Hello and welcome to my version of multi media!

*In the above voice memo I forgot to tell you about the first time I got to open for Lucinda and the nervous bug I was when I spoke to her… was essentially me talking well above my indoor voice (extremely rare) greeting her repeatedly saying HI HELLO HI and then staring at the ground between our feet and mumbling variations of “ thankyousomuchforeverythingyou’veevermadeyouchangedmylife” and scurrying out of there before she could say anything because my system couldn’t sustain vibrating at that level one second longer.

The second time I opened for her we were in an elevator together after the show at the Lincoln Center and I tried to think of something the entire ride up to the roof after “hello great show!” but then the doors opened and that was it.

I left the kettle bell in the photo because I want you to know I’m getting jacked for tour.

ok fine it’s for midline stability.

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Hello all!

The last few weeks have been beautifully busy as I start gearing up for new album release and summer touring. We have shot two music videos, one of which entailed me dancing more than I ever have. I love dancing so much and every time I do something like this for work I wonder why I am not doing it more for general life enjoyment.

Dancers are incredible and I will always maintain that they as artists have the most direct line to the universe.

I am always a little nervous performing with professional dancers but I have found that it is the perfect amount of empowering and inspiring if your choreographer (bless them) can meet you were you’re at and you are allowed to just do what you can and then switch to whatever comes naturally while said dancers handle the actual choreography.

Just a snippet from one of our rehearsals:

AMAZING DANCERS I can’t wait for you to see them in action: Matty Barry, Zach Jot, Jin Lee Baobei, Mindy Ng.

Absolute dream creative team: Sarah Jaffe (cinematographer) Alana Lowe (producer) Linda Mai Green (director,also made the video for Marrow) Jas Lin (choreographer)

In between takes I asked the dancers to help me film a birthday video for my friend’s six year old. This is not the whole song as I wanted to keep it special for the kid, also you know how the rest goes.

Hair and make up with Carla Farjado. Hand tied top by one of my absolute favorite lines Kaarem.

photo by Romain Thomassin

my new greeting stance. will only be moving through the world with synced entourage from here on out.

xx

t

As it was originally conceived.

Hi friends I wanted to share a slowed down more introspective version of this song with you

1. Because that is how I’m feeling

2. Because I just remembered 2 weeks ago I very much enjoy playing slide guitar

3. Because I originally wrote Nobody Dies (from A Man Alive) on slide and remembered that two weeks ago as well

• safe to say pre- frontal cortex was poppin 2 weeks ago

Stay strong and together out there

Xx

t

Hello friends!

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* a photo I took of the East River the last time I was in NYC. Close to Brooklyn. Brooklyn—> Paul Simon.. etc.

Just came across this cover I recorded almost ten years ago.

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Hello all-

I wanted to hear more about what was happening in Minneapolis at length to help ground what I’m seeing in clips. Maybe you want or need that as well? I don’t know about you but when I’m panicked and heartsick it really helps me to listen to movement organizers and facilitators speak in calm even tones about what is truly happening on the ground, what we can do, what we definitely should not do, and what has already been happening for ages.

***

https://endoftheworldshow.org/episodes/an-emergency-dispatch-from-occupied-minneapolis-intense-frightening-surreal-and-inspiring

***

I have such love in my heart for Minneapolis, always a gift to get to visit and perform there. It has always been one of my favorite cities to tour through and learn from. Thinking of everyone there who is showing up and showing out regardless of the very real fear they feel. Such remarkable examples of community and organizing happening there and in so many other cities, showing us what it will take in every city.

Much gratitude to How to Survive the End of the World Podcast hosted by Autumn Brown and adrienne maree brown (you can support their work here) and my friend Merrill for bringing their voices into my life.

xx

t

Hi all-

Performing Temple is always emotional for me but to do so bolstered by such a beautifully expressive and emotive orchestra… whew boy

*arranged by Minna Choi

Sending my best hope you have a great weekend!

x

t

As always, thank you so much for your support, more soon.

xx

t

xx

t

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Hello all! A couple weeks ago I participated in SF’s annual Litquake festival via the Songwriter Podcast hosted by Ben Arthur. Author Viet Thanh Nguyen (The Sympathizer, The Committed, Refugees, Nothing Ever Dies, a lot of great books) was invited to invite a songwriter to write a song based on his latest release To Save and To Destroy: Writing As An Other and he asked if I would, which of course I would and did.

We were joined in discussion by Dr. Russell Jeung, a professor of Asian American Studies, and founder of Stop AAPI Hate. I so appreciate his work, and Viet’s as well.

The song is inspired by a mention of Viet’s mother having not yet appeared to him in his dreams in his last chapter, The Joy of Otherness.

