Cassandra Jenkins is a singer-songwriter from New York City. Her record My Light, My Destroyer is available now.
Lutalo, aka Lutalo Jones, is an indie rock musician based in Vermont; Cassandra Jenkins is an indie rock musician based in New York, whose latest record, My Light, My Destroyer, came out earlier this year. Lutalo’s record, The Academy, was just released last month via Winspear, so to celebrate, the two hopped on Zoom to catch up about it.
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music
Lutalo Jones: Yo. How you doing, dude?
Cassandra Jenkins: I’m good. I got nine hours of sleep last night.
Lutalo: Nice. You’ve been running around a lot, right? Doing shows and stuff.
Cassandra: Yeah. I got home yesterday, and I just fully let go and really slept in. It felt really good. Where are you?
Lutalo: I’m back at home right now, just for this small window. It’s been really nice. We had planned to do this big release show in my hometown, in Minneapolis, with this band Hippo Campus. We drove all the way out there from Vermont, and the show got canceled the day of.
Cassandra: Woah. I’m so sorry that it was canceled — that’s a lot of excitement and anticipation with no play. All dressed up and nowhere to go.
Lutalo: Exactly. I had family and old friends and stuff like that. It just is how it works out sometimes, so I’m trying to just let it be. But it’s one of those things that’s like, no matter what we do, that was a moment that cannot be replaced. Like, that was that moment, and it’s now just not a thing, you know?
Cassandra: Yeah, I think that’s true. And it’s really hard to sit with that. It’s a hard pill to swallow. Events are sort of mythical creatures in my mind; there are so many factors that need to line up in order for them to happen, period. And then to go smoothly, you need even more perfect factors. But I’m curious — I know this isn’t the first time something like this has happened to you, and I know that it’s not the last. There’s always going to be wrenches thrown in and things that come up and cancellations. What do you do with that energy? Where do you put it? Is there something that you were able to do to take all of that anticipation and all of that excitement and give it a container?
Lutalo: Yeah. I’m very much of an acceptance kind of mentality, where I just am like, “Hey, it is what it is.” There’s always a moment of intense grief that I go through — I was just like, Damn, I really thought that something was going to work. I had pictured it so clearly. And sometimes I recognize in myself that I’m not the best at shifting gears, or just adjusting. I get super attached to an idea of how something is gonna look or feel, and then I struggle with that change. But I know that it has to happen, because there’s nothing else to do. And so for me, a lot of it just comes down to being really present and accepting, “Hey, this is where I’m at.” Like, “Well, we’re here. I haven’t seen my father and my niece and nephew and my sister and brother in a while, so I’m just going to spend time with them and enjoy what little time I have.” And I was like, “Oh, I’ll show my friends what the Mall of America is like.” It’s the most intense, crazy place. It’s kind of the worst place on earth, but at the same time, super intriguing.
Cassandra: Sounds like America in general. [Laughs.]
Lutalo: Oh, it really is. I almost love it, because it’s like taking the most concentrated form of it and just shooting it directly into your eyes.
Cassandra: I’ve actually never been there, so I personally would love a tour of that place with you. Maybe a virtual tour led by you. Oh, man — an audio-visual guide by you to the Mall of America? Your soothing voice in my noise canceling headphones? I want that.
Lutalo: That would be pretty fun. I took some of my bandmates, and there’s an amusement park inside the mall. Do you know about that?
Cassandra: No, I really don’t know anything about it. So I’m a perfect candidate for your audio tour.
Lutalo: I almost feel like I shouldn’t tell you about it, and then let you just see what it is in the moment. But yeah, in all, just figuring out ways to make the best of a situation, and also just being OK with things maybe not working out the way that I want it to be. What about for you?
Cassandra: I feel like tour is boot camp for that conundrum. And it’s sort of boot camp for flexibility of the mind and spirit and body as well, because it’s really demanding on all of those parts of ourselves. I feel like it is human nature to want things to go a certain way, and to have to grieve them when they go a different way than we would hope or expect. I think we have to give ourselves a lot of grace there; our brains want to be able to predict things, and we want them to go a certain way, and when they don’t we have to adjust. It takes skill, and practiced skill, to be able to do that. It’s not something we’re wired to do. I call it the “flexibility muscle” and the “letting-go muscle” — it’s something that hardens if we get stuck in a routine. I think when I’m just beginning a tour is maybe the hardest part, because I go from having a beautiful routine at home — I wake up, I have my coffee, I do my little meditation and yoga and then my smoothie — and tour rips that rug out from under me, and it’s like, OK, you’re gonna get five hours of sleep for x number of reasons, and then have to hop in a car and hope that traffic doesn’t completely fuck up your day. And that’s just the beginning of the day, you know?
