literally were too young to go to bar shows. So this kid Jeremy Enoch who ended up being in Sunny Day Real Estate, and then this guy William Goldsmith who was the first drum and the food Fighters, Like, these guys were in the scene and they had their own early bands, so we would go and watch them, and eventually I just thought like, I want to play guitar too, And then there wasn't really it was a fairly It wasn't like a guy's only seen or anything like that. But I so I didn't feel left out of it in that way. But I just knew I didn't want to just be on the periphery observing. It felt like a form I wanted to explore because it seemed very immediate, especially rudimentary punk. You know, you're like, I don't need to know that much, just a couple of chords and some anger and just mesh the two together. So yeah, I convinced my parents, and I think what you're referring to is, yeah, like that, my parents were a little hesitant at first because they're like, oh, kids go through phases like you know, you want the roller blades or you want the cool new bike or whatever. And I think my parents were like, I'm not gonna vest in this if you're not really gonna play. So it was one of the first things, actually the first thing of value that I had to earn money to buy. So I worked at a movie theater on the weekends and saved up money to to buy a little cherry red epiphone guitar. It was a epiphone copy of a of a stratocaster, and I think because I bought it myself, the relationship to it was much different. It wasn't something filtered through my parents or that it didn't It also didn't feel like a kid thing, you know. There was something that felt like very empowering about just knowing now, this is this is my first tool to like express myself that isn't just I don't know, part of my childhood like this. It felt like a through line to adulthood and I really dove into it. So, yeah, that was definitely fun and I opening and really exhilarating to listen to music and then try to figure it out and take the few chords I knew at the beginning and see how many songs I could write with four or five chords. And then how do you begin to learn? How do you get better? Is it with other kids or did you start seeking out lessons? Yeah, So Jeremy um who I mentioned from Sundayday Real Estate, although that wasn't his band at the time, he was a little bit of our like wonder kind in school, Like he could just you know, pick up a guitar and play. At the time, it was like Snade O'Connor and like r E. M. Automatic for the people had just come out and certain some you I don't remember what the YouTube album was at the time, probably rattling hum or something, you know, and he would just sit and play like, oh, here's the Shenado O'Connor song. Most of this A lot of songs on I do not want when I haven't got are just two or three chords. So he would just say like, this is the last day of our acquaintance at these two chords, and I was like okay, So he would just show me. He just basically showed me a few chords and I just went from there. I never took formal lessons, and in fact, kind of in retrospect, as I started meeting more people in music who did have formal training, I was sort of gleaned from them. And there's always a debate, and there's no right or wrong, but you know, you have the people who have been formally trained and the people who are self taught, and everyone wants a little bit of the other thing. You know. People that have been through tons of music theory are like, well, you the whole point is, then you have to forget everything. But people who never went through that are like, but I wish I could grasp you know. So anyway, I did kind of go back later and learn things. And I had taken piano lessons, so I do know notes and scales and stuff like that, so I had some understanding of of what music was and how to read it and how to how to think about it. But it was it was more just self exploratory. Though, that's so cool. I just started taking piano lessons. Oh that's awesome, And are you is it online right now or now? Are you able to go in person online? But it's interesting because I set this goal for myself. I realized and maybe this is where some of my anxiety comes in. Like all set a goal and then I it takes me like three years to do it. Like when I turned thirty, I was like, I'm an adult, I'm going to start going to therapy. And I didn't find a therapist until I was thirty three. And then like I decided I wanted to learn to play the piano, and weirdly, as I started talking about it, I basically said a friend of mine was like, well, how are you going to do? What are you gonna get a keyboard? And I was like, I, yes, I don't know, I'll figure it out, and like I just know that someday, And I explained the kind of piano I wanted to have, and a week later I found it in a flea market and it was in perfect condition, and I was like, something weird is happening. So I bought this piano, which sat in the entryway of my house for a couple of years before I started actually taking lessons. I was like, wow, I really just this a little slow to the takeoff here, but it's cool, and I in learning now I really think about how much I wish I had taken any instrument as a kid, because there there is, to your point, kind of a just an understanding of music. I think about it with my friends, who, you know, we're lucky enough to grow up in like international households. One of my best friends, her mom grew up in California and her dad grew up in Mexico, and so they grew