Courtney Barnett Talks About the Power of Live Performance on The Paste Podcast

Courtney Barnett just won’t quit. We met up with her in Montréal, the morning after an unreal two hour performance at Montréal Jazz Festival and she was all smiles. The week before that, she was hopping on stage with Wilco in Chicago to perform “Handshake Drugs,” singing the verses with Jeff Tweedy and trading shreds with Nels Cline. With more festivals dates in her future, Barnett is in the zone right now.

This was hands down the best Courtney Barnett performance I’d seen across every tour she’s played since 2014. Her live show has become nothing short of a must-see musical experience, and it’s not often that you get a chance to sit down with an artist to talk about the method to the madness, the day after an unusually special show when the dust is still settling. I damn near fell off my chair when the electric performer admitted that on stage, she “…used to be so nervous…I was trying to get through the gig cause I was so nervous.” And if you’ve had the pleasure of witnessing Courtney Barnett live, you’re probably just as surprised.

On the heels of last year’s fantastic second LP, Tell Me How You Really Feel, Barnett is now also focused on her Milk! Records label, which will be releasing the new Sleater-Kinney album on August 16th. She talked to us about what it means to have a hand in that release, who her guitar heroes are, the absolute amazingness we witnessed from her on stage the night before and you know…life. Hear it all now on The Paste Podcast, along with an exclusive performance of “Depreston” and a discussion of HBO’s new all-too-real dystopia, Years & Years.

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