Tone Glow 190: Jarboe
An interview with the American singer, songwriter, and ex-Swans member about her early performances, Tibetan Buddhism, and finding a muse in a red-eyed vireo
Jarboe
Jarboe is an American musician and songwriter who first came to prominence as a member of Michael Gira’s experimental rock band Swans. After learning about various industrial bands from the local Atlanta radio station WREK, she sent a tape of her own experimental music to Swans’ record label as a bid to audition for the group. She eventually moved to New York in 1984 and played in Swans until they disbanded in 1997. Jarboe and Gira also released three albums under the name Skin from 1987 to 1990. She released numerous solo albums throughout her career too, including Sacrificial Cake (1995), Anhedoniac (1998), The Men Album (2005), and Makhali (2008). Jarboe would also release multiple collaborative albums throughout the 21st century, most famous of which is an LP with the sludge metal band Neurosis. Earlier this year, her 2000 album Disburden Disciple was reissued via The Circle Music. Joshua Minsoo Kim spoke with Jarboe on May 10th, 2025 via Zoom to discuss her childhood in Atlanta, opening up portals within you, and her most memorable vocal performances.
Joshua Minsoo Kim: How’s your day been?
Jarboe: I had a late night so I’m still getting it together today. I was binge watching that TV series, Atlanta. It’s really brilliant. I started it last night and I really like Mr. Glover, he’s very talented.
I didn’t expect you to say that (laughs). I wanted to start off by quoting an interview from 20 years ago where you stated that “defiance is important to keep at optimum level.” You then went on to say that your work comes from this kind of defiance. What’s the earliest memory you have where you understood that defiance was important?
I think it’s just inherent in a person’s personality. Some of us are simply born into that. I think I was always doing my own thing as a child. In school, I was an example for my writing, for my ability to read passages of literature out loud to the class—I was set apart. The other kids weren’t chosen (laughs). And in sports, I preferred to run track by myself rather than play games. I would say I was a loner and iconoclast from day one. I’ve always been fairly antisocial. A lot of performers are this way—they’re more comfortable on a stage or creating their own work than in a group situation.
Not only would I say defiance, but a certain amount of humility and openness is important to me. In Swans, it was very much an attitude of trying to break down a barrier between the audience and the person on stage. I think that’s what the band is still doing. Defiance can be interpreted as a chip on your shoulder or as something that is just who you are. It’s not something you’re achieving, it’s innate (laughs).
Are you saying that in school you were called on because you had a good voice for reading?
Yeah! They wanted you to bring a certain life to the words, and that just came naturally to me. Even in first grade they pulled me out of the regular classroom and put me in a special group of people in upper classes. They had me reading college-level literature while I was in grade school. I remember my mother being upset by the books they had me read, like Henry James and James Joyce and Hermann Hesse (laughter). I think I was just ahead of my age group in terms of reading.
Reading is still very important to me. I like to do it right before I go to bed because then my mind will continue with that story when I’m dreaming. So right now I’m totally engrossed in Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 (2010) and I also just got Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind (2024). I think it’s important to read several books at one time. It’s a good exercise for the brain. I also think it’s important to remember the printed word and not just focus, like a lot of people do, on social media. I grew bored with that a long time ago. I try to have a certain amount of responsibility posting things, but I’ve lost interest in it.
Why was your mother upset about you reading those books?
I think both my parents didn’t really understand where I was at that point, if they had understood my maturity level of reading stuff like William Burroughs. I looked at all this as a world being created. All the worlds we enter into—whether films or books—will come back and influence you as a creative person, as an artist. Without all that input, I wouldn’t have gotten into what I did. There was a turning point when I thought of becoming a climber, going around the world to climb. My brother died in a climbing accident, and I was with him at the time. It had a big impact on my life and seriously turned my world upside down. He wanted me to gain the skillset of a med tech and go around the world climbing mountains because that’s what he was doing. His accident changed all this.
When was this?
I was almost out of college at the time. Without that, I think I would’ve gone into athletics. I fell back on music, which was also encouraged when I was a child, but without that tragedy I probably would have been climbing the Alps or whatever. My mother begged me not to climb after my brother’s incident and I just said okay.
Do you think you would’ve done it if your mother hadn’t begged you?
His friends came to his memorial service. They were climbers too and came from all over the world. They said that they were going to take me out and show me the places he loved to climb. I remember agreeing, but then my mom came over, hearing this, and very emotionally said no. Out of respect, I had to do what she wanted. But I will say, it wasn’t exactly welcome when I broke her heart in 1984, explaining that I was going to move to New York City (laughter).