up in a bilingual household. And you know, our other buddy speak Swedish, and I'm just like, God, you have a you have a flexibility with language that those of us who try to learn languages when we're older, it's just not quite the same. So I think that's very cool to know that you played piano before. Yeah, piano is a good entryway into other instruments because it's just like the key. It's very easy to understand what a scale is or what an octave is when you look at a piano, to me, compared to any other instrument. But I was not I'm not a great piano player. I'm actually mediocret a terrible piano player now. But I think it was a good foundation. And I hated I hated practicing, Like I would always get called into practice piano and always I just wanted to play pop songs, like you know, I'd be like going through Beeto and for beginners or whatever, and I'd be like, but I'd rather play like a virgin on the piano. And I would just remember my parents like buying like the sheet you could just go buy like the sheet music for pop songs and them just like, oh god, Harry am plunking out like a virgin, like the most the most virginal version of this song, like you're like here, I yeah, yeah, not even sure what the song was about. How how then did music begin to take shape in your adult life? Because cut to the band. When when did that all begin to change? I think in college. I went to liberal arts college in Washington called Evergreen State College, and I did not study music there, and it was fairly academic, but at the same time was very immersed in this vibrant music scene in Olympia. There was a handful of independent labels and all these bands who were quite incendiary, whether it was Bikini Kill or Bratmobile or Elliott Smith was on the label. From there, you know, it just was such like an incubator of of art and sound and it just I was that was as much of a school for me as college itself, and so I formed a band there with some friends and then eventually met Corrin Tucker, who I'm still in Slater Kenny with, and we just formed a band together. It felt like everyone there kind of made music, like when you hear but you know you're reading about like the New York like no wave scene or something like in the seventiess, just like people who didn't even traditionally do music. We're like, oh, I'm going to pair this cool poem with the guitar. I'm going to do like some avant garde thing. Like it was a little bit like that in Olympia. There were sort of traditional bands and then a lot of unconventional configurations, you know, like a weird two piece or just bass and drums. You know, there was just a lot of elasticity. So that was very exciting. But I think it wasn't until I started playing with Corrin that we really just thought, oh, this this could be something we we sort of dared to have, like ambitions beyond what was a fairly strident I think a lot of punk scenes back then we're kind of strident, and I I totally am glad I came out of that scene. I think it like instilled in me a lot of ideas and ideologies that I I think I still in conversation with. I don't think I subscribed to them, but I think are I am in conversation with. But as I graduated from college, I think we were. We had put out dig Me Out, which was just this record that, by most metrics, is not a big record, like we never We've always been an outsider band, like we were never on the radio, you never were on MTV. But at that point, ding Me Out made all these year end lists and people were right about us, and we sort of I don't know, I just felt like something we could continue doing. And so instead of going to graduate school, which I thought I would do, I was like, oh, well I love doing this and let's keep going. And then all of a sudden, we were putting out a record every year for a decade, which was pretty crazy. It is pretty crazy. I mean when you think about the achievements and and also just the I don't know, it's funny when you say we weren't on the radio, we weren't this, we weren't that. I'm like, God, how does that work? Because for me in in my sort of musical lexicon, I'm like, you guys are iconic, Like you're a huge band. What are you talking about? Um, so it's not wild to hear. I don't know. As a fan, I think sometimes you forget. Yeah, and we're kind of back to that time now where there are so many bands that you know, like the the kind of top down like hierarchy or the ways that people gain access to music are so diffuse now that it's not we're no longer in the like radio is king or MTV is a make or break situation, like so many bands just exist on SoundCloud or put out mixed tapes or now you know. So, I mean, we're almost back to that time where you you don't have to have any of those outlets. But I think when we were coming around, there was a definite difference between mainstream and underground, and now it's kind of conflated. But yeah, you're right, I mean, I'm we're very lucky, Like I think we we came up at a time and just lasted long enough to have an imprint and really feel like we we made something. But by like sort of the I don't know, classic ways of measuring success that was not ours, but also we did it the way we wanted to, Yeah, which I think I think for longevity it's better when you do you yeah for sure. And yeah, I think especially especially with music. But don't don't you as you find that with your career and as you I know it's not a perfect analog music and acting, but have you found that by like sort of sticking to what you want to