I played piano for about two years when I was a kid. I didn’t play long enough to be really great.

I have a deep rooted folk sensibility that I can’t get away from completely.

I didn’t sing for years and years, but I started playing harp when I was maybe 9 or 10. I had actually wanted to play for years leading up to that, but no teacher in our little town would take me on as a student, because I was too young.

I’ve been unaware of how people react to the instrument. People have ideas of what a harp is supposed to sound like, and a lot of them are negative ideas.

I didn’t really know a lot of the history when I was younger. I didn’t realize that the harp is coded in such a specific way in musical circles. It’s kind of this society instrument because of its history as a young woman’s parlor instrument.

Around eighth grade I decided I wanted to be a composer and that’s what I went to college for. Just a few years back, I switched out of composition and into creative writing so I could work with words.

I can’t play my songs on the smaller harp. I have a Celtic harp. I can’t do the key changes.

I don’t look at people’s expressions, because I still get nervous when I play, especially when I first put the harp up there. I just try to tune – it takes me a half-hour to tune, and I get nervous if I look at anybody when I do it.

I definitely don’t subscribe to the theory that more instruments, or more vocal tracks, harmony, or double tracking the voice, is a good thing. People do their early albums very stripped down, then each album becomes bloated.

And all that we built, and all that we breathed And all that we spilled or pulled up like weeds Is piled up in back and it burns irrevocably And we spoke up in turns ’til the silence crept over me.