Episode 1623 - Will Oldham
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks how's it going i'm mark maron this is my podcast wtf welcome to it are you all right out there wow right every day holy shit
Marc:I'm dealing.
Marc:I'm doing okay today.
Marc:I try to stay engaged, entertained, self-aware.
Marc:I try to allot myself about, not even intentionally, about, I don't know, two to three hours of relentless catastrophic thinking and panic a day.
Marc:And then I actually exhaust myself and it frees me up to do other things.
Marc:I don't know if that's a healthy process or spiritual or practical.
Marc:It just seems to be something that happens.
Marc:That exhausted peace of mind.
Marc:But look, today on the show, I talked to Will Oldham.
Marc:Now, this guy, he's been on my periphery for a long time, man.
Marc:You may know him as Bonnie Prince Billy.
Marc:He records under that name for most of his stuff.
Marc:He's put out more than two dozen studio albums, and the latest is called Purple Bird.
Marc:He's also an actor who's been in movies like The Bike Riders, Wendy and Lucy, and Old Joy.
Marc:But also, Matewan, remember John Sayles?
Marc:And Will Oldham, as a kid, actually played the child preacher in that.
Marc:And it's a performance that before... I never... I found out that he was that guy years later after I knew about or I'd heard about or listened to Bonnie Prince Billy.
Marc:Because...
Marc:That role, when he was a kid, as that preacher kid, was haunting and intense and menacing.
Marc:He's a fundamental part of that movie.
Marc:And he's like, I don't know.
Marc:I talked to him about it.
Marc:I can't remember how old he said he was, but probably under 20.
Marc:And it was memorable.
Marc:But now, Bonnie Prince Billy is one of those guys, not unlike some of the other Drag City artists, that label...
Marc:who just are very prolific, put out a lot of work.
Marc:And a lot of it is great.
Marc:I don't even know how you'd really classify Will.
Marc:I guess there's a folk element, but he's not beyond doing kind of rock-ish records.
Marc:And he's not beyond collaborating with people from other types of music.
Marc:And he's quite the artist, this guy.
Marc:And I was a little... I don't know if I was nervous...
Marc:Talking to him.
Marc:But I'd met him once before and I felt like there was a tension there.
Marc:But I can create that with anybody.
Marc:And not even in the moment.
Marc:Totally in my head.
Marc:But I didn't know if we would get along.
Marc:He had done some musical work with a guy I know.
Marc:Him and Matt Sweeney did that amazing record, Superwolf.
Marc:And that's where I sort of, I'd gotten the Bonnie Prince Billy records before, and I'd listened to them here and there.
Marc:But the Superwolf record really kind of blew my mind.
Marc:And I talked to Sweeney about that.
Marc:But then I just started getting into Will and into Bonnie Prince Billy.
Marc:And there's a lot of really lyrically and musically beautiful work with a lot of different types of musicians.
Marc:And so when the opportunity came up to talk to him,
Marc:I did.
Marc:I had this conversation that you'll hear today.
Marc:And it's a very it's pro art.
Marc:It's pro self-expression.
Marc:It's pro poetry.
Marc:It's pro finding your voice in what you do.
Marc:It's pro-community.
Marc:It's all those things that we still have to believe are important to maintain humanity and civilization the best we can, communicating through expression and art and engagement.
Marc:Can you dig it?
Marc:Can you dig it?
Marc:It's a good conversation.
Marc:I'm glad we met.
Marc:He actually came out to see me down in Louisville.
Marc:when I was there, because that's where he lives, him and his wife and some friends.
Marc:And they're kind of like...
Marc:Rural groovy.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Tonight, I'm in Oklahoma City at the Tower Theater.
Marc:Tomorrow night, I'm in Dallas at the Majestic Theater.
Marc:Saturday, I'm in Houston at the White Oak Music Hall.
Marc:And Sunday, I'm in San Antonio at the Empire Theater.
Marc:Then Durham, North Carolina.
Marc:I'll be at the Carolina Theater of Durham on Friday, March 21st.
Marc:Charlotte, North Carolina.
Marc:I'm at the Knight Theater on Saturday, March 22nd.
Marc:And I'll be in Charleston, South Carolina at the Charleston Music Hall on Sunday, March 23rd.
Marc:Then I'm coming to Illinois, Michigan, Toronto, Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York City for my special taping.
Marc:Go to wtfpod.com slash tour for all my dates and links to tickets.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So what's going on?
Marc:You guys watching the shows?
Marc:Are you watching the shows?
Marc:Are you watching the White Lotus?
Marc:Are you watching the Severance?
Marc:Or am I kind of pigeonholing myself into a bubble of people that watch those shows?
Marc:I don't know what everybody watches.
Marc:But I also rewatched A Face in the Crowd.
Marc:If you got Criterion, again, is this a bubble?
Marc:Am I in a bubble of people that do this?
Marc:A Face in the Crowd is on Criterion Channel.
Marc:Now, this is a, I believe it's a Bud Schulberg script.
Marc:It's Elia Kazan directing, and it's Andy Griffith from The Andy Griffith Show.
Marc:You know, if you've ever watched reruns of that, I don't know how old you are.
Marc:I mean, I never saw it originally.
Marc:It's really old, but he's he was just sort of a aw shucks guy, you know, on the sheriff.
Marc:And Don Knotts was on there and a little Ron Howard.
Marc:And it was kind of a nice, simple life kind of, you know, you know, kind of goofy, but but not menacing.
Marc:But a face in the crowd.
Marc:is one of the best movies about show business ever.
Marc:And specifically about the sort of megalomaniacal celebrity and the impact of that.
Marc:It was a different culture and certainly a different business in the way it operated back then.
Marc:But the movie...
Marc:It's menacing Griffith.
Marc:It's evil Griffith.
Marc:It's Griffith, Andy Griffith, the human monster that you understand and get.
Marc:So the character is genius.
Marc:You got to watch it.
Marc:I told Nate Bargetsy to watch it because I think he'd enjoy it.
Marc:It's funny because I was talking to Nate and I was like, you like Andy Griffith?
Marc:He's like, of course, I love Andy Griffith.
Marc:I'm like, you ever seen evil Andy Griffith?
Marc:Well, I want Nate to watch it just because there's a moral lesson in it about show business.
Marc:Look at where this can go when you get huge.
Marc:I guess it was a little passive aggressive, but I think it was a friendly and honest thing to do.
Marc:But I would recommend that movie to anybody while it's out because it's not...
Marc:One of those movies you can find easily.
Marc:I guess you can if you're looking for it.
Marc:But it's right there on Criterion.
Marc:And it's about a guy, you know, just kind of a... Is the word itinerant?
Marc:He was just a drifter, a drunky drifter with a guitar in a jail cell.
Marc:And some local reporter in Arkansas, Patricia Neal, is doing a radio show of people telling their stories about their lives.
Marc:And she goes into this jail and interviews...
Marc:Andy Griffith's character, who's called Lonesome Rhodes.
Marc:I think his name's Larry.
Marc:And he's just such a charming, kind of yarn-spinning, you know, kind of a rural character.
Marc:And it's just about from that moment where they talk in that jail cell and people respond to him on the radio, his kind of journey through stardom to becoming the biggest star seemingly in the country.
Marc:And then one of his sponsors wants to maneuver him into
Marc:And his charm into helping a politician get elected president.