do that if you just sort of last, you know what I mean, Like, then you the award, like the reward is a kind of accumulative. It's not necessarily instantaneous. Yeah. Well, I think that what so many of us see and assume is quote unquote normal in the world of entertainment. It's like a firework moment that we think we're all supposed to have, But what it really is is like a fireball. It's like when a star explodes. It's actually really scary if you're in space and that happens, and things are you know, gaseous and burning. I also went to space camp in case that wasn't clear. I've I love this, Yeah, I've really really loved it. But I think in my young career it kind of feels like, you know, when you're in the movie theater and you're looking up and everything so big and you think, wow, that's that's what it's supposed to be. An up close it can be scarier. I in my early career, I went toe to toe with a very famous actress and it got down to she and I for like six movies in a row, and her her star was really ascending, and she booked every single one of these movies, and every single time, the director and the everybody would be like, you know, you're you're going to be so amazing, and we're so excited to see where your career goes. And I can't believe you're just getting started and you'll be in this person's shoes soon. And and she had like a really tragic, explosive, horrible, devastating young life. It happened too big and too fast for her. And I I think that being so green and not you know, quote unquote having a big break that happened overnight actually probably like saved my life. You know, it allowed me to kind of be a kid. I thought I was an adult, and I realized, you know, at twenty year a child, you don't know any thing. I've got my first job three years out of like wearing a uniform in an all girls school, Like, what are we talking about? That? People? Let us be adults on sets? What? Um? And so I realized that the slow burn I'd much rather be, you know, a flare than a firework. And and it enables you to kind of be a little more curious and not get so swept up. And I don't know, I think for me that that was certainly great. And I think weirdly that it took me taking a break from the kind of television schedule I had been accustomed to to actually truly spread and slow down and and reconnect to my self and my adult priorities and and and a different kind of curiosity that had more room than five minute here or eighteen minutes on a turnaround there. You know, I didn't realize I needed to kind of breathe. Yeah, yeah. I think of it like a career versus a moment, you know, And I'd rather have a career. And careers do have fluctuations, but it tends to last longer, you know, Like, and I think once you kind of settle in, also, you just you you do get used to people coming and going and that ebb and flow, and you know, you you stopped seeing yourself in relation to the next thing, the younger thing, that whatever. You're just like, yeah, this is just how it works. And if you wait long enough, it's like only some people make it through that, and you're you're you're rooting for them, but you're just you just realize the truth is when the dust settles, you know, out of the five big things of a certain year, a couple of years, one person becomes you know, okay, there they have the career, and those are the things you start to val you a little more. Just also you start to things commit are put in perspective of like, well, what else. It's not just about the work, you know, like there's so many other things. There's so much too a life, And I think about us really being in this moment where perhaps because there's so much more transparency in the world, you know, I'd imagine we can ascribe that a lot two digital everything, honestly, social media, the ability to look up records, the ability to you know, scan historical newspapers from the comfort of your own home. You don't have to go to the library and go through those giants scanning machines that we had to when we were a little kids trying to write book orboards or like micro fish. But I think about the fullness of a life versus you know, your public career or or a promotional tour or something. We get to peek into people's lives more now than we used to, and part of what excites me about that. I have lots of reservations about it, but part of what excites me about it is the potential. And now it feels like a propensity for people to stand for things, um to take part in movements in whatever ways they can. And I realize we've always been doing this, but I'm excited that we're in an era where it's no longer acceptable for people to go, hm, I don't really do that, and I guess I should clarify. I don't mean to say that everyone is meant to do it in the same way, or that everyone's meant to be an expert on everything. I find myself having to take distance because I have to remind other people that just because I know a lot about something, I'm not an expert on everything and can't be. And I can't I can't survive, trying to carry at all. But I as tan gentle as this is getting it's it's all sort of coming up because I'm thinking about people who have stepped into movements and stepped in two spaces, and and there's so much about Slater Kenny and Riot Girl that really fascinates me in terms of just what that movement was for women in music. And and also just in a moment before this moment where everyone's talking about how you deserve some self care and to take up space, these were women