A conversation with Phoebe Bridgers ahead of Monday’s show at RecordBar

Since being discovered by Ryan Adams at the age of 20, Phoebe Bridgers has grown into one of indie folk’s brightest young stars. The steel guitar and string sections present on Stranger In The Alps, Bridgers’ debut album, at first call to mind the warmth of the contemporary folk music that’s so popular in the American Midwest and South, but spend a little more time with it and you’ll find yourself inside a brooding, gothic tour de force. On the heels of this release, Bridgers set out on her first headlining tour, and the second leg of that tour includes a stop in Kansas City this coming Monday, April 9, at RecordBar. I called up Bridgers recently, and we talked about the loneliness of touring, the album’s guitar sounds, and the tour’s peculiar name.

What made you want to call one of your first big tours the Farewell Tour? Was that meant to be an attention-grabber?

I guess. I don’t remember having another idea for what to call it, because Guided By Voices and all these bands are constantly going on farewell tours and I think it’s hilarious that then a year later they’re touring again. I just think it’s a funny concept. Neil Young actually was quoted recently saying that farewell tours are bullshit, and you’ll know when he’s dead when he tours for the last time. I think [that’s] amazing.

Daddy Issues is going to be the opening band on this leg of the tour. What do you like most about them?

Weirdly, I was just super drawn to them. They were on some suggested playlist that was made for me on my iTunes and I just fuckin’ fell in love with the record. They have a sick cover of “Boys Of Summer” and also their lyrics are really good. And then it turns out they’re from Nashville, which is super weird because Soccer Mommy was the band I toured with on the last tour, and they’re also weirdly from Nashville, and neither of those bands sound like they’re from Nashville. And it turns out my guitar player who’s from Nashville is really good friends with the girls in Daddy Issues. I love the band and had been listening to them by myself for a long time and then it was like, “Oh, let’s tour,” and then it was like, “Oh, wait, we have a bunch of mutual friends.” I just like their record a lot.

Has touring changed a lot since you released Stranger In The Alps?

Oh yeah, like night and day, for sure. It’s way different playing songs for people who give a shit and have heard the record before. I’ve had really good luck in the past, every once in a while playing a support show that went really well, but this particular tour has been really awesome for me just because yeah, to look out and people are singing the words, that’s pretty surreal and cool.

Did it feel like you were touring as hard before the album came out? 

Weirdly, I feel like I’m touring just as much — as far as the time that I’m gone — because I’ve done a lot of support touring. Like, all last year before the record came out I was touring, and so this doesn’t feel very different as far as being gone, but I will say it’s really cool to have the ball in my court with me playing my own shows and pick my favorite bands to support the shows. It just feels like I have more control, which is really nice.

Even though you live in such a big city and you’re always meeting people on tour, one of the big themes on Stranger In The Alps is loneliness. Does that feel strange at all?

Not necessarily, because I feel like the loneliest I’ve ever been is surrounded by something I didn’t really feel like I was a part of, if that makes sense. There’s a lot going on in L.A., but I can lie to my friends and say I’m busy and spend the whole night in my apartment and they’re all at a show without me. I feel like if I’m in Wyoming, where I’ve never been before, it’s more like, “Oh cool, I’ll take a walk and check out the one coffee shop in town,” and in L.A. I’m like, “Oh my god, there’s too much going on, I’m just gonna watch TV in my apartment.”

Also, tour can be very solitary, because you’re spending so much time with the same group of people that you get almost too comfortable with each other. You can kinda snap at each other; you can be completely silent in the car for hours. So that’s even lonelier to me than being by myself.

There are a few tracks on the album, like “Georgia,” that include these deep, lurching guitar lines kind of laid under the rest of the track. I was curious where along in the process that stuff gets added in.

“Georgia” is a weird one. “Georgia” went through so many changes over so long because it was the first one we started recording. I didn’t like it and I didn’t like it and I didn’t like it and then kinda went crazy and experimented with it and there’s already an acoustic version, so I wanted to stray as far possible from that version on the 7-inch that I released before the record. Sometimes on a song a weird synth line would be the only reason I even started writing the song. Sometimes we’d go backwards and have the weirdest sound first, but sometimes we build off an acoustic guitar track and it’ll be come something insane that nobody expected it to.

I was afraid to mention this until I saw you bring it up yourself in another interview, but the guitar on “Smoke Signals” has that Twin Peaks soundtrack sound to it. Are you a fan of the show?

I am. And I also get weird about that. I love the music on the show so much that it’s almost annoying how it’s a TV show and not a band. I wanna listen to that band. I want that vibe to be emulated in a full-on band.

I heard you’re already working on a follow-up album. How far along is that right now?

Yeah, I’m just writing a lot. I wanna be thoughtful about it, but I also don’t wanna be one of those artists that waits four years for their next record because they wanna obsess over it until it’s perfect or they tour too much. It’s weird because when I’m touring, I’m kind of wishing I’m in the studio sometimes, waking up in the same place and creating stuff, but when I’m recording in a windowless room every single day, I wish I was out on tour. So I’m kind of looking forward to recording right now.

And I guess there’s the whole trope of, “You have your whole life to write your first record,” but I guess you’re eager to jump back into it.

I am, although my other thing that I’m wary of is the classic [situation where] you take six months to write your second record and there are way too many cooks in the kitchen because people know how people reacted to the first record, so it’s like, “Oh, let’s bring in this producer,” or, “Oh, let’s do what we did last time,” or, “Oh, let’s try to emulate the one song that did really well.” So a lot of people’s second records are just not as good. I’m trying to keep those things in mind and relax about it. At least as far as the writing, I’m hopefully writing stuff that I’m nervous to have my friends hear ‘cause it’s so obvious and personal, so hopefully I’m keepin’ it real, keepin’ it as real as possible.

Phoebe Bridgers plays Monday, April 9, at RecordBar.