Howdy, I'm Marie from Katie Texas. The Sound of Young America is an independent production

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MaximumFund.org and click on donate. Live on tape from my house in Los Angeles,

I'm Jesse Thorn and this is the Sound of Young America from MaximumFund.org.

It's the Sound of Young America, I'm Jesse Thorn America's radio sweetheart. My guest on the program is a singer and songwriter whose music

crosses many boundaries of genre and time period and the whole nine yards. Her newest album is called Obligatory Villagers.

Nellie McKay, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. We talked on the way up in the elevator for a second about where I grew up.

But I was reading an interview with you where you were talking about living in Harlem, which you did when you were put like a young teenager.

Impressionable. Impressionable. During your impressionable time and I was so impressed to read that you and your mother in this story that you told had gotten mugged.

Maybe you should tell me what happened when your mother got mugged rather than me re-incapsulating it.

Right. Well, we both got mugged and seeing as I was around 10 years old, that shows how desperate this man was.

And he came up, he grabbed me as we were getting out of the car and I was saying, speaking of food of what I would like for dinner.

Which was a waffle. I really wanted a waffle. And so this guy grabbed me and he put a box cutter to my throat and and he said,

give me the fucking money or I'll fuck the get up. Give me the fucking money or I'll fuck the get up over and over and over again.

And we started laughing because we thought this was a friend of ours because all our friends have a good sense of humor.

And you know, said, we said we thought this is a very funny joke. Okay, we get it. We get it.

And then we realized, oh, he's serious. And so then my mom said, okay, okay, okay, just cool it, just cool it.

And I was like, and she reached for her dummy wallet because my mother's no pushover and she threw the wallet at him.

So he had to let go of me to pick up the wallet and I went running down the street going, and so rather than chase after him,

she ran after me to make sure I didn't get hit by a car because I'm an idiot from a young age through the future probably.

And then she got with me and then we went around, we turned the corner to see him and he was just sautering off.

And she said, yeah, you better run. You know, you better move it.

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