You Got Me Singing Jack & Amanda Palmer

Amanda Palmer
cannot be defined and yet she is the very definition of an artist who is supremely gifted in a number of disciplines: Singer. Songwriter. Filmmaker. Director. Playwright. Author. Pianist. Ukulele-enthusiast. Since first stepping out onto the world stage as a solo recording artist over a decade ago with WHO KILLED AMANDA PALMER in 2008, she has simultaneously embraced and exploded traditional frameworks of music, art and theatre. Her work is marked by a starkly bold autonomy, a musical approach that defies categorization, and an incredibly profound alliance with her global network of fans which has grown and strengthened over nearly two decades of in-person and online connection.

Born in New York City and raised mostly in Lexington, Massachusetts, Palmer studied experimental music at Wesleyan University where she graduated in 1998 with a degree in German Studies. After dropping out of a graduate program at Heidelberg University, her passion for street theatre saw her return to Cambridge, MA to become The Eight Foot Bride, where she busked as a living statue in full wedding regalia. In her early twenties she also worked as a stripper, art-party curator, barista, naming-and-branding consultant for dot-com companies, and dominatrix...all while honing her songwriting craft. She wrote and directed several plays and street happenings, but her deeper commitment to music led her to unite with drummer/multi-instrumentalist Brian Viglione as The Dresden Dolls in 2000.

Blending performance art with an array of sonic and lyrical influences to create a uniquely cathartic, often confrontational sound and vision all their own, Palmer and Viglione reaped kudos for their inventive punk cabaret and darkly original song craft. Their emotionally electric and raucous live shows, plus two acclaimed studio albums – 2003’s self-titled debut and 2006’s YES, VIRGINIA… – earned critical praise, hailing The Dresden Dolls’ distinctive work as both deeply unsettling yet remarkably accessible. The duo went on an indefinite hiatus in 2008 but reconvene every few years to play sold-out shows to thousands of die-hard fans across the globe, most recently selling over 7,000 tickets within a few days of announcing an appearance in London to celebrate Halloween in 2018.

Palmer’s solo career has since been aesthetically boundless and undeniably ambitious. In 2007, Palmer conjoined with long-time friend and collaborator, Seattle-based musician Jason Webley, to form a fictional pair of singer-songwriter twins called Evelyn Evelyn, releasing an eponymous album and graphic novel followed by a one-of-a-kind world tour later in 2010. 2008’s groundbreaking release WHO KILLED AMANDA PALMER saw Palmer working with fellow piano-banger and producer Ben Folds to expand the emotional range and musical parameters of her craft, prompting The Guardian to proclaim her “a songwriter who, at her best, can split the difference between PJ Harvey, Randy Newman, Kurt Weill, and Dorothy Parker.” Palmer embarked on her first solo tour in 2008, which included song-inspired theatrical performances at every show by a troupe of Australian-based performance artists – The Danger Ensemble – who work in the Butoh tradition. She made her debut fronting an orchestra in a collaboration with the world renowned Boston Pops Orchestra in 2008, and has since worked with several symphony orchestras around the globe, notably with the Colorado Symphony for a historic performance at Red Rocks Amphitheatre.

Palmer continued to juggle touring solo worldwide with her theatrical pursuits via collaborations with the American Repertory Theater, including an original workshop piece in 2007 titled “The Onion Cellar”, which she based on Günter Grass’s post-war masterpiece The Tin Drum, and a memorable, sold-out 2010 revival of Cabaret in which she starred as a gender-bent Emcee to great acclaim for over 40 performances. She also returned to her roots in 2009 to work with her beloved Lexington High School theater director and mentor, Steven Bogart, on an original play created, written and performed by Palmer and members of the Lexington High School drama department. Titled With The Needle That Sings In Her Heart, the two-hour play, which ran for only three performances, was inspired by The Diary of Anne Frank and the album In The Aeroplane Over The Sea by her fellow cult heroes Neutral Milk Hotel.

Palmer married writer Neil Gaiman in 2011. The two have collaborated on a number of unique creative projects in the years since, most notably their son Anthony, born in 2015 and named in honor of Palmer’s dear friend who had recently lost a long battle with leukemia.

The intimate interplay between artist and audience has been a key element of Palmer’s work from the beginning of her career. An early advocate of crowd-sourcing, she immediately saw its potential for celebrating audience over industry and chose to fund her second solo album via the nascent Kickstarter platform in 2012. Palmer’s efforts eclipsed even her own projections, with nearly 25,000 loyal fans helping to make 2012’s THEATRE IS EVIL the first-ever music crowdfunding project to raise over $1 million in pre-orders. Credited to Amanda Palmer & The Grand Theft Orchestra, THEATRE IS EVIL was a fully-produced, bombastic and deeply personal New Wave-influenced record. It proved another artistic triumph for Palmer, with Rolling Stone declaring it “one of the year’s best rock records.” Moreover, THEATRE IS EVIL made a top 10 debut on the SoundScan/Billboard 200 chart upon its release and remains the all-time top-funded original music project on Kickstarter to this day.

