Sound posted part of our interview with Seattle singer-songwriter Johanna Kunin, who is currently working on the follow-up to her 2006 release Clouds Electric, on April 16. Here’s the rest of the interview, in which she discusses the unpredictable nature of audiences, one of her most memorable shows of all time, and her new, more rocking set.

Sound: Do you have any shows coming up around Seattle?

Johanna Kunin: I weirdly don’t…I mean, I’m going to. I don’t have anything confirmed right now.  I’m touring in the end of May. I’m going out to Minnesota, where I grew up.  It’s kind of half an excuse to go to Minnesota.  So we’re doing a lot of house shows on that door, a few club shows.  And there will probably be a Seattle date attached to that…It’s funny how, a few years in—and it’s funny to me, actually, that it has been a few years, cause I can remember very clearly when I was first about to record how impatient I was and how I just could not wait to be light years ahead of where I was at.  I had just started writing songs and only had recorded Clouds Electric.  Like Tucker made me—his condition, he was like, I will record your record, but you have to have played at least twelve shows before we start recording.  And I hadn’t even done that.  When I first talked to him I don’t know if I had even played a single show yet. It’s been a lot compressed.  Like when I look back now, there were periods where it felt like—there’s always this sort of up and down where there’s a lot happening and then it feels like there’s a lull, and the lulls don’t last very long now.  You know, looking back, and I feel really ready to just sort of dive in again, so much more perspective.  I really like think it’s so funny now all the misconceptions I had. And it’s funny to me too that one of the first pieces of advice I ever got was, “Baby steps. Everything’s in baby steps.” And I just could not accept that at the time, but it’s so, so incredibly true.  And I’m really, really thankful it’s all in baby steps now. I wouldn’t really want it any other way. Or I wouldn’t have wanted to have it any other way up to this point. It’s—it just takes doing it, and having all the bad shows and bad sound, audiences that aren’t treating you very well, and people that don’t like what you’re doing. It’s so important to have that experience and I’ve very, very thankful for that now, looking back. I’m thankful that it hasn’t gone any other way. I think it’s a really good thing.

Sound: I read something, some quote from Ben Gibbard that was kind of like that too and he was saying how Death Cab for Cutie got big before internet hype was a factor in the scene, and a lot of these bands that are getting so much attention on blogs haven’t really had that chance to develop and it shows.

JK: Exactly! And then they get that backlash. I don’t envy that at all. I’m very glad that I didn’t have an experience like that because it—for me anyway, I’m a sensitive person, I write sensitive songs, I think that it was important for me to have little experiences of people not liking it and having to deal with that, and realize how that doesn’t matter and that can’t affect what you do. But, having that happen on a huge scale, I think you have to have a certain amount of maturity to deal with that. Or, I mean, in the same way, I think it’s just as important, dealing with praise on a huge scale. It’s just as much of a problem for people, I think, if not more. I mean, look how crazy celebrities are. It’s so hard to keep perspective and keep viewing yourself as a person first, and I think a lot of people fall victim to that, not seeing themselves as a person anymore because they’re not being written about in that way, or, you know what I mean? I can’t express that very eloquently.

Sound: I think it’s easy for people to get tied up in what everyone says you are.