Lutalo: Yeah.
Cassandra: There’s a certain beautiful state that I think can arise when you start to be able to have almost Jedi-like relationships with the constant shifts and changes that are happening when you have an infinite number of variables needing to cooperate in order for things to go the way that you think that they will, and a certain acceptance that it will never go exactly as you think. So I do have to think of it as a practice of not getting super frustrated in the face of things not going according to plan. It sounds like you do have a practice with that, that also includes grieving, which is really important. Before you’re able to accept, you have to let yourself feel the frustration of that and not just completely shove it under the rug.
Lutalo: Totally.
Cassandra: I like to also observe the ways in which my human nature gets frustrated, and observe the ways in which I wanna blame someone else when something goes wrong. You know, all of those things that my mind is going to come up with to try to deal with it, that may or may not be productive. And to be able to joke about that with the people that you’re with is also really important. As just a really tiny example, my partner came and helped me out with merch the other night, and when they left the next day, I was really bummed. And so my joke when I got in the car was, “I’m really bummed. The hotel — it’s all their fault. They made my partner leave.” It’s like the absolute absurd need to offload.
Lutalo: Yeah, it’s like this bottled-up energy. You kind of have to shoot it out somewhere.
Cassandra: Yeah. I also had just the most rough start to tour. It was as if the tour gods heard my most recent album — which talks a lot about touring and all the things that go wrong — and were like, “We heard your sassy little complaints and we are going to serve them right back to you.” Like, immediately a member of the band has COVID. Flights are delayed.
Lutalo: And there’s nothing you can really do about that. That’s the crazy part — when it comes to a band member getting sick, especially if they’re core people, you can’t be like, “Alright, the show will go on!”
Cassandra: Except that that is kind of what you have to do.
Lutalo: Well, yeah, you have to continue. But it won’t go on as planned. I was feeling that way — especially with tours, I feel like there’s a very intense, specific feeling that I want to be feeling when I’m up on stage. If it doesn’t work at all, then I might as well just be doing something else. But, yeah, having to adjust so heavily — even when I was going through that rip of a change, having to adjust, I was just like, Dang, am I doing something wrong? Is there a universal voice saying, “Let me just teach you a quick lesson right now.”
Cassandra: Right. You’re speaking directly to my soul right now, because I’ve been struggling with the same exact questions. Even though our brains want to be able to take information and say, “OK, learn from this so that it doesn’t happen again” — so often you’re served situations on tour that will never happen again. So there is almost nothing to take away from it, except for this broader goal of just being able to accept and and shift and be flexible. For example, I’m not sure if I will ever be in a hotel again when another person with the last name Jenkins will be given a key to my room and enter my room at 2 AM and wake me up. Is that something I can learn a lesson from? Not really. That’s just a random thing that’s going to keep me up all night before I have to do a seven hour drive. But it is kind of funny. I guess it wasn’t funny yesterday when I was really under-slept and tired, but today I’m like, Wow, how is she feeling? To walk into your room and see another Jenkins… I think there are a lot of things that aren’t going to give you exact lessons where you can say, “OK, well, every time I check into a hotel, I’ll make sure that there’s not another person named Jenkins.” I’m not going to adopt that as habit.
Lutalo: That’s wild. I mean, I’ve been on the other side of that before.
Cassandra: Really?
Lutalo: Yeah. I was on a tour and we were in the UK. We showed up at the hotel, and there was already kind of a disorganized vibe coming into it, but I was just letting it be. The main receptionist actually walks us to the room and opens the door for us, but he opens the door and there’s a man masturbating on the bed.
Cassandra: [Laughs.] Oh no!
Lutalo: And he’s just like, “Oh!”
Cassandra: He’s traumatized forever!
Lutalo: And the receptionist doesn’t even apologize! He just says [to the man], “This is not your room.” And he’s like, “Yes, it is! I’ve been in here for a while!” And we just were like, “We need to get out of here.” And [the receptionist] is like, “Oh, yeah, you’re right. This is a different room,” and then walks out. No apology, no nothing. Just walks out, closes the door.
