Robyn Cage Interview
Doug Burke:
Welcome to Backstory Song. I'm your host Doug Burke. And today we're here with Robyn Cage. Robyn Cage, songwriting creates atmospheric storytelling, married with dreamy pop alternative melodies. Her multi-octave range can raise from smoldering lower registers to soaring sopranos. The title song on her debut album, Born in the Desert, won Best Alternative Song at the Yukon Music Awards. Her follow-up album, Slow the Devil, was named Best in the Album of the Year by Scorpius Magazine and features songs about demons, dreams and duality. She's classically trained in piano and makes a wide range of emotional electronic sounds. Her songs can have an operatic and theatrical production style that takes the listener on a storytelling adventure. Today, she discusses the songs, Born in the Desert, The Fallout and Theatre Noir.
Robyn Cage:
Let's start with the song, Born in the Desert. Born in the Desert is one of my personal favorites of my own songs. It's one of my favorites to perform live. And it's very autobiographical, both in a literal way and a metaphorical way. When I was writing it, it was one of the first songs that I wrote for my debut album, which was called. Born in the Desert. And I knew I wanted the album to be called, Born in the Desert. So, I was like, "Well, I should probably write a song of the same title." And as soon as I sat down to write it, the song kind of wrote itself. Okay. I was born in the desert the year of the flood. Now, anyone who lives in Utah knows what year the year of the flood was. I don't want to give away my birthday. In the city of the Temple. I feel like that one's pretty self-explanatory. Bathed in blood. I was a rough birth. I was born screaming. I've walked through fire and I've shed my skin. For me, that is the experience I had in New York. That was my trial by fire. And I felt like that was where I first shed my skin as an artist. I know where I'm going and I'm ready to begin and you tell me I'm too late. That was what I was told when I first started to write songs. I was 27 and I was told that I should have started writing songs 10 years earlier because it was already too late for me to be viable for an any sort of major label. I had been living in New York City for the past five years and mostly doing musical theater while I was there. I actually loved the rat race and the cutthroat competition of New York. I loved it. I thrive in that environment. What I didn't love was my disconnection from nature. I love the wide open skies and the really dark nights and the wildness of the West. And I missed it so much when I was in New York. They say, there's a thing called the call of the mountains. And when people who are originally from mountainous areas move away to cities, there's a very, very high likelihood that at some point in their life, they're going to move back to the mountains. So, that was me. And that was the call of the mountains and the call of the desert. When I came back here, I wrote songs for my first EP. I wrote this EP, which was essentially half an album, and it felt like I had more to say that I wasn't quite saying. And I thought, "Well, okay, let's expand this. Let's make it a full length album. I'm going to call it Born in the Desert," because I felt that my returning to Utah was a rebirth of sorts. I took a week. Was it 10 days or a week? I think it was a week. I took a week and I went to Southern Utah by myself, no phones, no computers, iPad, no technology, just a tent and a writing notebook, a ukulele and a battery powered keyboard. And I spent that week writing songs. So Born in the Desert was a song that had described my journey as an artist thus far. I sort of had this sort of long identity crisis as to who I wanted to be as an artist. I loved acting, but I loved singing more. And music felt like it was my way in. For Born in the Desert, it really did feel like a rebirth, like I wanted to become a new artist. I wanted to be the artist that I had within me the whole time. It didn't come as quickly or as easily as I thought it would, as is the story for so many of us. You think, "This is it. I've found It was not that way. It was an enormous struggle. And I had some great breaks early on, but then things plateaued. And so when I wrote Born in the Desert, I was feeling deeply frustrated, stuck once again, unsure about who I was going to be, where I was going to go. The inspiration that that kept coming to me, that kept cycling in my mind was the Greek myth of Sisyphus who's damnation is to push a boulder up a mountain side. And at the end of every day, the boulder rolls right back down the mountain side, and he's been working so hard and accomplishes nothing. And I'm pushing this boulder up the mountainside, nothing to show for how hard I've tried. That's directly from the Sisyphus Greek myth, but it's not in vain. It's going to rain. And that's my persisting belief that the payoff is yet to come. And then the second verse, I'm just getting started, I'm not going down, I've come this far and I won't turn around. A voice in me rages, a noiseless shout, silently screaming, let me out. And that was this feeling that I had an artist voice that I wasn't using. That was that feeling when I was doing theater, when I was singing other people's songs, that I had my own voice, I had my own things to say, and I was not using my own voice until I began to write my own songs. And then we get to the bridge. The bridge is I've died a little death of a thousand little cuts. I resurrected and rose from the dust. That was sort of the slow breaking down of all the little demons, the fears, anxieties, and past experiences that led me to that place where I was when I wrote the song. Wandering the desert, searching for a dream, I finally found who I was born to be. That's one of those lyrics that sounds like metaphor, but it was literal. It was literal. I was wandering the desert, quite literally searching for a song. That's what I was feeling at that time as an artist. That was where Born in the Desert came from. Even though it's a song that was born out of frustration and this feeling of being lost, the core message of the song is that damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. I was still going to go for it. I'm going to try to persevere. And I have trust in the universe and faith in myself that if I continue on this path, I continue to believe and I continue to work so hard every day, it will pay off. It will eventually rain in the desert. So that's Born in the Desert.
