Heart of Glaspy: An Interview with Margaret Glaspy

Just about every piece written on Margaret Glaspy comes complete with reference to how, having left the prestigious Berklee College of Music after just one semester, she would continue to sneak into classes. It’s enough to make you concerned about campus security, certainly – and enough to make Hot Press wonder if it’s a wig-wearing, false-moustachioed interviewee we should be looking out for.

“I think it sounds more devilish than it was,” she laughs – entirely undisguised, we hasten to add. “There were masterclasses and workshops which were pretty casual, and I was friends with the teachers and students so it wasn’t a big deal. They had so many amazing guests come through – musicians, photographers, artists and producers – and it was really easy to drop in and listen to them speak.”

Born into a music-mad family in Red Bluff, California, it was from the unlikely starting point of Texas-style fiddle where she took her first musical steps. But since moving to the East Coast almost nine years ago, it’s as a guitarist and singer-songwriter that the 27 year-old has primarily operated. Like many, she came through the Boston scene as an acoustic performer, before a relocation to New York proved to be her Dylanat-Newport moment.

“There were practical reasons,” she points out. “In New York City, there’s a lot of loud little bars and clubs, and an electric guitar is going to be easier to hear. Obviously there’s lots of artistic
reasons too. I was trying to get into other kinds of music. So when I got a Harmony Stratotone – which I still have now – it inspired a lot of different songs; I was feeling a pretty different vibe, for sure.”

Perhaps that goes some way to explaining the range found on her debut album released earlier this year, Emotions and Math. While blues may be the bedrock of the record, it eases from fuzzy rock to a folky minimalism in exceptional fashion; this is clearly an not artist to be put in a box.

“No, there’s never a style in mind,” she concurs. “If there’s a goal in mind, it’s just to write good song that arc a certain way, or make certain elements work together and be happy with the core choices. All the guiding lines are pretty simple.”

So too is the album title, as it neatly sums up “the all-encompassing process of making a record”, as she puts it herself.

“A lot of it was taking these things that I created in a more emotional place, and then being
objective, putting them together in a way that feels almost analytical. Often a singer-songwriter
is known for being all emotion – a pour-your-heart-out kind of occupation, I suppose – but it’s not always pouring your heart out; it’s making sense of things and being methodical. I don’t know if I’m speaking for myself here, but as a writer it’s sometimes just a job.”

If she knew the blood, sweat and tears that go into every issue of Hot Press she’d probably change her tune, but we digress.

“Some people write personally, and others write objectively,” she proffers. “A diary entry all the
time would get a little boring to me. This isn’t a therapy session.”

Does Margaret find it easy to make that transition to writing from the perspective of a cast of characters?

“No, and I’ll never be good at it,” she smiles self-deprecatingly. “I’m always striving to get there,
but I always fall short in one way or another. But
that’s why the process is so cool, because there’s
no winning.”

Be that as it may, the LP is an undoubted triumph – though not before time. The record which hit shelves in June is its third incarnation, over which time it went through quite the evolution.

“The first time, it was a hodgepodge of me making all the sounds in my room, into an iPad. Then the second version was with real recording equipment, but still in my room, and it was still an acoustic album. But by the time I’d finished that, ATO Records asked me if I wanted to make an album – at which point it essentially felt like I was covering my own songs.”

And, in a Radio One Live Lounge style, putting a more contemporary twist on them too?

“Exactly,” she chuckles. “I was in a different space, having turned a corner in real life. I was
also playing with a trio, so we had a different sound. All of a sudden, it kind of clicked in the last hour.” One thing that wasn’t last minute, though, were her distinctive vocals, which can descend into a startling, intimidating growl at the drop of a hat. “Funny, I’ve been singing like that since I was small,” grins the former scariest seven-year-old in America. “I was pretty loud as a kid – if anything it’s settled down to where it is now.”

Emotions and Math is out now.