“… I take comfort in Thích Nhất Hạnh’s words about his own mother’s death: “for the first four years after she died, I felt like an orphan. Then one night she came to me in a dream, and from that moment on, I no longer felt her death as a loss. My mother has visited my brother in a dream, bringing him comfort, but she has never come to me, another mystery I do not understand.”

I was imagining she does appear- but because I didn’t know her and I don’t know anything of their relationship I imbued the messaging with what I’d want my own mother (to clarify she is still with us on this earth and I am so lucky for it) to say to me. It’s the voice of a mother figure composite who has had time to reflect on what she taught and modeled by virtue of extreme calamity and necessity, versus what she wished for herself and her children beyond safety and security, and what else she might still wish for them, had they the luxury of being out from under the dragnet of geopolitical whim. I want this mother figure to say your inheritance is more than just wanting baseline rest and safety.

Viet’s explorations regarding the joy of otherness reminded of this passage from the book I’m working on. I’ve shared this before, because it is a memory to which I am always looking to return. I include references to this passage and imagery in the song because to me those dancing evenings epitomized the joy of otherness.

The dance halls. I’ll call them dance halls because they were so much more than a temporary sheet-vinyl dance floor in the Harvest Moon Restaurant or someone’s cleared
basement. However I can remember the dancing, I will. Sweet memories are not about
accuracy, they are about safe harbor. You keep them well maintained and embellished as
needed so you can steal away from time to time.
I remember being eye level with waists and torsos. Thin leather belts, fabric swishing.
Curves. Panty-hosed legs and low heels. Hips. Graceful, manicured fingers resting lightly onstrong, scrubbed hands. Strobe lights from Party City and disco ball refractions swinging through the room, catching sequins from dresses bought at Macy’s or Nordstrom’s or Filene’s Basement. Smiling, cackling, levity. Forlorn yet soaring notes, bright, resonant snares.

Stateless men and women with varying degrees of fight still left in them, whom I knew
personally, were free and joyful, out from under memory and worry for the evening.

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First:

The score for AMONGST THE DISQUIET (a project I’ve mentioned here before), my film collaboration with filmmaker/multi-media artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen (who just won a MacArthur last week bravo my friend!) and producer Marion Ngoc Hill — featuring songs and prose I wrote specifically for the film. AMONGST THE DISQUIET recounts the story of the bonds within a multi-generational Vietnamese family in New Orleans, exploring the intertwining of migration and memory, home and history, land and water. The film premiered at Prospect 6 New Orleans and is now globe trotting, currently in exhibit at the São Paulo Biennial.

Second:

The 15-year anniversary remastered edition of KNOW BETTER LEARN FASTER, via sweet and dear Kill Rock Stars. KBLF is to date my only heartbreak album. Included with the vinyl is a handwritten letter to you from me, dotted with reflection and seizing the opportunity to say now what I couldn’t say then, namely: it’s a heartbreak album about a woman!

I’m so happy to revisit it with you, and I’m so happy I’m still here.

You can pre-order these records as a bundle (or individually!) on my webstore, along with a limited selection of merch from the KBLF era.

As a thank you to Substack subscribers we are offering a 10% discount on everything besides the bundle through Sunday evening. Just use THAOSUB10 upon checking out.

Thank you for being open to this vinyl commercial.

More soon,

t

Friends we are near, very near the album finish line.

All I need is your help on a group vocal section, if I may be so bold and you might be so inclined.

I even recorded a video to explain:

And my mgmt (thanks Sean and Caleb!) even made a landing page on the website, so you know we are serious and your efforts will not be for naught.

CLICK HERE to intertwine our destinies:

As always, as ever, thank you for your support.

xx

t

see you in the streets

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Hello all-

I’m preparing for an event next week wherein I will share photos that inspired some of the lyrics to the song “Temple”- I know I alluded to them in April but I didn’t properly put lyric to photo. Actual photos (my mom working in Laos for the South Vietnamese embassy) directly inspiring literal lyrics hadn’t happened before and hasn’t happened since so let us mark the moment in time and take the win when we can.

Look at this one/ I want you to see/ fashion was high, my hair was so long /this was maybe 73

**ok actually maybe was ‘74 but I needed the rhyme

I lost my city in the prime of my time/ mud silk and the dust of life

I was a diamond of the embassy/ It doesn't matter what I meant to be

You know I have been adored by good and kind men/ they sent their love with poetry/By day I gave grand speeches/ At night like you/We danced to be free

**related/unrelated- my mom raised me to fear the sun as I should a righteous god and as I get older I’m trying to make her proud in this way as well, not just through my refusal to live in one place for over 2 years.