Okay, this is Fallout. And this is one of the darkest songs I have written. And that's saying something. I've written some dark songs. This one was written after I'd gotten in a very bad fight with my husband. And it was a fight so intense that it had gotten physical. I feel like it's an important thing to talk about because he is not abusive by any stretch of the imagination. This is not that kind of song, it is not that kind of relationship, but we are both emotional people. I am a volatile person. So is he. When things get heated and intense enough, I think it's actually a normal human thing that nobody talks about anymore. So we had this intense fight. Nobody was hurt. Neither of us would ever hurt each other, but it was a physical fight. It was such a shocking and deeply upsetting and disturbing experience that I didn't know if our marriage would ever survive, and if we would come back from it. The song came to me very early in the morning. I actually, the morning after this fight, I still work as an actress doing commercials. So I was on my way to a commercial shoot early in the morning, about 6:00 AM. It was very gray outside. The sky was gray. It was snowing. It just felt like nuclear fallout. The idea for the song came to me and at the time I was way too emotional to even think about writing the song. So I spoke a few words into my voice memo in my phone, and I wrote down the title, Fallout, and some ideas. And that was it, I left it. I did not touch the song until I was on my desert writing sabbatical. And it was the second song that I wrote while I was there. And at that point, it was months down the road. The relationship had recovered. Things were fine. I mean, it took some time to get over the fight. It was not okay for a while, but it got okay. We recovered and we're good and yesterday was our six year anniversary. The fight was two and a half years ago. So we came through. We're like, it's okay. There's a happy ending to that story. So when I wrote this song, I felt like I could actually look at it with a new perspective because I was through it. And I had time to let the ideas marinate. I think sometimes while I'm going through an experience, and especially a really emotional experience, I can't write about it at the time. It's too raw. It's too overwhelming. I'm too close to it. And so if I give it some space and I give it some time, I can come back to it and I can still remember all the details very, very clearly. I haven't forgotten the events. I haven't forgotten the feelings, but I can look at them more objectively if that makes sense.
Doug Burke:
And so the video is very Halloween the... Friday the 13th.
Robyn Cage:
Oh, yeah. We had fun with the video. Yeah. The video is pretty tongue in cheek, actually.
Doug Burke:
Yes. Because I don't get that from the song in the lyrics.
Robyn Cage:
Oh, no. The heaviness...
Doug Burke:
I mean, it's a heavy, obviously heavy song.
Robyn Cage:
We definitely let the video take on a much lighter feeling than the reality of the song. I do... I should preface this by saying that I have an obsession with all things post-apocalyptic. I have multiple songs that have sort of apocalyptic themes or references.
Doug Burke:
I was going to ask you, were you considered a goth in high school?
Robyn Cage:
No.
Doug Burke:
No?
Robyn Cage:
No, I was a nerd.
Doug Burke:
Because that's very goth, that video.
