Frances Quinlan: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

Feb. 18, 2020, Marissa Lorusso This performance was recorded on March 2, 2020. We will continue releasing Tiny Desk videos of shows that had already been taped. In light of current events, NPR is postponing new live tapings of Tiny Desk Concerts. In the meantime, check out Tiny Desk (home) concerts Theyre recorded by the artists in their home. Its the same spirit strippeddown sets, an intimate setting just a different space. Frances Quinlan showed up to NPR HQ in Washington, D. C., in February, just after Presidents Day which explains her multiple midperformance jokes about White House residents. But even if her Tiny Desk concert had happened in July, the allusions wouldn t have surprised me. As a songwriter, Quinlan is piercingly astute at making connections between her present reality and the wider world; her songs often narrate other stories she s heard, fictional or real, from a place of wideeyed empathy. (It s unclear, however, whether George Washington s teeth the subject of one such