I was kind of rebellious, and that was a very bold step. We were doing a little art and music zine in Atlanta and I went up there for the purpose of interviewing and meeting Swans. They had one album out, Filth (1983). I was invited to a rehearsal space which wound up being my home (laughter). It was a raw space in the most dangerous neighborhood in those days. It was really hard getting there because a cab would sometimes not even take you to Avenue A in the East Village. In the ’80s, the living conditions were unbelievable. Living there took a lot of defiance and ferocity. We had a solid steel door with a lock on it, and many deadbolts on the outside. To even go out that door when I moved out there… it would be nothing to step over used hypodermic needles and puddles of urine and all kinds of shit. There’d be groups of drug dealers on every corner.
What was the zine you had called?
We changed the name every issue. One of them was Hell and High Water.
What was it like making zines, to have a community to focus on something creative?
That was pre-moving to New York and I had friends who were graffiti artists. They would make stencils and go around defacing stores they didn’t like and the mental health facility. They had a thing that spelled out “Defy Psychiatricks.” I never did climb up on top of billboards and spray paint those, but they did that. They were brilliant students too, and all of this was important. They had a space called The Blue Rat Gallery and I was showing stuff there. I also did a performance there with contact mics. We were into that whole industrial culture and movement, but what was interesting about this group of friends was that they had a radio show on WREK. These radio shows were how I heard all the music that changed my life: Swans, Einstürzende Neubauten, SPK. And I wouldn’t have been listening to that station if I didn’t know the people behind it. I wound up going on that show and doing extreme performances with effects units and a Scully reel-to-reel. That became the Walls tape (1984), which is a harrowing experimental thing I did. When I was trying to do the Swans interview, I sent the package up to New York and included that tape as well as all kinds of stuff about what we were doing. I think that got their attention.
What were these early performances like?
What I was interested in was going into a specific state of mind, like a closed reality. It was like entering into pre-madness where you are basically rocking back and forth in your own world. One of the artists behind Walls was one of those graffiti artists. Then when I met Michael [Gira], he gave me his writing and I performed some of those pieces. I read them and did a performance at an art gallery. It was a black room with a black curtain and you’d hear my voice in a creepy kind of way. I don’t think those recordings have ever been released.
So initially, I sent a tape of all the things I was capable of doing. It had all these vocal edits. What I wanted was an audition and to prove that I could be a member of the band. It’s interesting how it started out with just creating sound with the Ensoniq Mirage. What they were doing was, with cassette tapes that had sounds and atmospheres, literally using the foot pedal to increase and decrease the volume. The idea was that instead of using these tapes, you would create that experience live. It was a lot of sampling, and this was the first sampling keyboard. There was this big book with parameters and there was no screen—you had to look at frequencies. So that’s what I did, and gosh, I did the most brutal early tours playing in front of skinheads. I was kicked so many times, spit on, pushed down stairs, had things thrown at me—talk about being a woman in music. I’m kind of the expert at knowing what that was like (laughter).
When it was decided that I would use my voice, using the choral training that I had, there were, at first, the screams I did on songs like “Time is Money.” I will never forget the very first time I was singing. This was a club with a bunch of guys and they were going crazy and trying to kill me. This was my experience for a very long time in the band—people would talk over me, ignore me, shout at me, say obscene things to me. It was a long, hard battle before after many, many years until people would actually come over to my side of the stage to hear me sing. And then people eventually started applauding when I came up to the microphone. It was a battle itself joining a defiant, brutal group back then.
Were there specific things that you, Michael, or Swans did that got people to be more respectful?
It was when he decided to do a version of “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” the Joy Division song. That, with the drum machine that Roli Mosimann programmed, was very poppy in terms of what some of us thought. I was asked to do these background vocals on it and they repeatedly didn’t like them. The band kept telling me how it should sound and it was so not me. I tried really hard to be generic, and then they came back saying, “It sounds like a football cheer.” It was like, “Can you just let me by myself?”
That’s when things got a little negative between some of us, but not with Michael. Then they made a horrible video that got on MTV during the summer, and then Michael picked up the acoustic guitar and that’s when the folk elements entered the group. That opened the door to me singing more, but I think that for me, it’s a direct line from Children of God (1987) to The Great Annihilator (1995). There were some moments there when we really began to change directions. Even Michael said he preferred my version [of “Love Will Tear Us Apart”], the “Black Version,” and that was done at Wharton Tiers’ Fun City Studios. That was just me on the Casio and then Norman [Westberg] came in and that was it. I think that was possibly the better version because it didn’t have the programmed drum machine and poppy vocals.
