How Bruce Lee Inspired Margaret Glaspy’s New Record
Wong Notes
Premier Guitar
4.9 • 587 Ratings
🗓️ 22 November 2023
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Cory Wong sits down with indie-rock bandleader Margaret Glaspy for an in-depth dialogue on artistry, celebrity, and the wisdom of Bruce Lee.
Glaspy shares how she cut her latest record, Echo The Diamond, live off the floor, with most of the “homework” happening beforehand and studio performances happening in-the-moment. “It really felt like air blew through the studio and then the record was made,” she says. “What you’re hearing is mostly what happening.” The songs are like photographs of a particular moment, rather than an essential, unchanging thing; Glaspy says she values the “dying art” of taking risks in music.
Glaspy runs down how she and husband Julian Lage work on each other’s projects, and highlights one of their key criteria in assessing performances: are you your best guitar player right now? “Would you hire yourself or fire yourself?” poses Glaspy.
The conversation turns to Glaspy’s rig on the record—she played through a Magic Amps rendition of a black-panel Fender Princeton, plus a Fender Champ combo—before revealing that these days, she’s bypassing her tuner pedal and letting the audience hear the process between songs. “Let’s not hide what’s needed to make this actually go,” she laughs.Wong and Glaspy swap notes on Bruce Lee’s winning combo of talent and work ethic (and how one of his quotes inspired Glaspy’s record) before finishing with a fascinating philosophical dissection of artistry, pop culture, and celebrity. “The business of celebrity intertwines them in a way that’s hard to escape,” says Glaspy, who sees a clash between surface-level fantasy and bone-deep darkness in pop culture.
Tune in to the episode to learn all the gems from Echo The Diamond.
Listen to the full episode here: https://bit.ly/WongNotes
Get 30% off your first year of DistroKid by going here: http://distrokid.com/vip/corywong
Visit Margaret Glaspy: https://margaretglaspy.com/
Hit us up: wongnotes@premierguitar.com
Visit Cory: https://www.corywongmusic.com
Visit Premier Guitar: http://premierguitar.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/wongnotespod
IG: https://www.instagram.com/wongnotespod
Produced by Jason Shadrick and Cory Wong
Additional Editing by Shawn Persinger
Presented by DistroKid
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | What's happening? Welcome to Wong Nodes podcast. I'm your host, Corey Wong. I hope you're feeling well today. I hope you're feeling good. I'm feeling great. What a wild weekend in last couple weeks I've had. Both back had a residency in Brooklyn, eight shows in a row. It was fantastic. It was so much fun. It feels like every time, like we don't do a ton of gigs, |
| 0:22.9 | but every time we get together, it kind of feels like some sort of family reunion or something. |
| 0:26.6 | It's really fun. I guess that's like one of the nice things about not playing a lot is that |
| 0:30.5 | every time we get together, it's special. And like, I never have the opportunity to just, |
| 0:36.9 | like, take it for granted or something. And also weekend capped off with |
| 0:42.2 | get this. I played with Dave Matthews Bandit, Madison Square Garden. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't |
| 0:49.7 | believe it. A straight up dream come true. I was such a DMB freak when I was a kid. As a matter of fact, I'm looking right now across my office. I have two Dave Matthews band Tab Books that I bought when I was in like seventh grade. That's insane. It was so much fun. It was really great. And it's one of those things. Seriously, sometimes people will ask me to sit in with them and play some songs. |
| 1:11.2 | Like, they asked me to play five or six tunes with them. And we ended up doing five. |
| 1:15.2 | But they're like, what songs do you know? I was like, well, here's a list of 35 or 40 that I could do in my sleep. And I mean that in a good way. And they're like, okay, but let's do these. Sometimes I sit in with somebody and I have to really work like, |
| 1:25.6 | okay, I'm in a shed. |
| 1:27.3 | I got to make sure I got a couple hours a day here and there |
| 1:29.6 | and then really focus on stuff ahead of time and like, you know, work stuff up. This was the opposite. It's like I've been preparing my whole life for this sit-in. Like I just, they sent me the tunes. I'm like, got it. Cool. The only thing thing i had to do i went to go listen online to look |
| 1:45.5 | at recent gigs that they were playing if there were any arrangement differences and there's a |
| 1:50.2 | couple little things to do and it's like oh okay they add this line here or there's this sort of break |
| 1:54.5 | or tim reynolds does this sort of fill thing here so i'm just gonna you know i just wanted to know |
| 1:59.8 | where to leave space where to just lay wanted to know where to leave space, |
| 2:01.3 | where to just lay in the cut, where to step out and add things. And honestly, they were just like, |
| 2:05.7 | yeah, do whatever. You're here because we love what you do. So do your thing and step out |
| 2:11.9 | when it's your time to step out. So it was really fun. They were really welcoming, very warm. |
| 2:16.7 | It was a fantastic time. What a cool hang. I could not say enough nice things about them and their crew. They were very, very welcoming and it was very fun. Talk about fun. You know who's fun? Margaret Caspi. |
| 2:32.3 | Margaret Crosby is dope. Singer, songwriter, guitar player. |
| 2:35.6 | I can't remember the first time I found out about Margaret. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Premier Guitar, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Premier Guitar and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.