Marc:And then it's just sort of the megalomaniacal character versus his new power and what he does with it.
Marc:And can he handle it?
Marc:And there's a genius kind of I think might be the first performance of Lee Remick.
Marc:And Walter Matthau plays a writer.
Marc:And it is such an amazing and thorough examination of fame and demagoguery through celebrity that exists.
Marc:It might be the best one.
Marc:So I recommend watching that fucking thing.
Marc:But then again, I'm in show business and I feel like I have to watch it every few years just to make sure I understand the world I run in.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So look, Will Oldham is Bonnie Prince Billy.
Marc:There's a new Bonnie Prince Billy album, The Purple Bird.
Marc:It's now available wherever you get music.
Marc:This is me talking to Will Oldham.
Marc:I'm just like getting over a minor trauma that happened just minutes before you got here.
Marc:I was putting some honey on a cracker with peanut butter on it, and I just cleaned out the top of Dr. Bronner's all-in-one soap to get the, you know, when it solidifies in the top.
Marc:I guess some of that was on my finger, and I assumed it was honey.
Marc:And I took a nice hit of lavender Dr. Bronner's all in one.
Marc:Yeah, but I felt like it was going to be healthy in the long run.
Marc:I didn't feel like it was going to hurt me.
Guest:I think it'll be good for you.
Marc:Because of Bronner's.
Marc:Do you use Bronner's?
Marc:I've used it forever.
Marc:Forever, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I learned it about a camp in southern Indiana in the 80s, and we would go out in the woods, and that's what everybody brought with them to bathe in the- The little ones.
Marc:In the rivers.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We were kids.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And it stays with you forever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's the only thing I like to use.
Guest:But lavender, I have a thing with lavender like some people have with cilantro.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Where I don't find it a pleasant flavor.
Guest:I don't find it a pleasant smell.
Guest:And I'm sure that it has some weird genetic thing.
Guest:It's not, I don't think it's a bad smell.
Guest:It just doesn't work for me.
Guest:Like some people can't stand cilantro and I think it's wonderful.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Cilantro, coriander.
Marc:Great.
Marc:But some people repelled.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I think I have that with lavender.
Marc:Well, I don't think you should eat lavender generally.
Guest:Yeah, but they put it in cupcakes and cookies and things like that.
Marc:In your fancy town?
Marc:They put some lavender in the cookie.
Marc:Everywhere, yeah.
Marc:My wife likes to cook with it sometimes.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Marc:In sweets, mostly sweets, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I guess it's a nice hint of this or that.
Marc:It can be, but... So, dude, you know, we met once, and somehow in my mind I decided we have problems, but we don't.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We'll see at the end of this conversation or halfway through it.
Marc:We do.
Marc:Do you think maybe we do?
Marc:Who knows?
Marc:Who knows?
Marc:There's a class divide.
Guest:There's a continental divide.
Guest:Is there?
Guest:Yeah, there's big Rocky Mountains in the middle of the United States of America.
Marc:Where do you come from?
Marc:Arizona, is that right?
Marc:I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Marc:New Mexico.
Marc:And...
Marc:But I'm Jersey, genetically.
Marc:Oh.
Marc:New Jersey.
Marc:Righteously.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:I mean, you got, like, it's something to be proud of.
Marc:I think so.
Marc:Jersey.
Marc:It wasn't always, but now I own it pretty heavy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I own the, because I, you a Springsteen fan?
Marc:Some.
Marc:Some?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like, well, this is a good question.
Guest:I liked his interview.
Marc:With me?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That was pretty intense.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:But Nebraska have an impact?
Yeah.
Guest:It seemed like a natural thing to pick up when I was a kid, and it never hit me, but have you ever heard, I'm sure if they haven't put a box out of it, they will, but there's maybe 30, 40 songs recorded around the same time.
Guest:Those really do it to me, but the Nebraska record, it doesn't do a thing, except for My Father's House.
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, it just seems like that model, I mean, you were a kid still?
Guest:When I heard it, I was probably 14 or 15, something like that.
Guest:And it had come out maybe five years before.
Marc:But it was one of those things where it's like, he's just doing it in his bedroom.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's a big deal.
Marc:Well, I get it.
Marc:Wait, wait.
Marc:Is that a big deal?
Marc:No.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean.
Marc:I know what the big deal was because I just appeared in the movie as Chuck Plotnick.
Marc:And I read the book.
Guest:I read the 33 and a 3rd Born in the USA, which covers a lot of that stuff.
Marc:Did Warren Zanes write that one?
Marc:I don't remember who wrote it.
Marc:Warren Zanes wrote the book on the making of Nebraska, Deliver Me From Nowhere.
Marc:And I think the issue at that time was that after he recorded those things that were supposed to be demos-ish, he didn't know what he wanted to do with them.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That they tried it every which way to do it with the band, to do it this way or that way.
Marc:And he decided that they tried to record the songs in the studio with just him on the guitar.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But they wanted the recordings that he did on that TIAC four track.
Marc:But they couldn't figure out a way to transfer it onto vinyl with the quality necessary.
Marc:Necessary.
Yeah.
Guest:To make millions of dollars or what?
Marc:Well, I don't think that was, I think that was the big problem is that, you know, he was poised to be, he'd already started Born in the USA.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And they were like, this is it, Bruce.
Marc:And he's like, I want to do that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I'm going to do these songs.
Marc:I don't want my face on the cover.
Marc:I don't want to.
Guest:I would have picked different songs out of the, out of the repertoire that I've heard from bootlegs.
Guest:I would have chosen different songs.
Guest:Well, the song Nebraska always bothered me because it's a song about what's it about?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Isn't it about the killers?
Yeah.
Guest:No, it's about the movie Badlands.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Masquerading is a song about the killers.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Which I don't, I mean, it's like, I don't want to hear Bruce Springsteen sitting in a movie theater.
Guest:If he wants to write a song about Charles Starkweather, I want to hear that.
Guest:But I don't really care what his experience sitting in a movie theater watching Sissy Spacek twirling a baton is.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:I do know what you're saying.
Guest:It's like not a song about what people say it's about.
Guest:It's a song about Terrence Malick's vision of Charles Starkweather with Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek.
Marc:Right, and that gave him the vibe.
Marc:Gave him the vibe.
Marc:That drove the whole record.
Marc:But it's not an earnest vibe.
Marc:It's not an authentic vibe.
Guest:Except there is, on all those other songs, there's a lot of pretty intense stuff, and My Father's House is pretty intense.
Guest:Maybe just that selection for me just didn't necessarily do it.
Guest:And at the time, if you're listening to, as he was, like Suicide, he was listening to Suicide.
Guest:If you're listening to certain records at that time, it's not a very intense record.
Guest:Nebraska is not an intense record compared to the things that he was even listening to or that we might have been listening to.
Marc:Right, to that first suicide record.
Marc:And he gives them credit.
Marc:He doesn't own that.
Guest:Oh, my gosh, yeah.
Guest:No, a Jersey boy friend of mine, Alan Licht, sent me from like a live acoustic tour in the 90s, maybe.
Marc:And he does, what did he does, Johnny?
Marc:Dream Baby Dream.
Marc:Dream Baby Dream, yeah.
Guest:And he does it at the end of his, and he talks about Alan Vega, and he plays this long, beautiful harmonium version.
Marc:It's so gorgeous.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, that's good that he gives the credit.
Guest:I once, because I was in a movie in my teens called Matewan, Jersey movie.
Guest:Your role, your performance in that, it like haunts me still.
Guest:So John Sayles made it and he'd also made like Gory Days, at least, video for Spring Seas.
Guest:After.
Guest:Around that time.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So, yeah.
Guest:So a woman who worked with Springsteen was around and eventually became his manager, Barbara Carr.
Marc:Yeah, maybe.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I think that's right.
Guest:And once I was on a plane coming in Australia from Melbourne to Sydney and then Sydney, I was going back to the States and Springsteen was on the plane.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And he...
Guest:he had played the night before in Melbourne and I had played the night before.
Guest:And he was walking with this woman that I had met in West Virginia and I was like, hello, Barbara.
Guest:And she said, hey, Will.
Guest:She's like, Bruce, this is this guy that I had told you about.
Guest:And then she introduced me to Bruce.
Guest:She peeled off.
Guest:We're walking through the airport and Springsteen's like...
Guest:Heard you made a pretty good record.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I was like, yeah.
Guest:I was like, yeah, we competed last night in Melbourne.
Marc:Talked for a minute.
Marc:He was so sweet.
Marc:He was, and he was on the set of the movie the whole time.
Marc:Oh, well.
Marc:I didn't have a big part, but anytime they said cut, I could just go talk to Bruce.
Marc:How will it be as a motion picture?
Marc:Good question.
Marc:My question about it is really, I mean, the story is compelling about trying to get this sound and his tortured nature at that time, trying to get that sound and then eventually getting that sound.
Marc:But is that story something regular people are going to be engaged with?
Marc:And I guess enough people love Springsteen that maybe they will.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Your new record's fucking great, buddy.
Marc:I appreciate you saying that.
Marc:I really love it.
Marc:There's a couple of songs on there.
Marc:The Breathing Song.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Sometimes it's hard to breathe.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Love that one.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:And I like the gun song.
Marc:Yeah, right on.
Marc:Do you feel like elated or destroyed?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Exalted.
Marc:Exalted or destroyed.
Marc:Exalted or destroyed.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So when you're writing that, do you feel like, are you like, yes, exalted or destroyed?
Marc:Because the poetry, I have to assume you're writing constantly.
Yeah.
Guest:In periods of time.
Guest:There's, like, periods that are writing periods and then periods that are revision periods.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah, and the revision periods are longer than the writing periods.
Marc:But how does it work for you?
Marc:Because it's all, you know, you've sort of maintained this relatively haunting but elated tone for a long time.
Marc:And they must all come from the same place, which is your heart and mind.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But you don't carry a little notebook around.
Guest:I do.
Guest:I mean, I carry a tiny notebook around, like a little memo pad.
Marc:Yeah, like this, yeah.
Marc:And you just scribble things?
Guest:No, most of it is like if I'm away from my real notebook, which is the like whatever six inches by nine inches one or whatever it is, six inches by eight inches, something like that.
Guest:That's usually at home.
Guest:I don't trust most things that happen when I'm traveling in terms of my brain.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And musically, like when we're performing, I trust that, but I don't trust like trying to write something.
Marc:But things don't just all of a sudden come, a little noodle, a little riff, a little turn of phrase, and you write it down on the plane and you're like, can't trust that.
Guest:I just don't, yeah, I think I wouldn't put my mind in that position, I guess.
Guest:It's got so much to do when we're out on the road playing music.
Guest:My brain has way too much to do already.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Sometimes there'll be a song that we're playing and I'll stumble on a line and I keep stumbling on it night after night and think, oh, I guess that means I have to rewrite that line and then rewrite that line.
Marc:Oh, something that just happens organically and you change it?
Guest:It happens organically that it's screwed up and I can't remember a line even though I've tried to sing it 70 times or something like that.
Guest:I just stumble every time and I even write it on the set list.
Guest:I'll write the line down and think, why am I doing that?
Guest:Obviously that line doesn't want to be in the song.
Guest:So I got to listen to it.
Guest:Got to listen to it.
Guest:I got to listen to whatever delivered me that line to begin with.
Guest:And then it's fun because you're in shape anyway.
Guest:You know, you're in fighting shape, but you just don't have the time to sit down.
Guest:But one line, I can work on one line with the idea that I'm going to throw it in the song tomorrow night.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And do people notice or just you?
Guest:I have no idea what anybody notices or thinks.
Guest:I mean, it's been really fun talking about this Purple Bird record because people are, I don't,
Guest:the songs are really easy to get into.
Guest:And so people are talking about so many specifics about specific songs.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's really exciting.
Marc:Well, it's like an interesting record because like the production on it and like, you know, you have probably like 40 records.
Marc:You drag city guys put out a record every few months.
Marc:I try to think of it as one a year.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:But, uh,
Marc:But it feels like a legit country record.
Marc:Is that wrong?
Guest:Well, I mean, it's funny because it's a legitimate Nashville record.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And it's made within the system, the Nashville system, in a way that has been in practice for decades.
Guest:Okay, so in terms of engineering and the guys you use?
Guest:Engineering, the musicians, and then the style of...
Guest:like the way we did it Ferg the producer yeah Ferguson he calls his team of guys yeah um and we all get in the studio and there's 12 songs we're gonna do them in two days and I sit in the corner play the song on a guitar for the keyboard player Mike Rojas he writes down the progression right and Xeroxes it hands it to everybody and then we play it wow and then we might do up to
Guest:If we're doing four takes, we're in trouble.
Guest:Four to five takes, we're in trouble.
Guest:So we do six songs roughly one day and six songs the next day.
Guest:And that's a Nashville kind of style of recording.
Marc:And that's pre-pop country music.
Marc:Old school Nashville.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, people thought it was pop country at the time.
Guest:We think of Conway Twitty as hardcore, and people would have laughed at that idea.
Marc:Yeah, they were making pop country.
Marc:But as opposed to the layers of sound, three or four producers, let's bring an R&B guy in to lay down a beat.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No.
Marc:No.
Guest:But Ferg has made a lot of country music.
Guest:He's probably started his professional career maybe in the late 70s, I think.
Guest:And as a producer and as an engineer and as a player sometimes.
Guest:And to him, he announced to me, he said, Willie, let's not, I don't want to make a country record.
Guest:And I said, that's fine with me.
Guest:So to Ferg's ears and probably to mine, we did not make a country record, but I know...
Guest:that to the rest of the world, just like I knew when I, when I left Louisville, Kentucky as a teenager and moved to the Northeast for a little bit, everybody said I had a really strong accent and I never thought I had an accent.
Guest:I don't even know if I have one anymore, but at the time they would, they kept making fun of me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's like, Oh, I guess, you know, I guess this is country music.
Guest:It just doesn't, it's just the music that we played with, even with the conscious directive from Ferg to not make a country record.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:People will still recognize it as a country record.
Marc:Well, I think it must have been the production.
Marc:I mean, there's a couple of songs.
Marc:Except Berg said he didn't want to make a country record.
Marc:No, but I mean, I think a couple of the songs structurally are kind of country.
Marc:And then there's other stuff.
Marc:I think the Gunn song almost sounds like it's got kind of a Leonard Cohen gypsy groove to it almost.
Marc:That's interesting.
Guest:Berg said polka.
Marc:He said he wanted it.
Guest:When he heard the lyrics, he said, we have to do this as a polka.
Guest:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I think it was just a production thing because even with those later Steve Earle records, he's not necessarily playing country music, but he's a country guy.
Marc:I suppose, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, a little bit.
Marc:But your decision to do it that way was you wanted to do the Nashville thing?
Guest:No, this record was...
Guest:Kind of 110% just wanting to do something with Ferg and sort of play by Ferg's rules.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And almost every idea about making the record, including the writing of the bulk of the songs, came from ideas that Ferg had about how we should do things.
Marc:So when you're doing this, there's a whole discovery process that happens outside of your song.
Marc:A whole discovery process, yeah.
Marc:Because your control is limited to like, well, this is how I play it.
Marc:This is the words.
Marc:And then these guys, they get their charts done and they pass them out and you're like, what's going to happen?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:What was dreamy about this, it was kind of, I would imagine many people's, it was my fantasy and I didn't even know it was my fantasy because I've been doing this for a living for 30 years and I haven't ever quite had this experience.
Guest:But the fantasy of...
Guest:You know, we put the songs together.
Guest:We started putting the songs together, writing them without the intention of necessarily making a record and then decided to.
Guest:So then there's these songs.
Guest:I practice them at home, revise, practice, revise.
Guest:And then we get in there.
Guest:And at that point, all I am is the...
Guest:the featured vocalist you know i'm the singer whatever you call it the you know the artist on the session right whose name goes on it but that's my job and everybody else's job is to sort of buoy the things that my voice does yeah and that's how it like played out you know for get up there get on that mic and sing and everybody will be there and they're going to go where your voice goes was it amazing
Guest:It was so amazing.
Guest:It was just so amazing.
Guest:First time experience?
Guest:I had done a thing.
Guest:So the first time I went to Nashville was in the early 2000s.
Guest:I was trying to make a record in Shelbyville, Kentucky with my younger brother where we used to make records out there.
Guest:And it wasn't working.
Guest:I called the late David Berman to say, what should I do?
Guest:And he said, you should go to Nashville and work with this fellow, Mark Nevers.
Guest:I went down and worked with Mark Nevers.
Guest:We made a very simple, we were making a very simple record with me playing guitar, singing my brother Paul playing bass.
Guest:And then I said, well, what if we wanted to have a woman singing on this record?
Guest:Mark said, well, I'll just call the Singers Union and what do you want?
Guest:I said, somewhere between Sandy Denny and Dolly Parton.
Guest:So he calls and describes it.
Guest:They send over this woman named Marty Slayton and she's just...
Guest:the most fluent, efficient, amazing, expressive musician that I'd ever worked with in a studio because that's her job.
Guest:That's how Nashville people work.
Guest:In Louisville or other places where I've been, the artists are all scrappy.
Guest:You all know each other.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you go to the coffee shop and you're like, you want to do this cut?
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:It's not that urgent.
Guest:Everybody has other jobs.
Guest:But she, this is what she did.
Guest:And Mark saw my jaw drop and
Guest:He said, we can make a whole record like this if you want with just this kind of... And so maybe a year later, I went back and he put together an A-team of Nashville Session guys because Nevers had been in the industry in the 80s.
Guest:And so that was the first... And I brought a bunch of songs that we'd already recorded as like Palace songs in the 1990s.
Guest:And I was just like, I'm going to make these Bonnie Prince Billy songs with this Nashville...
Guest:team of folks.
Guest:And I witnessed the insanity of Nashville Session musicians.
Guest:The magic.
Guest:And their influence in the magic.
Marc:Oh, so that's interesting because that's why people go there.
Guest:I mean, it had to be the same when Dylan went down there.
Guest:I'm sure.
Guest:I'm sure, yeah.
Guest:I mean, if you listen, yeah, he goes in with his interesting songs, right?
Guest:At that time, his whatever.
Marc:Was it Nashville Skyline?
Guest:Was it Blonde on Blonde?
Guest:Might have been first because I think that was a Nashville record.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Mix a mix of some of his some of like the Hawks, the band and the Nashville people.
Marc:But just the idea that, you know, you're in a music city like that has its own history.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And legacy.
Marc:It's not like L.A.
Marc:where they're doing everything.
Marc:I mean, Nashville is doing Nashville.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And there's these people like, yeah, I can get you exactly what you're picturing or hearing in your head.
Guest:Or I'm going to actually get you something that's better than what you hear in your head.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Because you didn't even realize what's possible.
Marc:That we have these people on call.
Guest:Yeah, that we have these people on call.
Marc:That's fucking amazing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But when you start, let's go through a little of the history because I know that you don't do much acting anymore.
Marc:No.
Marc:And at some point you just turned on it.
Yeah.
Guest:Well, also, music schedules and acting schedules don't really line up.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:If someone casts you, I don't know how much notice they give you.
Marc:Sure, sure, sure.
Marc:It might be weeks.
Marc:It might be.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And playing music, usually someone will say, hey, can you do three days on this movie in two weeks?
Marc:And I'll say, no.
Guest:No, yeah.
Guest:But in 14 months, I can.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And they're like, oh, we'll be done.
Guest:Yeah, it'll be out by then.
Marc:Yeah, the movie will be.
Marc:You can go see it and the part you would have played.
Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But early on, where'd you grow up?
Marc:In Kentucky?
Marc:In Louisville, Kentucky.
Marc:I'm going to be there.
Marc:Do you live there?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Are you doing a movie?
Marc:No, I'm doing a comedy.
Marc:Cool.
Marc:Where at?
Marc:Good question.
Marc:Is that where the Baumhart Theater is?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:I'm at the Baumhart.
Marc:Oh, that's a beautiful room.
Marc:That's a pretty decent hip city.
Guest:It's like an octopus asked about the ocean.
Guest:There's not much I know how to say about Louisville.
Marc:But what was your experience growing up there?
Marc:You can do that.
Marc:No, it squeaks.
Marc:Was your family in the arts?
Guest:My family wasn't necessarily... My mom had a classic woman's transitional role of growing up.
Guest:She had a really...
Guest:Crazy childhood.
Guest:But then ultimately she was brought up in a kind of a conservative family and she married someone that she knew from Louisville and then she stopped working in order to raise kids.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it turned out that she wanted to – that she was an artist.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:She just did her art at home.
Marc:Like what medium?
Guest:She drew – the first thing she started doing when I was, I don't know, 10 or so was –
Guest:waking up and drawing her dreams oh wow with markers yeah in and and and she created kind of a scary avatar for herself so she would just draw one scene usually from each dream yeah and but she was represented always by this certain avatar and then other people might be and and there those are very intense intense drawings
Guest:Did she do any of your covers?
Guest:Yes, she did.
Guest:Yeah, because then she got into collage.
Guest:So yeah, the I See a Darkness is a skull that she made.
Guest:That's like a classic cover.
Guest:And she did... There's one called Lie Down in the Light where she did... She was obsessed kind of with... There's a little image of Jacob wrestling the angel in a Gauguin painting.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I was...
Guest:excited about gustave corbet and he had this wrestler uh painting and so i said mom would you do jacob and the angel wrestling each other in sort of gogan crazy colors but use the corbet light uh pairing like the choreography okay yeah yeah yeah so that's what the lie down in the light so she did she did yeah throughout and then i saw uh the wonder show of the world i love that one
Guest:That's the last thing.
Guest:She ultimately got Alzheimer's, and that's the last piece of art she made is the front cover of that record.
Marc:You know what's amazing about that record?
Marc:It was like, I've got to give that a listen again, and the color of that record, you can find it immediately.
Marc:It stands out, that turquoise color.
Marc:Well, that's amazing.
Marc:So you had this relationship with your mom that was creative.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:I mean, it's interesting witnessing somebody who was a very committed person
Guest:artist with a practice who didn't she never showed she didn't it wasn't about showing it was just she did it at home about getting it out getting it out but it was beautiful yeah very intense yeah you know and inspired and she did it every day you know and so that was a weird thing like is that I guess maybe my brain thought is this something that we're supposed to hide is this supposed to be our private thing but also it seems like you know one way to sort of combat
Marc:either darkness or depression is to enter it into the world in a creative way.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Well, see, I guess that's, she maybe on some level had a little bit of a feedback loop going because she wouldn't, you know, that's what I find is you put something into the music.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In order to share it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But she wasn't really, she was sharing it with those of us who lived in the same house as she did and certain friends of hers, but she wasn't, it wasn't actually getting out.
Guest:So she was maybe identifying something that needed to come out, but it didn't go very far, you know, it didn't go very far.
Marc:Well, that's interesting because it's almost like, I need you to know this is happening.
Guest:I think she, ideally, maybe she would have wanted to put it out in the world, but she didn't have a careerist mind.
Guest:But then you did as covers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then with the covers.
Guest:Was she thrilled?
Yeah.
Guest:I think so.
Guest:I mean, she would always agree when I would ask her to make things.
Marc:Oh, so she did it specifically for the cover?
Guest:You know, I See a Darkness had been, she had made the skull and then superimposed like a degraded Xerox photograph of her as a baby.
Guest:And so I said, you know, could I put this on a record cover without you as the baby on there?
Guest:And she said, yeah.
Guest:And then I would ask her, you know, sometimes I would, yeah, I've used collages of hers.
Marc:Like the sort of, the symbiosis of your vision for your music and then your mom's art, it just makes perfect sense.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And at the time, my father was an amateur photographer and almost every image, photographic image on most of the records were pictures that he took.
Guest:Like any picture of me would have been a picture of my dad.
Marc:A close-up of you that looks like a Nietzsche?
Guest:That's Steve Gullick, who's like for years, he's a British photographer.
Guest:And for years, I would say the only two people I really like to take my picture, my dad and Steve Gullick.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my dad's gone.
Guest:So it's just Steve now.
Guest:No, but there's other people.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So when you start playing, is music the first thing?
Marc:I mean, I know.
Marc:Acting was the first thing.
Marc:It was.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because I don't know where sales found you, but you must have been, what were you, 15 or something?
Guest:I think I was maybe 13 when they first contacted me and then they lost the money for Mate One and they made Brother from Another Planet.
Guest:Then they got the money.
Guest:Oh, so it's like his second movie.
Guest:And they called and said like...
Guest:Do you still have that script we sent you a couple of years ago?
Guest:And how did you get on his radar?
Guest:Because there's a theater in Louisville.
Guest:It's in an interesting place right now since COVID.
Guest:But there's a theater in Louisville called Actors Theater of Louisville, which was...
Guest:In the 70s, Louisville was kind of an important cultural center for the United States.
Guest:We had a really strong newspaper.
Guest:We had a really strong orchestra from decades.
Guest:And this theater, Actors Theater of Louisville, which had annually a new play festival that kind of the theatrical world would come to.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:From around the country.
Guest:From around the country, sometimes even around the world to see a group of maybe 15, 16 plays.
Guest:And so one year, I think I was 13, I was in a play, a really strange and interesting play called Food from Trash by a playwright named Gary Leon Hill.
Guest:It was an original play.
Guest:It was an original, because they would commission new plays.
Guest:And a lot of the play, you know, a lot of, there were a lot of plays, a lot of actors, a lot of plays that turned into bigger runs in, on Broadway, maybe, or off-Broadway, or turned into movies, or, and then actors.
Guest:I saw so many actors there who later went on to be
Guest:Is that how you learned or did you take lessons?
Guest:I took lessons.
Guest:I started taking lessons when I was about eight because I just, I loved going to that theater.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I loved watching movies.
Marc:Theater.
Guest:The theater was so good though.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And movies.
Guest:And yeah, like my dad got one of the first VCRs from a local camera store and they had 10 movies you could rent.
Guest:We started renting and then the library had them.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But I, that's what I, so I just assumed because of the,
Guest:The fulfillment that I got from witnessing theater and witnessing movies, cinema, I thought, this is what I'm going to do with my life.
Guest:These actors are helping me live the life, and that's what I want to do.
Guest:I want to help people live the life that they have inside of them.
Guest:That's what actors are supposed to be doing.
Marc:I've learned recently that I had a big switch in terms of how I approach it or what my understanding of it.
Marc:Because when you start to think about craft or this or that,
Marc:That, you know, you just think in terms of, like, how do I do this?
Marc:And, you know, for some reason, it wasn't until I talked to Pacino, and this was, like, a couple months ago.
Marc:Yeah, that'd be fun.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I read his book, and, like, you know, he's a kooky guy and a very shy guy, and, you know, life gets away from him.
Marc:But the idea of acting was really, for him, it was an artistic pursuit of truth.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:And I don't know that I really thoroughly looked at it like that.
Marc:That what you're honoring, whatever you think, okay, you can be like, I know I can be in the moment and listen.
Marc:But the other side of it is you honor the truth of that moment.
Marc:And what you're going for is the truth of a story or the truth of a character.
Marc:And it just blew my brain open.
Marc:I don't even know why I didn't think that way.
Guest:With ideally, right, the hope that...
Guest:that energy gets translated to the audience's experience and then they are able to, they are witnessing the conveyance of truth, right?
Guest:So then they can convey truth either just to themselves or to other people.
Guest:Right, see things differently.
Guest:See things differently, yeah.
Marc:But ultimately, like you said earlier about the music, you have no control over that part.
Marc:All you can do is be, you know, engaged and authentic in your work, and then you've done your job.
Marc:I mean, you can't, there's nothing you're going to do that's going to make the audience, you know, you can't think in terms of them all the time.
Marc:Maybe.
Guest:I mean, well, they're always a part of it.
Guest:They're always a part of it.
Marc:No, no, they're a part of the experience.
Marc:But, I mean, do you find yourself over the arc of 30 records or however many you've done, you know, playing, knowing you're playing to your audience always?
Yeah.
Guest:Well, except, I mean, it's not a specific, it's not a specific, it's an audience that is evolving always.
Guest:And maybe, so kind of, also because maybe the opposite of my mom, I've always thought like, well, I'm going to make a song so that I can.
Guest:Connect.
Guest:Connect.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's the reason.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Because I'm already connected to by watching great performers or listening to great records or going, you know.
Marc:And I guess what I'm saying is kind of false in the sense that like over time, you know, if you're authentically you, your audience kind of knows what to expect and knows you.
Marc:And they want to engage in that.
Marc:You don't have to honor like you can't you don't have to think like I got to do the record exactly like the last record.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But after a certain point, your voice is what brings them.
Guest:I'm still learning what brings them or doesn't bring them.
Guest:But yeah, what brings what brings the audience?
Guest:I mean, yeah, I think so.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, like now, like I know that over time, you know, somehow or another, my audience are they're grownups.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They're sensitive.
Marc:They're probably aggravated.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They're politically like minded.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And they find some sort of relief or release or comfort in what I do.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And that's within the last five years because I'm an old man.
Marc:And that's the other thing about doing art is that you don't really feel like you're old.
Marc:And at some point you're like, God, my audience is all over 40.
Marc:And it's okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because there's some ideas like, where are the kids?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:How come I'm not cool?
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's your old man.
Guest:Well, you want also, I mean, I guess I do crave, I love the idea of maybe having the goal of having the bulk of the audience that comes to the show be people that you would like to spend time with on an individual level.
Guest:Because you're going to be.
Guest:But even if for some reason you were invited to their house, that you would look forward to going to their house.
Marc:I don't look forward to going to anyone's house.
Marc:But I understand what you're saying.
Marc:Do you get a lot of that where you get emails through whatever the outlet is and they're like, oh, you're going to be in my town.
Marc:Do you need a place to sleep?
Marc:And I'm like, what?
Marc:No.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, you have to read between the lines a little bit.
Guest:I got to meet one of my heroes, Jonathan Richman, maybe a decade ago or something like that.
Guest:How long ago?
Guest:Maybe we met a decade ago.
Guest:Was he making pizza ovens in Davis?
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:But he came to a show in Grass Valley.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Guest:And I knew...
Guest:I mean, I have studied him since I was a child.
Guest:He was the guy.
Guest:He was one of my big guys.
Guest:His picture was on my wall.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And having different conversations with him then about life and work and things like that, I said, which I knew because of what you're talking about.
Guest:I had these invitations.
Guest:But I said, I'm going to tell you
Guest:That next time you come to Louisville, you should stay at our house.
Guest:Because you would like to stay at our house more than you would like to stay at anybody else's house or in any hotels.
Guest:Just trust me.
Guest:And that's where he stays.
Guest:He stayed at your house?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How is he?
Guest:He's just...
Guest:He's a hero.
Guest:I mean, he's... As a performing artist as well now, and he just played here, I think, in December, so if you didn't see it... Yeah, I didn't see it.
Guest:But he's... I can't imagine... I can't think of a better and more fulfilling performance that I've seen in my life, really, than seeing him in the last two or three years.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:I'm so mad that I don't go to more live shows.
Guest:And to spend time with.
Guest:He called maybe a month ago and said, I'm going to...
Guest:We're just driving through because we're playing, I don't know, Nashville or Lexington or something like that.
Guest:Or Cincinnati.
Guest:And I said, well, come stay.
Guest:And he came and we were already with some neighbors having a fire in the backyard.
Guest:And Jonathan Richman comes up and he's got his guitar and he sings a serenade to the moon before going to bed.
Guest:how can you not love that it's amazing it's it's just so earnest right and then and then first thing in the morning he comes over at 7 30 in the morning to you know to the back door knocks and he said you know he's got a guitar yeah you want to you know spend some time yeah and play play chant sure yeah
Marc:Wow.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that for you, the arc of that, of having loved him as a kid and then to have that relationship with him is just beautiful.
Marc:And there's something about him that is so specific and unique and honest and earnest.
Marc:And so like there's a childlike relationship.
Marc:with the world that no one really has.
Marc:No.
Marc:Yeah, nobody has.
Marc:And he seems to hold on to it.
Guest:And nobody has, especially because then when you see him on stage, it's still, you know, it has, it's maturing now in a really...
Guest:complicated and beautiful way.
Marc:In a kind of a spiritual way.
Marc:Is there a little flamenco involved too?
Guest:There's definitely some flamenco in there.
Guest:But what he's doing with his performance and changing it night for night and changing songs around and just, he's engaging in whatever, a 70 minute improvisational performance that he anchors with certain song structures.
Guest:But those structures can change night to night.
Guest:And so you are witnessing, it feels like, you know, it feels like what we've understood to be, say, maybe a great 1965 Miles Davis kind of experience.
Marc:Or almost like a Raga.
Guest:Like a Raga, exactly, yes.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:That's more precise, actually, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like I was just listening to someone like Shankar the other day, Ravi, because I was turning someone on to Ravi Shankar.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, and it was the first record from 58 where he explains the music and the structure of the music.
Marc:And I hadn't listened to that in forever.
Marc:And it really sets you up to be like, okay, here we go.
Marc:So that's the kind of night you spend with John from Richmond.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He might even talk about, yeah, the ragas are essentially kind of scales, right?
Guest:Is that right?
Marc:Well, they're scales, but there's also a very specific structure that you're going to build to this thing.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The scales are the scales.
Marc:So that's what his sets are like.
Marc:The destination is this thing.
Marc:And then you come down a little bit and then you end roughly on the same notes you started with.
Marc:Do you, do you structure like that?
Guest:Maybe I'm still learning.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, yeah, we, I think so.
Marc:So at the same time you're doing theater, you're listening to Jonathan Richmond and the modern lovers at first record.
Guest:I'm listening, you know, I was turned on by an article in Spin that probably was from 1984 and 1985.
Guest:So that's already late.
Guest:Oh, it's very late.
Guest:I think the record that came out when I started listening to him was called It's Time for Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Has a corner store, double chocolate malt.
Marc:So this is after he's almost exercised some of that Velvet Underground from him.
Marc:Fully, fully, fully.
Guest:Which he did very early on, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Then when you're doing the acting, when do you start playing?
Guest:So all of my, you know, my older brother was a musician, is a musician, is a great musician.
Guest:And he started getting in somehow to the Louisville punk art music scene and bringing back records, you know, to the house and playing lots of music.
Guest:really amazing records and then aligning himself with some pretty amazing creatives in Louisville.
Marc:Well, that's interesting because people, like, now they hear that and, you know, the way one thinks about punk, you got to be specific at the time because it really was an umbrella term for anything artistic.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, Mike Watt kind of set me straight on that.
Marc:That whatever punk has become or what people think it is is not what it really started out as.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So what you're talking about is what, the late 70s?
Guest:No, this would have been 82, 83.
Marc:So you've got a lot of people, some people doing performance art, some people are doing body art, some people are doing soundscapes, other people are doing audiovisual things, that kind of stuff.
Guest:That kind of stuff, as well as just the spectrum of music is...
Guest:even in a given all-ages show on a Sunday afternoon, you might see things that are very abstract along with things that are kind of hardcore.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Isn't that amazing that there was a time, because I'm a little older than you, but there was a time when we were kids where you could go get your mind blown by something totally new and something that you would never see even again.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And to see it in person and made by people that...
Guest:might call you by your first name.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:People who just blew your mind.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, they're like, hey, Will, how are you doing?
Guest:Thank God.
Marc:What?
Guest:You know, you're on the plane with the gods already.
Marc:Well, I remember, like, because, you know, I worked at a restaurant across from the university, so I was tapped into all that age group, and this would have been in the...
Marc:Early 80s.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And this guy that worked at the record store next door, he played in a band that played two times a year called Jungle Red.
Marc:And it was just him and this other guy.
Marc:And they're on stage, you know, in in operating scrubs.
Marc:And he's got a he wanted to borrow this Ivan as West Paul copy I had.
Marc:So and I said, sure, if you need a guitar.
Marc:But then he ended up just taping a doll's arm to it.
Marc:And, you know, hitting it occasionally.
