Interview: Maggie Glass
Words & Photos by Giovanni Zuniga
Silver Lake Meadows, Los Angeles, CA — Maggie Glass is a native Californian singer who is making a return to live shows after trying to wrestle what it means to sing for yourself. In this interview with Melophile Media, she discusses how hard it is to find a good band name, why crowd-singing is an ethereal experience, and how to find yourself after years of giving up a dormant dream and leaving the door open for all the unrealized possibilities.
Giovanni: Maggie Glass. Is that your real name?
Maggie Glass: No, no. Glass is a family name that I chose because I was sick of my own last name, which is Boles. It's a dumb name. <laughs>.
So, yeah, Maggie Glass felt like a little bit more [what] I needed when I started playing music again. I needed a fresh start and I needed something to separate what I was doing now from what I had done in the past. In my own brain. I also knew that I was gonna be playing solo. Before I played for a little while under a name called Comrade Sister. And that was 'cause of something I saw in a museum once, and it always felt like it was a little dorky.
Giovanni: Can you talk a little bit more about what your journey was like?
Maggie Glass: I was in a band in high school called Soul Rebel, named after a Bob Marley song. We were pretty bad but I sang in that band. When I got to college I picked up the guitar and started playing solo. And I met my, I'd say like, we call each other like, [our] non-sexual life partner or, uh, like a music life partner, Michael.
We started a band together called Square Fish. My good friend Lauren, who was learning classical, or she was studying classical piano, we were all in music school together, she joined the band. We played for a few years as Square Fish in Long Beach.
Yeah. Square Fish, another dumb name. Names are really hard. Okay. <laughs>.
And they just kept convincing me that [it was okay] and I kept saying we gotta change the name. And they're like no - Square Fish. We settled on it. You gotta do it. It was very stupid. We did that for a while until 2014. We played around in bars in Long Beach. Nothing really happened. We recorded two EP’s. I was really intent on making it as a musician at that point.
And it didn't happen, you know?
It was always like pulling teeth, getting people to come to shows, to come see me play like The Prospector at 11:00 PM on a Tuesday. It was infuriating. So, I left. I moved. I went through a really bad breakup and I decided to become an au pair in Paris.
I felt like I would start my new life as a Parisian woman. But I ended up missing home a lot and a lot of things happened. I ended up coming back and kept thinking I was going to play music again. I played a couple of shows right when I got back but things didn't feel [right], things felt wrong. I don't know. I didn't feel motivated. I was very depressed and blah, blah, blah.
I decided to stop trying for a while. That was 2015. I played on and off from 2015 to 2017. And then in 2017 I was just like, I'm gonna stop doing this. I'm no longer gonna even pursue this. I'm just gonna stop playing. I tried that. Then a few months ago, earlier this year, I started playing again and got the urge <laughs> the itch, you know?
There was this open mic by my house, like five minutes walking from my house and I decided to go there and play. I had such a great time. There's nothing really like playing in front of people. There's no feeling quite like it. It’s like singing in a choir, a really good choir. It’s similar. There’s nothing like it.
And that a few months ago and I was like, I'm gonna do this as much as humanly possible.
I met all these nice people and started playing more and more. I've played a handful of shows and I've been going back to that open mic as much as I can and meeting all of these nice people. The other thing was that LA always scared me. The music scene in LA scared me.I was afraid that people would be mean. I don't know. So, that's where I'm at. That's my journey. That's it.
Giovanni: The songs you're playing now, had you written them before, or are they recent work?
Maggie Glass: They're mostly songs that I've written from before. A lot of the songs I'm playing now are songs that I wrote in that little stop and start time. Some songs are from even before. Some songs I wrote while I was in Paris. And even a couple from the old band days. I haven't actually written a new song in a while and it's actually giving me a little bit of anxiety.
Giovanni:Is there a reason why you haven't written -
Maggie Glass: Yeah. What is the reason? That's a philosophical question. I have a lot of snippets of songs. I haven't given myself the space to expand them, to build them out. That's my next [goal], besides recording a bunch of this music that I've never recorded. The next step is to start pulling out all of my snippets and build them into songs. You know, you get one idea and then you let it marinate for a while and then you fill it out.
Giovanni: Is there a song of yours that you’re really connected to right now?
Maggie Glass: I've been really enjoying playing the song I wrote called Mabel, which is a song about a short story. And that's another project I was hoping to do, write songs that were inspired by literary works.
Mabel's based on a DH Lawrence short story. I'd say the last few times I've played it I've felt really connected to it.
Giovanni: Is there a reason why you like audience participation in your songs?
Maggie Glass: The truth is that the songs are more interesting with backing vocals. Those are the songs that I do audience participation for. I wrote them with a bunch of harmonies. [They’re] very, very simple songs. Like this song Ferocious Beast is a super simple song. So, if I could get everybody to sing along with me, maybe they won't notice how simple it is, or they'll appreciate the simplicity.
They’ll feel comforted by the simplicity rather than bored by the simplicity. Then the other one I recorded is Modern Love, which I actually did a music video for back in like 2016 or 2017. There were backing vocals that I recorded and I thought sounded really good. And so I can't do that alone. It’s simple enough to teach a room, especially an open mic, how to sing that. And I think it sounds good. And I also think that it's fun. It's another experience.
Whenever in your life you would get an entire room of people to sing with you? It's really special.
Giovanni: I've noticed it about you specifically. Especially at the open mic that there's definitely an energy you bring into it where you want the audience to be part of it too.