Hidden Girl Summer Re-Cap:

yours,

t

ps. Do you have a photo of your life you’d like to share with us in the comments? By ‘photo of your life’ I mean one that carries the gravity not only of the memory but the stubborn energy of something more to be done. These photos of my mom hovered and whirred in my consciousness for over twenty years before I found the right way to honor them. Perhaps sharing can help jog or activate the thing you need to mark/ create around.

Or if you just want to share how you protect from the sun that is also extremely welcome.

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I like to meander on the piano in the mornings and I wanted to share with you in case you found it meditative, as I do. I put a black and white filter on as though that would dull the edge of vulnerability. I should have also worn a hoodie! :)

I want to better formalize and strengthen my foundation on piano which means learning actual form and songs and practicing scales and building chords properly and learning more theory and noodling less. I could meander all day but then I don’t (as has been made clear to me) actually improve in the ways I want. As such I’m keeping my wanderings limited to the morning, because piano time is finite.

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Wanted to share my favorite song with which to start the day with you.

*If your day is well on its way but you’re thinking you’d like a re-set, crank this baby up.

also! you can change your outfit. A roommate in college did that, sometimes multiple times a day, and she was really grounded and didn’t make her problems anyone else’s. Thanks Suzanne!

Thank you so much Os Tincoãs.

From Wiki: Os Tincoãs were a Brazilian popular music band from Bahia, primarily active in the 1960s and 1970s. The music of Os Tincoãs was heavily influenced by Bahia's Candomblé tradition.

more soon,

thao

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M. Ward-of whom I am a big and longtime fan- reached out and asked if I would sit in for a couple songs with him when he comes through on tour later this month. I’ve been practicing because it’s not ideal to be under-prepared for your own show but it is excruciating to be underprepared for someone else’s.

I first discovered his music with Transfiguration of Vincent in college in 2004- listenend to it all the time ALL THE TIME and went to see him in 2005 when I was studying in London at a Rough Trade in-store.

It’s been so lovely to revisit his music and this album.

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I haven’t played a full band show in a long while, could it be since last year’s Newport Folk Festival? Preparing for a one-off after a long time of no shows is typically one day’s rehearsal and then rehearsing backstage and cramming right up until you have to go on. Sometimes in the thick of things I am tired and a bit stressed and very loopy and have to do the running man to keep up energy and remember joy and loose limbs. It helps very much to have bandmates with whom I am totally at ease and can be.. whatever I am in these moments.

Micayla Grace: Bass, Alex Guy: Strings and Keys, Henry Hung: Trumpet, Jason Slota: Drums, Claire Calderón: Vocals

If you made it to the end of video above you heard Alex Guy (string player extraordinaire and one of my favorite people in the history of time to tour with) hint at a seagull call. She is REMARKABLY good at mimicking seagulls. I’ve been touring with Alex since 2010 but did not meet her alter seagull until after soundcheck one day in Madison, WI in 2022:

If you made it to the end of video above you saw that I doubled over laughing after having gotten up from falling to the ground laughing.

This is us rehearsing Holy Roller because I remembered to bring my banjo:

** I found this oversized blue trench coat at Out of the Closet in Brooklyn for five dollars. FIVE DOLLARS.

some show:

photos by Vita Hewitt Visuals

Sending my best.

xx

t

I love New York City because as soon as I land I am doing 3-4 times the amount of things per hour I would in my normal life at home in the Bay Area. I am walking briskly from one activity to the next without going home first and making a snack, I am darting around people when they suddenly stop in the middle of the sidewalk, I am telling strangers I like your hat! I am dismissive of traffic signals, I am going directly from my musical workshop to a dance work shop and I don’t even really dance.

I was invited by director, choreographer and artistic director Jennifer Jancuska to be a part of the 2025 BringAbout cohort- The BringAbout invites composers and musicians into ongoing collaboration with dancers for development of new work.

Jennifer choreographed to a couple new songs on the album and it was incredible to watch artists of this caliber at work/play. I’m so envious and in awe of the way dancers move and express themselves in space. They isolate and make dance muscles I don’t even know if I have.

As far as I have ascertained there are two lanes of letting go of dreams in this life- one is for things that could have been in the cards but as time goes on you keep drawing from the deck and the ones you think you want keep not coming up and you make initially sad peace with it all but after a while and some release work the sadness dissipates and you realize oh all these other cards in my hand have things I love and are for me.

