There are multiple levels of security in place at an interview with Tori Amos; her "handlers" rove the halls of Shea's as she concludes her sound-check.
Told to arrive no later than 5:15 p.m. or risk missing the interview, the journalists involved in the roundtable (where each reporter asks one question, and Amos answers them all in turn) discussion are still waiting patiently 45 minutes later.
The wait pays off.
When Amos arrives in sweatpants and a sweatshirt, she introduces herself individually to each member of the collegiate press, carefully shaking hands and taking names as she moves around the circle of eager interviewers.
Although the format of the interview seems forced, given the lack of time to develop any sort of rapport between interviewers and subject, Amos does her best to answer each question with care and thought. Her speech is riddled with pauses, but her answers to each question and the calm aura that surrounds her delivery of them makes it easy to understand why past interviews have included mention of a surreal, almost magical tingle in the air.
Amos' friendship with Neil Gaiman is well known among fans of both her work and the English writer whose comics were the first (and last) to win the prestigious World Fantasy Award in 1991.
"I look to visual artists, um, I started maybe about twelve years ago," Amos said. "Before that, I was mainly influenced at first by the musicians when I first began."
The flavor of her music has certainly changed from her earlier efforts. While retaining the intensity of songs like "Father Lucifer" (from her album "Boys for Pele") and "Little Earthquake"'s "Precious Things," "Scarlet's Walk," the title of her new album, is a concept album detailing the travels of both the title character and Amos across America in the year after Sept. 11. The album draws influences from Native American religions as well as Amos' own personal journey.
There is an inclusiveness to every answer Amos gives. When she mentions writing, she says "we," so as to include the 10 young adults who hang almost breathlessly on her every word. Her gestures encompass not only the journalists who have waited for this opportunity to speak with her, but also the reps from Sony and the two members of her own entourage who linger in the room during the discussion.
"Of course I went to the writers - Sylvia Plath, Baudalaire, Rimbaud, you do all that," she said, "and, uh, then I started thinking, well, there's another medium there that's really, that I'm, I'm missing out on."
Amos may repeat words on occasion, but the clear direction of her answers is obvious whether she is answering questions from one reporter about the possibility of her collaborating with Gaiman on a "bigger project" like a musical or album collaboration ("Don't think that we haven't sat on the banks of many an ocean and talked about it," but "Friendship is so lean, meaning when you have a good one - and he's one of my most important friends in the world - do you test it like that?") or talking about her library full of books on visual artists.
"I've developed this kind of library system where I'm continually bringing in books from unusual artists from all over the world," Amos said. "I'll just go and bring books, and I don't know all their names, it's that diverse. "
As she begins to speak on the visual art that inspires her, Amos shifts in her chair and gestures, indicating the size and shape of the texts she's mentioned.
"They're written in other languages," she said. "Half of them I don't even know what they say, but I surround the piano and the piano room with books and a lot of times I'm just pushing myself tonally to try and have a conversation with the photographs or the paintings, and it's opened my musical vocabulary up."
