Margaret Glaspy’s new album, Devotion

Brooklyn-based artist Margaret Glaspy released her sophomore album, Devotion, in March 2020. In her press release, she says, "This record is very different from the last. It’s not about being righteous or all-knowing, it's about letting love in even when you don't know what will happen when you do. It's about devoting your heart to someone or something, against all odds.” While we’re loving Devotion so far, be sure to check out her 2016 album, Emotions and Math, which features bold arrangements and Glaspy’s rock edginess.

Want to learn more about Glaspy? Check out these interviews:

Fretboard Journal: What got you into music?

When I was in the second grade there were fiddle players playing in our town at a community gathering. I saw some fiddle players playing and said I wanted to play the fiddle, so I got into a school program that started the next year. I played the fiddle from about the third grade until I was about 15 or 16. I was in band and played trombone for a while, too. I was a little nerd.

Then, I was playing Texas Style fiddle at the Old Time Fiddlers’ Championships in Weiser, Idaho. I went to Weiser for a long time, for about five or six years in a row and around my last couple years I started to sneak off and sing more than I played the fiddle. I was kind of getting out of touch with [fiddle]. Once I started singing I threw the fiddle out and started to write songs.

DISCOGS: You just released your latest record Devotion, but it’s been four years since your debut, Emotions And Math, which is a fairly long time. What was in the interim between the two records?

I toured about two years straight for Emotions And Math. That was a pretty big change in lifestyle, and a pretty big stretch of perpetual movement. When that was done, I was pretty ready to change pace and figure out what excited me, not only as a musician, but as a person, you know? What was normal life like?

I think when you’re on tour for that long, I was creating so much output, and not really getting much input, in terms of just my brain. I was really just giving and giving and giving and I wasn’t really learning very much. I craved to kind of be able to pause and try to evolve a little more personally and creatively, so I started to study through Harvard. I’m still trying to peck away at my bachelors, which was a big deal for me in the interim. and kind of disorienting. I’ve always wanted to have an education, but I only went to Berklee College of Music for a semester and then just jumped right into performing and songwriting. So, that’s always been a childhood dream of mine; to really jump into academia and really learn and learn how to write well. Not just songs, but being able to write academically — prose, fiction — and be able to use my words. (May 6, 2020)

STEREOGUM: This has been a really big year for you. How did you go from recording in your bedroom and self-releasing stuff to signing to ATO? 

I suppose it’s a long story in a certain way, but I was a musician when I was really young. I played fiddle at a really young age. That was my first instrument, and then at 15 or 16 I got really into guitar and started to mess around with writing songs. I started doing covers of songs I liked as well. From there I got a grant to do whatever I wanted musically, but I used it to go to Berklee College Of Music. I went there for a semester, but stayed in Boston for three years, worked a lot of jobs, and just wrote a lot of music. I got really into songwriting. Then I moved to New York and I’ve been there for six years. I moved there when I was 21. (November 4, 2016)

Interview Magazine: I remember reading an interview in which you talked about songwriting as more craft than therapy, something abstract from yourself. So it’s new to hear you say that vulnerability is the main or one of the thrust of the new album [Devotion].

I felt like the theme of the first record is that I’m in control. And on this record, there’s a little more of a vulnerability and an openness to just not being in control. That seems to be a theme. There’s a lot of that on that record [Emotions and Math], where it feels like just wanting to be by myself. This is a different phase of my life: being in love and caring for my family, too, and not really having anything to defend or be afraid of. It’s kind of scary to know to be vulnerable sometimes. Especially when you start to realize more as you make music that people are looking at you—the listeners are looking at you to gain something. Hopefully when you watch a TV show or you watch a film or you listen to a record, you’re different afterwards. And if anybody gained anything from this record, I hope that they were okay with themselves afterwards. Maybe they gleaned a little bit of just the ability to be okay, no matter the weather. That’s how it felt for me, to follow love in whatever form that is, and to take the bad with the good.