really boldly, rashly, loudly taking up space. And I, I don't know, I just I'm wondering if you can explain to anyone who's listening who doesn't know what Riot Girl is, um, how you guys got involved. Can you kind of paint us a picture. I should preface this by saying that while my bandmate Corin was definitely a part of Riot Girl, I was a little more on the peripherty when I was still in high school up you know, in the suburbs of Seattle. When I started hearing about Riot Girl and the music that was going along with it, um and starting to get the fanzines, there was a Pikinikill fanzine, which is also of course the name of a band. There was an actual Riot Girl fanzin, and there was a fanzine called um Girl, germs Uh and jig Saw, and there was just all this like literature and music, and it was very unabashed, in your face, really just taking all these topics that were taboo up until that point, especially in the context of of music, and really bringing them to the forefront, whether it was sexual assault or the female body being objectified or exploited. People were singing about intersectionality of race, class, gender like it was, and there was queer influences, like it was just all these things that particularly in in punk up until that point, but kind of right before then it had become a little bit like the hardcore scene basically was so hyper masculine and very kind of violent. Like within these punk scenes there was often these mosh pits and slam dancing that we're kind of alienating and how forceful and physical they were. And then starting in d C and in Olympia, essentially we're a group of women who kind of took feminism from the academic realm and placed it in a very relatable vernacular, which is music. So for me, it was definitely the first time that these notions of feminism, and I will say it was definitely slanted slightly towards like what we would call white feminism, you know, even though there were plenty of women of color, and they're like as often the clumsiness of movements sometimes when they're getting started, as they're not as intersectional as they aim for. But definitely like a lot of these kind of heavy idea is we're suddenly being conveyed in a way that was just like hit you over the head. It was the first time I really saw myself in music, like heard lyrics that were explaining myself to me, like in the way that we seek that out in in all forms of art. So yeah, it was definitely people like clawing and scratching their way onto a canvas, onto stages, you know, making space safe spaces for women at shows, just bringing a discourse into a scene that had as many scenes like we're very reticent about starting to incorporate some of these what seemed like radical ideas into the day to day. And it really did change music and I think of and eventually it changed a lot of other things. Too, But it was definitely exciting, and I see the female musicians that came before me as really doing a lot of the work. If you've seen the Punk Seeing Her With, which is about Kathleen Hannah, like, you know, some of those days it was there was actual like violence and threats and people saw saw her and her band as a definite threat to the people's way of being into the status quo. And you know, same with with Corin and in Heavens to Betsy. You know, they were a little two piece band and it's just amazing the terror that they evoked just by being loud and outspoken. Um it seems tried to say now, but at the time it was very radical. And the meetings that there were Riot Girl meetings where people really sat around and had the kind of discussions that are commonplace now that people have either online or in person, sharing stories of of sexual assault and finding ways of like you know, there would be an instance of rape on a college campus and people would figure out, like, how how do we activate, how do we get the school involved, how do we what does it sort of slightly vigilante but also just just share activism, And yeah, it was very exciting for sure. I definitely see its influence now, and I'm glad that it's made strides in terms of acknowledging the ways that it was lacking and you know, becoming more more inclusive in its current iteration. It's very cool, and I mean, I think that that always has to be the goal, you know. I've been really trying to find the capacity to hold the both and of we don't have time for people to you know, learn lessons while people are out there suffering. And then there's the other side where I go, people don't know what they don't know, and they have to be kind of welcomed and taught, and um, it excites me that there's history like this to look at, and yeah, I think about what that must have been like in that moment, you know, as a teenager beginning to make music that influence happening. I get this visual almost of like young girls seeing women put a stake in the ground and be like, we're claiming it. And then you get to come after and make music. And I imagine that that influenced the band and all of you as as women, and probably other work as you've moved forward as well. For sure, I mean I think, well, it's interesting because I feel like the first people to come off and are not invited and they have to sort of force, you know, the kick the door down. But what's so great, what was so great about Riot Girl was once those people kick the door down, then you were actually invited and to be invited to the table. I remember being at a show or you know, usually you're sort of fighting if