Do you remember the first time you sang and really knew you had truly found your voice, where you weren’t leaning on influences or inspirations?
There are stand-out moments even in Swans. “When She Breathes,” doing the cover version of “Black Eyed Dog” in the Skin project, but the turning point for me was when I did “I Crawled.” That live performance was the pinnacle as I was able to showcase a story that I had. Four or five characters emerged, and the last bit of the song—and I could’ve gone on for 20 minutes—was going into a guttural growl. That was done with no effects whatsoever. You’re going from breathy to a lost, little girl and then a demon coming forward and having his way with her. That was when I was truly set free and in my own world. And I would say that was theatrical in some of the voices I used, but I took it as far as I could without any complaint from Michael—he knew he couldn’t fire me at that point, and I knew I could get away with what I wanted to get away with. I took it to the nth degree, and I could’ve gone on doing that kind of thing, but he decided to terminate the project at the time.
So you were set free, but what was constraining you previously?
My body posture, how I performed, how I styled my hair—I was told what to do. He didn’t want me to be too theatrical, but I was there when he was walking around on all fours either in long underwear or in the nude, sticking his ass in people’s faces. So it’s like, at what point do you describe something as theatrical? (laughter). I just thought it was contradictory to tell me to not be theatrical when most of the time I was performing with him, he were quite theatrical. And he’s still very theatrical. I saw them in April and he was slapping his ass, hitting himself with his fist over and over again. The audience cheered! I thought that was a reference to The Kipper Kids, the performance group, because I know that he really liked them.
What was it like to then have the works as Skin? Did you feel free at all then?
I liked the collaborative aspect of the Skin projects. That was a very healthy experience for me, and I also think it was important because, through me talking to Michael about how to sing, he became interested in “the singer and the song.” It wasn’t a band anymore, it was just the singer and the song. That opened up the portal for him to feeling more comfortable with his voice and singing. But the main thing there is that I went out on my own, doing live shows and touring, and I realized how satisfactory and pleasurable touring could me, whereas it never was in Swans. People were getting along, people were looking forward to the next show. I have this policy now where there’s no drinking or drugs or groupies—that doesn’t come into my situation on tour. That definitely limits who you can play with, but they’re out there.
The booking people in Europe have been interested in me performing alone but the problem with me performing alone is architecture. I become an engineer in terms of my sounds and how I mix and shape them. I’m not just playing acoustic guitar or piano and singing. I’m not doing karaoke (laughter). I’m kind of thinking about what direction the live performances are gonna take, as I want to promote Sightings [a forthcoming album, slated for 2026]. I would’ve been out there right now but finding the right people is an issue. Part of me wants to have a really talented piano player and percussionist. But yeah, I think what I learned during the first Skin tour was that you can actually enjoy the touring experience. I did an album called Anhedoniac (1998) at the end of Swans, and that was all about those bad experiences and the negative influences of alcoholism.
Earlier you talked about climbing and how you would’ve been an athlete if you didn’t go into music. What did you appreciate about climbing?
It was about endurance and building up your lungs. Case in point: I went from Swans to eventually getting contacted by Neurosis and doing the album [2003’s Neurosis & Jarboe] and those shows, which culminated in London at a venue that I had previously performed in with Swans. I was very excited to be doing this but the interesting thing was that the rehearsals, and stepping out onto the live stage with them, was like a warm blanket. The familiarity of that electricity on the stage… whoa. I had felt it before and I felt comfortable.
The point is that, prior to this, I knew that it would be physical—having to sing with that volume of amplifiers around me. I started running an unbelievable amount every single day. I was limiting my diet, and it was very minimal and lean. It was like I was going to participate in an Olympic event. One of the songs is just me panting forever [“Within”], and I did that live, so to keep doing that and then go into singing… (laughter). Before you’re gonna do something where you have little sleep and are going to be on the move all the time, you have to train.
Did you run with other people?
No, I did it alone. And the park where I was running, I would go over there at night. I don’t like people watching me when I’m exercising. I don’t like being in the gym. It’s a meditation and you’re in your own kind of world. I think that’s very important, the aerobics. That’s where the physicality comes in. Another thing you can do is that there’s a device that Michael told me about in Berlin where you blow into it and it strengthens your lungs. He was doing that to keep his voice strong, and he’s been sober for a long time too so he’s very health-conscious now.
What are you doing nowadays for your health?
When the pandemic hit, even the park was closed for a while, it was ridiculous. But I discovered the Rogue Echo Bike. Its handles move and its legs move and it has a giant wheel in the front. I have my Apple Watch on and get it connected so I can see exactly how many miles I’m going. I think that’s probably the best. I also have an incline treadmill, which can kill you (laughter).
