Tori Amos appeared in the studios of radio station CFNY 102.1 The Edge in Toronto, Ontario Canada on Friday afternoon, August 30, 2002. She was interviewed for about 6 minutes or so by Kelly Cutrara. The main thing she revealed was that she would be performing in Toronto during her upcoming tour on November 22, 2002! (This was the first real tour date we received for the 2002 tour!) Thanks to Julie, Richard Handal, Eryn, matthew.dewaal, and Erin Gudas for being the first people to email me about this!

Tori mentioned performing a small industry show the previous night (August 29, 2002) in Toronto and then she revealed the November 22 tour date for the general public in Toronto to see her on the upcoming tour. Tori was late for the interview and seemed a little rushed. They did play a sorta fairytale as well. Look below for a full transcript and some commentary on the show from those who heard it.

Transcript

Special thanks to Tito Balleste for taking the time to type out this transcript!!

Tori was supposed to be interviewed at 1:45 PM EST at CFNY The Edge in Toronto but didn't arrive at the studio until almost two hours later. Kelly Cutrara, the DJ doing the interview with Tori, had already finished her shift and the DJ whose show was currently on was scheduled to interview another artist in a few minutes. Before Tori arrived the DJs were joking about conducting the two interviews simulaneously and letting the listeners sort it out. Kelly joked that the wait for Tori was cutting into her weekend and hoped she would apologize when she arrived. During the interview Kelly spoke even faster that normal for a DJ and the interview definitely was rushed. Tori sounded tired and her voice a bit strained. She had played a five song industry showcase at Sony Toronto the previous evening and undoubtedly had a series of interviews and meetings all day before the CFNY interview. Tori sounded considerably more low-key in contrast to the upbeat, vibrant interviews she gave in California nine and ten days earlier. The multi-city showcase/media blitz must be exhausting. The CFNY studio is on street level with a window as the assembled crowd for Tori could be heard both when the DJs were talkng while waiting for Tori's arrival and during the interview. I lost the stream momentarily twice, but very little is missing from the following transcript.

CFNY: Welcome to Tori Amos who now is joining us!

TORI: Hi Kelly.

CFNY: Hello, we really appreciate it, I know the fans here appreciate it.

TORI: Yeah, they're great. (crowd cheers in background)

CFNY: Some of them have been here since ten! Yeah, and thanks if you are listening worldwide at edge.ca. We appreciate you sticking with us to talk with Tori. Yesterday I got a chance to go by Sony Music 'cause you were in for what the industry call a showcase. That's five songs, five of your new songs, and I was quite literally ten feet away from you and I don't know if you, how much you look at people while you're playing - it looks like you gaze at them directly - but at one point I had to look away because your eyes met mine or it seemed like that to me, and I quite literally couldn't handle the intensity and had to look down at your hands at what you were doing at the piano there. And so I can understand how your fans think of watching you perform as a little bit of a religious experience! How do you deal with your fans that look up to you in that way for maybe something for their soul, to feed their soul?

TORI: Well, its a mutual relationship. I think when you're singing songs that are very intimate, um, you have to feel safe enough to sing these songs, so you are dependent on the people who are listening and giving back because its very much an exchange, it really is.

CFNY: Yeah, I mean, have you had any freaky fans that are like -

TORI: Sure. (laughs a tentative little laugh and the crowd is heard laughing along)

CFNY Yeah. You don't want to talk about that -

TORI: No, we can talk about it -

CFNY: But you just kinda hang on to the good ones, eh?

TORI: No, you have to, um, sometimes there's no room to run the other way, I mean sometimes you run into somebody and- um, I think one of the favorites of the crew is this guy that says he's Anastasia and he used to come to the shows with a, um, a handcuffed briefcase and said that he really was Anastasia and that he needed to get backstage and had a million dollars that he needed to give me so that I could give it to someone but he wouldn't say who and it was about, you know, really, um, excavating her past and all that-

CFNY: ...And helping that person through whatever - I don't know if that's your job, though, I gotta tell ya. Let's go to this new album that you're, right now you've moved on to Sony, you've moved on to Epic and you've got a new record deal with them - This new album to me, from what I've read, its a little bit of ah, its similar to a Roger Waters Amused To Death -

TORI: (Half laughs)

CFNY:- its a whole, you know, concept album where its a story throughout the whole thing. Is it hard to write songs that are a piece of a bigger whole in an album and to know when to end them and when to start them, or do they kind of do it themselves?

TORI: They do it themselves. I mean, you have to know when its time to edit them becasue some of them can go on and on and on - you just have to say no, we get who you are and you get five minutes, Sunshine, that's it!

CFNY: And for the audience, can you tell us a little bit about the new album that is called Scarlet Walk -

TORI: - Scarlet's Walk...

CFNY: -and its based on a character - can you tell us about that?

TORI: Well, she and I are one and the same so maybe I get to hide behind her a little bit, but, my thoughts and feelings are in her, mmm....shoes.