In 2013, Palmer appeared at the annual TED conference to discuss her revolutionary model of fan support and artistic community. Her stirring presentation – entitled “The Art of Asking” – struck a wide-ranging global chord, resulting in worldwide views currently in excess of 20 million across platforms. The following year saw Palmer expand her fan-funding philosophy of vulnerability and authentic connection into the New York Times bestseller, The Art of Asking: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Let People Help. The audio version of The Art of Asking, narrated and sung by Palmer herself, was released in 2018 by Audible and soared once again to the bestseller list.

In 2015, Palmer brought her community to Patreon to push the parameters of crowd-power even further with the creation of a subscription-based membership platform to back her free-flowing creative output. Over 14,000 people now help fund Palmer’s ceaseless productivity, with a growing list of patron-supported “Things” – an average of two each month – which include demo songs, entire concept albums, original films and animations, performance projects, webcasts, and more. Palmer’s patron-supported work has been miraculously diverse and marked by a deep intimacy with her vast family of fans as she shares her life, artistic process and behind-the-scenes process work. Collaborations with hundreds of filmmakers, photographers, designers, painters, theater directors and a wide cast of other musicians have happened at a dizzying pace.

Palmer has co-created songs and projects with musicians as diverse as St. Vincent, Cyndi Lauper, The Flaming Lips and Weird Al Yankovic; not to mention the irrefutably super supergroup 8in8 (who created an entire album in one day), comprised of Palmer, Gaiman, Ben Folds, and OK Go’s Damian Kulash.

Palmer is also the rare singer/songwriter who can also double as a gifted interpreter of others’ work, putting her distinct touch to songs from artists spanning Brecht to Bat For Lashes. In 2016, Palmer teamed with Jherek Bischoff for two patron-supported memorials, STRUNG OUT IN HEAVEN: A BOWIE STRING QUARTET TRIBUTE and a remarkable string quartet rendition of Prince’s “Purple Rain.” The Bowie arrangements were invited to be performed at the BBC Proms tribute to David Bowie at Royal Albert Hall, on the TED MainStage, and at Carnegie Hall in New York City where Bischoff and Palmer were joined by Anna Calvi and backed by the legendary Kronos Quartet.

Through the years, Palmer has also published a widely-read blog in which her readers encounter and discuss topics ranging from feminism, motherhood, grief, love and identity. She has also contributed multiple essays to The Guardian, The Huffington Post and she has guest-edited The New Statesman. Since 2013, Palmer has been an affiliate at Harvard University’s Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society. She is currently an Artist-at-Large at her Alma Mater, Wesleyan University, where she teamed up recently with long-time film collaborator Michael Pope to co-teach a class in creativity and filmmaking.

Palmer and her father, Jack, released a passion-project album in 2016 called YOU GOT ME SINGING which featured 12 cover songs from the folk, country and blues traditions, including versions of songs by Leonard Cohen, Sinéad O’Connor, John Grant and Kimya Dawson. This was the first fully-funded release made possible by her Patreon supporters. In 2017, Palmer released I CAN SPIN A RAINBOW with one of her teenage heroes, Edward Ka-Spel of The Legendary Pink Dots, of which Drowned In Sound said, “This collaboration, not at all random but in fact 25 years in the making, lives up to every terrifying, dark, colourful, excellent thing it could possibly be.”

With the support of her patrons, Palmer’s music took a more overtly political turn in the past few years as her releases helped to raise funds for a variety of urgent causes. Most recently, Palmer collaborated with Welsh singer/writer Jasmine Power for a searingly powerful duet that grew into a groundbreaking short film called Mr. Weinstein Will See You Now. Entirely crowd-funded through her Patreon and directed/choreographed by powerhouse director Noemie Lafrance, the short film featured the work of over sixty local New York women of all ages, sizes and colors on both sides of the camera. Along with New York Times bestselling author, neurologist David Eagleman, she also just launched a new podcast series called The Art of Asking Everything.

Amanda Palmer’s new solo piano album, THERE WILL BE NO INTERMISSION, is Palmer’s most ambitiously personal and intimate song-collection to date. Returning to work on a grand piano in a stripped-down studio setting with Grammy-winning THEATRE IS EVIL producer John Congleton, Palmer’s new songs cover the themes of motherhood, abortion, miscarriage and death, delivering a present and prescient cri de cœur from this one-of-a-kind Artist, Storyteller and Activist. The album’s release, along with a 100-page book of photography and essays penned by Palmer, will be followed by a world tour that starts on March 8, 2019.

Palmer currently lives with her family in Woodstock, New York.

This album contains no booklet.