The other way less depressing lane is accepting you will not be all the things you definitely never had a chance of being. They were NEVER even potentially in your cards and if you ever had even a sheen of greatness for any such thing you would have demonstrated it from an early age and at least four people would have gone out of their way to tell you you had talent and promise, and one of them would have offered to connect you with someone who could help. But no one ever did (for good reason) and you have fully accepted this from the beginning. Being a professional dancer is one of these things for me. Would have loved it, love to dress like I just got out of dance rehearsal, but every time I’m asked to just isolate my left hip and move it to the beat along with everyone else I know deeply what could have never been.

This new album is a lot about physical embodiement, and it’s so gratifying to see how these songs begin to converse with those for whom their bodies are instruments and canvases. I will gladly settle for getting to make music that dancers might like to dance to, and to get to work with and be in awe of them up close every now and then.

For the song Enemy. This is after maybe 20 minutes of dancers learning the choreo. Remarkable, impossible.

xx

t

p.s- just to share- in case you needed this like I did— I first read about Ayodele Casel in the pandemic and then I got to see this show of hers at the Joyce in New York a couple years ago and it was one of the best times I’ve ever had as an audience member.

pps

Other things that were never in the cards but maybe next life:

-Being a surgeon. ( I have pretty steady hands)

-Being a professional archer. (See above)

-Making my own clothes

-Being 5’7

This album finds me asking for forgiveness a handful of times, albeit in different narrative voices.

I realized mid-take that the spiritual transport these moments hold and encourage are not unlike what I felt recording A Man Alive in 2015/2016, channeling some part of the character Jack and the family who loves him in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead. In “Astonished Man” in particular I am seeking understanding and forgiveness for my father— I was, it seemed, supernaturally moved to write it after reading a beautiful, softly devastating scene that just broke me open. I’m not sure I’ve broadcast this enough but that song, its prevailing sentiment, the entire album wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t been reading Gilead. Thank you so much Ms. Robinson.

Here is some transcript from my episode of Song Exploder in 2016 (as guest, not guest host) explaining the significance of Gilead for Astonished Man and A Man Alive.

I was reading Marilynne Robinson's novel Gilead, and there is this character (Jack) who is a

black sheep or an outcast of his family, and he's returned after several years of

being completely out of touch. And he's about to leave again and, basically,

break his father's heart. And there's this passage where he's asking forgiveness

from a family friend.

(Gilead by MARILYNNE ROBINSON: Then he stopped, and looked at me, and said, “You

know, I'm doing the worst possible thing again, leaving now. Glory will never forgive me”)

Thao: This character, and the way that he's developed and rendered struck me so

deeply. And it reminded me so much of my dad in this one passage in particular,

sort of brought me closer to understanding my dad, and gave me a kind of

compassion and a curiosity about him that I hadn't entertained before.

Wondering what kind of person he had been all these years that I didn't know

him. And I just started weeping. And I immediately started writing “Astonished

Man.”

Thao: Which is, in part, inspired by Marilynne Robinson's writing, is one who would be

astonished with the amount of forgiveness that could be afforded him. That kind

of astonishment that, in the end, people would still come looking for him and

want, you know, a part of him. And, he’s convinced he’s undeserving of such.

(“Gilead” by MARILYNNE ROBINSON: I said, “We all love you, you know?” And he laughed and

said, “You’re all saints.” He stopped in the door and lifted his hat, and then, he was gone. God

bless him.”)

Thao: No matter how his family loves him or tries to, they can never keep him, you

know, for whatever his ideas about himself are; his ideas of what he deserves or

what he's worth. I don't know if that's my dad's deal, but it certainly offered this

different perspective and this humanity that I guess I had denied him.

What I did not know was how that character would stay with me, and that ten years on in my songwriting I wouldn’t be channeling the family forgiving, I would be channeling the character asking for forgiveness. I am swimming around in it, what life is, how hard and high-stakes it is when we try and participate, keeping faith that there is no point if we don’t.

In 2015 I was trying to forgive my father for being a Jack and then ten years later here I am being a Jack and asking for forgiveness.

This is not me experiencing any revelation this is just me missing my cue:

*When I was young, around 5, one of my rewards for good behavior or task completion would be that I could ask to swear. I would ask both my brother and my father “can I say it?? Can I say it??” And mostly they would nod permission and I would delightedly ramp up and wind up and say “shiiiiiiiiiit.” Above is the more adult version.

Below- you can watch takes of these bridge lines and then the comping wizardry of Eli Crews as we choose phrase by phrase, word by word, because I am very particular about achieving a moment. I care about all elements of recording at least a little bit but I care an extreme almost zealot-level amount about delivery and emotion and capturing the scene of connection and communication I see and hear in my mind.

Paywall is up because of new album material/ vulnerability, etc. thank you!!

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