Sandra Bernhard's creative energy is on high

Sandra Bernhard's new music album with Ted Mason, "Whatever It Takes," arrives Tuesday. Look out, because she is spending lots of time in L.A. this fall and has things to pitch, including a TV project with Rip Torn and his daughter Angelica. This year, she has been touring with an anniversary version of her famous one-woman production "Without You I'm Nothing."

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How was the 20th-anniversary show?

I have to say it was one of the greatest nights of my life. We planned a couple of extra special things. I got a trumpet player, who is actually a teacher at my daughter's school.

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It becomes the slightly suburban mom reunion show.

Well, the school she goes to is hardly suburban! Her teachers are as hip if not hipper than me. That's the beautiful thing about it. It's the next generation. Total hipness. But anyway. Then I came out and it was a kind of slow boil of a standing ovation? I was just stunned. And not in a Liza Minnelli sort of way. I mean, I love Liza, but I think she's used to getting standing ovations.

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With this album, you're traveling in both rock goddess and world music territory simultaneously. Complicated.

We put it together in the waning time of the Bush administration, so I feel like a lot of it was influenced by what was going on globally and people's fear of the world and people's fear of us. It was a nice segue into the Obama administration with everything opening up and blossoming like a beautiful flower.

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The flower's struggling a little.

Either too much water or not enough. But at least there's a flower that somebody's tending to as opposed to chopping weeds. That's a perfect metaphor. Dry, dead, lifeless crap that was never even alive to begin with. I think they brought it in just for him to chop it. So long, so depressing, so oppressive!

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Some people feel that way about now.

Yeah, well, I don't think anybody on that side could possibly feel -- there's no visceral reason for them to feel it, other than the racist fear-mongering that those people deal in.

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Do you think New York has changed in the last year in any fundamental way?

I think it changed so much in the previous eight or nine years with the kind of "Sex and the City" mentality: "We're going to go out every night and have mixed drinks and carry our expensive bags!" And those are just the men talking. So I'm hoping that like Michigan, like nature reclaiming itself -- well the High Line's the perfect example! This is something that's free, that people can just enjoy and don't need to be all dressed up and over the top and crazy and devouring each other and shoes and expensive dinners.