Illuminati Hotties' Sarah Tudzin on Tour Yoga, Winning a Grammy, and Taking the Wheel

This is a free post from Larry Fitzmaurice's Last Donut of the Night newsletter. Paid subscribers get one or two email-only Baker's Dozens every week featuring music I've been listening to and some critical observations around it. And right now I'm running a sale through the end of this week—50% off a monthly subscription for the first six months, that's $1.50/month. Grab it here.

Sarah Tudzin enters the newsletter two-timers club today, having last appeared on LDOTN in 2021. I've been a big Illuminati Hotties booster since having reviewed Kill Yr Frenemies for Pitchfork back in 2018, and she just recently released her rock-solid third proper full-length Power. In between our last chat and now, she also won a freaking Grammy for her work on Boygenius' record, so we had plenty to catch up on in our convo when we hopped on a call earlier this summer. Check it out:

Long time no talk.
For real.

How's everything been?
It's been good. I've been having a nice summer. It was kind of pedal to the metal up until end of May, and now I'm going back to regular-style work, so that's good.

What was pedal to the metal about it?
I just said yes to too much.There's a lot of overlapping projects, and between trying to get all the finishing pieces together for the album and random things flying around, I had a wall-to-wall, no-days-off type of beginning of the year, which was just poor planning on my part. It was a "me" problem.

It's very relatable. For anybody of our ilk, we take on projects there's also this feeling where you're working on eight things at once, and then everything's over and you're like, "Okay, I'm going to take a break." Then, one day later, it's like, "Okay, I have eight more things to work on. How have you adapted to managing your own schedule over the years? It takes a lot of discipline, but there's no one-size-fits-all approach.
I think it's a little bit out of our control, too. For example, I have a week blocked off to mix a record, and then a band has to do a fly date last minute and then they end up four days behind on notes, and then we're moving into week two of mixing, but I'd already started tracking another thing, but this band is asking for mix notes because they didn't do it promptly or whatever. There's a million reasons why the projects all sort of bleed into the next thing.

The only way I've ever been able to be organized is just insane to-do lists and checklists while trying to block off calendar time. But you know how it is, especially when there'sour personal projects that we work on—and then it's like, "Oh man, I've got to schedule time to do this." Because it's easy for me to just keep saying yes. There's so many things we could be doing at all times that it's hard to prioritize.

Do you feel like you've been seeing an influx of work come in after winning a Grammy?
Yes and no. My profile is raised in a really nice way, and all that stuff takes a long time to get rolling. Obviously, I was so excited, but it feels like a stepping stone, an achievement that I'm proud—mainly because I makes the career legitimized to people who don't do music, like my family. The hustle is still the same. I do think the busyness has continued to grow in a natural way. and it's a great calling card. Also, there's just so many things that people are looking at as far as when they're trying to hire somebody to work on their record.

Did you attend the Grammys in person?
I did.

How was it?
It was awesome. The award shows get some flack, and over the years they've become cornier—but I don't know if it was just because I was there in person, but I do really feel like it was one of the best ones. Joni Mitchell played, Tracy Chapman played. There was some once-in-a-lifetime stuff that went down, and obviously it's kind of cool to see how it works behind the scenes. I don't know if you've ever attended a television taping of anything, but that whole piece of it is very interesting. They take commercial breaks and then suddenly, 10 seconds later, they're like, "Okay, everybody back in their seat." So it's like a television show-slash-stadium concert.

Talk to me about this new record. You've been unencumbered from a few things, like the entire Tiny Engines situation, since we last spoke.
Business-wise, yeah. As soon as I was released from the captivity of the record release cycle—once Let Me Do One More came out and I was on the road—I was kind of like, "Okay, now what?" I'm playing these songs that I'd put out and thought about for a long time, and then they moved to a different space in my brain where I was like, "This is the repertoire." They're not irons in the fire anymore.

