Jason Fraley: Welcome to the newest episode of beyond the fame with Jason Fraley. I'm your host Jason Fraley picking the brains of the top filmmakers, musicians, and artists of our time. Grammy nominee Regina Spektor performs live at Wolf Trap in Vienna, Virginia this Thursday night. She joined me to discuss her childhood journey from the Soviet Union to the United States, where a generous couple on the New York subway gifted her a music education, sparking an indie pop career that's evolved into hit TV themes in Hollywood. Regina Spektor, hey, thank you so much for joining us on WTOP in DC. 

Regina Spektor: Thank you so much for having me. 

JF: We are talking because you are coming to Virginia to play Wolf Trap on Thursday, August 3rd. Aimee Mann will be on the bill with you. So that's a that's a big deal. What can we expect from the show? Is it a little of the greatest hits or is it mostly, you know, stuff from the new album Home, before and after? 

RS: You know, it's kind of a good mix. I usually just do everything spanning all eras. And of course, I'm very excited to share the new music. So I've been playing a good chunk of that too. 

JF: Awesome. And that includes "Becoming All Alone" and off of Home, and before and after. What remind our listeners, if there's some newcomers to your music, we're going to introduce them here. What was that a pandemic project? What you know, how did that come together? 

RS: Well, actually, I was I was due to start recording my new record, you know, on April 1st of 2020. [laughs]

JF: Then world went to hell. 

RS: Yeah, so so nothing huge changed, right? 

JF: Yeah. 

RS: And so that was actually, it was an interesting thing because as a New Yorker, you know, like, we kind of got hit first. And we were, I remember talking to John, because the producer of the record, he he was in LA, and actually we made it remotely. So he he stayed in LA. But I remember him being like, "no", you know, "I think I think I could still fly out and make it". 

And I was like, "you don't understand what's going on here". Because it took a little while for people to figure out how how fast it was spreading, how many people were getting sick. So I think New Yorkers sort of just got super hit fast. And but I definitely told them like, "hey, trust me", like, and then of course, just a week later, everything was just shut down. And and yeah, nobody was making any trips anywhere. 

JF: Oh my god. Yeah, it's it's crazy. And we should remind everyone, I mean, you mentioned being in New York, but you were actually born in Moscow in 1980. And then your family moved to the Bronx, what '89 perestroika time. 

RS: This was even, you know, Russia just invaded Ukraine. So I mean, I mean, you've been through a lot in the last couple years with the pandemic. Oh my gosh. But remind our listeners, did you know, did did did that interrupt, you know, your classical piano training? Because you had started when you were in Russia, right before you moved here? 

Yeah. So I I started playing piano when I was six. And then when we we ended up leaving in 1989, and we came to the United States as refugees. Yeah, during perestroika. 

And it was still Soviet Union. And then, you know, I kind of started believing that I wouldn't get to study anymore. But luckily, my dad met an incredible, generous man on a subway who happened to be a violinist, and his wife was a pianist. 

And then they proceeded to gift me my music education. So good people make the world go around. And you mentioned this, you mentioned this horrendous war in Ukraine, which has been, you know, breaking all our hearts for this all this time now. It's really hard for me to believe because when I was leaving the Soviet Union, it just really, it really felt like things were going to turn around. 

And there was going to be this incredible awakening and people were sort of, there was going to be a shift of freedom and a kind of a chance. And the idea that it's actually clamped down, and it's even much less free, and much scarier than what I left is very hard for me to, to sort of really understand how, how, how does something like that happen? And I think that the feeling that I walk away from it all with is that you just have to be vigilant and you have to really be kind and gentle in your life. And remember, remember that your neighbors, you know, your neighbors are, you know, to be kind and accepting of people because these things, they shift on a dime and people are always ready to, to use scare tactics and to vilify other people. And, you know, through that wage war and enslave entire huge nations. It's just terrifying. 

JF: Yeah, it's such a good point. And thanks for painting that picture because yeah, I guess '89 was right around the time that the Berlin Wall fell and you're moving over here. And like, and we, we maybe we all had more hope of cooperation with East and West back then. And we're not here to talk about geopolitics too much.

RS: [laughs] No.

JF: But you know, we can't, you know, elephant in the room, I guess. But, but you know, so you're in New York, then you're coming up in the indie scene, you self-release those first three albums, Soviet Kitsch, all that kind of ties in that one song, "Us", was great off of that. And we was in the 500 days of Summer soundtrack, all that good stuff. But tell me about that, there Begin to Hope that was a huge one for you. I think it went gold, you know, "On the Radio" and "Samson" and "Better" all that stuff. But tell me, I guess the one we should talk about is "Fidelity". Everyone remembers it breaks my heah-ah-art. How'd you get the idea to kind of, you know, staccato the ah-ah-ah? 

RS: You know, I don't, I don't even know. I think that I've always, because I came from playing music just by myself. And I heard so, so many different instruments that I had no access to, you know, I was, it was just me and a piano or me and a keyboard for a really long time. 