Do you think there’s a correlation between all this and your creative practices? Obviously you mentioned that it’s a physical necessity, but do you think staying fit has impacted how you think about art?
The things that kept circulating back to me in the past were romance, love, being upset with your lover, whatever. And that left a long time ago (laughter). Now I’m directed by Buddhism. I received the Kalachakra initiation in New York from the Dalai Lama at the Paramount Theater in Madison Square Garden. I have an enormous amount of Tibetan Buddhist books, and I think that opened up a massive world for me. Things become more metaphorical with the lyrics.
People want to go back to these human relationships. On Illusory (2020), a reviewer said that the opening song was a response to Michael Gira (laughter). The lyrics are to the meaning of self, so it has nothing to do with a man or a relationship. It’s interesting how that was interpreted, and everything I’ve done has been this big message. The collaboration I did with Brian Castillo and any number of my albums now for years, whether self-released or not, were subtly directing towards Buddhism. I don’t want to be proselytizing; I just leave little hints.
I noticed when you joined the Zoom, your profile photo was the Kalachakra Mandala. I’m curious, where do you think you’d be without Buddhism?
When you come out of a deep Roman Catholic family like me, there is a relationship that you have with Buddhism through the ceremonies. One of the closest people in my life was a Catholic priest, and he was the one who directed me towards books that combined these two elements. There’s no conflict there because Buddhism’s not a religion per se with a deity. In terms of direction, with Buddhism, you’re more tolerant and you look beyond the initial reaction and response to everything around you. That’s what happens. There’s so much beauty in the words and chants and mantras. It’s a discipline that can open a portal if you let it, it can stimulate brain activity. The words in my music now are coming from meditation and that place.
The newest thing, and I don’t know what the record label—Consouling Sounds—will think, but I fell in love with a red-eyed vireo. He came a couple summers ago and he sang for me every single day. He was literally singing to me, and he was on a branch. I would give him my undivided attention every single day for 45 minutes. The interesting thing about the red-eyed vireo is that it has the biggest vocabulary of any bird. It’s fascinating—it’s like hearing freeform jazz with melodies interspersed that never repeat. You cannot get tired of it because it’s not the same call. I felt my heart opening up to it, and I recorded it. And that direct recording—and I edited it of course because I can’t just have 45 minutes of this bird (laughter)—but it’s basically one of the main vocalists on the album. I asked Phil Puleo, who’s in the current incarnation of Swans, to draw a red-eyed vireo for the album cover. It’s this beautiful drawing. And I have a story on the back about the whole encounter.
So I didn’t just see this as a bird, I saw it as a portal opening up a new world of jargon and never-repeating phrases and melodies. People research this bird and have found over 10,000 different variations. This to me was related to meditation and the calming of the mind, so that’s why I put it on my upcoming album, Sightings.
It’s funny that you mentioned that you don’t talk about love and romance anymore, but there was this love you had for this bird.
(laughs). That’s right. I felt my heart expanding. And I’ve felt my heart expanding a number of times in my life. Once was in the presence of the Dalai Lama. You feel this portal opening up in the center of your body.
Can you talk about meeting the Dalai Lama?
I had encountered him before at university, at Oglethorpe. In New York, it was 1991 and they had events every single day for weeks. There were performances and it was mind-blowing. We’re not supposed to discuss the ceremony at length, but I realized that there was this relationship between that and Catholic Mass. So I went to that every day, and we were directed, every day, to walk. I walked all the way from Avenue B & 6th Street up to Madison Square Garden. It was beautiful because the sun would just be coming up and I’d see the monks with their robes walking on the sidewalk. It was such a special time in my life.
The Dalai Lama was sitting in his chair up high and we would go in front of him, after the initiation, and he would do a type of blessing. You’d go there and you would bow. This was also beautiful: at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine—a place I went to all the time because they had exhibits and performances—he received one of his Nobel Prizes there and I was right on the edge of the aisle and I was able to stop and actually, you know, touch him. I felt my heart expand, but these are just a couple events.
There was this phase I had where I only wore maroon because I had colored my hair a maroon-red. I liked the monochromatic look, and I went to this particular event at the Cathedral. There were Buddhist nuns in attendance, and they actually got down on the floor. It was like, oh my god, they think I’m someone important (laughter). I wasn’t trying to be that, but it was funny.