Cassandra: OK, there is someone who has become completely desensitized to all of the various goings on of that place. It’s funny, I feel as people who both have homes that we love, that feel deeply — I don’t want to speak for you, but my home feels really comforting, and I need that as just human comfort. But I also live a very transient life, and I’ve spent a lot of my life writing about hotels. I’m really fascinated by them. I’m fascinated by the fact that you never know what’s going on, on the other side of that door, and that energy is shifting every single day, if not sometimes multiple times a day. I think a lot of people think of hotels as being luxurious. I have a very different relationship to them, whereas I feel like there’s a bit of a veil happening and I definitely don’t want it to be lifted. And in your case, it was lifted — much to the detriment of another person, and their sexual health. [Laughs.]
I have this song called “Clams Casino,” and there’s a line in it: “No one’s home at the hotel bar.” Just this idea that no one’s home here, everyone is from somewhere else — it’s a fascinating place to me. And in the song, I’m looking for these silver linings of, “Oh, you know, the show was canceled, but it was meant to be, because now I’m here talking to this person.” It’s very easy to want to find a silver lining in all of these things. Again, I think that’s our nature. We’re looking for a string to connect all of these events. And it requires a lot of that Jedi acceptance to be like, “Well, no, it’s random.” You know, random rules.
Lutalo: Exactly.
Cassandra: In “Clams Casino,” the line is, “I’ve been out looking for a silver lining, and I found a stray hair in the bedding.” It’s like, instead of the silver lining you find a gray hair, and it’s kind of there laughing at you, and a reminder that that silver lining doesn’t necessarily exist, and that’s OK.
Lutalo: Yeah, and there’s nothing that owes you an explanation, really.
Cassandra: Right, right. And there’s no one there that is going to provide that for you.
Lutalo: How has it felt to have this album out? [Talking about] expectations, and ideas of how people would engage with it, has anything shifted and changed for you?
Cassandra: That’s a great question. I think I wrote a lot of pretty — I wouldn’t necessarily call it “diaristic,” but I did get pretty personal on this record, and it is really funny now to be singing these songs for the first time in rooms and feeling them come to life. My expectations for this record, I think, were very unknown. I’m in a part of my life that I didn’t really see coming — I have talked about this period of my life as a bit of a bonus round, because I’ve had a few things along the way that really made me appreciate the fact that I’m here, and challenges that have come up with my health that have made me realize my life is very fragile, and life on earth is very fragile. I think I’ve been infused with a little bit of that humility and appreciation for my life. But nonetheless, I still fall into the trappings of wanting things to succeed and do well and in XYZ ways. I try to be compassionate with that part of myself, and also with other people who have those same habits. I think it’s harder and harder not to.
Lutalo: Totally.
Cassandra: But I’m amazed, and so warmed by the fact that my songs have been welcomed with open arms by people who appreciated my last record, and by people who have never heard me before. I have sort of two sides happening when I get to the venue — on tour, for example, we played a sold out show in Chicago and I was genuinely shocked when I got onto the stage. Like, I jumped back, because just an hour before the room was completely empty. I was just like, Oh, my god, where did all these people come from? But that’s why I was there, and I knew that was going to happen.
Lutalo: I know. But it’s definitely something pretty wild to experience. And it only happens for a few people, in the grand scheme of things, where you’re having people coming that want to hear what you have to say. Such a wild feeling. For me, for a long time around this project, I’ve just operated in the mode of, No one listens to my music or knows what what I’m doing. And that’s not to be self-deprecating or anything like that; I just can’t comprehend very easily that there are people that are perceiving me outside of my direct and personal engagement. What an insane thing to grapple with, that there’s other human beings living their lives and they took time out of their day to come see this. I think that’s so beautiful. And I’m so excited and proud of you for being able to have that moment.
Cassandra: That makes me want to ask you a couple of questions. I wonder, is there a part of you that is shielding yourself from others’ expectations by trying to imagine that no one will ever hear it? And if so, what happens as you do start to grow, and people do start to hear your music, and you have to acknowledge that they’re there? What is your relationship to that?
Lutalo: Honestly, I don’t read comments. I don’t read reviews, unless someone really pushes it in front of me. I have had enough people close to me that have gotten really hurt by that, and I know that I’m a sensitive person. Sometimes I actually want to hear criticism, as long as it’s insightful and there’s actually care and time that was put into it. I can separate the difference, so it doesn’t really affect me too much. Whether it’s positive or negative, I try not to focus on it, because I don’t want it to inform how I start making my own decisions, especially creatively. It’s definitely hard, because obviously I’m a sensitive person, so I do care about what people have to say. But I know preemptively that I need to be careful about what I really home in on and listen to. So that’s something I have to work through a little bit.
