Tori Amos: Piece by Piece

by Amos, Tori

  ANN: Despite the daunting economics of touring, Amos makes choices that others might consider luxurious—and not only for herself. Creating a nurturing environment, she allows for everyone in the caravan to maintain health and inner harmony.

  JON EVANS:

  Playing music is hard work, you know! There are so many things going on during a performance, and you have to be able to concentrate. Getting sleep helps. Tori never drinks before she goes onstage. Matt or I might have a beer or a glass of wine or something, but we never really indulge. Especially with all the travel—this tour is so much traveling, often on really bad roads. You can end up with serious sleep deprivation. Like you'd actually get shaky and your insides feel like they're just trembling; it's the worst feeling. But you have to keep up with this pace. You can't stop and say, you know, “You guys, I'm going to go to a spa for three days and regroup.” You have to keep going. You can't get sick. You just have to take care. So you try to sleep when you can and eat as well as you can. Sometimes it's just not possible to keep the regimen going. You know when you feel run down, you just want something that tastes good? That plate of fries is not necessarily what you need. Later you feel even worse. So you go through these little cycles, and it's really hard. There's no easy answer on that.

  ANDY SOLOMON:

  A tour is a long race, and if it takes a personal chef and a nanny to help make your life better so that you're not so beat up, hire them if you can, because this will beat the hell out of you. Whatever it takes, really, to preserve Tori so that she can keep doing it, that's what we need to maintain. Look, if she cancels a long tour because she's burned out, or gets ill, then we're all out of maybe one year's work and salary. Most tours get a crew signed on months before they go out, so you can't just get another gig that easy. She's made some really smart choices in that. She knows it all hinges on if she can maintain. She knows what she wants to eat; she knows what she needs to keep going, and she puts systems in place that help perpetuate the whole thing.

  People ask me if Tori's a diva. What is a diva, anyway? I don't know. Tori has always been very particular, which some people have a problem with, but I like it very much. At least I know what she wants—because she knows what she wants, right? And if there's anything to go wrong between the execution and the request, it's just a communication breakdown. So no, I never saw her in that way.

  TORI:

  Back when I was just a girl with my piano and a small crew, I would make the tours pay for themselves, but when you get a huge entourage, one more bus, one more truck, the costs multiply. Matt and Jon count for more than two people—they have techs who look out for them, and with their gear we need another bus, and now we have a nanny … It's big, you know.

  I guess there are some very successful artists who don't have their musicians staying in the same hotel as they do. I can't do that. That's not right, especially if you can afford it. Now what does “afford it” mean? Does it cost a lot of money? Are you kidding? Of course it does. Would I save thousands and thousands of dollars—six figures—if I had my band and crew stay in a Motel 6? Substantially. But it's worth it. We also have catering on the road, which a lot of people don't have. Most tours pick up local catering. With your own catering crew, you don't have the same old fried chicken and Sloppy Joes every day. You try to have salads and soups, healthy food. A vegetarian option, a fish choice, some meat, whatever. I'm trying to treat people as I would want to be treated.

  Mark tells me what the crew goes through when you pick up catering locally; it can be bad for their health. I'm hearing that local caterers are raising their standards in order to compete, which is good news. But I saw some of the women who work with me getting sick on Strange Little Girls because I didn't have catering; some of the financial guys advised against it. I regretted it, because everyone walked away really not well.

  MARK HAWLEY:

  After touring for a decade, I've come to really value catering as a big part of the team's social day. The kitchen staff knows each person, and we have all formed a relationship with them. They've got your tea the way you like it and you go in there and have a moment and establish a home away from home. It's the kitchen. Always the most beloved room in the house.

  ANN: The kitchen is particularly important for Amos herself, whose fairly delicate constitution sometimes balks at the demands of ongoing live performance. A touring musician is very much like an athlete, asking more from her body than an ordinary person would deem reasonable, needing to keep her system well tuned as she repeatedly pushes it to the maximum. Yet for most artists, diet is a minor factor, haphazardly approached. Hotel restaurants and truck-stop diners offer what fits into a busy schedule. Amos lived this way for years, until a lucky encounter with the chef Duncan Pickford led her toward a path that now sustains her.

  Pickford's approach to road food balances healthfulness with culinary delight. Fresh vegetables, fish, and lean meat form the center of his flavorful palette. Pickford knows where the organic groceries are located in every major American city, and he has created a portable kitchen that allows him to prepare unprocessed ingredients in whatever crazy corner a venue offers—an extra dressing room, a closet, even the hallway. An interest in medicinal herbs allows him to add another layer of nourishment to Amos's daily routine, as he prepares teas, tinctures, and tonics to soothe whatever ailment might afflict her, her bandmates, or crew members as they endure constant changes in climate and atmosphere. His special “Duncanade” keeps Amos's throat in shape for the daunting calisthenics of each show. He also prepares a customized essential-oil blend for Amos and her band-mates to wear during each performance, reflecting the elements of the region, the time of year, the weather, and whatever circumstances the set list addresses. Amos considers Pickford a lifeline on tour and off, and their intimacy is reflected in the fact that after he cooks for her, he often shares in the meal and her before-show confidences.

