Adrianne Lenker

“I've felt since I was a kid this desperate longing to be closer to - I don't know what. Just to something bigger, to be in conversation with the mystery of everything.”

“That's the way I started playing music: just playing guitar by myself in my room when I was a kid, and exploring the guitar and exploring the space I was in, with no project in mind.”

“Mostly I've just been stealing little moments for myself in order to write - in the bathroom at a hotel, or just slipping away for a half an hour. Amidst all of the touring, life has been happening.”

“With music, when you finish a record, you are entwined with it throughout your existence in a way which is both interesting and challenging because it's a living form, you have to come back to it.”

“I was born into a religious cult in Indianapolis, straight up. They had an apartment complex in this one area, and there were all these rules. My parents met through church and got married really shortly after, when they were both searching for connection and meaning, just like everyone is when they're 20.”

“I can't really choose how I'm going to connect to music. I find it just has to hit a wave, and just wash over me and take me completely to some other space.”

“I want everyone to feel very welcomed in the space of our music and our songs, it doesn't matter what you believe or think, I just want to cultivate a space of peace and to touch on these things that bind us as humans.”

“I feel like there's such ancient pain in us as humans. For instance, we come from this patriarchal lineage where women have been oppressed, and we're feeling, I think, collective pain from these energies being so out of balance.”

“The acoustic guitar is my first love, I've been playing since I was a kid, and I feel the most at home when I'm sitting with an acoustic, I just love it so much. It changes my heart. I love the vibration and frequencies and the resonance.”

“When I was born, my dad was playing music, so I'm pretty sure he was singing to me in the womb. I was born into music, in a way, because he was playing acoustic guitar. I was around an instrument growing up.”

“We're in transit so often and when we're moving from one place to the next and I have to be very alert and present and aware of where we are. You know, just like protecting our gear and making sure we get from one place to the next safely, being around so many people's energies. It's not just like a totally open and relaxed state to be in.”

“Some people operate in complete fear that they're gonna lose their stuff and their money. That sounds like hell to me. And then I guess some people operate with hands open, and maybe empty, but at least striving for a deeper understanding of what it means to care.”

“We lived in 14 different houses until I was 8, renting here and there.”

“Well, whenever I visit New York it feels pretty romantic, so I sometimes think about coming back here. But then I wonder if it's just 'cause I'm visiting that it feels so good. But also, Minnesota. I could imagine myself finding a place in Minneapolis.”

“When an audience takes to a song and it becomes older, in a way it changes it entirely. And then the journey just begins.”

“It's rare for me to sit in a room with my guitar and feel like I can't stop playing, because it just sounds so good.”

“We were still quite religious until I was about eight or nine. Then I watched my parents take a dramatic turn and discard all religion.”

“We all need ways of processing things. I think I was called to music because it was this thing that was always there for me that I could pour my heart into safely.”

“I always said I got my music from my dad, but my mom had these cassettes - Bjoerk and the Cocteau Twins and the Talking Heads. That was her music, and she would just get so wild and free when she listened to it.”

“It's kind've a cliche but I like when it's raining. I like the feeling of staying in and not being told I should be outside.”