Jensen McRae Performs Live; New Film Follows NYC Location Scout

All Of It with Alison Stewart

The episode features a live performance and interview with singer-songwriter Jensen McRae, who discusses her career evolution and the themes

Key takeaways

• Jensen McRae describes how social media provided vital momentum for her career during the pandemic stagnation.
• McRae recounts being cast in a Spike Lee film after he discovered her music on Instagram.

Main topics

• Jensen McRae live performance
• Songwriting and identity

Notable quotes

Comparison is a thief of joy.

Conclusion

A deep dive into the intersection of personal experience and professio

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:07) This is All of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us. I'm really grateful that you're here. Later on today's show, we'll talk with the writer and director and the star of the new film, The Scout, which follows a day in the life of a New York location scout. It opens today. But now let's get some things started with some music. Way back in 2020. Before her first album was even out, singer-songwriter Jensen McRae was one of our virtual Get Lit musical guests. She recorded performances in her bedroom of previously unreleased tracks. Since then, her career has taken off. Her second album, I Don't Know How But They Found Me, was released to excellent reviews. She toured around the country, opened for Noah Kahn. She's collaborated with artists like Brandi Carlile and even appeared in the Spike Lee movie, Highest to Love. And tomorrow, as of 12.07 Eastern Standard Time, she'll perform at Forest Hills Stadium as part of the All Things Go Festival. But first, Jensen joins me in studio to perform. It is nice to see you in person. Speaker 4 (1:15) Yes, thank you so much for having me. All Speaker 2 (1:17) right, we're Speaker 4 (1:17) going Speaker 2 (1:17) to start off with a song, the song Savannah. What's it about? Speaker 4 (1:20) It's about the city of Savannah, Georgia, and about how I was sort of spiritually and literally summoned there. And how when I went, I just couldn't stop thinking about the history of the city and how so much of it is about ghosts and being haunted and this rich history and realizing that so much of life, like the older that you get, you're inevitably going to be followed by these ghosts of your past. And the harder you try to outrun them, the closer they get to you. Speaker 2 (1:44) It's amazing. Savannah is like that. The Spanish moss and the trees, all the ghost stories people tell you about the giant houses. When did you spend time there? Speaker 4 (1:52) I was there in the summer of 2022 and it was very humid. Speaker 2 (1:57) Here's Jensen McRae in Savannah. There Speaker 5 (2:02) is an intersection in your college town. With your name always said to tear it. I should have been. Because I see signs from God and I tread alone. Speaker 5 (2:36) You see a man on bridges east of Atlanta Well, no wonder you lost manna Savannah is coming You swore you'd raise our kids to end up just like you Well, you're a false prophet That's a goddamn promise Cause I see signs from God I tread lightly You see a man and you try to start it Bridges east of Atlanta Well, no wonder you lost me And I'm, I'm going Bitches, didn't you Hold off sweet like honeydew I see signs from God I tread like You see them You try to start a fire Bridges east of You lost me So you lost me And I'm going Speaker 2 (5:31) That was singer-songwriter Jens McRae with a live performance of her song Savannah from her latest album, I Don't Know How, But They Found Me. Take me back to October of 2020. You were our guest on our Get Lit book club, our musical guest. It was during the pandemic. What was going on in your career at the time? Speaker 4 (5:52) Well, there was a lot of stagnation, which I feel like a lot of artists were probably experiencing. I had had plans to release music in 2020 and I got one song out in February and then everything changed. And I was just really... I was really stuck and I was right before I figured out really how to use social media to connect with my fans. Like at that point, I hadn't really been using it very consistently. And so I was just I was very adrift. And it was it was these kinds of opportunities like getting to do these Zoom performances that made me feel like I was having some sort of forward momentum and having some opportunity for people to hear me in a time when so few people were. Speaker 2 (6:28) What were you going through personally as you looked at that time? Speaker 4 (6:32) Gosh, I don't even remember. I mean, I was fresh out of college. So I think I was feeling that like existential despair of like losing my identity as a student, which had been so much of who I was. And I had this idea that I was going to step into adulthood. And then obviously, like with lockdown, it was like all these things that I thought I was going to do were just not possible. So I think I had that feeling of like arrested development and like a little bit of like an extended childhood in a way. So it's like, well, I don't really have anywhere to be. I have nowhere to go. So I think I was feeling frustrated. And like I was I was freshly 23. So I was like, I really feel like I'm supposed to feel like an adult. But like, I feel like I'm regressing because I don't have anywhere to put all of this, like, this frantic energy that I have as a person in my early 20s. Speaker 2 (7:19) Did you put that energy towards your songwriting at all? Speaker 4 (7:22) Absolutely. I was writing a lot. And not just music. I was writing poetry. I was writing fiction. I was writing screenplays. I was trying to keep myself super busy. I was on the phone with my friends 24 hours a day. I was just trying to figure out any way to not be sitting still. And writing was a great way to do that. Speaker 2 (7:39) That's interesting. So you wrote just everything, poetry, stories. Were they from your point