THE INDEPENDENT INTERVIEW: Christina Osborn opens up about family, the future and the meaning behind the music

Photos by Adrienne Beacco

Recently, local musician Christina Osborn joined The Independent staff on our weekly radio show, which is broadcast each Thursday at noon on KTIM 95.3 FM. Josh Warburton, publisher of The Independent, sat down with Christina and conducted an “Independent Interview” live on the air, which we print the text of here.

JOSH WARBURTON: You just released a new album. Tell us about it.

CHRISTINA OSBORN: It’s called “These Are the Blues,” and it’s got donkeys on the front of it. It’s got 10 songs, including a Neil Young cover of “Don’t Bring Me Down.” I waited to get the rights until after I printed the CD, don’t do that, people. Young has this obscure publishing house that he goes through, and I was panicking, having just printed 1,000 CDs. But happy ending, I did get the rights; it’s about $130 for 1,000 physical CD and 100 digital downloads. And once you run out you can just re-up. I went through Limelight, which is a service of CD Baby.

The other songs on the album are all original, and I feel like this is my first real album of me. Like, if you listen to the two things that I’ve produced, they are what they are, but I feel like this is a much more honest portrayal of who I am, how I feel. These are my songs, my thoughts. This is who I am. Like, if you want to know who I’ve been for the last couple of years, listen to it. The thing about expressing who you are, you start to realize that a lot of people have the same issues, the same concerns. The first song is called “I Am Afraid” and is just about my long legacy of being afraid of things. Track No. 4, “You’re My Angel,” contains what, to my knowledge, is the first reference to Cane Beds, Ariz. Cane Beds is a very special place; if you’ve never been there go check it out at christinaosborn.bandcamp.com.

JW: What are your plans for 2014? Any news?

CO: Actually, I just feel like I figured that out this morning. I’m going to school right now, studying French, and I’m switching my major to art, specifically ceramics. So that’s my plan for the next year, just to go to school, and in the summertime I plan on working.

JW: Musically, what are your influences? What drives your songwriting?

CO: The thing that drives my songwriting is something that was in place a long time before I even picked up a guitar, which is that my dad is a songwriter. And I probably don’t know anyone I admire as much as a writer as him. And I think he always wanted to be a performing songwriter and he never got to have that chance. So I think that I carried that dream on and it wasn’t necessarily my dream, but it was something that he gave to me. So that’s a huge reason why I do it. As far as my influences go, just everything; everything that happens in life. I know that’s a vague answer, but it’s like asking you what influences your relationship with your best friend, and it’s just everything. It’s a very magical process when it actually happens, but everything leading up to it is very mundane.

JW: You did technical theater for several years and have mentioned you still feel more comfortable wearing black and running tech for someone else’s show. Is being the one in the spotlight still an intimidating thing, when you take the stage? Or have you found your comfort zone as an artist?

CO: I would say that it’s not that I don’t feel comfortable on stage, because more or less I always have. I never have felt too uncomfortable onstage. It’s the idea of being a person who is on a separate level than everybody else that really bothered me. Because I was very much a loner growing up. I didn’t really have a lot of group experiences growing up, was very much a loner, and so then I became a songwriter and I was still alone, but there’s still this barrier that separated me from everybody else. This sort of “other level” thing happening. And that’s what I was always uncomfortable with. When you’re the technical theater person, you’re sort of the backstage shadow – like nobody pays attention to you. And when everyone pays attention to you, it’s kind of the same.

JW: Thinking back on all your performances, do you recall any favorite gigs that stick out in your mind?

CO: Yes, I do. The last George’s gig I played was awesome. Adrienne Beacco shot it and I played with Jake Shepard. I went into it with a really bad attitude and then I just breathed it all out and shook it off and I said “I’m going to play a really good show”; like I don’t care how I feel, I’m just going to do a great show. And it was the best show ever, with the possible exception of a show with Ninadavo when we played the Zion Canyon Music Festival. We played in between sets of a really good band from St. Louis. And all the Springdale and St. George people were there. It was just such fun, high energy. So those two stand out to me at this point.

JW: I know it’s going back a few years, but your collaboration with David Jorgenson wasn’t exclusively musical. How did that experience affect your songwriting and future collaborations?

CO: That is a very interesting question because I’ve thought about it a lot myself, and I don’t really know the answer. It was a unique situation in my life. I hadn’t before had someone who I was intimately involved with who I was also making something with. And we were making really cool songs, but the process was extremely difficult, extremely painful for both of us. I was very headstrong and very defensive. And he was very critical. It wasn’t a good match in a lot of moments. It created some really cool songs, and I think it turned me off from collaboration for some time. But as I’m moving forward I realize that was not the norm. People make music together because they love to do it and because it’s really fun. Like my friends Blammity Blam in Cedar City, they’ve been writing together for years and they have so much fun doing it; it’s like water to them. They’re breathing the air. They just do it all the time. And I guess that’s what I dream of, even if it’s not musical, just someone who I can really have fun with. And I do have that with my boyfriend; we have a really good, fun creative relationship. And I’d love to have that with someone in a professional sense, eventually. That’s kind of a dream of mine, to find that somewhere along the way.

JW: Outside of music, what else inspires or interests you?

CO: Well, music is actually the bottom of the list and has been for a long time. I don’t even really listen to music, honestly. I mean, I hate to admit that, but… I’m very interested in natural living and farming right now. I’ve been reading this book called “The One-Straw Revolution” by Masanobu Fukuoka. He was a Japanese rice farmer, and he basically wanted to practice this idea of do nothing farming, where you just throw the seeds out, you don’t till the ground. You create an environment that is healthy and then things will grow in that environment. And I’m a firm believer in that, both philosophically as well as literally. If you create a healthy environment, things will grow. You just have to put the effort in. I’m really interested in ceramics right now, as well. And next semester I’ll be moving more into that, and I’m really excited to get involved in visual arts. And food. And wine.

THE INDY INTERVIEW QUESTIONS:

What’s your favorite food?

Cheese. But I’m really liking green smoothies at the moment.

What would you like on your tombstone?

A quote of some kind from a writer I admire. I’ll let people figure that out when I’m dead.

What would you like to accomplish in the next year?

I would like to center clay on a pottery wheel.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

I’d like to live in a beautiful place in a beautiful, small home with Davis and have some children. And be selling art out of my house and maybe giving art classes to children.

If you could be anyone else in the world, living or dead, who would it be and why?

Well, I’d like to live out in the middle of nowhere, with a little farm holding and be a badass warrior woman who’s also a gardener and who planted trees all over the place but also went on adventures and stuff.

For more information about Christina Osborn, head over to www.facebook.com/christinaosbornmusic.

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