So it took me a really long time for me to wrap my head around writing again. I was really reluctant to start writing new songs—not because I was uninspired, but because the things that I thought I should be writing about, I didn't want to write about. Any time I wrote something else, it seemed like sort of frivolous and unimportant—not original, the way things were being said. I was really frustrated, and not feeling like the output was like moving in a direction I liked. So for the three years between Let Me Do One More coming out and turning in this album, I was writing a lot but not really seeing the universe come together yet.

I stacked up this large chunk of songs that were somewhere between "barely started" and "completely finished" and did a couple of recording sessions over 2022 and 2023. It was very piecemeal, and kind of weird. I'd got into a practice of just writing the moment I woke up every morning—before coffee, food, or anything. I'd just go into my little studio space, pick up a guitar, set a timer for 30 minutes, and just try and do it—like reps, until something clicked. I was like, "Well, maybe if I just make anything, I'll get a group of songs that I feel good about." It was like climbing up the mountain and it being hard to see where you are on the mountain, because I was looking at where the finish line was the whole time.

For whatever reason, there was an emotional block. It wasn't even writer's block—which isn't really something I even believe in. But I had to make space for myself to really dive into the writing, be an artist, and figure out how to get it done. I struggled at the highest frequency of writing at home, so I ended up booking this little trip to to an Airbnb in the desert—like, "Maybe I just need to remove myself fully for days, get the space, and not have the excuse of being like, 'I could just mix some stuff for someone today.'" I needed to make time where I was forced to be alone and didn't have an excuse to do other stuff.

The press materials mentioned some life changes you went through while making this one. Walk me through that.
Where the album landed subject-wise ended up being interesting. You don't see the steps you're taking to the finish line until you turn around—and when I did, I was like, "Whoa." There's some of the happiest things that have ever happened in my life—big career achievements, the Grammys, albums that I never dreamed I could work on that I got to be a part of, I fell in love in a "life partnership" way.

In the week that I was in the final rounds of Let Me Do One More, my mom passed away. So I had all this elation happening over the course of three years, and also the lowest lows—incomprehensible low points in my life—were also happening. In the middle was me being as scrappy as possible, fighting with every weapon at my disposal to push all that away and not feel it—to stay focused, or do whatever coping mechanisms that I could to put one foot in front of the other. At the center of it is being pulled apart in two very vast directions, putting my dukes up and trying to make sense of it all—dealing with the restlessness and misdirection that my brain was trying to set up for itself.

Did you have to draw any lines for yourself when it came to lyrical vulnerability?
There's a lot more truth in this record than in some of the other Illuminati Hotties stuff. You're a writer, and even when you're writing a review, or something that's not personal, your thoughts, life, and emotions will sneak into it no matter what. So I was tricking myself into thinking I wasn't like writing the things that I actually was. Then, when I looked back at it all, I was like, "Oh, this person is trying to say something, and it's all coming from a place of truth"—a place of bargaining with reality. I'm not, like, a great actor or anything—and that became very obvious in all the ways that I was trying to not write about like big feelings, and then they became a big part of the record regardless.

Tell me about having your own imprint under the Hopeless umbrella and what that means for you business-wise.
One of my tenets of trying to to be like any type of creative force is that it's a curative effort. It gives me freedom to signal boost artists that I believe in and want to support. Hopeless has been involved in varying levels with that. There's artists where they're like, "Yeah, go for it." Obviously, with Hotties, they're fully a partner in a way that any traditional label would would support a band that they've signed. I'm just happy that it's a way that I can be approached by artists that are attempting to have a wider reach with their career.

The way that labels work right now, no one's giving away money for free. They have to have had some sort of success already for a label to be willing to gamble on you, which is a little bit backwards to me when it comes to creative curation. It's not at a place where where I'm offering anything that's life-changing, but it's a fun way to collaborate with artists I love and say, "Let's get you into a distribution thing that's a little different than you've done before." It's a way to build a community of artists that I care about and push their music to a wider audience than if they were just self-releasing.

