What's your favorite song to sing in the car?

All of them! One of my favorite car singing bands is probably Phoenix, though. Do I know the exact words ? No. Not at all. Do I still sing loudly? Absolutely.

Share a song that represents rebellion or freedom to you.

There are so many musicians that have created important songs of resistance: Guthrie, Dylan, Baez, Seeger, Simone, Billie Holiday, to name a few. One of the first exposures I had to rebellion and the struggle for rights in our country was my undergraduate environmental law class and when I first heard an album made by Utah Phillips and Ani DiFranco, Fellow Workers, around the same time. Utah Phillips was labor organizer, folk singer, storyteller and poet. His songs include poetic interludes and clever lyrics that spill out the history of labor unions and a call to direct action, and cover a lot of other human rights and environmental issues too. His songs and words are still a fundamentally important listening to anyone involved in labor organizing. I started out an environmentalist, became a public school teacher and then fell in love with labor organizing about 2 years ago but the seed for a lot of it was planted decades ago with exposure to Utah Phillips. It’s all connected. Workers rights are environmental rights are human rights.

I chose an important song about Mother Jones, an Irish-born American labor organizer, schoolteacher, union organizer who’s work was fundamental in several mining strikes and co-founded the Industrial Workers of the World trade Union.

What song do you associate with your biggest accomplishment?

I don’t know if it’s my biggest accomplishment, but moving and living out West as a young adult was an absolute dream adventure for me. I’m not sure which I love more- music, nature or traveling. Moving to Seattle checked all the boxes. We moved there for the music scene and the hope for jobs in our career fields. A lot of my early memories are tied up with music from that time period- discovering new music, going to record stores, seeing tons of live shows, going to music festivals. We traveled all over between Vancouver, Montana and California- from sea to desert to mountains. It was so much fun packed into 5 years. For me, Modest Mouse’s album The Lonesome Crowded West was a backdrop for those adventures. We even saw them live near our house, in the University of Washington cafeteria on campus, just after moving there.

What song makes you feel understood when no one else does?

A easy go to for this question would be so many lyrics of female artists, especially within the punk or indie genre, but I really wanted to pick a song that always carries me away. Built to Spill has been one of my favorites since college and Carry The Zero is a song I could listen to over and over and never get tired of. They’re also a live band I’ve seen so many times but never get old.

What's a song you initially disliked but now love?

I really didn’t give Indigo De Souza a fair chance, now I love her music. It’s quirky, moody and catchy. Here’s an example of a great one off her All of This Will End album.

What song makes you think of your childhood home?

It’s a bit of a family joke that growing up near Saratoga, NY, required you to love the Dead, Phish or other hippie rock jam bands. I’m absolutely convinced that by the end of my life I’ll be an avid Grateful Dead fan. Full circle! When I was growing up, Steve Miller Band would play SPAC often and in 8th grade I felt like I had freaking arrived when a friend invited me to see them. I was so grown up! Whenever I hear them now, I magically know all the lyrics leading me to believe I heard a lot of Steve Miller Band growing up. I can’t help but imagine my hometown when I hear them, the Grateful Dead or other jam bands of that era.

What’s your favorite track one on a debut album?

I can’t think of a lot of songs that fit this category, but one from my teenage years sticks out, the unforgettable first note. Human Behaviour, the first track from Bjork’s debut album, Debut, still sticks in my head. That first note always reminds me of metal tumbling in a dryer! I loved her previous band, The Sugarcubes and then when she came out solo I was psyched. When I went to Iceland a few years ago, I got to visit the impressive Harpa Music Hall in Reykjavík where she’s performed and I could just imagine her there with it’s stark dramatic architecture. After all this time, Bjork is a powerhouse of new art and music.

What song reminds you of your first heartbreak?

My first real heartbreak came after a relationship that spanned my last year of high school and my first year in college and it had all the things. It was full of great moments but also heated, dramatic, terrible arguments plus trying to make the long distance thing work. We were both young, stubborn and trying to grow up together but separately. It ended like a ton of bricks but gave me so much clarity. I decided to stick it out at college where I was, instead of returning home, and started to finally try to make new friends where I was, in Buffalo. That led to some pretty amazing things about a year later.

One song that sums up the feeling of that heartbreak is Liz Phair’s *Never Said *. That album got me through a lot of relationship ups and downs at the time and when I hear that song I think of my 18 year old self being frustrated and thinking I’m right about everything. Liz Phair’s lyrics made me feel like my experience as a young woman wasn’t so foreign.

Describe your favorite summer as a kid using a single song.

As a kid, we camped almost year round, mostly in the Adirondacks, but every summer we went camping for a week in Rhode Island. I loved camping on the beach near the ocean, playing in tide pools all day and navigating salt marshes with our canoe. It was so different than the tucked in feeling of sleeping under a canopy of trees- it was breezy, wild, easy going and expansive. We visited Block Island which felt like being an a desert island- it was so beautiful, raw and empty. We also made trips to Newport to explore shops and historic mansions situated atop cliffs looming over the ocean in one direction and perched above a beautiful boat harbor in the other. It felt like a fantasy life that was glamorous, always sunny and carefree. For whatever reason, Vampire Weekend’s sound captures that Rhode Island feeling for me. I had a hard time choosing just one song that sums up what summers in Rhode Island felt like.

A song that matches my energy today:

Well, that would be super low energy. It’s late May and I teach middle school. We just finished up our long weather unit and I am surprisingly all caught up. We are off today and it’s cold, rainy and gloomy. I planned to do 100 things but it’s just not happening. So, a song that matches my energy today would be Holocene by Bon Iver, one of my favorite songs that just feels like cold, brisk weather and the slowness that it brings.