1. Amanda MacKinnon Palmer was born on April 30,1976 and is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and performance artist who is the lead vocalist, pianist, and lyricist of the duo the Dresden Dolls.
35 Facts About Amanda Palmer
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Amanda Palmer performs as a solo artist and was a member of the duo Evelyn Evelyn and the lead singer and songwriter of Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra.
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Amanda Palmer has gained a cult fanbase and was one of the first musical artists to popularize the use of crowdfunding websites.
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Amanda MacKinnon Palmer was born in the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, and grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts.
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Amanda Palmer's father was a physicist and her mother was a computer programmer.
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Amanda Palmer's parents divorced when she was one year old, and as a child she rarely saw her father.
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Amanda Palmer attended Lexington High School, where she was involved in the drama department, and later attended Wesleyan University where she studied theater and was a member of the Eclectic Society.
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In 1999, Palmer founded the Shadowbox Collective, a performance group devoted to street theatre and putting on theatrical shows.
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Amanda Palmer graduated from Wesleyan University with a BA in 1998.
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Amanda Palmer spent several years busking as a living statue called the Eight Foot Bride in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Edinburgh; Berlin; Melbourne ; and many other locations.
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Amanda Palmer refers to her street performance work in the Dresden Dolls song "The Perfect Fit", as well as on the A is for Accident track "Glass Slipper".
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At a Halloween party in 2000, Amanda Palmer met the drummer Brian Viglione and afterwards they formed the Dresden Dolls.
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The book contains the lyrics, sheet music, and notes on each song in the album, all written by Palmer, as well as a DVD with a 20-minute interview of Amanda about making the book.
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In July 2007, Amanda Palmer played three sold-out shows in a new "with band" format.
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Amanda Palmer's backing band was Boston alternative rock group Aberdeen City, who opened along with Dixie Dirt.
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Amanda Palmer collaborated with Australian theater company the Danger Ensemble; both again appeared at the Spiegeltent in Melbourne and at other venues around Australia in December 2007.
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In September 2007, Amanda Palmer collaborated with Jason Webley to launch the new project Evelyn Evelyn with the EP Elephant Elephant.
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In June 2008, Amanda Palmer established her solo career with two well-received performances with the Boston Pops.
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Amanda Palmer did most of the shows with a broken foot she had sustained in Belfast, Northern Ireland when a car ran over her foot as she stepped out into a street.
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In 2009, Amanda Palmer went back to her alma mater, Lexington High School in Massachusetts, to collaborate with her old director and mentor Steven Bogart on a workshop piece for the department's spring production.
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Amanda Palmer began using the ukulele during a concert as a goof, but soon it became a regular part of her repertoire.
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On November 9,2012, Amanda Palmer released the music video for "Do it With a Rockstar" on The Flaming Lips' website.
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In November 2014, Amanda Palmer released a memoir, The Art of Asking, which expands on a TED talk she gave in February 2013.
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On March 3,2015, Amanda Palmer began soliciting financial support on the crowdfunding platform Patreon.
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Amanda Palmer spoke at the 2015 Hay Festival about the prospect of reconciling art and motherhood.
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Amanda Palmer collaborated with her father, Jack Amanda Palmer, to record an album entitled You Got Me Singing.
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Amanda Palmer collaborated with Legendary Pink Dots frontman Edward Ka-Spel to record an album, I Can Spin a Rainbow.
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On March 8,2019, Amanda Palmer released her third solo studio album and first in seven years, There Will Be No Intermission.
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In fall 2020, Amanda Palmer launched a podcast called The Art of Asking Everything.
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For more than a decade, Amanda Palmer lived in an independent artists' cooperative named the Cloud Club in Boston, Massachusetts.
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Amanda Palmer has said that she once worked as a stripper under the name Berlin.
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Amanda Palmer has had three abortions, and her song "Voicemail for Jill" is about these experiences.
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When one, a former nanny, filed a police report in New Zealand, she said an officer told her that Amanda Palmer's cooperation was essential for the case; Amanda Palmer declined to speak with police.
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In fall 2020, Amanda Palmer announced she would be releasing a podcast called The Art of Asking Everything.
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Amanda Palmer has a chapter giving advice in Tim Ferriss' book Tools of Titans.