Tell me more about that sense of fostering community through your work. It's somewhat taken for granted, in the music industry, not being an asshole can get you a long way. Last year, I talked with your friend Sadie for the newsletter about this topic too, and it's something where, especially with creative types, you don't always get people who think that way.
I love to shout out Sadie, who is like a hero version of a community builder. Her career has gone so far and wide, and I've been really lucky that she's become one of my best friends.

There is this extremely dated rockstar ego that visibly lives in the center of the music community or like visibly lives in the center. But what really goes much further is just not being an asshole. I've been really lucky to work with the scrappiest artists and the largest artists you can think of, and the common thread is that they're nice people. I don't think that you get to the very top without being someone that people want to be around. That seems to be the case with the Chris Martins and the Phoebe Bridgers-like people—people like that are as huge as they are because, when you're dealing with them and helping them make music, or just running into them somewhere...I mean, obviously, no one runs into Chris Martin in person. But the common thread is that they're all so gracious and kind, and they take care of people—from whoever is the most powerful person in their camp to whoever is the assistant engineer. That exists all the way down to the DIY artists who are fostering just local community and trying to play shows for their friends all the time.

There's this dark middle underbelly that gets a lot of press. People love to tell stories that really show the darker side of creators. But, to me, the greatest version of creativity involves collaboration, and that's where we see the brightest shining moments in artistic history.

You produced the last Pom Pom Squad record, which was your first credit as sole producer on someone else's work.
That was the first label-backed production where someone called me who I didn't have a friendship with. They truly interviewed me to produce the record—they were talking to other people, and they had a label with a budget behind it, so it was the first one of that scope There were several records before it that were just stuff that I got to be a part of, but as the producer that didn't have that infrastructure built in.

It was an awesome experience. Mia builds her universe at a level that is unlike a lot of other artists—visually, sonically, and energetically. I kind of feel like I have a cheat code to view other peoples' creativity that intimately, because then it obviously informs everything that I do with my own music. That's the dream for every record I produce or work on: I jump in full with both feet into this world-building.

It was very easy to do that with Pom-Pom Squad because of the preparedness, and what they were already working with. I feel like they were at this great point in their career where they were young and scrappy, and they also had a team behind them that was willing to bet on that, which is not always the case. It was really special to hear demos and then do the most 3-D version of that with them.

You've got a big tour this fall. How do you stay sane on the road?
Man, I'm still figuring it out. I feel like we had a couple of hard shakes in a row as far as tour logistics, for reasons out of anyone's control—a couple tours in a row where there was like van problems, or stuff that we had to figure out on the fly. Knock on wood, I'm hoping for a carefree tour as far as logistics and mechanics go. Part of it is that the schedule is different every single day, but this time the drives are all in the same range, so I'll be able to get into a bit more of a flow.

On the last big tour, we would sound check and then my bassist and I would do yoga from an app on my iPad. It was good to stretch out. I've not yet had the luxury of completely loosening my grip on logistics, and I'm hoping as we continue to scale up, it will become a little bit more out of my domain. I tour managed us for a long time, and the last two years it became clear that that is a horrible idea. There's also been tours where I felt like I did need to be hands-on, even with a TM. There's just too much happening um to let someone do that on their own. So, you know, assuming everything goes smoothly, I think I'll be able to loosen my grip and be able to be an artist and just care about, "How do I make this show go off with my showmanship, creativity, and performing skills?" That's the job that I came to do, and with each show we do have the luxury of being able to do that more and do the other stuff a little bit less. But I'm still figuring it out—which is weird, because I also have been touring pretty actively since 2018, except for when touring wasn't happening.

I'm sure that break didn't help, because when you take into account what a year and a half really means and you have to get your sea legs back when everything opens up again, it's tough.
100%. I feel really lucky that we've gotten to play some shows that I'm just in complete disbelief that I ever had the opportunity to play. I'm really excited to jump into this headline tour, because I feel like enough time has passed since the last tour that I do feel really excited for that to be my day-to-day again—to be in motion, see new stuff, change location and time zones and have a slice of the country every day. Your creativity does get jogged in a way that it might not if I was just chilling at home.