After seeing her perform at a house show in Ballard the other week (see our review), Sound sat down with Seattle singer-songwriter Johanna Kunin (pronounced “Johanna just like Bob Dylan sings it and Kunin like KOON-yin, with the ‘oo’ like in ‘cook’,” advises her website) on April 10 to talk about touring, house shows, loud audiences, and the musician’s constant battle against entropy. Kunin is currently working on a new album, the follow-up to her 2006 debut Clouds Electric, which she hopes to release “before the end of the year.”

Sound: Do you play many house shows? Is that something you’ve done a lot of over the years?

Johanna Kunin: I think that came about because a lot of the people that I sort of knew—like Tucker [Martine], for example, I met him through the sort of Laura Veirs crew, and Karl [Blau] was playing in Laura’s band. and she was playing a lot of house shows, so she was kind of involved in that scene and I guess just through those people I just met tons of people that do it. It was something that I really didn’t know existed until I started writing my own songs– it all happened very suddenly, like I just started writing songs and things happened and I was able to make this record. It wasn’t something I’ve been doing since I was 15. I was lucky in that way. I love playing house shows. I don’t think I really understood it at first–it was just so foreign to me, playing a show in some random person’s house. I think I’ve come to appreciate it more and more having played more club shows. It’s just a totally different atmosphere. Especially with the music that I’ve up to this point been playing it was, for the most part, really quiet. And the new music is still quiet but it’s not so quiet. Sort of, it gets…it’s not rock, but it’s more towards that direction, you know. People talking in a bar won’t be as much of an issue, if I’m touring with a drummer. But, you know, I’ve had a lot of shows in bars where people are–their primary objective in being at the show isn’t necessarily to have a listening experience. It’s just different, that’s not their goal. and that’s fine, and I understand it. I mean, there’s a limit, where people are talking so loudly that, I can’t even hear myself on-stage, there’s something wrong here. But for the most part it’s not like that and one cool thing is that there are bar shows where people aren’t like that and it can be really surprising. Sometimes there’s just this hush in the bar, and you can’t predict when that’s going to happen and when it’s not. But I think one comforting thing is that it happens. I really think more and more that everyone has had that experience, of having people talk over them, that plays music that’s not really loud. I think that’s really comforting to know that even like people that have become wildly successful playing quieter music–they’ve been through that. It’s like a rite of passage. You inevitably will have to go through that over and over again. It’s part of paying your dues and, if you’re on the introspective side, you’re going to have to put up with it here and there. And sometimes it’s not practical to tour with a band. It’s more and more expensive, with having to take a large vehicle and gas and everything, so all of my tours that have been longer have not been with a band. It’s been either solo or duo. That’s something I really am hoping to change with this new record. I mean, it was really surprising and cool to play all those new songs—just do a solo set [at the previously mentioned recent house show]—because I’d never done it before with those songs. And it felt good, it felt like, okay, this can work. I was kind of questioning it like, I don’t know if this will really work this way, but I think it can work and that’s nice. I think that I’d really like to get this music out with a full band, with bass and drums, because doing it in the studio, that just added such a—it just totally changed the vibe of everything, and, I think, in a really exciting way. I’m excited to take it out to the east coast and not always show up at shows on the east coast like, hey it’s just me again. Not that I don’t love it, though. I love being able to do both. I love doing club shows that go well and I love doing house shows that go well and sometimes both can go weirdly. it just comes with the territory. It’s unpredictable playing live.

Sound: Was that weird playing a solo house show after you played that show [at the Sunset recently] with a full, nine-person band?

JK: I think it’s been weird for me in the past, switching, and weirder after doing, like, a whole tour one way and then switching, but this music is so new that it feels new every time I play it still, which is wonderful, it’s exciting after—like I said it’d been two years since I made a record, and this is my second record, so it’s like that exciting time of, for the first time, redoing everything and starting fresh with things that are really new and fresh to me and I’m really enjoying that. And I’ve had so much experience with my band changing from show to show that I’ve gotten pretty used to it. I mean, I know a lot of people that are in bands and I’ve definitely had moments of jealousy, like, they have four people that are in this and are dedicated and they don’t have to do everything themselves. But I can see that there are pros and cons to that as well as pros and cons to being a sort of solo artist who has to put together a band for every show and doesn’t have that dedicated core group of people. Several times I’ve thought like, oh yes, I’ve discovered the group, they’re gonna be the group that I try to rein in and get them to play with me every show. It just hasn’t worked out that way, which is fine and I’ve come to be very much at peace with that and enjoy the advantages of not having that. Although, I do still think that it would be a wonderful thing to have the luxury of working with the same people for a while and getting really tight. I hope to do that at some point, but when it happens, it will be the right people and it will be the right time. I guess that’s my attitude about that.

I’ve become more flexible—I’ve learned how valuable, how important it is as far as staying sane to have a very flexible sort of attitude about it. There are some things that just aren’t possible when you’re not very well-known. You don’t always have a lot of money to throw at musicians to entice them to play every show with you, and that’s fine. I just feel lucky that there are people that are into the music, and I can always seem to find somebody who will play that’s good, so I feel pretty good about that.

Sound: So that piano [that she played at the now thrice-mentioned house show] was kind of out of tune. You mentioned that there’s always challenges in playing live. Have there been any other moments when you’ve been surprised and had to roll with it?

JK: I think that probably any musician would say this, but gear, gear is… it’s a fickle thing. No matter what you’re using, you just don’t know. It can break at any moment and it does, inevitably. Especially when you play for a month on the road–something’s going to break. Up till the last—up till the show at the Sunset I was always playing a Wurlitzer. It’s a forty year-old instrument at least, it might be more, actually. I was extremely lucky and I basically decided to quit while I was ahead. I mean, the sustain pedal broke on-stage at least seven or eight times. Actually, probably more. There’s always somebody who wants to sell you a version that’s not going to break, you know, with this vintage gear, like somebody in Portugal has finally designed the sustain pedal that will work. You’re always taking your chances. I think that’s the bottom line. I’ve been at huge shows where gear has broken. it happens to everyone. You know, entropy—everything’s turning into chaos, your gear breaks. That’s been the main thing for me is that stupid sustain pedal. Then I decided that I was going to switch over to fake piano, which literally has made me sick to my stomach when I tried to in the past, but I kind of realized—cause I write my songs on a piano—and Wurlitzer is wonderful, and the wonderful thing about it is that it’s a portable instrument, it’s very heavy but it’s portable, and you have the feeling of pressing something and causing a mechanical action which produces a sound, which is not really the feeling I had ever had playing a digital keyboard. But I did find a midi controller and a piano sound that I like a lot, and I was shocked, I’m becoming a believer. However, what I discovered immediately, at that very first show where I used it at the sunset, is that it’s the same issue. Computers are no more reliable than vintage gear. Computer programs, computers—they will do even weirder things. With the vintage gear, the worst thing—or the most likely thing that’s gonna happen is it’s just gonna not work. It just won’t turn on. But you really don’t know what’s going to happen with a computer. It could do anything. Every note could sound at once, and actually, that’s not that unlikely. I mean, at least that’s what it feels like to me right now. But I should say, I’ve just started doing it and I haven’t totally gotten it figured out, but it’s been crazy so far.

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.