← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
Regina Spektor's 'Home, Before and After'
00:27:50
Regina Spektor stopped by our studio to perform some songs live last year to preview her 2023 summer tour.
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- [00:04]
Alison Stewart
Listener support WNYC Studios.
- [00:23]
Kusha Navadar
This is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart. Happy Friday, happy third night of Hanukkah, and happy on Almost New Year as we are preparing to perform Auld Lang Syne for Father New Year. A lot of us are looking back on 2024 and ahead to 2025 and thinking about our hopes and where we've been and where we're going. And so in that reflective spirit, we wanted to start today's show with some gratitude. And as I say almost every day on the show, listeners, I'm grateful you are here. And this year, I'm also extremely grateful that I am here after a pretty scary medical issue in my brain left me unable to speak, which is, as you know, a pretty big part of my job. I'm grateful to the healthcare workers, the surgeons, nurses and rehab specialists who helped me get better and to the team here at all of it who held down the fort. But today, we're dedicating our whole show with gratitude to the person who kept the host chair warm for me while I was recovering, Khusha Navadar. So without further ado, let's get into some of the great conversations Kousha shared with you all during his time here on the all of it airwaves. So let's get into it with a little music.
- [01:42]
Regina Spector
This is all of It.
- [01:43]
Kusha Navadar
I'm Kusha Navadar filling in for Alison Stewart. I had the great pleasure of speaking with singer, songwriter, pianist Regina Spector. She's someone whose work entered my life at the exact right moment. When I was in college, I was learning to play piano and one of my closest friends said, you've got to listen to Regina Spector. So I listened to a CD and the voice I heard and the piano that played told such vivid stories about joy, about regret. I remember thinking, dang, a piano can do that. Since then, she's performed at the White House, written memorable themes for TV and movies, and released multiple albums. So it was my great joy when she came into the WNYC studios to show us just what a piano and voice can do together. And because we can all use a little more music in our lives, we're excited to re air that conversation today. It began began when she sat down at the piano and played a song called Becoming All Alone. Let's listen.
- [02:41]
Regina Spector
I went walking home alone past all the bars and corner delis When I heard God call out my name.
- [03:00]
Alison Stewart
And.
- [03:01]
Regina Spector
He said, hey, let's grab a beer it's awful late we both right here and we didn't even have to pay Cause God is God and he's revered and I said why doesn't it get better with time? I'm becoming all alone again Stay, stay, stay.
- [03:40]
Alison Stewart
Let the ones who want it.
- [03:42]
Regina Spector
Bad get all the things that make them better Let the ones who don't care Feel a threat drill and I just wanna ride but this whole world it makes me car sick Stop the meter sir, you have a heart, why don't you use it? Why doesn't it get better with time? I'm becoming all alone again Stay, stay, stay.
- [05:14]
Alison Stewart
I went walking home alone Past all.
- [05:19]
Regina Spector
The bars and corner delis When I asked God, please call call my name and I said hey, let's grab a beer it's awful late I know you're here and we wouldn't even have to. Cause you are God and you're revered why doesn't it get better with time? I'm becoming all alone again Stay, stay, stay I'm becoming all alone again Stay, stay, stay, stay, stay, stay, stay, stay, stay, stay, stay, stay.
- [06:31]
Wow, thank you so much. That was beautiful. One thing that I notice, I'm just sitting here watching for listeners. I'm about what I'd say 20ft away on the piano, watching you. One thing that I see while you play is that you're choosing a register in the piano for a given time in the song and you really get into that lower register of the piano towards the end of it. Is that. Is that what you already have the foundation there, and you're really just putting that bass home. What thought goes into there?
- [07:01]
Alison Stewart
You know, I think that what happened was when I first started writing songs, I. I heard so many things in my head and I was so worried about like, not being able to grow things or make them small. Like, I cared so much about dynamics that I really would just write different parts of songs in different places so that it could kind of have this. It could have somewhere to go, you know, it could travel around and. And I don't think I do it consciously, but in hindsight I realized that I was just sort of holding place because I didn't have a bass and I didn't have a cello and I didn't have high strings. So a lot of the time the piano sort of had to imply everything. And between the piano and my voice, I tried to stretch it as far as I could, you know, with implying things.
- [07:59]
Regina Spector
Isn't that cool how like the constraint leads to that creation, which is such a well known fact for anyone who creates anything you want to make something good. Put constraint.
- [08:08]
Alison Stewart
It's true, actually. I think that the limits do kind of help you. Only if you buck against them, though, because if you're just kind of staying within the limits and you're just always kind of stuck there, then it doesn't help.
