I like complex works. They just keep me on a more magical carpet ride. I’m into not leaving the planet, but really traveling. Music can do that if it’s done right. Some records do that for me. I love Queen, Freddie Mercury, these great performers, David Bowie when he was in his Ziggy period.

It’s very strange when people break up because they don’t want to be together anymore. You break open the champagne and say see you later. But it’s different when you just can’t be together. I think when you are with a soulmate it’s not just somebody who you are hanging out with to blow time with. But you wake up one morning and you are making these gingerbread muffins for breakfast and you are dropping razor blades in them to just see how he reacts and you have to pull back and say hang on a minute.

And that’s really where the record [Boys for Pele] stems from; it’s being a woman alone and not being able to hide behind anybody else’s personality. I steal fire from a lot of the men in my life and that makes it fairly difficult and bloody. I didn’t allow myself to get angry and I needed to do that before I could kind of sit across the table and say ‘OK baby, I’ll make a margarita without using a lethal alcohol.

It is about excellence. It’s about every night. I don’t care where I’m playing, if I’m playing in Barnsfort, Wyoming … I’m sure it exists somewhere on some planet … but each night to go in and say, “Where can we go? Where can we take this?” that’s why you love what you do. Or you’re out there for all the wrong reasons, which is just to promote a record. And I’ve got to tell you, I’ve done 600 shows and three world tours, and it’s just … if I don’t love what I’m doing, I can’t do it for the newness anymore. My cherry busted a long time ago, honey.

You don’t live your life as an agent of the commercial dark forces.

I certainly go through different phases, from electronic to acoustic piano, most composers would die if they didn’t. However, as a true songwriter, I don’t write “just tunes.” Each work needs a narrative. It’s about the overall body of work, not just being a singer.

Well, you have to confront the issue that’s causing you fear. You know that saying, “If it’s too loud, turn it up?” You have to go into that place of… if you’re being intimidated by an idea or thought, you have to hold your ground and look it right in the eye. And that’s tricky sometimes, because whatever you’re confronting might be more slippery than a—well, I don’t know—and that could just be information, crap your friends are telling you about something. You know, you don’t… sometimes. Fear comes because you don’t know what to believe … when you’re facing a fear, I try and step into a place of neutrality, where everything doesn’t have to end okay. Everything doesn’t end with a hug.

I think you always have some regrets. Sometimes they’re little. It’s how you handle certain situations. I go back to that thing, “Be smart, not right.” I find that when I have to be right over being smart, which can achieve the win that you’re wanting to achieve, that you usually look back and wish you were smart instead of needing to be right.

I have my own parties. They involve being barefoot with a piece of fried chicken and margarita in each hand.

Society always allowed men to do what they wanted to do: drink, fight, rape, screw. Enough room for the dark side. At the same time women would wait frightened. When will I be raped, robbed or abused? Some of them turn as hard as nails because of that fear. You can’t reach them anymore. I was like that as well. But physical I’m in reach of course. I mean, that penis has to get in somewhere.

The piano is a multi-dimensional thing. You have to allow it to play you and you have to become malleable. You must surrender to the piano but, in the same breath, you have to be an absolute motherfucker. That way your playing can be as multi-dimensional as the piano; both thunderous and soothing. I’m not saying it’s easy but I am saying the instrument will teach you how to do this. It wants us to learn how to do this and to be capable of learning how to play it. But we have to be willing to be taught.

Music is my first language. Whether you like what I do or not, I know what it is that I’m trying to achieve with each work musically. When it comes to creativity I have a lot of will. It’s like the man would be going: “Come on Tori. Let’s take a drive and get to know each other”. Well, I get really shy, because I don’t have the 9-foot piano. And what if he gets to know me and decides he hates me?

The sad truth is there are a lot of women who are part of the patriarchy… . I’m thinking, ‘What has happened here?’ Gloria Steinem wouldn’t have gotten very far with us if we were what she’d had to work with. As a minister’s daughter it seems to me you fight off ideology with ideology. We know … white heterosexual male authority, the thing they abhor is a female authority. That’s what they’re scared of. They’re scared of Hillary. This is a male/God group of people. They don’t uphold the teaching of Christ, the compassionate half of Christ.

There’s this jungle called ‘Women in Music,’ and the women that come before you they have their machetes and they clear a path. Joni Mitchell cleared a lot of brush away with her machete in the ’60s to make room for so many who have come after her.

If you make a record and it’s nice - and I’ve made those records before - they’re lovely and blah, blah, blah. But when you make a work that’s supposed to push people’s buttons and you do push people’s buttons, you can’t get nervous. That’s where being around a long time comes in, the experience comes in.

A lot of people around me at that time were turned on by cheap come-ons, drawn to thinking that the Dark Prince was somebody who would handcuff you and give you the orgasm of your life. Well, he doesn’t need to handcuff you. It’s boring. Go handcuff yourself.

(Piece by Piece)