I'm a big fan of yours and so are a lot of my good friends. i feel a lot of connectivity between my creativity as a writer and yours as well as a songwriter and musician. i love how you write about love and life...reminds me of Frank O'Hara (idk if you have gotten that before) and Eileen Myles.
i was reading the notes on RSG on Apple Music and loved hearing about your process but i was wondering if you have influences that go beyond the scope of music. i know you're a big reader so id be curious to know how/if anything you've read has influenced your songwriting style&practice

i also wanted to mention that your music means a lot to me. i'm a black girl from the Midwest/South and even though I didn't grow up listening to rock music i have a real connection to it now in my adult life. Makes sense because blues and rock are connected and i grew up on blues/soul. listening to your music reminds me of the very special times in my life with my friends, growing up in Texas. and some of your songs feel like thoughts i've had, being actualized. just wanted to let you know!

First of all, hell yeah glad you are able to extract all that cool shit from our music. That is so special.

I like Frank O’hara but I actually struggled to get into the Eileen Myles book I got a few months ago. If you have any suggestions on a good place to start with her let me know.

As far as authors that have really affected my lyricism I’d say initially Tom Robbins and Richard Braughtigan were big ones. More recently I’m into Mary Karr, Harry Crews, and Lynda Barry. I read Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen recently and it blew my mind in a big way. I’m reading Joan Didion “Year of Magical Thinking” right now and I can tell its gonna stick with me for a long long time. I have a toooon of books piled up to get to also that I’ll be reading and probably talkin about on here

I’m glad I’m getting back into reading more recently cause I did NOT have the brain space for a minute to ingest anything, art or music, that challenged me to think or reflect. Was too exhausted by the chaos of my life for a bit, but now I’ve really rested and settled in and can read again. It has been a huge relief.

I’m reading a lot of graphic novels and comics recently though too, and those are super inspiring to my writing recently as well.

Indie video games have some really incredible story telling too. There’s like so many cool mediums to be inspired by rn, it’s so exciting.