JK: Exactly. And even if people are saying you’re something that you know you’re not, you can start to buy into that, and I think that during this bombardment of this, which is really hard, it’s important to stay humble and have a life outside what you’re doing artisitically. I mean, it’s hard to do that, though, because it takes so much time and is so much work. I think that’s one thing about, whether you’re DIY or not, it’s a lot of work. And there’s so much that goes on that people don’t know about that you have to do to sort of keep going. I guess what I mean to say is, whether or not you’ve hired yourself publicists and whether or not you have label support, if you have those people, then they’ve got you doing a million things constantly, and if you don’t have those people, then you’re kind of trying to do what they do on your own, which takes a lot of work in itself. Or you’re not trying to do it, and maybe you’re more at peace that way. It’s probably individual too. People decide how much they want to do that, how much do you want to be out there, part of the fray? I think that’s an important question for people to consider and I think I developed more and more perspective about as I’ve done this more. Not to talk like some veteran who’s been around forever, cause I haven’t. I’m relatively still new and I was definitely reminded of that going on tour with Robin Hitchcock, who has been making music since before I was born. It was an incredible experience though. I mean, it was really cool just to see their attitude about playing shows after doing it so long, and just how professional they were and nice and understanding to where we were at too, cause obviously, it was like night and day. Even though, my audience and his audience—there’s some overlap but not—it was very up and down. Some nights, people were way into it; some nights, people talked over it; some nights people talked over it and then bought a ton of CDs. That’s how shows always are. It’s so hard to really know what the general feeling is out there. First, you can’t hear the sound that they’re hearing. You’re having a totally different experience. This actually is a really good example of what you were asking about earlier. We played—the last show on that tour was in Boston and we played at this place called T.T. The Bear’s. Which, inconveniently, the stage at T.T. The Bear’s is directly above the stage at the Middle East, which is a huge rock club right next door, so there’s two big clubs right next to each other. I forget what band it was—I think it was Tokyo Police Club or something—was playing right below us during my set, and this was me playing duo with somebody, no drums, and it was packed, it was a sold out show, and people were talking loudly, because, I mean, they couldn’t hear us, apparently, and we couldn’t hear each other. Well, actually, they could hear us, we couldn’t hear each other. At one point Jeremy, who was playing with me, made a joke and the audience started laughing, and I was like, what? I couldn’t hear anything. We couldn’t hear ourselves or each other, but because we had been on tour for something like three and half weeks already, we were used to it, somehow we pulled it off. That was the most difficult experience I’ve ever had dealing with sound—well, it was right up there. Somehow we got through it and had a good positive attitude about it. We just were laughing and joking, like, okay, whatever, we’re just going to play. And you know, we sold a ton of merch that night, more than we did at any other show on the whole tour and people were really nice and apparently we must have sounded alright to them. It’s just very unpredictable. Sometimes people are just totally hushed and quiet and nobody seems to react or buy anything. Every audience is different, definitely, and every situation is different. And I think another thing I learned on that tour was there’s not—people will say like, “audiences in New York are such-and-such a way, and audience in Chicago are such-and-such a way,” and I really have started to doubt that. I think there’s maybe a shred of truth, if you’ve played a place a lot, you might start to get that feeling about a certain place. But, I mean, for example, we played in New York two nights in a row at the same club and the first night couldn’t have gone worse and we couldn’t have felt—we were dreading the second night, we were just like, oh, I don’t want to face these people again. It didn’t help that it was really hot that day and people were grouchy. But the next day was like probably the best show on the tour and it was exactly the same scenario. It just goes to show that you have to embrace the unpredictable nature of playing shows to keep doing it and enjoying it and sort of be at peace with that, and that people aren’t going to have the same perspective that you have about shows, playing them, you know, people coming to a show. If you play a bad show, they’re not going to understand that you played twenty great shows before that. They just saw the one show. But you have to be at peace with that too and know that, well, you tried. You worked hard and you did your best with whatever circumstances are thrown your way. That’s one really nice thing about house shows—they tend to go well. I think they do. There’s one unpredictable thing, if you don’t know the people from before. That can be weird. What if they don’t get people to the show? But that doesn’t usually happen. Usually people that do house shows have a lot of friends who want to go to house shows…usually they’re just really fun, relaxed. It’s just, you really feel like you’re interacting with people. Whereas at a show where it’s packed, with the lights shining in your face and you can’t really see the audience—it’s just a really, really different performance experience. I’ve been lucky to do tours where it’s back and forth. One night in a club, one night in a house. I love being able to do both of those things. A lot of variety. If nothing else, I’ve had a lot of variety in my playing experience. On the last US tour last fall, we played in a church in the middle of nowhere Vermont, near the Canadian border, in this town called Stannard, which is a town of 150 people. And we played in the historic Stannard church, which has no electricity. We were apparently the first electrified band to ever play in the space and we had to literally stretch an extension cord across the dirt road from the city hall, which was across the street. It was just the most magical show I ever played. The kids that put on shows there—they’re based in Burlington, Vermont, but they’re from Stannard originally—they had put up these incredible, handmade fabric lanterns leading up to the entryway to the church and set up several hundred candles and it was just, it was really a beautiful show. That show I will remember forever. It was amazing. It was the most acoustically perfect space and it was wonderful. If I was only playing in clubs I would feel like I was missing out—and I don’t mean to say anything against playing clubs because that can be amazing too. It’s just a totally different experience and I love it. Especially certain clubs. Nothing against them.

