St. Vincent talks about new collaboration with David Byrne at Toronto Luminato festival

St. Vincent sat down with New York Times critic Jon Pareles earlier this week, discussing her latest collaboration with David Byrne ‘Contemporary Color’ at Toronto’s Luminato festival.

Speaking about her knowledge about Color Guard, Annie Clark told Pareles about her introduction to the duty during her high school years in Texas:

“I went to a huge American high school, not too dissimilar from Friday Night Lights except for it was in a bigger town, in Dallas, Texas. What I know about contemporary color from those days is that they weren’t the football team, they weren’t the cheerleaders, they weren’t the high school band. They were this really bizarre underground subculture of what stemmed from a militaristic dance, but really flowered into its own world. I knew about the color guard because they’d be rehearsing on the lawn and throwing the toy rifles and waving the flags. It was interesting because they’re throwing these things that signify violence, but they’re doing it in a really beautiful way.”

During the forty-minute conversation, Annie Clark also told Pareles and the audience about her recent misfortune at a concert in Knoxville, which saw her fall off a speaker during the performance. Clark says:

“I tried to climb a speaker that I thought was tied down to the other speaker and was safe to climb. I looked at the security people like “this is cool, right? I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna climb up on top of this.” There was a really cool security guard named Patrick who was there buttressing me, and I was halfway up the speaker, and I fell on the stage pretty hard and hit my head, and for a moment thought, “Oh God, Where am I?” When I kind of came to, I realized because I hadn’t realized that the guy who was over there was the security guard.

So I get up, and I’m looking, and I’m terrified, like almost in tears. “Where’s the guy? Where is he? Where did he go?” And I’m thinking, “I just killed somebody”. It was so horrifying. It was really emotional and horrible, and luckily he was totally okay. None of us had concussions; he had a little cut on his eyebrow but it was so horrifying. It’s one thing to think, “I’ll get a bruise, I’ll get this or that,” but it’s another to think that in a moment of spontaneity you could actually hurt someone.”

Watch the full interview between St. Vincent and John Pareles below.