CFNY: Uh-hum

TORI: And so it starts on the west coast in, I guess the porn capital of the world, in The Valley-

CFNY: Uh-hum

TORI: -and I go to see one of my friends who is a, a b-, a b-, a b-, (giggles) I'm not thinking bumble bee here, a b-role porno gal-

CFNY: Okay

TORI: - not good lighting.

CFNY: Right - Amber Waters, is that right?

TORI: Amber Waves, yeah.

CFNY: Amber Waves - I'm close.

TORI: Yeah.

CFNY: So, and it travels through - now, ah, you know, you've done this journey - did you get the idea from travelling yourself alone?

TORI: It started coming rapidly and we were out on the road when a lot of people were cancelling. So, therfore, a lot of people were coming to the shows, hmm, talking about their impressions of the time and it was a time when the masks were down, when people didn't know what tomorrow would bring-

CFNY: You're referring to September Eleventh-

TORI: -and the aftermath-

CFNY: -and you were there, in New York City?

TORI: In New York, yeah.

CFNY: So how has this year - like we're coming up to the anniversary - how is this affecting you, personally?

TORI: Well, its been a - a busy year because, I think, touring after that tragedy happened and being in different parts of the country and then being in different parts of the world, you began to see people's impressions. How they saw the event and how they began to see the world. And that was really the key for me because people started asking questions like, why? Why shouldn't we ask The Question? And in some parts of America that wasn't a good thing - you were made to feel shameful if you said, "What did we do that would create this kind of hatred?" Besides that you have lunatics all over the place who just are malicious and will kill anybody without thinking about it - yeah, that, we know that - but people started asking these questions and so that started to spur on my own questioning. So, Scarlet is looking for what she believes in and who this being we call America is. Not the being that gets pimped out by our leaders or misrepresented - instead of being "Miss America" she gets to be "Miss Represented"-

CFNY: Wow, you know, its amazing to talk with you. The new disc is out October 29th and it is on Epic and Sony and the new disc is called Scarlet Walks-

TORI: -Scarlet's Walk!

CFNY: Scarlet's Walk - because she does, of course, walk-

TORI: Yes, she does.

CFNY: - she walks amongst others. And the new single, the first one is this, A Sorta Fairytale, is that the first single?

TORI: A Sorta Fairytale, yeah.

CFNY: Yeah, I heard you play it last night and it was absolutely phenomenal. I think we should listen to this, and before we get to this, when are you coming back to perform?

TORI: Chels? ...November 22nd.

CFNY: Excellent! We look forward to seeing you, and thank you so much cause I know you've been talking to everybody today - we do appreciate having you here at our street level studio!

TORI: Thank you, Kelly.

CFNY: Have a great day!

TORI: (to crowd) Okay everybody, thanks! (crowd cheers)

Commentary

More details from Alison Zemell:

One more quick thing about Tori being in Toronto. It was mentioned as we waited at the radio station for her that Tori was coming from Much Music. (Which by the way is only at most a 15 minute drive away, so I'm sure traffic was not the reason she was so late). My guess is that she did an interview with Much More Music, which is in the same building, and so it will air sometime on "The Loop" this week. This is a little news show which runs ever hour for the last 5 minutes between 4 and 9pm. Then they do a wrap up on Saturday and again on Sunday, which would probably be the best time for everyone to catch it. On Saturday it is 12:30pm and Sunday 10:30pm. I know this is not confirmed, but from previous visits seems very likely.

Here is a description of the interview from Julie Williamson:

I listened to the interview today. I don't have a transcript but it was really short. The interviewer talked about being at the private showing the night before and how Tori made eye contact with her but it was too intense and she had to look away. She asked Tori about her fans and if she had a problem with them being so intense and involved and Tori said no, that she liked it that way because it was a give and take and that she got alot from her fans.

She did mention that they would be back there on the 22nd of November but no other dates. The interviewer kept getting the name of the CD wrong calling it Scarlet Walks and Tori corrected her a couple of times.

More from Ryan:

I was also at the Tori appearance in Toronto this afternoon, and had some small extra tidbits about the event. Tori was in fact late, probably because of the city's traffic and pedestrian congestion today, by a little over an hour. She came into the Edge FM102.1 studio from a black SUV parked along Yonge Street, and immediately greeted the crowd (40+ people, and alot of window peekers) very warmly. Followed of coarse by autographs and picture-taking with the fans.

The interview with the DJ (who's name I don't know because I just moved to Canada recently) was brief, but they had plenty of good conversation going (although the DJ lady kept screwing up the names of the titles; "Scarlet Walks" and "Amber Waters"). Tori also talked a little about the album's theme, of a journey through a post-9/11 America, with all the good, the bad, and the ugly. When asked about often being surrounded by really intense fans, Tori told the tale of the guy who went to all her shows claiming to be Anastatia and offering Tori a million dollars in the brief case he carried around with him.!?. When the interview was over "A Sorta Fairytale" was played and Tori did some more picture-taking and autographing, but more with the radio station's staff. Then she exited, telling of a flight she was worried about missing, and got into her car and was driven away.