I tend to panic and fear on a low-grade level every day, but when something really disastrous happens, I kick into super high gear; a kind of transcendent, save-everybody mind-set.
— Weyes Blood
You know, around 14 or 15 I rebelled against Christianity pretty hardcore. I was reading a lot of other esoteric Eastern philosophy and getting into everything that wasn't dogmatic Christian. But I will say that it did kind of prime me for a more spiritual lifestyle. I didn't walk away with bitterness, even though there was some condemnation.
I was born in L.A. In Santa Monica, actually.
I love touring; if it were up to me I'd be touring all the time.
I think Baltimore is a wonderful artistic community with a lot of great musicians. It's kind of like a little secret for musicians.
There's nothing wrong with the feminine, there's nothing wrong with being vulnerable.
Eyeliner is a lifelong thing. You'll never get it perfect.
I like to keep things deceptively simple, but hard-hitting. You can reduce everything to the perfect, essential harmony. It's what used to be done with earlier music like Gregorian chants.
Our generation is the most cinematically saturated of all time. Videotapes, DVD's, streaming... Spielberg... all of it has thrust us into an endless loop of consumption.
I feel like humor and tragedy are all on the same coin, and it's all a part of the same process as humans as we assimilate reality.
I wanted to be a comedian long before I wanted to be a musician, for sure.
As we become more codependent with technology, it's not necessarily based on our desire for the technology but our desire for interconnectivity and wanting to stay connected, which is a natural human instinct. The technology itself is kind of emotionally manipulative.
I don't wanna make something depressing, I wanna make something sorrowful.
It's important to me to create archetypes of human experiences and make them so that the song has a sense of purpose when you experience those emotions. You know, just making people feel like they're not alone.
Our desire for interconnectedness, our desire to be seen, our desire to be acknowledged, our desire to be liked - these are all deep needs, these survival instincts we've evolved to function in a tribal society.
I was an alto and was in a lot of choirs growing up.
I kind of have an allegiance to the city, but I don't love Brooklyn.
Water represents to me, the beginnings of life, it is where we come from in our most primordial sense. It relates to some of our deepest subconscious thinking - it's a force we can't really see or understand, we just get glimpses of. But it's a part of us all.
My dad was a real working musician in the late '70s and early '80s. He had a band that was signed to Elektra/Asylum and they would perform at like Madame Wong's and Whiskey A Go Go all the time.
We all need a little something to believe in.
When I was about 15 I had already been recording on my four track in my room, but I couldn't find anyone in my town to be in a band with me. I was in a band very briefly with a bunch of guys and they kicked me out because they wanted to play grindcore. I think they didn't think I could tread hard enough or something. So I started playing solo.
I like baroque things.
The most restorative activity is to get out in nature where the air quality is a little nicer.
I love essential oils - there's one for every problem. It's kind of like nature's answers for what to put on your skin. I had acne when I was a teenager, and I did a pretty intense tea tree thing. You dilute it in a base oil, like carrot seed oil, which is good because it gives your face a little glow.
I think the American Dream is kind of a myth, especially for millennials.
I've always been very progressive and as much as I play Old World music, I have this progressive tenacity to keep adding futuristic elements in subtle ways where you won't notice.
In my mind, my music feels so big, a true production.
I really like a lot of different music, and it's taken a while to make them all work together as a unit.
The times I've had in Vegas have been very memorable and very strange. I find it to be a weird, kind of hyper-reality city... everybody I've met who is from there is usually really interesting.
I always had a lot of empathy for the deep outcast weirdos in school. I was kind of like the more sociable weirdo, but I was always talking to the real weird ones.
I have my own cosmology that's kind of like an esoteric mix of a lot of different things that work for me and that to me, are worth exploring. There is a little bit of the archetypal Christianity that I've kind of reconciled because when you're raised that way, inevitably that infrastructure will persist into your adulthood.
Being in a first-world country, it's like we have a first-row seat to witnessing humanity, but we're not really witnessing anything. Despite all the new technological tools we've been given, we're still powerless, watching everything happen like it's a theatrical performance.
Anne Briggs is great, and I love Sandy Denny and Steeleye Span.
I'm grateful that I didn't get thrown into the limelight at 19-years-old.
Climate change is often the first thing I think about it in the morning, and the last thing I think about before I go to bed. It is not something that escapes that my mind, so inevitably, I had to kind of express that existential terror through art and music. My hope is to channel that confusion and energy into something good.
My parents were a little more on the hippie spectrum of Christianity - they weren't liberal Christians by any means, they were pretty conservative - but they preached mostly about love and caring for people, so I grew up with a lot of compassion and empathy.
Nostalgia has become so much more popular because technology and climate change are visibly present. It's easy to idolize the past, before those things were prevalent.
Baltimore is wonderful. Super-weird city.
I wanted to show people that there's nothing wrong with trying to make something sacred.
I don't use foundation or anything - sometimes just a little BB cream.
I feel just as passionately about experimental electronic music as I do about folk music.
What is the consequent effect on a society of beings looking for themselves in the myths on the screen? It's safe to say that they have failed us, but I can't help it... I love Movies.
We thought the Internet would enlighten everyone, but it's given everyone access to more ignorance, and given ignorant people an opportunity to organize themselves and congregate.
I'm not a huge, popular artist, but I feel like one when I'm in the studio. But it's never taking away from the music. I'm just making a bigger space for myself.
I find Nevada to be extremely spooky.
I aspire to write like Robert Wyatt. I take a lot of inspiration from the way he writes.
I was always interested in the fringes of culture and society and in expressing myself in a distinctively different way, like always rooting for the underdog, that kind of thing.
We haven't evolved as loners, we need each other. It's easy to believe in the illusion of technology bringing us closer together. But if you were to protest that and say, 'I'm not going to use a smartphone, I'm not going to use email, I'm not going to use social media,' it's like you're no longer a part of humanity.
You can't really ignore what's going on in this planet, in our world, and the way it's all falling apart.
I love British folk music, but I'm not obsessed with it. I love the Celtic stuff, and Enya is a favorite, but that's more electronic.
