Jenn Wasner on Getting Older, What to Reveal, and the Minefield of Making Music

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.

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Jenn Wasner's been on my list of people to talk to for a minute now; I've loved her work across the last 15 years as one-half of Wye Oak and on her own as Flock of Dimes, and when it comes to the latter she just released an excellent new album The Life You Save earlier this fall. When Jenn hopped on the phone with me recently, we pretty much got into shooting the shit immediately, which is why this convo has a bit more of an "in medias res" (sorry) kickoff than usual. There was a lot of insight that emerged, and I'm happy to bring this one to you today. Check it out:

We're about the same age, and when it comes to living in trendy-ish parts of Brooklyn, I'm starting to officially feel a little older than everybody around here.
I understand that feeling. In fact, it's a large portion of what I've been talking about with my friends. I'm 39-and-a-half, and in many ways I've been really feeling my age—and it's interesting, because I'm not a person who's ever been age-phobic.
Maybe it's sneaking up on me in a weird way, because I'm like, "Getting older is cool." My values do not align with the idea that youth is the only thing that matters.

That said, my body hurts a lot, and I'm bumping up against that with the record release. It's a case of expectations that I didn't necessarily even know I had. For a going-on-40-year-old woman who's been in the music industry for close to 20 years, the context is changing. The industry is changing. I'm getting older, and I feel old in many ways. I feel like I'm entering a new phase of my career. I also played guitar for an hour the other day to practice, and my wrist hurts. I'm dealing with new, super-not-very-fun physical limitations. Then I think about how I'm gonna get in a van in a couple weeks, and I just hope I don't come back from that tour injured. I don't know if I could actually do it, basically.

So, it's interesting that you say that, because it's very much on my mind. I'm not in this zone where it's catching me off-guard, because I'm specifically someone who's welcomed the growth and wisdom that comes from getting older. I love so many things about it, and I love the idea of it. I guess I'm a little bit taken aback by this being the sum of the parts that I ended up with, and I'm struggling with it a little bit.

That makes sense to me. There is that phenomenon where you're like, "Oh wow, this hurts—and I don't think this ever hurt before. Do I remember whether this hurt before?"
100%—and it definitely didn't hurt before, and it hurts now, and it becomes a thing that I need to really consider because I don't want to be in pain. It can be a beautiful adjustment. There are creative ways of looking at the ways that you're changing, physically and emotionally and psychologically—and adjusting your life and career to fit that, rather than resisting against it and throwing money at it. It makes sense to not hold on to things that aren't actually suiting the person that I am today.

I was talking about this with a friend recently, about how people who just turned 30 will often be like, "I'm 30—I get it." And looking back at 30, you're like, "No, you definitely do not."
I thought I got it too, yes. Whether you assign value judgments to it or not, it is undeniably different. Because I've made a lot of choices in my life around being able to live in a very similar way to the way I lived when I was 30—I've dedicated my life to my art, my career, and my friendships. I didn't get married or have kids. In some ways, there is this fantasy of "You're only as old as you feel," but that starts to be not entirely true. I feel like I'm entering that phase where I need to adjust and be a little bit more careful about the decisions I make, and not just have this one size fits all approach to what it is to be an artist—a musician—that was the same as what I was doing when I was 20.

The industry has also changed, and I'm very fortunate that I've been doing this for a long time. I've put out a lot of records. It's quite a blessing to have been doing this work for as long as I have. I feel very lucky and grateful. But it's hard not to compare what i'm doing now to what I was doing in my 20s, and it's easy to forget that the context of the world and industry has shifted around me. I understand that intellectually, but that's not something I can take personally.

At the same time, it's weird, because I'm touring the same clubs I was when I was in my 20s, but I'm making less money. I can't afford a tour manager or a front-of-house person, and I know that's because the the world and the industry has changed. But it's impossible to not internalize that as backsliding or failure, even if it's such an emotional mindfuck. It continues to be one of these things where, you'd think it would get easier the more you do it, and in my experience the opposite actually seems to be true.