Cassandra: I relate to that a lot, both being a very sensitive person and really wanting to hear everyone’s voices. I think a big part of my songwriting is hearing other people’s voices and sharing those voices with other people via song. But I’m curious — this is a little bit of a side step, but I know your new record is a bit of a departure from some of the stuff that you’ve done in the past.
Lutalo: Totally.
Cassandra: First of all, how that is feeling to you now that you’re carving out new territory for yourself in new spaces? I’m wondering if it still feels fresh to you, even though it might have been recorded a little while ago. And then I have another question, that is: it sounds like one of the things that we’re trying to protect by not hearing too much criticism is our our sense of intuition.
Lutalo: Yeah, 100%.
Cassandra: I do want to talk to you a little bit about how you practice intuition in songwriting, and maybe how that came into your new record. That’s a lot of questions in one, sorry. [Laughs.]
Lutalo: No, I definitely I see the through line. The departure sonically from the first two EPs was a planned effort, actually. I really like progression and storytelling, so it might sound kind of goofy, but I wanted to lay the groundwork for people to have a narrative to follow. I started with a little bit softer folk, acoustic-lead stuff, and I tried to go very minimal and set people’s expectations with that, and then go a hard left and go a lot more gritty and tonally darker, just to subvert people’s expectations, because I wanted to prime my audience to be curious. It has taken people a little bit of time, I won’t lie. Some people are like, “OK, Lutalo is a folk artist.” But I never subscribed to that, and personally I never stated that I was a folk artist. I love folk music. I love soft music. But the goal was always to allow people to just stay curious about the project, stay curious about music in general. People have their expectations, and a lot of people like to quickly try to sum up things; I wanted to lay out this album and say, “Actually, now what do you have to say? What’s your thoughts?”
Cassandra: Yeah. “What Spotify playlist are you putting me on now?”
Lutalo: Yeah, exactly. And I don’t expect everyone to love every single song, but my only time that I have some outside perspective is like: I want at least one song to be for someone out there. Because the sonic throughline is that it’s coming out through me, but I just love music in general. And so I lean into that and hope that there’s something for somebody out there. I hope people search through the album and say, “Ah, I don’t like that one, that one, that one, that one. But this one specifically stood out to me, and I’ll sit with that.”
To lead into your last part of your question: intuition is everything for me. I’m always in this practice of trying to listen to this intuitive voice, because I feel it. And I also know the difference between the intuitive voice and my human brain. [Laughs.] I’ve seen through songs that were very human brain-led, and it always leaves me feeling like it’s very ego-based, because it’s about, Am I proving myself? Do I deserve to be here? I don’t want to create music from that place. I think that’s a dangerous pull for creatives — especially in this time period, with social media and all things coming at you, it really detaches you from any sense of self, because you see someone else doing something that might be fully right for them, and you might try to identify with it if you like it… That was one thing I had to check myself for: A lot of the music that I really love is not my music, and it’s not something that I need to go chasing. I can just appreciate that for what that is, and then allow whatever comes out of me to just be me. So then I focus more about making music that is just music, not genre-based; not classifying it, just allowing it to just be music and seeing where that takes me. Then naturally, that is what becomes Lutalo.
Cassandra: I love that you emphasize “naturally.” You’re not sitting down and saying, “What’s my brand?” It is a naturally occurring voice [that comes] out of practicing that voice, and allowing yourself to listen to that voice, first of all, in order to be able to express it. If it’s flooded with others’ voices, it is really hard to sometimes hear your own voice. I think it’s inspiring to remember that a lot of the information that we’re surrounded by encourages a sort of monoculture, and how important it is to have a diversity of voices, and how you really do have to push against it all the time in order to have that happening.
And at the same time — just to respond to something you said earlier — I love the idea that we think of songwriters as storytellers, like the sort of vagabond with a story on stage. But I love that you extend that idea of songwriter as storyteller into your broader story, and you’re looking at this broader arc, which is to challenge people into saying, “This is a dynamic story. This is not a brand that is easy to latch onto.” And as a result, I think what you’re doing is building a relationship with people in that way that is also as dynamic as the story that you’re offering. Which I think will hopefully, in turn, continue to support you, and that trust in that relationship with people.
