INTERVIEW // AMANDA PALMER SINGER, SONGWRITER, AUTHOR, PAINTER, THE LIST GOES ON AND ON. IT IS SAFE TO SAY THAT YOU’RE AN EXTREMELY CREATIVE PERSON. WHERE DOES THAT COME FROM? What a question. I don’t know, the sky? My parents were not artists, not even in the slightest. They weren’t even amatuer creative people. My stepdad who helped raise me was a physicist, more of a computer voice automation expert, and my Mom was a computer programmer. They were super straight people, but they were also really supportive. When I got really into music and theatre as a kid, they didn’t stop me. They didn’t understand me, but they didn’t stop me. And from an early age I was writing plays and songs. Just doing earlier versions of what I’m still doing now. EVERYTHING JUST HAPPENED BY CHANCE, NO FORCEFUL PARENTS BEHIND YOU MAKING YOU DO THIS THAT AND THE OTHER? I think it was the opposite. They were a little bit confused that I actually thought I could do this for a living but they didn’t. I think they did the most important thing a parent could do, which was they didn’t shame me for it and they didn’t stand in my way.
AMANDA PALMER EIGHTEEEN // GNIMAG.COM
BRILLIANT. YOU’RE COMING OVER HERE TO IRELAND. I’VE HEARD THAT SOME OF THE GIGS ARE ALREADY SOLD OUT, WHICH IS AMAZING. IS THERE A PARTICULAR PLACE THAT YOU ARE MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO VISITING? Yeah, I’m really looking forward to Belfast actually. I’m really looking forward to both Dublin and Belfast. Dublin actually figures into the album and the tour because I was inspired to write “Voicemail for Jill’ after coming back from that repeal vote. And I talk about that story in my show; I talk about being befriended by these incredible Dublin writers and journalists like Róisín Ingle, and I was really gobsmacked by the fact that Ireland seems to be progressing into the future whilst America was backsliding
into the darkness. These people were fighting so hard for their rights. I THINK IN NORTHERN IRELAND HERE WE ARE SLIGHTLY LAGGING BEHIND. HOPEFULLY COME OCTOBER THOUGH. Well that’s why I’m so excited to go to Belfast. Most of the places im touring right now, alot of them have restrictive abortion laws, but its still legal. Belfast is the city that I’m most excited to get up and say what I have to say about feminism, about autonomy, about not having shame around sharing your story if you have had an abortion, or multiple abortions as I have. It’s not fun to do, it’s not a gas to get up on stage and to tell these stories every night, but it is so fucking important right now. EXACTLY, IT REALLY REALLY IS. YOU PREVIOUSLY DID SOME CROWDFUNDING TO HELP YOU ALONG YOUR WAY AS AN ARTIST. WAS THAT SOMETHING YOU WERE GUIDED TOWARDS DOING OR YOU CHOOSE TO DO FOR A CERTAIN REASON BECAUSE I WOULD ASSUME IT’S KINDA HARD TO PUT YOURSELF OUT THERE AND SAY I NEED HELP, AND FUNDING? Crowdfunding is really difficult because it makes you really open and vulnerable, but the alternative was to stay shackled to the natural label system which was absolutely not serving me as an artist, as a business person, as a woman. I just found their best practices were my worst nightmare, and I just wanted to run as far away from that world as possible so that I could have control. Not only over my art, but also over my community, and crowdfunding seemed like the most obvious way to do it, even though I knew that I was going to get a little bit of flack for it, I knew that I was gonna have my work cut out for me and I knew that it wasn’t going to be easy, but I prefer for things to be more difficult and have control than to seek control and pay the emotional and artistic price for am giving those choices over to a giant boardroom