- [08:21]
Regina Spector
How do you buck against them, you know?
- [08:24]
Alison Stewart
Well, for me, it was really like, okay, well, you know, I just wrote a song and it has arpeggios and it has all this kind of watercolory pedal on it. So the next song I'm going to write is going to be, like, really staccato, really aggressive. And, you know, this one has complicated chords, and this one's gonna be three chords or this one's gonna be just the voice. And I also tried as much as I could to sort of stretch my voice into doing things and making sounds and just kind of to try and shape shift as much as I could, even though I was just playing a piano, which is. It's kind of interesting because it is a percussion instrument, but it's so vast and it's. It really can be so many different things that I think I got very lucky that if you are going to get stuck with one instrument, getting a piano is really fun. Yeah.
- [09:22]
Regina Spector
Much love to the tuba players, though. They do what they can with.
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Alison Stewart
They do. As a matter of fact, I've had really amazing tuba. I've had the pleasure of having amazing tuba on a lot of my records and songs. And what they brought to the song, nothing else could bring.
- [09:37]
Regina Spector
Absolutely. If you're just joining us, welcome. Thank you. We are wnyc. All of it. I'm Kusha Navadar and I'm here with Regina Spector, singer, songwriter. Her latest album, before and After. And you're celebrating, I guess in air quotes, some major milestones. OG fans are celebrating them with you. It's been 10 years since your song from Orange is the New Black and about 20 years since you first released your breakout album, Soviet Kitsch. Question for you about all of those milestones. Are there big lessons you feel like you've carried from one project to the next, or is every project just like Fresh Start? What are we looking at to do this time?
- [10:18]
Alison Stewart
I try really, really hard to have a fresh mind because I do think that. I do think that as we kind of do a lot of things, the field becomes narrower and narrower because we naturally want to. As if people be comfortable and with the familiar. I mean, I think there's a reason why sort of like people who kind of get to a Certain age, they're not there checking out the new bands. They're kind of just kind of and this. And you know, that happens with all kinds of things. People just sort of realize that they think they know everything, they're arbiters of their taste, and they sort of get a little condescending. But I do think that, you know, if you have the energy and if you have the curiosity, I think it's very, very worthwhile to keep that beginner's mind alive and to make yourself slightly uncomfortable. Even if it is something as simple as, oh, I'm going to go to this part of town that I've never been to and I'm going to just walk into a restaurant of the kind of food I've never eaten. Because something happens when you travel, when you eat, when you listen, when you do things that are outside of the norm for you. And I think when you make art, it's kind of your job, like you have to stay very, very open. But I think that even just if you don't make art, just as a human wanting to have a really good life experience, it's, it's. It really pushes you. And I really try very hard to do that consciously, even though it's not always easy. Because when you have made a lot of records, you know, you. You kind of tend to sometimes also fall into those like, well worn grooves and everything. That's why, like when I made home before and after the World because of the pandemic, sort of forced me into this new way of working. I'd never worked remotely with anybody.
- [12:19]
Regina Spector
And.
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Alison Stewart
It was just a very different experience because I'm so used to being so hands on. But I have to say that even though it was really hard, I learned a lot just by doing things in a new way.
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Regina Spector
So I want to think about doing things in a new way, but also based on your roots, which I think is an interesting intersection there. Something you and I actually share in common is that we're both immigrants who moved to New York City around the same time and because of tough circumstances in our home countries. So you're from Moscow originally, right? I'm from Tehran originally.
- [12:54]
Alison Stewart
Wow.
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Regina Spector
And about a year ago, I read in this music blog with Stereogum that you were talking about your music lineage. And I'll just, I'll recap so you don't have to go back to the.
- [13:04]
Alison Stewart
Archives, me squinting at you.
- [13:06]
Regina Spector
Yeah, right. But here's what you said that really struck me. You said one huge part of you that you don't get to Share much with your American friends is the Russian singer songwriters that you grew up with. And you said it's a huge part of you and you love them because they made up songs about the craziest things. And I gotta say that, like, forgive the pun, that struck a chord with me because it's like, what do you get to share? What do you not get to share? But also where do you reflect on the artistic roots of where you're from? So I wanted to jam on your roots a little. Is there a Russian singer songwriter you grew up with that I should be listening to? And what do they write about?