Robyn Cage:
It is very goth. I love the goth stuff. I love it. But no, I was a band geek through and through. I was a nerd.
Doug Burke:
But was the song inspired by goth instincts or not? Just the video? And the video was kind of a tongue in cheek kind of -
Robyn Cage:
More just the video.
Doug Burke:
Okay.
Robyn Cage:
Yeah. The song really was... There's absolutely the post-apocalyptic metaphor, but I felt like in this particular instance, it was fitting because it felt like the end of the world.
Doug Burke:
So I find that forgiveness is required to get beyond that kind of fallout.
Robyn Cage:
Oh yeah.
Doug Burke:
Did you write the song after you got through a stage of forgiveness?
Robyn Cage:
Oh, yes.
Doug Burke:
Or did you write it while you were pre-forgiveness?
Robyn Cage:
No, I had definitely, I had forgiven him. I had forgiven myself when I wrote the song. I was through the stages of healing. I think I wrote the song, let me see the fight happened in January or February. I wrote the song in May, so I'd had a few months. So it really was just a memory at that point. I don't think there were any residual feelings of conflict left.
Doug Burke:
Was it cathartic to get the words out then at that point?
Robyn Cage:
It always is. It always does feel like, "Wow, that was a terrible experience, but hey, I got a song out of it." I got a bunch of those.
Doug Burke:
Do you want to talk about the lyrics?
Robyn Cage:
Yeah, let's talk about the lyrics.
Doug Burke:
Okay.
Robyn Cage:
So, it begins on a gray morning, aftermath is falling from my eyes. No warning, wearing bruises from the chaos of last night. And a lot of that really is quite literal. Like I said, it was a very gray overcast. What do they call it in Salt Lake where they have the pollution?
Doug Burke:
The inversion.
Robyn Cage:
The inversion, thank you. It was an inversion kind of day, driving, especially in Utah County where my commercial shoot was.
Doug Burke:
That does feel like a nuclear fallout.
Robyn Cage:
It felt like nuclear fallout and it was just that sort of light snow that was falling like and it looked just like, if you've seen the Chernobyl series, the fallout that was coming down, like snow and kids are playing in it. And you're like, "No, what are you doing? Get out of there." Anyway, back to the song. I saw a side of you I've never seen before. You saw a side of me I only saved for war. And that was all very true. Like I said, things got rough physically and I have a violence in me. I think most of us do. I think it's very repressed. I think that we also have to be extremely careful. And like I said, this is not a thing that I am proud of, but I do also think that is a thing that happens. I think it happens more than we talk about it and I think that it is not something you can chalk up to domestic abuse. This is not about domestic abuse. This is about a fight, if that makes sense. I'm on the floor in the fallout, we both lit the fuse. How will we make it through the fallout? That's the chorus. Gray morning, my face is wet. My mouth is dry. I remember trying to get through that commercial shoot. And I had eyedrops to keep the redness out of my eyes and had to drink water because I had that horrible, sickly, dry mouth feeling. You know when you're so emotional that your body starts to freak out? That's where I was. Words forming to apologize, but then I'll lose the fight. So I spent the whole morning just thinking, "I don't know how to face him," because I knew I had things I needed to apologize for. I knew it was partly me, but it was also a lot him. And it was like the first one to apologize is the one who loses. And it's a terrible way of looking at it in retrospect. But, at the time, it felt like you would rather keep fighting that admit you were wrong. Again, I saw a side of you I've never seen before. You saw a side of me I only save for war. I'm on the floor, in the fallout. And then the bridge, your face is covered in ashes and dust. The air is colder in the space between us. Is this Armageddon? Is this how it ends? Now, obviously this gets more poetic. This is where I start to really get into the metaphor of that apocalypse. But it is rooted in reality, like the air is colder in this space between us. It was weeks before things started to feel better. There was this permeating coldness in the house that we shared. And it did feel like it could be the end. It wasn't. We got over it.
Doug Burke:
No, that's good.
