Moses Sumney Performs Dreamy Acoustic Take Of "Man On The Moon" Live

Q: Where are you from?

MS: I was born here. I grew up in San Bernardino and moved to Ghana (at age 10).

Q: What was that like?

MS: It was hard – my friends were here, I had to get acclimated to a whole new culture. I was already Americanized and there was no Pokemon.

Q: Did you take away anything?

MS: No. I was depressed (laughs). Looking back on it, on a subconscious level, I think I took away some musical inspiration, but not in the way most people would assume. I wasn’t like, “Oh, I am going to play Afro music.”

Q: How would you describe your personality?

MS: I would slip my songbook into my mattress because I was really shy. I feel shy, but people don’t perceive me as shy. I don’t get nervous before shows. I get nervous in social situations.

Q: What made you decide to air them out?

MS: (laughs) Desperation, I think, and fear that I would get old and regret that I didn’t try to do something with it. I knew I was meant to do it at some point, just never when. For me, I just felt like I was getting older. I started performing when I was 20.

Q: How old are you now?

MS: I am 24. My first LA show was a year ago. Since then so much has happened. School Night! was a really crazy night. You rarely get a chance to quantify the results of what you are doing – seeing how many people were there. It’s kind of creepy. It moved very slowly for 23 years and all of a sudden it’s boom.