Marc:And in the middle of the show, he just took his collection of original McCoy fiesta wear and started smashing it with a hammer on the mics.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I just remember like half the audience was like gay men.
Marc:And they were like, oh, they were just, it really hurt him.
Marc:The fiesta wear part.
Guest:But I'm like, what the fuck is this?
Right, right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:But it blew my mind.
Marc:It introduces you to possibilities.
Guest:Yes, precisely.
Guest:Yeah, it's just... Well, it introduces you... Well, it kind of sets you up for...
Guest:An expectation that boundaries, you know, the pushing and, you know, destruction of boundaries is a norm.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then you realize, oh, this is not a norm at all.
Guest:Almost nowhere is this a norm, but it became part of your formation.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:So you're a little lost also then, you know.
Marc:Lost, but also you know you—
Marc:If that's what you gravitate towards, you know that the challenge is upon you.
Marc:You know the challenge is always available to you as well, yeah.
Marc:But also you're being pummeled by mainstream music, which you like, but you do realize, like, well, there's something else out there.
Marc:I mean, I got turned on to, like, Fred Frith and The Residents, and I'm like, what the fuck?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:No one's playing this.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What is this?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think there were certain, because we have University of Louisville, but for some reason, college culture wasn't a part of Louisville culture in that way.
Guest:The record stores and things like that were nowhere near the university.
Guest:The university was in a part of town and kind of still is that people don't go to unless they're part of the university.
Guest:Right, so it's a campus.
Guest:It's not even a camp.
Guest:It's just in southern downtown Louisville.
Guest:It's kind of an urban area.
Guest:So we didn't have this college culture, which can be so valuable to certain communities.
Guest:So those of us who were hungry for things tended more towards the more underground because the residents had, for example, probably better record distribution than some of the things that we would end up listening to because, I don't know...
Guest:Because we managed it ourselves, I guess, because it was all mail order catalogs and things like that.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So when you start playing, what are you playing?
Guest:Well, I, I, everybody I'm spending time with is music, except for when I'm doing my theater classes, my theater performances.
Guest:So I'm spending time with all these music people.
Marc:Your brother's friends.
Guest:My brother's friends, eventually he sort of moves away from that scene and I get into it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm fully in it.
Guest:And so I'm spending all my time going to shows or in my friend's basement practice spaces, watching them practice.
Guest:And it never occurred.
Guest:And taking pictures.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because my dad taught me to take pictures.
Guest:Not playing anything.
Guest:Not playing anything.
Guest:I couldn't play anything.
Guest:Didn't think I had any... I didn't have any thought about playing anything.
Marc:No inclination.
Guest:No.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:And then I remember when I was going to do Mate One...
Guest:Three of my best friends said, how about we start a band?
Guest:Because we were spending all of our time together.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And listening to music together.
Guest:And I said, OK.
Guest:And what do you want me to do?
Guest:And they said, you could play guitar.
Guest:OK.
Guest:So I think I borrowed a guitar and took it with me maybe to the shoot in West Virginia for a couple months.
Guest:And they're giving me demos.
Guest:And I don't.
Guest:And finally, after a few months, they say, we're going to move on with this concept with somebody else because you're not doing anything.
Guest:I'm like, yeah, I don't know what to... I think that's a good idea.
Guest:But did you learn how to play?
Guest:So then those guys then were Slint, the group Slint.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, so then I... That's a heavy band.
Guest:I went, you know, I moved out here for a little bit to try, you know, I got an agent out here.
Guest:Oh, because of May 1.
Guest:Yeah, exactly, when I graduated high school.
Marc:That was a crazy role, dude.
Marc:It was a crazy role.
Marc:I mean, what, The Child Preacher?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was like, it was jarring.
Marc:Like, I remember seeing that movie, and I kind of remember what it was about, but I remember you.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I just watched it again, because there's a new, like, 4K print.
Guest:I watched it for the first time since...
Guest:And you're like, what, 17?
Guest:16, yeah.
Guest:It's unbelievable.
Guest:It's a good movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And sales was great.
Guest:Sales is so great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I really got set up in my teens.
Guest:to think that the world was this amazing, wonderful, generous, collaborative, cooperative, inspiring place.
Guest:And when I really left home, I realized that's not the case because that's how the sales production was.
Guest:And that's how our community, our music community in Louisville was and theater community.
Guest:And I thought, you go out in the world, that's not how the world is at all.
Marc:So you got to LA and you were just hit in the head?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:yeah yeah and then i said maybe maybe i'll try new york and then realize that none of that was for that acting wasn't it would be impossible for me to do what i thought i was you know wanted to do yeah in that and and then and then someone had given me a guitar when i was about 19 yeah and here and there people would
Guest:You know, I would just write little songs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:For no, you know, like my mom.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just writing songs.
Guest:Plinking around on the guitar.
Guest:And then I sort of started to apply discipline to it.
Guest:Even though, again, I had no, what was I going for?
Guest:I was listening to the weirdest music at that point.
Guest:Lots of just records checked out of the library.
Guest:Like what?
Guest:Because the covers looked interesting.
Guest:I mean, just, I don't know, records from other countries or going to church on Sundays to like gospel churches.
Guest:So I didn't know what one did with music once you recorded it, for example.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I lived for a summer with my friend, Todd Brashear, who was in this audio program at University of Indiana.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Indiana University.
Guest:In Bloomington?
Guest:In Bloomington.
Guest:And so we had access to recording equipment, recorded some of these songs.
Guest:And I thought, well, all I know from my growing up is that you make a seven inch once you've recorded songs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That I'm like, I'm going to send this.
Guest:Your single?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Send these demos out to record labels to see if they would be interested in releasing a seven inch record.
Guest:So it's just you and your buddy?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, me and Todd, yeah.
Guest:And then other people, you know, we roped other people in to play on the sessions of whatever these things were.
Guest:And that became a record?
Guest:And then, yeah, but I sent it to Interscope Records because I didn't know anything about anything.
Guest:I wrote them a letter saying, would you put a seven inch out of this music?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:um and but then also to drag city because i had seen a silver jews seven inch that uh a girl named tanya small had given me because she plays on the first silver jews ep yeah yeah um and i was like this looks great this sounds great you know maybe these people would be interested and and they said we like these songs yeah yeah
Guest:And you've been with him ever since.
Guest:Pretty much, you know, hiccups here and there, but yeah.
Guest:That's crazy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But Berman moved you?
Guest:I mean, yeah.
Guest:Did you ever spend any time with him?
Marc:Dude, I had one of the weirdest nights in my life in Nashville.
Guest:With him?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I had about 50 of the weirdest nights in my life with him just because that's what it is.
Marc:I came to him later and, you know, I read the poems and I listened to the records and I found him, you know, brilliant and interesting.
Marc:And I wanted to do a conversation with him.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And we had reached out a couple times.
Marc:And then he comes to my show in Nashville with his then girlfriend or wife.
Marc:Wife, Cassie.
Marc:Yeah, Cassie.
Marc:And then afterwards we go to this restaurant and I swear to God, we're the only people in it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's like 1130 at night and he fucking tells me his life story.
Marc:We were there for like two hours about this almost.
Marc:It was heartbreaking because it was all about this almost what he saw as a mythic battle.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:With his father.
Marc:Oh, my gosh.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And and how that, you know, crippled him.
Yeah.
Marc:And he didn't want to talk on the mics, but the story was mind-blowing and tragic that he was this guy who couldn't get out from under it.