Lutalo: That was something that I had someone mention to me, “You have to build your relationship with your audience.” When it was first said to me, I felt a little bit irked because I was like, “I can do whatever I want to do.” But there’s also a context for other people, outsiders, and that’s what I wanted to be able to lay out. Like, OK, most people don’t know me. They don’t know the hours that I’ve put into my craft and the songs, and the production work that I’ve done that no one’s ever seen. I forget that people can’t see what I’m doing every single day, basically. So I’m learning the only way that I’ll be able to have self-sufficiency, and be able to keep doing this for a long time, is to lay a groundwork where everyone’s down to just see where it goes. That’s basically what my strategy is. I don’t know what I’m going to be doing tomorrow, but I trust that it’s going to be fun and it’s going to be cool to see what’s up. And hopefully you’re down and here to see it with me. That’s pretty much all I can offer.
Cassandra: That’s great. I think the problem with trying to create a static thing that you simply execute is that, as artists, we’re not just here to execute something. We are constantly creating and shifting and changing and responding. I think going into that with that intention is to create a world for yourself in which you can change and grow, which is really vital to not only your practice, but you as a person.
Lutalo: Yeah. Also, leaning back into your work as well allows space for you to be able to just grow as an individual and reflect on how you perceive the world and how it shifts with time. That’s why I like the term “record” — it really is a record of this time. It’s a diary. It’s a journal.
Cassandra: I love that it really lets you know what it is right out of the gate — it is a record of place and time. I think that’s an incredibly freeing thing to touch base with. Because it is a huge effort to allow yourself to let go of the idea that, “This is my identity moving forward,” and to get really caught up in all those egoistic trappings. It can make the thing an insurmountable task, versus this idea that you’re capturing your lived experience and it is going to take on the traits of that place and that time, and it’s about exploring what that is. Also, it gives you the freedom to say, “There will be other places and times to capture beyond this place and time.”
Lutalo: Exactly.
Cassandra: I think we can lose sight of that in the world of music journalism and criticism, when it seems like a lot of verbiage like “career-defining record” — and that’s a real thing. I think there are songs and records that resonate with people on a level that is hard to quantify, and it can really define a person’s career. But is that the goal of every single record? If it is, I think it becomes very hard to make art.
There was also something else that you mentioned that reminded me that I think the songwriting process for me is often about recognizing a lot of these egoistic tendencies, and the difference between hearing a more truthful, pure expression of self versus the one that is charged with ego. I think songwriting actually helps me do that, because it’s a way for me to contain all of those voices, and be able to then step back and look at it and be like, “I’m going to call bullshit on that line. And that line is definitely you trying to sound cool — good job, didn’t pull it off this time.” It’s a way for me to call bullshit on myself and revise and edit and say, “OK, that’s a layer of defense. Let’s peel it away. What’s behind it? Oh, another layer of defense. Let’s keep peeling it away until we get to the thing that we’re actually trying to say.” I think that’s something that is really felt on the other side. I think we all have nervous systems that have incredibly intelligent bullshit meters that we can’t even fully understand. We share that with, like, every sentient being on earth. And I think that’s one of the cool things about music and song — it’s felt when someone is really coming out with something that feels unattainably true to them.
Lutalo: Totally. You couldn’t have said it better. It’s a vulnerable state. We all have our things that we overanalyze or overthink… I think I’m just bad at bullshitting, personally. [Laughs.] Even if I wanted to be able to pretend to be a certain artist, I wouldn’t be able to keep it up and I probably wouldn’t be very convincing. I would have no chance doing that. I gotta try to do my best to just do my thing.
Cassandra: I really feel that. When you’re phoning it in, it’s very easy to spot. I think that’s why it’s really important to take care of ourselves on tour, and take care of that really vulnerable part of ourselves, so that we are not forced to phone it in out of just pure necessity, that there’s space for us to share the thing that we need to share with each other.
Lutalo: I’ll leave it on this note as well: I think your album and everything that you’re saying is coming at a really good time for me specifically, because that’s something I’m having to reflect on. You’ve been touring quite a bit longer than me—
Cassandra: I’ve just been on the earth a little bit longer.
Lutalo: I really like to listen to other people’s lived experiences, because I’m very much of a tactical mindset. I’m like, “Alright, let’s consider all these possibilities and prevent as many problems.” But really, what you’re saying to me now is I need to learn how to listen to my body, listen to what I need and what I can and can’t control, and really consider what I am willing to step into and what I am not. Instead of just being like, “Well, this is how everyone else is doing it” — but then I come to find out that everyone else is struggling with it just as much. I can’t express how much I appreciate you sharing your art and that experience.
Cassandra: Likewise. It feels really good to chat about this at this particular juncture for me, too, and just have a space where we can process it all. So, thank you.
Lutalo: Awesome. Well, Cassandra, thanks for taking the time to have this talk. Let’s hang when I’m back.