you want, if it was your favorite band, even you know, and I'm talking about fairly small clubs, but still like trying to get your way to the front and just this wall of like big dudes, and then you have someone on stage saying, girls to the front. You're like, what, like you you see me. It's such a simple thing, but that can translate into any thing, like just people like having an awareness as they walk through a door, break the glass ceiling or whatever, like to lay down tracks behind them and to just make sure you're not shutting the door behind you after you go in. And I think, like that was definitely a lesson to learn from that. I came second, third, fourth, Like I was not a progenitor of this, but I was. I definitely benefited from other people's really hard work and then figuring out what I can learn from that, And the other thing I really loved about Riot Girl was definitely this attitude of of kind of not not caring, which I think it's tricky because the language now is so much about caring and kindness, which I do completely subscribe to, but I also think there's kind of a limit of just like where to put your energy, like what things to not have to care about, or that you shouldn't care about because it's actually just toxic or draining or you know. So I think that that a little bit of that kind of irascibility and feistiness. I think I I sort of kept kept with me um from that time, you know, even though I've mellowed, which is I think sometimes you have to have a little a little bit of fight in you just to survive. Well, yeah, it's like you got to keep the pilot light on at least. Yes, it's always got to be something burning that you can toggle up or chill out. But I think you've always got to have it going. You're nailing it with this band, and you've always loved movies and corralling all the ragtag kids into plays. How does the other side of your work begin to come into play because you're making music. And again now we're looking at this incredible show we loved, and obviously other work and the book, and how do you begin to figure out how to spin multiple plates? I think there is definitely a through line of writing and performance. And I should say and before music, like in middle school and high school, I was very into doing the school plays and stuff like that. So it was always kind of percolating and I enjoyed writing. But I mean it really was with Portlandia. Just Fred Armison also has a musical background and he had he was on SNL. He was not in the main cast yet I think he was still like a featured player and he was a fan of the band and really just kind of reached out to me and had this idea for something I think he'd been asked to do. It was something weird, like for the John Carey campaign, like so long ago. Like he was like, the John Carey campaign wants me to do like this little like humor sketch or something, you know, this little and he's like, can you you want to make something with me? And I was like, sure, that sounds weird and fun. And he had this whole character that where he wanted to play Saddam Hussein in his bunker, but he wanted to portray like that Saddam Hussein was found in a bunker and that he's just like kind of this aging British rock star. It's such a threat idea. And so he played Saddam Hu's saying like he's in like this really nice suit and he's got like this British accent and he's kind of like an older like Pete Townsend or something, and like this was and my character was just my name was Cindy Overton, and I had a cable access show from my basement in Ohio called Boink and I was getting the first interview. What'sa was saying? So dumb anyway, So what was similar about it was that it became this extension of this friendship because Slater Kenny was so much of you know, it was a very organic beginning. It wasn't like, oh, I'm looking for bandmates and I'm going to put an ad in the paper or some Svengali manager putting a band together. And often, as you know in film and television too, sometimes it works out. But people sort of package like Okay, well, what if we you should meet with so and so. I bet you guys would like each other. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't. It's all chemistry. But Fred and I just really developed a friendship and started making these little videos for fun until we kind of had developed our own sensibility and point of view and pitched it and it turned into Portlandia. And so I think that just what an unlocked for me was that I had always had this side of myself that viewed the world in Phenomena through a more absurdist lens and through a slightly more literary lens. But Slater Kenny, obviously it's it's music, and there's only like I kind of see that in this sort of sacred way, and I just sort of it just is what it is, you know, and it has these sort of parameters. And so this kind of gave me an opportunity to do something that was different, and it really provided a balance that I think I needed because I had our Eve been starting a people have started asked me to write music essays like they sort of knew like, oh, well, she's able to kind of step outside of what she's doing and and write about it in a way, and so it kind of allowed me to do that but less academically and just be like, Okay, now I'm now I get to write about things in a way that's not just cerebral but also funny and and strange and finding the truth by looking at it sixty degrees, you know, like anyway, it's just it. And then I think once that opened up for me, it all just became part of the world that I wanted to be living. And I think for myself, I love that. It's when you talk about getting out of the academic writing, I fill my chest get tight because I'm like, I love comedy so much. I love to watch it, I love to perform it. But there is something that is I'm struck with sheer terror at the idea of having to write it. And I think about you guys writing this show, I mean, eight seasons of a show and a Peabody Award hello, And I'm just like, how do you how do you even begin to give yourself the freedom to write that kind of material when you come from the world of writing music and writing essays. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think like or I just I love being an observant that's just how I am, and looking at the minutia of a situation, looking at the ways people perform aspects of themselves, Like I love watching couples perform couplehood. I love watching people perform personhood. Like just these things that just feel like this meta version of like humanity where you're like, oh, are you Are you doing that? Because that's who you are, you just have learned through watching, and that's how you're supposed to be in a certain situation. And like I love when moments get awkward or ring a little false or you know, just all those rings of people kind of tripping up or anyway, So yeah, it was hard, and I definitely give credit. There's this woman, Alison Silverman, who wrote on Portlandia the first season. She was She was a head writer on The Colbert Show way back Comedy Central years and then has written for Russian Ball and a bunch of She's a great writer. But she came in the first season in Portlandia and it was just me and Fred and Jonathan Kreisel or co creator and Allison really, and she was so kind to me because there was I mean, fred is was just my friend and he had a lot of faith in me. But there is a learning curve, you know. There is like I had not gone to like n y U or you know, USC, and here I am like essentially in a in a writer's room, and I'm like, oh my gosh, pitching like so vulnerable. The only I mean it is not unlike sitting and playing some things on a guitar and saying what do you think of this melody or this guitar riff, But especially with comedy, you're kind of looking for the laugh or looking you're looking for that approval. It's very frightening. So Allison was just so good, you know. I would I was not great at pitching, and she would really listen, and she would sometimes come back and say, you know, I think Carrie's idea is really good. Let's like kind of flesh it out a little bit. And I just I'm so admiring and of her and grateful that she just took the time to just be like I, these are good ideas, you're just not like presenting them in sort of the classic way. Um. And so yeah, it was definitely a learning a learning curve for sure. And same with First Dance Set. I remember most of my scenes were with Fred and then we were doing an early sketch and then suddenly it was just me like in my as my character doing like a little solo run of like riffing and improv and I was like what am I doing? Like this is horrifying. So it was trial by fire for sure. But I think no matter how much you can prepare for something, you do eventually just have to kind of go for it. I mean it sounds like that was your grad school. It was my grad school and my film school because then then when I got into directing, it was because I never took for granted though, because I you know, a lot of people who have their their own shows or are on show you know you end up directing, which is great. But I was like I just told my agents like, get me any like I will do every directing job I can. And I so I just started taking a ton of directing jobs because I was like, it's just it's the Malcolm Gladwell thing. You just put in those hours and I was like I gotta learn. Yeah, well, yeah, I would love to talk to you about that, because it really was. I was like, I was like, I don't want to just assume because I've directed some Orlandia and so yeah, I just went out there and directed a bunch of shows. And now now I feel like I contract. I love that I'm almost seeing a ven diagram of comedy and directing and acting, improv and music and you've you've put all these little spaces together to be in the center. Was it from that kind of central place that the idea, the inspiration for the nowhere in came from? Where? Where? Did where did that little where? Did where did that begin to percolate? You know? I guess it was so when Annie put out Mass Seduction, so Annie being st vincent Annie Clark, she put out Mass Seduction, and she asked me to help her with these very stylized interview segments where they were all fake interviews, and so I helped her write the fake questions and they were they were very strange, engine and fun and hopefully sort of funny. And like a year and a half later or whenever, she was kind of wrapping up the Mass Deduction tour, which was this really like cry I mean, I don't even know how to describe it. Like it was so just like it's so formal and like so just like prescriptive, like you know, she had all this pleather and video and like it was just maximalist, Like it was a really intense you know, she's so brilliant a like creating persona and phases in her life and so and Mass Deduction was just intense. It was just this total like sensualist, maximalist overload. And she's like, I think I want to make a concert movie with interstitial sketches, and I was