I didn't have any money for any kind of budgets to make records. Everything was sort of self-made and self-released. And I think that because I just loved playing around and experimenting with things and I needed these other sounds, I would just play with what I had, which was, you know, maybe on one song it was a drumstick on a chair, you know, and I figured out how to do that on a song on Soviet Kitsch. And then other times I would just make, try to get as much as I could out of the piano and out of my voice. And that's probably where all the sound making came from. It was just me implying other instruments. 

JF: Right, the voice as an instrument itself. 

RS: Yeah. 

JF: Well, we have to ask, my listeners will kill me if I don't ask about the big TV themes. You know, you did little boxes, became the title song of Weeds on Showtime. 

And then of course you've got time, was like Grammy nominated TV theme for Netflix's Orange Is the New Black. How did those, you know, those crossovers happen? I mean, did those networks reach out and say we need a theme? Or in some case, I guess it was already written and was used later, I guess. 

RS: Well, you know, for "Little Boxes", that was for Weeds. And Weeds was created by Genji Cohen, who also created Orange Is the New Black. And Genji is, at that time, she was just, you know, this person I didn't know well, but who liked my songs. And for "Little Boxes", they had the idea of having lots of different people cover them. So I just tried to do my own sort of version of it. But when it came time for Orange, Genji reached out to me. And by then we had become friends. And she said that she could just really hear me trying to write something for it. 

So we met in a cafe in Manhattan. And she just told me some of the stories of the show. And as she was telling it to me, I just started hearing things in my head. 

And then I really didn't know what I was going to write was going to be right for her or for what they were doing. But then I went on tour and they kept sending me little sort of like episodes that weren't even fully finished, like with the finishing touches, with the music fully in or with the coloring or any of that. But I just got so hooked on waiting in my inbox for those episodes to come. I just fell in love with the show so purely that the music just kind of came really fast. 

And then lucky for me, she loved it and used it. I was just so happy because I was so amazed by that show because it had so many incredible women in it from all different. It was the most diverse show I'd ever seen on television. And also the writing and the acting, it was just so hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time. It was just so it was so Genji. She's really brilliant. 

JF: Absolutely. Well, real quick about "Laughing With" on the leftovers. Another TV show. This is going to have to be the last question, but "No one laughs at God in a hospital. No one's laughing at God in a war. No one's laughing at God when they're starving or freezing or so very poor". That is a goosebumps moment when you're watching that show. And then when you listen to the song over and over again, I know we're tight on time, but just real quick, how did that come to you? It's beautiful. 

RS: I just think that that was the way that people use to me, like writing a song and then having somebody that happened in Leeds, for example, write an episode because they were inspired by a song or or envisioning how to use a song that you wrote in a scene, in a film or in a television show. It's one of the greatest gifts. Or when I see people dancing, like choreographing dances or ice skating to my music or any kind of a creative act, like I just think what a musician wants most in the world is for whatever they made to be useful to someone in some way. And to have other art come out of it is just so extra special. So I just I love, I love when these songs get used. And by getting used, it doesn't have to be just in television or in film. 

It could also just be somebody leaning on a song because they had a hard day or they want to dance around the room and have a blast. Like I just to me the idea of just something getting to make something that somebody else uses is just the greatest thing in the world. Yeah, you know, and just as an aside, I want to say that since, you know, I get this tiny moment to speak to the public. I just think that all these writers and all these actors work so hard. And what they give is so much. And we really do need to stand in solidarity with them. 

It makes me really sick that there are people who are collecting, who CEOs of these huge studios, who are sitting and collecting these multi-million dollar paychecks every year and who are saying things like, well, let's just wait and see the writers start to get evicted. Let's starve them out. That's not the American way. 

That should not be allowed here. We are not a country that is is is interested in starving our artists. We love our artists. And if anything, the pandemic showed how much we need television and film and music to get us through these things. We love these people. We don't want to we don't want to make their life miserable. So I just stand in solidarity with the strikes in a very huge way. 

JF: I'm with you. And yeah, it's the streaming revolution that took over. I mean, when you were doing Orange Is the New Black, Netflix was really pretty new. But yeah, and that revolution just kind of changed everything. 

But yes, hopefully we can get that straightened out. Thank you so much for joining us. There's so much we didn't, you know, didn't even have time for like "All the Rowboats" and Kubo and the Two Strings with that awesome "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" cover. So great. But thank you so much for joining us for a wide ranging conversation. I really appreciate it. 

RS: Thank you so much, Jason. It's been a pleasure. 

JF: All right, Thursday, August 3rd, Wolf Trap, Virginia, Regina Spektor. Everybody get your tickets. Thanks. Thanks so much for listening to Beyond the Fame with Jason Fraley. Our theme music is Scott Buckley's "Clarion". Remember to give us a five star rating if you like what you hear.