Maggie Glass: I think that that's one of the hardest things about what makes me wanna play music, being perceived as really important for me.
Giovanni: You want to be perceived as very important?
Maggie Glass: No, just the fact of being perceived is the most important part of it. I thought for a while that I could just write music and keep it for myself and nobody had to hear it and I would like the act of writing the music. [I thought] that was the good part, the part that I liked. And it turns out the part that I actually like is the connection and the sharing. That's something that you only get with live performance.
Giovanni: Who are the artists who inspire you?
Maggie Glass: Joanna Newsom is probably my North star. When it comes to music, I don't think I write music like her at all, but her lyric writing is really rich and she's another person who can do something really complex with something simple. A really simple chord progression or really simple idea. And just build all of these different layers into it.
Giovanni: Who have you been listening to recently?
Maggie Glass Recently? I've been listening to a lot of Tom Brousseau recently. He’s a folk singer from North Dakota. He plays guitar really beautifully and he's got this really kind of strange voice and really simple songs that are really emotional often. And are very folky.
Giovanni: Is folk a big part of your inspiration?
Maggie Glass: Definitely. Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan and John Prine are really big inspirations to me and have shaped what I listen to and what I like.
Giovanni: So you played a handful of shows. How do you feel the shows went outside of the open mics?
Maggie Glass: Some better than others.
Giovanni: Can you, can you explain what your experience is like, good or bad?
Maggie Glass: Well it’s a big thing that I’ve taken a month off of drinking. I haven't been drinking in September.That first days I had one of those really spacey days where I was forgetting everything and leaving things everywhere and I forgot my quarter inch cable and I'd ride home and get it blah, blah, blah. It was just a big stressful thing. And it was at an art gallery. The woman who ran it was sweet and nice, but I just felt like I played and messed up. I think like the first five songs I made mistakes and made the first five songs and I was like, wow, this is <laughs>. This is not my finest moment.
Giovanni: Was it because you were not drinking?
Maggie Glass: Because I was not drinking I learned [how much] I relied on drinking. I couldn't think of anything to stabilize me. Hmm. And rather than thinking of, I don't know, maybe a breathing exercise or like meditation or you know, listening to something calming instead I just ran around like a Muppet, you know, <laughs, makes Muppest noises>.
When I was done with the show, I didn't feel good either. Usually I have all of this adrenaline and endorphins and I'm so happy and excited and I just felt like crawling into a hole and living there forever. But that was the only one. All the other ones I felt really great about. I think it was just purely anxiety, like poorly managed anxiety.
Is this, is this too weird? Am I being too honest? Should I change that <laughs>? They were all really, really good <laughs>.
Giovanni: No, you can say whatever you like. I mean, it's good. I prefer you to be honest about your experience about it.
Maggie Glass: I don't know how people talk.
Giovanni: So, what's your plan now that you've returned back to music?
Maggie Glass: I think the next step for me is doing some recording. I have probably 12 songs that I've never recorded that I really want to. I think that I'll start recording those as the next tangible step.
Giovanni: Do you have anxiety when recording music?
Maggie Glass: Oh yeah. Playing with a quick track, I have nightmares about it.
Giovanni: Why?
Maggie Glass: Because I think because it takes me out of the moment. I have to really focus on playing at the right time. Don't rush the beat, don't rush, don't rush. What I should do is just practice with a click more often. It's what everyone has always told me.
I also think that recording is making decisions. Before recording you can always change. I’m always tweaking a melody or changing a lyric or changing a verse, or even changing the format. But once you’ve recorded, you’ve basically decided this is the best version of the song. And that's something a bit scary to say.
I’ve decided that this is the way that the song should be.
Giovanni: Do you think you're a perfectionist?
Maggie Glass: Maybe an unfulfilled perfectionist, you know? Never actually achieved perfection.
Can you be a perfectionist if you've never achieved perfection? Maybe that is the actual textbook definition of a perfectionist. I don't know. But yeah, I'd say I'm a little bit of a perfectionist, but also like a very sloppy, very sloppy person. Also <laughs>. So, yeah, I don't know. I'm vast. I am multitudes.
Giovanni: Is there anything else you'd like to add or anything that you think that maybe a question I missed asking you?
Maggie Glass: I think the thing that brought me back to music was deciding to take all the pressure off of myself. Before, when I was playing music, when I was younger, it was always like, how can I get my music in front of the right people so that we can get on tour with a band or book an opening slot with a big band? Get a producer who wants to work on a record with us for free?
It was always about chasing opportunities and trying to get in the right place at the right time so that you could get to the next step. I think that was one of the things that was so exhausting to me. And when I started playing music again I just decided this is gonna be for me, but not for me in the way that I thought it was gonna be. Which is like being alone in my room playing my songs to my cat and my lizard, but instead, this is gonna be for me. And it also is for whoever wants to be there. And it doesn't really matter what that looks like. There's no expectation, you know? Does that make sense? Yeah.
Giovanni: So you removed the expectation part of the joy of singing and making music. Is that correct?
Maggie Glass: Yeah, I think so. I think that there's something very freeing and removing the expectation doesn't mean not sharing it with anybody. It just means that I like the door to be open. There's not a specific door. It's just a door. And that's next.
Giovanni There's a door open that you can walk through now? Yes. And you are happy to do it?
Maggie Glass Yeah. And it's also like, it doesn't matter what's on the other side of the door, it's just the fact that there's a door.
