MR: Well, once you’re writing songs the natural thing is to want to just embellish them. So I started producing my own records in high school; the early demos of a record I put out when I was 17 brought me to the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University. There, I studied English and Music and self-released another folk record when I was 19.

TV: How did you decide upon that specific school?

MR: For me, NYU was practical because I was learning about the industry, the business side of things, and production—it was really about being in control of my own career. But also, it was academic. I loved the idea that I could be in the city and be living with people who weren’t all studying music. It was really important to me to study something that wasn’t music as well and be a double major. I don’t think that any college is ever a perfect fit; I definitely had my ups and downs with NYU but inevitably it was really the place I needed to be. And I just kept trusting that.

TV: Why did teachers call you “banjo girl” when you first started at NYU?

MR: Yeah, it’s funny. They kind of designed my classes so that everybody represented a different niche in the industry. So somebody was the rapper and somebody was the rock band and I walked in and they were like, “banjo girl!” I had professors that called me the banjo girl for almost my whole first year. For me, playing the banjo was something that allowed me to break the gender barrier in music. So often I would go to music camp or just sit down in a jam session and there would be six guys playing guitar, but if I played banjo then I could offer something different. And I also just love folk music. In high school I listened to a lot of Sufjan Stevens and Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell and even people like Bon Iver and The Tallest Man on Earth. For me, folk music was about connecting with nature and the environment and being outside.

TV: How did make the shift from folk music to your current style?

MR: When I moved to New York, I went from living in a very rural space to living in a big city. I was experiencing all these new things and being able to see new live music. I went to my first punk show and my first DIY hip-hop show. Just being able to see music and take in culture all the time, I felt myself changing. It was really confusing for me because music had always been the way that I represented myself and suddenly I didn’t really know what I wanted to sound like anymore. So I actually stopped making music for a couple of years while still in school and just figured it out. It was really stressful because I was surrounded by people who knew exactly what thy wanted to do and I was really struggling. But I was patient with myself. Because, inevitably, I really did figure it out. And what I ended up with was sort of a hybrid of the sort of organic roots I come from and the city I really love being in. I feel like the music that I’m making represents me as a whole instead of a box that one genre could put me in.

TV: What experiences most heavily influenced your sound and helped you determine the direction you wanted it to go in?