like, okay, let's let's think about that. And then as we started writing these little interstitial sketches, there was just such a jarring contrast between like this very essentially releast scripted like performance as she was putting on like it was all enableedon. The video was like locked into the music, like there just wasn't really room for breathing or improvisation. So to go from something like so boundaried and I don't know that just was kind of playing with things that were really didactic. To go from that to improv was just like, no, can't happen. So we thought like, well, what would be a kind of movie that would actually speak to this version of St. Vincent that you've been exploring in Mass Deduction? And then we just started thinking about like music films and biopics and documentaries, and we're like, well, what she's doing is so artful. We need to just create something that's more has some more hybridity to it, and like allow it to be weird and to kind of speak to ineffable quality of music, which is not you can never quite pinpoint it, you know, you're always coming at it experientially. So the movie is a little more experimental and experiential than anything we set out to do at the beginning, you know, ended up being like a full screenplay instead of just oh here just tend desparate sketch ideas. That's so cool? Does it feel interestingly for Full Circle to have just made this with her as a as a real examination of the persona of an artist and an album, and then to be going back into the studio with Slater Kenny, Like, you have so much music in your life right now. What what's kind of going through your heads as you're diving back into now making your own music? Well, I think I just had a different hat on for nowhere in you know, like it was I was writing it and I'm in it playing a very feckless guileless version of myself. So for me, it wasn't really a musical endeavor, but we did at the time Annie produced one of our records, so that felt very much of a world and then our most recent record we produced ourselves. But I I don't know, I think music for me, I don't know. If you have something like the Senior life, it just operates in like this third space, like it just no one that I work with in terms of like agents or managers, like they're My music is just on its own. And I really like that, Like I just I'm protective of it, and like it just feels like something that came before and will come after, and like it's just there's a real freedom to it, I think, And so I returned to it. I will not surprise that That's what I did a lot during the the pandemic was was focused on music so special. Maybe that's why I'm taking the piano. I'm like, I need I need a thing. Here's the vent and then there's my circle over here. You know that. Yeah, I think it feels important. But you must have you must I mean, yeah, but there's definitely something besides from music, you know, just that thing that you sort of like this is my world. This is whether it's like a relationship or friendships or like nature where you're just like, nope, this is my safe place. Yeah. Absolutely, for me that's often been you know, my close community and nature for sure, just getting kind of out um, which I think is we all need that, we all deserve that whatever you know, feels like home. Yeah, You've had so many incredibly successful projects in different arenas, and I know we're kind of talking about where they all lay in your life right now. Are there other mediums that you see on the horizon that that you'd like to add to this sort of section of rings in your circus? Or are you've very good with the ones you have and you and you just want to continue dipping in and out of those. I think the latter. And it's mostly because even with that, like there were there's just this thing that I've become so wary of in our like hyper capitalist society where it's just productivity, you know, like how much like for a while it just felt like there was a real currency. The currency was like you couldn't just be busy with one thing, but it was like I'm working on this and I'm working on that, and I just was like, who cares? Like I just want to be answer like what are you working on? Nothing? I'm not working on anything, Like I'm just fucking living my life, you know. Like I just I don't like that idea that like in order to be successful or happy or that, Like there's just this bottomless pit of work that we're supposed to be just like moving around in and it just feels so crass and competitive, and so I've really just been trying to focus on one or two things, like it just, uh, it feels like there's diminishing returns sometimes, Like I just I never got to that place where I was felt like I was spreading myself too thin. But I was always wary of that, and so yeah, I think the pandemic was that was clarifying in that way too. It was just like, you know what, I want to work on one thing and try and if it doesn't happen, then it doesn't happen, and then I'll move on to the next thing. I mean, obviously things overlap in all of our lives. We're juggling multiple things, whether it's a couple of work things or work family or whatever. Like it's it's there. It's life is messy and complicated, but I feel like I just have to kind of check myself. I don't need to be firing on all cylinders, Like what does that even mean? You know, like all the all the metaphors, but use just seem like so inhuman. So anyway, Yeah, if I if I take on a new skill, it will be something that is just