“I’m really working on getting free on stage. I’m normally quiet, being on stage isn’t my natural state, so I’ve been really loving this last year of playing shows… getting a new taste of being a bit more comfortable,” says Portland, Oregon-based singer/songwriter Anna Tivel, reflecting on her most recent experiences on the road, which included summer performances at Newport Folk Festival (where she was hand-picked to appear by curator Nathaniel Rateliff) and Rocky Mountain Folks Festival, followed by a tour supporting The Waterboys and a jaunt with husband Jeffrey Martin later in the year. The dates have been in support of Animal Poem, Tivel’s seventh studio album of original material, which dropped in August via Fluff & Gravy Records, a Portland musical institution that’s been releasing her music since 2014 debut LP Before Machines, which she tells me during a recent phone chat she’s been ecstatic to have accompanying her for so long.
“They’re incredible! This wonderful guy John Shepski, who started the label, is a dear friend, and we’ve grown together. To find a friend who is so trustworthy and really loves music more than business is a pretty rare thing in this business. He’s definitely a rare bird! I’d love to be 90 years old together and still making music.”
“It’s a live, unproduced recording of people playing music in a circle,” Tivel tells me of Animal Poem, which had her recording the LP’s 10 tracks with some of her closest musical friends, including fellow Portland artist Sam Weber, who also served as co-producer and engineer. Pitchfork gave the album a 7.6 and compared her talents to her friend and ours, The Weather Station, while No Depression wrote, “There’s something about the spaces between Tivel’s minimalist writing, precision-targeted rhetorical flourishes, and her spare delivery that make her music vivid and alive: pregnant with possibility and a future that is never quite foreclosed, even when the protagonist is dead.” However, Anna tells me that the kinds of things people have been telling her at merch tables have proven most meaningful: “I really love when people just kind of live with the songs and let the music be a part of their lives. That means a lot to me when people are using your work in their daily lives and tell me things like, ‘I played that when my child was born!’”
Anna Tivel is getting ready to hit the road with more folk luminaries next week when she kicks off a run of dates supporting The Barr Brothers, who will bring Anna to Underground Arts on February 19th. “I love touring. I love being out in the world. I really love moving around from place to place and being in a room with people,” she reiterates about her recent affection for playing live, going on to add, “I really love getting to open up shows for people… Fortunately, in the indie folk community, there aren’t a lot of assholes [laughs].” She also tells me that those who come out for her opening set will get to see the most intimate version of her live show: “I’ll just be solo, so just me trying to get free in front of people… I’ll be playing a bunch of new songs and trying my best to be human.”
Past area performances have had Anna Tivel at the likes of Johnny Brenda’s, the Keswick Theatre, and City Winery, which would all seem a far cry from Underground Arts, Philadelphia’s basement mecca for metal and hardcore, but Anna tells me that, for her, the venue rarely dictates the experience of the show itself: “I just love intimacy, and that can happen in theatres and that can happen in bars; it has to do with the connection you have with the audience just having an experience together.” She also says that she’s always enjoyed her stops in the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection, which is actually where her mom grew up: “I love Philadelphia! I feel like every time I come, I discover a new little place in the city! I love the feel of the city. I mean, I live in Portland, which is obviously a city, but a gentle city [laughs].”
While Anna Tivel has been loving her time on tour more than ever, when I ask what the future holds for her and her music, she tells me that she’ll be happy to spend some time back in Portland: “I’m looking forward to having time home. I’ve definitely spent the past 15 years touring way more than being at home.” She also says that she’s excited to spend some time on the other side of music: “I really love the quiet writing work… I have been in a really deep writing zone lately. I’ve been drawn to writing long-form, writing something that stretches my own boundaries… and battle this fractured form in which we listen to music now, as opposed to this whole journey of an album.”
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