St. Vincent Discusses David Byrne Collaboration, Live Show, Falling Off Speakers In TimesTalk

Earlier this week, St. Vincent sat down with New York Times music critic Jon Pareles for an interview at Toronto’s Luminato festival, which just hosted the premiere for the musician’s collaboration with David Byrne and others, Contemporary Color. Over the course of the forty-minute conversation, Annie Clark took time to discuss the project, the whereabouts of her Grammy (it’s at her mother’s house), and her tumble off a stack of speakers last month in Knoxville, TN.

Explaining her introduction to the world of Color Guard, Vincent recalled her high school days in Texas.

I went to a huge American high school, not too dissimilar from Friday Night Lights except for it was in a bigger town, in Dallas, Texas. What I know about contemporary color from those days is that they weren’t the football team, they weren’t the cheerleaders, they weren’t the high school band. They were this really bizarre underground subculture of what stemmed from a militaristic dance, but really flowered into its own world. I knew about the color guard because they’d be rehearsing on the lawn and throwing the toy rifles and waving the flags. It was interesting because they’re throwing these things that signify violence, but they’re doing it in a really beautiful way.

Later, she recalled the “Speaker Incident”:

In Knoxville, I tried to climb a speaker that I thought was tied down to the other speaker and was safe to climb. I looked at the security people like “this is cool, right? I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna climb up on top of this.” There was a really cool security guard named Patrick who was there buttressing me, and I was halfway up the speaker, and I fell on the stage pretty hard and hit my head, and for a moment thought, “Oh God, Where am I?” When I kind of came to, I realized because I hadn’t realized that the guy who was over there was the security guard.

So I get up, and I’m looking, and I’m terrified, like almost in tears. “Where’s the guy? Where is he? Where did he go?” And I’m thinking, “I just killed somebody”. It was so horrifying. It was really emotional and horrible, and luckily he was totally okay. None of us had concussions; he had a little cut on his eyebrow but it was so horrifying. It’s one thing to think, “I’ll get a bruise, I’ll get this or that,” but it’s another to think that in a moment of spontaneity you could actually hurt someone.

Fortunately, everyone is okay. Check out the entire interview – in which St. Vincent also talks about last year’s self-titled LP and her frenzied live show, below.

Read our interview with St. Vincent.

Watch St. Vincent’s Annie Clark on Pitchfork.tv‘s “Over/Under”: