RiYL: Recent Episodes
Brian Heater
Recommended if You Like: longform conversation with musicians, cartoonists, writers and other creative types.
This year, Drawn & Quarterly is reissuing Curses. Now 20 years old, the book represents Kevin Huizenga at his finest. The book features a collection of stories united by the cartoonist's long time lead, Glenn Ganges, exploring history, fiction, folk tales and more, backdropped against a seemingly mundane suburban midwestern backdrop. It presents a true master at work.
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Over the decades, Collective Soul has managed to avoid many of the pitfalls that torpedoed their contemporaries. The Georgia-based band saw a quick rise in the early 90s, on the backs of hits like "Shine" and "December." More than 30 years on, the band remains as solid a unit as ever, have maintained an extraordinarily consistent lineup. Longtime bassist Will Turpin joins us to discuss the band's rise and what keeps the group together all these years later. Transcript available here.
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The most recent stage of Bruce Sudano’s career began in earnest just over a decade ago. His wife and long-time creative partner, the legendary Donna Summer, passed in 2012. With their children now grown, Sudano restarted his solo career. The move, he notes, felt like nearly restarting a decades-long musical journey from scratch.
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It's been a hard few years for most of us, but Pearl Harbour has managed to stay positive throughout. It's no small feat, given struggles with lung cancer that have indefinitely sidelined her singing career. The musician recently penned linear notes for the re-issue of her great unsung 1980 rockabilly LP, Don't Follow Me, Im Lost Too. The album features an all-star cast of musicians from The Clash and Ian Dury and the Blockheads, Habour's friends and tourmates at the time. And while she's not one to get hung up in the past, she happily recounts some terrific stories from the era. Transcript available here.
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In Summer 2022, Jon Batiste left his longtime role as band leader for Stephen Colbert's Late Show. Longtime bandmate and sometime replacement Louis Cato stepped into the role, breathing new virtuosic role As Colbert noted at the time, "Give him an afternoon, he'll learn how to play Mozart on a shoehorn." Cato joins us to discuss his journey, music school, becoming a parent at 19 and his soul new record, Reflections, for which he played every instrument.
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The term "love letter" is criminally overused in this industry, but you'd be hard pressed to find a more appropriate phrase for Fall Through. The book finds cartoonist Nate Powell reconnecting with the punk rock touring days of the 90s. Before his career as a cartoonist, Powell played in bands, including his time as one of the longest tenured members of Little Rock's Soophie Nun Squad.The artist joins us to relive those times and discuss his friendship with civil rights pioneer, Congressman John Lewis.
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The Workbench is an ode to the power of objects. The EP is the celebration of the titular possession Brian Harnetty inherited when his father passed. It's an tribute to a man who could seemingly "fix anything," a trait the musician admits he did not inherit. The younger Harnetty is, however, a whiz at creating songs with his hands, incorporating a wealth of found sounds for a richer portrait of his late father
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September marks 25 years since the release of 69 Love Songs. The landmark triple-album cemented frontman Stephin Merritt's states as one of the finest songwriters of his generation. A quarter-century later, the songs don't always come as easily to Merritt. At his most prolific, however, the musician wrote more than enough to carry him through the rest of his career. "No one would ever know if I never wrote a song again in my life," he explains, "because I could just use the ones I already have that I haven't found an album for yet."
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Ten years is forever in the rock world. There were times it seemed Camera Obscura might never return. The 2015 death of longtime keyboard player Carey Lander put the group’s future in limbo. For the first time since the mid-90s, the band went on indefinite hiatus. An invitation to perform at the Belle & Sebastian curated Boaty Weekender cruise brought the band back together in 2018. Plans to record an album two years later were themselves put on hiatus, courtesy of a global pandemic. On May 3, the band returns to form with Look to the East, Look to West. Transcript available here.
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For our conversation, Emel Mathlouthi popped into a Brooklyn coffee shop. It’s a little cacophonous, but also a fitting microcosm of the city she now calls home. The musician moved to the States after a stint in Paris, but a part of her home country of Tunisia always remains close. As she broadens her cultural and musical horizons, the North African country continues to inform both. Her latest album, MRA, pushes Mathlouthi’s explorations further still, courtesy of songs performed and produced entirely by women.
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Fifteen years is forever in the world of popular music. But the number doesn't tell the whole story. While it's been a decade-and-a-half since Mary Timony released her last solo record, the low-key guitar god has been plenty busy. She's released a pair of albums as part of Ex Hex, a record with indie rock supergroup Ex Hex with members of Sleater Kinney and cofounded Hammered Hulls with childhood DC punk friend Alec MacKaye. Timony joins us to discusses her latest, Untame The Tiger.
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Few individuals have left as an indelible a mark on late-20th century American popular culture as Don Was. As a producer, he work includes some of music’s biggest names, including Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones and Iggy Pop. In the 80s, he found success on the other side of the microphone as one-half of the Was (Not Was). In 2012, he became the president of legendary jazz label Blue Note Records and six years later began performing regularly alongside Bob Weir in The Wolf Brothers. His latest project, Don Was and The Pan-Detroit Ensemble, finds the musician reconnecting was jazz performance by way of the city of his birth.
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Fun bonus episode this week, as we're joined by James "Murr" Muray and Brian "Q" Quinn of "Impractical Jokers. The pair discuss their upcoming tour and keeping the show fresh after 10 seasons.
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Health scares have a way of prioritizing things. For Lauren Denitzio, undergoing heart surgery at the young age of 25 brought one key priority into sharp focus: music. Since then, the musician has approached their creative venue Worriers as a form of pure expression, both musically and emotion. The band's earnest, joyful music has earned it a place in the world of punk, including an upcoming tour opening for Alkaline Trio. Transcript available here.
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Ducks Ltd. arrived out of nowhere with 2019's Get Bleak. The tight four-song EP offered grad-level crash course on perfect indie pop hits. This year's Harm's Way find the group plumbing the kind of jangle pop that made 2021's Modern Fiction a critical darling. Tom McGreevy, the singing/rhythm guitar playing half of the duo joins us to discuss life in Ontario, railway disasters and balancing the darker side of life with bright music. Transcript available here.
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There are more than a few points when Hey Panda sounds like the work of an entirely different band. The songwriting is sharp as ever, but Sean O'Hagan gleefully pushes the High Llamas into new directions. It's an impressive accomplishment in itself more than three decades after the band's formed. O'Hagan was already a music industry vet by the time he founded the High Llamas in 1990, having spent the previous decade sharing songwriting credits for Rough Trade act, Microdisney. Transcript available here.
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In 1970, Mayo Thompson released his only solo record to date. It's a strange thing to write 50 years later, especially given the Texas-born musician's wildly prolific career as the sole consistent member of the eclectic and enigmatic Red Krayola. Ignored in many circles upon its release, Corky has grown in stature over the decades, which -- much like the Red Krayola -- has achieved the status of cult icon. Thompson has begun playing the album live in recent years, as he chart the course for a potential sequel, half a century later. Transcript available here.
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The legend of McLusky has grown greatly since the the group's initial breakup in 2005. The release of the three-disc Mcluskyism compilation is no doubt reasonable for much of that prolonged success. So, too, are the members' post-McLusky projects, including Future of the Left. Formed by ex-members Andrew Falkous and Jack Egglestone shortly after breakup, the group carried on its tradition of sardonic and melodic noise rock. Falkous and Egglestone reformed McLusky in 2014. The group's second stint is officially longer than its first as of 2024. The group is currently in the midst of an American tour, postponed by two years, due to Falkous' health issues. Here he discusses all of that and more. Transcript available here.
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After half-a-decade with Montreal's dreamy synth pop group Tops, Marta Cikojevic took her own turn in the spotlight in 2022. The eponymous debut of her project Marci finds the musician embracing dance music, with one foot planted in yacht rock's golden era. Prior to her time in music, Cikojevic had a flourishing career in modeling that took her around the world, including a long stint in Hong Kong. The musician joins us to discuss finding her voice. Transcript available here.
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For a few decades now, it seems like Doug Gillard is everywhere. He's the second longest tenured member of the wildly prolific Guided By Voices, behind frontman, Robert Pollard, having been in and out (mostly in) of the band since the mid-90s. He is also a long-time guitarist for alternative rock stalwarts, Nada Surf, having played with the group since 2010. His work has earned him spots on the linear notes of many of indie rock's biggest names, as he continues playing with a variety of of groups, including the early Beatles homage, Bambi Kino. Transcription available here.
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On 2022’s self-titled debut, BLKBOK enlisted poet (and English teacher) Lauren Delaphena to record spoken work tracks, which served to break up instrumental tracks. For the follow up, Charles Wilson III gave the job to his therapist, Dr. Felicia Thomas. Plenty of albums can be described as “deeply personal,” but in that respect, 9 is on another level. The neo-classical piano tracks also serve as a homage to high school civil rights, the Little Rock Nine. Wilson joins us to discuss the story behind the album and keeping classical music fresh for another century. Transcript available here.
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By the time Roaming arrived last year, it had been nearly a decade since This One Summer, the last collaboration between cousins Jillian and Mariko Tamaki. The comic was their second joint project, follow 2008's award-winning debut, Skim. This One Summer won the pair an Eisner, Ignatz and Coldecott, before running afoul of overzealous censorship boards, due in part to its compassionate and humane approach to writing LGBTQ youths. Targeted at a YA audience, Roaming's cast is older, but the book similarly approaches a budding queer relationship, as three college aged woman travel from Canadian to New York City for a whirlwind trip.
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World records can be tricky things. Rules enforced by governing bodies can disqualify potential contenders. While there was no likelihood of enshrinement at the finish line, Pocket Vinyl went for it nevertheless and got their own book in the process. How to Completely Lose Your Mind finds bandmates and husband/wife duo Elizabeth Jancewicz and Eric Stevenson racing to finish a tour of 50 states in 45 days. Jancewicz joins us to discuss the book, tour and painting in front of a live crowd. Transcript available here.
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There's no one quite like Gogol Bordello. The band has cultivated a wildly joyful mix of Romani and Ukrainian music, crossed with punk, polka and any other genre that might suitable serve the chaos. Eugene Hütz stands in the eye of the storm, as frontman and ringleader. Growing up in Ukraine studying English language punk and folk, Hütz and family would move across the content to Poland, Hungary, Austria and Italy as political refugees. In the early-90s, the band settled in the U.S. By the end of the decade, Gogol Bordello began in earnest in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Transcript available here.
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By her early 20s, Veronica Swift was a jazz veteran. The daughter of musicians (pianist Hod O'Brien and singer Stephanie Nakasian), she recorded her debut at age nine. Swift’s career has taken its share of turns, including a rock opera in which she played a killer nun, composed while studying music at the University of Miami. Last year’s self-titled LP presents yet another side of the musician, as she marries her love of rock with her jazz bonafides. Transcript available here.
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Place invariably has a profound impact on the art we make. Immigration melds cultures and creative output, a phenomenon embodied by musical cross pollination. Movement, which began its second season this year, explores the lives and works of immigrant musicians. It’s a subject that is near and dear to the podcast’s host, Meklit Hadero, whose music marries influences from her American home and Ethiopian birthplace. Transcript available here.
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As day jobs go, one could do a lot worse than composer. Classically trained at Yale, Ellis Ludwig-Leone spends much of his time writing music for institutions including the New York City Ballet. By night, he’s the principal songwriter and ostensible leader of San Fermin, whose indie-inclined chamber pop has earned a steady following and critical acclaim for more than a decade. Next month, the will release Arms, a rawer, more immediate album dealing with – among other topics – art and the end of relationships. Ludwig-Leone joined us to discuss the two sides of his songwriting life. Transcript available here.
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With a name borrowed from the Get Up Kids’ second EP, Red Letter Days finds front man Matt Pryor delving deep into personal stories. The memoir was adapted – in part – from the musician’s journals, beginning with his childhood diabetes diagnoses, through his musical journey. Formed in Kansas in the mid-90s, the Get Up Kids went on to become one of the most influential acts of emo’s second wave (referred to as the tongue-in-cheek “e-word” throughout). Pryor joins us to discuss his musical life, personal struggles and the act of getting it all down on paper. Transcript here.
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Survival Guide is, for all intents and purposes, Emily Whitehurst. What began as collaboration evolved into a solo act. For the project’s fourth album, deathdreams, the musician has continued to push her limits, playing nearly every instrument on its 11 tracks. Whitehurst has had plenty of collaborative projects over the years, including her stint in punk band, Tsunami Bomb and the follow up group, The Action Design. But sometimes the purest form of expression requires an artist to take things into their own hands. Transcript available here.
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Plenty of pioneers aren’t sufficiently recognized in their time. Fanny had its share of high profile champions, from David Bowie to Steely Dan, but nothing amounting to the level of stardom they might have achieved had they come around a decade later. The band’s legend has only grown in subsequent decades, however. More than a quarter-century after the band’s dissolution, however, Rhino resissued the band’s four albums by way of a box set. More recently, the documentary, Fanny: The Right to Rock, introduced the group a whole new generation of fans. Singer and guitarist June Millington joins us to discuss her journey in music, mindfulness and teaching. Transcript available here.
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A deeply personal meditation on life, art and surviving capitalism, Time Under Tension further establishes MS Harkness as a formative voice in auto-bio comics. The book – her first for Fantagraphics – follows the Uncivilized Books titles, Tinderella and Desperate Pleasures. Harkness joins us to discuss her work, weightlifting and teaching comics. Transcript available here.
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When the time came to put out a new record, Will Butler formed a band. Comprised of the group he’d toured with for his 2015 debut, Policy, Will Butler and Sister Squares released a 14 track self-titled album that is as reflective as is it is danceable. It’s the work of a mature artist, propelled by his two decades playing alongside older brother, Win, in the critically-acclaimed Arcade Fire. Butler joins us fresh off a long run in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. Transcript available here.
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In 1989, a 23-year-old Chris Oliveros founded a quarterly publication that grew into one of the world’s most respect independent comics publishers. In 2015, he left the company after 25 years, in order to focus on his own work. Oliveros released The Envelope Manufacturer the following year, chronicling the titular character’s financial and mental struggles in a changing world. Earlier this year, D&Q released Are You Willing to Die for the Cause?, which delves into a fascinating an oft-overlooked chapter of Quebec history.
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In 2019, Jack Tatum and his wife made the move from Los Angeles to Virginia. As timing goes, the decision couldn't have been better, as they rode out the pandemic with considerably more space. Since then, the couple have had a son, a factor that weighs heavily on the themes of his latest, Hold. The album is his fifth as Wild Nothing, and his first fully self-produced record since 2010's Gemini. Tatum discusses his creative process and using music to work through pain. Transcript available here.
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A few months ago, Joshua Cotter did something difficult: he asked for help. Social media posts detailing the number of copies his Nod Away series have sold struck a chord. If a supremely talented artist like Cotter can’t make a living at comics, what hope does anyone else have? Over the years, Cotter has crafted many excellent works, including Skyscrapers of the Midwest and Driven by Lemons. Those two titles have taken on a special meaning for the cartoonist, after being diagnosed with neurodivergence. Transcript available here.
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Few bands reach the status of “institution.” It’s a qualifier that has applied to Barenaked Ladies for several decades now. Multi-instrumentalist Kevin Hearn has been a part of that journey since 1995, joining prior to the one-two punch of Born of a Pirate Ship and Stunt, the latter of which catapulted the already-popular band into the stratosphere. Hearn’s professional career stretches back further, to the late-80s, when he joined Toronto’s legendary Look People. Transcript available here.
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Last night was a late one – a big show at Pappy and Harriets in Pioneertown, California, followed by the inevitable after party. Zia McCabe dials in from the passenger seat of the tour bus, slightly worse for wear, but sharp as ever. After nearly 30 years, the Dandy Warhols know the road like few others – and like even fewer, they’re still committed to bringing it every night. McCabe joins us to discuss her journey with the band, family and life in real estate.
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"World Worth Keeping" is a joyful song of existential crisis, celebrating a planet as it stares down the face of climate change. It's a perfect microcosm of its creator's work, at once serious and playful, with a country twang and a great hook. Jaime Wyatt hasn't always had the easiest existence, dealing with substance abuse and a stint in jail, but she's emerged from the other side confident, proud, as a rising star in the country world. Transcript available here.
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Sixty-six million years ago, roughly three-quarters of the Earth’s plants and animals went extinct. As Riley Black notes, such deaths happened almost instantaneously. Those who survived asteroid impact perished shortly after. The Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event is the cheery topic that forms the basis of Black’s best-selling, The Last Days of the Dinosaurs. She joins us to discuss her path to paleontology and the experience navigating the field as a trans woman. Transcript available here.
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The Music of Heatmiser affords the titular band an occasion to step outside their own large shadow. It's an opportunity to judge the group on its own merit, beyond simply serving as a launchpad for its most famous member. College friends Neil Gust and Elliott Smith serve as the songwriting forces behind the Portland act, whose unreleased recordings appear on the new Third Man record. After Heatmister's rise and quick dissolution, Gust founded No. 2. More recently, he made a second career as a video editor in New York, only to feel music's pull once again. The musician joins us to discuss Heatmiser and his subsequent journey.
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A dozen different songs about death. That's how one arrives at a title like Eulogy Volume 1. But not all deaths are equal. Some are metaphorical, representing a new beginning. Josh Radnor's first solo album finds him operating without the accomplished musical safety net that is longtime collaborator, Ben Lee. The actor/musician joins us to discuss relationships, psychedelics and the wisdom of middle age.
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This month marks 20 years since the Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone? The Unicorns' sophomore album is a singular triumph for a group that was clearly too beautiful to live. But it didn't take Nick Thorburn long to regroup after his seminal high school band imploded. There have been countless musical projects along the way, but Islands stands the tallest as longest tenured, most brilliant and best among them. The band returns this year with And That's Why Dolphins Lost Their Legs, the second album since Thornburn's self-imposed hiatus. It's bleak at times, but always a fantastic snapshot of a musical career ever charging ahead.
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Northern (Redux) began as something altogether different. The planned record length cover of Taylor Deupree’s 2006 ambient album became a collaboration. Jeremiah Fraites brought Dupree into the projects to reimagine the original, with the Lumineers cofounder behind the piano. It was a departure from Fraites’ solo debut Piano Piano, but both projects are united as radically different works than his immensely popular alternative folk band. He joins us to discuss his distinct musical journeys.
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Sitting in the backseat of an Uber on the way home from a three week work trip, I tossed The Skies, They Shift Like Chords on my music player. “Centering” is the first word that comes to mind. A few minutes in, and your blood pressure starts to drop. Roger Eno has been an expert at centering for decades, constantly refining his music and distilling it to the fewest viable parts. The composer joins us to discuss his long career in music.
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Some artists prefer to "let the art speak for themselves." It's a stance I respect, but hope to never encounter during an interview. Kristin Hersh, on the other hand, is an open book. The musician has faced adversity head on, and chronicled it great detail through memoir. It's a breath of fresh air -- particularly from an artists whose work stands on its own, several times over, as the founder of Throwing Muses, 50 Foot Wave and nearly a dozen solo albums. Her latest, Clear Pond Road, arrived in September. It's raw, adventurous and triumphantly her own.
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Several months before the release of Monica, I spoke with Daniel Clowes for a magazine feature. I consider this a kind of companion piece to our more recent conversation, digging deeper into his latest book and the stories behind it. I hope you get something out of it, too.
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With a few days between book tour dates, Daniel Clowes is decompressing in his Bay Area home. It had been a few months since we’d spoken for a magazine piece – a perfect time to reflect on the critical acclaim surrounding his latest book, Monica. It’s a deeply personal book in a number of ways, inspired by his mother who passed during the several years it took to craft. It’s also a welcome return for one of the finest cartoonists of his generation.
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For 34 years, Teenage Fanclub has remained remarkably consistent, both in terms of lineup and quality. Emerging from the Glasgow scene at the tail end of the 80s, the band’s 11 records maintain a level of quality matched by remarkably few. The streak continues with the Ominously Named Nothing Last Forever, which arrived this September. The album embraces heavy topics, like aging and loss, all while maintaining a knack for writing a great pop song.
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As a member of both the Modern Lovers and Talking Heads, Jerry Harrison has had a profound impact of rock music. Along with his solo work, he’s also produced some of equally influential acts, including the Violent Femmes, General Public and the Bogmen. Harrison took at extended break from touring, following the end of the David Byrne-free trio, The Heads. His LinkedIn tells the story of a successful businessman, including – most recently – cofounding equity crowdfunding platform, RedCrow. The keyboardist recently returned to touring, however, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Talking Heads’ Remain in Light, alongside guitar Adrian Belew.
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Knowing full well that I've become the interviewer who asks about album names, I can't help but draw a parallel between Isn't it Now and Ram Daas. There's truth in the comparison, stemming from the band's evolving approach to music and the simple act of existing in the world. But there are countless other meanings to extract from those three words. Few things are as simple as they appear in Animal Collective land. David "Avey Tare" Portner joins us to discuss life inside and outside an ever evolving musical act.
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For some musicians, touring is a strange dichotomy. In him home of France, Ibrahim Maalouf plays stadiums. It’s a different vibe here in the States where he finds himself playing to a few hundred, in spite of last year’s Grammy nomination. The Lebanon-born musician was up for the award courtesy of Queen of Sheba, his reent collaboration with Angélique Kidjo. Maalouf joins us to discuss how he came to love the trumpet.
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The first Wolfie's Just Fine album arrived in 2016. I Remembered, But Then I Forgot marked a major shift in Jon Lajoie’s music, toward more earnest songwriting.He admits to an initial hesitation. After all, Lajoie built a career around comedy songs, going on to star as Taco in FX’s beloved series, The League. The move worked. An EP arrived in 2018, followed by Everyone Is Dead Except Us, which arrived this summer. Lajoie joins us from a truck to discuss his unique trajectory.
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Soundtracking a movie was a perfect opportunity to flex new songwriting muscles. As is often the case in life, however, things went nowhere near according to plan. There's not a lot you can do when you and the director don't see eye to eye. But Alejandro Rose-Garcia found opportunity amid frustration. Movie of the Week finds Shakey Graves embarking on his own imaginary film soundtrack, courtesy of AI and endless remixing. It's a perfect outlet for an artist who is every bit as restless as his fans.
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Play children’s music long enough and something peculiar starts to happen: your fans start having kids of their own. A quarter century after releasing her album, Laurie Berkner is a veritable music institution. She’s racked up more than one million streams and 350 YouTube videos – but most importantly, her work has engaged multiple generations. Berkner joins us to discuss her start and musical growth over the decades.
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Set during the first year of the Great Depression, The Man in the McIntosh Suit is a classic noir meets immigrant story. The book follows one-time lawyer from the Philippines, who finds employment as a migrant work, before heading to San Francisco to track down his missing wife. The book is Rina Ayuyang’s third. The Pittsburgh born, Oakland, CA-based cartoonist also runs comics publisher, Yam Books, and cohosts The Comix Claptrap. Word of warning to comics fans: there's some sports talk at the beginning. Proceed with caution.
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Released on YouTube earlier this year, Shocks & Struts finds Kyle Kinane in top form. The comedian may have intentionally slowed down his breakneck touring schedule, but he remains one of the consistently funny standups in the business. In addition to touring, Kinane also co-hosts the podcasts, The Boogie Monster amd No Accounting for Taste. He joins us to talk about not talking about politics and competing with Fast & Furious films.
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There’s a sense of optimism that breaks through on Messages to God. It’s marked change from the darkest moments of its predecessor. Consistent across all of Sarah Mary Chadwick’s songs, however, is a sense of honesty – however brutal or funny (or both) it might be. Honesty is a trait, thankfully, that is also on full display in Chadwick’s interviews. The musician joins of to discuss her songwriting and life.
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Few things in this life make one rethink the state of the world quiet like parenthood. It’s a subject Hari Kondabolu knows well. The comedian’s dives into the topic on his latest standup album, Vacation Baby – though the subject of social consciousness is never too far behind. That’s something that has permeated his career from the beginning, including Politically Re-Active, a podcast cohosted with W. Kamau Bell, and 2017’s The Trouble With Apu. Kondabolu joins us to discuss his journey through comedy and politics.
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After Invisible Ink, the floodgates opened. Since the book's publication, Bill Griffith has been a graphical novel producing machine. In fact, he's working on one right know, as I write this. Nobody's Fool followed in 2015, painting a three-dimensional picture of Freaks star, Schlitzie. A few weeks back, Three Rocks hit shelves, doing the same for Nancy artist, Ernie Bushmiller. All the while, the cartoonist has continued to produce the beloved strip, Zippy the Pinhead, as he has for the last 37 years. We discuss those works and pay tribute to his late-wife, the pioneering cartoonist, Diane Noomin.
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Tits & Clits changed the underground comics scene forever. Over its 15-year-long existence, the anthology published such now legendary cartoonists as Mary Fleener, Roberta Gregory and Trina Robbins. The series tackled then-verboten topics like female sexuality, abortion and more, driven by cocreators Lyn Chevli and Joyce Farmer. Both artists continued to have impacts on comics and social movements, though Chevli passed in 2016. In 2010, Farmer released Special Exits, a powerful and touching based on her parents’ final years.
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“Many of us yearn for stillness and peace, as an escape from the movement all around us,” Heather Woods Broderick says of her latest LP. “Yet movement is perpetual, happening all the time on some level.” But Labyrinths was conceived at the stillest moment for many: March 2020. It was a moment to improve her home production and build from scratch. The album arrived in an entirely different world, after things had reopened and musicians returned to their lifeblood of touring.
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The imagery of a distant fire found its way into several of I Am Not There Anymore’s tracks, most notably “Claire’s Not Real.” Frontman Alasdair MacLean says he was inspired by trip to Spain in the summer of 2020, spotting an orange glow on the horizon. The Clientele’s long career is speckled in surrealist imagery, and real-life moments. The death of MacLean’s mother a quarter century prior permeates the record, as well. The musician sat down to discuss process and inspiration ahead of the new album’s release.
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In many ways, Impossible People is a companion piece to Drinking at the Movies. The new book finds Julia Wertz confronting the period of her life detailed in its predecessor. It’s as much a story about getting one’s life together, as much as it is about recovery. Wertz returns to the show to discuss the book and the aspect of her life that informed it.
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Last year marked 40 years since the Swans hit the scene. Those decades have produced some of the most forward-looking albums in an era when rock music often feels stagnant. Released in June, the Swans’s 16th record, The Beggar, finds the group continuing to push boundaries, even as most of their contemporaries have either seen fit to rest on their laurels or pack it in. Frontman Michael Gira joins us to discuss songwriting, god and his soft spot for Lana Del Rey.
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When we last spoke to Alex Winter, he was in the midst of a publicity push for his Zappa documentary – a longtime passion project about enigmatic musician of the same name. This time out, the actor-turned-documentarian has returned to the tech world. It’s topic that he has returned to several times, including 2012’s Downloaded and 2015’s Deep Web – the latter of which was the subject of our first conversation that same year. The YouTube Effect finds Winter and company exploring the light and dark sides of the world’s most powerful media organization. The documentary includes conversations with YouTubers, media experts and top executives at the Google-owned platform, in a bid to understand its influence and power.
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[Apologies for the literal jackhammering 10 feet from my window for portions of the recording. I promise it hurt me more than it hurts you.] “I feel very lucky that we all ran into each other at some point pretty early on in our lives,” John McCauley explains in the press material for Deer Tick’s latest. For nearly 20 years, the band has quietly been one of America’s best. From its folk-rock roots to earnest explorations of rock, the band has maintained a consistency that feels increasingly rare. That applies to both the group’s records and live performance, as well as the core group of musicians who clearly still enjoy the act of playing together. McCauley hops on from a hotel room, whether the other members are hanging out, waiting to start a Reddit AMA and seemingly enjoying life on the road.
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[Apologies for the poor audio quality on my end. I was unknowingly dealing with microphone issues.] Ruined’s premise is simple enough. One host loves horror movies. The other can’t bring herself to watch them. She does, however, want to know everything about what she’s missing out on. Good podcasts are rarely so simple, of course. The Crooked Media program is as much a meditation on friendship and society as genre films. When not podcasting, Alison Leiby is a standup comedian, whose has performed her one-woman show, "Oh God, A Show About Abortion” off-Broadway and various East Coast cities. Halle Kiefer is a television writer and blogger for New York Magazine’s Vulture.
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Leon Russell: The Master of Space and Time's Journey Through Rock & Roll History is every bit as grandiose as its subtitle suggests. It’s a sprawling and lovingly researched portrait of an unsung rock hero. Author Bill Janovitz knows a thing or two about that world, as the longtime frontman of Boston-based alternative rock stalwarts, Buffalo Tom. The band continues to tour and release music – though the pace has slowed since the halcyon days of the late-80s/90s. The band’s latest record, Quiet and Peace, was released in 2018. These days Janovitz is largely content to focus on books. 2013 saw the release of Rocks Off: 50 Tracks That Tell the Story of the Rolling Stones.
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What do you do when you’ve got a bunch of paintings and nowhere to show them? If you’re Trever Keith, you do the same thing you’ve done your entire adult life: go on tour. The Face to Face front man is playing a handful of dates across the U.S. that showcase work he’s created based on his own songs. The events also feature an acoustic performance, something the lifelong punk singer has grown increasingly more comfortable with. Keith is currently working on an album of Americana-style originals that tap into a newfound fascination with country.
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In terms of both influence and longevity, few zines rival Doris. While Cindy Crabb hasn’t published an issue in several years, it remains a prominent presence in bookstores across the world. The series, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, is both deeply personal and broadly relatable, regularly tackling life’s obstacles, both large and small. These days, Crabb runs a somatic therapy practice, focusing on the ways the mind and body react to stress and trauma. She continues to write, as well, producing works on a range of topics, including 2015’s Filling the Void, which focused on alcohol recovery and the following year’s Learning Good Consent.
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There’s prolific and then there’s Jad Fair. The 30 albums released by his seminal art punk band Half Japanese just scratches the surface. Since 1974, the musician has released hundreds of albums, including 150 issued through Bandcamp in a single year. Beyond the output with his band, Fair’s best known work may be his collaborations with artists like Daniel Johnston, Yo La Tengo, R. Stevie Moore and the Velvet Underground’s Mo Tucker. Fair is also a prolific artist whose paper cuttings have been show in galleries around the world. Special cameo from Fair’s dogs, Button and Blanket.
Wronger finds Cowboys in the Campfire embracing the sort of stripped down twangy Americana such band name suggests. It’s the latest left turn in a career full of them. Tommy Stinson’s musical career began in his pre-teen years, courtesy of bass gifted by older brother, Bob. Joined by Paul Westerberg and Chris Mars, The Replacements would ultimately become one the 80s most influential acts. In the years since the band’s 2021 dissolution, Stinson has gone on to play with Guns N’ Roses and Soul Asylum, while pursuing his own solo ambitions.
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Last year, Chad Clark got a new heart. It was an emergency transplant, after a mechanical version failed – the latest in a horrific season of events that began when he was diagnosed with a rare heart virus. The condition has been a surprise motivator. For one thing, the $2 million fee was only partially covered by insurance. Facing massive medical debt, Clark opted to release a remix of the band’s 2015 album, Beauty Pill Describes Things as They Are. Touring presents its own issues, in the age of Covid, but Clark presses on, determined to product art and make the most out of his second – and third – chance.
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The bad apology has become a major feature of modern American life. “I’m sorry to anyone I might have offended” more often than not boils down to “I’m sorry I got caught. Are the impacted obligated to forgive? And more importantly, what is the process for earning such forgiveness? Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg draws on the teaching of 12th century philosopher and Torah scholar Maimonides for her latest, On Repentance and Repair, which explores the steps for repairing mistakes, both large and small. In addition to her rabbinical practice, Ruttenberg is a prolific author an popular online champion of progressive politics. She joins us to discuss her journey and to reflect how far we’ve come as a society – and how far is still left to go.
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Fifty years after its founding, Romeo Void finally got its first live album earlier this year. Released in limited quantities for Record Store Day, Live from the Mabuhay Gardens: November 14, 1980 finds the young band at the top of its game. Teetering at the edge of post-punk and new wave, the group rose the charts on the strength of timeless tracks like "Never Say Never" and "A Girl in Trouble (Is a Temporary Thing),” before dissolving in 1985. Lead singer Debora Iyall joins us to discuss the group, her early activist days and finding happiness in a second career.
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In the early 70s, Vashti Bunyan went away. Frustrated with an industry unwelcoming of her talents, she eventually moved back to Scotland and raised three children. She never sang, and rarely missed it. It was a perfectly content life. But 30 years later, music once again came calling. The singer experienced a resurgence in interest at the turn of the millennium – more interest than she’d ever had the first go round. Last year Bunyan released Wayward: Just Another Life to Live, a memoir recounting one of music’s most unique and fascinating careers.
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A wonderfully lush and layered debut, Mole is awash with ideas. Maryam Said’s Poolblood project arrive with a truck full of ideas and a reverence for pop rock. Said’s religious upbringing offered little access to secular music, though Yusuf Islam’s (née Cat Stevens) gentle folk rock managed to slip through. A later embrace of artists like Fiona Apple, Nick Drake and Apples in Stereo, however, left an indelible imprint of the songwriting that populates this first LP. It’s an album about relationships, and learning to lean into inevitable discomforts.
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There’s no such thing as half-measures in Kid Koala land. Take, for example the recent release of Creatures of the Late-Afternoon. Most would be perfectly content to issue 20 tracks half as innovative and vibrant at this point in their career. Koala, on the other hand, created his own accompanying board game. For nearly 30 years, the Canadian DJ has pushed musical boundaries, fusing a broad range of genres together, with little regard for status quo. He’s also elevated the work of others, from scores to films like Baby Driver and Scott Pilgrim, to influential projects like Deltron 3030, Lovage and Handsome Boy Modeling School.
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A special edition of the podcast this week, as we joined by three musicians who have released books. Howard Fishman’s To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse is available now from Dutton. The book explores the life of converse, who remained largely unknown until her music was reissued in 2009 with the compilation, How Sad, How Lovely. Vashi Bunyan’s music had its own renaissance around the turn of the millennium, when her album, Just Another Diamond Day was discovered by a new generation of musicians. Her memoir, Wayward: Just Another Life to Live is available now on White Rabbit. Ryan Walsh is the founder and front man of Boston-based indie band, Hallelujah the Hills. In 2018, Penguin released his Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968, which explores the creation of Van Morrison’s seminal album.
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Few in the indie world are as deft at creating a perfect pop song as Carl Newman. Since the late-90s, he’s served as the principle songwriter, front man and nucleus of The New Pornographers. A little over a month ago, the band issued its 9th studio album, Continue as Guest – living proof that the band still has new ideas more than a quarter century into its existence. Over the years, Newman has released trio of solo albums under the name A.C. Newman, but he’s always found himself returning to the New Pornographers’ welcoming embrace.
Brooklyn's Last Secret is a wonderful synthesis of its creator’s twin passions. It’s a book that cartoonist and rock guitarist Leslie Stein was uniquely qualified to create. The book is built around the daily minutiae of an indie rock band that sets out on tour in hopes of finally catching that one important break. It’s a meditation on friendships, relationships and the harsh realities of the modern music industry that’s alternately funny and touching. Stein returns to the show to discuss the book’s genesis, which finds her continuing to branch out from her deeply personal memoirs.
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Sometimes your body knows innately, well before those reach your brain and sink their hooks into your consciousness. Of course, it’s also entirely possible that Blindsided’s title was just one of those strange bits of cosmic irony. The word arrived well before Mark Erelli was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) a degenerative eye condition that almost invariably leads to blindness. The diagnosis would arrive in the summer of 2020, triggered by fuzzy vision during an outdoor live show. It’s a struggle which informs his latest, Lay Your Darkness Down. It’s a bid to relay a life altering condition, both literally and metaphorically, in a bid to capture broader themes.
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Where I’m Coming From arrived in the Detroit Free Press at the tail end of the 80s. The strip, based on Barbara Brandon-Croft’s friend circle, was a breath of fresh air amid often formulaic newspaper comics. Two years later, Croft’s work received national exposure, upon being syndicated by United Press Syndicate. The strip would go on to run in more than 60 papers, plus magazines like Essence, before ceasing publication in 2005. Earlier this year, Drawn & Quarterly celebrated the beloved and bygone strip, with a collection aimed at bringing the work to a new generation, 18 years later.
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This bonus episode features the a full version of my recent conversation with the Batman writer for Publishers Weekly. The feature can be found here.
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This has never been a podcast obsessed with spoilers. In fact, the topic has rarely comic up over nearly 600 episodes. But Why Don’t You Love Me is the kind of book you desperately don’t want to spoiler. The Neil Gaiman quote that monopolizes the entire back cover of the Drawn & Quarterly edition sums it up nicely, reading, in part, “The kind of story leading to a last panel that’s all pain and joy and delivers the whole thing.” I would like to say that’s why this conversation veers into all sorts of unexpected areas, but the truth of the matter is sometimes the conversation takes over and you’re just along for the ride. Author Paul Rainey joins us to discuss, among other things, Marvel movies, Peanuts and why Twitter is a terrible source for news.
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After more than two decades, Lee Fields left the music industry and strongly considered opening a fish store. “What do you know about fish?” his wife asked. Very little, turns out. He did, however, know soul. In the late-60s, his performances had earned him the nickname “Little JB” – an homage to long-time hero, James Brown. Re-entering music in the 90s, Fields began experimenting with home recording, eventually attracting the attention of the Daptone scene. Last year, he and the label joined forces again, releasing Sentimental – a perfect showcase of the things that make him one of the remaining 60s soul greats.
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Formed in the late-70s South Bronx, ESG has an almost impossibly wide-ranging impact on popular music. Factory Records-owner Tony Wilson spotted sister act performing in Manhattan, and within days they found themselves recording in Manchester and playing opening night at the Hacienda. The group’s self-titled debut EP prove a massive hit with critics, while its third track, “UFO,” would go one to become one of music’s most-sampled tracks following the birth of hip-hop – a mixed blessing, to say the least. Singer Renee Scroggins has been through a lot in the 45 years since the group’s founding, but she’s managed to remain active, all while keeping ESG in the family.
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Even with nearly a quarter-century under their belt, five years was a long time to wait between Ladytron releases. The group had settled into a comfortable cadence of three year, but 2019’s self-titled album finally arrived after two major releases. Life can get in the way – take, for example, Daniel Hunt’s move to Brazil. Or his production of big name artists like Christina Aguilera. Or various movie scores. This year, the band happily returned with its seventh record, recapturing the magic and consistency the electropop band has maintained for well over two decades. As contemporary acts and flash in the pan stars has come and gone, the group has maintained and thrived – an increasingly rare feat these days.
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Earlier this year, The New York Times Review of Books published All Your Racial Problems Will Soon End. The collection features cartoons dating back to the 60s and 70s, offering a glimpse into author Charles R. Johnson many have not seen. Decades before he won the National Book Award for Middle Passage, his historical novel about the slave trade, Johnson was being published as a cartoonist. The works contained in the volume are gag strips tackling some of the day’s biggest hot button topics, primarily race relations at the height of America’s civil rights movement. Johnson joins us to discuss a wildly diverse career, as well as his time teaching drawing on public television and a long-time embrace of Buddhism.
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There are those musical careers that follow predictable paths – and then there’s Ivan Julian’s. The child of a Navy officer, he found himself in far flung corners, including Guantanamo Bay. After spending his early teenage years as the front man of a Led Zeppelin cover band, he found himself in London, as a touring guitarist for The Foundations, eventually leaving the group behind to take up residence in Macedonia. It was his time in New York that ultimately put him on the map, however, as a founding member of Richard Hell and the Voidoids. Subsequent years found him collaborating with a broad range of musicians from Afrika Bambaataa to Matthew Sweet. These days, Julian lives in New York, running Brooklyn’s SuperGiraffeSound recording studio. He’s also gone on to release solo albums, including his newest, Swing Your Lanterns.
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Beyond Vaudeville is a perfect time capsule. It’s a pre-internet era, when public access provided a rare outlet for entertainers. As Frank Hope, Rich Brown was the neurotic calm in the storm. Along with stoic sidekick David Greene, the pair held together a 30-minute variety show that paired celebrities with outsider entertainers for a decade. In 1997, the show was reborn as Oddville, MTV, which managed to revive some of the magic, in a more formal format that partnered gen x names with buzzbin bands. Brown has maintained a high profile show business career in the intervening decades, appearing as a Daily Show contributor and producing shows like Fear Factor and the Jay Leno hosted, You Bet Your Life.
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Sometimes you can’t fully appreciate the power of music until you need it. For me, it was 2019’s Silencia, which helped me through the darkest period of the pandemic. Naturally, I jumped at the opportunity to speak to Marc Byrd on the occasion of Hammock’s 12th release, Love in the Void. Byrd happily discussed the healing role of music as a musician, as writing and performing pulled him through some of his own darkest moments.
Prism is a breath of fresh air in troubled times. The Brooklyn-based seven piece delivers sunshine psychedelic soul grooves transported from a different time. At the group’s core is the three-part harmony of Piya Malik, Sabrina Mileo Cunningham and Nya Gazelle Brown. Their ties to groups like Chicano Batman and the Dap-Kings betray the band’s rich and dreamy sound. The trio joined us to discuss their New York City origin story and the struggles of being a musician in the post-pandemic landscape.
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Ahead of our conversation at Greenlight Books in Brooklyn, Tom Gauld and I sat down to discuss his career. The cartoonist was on tour in the States to promote his latest Drawn & Quarterly collection, Revenge of the Librarians. The book is classic Gauld, gag strips with historic and literary edges. These days, he’s probably best know for the latter, with a weekly strip appearing in The Guardian. As the book’s title implies, the artist has earned a loyal following among librarians for comics that mine the absurdity of canonical classics. He’s also earned a fanbase in an even more unlikely place, with strips for New Scientist that take on the day’s scientific headlines.
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Hard as it is to believe, the half-decade preceding last year’s Shufflemania was the Robyn Hitchcock has gone between albums since 1979’s Soft Boys debut, A Can of Bees. That band, while wildly influential, wasn’t long for this world, breaking up shortly after their second album, Underwater Moonlight. Within a year, Hitchcock released his first solo album, Black Snake Diamond Röle. Shufflemania, meanwhile, marks his 22nd solo studio album. Were it entirely up to him, he explains, he’d release a constant stream of music, but studios and schedules too often get in the way.
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Her second poetry collection, Cry Perfume, deals with a lot. There’s a lot to deal with, from overdoses to a society that allows its artists to simply scrape by as a result of making art. Her band, Speedy Ortiz, hasn’t toured for some time, owing to the constraints of the pandemic, but has still found her way back onto the road, coheadlining a book tour with cartoonist, Michael DeForge. Dupuis has been plenty busy on the music front, as well. In 2020, she released Haunted Painting, the second LP from her solo project, Sad13. To mark the release of her new book, we sat down to discuss teaching, editing and the importance of killing your darlings.
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With his sixth solo album, Tim Burgess left nothing on the table. The 22-track album found every last new song put down on record. The singer says he wanted to give listeners ever once he had left. Of course, for some, creativity is a renewable resource.
Since its formation in the late-80s, the Charlatans have given the world 13 LPs, each of which cracked the UK Top 40. Burgess also spent much of the pandemic focused on Tim’s Twitter Listening project, which brought together top musicians from Paul McCartney to Pulp and Pixies, each discussing seminal albums.
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In April, Anvil! The Story of Anvil marked its 13th anniversary. Five months later, frontman Steve "Lips" Kudlow and drummer Robb Reiner joined the film’s director, Sacha Gervasi, to screen for a limited re-release. The film, which captures the ups and downs of the long-lived Canadian metal band during the recording of their 13th LP, This Is Thirteen, has continued finding new audiences. The Story of Anvil captures a band determined to not just survive, but to one day crack the mainstream. In the wake of its 2008 release, the film helped them do just that. Lips, Reiner and Gervasi join us to discuss the documentary’s lasting impact on the band.
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The plan wasn’t to write a book. The money was enough, Douglas Rushkoff says with a laugh. But appearing in from of anonymous billionaires at a desert resort was more than ample fodder for a new volume. Survival of the Richest is an exploration on how the wealthy plan to survive seemingly inevitable catastrophe, and few are as well equipped to explore this rich vein as Rushkoff. The media theorist returns to RiYL to discuss the new book, and what it means for the rest of us when billionaires are planning exit strategies for the end of the world.
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2018’s Sabrina was, quite deservedly, a breakthrough moment for Nick Drnaso. The Chicago-based cartoonist was nominated for a Man Booker Prize and suddenly placing at the top of numerous best of the year list. Four years later, he returned with Acting Class, a book that was, in part, serialized in The New Yorker early on in the pandemic. Like its predecessor, Drnaso’s third book is a sparing look at the modern human condition that refuses to hold the reader’s hand, this time filtered through the lens of a continued education acting course. The cartoonist returns to the show to discuss the making of the book, and new methods for art making and storyteller.
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The new album is a product of a largely forgotten time in Roches lore. Before youngest sister Suzzy joined the group, the sister act was a duo: Maggie and Terre Roche. The pair produced one album: Seductive Reasoning. Terre’s latest project, Kin Ya See That Sun, explores the group’s early days, touring the country, encourage by early supporter, Paul Simon. It combines live track from the era with a book that began life as an oral history. The Roches found a bigger, more lasting success as one of rock’s great vocal trios. While the group effectively ended when Maggie passed away in 2017, the group continues to attract new generations of fans.
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Let’s talk about yoga. Let’s talk about the practice behind the familiar, physical movement. That deeper, spiritual resonance heavily informed Rebecca Pidgeon’s latest record, Parts of Speech Pieces of Sound. In fact, the tracks that populate the album were each influenced by different chakras and their corresponding deities. It’s a concept album of sorts, one deeply tied to daily practice under the instruction of Prashant Iyengar. Though focused on her music career, Pidgeon is best known as an actress, best known for appearing in films like The Spanish Prisoner and State ad Main.
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One of our most requested guests returns to the show. It’s been nearly eight years since we’ve caught up with Will Cullen Hart. The Circulatory System/The Olivia Tremor Control front man has spent most of the pandemic focused on his painting. We discuss his artwork -- one of which falls onto his head, as the interview winds down. But our focus is his continued musical work, from some of the earliest Elephant 6 demos, to forthcoming Circulatory output. Ten years ago this July, The Olivia Tremor Control’s long-awaited reunion came to a close with the tragic death of Cullen Hart’s childhood friend and longtime collaborator, Bill Doss. While the event spelled the end of the group’s live performances, many of Doss’s contributions to a new record, The Same Place, had already been record. Hart discusses the likelihood of that music seeing the light of day.
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Recorded in hotel rooms while on tour with the Avett Brothers, Seth Avett Sings Greg Brown finds the musician paying tribute to the titular singer-songwriter over the course of 10 tracks. After being temporarily sidelined by the pandemic, brothers Seth and Scott returned to the touring with full force. Though not even a global pandemic could keep them away for too long, with the band releasing its third Gleam EP in August 2020. Still, the past few years did offer a few moments of silent reflection in a job that seems to rarely offer moments to come up for air.
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This year, Love and Rockets celebrates 40 years as – perhaps – the single greatest American comic of all time. Mario Hernandez, along with siblings Gilbert and Jaime, was a principle driving force in the book’s formative years. Mario would soon take a back seat and ultimately leave the book to his brothers, instead focusing on supporting his family with non-comics work. He’s continued to work in the form over the years, including a number of collaborations with Gilbert. Now retired, he’s begun to reconnect with what he loved about the medium in the first place, with plans to produce work that has been building up in his studio for years.
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We postpone the interview a few days, as there’s a hurricane bearing down on Florida. Tampa staved off the worst of it, but it’s another one of those things – counting yourself lucky that you made it through another one okay. In addition to managing the occasional natural disaster, Pohgoh’s existence has been a series of ups and down. The group spent the better part of two decades in a kind of quantum state – together, but also not really – until it properly reunited in 2016. This year’s du und ich is the group’s second LP in this latest go-round. It’s a deeply personal record, setting Susie Ulrey’s life with Multiple Sclerosis against an indie-pop backdrop.
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One of the beautiful things about music is that it’s a seemingly bottomless resource. Whenever you begin to doubt it, something new and fresh quickly dispels the notion. Big Joanie’s sophomore LP, Back Home, is just such a record. It’s confirmation that the spirit of punk beats on in new groups, even as it charts new territories. Ahead of the album’s release, singer and guitarist Stephanie Phillips joined us to discuss the band’s journey, Sleater-Kinney, music journalism and the power of Solange.
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It’s easy to feel hopeless in this world, but a 45-minute conversation with Mariah Parker makes you feel like you can do just about anything. A rapper, politician, activist and mother, the Athens, Georgia-based artist who performs as Linqua Franqa channels both sober pragmatism and hope for a better world. From being sworn in as City Commissioner with a copy of The Autobiography of Malcolm X to the release of this year’s urgent Bellringer LP, it’s hard to know how they find the hours in the day. But conversations like these make you glad there are people like Parker out there who still do.
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Last year, Immersion released Nanocluster Vol 1. The album finds the duo of Malka Spigel and Colin Newman quickly composing and recording music with names like Tarwater, Laetitia Sadier, Ulrich Schnauss and Scanner. Spigel and Newman – also a married couple living in the U.K. have their own impression back catalogs, as members of Minimal Compact and Wire, respectively. The former has been pioneering Israeli post-punk group that’s sporadically reformed over the course of 40 years. In this conversation, Spigel talks pandemic productivity, production and a potential reunion.
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As the sole consistent member, Will Sheff has built Okkervil River into one of the smartest and most beloved indie rock bands to walk the earth. This year sees the release of Nothing Special, his first solo record in his nearly quarter century long music career. The milestone, coupled with a seemingly endless pandemic, have afforded the musician plenty of opportunity to reflect on the world around him.In this conversation, we discuss empathy for those we disagree with, the drive to make music and the end of the world.
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Since 2004, Michael League has remained Snarky Puppy’s one constant. For every album and every show, the bass player has been there to help shape the amorphous jazz collective. Empire Central is a rare concept album of sorts – a musical homage to Dallas, the city near the University of North Texas, where the band began life. The area is now half a world away from Spain, where League now calls home. He phoned me from Catalonia to discuss the new record, which is also the final recorded appearance by the group’s mentor, Bernard Wright.
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Fatigue arrived like a breath of fresh air. The album is alternately complex and calming, but also deeply felt. The LP is Taja Cheek’s second under the L’Rain name, arriving in 2021. It’s a mix of soul, jazz, rock and field recordings, output into something wholly new. The Brooklyn native is a classically trained pianist and cellist, who began playing bass in rock bands during high school. She’s also served as a curator for MoMA PS1, a job well served by a keen eye for the power of juxtaposition.
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There’s a video from last November featuring Billy Bragg speaking to the camera outside the Brighton Dome. He’s nearly drown out by the sounds of chants – antivaxxers come to protest venue mandate. The singer is patient and thoughtful, laying out his own nuanced take on the situation. It’s hard to imagine too many artists in his position being so generous with their time. This month, Bragg returns to the U.S. It’s his first time touring the country since 2019 – his longest break since his began traveling across the Atlantic nearly 40 years ago. Many of the songs are new, but the messages are the same – empathy and compassion in an effort to spread hope during an era that can desperately use it.
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Keeping Two isn’t an easy book. It’s a book about loss, trauma and brains wired to project worst case scenarios – things to which many of us can no doubt deeply relate these days. It’s also a gorgeous book. That bit, at least, shouldn’t come as a surprise. Crane is, perhaps, not the most productive cartoonist when it comes to full length comics, but his latest is worth the wait. The artist joins us to discuss the planning and executing his latest, the importance of choosing the right colors and the processing trauma through art.
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The book took around a year to draw, but Ducks was more than a decade in the making. The foundation of the book arrived in 2014, as a five-part webcomic, documenting her time working in the Alberta oil sands. Fresh out of college, she took a job at the mining site in an effort to pay off her student loans. While the work follows her experience, the story paints a much broader picture, shining a light on the industry’s impact on workers, the indigenous people who live near the site and unaddressed issues of personal safety and assault. It offers another side of an artist who rose to prominence through her online historical strip, Hark, A Vagrant, present a warm and thought picture of what a comic memoir can accomplish.
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The last time I spoke to Rhett Miller, the conversation turned to 9/11, as it sometimes does. The Old 97s singer was living in New York, not far from ground zero and has a fairly harrowing story to tell. Today, it’s a brand-new collective trauma, nearly three years into a global pandemic. Living out in the country with his family has given the music time to decompress, slow down and spend time getting to reconnect with his kids, after years on the road. As I type this, however, he’s back on the road. It’s a band tour, followed by solo dates, to promote his latest solo album, the Misfit. It’s a Tom Petty inspired affair that finds him learning to let go and once again write from the heart.
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Paint By Numbers 1 was a pandemic album in just about every sense. Recorded at home with no budget, it was a band release in name only. Life intervened for Goon's members, effectively rendering it a solo release. Along the way, Goon reemerged as a full band, centered around Kenny Becker's song. The result is Hour of Green, an attempt to capture the quiet of suburban pre-dawn. Becker joins us to discuss Goon's evolution, painting and the power of metaphor.
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In 2019, Idris Vicuña was suddenly everywhere, an overnight success several years in the making on the strength of “Jealous.” The single found the L.A. musician shooting up Spotify charts on the back of viral TikTok videos. “Romantic Lover” and “Something About You” found their own success as gold records, over the next two years. As with its predecessor, 2022’s Full Time Lover finds Eyedress in full collaborative mode – an element that’s been a key to his art, ever since he found likeminded individuals after years of searching. The musician joined us from his L.A. home to discuss a childhood spent moving around and his continued growth as an artist.
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After a pair of albums steeped in the polarizing politics of the era, Welcome 2 Club XIII finds The Drive-By Truckers in a reflective mood. Frontmen Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley find themselves warmly embracing stories from the band’s earliest days. It’s driven, in part, by the manner of reflective soul searching many of us have undergone, over a difficult past few years. The phenomenon was coupled with a brief, pre-pandemic reunion of the pair’s late-80s band, Adam’s House Cat. It’s the ideal moment to catch Hood for a long, career spanning interview about the ups and downs across a quarter-century of the Drive-By Truckers.
The sound quality is a bit hit and miss, due to technical difficulties. Hope you still enjoy.
“Here’s two the next 20 years,” Emily Haines concludes with a laugh. Nearly a quarter-century into Metric’s existence, the band’s frontwoman is looking forward at the lifelong project. As many of their peers burned out or faded away, the Canadian indie-rock darlings have continued to release some of their strongest work, including 2022’s Formentera. A meditation on a rough couple of years for the world, the album finds Haines and co. laying the groundwork for what’s to come.
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The pandemic hasn’t been easy, of course, but it has provided at a new way for Mary Gauthier to engage with her music. Her story songs have comfortably made the jump to virtual performances, as she’s embraced the talk show host inside. Earlier this year, she released Dark Enough to See the Stars – her 11th album overall and the first in eight years made up entirely of her own songs. The album follows 2018’s Rifles & Rosary Beads, a collaborative effort that found providing music for lyrics penned by Iraq War veterans.
Every so often, he makes a fist and gently punches his hand, trying to stave off a yawn. I don’t take it personally. It’s less than two days after the 24 hour Best Show marathon, and Tom Scharpling is exhausted. It was, by all accounts, a moment of triumph. The marathon marked both the paperback publication of his 2021 memoir, It Never Ends, as well as a kind of return to form for the beloved radio show-turned podcast. Old friends returned, new names called in and above all, it presented an opportunity for host and listener alike to reconnect with what’s made the program special.
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Nothing last forever in the music world – breakups least of all. In February of this year, Frog Eyes’ Carey Mercer announced he was getting the band back together after a four year hiatus. Two months later, the beloved Victoria, BC-based band released its comeback record, The Bees. It was a triumphant return for a band that never really went away, so much as temporarily morphed into a new project, Soft Plastics. The band’s return – coupled with the pandemic – have offered a unique moment for reflection. Mercer joins us to discuss 20 years of Frog Eyes, while navigating the group’s place in an ever-shifting musical landscape.
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“If anybody has someone in their past that you would still like to maintain some sort of relationship with,” Rory Phillips explains, “but you have some traumatic event that you’ve never talked about, I highly recommend getting a couple of microphones and talking about it.” Fresh off the breakup of The Impossibles, Philips was pair with Jamie Woolford – himself having recently left fellow ska-punk band, Animal Chin. Following the release of their Fueled By Ramen debut, 300, the band soldier on – without Phillips. This year, the reunited group released the crowdfunded Thirteen. Woolford focused on post-production, while Phillips devoted himself to Kings of No Hope, a podcast focused on The Stereo’s story to date. It’s an honest – and sometimes difficult -- portrait of breakups, breakdowns and an exploration of a group that never managed to hit the heights of the bands they inspired.
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Twelve albums in, Laura Veirs is ready for a fresh start. Emerging from a breakup album dealing with the detachment from her husband and longtime producer, Found Light arrives this month like a jolt of light night. It’s been a strange and fascinating journey to get here. After studying geology and Mandarin, she threw herself into music full-time and never looked back.nAs a songwriter, she’s wildly prolific. For each of the dozen records, a hundred or more songs are written. As processes go, she readily admits it’s not the most efficient – but the results speak for themselves.
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For their many downsides, the past few years have offered an opportunity to reflect and reconnect with friends, family, projects. For Wayne Kramer, 2022 represents a full-throated embrace of a specter that’s loomed large for decades. This year, the musician released the first new songs under the MC5 banner in more than half-a-century. It’s a reinvigorated collective that culminates next month’s arrival of Heavy Lifting, the first LP under the moniker since 1971’s High Time. Kramer’s been plenty busy, of course, through solo albums, collaborations and film scores. He’s also become one of pop culture’s most vocal advocates for prison reform and the founder of Jail Guitar Doors, a project that supplies musical equipment for inmates. Ahead of the album’s release, Kramer discuss his musical and personal journey.
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There are birds chirping. Shaun Fleming is making the most out of this beautiful spring day in Los Angeles, taking the call from the front porch. We get into a little lore about some parrots that have colonized Pasadena. Things get personal quickly, as they tend to with these conversations. And while he’s quick to note that his latest record, With People, arrives under the Diane Coffee monitor, it’s still a personal one. The name, after all, has been a fluid one. It’s sometimes a band, sometimes a person. Sometimes him, sometimes not. Male, female. Often in-between.
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Fresh off the release of a new record and suddenly unable to tour, Joan Osborne got the work. The musician dug through the closets in her Brooklyn home, pulling together live recordings from across her 30-year career. The resulting compilation, Radio Waves, paints the picture of an evolving artist often paying homage to the decades’ most influential artists, from Sky and the Family Stone to Bob Dylan. It’s a nice reminder of precisely how electric and essential live performances are, in an era when everything ground to a complete halt. Back on the road, Osborne took a moment to discuss her work from her early days as a NYU film student with a penchant for nightclub singing to 2020’s Trouble and Strife, a biting repudiation of American political collapse.
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“I’ve always been in more than one band,” Janet Weiss notes. Even during the nearly two-and-a-half decades she spent as one-third of Sleater Kinney, she’s kept busy. Since 1993, she’s been half of Quasi and had overlapping stints with Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks and Wild Flag – to make no mention of the albums she’s performed for indie rock darlings like The Shins and Bright Eyes. When we sat down to speak, she was prepping for a joint tour as Quasi and the drummer for Jon Spencer’s latest project, the Hitmakers. The shows coincide with the release of Cockroach In A Small Town, the debut LP from Slang, a project that also features Drew Grow, Kathy Foster and Anita Lee Elliot. It’s a lot, all at once, but after rehabbing from a serious car accident, followed by a two-year pandemic fueled hiatus, Weiss is more than ready to get back at it.
Ambient music helped me survive the darkest moments of the pandemic, and David Toop’s 2001 classic, Ocean of Sound, gave me the context to fully appreciate what I was listening to.
He is a rare bird, with dual careers as both an accomplished musician and historian/cultural critic. In a world where artists are so often concerned about overthinking, Toop revels in it.
I reached out on hearing that a pair of his 90s works – Pink Spirit and Noir World – had been reissued on vinyl.
It was equally an opportunity to discuss silence, a frequent topic of his writings that has become an increasing feature for many who’ve been forced to slow down for once, amid the pandemic.
Our Little Secret isn’t an easy book, but it’s an important one. In her first-ever graphic novel, Emily Carrington delves deep into her history and self-conscious, to explore her childhood abuse and the resulting trauma. It’s story Carrington has waited half her life to tell, searching for the right way – and medium – to tell it. It’s a powerful debut from life-long painter, exploring the ins and outs of a new form of storytelling. In this intimate conversation, she discuss her process and how making art has impacted the way she interacts with the world.
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Wild Tales begins at an impasse. At the tail end of the 60s, Graham Nash writes, his time in The Hollies had seemingly run its course. A trip to the U.S. to visit his then-girlfriend, Joni Mitchell, found him harmonizing with a pair of musicians who had recently left their own iconic groups. That particular story has a happy ending, of course. Crosby, Stills, Nash (and sometimes Young) played a central role in defining the following decade. Nash’s first two solo albums, released concurrently with the CSN’s early days, are the subject of his new album, which finds him revisiting the work in a live setting. He’s a loyal person (he’s about to go into the studio to record songs with Hollies’ singer Allan Clarke, as we speak), but not necessarily a nostalgic one. Thankfully, those songs from 50 years ago still pack a proper punch.
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The transition into the 70s wasn’t an easy one of for The Rascals. But it had been an extraordinaire run before the wheels came off, penning several songs that helped define what could reasonable be called pop music’s greatest decade. Throughout it all, Felix Cavaliere never stopped working. It’s a rich and fascinating career, he eagerly narrates in the recently published, Memoir of a Rascal. He highlights the whirlwind trip up the top of the charts with equal excitement during our conversation. It’s a fascinating conversation, from the guru that changed his life, to the ugly side of the music business.
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Niineta opens unexpected. A call from inside the penitentiary. It’s a cousin of Joe Rainey’s – but one he considers close enough to call a brother. It’s a striking opening for a striking album that explores the traditional indigenous songs he grew up singing at Pow Wow, set to modern production. The music is both faithful and new. It’s a celebration of the communities carrying on these musical traditions and an opportunity to share that cultural wealth with the world.
The last time we chatted was on stage in October 2019, not long before the world changed. Simon Giertz had recently dealt with some health struggles, chronicling her successful battle with a brain tumor in a very public way. Over the years, her wildly popular YouTube channel has served a number of roles for its creator, as she’s chronicled her builds from the functional (turning her Tesla into a pickup truck) to the absurd (a haircutting drone). As the pandemic has pressed on, it’s found another role, as a place where Giertz can design, iterate and gauge audience interest in potential products for her new online store, Yetch. We caught up early this week for a TechCrunch feature, which you can read here. What follows is the (more or less) complete audio from that conversation.
Life off the road is a strange thing after 18 albums and 30 years , but Anton Newcombe is thriving. After decades in San Francisco, he settled in Berlin with a wife, kid and a dog – the whole deal. He calls me from Germany, giving me a makeshift tour of his home, as he holds his phone to his face. We speak mostly of world events. It’s kind of inevitable, these days – the pandemic, politics, the inevitability of encountering history walking down the street in Berlin. Things invariably turn to music, of course. Brian Jonestown Massacre’s 18 albums are about to turn to 19 with next month’s arrival of Fire Doesn’t Grow on Trees, following an extended U.S. tour with Mercury Rev.
Facing an indeterminate period of isolation, Lyrics Born did what any rational person would: he started a podcast. While he’s quick to note that the last two years offered a period of reflection and a rare moment to catch his breath during an impressive 25-year career in hip-hop, Mobile Homies was, ultimately, less about working than connecting. The show offered an opportunity to connect with fellow artists and friends during an exceedingly trying time. Conversations became collaborations, resulting in a new album of the same name. The LP finds him collaborating with familiar names like Lateef the Truthspeaker, Prince Paul and Dan the Automater, along with an appearance by the late-emcee – and his longtime friend – Blackalicious’ Gift of Gab.
In 2019, Paul Cauthen gave the world a breakup record. That’s not to say that Room 41 didn’t offer hints of what would come next. “Cocaine Country Dancing” offered the hint a brashness its title suggests. But two years into a global pandemic, the Texas-based singer-songwriter comes out of the gate swinging on Country Coming Down. “Country as Fuck” leads of an LP littered with titles like “Champagne & a Limo.” Sure, there are love songs on here, but Cauthen’s made it clear he’s here to have some fun. Just ahead of the record’s release, we sat down to talk about his religious upbringing, mindfulness and Johnny Cash.
As I type this, Bob Mould has jumped back in with both legs. He’s quick to point out that he managed to get a handful of dates in at the end of last year, but the his solo electric distortion tour spans three months and finds him hopping between the U.S. and U.K. It took the world grinding to a screeching halt to get the musician off the road for a while, though he’s kicked 2022 off with a bang. The year opened with the release of The Ocean, an EP that finds him dipping into his back catalog with a pair of tracks from 2020’s Blue Hearts and a reimagining of a Hüsker Dü classic. Our chat is a quick one, with an artist who once again finds himself getting back into the swing of things. We talk San Francisco, listening and not listening to music and his time as a wrestling writer.
His voice echoes as he speaks. The walls are entirely empty ahead of a big move, but Jonathan Meiburg has carved out enough time to sit and speak. We get into the subject of caracaras fairly quickly. They’re strange little birds in the same family as falcons – though they sport personalities more in line with a crow or a raven. Meiburg was so taken by the creatures he devoted several years to penning a book on the topic. But he’s forever returning to music, be it projects like Loma, Okkervil River or his primary act, Shearwater – the latter of which is set to release its first LP in six years. Due out in June, The Great Awakening might be the band’s most ambitious original work to date.
He quotes his therapist when describing his latest album. It’s a conflict of external vs. internal wanderlust. Ramesh Srivastava spent the last several years exploring the former, but Eternal Spring charts his time with the latter. His second solo record since the dissolution of indie darlings Voxtrot finds the singer getting deeply personal in a way that didn’t come naturally in his earlier career. He’s spent the years working on music, waiting tables and getting to know himself. It makes for a good conversion, and Srivastava is eager to discuss it.
The album-making process has always been somewhat contradictory for Beach Fossils. Front man Dustin Payseur has never suffered from lack of inspiration, with hundreds of unreleased songs to his name, but releasing an album has always been about getting things just right. The Brooklyn-based band has released three LPs of original songs in its dozen or so year existence. The strange and seemingly unending nature of the pandemic, meanwhile, presented the opportunity to do something altogether different. Last year, the band released The Other Side of Life. The record finds the group revisiting eight older tracks. It’s a kind of greatest hits, re-envisioned as piano ballads, played by early member, Tommy Gardner. It’s fascinating and enjoyable experiment, as well as an exercise in what it means to strip a song down and build it back in a dramatically different form.
At the height of social distancing, David Christian (nee Feck) went solo. After 29 years as the chief wrangler of the ever-morphing indie pop act, the musician went to work on For Those We Met On The Way. It’s been strange couple of years for the singer – as it has for most of us. Christian and family left London for the pastoral French countryside. A mostly quiet life, as he describes it, with the occasional bicycling through the rain. The pandemic has also seen him experimenting with new methods of releasing music, including a prolific Bandcamp output, populated with ideas and songs that didn’t make it onto vinyl.
As we’re about to start, Scott runs to the kitchen to check on dinner. He’s making chicken, breaded with Shake ‘N Bake. He’s up a few more times during the conversation, once to proudly present the final product to Zoom call. Scott Thompson and Paul Bellini see each other a lot, these days. They’re prepping for a rare live performance in Philadelphia and spending the rest of their time writing. In fact, it’s a lot like the early days of Mouth Congress, before the band’s carefree approach to queer punk was derailed by the rocket ship that is Kids in the Hall. It’s history repeating itself, really, as the band’s recent resurgence through a self-titled documentary and the compilation album Waiting For Henry arrived before an Amazon KITH revival.
There was no guarantee we’d ever see another Midlake album. The eight year gap since their last album was more than a simple break before records. Tim Smith’s departure in 2012 left the band with a major gap to fill, suddenly staring down life without a princjple songwriter. Eric Pulido stepped into the role, and the band scrapped two years of recordings, in favor of starting from scratch with Antiphon. The band’s fourth full length was well-received, but its future remained uncertain. The intervening years have found its members focusing on side projects and other life pursuits. Plans to reunite were temporarily thwarted – along with everything else – by the pandemic, but this month, the group returns with For the Sake of Bethel Woods. It’s a deeply personal record and the sound of a rediscovering why they started in the first place.
Last year saw the release of The Horses and the Hounds. James McMurtry’s 10th album was easily one of the year’s best, showcasing a seasoned songwriter at the top of his game, 35 years after entering the industry. The musician is quick to point out that his songs are essentially all fiction, something that has, perhaps, become something of a sticking point after so often inhabiting his characters in the first-person. The son of an English professor and The Last Picture Show novelist-turned-screenwriter, McMurtry has a keen knack for storytelling that’s made him one of alternative country’s most enduring voice. The musician joins us to discuss performing during a pandemic, penning protest songs and the magic of Rick Nelson’s “Garden Party.”
Faced with an indefinite touring hiatus, Josh Caterer improvised. The musician recorded a pair of “live” albums – The Space Sessions and The Hideout Sessions. No audience, no overdubs – just a trio of well-rehearsed musicians putting new spins on old classics. Caterer’s vocal range tends toward crooner as many of the song veer into jazz territory. That’s nothing new, of course. His unique vocal delivery is a major piece of what set Smoking Popes apart from their pop-punk brethren in the 90s, finding fans in everyone from Green Day to Morrissey. Caterer joins us to discuss his journey through the height of the 90s music industry crunch, to connecting with religion and reforming the Smoking Popes.
A talented flautist trained as an opera singer, Melanie Charles wanted to make a splash with her Verve Records debut, Y'all Don't (Really) Care About Black Women. She taught herself to sample and tackled a slate of songs by some of jazz’s all-time greatest vocalists, from Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald to Betty Carter and Abbey Lincoln. The result is a bold and expansive meditation on music and the many civil rights that permeate to this day, hitting a kind of fever pitch in recent years. Charles joins us to discuss her journey, the role of meditation and building on the work of some of music’s biggest names.
Editor’s note: Apologies for the rough audio quality this time out.
Just shy of hallway through Tunnels, two of the books leads engage in a spirited exchange. The Israeli and Palestinian characters are debating who got there first. The moment is central to the plot of Rutu Modan’s latest graphic novel, while reflecting the underlying tensions of an on-going conflict that informs much of the artist’s work. It pokes lighthearted fun at the matter without being heavy handed or dismissive. An exploration of such conflict peppers a story that is, at its heart, an adventure tale. Over the years, Modan’s work has drawn aesthetic comparisons to Herge, and here she full embraces a search for the search for the arc of the covenant in a manner that equally embraces Spielberg.
The past two years have afforded us all plenty of time to reflect – for better and for worse. For all of those who’ve devoted pandemic hours to reaching into past and wondering how we might change the past, given the chance, The Garden presents an ideal metaphor. Over 16 tracks, Basia Bulat revisits her past, breathing new life into old songs with the aid of a band and string arrangements. It’s an opportunity for the singer-songwriter to cover her work as she has countless others, from Daniel Johnston to The Strokes. The singer-songwriter joins us to discuss given birth during a global pandemic, the importance of remaining present and the music of Alice Coltrane.
Nostalgia is a strange thing for any artist – particularly so for a group like Pere Ubu. Perpetually striving for change and innovation, the band’s evolution has afforded little time for reflection. Last year, however, saw front man David Thomas remixing the group’s 11th and 12 albums, Pennsylvania and St. Arkansas. It provided a rare opportunity to revisit and reflect on a pair of 20-year-old albums representing the halfway mark of the band’s career to date. Thomas’ musical career dates back even further, to the legendary – if short-lived -- Rocket from the Tombs. Pere Ubu represents to the next step in that musical evolution, a journey that took him and an ever-changing lineup through 2019’s The Long Goodbye. In spite of health problems, both Thomas and Pere Ubu still a mission to keep bringing music to the world.
Two years of pandemic couldn’t keep Melvins down. In 2021 alone, the group released a pair of LPS: Working with God and Five Legged Dog, their 24th and 25th, respectively. The latter found the band revisiting their back catalog with acoustic reimaginings of 36 tracks. Last month, the group released the four-song EP, Lord of the Flies, a preview for yet another full length due out later this year. Frontman Buzz Osborne and drummer/bassist Dale Crover have remained the driving force for the band’s nearly 40-year history. Through the decades and a rotating cast of musicians, Melvins have remained a defiantly pioneering – and weird – force.
When she hops on the call, Naomi Yang is still in the middle of an editing project. It’s one she’s not quite ready to talk about. At it for a little over a decade, filmmaking is a relatively recent passion, but she’s managed to compile an impressive list of projects, including the 2013 short film Fortune and a number of music videos for artists including Marissa Nadler and Waxahatchee. An accomplished photographer, Yang also designs book covers for Exact Change, a publishing house she co-owns with partner, Damon Krukowski. But in amongst her myriad projects, she never strays too far from music. Along with Krukowski and Dean Wareham, Yang cofounded the short-lived, but extremely influential group, Galaxie 500. Since 1991, the pair have performed as Damon & Naomi, releasing their 9th album, A Sky Record, in August of last year.
Fresh off a rescheduled tour opening for Drive-By Truckers, I manage to catch Carl Nichols at home. In the not so distant future, he’ll be back on the road, with a headlining stint bookended by tours with Houndmouth and Valerie June. It’s a far cry from the years and months spent at home during quarantine in his newly adopted home of Austin, Texas. Still, he sounds restless. Having graduated from his hometown of Milwaukee and found acclaim with his self-titled debut, Buffalo Nichols, the singer is ready to branch out from the blues genre. It’s a familiar feeling for a musician who never feels comfortable staying in one place.
In July 2013, Lester Chambers was attacked. Performing at a Bay Area blues festival, the singer had just launched into the Impressions’ classic, “People Get Ready,” as a woman charged through the crowd incensed that he had had dedicated the song to Trayvon Martin. It’s something of a dramatic understatement to say Chambers is a survivor. The musician has seen the heights of music stardom, from fronting The Chambers Brothers to guesting on albums by fellow musical legends like Miles Davis. But the years have found the singer battling labels for royalties and even spending a period homeless and uninsured, battling severe medical issues. But while the industry may have abandoned him, Chambers never lost faith in the music. Keeping the family tradition, he’s returned to the stage with his son Dylan, as part of the musical collective, Moonalice.
Two years, Mark Oliver Everett interjects, isn’t really that long away from the road. In March, the Eels return to the road for the perfectly titled, “Lockdown Hurricane” tour. Even as the rest of the world shut down, the band was never away for too long, releasing Earth to Dora in 2020, and returning this month with Extreme Witchcraft – their 14th album overall. It’s a hard rocking affair, a reinvigorated return for a band that’s managed a remarkable run over the past 20 years. It’s a musical project that’s held together even in the face of Everett’s own doubts, which not even a proper pandemic could keep away for too long.
2021 saw reissues of some of the most beloved albums in the Lilys’ 30+ year history. After many years out-of-print, A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns, Better Can't Make Your Life Better and The 3-Way were all reissued. The band kicks off 2022 by revisiting those classics on tour. It’s been more than 15 years since the Kurt Heasley-fronted group has released a proper LP, but something is definitely happening in Lilys land. To commemorate going back out on the road, Heasley – the band’s sole consistent member – joined us to discuss the heady days of the 90s music industry and the Lilys’ lifelong aversion to staying in one place.
In February of last year, Oliver Ackermann launched a new label. For some, such a project could easily have been written off as a pandemic project or platform for launching a few pet projects. But from the outside, at least, the Brooklyn-based musician rarely takes half-measures. Dedstrange, “built from the smoldering decay of the music industry,” per its online bio, currently lists a half-dozen bands on its roster. The list, naturally, includes Ackermann’s own A Place to Bury Strangers, which has thus far released an EP, with the full-length, See Through You due out next month. Prior to forming "the loudest band in New York,” Ackermann launched effects pedal company, Death By Audio, which lent its name to a beloved Brooklyn art/workspace and venu, which ultimately shut down in 2014.
There may be no singular figure in rock who has aged more gracefully than Nick Lowe. This year marks the 20th anniversary of The Convincer – perhaps the quintessential example of the singer-songwriter settling into a comfortable new role as a rock elder statesman. But while the artist notes that he’s happily left the Chuck Berry-esque rock and roll stage antics in his past, two decades later, he finds himself reimagining his catalog with luchador mask-wearing instrumental rock band, Los Straightjackets. You can leave the rock and roll behind – but if you’re lucky, the rock and roll never leaves you. Half a century after a brush with fame as the front man of pub rock group, Brinsley Schwarz, Lowe has continued to thrive. From serving as the in-house producer for Stiff records, to breaking through with like "Cruel to Be Kind" and "I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass,” to penning classics covered by Elvis Costello, Johnny Cash and Dave Edmunds, he’s endured as one of great songwriters of his – or any – generation.
In 2017, Greta Van Fleet did the seemingly impossible: broke through the pop music world as a new rock band. And while the Michigan-born quartet was chided in some critic circles as a throwback to the genre’s heyday, it’s a no less remarkable feat. That same year, the band’s second EP, From the Fires would go on a Grammy for Best Rock Album. In spite of its rapid climb to the tops of the international charts, the band – comprised of brothers Josh, Jake and Sam Kiszka and drummer, Danny Wagner – have remained restless in their pursuit of new ways to expand their hard rock palate. Singer Josh and bassist Sam sat down to discuss the band’s journey and life during the pandemic.
Nine years after her last solo album, Julie Doiron returns with I Thought of You. Written and recorded prior to the pandemic, the album was shelved for a spell, in hopes of finding a more welcoming release window. Ultimately, Doiron and her label thought better – in part, due to the stark realization that this moment isn’t ending any time soon. While touring remains difficult, the record is a welcome breath of air, building on her joyful writing and singing in a way that’s both intimately joyful and broadly welcoming. Thankfully, in the years between releases under her own name, Doiron never truly went away, save for some breaks for family.She’s continued releasing music in a variety of configurations, including a rock record under the name Julie and the Wrong Guys and her second collaboration with Mount Eerie, Lost Wisdom Pt. 2.
A self-proclaimed theater kid, Tahlena Chikami spent much of the past decade landing roles on film and television, including a number of beloved series like Parks and Recreation and Gilmore Girls. In 2019, however, her IMDB page takes a turn. A year after forming Bite Me Bambi with with ex-pats from a number of Orange County ska titans like Save Ferris and My Superhero, the band had already made the scene. Punchy ska singles backed my memorable music videos gave way to virtual shows during the pandemic and, finally, the band’s debut EP, the fittingly titled, Hurry Up And Wait.
In September, The New York Times published a feature on Kevin Whelan bearing the headline, “The 18-Year Wait for New Wrens Music Is Over. Sort Of.” The piece was exactly as bittersweet as the title betrayed, documenting the genesis behind Aeon Station, a musical project born out of the ashes of what would have been a final Wrens record – the first since the band’s 2003 masterpiece, The Meadowlands. Eighteen years is, of course, an extraordinaire amount of time to wait for a follow up album – particularly for one that ostensibly never broke up. In intervening years, life happened. For Whelan that meant a family and a job in the pharmaceutical industry that temporarily moved him around the world. But he never abandoned the dream of releasing another album, even if he ultimately had to do it on his own terms, aside from the long, looming shadow of The Meadowlands.
More than anything, Ex Libris is a love letter to a medium. Framed as a meta-fiction mystery of sorts, the book is an exercise in flexible styles and genre, as the story leaps from book to book.It’s an ideal outlet for author Matt Madden, who happily serves the role of stylistic chameleon, expanding the short story form of his 2005 collection 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style into a book length narrative. A comics educator and coauthor of the educational Mastering Comics: Drawing Words & Writing Pictures Continued (with Jessica Abel), Madden is drawn to questions of style and form. His latest book is an ode to these ideas – and an exploration of how they can be subverted.
Her music career wasn’t an accident, exactly. But it’s safe to say that Anika didn’t see it coming. A music journalist by trade, the singer assumed she was signing up for a guest vocalist gig on what ultimately became her self-titled debut. Largely comprised of covers, the LP featured a smattering of originals, cowritten with electronic rock band, Beak. After being handpicked by Portishead to perform at All Tomorrow’s Parties in London, Anika went on to form the group Exploded View in Mexico City. This year, she returned for Change – her sophomore solo album and first under her own name in 11 years.
“If a book is good,” Lou Mathews explains, “it will find an audience.” Finding a publisher, on the other hand, is often a different question altogether. “A writer writes” is perhaps a more appropriate adage for the author and educator who has thus far had two of his seven novels published. Luck, timing and connections are every bit as important in publishing. And thankfully, in the case of Shaky Town, the latter finally paid off. Last year, the book finally saw publication courtesy of newly-minted publisher, Tiger Van Books, which arrives with the following manifesto, “We believe in books. Our business model is failure. We plan to lose money and fold quickly. Join us.” A labor of love founded by Lodge 49 creator – and Mathews’ former student – Jim Gavin, Tiger Van aims to put good things into the world, financial windfall be damned.
There’s no lingering doubt after an hour-long conversation that Bonnie Bloomgarden believes in the power of music. And not in any abstract sense, mind. This stuff is transformative manifestations, filtered through almost ritualistic commutations of the spirit. But for many, such notions are understandably secondary to the power of rock. And by that measure, Under the Spell of Joy is a routing success. The Death Valley Girls’ latest delivers the joy it promises in a wonderfully fresh garage rock package couched with gang chants that provide the spell aspect of the equation. It’s feel good music without the self-help trappings at a time when we can use it the most.
In 2022, Hanson will celebrate 30 years as a band. It’s a remarkable accomplishment for any group, let alone one whose members ranged from age six to 11. The group was propelled to success in its earliest days on the strength of its 1997’s Middle of Nowhere, a multi-platinum debut. Hanson’s seventh’s studio release, Against the World, arrived earlier this month. At first glance, the title is downright confrontational, though Taylor Hanson explains that the name is intended to reflect a kind of underdog status adopted by the group. It’s a strange notion, for band that has seen such high highs, but intervening years have forced the group to forge its own path in the often difficult to navigate world of the music business.
In 2021, Merry Clayton returned with a vengeance. In her solo first album in 27, years the singer once again poured her heart out on record. Beautiful Scars bears the mark of a musician who has suffered tremendous loss, but remains defiantly joyous and hopeful. Her voice remains confident and unmistakable, singing a title track that references, in part, a 2014 car crash that result in the loss of both of her legs. It also marks a post-humous return for her husband, Curtis Amy, whose sax part from her original recording of “A Song For You” 50 years prior reemerges on a rerecording. As she notes, our interview was recorded on what would have been his 92nd birthday. It was Amy who answered a phone call in the middle of the night that found Clayton recording what may be her best-known performance, dueting alongside Mick Jagger on the Stones classic, “Gimme Shelter.” But that’s just one moment in a 58-year singing career that’s among popular music’s most legendary.
Released over the summer, Alone in Space offers brilliant glimpses in the process and work of a powerhouse cartoonist. The collection offers works from her teenage years and the classroom prompts that catalyzed her early works, include a Windsor McCay homage that would prove foundational her developing style. Walden’s books range from 2017’s deeply personal Spinning to 2018’s sci-fi meditation, On a Sunbeam. Most recently, she’s been working on Clementine, a coming-of-age zombie book set in Robert Kirkman’s Walking Dead universe.
I spent a lot of hours and a lot of words exploring the world of vertical farming over at TechCrunch. The research, which resulted in this feature, was bookended by conversations with Dickson Despommier, a former Columbia University professor now regarded as the godfather of vertical farming. This final discussion with Despommier is a kind of coda to the piece, exploring his seminal book, The Vertical Farm 10 years after its initial publication. You can read a writeup of the full interview over on TechCrunch.
Seems hard to believe that 40 years into a career of pushing boundaries and taking risks that They Might Be Giants still have anything left up their sleeve. But amidst a global pandemic, when the world is perpetually falling apart at the seams, the band has returned with a new album and accompanying art book. Book (the book) is a beautiful document celebrating Book (the album) with 144 pages of photography and type-written lyrical art. Most of all, it’s a testament to the fact that a band that’s made a career of making wonderful music staunchly against the cultural grain can still surprise. John Flansburgh joins us to celebrate the release of both and reflect on one of music’s most fruitful collaborations.
A citizen of the world, Cedric Noel has made his home in Montreal for the past five years. His musical influences are every bit as eclectic as his geographical background, result in songwriting that isn’t particularly beholden to any one form. Hang Time, released this year on Joyful Noise, continues his explorations, and a focus on deconstructing the fundamental elements of popular music, be it Salif Keita or Blink-182. In a wide-ranging conversation, Noel discussing near manic bouts of songwriting and freedom that comes with never learning the rules.
The press copy describes Factory Summers as Guy Delisle’s “most personal book.” It’s a strange phrase for a cartoonist whose work often tends toward the autobiographical — but it’s hard to ignore. What begins as a memoir of teenage summers spent working the floor at a Quebec City paper factory ultimately grows into something deeper. Ultimately, the book is a mediation on the relationship between a son and his distant father. That dynamic is the heart of the story — a fact the cartoonist says he only truly recognized as he was deep into the work.
Fictional Father begins with an apology of a kind — or, at very least, an acknowledgement. Told as a self-effacing autobiographical strip, the preface notes the accidental similarity to the real life story of Dennis the Menace and the 1999 novel, The Funnies. But maybe some stories are too good not to tell through a different lens. “I’m sure you’ll make it your own,” Seth tells Joe Ollmann in the piece. And that certainly proved fortuitous. What happens when your life is made the focus of a parents’ ultra-saccharine comic strip? How does one square a true and fictional father when the two are seeming polar opposites? The cartoonist joins us to discuss the work and some broader truths it brings to the front.
2017’s What I Found in a Thousand Towns finds Dar Williams tackling urban studies. It’s new territory for the singer-songwriter, but one that builds on decades of fascination with the small towns she frequented on tour. The book has taken on a special sort of resident over the past two years, as the pandemic has spurred countless think pieces about the future of life in cities. It’s certainly top of mind as we discuss the force stasis of life during Covid-19, and something Williams is clearly thinking about as her latest album (her first in six years) I’ll Meet You Here is returning her to the road again. This, perhaps, is where the book and album converge, around the concept of “meet[ing] life as it arrives,” as Williams puts it – however and wherever that might be.
“We are the apes that are starting to understand the universe and our place in it,” José González says in a statement released ahead of his latest album, Local Valley. The comment refers specifically to the track “Visions,” but the sentiment can be applied to many of the thoughts that occupy this mind. A one-time PhD student for biochemistry, the musician’s social media outreach reflects the sentiments of a person deeply consider with climate change and the state of the world he leaves for his young daughter. As quiet and thoughtful in conversation as in song, Gonzales discusses altruism, the pandemic and teenage years spent playing in hardcore bands.
This month, Numero Group issued I Shall Wear a Crown, an expansive five-LP set that explores the life and work of T. L. Barrett, a Chicago-based Pastor and musician. It’s a testament to the musical genius and master communication of an overlooked artist getting a long-overdue second life. It’s what the label does best, through compilation series like Eccentric Soul and Wayfaring Strangers and spotlights on artists like Barrett and fellow should musician, Syl Johnson. Cofounders Rob Sevier and Ken Shipley join us to discuss the new collection and life as an archival record label in an ever-shifting musical landscape.
The success of Azure Ray’s self-titled debut seemingly took everyone by surprise — not least the band itself. Following the breakup of their group Little Red Rocket, longtime friends Maria Taylor and Orenda Fink reconvened to pen a set of songs aimed at coping with the recent death of Taylor’s boyfriend. Heartfelt and emotional, the sad, dreamy songs would form the foundation for a duo now celebrating its 20th year. There have been hiatuses over the years, finding the musicians focusing on solo and side projects. After releasing three albums in three years, seven would pass between their third and fourth LP. It would be another 11 until Azure Ray released album number five, Remedy, in 2021. But the pair have remained close friends throughout and another album has almost always seemed like an inevitability — even if it takes a move across the country and a pandemic.
Every time I speak to Mary Roach, I invariably get hung up on some minor detail — some story or person she’s teased out to unlock a fascinating new world. This time out, it’s the dried tiger penis lady, and really, how could it be anything else? The writer has a world class knack for finding fascinating tales in edges of the scientific world, from the dead bodies of Stiff to the space travel of Packing for Mars. With Fuzz, Roach finds herself exploring the intersection between the natural world and human law, from burglarizing bears to killer trees — and, naturally, dried tiger penis. Roach joins us once again to discuss the methods of her pop-science madness.
For 20 years, Ben Snakepit has been building a magnum opus. Day in, day out, the musician-turned-cartoonist draws another daily strip recounting a scene from his life. It’s rare bit of constancy in a chaotic world. Of course, as with everything else, SnakePit does the strip his way. Bucking the ubiquitous world of webcomics, the artist releases the strips as a collection every three years, allowing for a kind of binging of three years of his life in a single sitting. For the past 17 years, Snakepit has also drawn a comic for the Razorcake fanzine, soon to be collected as the straightforwardly-name, One Hundred Columns for Razorcake. Though, while he finally plugged the plug on that work, he plans to continue drawing Snake Pit until the bitter end.
It’s been a big couple of years for Shirley Manson — not something every artist can say, as a global pandemic stretches into its second year. Nor, is it something many bands can say staring down their third decade of existence. Our call is scheduled early — another rarity in this world. When we connect, the musician explains that’s she set to go exploring on a rare off day for Garbage’s tour with fellow alternative icon, Alanis Morissette. In June, the band released its well-received seventh LP, No Gods No Masters, which found Manson’s lyrics taking no prisoners in a world that too often appears to be coming apart at the seams. Late last month, the singer also kicked off a new season of her critically acclaimed interview podcast, Jump, which features frank conversations with artists like Patti Smith and David Byrne.
More than 30 years after Trots and Bonnie ended its decades-long run in National Lampoon, the strip finally gets a worthy collection. Shary Flenniken has moved on from the work in more ways that one, but the story of a teenage girl and her talking dog still feels as vibrant as ever. While she might be the last to admit it, Flenniken’s life has been every bit as fascinating as the work she’s created, as a member of the Air Pirates comics collective in the early 70s, editor at Lampoon at the end of the decade and a long-time illustrator and cartoonist across a wide range of titles. Flenniken speaks fondly about her time working at a hardware store and frankly about the time she worked in end-of-life care.
When the interview suggested he might be a spiritual person, Ben Chasny blanched, explaining, “I'm actually a total nihilist.”Sixteen years later, he confesses that the answer was contrarian to a fault. It’s easy to arrive at the conclusion, listening to a lengthy back catalogue that finds him releasing the 20th album under the Six Organs of Admittance moniker. But he’s also very much someone who refuses to be pigeon-holed, as the industry was clearly attempting to do at the time, amid the burgeoning freak folk scene. But Chasny and Six Organs continue to break new ground, drawing on a wide range of influences, from the industrial bands of his youth to the hexadic card system he developed for composing music.
My Begging Chart finds Keiler Roberts exploring the in between moments. She’s content to mind the little things that would not only find their way on the cutting room floor of most memoir, but might otherwise be forgotten by the end of the day. It’s not for lack of material. Conditions like bipolar disorder and multiple sclerosis can loom large in her life, as they would anyones, but the cartoonist possesses a laser focus for finding hilarity in the mundane. It’s a gift that makes so much of her work wildly relatable. Kicking off her virtual book tour, Roberts joins us to discuss untangling life from internal conflict, letting go of old work and the downside of nostalgia.
When it comes time to record, Laura Stevenson is honest to a fault. 2019’s The Big Freeze may well have been her most personal record to date, but the album has nothing on her recently released self-titled followup. Plenty had happened in the intervening years — some things she’s happier to speak about than others. Stevenson is clearly protective of the people around her, but when it comes to her own life, she’s much more of an open book. Born just as the pandemic was beginning to shut down businesses in the States, her daughter wakes up from an afternoon nap about halfway into our conversation. The difficult timing was, perhaps, fortuitous, stuck at home with a young child at a time when touring was an impossibility. With a new album in the world, touring is a possibility once again, but Stevenson is more than happy to take things one day at a time.
Like many of us, Danny Elfman had big plans for 2020. For the first time in forever, the musician paused many of his perennial obligations, clearing all film scoring jobs from his calendar. The new year would be all about touring. And then the once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic hit. Relocating his family away from their longtime home of Los Angeles, Elfman buckled down and got to work on something new. Big Mess is, at once, something familiar and entirely new. His second record and first studio album since the waning days of Oingo Boingo, the LP finds him returning to guitar-based composition. There are notes of his beloved band, including a reworking of the song “Insects,” but unique time signatures and dives into the avant-garde find the musician exploring new sonic realms.
The way Mike Doughty tells it, it’s a bit of a minor miracle Soul Coughing lasted for eight years. It was long enough, however, to generate three LPs, a handful of alternative rock radio hits and enough stories to fill a few memoirs. Attempts to reunite have, predictably, fallen short, but Doughty has carved a path as an extremely prolific singer songwriter, culminating in last year’s Ghost of Vroom 2 EP. A collaboration with Andrew "Scrap" Livingston produced by Beastie Boy mainstay Mario Caldato Jr., the project finds the duo excited exploring new shades of the "deep slacker jazz” pioneered by his long bygone band. Doughty returns to the show to discuss the new project, his most recent memoir and the pandemic year.
The latest issue of The Nation — a double-issue on the subject of utopias — features a sprawling cover illustration by Michael DeForge. A group of smiling people are making art, making dinner, making out. Throughout it all is the constant presence of technology. It’s a fraught subject for any artist, but DeForge especially, whose work so often touches on science-fiction and politics. A pioneering — and prolific — cartoonist, DeForge has released eleven books over the course of the past decade, culminating with the short story collection, Heaven, No Hell. DeForge joined us to discuss the art in the era of Trump and Covid-19, the inevitability of writing about politics and the downsides of technology.
Even among a list of peers that includes names titles like Eightball and Hate, there’s a strong case to be made that Love and Rockets is the most influential comic of its generation. It’s a fact that puts the series high on the all-time list. The 40-year-old series began in 1980 as a self-published book that was soon picked up by Fantagraphics. Two years in, Gilbert Hernandez gave the world “Heartbreak Soup,” a story that kicked off Palomar, a long-running exploration of magical realism in a Latin American village of the same name. It’s Hernandez’s longest-running storyline, and the one which which he has become most closely associated. Four decades later, the artist continues to grow and experiment, as evidenced by the recently released Hypnotwist/Scarlet by Starlight, a collection of two graphic novellas that embrace dramatically different forms of storytelling.
“I know that I literally wrote the best book about pencil sharpening techniques that has ever existed or ever will exist,” David Rees explains, confidently. It’s a hard claim to refute. Rees knows a good niche when he sees it. It’s a characteristic that has lead to a both fascinating and nearly impossible to define career. Perpetually-correct Wikipedia alternately calls him a cartoonist, humorist and culture critic. You can also add musician, television host, writer and podcast to the list. And while he might dispute the former, he’s thrived with the latter courtesy of Election Profit Makers, a political betting podcast he hosts with Jon Kimball and Starlee Kine.
The pandemic found Lou Barlow enamored with a surprising new creative outlet. The musician took to social media like Instagram and YouTube, playing songs, performing covers and celebrating holidays with his young family. In one video, he’s dressed as the Easter Bunny. In another, he’s covering the Paw Patrol theme with his own lyrics. It’s a side of the Sebadoh/Folk Implosion/Dinosaur Jr. musician few have seen. Released in May, the fourth solo record under his own name (though, the counting is a bit tricky) Reason to Live finds the singer settling into a warm domestic life that mirrors those recent videos.
Thirteen is a long time for any act to go between albums. That’s not to say that Johnny Brennan hadn’t kept busy in the meantime. The years included plenty of voice over work — including, most notably, a regular gig on Family Guy, courtesy of long-time fan, Seth MacFarlane. The Jerky Boys, too (Brennan is quick to point out) stuck around as well, soldiering on after the departure of collaborator, Kamal Ahmed. Last year’s self-titled eighth album finds the brand returning to prank phone calls, a medium that catapulted the group to the status of pop culture phenomenon, hitting its apex with major motion picture in 1995.
In June of last year, Chris Carrabba’s motorcycle crashed. It was another terrible event in a year of them. A handful of months after the pandemic engulfed the U.S., the singer embarked on a series of surgeries and rehab. The world had thrown another wrench into what should have been a triumphant year for Dashboard Confessional. To mark its 20th anniversary, the group planned a tour, greatest hits album and reissues, only to be cut short by the pandemic. This year, has found Carrabba finding his way back, starting with virtual shows and culminating with the announcement of an unplugged tour that kicks off in September. In this candid conversation, Carrabba discusses the challenges he’s dealt with in returning to music.
It’s clear that Pell is calling in from a hotel room. He’s back in Los Angeles, wearing a Dodgers hat to match his former adopted home. Like so many, however, the pandemic brought the importance of home into stark relief for the rapper/producer. This latest trip to Southern California mostly involves moving some belongings and tying up some loose ends. The past year has found Pell sharing the spotlight as part of the Glbl Wrmng collective, fostering creativity in their hometown and raising awareness for causes like climate change. The group, like Pell himself, wear their allegiance to their roots on their sleeve, as evidenced by the hook of their first single, 504, “I'm out that 504, that's my home / Ain’t no need to ask, they know what I'm on / Baby I'm NOLA grown”
This January, Chris Murphy was diagnosed with Bell’s Palsy. Later that month, the Sloan bassist posted a photo on Instagram, stating, in part, "It’s a drag but it could be worse. I have a great doctor who is on top of my treatment. Of course, I hope I get better. If I had to sum up my feelings in a facial expression, it’s the one I have." It summed up the musician’s general approach to things — self-deprecated, a little jokey and mostly positive in dealing a genuinely scary situation. It wasn’t long before Murphy was performing again for an online audience, as the pandemic continued to make live performance impossible. Above all, Murphy possesses a devotion to a devoted fanbase that has stayed devoted to the Canadian rock band through 30 years and a dozen albums. The musician joined us to discuss Sloan’s journey, his side project Tuns and dealing with facial paralysis during an already horrible year.
In February, Steve Lukather released I Found The Sun Again. The guitarist’s eight solo album arrived alongside an LP by Joseph Williams, featuring heavy contributions the Toto singer, along with bandmate David Paich. Lukather and Paich have maintained constants across the band’s 44 year history (though the latter has been forced to retire from touring over health-related reasons). It’s a timeline that’s seen ups and downs, but has managed to maintain a loyal international fanbase as many contemporaries have faded away. In this interview, Lukather discusses solo work, the band’s staying power and how he learned to love the yacht rock label.
A quarterly of reissues from Drawn & Quarterly has offered a fresh opportunity to reexamine King Cat. Not that there’s every a bad time to revisit John Porcellino’s work. The cartoonist has self-published nearly 80 issues of the series over the past 32 years. The black and white mini comic remains both deeply influential and extremely singular, built from a DIY ethos that informs all of his work, including the Spit and a Half comics distro, which dates back nearly as far. Porcellino’s work is hailed for its deeply personal subject matter, coupled with simple line work that distills images down to only the most necessary markings.
[Spotty audio warning] Released in February, The Pahrump Report chronicles Lisa Carvers years in the titular Nevada City. A strange town in the desert some 90 minutes outside of Las Vegas, the writer found her new home on something of a whim. When we caught up, Carver had already left the town for other locations in Nevada and was planing an escape to Africa. Pahrump, for all of its magic — and, perhaps, even god — had worn out its welcome. Her kids having grown, the artist of several books and zines, musician and sometimes performance artist, Carver continues to find new ways to reinvent herself. In this breezy conversation, the artist occasionally known as Lisa Suckdog, talks Art Bell, religion and a longtime love of G.G. Allin.
The past few years found her trying something new — or, rather, old. With a pair cover albums, Juliana Hatfield first tackled the song of Olivia Newton-John and the then Police — both to rave reviews. Earlier this month, the singer-songwriter released a new solo album — her 19th. Titled Blood, the LP explores the divisiveness and psychological tole the last four years have had on much of the American psyche. Limited by the pandemic, Hatfield recorded much of the audio at home, adding overdubs and mixing at a nearby studio. The result is the emotionally raw and sometimes aurally abrasive work of an artist still breaking new ground more than 30 years after making studio debut as a member of the Blake Babies.
Released in 2020, And Now, Sir — Is This Your Missing Gonad features familiar faces from Jim Woodring’s Frank universe. As ever, the artist’s masterfully fine-tuned art marries the precious with the horrific, but this time further obfuscates meaning with the addition of seemingly random captions. More than 30 years after first putting frank to paper is his self-published mini comic, Jim, Woodring continues to push the boundaries of his bipedal, buck-toothed funny animal creation. The new work —heightens a sense of surreality the artist has cultivated for decades.
By his own admission, George Lewis Jr. makes too much music. He describes it like an addition — referencing a folder on his desktop started in late 2019 with 150 song he confesses no one will likely ever hear. Of course, there’s plenty has shared, as a producer, songwriter and, most notably, as Twin Shadow. After a move to Brooklyn, the project began in earnest with 2010’s release of Forget, which put Lewis on the map with a unique stamp on the synth-pop genre. Twin Shadow has release three additional LPs, culminating with 2018’s Caer, a more somber approach penned as the musician recovered from a bus accident that left him temporarily unable to play. In July, Twin Shadow will deliver its fifth self-titled LP, which finds Lewis returning to some surprising roots for a joyous return to form.
The third in a trilogy, For My Mama And Anyone Who Look Like Her is McKinley Dixon’s most personal and deeply-felt work to date. The musician has taken in new experiences and explored new sounds, all while looking to explore stories that don’t get told nearly enough on record. Like much of Dixon’s work, the album sets thoughtful hip-hop verses to live jazz instrumentation. It’s electric and vibrant the way the best hip-hop albums are. Ahead of the LP’s release, Dixon joined us to discuss his history, recent stint as a farm hand and where he seeing jazz-hip-hop heading into the future.
There are all manner of reasons The Secret to Superhuman Strength was eight years in the making. For one, Alison Bechdel was dealing with the rather surreal experience of watching her book, Fun Home, be adapted into a successful Broadway musical (soon to be a major motion picture). There was also the matter of turning 60, which the cartoonist did last year — a perfect beat on which to end a book broken down by decades of her life. Perhaps the most time intensive part of the process, however, was funding the right hook. For Fun Home, it was reading list of her father’s favorite books. For the subsequent graphic novel, Are You My Mother?, it was the work of psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott. In her latest, Bechdel explores her own lifelong fascination with fitness. As the first book written after the passing of both of her parents, the author takes center stage in ways she hasn’t necessarily allowed herself in previous works. The subsequent story is both an exploration about identity and meditation on growing old.
As the conversation winds down, I go grab my painting off the wall for the artist to describe. It’s a rare opportunity. It’s also the second time in a month that I’ve done this on Zoom call, following a recent one with friends where we all realized we had Keenes on our wall. In certain circles, Steve Keene’s work has become a fixture. A generation discovered the artist through his cover paintings for bands like Pavement, The Apples in Stereo and the Silver Jews — realizing that he work could be purchased in bulk through his website. In a medium where seemingly everything has been attempted over the course of thousands of years, Keene pioneered a unique niche, with a form of mass production that has generated more than 300,000 works over the course of his career. The Steve Keene Art Book: Live from Subliminal Projects LA, CA is an effort to catalog a fascinating career. The art book — which is the first of Keene’s long career — is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter.
As a second generation harpist, Mary Lattimore may have been born to play the instrument. After picking up the instrument at 11 and studying at the Eastman School of Music, however, she began to forge her own path with the instrument. A stint in Philadelphia found the music integrating into the indie rock scene, adapting a traditionally classical instrument to accompany the likes of Kurt Vile and later Superchunk’s Mac McCaughan and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore. Since 2013, Lattimore has released a quartet of solo records, including, most recently, last year’s Silver Ladders, recorded over nine days in Cornwall by Slowdive’s Neil Halstead. Lattimore sat down to discuss her evolving approach to the instrument, which included a recent Bandcamp-released ambient track designed to help listeners get some rest during the pandemic.
As much as anything, Time Between is an opportunity to reflect on a remarkable career. It’s one that found a young Chris Hillman falling in love with country and bluegrass, playing his way up the ranks and landings a gig as the bass player for an up-and-coming L.A. band called, the Byrds.
The musician is every bit as modest in conversation as he is in his memoir. He’ll be the first to admit that he had no idea how to play the instrument when he took over duties for bandmate, David Crosby. But the young player knew talent — and opportunity when he saw it. In this brief conversation, we discuss Hillman’s time with the band and subsequent projects, including the Flying Burrito Brothers, featuring fellow recent Byrds expat, Gram Parsons. The musician discusses his reluctance to become a frontman, the lifelong process of learning the mandolin and why bands don’t last forever.
Last March, Amazon announced that the Kids in the Hall would be returning to television sketch com after 25 years. The troupe never really broke up — or at least not for long. In the intervening years, the quintet made a movie, toured North America and in 2008, released the miniseries, Death Comes to Town. The new show will return the troupe to the sketch comedy it has been performing since the mid-80s. Delayed due to the pandemic, writing for the series has already begun — albeit largely at a social distance. Ahead of the show’s return, Kevin McDonald joins us to discuss the series history and return — and how KITH is adapting its material for a changing world.
In 2017, Josh Radnor entered the music world in earnest with a major assist from Australian indie-popper, Ben Lee. After two records as Radnor and Lee, he stepped out alone for the first time this year with a solo EP. Paired down down 15-17 songs, One More Then I’ll Let You Go is named in honor of a particularly fruitful period in Radnor’s burgeoning songwriting career. It’s a new world for Radnor, an actor know for TV roles like How I Met Your Mother and Hunters, who has also made a name for himself as a director with the films Happythankyoumoreplease and Liberal Arts. In this wide ranging interview, Radnor discusses music, gratitude and the role meditation and ayahuasca have played in his creative efforts.
Relative Fiction finds Nicole Georges returning to familiar territory. Eight years after the release of her book, Calling Dr. Laura, the podcast miniseries serves as both a followup and expansion to that deeply personal work. In both, the cartoonist explores the story of a father she grew up believing was dead. Following a tip from a psychic, she discovered the truth about her family and began exploring the stories about a parent she never knew. Narrated by Georges, the mini-series features interviews with family members, as she works to unravel greater mysteries about herself and her family. The show is her second podcast, following her advice show, Sagittarian Matters. Georges returns to the show to discuss freelance life, making personal work and finding love during quarantine.
It’s a perfect rock and roll story, and Butch Vig swears it’s true. The day that Kurt Cobain died is the day same day he met future bandmate Shirley Manson. Some things are just meant to be, perhaps. It was a profound turning point for the producer’s career. One of the era’s most successful producers going on to form one of the decade’s most popular rock bands, Garbage. These days, Vig continues to serve as a producer for some of rock’s biggest names, from the Foo Fighters to Silverspun Pickups. Last year, Vig reunited with his supergroup, 5 Billion in Diamonds, to release the band’s second LP, Divine Accidents.
By most accounts, the heyday of the guitar as a pop cultural force is several decades in the past. But every so often, an artist emerges who breathes new life into the instrument. A musician happy to explore the fringes of her own musical boundaries, Kaki King’s instrument music is consistently fresh and nearly impossible to categorize. Released during the pandemic, Modern Yesterdays finds the guitarist finding new ways to interact and promote her music, stuck at home in Brooklyn with her young family. In this wide ranging interview, we discuss the development of King’s sound and the personal and professional lessons over the course of this very strange year.
Sixteen years is an eternity in this world. But for Bob Forrest, the time was right finally right for a reunion. A brilliant outgrowth of the Los Angeles 80s punk scene, Thelonious Monster flirted with major label success, signing to Capitol Records for 92’s Beautiful Mess. The group failed to reach the heights of contemporaries like Jane’s Addiction and the Red Hot Chili, finally self-destructing not long after its major label debut. Forrest would go on to release one of his strongest works in 1999 as The Bicycle Thief, but his most mainstream success would come from somewhere altogether different. His addiction saw its rock bottom in the mid-90s, kickstarting a journey to become one of the country’s best known drug counselors. In addition to running dependency services and recovery services, Forrest appeared along with Dr. Drew on the TV shows Celebrity Rehab and Sober House. The pair also cohost two podcasts. Last year saw the release of Thelonious Monster’s sixth LP, Oh That Monster.
Ginseng Roots finds Craig Thompson returning childhood memoir — albeit in an entirely different form. Currently being serialized as mini-comics through Uncivilized Press, the series is as much the story of ginseng cultivation as it is his formative years growing up in rural Wisconsin. It’s a chance to revisit some important aspects of his youth that failed to make it into his epic 600-page book, Blankets, as well as an opportunity to trace some global history through the roots of one important plant he and family members spent years harvesting. The move toward serialize, meanwhile, finds the artist interacting with his own work in a matter different than the customary seven or so years it takes for him to produce a complete graphic novel. In this conversation, Thompson discusses creating the deeply personal work.
“Something I realized after we spoke that I curiously never had noticed before,” Peter Stampfel wrote in an email shortly after our interview, “big similarity that hallucinogens and the Smith Anthology both had on me: I saw that the world was much more strange and much more vast than I had previously thought.” The musician’s own long, strange career has almost certainly had its own profound effect on generations of music, from being a driving force in The Holy Modal Rounders and, briefly, a member of The Fugs, to his more recent collaborations with anti-folk artist, Jeffrey Lewis. This year finds Stampfel releasing his most ambitious work to date. Stampfel's 20th Century In 100 Songs is a project roughly two decades in the making. The work finds the idiosyncratic singer tracing the history of popular music through a wide gamut of hand-picked songs. Now struggling with dysphonia, which has left his voice weakened and strained, the musician continues to write and play, looking to continuing expanding his already-broad musical scope.
“Power, wealth and mental health,” Craig Finn offers a succinct tagline for a hypothetical Open Door Policy movie poster. These themes, among others, including technology, working and inequality under capitalism clearly emerged as the lyrics for the latest Hold Steady record came into focus. To borrow a quote the singer, in turn, borrowed from Joan Didion, “I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” Finn’s long-time fascination with hard-luck characters continues to populate the world of the Hold Steady and his solo work, but the stars of his songs have matured along with him. The band’s early records often featured tales of drugging and drinking, hard partying youth. These days, the work is more concerned with what happens next.
Peter and the Wolves is a lot of things. It’s both memoir and biography, as Adele Bertei recounts her early days in music, while showing an oft-ignored side of friend and mentor, Peter Laughner. The Pere Ubu/Rocket from the Tombs guitarist gave the musician her earliest break in Cleveland, only to die at age 24, following longtime substance abuse. Back in print, Bertei’s book is an effort to show a side of the musician beyond the easy live fast, die young headlines. After Laughner’s passing, Bertei moved to New York, becoming a fixture in the city’s burgeoning no wave scene. The subsequent decades have given way to a fascinating and diverse career, working as a backup musician for some of the era’s biggest names and recording dance hits of her own.
There’s a darkness to Catspaw — something that lurks beyond the innocuous and even adorable title. Culled from an episode of the original Star Trek, Matthew Sweet’s usage is evocative of a certain doom. For an album finished before Covid-19 really took hold, the mood is certainly in keeping with the present moment. Not that things were particularly great prior to the pandemic, of course. Equally fitting is the truly solitary method in which the album was written and recorded — perhaps the most purely solo recording of a decades-long solo artist. In a remote interview, the power-pop star opens up about struggles with bipolar disorder and a unique and lasting career.
A lot has changed in the nearly five years since the the launch of Beautiful/Anonymous — some for the better and many for the worst. Certainly, the need to listen and be heard has only grown stronger during a pandemic that has left many alienated and alone. Earlier this month, host Chris Gethard announced that the Earwolf series will become a TV show, adding a visual element to the long conversations between strangers. Prior to launching the series, the New Jersey-born comedian was best known for his self-titled variety show, which started life on public access and managed to maintain a celebratory underdog quality, even after moving to Fusion and, ultimately, truTV. In a conversation that’s ever bit as honest and open as his listeners have come to expect, Gethard discusses his struggles with mental health and the role his work plays in fostering his own empathy.
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The timing of Sonic Boom could have been better, as far as these things go. The first collection of original Nixons music in 20 years arrived about two months into a country-wide shutdown. In 2018, the band toured for the first time in nearly as long. The group’s breakup wasn’t the most amicable, but it’s amazing how bad feelings can dissolve with a couple of decades between them. For singer Zac Maloy, the breakup was an opportunity to explore new avenues in the industry, including the fruitful beginnings of a songwriting career that’s found him collaborating with musicians ranging from Carrie Underwood to Adam Lambert. Ahead of a livestream online event, Maloy joined us to reflect on the band’s career, life as a songwriter and how much to foster his own kids’ musical ambitions.
In September, “Free Fall” seemed to be everywhere. In her latest long form work for The New Yorker, Emily Flake captured a sense of existential ennui that permeated much of the population six months into a pandemic-driven shut down. It was, one of the cartoonist’s most widely-shared works for the magazine since “Young and Dumb Inside,” which explored her decades’ long love for the punk band, Jawbreaker. Flake is probably best know as the long-time publisher of New Yorker gag strips, but her deeply personal comics essays strike an entirely different chord among its readership. Flake joined us to the discuss the process of putting heartfelt and personal work on paper and how the pandemic has impacted her comics.
In September, The Jimmy Chamberlin Complex returned for Honor. The group’s third album found it returning to its core to deliver the manner of improvisational jazz that it sets it apart from most of the drummer’s work. A lifelong musician, Chamberlin is undoubtedly best known as the drummer of alternative rock mainstays The Smashing Pumpkins and fellow Billy Corgan-fronted group, Zwan. But while he’s frequently regarded as among the best rock drummers, he’s had a fairly fascinating career one the other side of the career, serving as the CEO of music tech company, LiveOne Inc.
The timing of An Evening of New York Songs and Stories could hardly have been better. The album arrived nearly six months into a pandemic that completely disrupted the titular city. For a few months there, New York City was the center of the world, in a new and unprecedented way — a matter not so subtly hammered home by the LP’s coincidental September 11 release date. The album is a bittersweet reminder of the power of live music, as Suzanne Vega sings many of her best known song, and a selections of covers to paint a portrait of the city. As a nearly lifelong resident (having moved here when she was two-and-a-half), Vega’s songs are more often than not as quintessentially New York as the singer herself.
In 2019, The Black Watch Celebrated its fourth decade with a career spanning compilation. The cheekily titled 31 Years of Obscurity was an effort to shine on one of indie rocks most-enduring and unsung bands. Though “band” is, perhaps, something of a stretch, with John Andrew Frederick serving as both the project’s creative leader and sole constant member. And while relative obscurity has become, perhaps, a kind of running joke, Frederick seems largely unfazed, maintaining a remarkable consistent output through ten or so record labels and around two dozen EPs and LPs. Frederick also teaches, paints and has written several books, including 2017’s Fucking Innocent: The Early Films of Wes Anderson.
Decades before “Despacito” arrived, Erika Ender was a hit machine. The Panamanian musician’s compositions have appeared on more than 200 albums, and in 2017, she became the youngest person ever inducted into the Latin Songwriter Hall of Fame. In this conversation, Ender traces an unlikely path to success that includes a stint as a newscaster and the decision to hide her gender in order to breakthrough as a songwriter. It was her role cowriting 2017’s “Despacito,” that broke her — and all involved — onto the national stage. The Spanish language song shot to the top of the charts in 47 countries. Late last year, Ender released MP3 - 45, a language- and style-spanning concept album. Ender joined us to discover her journey, charity work and mindfulness practice — along with an unexpected cameo from her new puppy.
What does having a style mean when one’s work is almost exclusively based on recontextualizing the work of others? It’s a question that’s long been at the heart of R. Sikoryak’s art.The New York City artist has been publicly producing work since the 90s, beginning his career as an editor of the legendary comics anthology Raw, alongside some of the era's top cartoonists. Sikoryak's best-known work is almost certainly found in Masterpiece Comics, built around mashups of classic comics and the literary canon. More recently, he has produced Terms and Conditions, with comics based on Apple Terms of Service and Constitution Illustrated, a recreation of the U.S. founding document. The cartoonist joined us to discuss remote teaching and discovering one’s style by recreating the works of others.
When he first traveled to the Canadian Northwest Territories, Joe Sacco wasn’t looking to book length comic about the Dene people. But to hear him describe it, the cartoonist’s books more often than not have a tendency to take on a life of their own. Sacco is almost certainly best known for pioneering comics journalism that has often taken him to heavily conflicted corners of the globe. It’s a sentiment that was probably best expressed in the title of his 1997 collection, War Junkie. Paying the Land is a quieter book in a number of respects — but the story it tells is every bit as important. Sacco seeks to document the story of an indigenous culture ravaged in the name of “progress.”
September saw the release of the Trover Saves The Universe soundtrack. The 31 instrumental tracks were composed for the 2019 game from Rick & Morty co-creator, Justin Roiland. The work finds composer Asy Saavedra outside of her comfort zone. Since 2012, she’s been one-half of the sibling duo, Chaos Chaos — though the band’s work actually stretches back another dozen year. The pair released their first single as Smoosh in 2000 when the sisters were, quite literally, children. Saavedra joins us to discuss two decades of making music, art during COVID and the importance new creative pursuits.
The last time Alex Winter was on the show (his second appearance), we discussed his recently launched crowdfunding campaign to produce a documentary about Frank Zappa. With the film finally out five years later, the director joins us again to discuss the process of combing through the legendary musician’s archives to create a portrait of one of the 20th century’s most fascinating musicians. In spite of everything, it’s been a fruitful year for Winter, even beyond last month’s release of Zappa. In July, the filmmaker release Showbiz Kids, an unflinching look at another subject close to his heart, having been in the public eye since early teenage years. The following month, Winter reprised his most iconic role, playing opposite lifelong friend Keanu Reeves in the long-awaited sequel, Bill & Ted Face the Music.
A few weeks back I had the opportunity to speak with Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo for TechCrunch. What follows is a more complete audio of a conversation primarily focused on his (relatively) newfound love for coding. Fair warning that it’s not a deep dive into the band’s music, but it’s a fascinating conversation nonetheless, I think.
Ultimately, The Contradictions serves as an important turning point for both its lead character and author — both, coincidentally, named Sophie. For the fictional Sophie (a college student with more than a few common traits with her creator), the road trip is a journey of self discovery. For Yanow, the book finds her hitting her stride as a storyteller and artist. Prior to the publication of her first book for Drawn & Quarterly, the cartoonist cut her teeth creating comics journalism for a wide range of outlets, including The Guardian and New Yorker. She joins us to discuss making comics, practicing leftist politics and where the two meet.
Nearly 20 have passed since the last Semisonic album, All About Chemistry arrived. The band’s third LP didn’t live up to the massive popular success of 1998’s Feeling Strangely Fine, but the charts are a fickle thing. A proper reunion was never a guarantee, in spite of the fact that the trio remained close. The members moved to different cities, found new musical outlets, and, in the case of drummer, Jacob Slichter, a gig teaching writing at Sarah Lawrence. Wilson has found plenty of success as a solo artist — and perhaps even more notably as a songwriter for other artists, including The [Dixie] Chicks and Adele, each of which scored him a Grammy. This year finds Semisonic releasing the EP, You’re Not Alone, the band’s first new music in 19 years. Wilson joins us to discuss songwriting and returning to the band for which he’s best known.
It’s hard to say precisely what semi-retirement means for a standup comic. Kyle Kinane has been tossing the term around for a while — well before this year’s release of his fourth album, Trampoline In A Ditch. Mostly it seems to be involve taking time for himself and generally enjoying life — all good things. Though Kinane is quick to acknowledge that there’s a certain element of semi-retirement in the simple of of being a full-time standup. Following the release, Kinane joined us to discuss comedy during quarantine, relocating to the Pacific Northwest and the effects of alcohol on comedy.
There has been no shortage of deeply personal stories during Adrian Tomine’s long, celebrated career in comics. But up to now, they’ve been almost exclusively filtered through a fictional lens, from his on-going series Optic Nerve to 2015’s Killing and Dying. With The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist, Tomine finds himself diving head-long into autobiographical work. The book features some of his funniest and most honest work today, told through a loose style perfectly captured by its sketchbook packaging. Two years after his first appearance on the show, Tomine joins us again to discuss the task of telling these deeply personal — and often embarrassing — tales.
Unbeknownst to me, Van Dyke Parks is seated at his piano. This fact becomes clear numerous times during our conversation, as he tickles the ivory to punctate points. It’s not as if he requires the tool during the interview. Parks is a raconteur, above all. He seemingly has a story for everything, winding his way through fascinating avenues to make profound points about life, music, politics and art. Parks have lived several lives by popular culture standards, with a professional career that began as a child actor in the 50s. Ten years later, a musical break found him working as an arranger for Disney’s The Jungle Book. After a brief stint in Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention, he was paired with The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, writing lyrics for Smile. The following year, he released his wildly ambitious solo debut, Song Cycle. In 2015, Parks gave his final piano performance, following unsuccessful hand surgery. But he continues to remain active. To celebrate the 25th anniversary of his underrated reunion with Wilson, Orange Crate Art, we spoke to Parks about his work and the role music can play in one of the most dire moments in our country’s history.
A Brand-New Shade of Blue finds Chris Stamey exploring jazz music in the mold of the cool movement of the 50s/60s. Composed on sheet music, the album was finished with remote recordings amid a pandemic shutdown — a less than ideal scenario for a genre defined by in-person collaboration. The music has spent recent years exploring new horizons, mostly notably with 2019’s New Songs for the 20th Century, Vols. 1 & 2, which saw him compositing songs in the style of the Great American Songbook. A year prior, he released the memoir A Spy in the House of Loud, which traced his early days in music, leading up to the formation of the Sneakers and the dB's, perhaps his two best known musical collaborations.
Released in 2018, American Dharma blindsided its director. Errol Morris had spend decades making some of the universally acclaimed documentaries of all time. This time, however, the press wasn’t having it, accusing the filmmaker of “platforming” his subject, Steve Bannon, or at very least, never pushing back hard enough against Trump’s political strategist. In many ways, however, the documentary is quintessential Morris, built around 16 hours of interviews with a single subject. It’s territory he perfect with films like The Fog of War and and The Unknown Known, exploring controversial figures Robert McNamara and Donald Rumsfeld. Two years into the Trump presidency, however, it’s clear the wounds were still to fresh, a fact that the filmmaker has, to some degree, come to grips with. Tied together with footage from classic war films — a passion shared by Morris and Bannon — the film offers rare insight into one of the most influential and damaging political figures of his era.
With Sun Piano, Laaraji returned to his first instrument. After years of eschewing the keys in favor of something more portable, the New York-based new age music finds himself reconnecting with his first love, in the first of a trilogy of piano records. It’s the electric zither for which the artist is best known. In one of 20th century music’s more charmed tales, Laraaji opened his eyes after an extended transcendental busking jam on the instrument, to find a note from Brian Eno. The chance encounter in Washington Square Park gave rise to the third record in the iconic Ambient series, Laraaji’s Day of Radiance.
In the interviewing the years, he’s become one of the most iconic artists, espousing the concept of sound vision through ambience and drone.
You have 20 years to write your first record and 18 months for your second. For The Ace of Cups, the first part of the equation took roughly two and half times the conventional wisdom, but in 2016, the band finally released its self-titled debut. Four years later, the band has returned with Sing Your Dreams. Like its predecessor, the sophomore record features an all-star lineup of collaborators, ranging from Jackson Browne to Sheila E. To Wavy Gravy. A charter member of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters prior to forming the band in the late-60s, singer and bassist Denise Kaufman continued playing music during The Ace of Cups’ decades-long hiatus. She’s also an activist and yoga instructor. In her second appearance on the show, Kaufman discuss her life life in Hawaii, keeping hopeful in the time of COVID and why QAnon conspiracy theories have caught on so quickly with members of the wellness community.
When publishers refused to release an updated edition of his 1975 classic of beltway bureaucracy Who Runs Congress over concerns of commercial viability, Ralph Nader did what he often does. He wrote another book. This time, the lifelong political activist took another tack entirely, trading dry political prose for a fable. The book first saw life as How the Rats Re-formed Congress, published on Nader’s own Center for Study of Responsive Law in 2018. This year, it sees an abridged reprint on Fantagraphics as The Day the Rats Vetoed Congress, featuring art from political cartoonist, Mr. Fish. The work is an attempt to get readers to “laugh themselves serious,” according to Nader, featuring a guide for citizen action. At 86, the lifelong consumer advocate and government reformer shows no signs of slowing down.
It should be painfully obvious from the title alone that Anime, Trauma and Divorce is a deeply personal record — and part of Open Mike Eagle’s continued evolution as a songwriter. A good punchline is never more than a track or so away, by the Chicago-turned-L.A. emcee bares his soul on his latest LP in new and sometimes uncomfortable ways. But hip-hop is just one of several outlets for the musician. He’s also the host of several podcasts, including those hosted on his own network, Stoney Island Audio. The list includes, perhaps most notably, What had happened Was, which finds him interviewing legendary producer Prince Paul, album by album. Ahead of the release of his latest record, we sat down to discuss his musical evolution, music as therapy and enduring appeal of professional wrestling.
In 2013, Fruits Bats broke up — or at least as close to a breakup as an essentially solo project can come. Frontman Eric D. Johnson was going about it on his own as EDJ. It was a short-lived venture. By 2015, the band was back together. Fruit Bats, it seemed, was too good a thing to let die. After all, the band has recently released two of its best albums to date — The Ruminant Band and Tripper. Re-formed in 2015, the Fruit Bats also had their popular peak ahead of them — something very few indie rock bands can say nearly 20 years into their career. Johnson has continued to play on other projects, as well. There was a stint in The Shins in the late-00s, and more recently serving as one-third of indie-folk supergroup, Bonny Light Horseman. Amid the quarantine, Johnson finds himself as prolific as ever, readying a new album and releasing a track-by-track cover of the Smashing Pumpkins’ classic, Siamese Dream.
“Hey There Delilah” was a turning point for Ariel Rechtshaid. The simple, stripped down pop song was a massive hit, putting the musician on the map as a producer. Since that 2006 breakthrough, Rechtshaid has become one of music’s most in-demand names, worked with some of the industry’s biggest names, including U2, Madonna, Beyonce and Adele. His work has also found him working closely with indie superstars like Vampire Weekend and Haim.In this conversation, we revisit a career that found Rechtshaid producing hip-hop records in high school and getting signed to Interscope as the front man for the Los Angeles ska-punk outfit, The Hippos.
Clocking in north of 1,100 pages (when you included the end papers, he’s quick to point out), Reaganland is the final chapter in Rick Perlstein’s massive tetralogy documenting the rise of contemporary conservatism in America through 1980.
The series offer unique insight into a history that feels both intensely relevant to the current moment and impossibly far away. It’s a sometimes-dry and frequently infuriating topic that the author captures with a panache that has made him one of the most consistently engaging historians of the modern era. When I first emailed Perlstein to set up an interview about writing, he sent a series of videos featuring him playing solo jazz piano, somewhat jokingly stating that it his process. There’s truth to the sentiment, as he explains in this conversation, “I don’t understand how anyone can be a writer if they’re not a musician.”
The same scene inevitably plays out at every convention Carlos Alazraqui attends. At some point someone the epiphany. Rocko the Wallaby, the Taco Bell Chihuahua, Mr. Weed from Family and Garcia from Reno 911 are all the same guy. After beating out Marc Maron and Patton Oswalt in 1993’s San Francisco International Comedy Competition, Alazraqui used his winnings to move to Los Angeles. An addition for Nickelodeon landed him the lead role on Rocko’s Modern Life and began a long and fruitful career in voice work. On the heels of Quibi’s Reno 911 revival, Alazraqui joined us to discuss diversity in voice acting, comedy during quarantine and the ups and downs of voice over anonymity.
In 2012, Cidny Bullens was ready to tell the world who he really was. An article published in The Daily Beast gave him the opportunity to explain the previous year’s transition in his own words — the realization of something he’d long known but hadn’t allowed himself to be honest about. This year, Bullens released his first album under his name, a major step for an artist whose professional career has spanned more than 40 years. In those early days, he’d found work backing Elton John, sang the lead vocals on three tracks on the Grease movie soundtrack, and found a Grammy-nominated hit with the 1979 album, Desire Wire. The 80s found him leaving music to raise raise two daughters, returning the music in the late-90s following a personal tragedy. The event transformed Bullens’ work into something far more personal, serving as an important tool in his arsenal some 12 years later, when he announced to the world that he was a transgender man. Walkin’ Through this World finds Bullens ready to tell his story in an entirely new way.
From a distance, it seems that Noah Van Sciver is able to make comics roughly as fast as most of us are able to read them. Each social media update from the cartoonist seemingly presents another project he has in the works — an admirable trait in a field that tends to attract so many procrastinators.I’ve talked to Van Sciver a number of times over the years, but this chat was designed to be a kind of make for a previous appearance on RiYL, held at his table at Comic Arts Brooklyn a few years back. Shows aren’t an ideal setting for interviews. They’re busy, chaotic and time is fairly limited. I think it’s safe to say, however, that this particular talk delivered on those things the previous one lacked. Ostensibly about Fantagraphics’ massive collection of the the very good and funny Fante Bukowski, we quickly veered into the subject of Van Sciver’s upbringing in the Mormon church — the basis of his upcoming book on the prophet Joseph Smith.
Retirement was short-lived for Matt Pond PA. The eponymous front man very publicly toyed with the moniker that’s continued to tie him to his home state, but a 20 year run like that isn’t something one walks away from so easy. Pond continues a prolific career, often teaming with producer and guitarist Chris Hansen, a core collaborator and creative life mate. This month, the duo released Songs of Disquiet, a seven-song EP written and produced amid the current pandemic. It’s an album that, among other things, maintains his long standing passion for juxtaposition loving cover songs with originals. Ahead of the pandemic clamping down on travel, Pond came down from his nearby Hudson Valley, NY home to discuss the ups and downs of a life in indie rock.
Forty years after forming in New York’s late-70s punk scene, the Bush Tetras are still going strong. 2018 saw the release of the Take the Fall EP, the product of a band content to release music for the pure love of it. There were rocky times, of course. By 1983, the band saw some key membership turnover, ultimately dissolving that same year. There was a short-lived stint in the 90s, but it’s this latest reunion — spurred in 2005 by increased interest in the post-punk genre — that marks the band’s longest stretch. Vocalist Cynthia Sley joins us to discuss the band’s early years, its legacy and the drive to keep making music.
There’s a great video from early last year. Taken onstage at the End of the Road Festival, Ezra Furman is tasked with interviewing John Cale. You get pretty much what you’d expect from the Velvet Underground founder — soft spoken, deliberately thoughtful answers. Furman, clearly a massive fan, is far more excitable. Above all, they’re searching for a connection with the legendary musician on topics of creativity and songwriting. It’s a both endearing and insightful view of a musician like Furman, who appears to prefer to retain some mystery around their own process. And certainly there’s a strong argument to be made for letting the music speak for itself. Recent releases like Twelve Nudes and Transangelic Exodus have become of some of the most celebrated indie rock releases of the past decade. On a recent trip to Boston, Furman joined us for a thoughtful discussion about the personal, the professional, gender, religion and the ups and downs of the creative process.
The last time Ryan Walsh appeared on the show was during another trip I took to Boston. At the time, he spoke of his upcoming book about Van Morrison.
What, admittedly, sounded like a fairly niche examination of the musician’s time recording a legendary album became one of the year’s most acclaimed music books. Astral Weeks finds Walsh playing detective, seeking to answer some longstanding questions, while exploring the largely unremarked upon Boston psychedelic scene of the time. Last year Walsh’s band Hallelujah the Hills released I’m You. The album finds the musician writing and singing his most straightforward — and arguably best — set of songs in its decade-plus existence.
Few can rival the indie rock pedigree of Tanya Donelly. At the age of 15, she cofounded 4AD stalwarts Throwing Muses with best-friend-turned-step-sister Kristin Hersh. Seven years later, she joined forces with Kim Deal on her then-side project, The Breeders. But it was the formation of Belly the following year that really allowed Donelly to shine as both a front woman and songwriter, scoring one of the era’s most memorable singles, “Feed the Tree” in 1993. After a less than amicable breakup in the mid-90s, the musician began a decades-spanning solo career, culminating in the five column “Swan Song Series” in 2013-2014. In recent years, Donelly has found a second career, working as a postpartum doula for new parents, even as the siren call of music has beckoned to her yet again through recent projects, including Belly’s 2016 reunion.
Adapted from a podcast of the same name, Ways of Hearing explored the countless knock-on effects that play out in both production and listen when music shifts from analog to digital. The book explores similar notions as Damon Krukowski’s previous work, 2017’s The New Analog — subjects that are near and dear to him as a member of the iconic groups, Galaxie 500 and Damon & Naomi. In addition to the works he has published through the New Press and MIT Press, Krukowski is also cofounder of independent publishing house Exact Change, along with partner, Naomi Yang. Krukowski joined us to discuss how technology has changed the way we play and consume music.
As a journeyman musician, Kyle Forester’s resume reads like a who’s who of indie bands from the past decade and a half. Most notably, the multi-instrumentalist has spent time as a member of Crystal Stilts, Woods and Elephant 6 mainstays, The Ladybug transistor. More recently, he played on the David Berman’s Purple Mountains LP. In 2016, Forester released his self-tiled debut solo record, following it up with Hearts In Gardens earlier this year. Forester joins us to discuss life as touring indie musician, scoring films and why he’s still hopeful about the future, in spite of it all.
In 2018, Kat Edmonson declared herself an “Old Fashioned Gal,” with an LP and track of the same name. The Brooklyn based musician sings and writes songs steeped in pop-jazz stylings of another era. But her work aims deeper than simple nostalgia. This year brought followup album, Dreamers Do, a mix of Disney covers and originals. “Too Late to Dream” finds Edmonson pondering her approach to the world during a sleepless night, a notion that gave rise to what amounts to a loose concept album. The singer joins us to discuss jazz singing in 2020, going through the major label ringer and the major label wringer and the connection between insomnia and the creative process.
There’s a video shot in 1991 of a 13-year-old Jen Shyu playing the hell of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 on grand piano backdropped by the Peoria Symphony Orchestra. A lifelong musician who studied theater and opera at Stanford and has performed at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, Shyu’s current work veers into the experimental and avant-garde, all while paying homage to a wide range of musical traditions, including Taiwan an East Timor.Often highly theatrical, her work utilizes a wide range of languages (she speaks ten) and instruments, including piano, violin, the two-string Taiwanense moon lute and the Chinese er hu, among others. Shyu closed out last year with the performance of her show “Zero Grasses,” a part of John Zorn's on-going Commissioning series in New York.
A Change of Diet finds Elliott Moss living in the wake of a decade-long relationship. The singer writer grapples with the all of the major and unexpected knock-on effects of such a life change. It’s his most deeply personal record, intertwining such sentiments with a dense electronic soundtrack over the course of its 11 tracks, marrying the brutally honest with the willfully opaque. Like much of the rest of his work, the musician record the album largely solo, constructing its pieces with an arsenal of multi-instrumental prowess. On a recent visit to the city, Moss discussed the process of musical catharsis and transforming the personal into a public display.
Well before her debut album We Need to Talk arrived in April 2019, Tayla Parx had already established herself as a music force. As a songwriter, she’d penned tracks for some of the biggest names in the business,fFrom Mariah Carey and Ariana Grande, to K-Pop bands like BTS. A decade prior, Parx made her film debut, in the role of Little Inez in the adaptation of the stage music. At the ripe old of age of 26, the music is ready to take on the world, courtesy of a prolific writing career, tireless work ethic and a thoroughly choreographed stage show. We sat down with Parx in a Manhattan rehearsal space for broadway performers — a perfect temporary home for the Los Angeles musician.
It was shaping up to be a banner year for Wire. When we sat down in the Musical Hall of Williamsburg green room, the band was in the process of adding a west coast leg to their tour in support of the band’s terrific new record, Hive Mind. The band also used the opportunity to announce 10:20, a second new LP released in conjunction with Record Store Day. The album finds the band taking a very Wire-esque approach to revisiting old material, revamping sketches and long abandoned work from earlier decades. There are no half-measures with Wire — and there has very rarely been a misstep. It’s an absolutely remarkable track record for a 44 year old band that took nothing less than a global pandemic to monetarily slowdown. Frontman Colin Newman joins us to discuss how the band has managed to stay ahead of the curve so many decades into its career and describe the touring life of rockstars who are now pushing 70. Episode 400 also features an introduction from friend of the show, The Moth’s Dan Kennedy.
At 19, Kelli Dunham was living in Haiti in the midst of a Civil War. From there, it was a fairly straightforward path to becoming a nun — albeit one that also required a conversion to Catholicism. These days, Dunham lives in New York City as a genderqueer nurse and standup comedian. It’s a natural combination for an artists who happily draws the line between comedy and tragedy, drawing on material from her own life for both. Experience as a hospice nurse and the death of two partners who died of cancer have left her uniquely positioned to grapple with the darkest subject matter in her comedy routines. What’s more, she manages it all with an unwavering sense of positivity, no better exemplified than in the track “Deep Biological Optimism” from her new standup album, Not the Gym Teacher.
When I first met Emily Panic, she was a touring musician. Her work as a bass player and backup singer brought tours with Foxygen, Run the Jewels, Sleigh Bells and Miike Snow. There was even a spot performing vocals on a Bryan Ferry album. In recent years she’s shifted into comedy — arguably an even harder racket than the life of a professional musician. But her sketch work has landed her a hosting gig for Pitchfork and appearances on Funny or Die and Netflix. She also cohosts the paranormal comedy podcast, Ghosts to Show You. Panic joined us to discuss transitioning career focuses, the ups and downs of comedy and a podcasting run-in with a pig ghost.
The grandson of an opera singer, Michael Blume took to music at an early age, first learning the piano and trumpet and ultimately touring with an a cappella group while attending Yale. Yes, the it was the Whiffenpoofs. But the singer found his true voice after moving away from academia. Supporting himself in New York first through SAT tutoring and later wedding gigs, Blume has since become and idiosyncratic front man, blending genres and peppering in performance art. To mark the release of his latest track, In Between, Blume joined us to discuss queer identity in music and simple acts of transgression in the age of Trump.
A fixture in the New York indie comics scene for some years, Colleen AF Venable has made a name for herself designing covers for publishers like First Second. An accomplished author in her own right, Venable has released a number of children’s and YA titles, including Mervin the Sloth and the Guinea Pig series. Most recently, her young adult comic, Kiss Number 8, earned her and artist Ellen T. Crenshaw a National Book Award nomination. Venable joins us to the discuss the genesis of the book, which deals with a range of deeply personal issues, from LGBTQ identities to Catholic school.
At 19, Jamie Drake was sure that she was too told to break into the music business. Nearly two decades later, she officially has, with the arrival of Everything’s Fine. There was music in the meantime, of course, but the singer-songwriter is confident that she finally found her voice of what’s been deemed her debut LP. And indeed, she’s in fine form, as both writer and musician. On a trip to New York, the Los Angeles-based musician sat down to discuss the road that brought her the debut, and how she learned to stop worry and love simply love the music.
In the music world, everyone sounds like someone — except Mary Halvorson. All musical touchstones feel like a stretch when attempting to describe the work of the New York-based musician. Avant-garde or free jazz works to the extent that either actually describe a musical style. There’s rock in there, certainly, and I’ve even seen the term “experimental flamenco” bandied about. But all belie the unpredictable nature of her time signatures and chord progressions. Among her best known works is a cover of “A Little Help From My Friends” that sounds like a familiar work stripped bare, run through the grinder and reassembled in ways that defy the laws of physics. It’s the sort of things that rewires the listener’s brain, while giving you hope for a continued way forward for jazz experimentation.
In 2019, Saves the Day’s debut LP, Through Being Cool, turned 20. Unsurprisingly, the New Jersey band marked the event on the road, with a tour that found them playing the album in its entirety. Two decades and nine full lengths in, a lot has changed for the band, including several lineup shifts that have left frontman Chris Conley as the sole founding member. Now 40, the musician has come a long way from the teenager who penned one of emo’s most iconic debuts. Conley is now the parent to a teenager himself. But through all the ups and downs, his music has remained a constant. Hitting a major milestone has given him ample opportunity to reflect on his work and where he and the band go from here.
For those exclusively familiar with Nels Cline’s work as the guitar player for Wilco, Spinning Creature may come as a kind of surprise. But well before the musician began playing with the indie rock juggernaut, he was never afraid to let his freak flag fly. A student of jazz and the New York rock and avant garde scenes that gave birth to legends like John Zorn and Sonic Youth, much of Cline’s work is a sort of musical 180 from the band. CUP, a duo that finds him collaborating with Cibo Matto alum (and his wife) Yuka Honda, mines deep veins of experimental pop. Following the release of the band’s debut last fall, Cline sat down to discuss his musical history, the ups and downs of the gig economy and finding his voice as a musician.
Formed in Southern, California by teenage brothers Jeff and Steve McDonald, Redd Kross was never one to follow pop cultural trends. Torch bearers for a more classic rock sound, the band rose the through ranks with hardcore legends like Black Flag and the Circle Jerks (even sharing members in the process). But the group was never truly belonged to any scene — and somehow belong to them all, in the process. Redd Kross kicked off the 90s by signing to Atlantic Records, finding some mainstream success alongside the rise of grunge music. Following an end-of-decade hiatus, the brothers returned to the band in 2004, eventually releasing sixth album in 2012, after a 15-year gap. It was only five years this time, as Beyond the Door hit legendary indie label, Merge. The McDonalds crowded around a microphone ahead of a show with tour mates (and shared bandmates) The Melvins to talk punk, major labels and K-Pop.
This week marks the 12th anniversary of Stop Podcasting Yourself. What began as a venue for two Vancouver-based comedians has since become one of the longest running and most beloved comedy shows in the medium. For more than six-hundred weekly episodes, the show has been a remarkable consistent — and hilarious showcase for cohosts Dave Shumka and Graham Clark, along with a rotating cast of established comedians. Shumka’s podcasting bonafides extend beyond SPY, including the one-off musical series, Our Debut Album (cohosted with Clark) and his work on the well-received This Sounds Serious, a takeoff on popular true shows like Serial and Making a Murderer that is currently on its second season. On a recent trip to New York, Shumka joined us to discuss his podcasting career.
The New Pornographers are running late. It’s hard to say whose decision it was to drive from midtown at this time of day on a weekday — likely not former New York City resident, Carl Newman, if I had to guess. These days the ringleader and frontman lives a far more idyllic life, a two-and-a-half hour drive away in Woodstock. To hear him tell it, it’s a veritable retirement home for rock legends — well, insofar as rock legends ever retire. It helps, of course that Newman’s wife is the manager of the late-Levon Helm’s studio. For their part, The New Pornographers show no sign of slowing, even after the official departure of longtime collaborator, Dan Bejar. In fact, the band’s latest (their eighth), In the Morse Code of Brake Lights, is easily one of their best in years.
Punk rock, politics, history and some gracious nods to science — there’s a lot to like about The Future of Another Timeline. Annalee Newitz’s latest explores the possibilities of time travel in a world where the sci-fi standby is downright utilitarian. The book is a lovingly researched second novel for Newitz, who joined us back in 2017, shortly after releasing their debut, Autonomous, an exploration of artificial intelligence and big pharma set in the nearish future. Scientific accuracy has long been a focus for Newitz’s speculative fiction. Prior to the release of autonomous, they were best known as the founder of io9 and EIC of Gizmodo, with a focus on real-world science breakthroughs. The science has, perhaps, been fudged a bit to allow for a mundane sort of time travel to pervade through out, but in an era routinely referred to as “the darkest timeline” by many an online commentator, it’s an ideal lens with which to examine our own reality.
Fresh off her hiatus, Renee Holiday is ready to put on a show. Late last year, the artist formerly known as Shaprece (full name: Shaprece Renee Richardson) put on “Beautiful” in her native Seattle. The multimedia event was held at the Can Can, beneath the city’s iconic Pike Place Market. After “regrouping” to deal with both self-imposed and external pressures, Holiday release “Ain’t Got No Love” in late-2019. The single eschewed earlier musical experimentations for a more straightforward sound. Holiday makes her home in Los Angeles these days, as both a performer in her own right and songwriter for other acts. During a recent trip to New York, the singer sat down to discuss her time off and the difficult task of finding one’s own voice.
With The River at Night, Kevin Huizenga found his perfect hook. Casting his go-to surrogate Glenn Ganges as an insomniac, the cartoonist discovered an ideal frame for storytelling that that runs the gamut from the beginning of earth to the dot com bubble burst. It’s peak Huizenga, really. The work belies the cartoonist’s love of learning, visualizing a stream of information that leans heavily on a love of science drawing and history. The book taps into the same sense of delight in discover that permeates much of his work, with regular detours that are served well by the mental restless that can make sleep so elusive for so many. Set to the chaotic sounds of downtown Brooklyn early on a rainy Saturday morning, Huizenga discusses teaching, the business of comics and the possibility of embracing scientific drawing in a fuller form.
We don’t have a lot of time. I’m setting up my gear in some Sirius-XM meeting room, while Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan order lunch. They get something nice, a welcome change from the usual road fare. The Milk Carton Kids just finished an appearance on Steve Earle’s show, chatting with the country legend following an appearance on the Howard Stern after show. It’s a bit of cultural whiplash, but the duo take it in stride. The soft-singing, tight-harmonies indie-folk group found success only after pairing up, but since their 2011 debut, it’s been a steady rise. The group have become NPR darlings and have played alongside some of the genre’s biggest names. This time out, however, they’re giving a nod to humble roots, with the on-the-nose Very Small Venues at Very Low Ticket tour, which finds them performing far more intimate sets for a hardcore fanbase.
A lot has changed in Krewella’s world in the seven years since the band debuted with Get Wet. The group’s second full-length finds the one-time trio down a member, while having jumped from Columbia to their own label, Mixed Kids. But Zer0’s an album dedicated to fresh starts and sister duo Jahan and Yasmine Yousaf vibrate positivity as they discuss the project and their own positive life changes. Formed in 2007, when its members were in high school, the band grew up in the electronic dance scene and very much in the public eye, with Get Wet debuting at Number One on the U.S. Dance chart. As things are ramping up around them, ahead of their next record, Jahan and Yasmine the importance of taking time and finding their voice.
There have been plenty of opportunities for Daniel Clowes to get reflective in recent years. 2015 saw the release of The Complete Eightball, a massive two-volume hardcover set that collected the full eight year, 18 issue run of his iconic underground series. Next month sees the release of Original Art, a deluxe single volume book that examines his raw pencil and ink work, from Eightball to 2016’s Patience. It’s a loving examination of one of the medium’s most beloved artists. A lesser artist might balk at the mere suggestion, but decades later, Clowes’s work loses none of his punch under such a microscope, even as he restlessly adopts new narrative and artistic styles. Clowes, too, is able to examine his own work at a comfortable distance all of these years later. And as with the pages of Original Art, the cartoonist never shies away from a warts and all examination of the work and the processes that got him there.
When she arrives, Leslie Stevens is carrying a large beach bag. Protruding from its insides is a large cowboy hat sporting a massive feather. It’s a perfect encapsulation of the Los Angeles singer-songwriter, whose career found her flirting a number of genres, including time as the frontwoman of the punk band, Zeitgeist Auto Parts. But her the twang of her latest, Sinner, is perfectly suited to her musical stylings. With a foot firmly planted in Laurel Canyon, it’s clear she’s finally making the music she’s always wanted.
It hasn’t always been easy for Fastball. Some night, weeks and even years, playing rock and roll music can feel futile, especially when it’s not clear when the next show might be. But neither Tony Scalzo nor Miles Zuniga hesitate for a second when asked if they’re doing exactly what the should be. And while the future of the Austin band hasn’t always felt certain, the group has remained remarkably consistent. Now in their 25th year, Scalzo, Zuniga and drummer are clearly in it for the long haul, making the most out a lifelong career. The group broke quickly, a mere three years into its existence, when their sophomore album, All the Pain Money Can Buy yielding alternative rock staples like “The Way” and “Out of My Head.” 2000’s fittingly titled followup The Harsh Light of Day marked the end of their radio career, but the beginning of a growth as a band, building up a loyal following. In 2019, the group released its seventh LP, The Help Machine
In 2019, Professor Richard Wolff was everywhere. He published two introduction to economics books — Understanding Marxism and Understanding Socialism — hosted a weekly YouTube show and podcast and made countless media appearances, all while serving as a visiting professor at New York’s New School.As he offhandedly points out during this conversation, we were his third podcast appearance of the day. It hasn’t always been like this, of course. The notion of a Marxist professor becoming a media darling would have seemed a crazy notion a mere decade or so ago. Wolff’s media prominence has come in the wake of financial collapse, Occupy Wall Street and a new wave of leftist politicians that made once verboten words like “socialism” mainstream political talking points. For decades, Wolff has honed a manner of plain spoken deliver of breaking down complex economic and political concepts that have perfectly positioned him to bring such ideals to online media.
In hindsight, things happened quickly for Paula Cole. Before her first record arrived, she was on tour with Peter Gabriel, playing stadiums in Europe. The following year, she released her debut and deleted with Melissa Etheridge on VH1. Her sophomore record, This Fire, sported two decade defining hits in “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone” and “I Don’t Want to Wait.” It’s a tremendous rise for a kid from a small New England town who went to school with dreams of becoming a jazz singer. It’s also the sort of trajectory that causes some to burn out or fade away a few years in. And while Cole has had her ups and down both professionally and personally, this year’s release of her ninth album, Revolution, is a testament to an artist who continues to focus on music with a message. The singer-songwriter, now 51, still has plenty to left to say. Cole speaks with that same thoughtfulness and passion when discussing both her life and her work.
Sound Field Volume One turned out quite differently than its creator planned. Randy Randall had grand plans for field recordings. Inspired by his early years growing up the Inland Empire, the No Age guitarist took a microphone to the freeways of Southern California. Turns out all freeways more or less sound the same. Lesson learned. The experience did, however, shape his first instrumental for the Arthur King collective. A more traditional collection of ambient tracks, the album takes the listener on a sort of sonic road trip, from Desert Sunrise to Shore Sunset. It’s an impressive collection for a first time ambient artist, and a far cry from No Age’s much loved noise rock.
NYLONANDJUNO finds Jason Lytle trying something new. It’s a set of songs constructed around limitations — in this case, all of the music is played on a synthesizer and guitar, with a broken bottom nylon string. It’s also an entirely instrumental album, a far cry from the singer-songwriter’s days fronting indie-rock mainstay, Grandaddy. The record finds Lytle joyfully exploring new territory more than 20 years into his professional recording career. With a number of his fellow Arthur King collective members in town for an art exhibition, the musician joined us to discuss the ups and downs of his long celebrated career, time as a pro skater and reconnecting with the joy of making music.
The group’s URL evocatively posits the question, Who Is Arthur King? It’s not a particularly easy question to answer. It never is with a collective. For the sake of brevity, we’ll cowardly default its own description. Arthur King is an experimental music and visual art collective seeking to engage the tension between the known and unknown inherent in creative expression. For the sake of this interview, Arthur King is, in part, former Earlimart guitarist Aaron Espinoza and painter, John Schlue. The first of a three part series, the duo will be joined in coming weeks by Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle and No Age’s Randy Randall. All parties sat down to discuss their on-going collaborations while putting on an exhibition in Manhattan. In this first part, Espinoza and Schlue discuss the collective’s multimedia work.
When Drive appeared in theaters, Electric Youth was still finding its sound. The track, created in collaboration with producer College, was a defining aesthetic touchstone for the film, appearing throughout. For the Toronto-based duo, it was as good a sign as any that they were on the right track. It was a sort of overnight success for Austin Garrick and Bronwyn Griffin, a pair that had been together since middle school. Released in August, Memory Emotion maintains the group’s atmospheric synth-pop sound. Any one of the tracks could slot comfortably into the Twin Peaks soundtrack. Their first proper release in half a decade, the album comes on the heels of a diverse array of collaborations. There are several soundtrack contributions, along with 2017’s Breathing, an “Original Motion Picture Soundtrack From A Lost Film” — the result of an abandoned horror project by director Anthony Scott Burns. Garrick and Griffin have also collaborated with Gesaffelstein and Ryuichi Sakamoto.
There’s been an argument. Actually, that’s probably too strong a word. Some minor disagreement. The entire band is laughing about it by the time I arrive at the Brooklyn apartment. Like everything else they do, the conversation over some synth patch is downright familial. The quartet has been making music together for so long, they’re practically siblings, with all of the love and squabbles that brings. Ever since their debut record hit the since in 1996, Imperial Teen has been a staple of alternative and indie rock. Following the release of their sixth album, Now We Are Timeless, the full band (Roddy Bottum, Lynn Truell, Will Schwartz and Jone Stebbins) sat down to discuss nearly a quarter century of Imperial Teen.
Having just secured a plate of pasta, Lonnie Jordan’s beaming. Even with a nightly club rider, life on the road as a vegan can be a tough one. But he swears by it, even when it means getting creative with a couple of slices of bread and some condiments. At 71, he swears he’s in best shape of his life, having sworn off the many vices of a touring rock musician. Toward the end of our conversation, I ask whether he’ll still be on the road at 81 and 91. “Try 101,” he answers with a grin. The last original member still touring under the War banner is has more than embraced life on the road, happy to play an impressive string of iconic hits, from the Eric Burdon-led “Spill the Wine” to “Why Can’t We Be Friends” to “Low Rider” to “Summer.” He shows no signs of quitting and apparently wouldn’t have it any other way.
I had to double check, but its seems that, in all of my time writing about comics for various outlets, I’ve never actually interviewed Sammy Harkham. It’s shocking, really, given what a important player he’s been in the indie comics scene for some time. Thankfully, the release of Kramer’s Egot 10 presented the perfect opportunity. For fans of round numbers, next spring also marks the 20th (!?) anniversary of the influential publication, which the Crickets author produced at age 18. In spite of a somewhat irregular publishing schedule and a range of different publishers (most recently settling at Fantagraphics), the anthology has become a bedrock of alternative comics. The series is known for both experimental formats and the stellar quality of the work it publishes, featuring the industry’s biggest names and highlighting lesser known talents. Harkham joined us to reflect on the series and discuss his love for the medium.
At times, Nice Try is a book about failure. Josh Gondelman chronicles his struggles as as up and coming comedian, love woes and awkward teenage attempts to be cool — all topics that might be a touch too painful had things not worked out so well. When he meets up with me, he’s just come from his gig writing on the Showtime series for the beloved Bronx duo, Desus and Mero. It’s a gig he left John Oliver’s equally beloved Last Week Tonight for. Like I said, things are going just fine for the Brooklyn-based comedian. Indeed, when “the nicest guy in comedy” is what people call you behind your back, things are probably going pretty well. In the wake of his new collection of essays, Gondelman joined us to talk about standup, teaching preschool and reliving one’s awkward youth. Oh, and here’s Josh’s curated reading list for the inaugural and almost certainly finally RiYL book club.
Reading Syllabus:
One Day We'll All Be Dead and None Of This Will Matter by Scaachi Koul
The Sellout by Paul Beatty
We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby
In Revenge of the She-Punks, Vivien Goldman charts feminist ideology in punk across nations, languages and decades. Beginning with 70s pioneers like Poly Styrene, Patti Smith and The Slits, the book draws together threads that are often ignored in wider conversations about the genre. The book follows the rebirth of Goldman’s own musical career, with 2016’s terrific anthology, Resolutionary (Songs 1979-1982). Now doing double duty as a musician and author, Goldman continues to teach at NYU, where she’s affectionately know as the “punk professor.” Using her latest book as a starting point, Goldman joined us to discuss the secret history of women in punk, the lingering role of the holocaust in the birth of the movement and drawing inspiration from continued musical resistance.
The guest are running late. So far as I’m aware, my conversation with Aaron “SonReal” Hoffman is the first RiYL to get pushed back due to an appearance on Sway’s morning show. It’s a pretty good excuse, so far as those go. Hoffman is in good spirits when he arrives. The appearance went well. It was his second time free styling on the show, and things went far better this time It’s amazing what a few years and a little confidence will do. The Juno-nominated Canadian rapper’s maturity shows of his latest record, as well. The Aaron LP is his most sophisticated and personal to date, dealing with earnest themes of love, loss and family.
In Faking It, Lux Alptraum explores a wide range of lies about sex, from faked orgasms to sexual assault. It’s a powerful statement that spans the wide range of her many years of writing about sex — the good, the bad, the unspoken. As an author, her work has appeared in a wide range of outlets, including The New York Times and the Guardian. She also served as the editor of Fleshbot, a pop culture sex site formerly operated under the Gawker Media banner. Following the release of Faking it, Alptraum joined us to discuss lies, reproductive rights and writing about sex in the era of Trump and #MeToo.
Life was fairly different the last time Whitney Matheson was on the show. In fact, USA Today pulled the plug on her 15 year culture column Pop Candy sometime between the recording of the interview and its publication. In the intervening half decade, Matheson took up a teaching gig, moved to Tennessee and had a kid “It's funny how life can change on a dime” is how she put it as we were discussing running the original interview. From the sound of things, however, recent changes have been for the best. Now back in the city, Matheson has written a children’s book about comics publishing and started a newsletter that brings Pop Candy’s spirit to a weekly digest. She’s ghostwriting and writing a play in her spare time after some hard learned lessons about not taking any of it for granted.
There will never be another Swamp Dogg. At 77, Jerry Williams Jr. has had one of the most fascinating and diverse careers in popular music. It’s hard to believe the same man created the psychedelic funk of 1970’s Total Destruction to Your Mind, manage a young Dr. Dre, and penned the country standard, “She’s All I Got. While his career career and life have hit plenty of rough patches, he’ll be the first to admit that he’s been incredibly lucky when it comes to music. Covers and samples have helped keep his work relevant through the decades, even as he refused to play live. Last year, Williams’ embarked on the latest stage of his eclectic career with Love, Loss and Autotune, a new collection of song created with the help of Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. The high profile released has seen the musician embraced by a new generation of fans drawn to his soulful tracks and biting humor.
Toward the end of the interview, Wayne White gestures to a word painting sit nearby on the floor of his home workshop. “Finally got there, wasn’t so great,” he says, reading the big, block letters out loud. “That’s the story of life. It’s been a heck of a journey, though. In the late-70s, the Chattanooga kid moved to New York, to attend classes at SVA, including a brief stint studying under Art Spielgman. By the mid-80s, he found T.V. work as a puppeteer, imprinting his work on countless young minds with the puppets of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. The have been Emmys along the way and Grammys for music videos like Peter Gabriel’s “Big Time” and The Smashing Pumpkins’ “Tonight, Tonight.” More recently, White has carved out a niche in the fine art world, further catapulted to prominence with the delightful 2012 documentary, Beauty is Embarrassing.
Some time in six or so years since I last sat down with Adam Lisagor, something strange happened. He became a nationally broadcast product spokesperson. It wasn’t the career trajectory any of us were expecting, but here we are. Over the years, the video producer had begun to appear on camera during his signature well produced startup ads. But it was TrueCar that made him a in inescapable presence during nationally televised commercial breaks. For those who’d come to know him as Lonely Sandwich on Twitter and through (relatively) small but loyal online offerings like You Look Nice Today, it was odd watching Lisagor become a kind of peer to a Flo from Progressive or the “Can You Hear My Now” guy. A lot, too, has changed with his production house, Sandwich Video, which has grown to include brands like Starbucks alongside Series A startups. Lisagor joins us from his Los Angeles offices to discuss the journey and newfound focus on music video pet projects.
In November 2018, Ace of Cups released their self-titled debut. The album arrived more than 50 years after the band’s formation. With several tours and a second double album on the way, it’s clear the group has every intention of making up for lost time. The groups was an anomaly during its first go-round. The all-female rock quintet shared stages at legendary venues like the Fillmore with the likes of now legendary contemporaries like Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. They shared a studio with John Fogerty’s pre-Creedence garage band, the Golliwogs. Ex-pat Jimi Hendrix told Melody Maker that the band was his favorite thing about the States. What sounded like a recipe for superstardom had fizzled by the early 70s. With the band reunited, singer and bassist Denise Kaufman joined us to discuss the band, her time with Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters and why the Kawaii-based yoga instructor still has hope for the future of humanity.
When he was 16, Lou Barlow formed Deep Wound. Two years later, he and the hardcore band’s drummer, J Mascis would create Dinosaur Jr. (then simply Dinosaur), one of alternative’s most beloved and influential groups. Barlow stuck around for three albums — regarded by many as the band’s best. That would have been enough to have cemented his status in the indie rock pantheon, but the music would go on to form an additional pair of hugely influential groups: Sebadoh and The Folk Implosion. The former, in particular was a defining voice of the genre’s lo-fi revolution. And like Dinosaur, the group resumed operations earlier this century, now boasting a pair of post-hiatus LPs. 2013’s Defend Yourself was met with largely positive reviews, though Barlow is quick to dismiss certain aspects as the result of a particular rough patch in his personal life. This year’s Act Surprised, however, finds both Barlow and the rest of the group in top form.
Five years ago, Gastor Almonte quit his job and went all in on standup. It was no small commitment from a married man with two kids and a six figure sales job. But a supportive wife, encouraging family members and his position as a landlord in East New York, Brooklyn allowed him to take the leap. With the recent release of his debut album, Immigrant Made, things appear to be paying off. Almonte’s success is a combination of natural humor and an impressive drive that finds him writing jokes every day like a 9 to 5 and working the comedy clubs at night. The comedian joined us to discuss his life in comedy, love of his neighborhood and prioritizing happiness.
Things are a lot quieter. The last time I say down with Guster, the full band passed around a mic, seated at a table in the front of the sadly now-defunct Grassroots on St. Marks Place. Percussionist/drummer Brian Rosenworcel came alone this time, and the ambience is little more than an office air conditioner. It’s a welcome change and one that allows us to get to the heart of the group’s nearly 30 years of existence. Out in January, Look Alive is the band’s eight record. As with all of their releases, it finds the quarter exploring new venues for music making, including the debut single, “Overexcited,” which adopts a British accent for a surprising homage to Madness.
The first thing you learn upon meeting Joanna Sternberg is that they want to be your friend. It’s nothing about you, specifically, mind. They would love to be friends with everyone, but there simply aren’t enough hours in the day. The second thing you learn, quite probably, is Sternberg’s lifelong love of Motown bassist James Jamerson. It’s a fact pertinent enough to be list in the two sentence bio at the top of their website. The Funk Brother may stand head and shoulders above the rest, but Sternberg’s love for music is deep and varied, influence that’s left its marks on a life in music that includes orchestral lessons on the piano and double bass. But Sternberg’s third record (and for reasons we go into, the only one currently available online) Then I Try Some More presents singular voice. It's a soft-spoken indie folk that draws on a classical education and an idiosyncratic singing voice to tell stories of love, addiction and penguins.
Shortly after appearing on the podcast way back in 2015, Joe Biel sent me an email. Since the interview, he’d been diagnosed with autism (or “Asperger’s” at the time), a revelation that had already begun to have a profound effect on his life. Biel returned 30-odd episodes later to discuss the insight and impact. On a recent visit to New York City, the Portland-based publisher returned my apartment to discuss the intervening four years his life, which included the 2016 publication of Good Trouble. The book was published to mark Microcosm’s 20th anniversary, exploring the publisher’s history and Biel’s own life, up to and including his diagnosis.
In 2006, a 19-year-old Yuna auditioned for Malaysian reality singing show, One in a Million, ultimately making it into the top 40 prior to elimination. After finishing up law school, the she threw herself into her songwriting at a time when Myspace was still a musical gatekeeper.Discovering her music online, agents flew to Malaysia to meet the singer, eventually signing her to Fader. The label released her debut EP in 2011. A year later, the Pharrell-produced single “Live Your Life” appeared, but it was “Crush,” the 2016 single featuring Usher that made her an international star. Last month, her fourth record, Rouge, dropped on Verge Forecast/UMG, featuring a number of high profile collaborators, including rapper Tyler the Creator. Ahead of the album’s release, Yuna sat down with us to discuss her journey from bedroom recordings to pop stardom.
In February, “Peter Frampton Finale—The Farewell Tour” was announced. Running through October, the tour would find the musician going on the road one final time. Of course, in the world of older rock musicians, the “farewell tour” has become a kind of running joke. For Frampton, however, an artist whose work has been inexorably linked to the live setting since Comes Alive made him a household name more than 40 years ago, the promise is very real. Four years ago, he was diagnosed with inclusion body myositis (IBM), a rare progressive muscle disorder that would eventually render him unable to play guitar. Since then, he has happily become a kind of unofficial spokesperson for the condition, using the tour to raise both money and awareness. Frampton joined us via phone to discuss living with the condition, struggles with fame and substances and how his former schoolmate the late-David Bowie helped rescue his musical career and self-worth.
At 15, Michael Mwenso was on stage with James Brown. It took the Sierra Leonean teenager four years to convince the godfather of soul to let him up there, through a combination of raw talent and persistence. But once he did, he wowed the crowds and Brown alike. It was then that Mwenso got a taste for the stage and learned the dos and don’ts of management from one of the late-20th century’s great band leaders. Those lessons were applied first to his Wynton Marsalis-appointed role as a curator for Jazz at Lincoln Center and more recently as the frontman for Mwenso and the Shakes, whose debut album, Emergence, drops this month. Carrying three large shopping bags filled with stage costumes, Mwenso sat down to discuss his journey.
Prior to The Deconstruction, Mark Oliver Everett took a break. Four years passed between albums. Honestly, it’s not too long for most musical acts pushing a quarter century, but The Eels have released records like clockwork, with a dozen studio albums currently under their belt. For Everett (that’s “E,” to you), the last few years have marked a new chapter. He got did some acting married, got divorced and at age 54 had a son. It was a lot, even for someone who’s lived through plenty. It’s clear seeing The Eels’ current iteration on-stage, however, that the musician has found new appreciation for the music on his return. Now 56, he’s very intent on putting on a show, as the group powers through its lengthy catalog, all while sporting matching pants. Ahead of a performance at New York’s Irving Plaza, he sat down to discuss his break, return and the highs and lows of the past 23 years.
In March, a comic by Eli Valley landed him on the radar of Meghan McCain. There was nothing extraordinaire about the piece from a cartoonist who has long wading into the divisive world of U.S.-Israeli relations, but the commentary about the American right’s relationship with the country caused The View cohost to lash out on Twitter. That, in term, put a relatively unknown cartoonist in the national spotlight. But in spite of the conversations it provoked, Valley explains that publicity doesn’t always equate to income. He’s quick to plug his recently opened Patreon account in hopes of making a living at his art. Valley’s work is part commentary, part personal catharsis, exorcising the demons of the most politically charged era of most of our lifetimes. In deals in politics and identity through a lens of grotesqueries inspired by humor cartoonists like Basil Wolverton. It doesn’t avert its gauze from the subject matter — a fact that makes for better work, but not always financial gain.
On a day in late October 195, Kate Slaugherback singlehandedly killed 140 rattlesnakes to protect herself and her young son. When she ran out of ammunition, she grabbed a nearby sign to bludgeon the venomous reptiles. Legend has it, the sign read “No Hunting.” It’s clear why Neyla Pekarek found the ideal subject matter in Rattlesnake Kate. She also found something of a kindred spirit. Playing cello in one of the world’s biggest rock groups isn’t quite like exterminating rattlesnakes en masse, but her time with the Lumineers could be harrowing nonetheless. News of her exit from the Denver in late 2-18 group was enough to warrant a press release noting that the parties had amicably parted ways, and Pekarek hit the ground running. Rattlesnake was released early this year, along with a theatrical live show betraying her broader musical intentions with the songs.
The K Chronicles has been an alternative weekly staple since the 90s. The strip, which mixes the personal with the political, has weathered the bumbling of George W. Bush, the hopefulness of Obama and the existential dread of Trump. All through it, cartoonist Keith Knight has balanced family with a multimedia career including comics, music (most notably the five-piece hip-hop group, the Marginal Prophets) and a push to adapt his work for television.The last bit, it seems, has become far closer to reality, courtesy of a deal with Hulu. Knight won’t discuss the project in depth at this early stage, beyond the admittedly catchy elevator pitch of “African-American Splendor.” During a break from tabling at MoCCA — and a protected wait for a $25 hamburger — Knight sat down to discuss the state of the newspaper strip, his move to North Carolina and the pitfalls of trying to find a public restroom in San Francisco.
A veteran of the New Oreans slam poetry scene, Tarriona “Tank” Ball’s career only really caught fire when she embraced her musical impulses. She became a member of collective stylized on the success of The Roots, backed by a handful of local musicians. But as members fell away to embrace family and other life obligations, Tank and a core group of Bangas held on. In 2017, the band won NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest, garnering the band national attention and putting them on the radar of instant fans like Chance the Rapper. Shortly after the release of the group’s sophomore album, Tank joined us to discuss her journey from IHOP waitressing to NPR, the creative process and what the future holds for the group.
In 2017’s The Only Rule Is It Has to Work, Ben Lindbergh and co-author Sam Miller detailed the season they spent running an independent baseball team with strict adherence to sabermetrics, analytic-based analysis that has come to define the past decade of management. This year, Lindbergh and fellow baseball writer Travis Sawchik take on the majors with The MVP Machine. The recently released book details baseball management after Moneyball, as the war for statistical advantages has been replaced by teams working behind the scenes to improve players through new technologies and analysis. Fresh off the book’s release, Lindbergh (and his adorable dachshund Grumkin) joined us to discuss how the process differs from his day job(s) writing for The Ringer and cohosting the podcasts The Ringer MLB Show and the popular and Effectively Wild, a popular and long running show currently produced by Fangraphs.
In Cannonball, Kelsey Wroten tells the story of a a young writer dealing with the successes of her first novel. After her debut graphic novel became a hit in its own right, Wroten has seen some of the book’s events come to life first hand. Of course, the cartoonist isn’t her character. The Kansas City transplant had already made a name for herself as an illustrator, her work appearing in such publications as The New York Times, New Yorker and NPR. In this sit down recorded shortly after the book’s release, Wrote discusses her move to New York, experimenting with her visual style and the importance of queer identity in her work.
Seeing Freaks at 19 was a formative experience. A small public viewing of the film in a Greenwich Village loft left Bill Griffith feeling baffled and fascinating, with the overwhelming desire to express the experience through art. This was well before he became another convert of the underground comics movement, eight years later, his best known and longest lived creation bore the clear influence of the film. Schlitzie, a microcephalic supporting actor was the clear inspiration for his strip, Zippy the Pinhead. Schlitzie’s influence was largely aesthetic, however, with Zippy largely being a cipher for Griffith and a conduit for absurdist satire. Decades later, the cartoonist finally found the ideal outlet for a longtime fascination with Freaks. Nobody’s Fool tells the story of Schlitzie, offering a full portrait of a performer who captured his imagination a lifetime ago with a few moments on screen.
Released last year on Secret Acres, Little Stranger presented a much welcome retrospective of Edie Fake’s more recent comics work. The book collects an assortment of pieces published in various zines and anthologies since his seminal series, Gaylord Phoenix. After stints in Chicago and Los Angeles, Fake currently resides in the California desert of Joshua Tree. Here he largely focuses paintings influenced by a range of topics, including nature, architecture and trans and nonbinary sexuality — themes that have also been pervasive in his comics work. A guest of honor at New York’s MoCCA Fest, Fake sat down for wide-ranging discussion on urban life, art and identity.
2010 to 2012 was a busy time for Bad Books. By the end of its first two years, the band had two LPs and a tour under its belt. It was easy enough to hit the ground running, of course. Manchester Orchestra’s Andy Hull and Robert McDowell met Kevin Devine on tour, an opening act slowly ingratiating himself into the band’s live set. The fit was so perfect the trio began a new group with a new name. By 2013, however, the group went silent. Seven years after their last full length, the group is back with the simply titled Bad Books III, out this month on Loma Vista. The new record is the product of more mature artists, both in terms of music and subject matter, dealing with topics like parenthood. Ahead of the new record, Hull and Devine joined us to discuss song writing, collaboration and Elliott Smith.
Law school didn’t work out for Rachel Kramer Bussel. After failing to complete her studies as NYU, she began writing erotic on the side, while working as a paralegal. Twenty years later, she continues to write and edit works in the genre, even after moving to a far more suburban life in New Jersey. In the intervening years, she’s edited dozens of collections, including the Best Sex Writing series. The author sat down with us on a recent trip to Manhattan to discuss a two-decades long career that began as a happy accident and how life away from the big city has impacted her work.
Like many of his fellow Pittsburgher cartoonists, Jim Rugg’s work lives at a fascinating cross section of mainstream and indie comics culture. It’s a phenomenon Rugg and cohost Ed Piskor happily explore in their YouTube series, Cartoonist Kayfabe, which breaks down the earlier days of Wizard Magazine, issue by issue. His work, too, is the product of a confluence of distinct influences, from the skateboarding and martial arts of Street Angel, to the blacksplotation films and pulp comics of Afrodisiac. On a recent visit to his hometown, Rugg joined us to discuss teaching comics, choosing projects and why Rob Liefeld is important.
In Satan Goes to the Mind Control Convention’s eponymous essay, Joseph Flatley visits a convention of therapists dedicated to uncovering repressed memory, a fascinating artifact from the Satanic Panic that gripped the U.S. in the 1980s. His upcoming followup, Finders, is set to explore similar territory, this time focusing on a rumored kidnapping ring with CIA ties. Since leaving the world of tech journalism, the author has devoted himself to the world of conspiracy theory. In the intervening years, the mainstream media has joined him, as concepts like Pizzagate and Q-Anon have gained popular acceptance, from YouTube propagandists like Alex Jones to the President of the United States. We sat down with Flatley on a recent trip to Pittsburgh to discuss the rise of conspiracy from flat earth to the Satanic Panic, and what, if anything, can be done to stop it.
When she arrives for the interview, Cara Beth Satalino has her luggage in tow. She’s gearing up for a handful of shows ahead ahead of the release of Outer Spaces’ sophomore release, Gazing Globe. It’s a nice spot ahead of a second record, having honed their chops in Baltimore, the trio has held its own alongside indie vets like Ted Leo, Waxahatchee and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.
Though the musician explains that she’s not too hung up on expectations. Music has never been particularly lucrative, but there’s a lot to be said for the ability to do what you love in the studio and on tour -- and putting out memorable music along the way. And Satalino and her rotating cast of musical cohorts are enjoying the process more than ever.
The way he tells it, The Hard Times was a hit right out of the gate. Some perfect combination of zeitgeist and internet algorithms had the satirical site racking up a million page views via social media sites like Facebook almost instantly. It’s a far cry from the sort of hard luck grinding stories one usually hears about the punk scene — but when it’s right, it’s right. Initially focused on the punk and hardcore scene, it’s since grown into a broader view on millennial culture. Founded with few expectations in 2014 by Matt and Ed Saincome and Bill Conway, the site managed to capture much of what made The Onion a phenomenon, while staying focused on a wide range of subcultures. Earlier this year, the site launched an interview podcast, with more multimedia projects in the works, including a book and television show.
Launched in summer 2018, the Awkward Sex and the City podcast maintain the magic the has made the stage show of the same name a hit with New York City audience. Founder and host Natalie Wall is joined by fellow comedians who explore their own uncomfortable sex stories, celebrating the…less sexy elements of intimacy. Wall joins us to discuss her comedy career, getting personal on stage and the importance of knowing the location of the nearest New York City public restroom.
Released in February, Mort Gerberg on the Scene is a loving celebration of the long time New Yorker cartoonist. For half a century, the artist has taken on contemporary city life and politics, capturing everything from basketball games to the Nixon administration. It was the latter topic that found him guesting on The Today Show, live drawing the controversial president alongside Barbara Walters. The New York City native has held down a wide range of different gigs over the course of his career, serving as the editor of the Alaskan Post, running promotional copy for Ziff Davis and teaching cartooning at the Parsons School of Design and the New School. But making art has long been his passion, and at 88, he has no plans to put down his pen any time soon.
From the sound of it, Lou Doillon was surprised as anyone by her own musical successes. Her 2012 debut put her new career on the map, earning her a French Grammy for Artist of the Year, only to be catapulted to global fame with her 2016 followup. Fame as a singer-songwriter, at least. As an actress, model and the daughter of two famous parents, Doillon has never not been a known quantity, but making music has allowed her to pursue a number of creative passions in a single project. This year’s Soliloquy is the result of collaborations with multiple producers, including Cat Power and Timbre Timbre’s Taylor Kirk, allowing her to explore more musical directions than ever before. On a trip to New York, Doillon stopped by our offices to discuss opening for Madness, feeling old at 30 and why there are so few karaoke bars in France.
We get the chance to talk to a lot of great seasoned artists, but there’s a wonderful change of pace to interviewing one who’s just getting started. London born and raised, Jnr. Williams released his debut EP Where We Start earlier this year on Arista. The singer-songwriter creates stripped-down, jazz-influenced R&B that taps into earnest and emotional subject matter. In this bonus episode, we discuss Williams’ journey from working at a movie theater to the release of his debut record.
It’s been a long day of press, but Bruce Hornsby is firing on all cylinders when he arrives for one final interview. Absolute Zero is the artist’s most-hyped record in years, courtesy of collaborations with the next generation of artists, including Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. Hornsby, it seems, is just hyped up himself, speaking in pilot lingo, as he passes through reception. I jury rig a microphone setup up for him, stacked atop a pile of books to accommodate his 6’4 frame. When we launch into the interview, its hard keeping up with the 64 year, as he holds court on everything from social justice to a life-long interest in atonal modern classical. It’s a brisk and fast-paced recap of a fascinating career that has included radio hits, a stint with the Dead, several Spike Lee scores and a handful of bluegrass records.
Live from Book Are are Magic in Brooklyn, we sat down with Julian Glander to celebrate the launch of his new Fantagraphics title, 3D Sweeties. The book collects a series of short strips the cartoonist has been compiling over the years through freelancing for various outlets. It features Glander’s signature computer generated characters in vignettes that are sometimes funny, sometimes thoughtful and often both. Comics are just one of several mediums in which Glander has found a home. The list also includes several short animations, video games and music. The artist also discusses his on-going plans for a feature length animated film. Thanks to Books are Magic for hosting and recording this live conversation.
When Before We Forgot How to Dream arrived, most of the coverage understandably centered on the songwriter’s age. At 19, Bridie Monds-Watson has released a remarkably worldly and mature record for Rough Trade. It’s been four years, the woman behind Soak having taken some well-deserved time off from recording and touring. She moved from Derry, North Ireland, to the perennial musical hot spot of Manchester. She didn’t rush and just generally went about living the of a young person in an exciting new town. This month, Monds-Watson returns with Grim Town, an ode to her beloved hometown and to her own growth as an artist and human being. Recorded a few months before the album’s release, this interview finds the musician on a break from tour and ready to discuss the impact of those few years away.
I first met Shunsuke Aoki on a trip to Tokyo last year. The roboticist’s work fascinated me. From its brain-controlled cat ears and a robotic pillow with a tail that wags as you pet it, to more serious devices for older family members, Aoki’s Yukai Engineer has created some utterly fascinating products. On a recent trip to New York, Aoki and I sat down at Brooklyn cafe to discuss Aoki and Yukai’s goal of spreading joy through robotics.
In 2015 Carriers became Lauren Weinstein’s most critically acclaimed work to date. The five-part webcomic series found the cartoonist winning widespread recognition and a number of awards, including The The Society of Illustrators’ Gold Medal. Weinstein’s work has never shied away from the personal, but motherhood has found her examining her own life even more intently than earlier work. The series explores the anxiety and fear of discovering that both she and her husband are carriers of the gene that causes cystic fibrosis. After the birth of her second child, the artist says she’s ready to finish a long awaited (15 years and counting) book about her own teenage years — one that may finally arrive as her own oldest child becomes a teenager herself. Weinstein also works at the School of Visual Arts, teaching both teenagers and continuing education students. In another life, she was also the lead singer of New York-based art rock collective, Flaming Fire.
The band calls it “dog.” It’s an ever present quest to get heavier, and with each subsequent record, Health’s members demand more of it. Other groups that have been doing this for nearly 15 years might have slowed down or mellowed out, but for Health, there’s always a need for more dog. These days, John Famiglietti finds himself spending more time behind a computer screen than an electric bass. In fact, the instrument is missing on all but one track on the group’s latest, Vol. 4: Slaves of Fear. It’s a byproduct of a band willing — and even eager — to continue adapting. There was a six year hiatus and a change of record labels before the previous album. An shortly after its release, longtime guitarist/synth player Jupiter Keyes left the group.But Famiglietti and the rest of the band still have plenty left to say and lots more dog left in it.
Beulah hit like a tidal wave, marking a swift end to John Paul White’s music hiatus. It was a well-deserved break after the dissolution of the Grammy Award winning duo, the Civil Wars, but real life could only key the music at bay for so long. With his latest album due out this week, White reflects on Beulah as kind of an anomaly, an album that came almost effortlessly. The Hurting Kind, on the other hand, finds the musician drawing on his roots, for an old school sound that borrows heavily from the 60s Nashville scene. It’s big and celebratory, the product of collaborations with the era’s songwriters, like Whisperin' Bill Anderson and Bobby Braddock. Fresh off a performance at Carnegie Hall, White joins us to discuss the writing process, battling imposter syndrome and working Taylor Swift.
A lifelong Oklahoman, Ryan Lindsey is a happy Tulsa resident, these days. Half of Broncho resides in the Sooner State’s second largest city. The other two are a two hour drive away in Norman, the college town where the band got its start. It’s a Tulsa warehouse, however, that the band truly calls home. Before Broncho moved in, the spot was used to manufacturer hot tubs, and left some nasty chemicals in the air after it closed up shop. These days, the spot serves as a practice space/studio/venue/sound stage for the group’s various creative pursuits. And both Tulsa and the indie rock community at large are better for it. After nine years, the band has developed into a force to be reckoned with, releasing Bad Behavior, one of 2018’s best indie records.Lindsey sat down before a soundcheck to discuss staying in Tulsa, the life cycle of a band and how to embrace the political without alienated half your audience.
A few minutes into our conversation, Hannibal Buress injects mid-question, “How is it my first interview in Nigeria is with a white dude?” busting up mid-way through. The whole scene’s admittedly odd. We’re seated across from each other in my Lagos hotel room. My wheeled suitcase is flipped upside down on the coffee table, with my recording setup gingerly placed on top. The comedian hasn’t slept that night and I’ve been up for about three minutes. Buress is in great spirits, however, having flown to Nigeria to check out the sub-saharan African startup scene. It’s his first trip to the country, and appears to be having the time of his life. Slightly groggy on both sides of the mic, it’s a fun conversation nonetheless, about comedy, community and that notorious Lagos traffic.
When Penguins arrived late last year, it was the latest in a long line of projects from a seemingly restless artist. The Fantagraphics book found Nick Thorburn taking the plunge into comics for the first time, amid a long career as a critically acclaimed indie musician. His first published work is a remarkably adept one, showcasing a keen knowledge of the subtle art of wordless story telling. It’s an examination of the human existence through the seeming tragedy of flightless birds. For Thorburn, it’s also an opportunity to indulge in a new creative pursuit after a laundry list of beloved bands, including Islands, the Unicorns, Mister Heavenly and Human Highway (along with composing the music for Serial), as he wonders aloud whether there’s a continued place for him in the cutthroat music industry. I met up with the artist on a crowded Los Angeles street one sunny Southern California day to discuss his work in a new medium and what his creative future might hold.
A move to Los Angeles may have mellowed Matthew Murphy out a bit. The warm weather and sunshine has tends to have the effect on people, and the results have certainly begun to manifest themselves on The Wombats’ fourth album. But as the title Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life, clearly indicates, for all the talk of slowing down, the biting sarcasm that has come to define the Liverpool group’s output is still clearly in tact. Murph certainly won’t go so far as calling himself “happy,” but at the very least, he appears to be doing a valiant job keeping those demons at bay. The frontman joins us to talk about the trio’s 15 year journey and the importance of playing well with others.
In 2014, Drawn & Quarterly published Over Easy. It was a story that had been percolating for decades in cartoonist Mimi Pond’s mind, but life, family and the daunting task of actually sitting down to write it got in the way. By the time the cartoonist was ready to pitch the story, the publisher insisted on breaking it up into two volumes. In 2017, the second part, The Customer is Always Wrong, arrived, wrapping up the tale of her time as a waitress in her 20s. These days, Pond is in the midst of researching a new book, having been liberated by the act of actually getting a massive two-volume graphic memoir into the world. This time, however, she’s sought inspiration outside of herself, in spite of her own fascinating history that involves writing the pilot episode of The Simpsons, penning a best-selling book on Valley Girls and writing for the 80s children’s classic Pee-Wee’s Playhouse alongside her puppeteer husband Wayne White.
In a career spanning four decades, screenwriter Ed Solomon has worked on some of Hollywoods biggest titles, from X-Men to Charlie’s Angels. But it’s his film, co-written with longtime collaborator Chris Matheson, that may well be his most iconic. 1989’s Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure remains one of the most wholly original major studio films in recent memory. The 1991 sequel, cowritten by Solomon and Matheson, wasn’t nearly the smash success of its predecessor, but the darker film has gone on to develop a cult of its own in the intervening years. After being batted around for decades, a third film, Bill & Ted Face the Music, finds the writers teaming up once again, as Alex Winters and Keanu Reeves return to reprise their titular roles. In a wide ranging conversation about collaboration, inspiration and working within the studio system, Solomon reflects on his sustained career and why the time was right for a return of his best loved creations.
A lot can happen in six years. It’s the entire lifetime of some prominent bands. John Vanderslice has certainly been through plenty, including the death of a close family member and what might well have been the end of his own music career. In April, however, the musician with return with The Cedars, a sonically complex and emotionally rich new record, inspired by personal upheaval and a recent obsession with contemporary hip-hop. He’s also returned to touring, beginning with last year’s living room tour, which found him playing stripped down versions of his music to intimate audiences. During a stop in New York, Vanderslice sat down to discuss the past few years, the production of a “Protools record recorded to tape” and why he’s ready to leave San Francisco.
Unhappy as a creative director at Nickelodeon during the heady days of Ren and Stimpy, Lu Olkowski left the board room and offices behind to pursue her long time passion for public radio. The major career change found her starting over from scratch in a related, but still completely foreign field. Inspired by shows like This American Life, Olkowski entered the world of public radio as intern, rediscovering the harsh realities of creative pursuits along the way. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear she made the right choice, her work having now appeared on Radiolab, Studio 360 and All Things Considered, to name a few.These days, she is happily exploring the freedom of podcasting, including her work as the host of the CBC series, Love Me. In this wide ranging conversation, we discuss the ups and downs of giving it all up to pursue creative passion.
Relentless optimism may well be Michael Franti’s defining characteristic. It’s a rare trait, especially in these days of ideologically-driven, social media-fostered detachment. But for all the positivity of a record like Stay Human Vol. II, Franti and Spearhead never avoid the harsh light of reality. In fact, the album doubles as a soundtrack to the Franti-directed documentary that finds the musician traveling the world, in search of humbling stories. The Oakland-born singer has seen plenty in his own right. In an extremely frank and candid conversation, Franti discusses growing up as an outsider with an adopted family, coping with with parental substance abuse and the darkness of his own depressive moments. In a moment that feels historical dark for many, he’s a testament to the healing power of music and human stories.
Prior to Shades, music had never been a full-time pursuit for Vera Sola (Danielle Aykroyd). Splitting time between New York and Los Angeles, voice acting was her primary gig, until things went pear-shaped. Sick family members, the ends of relationships and myriad other issues knocked her flat. But encourage from peers helped instill confidence, first as a touring musician with indie folk singer Elvis Perkins and eventually under her current monitor. A well-received Slayer cover and an EP of Misfits songs followed, filtered through a smoky, folk sound. With 2018’s Shades, however, Sola both figuratively and literally found her sound.
It’s never quite clear where the memoir ends and the fairy tale begins in Passing for Human, and for Liana Finck, the distinction is incidental at best. Growing up, her home life was spent in a fantastical house built by her architect mother, provide a warm escape from the sometimes harsh realities of school life. These days, the artist is far more social, with a pool of friends in New York City and a growing army of admires amassed through Instagram comics and then the New Yorker. Her pen and ink work bares the influence of older cartoonists like Jules Feiffer, but the storytelling is uniquely her own. Fresh off the press push for her latest work, Finck sat down with us in Manhattan to discuss the ups and downs of socializing, the genius of Nabokov and the difficulty of telling one’s own story on the page.
Due out in February, Post Earth is only their second full length, but the members of FEELS going way back. A quartet of of Los Angeles natives, the members have been playing together in various iterations for well over a decade. And it shows. All four are crowded around a microphone, sometimes speaking in unison, as they discuss how their Tim Green-produced album became a kind of accidental political record. Better music through osmosis, and the feeling that the world is coming apart at the seams is a hard one to shake these days. It’s a fun conversation about bad Airbnbs, the Los Angeles music scene and playing music for the sheer joy of it.
When Douglas Rushkoff asks you to chat, you say yes. We’ve spoken to the visionary media theorist a dozen times over the years, and each opportunity always yields fascinating new results. These days, Rushkoff is peddling Team Human. What began as a weekly interview show with a wide range of subjects is now a book — a kind of manifesto for socializing in particularly bleak times. Along with uncanny predictive powers, the author has long been a champion of the transformative potential of technology. But Team Human finds Rushkoff bemoaning the isolating nature of ubiquitous technologies and late-stage capitalism. In all this, however, he remains ever an optimist for mankind’s resilience — too rare a quality in his chosen field. Having finished the book, Rushkoff describes his current crossroads, determining what his career will look like, going forward, and the role he can play in helping more voices be heard.
After years of writing about music, Taleen Kali decided to create it. She began performing live sound collages, before heading in a more rock oriented direction with the quartet, TÜLIPS. Last year, the musician released her first solo record, Soul Songs on local Los Angeles label, Lolipop records. She also keeps busy as a yoga teacher and the driving force behind the literary publication Dum Dum Zine. On a recent trip to L.A., we sat down with Kali to discuss the city, self-publishing and the drive to create.
In 2012, Georgia Webber stopped talking, save for 15 or so minutes a day. The act of vocalizing had simply become too painful. A year later, she began to serialize Dumb, the story of her struggles as a vocal abuser (the official diagnosis). The work follows the young cartoonist as she struggles to adjust to living without speech, concocting methods for communicating with friends and family and otherwise coming to grips with a newfound fact of life. Initially self-published, the book would later be collected by Retrofit Comics and, ultimately, as a single volume by Fantagraphics, which debuted over the summer. These days, when she does speak, Webber takes a measured approach, choosing words carefully. In this conversation, the cartoonist discusses the insights her struggles have given her into the ways in which we chose to communicate.
You’d think you’d have your fill of a man with four concurrent podcasts. And yet, John Roderick always seems to bring something new to the table. The Long Winters frontman has made a second career of sorts as podcasting’s great indie rock raconteur, cohosting Roderick on the Line, Road Work, Omnibus and Friendly Fire. The medium has proven an ideal fit for an entertainer happy to impart personal stories and knowledge, balancing the personal with the universal. For his third appearance on the podcast, the singer delves deep into stories of sobriety, bipolar disorder, transience and the Long Winters record he’s been putting off for a decade. It’s a rich conversation, that’s both idiosyncratic and deeply relatable for anyone who’s ever had difficulty getting over the creative hump.
Best know to many for guest starring roles on popular show like Park and Recreation and Girls, Jon Glaser has been a mainstay in the alternative comedy scene since landing writing gigs on the Dana Carvey Show and Late Night With Conan O'Brien. Glaser has long called New York his home, becoming a mainstay in the city's comedy scene and writing and starring in a trio of TV series: Delocated and Neon Joe on Adult Swim, and, more recently, TruTV's Jon Glaser Loves Gear. In anticipation of the mockumentary series' second season debuting this month, the comedian joined us to talk about working in New York, learning to write comedy and what's it's like playing an asshole version of yourself.
One of the more memorable spots in recent memory, "Wu Tang In Space Eating Impossible Sliders” does pretty much what it says on the tin. The web series created to promote vegetarian burgers at White Castle eschews the traditional ad trappings, in favor of a genuinely entering series of videos starting the RZA, GZA and Ghostface Killah. It’s the latest in a long line of high profile collaborations for director Sam Spiegel. In addition to creating ad spots and other videos with his production company, Squeak E. Clean, Spiegel is also a prolific music producer and has served as music director for artists like Karen O and Kanye West. Spiegel paid RiYL a visit on his most recent trip to his hometown of New York to talk about inspiration and the joys of collaboration.
Sabrina seemingly came out of nowhere, only to land on the top of nearly every best of 2018 list. Nick Drnaso’s second book-length work (following 2016’s collection, Beverly) perfectly captures feelings of isolation in an always-connected world. It’s a tale of fake news and online conspiracy custom made for the age of Trump — a world that took an emotional toll on its author during the creation process. For all the accolades the book has racked up in the intervening six months, Drnaso is happy to be focused on his next project.The Chicago-based artist sat down with us on a recent visit to New York, to discuss the difficulties of releasing a book into the world, the search for inspiration and learning the art of cartooning from the great Ivan Brunetti.
It’s a familiar refrain. The 15-year itch. It’s the perfect time to look back and how far a group as come — and wonder aloud how much gas is left in the tank. The More I Sleep the Less I Dream is a 15-year album. The fourth LP from a band whose lineup has remained remarkably consistent since forming to perform at a high school talent show. It finds the group searching for the magic that helped catapult their 2009 debut These Four Walls up the indie chart. Thompson admits that the group spent a couple of records hunting down chart success, but adds that this latest finds WWPJ working with something far more authentic and organic.
You don’t get to choose your audience. Especially when you’re playing a free to the public show at South by Southwest to promote your first record. It was, quite possibly, the worst showcase for a quiet voiced singer-songwriter.But the bad show gave birth to NPR’s Tiny Mix Tapes. The show’s producers quite rightly believed that Laura Gibson deserved a better showcase for here soft-spoken gifts.This year, Gibson released the haunting Goners, a beautiful and more sonically complex record that meditates on the connection between love and loss. It’s a theme that permeates her best work.
Fresh off a hike up Mount Kilmanjaro with his fiancee (now wife) and a ritualistic beard shaving, Taylor Goldsmith sits down to talk about Dawes’ latest, Passwords. The new record finds the band diving into the political and personal in ways not found on past records. Goldsmith is clearly in a good place, halfway through the band’s tour opening for pop-rock legends, ELO. He’s making the effort to be thankful for all of the band has amassed with half-a-dozen records over the course of nine years, even as he looks for ways to take things to the next level. It’s a hopeful talk, as Goldsmith discusses music industry competition, the future of indie rock and lessons he’s learned from The Rock’s Instagram account.
RE/Search’s North Beach office more closely resembles a library or museum. It’s a wonderfully crammed space that also serves as publisher V. Vale’s home, standing as a small monument to self-publishing and serving as a slightly melancholy reminder of all of the books we’ll never have time to read. Not that Vale isn’t trying, of course. The San Francisco mainstay is several decades into a lifelong search to acquire the world’s knowledge. It’s a quest that’s manifest itself in several wonderful volumes, exploring the works of countercultural icons William Burroughs, Lydia Lunch and JG Ballard and offering examinations of countless countercultural phenomenons. RE/Search hit its publishing peak in the 90s, just before the internet became fully ubiquitous here in the States, but Vale and a team of friends and family continue a commitment to printed matter and the goal of amassing useful and fascinating information.
Somewhere along the line Chris Barron quite literally lost his voice. The condition, vocal cord paralysis, left Spin Doctors frontman barely able to speak, let alone sing. It was, he confesses, a dark time — one that left him wondering whether a return to music was in the cards at all. It slowly returned, thankfully, and Barron, with the help of doctors and a vocal coach, was able to learn how to sing with a single functioning vocal cord. In 2017, he released his second solo record, Angels and One-Armed Jugglers — the second bit an unintentional nod to his own condition. The condition afforded the singer the opportunity to reflect on his life and career. Perfect timing, really, as the Spin Doctors celebrate their 30th year of existence — a run that’s seen remarkably few lineup changes over the decades.
In an age of uncertainty, This Modern World has remained a rare consistent. For nearly 30 years, the strip has offered a staunchly leftist take on the week’s news, outlasting many of the world leaders its lampooned, along with most of the alternatively weeklies that carried it. Back in 2015, artist Tom Tomorrow celebrated the strip’s 25 anniversary with an ambitious Kickstarter-backed collection. The campaign far exceeded its initial goals, pulling in more than $300,000 — a number that required Tomorrow to get a tattoo of long-time mascot, Sparky the Penguin. These past few years, have proven a bit more of a struggle. The ascendence of Donald Trump has turned the world of political satire on its head, forcing the cartoonist and his ilk to rethink their approach to political comedy. Recently relocated to New York City, Tomorrow sat down to talk about keep the weekly strip fresh after nearly three decades.
A trip to India changed everything for Sonia Kreitzer. It’s the kind of cinematic-style quest for knowledge so many seek out and so few actually achieve. For the singer, who opted the stage name Doe Paoro, the trip came at the most vital of times. Struggling to make ends meet as a part-time singer and full-time waitress in New York, Kreitzer was attempting to make peace with her plan to throw in the towel on the music business. Faint singing in the distance, however, led her to study with a Tibetan vocal master, a style that would ultimately inform her future musical direction. Kreitzer sat down for a conversation about creativity, musical phases and the importance of mindfulness.
Eight albums into her career, Marissa Nadler is still discovering aspects of her musical life. For My Crimes finds the Boston-based musician fighting impulses to overthink and overdo. The metaphors and endless layers of music are stripped away for something that cuts even closer to quick.Of course, the ethereal melancholy that has defined much of her work is still present, and the the record finds her singing and picking her way through relationship difficulties and other universal struggles. Nadler’s voice has long been a confident one, but recent life events have found her rethinking her approach to life and art, from leaving a day job to rekindling a love of painting, while leaving other forms of expression behind. I should note that I, on the other hand, am very clearly losing my voice during this conversation. Apologies in advance.
After that first breakup, the press tends to regard everything as a reunion show. As Matt Pryor and Jim Suptic are quick to note, however, The Get Up Kids have been around as long in their current iteration as they were the first go-round, at 10 years a piece. Reforming has clearly given the legendary emo band a second lease on life, however. This year, the group released Kicker, its fist album of material in seven years. The four-song EP finds them revitalized, and their live sets show no sign of flagging. The members live in different parts of the country, with family responsibilities — a far cry from their teenage beginnings in Kansas City. But the group clearly enjoys playing after all these years, and is already discussing the next record as we sit down bag stage at White Eagle Hall in Jersey City.
The van is running late. Never underestimate the traffic in from D.C. When Malka Spigel and Colin Newman do finally arrive, they’re both a bit wiped. Another late night on tour, getting in after last call, but the couple are both excited and slightly melancholy to play the final show of the tour. It’s Immersion’s first in the U.S., celebrating their first LP in a decade and a half. Spigel and Newman are clearly happy at the reception both the album and tour have received, even if it’s felt a bit like starting from scratch. After all, the mention of the pair’s other legendary bands Wire and Minimal Compact only go so far when it comes to filling venues. But with their son out of the house — as it happens, Spigel and Newman are also a married couple — the time is finally right to fully embrace a musical project that’s been on the back burner for quite some time. And the result is a sort of newfound energy musicians often lack later in their career. Spigel and Newman sat down ahead of a show at Rough Trade in Brooklyn to discuss the project, touring and choosing musical passion over commercial success.
The Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, three top 10 solo hits and one of the defining voices of his generation — but through it all, Michael McDonald has remained utterly humble. He didn’t feel he had the chops to make it as a full time studio musician, he tells me toward the beginning of our chat, so he sought a different path. Plan B gave the world “What a Fool Believes,” “I Keep Forgettin’,” “Takin’ it To the Streets” and “On My Own,” among others. Not too shabby, as far as those things go. Last year, McDonald returned to recording with his first album of original material in 17 years, following a fruitful run that found the singer releasing three covers records, largely drawing upon the Motown songbook. Wide Open arrived as the musician found new life breathed into his career, courtesy of the lovingly parodic web series Yacht Rock, alongside collaborations with a new generation of artists, including Thundercat, Grizzly Bear and Solange. McDonald wasted no time getting back into the studio this time around. This month, he’ll release his latest Christmas album, Season of Peace. The singer joined us for Episode 300 to discuss getting back into the studio, finding his voice as a songwriter and the sorry state of politics in 2018.
A few hours before the kickoff of the Posies’ 30th anniversary show at the Bowery Ballroom, Jon Auer is feeling reflective. It’s the perfect moment for the musician to examine a long and fruitful career that’s found him performing as the member of a half-dozen bands, producing countless records and spending 17 years playing guitar for the final iteration of the legendary group, Big Star. But The Posies have always been the nearest and dearest to Auer’s heart. Formed in high school with childhood friend Ken Stringfellow, the band helped define power pop for the 90s. A trio of iconic records released on DGC set the group apart from the grunge sound of their hometown. But they never achieved the popular success of other Seattle groups of the era, The Posies have long remained one of the decade’s most beloved bands. In our conversation, Auer happily reflects on the ups and downs of his long career and explains why The Posies are sticking around for good this time out.
It seems Matt Costa has a guitar within arm’s reach at any given moment. As I fumble around setting up my recording rig, he pulls the acoustic out of the case and begins strumming, absent-mindedly. Prior to this year’s release of Santa Rosa Fangs, it had been a full five years since Costa released an LP under his own name. But it’s clear that music is never too far from his mind, as he fiddles around on the instrument or scribbles writing exercises for himself. When he’s not making music, the California musician is busy thinking about it, as evidenced by the recently released Santa Rosa Fangs (Novella Edition), an appendix to his latest record that explores the meanings behind the songs. Reaching for meaning or inspiration isn’t always easy, but Costa is more than happy to discuss his craft.
When she arrives, Lizz Winstead is quick to note that she’s a bit frustrated at having missed Trump’s latest impromptu press conference. Not so much for the content — not rational thinking person could make that argument — just for the Twitter jokes. The comedian has made a career out of poking fun at the political, from co-creating The Daily Show, to cohosting an Air America radio show with rapper Chuck D and future cable news superstar Rachel Maddow, to her current gig as the head of pro-choice non-profit, Lady Parts Justice. The last time we spoke to her, the org was in its infancy. In the age of Trump, with the specter of a major rollback for women’s rights, the group is thriving. For Winstead, it’s a reason to feel hopeless and hopeful all at once.
Backstage at the Murmrr theater, the band is about to sit down to eat some fancy local Brooklyn pizza. It’s a strange space — a plush 700-seat theater that also serves a synagogue, the occasional Star of David on the wall the remind you that you’re a holy place. Damien Jurado seems eager to talk, in spite of being at the tail end of his East Coast tour (in a few days, it will be the same thing all over again up and down the West Coat). We launch into chat about Shabazz Palaces, a brilliant hip-hop duo from his native Seattle. Then it’s Billy Bragg and Beck and the Mountain Goats, all by way of explaining how he made the jump from Minor Threat-inspired hardcore frontman to earnest singer-songwriter. It’s been a long and fascinating journey for the musician, including a few unexpected pitstops along the way. But in spite of some personal struggles, Jurado says without hesitation that this year’s The Horizon Just Laughed is both his most personal and best album to date.
Released in June, Shannon in Nashville finds the singer embarking on her own for the first time, after a half-dozen albums with backing band, The Clams. But Shannon Shaw still had plenty of support. The singer/bassist’s solo debut was produced by Black Key Dan Auerbach, who played on the album, alongside an all-star cast of Nashville studio musicians. But Shaw’s smoky vocals and dreamy songwriting are the stars of a record that is at once forward looking and firmly rooted in the past. The musician has come a long way since tentatively picking up an ex’s bass in college and honing her craft at karaoke bars and open mics. Shannon and the Clams have quickly become one of Oakland’s best and most fascinating musical ambassadors over the last decade.
Asked how long he’s been Alexander Orange Drink, Alex Zarou Levine pulls a packet out of his backpack and tosses it on table in front of him. “That’s my orange drink,” he says. The musician laments for a moment that the name is no longer a secret, because it’s 2018 and secrets don’t exist anymore. But Levine and his Brooklyn-based band of brothers, The So So Glos have never been afraid to wear their hearts on their sleeve. In a world of ironic detachment, their music is proudly earnest and anthemic. “F*** art, let’s dance,” he says, referencing the infamous Stiff Records slogan when asked to describe the overarching theme of his solo debut. Out this week, Babel On is a document of troubled times both internally and externally. It’s the product of a singer who’s long found solace in making and listening to music, from the rare metabolic disorder that requires him to carry around the aforementioned orange drink, to a political climate that’s infinitely more troubling than any we’ve experienced in our lifetimes.
When Richard Elfman laughs, he commits his entire body to the act. It’s deep, hearty and infectious. The consummate entertain and raconteur, Elfman pours us both a glass of scotch, describing his last big barbecue and inviting me to his next, should I pass through the parts again. A number of recent guests also happened to appear his his upcoming film, Hipsters, Gangsters, Aliens and Geeks. It’s was completing on a shoestring budget, with the help of many favors, but the director is convinced its his best to date. If all goes according to plan, it will help finance Forbidden Zone 2 — the long awaited followup to his 1980 black and white cult musical classic. The film, which launched his film directing career, was assembled as a showcase for Elfman’s theatrical musical act, The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. That act, under a truncated name, would later find mainstream pop success, courtesy of Elfman’s preternaturally talented younger brother, Danny. Richard, meanwhile, has found an avenue for creative passions in a wide of outlets, from theater, to prose, to a lifelong passion for Afro-Cuban percussion.
In 2016, Tony Millionaire drew his final Maakies. For nearly a quarter of century, the strip ran weekly in alternative papers like The New York Press, LA Times and Seattle’s The Stranger. While he’d flirted with the idea of doing it for as long as he was still able to hold a pen, the newspaper industry imploded around him, leaving him with too few places to syndicate the strip. During its life, the strip inspired a number of animated products, beginning with animated Saturday Night Live shorts in the 90s, an appearance in the They Might Be Giants documentary Gigantic and its own Cartoon Network series. Millionaire, for his part, kept plenty busy, producing several Sock Monkey titles for a younger audience on Dark Horse Comics. These days, the cartoonist is plotting a return for Maakies stars Drinky Crow and Uncle Gabby, as the guiding force and comic relief for the upcoming autobiographical book Tony's True Tales. I met up with Millionaire on a recent trip to Los Angeles to discuss this work, drinking and a suburban southern California life.
I can count on one hand all of the cartoonist whose work has unfailingly made me laugh out loud. Ivan Brunetti’s strips are up toward the top. You don’t always feel great about belly laughing at the material, but it’s never not hilarious. For the past several years, however, Brunetti has been conspicuously absent from the comics scene, save for a pair of kids titles for Francoise Mouly’s Toon Books. The works are delightful in their own right, but do not satiate one’s desire for Brunetti’s gut-shakingly hilarious adult work. In recent years, he’s been more focused on his day job, as a comics/illustration editor at Chicago’s Columbia College, a gig that has more recently found him working out of the back office. Brunetti’s last major comics work was released nearly a dozen years ago. I paid the artist a visit on a recent trip to the Windy City, to see how his life and work were going. Brunetti happily poured his heart out about the struggles to create and his plans to release comics in the future.
The last time we spoke, we were backstage at New York Comic Con. It was a short, manic conversation, with the first Hilo book having only just been published. Two years, later, we’re sitting in a coffee shop in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district — an only slightly less chaotic setting than last time around.Hilo has become become a bonafide success. Earlier this year, Random House released the fourth book of the series, Walking the Monsters. The series represents something very pure for Judd Winick — the ability to tell a superhero story on his own terms.It’s a far cry from the cartoonist’s work at DC Comics. After runs on titles like Batman, Green Arrow and Catwoman, Winick was ready to leave the dark and gritty world of superheroes behind. Hilo finds the artist writing for a younger audience, including his own kids. In his return to the show, Winick discusses long form story telling, taking risks and the importance of a built in support structure.
“Green Day was the true reason I learned how to play guitar,” Van William says with a smile. “‘When I Come Around,’ when that video came out and Billie Joe was walking around the Bay Area and at one point he took the pay phone off the hook and kept walking. I couldn’t imagine anything more rebellious than that.” The former Waters’ frontman’s music is a bit more mellow than those early days of pop punk worship. But it’s no less raw. His 2018 solo debut, Countries, finds the indie folk singer finding hope after an intense break up. Earlier this year, he say down to discuss the record, growing up in California, and fantasizing about leaving it all behind to work on a fishing boat.
We grab a seat on the “punk couch,” an old piece of living room furniture covered in band name tags. Penelope created is as part of an installation, drawing upon her days as the 19-year-old singer of seminal San Francisco punk band, The Avengers. These days, Houston mostly paints during her off hours from the SF library. Her latest project finds her recreating mugshots from nearly 100 years ago. Muzzlers features a parade of grizzled sex workers and sex criminals. It’s been a half dozen years since her last solo record, On Market Street. The singer still performs, both under her own name and as the Avengers, who’ve played off and on since reforming in 1999, with members of The Mr. T Experience, Pansy Division and Screeching Weasel In a wide ranging interview, we discuss the early days of the band, painting and finding creative fulfillment.
“We kind of want to be more of a factory than a band,” says bassist Charlotte Kemp Muhl, drawing clear inspiration from Andy Warhol’s stomping grounds several decades prior. Uni is, fittingly, one of the most stylish New York bands in recent memory. Muhl (ex-Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger) is joined by former Courtney Love guitarist David Strange and singer Nico Fuzz for a raucous take on vintage 70s rock, channeled through 90s fuzz. I sat down with the trio backstage to discuss their unique approach to music distribution and the importance of having a solid gimmick to rise above the nose of the music industry.
“I felt like it was a noble thing to do, to help people laugh,” says Michael Kupperman. “I’ve had that beaten out of me, a little bit.” The cartoonist sounds a bit defeated, describing earlier work like Tales Designed to Thrizzle and Mark Twain's Autobiography.
It’s not an uncommon sentiment — humor comics are a hell of a tough place to make a living, even after decades of churning away. Kupperman latest book finds the artist turning a page, putting his own family under the microscope. His father, Joel Kupperman is the subject of All the Answers.
The academic rose to fame at a young as the star of NBC’s nationally broadcast radio series, Quiz Kids. The elder Kupperman’s life is fascinating and often stark, as he grabbles with the lasting impact of having fame cast upon him at the age of seven.
It’s bold new territory for the cartoonist, and the result is easily one of the year’s best comics.
I met Matt Groening very briefly years ago, while attending a small indie comics show in Brooklyn. He was there as a fan — and to support longtime friend, Lynda Barry. He came upon a pile of Treehouse of Horror comics, picked them up and pulled out a Sharpie and signed every one, walking away with out a word. This second conversation was a bit more formal: 20 minutes on the phone to discuss his new Netflix show, Disenchantment for TechCrunch. No questions about Apu allowed. Instead, we talk about tailoring a show for its format, the importance of developing a style and the origins of Bart. The conversation was recorded over the phone, so the sound quality’s not great, which is why you’re getting this a bonus episode. Still, there’s a lot of fun insight into the mind of the man who created the most popular show in television history.
Matt greets me at the door of the duo’s spacious Brooklyn home. We walk past a fireplace mantel showcasing multiple MTV Moon Men. We chat for a bit about social media, and he shows me snippets of the Matt and Kim Vlog — short videos from the road, designed to connect with the group’s very loyal fanbase. We meet Kim upstairs in a room they’ve converted into a recording studio. Kim wonders half-jokingly whether she’s going to “drag [her] lazy ass out of bed” in the morning for an exercise class (she will), and as gesture to a toy piano in the corner, Matt taps out the melody of “Daylight.” Kim and Matt are beaming and joking — precisely the what you’d expect from the pair after listening to their records for a dozen years. But the current state of affairs belies the struggle that underpins much of their most recent record, Almost Everyday. The album was written during Kim’s recovery process, after the drummer injured her ACL on-stage in Mexico. 2017 was a year filled with recuperation and bouts of depression. But both insist they came out the side better for it — and at the very least, having recorded their most introspective work to date.
Reagan Youth only released a single album during its first incarnation, but the group of anarcho-punks from Queens had a profound impact on the New York hardcore scene. The band called it quits in 1989, as their primary inspiration, Ronald Reagan finally left office. Founding members Dave Rubinstein and Paul Bakija would go onto form House of God with drummer Javier Madriaga. The psychedelic rock band was ultimately short lived, due, in part to Rubinstein’s drug problems. Ultimately, the band left only an unmixed seven-song demo behind. Rubinstein’s death by suicide in 1993, seemingly closed the book on both bands forever. In 2006, however, the band reformed the band with a new vocalist for a one-off show that eventually became something more permanent. Bakija’ plans for the band include a concept album dedicated to his to Rubenstein, his childhood classmate and a metal record, both bearing the Reagan Youth name. He joins us to discuss how the musical project has soldiered on, after the death of its driving force.
“I think there’s something radical, defiant and necessary about continuing to tell the truth in a very compassionate way in a world that is screaming and yelling talking points at each other,” Kevin Allison explains. “To me it just seems important right now.” The week we record this conversion, news breaks about child detention centers at US/Mexico border. Even in one of the roughest years in recent memory, things are staring to look especially bleak. But the former member of The State turned podcast host finds some hope in interactions with a diverse group of listeners. The extreme and embarrassing nature of Risk’s stories have helped engender a surprising sense of empathy amongst listeners of different backgrounds. “People will write in and say, ‘I never thought I’d listen to a show about a man eating another man’s shit and feel moved,” he says with a laugh. The show, which is just shy of ten-years-old also recently landed Allison a book deal. Risk: True Stories People Never Thought They'd Dare to Share is out now, featuring a number of essays adapted from the live show by storytellers including past RiYL guests Marc Maron and Jesse Thorn.
In the early 90s, Allen Ravenstine quit music. Just like that, to hear him tell it. The founding keyboardist for pioneering art-punk legends Pere Ubu was finished with the industry, opting to fly gliders and ultimately work his way up to commercial airline pilot. 2014’s modular synthesizer documentary I Dream of Wires changed things, however. A jam session with his Ubu replaement Robert Wheeler found him fiddling with synthesizers yet again.The music switch flipped on just as easily it had turned off, more than a decade prior. Waiting for Bomb finds is the result of hours of experimentation, distilled into 18 tracks that capture the energy of those early days. “I lose myself [making music],” he says as we sit down for an interview in Manhattan. “It’s a very peaceful place to be. I’m living in the moment, and that’s a rare feeling, to be untroubled by the past or future”
“I’m pulled in a million different directions,” says Ian Parton. The musician is describing the inspiration that led to the creation of the Go! Team in the lobby of La Poisson Rouge in Manhattan. It’s the final night of the tour, and he believes the band is really just starting to hit its stride. But two weeks is about all Parton can take, with two kids at home in the U.K. Parton describes the band’s vibe as a kind of cross between his love of noise music and obsession with melody. “I like forcing things. I like the idea of worlds colliding,” he explains., “I think of myself in the hook business […] No one’s really cracked it. It’s still as elusive to Paul McCartney as it is to me.”The band’s latest, Semicircle is as loud and about as good as anything the band has produced in its nearly 20-year-long existence. It’s a raucous cacophony of sounds and influences, featuring a wide range of collaborators, including the Detroit Youth Choir.
In 2012, Sylvia drew to a close. For the first time in more than 20 years, Nicole Hollander found herself without a daily comic. But the lifelong Chicagoan wasn’t done with cartooning just yet. Released earlier this year, We Ate Wonder Bread marks a distinct change for Hollander, moving from strips to long form. The book, which was inspired by a storytelling course and a trip to her old neighborhood via Google Street View, finds the artist exploring tales of her youth. I paid a visit to Hollander’s Chicago apartment during a recent visit to the city. We discussed the beginnings of her career as a cartoonist and what it was like regularly being the only woman in the room.
Launching a media property is never easy, but from the outside, at least, the story of Pineapple Street’s early days certainly seem charmed. The network counted among its earliest hosts then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. There aren’t too many people in the world who bring more star power to the table. The network has launched numerous high profile shows since With Her, including Lena Dunham’s Women of the Hour podcast and the surprise runaway hit, Missing Richard Simmons. Jenna Weiss-Berman cofounded the company in 2016, leaving a cushy gig at Buzzfeed to enter the uncertain world of startups. “I always wanted to work in either homeless services or make podcast,” she explains during our chat at the OnAir Fest in Brooklyn. “I want to do things that feel like they’re making a difference.”
Dana Buoy’s two LPs feel like the work of two different bands. The first is a clear successor to front man Dana Janssen’s work in the beloved freak folk outfit, Akron/Family. This year’s Ice Glitter Gold, on the other hand, is a late-night dance record, driven by Janssen’s 4-on-the-floor drumming. A lot has happened since the band released their 2012 debut. Life intervened, and the record didn’t perform as well as expected. Janssen and bandmate Justin Miller also relocated to Portland from New York, as the kids all seem to be doing these days. Fresh off a red eye from a whirlwind visit to their former home, the pair sat down to discuss the stress of city living, dealing with disappointment and the pluses and minuses of reinvention.
“Music doesn’t happen when you try really hard,” Royston Langdon explains, toward the tail end of our conversation. “Keith Richards didn’t write the riff for ‘Satisfaction’ while he was concentrating.” Everything’s Dandy, his debut record under the moniker Leeds, finds the former Spacehog frontman in a more reflective space. He’s mellowed, it seems, since those heady days of mid-90s New York City. He got married, had a kid, the band broke up a couple of times in the interim. And while songwriting has been a kind of constant in his life since the age of 12, Langdon explains that art isn’t something you can force. It’s a kind of quiet acceptance of all that life has thrown at him — for better and worse — that has informed both his music and general state of mind.
You would be hard-pressed to find an artist as passionate — or joyful — about their art than Fatoumata Diawara. It’s catharsis and happiness and medicine, all rolled into one, with songs that explore some of the darkest moments of the human experience inspired by the confessional style of the American blues, set to joyful rhythms emanating from West Africa. “When you stop crying, you decide two things: to kill yourself, or to survive,” the Malian musician explains, during our conversation. “And when you decide to survive, you must find things to help you survive. Music was mine.” Diawara is extremely candid during our half-hour-long chat, discussing her own hardships and those others have a tendency to confess to her. But she’s ever hopeful, for having discovered her reason for being put on this earth: bringing joy to others through the music making process.
She’s a comedian, a radio host and a writer, but above all, Ophira Eisenberg is a storytelling. That much is immediately clear a few minutes into a conversation. When she’s not hosting NPR’s popular quiz show, Ask Me Another, Eisenberg is discovering different outlets, from her early days as a New York standup, to storytelling gigs with The Moth. In 2013, she released her debut memoir, the hilarious confessional, Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy. These days, she’s moved on the scars as a storytelling device, as she explores those moments that have defined her throughout her life. In this wide-ranging and fast-moving conversation, we discuss the importance of confessional storytelling, and whether becoming well-adjusted really does get easier as you mature.
For 42 years, Eugene Chadbourne has been wonderfully, definitely and sometimes frustratingly independent. A one-man journey into avant-garde folk and jazz, his work has touched several generations of independent musicians, from collaborations with college rockers Camper Van Beethoven, to a Sun Ra tribute where he played his own musical concoction, built with an electric guitar pick up and a garden rake.Earlier this decade, the journeyman musician released Dreamory, a massive, 1,000+ page tome that flips between memoir and dream logic, telling of his entry into music as a Beatles obsessed youth.After a reading in Brooklyn, Chadbourne and I sat down at a Williamsburg diner to discuss his career and the state of the industry, with a special cameo from collaborator and lifelong fan, Jim McHugh.
By the time their self-title debut dropped last month, Goat Girl was already a buzz band. The South London quartet had signed to Rough Trade two years prior, drawing the industry’s attention with their energetic live show. The band’s music is both playful and political, building up a following of fans disillusioned by the likes of Brexit and Trump. Fresh off a triumphant appearance at SXSW, the entire band — Clottie Cream, Rosy Bones, Naima Jelly and L.E.D. — shared a mic on a subterranean office couch to inspiration, friendship and why modern guitar rock is so boring.
“The rewards of being a successful cartoonist would not be enough to make for a happy life,” says Adrian Tomine. It’s something that’s changed as he’s grown older, gotten married, had kids. He adds that he’s grateful for the readers and the recognition — that plenty of people still read everything he does. But priorities change. as we get older. Where critical acclaim for a new work would have been more than enough to keep him going, the Brooklyn-based artists is more focused these days on his wife and two daughters — factors that have impacted both the way he works and what he produces. The short stories in his latest, Killing and Dying (now out in paperback), while not connected in term of subject matter, all contain elements of a creator steeped in parenting. And while being home during the day to care for two young kids hasn’t made him the most productive he’s been in his career, it’s compelled him to take risks, like optioning a comic to filmmakers for the first time in his long career. In this wide ranging and honest conversation, we discuss the pitfalls of perfection, the influence of growing up in Northern California and inhabiting the shoes of a broad ranging cast of characters.
Valentine’s Day casts a slight pall on the conversation, as we sit down just ahead of Titus Andronicus’ latest record, A Productive Cough. There’s a lot of talk about art and punk and life, and how long one can sustain a rock and roll career without reaching the jet setting heights of a Led Zeppelin or U2. It’s a conversation Patrick Stickles has always been open about. The band’s driving force and sole consistent member has often openly wondered whether each album might be its last, but has continued to release new records on a regular schedule. The band’s latest is a stylistic departure from the group’s earlier work, with “no punk bangers,” as he puts it during our conversation, followed up by a stripped down, nearly acoustic tour. “Pushing yourself out of your comfort zone is how you grow,” he says. But Stickles and band maintain the ethos on which the project was founded, seeking to find a personal connection with its loyal fanbase, continuing to evolve nearly a decade and a half into the group’s existence.
We start by talking about food. Something most musicians take for granted on road, but Yoni Wolf’s struggles with Crohn's disease have made him acutely aware of what he puts into his body. It’s a subject that’s featured heavily in his work, including, most notably the decidedly dark Mumps, Etc. 2017’s Moh Lhean finds Wolf in a reflective state. Having embraced meditation, mindfulness and writings by American buddhist writers like Sharon Salzberg, the practices make themselves known throughout the record as sung mantras and snippets from teachers like Ram Dass. It’s spiritual in parts, without being overbearing, a complex mix of musical styles, including, most prominently, indie rock and hip-hop. And somehow it all works.On a down night during touring, Wolf and I sat down in a hotel room in rainy Brooklyn to discuss illness, spirituality and dealing with music critics.
2008’s Jesus That Looks Terrible on You was a delightful debut from a promising New York indie pop band. In the intervening decade, however, things have been fairly quiet on for A Big Yes and a Small No, aside from a single hard to find EP. I jumped at the idea of interviewing frontman Kevin Kendrick, if only to discover what, precisely he’d been up to for the past 10 years. With a new record Mise En Abyme just over the horizon, Kendrick sat down after work one day, equipped with several lifetimes worth of stories. There’s the heroin addiction, the kidnapping, a false imprisonment — all things he casually touches upon as he gets to more important subjects like the topic of songwriting. It’s a fascinating and fittingly manic conversation that runs the gamut from addiction to coming to grips with one’s own mortality.
I first heard The Devil Makes Three bleeding through the thin walls of Santa Cruz house all hours of the day and night. The trio had only just formed and practice seemingly nonstop a set of songs that would form the basis of their self-titled debut. There was nothing like them in Santa Cruz at the time, a music scene populated by freak folk, indie-noise and skater punk, but the band’s single-minded focus on stripped down, bluegrass inspired punk country was precisely what helped them stand out. And the fact that, in spite of those never ending practice sessions, they seemed to enter the world fully formed. The world has, of course, come around to the band’s music. The band was perfectly positioned to be embraced by the indie scene’s newfound love affair with Americana, and had the songs and showmanship to back it up. When I met up with the trio, they were about to take the stage to an enthusiastic crowd at Brooklyn Steel, singing along to every song. Pete Bernhard, the band’s singer and guitarist sat down to catch up on the last 15 years and talk about what’s next for the group.
I first met Becky Stern back in 2011, when she appeared on the Engadget Show as a blogger for Make Magazine. At the time, she was showcasing a hoodie capable of turning TVs off an off when zipped. It was pretty standard fare for the maker — a project that explored the cross section of art and fashion. Stern left that gig the following year for a gig at open-source hardware company Adafruit, where she served as the head of wearable electronics. These days, she’s a content creator at Instructables and Autodesk, while teaching her trade at New York’s School of Visual Arts. We sat down to discuss the state of the maker community, the pluses and minuses of launching a startup and having garbage knees in the era of uncertain health care.
It’s been nearly five years since we sat down with Julia Wertz, and naturally plenty has changed. Her latest book, Tenements, Towers and Trash is a veritable love letter to New York City, written after the cartoonist had moved back home to California. The book is a history of the city, told through obsessively detailed architectural renderings of buildings. It the same funny cartoon story telling that put her on the map in her long running strip, Fart Party, while exploring far more meticulous black and white line drawings. In her return to the show, we weigh the benefits of living in New York vs. San Francisco, discuss her newfound (and only slightly reluctant) passion for meditation and mindfulness, talk Tinder and find out what’s next for the artist.
Vancouver-born and Toronto-based, Laila Biali has toured with some of the biggest names in music, from Sting to Suzanne Vega. The pianist/singer is also a well regarded color performer in her own right, having released seven albums, including a new eponymous record, which debuted in January. The album’s first single, “Refugee,” follows the plight of a child, the same age as her son, caught up in the Serbian refugee crisis. In addition to performing, Biali is also the host of CBC Radio 2’s Saturday Night Jazz, a weekly four-hour show that explores the broad expanses of the genre. In this interview, we discuss the state of jazz in 2018, programming music for a diverse audience and life on the road with a young child.
A decade after releasing Some Loud Thunder, Clap Your Hands Say took the album back on tour. A lot has changed for the band in the intervening ten years, of course — not the least of which is the fact that frontman Alec Ounsworth remains the band’s only consistent member. The short stint of shows kicked off after the band finished touring for The Tourist, the group’s most critically acclaimed record since breaking through as the poster children for blog rock. After that self-titled release, Some Loud Thunder fell on somewhat deaf ears — mostly a victim of the band’s own seemingly overnight success. I met up with Ounsworth on the final night of the tour, after watching the band meticulously reinterpret the album’s songs in sound check, so many years after their initial release. The atmosphere put the singer in the perfect position to talk about those early years and his still evolving approach to writing a song.
2018’s Uncle, Duke and the Chief finds Born Ruffians performing with their original lineup for the first time in half a decade. Such a return is always an important turning for a band, but it takes on an extra weight for the trio, who began performing together as 15-year-olds in a small Ontario town. It’s a clearly joyful experience for the band, who managed to tap into the initial excitement that fueled the group in their earliest days. According to frontman Luke Lalonde, that sense of pleasure is an essential part of the music making process. Sure the fuel for the songs often comes from ideal circumstances, but he adds that he’d rather hang it up than feel as if he’s simple going through the motions. In this conversation, the front discusses the songwriting process and taking inspiration where you can get it.
In May of last year, Land of Talk returned after a seven year hiatus. At the height of her powers, following tours with bands like Broken Social Scene and The Decemberists, Elizabeth Powell took a break. Between her vocal polyp and a laptop crash that result in the loss of an album’s worth of demos, it was time to step away. Of all things, however, it was yet another personal tragedy that ultimately brought the music back. Powell’s father suffered a major stroke, and Powell began playing again as a kind of rehab. Her father pleaded for her to start making music again, and the resulting record, Life After Youth was became one of her strongest and most personal to date. We caught up with Powell, ahead of a show opening for a reunited American Football to discuss the healing power of making music.
Five years between in records is a drop in the bucket for many groups. For Minus the Bear, however, it marks the longest gap between albums in the band’s 17 year history. The making of Voids was marked by both personal and professional changes, as the group shuffled members and began to settle down and have kids. But there’s a fresh energy on the record, kicked off by “Lass Kiss,” which find the band in peak form. It’s a document of a band that still has has something to say. In this short interview, the group sat down back stage, following an opening slot for The Silverspun Pickups in Brooklyn to discuss changing dynamics and Donald Trump.
The track list for Playing Chess is nothing if not bold. The 11 tracks that make up Elise LeGrow’s debut LP represent some of the legendary Chicago Record’s biggest names, including Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Etta James. The collection of covers is both and a risky and savvy move for the singer. Of course, LeGrow’s not exactly new to the industry — the Canadian musician signed with Sony back in 2009, but this record, released early this month, marks a major step, after years of singles and LPs. It doesn’t hurt that, this time out, she’s joined by Betty Wright, Questlove and members of Sharon Jones’ legendary backing band, The Dap-Kings.In the lead up to the record’s release, LeGrow sat down to discuss her curation of covers and the pitfalls of trying to break into the music industry.
When I first encountered Gina Wynbrandt’s work at MoCCA Fest a few years back, the Chicago-based cartoonist seemingly came out of nowhere. Here debut book, Someone Please Have Sex With Me was the hands-down hit of the show — and for good reason. The book is an unflinchingly and often brutally hilarious look at sex that turns some of alternative comics’ most unshakable tropes on their head. “I read so many comics about the ugly male cartoonist in live with hot women,” she explains during our chat, “and I wanted my shot at it.” A followup minicomic, Thank You, follows in a similar vein, with the artist beginning the reader to help her foot the cost of a handsome male escort for the night. She debuted the book at Comic Arts Brooklyn, where we sat down for our chat — one she was finished setting up the giant Justin Bieber blanket on her table.
“Do not listen to people’s idea about what you can accomplish,” Emil Ferris insists as we wrap up our interview. “ You must do the thing you were sent here to do.” We’re short on time during the quick conversation. Someone’s stopped by to whisk her off to her next appointment. But, she adds, it’s important that she get that one simple and powerful message across. Ferris’ brief career as a cartoonist is nothing if not a lesson in perseverance. In 2001, she was paralyzed by West Nile Virus contracted from a mosquito bite. After a hopeless diagnosis from doctors, she learned to walk and draw again, eventually receiving a creative writing MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2017, at age 55, Ferris release her debut graphic novel, My Favorite Thing is Monster, a painstakingly crafted coming of age story that led Art Spiegelman to call the cartoonist, “one of the most important comics artists of our time” in a lengthy New York Times piece. Since then, the book went on to become far and away the most lauded book of the year, with a second part due out this August. In this brief but fascinating conversation, Ferris relays a message of hopefulness for aspiring artists and those dealing with seemingly insurmountable health issues. The cartoonist also expounds on her love for classic horror movies and how to overcome demons of negative thinking.
I’ve been eagerly awaiting Joseph Remnant’s debut graphic novel since he began collaborating with underground comics pioneer Harvey Pekar for the online Pekar Project anthology back in 2010. The moment finally arrived last year when Fantagraphics published Cartoon Clouds, the tale of recent art school graduates grappling with the realities of adult life. Of course, the cartoonist has been busy in the meantime, working on his on-going floppy series, Cartoon Clouds and working on Pekar’s final book, Cleveland, a fitting send off for one of the medium’s most influential writers. Remnant and I sat down at the CAB show in Brooklyn to discuss his work to this point and the process of setting out to create a debut graphic novel after years of shorter work and collaborations.
“Without nostalgia,” Torquil Campbell explains, “I don’t know how you make pop music.” It’s an inescapable dimension of Stars music, if only because the band essentially grew up together in Toronto. Plenty has changed, of course, in the nearly 20 years since the group formed. Two members married one another, and Campell became the sole member to move away, relocating part-time to Vancouver and a spot near Niagra Falls for his wife’s theater acting career. But the indie-pop group’s career has remained strong. Stars’ ninth studio album, There Is No Love in Fluorescent Light is among their strongest, and we meet up backstage at Rough Trade in Brooklyn, fans are already lined up, waiting to get into one of multiple sold out shows. Back in the city where the spent so many of its formative years, the singer seems especially reflective. “Pop music without nostalgia,” he adds in almost a whisper, “Is like coffee without cream."
“The thing that is the product is the excrement,” Emily Haines posits, loosely paraphrasing English writer, Jeanette Winterson. “The thing that is of value is the experience.” We’ve only got half an hour for an interview, as she rolls through town to promote her latest solo project, Choir of the Mind, and by the end it feels as though we’re racing to cram as many ideas as possible into that brief window of time. The Metric front woman and Broken Social Scenester is a self-proclaimed “bad meditator,” but she clearly has no issues living in the moment. She’s equally reflective, as well — an artist who’s clearly thankful for where her skills have helped her get. Haines’ first solo in 11 years in an exploration of memory, the result of returning home to Toronto after years spent in New York City. It’s the story of the cyclical nature of one’s life confronted by the realization that we’re invariably vastly different people than we were the last time we set foot on a familiar block. Fresh off a limited run of solo shows, Haines is happy to be back in the city she once called home, if only for a few moments. And from the sound of it, she wouldn’t have it any other way.
I was first made aware of Jay Rosen when he began to pop up in my Twitter feed. As the last presidential election neared, he began to show up more and more often through the retweets of friends and colleagues. Now that Donald Trump has declared an all-out war on journalism, Rosen’s voice is ever more essential in the national conversation. A week after the President issued his “Fake News Awards,” here’s a talk with the NYU journalism professor that attempts to get to the bottom of precisely what got us into this situation in the first place. As a journalist — and, for that matter, a reasonably thoughtful human being — it’s a tough conversation. Rosen struggles to find a perfect historical analogue for the current state of the press in US, settling on the Civil War — a chilling comparison to say the least. There’s not a lot of hopefulness contained in here, save for the fact that perhaps the internet — the same medium that helped get us into this mess — could ultimately be the one that redeems us.
Recorded on the eve of a pair of celebrating the 20th anniversary of his first Best Show call, we managed to catch Jon Wurster at the perfect time to reflect on his work. It’s been a strange career — the musician has drummed for some of the biggest names in indie rock, from his longstanding gig as a member of Superchunk, to on-going work with The Mountain Goats and Husker Du frontman, Bob Mould. But it’s his work with Tom Scharpling about which Wurster seems to take the most pride. “I think when i’m dead that’s is what i’d like to most be remembered for,” he explains, adding that the groundbreaking, long form comedy program is the purest expression of himself. Twenty years ago, Wurster called into the then-WFMU program as a music scholar of sorts, who’d penned the book Rock, Rot and Rule, a definitive ranking of rock acts, filed into one of three titular categories. What started as a goof has since grown into one of underground comedy’s most beloved on-going programs, building up a town’s worth of Wurster characters in the process. The drummer-turned-comedian sits down to discuss the birth of the show, breaking into comedy and dealing with creative dry spells.
“I never thought i’d making a living doing this,” Chris Ware explains, candidly. “I just thought i’d be a weird guy on the street shuffling around with tattered notebooks.” Maybe he’s half-kidding, or at least winkingly slightly. It’s hard to say. He’s hard person to read. But the cartoonist is nothing if not candid to a fault when it come to discussing his art and the work that goes into it. As we sit in a bare hotel room on one particularly cold early morning in Brooklyn, he’s more than happy to deconstruct the process of creating some of comics’ most complex and layered work. Perhaps he’s feeling especially introspective, following the recent publication of the massive Monograph, a 280 page art work that doubles as something of a career retrospective, with Ware deconstructing his own work in the marginalia. It’s a beautiful and lovingly crafted mid-career examination of one of the art form’s most important figures. If you tell him that, of course, he’ll likely thank you effusively, as though it isn’t something fans suggest to him on a fairly regular basis.
“Sometimes I’ll write something and I’ll weep while I’m writing it,” Cecil Castellucci explains, as we wrap up the interview with one final question. “It’s like I’m getting as close as possible to being human.” She gets close to that state just answering the question. Creation is a pure process for the writer. It’s one that sometimes feels like banging her head against the wall, but it’s an essential part of her existence, from her mid-90s indie rock career as Nerdy Girl, to her career as a young adult novelist that kicked off with 2005’s Boy Proof. Two years later, she collaborated with cartoonist Jim Rugg on The P.L.A.I.N. Janes. Her first graphic novel was a bit among the earliest books that helped form the core of comics’ current YA renaissance. In the subsequent decade, Castellucci has been prolific in both mediums, including a run on the D.C. superhero book, Shade, The Changing Girl and the upcoming Don’t Cosplay With my Heart, which draws upon the writer’s own history with fandom.
We sit down on a pair of chair in the First Second booth, smack in the middle of a crowded New York Comic Con show floor early on a Saturday. Nidhi Chanani is still high from the release of her debut graphic novel, Pashmina, which only hit store shelves a few day prior. The book tells the sort of a young Indian-American girl’s fantastic journey, as she reconnects with the homeland she left at a young age. There are certain parallels to Chanani’s own life, though the author’s earlier attempt at straight autobiography had been scrapped sometime before starting on her debut. It was a false start at a first comic that taught her a lot, but perhaps hit a bit too close to home. “Every bad drawing is going to teach you something,” she explains. “So 200 pages of bad drawing is definitely going to teach you something.” Pashmina, on the other hand, has garnered a warm reception in the intervening months, particularly among schools and libraries. In this conversation, we discuss cultural identities, the artist’s struggles with art school and the pains and pleasures of putting a book out into the world.
Founded in 1990, Tales of Blarg became one of the longest running and most influential zines out of the East Bay punk scene that gave the world Lookout Records. Over the years, the it published the work of such Northern California punk rock luminaries as Aaron Cometbus, Iggy Scam, Lawrence Livermore and Robert Eggplant. Janelle Hessig (née Blarg) hasn’t published an issue since 2006, but the writer/cartoonist is still strongly invested in the world of independent publishing. (And inspired a song by Bratmobile along the way.) For years, she worked for Last Gasp, and these days publishes other artists’ work through her own publishing house, when she’s not on the clock at San Francisco PBS affiliate, KQED. In 2014, she published The Cruising Diaries, a collection of writer Brontez Purnell, which Hessig also illustrated. Next year, Gimme Action will publish Rotten Philosophies, a personal collection of work from Hessig, who spent much of last year battling breast cancer. Hessig recommended a local San Francisco bar decorated with work inspired by outsider artist Henry Darger for this conversation, which touches on the importance of self-publishing, the downside of the internet and living day to day with a life threatening disease.
“My life makes no sense,” Mimi Fischer says with a laugh. The 64-year-old comedian recently put on her first solo show, “A Late Bloomer” at the PIT theater in New York City. She is, of course, the titular late-bloomer, discovering the world of hoop dancing in 2007, after years of bouncing from job to job. In 2011, she entered the comedy world, at age 58, enrolling in an entry-level course at UCB. It’s all clearly being a liberating experience for Fischer, after years spent in everything from commercial art to Wall Street. Her fascination with hula-hooping captured the attention of comedian Chris Gethard, who made her a fixture on the Chris Gethard show, where she earned the nickname Mimi on the Hoops, fitting in perfectly with the program’s controlled chaos. Just before embarking on her first solo show, Fischer sat down to talk about her journey, and why it’s never to late to discover your true passion. “I’ve been too told, I’m too fat, but i’m f*g going to do it this time,” she explains. and if i fail, at least i tried once in my life to do something.”
“I don’t want to go back to the bird shit,” Simon Hanselmann explains, reminiscing not-so-fondly about about jobs past. From all appearances, life is pretty good for the Tasmanian cartoonist. He’s making a living with comics, living in a nice Seattle home he shares with his wife, Jacq, a dog and a basement full of recused rabbits they lovingly refer to as “the bungeon.” His series, Megg, Mogg and Owl has been the subject of multiple award winning collections on Frantagraphics and has drawn interest from television production companies looking to turn his stoner trio into a series. His work appears regularly in magazines and anthologies, and when I arrive, he’s in the middle of preparing his work for an exhibit at a prestigious French art gallery. So naturally, he’s looking to mix things up. Hanselmann is beginning to embark on his most ambitious work to date, a multi-volume set that explores his own family history through the lens of Megs and Mogg, uncovering some early stories that his family would likely prefer stay hidden. It’s a deep and extremely personal story, he’s been meaning to tell for some time. “Once I started became successful in comics,” Hanselmann says with a laugh, “I stopped needing to see therapists.”
Blush’s debut album is the culmination of nine years worth of songs. Singer Maura Lynch spent the last decade playing in bands and working day jobs for startups like Kickstarter and Birchbox, all while writing music on the side. What sort as a solo project ultimately coalesced into a proper group, a collection of long time friends (and a pair of siblings) turning those demos into proper songs. Bass player Andrew Chugg stepped in to produce, attempting to retain the home recorded charm in the process. Ahead of the album’s December 8th debut, Lynch and Chugg sat down to discuss beginnings, collaboration and the upside of not quitting one’s day job.
Ron Turner is running late. It’s impossible to find parking in North Beach this time of night. I’m nursing a whiskey upstairs as Cafe Vesuvio, the historic San Francisco bar, best known as a famed beat generation water hole. The crowd’s already getting noisy, but the founder of the legendary Last Gasp publishing house couldn’t have chosen a more perfect location for our conversation. An unfamiliar face waves hello, hands me copy of Last Gasp’s latest catalog and sits down at the table across from me. He introduces himself as Winston, a local artist. It slowly dawns on me that the man is Winston Smith, the collage artist who helped create the house style for San Francisco hardcore band, The Dead Kennedys. Suddenly it’s a group interview. Our conversation is wide ranging and occasionally on topic, fueled by multiple rounds of libation. There’s talk of working on the Bakersfield/Fresno train line, Cary Grant’s love of LSD, sending comics to John McCain and Fidel Castro, and how Allen Ginsberg indirectly helped kickstart Robert Crumb’s career. And, of course, the ever-changing face of San Francisco.
Toward the end of our conversation, Nicole Georges takes a moment to point out that her latest book, isn’t the downer this interview might have made it out to be. But then, when you start down the road of dog deaths, it’s a bit hard to the right the ship. Which is to say, the subject matter of this episode gets pretty heavy, pretty early on. But like Fetch itself, the interview provides plenty of important reminders of why we need pets in our lives, even in the face of the knowledge that we’ll almost certainly outlive them. It’s a good talk, with a friend of the podcast, making her third appearance on the show. And, as is tradition with every one of her episodes, there’s a camera from an adorable dog, roughly halfway through. This time out, it’s the cartoonist’s trust chihuahua side, Ponyo, who provides yet another reminder of why dogs are the best.
“As long as one can walk one can protest,” Trina Robbins explains, over the white noise of a nearby espresso machine. “And as long as i don’t have to take too many hills, I can still walk.” The cartoonist’s assessment of the current political climate is equally pessimistic and hopeful, as the actions of the Trump administration have caused many Americans to loudly declare their support for women’s rights, while taking to the streets in protest. Robbins has been outspoken about her values for decades, even when it her opinions made her unpopular with many of her peers, as one of the first women in the underground comics community. But the artist and her have persevered, from the Last Gasp all-female anthology, Wimmen's Comix, to her stint in the early 80s as the first woman to draw Wonder Woman. This year, Robbins looked back on her career with the memoir, Last Girl Standing, an insight into her love affair with comics, struggles in the industry and reconnecting with her father’s writing after his death. We sat down at a cafe near her San Francisco home to discuss her long career and hope for the future.
The last time Anders Nilsen was on the show, we were huddled on a patch of grass out behind the San Diego Convention Center with pedicabs carrying cosplaying show attendees whizzing by, playing top 40 songs at maximum volume. Thankfully, things are much more subdued this time out. The Big Questions artist joined us in New York, during a mini-tour for his new series, Tongues. The first issue of the series arrived over the summer, part of Nilsen’s plan to self-publish it in floppy serial form, with Pantheon collecting the series as a single volume, when all’s said and done. The new series retells the myth of Prometheus, exploring the Titan’s relationship with the eagle tasked with ripping out his regenerated innards every day. The story is an outgrowth of the cartoonist’s 2007 book Dogs and Water, aiming to address some lingering questions about the doomed deity. Nilsen joins us in a pedicab-free office to talk religion, self-publishing and taking the first steps into a new story.
“Every once in a while,” James Jackson Toth explains, “you make a record and it feels like the message in the bottle sinking before it gets to the other shore.” Between official Wooden Wand albums, CD-Rs, online releases, records issued as a full band and the occasional under his own name, something’s bound to fall through the cracks every once in a while. But even with the constant flux of musical approaches, record labels and naming conventions, the singer has been quite consistent in quality, as one a member of a long, proud history of enigmatic troubadours armed with little more than a guitar and a memorable voice. After all these years, he seems a bit exhausted by live performance. Or maybe it’s just the pre-show jitters as we take a pair of chairs on stage at Brooklyn’s Baby’s All Right. Touring’s tough on any musician, and these days it can seem like a downright crapshoot whether on not you’ll be able to fill the place. There’s always fulfillment in the music making process, however — and new ideas and sounds to exploring on ever subsequent record. He describes his latest, Clipper Ship, as ‘exploded string band music,’ a description I find myself still attempting to wrap my head around.“If you don’t have anything new to say,” Both explains, simply, “don’t make a new record.”
It’s a few days before the opening of her first theatrical performance, and Stoya doesn’t know what to expect. It’s all really new — aside from a few trivia nights here and there, she hasn’t really done much in front of a live audience since some ballet classes as a youngster. She’s committed to trying new things, moving outside her comfort zone for the sake of a new experience. Her first acting gig outside of the adult film industry came not all that long ago, when she agreed to star as an Android in a still-unreleased sci-fi film, so when cartoonist Dean Haspiel approached her to star in his new play, Harakari Kane, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to give it another go. In this bonus episode, we discuss the adult film actress’s decade in the industry, her on-again, off-again work as an advice columnist and surviving in the city as a freelancer.
In the 60s, he cowrote ”My Boyfriend's Back" and "I Want Candy” and cofounded Sire records with Seymour Stein. But Richard Gottehrer isn’t one to dwell on the past. Six decades on, he’s still a guiding force in the music industry. Over the years, he’s produced Blondie, the Go-Gos, Richard Hell and, more recently, The Dum-Dum Girls. In 1997, Gottehrer cofounded the forward-looking digital distribution company, The Orchard. His latest project, Instant Love, is the brainchild of New Orleans native, Allison Zatarain, an employee of The Orchard and GM of its subsidiary label, Instant Records. The project pair female performers with songs traditional sung by men about women. Now 17 tracks deep, the pair regard the work as a “living album,” a growing collections of songs that lives on streaming services like Spotify, that will one day be collected in a more permanent form.Thus far, the project includes legendary performers like Irma Thomas, who performs Van Morrison’s “Crazy Love,” and less established artists like Erin Durant, who takes on Buffalo Springfield’s “Kind Woman.” Zatarain and Gottehrer regard the project as a kind of on-going conversation with female, as well as a experiment in music distribution in a time that’s been fairly tumultuous for both.
“When’s this podcast going to air?” Greg Saunier asks with a laugh. “Because the world might be over soon.” The conversation takes a bit of a serious turn toward the end, as we transition from touring with the Red Hot Chili Peppers (twice) to what, precisely, has kept the experimental indie rock band together for 23 or so years. Motivation hasn’t been hard to find — these days it’s everywhere as the band has grappled on record with the fall out from last year’s election, as in songs like Mountain Moves’ “I Will Spite Survive.” The record also found the group injecting new blood into its creations with a slew of collaborates — a rare thing over the course of the band’s 14 releases. And while Saunier is the only member who’s been in the group since its origins in mid-90s San Francisco, the group's line up has remained remarkable constant for an act that’s existed for nearly a quarter of a century. It could be the band’s continued evolution — no two Deerhoof records are ever the same. As the drummer says during the conversation, “Being expected to change is like the holy grail for a creative person.” Or maybe it’s just that special kind of chemistry that develops among a group of people who truly love what they do.
It’s been a few days since a white nationalist rally resulted in violent outbreaks and the death of a counter protester in Charlottesville, VA. Nerves are still pretty raw, and Dylan Marron has skipped this third week of his limits run podcast, Conversations With People Who Hate Me. It’s a constructive show, in spite of a somewhat cheeky title, but it simply didn’t feel write airing a that sort of idealogical back and forth in the wake of such a grave and fundamentally upsetting event. The show is tough to listen to in moments, but it feels important. It clear serves a purpose for Marron and a parade of guests who’ve sent him online hate mail — but it’s also a template for difficult conversations in an incredibly polarizing time. And Marron is the ideal host, both due to the notoriety he’s gained through web video and the insanely popular Welcome to Nightvale (where he voices the character Carlos), and because of the incredible patience he displays with his combative interview subjects. If you’re anything like me, you’ll find yourself yelling at the podcast while Marron patiently hears people out. In a long and wide ranging conversation, Marron discusses tackling difficult topics, being an ally and trying to love someone who hates you.
In the 80s, Glenn Morrow was at the forefront of Hoboken’s burgeoning college rock scene. The musician moved to Jersey while attending NYU and watched as Frank Sinatra’s hometown blossomed into a burgeoning indie rock scene, thanks in no small part to his own pioneering groups, The Individuals and ‘a,’ the latter of which would blossom into power pop darlings, the Bongos. After a few flirtations with major label success, Morrow eventually bowed out from performing, and moved to the other side of the desk, joining forces with Bar/None records. His first task found the label signing Brooklyn upstarts, They Might Be Giants — a fairly auspicious start that eventually led him to rise through the ranks to label owner. This summer, Morrow made a surprise return to recording — his first in 28 years. Glenn Morrow’s Cry For Help is a tight and compelling rock record that shows none of the rust one would expect from a musician who’s spent the better part three decades on the sidelines. Ahead of a show at the Bowery Electric in Manhattan, Morrow and bassist Mike Rosenberg sat down to discuss their return to recording and the embrace of “post-dad rock.”
It’s a beautiful day in Cambridge, MA when we sit down for an interview at a local dumpling shop (his recommendation). It’s all very serene in Harvard Square, a music singing acoustic classic rock songs through a small amplifier. These days, Clint Conley seems about as far from the manic energy of Mission of Burma as is humanly possible. Shortly after the end of the Boston post-punk band’s explosive four year run, the bass player became a house painter, ultimately finding his path again as a communications major. For the past 30 years, he’s worked as a producer for local television magazines, producing narrative segments on everything from artist colonies to the opioid crises. Of course, there have been flirtations with music since — including, notably, Burma’s reunion that kicked off in 2002, and continues in fits and starts to this day. It was an unexpected return to seemingly everyone including Conley, who’d mostly confined his guitar to the closet as he focused on raising a family and his production career. For now, the band is on indefinite hiatus, but as Conley will happily admit, when it comes to Mission of Burma, there’s no such thing as “never."
A stint in rehab moved Frank Conniff from New York City to Minneapolis, derailing his standup career for a bit and ultimately kickstarting his career as a TV writer. In the Twin Cities, he met the Mystery Science Theater 3000 team, ultimately joining the show in its second season as a writer, and more notably to fans, mad scientist’s assistant, TV’s Frank. After leaving the show (the only cast member to do so amicably, by his own account), Conniff went on to write for an incredibly diverse series of shows. After a year long Hollywood dry spell, he restarted his career with an Elvira TV movie and eventually scored gigs on Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Invader Zim and a string of progressive radio shows on Air America.More recently, Conniff has reteamed with MST3K expats for the movie riffing series, Cinematic Titanic, gone full bore into the lucrative world of podcasting and recently published his second book, Cats V. Conniff: A chronicle of the historic lawsuit brought against Frank Conniff by his cats, Millie & Barney.Conniff also hosts the monthly Cartoon Dump at Q.E.D. in Astoria, where we met up along with an extremely loud air conditioning unit to discuss his unlikely career.
“Right now, I’m in an unchecked creative zone,” Phoebe Bridgers says with a laugh. It’s a sort of cautious half joke, but one that describes her current songwriter state quite well. Our conversation was record a couple of months before the release of her debut LP Stranger in the Alps. The buzz has already kicked off from high profile outlets like NPR and Paste, but it doesn’t yet belong the world. So the 22-year-old is taking full advantage of the time ahead of touring to work on record number two, knowing full well from seasoned mentors like Ryan Adams that things are about to get really real for a while. Bridgers takes it all in stride, from the surprise early excitement to opening shows for the likes of indie rock legends like Bright Eyes and War on Drugs to playing Willie Nelson's strange little ghost town in Luck, Texas. The musician is still in awe of it all and eager to take it all in, even as she pens songs like a veteran who’s been through this rodeo before.
Ted Leo balks slightly at the notion that The Hanged Man is a more personal record than previous efforts. He chalks much of the idea up to the media surrounding the self-released record, and his particular candidness in recent interviews. But Leo’s done a lot of living in the seven years since the release of The Brutalist Bricks, and many of those stories manifest themselves in very real and raw ways on his new record. Since 2010, the musician has left New York City for more spacious digs in Rhode Island, found a new songwriting partner in Aimee Mann and grappled with some personal tragedy. The record is also the first in some time to bear only Leo's name, putting his long time band the Pharmacists on temporary hiatus and holing up in a newly built home studio. The new album also finds Leo without a label, opting instead to fund the record through a Kickstarter campaign. But while all of this sounds like the making of a four-track bedroom album, The Hanged Man is anything but. It’s one of his most luscious and fully realized records to date. Ahead of the album’s official release and his subsequent tour, we sat down in my Queens apartment to discuss the changes in Leo's life over the past several years and how a lifetime of adhering to a DIY ethos helped him prepare for his new album.
The building across the street was on fire the night we sat down to talk. The entire floor smelled of smoke and if you looked out the window, you might have thought the world was coming to an end. It's probably as good a backdrop as any for a interview that quickly shifts into an impending sense of gloom during this age of Trump. Honestly, I can’t remember what was in the news that week, but I’m sure it was plenty bad. Kotis has a knack for timing. His best known work, the dystopian satire Urinetown: The Musical opened on Broadway September 13th, 2001. Sure, everyone in New York has a 9/11 story, but his seemed strangely appropriate given the subject matter. As Kotis tells it, that timing sometimes works to his advantage, as the musical was something of a Hail Mary pass for himself and Mark Hollmann, one final shot living the life of a playwright before the realities of adulthood really settled in. Kotis discusses his early days in New York, as a writer turned location scout, and the importance of satire even when it seems that all is lost.
For Katie Skelly, comics have always been something of side hustle — something she’s never expected or even wanted as a full-time career. During the days, she works at a beloved New York City film house, a gig that gives her front row access to some of cinema’s most impactful work. The influence has clearly bled into her comics work, perfectly exemplified in her new work, My Pretty Vampire, which draws heavily upon the sexy/surrealist horror aesthetic of 70s films of Jean Rollin. Prior to this, Skelly sought a career in fine art, working as a docent at a gallery in the city. She ultimately abandoned that path when it became clear that, even after additional schooling, she’d be hard pressed to earn much more than a career cartoonist — which is saying a lot. Over the years, however, she’s found outlets for her art criticism, from her (now on hiatus) podcast Trash Twins, along with frequent reviews in places like The Comics Journal. All the while, she’s continued her own work in earnest, including the upcoming Patreon-supported work, Summer of Felines.
When Frankie Rose began work on Cage Tropical, she was living in Los Angeles, employed as a caterer — the struggling actor, Party Down kind. Not exactly the triumphant rock start victory lap of the artist who released one of of the best LPs of the best half-decade. But, then, these things rarely work out as planned. But the former Vivian Girls/Dum Dum Girls/Crystal Stilts managed to pull things together. Her new record ranks among her best, a testament to putting one’s head down and focusing on art in the face of uncertainty. It’s big and sprawling and personal, all at once, juxtaposing the her ups and downs, as exemplified on the second single, Red Museum, an existential sort of love song. Rose sat down in the lead up to Cage Tropical’s release to discuss the journey that led to the new LP and how she’s since resigned herself to the fate of being a musician for as long as she can sing into a microphone.
Every so often, my work obsessions bleed into my extracurriculars, and Annalee Newitz was more than happy to help me geek out about robotics. We sat down a few months back in New York, while she was visiting for Book Expo America, in advance of her first novel, Autonomous. The book tackles questions of civil rights in a world where people own machines that are virtually human, exploring the cross section of her longstanding interests in technology and social justice. Newitz has been writing professionally about technology since the 90s, with a lengthy resume that includes top names like Popular Science and Wired, along with a stint as an analyst for the Electronic Frontier foundation. In 2008, she was tapped to launch and run iO9, a Gawker (now Gizmodo)-owned blog steeped in her love for science fiction. In this conversation, Newitz discusses the state of artificial intelligence and robotics and addresses of the tough questions society will have to answer as our creations become more and more like us.
In 2014, Manchester Orchestra released Hope, a new album with an identical track listening as its predecessor, Cope, released the same year. The two albums represented dramatically different musical takes on the same songs — the first was the band’s hardest edge record to date, and the second wholly stripped down. The pair of albums was the work of a band looking to shake things up a decade into its existence. The following year, the band was given the opportunity to think entirely out of the box, scoring the soundtrack to Swiss Army Man. The tale of a young man and his farting corpse of a best friend required an equally off-beat set of songs, so Andy Hull and Robert McDowell performed the whole thing a capella, layering as many as 150 tracks to accomplish the task. I met the duo on the eve of a record listening party, for their latest work, A Black Mile to the Surface. The album finds the band newly refreshed and introspective. We sat down in a soundproof booth and recorded a wide ranging conversation with the aid of the event’s whiskey sponsor, which helped ensure a free flowing conversation about musical work ethic, movie passes and starting a family.
Here’s a conversation recorded a while back and initially intended for publication. While the story never actually appeared in print, the subject matter was just too interesting to let it languish, so I’m presenting it to you as a bonus episode. Cartoonist Mike Diana is known less for his work itself as the fallout it caused, when he became the first artist in the US to receive a criminal conviction for artistic obscenity. Diana’s self-published work raised red flags due to its extreme violence when it was found discussed during a traffic stop at the height of a serial killing spree in nearby Gainesville, Florida. Diana was cleared of any suspicion in the then unsolved murders, but his book, Boiled Angel, soon became the subject of an obscenity trial. The cartoonist was found guilty and the repercussions follow him to this day, nearly a quarter of a century later. In this episode, recording in a Manhattan tea shop, Diana takes us through the trial and the sentencing, which barred him from drawing for three years and has made it impossible to return home to Florida, all these years later.
Comics are hard — doubly so when you live in a place like New York, where holding down a day job is a necessity. By their early- to mid-30s, most opt to pack it in. It’s not a personal failure or flaw, so much as an admission that the world just isn’t equipped to support its artists, particularly in a field as marginalized as indie comics. A few years back, Liz Baillie found herself at a crossroads, ultimately leaving comics for a newfound passion of coding. It was sad to see her go. My Brain Hurts was always a personal favorite among the comics that emerged from the 00s New York comics scene, a heartfelt and funny look at life among queer punks in the big city. But Baillie seemed to find success in record time in her new field. She moved to Portland to be among the startup community and found herself presenting at conferences in no time. Turns out life after comics does exist. In this we discuss moving to the Pacific Northwest after a lifetime in NYC and the emotional tolls of making a major career change in your 30s.
Kate Stables’ Earl of Lemongrab wallet is on the table when I sit down for our interview at Baby’s All Right — so naturally, we spend the first several minutes of the conversation discussing Adventure Time. It was some she discovered independently, but it’s since become a nice source of bonding for Staples and her daughter.
Stables happily discusses the ways in which having a child have impacted the music of This is the Kit, from decisions to take her on tour in her younger days, to a hand clapping pattern she and a school mate brought home that inspired “Moonshine Freeze” the lead off single and title track from the band’s new album.
Then there’s the utter lack of alone time, something the musician says she requires in order to thrive as a songwriter — though she’s found enough of it to put together her fourth and strongest record to date. And, thankfully, we were able to grab a few relatively quiet moments ahead of her most recent New York appears to discuss the songwriting process and what it means to be in a band.
On the heels of the second issue of Resist, we hopped on the line with publishers Francoise Mouly and Nadja Spiegelman to discuss the free comics protest newspaper. The first issue arrived alongside the Presidential inauguration in January, as a broadsheet process and sequential catharsis. Eight months later, issue two finds the paper exploring similar themes in a world where the reality of Trump has truly settled in. The list of primarily female contributors includes some of comics’ top names, including Roz Chast, Alison Bechdel, Lynda Barry, Daniel Clowes and Art Spiegelman. Mouly and Spiegelman joined the show via Skype to discuss online political discourse, the importance of print and discovering one’s own patriotism when things seem the darkest.
No Resolution is an album about heartbreak. It’s raw and real, delving into break ups and fears of settling down, topics that Tim Kasher is set to explore even more deeply in his upcoming film of the same name. His directorial debut (soundtracked by the accompanying album) tells the story of an engaged couple breaking up over the course of a New Year’s Eve. For his part, however, the sometime Cursive/The Good Life frontman seems pretty content — at least over the course of our hour-long conversation. He’s newly married, living in Los Angeles and generally drinking less than he did in his indie rock glory days (though we are speaking over a couple of beers — he’s not made of stone). But as he is on record, Kasher is open and honest about the ups and downs of his existence as a professional indie rocker in his early 40s. Over the course of our talk (next to the highway in the backyard of a Williamsburg bar), Kasher discusses creative roadblocks, drinking in Omaha and the looming terror of children.
Of course Catherine Burns has a good story about getting her current gig. It involves MTV and 9/11 and parents in Alabama who were slightly befuddled that their daughter had moved from a planned career as a documentary filmmaker to something called “storytelling” (“like for children?). The Moth’s long-serving Artistic Director helped shepherd the storytelling event from New York City curiosity to cultural phenomenon. These days the organization runs events in cities across the globe and produces one an intensely popular NPR show and podcast. The name has also become synonymous with the show’s unique storytelling style. Fresh off a book tour in support of the organization’s second book, The Moth Presents All These Wonders: True Stories About Facing the Unknown, Burns sat down to discuss story crafting, driving a car off a (small) cliff and how storytelling is like dancing with fire (literally).
When I hit up cartoonist Jim Rugg before a quick three day trip to Pittsburgh, he sent his apologies. He was leaving town the same night I arrived, but helpfully sent along a list of fellow cartoonists in the city. The city’s comics community is a diverse but tight knit one, and the artists will champion their fellow Pittsburghers any chance they get. I’d totally forgotten that Frank Santoro lived there. He’d moved away from the city for a while, publishing his first works in the mid-90s, as part of the San Francisco comics community. But unlike the Bay, his hometown is actually livable for an artist. In fact, he own two houses on the same street. The second, a mirror image of his own residence, is the headquarters of the Rowhouse Residency, an off-shoot of his long standing comics correspondence course that he likens to “a dojo for students much like a martial arts academy.” It’s an immersive school from which Santoro broadcasts lessons and publishes the work of the artist in residence, fueled by home cooked meals prepared by his mother who lives up the street. Santoro and I met up at his row house to discuss Pittsburgh comics, self-publishing and the shadow of Andy Warhol.
Before it helped elect a president who teetered on the bring of nuclear war with every subsequent tweet, Twitter was an important testing ground for young comedians, honing their one-liners 140 characters at a time. Ashley Bez will be the first to admit that she owes much of her career to the social medium platform.Through Twitter, she’s found steady work and writing gigs for online magazines and TV shows, along with her most recent gig, an online radio dating advice show through Anchor.fm. And really, it’s a pretty good microcosm of a career that she’s put together piece meal through a variety of different online mediums, from a daily clothing blog to a surprise viral video hit that found her microwaving string cheese through a faux-drunk emotional roller coaster. In our first face to face meeting after several years of following one another on social media, Bez comes in from the pouring rain to discuss comedy, New York City, day jobs and the power of Twitter.
Scott Westerfeld didn’t move to New York expecting to become a writer. He’s dabbled in politics, music and software design, but after 18 novels, it’s pretty safe to say that he’s found his calling. Over the years, his work has largely gravitated toward the young adult end of the bookstore, most often dealing with science-fiction themes, as is the case with his best known series, Uglies and the Leviathan. Westerfeld’s most recent work is the two-part graphic novel, The Spill Zone. Like a number of his past works, the book uses a sort of post-apocalyptic setting to tackle topics like alienation, paired with good chase scenes featuring psychedelic monster dogs and the like. The author sat down ahead of his book tour to discuss writing, life in the city, math textbooks and catering to young readers.
Everything is running about an hour late, and the opening band has already started by the time two-thirds of The Coathangers show up back stage for the interview. Complicating things even further, bass player Meredith Franco has a nasty cough. The life of a touring rock and roll band is pretty far down the list things any rational individual would want to do for a could. But it’s already cycled through the band once before, and the show must go on. Guitarist Julia Kugel, who does most of the speaking during the conversation, explains helpful that it’s all just part of life on the road. And besides, the trio (recently down from four) only just got over some nasty parasites. It was a miserable experience — tired muscles, hair falling out. But at least the group got an EP name out of the whole thing. All in all, The Coathangers have been remarkable resilient over their 10-plus years. The band start as something of a lark, with the help of a stolen drumset (long story). The group, Kugel explains, had to be coerced into playing its first show, hoping the space would flood or some other act of god might mercifully intervene. But the group has held on, and somehow manages to get better with every release.
We’re back from a brief hiatus for a conversation with cartoonist David Lloyd. Recorded at an Irish Pub a few blocks from the MoCCA Fest art show that brought him into town, Lloyd discusses his on-going work as the editor of Aces Weekly, an online anthology he believes hold the key to post-paper comics reading. Lloyd is, of course, best known as the artist on the seminal 1988 Alan Moore collaboration, V For Vendetta. The book inspired a 2005 film and created the iconic Guy Fawkes mask that has since become an online calling card for the hacktavist group, Anonymous. The artist says he has no qualms about being most strongly identified with the work, given the opportunities its opened, including the ability to better promote Aces. The last time we spoke, Lloyd was out promoting Kickback, a book a he’d both written and drawn, whose timing perfectly coincided with the V for Vendetta’s DVD release. A series of unfortunate incidents tied to the book played a key role in the artist’s decision to turn his back on mainstream comics. A few years later, opportunity presented itself once again in the form of online publishing. These days, the artist solely plays the role of editor, having largely abandoned the artist side of things. And from the sound of it, he’s mostly content — aside, of course, from a somewhat heated debate toward the end of the conversation about experimenting with mediums.
“My method is slowly eliminating my style from the work,” R. Sikoryak explains during our long and wide-ranging interview. As with nearly every other creative pursuit, style is one of the key elements of expression, but the cartoonist has spent much of his life working against developing his own. After all, his best known pieces like Masterpiece Comics work in opposition to original stylistic sign posts, instead immersing themselves fully into a rotating cast of existing artists. The book plays with juxtaposition of high and supposed low art, casting some of the world’s great works of literature with characters from the Sunday comics page. Sikoryak’s latest work, Terms and Conditions finds the artist taking a similar approach, albeit with a widely distributed but largely ignored work: the fine print that arrives with every new Apple device. The new book is a perfect springboard for a conversation about originality, sampling and the ways our brains are wired to find narrative where none exists.
Josh Bayer is coming a teaching class up town, and I’ve just finished work, so find a middle ground, a coffee shop called Ralph’s, bathed in the shadow of nearby Trump Tower. The place came highly recommended online, but there was no mention of the fact that it’s stashed away on the second floor of a Ralph Lauren store. Descent coffee, though. Bayer’s already there when I arrive, poring over comics on a tablet. He’s excited to talk about his work as a comics educator, having just come fresh off a class. His students run a broad spectrum, from upper east side kids to adults in need of a sort of art therapy. A deconstructer by nature, the work has caused the artist to pull the curtain back even further on what goes into making a great comic. The artist’s best known works are exercises in their own right. His Suspect Device anthology made a mission of turning well known comics source material on its head, with postmodern popcultural mashups and collaborations with a broad range of different alternative artists. His latest work, the ongoing All-Time Comics finds the artist paying homage to golden and silver age comics superheroes published by Fantagraphics, an odd destination for the tights and cape crowd. The each issue focuses on a different character, an experiment of sorts of step-by-step word building with a broad range of creative collaborators including the late-Herb Trimpe and covers by the likes of Jaime Hernandez and Anders Nilsen.
“I’m a Texan and I don’t dislike Texas,” Frank Stack explains. “But I don’t like those sons of bitches.” The artist’s first major work sums up his feelings toward attitudes in the Lone Star State. First published in the pages of University of Texas paper, The Texas Ranger, The Adventures of Jesus is often regarded as the first underground comic. The strip is seen through the eyes of a Jesus newly returned to Earth. It was, predictably, controversial subject matter in Stack’s backyard, as it tackled issues of religious hypocrisy. The stories were first collected by fellow UoT student and underground comics luminary Gilbert Shelton and decades later by Fantagraphics. Stack also found acclaim for his work with Harvey Pekar, both in the pages of American Splendor and in the groundbreaking book, Our Cancer Year, co-authored with Joyce Brabner. But his cartooning career has been sporadic, broken up by long comics droughts, due to struggles with publishers over the decades. The artist has, however, found success as a fine artist and had his most steady gig as a professor at the University of Missouri, from which he retired roughly a decade ago. Record on the show floor of Big Apple Comic Con, this conversation covers much of Stack’s long and fascinating career in and out of comics and manages to drop a wide range of references from Picasso to Mystery Men.
You’re bound to raise some fan suspicion when the first track off your new album A Band Is Something To Figure Out has a title like “What do the People Want,” particularly when the thing is released on the 10th anniversary of your band’s existence. Hallelujah the Hills frontman Ryan Walsh admits that the album’s name was intended to raise some questions about rock music in general. And for full effect, Walsh adds, he first suggested it in the middle of practice, when a writer from the UK was in Boston getting material for an upcoming book on the group. But then, Hallelujah the Hills has always put on a good show. The band has released a half-dozen records in their decade-long existence, coming out of the gate with 2007’s Collective Psychosis Begone, which made them something of a media darling right at the apex of the 00s blog band boom. But while the group has maintained a steady fanbase (who’ve helped fund the last couple of records), Walsh has held down a day job for nearly all of its existence. These days, he’s also jammed book writing into his already-packed schedule. Walsh is adapting a 2015 Boston Magazine piece in a full-length book for Penguin, documenting Van Morrison’s late-60s self-imposed New England exile that gave rise to Astral Weeks, one of rock and roll’s most beloved masterpieces.
“[Depression] is something I’m comfortable with now,” Los Campesinos singer Gareth David explains during our conversation backstage at the Warsaw in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. He’s remarkably open and funny about the subject, adding, “the best thing for my mental health has been Pokemon Go.” It’s clear that his time serving as the lyrics writer for the joyfully woeful seven-piece has gone a ways toward opening him up over the course of six albums. And indeed, titles like We Are Beautiful , We Are Doomed, Hello Sadness and Sick Scenes perfectly reflect the balance of musical excitement and melancholy subject matter that have long defined the group’s work. It’s also clear that the band’s longevity is the product of sheer love for the music. The group, formed in Cardiff, found early success among the blog band boom of the mid-00s, with an early single appearing in a Budweiser advert. These days, its members have gone on to support themselves with day jobs, reforming for the sheer love of playing. But the continued commitment to the group has resulted in a band that seems to get better with each subsequent release. The group on this year’s Sick Scenes is clearly the one found on 2007’s Sticking Fingers into Sockets, but the decade since its release have found the group operating with far more maturity and depth for the most fully-formed songwriting of its career.
“We never make a decision because we want to alienate the audience,” Tim Kinsella explains. “But we also never make a decision according to what we think the audience wants.” That sums up the musician’s career as any review. Though it only accounts for a bit of the outright animosity found in pieces like Pitchfork’s take on Joan of Arc’s latest opus, He's Got the Whole This Land Is Your Land in His Hands, referred to by the site as a “troll manifesto.” But the way Kinsella tells it, he’s just doing his thing. Joan of Arc, and with the prolific Chicago musician’s numerous other outlets like Cap'n Jazz, The Owls and Make Believe — which found him playing a wrestling heel — have never shied away from experimenting as a method for shaking up the doldrums of music writing. This latest record is the result of hours of jamming, a loose confederation of friends playing freely and exchanging instruments — having fun making music. The result is challenging, confusing and sometimes sublime, as in the case of Kinsella’s stream of conscious, which seem to invoke Trump’s tiny-handed insecurities well before the subject became national news.
After touring around with prominent outfits like Yeahsayer and Of Montreal, Sinkane’s Ahmed Gallab really come into his own on 2012’s Mars. The breakout record found the multi-instrumentalist embracing musical selections as diverse as his background, from the polyrhythms of Sudan to the punk, indie and funk of the midwest. Released in February, Life & Livin' It builds upon his myriad influences and finds the artist crafting one of this most personal records to date, released amidst a cultural upheaval in a United States now turning its back on the immigrant cultural that helped build it. Sitting down in a coffee shop in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Green Point that he now calls home, Gallab discusses a childhood split evenly between Sudan and the States and how confusions over culture and identity helped shaped his unique musical voice.
Tommy Stinson is exhausted. It’s the tail end of a long day of interviews, with appearances on high profile outlets like Fox News, and the Bash & Pop frontman isn’t not entirely sure he’s going to make it through one more. Things get off to a rough start, and for a while only get rougher from there, tethered only by the calming force of friend and Cowboys in the Campfire co-conspirator Chip Roberts. There’s talk of The Replacements and an off-handed mention of Chinese Democracy that doesn’t go over particularly well, for obvious reasons, but when the conversation turns his nine-year-old daughter, things calm down a touch. Her presence is clearly a grounding one, one that brings the musician back down to earth and puts everything into perspective. When he’s not touring or recording, he’s a full-time father, a sense of stability for musician whose lived most of his life on the road since joining up with the Replacements at the tender age of 12. It’s been a sometimes hard life, but a rewarding one, and when he reflects back on it, he laughs, “none of these mofos thought I’d live past 30.”
Reverend Jen Miller was a Lower East Side fixture when I moved to New York more than a decade ago, an elf-eared, chihuahua-toting being who seemed to show up everywhere in those first few years, from The Village Voice to cable access. She ran a Troll Doll museum and wrote books, served as the sec columnist for nerve.com, starred in low budget films with names like Elf Panties: The Movie and Lord of the Cockrings. These days, her vibrant and idiosyncratic output has taken a major hit courtesy of sky rocketing Manhattan rent prices. When we sat down for an interview, Miller was grappling with a recent trip to a psych ward, spurred on by the recent passing of her beloved dog, Reverend Jen Jr., a pocket-sized chihuahua that rarely left her side. In spite of everything, she lights up when time comes to discuss her varied career as a performance artist, author and one-time professional submissive at a Manhattan S&M dungeon. Miller discusses coping with the changing state of the city and the first time she ever put on a pair of fake elf ears.
Jon Ronson confesses with a laugh that he feels at least partially responsible for the rise of Alex Jones, the once-fringe Texas-based radio show host who since has become a central figure in Donald Trump’s political rise and the development of his subsequent White House policies. It’s a strange claim coming from the This America Life contributor behind The Men Who Stare at Goats. Ronson speaks in a soft Welsh accent, and in many ways seems the exact antithesis of the radio conspiracy theorist who growls loudly to millions of devoted listeners about Obama and Clinton smelling of sulfur. But it was Ronson who helped Jones grow from local radio personality to national phenomenon, as he recruited the right wing ideologue in his mission to infiltrate Bohemian Grove, a playground for the super rich, which helped launch both men’s careers, almost 20 years back. The pair’s link is at the center of Ronson’s latest work, The Elephant in the Room, a Kindle single exploring the rise of Trump and the alt-right, using his relationship with Jones as a springboard into the strange and scary world once simply dismissed as the fringes of the Republican Party. It’s perfect fodder, really, for a writer whose work has centered on themes like internet shaming, extremists and psychopaths.
Punk rock resumes don’t get much better than Kid Congo Powers’. The Southern California-born musician has been playing music professional for nearly 40 years, since the then-president of the Ramones fanclub was recruited by Jeffrey Lee Pierce for the band that would soon become the Gun Club.Soon after, Powers was recruited by fellow punk rock weirdos, The Cramps as rhythm guitarist, staying with the band for two of their most influential records, Psychedelic Jungle and Smell of Female. After another multi-album stint with The Gun Club, the musician joined up with Nick Cave, recording two records as a member of The Bad Seeds. For the past decade, Powers has served as the front man for The Pink Monkey Birds, an amalgamations of decades of music influence, including the Southern California Chicano rock sound that helped ignite his love of music. To celebrate the release of the band’s latest, La Araña Es La Vida, Powers sat down for a far reaching interview about his long and storied career.
“I think about music as joy” sounds like one of those things that musicians just say. But then you go see Adele Bertei live, and there’s really no other way to describe. She ought to be rusty, out of shape and out of practice after a long hiatus, but when she took the stage at Le Poisson Rouge in Manhattan a few nights after out interview, she was a goddamned force of nature at 5’0 tall and dressed to the nines in a full suit and tie.A surviver of Cleveland art-rock, New York No-Wave and radio pop, Bertei’s solo may continue to be the thing she’s best known for, but the musician has seemingly leapt from one fascinating gig to the next, working as a personal assistant to Brian Eno, singing backup for Tears for Fears and Blondie and directing films for Playboy. Her next gig finds her embracing a number of past artistic passions, writing, directing and composing music for a web series about an all-female punk group and enamored with one member’s No-Wave surviving grandmother.
The latest Fuzz and Pluck (last year’s The Moolah Tree) begins with a rough visual — one I’m admittedly a bit hung up on during my conversation with Ted Stearn a few months ago. In it, Fuzz, the hapless teddy bear character, is unraveled until he’s little more than a long thread and a pair of eyeballs. I’d seen in before in an old issue of the Fantagraphics anthology Mome, and it had stuck with me ever since. Admittedly, it ultimately proves a dream sequence and one of the darker scene in what’s a fairly lighthearted fairy tale, but it’s a fairly good insight into Stearn’s sense of humor and visual sensibilities. The Moolah Tree was seven years in the making, with the odd seen (like the aforementioned dream sequence) popping up here and there, while Stearn focused on his day job, working on big budget network animated shows like King of the Hill and Futurama. It’s a testament to seeing a project through and the power of the comics media to allow an artist to see every aspect of a creation through, from beginning to end.
When I arrive backstage at Le Poisson Rouge green room, Charles Watson is digging into a pre-set dinner, with Rebecca Taylor seated in the back on the phone with another interview. He’s asking her about Brexit — seeking advice, really, a mere day or so after our own shattering electoral upset. The duo flew in on election day, the whole thing feels like an unwelcome bit of deja vu — but they’re happy to help us through it nonetheless.Taylor, for one, has never shied away from the intimate in her own work, even as Watson’s contributions to Slow Club tend toward the fantastic.Their opposite approaches to music and life have ultimately proved one of the group’s greatest strengths, with two strong and divergent approaches coupling nicely on record, including last year’s fittingly bluntly titled, One Day All of This Won't Matter Anymore, that finds their sound stretching out and mellowing slightly (in tone, if not content) from the pop sensibilities that have defined previous efforts. Their distinct but complimentary personalities are on full display during a deep but light hearted backstage conversation that finds Taylor experiencing the wonders of American cold medicine for the first time.
It was important to me that we have a special guest for episode 100. They Might Be Giants fitted the job perfectly, a band that played an incredibly important role in the early development of my musical tastes, as strange and idiosyncratic as they might ultimately become. With episode 200, the camera gets pulled make even further, to a man and a magazine that, for better or worse, let an indelible mark on my impressionable young mind, as they have for generations before and since. Weeks before I sat down to record this interview in Al Jaffee’s amazing Manhattan studio, upcoming guest Kid Congo Powers made reference to a club “looking like a scene out of Mad Magazine.” I knew what he meant immediately. The strange cross section of the human experience filtered through the lens of the Usual Gang of Idiots. And at their center is Jaffee. The cartoonist is now 95 (“closer to 96,” as he handily points out during the interview), with his signature fold-in having appeared in virtual every issue between 1964 and 2008, along with his other mainstays like "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions.” The longest working cartoonist in history kindly agreed to sit down for wide ranging interview about life, death, cartooning and the importance of a steady gig. It’s one my absolute highlights of doing the show and great way to spend episode 200.
Mari Naomi sat down for an interview a matter of days follow the election, a fact that unavoidably colored the conversation. It’s pretty clear listening back almost two months later that we were only beginning to process our thoughts at the time — not that most of us have made all that much progress in the meantime. For a cartoonist whose work deals so often with issues of cultural and sexuality identity, there were a number a of topics we likely would have broached over the course of our 50 minute long conversation even if the election had gone a different route entirely. But all of the recent goings on do have a way of bringing such concerns into sharp relief. As such, it’s a sometimes depressing, sometimes funny and always enlightening conversation with the cartoonist, who says with a laugh, “The worst part was that I couldn’t even draw a comic about it,” when referring to a recent accident that resulted in her breaking both of her hands. Hopefully it’s the sort of combination of darkness and light we can all use as we cast aside the darkness of a recently ended year and look toward the potential for hope in the months to come.
Dame Darcy’s got a great comics show gimmick. While cartoonists look on sad-eyed as show goers flip through their work and move on, the artist offers up tarot readings through her own custom deck, giving curious parties insight into their future and perhaps selling some books in the process. She’s engaged and curious, and even if she didn’t manage to move any books at Comics Arts Brooklyn, she clearly would have enjoyed the experience nonetheless — a unfortunately uncommon trait in the often introverted world of comics artists. But this work is only one aspect of her multi-faceted career. Darcy has lived many lives, both figuratively and, to hear her tell it, literally. This time around, she’s been an activist, a model, a designer, a screenwriter and a sailor, all the while producing her underground indie comics series Meat Cake for more than 20 years. These days, she makes her home in Savannah, George, the aesthetic embodiment of her work and the cultural opposite of New York City and Los Angeles, where she made her home for some time. In this wide ranging interview, we discuss witchcraft, mermaids, 9/11 and the importance of finding fellow weirdos.
There’s no real podcasting precedent for Welcome to Night Vale. In the decade or so since I started podcasting, I’ve never seen a phenomenon like it. The show seemingly came out of nowhere and shot to the top of the iTunes chart with loyal fanbase built up around Tumblr communities, creating fan art and fiction and dressing up as their favorite characters whenever the show rolls through town. The brainchild of writers Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, the show centers on the goings on of a small desert town somewhere in the southwest, an impossible place where occult creatures are commonplace and conspiracies are the law of the land. Baldwin, a Neo-Futurist actor based in New York, portrays Cecil Palmer, the host, main character and moral center of the program, imbuing the character and show with a hypnotic voice and elements of his real life personality that have become a rallying point for so much of the show’s communal nature. In honor of Night Vale’s 100th episode, we sat down with Baldwin to discuss the show’s origin, his acting history and the recent announcement that he is HIV positive.
We struggle to find a decent spot to set up shop on the New York Comic Con show floor — finally opting to do the whole thing standing, leaned up against the reception desk at the Dark Horse booth. Baker is fresh off a signing with Fifth Beatle collaborator (and past guest) Vivek Tiwary. The conversation quickly turns to the business — the hustle of comics, something that’s seemingly always at the front of the cartoonist’s mind. After all, Baker has managed to remain staunchly independent after decades in the business, even after countless industry awards and successful stints on books like Plastic Man and Deadpool. And fittingly, it’s Baker’s own creations that have been his most lauded, from his 1990 breakthrough, Why I Hate Saturn to his family strip The Bakers and 2005’s Nat Turner, a retelling of the 1831 slave rebellion produced at time when big publishers wouldn’t touch the story with a ten foot pole. In the midst of the busiest day of one of the county’s biggest comic shows, Baker explains how he’s managed to maintain his independence for two and a half decades.
Neutral Milk Hotel two albums surely cast a long shadow on all involved. Multi-instrumentalist Julian Koster has never shied away from his role in the band — both reuniting with the group and supporting frontman Jeff Mangum in recent years — but all the while the musician has been building a singular body of work all his own, both as a solo artist and through his on-going project, the Music Tapes.For anyone who’s seen the latter in a live setting, it’s clear that Koster is, above all, a storyteller. The band act features a seven-foot-tall metronome and a talking tube television. It’s a living circus built around strange tales and Koster’s songs — very much a product of the Elephant 6 Collective from which it sprung, while remaining uniquely his own. When it was first announced that Koster was working on a podcast with the team behind Welcome to Nightvale, it was clearly serendipity. Three episodes in, podcasting has proven the perfect medium for the musician’s world building, manifesting itself as a sort of classic radio drama beamed from the top of the Eiffel Tower. It’s idiosyncratic and fascinating, a perfect encapsulation of what Koster does best. And yes, he wore the hat.
Bobby Rush is a storyteller. At 83, he’s no doubt told many of his best ones hundreds if not thousands of times, but as the consummate perform, he spins each one as it were the first time – even something as old and simple as the tale of how the son of a pastor became one of the foremost bluesmen of his generation. And while the musician has never taken himself too seriously, from his 1971 gold record, “Chicken Heads" (“I love that gal / I love them chicken heads too”) to this year’s Porcupine Meat (“Too fat to eat / Too lean to throw away.”) – but these past few years have given the musician opportunity to reflect on the importance of the blues and his role in the genre. Last year, his friend B.B. King passed on, and passed the torch in the process, playing some of his final shows with Rush and bestowing upon the musician the ‘B.B. King Entertainer of the Year’ award. And Rush is keenly aware of his place as the one of the last of a breed, still playing performing out with the energy of a man a third his age. On a stop over in New York, Rush sat down to discuss his six decade long career, the importance of the blues and, of course, how he got a song called “Chicken Heads” on the radio in 1971.
Vivien Goldman’s New York City apartment is a shrine to decades of music journalism, bookshelves overflowing with seemingly every title ever published on the subject. This particular evening, former Chantage bandmate Eve Blouin is over for a visit, discussing their days in Paris and the myriad ways in which even Queens has become virtually unlivable for artists. The two still perform music when they get together from time to time, but Goldman spends most of her time these days writing about and teaching music history. The fact that we were able to get together when we were was something of a minor miracle, as she was devoting most of her time to piecing together a syllabus for incoming NYU freshman for her gig as the school’s adjunct professor of punk and reggae. All the while, Goldman has been enjoying a new round of interest in her wonderful, if sporadic music career, courtesy of Resolutionary, a new collection of her singles recorded between 1979 and 1982.
I must have been 12 or so when I first saw the Pansy Division. The band was opening for Green Day at a benefit show in Oakland, a return to the Bay Area following the triumphant Dookie tour. I had no idea what to make of the band at the time — and my dad, who’d kindly agreed to chaperone, was, I believe amused. He may or may not have said, “don’t tell your mother about this.” But that was always the Pansy Division’s MO — in your face sexuality backed by songwriting that rarely took itself seriously. The band no doubt blew the minds of young teens all across the country as the opening act for the soon to be biggest rock band in the world, and it appeared to have a hell of a time doing it. This year marks the group’s quarter-century anniversary, a milestone it celebrated with Quite Contrary, its first album in seven years, which is both celebratory and reflective, featuring a cover shot in the same room that graced the band’s seminal 1996 album Wish I'd Taken Pictures, starring the same two cover models. Frontman Jon Ginoli already did a thorough job reflecting on the band and its influence in his wonderful 2009 memoir, Deflowered: My Life in Pansy Division, but a twenty-fifth anniversary offers yet another opportunity to recognize how far he, his band and the world around them have come in the last few decades. We sat down at a cafe in Manhattan following a recent appearance in the city to discuss the band, its music and mission.
Of all of the bizarre sights at this year’s New York Comic Con, you’d be hard pressed to find one more serendipitous than the droves of show goers milling around IDW booth in bright orange cardboard Donald Trump masks – including, in one moment of heightened verisimilitude, a Darth Vader sporting the face of the Republican nominee. The masks were being handed out to promoting Tom Tomorrow’s latest offering, Crazy is the New Normal, a paperback collection of the political cartoonist’s work from 2014 to 2016. The neon orange, Hulk-inspired rage monster is really the perfect distillation of Tomorrow’s strip, This Modern World, a cross section of biting political satire and hilarious comic book premises. The strip in a rare bright spot in the often anemic world of political cartooning, running weekly since the late 80s in alt-weeklies across the country and left leaning magazines like the Nation. These last couple of years have seen the cartoonist’s profile continue to grow, in the face of shuttering print publications, including a spot on the list of Pulitzer finalists, a crowdfunded career retrospect and the beginnings of an animated series based on his long-running strip.
Sometimes you finish an interview not quite sure how things went. Other times you just know. With Sarah Assbring, it was pretty clear from the first seconds, when she belted out a song when asked to do a soundcheck. With all she’s been through in her life, the driving force behind El Perro Del Mar clearly sees no point in holding back. Assbring’s new record KoKoro, which dropped last week, is the sound of an artist bursting at the seams with creative inspiration. As she notes during the interview, she rented out a music room in a children’s museum to experiment with international instruments in an attempt to capture her feelings about a world in turmoil following the birth of her son. But music didn’t always come easily. During this conversation recorded prior to an intimate performance in New York City, we discuss battles with depression and the slog of existential thought that have gripped her life and stifled the process at various points. It’s one of the most candid and frank conversations with had in this show’s nearly 200 episode history and a fascinating insight into a singularly creative musical voice.
In 2008, Dash Shaw arrived seemingly out of nowhere and the indie comics community feel in love almost immediately. His Fantagraphics debut, the 720 page opus Bottomless Belly Belly Button, was a wide ranging, following the lives of a family over the course of three generation, which landed the young artist on numerous book of the year lists. Since then Shaw has regularly bounced back and forth between comics and animation, maintaining a singular vision with one ambitious project after another. This fall, the artist marks two major releases, a college of his book Cosplayers and the animated film, My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea. The film, which premiers at the New York Film Festivals this months, features an impressive voice cast, including Jason Schwartzman (as Shaw), Lena Dunham, Reggie Watts, Maya Rudolph and Susan Sarandon. Shaw joined me at a Manhattan tea house on a recent visit to the city to discuss his work, collaboration and moving from New York to an artist commune.
I’d known Alex Segura for a few years, before I found out about his not so secret passion. We’d work together in the comics world, we as a journalist and him as a PR rep, first for DC and then for Archie. We were drinking together at some comics after party, when he casually mentioned that he was about to head down to Florida for a crime writers convention – and not just as a casual observer. This year Segura released his second novel, Down the Darkest Street, the second installment of his Pete Fernandez Mystery series set in his hometown of Miami. In this casual chat at a coffee shop in Astoria, Segura takes me through the world of mystery writing of which I know very little, while discussing side passions as his continued work as a writing on various comics titles, like the newly released Archie meets the Ramones.
I was excited when I first saw Pepe popping up on strange corners of the internet. After years of spotting Matt Furie’s work at indie comics shows like SPX and MoCCA, the online community was starting to take notice of his work, albeit in that idiosyncratic internetty way. But after years of bizarre and benign appearances on body building forums and Kim Kardashian’s Twitter feed, the stoned frog character seemingly, suddenly took a strange turn, embraced by some of the internet’s darkest recesses. Over the past several weeks, Pepe was reference by presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, highlighted on the Rachel Maddow Show and, as of yesterday, designated as a symbol of hate by the Anti-Defamation League. Suddenly, the artist’s phone start ringing off the hook with dozens of calls from journalists asking Furie to defend his benign cartoon creation. Sure most artists would kill for a moment in the national spotlight, but practically overnight the cartoonist was in the incredibly unenviable position of having his name and creation linked with online hate groups. Furie kindly jumped on the phone for a quick chat while driving from his home in Los Angeles to an art showing in San Francisco. We talked about his unexpected and unfortunate fame, the power of simple symbols and his on-going efforts to steal Pepe back for the forces of good.
This one took a while to get out, unfortunately. Long story, but it dates back April, around the release of Faith Erin Hicks’ most recent book, The Nameless City. Thankfully, the new title is just the tip of the iceberg for the Canadian cartoonist, as the first of a three-book series for First Second, a period piece exploring an unlikely friendship set against the backdrop of an ancient city inspired by Central Asian architecture. It marks something of a departure for an artist whose work more often deals with a school setting, though Hicks has proven to be both diverse and prolific in the eight or nine years since she officially hit the comics scene with the undead adventure, Zombies Calling. Hicks currently has nearly a dozen works under her belt, as either a collaborator are sole creator, with topics ranging from Bigfoot to Buffy to the 2013 Dark Horse title, The Last of Us: American Dreams, a four issue miniseries inspired by the video game of the same name.The next book in The Nameless City trilogy has already been announced for next year, along with an upcoming collaboration with kids author, Rainbow Rowell.
Frank Portman sends me his new record a few hours before we’re set to meet up at a coffee shop on Market Street. The whole thing came together at the last minute at the tail end of a three week long work road trip, and I only have time to listen to three or four songs before checking out of the hotel and meeting him down the street. But it’s enough. It’s new and familiar. It’s self-deprecating and funny, bouncing sugary pop-punk with a humorously cynical bit. The second song is called “Sadistic Masochism.” It goes, “Sadistic masochism, that’s how its gonna be / Sadistic masochism, baby you and it.” After a dozen years, the Mr. T Experience is back.
It’s a perfect sort of return to music for Dr. Frank, a soundtrack for the sequel to his hit YA book, King Dork. The album, (like the book) titled King Dork, Approximately, finds Portman inhabiting the voice of his protagonist, high school rock musician, Tom Henderson, on 12 songs that are unmistakably the work of the MTX starship. Portman’s time away from the microphone was largely unintentional, the result of a changing record industry, the implosion of the beloved East Bay record label that had served as their longtime home, and a somewhat accidental career as an author. In this extra long edition of RiYL, the artist discusses motel laundry, the publishing industry and not being Green day.
We’re back after an unexpected bye-week (sorry, I’ve been traveling a lot) posting up a fascinating interview with Laura “LP” Pergolizzi. The LA singer-songwriter has released a string of critically acclaimed albums, including, most recently, Death Valley, a five song EP released on Vagrant in June. In spite of such acclaim, the singer has struggled to maintain the commitment of major labels in a time when the music industry seems in the constant state of death rattle. While other artists are forced to look outside their own creative medium in order to make ends meet, LP has built a fascinating side career writing songs for some of musics big names like Cher and Rihanna. During a recent stopover in New York during a string of shows opening for Roxy Music frontman Bryan Ferry, the singer sat down for a long conversation about creativity, making ends meet in the music industry and pop song bootcamp.
Up to now, Miss Lasko-Gross and Kevin Colden had never professionally collaborated in any official capacity — not out of any conscious decision, the pair had just never found the proper vehicle. After all, there hasn’t been a tremendous amount of overlap between the married couple’s respective output. Lasko-Gross’ best known work is the autobiographical Fantagraphics series, Escape from Special and the fantasy series Henni, while Colden’s 2007 rue-crime Fishtown was followed by flirtations with the superhero side of comics. Penned by Lasko-Gross and pencilled by Colden, The Sweetness fittingly marks a departure for both, a grotesquely comic sci-fi work about intergalactic drug smugglers. The pair joined sat down to discuss their first collaboration and the ups and downs of trying to make a living as New York City cartoonists.
Somewhere between the first LP and last year’s self-titled EP, things really started getting serious, so Potty Mouth did what any self-respecting rock and roll group would, packing up things in their small Massachusetts scene and moved to Los Angeles. New York, it turns out, just wasn’t in the cards for reasons they were happy to explain on the hot summer day we sat down in the band’s midtown publicity office. The band started in earnest in 2011, a casual side project from a pair of Smith College students, neither of whom had ever actually played guitar. The duo recruited an experienced drummer and rounded out the quartet with a front woman who was still enrolled in high school. A perfect punk rock original story, really. Later that same year, the band recorded a demo, followed by a debut EP the following year and a full length, Hell Bent, in 2013. Last year’s EP found the band working with producer John Goodmanson, whose resume is a who’s who of music acts from the past two decades, from Sleater-Kinney to the Wu-Tang Clan. The trio joined me during a whirlwind trip through the city to discuss Hollywood, touring and Pokemon Go.
Back in 2008, two funny guys saying funny things into microphones with an optional third funny friend was the concept a podcast needed. But we’re living in the age of Serial, a time when show need a central idea to set themselves apart from millions of like-minded shows. Eight years after launching Stop Podcasting Yourself, comedian comic duo Dave Shumka and Graham Clark are giving their loyal audience even more bang for their podcasting bucks with Our Debut Album, a monthly podcast in which the pair force themselves to write and record a song in an hour. At the end of the twelve-part mini-series, the pair will have produced a full album, downloadable independent of the show.It’s as engaging as it is ambitious, both in term of content and monetization, a strategy that looks to generate income without a single mail order mattress ad. On this bonus episode recorded over Skype, the comedians join us to talk songwriting, supplemental income and what podcasting’s legacy will mean for future generations of Shumkas.
Ruben Bolling should have been a lawyer. He graduated from Harvard Law School, he married a lawyer, and he even does some work in the field. But after seeing an ad in a school paper, the artist’s fate was sealed, creating the first installment of Tom the Dancing Bug in a flash of creative inspiration. This week, the comic celebrates its 1,300th installment. Thirty-years after its Harvard Law School Record debut, the the strip has become a staple in alt-weekly paper across the US, along with various online outlets, including, most notably, Boing Boing, where’s it’s syndicated weekly. Tom showcases a wide range of styles, satirizing politics, celebrity culture and his fellow cartoonists, as is the case with both the reoccurring feature God-Man: The Superhero With Omnipotent Powers! and Super-Fun-Pak Comix, which jams a page of Sunday strip-style work in a single comic. After a year or so of scheduling conflicts, we finally managed to sit down and discuss Bolling’s beloved strip, just in time to get real about the role of comic strip satire in one of the scariest political years in recent memory.
I feel obligated to say that I was very tired when we record this. I had just gotten off a plane from New York to LA, and Carrie Poppy was kind enough to let me crash on her couch for the night. We turned on the mics and started podcasting almost immediately, because hey, why not? We sat at the dining room table, which was littered with all manner of herbs and over the counter remedies. Research for the latest episode of Oh No, Ross and Carrie, the Max Fun podcast Poppy hosts with fellow skeptic Ross Blocher, which features a broad range of investigations, from organized religion to oxygen bars. The episode the pair were currently preparing for on the topic of nootropic smart drugs was a relative walk in the park after a multi-part series in which the pair infiltrated the Hollywood wing of the Church of Scientology, an act that garnered the attention of a number of best of podcasting lists -- and the church itself. Naturally, we start the conversation with talk of plane crashes.
In the decade and a half she spent contributing to This American Life, Starlee Kine transformed deeply personal aspects of her life into some of the show’s most memorable segments. There was the time she employed Phil Collins to evaluate the breakup song she wrote for her ex, and the oddly heart warming story of her family’s annual vacation to the Disneyland Hotel (but never Disneyland proper). Last year, Kine kicked off her own show, debuting in May on fellow TAL alum Alex Blumberg’s Gimlet Media podcast network. Myster Show's six-episode first season follows the host as she attempts to solve low stakes mysteries for her friends, from a prank on a Welcome Back, Kotter lunchbox to what’s on Britney Spears’s reading list. Kine fancies herself an Encyclopedia Brown-style detective, unfolding mysteries through extensive research and on-the-ground reporting, giving her subjects the kind of exhaustive investigation traditionally reserved for government coverups and political scandals. Busy at work on the show’s second season, Kine paid us a visit to discuss her mystery solving methods, the difficulty of podcasting and what its like going it alone.
When my sister’s beloved dog passed away just before my trip to LA, Minty Lewis did me a solid. When I wanted to commission a portrait of a Yorkie, no other artist made any sense. After all, the cartoonist had made a name for herself in the indie comics community filling minis full of the little terriers and talking fruit — much of which can be found in her 2009 Secret Acres collection, PS Comics. These days Lewis has a more profile gig scripting storyboards for the hit Cartoon Network series, The Regular Show, a job that’s also landed a voice over gig as Eileen, a shy bespectacled mole who waitresses at a coffee shop. The cartoonist has also parlayed the gig into her own pilot, Bottom’s Butte, starting Freaks and Geeks alum, Busy Philips. Lewis and I met up at a Japanese restaurant in Toluca Lake, to hand off the Yorkie picture and discuss her animated output.
It’s the long-awaited return of RiYL guest number two, the great Mary Roach, who was in town kicking off a press tour for her new book, Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War. The author’s latest volume explores a subject near and dear to her heart, exploring her frequent theme of the human body as viewed through the camouflaged filter of the military. It’s a subject that links most of her books, gross and glorious popular science writing on topics from dead bodies to the stress of long distance space travel. In her new book, Roach examines everything from caffeinated meat to penis transplants with, balancing her delightful sense of humor with a serious inquisitiveness. Roach, who graduated with a bachelor’s in psychology has made a name for herself as a science writer, with a steady flow of best seller’s on the subject — six in all beginning with 2003’s ode to dead bodies, Stiff — in spite of having no formal training. It’s a remarkable feat, and a testament to her own engaging writing and unending inquisitiveness. On the day before she kicked Grunt press into full gear, Roach sat down with us in the lobby of her Manhattan hotel to discuss military secrecy, angler fish, and precisely what make a given subject “Roachable.”
I got more than I bargained for when I interviewed John Holmstrom — which is saying a lot when you know going into things that you’re sitting down with the guy who co-founded Punk Magazine for a couple of hours in an East Village watering hole. We kick things off with a conversation about Holmstrom’s time at SVA, which led to part time gigs working with comics legends Harvey Kurtzman and Will Eisner. In 1975, Holmstrom, publisher Ged Dunn and (past guest) Legs McNeil co-founded Punk, a magazine that helped cement the name for the burgeoning undergrounding music bubbling up around them. Holmstrom edited the magazine and contributed Mad-inspired cartooning that would become a trademark of the scene and also contributed cover art for the iconic Ramones records, Rocket to Russia and Road to Ruin. In the years following Punk’s folding in 1979, the artist has contributed work to a wide range of publications including Scholastic’s Bananas Magazine, Spin, The Village Voice and Heavy Metal, along with an extended stint at pot culture chronicler High Times, where he ultimately served as publisher and president. Holmstrom sat down at a table at Manitoba’s, the East Village bar run by the Dictators front man of the same name. It a long and fascinating look at an artist who bridges a wide range of cultural touchstones and who, thanks to events like the on-going Ramones retrospective at the Queens Museum, appears to finally be getting his due.
It’s hard to say whether their timing was extremely fortuitous or really unfortunate. After all, until this month’s Yep Roc reissue, Eggs Over Easy’s work had gone largely unheard in their own country. The UK, on the other hand, is another story. The California band’s country-tinged roots rock and explosive live shows inadvertently started a musical revolution in London, well after the band packed up and left, inspired the pub rock scene that would give rise to artists like Nick Lowe and the 101ers, featuring a pre-Clash Joe Strummer, making the band the unwitting link between Dylan’s Greenwich Village and British punk rock. All these decades later, Eggs Over Easy and their stellar and criminally under appreciated recorded work are finally getting their due, courtesy of a lovely reissue and a smattering of reunion shows featuring founding duo Jack O'Hara and Austin de Lone, two of the band’s three singer-songwriters (the third, Brien Hopkins, died in 2007), All of that only scratches the surface of a crazy rock and roll story that also includes members of the Jimi Hendrix Experience and songs with titles like "I'm Gonna Put a Bar in the Back of My Car (And Drive Myself to Drink).” Thankfully, both O’Hara and de Lone joined me at a friend’s East Village apartment to recount the story in all its gory detail.
Change isn’t always easy when you’re a punk rock band — particularly one with a sound beloved and well-defined as The Thermals. After a pair of well-received LPs that cemented the Portland band’s place as one a low-fi, distortion-laden indie power-pop trio, the group released its masterpiece, The Body, the Blood, the Machine. Produced by Fugazi’s Brendan Canty, the album was a dystopian concept record of sorts, that channeled Bush-era anger into the tale of a young couple forced to flee an authoritarian government. In 2010, the band offered up Personal Life, a far more somber and deliberate album that went a ways toward polarizing the band’s fanbase. This year’s We Disappear marks a return to form for the band after the somewhat disappointing performance of 2013’s Desperate Ground, both building upon the simple punk rock the band does best, while incorporating lessons learned from their more emotionally complex outings. It’s alternately anthemic and somber, a reflection on maturing while hanging on to one’s pop-punk roots.
Lead singer Hutch Harris sat down ahead of the band’s fiery Bowery Ballroom performance to reflect on the ups and downs of the band’s illustrious career.
I haven’t seen Gabrielle Bell much since she moved out of the city. New York spoils you like that. Makes getting even a half hour outside of the city seem like a chore. It’s been a few years since we’ve sat down for an interview, and despite efforts to sync up, we just kept missing each other every time she was in town.
Thankfully, we were able to catch up following a memoir panel at MoCCA back in April, a sort of mutual lovefest, also featuring past guests Jennifer Hayden and Nicole Georges.
Though Bell’s classifying Bell’s work as straight memoir is perhaps something of a misnomer. For her, reality is only really a jumping off point into tales of something more casually fantastic, a sort of daydream come true.
We found the noisiest diner in all of Chelsea to discuss her magical realism, absent-minded sketching, and making friends outside of the city.
Delusions of Grand Fur is a sort of return roots. It finds the band experimenting with the sort of fast and loose improvisational set up that first gave rise to Rogue Wave. Like the band’s first record, which began as the result of a somewhat spontaenous cross-country trip by frontman Zach Rogue, upon being laid off from a startup at the height of the dot-com bubble bust, the latest record lacked a formal recording structure — even going so far as eschewing a producer. The result is breezier, looser, and more fun loving than the band’s recent work, thanks to both a change in recording techniques and the recent birth of Rogue’s son shortly after the release of the band’s last album. Back in April, Rogue and longtime drummer Patrick Spurgeon found themselves in New York for a few days, making the promotional rounds for the band’s latest record. The pair sat down at one of my favorite recording spots in the city to discuss the band’s return to form, musical experimentation, and how to separate the personal and the professional.
He won an Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animated Programming, was inducting to the Art Directors Hall of Fame, and has drawn multiple covers for the New Yorker, but his most lasting legacy may be the mid-60s advertisements he created for Alka-Seltzer and CBS — a fact that makes R. O. Blechman a quintessential 20th century artist. This year, the swiggly-lined artist released his second graphic novel more than 50 years after his first. Amadeo & Maladeo is a whimsical prince and pauper story, charting the life of two musically-inclined half-brothers separated by vastly different circumstances. Blechman is quick to admit that he sees the product as only half-finished, a sort of storyboard for the animated film in his mind. Fittingly, the artist presented a truly incomplete film during an appearance at the MoCCA Festival in New York, debuting his attempt at a feature length adaptation of Voltaire’s Candide for the first time in public. It’s both a testament to the artist’s vision and a bittersweet look at what might have been. It’s a theme that has followed Blechman through much of his career. A victim of circumstance and a failure to fully embrace trends, it easy to imagine the New York City cartoonist having become more of a household name, but with a robust resume dating back to 1953, the Blechman has left an impressive mark on the fields of animation, production and cartooning.
A week or two after our interview, Penguin released the cover for Where Am I Now?, featuring a young, precocious Matilda-era Mara Wilson smiling for the camera. It’s the Mara Wilson most familiar to book browsing audiences, the one who will live on forever the hundreds of times every week Mrs. Doubtfire plays ad infinitum on basic cable The Mara Wilson who sits down for an interview is a million miles away. A professional writer eking out a living in New York City, having ostensibly given up the acting game decades early, she’s cultivated a large online following through published works, social media and frequent live story telling appearances. She’s become a regular on Welcome to Nightvale and recently made a return to TV with a cameo on Broad City, with an upcoming appearance on Netflix’s Bojack Horseman just over the horizon. In a sense, Where Am I Now? is where the two Mara Wilsons meet, the grownup, professional writer having finally found the proper distance with which to examine a childhood that has made her an iconic for a generation and the surreal subject of terrible internet clickbait. During our hour-plus conversation, Wilson discusses the creative process, anxiety, and embracing the things that helped define us.
When I mentioned casually to a friend that I would be interviewing Ariel Schrag, her answer was less excited that confused, “you haven’t had Ariel Schrag on your show yet?” Fair enough. I don’t really have any great answer as to why I haven’t had had the cartoonist on in the three-plus years we’ve been doing the show, but I’m happy to say I finally managed to amend that at this year’s MoCCA Arts Festival in Manhattan. Following a panel on autobiography in comics, which Schrag sat out but was name-checked as an influence multiple times from the sidelines, we found a reasonably quiet spot in the hotel lobby to discuss the artist’s accomplished body of work, starting with 2014’s Adam: A Novel and working backwards to her precious comics creating youth. Along the way, Schrag has written for Showtime’s The L Word, been name checked alongside Angela Davis and Gertrude Stein in a Le Tigre song and been the subject of her own documentary at the tender age of 23. It’s a fascinating discussion about sexuality, comics, and writing what you know.
The Heavy makes no bones about it. The Hurt & The Merciless is a breakup record, through and through, from the leadoff track that repeats “The raindrops won't stop falling from my eyes,” to the fittingly titled closer, “Goodbye Baby.” The pain of real life has seeped its way into the record’s marrow. But it’s celebratory, too. Granted, it’s not quite the giant middle finger that put the band on the map when “How Do You Like Me Now” became one of 2009’s monster hits, but the record does employ pounding the rock and roll neo-soul that’s defined the British group across four records, in hopes of finding catharsis somewhere on the other side. Lead singer, Kelvin Swaby joined me for a couple of pots of TV during a stop in New York just ahead of the band’s upcoming appearance at South by Southwest to talk love, loss, growing up, and the eternal importance of a great record collection.
When you write an open letter on your Facebook page about quitting the music business forever, it’s bound to be the opening line of every review of your next record. It’s just the way of of the world. Rob Crow looks great, for what it’s worth. He quit drinking and started running (losing a considerable amount of weight as a result) — as we make our way to the Knitting Factory green room, he asks somewhat distractedly how long the whole thing will take, as he has to fit some exercise in ahead of the evening’s show. But the prolific Pinback/Heavy Vegetable/Goblin Cock frontman hasn’t necessarily quit quitting music. The prospect looms large over his latest, Rob Crow’s Gloomy Place, along with practically every word he utters about the tour, a sometimes indecipherable mix of dry humor and melancholy, not so subtly hinting that he just can’t keep doing this forever. It’s a good talk, and tough one at times. It’s a reminder of the difficult touring life of an indie musician casual listeners so often takes for granted. As we finish and I begin winding up my cables, Crow strips off his clothes, throws on some neon exercise gear and takes off for a run down the Brooklyn streets.
Aladdin is a crowd-sourced paper mache fever dream. It’s both completely singular in Adam Green diverse portfolio of work and perfectly representative of an artist who has made a career or tearing down the barriers between conception and execution. After first making the scene as one half of the seminal anti-folk act The Moldy Peaches, Green has released a steady stream of terrific solo records, marrying a crooning singing style with often hilarious stream of conscious lyrics. In 2011, he made his feature length directorial debut with The Wrong Ferrari, employing an impressive cast of contributors, including Macaulay Culkin and Alia Shawkat, along with fellow musicians Devendra Banhart and Har Mar Superstar — all of whom also star in Green’s latest. Green and I met in his Brooklyn art studio, surrounded by hundreds of his paintings, to discuss the film, his music career, and the nature of creativity.
You don’t know Batman like Glen Weldon knows Batman, and the frequent NPR contributor has the book to prove it. Out now on Simon & Schuster, The Caped Crusader is a fascinating examination of one of the comics’ most beloved characters, from his early days as a pulpy shadow knockoff to today’s record breaking box office draw. After years of online correspondence, Weldon and I finally met face to face, while he was in town promoting the book. We grabbed a couple of seats at a tea place in midtown Manhattan and proceeding to talk Batman for an hour — or, rather, he talked and I just took it all in, from unique insights into the character’s creation to an appreciation of Joel Schumacher’s much maligned late-90s films from the standpoint of gay comics reader. Weldon offers from fascinating insight into the dark knight’s long and storied history that likely holds some surprises for even the most knowledgeable of Batman fans.
I didn’t recognize Eszter Balint’s name when I got a PR pitch about her Airless Midnight, but I the record a quick listen anyway and shot her representation a note about getting her on the show. Lucky for me, the musician has the sort of backstory press release writers kill for, the daughter of experimental theater troupe members who moved her and the theater from Budapest to New York at an early age, putting her at the epicenter of the city’s late-70s avant garde scene. In 1984, friendships with musicians John Lurie and Richard Edson led to a leading role in Jim Jarmusch’s pioneering Stranger Than Paradise, with roles in Woody Allen’s Shadows and Fog and Steve Buscemi’s Trees Lounge following (along with a lesser-cited Miami Vice appearance). Disillusioned with acting, Balint dove headfirst into a musical career that found her collaborating with a wide range of musical visionaries, from Michael Gira to Marc Ribot, along with the release of two critically acclaim solo records more than a decade apart. 2014 also saw an unexpected return to acting, as Louis CK cast Balint as his violin-playing Hungarian neighbor in Louie. Balint was kind enough to sit down at a Manhattan cafe to cram as much of her fascinating life as possible into an hour-long interview.
The real Tromaville is an unassuming place. Located a few blocks from the East River, in an industrialized section of Long Island City still untouched by the rapidly encroaching gentrification of art galleries and speakeasies, the country’s longest running independent movie studio is headquartered in a Queens commercial space, extremely nondescript, save for the giant Toxic Avenger painted on the big metal security shutter. Inside, the walls are littered with old props like a makeshift living museum dedicated to 40 years of some of the most colorful movie making in film history. A few small spaces have been converted into makeshift movie sets, while the majority of the downstairs space serves as a complete film archive of Troma’s four decades of prolific output. Upstairs, it’s business as usual. Lloyd Kaufman is in the middle of an important business call. Even after all this time, the company’s cofounder, director, and long-time mouthpiece still has to hustle get things done. Nothing comes easy when you’re perpetually swimming upstream — and Kaufman’s disinclination to hold punches when discussing the big studio movie machine likely hasn’t helped matters much.
It does, however, make for one great interview.
Note: Hey listeners, we’re launching a Patreon. Please consider supporting the show to help keep us afloat. By the 80s, the pinball machine had seemingly been all but replaced, making way for machines like Asteroids and Pac-Man, which quickly began to dominate the arcade landscape. Within the next few years, a home gaming console explosion led by the NES would deal the industry an even further blow. It was precisely around this time that Gary Stern doubled down. A second generation pinball professional (his father having served as the co-owner of the profoundly influential Williams Electronics), he launched Stern Pinball, Inc. in 1986, as many of the leading forces in the space began fleeing in droves. Thirty years later, the company is the one of the last producers of the game, having weathered the storm long enough to see a modern pinball resurgence, through an explosion in the popularity of barcades and home collections. It’s made the company a bit of an outlier on the floor of the Consumer Electronics Show, flanked on all sides by drone manufacturers and virtual reality companies. Stern took some time out of the show to discuss the game’s lasting appeal in an era of instant gratification.
Sometimes things just come together. Sometimes one of the geniuses behind Broken Social Scene catches one of your ramshackle live shows and decides you’re the first outside band he wants to produce. Sometimes you line up SXSW and Coachella before you even get yourself a booking agent. Not bad for a three-year-old band whose members didn’t particularly know how to play their respective instruments when they sat down to record their debut LP. The relatively short story that is The Dead Ships plays out like a list of cosmic coincidences, culminating with last year’s excellent Brendan Canning-produced EP I and a small print spot on Coachella’s Saturday lineup, alongside names like Ice Cube, A$AP Rock, CHVRCHES and local favorites, Guns N’ Roses. It’s an an digital era when artists are struggling to make ends meet that good songs, hard work, and a little bit of luck can still put you on the map. The Dead Ships (all of them – plus a live guitarist and manager) joined us to talk about their slow rocket to stardom.
I first saw Eleanor Friedberger solo back in 2013, shortly after falling head over heels for her second solo album, Personal Record. Her band was an opener (for The Long Winters, featuring past guests John Roderick and Sean Nelson), but her voice is an unavoidable force of nature. It overpowers the instrumentation both on record and live, where, if you close your eyes for a few moments, you can trick your brain into believe that you’re witnessing Patti Smith in 1975. I’ve been trying to get Friedberger for the show since then, and we finally managed to sync up our schedules following the release of her terrific new album, New View. The musician was back in the city for a few days, having made an appearance on Seth Myers the evening before (as evidenced by the mug sitting on the counter of the apartment she was holed up in). Friedberger had gotten out of Dodge ahead of the new record, leaving New York City for the far more pastoral views upstate. We sat down on a cold February morning to discuss nature walks, home maintenance and the importance of getting out of town.
Chip Zdarsky wore a felt crown during our interview because he was promoting his new Jughead series for Archie — and because he’s Chip Zdarsky, and that’s just like a thing Chip Zdarsky does. The cartoonist has been responsible for some of the the funniest mainstream comics work of the past decade and a half, with titles like Howard the Duck and the Eisner Award winning Matt Fraction collaboration, Sex Criminals. The cartoonist, who also publishing humor pieces under his given name, Steve Murray, was nice enough to take a few moments out of his exceedingly busy schedule to sit and chat about his reimagining of everyone’s favorite hamburger devouring prankster. Like Zdarsky, Matt Kindt has parlayed indie comics success into a prolific career on big books, including, most recently, a glut of titles for the recently relaunched Valiant Entertainment. The artist/writer sat down with us to talk about his work with the publisher and the move from small publishing to mainstream books.
When I first met Dan Friel, he was working the front desk at The Onion. I was but lowly intern and he was tasked with, among other things, handing me a list of the newspaper boxes around the city that needed moving. Turns out the the guy was also pretty good at making music, too. For a decade Friel, was a driving force behind Parts & Labor, a raucous Brooklyn-based three-piece that released five terrific LPs of explosive, analog electronic-fueled noise pop. After the band’s dissolution in 2012, Friel has shifted his focus to his solo career, marrying pop hooks with sonic drone. The phenomenon is perfectly exemplified by Lullaby (For Wolf), the leadoff track to last year’s Life, which had its genesis in a bedtime song Friel hummed to his newborn son.
There’s an art to interviewing Douglas Rushkoff — and really, “interview” isn’t the right word. It’s akin of offering suggestions and watching him takeoff, explore an idea, and just blow the thing wide open. As with all of his books, every page of Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus is utterly bursting with ideas — and every conversation with the author follows the trajectory, as well. It’s impossible to keep up, but if you’re lucky, you can contribute the occasional thought and marvel as Rushkoff runs with the ball. In his latest book, the writer grapples with issues of economics and fairness in the digital age, exploring why the utopian promise of digital democracy and doing no evil never quite came to fruition as many late-20th century philosophers anticipated. But much to his credit, Rushkoff is forever the optimist on the topic of technology, presenting hopeful solutions for every issue the book raises. In this hour-long conversation, we discuss Kickstarter, what’s going on with Twitter, and how all of us lowly cogs can make a meaningful impact.
Rosalie Lightning is one of this year’s most difficult and most important books. It’s the story of a parent grieving the death of his young daughter the best way he knows how — through making a comic. Tom Hart taught the form for a decade at Manhattan’s school of Visual Arts before opening The Sequential Artists Workshop, a Gainesville-based school devoted solely to the art of comics making, where he serves as Executive Director. Hart has been producing his own work in earnest since 1994, when Hutch Owen's Working Hard earned him a Xeric Foundation grant for self-publishing. Over the years, the titular Wall Street-battling protestor has earned the cartoonist numerous industry awards and landed a daily strip in Metro newspapers. His new book i easily his most potent and highest profile, having landed the top spot on The New York Times’ best selling graphic novel list. As with the book, this conversation is not an easy one, but it’s one well worth having.
“Other ATI beliefs that I learned range from utterly bizarre to downright barbaric,” Brooke Arnold writes in the essay, I Could Have Been a Duggar Wife, “like the creator of Cabbage Patch Kid dolls is actually a Satanic wizard who implants demons into the dolls that then sneak into children’s bodies while they are sleeping — along with the old standard that rock music is inherently sinful.” The story’s subhed labeled Arnold a “real-life Kimmy Schmidt,” as she exposed a laundry list of horrors perpetrated by the Advanced Training Institute, a fundamentalist homeschooling program that helped give rise to reality TV stars, the Duggar family. A week later, Salon published a followup in which Arnold admitted that if she had know how large a splash the story would cause, she “ would not have had the courage to press ‘send’ on the pitch,” while adding that the positive response from women with similar backgrounds ultimately made the decision worthwhile. The story also, naturally, helped raise the profile of a comedian working to establish a name for herself in the big city, as well as helping to inspired the creation of the forthcoming comedic memoir, Growing Up Fundie. We sat down to discuss starting over again in the big city and creating comedy from personal tragedy.
Not too long before our conversation, the Library of Congress appointed Gene Yang its “Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.” It’s the kind of announcement that makes everyone around the comics community cheer — another big moment in a space perpetually starved for legitimization as the institution chose its first ever graphic novelist for the post. Of course, they would have been hard-pressed to find a stronger candidate. Yang has been a fixture in the kids and YA comics scene since his 2006 book American Born Chinese became the first graphic novel to score a spot as a finalist for the National Book Award, Young People’s Literature. These days, Yang finds is at the helm of DC’s flagship Superman title and has released Secret Coders, an educational book that combines the cartoonist’s love of comics and passion for computer programming. We sat down at First Second’s triangular conference room in the Flatiron building to talk tech and the Man of Steel’s truly American immigrant story.
Friend of the podcast Nicole Georges joins us via Skype to discuss her brand new show, Sagittarian Matters, which combines her love of conversation, advice and eating food products past their expiration date. Just in time for Valentine’s Day, a conversation about love, punctuation, offering unsolicited advice, and the pitfalls of writing comic books about your parents.
We kick things off Noah Van Sciver, one of comics’ most exciting — and prolific — young talents. Last year alone, the Denver cartoonist released three books, all of which made their way to various best-of lists: St. Cole, Fante Bukowski and My Hot Date. The artist is also well-known in indie comics circles for his on-going series Blammo and the 2012 Fantagraphics title The Hypo, following the life of a melancholic young Abraham Lincoln. Released that same year on Abrams, My Friend Dahmer details Cleveland cartoonist Derf’s experiences attending high school with future serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. The book’s followup, Trashed, debuted from the publisher last year, offering a fictionalized version of the time the artist spent working as a sanitation working as a 19-year-old. Derf is also the author of the alternative weekly comic strip, The City, which ran in 140 paper before coming to a close in 2014. Finnish cartoonist Tommi Musturi made his Fantagraphics debut last year with The Book of Hope, which follows the life of a retired couple. The artist is also known for his wordless comic Samuel, and for co-founding the publishing house Huuda Huuda, for whom he has translated a number of prominent English language artists, including Daniel Clowes and Edward Gorey.
It’s been several years since I last spoke to Bill Griffith. I’m fairly certain I spent much of that last interview attempt to talk the cartoonist into drawing a full length book — and while I certainly can’t take any of the credit, I’m happy to say that the artist was on-hand at this year’s Comic Arts Brooklyn to discuss just such a project. Invisible Ink marks, incredibly, Griffith’s first full-length graphic novel, after four decades spent drawing comics professionally. Of course, working on a daily strip ha kept the cartoonist plenty busy, producing a cumulative output that dwarfs any of his underground comics contemporaries. While others focused on floppies and books, Griffith took a more traditional approach to the medium, infiltrating national newspapers with the sublimely, absurdly subversive Zippy the Pinhead. With Invisible Ink, Griffith explores his mother’s life, uncovering her diary, unfinished novel, and a “long and happy” affair she carried on with a fellow cartoonist. The conversation is a wide ranging and fascinating look at one of alternative comics’ most enduring and beloved careers. It’s a great way to celebrate episode 150.
“It’s woven very densely into the fabric of my life,” explains Josie Long. “It happens when you do your accounting every year. You look at your receipts, and everything there you’ve written about.” The comedian began her standup career at the tender age of 14, scoring a BBC New Comedy Award three years later. Having spent more than half her years on Earth as a standup, it’s certainly understandable that comedy has become the filter through which Long examines her life. I caught up with the comedian ahead during a week-long string of shows in New York. She’d been out swimming in the ice cold Atlantic in the midst of an autumn chill, her voice slightly worse for wear. But she happily spoke the cross section of the personal and professional, an area she had been mining heavily for the set she was performing later that evening. Cara Josephine trades her often political source material in for stories about family and failed relationships, making for far away Long’s most personal show to date.
Eric Bogosian is not an easy interview — but he’s a good one. I came ready to discuss his recently published book on the Armenian genocide, Operation Nemesis — but the writer quickly made it known that he’s not keen to reflect upon something that’s already out in the world, particularly not with something new in need of promotion just over the horizon. Before we began, he sat me down and played a handful of examples of his 100 Monologues project, featuring a rotating cast well known actors from stage and screen acting out works written by Bogosian between 1980 and 2006, arguably the purest manifestation of the work at the hard of an incredibly diverse career. Over the decades, he’s written books and appeared in myriad films, sitcoms and stage productions , but its Bogosian’s career as a playwright that will almost certainly be his legacy. And here it’s shown bare for all the world, just his words and an actor’s performance cast against a black backdrop. The interview, conducted several months ago, has been waiting for the release of the 100 Monologues Kickstarter campaign to go live, timed to promote the project, which is currently seeking $25,000 to shoot and post the the second 50 monologues. It’s an ultimately a wide-ranging talk focused on Bogosian’s current passion project, while taking the occasional peek back at an utterly fascinating career in art and entertainment.
Walter Martin and I keep getting kicked out of coffee shops. It’s a strange thing. Over the course of the 50 minute interview, we close out two places in Manhattan. But as romantic as getting kicked out of two New York City establishments in under an hour with an indie rock star looks on paper, the whole thing is slightly mundane. Turns out the coffee shops in midtown like to shut their doors before eight. And Martin, for his part, doesn’t appear to be embracing the rock and roll lifestyle these days. The Walkman multi-instrumentalist has settled down a bit, starting a family and taking a step back from the heavy touring. In 2014, Martin issued his post-Walkman debut, We’re All Young Together, a delightfully catchy collection of all-ages kids tunes recorded with members of bands like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. The followup, Arts & Leisure, is due out next week. The songs are a joyful celebration of Martin’s love of fine art, filtered through the youthful passion of singer-songrwriters like Jonathan Richman. Coffee shop shut downs aside, we managed to have a fascinating conversation about rock band politics, playing solo and what it means to grow up.
Our final round of interviews from Baltimore Comic Con includes two artists who have had a profound impact on the American underground/independent comics community. Carla Speed McNeil has produced the sprawling, epic aboriginal science-fiction series Finder since the mid-90s, making it one of the longest running series in all of indie comics, with 10 printed volumes of output released through the artist’s Light Speed Press. McNeil has also collaborated on a number of series through the years, including Queen & Country: Operation: Stormfront with Greg Rucka and the recent Image miniseries No Mercy, created with writer, Alex De Campi. Inspired by underground masters like Robert Crumb and Jay Lynch, Denis Kitchen began self-publishing comics in the late 60s. The artist would ultimately have more of an impact behind the scenes, through publishing companies like Kitchen Sink Press and Kitchen Sink Books, as well as serving as an agent for the works of comics giants like Will Eisner and Harvey Kurtzman.
Kitchen also counts the founding of The Comic Book Legal Defense fund among his many industry-shaping accomplishments.
In A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Dave Eggers describes the auditioning process for The Real World: San Francisco. The spot the McSweeney’s founder tried out for was won by another artist, a cartoonist who served a, perhaps, the moral compass for a reality show fueled by roommate strife. Most of us can count on a single hand the moments that had a truly profound impact on our lives. For Judd Winick, that key moment was spread out over an entire season and broadcast on MTV. But while the show put the artist on the pop cultural map, it’s the work he’s done in comics and animation that will be his lasting legacy, from his break through Graphic novel Pedro & Me, to his run a slew of DC Comics titles and his work as the creator and lead writer of the Cartoon Network series, The Life and Times of Juniper Lee. Released in September on Random House, Hilo marks his most ambitious work to date. The comic is fun, funny, and instantly engaging, a welcome embrace of all-ages comics from an artist with kids of his own.
Of course Chip Kidd put out a book with Art Spiegelman. In an age when the transition to digital seems all but inevitable, both artists have a vested interest in the book as object, crafting tangible experiences that cannot be recreated on a tablet or e-book. For his part, Kidd is probably best known for his book designs for cartoonists Daniel Clowes and Chris Ware, along with a who’s who of contemporary novelists, including Haruki Murakami, Cormac McCarthy and Donna Tart. But the designer is an author in his own right, having penned two novels, a tribute to Plastic Man creator Jack Cole (alongside Spiegelman), and Bat-Manga, a collection dedicated to Japanese Batman esoterica. His latest release is Only What’s Necessary, a gorgeously designed volume that pulls together little seen work from Peanuts creator Charles Schulz, including sketches, unpublished strips, letters and merchandise. It’s a lovingly designed tribute to one of newspaper comics’ most beloved pioneers. Kidd joined me on the jam-packed floor of New York Comic Con to discuss the book and long standing love of print in a world gone digital.
“All you really want to do is get yourself excited, get your wife excited, get your friends excited,” Colin Hay explains with a smile. “Beyond that, who knows? You want to say to someone who’s upstairs, ‘hey, come and listen to this. This is cool.’ ” The crowds, the fans, the radio play, the record sales are secondary. Thirty-four years after the release of Men at Work’s debut, Business as Usual, Hay is a songwriter first and foremost, having settled in to a seemingly zen-like approach to the craft. Distribution methods and record industry nonsense be damned. Write a great song and it’ll find an audience. A decade and half after putting his band to rest for good, Hay has never failed to find an audience. Where many of his contemporaries have relied on nostalgia or quit the game altogether, Hay’s work has managed to attract new generations of fan through thoughtful, straightforward songwriting. Hay and I sat down at the bar in his hotel lobby ahead of a New York City show to discuss growing as a songwriter on his new record Next Year People, coping with loss, and why writing the perfect three minute pop song has never gotten any easier.
The artist has been something of a hero before I’d even heard his name, through his illustration work in the aforementioned classic children’s book and as the screenwriter of Robert Altman’s perfectly chaotic 1980 cinematic adaptation of Popeye. Since then, Feiffer’s work has been a constant in my life, from his four decades long stint as an editorial cartoonist for the Village, to his early apprenticeship with Will Eisner, and a stint of film projects like Little Murders, the artist’s work always seems to find its way back into my life. Now in his mid-80s, the modern day renaissance cartoonist is trying his hand at an entirely new endeavor, writing and drawing his first graphic novel 69 years after he first began working his way through Eisner’s The Spirit at the tender age of 16. Kill My Mother maintains the cartoonist’s loose approach in a far more sustained form than his other cartooning works, marking yet another remarkable turn for the octogenarian. We pulled up a couple of seats in the lobby of the hotel where Feiffer was staying during Baltimore Comic Con to discuss his latest career and the important of perpetually testing one’s limitations.
By all rights, the story of South Atlantic Blues should have ended in 1968. Released the same week as Van Morrison’s masterpiece of pastoral angst, Astral Weeks, the record failed to garner any notice, in spite of promises that its young singer-songwriter would soon become “bigger than Elvis.” A masterpiece of a soulfully sung, lush psychedelic folk, the record vanished into obscurity, thanks to a perfect storm of record company failure. Not even a chance encounter with acclaimed painter and fan Jasper Johns could rescue the album from the remainder bin. Thankfully, the story of the album and its creator don’t end there. Nearly 50 years after its release, South Atlantic Blues is finally getting the recognition it deserved — and unlike so many of these story, which recapture public consciousness posthumously, Scott Fagan is still alive, well, and singing at 70. In the intervening 47 years, Fagan has led a fascinating life, achieving some fame as a calypso singer, struggling with addiction and reuniting with his long, lost son, Magnetics Fields frontman Stephin Merritt. Fagan was already seated when I arrived a few minutes early to set up for our interview. What transpired was one of the most fascinating conversations I’ve had in some time.
Two conversations with extremely talented — and patient — artists conducted at Baltimore Comic Con. Both were also prefaced by waiting quietly for their signing lines to slow down before taking time out of their signing schedules for a chat. In the case of the legendary Marvel artists Jim Starlin, it was a long, unbroken line of autograph seekers carrying armfuls of Silver Surfer and Warlock comics to sign. With most, Starlin simply signed and small talked, tossing off a few notes about each. On occasions, however, a fan would present a copy of Captain Marvel and discuss the book’s impact on a personal level, how the story of the hero’s battle with cancer impacted them as a young reader — a testament to the power of important stories filtered through the pages of superhero books. As I waited for Brian Stelfreeze, meanwhile, the Gaijin Studios artist walked a young fan through the drawing process, critiquing his portfolio and demonstrating how to draw without focusing too heavily on the details — a method he discussed with me, before giving some insight into the eagerly awaited Black Panther miniseries he’s working on with journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates.
I’ve been wanting to have Luc Sante on the show for some time now, and a recently appearance at the Brooklyn Book Fair finally afforded the opportunity to sit down with the author. Immediately after a panel with Vivian Gornick and David Ulin on the topic of writing about cities, Sante and I sat down in a courtyard on a windy Sunday. Published the same year I moved to New York, the author’s book Low Life might well be my favorite book I’ve ever read about the city, peering into the crime dens and slums often whitewashed out of portraits of Gotham’s golden age. Sante was at the show promoting his most recent work, The Other Paris, which offers similar insight into the city of light. He happily agreed to discuss the two vastly different, yet eternally link metropolises, while giving candid look into what keeps him writing.
It had been a while since I’d last spoken with Sara Varon. At the time, the artist had a handle of comics and kids books under her belt, including most notably — and recently — Robot Dreams, a delightful wordless buddy comic about a relationship between a robot and a dog. Since then, Varon’s been plenty busy, adding several more titles to her bibliography and teaching printmaking at her alma mater, the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. She also has a trio of books already planned for publication over the next two years, including a reissue of her 2003 short story Sweater Weather, a book about an anthropomorphic donkey for First Second and President Squid, the tale of a giant squid who runs for president. Varon and I sat down at her studio in Gowanus, Brooklyn surrounded by shelves of children’s books to discuss quitting her day job, writing for kids, and a failed TV pitch about unicorns.
Like many of roughly my age bracket, my first exposure to Usagi Yojimbo was as an action figure — a badass samurai rabbit that fit in perfectly in world where Ninja Turtles roam the streets of New York at night. It’s one of those perfect sorts of synergy, anthropomorphic superheroes trained in Eastern forms of combat born out of the small press black and white comics revolution of the mid-80s. But Usagi’s roots are far deeper than his gritted toothed action figure implies. Stan Sakai has been telling the samurai rabbit’s story for 30 years now, writing and drawing one of the most complex works in all of comics. It’s a work deeply tied to the cartoonist’s early obsessions with his heritage, bits and piece of Japanese culture he poured over in his formative years in Hawaii. Conducted on the show floor of this year’s Baltimore Comic Con, Sakai and I discuss the roots of his beloved creation and how he manages to keep Usagi’s story fresh three decades in.
“The head space for a lot of people post-any kind of cancer is ‘I gotta get going,’” Jennifer Hayden explains with the positive energy of an all-star slugger holding a World Series trophy aloft. Whatever it is, I’m gonna jump on it. Everything is doable, everything is wonderful, thank God I’m still here.” When she was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 43, the struggling artist turned to comics for the first time in her adult and found a medium that had changed dramatically from the Archie Digests she grew up on. In comics Hayden discovered the perfect form in which to tell her memoir. Released last month by Top Shelf, The Story of My Tits is a book ever bit as bare as its title implies, forming her biography through the titular body parts into a work that is, in turns, both serious and silly, much like Hayden herself. What follows is a mediation on cancer, creativity and the healing power of comics.
This one gets pretty raw. No surprise, really, given the nature of Sam Zabel And The Magic Pen, a semi-autobiographicalish comic that deals with the nature of and relationship between creativity and depression, kicking things off with a chapter titled “Anhedonia,” an inability to experience pleasure that arises from melancholy states. Of course, it’s not all gloom and doom. When New Zealand cartoonist Dylan Horrocks stopped by my office in lower-Manhattan, we conducted a long and wide ranging conversation that hit upon pieces from throughout his career, from the beloved 1998 graphic novel Hicksville, to his sometimes controversial run on the DC comics series Bat Girl.
“It's a good story,” Joe Biel wrote in an email from a few weeks back. “It’s our 20th anniversary book and my big reveal is that I have Asperger’s.” When Good Trouble comes out from Microcosm in March, it’s bound to cause a stir in the company in which Biel’s publishing has played such a central role over the past couple of decades. It’s deeply personal to a fault, exploring Biel’s work, relationships and the role his diagnosis has played in both. Not that the deeply personal is anything new in the small press world, but the writer takes care to offer as much insight into his own development as possible, learning important lessons about himself in the process. It’s a fascinating look at self-publishing, punk ethos, and the nature of autism. In a followup to our wide ranging conversation from earlier this year, Biel and I hopped on Skype for a bonus conversation about his diagnosis, the process of writing the book and where he goes from here.
He calls it “the curse of being multi-talented” and insists that it is, in fact, a curse. Musician, author, politician, comedian, and all around gadfly, Kinky Friedman is one of the those rare multi-faceted artists who is arguably equally well-known for several of different endeavors. Reflecting upon his singular career at 70, Friedman hesitates for a moment, invoking the curse with the suggestion that he may have found more fame, had he simply buckled down and focused on aspect at the expense of all others. But in 2006, for example, the call for public service trumped the rest, as the self-proclaimed Original Texas Jewboy threw his 10-gallon hat in the ring, challenging incumbent Republican candidate Rick Perry for the role of governor of the lone star state. Two decades prior, he penned a long string of hard-boiled detective books inspired by the likes of Raymond Chandler. This year Friedman returned to music with The Loneliest Man I Ever Met, his first studio album in 35 years, a set of songs that caught critics completely off-guard, trading acerbic standards like “Asshole From El Paso” and “They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore” for restrained and musically minimalist covers of arts like Tom Waits and Dylan. Though, as our half-hour together can happily attest, all the reflection in the world can’t stop Kinky from being Kinky.
When I asked for interview suggestions for my five day work trip to Berlin, Comics Reporter Tom Spurgeon suggested Olivier Schrauwen, heaping praise upon the Belgian expat and categorizing him among the top living cartoonists.And indeed, the trip halfway around the world afforded a rare opportunity to speak with the Arsene Schrauwen cartoonist, who, in spite of growing acclaim within the comics literati, hasn’t granted all that many interviews over the years — particularly with the English speaking press. Schrauwen agreed, meeting me at Modern Graphics, a wonderful independent comics shop located in the German city’s Kreuzberg district. He arrived on his bicycle after I’d just finished spending some ungodly number of Euros purchasing an armful of comics and minis. We found a sidewalk cafe on the corner and drank beers as trendy Berliners passed by on their way to do some afternoon shopping. An ideal setting for an utterly fascinating conversation with a singular cartoonist.
It had been eight or so years since I last interviewed Raina Telgemeier. After a few years spent adapting the beloved young adult series The Babysitter’s Club into a handful of graphic novels for Scholastic, the cartoonist was getting ready to branch out on her own. Telgemeier was understandably nervous ahead of the book’s debut, unsure whether or not she would even be able to find a publisher. As of this week, Smile has spent an astonishing 173 weeks on The New York Times’ Graphic Novel Best Seller List, since joined by three more Telgemeier titles, to monopolize four of the list’s top ten spots at last count. The word “phenomenon” doesn’t quite cut it. No other single YA cartoonist comes close — an really, one would be hard-pressed to find any one cartoonist who has experience so much success in such a brief period. Naturally, Telgemeier can be a bit tough to pin down, but after months of trying to meet up, we finally managed to carve out some time to sit down over some Greek food in our mutual neighborhood of Astoria, Queens to discuss her meteoric rise on of comics’ most beloved artists.
“It comes down to a lot of educated guessing and trying to handle it like a grown up,” explains Jaime Hernandez. We’re seated on a curb outside the San Diego Convention Center and the subject of the Love and Rockets cartoonist’s propensity for strong female protagonists has come up. For Hernandez, writing women is second nature. Writing men, on the other hand — that’s where things get difficult. ”I guess because I am a guy, I would get very self-conscious when I write men. The very first time a woman told me they liked the way I write women, I was gone, man. No holding back.” The cartoonist is kind and candid discussing the 33 year history of alternative comics’ most beloved series. No question is off limits as we sit somewhat uncomfortably watching costumed foot traffic and loud pedicabs pass by. It’s a terrific conversation that’s as wide ranging as it is casual about superheroes, keeping things interesting after three decades, and why that new Mad Max movie wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
I first encountered Ed Piskor’s work through the cartoonist’s collaborations with the legendary Harvey Pekar. The duo released the book Macedonia in 2007, highlighting The American Splendor author’s work to push non-fiction storytelling forward in the medium by highlighting cultural struggles in the Republic of Macedonia in comics form. It was no doubt a formative experience for the cartoonist who would rise to even greater fame in the indie comics community half a decade later with the release of the first volume of Hip-Hop Family Tree, a sweeping on-going series highlighting the music’s rise from the streets of the Bronx to the driving force of international popular culture. Also recorded at San Diego Comic Con back in July, part two is a chat with cartoonist and fine artist Marc Bell, who hilariously explains why his attempts to tell a straight forward story with his latest book, the delightful Stroppy on Drawn & Quarterly, went so horribly wrong.
It was one of the most surreal things I’ve experienced, legendary civil rights leader turned congressman John Lewis leading a procession of small children through the packed halls of the San Diego Convention Center during rush hour at Comic Con.Turns out it was even more amazing than any of us suspected. Without telling anyone, the Congressman had gone full-on cosplay, recreating what he had worn during the Selma to Montgomery march 50 years prior, right down to the apple he carried in his knapsack. It was, as one might suspect, a packed weekend for Rep. Lewis, who was attending Comic Con along with March collaborators Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell to mark the release of the trilogy’s second volume. We did, however. manage to sit down with all three (first Lewis and Aydin and then Powell) to discuss the powerful graphic novels. Rep. shed light on his history, his thoughts on the current state of the struggle for equality and Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, the $0.10 comic book that influenced a generation of civil rights activists.
In one sense, perhaps Comic Con is the ideal setting for this conversation. It’s a conversation about authenticity, about the unintended artifice of a sketchbook created for public consumption. By all other measures, however, it’s completely bizarre. The show occurred a week or so after the release of Ander Nilsen’s new book, Poetry is Useless. A loud and boisterous setting for a low-key artist making low-key art. Nilsen recommended a spot behind the San Diego Convention Center — a small island of grass and shade with pedicabs whizzing by on either side blaring top 40 hits. Even so, it’s a fascinating conversation about the creative process, letting art happen, and the ups and downs of dealing with grief in a public forum. And cosplay, naturally.
The moment I heard Alex Winter was working on a Zappa documentary, I wanted to get him on the phone again. For starters, their was our first conversation, which ranks among my top RiYL episode — and then there’s the fact that I’m constantly on the look out for someone to help gently nudge me into the musician’s massive and sometimes impenetrable back catalog. As Winter quickly notes, however, that’s not his job. Nor is it the job of his forthcoming documentary. The Deep Web filmmaker is far more interested in Zappa the man and polymath, examining his strange and singular career outside of music, including his increasing involvement in social activism. It’s another fascinating conversation with Winter about Zappa’s legacy and why it’s was so important for the director to go beyond the standard rock-doc.
We delve into insecurities almost immediately. It’s a surprising way to kick off a conversation with an artist infamous for going topless at regular intervals in public gatherings. Surprising, but appropriate, given the nature of Haspiel’s new collection, Beef With Tomato.The cartoonist, who’s made a name for himself with Jack Kirby-influenced takes on the superhero genre such as his own Billy Dogma, takes a far more introspective turn in this latest collection, pulling together short autobiographical pieces documenting his move from Manhattan to Brooklyn. It’s a collection no doubt inspired by Haspiel’s work with autobio masters like Harvey Pekar and Jonathan Ames, the latter of which helped the artist score a Emmy Award for his work on the much beloved HBO series, Bored to Death. In the course of the hour-long interview, we discuss Haspiel’s long list of collaborators, a push toward minimalism and his self-imposed growth as a storyteller.
As we prep ourselves for the onslaught of belated Comic Con interviews, here’s a trio of quick conversations with comics creators, Kate Beaton, Jeffrey Brown and Jeff Lemire. Our conversation with Beaton occurred at the Scholastic offices in the weeks leading up to San Diego. The Hark a Vagrant cartoonist was in town to promote her new kids book, The Princess and the Pony, which centers around the friendship between a young girl and her portly equine friend. We caught up with Jeffrey Brown who was wandering the halls of the San Diego Convention Center in between panels about his own recent success with younger audiences, thanks to his unique take on the Star Wars franchise through books like Darth Vader and Son and Jedi Academy. It’s a galaxy far away from the manner of introspective autobiographic work he was best known for the last time we spoke. And speaking of fascinating career trajectories, we sat down with Jeff Lemire to discuss how the author of the idiosyncratic Essex County series went on to become one of the most prominent writers of mainstream superhero books.
With his Seattle City Council campaign behind him, I suggested to John Roderick that we sit down for a short conversation to reflect on the run. But as fans of the Long Winters singer’s popular podcast Roderick on the Line are no doubt already aware, when it comes to John Roderick, there’s no such thing as a short conversation. The Pacific Northwestern polymath’s knack for nuanced conversation may not fit in particularly well in the soundbite-driven world of stump speeches, but it makes for an extremely compelling podcast for anyone interested in the a conversation about running for office from someone who’s more than happy to discuss all of the gory details. We’re running this as a bonus episode, since the conversation was conducted remotely, but hopefully you’ll get as much out of it as any installment of the regular show. You can also find a longer RiYL conversation with Roderick here.
This conversation with Bobby Tisdale begins with a story in which he picks a scab until he starts bleeding on a woman on the subway, segues into a conversation about the time a kitten bit into his scrotum and then proceeds to snowball from there. I had some semblance of what I was in for when we sat down following his brief set at the QED performance space in Astoria. The comedian doesn’t hold much back on stage, a quality that translates well into a one-on-one interview. In a wide ranging conversation with the Bob’s Burgers actor, we discuss the process of discovering one’s voice as a standup, finding happiness and what to do when all of your friends become wildly successful. Tisdale also reveals the details for his dream project, which I attempt to convince him to follow through on. In fact, we make a handshake agreement during the interview to conduct a followup interview when the podcast finally airs — so stick around until after the intro to find out of the status of the Bobby Tisdale variety special.
Some days nothing goes right with an interview. Other days the stars align and you score someone like John Leguizamo on a bit of a whim, because he happens to be promoting a new graphic novel at Book Expo America. This, as you’ve already gathered, is one of the latter. Due out in October, Ghetto Klown is the actor’s first foray into comics, an adaptation of the 2011 one man Broadway show that scored him Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards and an HBO special. Drawn by Christa Cassano and Shamus Beyale, the book find Leguizamo spilling the dirt on some of his best know acting gigs, from To Wong Fu to Romeo and Juliet and the Steven Segal action vehicle, Executive Decision. We discuss some of the best stories, Leguizamo’s love of comics and whole lot of therapy in a fascinating behind the scenes interview at BEA
The contents of this interview originally appeared as a Q&A for my day job at TechTimes. I enjoyed speaking with Mike Mignola so much I thought it would be fun to run the piece in its entirety as a bonus episode on this here podcast — and besides, as is so often the case, there are some intricacies that just don’t translate in transcribed form. I spoke with Mignola ahead of the release of Hellboy in Hell #7, the latest issue of the on-going series that finds the cartoonist returning to writing and drawing the hybrid demonspawn he helped bring into the world. The conversation touches on Mignola’s work on the series, his relationship with his best known creation and how the pair of Guillermo del Toro impacted his feelings about old Hellboy. It’s a fun and quick chat — and a rare phone conversation for us. But hey, that’s why they’re called bonus episodes, right?
Nothing says reunion of old friends quite like a few cups of tea and a couple of microphones. It had been a year or two since I’d last seen my former Engadget colleague and current world record holding blogger Darren Murph, so I suggested a sit down at my favorite combination tea house/impromptu podcast recording venue when he found himself in the city for a few days. In addition to his PR day job, Murph is an incredibly prolific writer who has penned a 17,000+ blog posts and a number of electronics guides. His latest book, however, is by far his most personal. The self-released Living the Remote Dream is a sort of bible for the blogger’s world traveling, remote working lifestyle. Murph and I sat down over some pots of green tea and discussed our glory days of gadget blogging and surviving the rapidly changing world of digital publishing. As with Murph’s latest book, it’s one of the most personal episodes of RiYL, along side the conversation with fellow former Engadgeteer Tim Stevens about life in the trenches of tech journalism.
The indie comics booths present a perfect sort of eye in the middle of the Comic Con storm. Top Shelf, Drawn & Quarterly and Fantagraphics form a perfect sort of triangle where the costumed self-madness of the show takes a momentary reprieve. This is where Not Funny Ha-Ha has its unofficial debuts. A few week later, Leah Hayes will present the book more formally, reading from the abortion-themed graphic novel in front of a crowd at Los Angeles independent bookstore. For now, however, she discusses the story with curious parties who pass through the Fantagraphics booth. The stories have already begun flooding in, she explains as we sit down in a shady spot behind the San Diego Convention Center. The subject matter is nothing if not a conversation starter. Thus far, she’s already have several strangers describe their own abortion experience or the the experience of someone close to them. Others have discussed different difficult moments — heck, over the course of our conversation, I find myself relating a story about recently losing a pet. It’s just that sort of book. Hayes and I discuss the impact of debuting such an intimate book in boisterous environment on a small patch of grass as cosplayers ride in the backs of rickshaws on either side of our little green island.
Jeff Smith made comics safe for kids again. In 1991, the cartoonist began self-publishing, an all-ages adventure story rendering in a style reminiscent of legends Walt Kelly and Carl Barks that felt like a breath of fresh air in a world of sequential art utterly disrupted by Watchmen and the Dark Knight half a decade before. With 55 issues spread out over the course of 13 years, Smith created one of the medium’s great masterworks, a 1,300 cartoon page epic to rival the likes of the Odyssey or Lord of Rings, racking up ten Eisners and 11 Harvey Awards in the process. After a decade and a half in Boneville, Smith abruptly shifted gears with RASL, a sci-fi tale of a dimension-hopping art thief also published on his own Cartoon Books. Shortly after the end of RASL’s run, Smith once again pivoted, exploring the world of Webcomics through Tüki, the largely wordless tale of African tribesman who dared venture to other continents. We sat down with Smith at Book Expo of America to discover his wideranging and pioneering works, the wild world of self-publishing and how his hometown of Columbus, Ohio has been transformed into Comicstown, USA.
Some context before we get started: I met Sam Seder five or so years back when he cohosted a video show in the Air America break room. By then the progressive talk station was on its last legs. Both Seder and cohost Marc Maron had been through the ringer with other programs and had ended up setting a desk directly in front of a vending machine in a radio station kitchen.After the plug was unceremoniously pulled, Seder did what countless abruptly unemployed comedian/radio personalities have since: he launched a podcast. The show borrowed the format, Jon Benjamin-voiced bumpers and title of an Air American show he had co-hosted with long-time friend Janeane Garofalo. Ten years after launching, The Majority Report is still going strong, featuring daily interviews with guests and left leaning political talk that would make many of the talking heads at MSNBC. When sat down at Seder’s downtown Brooklyn studio, the specter of Break Room Live was very much on my mind, thanks in no small part to a the fact that Maron had released an interview with Seder on WTF that very week. As such, there’s much talk about vending machines, political radio and how to deal with a friend’s new-found success.
I would have been more than content to discuss Wild Cat Academy, the New York City second chance high where Lisa Wilde has taught for more than a decade and a half. What resulted from our hour-long conversation, however, was one of the more wide-ranging interviews we’ve run for some time, hitting on subjects like life in the city and juggling, life, family and part-time creative pursuits. And the, of course, there’s the factotum of jobs that factor so prominently into Wilde’s bio, from baking, to the BBC to the teaching gig that gave rise to Yo Miss, a self-published mini-comic turned anthology by our friends at Microcosm Books. Wilde sent me a few issues while I was writing about zines for Boing Boing, and I knew she’s make for a fascinating interview. It took a year or two for us to finally line our schedules up, but when we sat down in the drawing studio of the Brooklyn home she shares with her husband and son, it was well worth the wait.
This isn’t the first time this has happened, the realization that an upcoming guest has recently been on WTF fills me with an immediate sense of dread. Surely Maron has mined this person for all of their conversational juices. Of course, that worry subsides almost immediately when the interviewee is Kevin Allison The former State member has built a second career for himself standing on-stage and not holding back. The Cincinnati-born comedian founded Risk! as a weekly live show in Manhattan, in August of 2009. A few months later, the series grew into a podcast, setting itself apart from myriad other storytelling radio shows and podcasts thanks to some well-known guests and a dedication to Allison’s fearless confessional style. Risk’s explicit mission statement involves guests, “tell[ing] true stories they never thought they’d dare to share in public.” As a frequent Risk storyteller himself, Allison is no stranger to brutal honesty. It’s a great quality in a podcast guest — and one that was happily on full display as we sat down in an empty bar in Astoria, NY ahead of a Friday night standup set.
I’m pretty sure I first heard about Jeffrey Lewis through his music. By the time I arrived in New York City, the singer-songwriter was already a veteran of the same Lower East Side antifolk scene that gave the world the likes of the Moldy Peaches. Turns out the guy also makes some really terrific comics as well. And better still, he takes every opportunity available to combine the two forms, as with with a series of comic essays on the songwriting process written for the New York Times, or the year we asked him to perform at Manhattan’s MoCCA Fest in which he combined singing with an easel baring drawings for a lo-fi multimedia storytelling experience. I ran into Lewis once again at this year’s MoCCA comics show and he happily agreed to an impromptu conversation on a scenic Chelsea rooftop overlooking the Hudson. It’s a relatively quick (by RiYL standards) conversation, due to the rapidly dropping rooftop temperatures and Lewis’s need to get back to his unmanned table at the show, but it’s still a wide-ranging and interesting chat on the nature of creativity from an artist who seemingly does it all.
I’m fairly certain the phrase “mommy blog” is tossed around once or twice over the course this interview. I only mention it here as I’m sure it sends up a few red flags, though undeservedly so. For starters, there’s the fact that The East Village Inky predates the phenomenon by at least a decade or so. Ayun Halliday has been producing the pocket-sized, photocopied zine for over 20 years now, having just released issue 55 when we sat down for a chat a local watering hole following the Brooklyn Zine Fest. The series is a breezy and largely lighthearted first-hand account of two artists raising children in the city, told through a series of stories, mini-comics and whatever other assorted odds and ends Halliday opts to include. The Inky also manages to avoid most of the preachy and rose-colored trappings of its successors, which are no doubt a large part of what’s made the long-running zine beloved even amongst childless readers. Despite living in the same metropolitan area, I’ve had a surprising amount of trouble tracking Halliday down — due, perhaps, to a busy schedule of work related and artistic pursuits, travel and the whole raising two children thing. When we final sat down in the backyard of a Brooklyn bar, I’m happy we were finally able to make it happen. It’s a wide ranging and fascinating conversation about child-rearing, artistic ambition and the give and take between the two.
For me, it goes Kids in the Hall, Kurt Vonnegut and punk rock, in that order. I shudder to think what sort of person I might have become had Comedy Central not started airing the Canadian sketch show in reruns right after show during my formative years. KITH presented new frontiers in comedy my tender suburban brain never imagined were possible. And Bruce McCulloch was their poet laureate. McCulloch was the weirdo in a group of weirdos. The angry young man with a penchant gruff voiced, world weary characters and flair for beat poetry, as evidenced by 1995’s criminal underrated comedy record, Shame Based Man. Spending a Halloween chewing on an unlit cigar with half a head of cabbage taped to my skull seemed like a no-brainer in high school, and when I found out that KITH were making a triumphant live show return to New York City, his publicist was the first on my list to receive an overzealous email. When he answered the door to his room, McCulloch gently ribbed the hotel employee for letting the riffraff through security. Once inside, the comedian opened up about his time the troupe and the youthful rebellion behind his new TV series, Young Drunk Punk.
Jon Spencer is tired of talking about music. Perhaps it’s the fact that he’s been talking about it professionally ever since Pussy Galore emerged from the garages of Washington DC 30 years back. Or maybe it’s because he’s knee deep in the press junket for Blues Explosion’s 10th full-length, Freedom Tower No Wave Dance Party 2015. I met the musician at his practice space, a nondescript spot, located in a lower-Manhattan basement down a dank flight of stair a few days after I managed to catch him during the final show of his five boroughs tour. It was an explosion ending at a brewery in Astoria, Queens, which found Spencer unraveling and wearing a giant American flag and hanging from a balcony while performing daring feats on rock and roll. As excited as I am to talk about what I’ve just seen however, the singer really comes alive when the topic of comics arise, as he discusses collaborations with cartoonists like Paul Pope and Tony Millionaire, and his love for the magazine Heavy Metal, whose back page rock writing turned him onto rock and roll oddities like The Residents. Spencer also happily discusses the late night horror films that introduced him to the otherworldly sound of the theremin that has become tentpole feature of the group’s unhinged sound. By the end of the conversation, he pulls out a backpack full of the week’s scores at the nearby comics shop, Forbidden Planet.
Mark Stewart doesn’t want to talk about music. Least of all his own. A few hours ahead of The Pop Group’s appearance at The Bowery Ballroom in support of their first record in 35 years, he makes that much clear. He’s been talking about for decades. He’s bored. It’s not so much that the musician is a difficult interview as others have suggested, it’s more a matter of figuring out precisely what he wants to discuss. Sometimes finding that out is a simple matter of stopping the interview and asking outright. Tonight it’s politics. “Post-punk secret agents,” as he lovingly puts it. Contemporaries who have managed to find their ways into positions of power to help spread the word of progressive politics. For Stewart, spreading the word of political disarray means harnessing the power of pop culture press. It’s a wide-ranging, hour-long conversation that touches on aspects of global politics, cryptocurrency, popular music and creative inspiration.
The Too Much Coffee Man creator became a member of the extremely rare two-timers club, with a second RiYL appearance. Shannon Wheeler was among the show’s original guests early on when the interviews were primarily recorded remotely. When he mentioned that he’d be in New York for work for a few days, it seemed as good a time as any to give the interview thing another shot, this time face to face. In a lot of ways, the interview is the platonic ideal of an RiYL episode, a casual cafe (or, in this case, tea house) conversation that likely would have gone the same way whether or not I’d decided to bring my microphone setup along with me. Though, for the record, most of my conversations these days don’t begin with a discussion of Ayn Rand — but when Wheeler confided in me that he was attempting to watch the Atlas Shrugged film series, I couldn’t help myself. Also, I’m not sure I’ve talked that much about God in a single sitting in college, but when you put out an abridged adaptation of the bible like God is Disappointed in You, it gets to be a fairly regular topic of conversation. But don’t worry, much like the book itself, there’s plenty of laughter to be found throughout.
Kevin Barnes has a cold. He looks tired, taking swigs of coconut milk from one of those oddly-shaped cartons, but his face is sparkling in the mid-day sun. It’s the first truly nice day in New York City in several months, and we’re jammed into a corner on the southside of a packed Union Square Park. Barnes asked if we could find a sunny spot to speak, so we walked the five blocks up from Webster Hall and now he’s sparkling in the sunlight with the residual glittering of last night’s show, like those teenage vampires of lore. It’s bright and it’s crowd and noisy as the city takes momentary respite from the longest, coldest winter any of us can remember. It’s hardly the ideal spot for frank and intimate conversation about the creation of art in the wake of lost love, but it somehow works, as Barnes and I discuss the Elephant 6 alum’s 13th record, Aureate Gloom and the painful separation from his wife that followed shortly after the release of his last album. It’s an honest and fascinating conversation with an artist’s whose musical themes are sometimes seemingly impossible to penetrate.
Several years ago, I began to notice a pattern emerging. Practically every book of interest I'd pick up at independent bookstores and zine fest had the same logo on the back: a small bicycle gear with a heart at the center. Microcosm had seemingly come out of nowhere to corner the market on things that fascinate me. Joe Biel formed the indie publishing empire out of his Cleveland bedroom in the mid-90s, moving Microcosm to greener Pacific Northwestern pastures of Portland, Oregon in 1999, where the company still remains, along with with a retail storefront baring the same name. After a year and a half of attempting to coordinate an interview, Biel and I finally found ourselves in the same place. He was kindly enough to make a detour to my Queens apartment during a brief stopover in New York following an appearance at bicycle policy convention in Colombia. It's a subject matter than has long been near and dear to the publisher, recently manifesting itself in the form of Aftermass, a documentary exploring Portland's cycling community. Biel and I sat down over a couple of cups of tea to discuss cycling, his filmmaking and the strange and fascinating world of independent publishing.
The last time I saw Jean Grae in person, she was giving out free hugs in Union Square. The event was a unique attempting to cope with and have a discussion around the events unfolding in Ferguson. Grae and a group of fellow #TheHugStation attendants were offering a slew of hug varieties off of a lengthy Hug Menu. For the life of me, I can’t remember which variety I settled on, but I’m happy to report that hugging is, in fact, yet another one of her seemingly endless list of talents. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Grae was solely an emcee. She has, after all, issued dozens of records since she began rapping in the mid-90s (included several EPs in 2014 alone). But her ever-increasing portfolio also includes producing, writing, directing and starring in her an online sitcom (Life With Jeanie), writing and recording the audiobook The State of Eh and several live comedy shows like January’s Ghostbusters II ½: The Rise of Winston. And that’s all with the last year.Since 2008, Grae’s mission statement has more or less been stop talking, start creating. That year she opted to true embrace digital distribution as a means by which to eliminate the endless string of middlemen and the roadblocks and excuses they bring, telling her fans, "I don’t wanna complain anymore, I just wanna change some things about the way artists are treated and the way you guys are allowed to be involved, since it IS the digital age." Grae began releasing her work through Bandcamp, embracing the new found freedom of self-distribution to deliver a diverse array of work unfiltered to her fanbase. Her steady output means, among other things, that Grae is a tough person to pin down for an hour-long interview, but after a year of trying, we finally managed to sit down over a couple of drinks at a Williamsburg bar to discuss creativity, mentorship and moving to Los Angeles.
I knew Brooks Wheelan was moving. His PR reps had already alerted me to the fact that the comedian only had a few days remaining before moving on to greener entertainment pastures. And, of course, he hadn’t exactly been quiet regarding his intentions to leave the city after his unceremonious departure from Saturday Night Live (nor anything regarding those unfortunate circumstances).Even still, I wasn’t fully prepared to find his entire life in boxes when I arrived at his soon-to-be vacant Lower East Side apartment. He had one final standup set directly following out conversation, and that was pretty much it for Brooks Wheelman and New York City. All of his worldly belongs were now stashed away in U-Haul boxes, but there were, thankfully, a few beers left in the fridge. We grabbed a couple of beers and sat cross-legged on the floor. In what many might have reflected upon as a moment for regret or solemn reflection the comedian expressed only excited at a new life on a new coast full of unlimited possibilities.
I shouldn’t have been surprised when, in the email lead up to our interview, Vivek Tiwary told me he was pals with former RiYL guest, Mike Watt. When, after the interview concluded, he asked me who I was speaking to next, it also shouldn’t have caught me off-guard that he friends with Alex Winter, as well (who subsequently referred to Tiwary as, “a ray of sunshine” when I name-dropped him during the subsequent conversation). Tiwary has seemingly lived a million lives in the entertainment industry, rising through the ranks of the major label record companies, running a entertainment financing company, producing musicals like American Idiot at the forefront of a new wave of Broadway shows and, most recently, penning the Eisner award winning graphic novel, The Fifth Beatle. Perhaps more so than any other projects, that book was a real labor of love for Tiwary, the culmination of multiple decades of research about legendary Beatles manager Brian Epstein, a figure who perfectly embodied the writers dual fascinations with music and business. When we finally sat down to speak at Tiwary’s Manhattan office, the conversation was, fittingly, equally wide ranging, discussing Broadway production, film making, and Eddie Vedder’s basketball prowess.
While the old adage about truth making for great art certainly applies to standup, the equation can be something of a mixed bag. After all, comedy is often as much about deflection as it honesty, a slight of hand designed to distract from larger, painful and more personal truths. But honesty, it seems, isn’t really an issue for Guy Branum. The comedian, writer, podcaster and former Chelsea Lately guest deals in truths — largely about himself. As Branum put it in a recent comment about the Trevor Noah Twitter dustup, "Good stand-up comedy cannot be safe; it must shock or surprise an audience. Some comics can do it magnificently with insights about socks, but the best do it with bracing commentary about the stuff that really matters to us." For Branum, such truths are largely internal, tackling obsessions, body issues and coming to grips with his own sexuality, in spite of a less than supportive environment. This quote from his new standup album, Effable, sums the whole thing up pretty nicely. "When my parents realized I was going to be gay, they figured they might as well raise the largest in the county. If there not getting grandchildren out of the deal, at least they could get a blue ribbon." And thankfully, for interviewers such as myself, such honesty isn’t designated for the stage alone. Freshly arrived in New York, Branum made the trip to my apartment for a wide-ranging and deep digging conversation about comedy and life.
I never knew New York before the war. The towers were gone by the first time set foot in the city. But nearly a dozen years after making the place my home, I have a fundamental distrust for anyone resident who claims not to have a conflicted relationship with the city. Even in my relatively short while here, I feel as though I’ve watched the city undergo constant transformation. It’s to be expected to some degree in a city famous for never stopping, and life certainly can’t exist in a vacuum of nostalgia. But there’s forever a sense that something fundamental about the city is quickly eroding. Jesse Malin is an expert on the matter. The Queens native spent his whole life in the city, and his love of its native sounds is precisely what led him to plumb its depths, diving headfirst into the world of New York City hardcore at age 12, fronting the legendary band heart attack before officially entering his teens. Malin’s musical leanings have mellowed out considerably since Heart Attack’s Hilter Demo, but City has continued to play a key role in his songwriting, taking center stage for this year’s New York Before the War. We met up in the East Village ahead of the record’s release, grabbing a table at the back of Odessa’s, a rare reminder of old New York remaining in amongst the long ago gentrified East Village, directly across the street from Niagra, a bar co-owned by Malin that proudly boasts a rainbow colored Joe Strummer mural on the side that faces Tompkins Square Park. Malin and I ordered a couple of teas in the happily familiar location and talked collaboration, commitment, the Big Apple and The Boss.
Flood is my Beatles on Sullivan, my self-titled Velvet Underground record and Run-DMC on MTV. It was the first time I remember being keenly aware that an ever-expanding musical universe existed beyond the confines of the rock and Motown the radio played on the way to and from soccer practice. It was a strange and idiosyncratic world of misplaced accordions, horn-rimmed glasses and lyrics that only began to take on some semblance of meaning after repeat listens. So I listened, over and over again on the cassette tape a friend had record on, the mystery only deepened by the lack of official art work. I was in college by the time I realized I’d been getting key lyric to “Particle Man” wrong all these years—singing it at full volume in a car full of people who knew better. The sense of discovery is inextricably linked to the They Might Be Giants experience. It’s a tie that bonds so many of my generation, discovering in those days just before the mainstream adoption of the internet that maybe we weren’t so weird after all — or, perhaps more appropriately, that there were other weirdos out there just like us. Dial-A-Song is the most literal manifestation of the phenomenon, an old answering machine purchase by the band to get its music out into the world as John Linnell healed from a broken wrist and Flansburgh recovered from an apartment robbery. The duo advertised a phone number in the back of the Village Voice readers could call to hear the band’s songs. The band resurrected the project this year, through the decidedly less intimate medium of YouTube, with the ambitious goal of releasing a new song each week for the full calendar year. In this 100th episode, we discuss Dial-A-Song, the importance of partnerships and the role of discovery in art.
This one’s going to be a bit different, as you’ve no doubt gathered from the title. It’s a bit of an, as the Who so eloquently put it, odds and sods — interviews that never got their own standalone episodes for a number of reasons, which will be detailed below. Those of you out there who are looking for a place to start in amongst our nearly 100 episodes, I strongly suggest you turn back now. That said, I think there’s something in each of these worth posting. I’m a big fan of everyone featured here, and am happy that these are finally seeing the light of day, in some cases several months after first being recorded.
One of the real dangers of recording interviews is that plenty can change over the course of a few weeks. One interviewee lost her job of 17 years the week before that conversation was posted. Another didn’t get their show renewed. The news isn’t always bad, however. And in the case of artists like Sara Benincasa there’s a sort of unspoken understanding that five or 10 new project will be unveiled in the interim. The bulk of our hour-long conversation was dominated by Benincasa’s 2012 memoir Agorafabulous (now a newly-released audiobook), which tackles her struggles with agoraphobia, anxiety and chronicles her somewhat accidental early comedy career. Fittingly, we also discussed the ways in which the internet has affective creativity, leading so many to build a career from bits and pieces, rather than plugging away as some singular goal. Benincasa’s Twitter account is a testament to a writer who seemingly never slows down, and as I was readying this interview for a few weeks back, it occurred to me that we really ought to find a way to shoehorn fascinating new Kickstarter project into the mix. The comedian agreed to sit down for a rare Skype followup, setting aside 10 minutes during a teaching trip to Chicago. So there you have it, two interviews — or maybe one and a half — for the price of one. Which, incidentally, was free in the first place. What’s not to love?
If I’m being totally honest, it takes me a few minutes to shake the fact that I’m sitting across the table from Bill S. Preston as I unspool mic wires in the kitchen of some stranger’s Tribeca apartment. But if there’s stigma attached to having starred in a number of iconic films at a young age, Alex Winter shed it years ago. The career of the self-proclaimed “showbiz lifer” has been a fascinating one to watch over the years, as he transitioned from child/teen star to respected filmmaker, first through the uniquely absurdist comedic visions of his MTV sketch series Idiotbox and the Troma-esque feature Freaked to award-winning features like 2012’s Downloaded, a documentary detailing the rise and fall of Napster soundtracked by former RiYL guest, DJ Spooky. I caught up with Winter as he was in town filming the culmination of the followup, Deep Web, capturing the trial of Silk Road founder Ross William Ulbricht, which concluded three days before our conversation. Though the director was shockingly at ease despite having a number of interviews to conduct just over a month before the film’s premier. That film, which premiered this week at SXSW in Austin, complete with narration by once and future fellow Wyld Stallyn, Keanu Reaves, was, perhaps unsurprisingly, the focus of our conversation, from its birth as a Kickstarter campaign to the relationships he formed with Ulbricht’s family during shooting. Even still, it’s a wide ranging conversation from an accomplished director with no concerns about rehashing old gigs. And hell, when the conversation turns to a third Bill and Ted film, I’m not going to be the one to change the subject.
“All the bull**** of the music industry dying,” Brian Rosenworcel explains, his passion drowning out the din of the packed Manhattan bar, “all the babies, all the egos, nothing really matters except the fact that we’re honing in on a classic pop album.” The babies, incidentally are his own, the drummer’s primary focus in the half-decade since the last Guster record. Maybe it’s the beer speaking, but Rosenworcel sounds damn excited about about Evermotion, convinced that the band’s seventh record just might be its best. It’s the sort of excitement you don’t find in a group approaching its 25th birthday. Perhaps there’s something to be said for taking a good five years between records. Around halfway through, multi-instrumentalist Luke Reynolds takes a seat at our table — a somewhat fitting later arrival for the band’s most recent addition, having joined Guster in 2010, after the release of their last record, Easy Wonderful. It all adds up to a fascinating peek into the of day to life of band that’s been doing its thing longer than many of its fans have been on this planet.
Art Bell will forever hold a special place in my heart. Coast to Coast was a mainstay as I drove late at night to fill in 3AM slots at my college radio station. The show opened up the true potential of late night radio for my sleep addled brain, strange night dwellers relaying stories of encounters with werewolf spirits and unidentified flying objects.In its own way, Welcome to Night Vale captures that mystery of the Land of Nye, through bi-weekly stories from a fictional town in the Southwestern desert, where paranormal is the status quo. The series, co-created in Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, clearly struck a nerve with the podcast listening public, quickly skyrocketing to a number one position atop the iTunes charts, beating out mainstays like This American Life and Radiolab with its scripted idiosyncratic tales of a small desert community, exploring the possibilities of of a longform episodic podcast well before Serial took the nation by storm. Cranor and I sat down at a teahouse in Manhattan to discuss the roots of the show, the seemingly endless dark mysteries of the Nevada desert and how we’re only beginning to explore the breadth of possibilities the podcasting medium has to offer.
I’d have been content to spend the whole time talking about Thelonious Monk. There’s a picture of the composer wedged in one corner of the home office located in the lower of Vijay Iyer’s Harlem brownstone. But while he invariably comes up over the course of the conversation, there’s far too much ground to cover to spend too much audio card space dwelling on the matter. And you get the feeling, sitting with Iyer for longer than a few minutes, that’s he’s never been one to stay in the same place too long. His creative impatience has paid off, winning the pianist a MacArthur Genius Grant in 2013 and a professorship at Harvard last year. And on a more selfish note, he’s got me thinking a lot more about contemporary jazz, a genre I’d—perhaps foolishly—written off in some stubborn decision somewhere along the line to not listen to anything recorded after 1975. But Iyer’s thoughts and records like this year’s intricately-woven Break Stuff form an extremely compelling argument that there’s still plenty of ground to be tilled in both that genre and the more ancient realm of classical — though Iyer, unsurprisingly, is not hung up with those sorts of tags. In this wide ranging conversation, we discuss Iyer’s creative growth, from learning to play violin at age three to his rise as one of the most celebrated jazz musicians of the modern era — including an ever so brief detour that landed him degrees in math and physics at Yale and UC Berkeley.
Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant isn’t as easy book. As the title implies, in deals in topics few are equipped to candidly discuss: family, aging, mortality. But long time New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast valiantly marches headfirst into a memoir of her parents’ decline armed with humor, insight and desk full of watercolors. The result is one of the best comics of 2014. I met Chast in a strange cavernous room below a luxury hotel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, following a talk and signing. We sat on a bench, discussing her work as a fascinating collection of fellow comics luminaries like Art Spiegelman and Charles Burns milled about between appearances. Given the subject matter of her most recent book, I wasn’t entirely sure what tone the conversation would take, but quickly realized that as with her work, Chast has a knack for making even the heaviest of conversational topics immensely entertaining. During our 40 minute interview, we spanned the cartoonist’s entire career, beginning with an envelope dropped off at the New Yorker in 1978, stuffed with 60-odd submissions. All of these years later, the artist The Comics Journal called, “the first truly subversive New Yorker cartoonist” has had well over 1,000 cartoons run in that most prestigious of periodic institutions and one of the most touching graphic memoirs in recent memory.
The phrase “those who can’t, teach” runs through my head pretty consistently when I sit down in front of a blank page in an attempt to flex some creative muscles. It’s the curse of the critic, the curator, the teacher — anyone on the outside looking in who assumes their work, perhaps rightfully, will be subject to that added level of critique when they finally unleash it on the world. That, no doubt, is a large part of why it took Scott McCloud so damned long to bare himself in such a way. The artist has, quite literally, written the book on making comics — three of them, in fact. For decades, his work has been largely regarded as the gold standard for making and interpreting sequential art, a watershed moment in the academic approach to the form. Like so many on that side of the creative process, however, McCloud’s bibliography has long lacked a major, self-contained narrative work. In the 80s, the artist produced Zot, a manga-influenced light-hearted take on superhero books, but until The Sculptor, McCloud has never given himself a long-form opportunity to put into practice the rules he’d first committed to paper in the early 90s. A half-decade in the making, the new book shockingly lives up to the hype. It’s a masterfully constructed and pitch-perfectly paced take on the Faustian archetype with creative roots that reach back well beyond the publication of McCloud’s earliest work. I sat down with McCloud in a colorful room at First Second’s Flat Iron Building offices ahead of his speaking engagement at the 92nd st. Y to discuss The Sculptor, thinking critically about comics and the frustrating notion of the effortless artist.
I feel a bit bad entering the hotel room. There was a bit of a miscommunication on timing, and Legs McNeil is clearly quite comfortable lying in bed watching Law and Order. It’s an episode he’s already seen multiple times, a fact he lets be known by rattling off the entire plot in a couple of quick sentences, so he’ll be able to give me his undivided attention as Detective Briscoe successfully apprehends some pure. McNeil and frequent collaborator Gillian McCain finished up an talk at the Rough Trade record store earlier in the evening, discussing their latest, Dear Nobody, a posthumously published diary of troubled young teenager, Mary Rose, though the pair had devoted most of the New York City trip to a forthcoming book focused on Charles Manson, which McNeil promises will shed new light on the well trod story — even if he’s admittedly a bit cagey on the specifics. McNeil and McCain’s first — and best-known — collaboration was 1996’s Please Kill Me, an oral history of punk rock’s early years that is widely regarded as the definitive document of the movement’s New York City roots. It’s a story McNeil knows as well as anyone, as the co-founder of Punk Magazine, the iconic fanzine that give the CBGBs movement a name. These days the author no longer calls New York his home, having traded in the skyrocketing rents and disappearing culture for a far more bucolic life in a small Pennsylvanian town, where he lives, writes and catches the occasional rerun of Law and Order.
The list of people I’ve cohosted ska shows with is a short one indeed. It’s like going into battle with someone, really — a battle that trades the gunfire and mortar of trench warfare for song request from teenage Reel Big Fish fans, but a battle nonetheless. It’s the sort of experience that forms life-long bonds. Our careers have taken divergent paths since then — both of us eventually coming to the realization that ska radio DJ just isn’t the lucrative career path it once was. Jordan has made a name for himself in the Los Angeles comedy scene, thanks in no small part to his role in podcasts like The Sound of Young America and a titular co-hosting gig on the long-running comedy program, Jordan, Jesse Go. After a hilarious stint cohosting red carpet and movie junket interviews for extreme sport cable channel Fuel TV, Morris landed himself a position as a writer on the popular Comedy Central series, @Midnight, a gig that recently brought him out to New York City for a week. We caught up over some whiskey and a couple of microphones in between whirlwind schedule of podcast appearances at a bar in Astoria, Queens to talk success, superheroesvmovies and, naturally, ska.
Practically every episode of RiYL has had the same format — two people having a long form discussion into two microphones. Given my portable setup, things get a bit more complicated when a third is added in, as is sometimes the case when interviewing band members. It’s not that I don’t welcome more voices, of course, it’s just that I don’t really have the setup to accommodate such things. And then there’s the Birthday Boys. When I walked into the conference room at IFC, I was greeted by the entire sketch troupe — all seven of them. And as such, the first ten or so minutes of the conversation revolved around where we should position the chairs in order to get the maximum effective of seven different people sharing the same microphone. The good news is that thing pick up considerably from there, as the Odenkirk acolytes shed some light on their origin story and their seemingly overnight rise to fame in one of the funniest episodes we’ve ever recorded as the Los Angeles troupe discusses some of the bluer stories from the time they spent sharing the same house, Monkees-style. So sit back, relax and enjoy — but maybe put the headphones on if you’re planning on listening to this one at work.
I’m not sure where to start with one, but the gallery seems as good a place as any. It was, after all, the reason Jim Woodring was in New York for a particularly cold few days last week. Fine art has been the cartoonist’s focus off and on for the better part of a decade, bouncing between the world of galleries and the paneled pages on which he first made his name. It’s hard to believe, then, that the artist is only now having his first solo gallery showing. Honestly, though, that’s likely the least surprising revelation in this hour long interview. I defy you to have an extended conversation with the artist without having your mind blown a bare minimum of four or five times. Woodring has long used his comics work as a method for exploring his singular vision of reality, beginning in the 80s with the publication of Jim, which explored the artist’s dreams and long standing hallucinations in the form of autobiographical comics. His most beloved work, Frank, was a more fully realized world inhabited by assorted anthropomorphic beings, including the titular buck-tooth hero. The last time I spoke with Woodring, the artist was promoting Seeing Things, a collection of his charcoal drawings that presented an even more direct insight into his visions. At the time, the artist had seemingly turned his back on comics, but has thankfully returned to the medium with even longerform works. These days Woodring works in whatever medium best represents the images he’s attempting to represent as he walks through life, moleskin sketchbook in-hand. I ask to see what he’s been working on during his days in New York City and he happily stands up from his hotel bed and rummages around in his jacket pockets. Woodring is that rare and wonderful sort of interviewee who creates work that requires no additional discussion, yet is perfectly willing to discuss it ad nauseam when the time comes. The result is a frank and fascinating conversation tracing the course of the artist’s career, beginning with his very first frog hallucination.
“I feel like this band is what I’ve been search for during my entire musical career.” Some pretty strong words from someone who’s been in bands like Helium and Wild Flag — and, of course, there's the matter of all of those solo records. But when Ex Hex takes the stage a few hours after our interview, there’s no question that Mary Timony is in her element. Indie rock, post-punk — all of those subgeneres are rendered moot when the band hits the stage. The trio that tears through a dozen songs in front of a packed Mercury Lounge is a just a good, old fashioned rock band. Any lingering doubt is put to rest by the two song encore. Having expended all of the songs from their excellent debut, Rips, the band launches into a pair of covers — first Johnny Thunders, then the Real Kids. And everyone goes home satisfied. So, how did Timony arrive at such a state of rock and roll bliss? We reach way back to her days learning classical violin, up through the off-season that she spends teaching guitar to youngsters to get a full picture of her musical journey.