I've found you also hit a point around, let's say 35, where you're kind of like, "You know what? At this point I am here to survive and stay alive, and that's the most important part." Everything else becomes window-dressing.
Yes, absolutely. Also, my priorities have shifted. I feel like I'm in a much happier healthier place. I don't fetishize suffering. I want to be a healthy, stable, well-balanced human being. I think my art will get better when I like care of myself, and I'm in such a different place emotionally in my life at this moment. My creative ambition persists, but my need for attention and external validation has never been less. And it's not the only motivator, right? But that does sort of light a fire under your ass, in some ways, to push through the suffering—and I just don't have that. And I think that the fact that I don't have that is ultimately a net positive for me as a person, you know? But it's a net loss for my jobby-job. It's confusing. Also, the record that i made is a heavy place to dwell in, emotionally. I got a lot of the things out of it that I needed to get out of it in the process of making it.

I read your interview with Hannah Frances for Talkhouse, and I thought it was very interesting to read the two of you talking about the sensation of revealing yourself, not only in your work, but in interviews. I think a lot about this interview with Will Arnett from a few years ago where he was asked about previous comments regarding alcoholism, and he expressed mixed feelings about how much he'd shared in the past. I had a similar feeling after I quit drinking, where at first I was like "I have to talk about this," and after a while I was like, "I don't know if I ever want to talk about this again with anybody."
I have people I'm very close to who feel similarly. The last thing they want to do is talk about it. What they'd like to do is for everyone to go about their business and not call attention to the fact that they're not drinking.

I mean, this is always the tightrope that I've walked my entire life. My personality is such that I'm very much an open book. I'll tell anyone my life story the day I meet them—and I like that about myself, to a certain extent. Publicly, it's always my nature to disclose and reveal. I also think a lot about how I want my art to exist in the world, and some people have a knack for mystique, creating persona, and cultivating this aura around themselves, which I think is a real art and a skill. But I realized pretty early that was never really going to be the thing for me, so I've instead just tried to lead with this very radical humanity—be very open and forthright about showing that to people, not just in the art but in the performance.

I've been doing these living room shows that have basically changed my life, where my partner and I go to people's houses, set up, and play music. One of my deep beliefs as a person is that artists aren't gods and creativity is accessible to everyone. I like the idea of leading with my humanity and not with this mystique that's essentially a barrier to connection. Also, I am sort of a private person. I hate social media and the pressure of having to document my entire life. I'm not a natural performer. There's a one-on-one IRL hangover where I say a lot to try and connect with the person I'm talking to, and then I see the words on the page and I' like, "Oh fuck." Even knowing that my M.O. is leading with humanity, openness, and vulnerability—it still doesn't always feel good.

Do you remember how it felt when your work as a songwriter started to gain attention?
We all have these little one-liners we say about our lives—our little "If-onlys"—but I often say that I wish that happened to me now, and not then. I would've been a lot better equipped to manage it. I was in my 20s. I didn't know what the fuck I was doing. I didn't know what I wanted. I was getting the thing that I wanted, and
I was still unhappy. There were many lessons I got to learn, and I made a lot of decisions out of a place of trying to protect myself and get back to a place of freedom and purity. Some of those decisions maybe weren't the best for the longevity of my career necessarily, but they were important decisions to make for the longevity of my work and my physical person.

Sometimes I'm just like, "You're like this." Like, I ask myself a lot, "Why am I like this" Because I do think some people are, temperamentally, just built a lot better to withstand some of the expectations that are put upon musicians who get popular. The thing for me that's been and continues to be very challenging is that I really have a hard time staying with my work once it's done. The expectation of returning to the same well over and over again is very hard for me to do—and that's what the expectation is. That's why I've gotten into this rhythm of creating and destroying monikers and bands. I have this weird conflict where the artist part of me wants to do whatever she wants, whenever she wants, and never wants to inhabit a song that feels outdated or inauthentic.

The people-pleaser careerist part doesn't like the idea that someone would buy tickets to a show and not get the thing that they wanted. The way that I'd manage people's expectations would be to just be like, "Well, I'm not doing that anymore, so don't get your hopes up, because it's not happening. And if you're going to come, you're going to see this thing." That part of me is why I do what I do. It's directly linked to my capabilities as an artist, but it's a real disadvantage when it comes to sustaining a career. So I can get in a little headspace where I'm like, "Why am I like this? I wish I wasn't like this." Some people are just natural entertainers, and I think they enjoy the presentation performance part of it more—so it's easier to stay with these other versions of themselves for longer. But I just don't have that.

It's interesting, because the way social media works now, you really have this weird and uneasy sensation where anybody is able to be like, "Well, maybe I'm going to be a personality of a sort." When I see the people who seem the most at ease with that stuff, I'm always like, "What's actually going on here?"
No, I know. I'm suspicious of it, too.