- [13:42]
Alison Stewart
Oh my God. Well, there are so many. And it's, you know, it's one of those things that when I saw the Matrix, like I was like, oh, you know, if I could just, instead of like downloading how to have incredible martial arts skills, like if I could download into all of my American friends, just a program that would allow them to partake in all these incredible Soviet era singer songwriters. Because basically there was, you know, there was like the official music and all of these, all of these other people, they were just making these cassette tapes, they were house concerts, they were kind of camping get togethers and they would write the most amazing songs usually accompanied by guitar. They were all self taught. But it was because in Russia basically poets were heroes. It really had like such a love of poets and so poetry, the poetry of these songs was on such an incredible level. But I would say that, you know, of my soul, soul, like if I was, if I could somehow. And I don't even know how you would translate a lot of it. It's so particular. But there's this amazing, brilliant singer, songwriter named Vladimir Vasotsky and he was a great actor of the stage, but he wrote hundreds and hundreds of songs really on all kinds of topics. And the amazing thing that he did was he embodied the characters. So he would have everything from the deepest, most emotional songs about World War II, where even veterans would write to him. He was just a little boy during World War II, but veterans would write and he would say, I remember that I was in your platoon. I remember that moment. It was that vivid. And that's incredible. And, and then he would also write these hilarious songs from the point of view of, you know, petty criminals or just, you know, all kinds of people. Like, and he would embody, you know, the thing that really influenced me was he would embody really bad people. He was sort of like an anti hero in a lot of them. And it was really incredible. And I really internalized that idea of like, I always wanted to have all these different perspectives and to be these different characters in my songs because I just loved so much listening to those stories.
- [16:08]
Regina Spector
So you feel like that's kind of where your storytelling bug came from or that inspiration of how you tell a story through music.
- [16:16]
Alison Stewart
It was definitely a big part of it. I think also just I had an insatiable hunger for stories just ever since I was little. Like, I love, like if you wanted me to just, you know, pay attention to you all, you had to be like, once upon a time. And I like sit down and just be like, yes, yes, uh huh. And tell me more. And as soon as one story would be over, I would just have this pining for a new story. And so I loved fairy tales, myths, books, you know, films. And it still goes on, you know, this insatiable, hungry for. Tell me a story.
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Regina Spector
That brings up a question that I was gonna ask way later, but I feel like it's perfect right now. An element of your songs that resonates, I think, with a lot of people is the storytelling aspect of it. And I think on a lot of songs I notice that sometimes it's the change in time signature that you choose to do that evokes that sense of like stream of consciousness storytelling. Is there a conscious connection there with changing time signatures or is it just. That's how it came out. That's what it is.
- [17:25]
Alison Stewart
You know, it's funny, like, so much of what I find out about my own music is from other people telling it to me. I think most of it is actually not very conscious. And I do very much respect people who are always talking about the craft of songwriting and all that. I believe them. And I know that somewhere in there, like, I have been gifted, you know, a music education by my teacher and I have been gifted these skills so that I can go over to the piano and I could find things when I look for them instinctively or unconsciously, as opposed to just being like a shadow artist, which is somebody who feels all the feelings and wants to make art, but just hasn't been given the skills to actually do it in whatever medium, you know. And so I'm so grateful for that because I think I would just be brimming with feeling and I wouldn't be able to get it out. But as far as like knowing what it is I do consciously, I've only found out from people in hindsight. They're like, oh, there's like a flatted ninth. And I'm like, I Don't even know what that means. You know, it makes me feel like a, you know, like a musical idiot.
- [18:37]
Regina Spector
Well, no, not idiot. I think just the pioneer, the ones creating. You're too busy creating it. Right. There's one song that comes to mind that does a lot of these things. It's Loveology on your newest album. I'm hoping maybe you might have that one in your back pocket you could share with us.
- [18:53]
Alison Stewart
Yeah, of course.
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Regina Spector
So before you play, is there a quick idea of what people should be listening to or something you really appreciate about this song?
- [19:00]
Alison Stewart
You know? Well, it's. That's so hard to talk about songs. I'm always just struck silent when I get asked questions. I know for a fact that, like, the thing about this song that's so special to me is that I wrote it in my early 20s. I played it, I think, once or twice, and then I kind of left it, but. Because at that time in New York, there were people coming to my shows and they would record songs and they would put them up on the Internet. And so these songs, even though they never got to be on a record or have this life of being fulfilled properly in a studio, had a life of their own. And a lot of them were kept alive by fans and listeners sharing it. And so eventually, actually, this song came back into my life because people had been asking me about it for so long that Jack, my husband, was like, what is this song? Love ology. You know, people keep asking about it. So I figured out how to play it. I played it for him, and he was like, you have to start putting that into your solo shows whenever you go and play solo. So I tried and I just kind of. I just re. I don't know. Re met it, and it was really like, such a good feeling.
- [20:21]
Regina Spector
Let's meet it right now.
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Alison Stewart
Okay.