  TORI:

  Before I met Duncan, I wasn't a junk food junkie. I thought I was eating healthily, but I wasn't feeling great. That's because I hadn't found what was right for me. I tried all sorts of things—vegetarianism, health food, the macrobiotic diet. You hear from other people what's working for them. I couldn't quite figure out how to get the energy I needed to perform night after night. Often during a tour, we roll on three shows on, one day off—that's six shows a week, month after month after month. I'll also have a full promotional schedule, with press and radio appearances usually scheduled from the early, early morning. Radio shows are all about “drive time”—seven until ten in the morning. On my early tours, I didn't understand that certain things for me just don't work. I've learned the hard way that to maintain energy, I need to separate my carbohydrate consumption from my proteins. I don't eat rice or potatoes or bread when I'm having protein, because it doesn't make me feel good. I have to live in this disciplined way to meet my scheduling demands.

  Duncan makes the discipline delicious. He is ethnically Welsh, though he was raised in England. He's very much a modern Druid type of guy, and there's all of that pagan beauty in his creations. His heritage really brings him back to the properties of food and herbs. And he's been doing so much research on what, say, cardamom does, on the power of different herbs and how different combinations work off each other that build the immune system. The throat is an instrument. A guitarist or a drummer can get a cold and still play; I get a cold and sound like a wet mitten trying to sing you a love song. Charming.

  CHELSEA LAIRD:

  Tori is really drawn to Duncan, not just for his culinary skills but also for the healing aspect of his craft. By preparing tonics, aromatherapy potions, and drinks, as well as meals, he provides care of the throat, the stomach, whatever it may be. He's definitely a healer. If she's not feeling right in a certain area of her body, she'll tell him and he will go after it. Of course, having a chef on the road is a good perk, but it's not just a luxury. It's part of a regime. On the same principle, she'll do abdominal exercises in the dr
essing room before a show just because it makes her feel so much better, and we try to do some stretching. It all helps relieve a physically challenging situation.

  Being a mom on the road is really difficult. Tori hardly ever gets any sleep, and there's really barely any real downtime for her to retreat inside her own brain and just be there for a little while. If it's that five minutes she's got to go into the corner of her dressing room, even if there are three other people in it, she does that and she carves that space out for herself. She's really good at that now, because I think for years and years and years that's all she's had, and you have to do it. She really listens to herself. She really listens to her body.

  DUNCAN PICKFORD:

  When I'm cooking for Tori, the overriding concern is nutrition. It's my job to make sure that she's eating regularly—I prepare a breakfast smoothie for her every day, plus a preperformance supper and dinner afterward on the bus—and that she's getting a balanced diet. If she doesn't eat, Tori gets low blood sugar and then she gets very, very tired and finds it difficult to concentrate on what she's doing. And she reacts badly to certain foods, which could affect her performance, so we separate carbohydrates and proteins and maintain a certain regimen.

  At the same time, the food has to taste really good. On tour, it's extremely important to enjoy how you get through your day. If you're not able to eat the things that you like to eat, then there's stress over that as well as whatever else is getting thrown at you. After five years of our working together, I can sense what Tori needs to eat on a certain day. If she's a little down, I know what she really likes. She has her comfort foods, though they're not the usual mashed potatoes and fried chicken; more like caramelized baked tilapia with chili, ginger, and lime wrapped in a banana leaf.

  Sometimes you look at her and she's so tired. You just think, God, this woman just needs to lie down for twelve hours. Yet you know that afternoon she's going to go do three radio station interviews. And she's not screaming at people, she's not jumping up and down, foaming at the mouth. She just says, you know, it's my career; I'm just taking care of business.

  ANN: Dinner with Duncan is a key aspect of the intimate sphere Amos carves out wherever she travels, a necessary counterpoint to the public exposure of her per-

  formance. Because she protects herself physically and emotionally through healthy habits and the support of her team, Amos can be unusually open to her

  fans, who have come to expect an unusually high level of contact on tour. Amos herself typically declines to discuss her fans, but even after years of touring with her, her fellow travelers still marvel at her generosity.

  TORI:

  The relationship with the fans is the area where the least bullshit goes on. There's an agreement. They want this person that will be someone they have a relationship with. I can do that. I know what they need from her. I've got no problem with it.

  The key question is, Can you listen? You really learn from people's stories and can see, Wow, these are the people relating to these songs. So whatever the record companies are telling me these people want to hear, I have to wonder, what is it based on? Some nefarious demographic exercise that suits and bean counters calculate by monitoring what products people buy at Walgreen's? Not relevant to my crowd.

  ALISON EVANS:

  Tori knows many of her fans that are at the stage door for the meet and greets by name, and she knows their stories. She'll actually say, “Hi, John, how's your sister?” because she knows his sister is suffering with depression, for example. She's very connected to the ones who keep coming back.

