Tone Glow 181: Macie Stewart
An interview with the Chicago composer and musician about solitude, sitting with discomfort, and her new album 'When the Distance is Blue'
Macie Stewart
Macie Stewart (b. 1993) is a Chicago-based composer and musician. Much of her practice as an artist today was informed by formative childhood experiences in theater and with studying the piano. While in high school she was in the soul-rap-rock band Kids These Days, which featured a young Vic Mensa and Nico Segal. After the group broke up, Stewart started the rock band Finom with Sima Cunningham in 2014. She became much more interested in free improvisation and jazz in the following years, collaborating and performing with various artists including Lia Kohl, Whitney Johnson, Makaya McCraven, and Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra. Her debut solo album is titled Mouth Full of Glass (2021), and her newest LP is called When the Distance is Blue (2025). This sophomore album is out now physically via International Anthem (the album hits streaming services on April 10th). Stewart will be on tour throughout the next couple months, including a show at Big Ears Festival. Find all the dates here. Joshua Minsoo Kim spoke with Stewart on February 26th, 2025 via Zoom to discuss her evolving relationship with playing piano, the development of an inner confidence, and the stories behind her new album.
Joshua Minsoo Kim: How’s your day been?
Macie Stewart: I’ve been recording all day, which is fun. I was doing strings in the morning at my house and I’ve been working on a new record for the Tweedy band, so I’ve been here at The Loft all day.
I really love the moments on your new album, When the Distance is Blue (2025), when you’re singing. I wanted to start by asking about the early memories you have of singing, of being enamored with the act of using your voice in this way.
Wow, that’s a really beautiful question. Two things come to mind. When I was in first or second grade, my best friend Zoe and some other friends wanted to start a choir for some reason—we just wanted to sing together. It was probably at the encouragement of our parents, too. I just remember singing songs, and I recently found a photo of us when we were seven or eight years old with these little glasses (laughter). It’s a tie between that and singing in school plays. I was singing “Surfin’ U.S.A.” (laughter).
Wait, what play would that have been in?
Good question (laughter). I went to a school called Decatur in the ’90s and it was very small. It only went up to 6th grade and each class only had up to 30 kids. The art teacher was the drama teacher and was also an administrator. She would write our plays each year because it’s expensive to get the rights to do a musical. She would just take her favorite songs and put them in a play and make a storyline around them that didn’t make sense. One of the songs that the kindergarteners got to sing was “Surfin’ U.S.A.” I remember being like, “This is my favorite song!” (laughter). Something about it just struck me. I’m realizing that my earliest memories of singing were tied with performance in some way. I used to sing songs with my mom, too, and I would just make up songs on the piano.
Does that mean you were always comfortable with performing in front of people?
Yeah. My mom is a musician and would perform in restaurants and bars, and I would sing or play with her sometimes. That’s just something I knew was a thing that you do. I don’t think I ever had stage fright; I just loved performing on a stage from a young age. And I think that was mostly from the lens of theater more than anything else. I did piano and violin recitals, and was taught to do that really, really young. It was never something scary for me because those are some of my earliest memories—there was never this “jump” into suddenly doing it.
What I’m hearing is that there was a lot of this communal singing. What was it like singing with your mom and in this choir? Is there something you specifically feel like you learned from singing with them?
With my mom it was about learning songs. When I sang with her, she would play piano—she would accompany me. Through my mom I learned that something you do is just learn songs and they become a part of your lexicon. With Zoe, I learned to just have fun with it—we were both goofy children. The choir we made, and I just remembered this the other day, was called The Pickle Choir. We just liked absurdist humor as children. Through singing with Zoe and in those kinds of friendships, I learned to have fun and be goofy and to not take things so seriously. I was simultaneously playing classical music with piano and violin, which was very serious, and I learned that it can also just be fun to perform. In that theater program, I was able to embody a lot of different personalities through singing, and that was a big part of my growing up and becoming a person.
How so? What would it be like to sing today without having been in theater?
That’s such a good question. I can’t know because I can’t go back in time and not have that, but I feel that it made me learn that what I can do is more expansive than the notes I can play. I learned how to imbue personality and drama and emotion into something, and I learned that this is really important. You can really expand yourself into the farthest reaches of these things. And it was about not taking yourself seriously, which is something I did fall into when I was a teenager. I became more serious about being a musician and said, “This is the only way to do this!” and things like that. It’s made me more exploratory and want to dive deeper into the deepest crevices of my own mind. And with other people too—I want to use my own fantasy as energy to keep moving forward. As I’m getting older and getting more into the performing aspect of music—more so than just playing the notes correctly—it’s like, “Who am I on stage?” That’s been a huge part of it.
