Tori Amos’ “Ocean to Ocean” tour to hit Denver’s Paramount Theatre

The pandemic bought to Tori Amos.

Oh, certain, the acclaimed, classically educated and enduring pianist and singer-songwriter — recognized for songs together with “Crucify,” “Cornflake Woman,” “Caught a Lite Sneeze” and “A Sorta Fairytale” — was fantastic at first.

She huddled up together with her music engineer husband, Mark Hawley, of their residence in Cornwall, England, and so they invited their grownup daughter, Tash, and her boyfriend to stick with them.

Amos tried to maintain busy, releasing a guide, “Resistance: A Songwriter’s Story of Hope, Change, and Braveness,” within the first half of 2020, and a vacation EP, “Christmastide,” within the second.

“I wished to place out one thing that wasn’t unfavorable on the time,” says Amos throughout an interview in mid-April, every week earlier than beginning a North American tour that on June 2 will deliver her to Denver’s Paramount Theatre. (The present is bought out, however verify livenation.com or secondary markets for last-minute tickets.)

Then got here early 2021.

“By the third lockdown, I’ve bought to inform you, I used to be carried out.”

The restrictions have been extremely strict, says Amos, on the telephone from Florida, the place she additionally has a residence.

“Should you didn’t have the suitable license plate, they weren’t going to allow you to into Cornwall,” she says. “It was fairly extreme, and I believe at that time, I wanted to jot down myself out of, simply, disappointment.”

There was only one drawback.

“Usually, I’d take what I name a ‘pilgrimage,’” Amos says. “I journey. For the final, I don’t now, over 30 years, I journey. I am going locations and observe.

“As a songwriter, I really feel that may start to start out a course of — kickstart, in order for you, concepts,” she provides. “Whenever you’re writing your first file, it’s a little bit totally different than once you’re writing your sixteenth (laughs) since you’ve mined all that materials.

And but, when the press supplies for “Ocean to Ocean” — her, sure, sixteenth studio album, launched in October — name it her “most private work in years,” that will not simply be advertising and marketing communicate.

The tune “Swim to New York State” is a declaration of affection to her husband.

“Flowers Burn to Gold” is impressed by the loss of life of her mom a couple of years in the past.

“Spies” is “an account of the bats and different creepy-crawlies that entered the Cornish home at night time through the July heatwave and terrorized her daughter, asleep within the sitting room,” say the supplies.

After which there’s “29 years,” a reference to a mindset involving searching for empowerment that she established across the time of the discharge of her first album, “Little Earthquakes,” which this yr turned 30.

“I couldn’t journey, so I couldn’t take that pilgrimage,” Amos says. “I needed to discover a totally different means, so I appeared round and mentioned, ‘OK, workforce — you’re up!’”

Amos has penned myriad compositions through the years — for albums together with “Underneath the Pink” (1994), “Boys for Pele” (1996), “Scarlet’s Stroll” (2002) and “Evening of Hunters” (2011), an idea album that includes Tash as a visitor vocalist — but it surely isn’t precisely correct to say all of that songwriting has come simply.

“(If) you have been to problem me and say, ‘Are you able to write a tune each day for a yr?’ Yeah, in fact, I can try this. Ought to anyone hear any of it? Most likely not,” she says. “With the ability to do a activity and having tune magic are two very various things.”

She says when her “muses” do present up, they might give her solely two great bars of music, and it could take her weeks, months and even years to flesh out a tune from there.

“Some songs have been hanging round for 20 years, and I simply don’t know the place to take them.”

Together with a present for creating memorable piano-based melodies, Amos possesses a willingness to problem the listener lyrically. In truth, counted amongst those that don’t all the time perceive the meanings of her songs is her husband, who has admitted as a lot to her crew members.

“‘I’ve no clue what my spouse’s speaking about, and I’ve no clue what’s happening in my spouse’s head, however I simply obey orders,’” she says, imitating him having amusing.

She permits that some songs are extra cryptic than others and that work goes into matching lyrics to the sentiments she’s attempting to evoke with the music.

“I don’t simply take some phrases and put them in a jar and shake them up and throw them on the ground and that’s your tune. I don’t try this,” she says with extra laughs. “Possibly I ought to strive.”