I don't know. Everybody's got their thing! Maybe some people aren't as upfront about it as others, and I think it might make those who are more upfront about it feel kind of insecure—like, "Well, what's wrong with me?" But I feel like there's definitely something wrong with everybody in the end.
Oh yeah. We're all a hot mess. Everyone's got some kind of major damage that they're trying to navigate around. I try not to be judgmental about it. The things that I'm most judgmental about, if I had to guess, are probably some of the things that I perceive as deficiencies in myself. I'm like, "Shit, yeah, if I was better at that, I would probably be in a much more stable position in my life without those hangups." But I wouldn't be me. I'd be unrecognizable to myself in that scenario. So, you got to take the whole lot and figure it out.

It's weird. You know, I think my shit's messier than a lot of people.Sometimes I look at my career and I'm like, "This shit is a mess." It's my inner turmoil and ambivalence around my desire to create and share, mixed with my ambivalence
about attentiom, scrutiny, and expectation. It's resulted in this very confusing and convoluted collection of things, whereas a lot of people, when they're able to focus
and double down...I sometimes wish that I'd been more capable of that, because now I'm even confused about my work and what umbrella each thing is under. But maybe some people find it admirable. It seems like an outer reflection of my inner turmoil, and the way I figured out how to keep going. I have to give myself credit for that, at the very least.

Do you remember the exact moment where you were like, "Okay, I guess I'm actually doing this for a living?" Was it an "Aha!" moment, or just something that came along with general life decisions?
I took it for granted in my 20s. I was so disassociated and working so hard, and I took a lot of things for granted. Part of learning to appreciate the things that you have is practice. It doesn't necessarily come naturally. I'm a lot better about intentionally being like, "Look at what you did." I do that a lot more now. When I was younger, I was just like, "This is what I do, and it's always going to be a thing that I can do." That's part of what's so heartbreaking about what's shifted in the world and the industry that I'm in—and in a lot of industries too. But this is the one that I'm in.

I didn't really appreciate what I had. Touring used to be a viable way of making a living as a mid-level band, and now it's not. I was like, "Well, this is going to be my job as long as I want it to be." It never occurred to me that it would be a choice that I wouldn't get to make—that it would be a choice that was made for me, in some ways. I would've made different decisions if I didn't add a little bit more fear around hanging on to it. But it did feel, in some ways, like I took it for granted.

I think also taking things for granted is what 20-somethings are built to do. It's the way of things. So I don't know that there was a moment, because I disassociated, compartmentalized, and lived with the delusion that it would be a thing I could do whenever I wanted. I'm a lot better at stopping, slowing down, and appreciating what's happening right now—not taking things for granted.

The record just recently came out. How does it feel to be in the afterglow of its release?
One of the great lies that we tell ourselves as musicians is that releasing records is going to feel really good. It actually fucking sucks. It's a minefield, and it's built to make you feel bad about yourself. One thing that's been really helpful for me is talking to other musicians and being reminded that everyone has really complicated feelings about putting records out into the world. It's always anticlimactic at best until you get out into the world and start playing songs or talking to people. The last five years of my life built up to the release of this record. It's so pressurized and loaded, and you're destined to feel let down by that process—and it's that way every time, no matter how well it goes.

But I'm experienced. You mentioned earlier that the journalism industry is also not doing awesome at the moment. It's not good. But this is the first time in my career that—I mean, I've been laughing about it to myself—I spent a year being anxious about talking to people about this record, and the irony is that no one wants to. I understand that there's a lot of factors at play, but I'd taken for granted that it would go the way it's always gone for me. There will be certain benchmarks and milestones in place I'd check along the way. I know, intellectually, that every time you put out a record, you're doing it in a completely different world. But it's hard not to internalize that as some kind of personal failing.

I also made a really subtle record, and I did that on purpose. I made a lot of choices about this record that I don't regret, creatively, but it makes sense that it would be a bit of a grower and fly under the radar. It's not gonna reach out and grab you by the throat, and I'm not the kind of public figure that's gonna do that, either. I was talking to Amelia from Sylvan Esso about it, and she was like, "You don't want to talk about this extremely painful and tender thing in the New York Times. You've been dreading this for years—this is a blessing." If I can just let go of the part of my poor little ego that's like, "You're not as popular as you used to be" or whatever the fuck, you know what I mean?