of view or were they from different point of views? Speaker 4 (7:47) A lot of it was from my point of view. Yeah. I mean, I think... I'm still working that out. Like I'm still writing a lot from my own point of view, but I feel like I'm getting a little bit better now at expanding what that can mean. And I'm getting a little bit better at inhabiting other people's consciousnesses and trying to write from other perspectives, even if they overlap with my own, like trying to, especially when I'm writing like poetry and fiction, all these things. And in my songs for that matter too, I guess like trying to, I'm trying to figure out what is the most interesting story I can tell, not necessarily the one that feels like it's the most accurate to my. point of view on absolutely everything. Speaker 2 (8:20) It's interesting because you write about some serious topics. You write about being in a predominantly white environment and white boy. You write about predatory men in wolves. What is helpful to you when you're writing about difficult topics? Speaker 4 (8:35) I think the most helpful thing is to remember that once the song sort of leaves my custody and is released into the wider world, it's going to have an impact for so many people, both in the ways that I intend and in ways that I don't. And so as scary as it can be to talk about like emotionally fraught topics, it's always. It's very redemptive to get messages from people saying this song helped me in this way, either because they're like, I've been through the exact same thing you've been through, or they're like, I know that this isn't what the song is about, but this is what it means to me. And that's why it was helpful. So to know that, like, I'm a very big proponent of the death of the author. It's very, it's very heartening to know that once I release something into the world, it really doesn't have to have anything to do with me anymore. And I can sort of seed the spotlight of the conversation to like what other people are getting from it rather than whatever I mean to tell people with it. Speaker 2 (9:25) My guest is singer-songwriter Jensen McRae. She's performing live from her latest album, I Don't Know How But They Found Me. She's performing tomorrow at Forest Hill Stadium as part of the All Things Go Music Festival. Knock wood, it's going to go on. You've been very open about the fact that this album deals with the end of relationships, two relationships. What did you want to process about those relationships and falling in love on this record? Speaker 4 (9:52) The biggest thing I wanted to process was how much of your identity can get wrapped up in relationships. I was kind of a late bloomer, didn't really date very much as like a teenager. And so getting into my 20s and starting to embark on relationships, it was very easy for me to sort of be consumed by love. It's very tempting to be consumed by love. It's really euphoric and it's really fun. It takes a lot Speaker 5 (10:14) of Speaker 4 (10:14) the pressure off of yourself to feel like someone else's identity is equally as important or maybe more important than yours. And then when a relationship ends, when you're really young, you feel this real profound sense of confusion and anxiety because you are no longer tethered to this thing that you were defining yourself around. And so a lot of what I was processing was like, well, what now? Like, what do I do now? And like, what am I going to take away from these relationships? Like, what can I carry with me that's going to be helpful? And what can I what do I need to leave behind? And like, how can I find a way to have positive memories about an experience that was painful and negative? Because I don't want to look back on my life in rage or sadness. Speaker 2 (10:54) Do the songs sound differently to you now? Speaker 4 (10:56) Yeah, I hear a lot of like, they sound so thorny to me now. It's like so much processing. I'm like, I really hear me wrestling with a lot of complicated feelings. And I mean, I'm really proud of them still, but they do sound like they're written by someone else. I'm like, I don't remember any of that. Speaker 2 (11:13) One of the songs on your deluxe album, you released a deluxe album this Speaker 4 (11:17) year, is titled Richard Silken. Speaker 2 (11:20) Silken? Speaker 4 (11:20) Siken. Siken, thank you. Speaker 2 (11:22) He's an American poet. He's known for collections like Crush. And he wrote on his Instagram, thanks to Jensen McRae, I'm a song now. Yes. Why did you want to reference him? Speaker 4 (11:32) Well, there's so many amazing... Richard Saiken lines that have crossed my desk over the years. Like I was a kid on Tumblr and Richard Saiken was getting quoted a lot on Tumblr. And every time I would come across his writing, both like in the form of poetry, but also just like his tweets, like everything that he produces is incredibly profound. And I read that line, if you love me, Henry, you don't love me in a way I understand. And I was like, wow, the idea of like, that's that really summed up so much of what is difficult about falling in love, especially for the first time is like, you realize like people have our people's love maps and the way that they love is so informed by their lives and like that can be a good thing in the sense like you might have encounter someone who shows love in a positive way that you've never experienced before but it Speaker 5 (12:15) can Speaker 4 (12:15) also be negative of like why does this person think that this is what love is like why does this person think that this kind of treatment is equivalent to love and realizing that like the way that you love is not going to be a perfect match for the other the people that you encounter in the the world necessarily is I think a really important And also, I just, yeah, I just love, I love Richard Zykin. Speaker 2 (12:36) Go look him up if you haven't read him. Jensen, God is a Hitman is a song you released on YouTube several years