Are there specific things you had to do to get back into this mindset of being less serious?
There was this whole nature of preparing for college auditions in high school, where you prepare a program of music that you have to memorize and learn to a T. When you go to auditions, they call out whatever they want you to play and sometimes they stop you after five seconds and tell you to start the next piece. In preparing for that, I was practicing for up to five or six hours a day on the piano and that was the only thing I cared about. Then I started playing in a band [Kids These Days] in high school and touring. I had this dichotomy, these two different pathways of pursuing music. I began to think, I don’t know if this one thing will ever happen again, and regardless of whether or not it is me all the way, I want to explore this direction. It opened up my brain. And in starting to tour in that band—I ended up deferring from college—it opened up my mind to other types of music and ways to make things. Being in that band was another type of “taking myself too seriously,” but it did unlock different parts of my brain. It forced me into a new world of creativity. That band ended and then I discovered the world of free improvisation and experimental jazz and went deeper into the rock music world. Not that I wasn’t already doing that—I’ve been in bands since I was young—but doing it in a real way as an adult was, like, “Okay, I understand now.”
I like the idea of always putting myself in a position where I can be surprised, and I guess that means being uncomfortable at times. You mentioned all these different avenues through which you’re exploring music. Are there different facets of your life where you’re also trying to “unlock” different experiences? Does this happen outside of music, too?
Definitely yes (laughs). Not to get too deep into it, but in the last five years or so I’ve been exploring my own queerness and getting into that. I have a really beautiful partner right now and I’ve been putting myself in this place where I’m like, “I haven’t fully realized this part of myself for most of my life, but there’s something there.” It’s really meaningful to be like, “I want this” and to confront some of those things in myself, to surprise myself in ways that I didn’t think were possible or could even imagine. It’s cool that you bring this up because I was having a conversation with them the other day about creating things. I was figuring out how, when I’m making stuff, like… what is it? I know I’m making stuff in a way that is truthful to me, and I realized that I make things because I feel an energy pulling me towards it, like “Oh, that’s interesting, I want to go there.”
I came to the conclusion that I like to sit in discomfort and see what comes up. I like to sit in this in-between space where there are things that I know are beautiful and things that make me feel weird and don’t know why. And sometimes I like to put them together and see what happens. It was important to have that conversation in this larger emotional sense of my life but also in this creative sense. All of the projects I’m doing, they may sound different or may be with different people, but it’s always this concept of, “Where do I feel uncomfortable?” I always feel this draw towards the light and also towards deep darkness (laughter). That’s a big part of my creative process—trying to unknot that. Or to put things in different contexts with each other and see what it means now. Or maybe it doesn’t mean anything, and that’s fine too.
When did you most recently sit with discomfort?
That’s a really good question. In a creative space or in a life space?
Should we do one of each?
(laughs). Yeah, maybe one of each. Even today we were doing a song and I was figuring out a violin part that’s more of a country-leaning song. I listen to country music and I’ve played lots of Irish fiddle as a kid, but I would not say that I’m a country fiddle player. I was like, “I’m gonna just see what happens if I put myself in this role.” I’m not entirely sure if it was successful (laughter) because I wasn’t sure how my personality fits into this kind of playing, but when you put yourself in those positions, you learn something about yourself.
What did you learn?
I learned that I’m closer to the idea than I thought I was. I also learned that if I’m nervous about a thing, I play too much (laughter). I was like, “I’m gonna do another take… but with less notes!” (laughter). It’s also just true with life in general—if I’m nervous, I’ll be talking too much, or maybe I won’t be talking but will make myself busy. And in a life sense, I’ve lately been trying to pursue a solo project and hold some other collaborative projects at the same time, like with Finom. I’m self-managed right now, as is Finom, and getting in that position and holding it for a bit has been exceedingly challenging, but it’s been a huge learning experience in terms of what goes into all of it. I’ve learned that I can handle logistics better than I thought I could, but also… you don’t have to do everything yourself (laughter). I’m trying to be a lot better about that.