Robyn Cage:
And one of the original lyrics was, instead of saying, we both lit the fuse, how will we make it through? The original lyric was it was something along the lines of, I know we'll make it through. I'll find my way back to you through the fallout. That was the original lyric. And I actually felt like it resolved too much. I didn't want this song to have a happy ending. I didn't want the song to have a hopeful ending. I wanted it to live in that space of darkness and uncertainty.
Doug Burke:
The melody is not upbeat.
Robyn Cage:
No. Yeah. The whole song's in a minor key, the production is fairly dark. And I think that's why I wanted to juxtapose it with a campy fun video because I've done the dark videos as well. And I wanted to do something new and it was around Halloween time. And like I said, I'm obsessed with all things post-apocalyptic and I thought this is a great opportunity to make use of some of our desolate abandoned spaces out by the Great Salt Lake, and that's what we did.
Okay. Theatre Noir. This is the odd ball one. This is one of my favorite songs that I've written and it's probably my favorite song of my own to perform live. I had to fight for this one because when I recorded my first album, I pitched the music to a bunch of different producers. I made my wishlist of top producers, Grammy nominees, Grammy winners who'd worked with artists who I love and respect. And I was like, "Wherever you are in the world, I will go to you and record this record." So I put together three of my own songs, demoed them and sent them to producers. And I heard back from a bunch who said, "We'd love to work with you, but Theatre Noir is a no go. Don't go that direction. You'll never have a career as an artist." Finally, I ended up talking with Dan Burns in LA, and he was like, "Yeah, I'm in, Totally game, totally game." And I was like, "All right, let's do it. Let's do it. Let's record this record. I love your work. I think you've done brilliant work for artists who I am very influenced by, so let's commit." And right before we signed the contract, he was like, "Oh, by the way, I don't think we should do Theatre Noir." And I was like, "We do Theatre Noir or we don't do the album." And he's like, "Okay, we can do Theatre Noir." He was like, "Well, we'll do it in a quirky, Tom waits kind of style." And I was like, "That's perfect. That's exactly what I want for this song." So, it worked out, but it was one that I had to fight for, but it's a song that means a lot to me. I feel like I come to life when I perform it, audiences get really into it. They love it. They remember it. People buy the album for the song. I think that it just freaked out producers because it's different. I mean, I made a pop album and I put a theater song on a pop album. Look who else has done that? Tom waits, Tori Amos, Amanda Palmer. Lanka is a pop star and she's made songs that are totally theatrical like that. So I thought, "You know what? If I can't stand by what the song represents, then I'm a phony as an artist." So a little background on the song. As I mentioned earlier, was born and raised in Utah. And I was not raised Mormon. I didn't really realize until I was probably in sixth grade that everyone else was part of a community that I wasn't a part of. The area where I went to school was almost completely Mormon. And there's nothing wrong with that. They're really nice people, but all the Mormon kids did all their church community things together. They did all their activities together. They played together in the playground. After school, they hung out together. And so kind of by default, without realizing it, I ended up becoming close friends with the two other kids who also weren't Mormon. And I didn't really put those two together until I got to about junior high. As soon as I realized... I didn't stand a chance at popularity. I had a couple of close friends, but I was never going to be accepted by this community. So I was an outcast. It did not help that I also was a nerd. So I was the kid that played oboe in band. I won the geography bee in the science fair. This is the kind of nerd that I am. But I found my fellow misfit, odd ball, best friends and together, we kind of formed our own little geek community and I'm still very close to most of them today. And yet the whole time, I started to develop a chip on my shoulder about feeling like an outcast and feeling like I would never fit in and I desperately wanted to fit in it. It wasn't until I even started writing my own songs because I think I spent most of my, all of my teenage years, much of my childhood and a good portion of my adulthood, just trying to fit in and be cool. It was not until I started to write my own songs that I realized that you don't get anywhere by fitting in. You don't want to be just like some other artist who already exists out there. You need to be something completely different. You need to be your authentic self. Find the things about you that are unique and that are different and amplify them. That's where your special specific artistry comes to life. And for me, that was Theatre Noir. And that is essentially, at the heart of it, what the song is about. So the song is about circus freaks who have... Because I wanted to take a community of people who have embraced the things about themselves that are weird and different and played them up and are now celebrated for it. So yes, it is a grotesque love story, but at the heart of it, it's really about celebrating the things about yourself that are unique and different.