It's complex, and it's ongoing. I will say that I do feel really good about the record and the the decision to make it. I've received more individual messages from people about it than I ever have about anything I've ever made, and that's amazing. The audience of people that this record is for, will find it. I got the thing out of it that I needed already.

I empathize with the individual connection having a greater impact. It is this rough period where there's no resources. For an independent artist of any scale, between 2019 to 2021 it went from, "There's maybe six to ten outlets who will do an interview with me" to, "OK, none of these outlets exist anymore. They're all gone."
The competition is so fucking fierce, it's crazy. It's bad, I know that, and I also have to talk myself out of internalizing it as a failure, even though it's so stupid. It's a perfect example of having an emotional reaction isn't in alignment with your professed values.

I've been doing this newsletter for five years now, and I really had to adjust my expectations from the beginning. I obviously didn't have the readership or resources of a traditional music publication. But there were so many things I'd write for those outlets where it almost felt like I was throwing work into a void. Now, when I get positive reader feedback, it feels a lot better than just having a publication run something I did and hoping it makes its way around social media. There's a lot of good in that mindset.
Oh yeah. The problem for me is, out of—who knows what, fear or something—I'm trying to have one foot in both worlds. The house shows are a great example. I think a lot of people look at that kind of touring as where artists' careers go to die. But I fucking love it, because it feels authentic and human. The weird show that you just had where you immediately talk to 30 people who tell you these absolutely beautiful stories about how much your music means to them—the scale of it feels down-to-earth. It feels aligned with who—and how—I am, in this way that proper touring and all of the compromises that come along with it has never felt for me. To have a performance that doesn't involve 10 different kinds of uncomfortable compromise...I didn't even know that was possible.

It's a good lesson and a nice reminder to lean into that stuff that feels good. Don't let fear stop you from creating, because it's not a one-size-fits-all thing. You have to find the version of it that suits you. And, the world's changing, man. It's changing so fast. It's changed so much already. I got to let go of the things that don't serve me anymore and trust that something else—maybe even something better—will rise up in its place. I'm working towards that, but it's hard and scary. It's a rare thing to survive in the creative industry for as long as I have without a financial safety net. I don't have that, so the stakes feel very high for me, and I have a lot more fear because of that. And yet, I have to listen to what my my gut and my heart is telling me. It's the right thing to do.

Spending a lot of my time talking to a lot of people over the last couple years, there was a period of time—let's say from COVID to, like, 2023—where it was like, "Okay, we're fucked, everything's fucked, everybody's fucked. What do we do here?" But I had this conversation with Jens Lekman recently where he was like, "I despised the 2010s, because it was so focused on growth." I do feel like, for indie rock, there's been a bit of a forced reset over the last couple years, where a lot of people in different phases of their careers have been like, "Okay, well, we used to do this in a very specific way, and I guess we're doing that again." I always pinpoint 2017 as the actual year where, if you were paying attention to things, it was like, "Hmm, I think everybody's running out of money in this industry." It was happening in media too—that feeling of, "I think we may be a little screwed in the long run." Lo and behold! Indeed. It's weird to have lived through that, and that's my lived experience as well. On my good days, I'm like, "This is awesome, and I'm free. Nobody knows what the right thing to do is anymore, and I get to do whatever I want." I feel hopeful about it. Not every day is a good day, of course. But I've carved out my weird little niche in the music industry—proximity to the top tier. I see every part of it from all the way at the tippy top all the way down to the very bottom. I've moved through all those worlds, and that's been a godsend in some ways, because it cures you of the myth that if you get to point x, then everything will be super groovy and cool.

A lot of people believe they're the exception to the rule. "Money doesn't buy happiness, success doesn't make you feel validated—but not for me. If I had just a little more, it would be good." The evidence that I've accumulated over the years suggests that's not going to fix it. But once you've accepted that, you're like, "Well, that's not going to do it—then what will?" These are the questions I'm asking myself at this point in my life.

It's nice to talk to you about this, because I've been kind of bummed out, quite honestly. But I do think it's a nice reminder that I feel very hopeful a lot of the time about cobbling together a career that works for me. It doesn't matter how it looks on paper if it feels good to me. This is how I genuinely feel, and like these are my actual values—and there's no way to engage with the game without it brainworming its way into your psyche. It gets in there whether you believe it or not, and it leaves its little trails that require constant personal heat-checks.

