EVANESCENCE Singer On Balancing Family And Career

Recoil magazine recently conducted an interview with EVANESCENCE singer Amy Lee. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Recoil: You put so much into each and every one of your live performances. How exhausting is it for you to be out on the road? How challenging is it for you to maintain your voice when you're touring?

Amy: It's physically exhausting, but it's more mentally exhausting than anything. We've learned how to pace it, where, as long as I don't get sick, it's cool. You've got to get your sleep, you can't party too hard, you've got to drink a lot of water, a lot of hot tea, even when it's hot outside, which is the worst. Playing like a summer festival outside in the heat and trying to sip a hot tea, forget about it. But, at the same time, I think it's just the pressure and stress [laughs] of all the shit that's going on all the time that sort of gets to me after a while, where I'm like, "OK, I need a whole day where I don't think about EVANESCENCE."

Recoil: I know that part of the reason why you took as much time off between [EVANESCENCE's last album, 2006's] "The Open Door" and the new self-titled record is that you just needed to take time away from your EVANESCENCE identity to be inspired, and to live your own life outside of the music industry machine, that whole album release tour cycle. How much of a challenge is it for you to maintain that balance, between being able to just be yourself, and still be the lead singer for EVANESCENCE while you're on tour?

Amy: It's a little bit of a challenge. More than anything it's a little bit of an adjustment, because I live two completely polar opposite lives, and each one lasts for a couple years at a time. So, like, writing and recording, it's so inward, you know? It's so private, and I spend so much time indoors, creating and staying up all night, and kind of just being a cave girl zombie. And then we go out on tour and it's all about the performance and interviews and looking good and sounding good, and getting thoughts across in every possible medium. So it's weird because you go from being super introverted to super extroverted, and it just goes in a weird cycle. So it's always an adjustment when we have to do the other thing. I've been on tour for a good long time now where I'm missing my family a little bit, and making my own schedule, I think that's something that gets to me sometimes, because there's something that I'm supposed to do [while on tour] and I have a little bit of a rebellious heart, and I don't like doing what I'm supposed to do.

Recoil: You mentioned missing your family. I know you got married in 2007. How has being married changed the sort of lifestyle you live while on the road, or like you said maintaining the balance between your two lifestyles?

Amy: It's definitely a balance. I'm always going to put my family and my husband first, but I do have a really understanding and cool husband, and he loves what I do, and he's been able to come out on a lot of our tours. He was just on that crazy Euro run with us, which was good, because those can get a little lonely after a while. A lot lonely. But we had a lot of cool, fun adventures together. He's not going to be coming out on this next one, but we'll be in America, and it'll be good. I'll be seeing a lot of family on the road.

Read the entire interview from Recoil magazine.