Doug Burke:
It has a Bertolt Brechtian feel.
Robyn Cage:
Oh, very much so, yes.
Doug Burke:
Mack the Knifeish.
Robyn Cage:
Uh huh.
Doug Burke:
I don't know if that was part of your inspiration or...
Robyn Cage:
Threepenny Opera was in my in my training, so yeah, yeah. Yeah. I love Pirate Jenny, these sort of long dark story songs of Brecht and Vile. Yeah, definitely. I was on a big Tom Waits kick when I wrote this, but I know he was inspired by Brecht and Vile and I was also listening to a lot of Amanda Palmer and Dresden Dolls. And I know that she's also very influenced by Kurt Vile. So those are a big, big part of where this song came from. Any other questions or should I dive into the lyrics?
Doug Burke:
Go to the lyrics.
Robyn Cage:
Okay. Welcome to Theatre Noir, the traveling circus sideshow, land of the freaks, home of the depraved. Welcome to Theatre Noir. Nagina can charm any cobra. Sabra can swallow any sword. Masters of the macabre. Gladiators of the grotesque. Prodigies of all perversions. Interestingly enough, this is a co-write with a guy named Stuart Maxfield, who fronts the band, Fictionist, down in Provo. Stu and I had been working together probably about a year and I'd had writer's block. And he was like... Well, generally speaking, I would write lyrics and then he would put music to them and he's like, "I feel like you're too tied down by rhymes. Why don't you just try writing a poem? Write a poem that doesn't rhyme." I was like, "Okay, sure." And so I wrote this Welcome to Theatre Noir poem. It was never meant to be a song. And I brought it to him the next week. And I was like, "Hey, I wrote a weird poem. I don't think this is a song. I don't think there's a song in here, but I enjoy the poem. I like the story. What do you think?" And he read through it and he's like, "This could be a song." And I was like, "How?" And he was like, "Well, I don't know, maybe try to trim down the words so that you're fitting similar syllables into each sentence and find rhymes where you can and play with other poetic devices." And I was like, "Okay, I know what to do." So I went home and so what ended up happening is there's a lot of wordplay in here. And there was even before I revised the poem to work as a song. For example, Nagina can charm any cobra. Nagina is... Do you remember Rikki-Tikki-Tavi? Nagina is the snake, the female snake. Nagina, I think, also is a word in some language, meaning snake. Don't know what language. Sabra, again, saber, can swallow any sword. And then I found all kinds of opportunities where I could find some alliteration. So masters of the macabre, gladiators of the grotesque, prodigies of all perversions, I just thought, "Well, all right, if I'm not going to rhyme, I can at least have consonance and assonance and alliteration." And now Lydia, the tattooed lady, takes the stage. A serpent wound 'round her neck. Defiant roses decorate her arms and flames lick their way up her legs. With a proud, full gaze, she confronts her audience. Welcome to Theatre Noir. Now I'm introducing my main character, Lydia, the tattooed lady. I like the idea of these sort of self created freaks, right? We take pride in our deformities, profit from your disgust, natural born monstrosities, self-created oddities, morbid curiosities. So saying that there's equal value, whether you were naturally born a freak or whether you made yourself into a freak. It is equally something to be embraced and celebrated. Next up, young Aiden raised in sheltered bliss in the unassailable Midwest. This is our romantic lead character. The red carnival ticket was admission to a brave new world. One look at lovely Lydia, and he could hardly see the ink. He saw beauty beneath her branded skin. Her eyes whispered to a soul within. They said, "Welcome to Theatre Noir." So we have the innocent young man, Aiden, meeting the beautiful tattooed lady. Onward, the caravan crawls with Aiden following after. His lunatic obsession only grew with each rejection. Welcome to Theatre Noir. Backstage, he proclaimed his love, but Aiden was tragically rebuffed. "We are all abominations and without some aberration, you'll never be one of us." And I sing that in my best Lydia voice. "I'll do anything," Aiden replied. "I'd walk through fire to stay by your side." And that's precisely what he did. His hair melted and his flesh dripped. He rose like a phoenix from the smoke and ash, thus was born the smoldering man. Welcome to Theatre Noir. Yeah, it's dark. It's gross. It's fun. And then the final verse, come see the tattooed lady. At her side, the smoldering man, the legendary lovers so scandalous, so strange, twisted and taboo and so deliciously deranged. Witness their wickedness, their pleasure and their pain and welcome to Theatre Noir. And then this is the bit in the song where we have a little instrumental section where the band starts to gradually speed up and we get people to clap along or stomp their feet or make some noise or dance or whatever. And it's the sort of audience participation moment that always is fun. And we keep increasing the speed and it becomes this sort of competition or race between the band and the audience to see if they can keep up with us. And usually the band wins. But sometimes when we have a rhythmically inclined audience, they'll hold their own, if not win. I think we recently had an audience win. And then finally the song ends with, we'll glorify your scars. You'll be the greatest star. Yes, welcome to Theatre Noir. So that's my weird one.