There are worse places to conduct an interview with Cory Doctorow than the press center above the New York Comic Con show floor. Granted, it’s still fairly low and a bit hectic that high up, but there’s want for conversational inspiration. In fact, if there’s a complaint to be had, it’s that 45 minutes is only enough to start scratching the surface. Boing Boing blogger, science fiction author, digital rights and privacy advocate, Doctorow is one of those rare instances of an interview subject with whom a few externally imposed conversational restraints might actually come in handy. But as a leading voice in the battle for freedom of information, Doctorow certainly isn’t going to be the one to enforce them. As it happened, the writer was on-hand to promote In Real Life for First-Second, a YA graphic novel produced with Los Angeles cartoonist Jen Wang that tackles the subject of human rights through the lens of online goldfarming. By sheer coincidence, I also happened to receive an email from McSweeney’s, asking if I’d like to speak to the author for his upcoming treatise, Information Doesn’t Want to be Free: Laws for the Internet age. The best option seemed to be to simply sit down and see where the conversation took us. The result is a free ranging discussion that manages to covered a whole lot ground, while leaving me wishing for just a few more hours.
The Greenwich Village loft space occupied by Toon Books is one part office space, part living comics museum. There’s a row of iMacs where most of the business is done, from filling orders to taking product shots, while just above on a second level balcony, a spool of bubble wrap roughly the size of a Volkswagen Beetle leans against a wall of bookshelves fit for a small library. There are decades of fascinating ephemera lining the walls, original comics pages, an in-store cardboard cutout for Chris Ware’s Acme Novelty Library and, most compelling of all, the Gary Panter classic comics head mashup painting that graced the first issue of the RAW’s second volume (1989’s “Open Wounds from the Cutting Edge of Commix”). It’s hardly a surprise, of course, that so many amazing pieces call the space their home. Francoise Mouly has been here for decades herself, since the days when she and husband Art Spiegelman first altered the course of the New York City avant garde comics community with a nascent anthology aimed at offering a publishing home to unknowns like Charles Burns, Joost Swarte, Ben Katchor and, naturally, Spiegelman, who used those pulpy pages to serialize a groundbreaking first-hand account of the holocaust starring a cast of cat and mice. That the Toon Books office occupies the same space is certainly no coincidence. Like RAW before it, the kids comics publishing company was launched to fill a perceived hole in the comics community in the wake of a media that had arguably overcorrected. Thanks to trailblazing works like Maus, the headline-ready phrase “comics aren’t just for kids” had quickly turned from rallying cry to cliche as adult-focused books rapidly became the norm in the intervening decades since RAW closed its doors. In the 00s, Mouly — by then the art director of The New Yorker — pitched a line of education kids bolstered by Jeff Smith’s epic fantasy masterpiece to Scholastic. By 2008, the idea gave way to Toon Books, an independent entity focused on books by cartoonists like Spiegelman, Smith and Eleanor Davis aimed at teaching kids to read and bolstered by detailed lesson plans aimed at reintroducing comics into a classroom setting. A half-dozen years later, Toons’ scope continues to grow, including the recent publication of a Hanzel and Gretel adaptation penned by Sandman scribe Neil Gaiman. I sat down with Mouly in the middle of Toon Books' cramped quarters to discuss the company's role in the ever-evolving perception of comics as a educational tool.
It must be around 11PM by the time Tom Scharpling arrives at my apartment, and he’s predictably exhausted. We’d scheduled something for earlier in the evening, but he found himself sitting though four hours of traffic making his way into Queens, making the executive to skip directly to the live podcast he’s appearing on a ten minute ride away. He’s tired, but ready. This is his moment of triumphant, one of the final few podcast appearances on a victory lap before ending The Best Show’s year-long self-imposed hiatus, resurrecting the beloved public radio program as an internet-only concern. It’s a world the comedian has (somewhat) lovingly ribbed, but later this month, after a dozen-plus years as a terrestrial radio show, WFMU’s former tent pole program joins the ranks of standalone podcasts. Scharpling and indie rock drummer turned comedy partner Jon Wurster have spent the past year piecing together the infrastructure for a proper relaunch, taking a much needed break to pursue other avenues of expression and reflecting on the program’s strange and steady transformation from music-based radio program to one of the purest and most unique pieces of on-going comedy in the last 20 years. The intervening months have also seen a number of Best Show-related projects that have afforded further reflection, including the suitably off-kilter Adult Swim one-off The Newbridge Tourism Board Presents: “We’re Newbridge, We’re Comin’ To Get Ya!” and the forthcoming Scharpling and Wurster Numero Group boxset, which collects 79 of the duo’s best bits over a massive 16 CDs. Even after all that, I still managed to squeeze around an hour or so out of Scharpling to talk social media, success and Donald Sterling.
The Hold Steady are just one of those bands — it takes all my will-power not spend the entire interview drilling down on the specifics of all of those story songs that populate the group’s backcatalog. After a decade of listening to everything they’ve ever got out, I’ve got my share of questions about Charlemagne and Gideon and the Cityscape Skins. In a funny way, sitting down with Craig Finn and Tad Kubler is like interviewing the creators of your favorite soap opera — albeit one that has unfolded obscurely, one album at a time over the course of ten years. It’s a soap opera no doubt inexorably tied to the lives of the musicians who create it, mirroring semi-misspent youths growing up in and around the upper midwest. I do have get a little nerd time in, after the recording, asking about the Party Pit, the one location none of the locals seemed to have heard of on my last trip to Minneapolis. A clearing in a suburban forresty area, according to Finn — developments that had never been fully developed, where the local kids went to drink just out of sight from their parents’ prying eyes. It’s hard to imagine another band getting so much creative mileage from a glorified hole in the ground that had likely been paved over decades before in the name of commercial developments. But, then, that’s precisely why there’s never been another band quite like the Hold Steady.
I’ve had questions for Matt Sharp since 1994. Hell, I had the guy’s visage on my wall back in the mid-90s, in the form of a blown of poster of the Blue Album, the first pop record of the era that really tapped into sensibilities of an indoor kid growing up amidst piles of X-Men comics. And if Weezer was the quintessential geek rock group of the mid-90s, then Sharp was its quintessential geek, an image he fully embraced for Return of the Rentals, the Moog-drenched debut of the newly band that would establish the bass player as a songwriting force in his own right. I’m not sure what I would have asked Sharp 20 years ago, but these days my questions revolve largely around notions of success: namely, how the musician’s multi-decade career has been impact by his early successes. After all Weezer’s first album put the band on the map almost immediately, and Sharp managed to strike gold yet again with The Rentals’ scoring their biggest hit to date with the their very first single, “Friends of P.” But while the band would never manage to recapture that success, subsequent albums have found the group’s rotating cast of players evolve into something far more exciting: a beloved and ever-evolving indie rock band, reinventing itself with every subsequent release. And Sharp has evolved right alongside them, severing his ties from the music world and moving to the rural south following the release of The Rentals’ terrific but moderately selling sophomore record Seven More Minutes. Over the years, he’s release heart wrenching solo work, played synths for indie darlings Tegan and Sara and even managed to reconcile things with Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo in the face of mounting legal concerns over songwriting royalties. But all the while, the Rentals have represented a sort of homebase, a safe place to which Sharp could return even after years of absence to produce something beautiful, most recently with this year’s understate Lost in Alphaville. We sat down ahead of the band’s triumphant return to New York City to discuss the musician’s idiosyncratic career.
There’s a whole of confusion when I arrive at the Mercury Lounge. By the time I emerge from the front of the club, on being informed that I was supposed to meet Mike Watt at “the boat,” the I spot the musician limping his was toward me on Houston Street. He’s longer the skeletal figure the late D. Boon described as a dimensionless “serious of points” of course, but the bassist is still a force of nature, now barreling through the crosswalk. I introduce myself and add that I’m more than happy to go back to the van, but Watt waves me off. “It’s fine,” he answers. “We’ll find something inside the venue.” And for once, I’m disappointed at the prospect of not following a stranger back to a van, the giant white Econoline at the center of year’s worth of road stories, behind whose wheel Watt conducted the lion’s share of interviews for the delightful 2005 documentary, We Jam Econo. We settle in a small alcove, where the instruments are stashed between sets. Watt takes a moment to settle in, compensating for a bum knee exacerbating by chronic touring and then asks in earnest why I’m interested in speaking with him. There’s no false modesty there. He is, after all, just one-third of Il Sogno Del Marinaio a trio formed with two Italian musicians from a younger generation marking yet another sharp turn in the Watt’s long and winding career path. “Because you’re Mike Watt” seems a strong enough answer, but instead I sit and listen as he maps out the band’s approach in typically democratic language, playing alongside two tremendous young musicians in a situation that requires continual musical growth, nearly three and half decades after the release of the first Minutemen LP. He may be limping slightly, but Watt shows no outward signs of slowing down, music or verbally — and hell, I’ll be the first to admit that for the first few minutes of our conversation, I have some trouble keeping up. As with his music, Mike Watt speaks in a language uniquely his own — a sort of Southern Californian free jazz approach to verbal communication that requires dialing into his very specific frequency. And as with everything else the music does, once you’re tuned in, it’s best to just hang on and enjoy the ride.
In 2013, The Polyphonic Spree released, quite possibly the best album, a decade into their existence — quite the feat for a band many had written off as little more than novelty the first time its 20-odd members took to the stage in matching robes. But, then, Tim Delaughter has built a career out of defying exception. The Spree itself was one of those crazy sorts of what ifs that artists sit around and discuss but rarely ever deliver on: as much a happening as a band, with two dozen members in choir outfits, born out of the dissolution of Tripping Daisy a damaged 90s psychedelic alternative act that recorded a handful of wonderful records that will forever be relagated to the Buzz Bin of history for its sunshine single “I Got a Girl.” Delaughter’s determination is the glue that’s held his deeply satisfying pop experiment together since 2000 in the face of financial strain and all of the other numerous logistical considerations that come with such a massive operation at a time when similarly positioned groups with roughly one-eight the band members struggle to make ends meet. The singer looks slightly worse for wear when we sit down upstairs at Brooklyn Bowl in a meeting spot oddly positioned just outside the ladies room before the doors have officially opened. But once the music starts — after a very brief but extremely wedding ceremony between audience members — the band puts on a show with every ounce of energy that defined the Spree in its nascent days. Over the years, unsurprisingly, members of the massive group have come and gone, but Delaughter has maintained his position as the excited and chaotic nucleus. The band has already outlived Delaughter’s previous group, and if Yes It’s True is any indication, The Polyphonic Spree still has plenty of life ahead of it.
I first met Glenn Tilbrook two years back in a hotel bar roughly 40 minutes or so outside of downtown Austin, Texas. I was nursing a whiskey after a long day’s work and overheard the older gentleman describing a corporate music gig in a soft spoken English accent. It took me longer than I care to admit that the guy sitting next to me was the frontman of one of the greatest pop group of the last 30 years. I’m also slightly embarrassed to admit that I slipped into interviewer mode a few times during that conversation — and subsequent conversations the following two nights, asking Tilbrook about my favorite Squeeze song, “Up the Junction.” A typically upbeat song musically, the number seems to take an abrupt tonal shift in lyrics roughly halfway through when, seemingly without warning, things shift from white picket fences to alcoholism and broken relationships. “I’d never thought of it like that,” Tilbrook answered. “I’d always just thought it was realistic. Fair enough. And really a pretty solid encapsulation of the musician’s approach to the world — a realist with the undeniable propensity toward perfect pop hooks. Fitting then, that things got a bit real in the tour bus parked just outside of the City Winery ahead of a Tilbrook solo show, as we spoke of matters of songwriting and life.
There are few people around I’d rather sit down and discuss music with for 45 minutes than Greg Cartwright. Beyond the laundry list of excellent bands he’s fronted, from The Oblivians to The Reigning Sound (and the dozens in-between), the Tennessee musician makes no bones about being a huge music fan himself. That fact has manifested itself in countless side projects like The Parting Gifts with Ettes singer CoCo and records like Dangerous Game, which saw the return of Shangri-Las singer Mary Weiss after a number of decades away from the music scene. Cartwright’s deep love of music affords him an impressive level of insight when it comes to discussing his own output over the years — and almost invariably leads us down all manner of musical rabbit holes in the interim. I sat down with Cartwright backstage at The Bowery Ballroom to discuss his near decision to retiring The Reigning Sound name and the band’s subsequent return to recording with the newly released Shattered, which finds him playing with a number of recent recruits and a new-found lease on life for one of rock and roll’s most exciting groups.
In amongst the throngs of costumed chaos that the Jacob K Javits Center on the Saturday of New York Comic Con weekend, we find a reasonably quiet corner to sit down and discuss life and art with Jillian Tamaki — “reasonably,” of course, being a nice way of designated that rare spot where one can talk without shouting. Maybe there’s some metaphor to be explored there about finding oneself in amongst the pop culture sound and fury that is the contemporary comics scene. And Tamaki has certainly carved out a place for herself, rising to prominence in the indie comics and YA scenes with Skim, a collaboration with her cousin, writer Mariko, that landed the duo on all manner of year-end best of lists. The two Tamakis joined forces again for 2014’s This One Summer, a teenage coming of age story that has once again landed the cousins in critics’ good graces. We had about 40 minutes before Tamaki had to rush off to a signing with First-Second, but we managed to cover a lot of ground, from collaborating to teaching, to surviving the Comic Con chaos. The questions about Adventure Time, sadly, will have to wait until next time.
Kevin Seconds is seated next to me on a small bench just in front of the Knitting Factory. As I prep the record and unravel the mic cords, fan after fan approach the singer. Some want autographs, some want to take a photo, some just want to say hello, but all have a story — mostly tales of seeing 7 Seconds way back when. Punk show stories that prove they’ve been there for the band for just as long as the band’s been there for them. Seconds has been living the stories since he was 19-year-old in Reno, one of two groups of brothers who helped bring the nascent hardcore scene to the biggest little city. At 53, he still appears grateful for every one. The band still tours, now and again, when Seconds isn’t putting out solo records or running a Sacramento coffee shop wife his wife, a fellow musician. In the past year, 7 Seconds even put a new record, Leave a Light On — it’s first in nine years. When he gets up on stage, the energy returns, though, granted, not quite the same level as the 19-year-old who started the group 35 years ago. But like his fans, those intervening decades have left Seconds with many more roads traveled and stories to tell.
I’d spoken with John Porcellino not all that long ago for Publishers Weekly feature discussing The Hospital Suite, the indie cartoonist longest self-contained work to date. Published by Drawn & Quarterly, the book is deeply personal, exploring long standing health concerns that caused Porcellino to be hospitalized numerous times over the years. Toward the end of that conversation, I asked the artist whether he’d be willing to meet up again for yet another interview when his book tour brought him to New York City. He’d only be in town for a couple of days for the Brooklyn Book Festival and would only have a couple of hours to spare, but he happily agreed to devote one of them to sitting down with me in front of a microphone yet again. Porcellino greeted me in the lobby of his Brooklyn hotel a few weeks later in a white t-shirt bearing the visage of celebrity cat, Lil Bub. He recognized me before I recognized him. He looked different than the last time we’d met, when I’d interviewed him on-stage at the Minneapolis Indie Expo a few years prior. Back then, he’d been in the throes of the health concerns at the center of his new book. “I’ve put on a little weight,” he said proudly. “I just turned 46, after all.” He didn’t look overweight, he just looked, well, healthy. He offered me an English muffin and apologized for tucking into the hotel breakfast that had only just arrived. He was making the most of his limited time as I set up the recorder. After five ten minutes of discussing the relative niceness of various hardcore frontmen (Ian MacKaye, Kevin Seconds and Keith Morris all get gold stars), any concerns I harbored about our ability to fill yet another hour’s worth of SD card with conversation melted away. For episode 75, here’s a wide ranging one with one of the most fascinating and longest lasting figures in the world of self-published comics. Punk rock, buddhism, nature, health and art all abound.
The best interview subjects and the best comedians share a common thread: brutal honesty. There’s a sense that nothing is off-limits in pursuit of the perfect joke or honest answer. Jason Nash, to his credit, is nothing if not honest — often times brutally so. About his career, about his life and, most frequently, about his marriage. In fact, the comedian recently released a movie on the subject — the fittingly straightforwardly named Jason Nash is Married. “The secret to a great marriage is very simple,” Nash sums the whole business up in a voice over at the end of the film’s trailer. “One person eats shit and the other person soars like a bird feeding off the lost dreams of the first person.” Nash and I sat down at the Sidewalk Cafe in Manhattan while the comedian was in the city promoting the film’s video on demand release. And just as one would expect, things got really real.
Two years ago, while on a take a half day off following a photography convention, I ran into Art Spiegelman on the streets of Cologne, Germany. Actually, I spotted his wife first, and it took me a moment to place the familiar face so completely out of context — New Yorker editor and former RAW Magazine partner in crime, Francoise Mouly. I reintroduced myself, having interviewed Art a year or two prior for a HEEB Magazine cover story. Spiegelman nodded his recognition and invented me to a talk his was giving at a modern art museum later that night. Naturally, I obliged. It was one of the more surreal experiences of my comics-adjacent life. What began as a conversation about the cartoonist’s beloved holocaust book Maus, soon transitioned into a slideshow featuring holocaust denial gag strips Spiegelman had drawn, answering then-Iranian president Amedinijad’s call in the wake of the uproar over the massively controversial 2005 Dutch Muhammed cartoons. Watching the German audience crack up at the work offered a fascinating glimpse at the coping mechanisms of a country whose psyche is forever changed by the topics Spiegelman has unflinchingly embraced. It was also a reminder that, along with being a vocal pundit in the ever-shifting give and take between “high” and “low” art, Spiegelman has long been a showman. His new touring act “Wordless” is the most direct manifestation of these two qualities. The event mixes multimedia, lecture, a live jazz band and conversations revolving around the influential if often forgotten pictorial novels of artists like Lynd Ward. Spiegelman spoke with me ahead of his upcoming tour about Ward’s on-going impact on his own work, the power of the visual medium and the often questionable pursuit of multimedia comics.
“Once a bugle stood in the window of a store that sold brass goods.” That’s the first line of The Magical Bugle, a short story written by a young John Darnielle after acquiring an old Royal typewriter for his seventh birthday. It was a line so good his father taught it to his Freshman composition students at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Darnielle has, it turns out, been a writer his whole life, and if that first sentence is any indication, he’s been always been a pretty good one. Since the mid-90s, he's been best recognized as the frontman and sometime sole member of The Mountain Goats, a southern California indie rock outfit defined by the musician’s intensely emotive vocals and narrative song structures that play out like two to three minute short stories. His early career was also marked by lo-fi recording techniques, with songs often taped directly to a cassette boombox. In 2002, Darnielle released Tallahassee, a concept album relating the story of a embittered Florida couple perpetually near divorce. The singer’s second LP that year, the record also marked the first Mountain Goats record to be performed by a full band. An arguable disappointment to some of his hardcore fanbase, the record was a perfect manifestation of Darnielle’s desire to pursue new challenges, having taken home recording to its logical conclusion with the equally brilliant All Hail West Texas. Wolf in White Van marks is a similar pursuit in some sense, the novel serving as a manifestation of his desire to perpetually challenge himself, though Darnielle’s decision to pen a novel likely didn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone familiar with his songwriting abilities — or any mid-70s Cal Poly composition students. Darnielle and I sat down in the Manhattan offices of his publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux, a veritable shrine to the written word, to discuss the novel, his life long science fiction and the importance of being able to throw things away.
In retrospect, there’s probably not a heck of a lot that we talk about here that Mike Doughty didn’t touch upon in Book of Drugs. His 2012 memoir is candid and rock — everything a rock and roll autobiography should be. As evidenced by the name, the book tells the musician’s tale through a series of inebriated anecdotes, including the rise and fall of his beloved 90s electro-alternative group, Soul Coughing. That’s not to say that there’s wasn’t plenty of good stuff left to talk about when we sat down for lunch at a Brooklyn Diner. Doughty has been keeping busy with his solo career in the years since, including a recent crowdfunded effort that found the singer songwriter reimagining a number of hits from those heady Buzz Bin days. Doughty also plays around the city as much as possible these days, a willingness to perform that has made him a regular on comedy bills all over a city — a challenging but welcoming environment he insists he prefers. In fact, it was a recent appearance performing at a friend’s Greenpoint stoop sale that brought the singer-songwriter to my attention once again. We talk about the beginning of his career during the twilight of the record industry, surviving in New York City and how stumbling into a show with then unknown Elliott Smith and Stephin Merritt changed his life and music forever.
“It’s funny how life can change on a dime.” That’s how Whitney Matheson put it, asking whether I was still planning on running this interview. That’s the downside, I suppose, of stockpiling these interviews, though in my defense, these conversations tend to have a shelf life of a bit longer than month. When the news came out last week that USA Today would be pulling the plug on Matheson’s beloved pop culture column Pop Candy after 15 years, the thought of killing the piece never actually occurred to me. We touched upon some really interesting topics during our conversation in a midtown Manhattan tea shop. And in some ways, it’s perhaps even more important in light of Pop Candy’s end. What really struck during the interview was a conversation about a piece Matheson wrote about Seinfeld, which the titular comedian referenced during an interview with the writer. The essay was part of a larger Pop Candy project exploring the ways in which popular culture effects us on a personal level, with Matheson revealing how the iconic sitcom helped her survive a bout of depression. Matheson touches on similar themes in the Pop Candy farewell letter she published on her site today: Every major event in my entire adult life took place while I wrote it, too: marriage, three moves, the losses of loved ones, my daughter’s birth. With each of them, I received a stream of unwavering support from thousands of people I’d never even met.It’s a good conversation about the power of popular culture to connect, inspire and persevere.
1993’s The Donovan of Trash, just might be Eric Goulden as his most unhinged — which is, naturally, saying a lot for a guy who’s borne the “Wreckless” qualifier since the late 70s. It’s rough and fuzzy — a cardboard box was involved percussion at one point in the process. It’s a sort of lost low-fi, shambolic masterpiece, finally back in print for the digital age, alongside its contemporary, the also terrific Le Beat Group Electrique. The reissues, thankfully, shine additional light on period of Goulden’s career that seems forever destined to take a backseat to the early Stiff Records output that gave the world his best known hits, “The Whole Wide World” and Semaphore Signals. The singer took it upon himself to shed even more with a short US solo tour that capped off with an intimate but sufficiently energetic set at Manhattan’s Mercury Lounge, power through a set on less than pristine instruments older than many of this in attendance. I sat down with Goulden in the short space between soundcheck and showtime to discuss his long and fascinating career on the fringes over a bowl of overpriced New York City chili.
Harvey Danger was one of the last of the Buzz Bin bands, in those waning when major labels were still forces to be reckoned with and MTV rotation was all it took to cement a song’s status as a generation-defining hit. Fresh out of college, the band scored its one major hit with “Flagpole Sitta,” the second track on the band’s debut record, which, all told cost around $3,000 to record. Through some combination of unpopular choices, one major flub on the part of some crew member for 120 minutes and poor choices from above, the band would never manage to recapture such success, in spite of, quite arguably, releasing two far stronger records before disbanding for good in 2009. In the days since, Nelson’s seemingly tried his hands at everything, playing keyboards for indie darlings The Long Winters, taking on backup vocal duties for the likes of Nada Surf and Death Cab for Cutie, taking roles in a number of films and writing for Seattle’s alt-weekly, The Stranger. Last summer, Nelson even returned to songwriting, releasing his first solo record, Make Good Choices for the tiny Seattle label Really Records. Nelson and I met up while he was in New York to help a friend work on a musical, also using the opportunity to play an intimate show downstairs at Brooklyn’s Union Hall, along with his new wife Shenandoah Davis, who accompanied him on piano as he worked through solo songs and the occasional Harvey Danger number. We spoke about gauging one’s own accomplishments in the wake of massive success, occupational diversification and how to take a backseat to someone else’s creative force.
There’s always been some degree of confusion over what, precisely, constitutes The Beat. Here in the States, the group has long added the word “English” to its name, so as to avoid confusion with the contemporary Paul Collins’ power pop project. In recent decades, things have only gotten trickier as the band’s two frontmen have pieced together their own versions of the group. If you go see The Beat in its native UK, it will likely be the project led by toaster Ranking Roger and his similarly named progeny. Here in the US, lead singer Dave Wakeling retains the name, heading up a revue of the band’s greatest hits, with a few choice cuts from his followup band General Public mixed in for good measure. It’s a strange thing, of course, to hit the road playing decades old songs without the aid of any original members, but Wakeling, to his credit, puts on a tremendous show each night for packed houses, middle aged women inviting themselves on-stage as the opening notes of “Tenderness” ring out during the encore. Of course, that he’s still able to tour on songs like “Save it For Later” and “Mirror in the Bathroom” is a testament to some quality in their DNA that has made the music outlive subsequent generations of ska bands, who have come and gone like so many porkpie hats. Wakeling and I sat down in the back of the band’s tour bus to discuss longevity, life, Margaret Thatcher and what keeps bringing him back to the songs that made him famous.
A short one this week because, well, Peter Diamandis is a busy guy. Recorded at a financial tech conference in Manhattan, we managed to get 15 minutes alone with the X Prize and Singularity University to discuss what he refers to as “the most extraordinaire time in human history” and the role he’s played in pushing rapidly advancing scientific and technological breakthroughs even further.
It’s a hot one out there today. Come, have a seat on the couch in Julie Klausner’s fancy Manhattan apartment, while we discuss podcasting and writing for television series — and I spend way too much time explaining how I’ve just never been into musical theater. Oh, don’t mind the cat hair. You took your Claritin today, right? I’d attempted to sit down with the comedian for some time — at least two podcasts ago. Not podcast episodes, mind you, entire podcast series. Every time I’d asked, she was either living on the opposite coast in a TV show writer’s room or otherwise knee-deep in some other project. On the upside, however, there’s plenty to talk about. When we sat down, Klausner had just finished filming a TV pilot with Billy Eichner, the Amy Poehler-produced Difficult People about two struggling New York comedians. It’s not autobiography, of course — Klausner seems to be doing just fine. And besides, when she’s searching for a more direct method of venting, she’s always got her weekly podcast How Was Your Week to turn to. Other topics discussed herein include: David Rakoff, my unexpected turn as a Mike Love apologist, the downside of bearing your soul and whether or not Ben Folds is this generation’s Billy Joel.
Over its 17 year existence, The Moth has shaped the age-old art of storytelling into something uniquely its own, a style as instantly recognizable as any music style or movie genre. And like a great song or movie, there’s something in a perfectly executed Moth story that leaves the listener feeling as though they could never imitate such a perfect feat. Of course, if the organization’s show runners are to be believed, just about anyone with a story and the willingness to be coached by a few professionals can do precisely that. And that, really, is one of The Moth’s greatest attributes: the ability to balance populism with transcendence. In some sense, the podcast’s host Dan Kennedy embodies exactly that, at least the way he tells the story: jobless, furnitureless, recently dumped and newly sober, stumbling into a storytelling night so many years ago. Until I heard perform the story of a magazine-assigned trip to Indonesia to search for an elusive nine-foot reticulated python on the Moth’s weekly podcast a couple of months back, I knew little about the guy beyond what he sounds like attempt to convince a large internet audience to redeem an Audible coupon code. Turns out, just as one would hope from the host of The Moth's weekly podcast, Kennedy is a man brimming with stories — and over the years, he’s gotten pretty good at telling them. In fact, he’s got a few books to his name. There’s Rock On, which revisits the 18 months he spent working marketing for Atlantic Records and Loser Goes First, a memoir of Kennedy’s uncanny knack for stumbling into interesting situations — not unlike the one that brought him to the Moth in the first place. But first a conversation about Roger Daltrey's mic technique.
Every time I speak to Peter Kuper, the conversation invariably turns to New York — or, as is often the case, begins there. It’s my own fault. I’ve got this insatiable need to ask fellow residents, artists in particular, what keeps them in the city’s orbit. Kuper is a particularly interesting case study, having left the city — and country — in 2006, for a life in Mexico.
It was, as one might, expect, a multifaceted decision to move his entire family down to Oaxaca, in part an attempt to expose his daughter to another language and culture — and certainly leaving the country at the height of George W. Bush’s second term was seen as a net positive for the oft political cartoonist. A few years later, the Kupers found themselves back in New York, but the experience generated, amongst other things, the lovely Diario De Oaxaca, a sketchbook diary chronicling Kuper’s time in Mexico, immersed himself in the area’s stunning counter-cultural murals. More recently, Kuper returned to the book’s publisher, PM Press, in hopes of helping to anthologize World War 3 Illustrated, the progressive comics anthology he co-founded with fellow New York cartoonist, Seth Tobocman. The process was a touch more complicated, and when we sat down to speak at the MoCCA Arts Festival back in April, the duo had recently completed a successful Kickstarter campaign. Even outside the long-running anthology, Kuper’s career has long been both fascinating and diverse, from multiple Kafka adaptations and his 2007 semi-autobiographical Stop Forgetting To Remember to an on-going stint as Mad Magazine’s Spy Versus Spy artist. So, you know, plenty to talk about.
“It’s not usually this crazy,” Lizz Winstead apologizes, greeting me at the door of her Brooklyn apartment alongside two overstimulated dogs. Inside, a small staff helping prepare Lady Parts Justice for its upcoming launch. The site is the latest in a long line of projects that straddle the sometimes treacherous line between comedy and politics. Winstead’s impressive CV includes co-founding both The Daily Show and the since-departed left-wing radio station Air America, on which she co-hosted a program with Chuck D. and then relatively unknown politics wonk named Rachel Maddow. In the wake of a series of standup shows throughout the midwest, the comedian opted to focus her political efforts on a primary political cause — on that has been at the forefront of a number of recent news cycles due primarily to unfortunate turns of events. Built with the help of a recent Indiegogo campaign, Lady Parts Justice aims to sign light on the struggles of reproductive rights through a series of well-produced, star-studded comedy videos and some cold, hard facts. It’s an issue that’s been at the front of Winstead’s activism since the product of a conservative midwestern upbringing found herself at an abortion clinic at age 17, an experience she writes about at length in her 2012 essay collection, Lizz Free for Die. We grabbed a couple of chairs coated in dog fur to discuss the cross section of politics and comedy and how some funny YouTube videos might some day effect change.
When we sat down in the East Village tenement apartment Hell has occupied since 1975, the conversation turned turned to writing. His aforementioned memoir pretty well covers the years beginning with his birth up through the end of his music career, and as Hell made pretty clear early on in our conversation, he’s not particularly found of being asked the same question twice. Between last year’s I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp and all that goes on between the iconic red and white covers of Please Kill Me, there’s seemingly little about Richard Hell’s relatively short music making career that hasn’t been written. Save for an outing with members of Sonic Youth under the banner Dim Stars, the man who played such an instrumental role in defining the aesthetics and voice of New York City punk had largely retired from the music game by the mid-80s. It’s a tough proposition when speaking to an artist who’s been in and out of the public eye since the mid-70s, and it’s no doubt at least part of the reason Hell seemed to balk at my initial interview request. With his latest book having just been released in paperback, however, Hell agreed to sit down and discuss his career as a writer, from his early days in poetry to the novels Go Now and Godlike and his 2013 autobiography.
It’s catch up time with cartoonist/musician/general purpose raconteur James Kochalka. It’s been a few years since the both of us we’re in the same room at the same time — even one the size of New York City’s 69th Regiment Armory — so there’s plenty to discuss with the Johnny Boo author. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, the last time I saw the guy was immortalized in his American Elf strip. Seated on a pair of folding chairs just outside the army recruiting office during the weekend of the MoCCA alternative comics, start things off by discussing why Kochalka really doesn’t leave the house all that much these days. Things immediately take an unexpected turn to a conversation about his childrens’ shared love of Archie’s Sonic the Hedgehog comic, which is not only still a going concern in 2014, which the cartoonist contends is “one of the most complicated works of literature ever created,” so take that Leo Tolstoy. Also on the list of topics: the star-studded Superf*ckers animated web series, the ups and downs of working on kids comics and we get a peek into the epic masterpiece that is his unrealized film script. Seriously, let's make a Kickstarter and get that thing made.
Where does one go after the fake Zach Galifianakis talk show they produce books the leader of the free world? If you’re Scott Aukerman, you sit down on a gold-painted couch in the lobby of a swanky New York hotel to discuss such things with a Boing Boing podcast.
From Between Two Ferns, we move on to the other fake talk show in Aukerman’s life, Comedy Bang! Bang!, which recently kicked off an excellent third season on IFC. We discuss how the ubiquitous format manages to offer the perfect springboard for cutting-edge comedy. And, of course, it wouldn’t be an RiYL Scott Aukerman interview if we didn’t discussing at least one of the projects that never made it.
This time out, it’s Privates, an NBC pilot about a family of detectives co-written with fellow Mr. Show alum B.J. Porter. As always, Aukerman imparts some life lessons — namely what to do when something you’ve poured your heart and soul into fails to break through, including some sage wisdom passed down to him by Louis CK.
I’ve encountered plenty of musicians who’ve made me come around on certain songs and even musical genres, but off the top of my head, I can only think of one who’s caused me to rethink an instrument I’d largely written off. It’s not that I’ve ever been averse to the cello, it’s just that, in all my years of music listening, I’d rarely given the instrument a second thought. Erik Friedlander first came onto my radar by way of the Mountain Goats, opening and playing alongside Johns Darnielle and Vanderslice at the old Knitting Factory in Manhattan, plucking and bowing on the band’s then-recent LP, The Sunset Tree. Over the years, his work has continued to surprise me, jumping around from modern classical to avant-garde jazz and playing alongside music pioneers like John Zorn and Laurie Anderson. It’s Friedlander’s solo work I’ve been most taken with, however, most notably Block Ice & Propane, a jaunty sort of tribute to the RV trips he’d taken across the country with his parents as a youth and last year’s Claws & Wings, which plumbed the opposite end of the emotional spectrum, as the artist coped with the recent death of his wife of 22 years, dancer and poet Lynn Shapiro. I met up with Friedlander in his Manhattan apartment to life, loss and the cello over a couple of cups of tea.
After our interview, Ray Wylie Hubbard and I grab some coffee across the street. He asks me what new bands I’m listening to, and I rattle off a couple — for whatever reason, it’s always a tough question to answer on the spot. Hubbard’s already got his answer locked and loaded, of course: The Bright Light Social Hour. He tells me to go on YouTube and check out the song “Detroit,” the same instructions he’ll give the audience at City Winery when he takes the stage in 90 minutes. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was getting myself into when first walked backstage to meet Hubbard, the 67-year-old outlaw country survivor. An elder statesman of the same scene that produced the likes of Waylon Jennings and Townes Van Zandt — one of the few who’d lived to tell the tales. What I found was a man who was more than willing to relate some of those gems, many still fresh in his mind as he puts the finishing touches on an autobiography due out next year. The man who, most famously, penned “Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother” has always been a storyteller, a trait he’s been putting to good use as of late, creating some of the best music of his long career over the past two decades. And thankfully, the way he tells it, he won’t be slowing down any time in the near future.
I tried to interview Paul Hornschemeier back in February, on getting a bit of last minute news from his on-again, off-again publisher Fantagraphics that he would be in the city for an event at the Strand bookstore. We missed one another, like podcasting ships in the night, but the cartoonist promised that he would be back soon enough, visiting to work on some project or another. He delivered on that promise a couple months later, at the MoCCA independent comics festival, where he tapped me on the shoulder and introduced himself. I’d had no idea he was going to be at the event — then again, neither did he. After all, he didn’t have a book to promote, but opted to show up on a bit of a whim. That’s not to say, of course, that Hornschemeier hasn’t been keeping plenty busy — in fact, given the number of irons he has in the fire, it’s something of a minor miracle he’s managed to carve out a weekend at all. In addition to a handful of graphic novels, the Hornschemeier makes music, animates and has recently tried his hand at writing and directing films. Just last week, his latest project hit Kickstarter with a splash. The short "animated crisis" Giant Sloth is well on its way to its $25,000 goal, with around $19k pledged as of the writing of this — a fact no doubt helped along by a voice cast that includes Paul Giamatti and comedians Jason Mantzoukas and Kate McKinnon.
There’s something slightly surreal in reading a book, knowing the final chapters will dovetail with your own life, if only slightly. By the end of Marc Spitz’s new memoir Poseur, the rock writer found his way into the masthead at SPIN Magazine, and for a few months during his reign as senior writer, I found myself there as well, albeit as lowly intern who’d moved across the country with dreams of one leveraging his love of the written word into New York City rent money. Sarah “Ultragrrrl” Lewitinn plays a major role in those final chapters, first as a coworker and then as a partner in crime. When I arrived at the magazine, hers was a rare friendly face in amongst grizzled rock journalism veterans navigating an anemic industry, inviting us plucky little interns to rock shows and club nights, once sneaking me into a Jarvis Cocker DJ set at her weekly brit-pop night. By the time I got to New York, Ultragrrrl was everywhere, breaking bands like The Killers, managing groups like My Chemical Romance and appearing on the cover of The Village Voice in full ironic martyr mode, a Photoshopped shot of Lewitinn chained to stake as flames lapped at her designer dress. Finishing Spitz’s book, I shot her an email, proposing an opportunity to catch up on mic after a decade or so, and Ultragrrrl jumped at the chance, inviting me over to the East Village apartment building where she’s resided for the majority of her time in the city.
“I’m sorry if I can’t look you in the eyes during the interview,” Keith Morris apologizes, taking the microphone from me. I’m slightly baffled by the statement until he lays down on the couch, feet facing me, mic resting on his chest. It takes a few minutes to shake the feeling that this is some sort of on-the-record counseling session. Morris isn’t feeling 100-percent. Not too surprising, really, for a 58-year-old hardcore singer grappling with diabetes and emphysema, but the mere fact that he’s made it this far is an accomplishment in and of itself — and then there’s the fact that, in a couple of hours, he’s set to take the stage with his new band, OFF. For the time being, however, the former Black Flag/Circle Jerks frontman is attempting to exert as little energy as possible, as we sit in the Bowery Ballroom’s backstage, in amongst assorted foodstuff that looks to have been plucked from the shelves of a nearby health food store. But while Morris will barely move a muscle during the hour-plus conversation, his mind and mouth hardly ever stop. There’s plenty of ground to cover, of course, from the early Southern California hardcore days of the late-70s/early-80s to his recent rebirth, creating arguably his best and most immediate music since Golden Shower of Hits. And then there’s the health concerns and the lawsuits and the time spent on the Black Flag Facebook page defending his old pal, Henry Rollins. As for their old bandmate, guitarist Greg Ginn, however, Morris isn’t likely to be rushing to defend him on social media any time soon.
With this episode, Marc Maron becomes RiYL’s first-ever repeat guest (forgetting for a moment, the last-minute double-header from Dave Hill), and it’s appropriate, really. Last time felt rushed. Granted, there’s no shortage of places to catch the comedian these days, but a 15 minute time limit just doesn’t feel sufficient.
IFC gave us a bit more time to spread out, this go-round, though I had a few reservations off the bat. For starters, I was warned this was the last of a day full of interviews. It was a day or two before the premier of the second season of Maron, his self-titled sitcom about a self-obsessed comedian hosting a podcast out of his cat-filled Los Angeles garage.
Maron's 24 hours in New York began by stepping off a redeye from Los Angeles early this morning, into the gauntlet of media interviews, culminating with our 6PM chat in the lobby of his hotel. Turns out jetlag can do wonders for a free-flowing conversation, and things actually went along pretty well.
By way of background, Maron and I first met years back when I appeared on his Air America video podcast, turning him on to the strange world of electronic cigarettes, back when the things were little more than glowing blue novelties imported from Europe. It didn’t really stick.
From there, it’s a conversation about drug addiction, Las Vegas, writing loosely veiled autobiography and, you know, podcastin'.
Ben and Ellen Harper are in New York for a few days ahead of a trip to Europe. It’s a tour the former had scheduled for some time now, 17 “acoustic evenings” beginning in England, through Belgium, the Netherlands, then onto Germany, Switzerland, Italy and France. With the dates kicking off a week prior to the release of his new record, however, it only made sense to bring the album’s collaborator along for the trip. Out this week, Childhood Home marks the first album length collaboration between Ben Harper and his mother Ellen, a lifelong musician who runs Claremont, California’s The Folk Music Center. The combination music store / museum is Southern Californian institution, opened by her parents in 1958, which has hosted everyone from Leonard Cohen to Taj Mahal in its 50-plus years of existence. A single mother, Ellen put her professional musical ambitions on hold to raise three boys. Now back on the road, she’s stepped into something far removed from those nascent coffee shop folk days, thanks to Ben superstardom. Today, the pair are staying at the Ritz, just below Central Park, doing phone interviews with international press and making a handful of television appearances ahead of the new record.
Chris Hayes arrives carrying a sandwich in a brown paper bag. When I make some offhanded joke about the host of a primetime cable news show having to get his own lunch, he thinks nothing of it, just appreciating the chance to get away for a moment. Not that he doesn’t love his job, of course. It takes a very specific sort to host a show like All In five days a week, a few if any are as perfectly suited for the 24 hour political news bring as Chris Hayes. Over the past four years, the bespectacled pundit has worked his way up from guest on the network to the host of MSNBC’s 8PM slot — a position that puts him directly up against Fox’s O’Reilly Factor. Hayes kindly took 30 minutes out of his busy TV show hosting / sandwich procuring schedule to discuss his career and the increasingly prominent role of cable news in our always-on society.
“She Loves the Sunset” from 2008’s Blame it on Gravity is a peppy little number about love and loss. It’s a good song from a good record, but hardly a standout in the Old 97’s catalog. What makes the track so fascinating is its origin story, and while I’m generally one to wince at the prospect of discussing 9/11 three minutes into an interview with the front man of an alt-country band, the events that led Rhett Miller to write the track entirely on a toy güiro borrowed from a marionette in the wake of the biggest attack on US soil are fascinating indeed. Among other things, it’s the story of a musician compelled to make music at all costs, a story that plays out several times on the band’s forthcoming record Most Messed Up. “I’m not crazy about songs that get self-referential,” Miller sings in the lead off track. “And most of this stuff should be kept confidential.” But if it doesn’t break his own rule, “Longer Than You’ve Been Alive” and a number of other tracks from the LP certainly bend it as the band tackles precisely what it means to have been playing in a band for longer than many of its fans have been here on Earth. Miller and I took up that conversation over some whiskey and plate of pepper backstage at New York’s City Winery.
In April of last year, Image Comics published Maximum Minimum Wage, a hardcover compilation of Bob Fingereman’s long-running Fantagraphics series. To this day, Minimum Wage and the subsequent collection Beg The Question remain the cartoonist’s best known work, telling the close-to-home tale of an artist struggling with work, love and life in New York in the 90s. After a 15 year hiatus spent on various comics projects and a trio of prose novels, Fingerman picked up the story again in January with a new series bearing the same name, set three years after the end of its predecessor. I met up with Fingerman in the Manhattan apartment he shares with his wife to discuss returning to a project after nearly a decade and a half and how to get back into the mindset of younger, poorer time.
When 3D Systems CEO Avi Reichental swung by the city to address the Inside 3D Printing conference in Manhattan, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to discuss the technology. The company has been at the forefront of the space since 1986, when co-founder Chuck Hull invented the process of stereolithography, which gave rise to the world of industrial additive manufacturing. The company’s been a player on the business side since then and has also spent the last several years developing a consumer facing arm for the quickly growing world of desktop 3D printing. There’s a lot of ground to cover here, of course, but I think we make a valiant effort, tackling the the viability of consumer technology, the on-going patent wars and the recent controversies surrounding 3D printed weapons.
I can’t think of a single cartoonist whose work I’ve watched progress from such an early stage. And it was no doubt that exact drive to put his stuff out in the world that helped Box Brown improve by leaps and bounds, culminating with the forthcoming release of his first full-length book, Andre the Giant: Life and Legend, which examines the man behind one of professional wrestling’s largest legends. Brown and I met up at a coffee shop next door to Locust Moon, my favorite comic shop in Philadelphia. We discussed giving it all up to pursue your dream — and, like zine publisher (and friend of Brown) Robert Newsome before him, the cartoonist was more than happy to talk about his lifelong love of professional wrestling with a podcast host who’s only just beginning to familiarize himself with the subject.
My knowledge of sabermetrics is elementary, at best. I know that it’s utterly transformed baseball analysis and helped get a lot of plush clubhouse jobs for an army of number crunching math geeks. I know that it involves a close examination of traditionally undervalued statistics like on-base percentage and foul balls. I know it’s caused writers and managers to rethink the amount of emphasis put on traditionally overvalued indicators like batting averages and strikeouts. Ben Lindbergh, editor in chief of leading sabermetrics site Baseball Prospectus sits down with me the week prior to opening day in a Manhattan cafe blaring the hits of the 90s to discuss how a group of statistic geeks have transformed our national pastime.
Molly jokingly noted recent online accusations that this so-called “Crabapple” person was actually a collective of people posing as a single person, and it’s easy to see why. She’s been plenty busy as of late, between art exhibitions, murals, illustrations and an increasing interest in social justice, which recently led Rolling Stone to call her “Occupy [Wall Street]’s greatest artist.” It’s a fascination that has taken her around the world, to unexpected locations like the courtrooms of Guantanamo Bay.
I met Shlomo last week at New York's City Winery, just before settling into another RiYL interview. The 6'4 mustachioed Israeli was making sure everything was all right with the the Old 97s' Rhett Miller, ahead of his show that night. Fascinated by meeting my first real life Shlomo (surprising, perhaps, given my own ethnic makeup), I Googled the venue's booker the following day, stumbling upon a Wall Street Journal story from 2012 about Israeli baseball -- a subject which I, admittedly, know nothing about. At the top was an image of the booker, full-beard, in a pre-pitch lineup. Down below, the paper described Lipetz as, "Israel's biggest baseball star." A day later, we sat down during a Bob Mould soundcheck to discuss how one earns such a title. Lipetz is characteristically modest, pointing out that he's the best at something in a country that seemingly barely knows it exists. According to the Journal story, some 1,000 of Israel's population of eight million play the sport. Still, how many of us can say we're the best at anything?
From Guided By Voices to Nada Surf, if you can think of a seminal indie rock band from the past 20 years, there's a pretty decent chance Doug Gillard's put in time among their ranks at some point or other. The journeyman guitar player also has a accomplished solo career, with his latest, Parade On, due out in a few weeks. Fittingly, the song's every bit as diverse as one would expect from an artist with a seemingly endless parade of projects. Gillard joins us over some green tea and bourbon to discuss the Beatles, Ohio and playing with some of the best rock and roll bands going.
From Guided By Voices to Nada Surf, if you can think of a seminal indie rock band from the past 20 years, there's a pretty decent chance Doug Gillard's put in time among their ranks at some point or other. The journeyman guitar player also has a accomplished solo career, with his latest, Parade On, due out in a few weeks. Fittingly, the song's every bit as diverse as one would expect from an artist with a seemingly endless parade of projects. Gillard joins us over some green tea and bourbon to discuss the Beatles, Ohio and playing with some of the best rock and roll bands going.
Come spend 45 minutes in the Red Hook living room shared by Hospitality's singer and percussionist a day after the launch of their sophomore record. The expectations are elevated this time out, after the healthy amount of buzz generated by the band's self-titled indie-pop debut. You wouldn't know it from outward appearances, however. All is calm in the Brooklyn band's apartment. Dinner is on the stove and Michel is halfway through Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung. The tour, after all, is still a few months away.
Colin Spoelman quite literally wrote the book on home whiskey distillation. Is a subject he knows a thing or two about, having transformed the output of a single internet-purchased pot still into a major microdistillery -- New York City's longest running, no less, at the ripe old age of four. It's a terrific book -- though it did firmly crush any fantasies I had of running my own apartment-based distillery. Thankfully, however, there are more terrific whiskies in the world than ever before, thanks to a recent explosion in craft distilleries. The list certainly include Spoelman's King's County, maker of some fine bourbon and the smoothest moonshine I've ever tasted.
Over the past 30 years, Rodney Anonymous has become a sort of Philadelphia landmark like Ben Franklin's house or that big cracked bell. If you get a chance to visit him during your time in the city, it's the sort of thing you won't soon forget. I met the once and future Dead Milkmen frontman at Philly's top goth/industry record store, at which point we adjourned to a nearby tea shop, so at not to interrupt the employee's Magic: The Gathering tournament in the rear of the store. Three decades after forming punk's most hilarious band, Anonymous hasn't slowed down (save for the occasional slipped-disc of old age), nor have his opinions dulled a bit.
When the next generation finds itself knee-deep in an occult revival, who better to call that Jason Louv. My two-time former roommate swung by New York City a while back to teach the kids in Bushwick a thing or two about magic. Louv has written a number books on the subject, including 2005's Generation Hex for Disinfo. His most recent volume explores his newfound fascination with the genetically modified organisms of Monsanto.
Strange to think, more than twenty years after Maus became the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer, the concept of comics as academic pursuit still seems a foreign one. Standing in front of Columbia's impressive collection of bound sequential art, however, the day when comics are widely regarded as some of the finest literature and art available doesn't seem too far off after all. When Karen Green started work at the university, Columbia's comics collection was a scant three titles. Now it's an impressive thing to behold.
Join The Onion's former Features Editor and current Adult Swim employee for a frank discussion about buying Firehose records on eBay after a dream told him to do so.
Every show can't be a skafest -- unless, of course, you're Dan Potthast. We swung by the MU330 frontman's Santa Cruz apartment, and happened to catch Skankin Pickle / Chinkees singer Mike "Bruce Lee" Park. That means you get two third-wave ska legends for the price of one.
David Cope is a professor emeritus at the University of California and a pioneer in the world of computer created music, having worked to perfect classical compositions on machines since the days of punch cards. He's also exactly the sort of person you'd like to sit down with for an hour to discuss the rules governing music, math, art and the universe.
The Boing Boing / Make Magazine / Cool Tools editor and I found the quietest corner we could at the recent Engadget Expand event in New York to discuss the importance of curation in the digital age, the lost art of print media, podcasting and the magic of Art Bell.
Marie Javins is a comics writer, world traveler, art school professor and friend to Daniel Johnston. She ventured into the city to discuss all of the above and more.
Recorded at Java Joe's in Athens, GA, the editor of the Atomic Elbow zine gives us a long overdue lesson about the world of professional wrestling.
Still aching for some hot Dave Hill action after that last hour-long interview? Good news: we squeeze another half hour out of the comedian on hearing the news that he would be taking over the Tuesday night slot on WFMU from Tom Scharpling's beloved Best Show.
Come, sit down and enjoy some light jazz trumpet at a Greenwich Village coffee shop with Dave Hill. The Tasteful Nudes author joins us for what turns out to be the first of a two-part interview. We'll be following up with the comedian soon to discuss his upcoming WFMU show. In the meantime, we talk suits, cable talk shows and piloting a pedicab through the streets of New York.
We pulled up a lawn chair in the Will Cullen Hart's cat-infested backyard in Athens, GA to discuss the Circulatory System / Olivia Tremor Control frontman's two upcoming records, the recent loss of his lifelong friend and songwriting partner Bill Doss and his on-going battle with MS.
The lead singer of the Dismemberment Plan makes some pretty solid arguments in favor of getting Bob Mould to appear on The Simpsons. And with that you know pretty much everything you need to know about this conversation.
Spend an hour or so at Seattle's Whisky Bar, discussing the life of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger with Hate cartoonist Peter Bagge. Seems as good a use of your time as any.
We sit down with the Battling Boy cartoonist at one of his favorite New York City haunts to discuss just about everything. There's mythology, filmmaking, giant robots and superhero archetypes.
We happened to swing by the Electronic Frontier Foundation's office the same day the digital rights organization filed a challenge to Personal Audio's podcast patent suits. Thankfully, the EFF's Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents Julie Samuels and her dog Daley took the time to meet with us.
Engadget's former editor-in-chief (and my former boss) sits down at a noisy Manhattan diner to discuss the state of tech journalism and his nascent novel writing career.
We meet the Burn Collector author at a cafe in Berlin to discuss teaching comics, the legacy of World War II, surviving as a writer and cold war era punk rock.
The Eye of the Majestic Creature artist / Prince Rupert's Drops bandmember joins us in Union Square to discuss mixology, performance jitters and nostalgia for New York City record stores.
In this mini-episode, Comedy Bang Bang co-host Reggie Watts discusses not practicing, live experimentation and the most serious song he's ever written.
This American Life's director of operations takes us behind the scene at the radio show to talk NPR, podcasting and working down to the wire.
The Boulevard of Broken Dreams cartoonist joins us to talk collections, aging and getting a late start.
Lisa Hanawalt's comics are about horses and cats and genitals and things. Some of her less racy work has appeared in The New York Times. Here we talk about pitching TV shows, making minis and the depressing dangers of working from home.
The One More for the People author discusses fundamentalism, fears of the apocalypse, zine making and life with an incurable disease.
As one might expect from the original Gang of Four bass player turned interactive brand strategist, Dave Allen's got something fascinating to say about just about everything, from cars to music royalties to the fireplace on Led Zeppelin's jet.
Paul "DJ Spooky" Miller took time out of his insanely busy travel schedule to meet us at Union Square. Naturally, we talked traveling, staying busy and city living.
When a famous comedian tells you that he worked on "Shark Tale," that fact pretty much become your sole focus. This is that story.
Marbles is that sort of book that makes you want to immediately spark up a conversation with its creator. Thankfully, that's what podcasts are for.
The Present Shock author joins us to discuss the death of the narrative, the importance of books and how we're misusing technology.
The former Fart Party cartoonist talks about being a former cartoonist and spending her days breaking into abandoned hospitals.
New York vs. LA, the future of podcast and how Iggy Pop will always take is shirt off, whether you ask him to or not. It's a shorty but a goody, with WTF's Marc Maron.
Nothing like digitally recording an interview in an analog mecca like Tiny Telephone -- but as John Vanderslice says, it's all about the right tool for the right job. We talk the importance of day jobs, Third Eye Blind, professional assholes and the consequences of crossing Mountain Goats fans.
We're still waiting for our copy of Larry Livermore's new book to ship. In the meantime, however, we've managed to coax some Spy Rock memories out of the Lookout Records cofounder. from growing up to the music of the MC5 and mountaintop encounters with teenage members of Green Day.
The Too Much Coffee Man creator talks the bible, Berkeley High and drinking at airports.
America's radio sweetheart joins us from his studio in downtown Los Angeles to discuss the dirty business of podcasting.
John Roderick's less inclined to play the role of the cross country troubadour in the heady days, but the indie rock elder statesman has slipped quite comfortably into the role of podcast philosopher. Come sit with us, on his leather couch.
The one-time Iggy Scam discusses life in New York, self-publishing, the art scene and the death of his alter ego.
Mary Roach writes wonderful books about pooping in space and vaginal bunnies. She is, unsurprisingly, an equally delightful podcasting guest.