  CHELSEA LAIRD:

  There is a posse of fans who travel to every show, and she does know them. I've gone so far as to send books to fans whom she's hoping she can reach with something they can relate to. She goes out of her way to make sure these people feel as though there's somebody that cares, that someone is indeed listening. They feel that connection from her so they continue to come back. I think it's just been years and years and years of taking that all in, and maybe, in a way, being one of those people herself—in need of connecting, as we all can be. Just really sympathizing. That's how the whole meet-and-greet tradition came about. It's that one time of the day when the fans all know that they can come and see her, have a chat—she tries her hardest to reach all of them.

  To be honest with you, I think sometimes it becomes hard for her to draw lines with the fans. I see her listening intently, knowing she alone cannot reach everyone standing in line, and wanting to desperately. It is hard; it's a fine line. The stage crew is ready for sound check and Tash is ready to spend time with her mom. That's where her great relationship with Joel comes into play There's a lot of trust there. He's been with her for a really long time, and he's amazing with the fans. He's completely that iron fist and they all know it. Whatever he needs to do to set the boundary, he will do. When Tori has to run, she has to run. But they all take it as complete loving kindness, because they just know how he is and they know he's acting in Tori's best interest. He's got a fan club, just as much as she does. There are people out there giving Tori gifts and they slip him the Starbucks card that they bought him. He is that line between her and the fans, and they love him for that, they really respect him. They'll send thank-you notes to him, thanking him for protecting Tori.

  JOEL HOPKINS:

  She's always wanted to go the extra mile rather than just coming, playing, waving, and leaving. She wants to have that little extra connection. I've always tried to make that work for her, to make it happen so that she can do that but not feel threatened in any way. I've told her on many occasions that she's my hero, because she never lets her fans down. No matter what else is going on, she makes sure that she can make them satisfied so that when they leave they're feeling good.

  In the infancy stage of the meet and greets, a small group would be outside the venues afterward. It grew into where we'd always just come out—I'd always come out first, some kids would have flowers or one would have a note, and then a note would turn into a letter from somebody else, and then on and on and on. In the beginning we'd usually have maybe ten or twenty fans waiting around before I would get her and Johnny to the car. I would always go out and talk to them and let them know what we were going to do, same thing as I do now so that there's never any disappointment with them, so none can say, “We've been out here all day and no one told us and that's not right.” They can never say that, because we always have that communication. There's a lot of respect on both ends, and I try to keep a close watch on the vulnerable ones.

  A lot of times I don't share their troubles with Tori. Sometimes I do, if I think it's something that's really important that she needs to deal with. If someone could hear something from her that might bring them out of what they're in, and it's something really immediate, then you know we'll talk about it. But you just have to be really careful about how much of that that Tori gets now, because it did get to a point where it was a little overwhelming. It's just too heavy.

  Originally, Tori would want to read all of the letters the fans brought, and she just couldn't deal with it and still function on the level that she wants to be on as a performer. You can't save everybody. I often had to tell the kids, “It's great that you guys have this connection with Tori and that it's enlightening for you and it gives you inspiration, but remember that she's also an entertainer. People also come to see her perform.” Sometimes some of the kids can forget that—especially if they're fleeing and escaping an abusive life experience.

  The feeling with every kid out there is that it's one on one. And they're all tuned in. Every single one of them. The respect for her while she's onstage, you don't see that with the majority of artists.

  DUNCAN PICKFORD:

  I remember once we were in L.A. for a few days during a tour, taking a few days off for Thanksgiving. We'd gone to the Newsroom Cafe for lunch and were in the kiddie's bookstore just across the plaza. Tori and Natashya can spend ages in there, just peeking at books and pict
ures and stuff. I happened to just glance out of the window, and there's this big cadre of obvious fans gathering. I'd been talking to one earlier on and actually walked away saying, “No cell phones!” So when I saw him in this crowd, I walked straight up and said, “Did you call these people?” And he put on this, like, really shamefaced look and wouldn't look me in the eye.

  Joel wasn't there; it was his day off. I had to handle things. So I walked over to Tori, and said, “Look, look, there's a whole bunch of fans out there and I don't think they're going to just leave.” She said, “Okay, I'll sign two things, no photographs.” I said okay. I was just quaking, because this wasn't my thing, dealing with her admirers. I was like, “Listen, guys, she's coming out in a minute, she has her daughter with her, none of us really appreciate you being here, but she's consented to sign two autographs. No photographs. Don't take offense, okay?” So she came out—and she was there for twenty minutes, signing everything anyone wanted, and the cameras are going, click click click.

  JOEL HOPKINS:

  Away from the venue, she's very personal about her time. She's never gone out on the town. Her night on the town is to go to a nice restaurant with Mark or with Johnny and Chelsea, to be able to just talk about stuff, about the show, talk about whatever they want but have that distinction between show life and private life. She's never been one to seek the limelight or the gossip columns. Not a chance. That's nonexistent. If it ever did happen it was something that she didn't have anything to do with.