- [20:39]
Regina Spector
Oh, an incurable humanness do I oh, an incurable humanist you are, you are, you are, are you are you oh, an incurable humanist you are oh, an incurable human humanist you o r r r r you o r r r r let's go to the movies I will hum you a song about nothing at all let's go to the movies.
- [21:33]
Alison Stewart
I will hum you a song about.
- [21:36]
Regina Spector
Nothing at all let's go to the movies let's go to the the movies Nothing at all, nothing at all, nothing at all, nothing at all oh, oh, an incurable humanist you are oh, an incurable humanist do oh oh, oh I I I I you oh oh I I I I let's go to the movies. I will sing you a song about nothing at all. Let's go to the movies. I will sing you a song about nothing at all. Let's go to the movies. Let's go to the movies. Nothing at all.
- [22:35]
Alison Stewart
Nothing at all.
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Regina Spector
Nothing at all. Nothing at all. Oh.
- [22:45]
Alison Stewart
Sit down, class. Open up your textbooks to page 42. Porcupinology.
- [22:56]
Regina Spector
Antlerology, carology, Busology, Trainology, Planology, Mamaology, Papaology, Eology. Me, Ology.
- [23:16]
Alison Stewart
Love, Ology. Kiss, Ology.
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Regina Spector
Stay, Ology. Please, Ology.
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Alison Stewart
Let's study, class.
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Regina Spector
Let's study, class. Sit down. Love, Ology.
- [23:36]
Alison Stewart
Love, Ology.
- [23:38]
Regina Spector
I'm sorry, Ology. Forgive me, Ology. Love, Ology. Love, Ology. I'm sorry, Ology. Forgive me, Ology. Love, Ology. The Father Jesus. Father Jesus, Father. Study, class. Let's study, class. Sit down. Love, Ology. Loveology. I'm sorry, Ology. Forgive me, Ology. Love, Ology. Loveology. I'm sorry, Ology. Forgive me, Ology. Oh, an incurable humanist you are. Oh, an incurable humanist you are. I'm sorry. Forgive me. Forgive me, Ology. Forgive me. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Ology. Forgive me. Forgive me, Forgive me. Theology.
- [25:03]
Wow. There's so much in that song that speaks to me about regret, but also where home is, and it feels so perfect. Given that your latest album is called Home before and after and you're home for your tour, yes, this is going to be a geeky question.
- [25:23]
Alison Stewart
Yes, I love geeky questions.
- [25:25]
Regina Spector
Okay, well, he came to the right studio. You're talking a lot about home lately. Is there a chord or something on the piano that feels like home to you? You can say a chord. You can play something. Is there anything that to you, when you play it, it feels like, oh.
- [25:41]
Alison Stewart
That'S where I sit, you know, Honestly, like, so as you're talking, I know there's no video here, you guys can't see it, but as he asked the question, I just put my hands right on the top of the piano, like some, like, sort of smushing the lid to that nice top. And I think that just touching it, like, right in this spot, like, at the center, just feels very grounding to me. I just. I think that because, you know, I do get kind of sometimes, you know, nervous or just kind of this whole thing feels a little bit, like, outside of my nature. You know that when you do have such a nice, big, beautiful, like Steinway by your side and you can just go to it, it's almost like being friends with, like, a huge whale or elephant or something. And just, I think more than a cor. Just kind of touching the piano and being able to lean on it makes me feel, ah, like I'm home.
- [26:47]
Regina Spector
This is where I am. Yeah, I love that because I think of it as chords, like the sound that it makes. But for you it's very tactile. It's where you sit, it's where you can hold on kind of. Is that fair?
- [26:57]
Alison Stewart
Yeah, I think that kind of. Yeah, I think actually. Yeah. The touch of the piano and the keys and the. Yeah, just because actually a lot of the time I realized this again only when I started doing television because they were like, do you ever open your eyes? And I was like, oh, no, I think I kind of don't, you know, But I really, I most of the time play with my eyes closed. And so, so much of the piano is besides sound. It's just this kind of touch to me. Like I kind of feel like connected through that.
- [27:31]
Kusha Navadar
That was Kushinavadhar's conversation with singer songwriter Regina Spector. Up next, we'll hear a conversation with Ali Volpe, a senior reporter at Vox, about the importance of third spaces and why in the digital age, in person, socializing is still important to our social and civic lives. This is all of it. Since WNYC's first broadcast in 1924, we've been dedicated to creating the kind of content we know the world world needs. In addition to this award winning reporting, your sponsorship also supports inspiring storytelling and extraordinary music that is free and accessible to all. To get in touch and find out more, visit sponsorship wnyc.
- [28:21]
Alison Stewart
Org.