At that point we lived out of our big blue van. I remember staying with all kinds of characters for a while, all around the Midwest. We stayed in Coon Rapids [Minnesota] in a tiny apartment with this Russian family: two parents and their five little kids, then three of us kids and my parents in a two bedroom. We stayed with these two women who were living this Amish lifestyle, so my sister and I had to wear dresses and scarves around our heads. I remember when my dad said we could wear pants—I was so stoked because I was a tomboy. I went straight into wearing long, baggy shorts and backwards hats.

We lived in 14 different houses until I was 8, renting here and there. My dad suddenly had this realization about the religious stuff. He felt like he’d been deceived and he was almost throwing religion off himself. It was like this pendulum that had swung all the way to one side with being repressed and pent up, so it just had to go to the other. My parents became very open, and it was a traumatic shift. We went from not celebrating any holidays to having our first Christmas and Halloween when I was 8 or 9.

At that point my parents bought a house [in the Minneapolis suburbs], but right before we bought the house, my dad was like, “We’re selling everything and moving into a bus, this is what God is telling us to do.” So, we sold all of it. And then, sure enough, that wasn’t what we were supposed to do. When we moved into the house, we just didn’t have anything, only lawn chairs in the living room, blankets and pillows to sleep on.

The first song I wrote, when I was 8, was about feeling really angry—like the weight of everything on my shoulders. That’s something I’ve always tended to do. I’m the oldest of three and I still do it. It was like, “The pile of things I got to do stacks up to the sun. I'm angry at the world. I just want this feeling to be gone. I'm not sure that I can take it anymore.” Then the chorus was like, “That's just the way life is sometimes.” My first few songs were about that—always thinking about life from outside of it. A lot of my perspective had to do with my dad because he was always having philosophical discussions with me, asking questions and encouraging me to ask questions.

He’s a songwriter and he would spend so many nights getting in these trances on the guitar or piano where he wouldn’t want to stop. That meditation—where the most important thing was following the path of inspiration and getting everything you can before it disappears—really seeped into me. He would always talk about the muse and how it will visit you if you put your soul in a certain state. On some level he was consciously giving me this tool for healing, but I’m not sure if he realized that it would become my main form of survival.

When I was little, he taught me everything he knew—basic chords but also chords and melodies that aren’t typical to learn in your first stages of playing guitar. He also had this way of recognizing his own shortcomings and bringing in teachers. My sister, brother, and I all took voice lessons, and we all practiced karate. He always wanted me to be independent and fearless. He taught me the tools to never be alone in any place, how to read people intuitively. When I was 12, he would put me on a bus to Minneapolis, and I would transfer in St. Paul and take another bus to go hang out with this musician and stay-at-home dad, who would show me records and work on songwriting with me. My dad would also take me to open mic nights, and I would play bars when I was 12.