Sound: Johanna Kunin hates clubs! Don’t book her to play there. Ever.

JK: I love clubs! I think that as an opening act at a club versus an opening act at a house show, I think that you get treated better by the audience sometimes, and I think that’s sort of an advantage of playing house shows as a lesser-known artist. It’s weird. I don’t think I’ve ever played a bar show where a fight broke out, but I’ve played several house shows where fistfights have broken out, in spite of the fact that I feel like some of my music is pretty calming.

Sound: During your set?

JK: Between sets. I don’t think during my set ever. It’s really funny. The way it’s happened—I don’t think there’s ever been a fight that’s broken out at a bar show. As far as I know. I could have missed it…And another advantage to playing house shows is that you have a place to stay on tour. It’s like built in, crash on the couch. Any band—almost any band—going on their first tour is going to need a few couches to crash on. You’re not making a million dollars. I think more and more I’ve stayed in hotels, but you start to feel like you’ve earned it. We drove twelve hours. I am staying in a hotel…I going to sleep on a bed. But I avoid that, especially with gas being $3.50 a gallon. It’s really bad.

Sound: Hopefully by the time you’re touring things will have calmed down a bit.

JK: Not counting on it.

Sound: It could be even more expensive.

JK: It could be. I need to get a Smart Car. I need to get my set-up, like, even smaller. I started standing up. I stand now, so I have one less piece of stuff to carry. I don’t have a bench anymore. Which is exciting. I get to stand. It feels powerful. It really like, I was so excited that I was going to get to stand to play a show. I know it sounds silly, but playing so many shows sitting down—we played a show in Napa, Idaho…at this little place, and they had this little marquee, and we were playing on a Saturday night but they abbreviated Saturday, so it just said, “Johanna Kunin Sat.” And I was like, I did. I did and I’m so bummed about that. Cause, you know, there’s more energy somehow in standing, or at least that’s what I thought and I finally figured out a way to do it. A friend of mine told me to put the sustain pedal backwards, under my heel. It felt like I was going to get shin splints or something, having to lift my toe up over and over again. It feels a little better. So I’m excited about that. We’ve got this more rocking set and—nothing against quiet music.

Sound: It really changes the atmosphere though, whether people are sitting down or standing up.

JK: I mean, I definitely started out in music with this very purist, idealistic view that it’s the music, nothing else should matter and I’m not going to care about the rest because it shouldn’t matter. But I think that that’s really not totally true.  I think that it is about the experience, the whole experience, and that does have to do with how you relate to people, how you come off on stage. And of course, there’s never going to be a show where everybody loves you. There’s no person that everybody loves and there’s no music that everybody loves. But I guess the only conclusion that I can draw from that is to do what makes me feel the most comfortable, be as much myself and do the things that I like as much as I can.

Sound: So there’s going to be pyrotechnics?

JK: Oh, exactly. I’m going to go totally Celine Dion, start beating my chest, have pyrotechnics spewing behind me…I haven’t gone nearly that far, that’s for sure. But I do believe in really hard work and not going half-assed. Hence the ten piece band. Which was a lot of work to put together—it was a labor of love. And hopefully it will happen again, cause it was really, really fun. And such a wonderful group of people. It brought together people from every year of my life in Seattle, which was really cool—worlds collided thing. And everybody liked each other, which was like, “aw, I know good people.” Good musicians and good peeps. So that felt good.

For more on Johanna Kunin, check out her website or her MySpace. Her independently-released album Clouds Electric is available for purchase on iTunes, among other locations.