Maggie Rogers, 30, has come a long way since Pharrell visited her NYU Master Class in 2016 and anointed her for stardom. The singer-songwriter has since released three full-length albums and received a master’s degree from Harvard’s Divinity School, and she’ll be performing at Madison Square Garden on October 19 and 20.Â
I have an amazing band, and that’s where everything starts. Some of these guys have been with me now for eight years. We get out there together. It’s about finding space for there to be as much improvisation as there is excellence, space for us each to bring a piece of ourselves to the music.
What I love about live music is that as soon as you recognize something beautiful is happening, it’s slipping through your fingers. It’s about preparing for that perfect moment where you know that you have all the tools at your disposal and you can react. Every crowd is really different. Your personal chemistry is a part of that alchemy every night. A song that I wrote when I was 20 will catch me in a weird or special moment on a Tuesday night, and suddenly it feels as if I wrote it yesterday.
The recording of an album is the first draft of the record. It really starts to breathe when you add different people with different influences and personalities every night. Before tour, I make a brief with the show creative. Then I find the right collaborators: I interviewed ten guitar players. I do the same with lighting designers or costuming people. Passion is the most important and attractive quality in a work environment because you want to be able to build something together that feels bigger than anything you could do alone. The show feels like the sum of the parts that are everyone’s hours of hard work and creativity coming together.
I want the show to feel like the best house party you’ve ever been to. I have so many memories of being a student at NYU and you would walk into someone’s home and it felt like you were at the right place at the right time and there was no dress code. That version of New York was so alive and colorful to me when I moved here from Maryland. I want people to feel free and welcomed. My goal is to bring people together and remind them that they have more in common with each other and then might think, to feel like the show is a place where they can come to exhale.
When I think about my band, my favorite thing is that we play music in the dressing room. Every time anyone’s playing something, I’m like, “Oh my God, what is this song, what is this record, tell me a story of this musician.†We are all attracted to the same things in a performance on-record or off-record; we’re all looking for the same qualities in that musicianship.
I’m always looking for more challenge as a performer. This arena tour, I’m going to have a catwalk for the first time — a new dimension of staging that I haven’t gotten to play with before. You keep learning what works or what just feels good for yourself. I made Surrender because I wanted more songs in my catalogue with distorted guitar because of the way it feels on my body.
Recording is a more introverted process. It’s like the difference between embroidery and knitting. You have the ability to work in such small and slight detail. Onstage, it’s more broad strokes. It’s just physical. I feel like a high-intensity athlete. Right now, I’m doing strength and sprint training every day so that I have breath stamina. I changed my diet to sustain a physical performance that’s two-plus hours every night where I’m running around in heels.
As my confidence has grown, I’m discovering that I actually have this very big voice and I’m learning how to use it. When I’m onstage, I feel so free and my body becomes my instrument and I’m just sprinting around in circles yelling. It’s my favorite thing in the world.
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