Let's talk about your work as a producer. You self-produced all three Flock of Dimes records, and you also produced the Madeline Kenney record a few years back as well. What skills do you feel like you've had to develop as a result?
I so appreciate you asking me this question, because I feel like my abilities as a producer often get sidelined or overlooked. You've got to work a little bit harder to be recognized as a producer when you're a woman in the industry. It's one of those things where people see right through you—and I have a lot of my own weird internalized misogynistic baggage about it as well.

I love producing records. I want people to ask me to produce their records more. I really wish that they would. "Producer" is a really slippery term, because it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. The mistaken assumption that a lot of people have—that I definitely had when I was starting out—was that in order to call yourself a producer, you have to be able to do everything. But at this point I've met so many producers—often male producers—who operate with an engineer, so that's a thing. I was like, "Well if I'm going to do this, I have to also be an engineer and a mixer, and I have to also be able to play all the instruments." For some producers, that is the case—and for plenty of great producers, that is not the case. They delegate to different people with different skill sets. It's really about having ideas and reacting to other people's ideas.

The big one that I think I really excel at—that a lot of producers, particularly male producers, often miss the mark on—is communication and emotional intelligence. The process of making a record is extremely emotional and deeply psychologically challenging. I've felt alone in the room as an artist being produced many times. You get a lot of people who have all this technical prowess and know-how—they know how all the machines work, the buttons to push—and they have the emotional intelligence of a rock. They're not in the room with you, and it's lonely and hard and sad.

I know how things work, and I have a pretty good ear, but one of the things I bring to the table the most is the ability to communicate around ideas with sensitivity—to understand the emotional and psychological journey of making a record. I love putting together a tracklist, I love how songs flow into each other and tell a story from start to finish. I also feel a lot more comfortable at this point when it comes to delegating in the areas which I need more support: Engineering, mixing, calling in someone who's a better guitar player than me to get a particular kind of sound. I'm really good at it, I want to do it more, and it bums me out that people aren't asking [as much]. Maybe I'm not putting myself out there enough, but I sure do love it, and I hope somebody reads this and are like, "Ah,I should hire her to produce my record." Because I'm really good at it, goddamn it!

It's also where I feel most lit up and at home. I've produced or co-produced most of my records over the past two decades. But the experience of getting to make a record and guide someone else through that process is so meaningful and wonderful. It brings me a lot of joy, to take my ego and feelings out of it and be in service to someone else's story.

When it comes to being in the studio, do you have any parameters for experiencing blocks in your creative mindset?
Understanding to treat my body and mind with a little bit more sensitivity, and not pushing through in a punishing way. But it's really diminishing returns when you're trying to come to a creative space in the wrong mindset. Conversely, when you're in the right mindset and the flow is there, good things can happen really quickly. Something I've gotten a lot better at as I've attacked my own internalized workaholic tendencies is understanding that the things you do to cultivate the right mindset are part of the work. That's been a real game changer, and it's helped me be a lot kinder to myself and others in the process of making things.

Beating my head against the wall—simulating the act of working, to prove that I'm a good little worker—being like, "This is what work looks like." No, you're not in the zone. Go sit outside, have a cup of tea, go for a walk, call your friend, do something that makes you feel inspired. You do that, and you get yourself to a place where the flow is a lot more accessible.

That makes sense. It pushes against the very American grindset way of thinking in culture, which typically makes people fairly unpleasant to be around.
And I don't think it actually results in better work. either. We've been talking about a lot of big lies, and that's another one. Living is also work—living your life, connecting with people, being in the world, resting, observing, internalizing. It makes your work better and more interesting. It's not just about sitting in front of a computer and getting all the things together in the same place. There's other, equally important parts that that you have to cultivate.

It's interesting. I'm better at my job as an artist, producer, and musician than I ever have been in my life now. I weirdly believe that my best work is ahead of me. That feels good and exciting, and that's the part of it I can control. As far as what happens with the reaction to it, I try to spend as little time worrying about that as I can. But I'm also a human being with an ego and feelings, unfortunately, so it's a juggling act. That's why talking about it with people is so important. Sitting alone in your house feeling sorry for yourself is not going to get you there. Having these conversations is a vote for putting yourself out there, even if it's uncomfortable. Next thing you know, you're hearing from people who feel the exact same way as you. You had no idea they were feeling weird, but it turns out they're feeling weird the whole time, just like you. That's why we need each other.