Earlier you were questioning how your personality comes into play with the music you make. How do you see yourself when you hear your new album? Who is Macie Stewart, and where is she on When the Distance is Blue?
Wow, these are such great questions, they’re so fun. A big part of when I’m making something—when I am not playing on someone else’s work—is I don’t often know what I’m feeling, or I don’t have the words for where I’m at in that moment in time. But I follow a thread and, looking back—because that record’s been done for seven or eight months—it’s really cool to be able to see myself from a distance. I more fully realize what I was feeling in those moments, and when I look back at it, I see that I was coming out of a period of really craving solitude in a deep way. I was trying to invite people back in, in varying degrees of success. I was also trying to enjoy the present moment I was in, in any space I was in.
Listening to some of the field recordings I included, so many of them are just me existing in a space with so much life around me. That was a theme with a lot of things that I recorded, like hearing my friends laughing over there and walking through a crowd. And maybe I’m silent and I’m listening, but I’m in a space with other people. I’m there and present. It really feels like there is a longing there for connection, for inviting people back in and to be in close relationships with others again. The record starts out with a duo with Lia [Kohl]. She’s one of the dearest people in my life, and having her on there as well as Whitney [Johnson] and Zach [Moore], as well as having Dave [Vettraino] record it—these are all people I trust really deeply and feel emotionally connected with when I play. And I think that comes through in the record.
With the sixth track, “What Fills You Up Won’t Leave an Empty Cup,” it feels like an encapsulation of what you said earlier with regards to playfulness. And it’s still serious too. It feels like you’re playing a game and that it goes into the final two tracks where you hear chatter in the background. It feels like a track that elevates these minor moments. What do you feel like you gained from the period of solitude you had? And what do you do in order to switch modes and allow yourself to invite others into your life?
What I gained from that period of solitude is that inner confidence that maybe wasn’t there. It was a deeper confidence than just, “Oh, I can do a good job at that.” It was more like, “Even if I fuck up, I’m still a person.” (laughter). I don’t think that’s been necessarily present in my life. I have this issue where if I make a mistake I’m like (dramatically) “That’s my whole character!” (laughter). I was developing an inner confidence where even if I’m not playing music, or actively loving someone or being loved by someone, or actively making something, I’m still whole and can move through the world. Having that foundation now—even if it’s shaky and moves around—is nice because I know I can always go back to those moments. I heavily value independence and I don’t think that’s a bad thing, and learning that I can be independent was a good lesson. I was thinking about independence and interdependence with friends and loved ones.
I became less afraid to, for example, invite people over for dinner. Or at least I was practicing that, and practicing going up to people when I’m at a concert by myself. I’ll maybe buy two tickets now to something so I have to invite someone. But mostly, I think it was internal. Like, okay, I’m ready. I do believe that the energy you project and feel in yourself attracts that energy back. Maybe not all the time, but a good amount of the time it does. When I finally felt that inner comfort, it was easier to make it happen.
You mentioned that the album is eight or nine months old. Listening to it now, what do you see about yourself now that you didn’t see initially?
I can see that I was longing for something but I didn’t know what it was. I’m not sure I know what that is now either, but I can tell that I was searching. And maybe I was a little bit lonely. I haven’t fully thought through it either because I think I’m just at the point where I can finally see the album less as me and something that’s over there. One thing that I can see when I look at the record is a comfort in not knowing. Even right now I’m like, “Do I still feel that way?” Even if there was a loneliness or a longing, I think there was an inner peace that is present in the record. There was a cherishing of that. There’s a lot of space in the record and a lot of sitting in the in-betweens. But also, I was not trying to get out of it. Like, it’s okay to sit here for a little bit longer. I’m proud of myself for that.
Looking at myself and my friends and just people in general, it’s like… we’re all moving so fast. It sometimes has to be that way, but that constant urgency—the fact that time is always filled with something, with scrolling or sending an email—I realize that I miss boredom. Boredom is the most important thing. Finding things to do when you’re bored is important, and I think with this record, not that I was bored, but I was able to sit in silence and just be like, “Alright, I guess I’m here. Might as well just get a field recording of this weird frog over there.” (laughter).
With “Tsukiji,” I like that it’s a short field recording and then when “Murmuration/Memorization” comes in, you hear these strings coming in but it’s still so gradual and slow. It’s like, hold on, you thought we were gonna really keep going, but it’s still about soaking in the moment.