because I I want to do it for myself and has nothing to do with checking off a box or something. I like that. You bring up the terminology. Someone pointed out to me recently that so many of the terms in our common lexicon are are violent or war based. I'm going to conquer it. I'm gonna beat it. You know, everything is about you know, fighting the battle, and it's so intense. And as I've been trying to think about living more than doing m hmm, I've been thinking a lot about choosing a more tender vocabulary. I'm craving a softer daily existence than I used to. I have no desire to conquer anything. Yeah. I like that. I'd like to be younger. I'd like to be a river. Yeah. I this A friend of mine's girlfriend had this made this like baseball cap and on it it says no goals, And I mean it's a little bit it's a little intense because it is I've warned a couple of times, and in my mind, I sort of like it is because it's just you know, all of that like self care language, which is totally well meaning but can sometimes become its own like addiction, its own like competition, like who can be the most self caring. It's like, it isn't that the like it shouldn't be. We shouldn't be competing at someone else for self care. So you know, I sort of like it as sort of the antithesis of goal oriented life and living. But I have noticed the other day I was sitting outside of a store with my dog and the sky walk around. He's like, no goals, huh, And I was like, yeah, maybe this hat isn't that successful, Like it's but I do know what you mean about just like finding a way. I mean, language is such a lens through which you know, we think about things and how it shapes our thoughts so much that I do think you can really get sucked into both extremes, you know, like the kind of hyper violent, kind of aggressive language and then also language that pretends to be softer, but it's actually just as manipulative, you know what I mean, Like it's kind of like how you use it, I think, more than what the actual words are, the self care language that that's the version of bless her heart, Like we don't want that here either, Yeah, exactly, Well, so I wonder And this is this is my favorite thing to ask. Everybody who you know joins me for a conversation like this, thinking about work and inspiration, what comes next and space for life? What in this moment in your Venn diagram feels like your work in progress? I mean, I think it's definitely less about work and career and more just about being able to appreciate stillness and to sit in discomfort. Is definitely my work in progress, you know too, because I think that can be personal, but it can also be broader than that. To be able to like sit in a in a time that is unclear, that is like murky and uncomfortable, and not to rush to fix it without really understanding it. Or two, go for tools that might be more blunt than they need to be, or perhaps even more sharp than they need to be, you know, like to really just figure out, like wait and sit until something becomes a little more clear or becomes a little more obvious. I guess I think that's that's hard to do, and it's hard to appreciate. I think that liminal space between in action and action. But it's also a good time to reflect, you know. I think I tend to in those moments start kind of thrashing around. And I think a lot of us, do you look at all the kind of reflective outrage that is fomented so easily on social media or just even within ourselves, you know, in a given situation, so reactionary. So I think my work in progress is just sitting with that stillness and discomfort until I learn from it, or maybe don't learn from it, but just be like, Yep, that was really uncomfortable, and now onto the next thing I'm working on. That, Sophia, That's what I'm working on. Yeah, I've label maker my pantry. I can't do it anymore, so I have no way to avoid the discomfort. I have to sit. I'm like, well, I've labeled everything in the house, so the thing that I do when I'm stressed I can't do anymore. And I guess I have to sit with it. Oh that's good. That's a good tool. That's kind of a it's good when you run out of distractions for those things. I think that's I think that's a really good goal for all of us, you know, just be with it. Be with it, alright, Step one, label maker, touch best one. I've tried them all. I can send your family. Oh yeah, I could be that person who like did the h g TV on YouTube like review of of gizmos. Yeah, it's embarrassing, but I really like Wirecutter the New York Times and strategists from New York Magazine like I'm kind of obsessed with, and c net is another one that they do these like reviews of Like any time I'm looking for things I'm like, and it's also things This is such an nonsecutor and probably not how you want to enter in this episode, But I'm always like things that I should just be able to empirically or just like experientially know what I want, like a baking sheet. Who cares? But I'll be like best baking sheet and it's like, yeah, oh my god, why am I researching this? Just go get one. I think I researched though, because I want to get the one so I don't wind up having to get another one. Okay, let's see. This is a really I like how you're turning something that I am looking at as a negative and you're like, no, there's a reason you're doing that, and it's a time and time and money saver. Yeah, next time I need a baking sheet, i'll ask you. So I stopped needing them. I will be your resource for that. Gary, Thank you so much.