LinguistHere

You've mentioned that one of your biggest influences in piano playing is Thelonious Monk—specifically when it comes to incorporating dissonance and treating the piano like an extension of the self.

What about your influences in writing lyrics? You have a great ear for alliteration and assonance, a strong command of meter and rhythm, and a tendency to write darkly personal, confessional pieces which nevertheless have a sprinkling of almost joyful cleverness and wordplay. Where do you think that style comes from?

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Some examples for those less familiar with your work:

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But with every Jeep I see

My broken heart still skips a beat

I guess it's just my stupid luck

That all of Boston drives that same black fucking truck

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And the butcher stops and winds his watch he

lays their lives down on the block he

raises up his hatchet and the

big hand strikes a

compromise

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I picked up the pieces of my broken ego

I have finally made my peace as far as you and me go

But I'd love to have you up to see the place

I'd like to do more than survive; I'd like to rub it in your face

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There's the crosswalk where a milk truck almost ran me down

The day I finally saw you when you got back into town

I don't know if you saw me, 'cause I turned so quick around

Hiding into traffic, clearly dying to be found

I think it's really important to see Jherek Bischoff's side of the story too.

TL;DR: Jherek, who is a classically-trained musician and writes his own orchestral music, was in charge of recruiting professional musicians for tour gigs--

Having to organize, rehearse and play with a completely new group every single night was a crazy amount of work and somewhat of a crap-shoot. The easiest way I saw to manage all of that work was to contact the very best players, hope I could lock in one or two ringers each night, and build the ensembles from there. So the first thing I did was reach out to friends, friends of friends, and to the CR network, some of whom were outside the AP fanbase, some of whom had been paid to play during the promo tour, all before the open call was even made. This is how some of the cities ended up having paid players, such as in New York.

Amanda likes to involve her fans wherever possible, though, and suggested that in addition to having commissioned musicians, they put out an open call for fans to volunteer to play just for the joy and experience of it.

So Amanda presented the idea of reaching out to her fanbase, something she has done in various ways in the past to great success, in order to source local volunteer players for each night of her tour... we discussed the things we could offer the volunteers, settling on the now infamous “beer, hi-fives and hugs”, as well as guest list spots, merch and food. During the promo tour, we had also invited the guest musicians to sell their own merch at the shows, and some expressed interest in playing before the show, which was something we were very happy to try and accommodate.

Jherek's point of view is that there was a fundamental misunderstanding caused by the fact that on the one hand, they were commissioning and paying musicians to play with the band, while on the other hand, they were reaching out to the fanbase to find musicians who might like to play for fun, plus things like guest slots on the concert schedule and merchandise selling opportunities.

I’m sorry it wasn’t clear that there was a budget for some cities, and that I had approached players on my own outside of AP’s fanbase before the open call was made. This, in particular, seemed a big contradiction to the original intent of crowdsourcing volunteer players from AP’s fanbase as a unique approach to touring. The whirlwind of activity and attention that surrounds an “overnight sensation” like Amanda’s Kickstarter can really mix up plans and intentions and execution in ways that are hard for the public to discern, especially when so many different people are involved. It certainly wasn’t anyone’s intention to take advantage of or exploit anyone. And for what it’s worth, once the feedback started rolling in at the start of tour, I was glad to forgo profits from the nightly sales of my own merch in order to compensate the volunteers. And of course, Amanda announced later that all of the volunteer musicians would be paid, retroactively as well, which I am very happy about.