I wanted to talk about the reissue of Disburden Disciple (2000). You’ve mentioned your upbringing in Roman Catholicism and your interest in Buddhism, and I think about the lyrics throughout the album. You say, “This is the time for forgiveness / So father forgive” on “Forgive,” there’s a mention of an altar on “Scarification.” There’s all this religious imagery. Do you mind talking about how Roman Catholicism impacted you, specifically with regards to this album?
The first incarnation of my website had Saint Dymphna featured on several pages, and she’s the virgin martyr and the patron saint of mental anguish. The website designer, Cedric Victor, made this title for the website that referenced a saint: “The Living Jarboe.” So it was referenced in this imagery, and they say that you can’t really escape it when you’re indoctrinated into Catholicism. Some will say that when things go horribly you’re a Catholic, and when things are going well you’re a Buddhist. There’s a joke there, but it really is ingrained into you. There’s this idea of suffering on your knees, and you’re suffering as a child and waiting for communion. You go to school with the ash on your forehead during Ash Wednesday and there’s only one other kid with it (laughter). That sort of stuff sets you apart. And during the summer, I really liked summer school because that’s when they taught us Latin, and I think that it definitely had an impact, but the ritualistic aspect of the Mass is the thing that I easily fell very into with Tibetan Buddhism. There’s a lot of similarities there. They kind of merge for me.
Can you talk about the song “Bound”? It seems like it’s in dialogue with the trip-hop that was coming out of the UK in the ’90s. Was that something you were into?
I wanted it to be catchy. At the time, everything in media was “sugar-free, smoke-free, additive-free,” everything was free. I was thinking about all these commercials and being free, but then I was thinking about being free from the grip of someone on you, about being free from love. I wanted it to be kind of funky, you know? But I also wanted it to merge into a ’70s rock thing, and the background vocals are referencing the Rolling Stones. I went around seeing bands and performers, and I hired people for the shows that we did in Atlanta, Chicago, and New York City. I hired them based on their beauty and their ability to move. I wanted this elegant thing—I wanted models, basically. But I also wanted some eccentricity. I dressed the drummer as a Catholic priest. And the interesting thing about that performance was that I was bound—I had puppet masters, and these are people who wore masks and would move you around. So the puppet masters come forward and bind me, with my hands behind my back, and I’m on the edge of the stage, whereas Diana [Obscura], the wonderful singer and dancer, is free and she’s dancing across the stage. It was very effective, then, to sonically move from the funky into the rock theater. I was commissioned to do rock theater, and that’s what I tried to do.
Earlier you talked about reading and having dreams. Can you talk to me about how dreams impact your songs?
Yeah, there’s this song called “Dear 666” and I woke up and started making some toast and it just came out of me, instantly. And that came from a dream, and I do think it came from a novel I was reading. At the time I was reading a lot about women and Stockholm syndrome and why people stay in situations. I’m pretty sure that inspired those lyrics. I will say, once in a while I’ll write down my dreams, but there’s nothing more boring than someone telling you about your dreams (laughter).
I did a project that was never on a label or anything and it was called Dreams (2013). That entire project was about keeping a pad and pencil and deliberately forcing myself to wake up at 3:30 or 3:45 and write stuff down. I was training myself to do this. All those words on the album were coming from dreams, and it got pretty emotional, all the purging I was doing. I say that dreams are a purging of negative trauma and that kind of thing. There are lyrics about my brother Sam and how he died, and then I’m relating it to the death of people who influenced me growing up—John Lennon, even Kurt Cobain. Those were definitely images that were swirling around in my head. I really forced myself to make sure all the lyrics only came from dreams.
I always end my interviews with the same question and I wanted to ask it to you. Do you mind sharing one thing you love about yourself?
I think it would be that I check myself and don’t react emotionally. I think that’s how I’ve changed. There was a time when someone said to me that I was a slave to my emotions.
Did you agree with that person when they said it?
Yes. There’s a chemistry that can happen, and probably happens all the time, which is a sort of vulnerability that arises when you’re in a relationship without any boundaries. This opens up the person to slash you, to manipulate you. I no longer have anyone like that in my life. That can all heal and mend, but that is a chemistry you should become alert to, and then you can go into this mode where you say, “I am not going to be my emotions. They’re my emotions, but they’re not me.” I can use my emotions—as a singer, as a performer, as a lyricist—but I’m not a slave to them.
Some of Jarboe’s music can be heard at her Bandcamp page. More information about Jarboe can be found at her website.
Thank you for reading the 190th issue of Tone Glow. Dream, girl.
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Thank you for conducting this interview! It’s one of the best I’ve read with Jarboe - what she says is truly inspiring!