That track is fully improvised, and that’s all the beauty of improvising, and improvising specifically with Lia and Whitney. We have a trust among the three of us and sometimes it’s like, that’s where we are in the moment. We wee listening to the reverb of Comfort Station and what happens to the sound we’re making when we’re in this specific space. Thinking about how I sequenced the record, the field recordings feel like they’re guiding you. You buckle in your seatbelt when the recording starts (laughter) and you’re on this track. And then you’re in this new space that’s adjacent to the original one. A lot of this record feels like traveling to me, and I wasn’t home very much during the making of this record. I think that idea is present in where these pieces were recorded and how they were put together.
Is there anything we didn’t talk about today that you think is important to mention?
I grew up playing piano and that was my baby for so long—from age three to nineteen. When I was in Kids These Days and touring, there was still this part of my brain that was like, “I’m still gonna go to college for piano.” I was always practicing on the road, wherever we were staying. I fell out of love with it in a very real way when I was 19 or 20. I was like, okay, I’m playing keys in this band, but I don’t like the textures that I have, I’ve heard it the same way for 20 years at this point. And I didn’t like how it sounded on records. I like it now, but there was a moment when I was like, “Get it away from me.” I felt boxed in by this thing, and nothing I wanted to make sounded like what I wanted to make. And that’s definitely part of why me and Sima [Cunningham] started Finom—we were feeling a similar way about the piano and wanted to play guitar, which we didn’t know how to play at the time. Now I’m like, I’ve played guitar for ten years and I want to go back (laughter).
I played in this band called Marker with Ken Vandermark and I played keys and organ and Wurlitzer. In playing with that band, I started running into prepared piano players and prepared clavinet players and people doing crazy shit with the piano. I was like, “What?!” I didn’t know you could do that, and I don’t know why I didn’t know that. I wanted to try it, and that’s how this whole thing unlocked for me—I was like, I’m gonna return to my first instrument. I’ve spent more hours of my life playing piano than anything else. I was returning to it with a different mindset, from a different angle.
I’m wondering what it was like to return to it. I imagine it feels like going back to a childhood home, or running into an old friend you haven’t seen in years.
I love that framing because it is a relationship. It may be an inanimate object but it’s really emotional. I learned so many things about the sounds I’m interested in and, coming back to it, I knew how to work this thing to get what I want out of it, instead of feeling inhibited by my training and feeling like I must play it in this specific way because of the way I learned how to do so. I felt like it was opening up things for me. I feel like that happened when I was a kid, but there came a point when it folded back in on itself. And now, I know myself better so I don’t feel controlled by outside forces in trying to make something with it. It’s funny, I had a rehearsal for the When the Distance is Blue live shows, and we rehearsed on the grand piano in my parents’ house. I used to have string quartet rehearsals in the same living room with the same piano when I was 14. I was like, this is weird (laughter), but it was cool. I invited my piano teacher to my release show. I hope she comes. The piano is such a present figure in my life that I was trying to get away from, and now it’s like, “No, I love you, let’s figure this out together and see how we can bring our best selves together.”
That idea feels symbolized with “Stairwell (Before and After)” because I know that track was made with two separate recordings that you then brought together.
That track feels like the most precious on the record because it was one where I did not intend for the pieces to fit together. I had this thing in mind where I would put these recordings together that were made a year apart—an ocean apart—and to then have meaning when they were put together was like, that’s it.
There’s one question I end all my interviews with and I wanted to ask it to you. Do you mind sharing one thing you love about yourself?
That’s so nice (laughs). Wow. This is so therapeutic—maybe I needed this today. One thing I love about myself is that I can bring myself into other people’s musical projects, into these collaborations, and figure out a way to communicate their ideas on that scale. I love that this is such a base mode of communication for me. I love that I can communicate with people without using words, through music, and try to see their ideas, to see myself through them, to see themselves through me. I love that I get excitement out of that. I get deep, meaningful human connection out of those relationships.
Macie Stewart’s new album, When the Distance is Blue, is out not via International Anthem and can be purchased at Bandcamp. While physical copies of the album are out now, it will arrive on streaming services on April 10th, 2025. Her tour dates, including a show at Big Ears Festival, can be found here.
Thank you for reading the 181st issue of Tone Glow. Less serious, please.
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