Doug Burke:
I like the way end that musically. And I was wondering when I heard it, if you were referring to the freak show, that is Park City. I've heard folks in Provo call Park City the Land of Misfit Toys. I don't know if you've ever heard that before.
Robyn Cage:
That is funny.
Doug Burke:
But we are considered the outcasts of...
Robyn Cage:
How appropriate. I did not know that, but I can see...
Doug Burke:
You did not know that. Okay.
Robyn Cage:
.... where it could come from.
Doug Burke:
And I was wondering if any of the characters were based on some of the freak show characters who both live here and stay here, but also come here, our tourist industry, combined with alcohol bars and music...
Robyn Cage:
Sure. It's a wild seed.
Doug Burke:
... can lead to a freak show of its own when you are at The Cabin or O.P. Rockwell or...
Robyn Cage:
Actually, okay. So it's similar. You're on the right track, but it's a little different. When I came to Utah, I did not intend to stay here. I had planned to move to Los Angeles. I stayed here, worked for Sundance, met the guy who was now my husband. And we fell in love and the winter season ended and I was getting ready to move to LA. We had entered into the relationship with the understanding that I was moving. It was like, this is not going to be a longterm thing. I am leaving and I'm not going to do long distance. Late March, as moving days approaching, he finally tells me like, "Look, if you have to move to LA, I hate LA, but I will move there with you. I will move to LA to be with you." And I was like, "Ooh, geez, okay, let me rethink this whole thing." And so in this story, I am Lydia, the tattooed lady. He is Aiden, the smoldering man. And the idea is that I am already part of the circus as an artist, as a performer. I've been in this circus for a while, but he was willing to join just to be with me in that kind of way. It's funny because we were actually driving down to Southern Utah when I wrote this song or wrote the poem that the song was born out of. I was bouncing ideas off of him. I was like, "Oh, I want to write this love story about this trapeze artist in the circus and she's a traveling circus performer," because at the time I'd been moving so much, I didn't feel rooted. I was like, "Oh, I might as well be in a traveling circus." I was constantly touring while I was in New York. And I never felt really rooted or grounded anywhere. And I was like, "And you could be the guy who joins the circus to be with her." And then the conversation evolved. And I was like, "No, wait, what if she wasn't the trapeze artist? What if it was a side show and she was the tattooed lady?" I was like, "I like that better." And then we're brainstorming possible endings for the song of like, "Well, does he follow the circus everywhere? Does he join? What happens?" And I was like, "Oh, here we go. He just figures himself to become one of the freaks." There is a romantic love story for you. I just decided that the weirdest and most shocking ending was probably the right one. So, that's what I ended up going with.
Doug Burke:
Do you have any tattoos?
Robyn Cage:
Not a single one.
Doug Burke:
Actual ones. Metaphorical ones you have.
Robyn Cage:
Oh, metaphorical aplenty.
Doug Burke:
Okay.
Robyn Cage:
No, no, no tattoos at all. I love tattoos, actually. I love them on other people. I've never been able to commit to an idea of one for myself. And I figure I've made it this far without any, I might as well just continue with that.
