Aimee Mann — True to Herself — Comes to Hampton Bays

To live a life as a consistently successful, working musician takes creativity, bravery, and a lot of grit. Aimee Mann may have the voice of a sweet songbird, but she was never willing to have her wings clipped. Maybe that’s why she’s consistently creating, surfacing to the general public in moments of glory, like her shining presence on the “Magnolia” soundtrack in 1999 or her Grammy Award-winning folk album in 2018.

Then she returns to the quiet, steady work of being true to herself.

When Mann was starting out in Boston, she found success with her band ’Til Tuesday, with their song “Voices Carry” rising to No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1985.

“’Til Tuesday taught me what it was to be in a band, to be on the road, nationally touring,” said Mann in an interview last month.

The band released three albums together and were represented by a major label. But by the late 1980s, Mann found her musical interest was changing.

“I was starting to write in a different way,” she recalled. “So the band wasn’t an appropriate vehicle for me anymore. So I went solo.”

It wasn’t quite that easy, because the record label wouldn’t just release her, but she started writing and performing live shows on her own, following her vision in any way she could. Still, the grip of the record label was stifling.

“The label starts to see their job as making your record instead of promoting it,” Mann said. “So there’s this interference with the creative vision of the song.”

Still, she pushed to make sure her voice was clearly heard. Her influence on Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1999 film, “Magnolia,” can’t be overstated. Not only did she write nine songs on the soundtrack, but one — “Save Me” — was nominated for both a Grammy and an Oscar. Another, “Wise Up,” makes a gut-wrenching montage where the powerhouse cast from Philip Seymour Hoffman to Julianne Moore and Tom Cruise sing along to the song in their isolated moments of despair.

“When I wrote that song, I was writing about a friend of mine who was engaged in unhealthy, addictive behavior,” she said. “That’s what that song is about. How nothing changes if nothing changes.”

Her prominent role in that critically acclaimed film gave her plenty of fuel to go out on her own.

“I would have done anything to avoid answering to people who don’t really care about music in the first place,” she said. “To take directions from people who don’t even like music is kind of insulting and it’s hard to take seriously.”

Mann started SuperEgo Records in 2000, when the internet was just becoming popularized. She used it to promote her music and to sell directly to fans.

“I didn’t care what we had to do,” she said. “Whatever wasn’t being stuck in the major label system. We’d go on the road, promote the record, make a video, and hire promo people to get it on the radio. It wasn’t rocket science. So we did it ourselves.”

Mann had always been a great songwriter, and now she was unencumbered. And the more she wrote, the more fun she had with it.

“I am always excited about writing,” she said. “It always feels like a treat to be able to sit down and work on a song.”

The process may vary, but usually, she picks up the guitar or sits down at the piano first.

“I might strum some chords, which might come along with a melody or a line,” she said. “I listen to the way the music sounds, and what kind of story would go with this vibe that the music is creating.”

She compares it to scribbling something, and then realizing it looks like something that has meaning, and then developing from there.

“Music has a flavor and a feeling,” she said. “So maybe this riff I’m playing feels like a film noir story with a wet street and a lonely man in a cafe. And then I think, ‘How do I relate to that story?’”

Storytelling through song is a quintessential feature of the folk genre, and maybe that’s why, when she released “Mental Illness,” her ninth studio album, in 2017, it was nominated for a Grammy for Best Folk Album. In 2018, she won.

And still, she returns to her steady work. Writing, processing, practicing. When she comes to Canoe Place Inn in Hampton Bays this summer, she’ll be sharing her unique, unadulterated view of the world in the best way she knows how — through her original music that speaks for itself.

Aimee Mann will play at Canoe Place Inn in Hampton Bays on Thursday, June 12, at 8 p.m. For tickets, visit canoeplace.com.