I guess it's pretty diverse, but I do have quite a 30-and-older male audience coming out to the shows. I don't know if that's due to me being a female or what.
I don't think it's something that people would ask a man. Some people make a huge deal out of the fact that I sing about drinking all the time, but I don't think of it as singing about drinking. It's singing about emotions, and sometimes that centers around drinking. To me, I'm writing about things that I'm going through that mean something to me, but some people just reduce it to: "She must drink all the time." But if a guy sings about that sort of thing, no one really looks twice.
My guitar player calls the process of writing lyrics based on another story, "filling up the well" when you can get inspiration from other people's art without stealing, more being influenced by it.
I was just staying home and getting stoned and drinking. It was a pretty rough period. I think that's kind of the whole theme of Indestructible Machine, how when you have social anxiety, you can sort of convince yourself that you've gotten over it by drinking a bottle of whiskey, but once you sober up you're still terrified of everything. Hence you're treating your body like it will never die. I think I have gotten better, just from touring so much, but I still definitely have the skittish nature.
When I do interviews, sometimes I'll just be like "Why the hell did I say that?" because after I hang up the phone I realize there were so many things I could have said, but my brain just goes on lockdown. There's something about having conversations with people that's so much different from just singing and playing guitar. And I think a lot of people are actually performers because of that. I can't really explain why. It's like just the only chance you have in life to feel really good and outgoing.
When you move to the city, you really notice how ugly people can be. And that's something you don't really have to deal with in the country. So I do miss that.
When I was in Coshocton as a kid, I was like, "God, I need more than this out of life." But now that I'm in the city, I'm like, "God, I'd love to just be able to run around naked and shoot a gun in my backyard again."
There's always a handful of 40-year-old dudes. I don't know why that is exactly. I don't know if it's like my looks or the music or what, but I seem to just really appeal to that age group. A lot of people have said to me, "What's with all the old men?," and they laugh. But to me, those are my fans and I'm happy they exist.
When I first started playing, I definitely had a younger scum-punk crowd, but as my music developed more and after I started playing electric guitar - you'd think it would be opposite - but a lot of people were like, "You've changed." And I have more of an older audience now.
My parents listened to the Outlaws when I was a kid and I just had no interest in it. But my boyfriend at the time listened to Hank Williams III, and I thought that was really cool because he was singing about whatever he wanted to but it was very country.
I was kind of a little redneck growing up, living on a farm, and running around in the country. I developed hillbilly tendencies, but I wanted to listen to something a little more meaningful than "Redneck Woman" or whatever.
I was listening to country at the time too, mostly because when I was a kid growing up in the country, all my friends would listen to the CMT crap and I really hated it. That would make me really angry. But when I got older I started discovering that there was actually good country music that could sort of take me back to my roots.
I think I was six when I discovered the song "White Wedding" by Billy Idol, and that was the first time I thought I had discovered something on my own. It's the first song I remember hearing and liking without anyone telling me to like it.
My idea of making time for myself is writing songs. I never stop beating myself up about trying to be productive, so I don't really like to do a lot of things other than write in my journal and write songs.