Marc:And obviously, you know, it ended very badly.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And we had emailed right before he passed.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I had no idea.
Marc:And then I saw Sweeney in New York.
Marc:And it was sad because it didn't seem to surprise anybody.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That he took his own life.
Marc:That he struggled like that.
Guest:No.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, my gosh.
Guest:The struggle was evident.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The struggle was evident.
Guest:And that Purple Mountains record is crazy.
Guest:It's too much for me.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I know that it's a great record, but I think I've listened to it two times and I just say, well, I know that it's there.
Guest:Yeah, because it's too sad.
Marc:It's too sad.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But, okay, so when you start with Drag City, I mean, obviously we're not going to get through every record, but... Oh, and the new record is on No Quarter.
Guest:Oh, it is?
Guest:It's one of the diversion hiccups.
Marc:But you're still okay with Drag City?
Marc:I think so, yes, yes.
Marc:I got mad at them because they wouldn't put out my comedy record.
Guest:Yeah, they can have interesting stances on.
Marc:Yeah, they said they put me out on their other label, whatever that one is.
Marc:Could be C-Note maybe?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:And I was like, no, I want to be.
Marc:But look, I listen to their artists.
Marc:So that's where you start the career.
Marc:You wanted to do a 7-inch, and the music is just stuff you're putting together without any real guidance.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So the 7-inch, and then a few months later, Dan from Drag City says,
Guest:When's the full-length?
Guest:And I'm thinking, full-length record?
Guest:You want a full... Sure, I'll get to it right now.
Marc:And you did it.
Marc:Did it, yeah.
Marc:And you released that under Palace?
Marc:Palace Brothers, yeah.
Guest:And you did what, three records, Palace Brothers?
Guest:The first record was...
Guest:See, at the time, I was still coming from this film world.
Guest:And, you know, that's what I understood about, like, if you're going to be in a play, you get a group of people together, prepare for it, make it, do it.
Guest:It's this entity.
Guest:And then it's over.
Guest:And you move on.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so I was thinking, like, well, that's...
Guest:I want to try to make records that way.
Guest:So you put people together, you make this thing, and then you move on and try to make something else.
Guest:How do you connect them so that maybe an audience could follow it?
Guest:Well, that's why I thought, well, I'll keep this palace word, but let people understand that we're moving on into different territory with each record.
Guest:So I didn't even know.
Guest:Like the first record...
Guest:was a palace, you know, I just thought, I just want, I don't want to have a band, you know, but I don't want it to be a solo artist thing because it should be about the record and about the songs.
Marc:So it was a collaborative effort with some people that you gelled with and when it was done, it was done.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then like eventually you decided, you know, still not to really record under your own name because you wanted to have that anonymity.
Guest:Well, also eventually it's not necessarily even anonymity as much as it is like when you see a record and it's credited to somebody, are you expected, you know, a Neil Young record?
Guest:Does that mean Neil Young did everything?
Marc:No.
Guest:No.
Guest:So...
Guest:I think to just be a little more transparent about that.
Guest:So I'll say Bonnie Prince Billy because that's just an entity through which all these forces can be brought together to make something.
Guest:Whatever it's going to be.
Guest:And then the audience will, because that's our tendency, to look at it as an individual.
Guest:But I can look at it too and say, yeah, that's Bonnie Prince Billy, whatever.
Guest:Whatever you need to say.
Guest:But there's not a single artist on this record.
Guest:There are however many artists on this record.
Marc:And you work with many.
Marc:So many.
Marc:Yeah, almost like it's an interesting thing because there's not a lot of people that do that.
Marc:I mean, Dylan does that.
Marc:And that everything is a collaborative effort with new voices and new artists.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And that was sort of the goal.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You honor that goal.
Guest:I mean, it's you get yourself in a position where you get to spend time, creative time with people that you really, you know, it's like I want to it's a way of getting intimate with people.
Guest:Yeah, for sure, yeah.
Guest:And have kind of an urgent community, urgent collaboration.
Guest:And also learning.
Marc:Learning, absolutely.
Marc:And evolving all different things.
Marc:You get something new out of yourself when you're in relation with other people.
Marc:Every time.
Marc:Every time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But ultimately, what's interesting is that...
Marc:Because a lot of it is your writing, there is a through line to your point of view and your vision.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, wherever that comes from, well, that's your business.
Marc:But you do honor a sort of, you know, taking it up to the edge of sort of almost heartbreaking poetry a lot of times.
Marc:But then you get goofy.
Marc:And propriety.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, in terms of, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But like, you will get goofy.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But the idea was always to create structures for the purpose of gathering people around rather than the other way around.
Guest:It wasn't gathering of people to put the songs forward.
Guest:It was getting, you have to write songs so that you have something to share with people that you can then make a record out of or make shows out of.
Marc:And the first record that got significant critical attention was I See a Darkness?
Yeah.
Marc:I don't even know what that means.
Marc:Well, I mean... I mean, I really don't.
Marc:I guess maybe not critical attention, but it was...
Marc:out there enough to where you know people cover your songs yeah so within the community and i guess that's another benefit of working with all different artists is that people are like do you know this guy or like you should work with this guy and have you heard this song by this guy right and then other people cover the stuff to me outside of critical uh recognition if somebody plays your fucking song that's a big deal big deal yeah like you're like oh my god
Marc:And then you get to hear that interpretation.
Marc:I mean, not everybody gets Johnny Cash to cover a song.
Marc:I don't even... It's the truth.
Marc:I don't even know how that happened.
Marc:Do you?
Guest:I know vaguely how it happened.
Guest:I think it was... Was it Rick?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I think it was Rick... I think he was talking to the...
Guest:music journalist slash sex writer, Neil Strauss.
Guest:Sure, I know him, yeah.
Guest:And I think Neil Strauss... Said this is the song.
Guest:Yeah, played him, played him.
Guest:I think he played him a few records, a few records that I'd been involved with, and yeah.
Guest:And then I think Sweeney ran into Rubin on the Street.
Guest:Well, yeah, Rubin.
Guest:I think...
Guest:Neil Strauss had told Sweeney that he'd been with Rick Rubin and Rick Rubin was listening to all these records.
Marc:Superwolf.
Guest:And that's how.
Guest:Or before Superwolf because that's Superwolf.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:But that's what got Sweeney into the Rubin circle, right?
Marc:Or Superwolf.
Guest:Sweeney got into the, yeah.
Guest:I mean, essentially, yeah, even because Sweeney and I were playing together when the I See a Darkness cover was going down.
Guest:So I think Sweeney at one point saw Reuben and said, hey, I heard you've been listening to these records.
Guest:We're playing a show at the Bowery Ballroom in two weeks.
Guest:You want to come?
Guest:And then...
Guest:And I think at that point, you know, they, they then recognized each other and that was the beginning of their relationship.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But it's so wild that like, because, you know, whatever you started as, which was, I guess, kind of qualified as lo-fi to a degree, but then like, because of your need to collaborate, you know, that Sweeney record that you, the two of you did, I don't know how much you were working before Superwolf with him.
Marc:It's this whole other thing.
Marc:But it's not that different than what you always do.
Marc:But there was something infused in that, primarily because of whatever you two were doing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I think we'd probably played together four or five years, something like that.
Guest:And then in the middle of that four or five years, though, was the...
Guest:kind of Zwan debacle.
Marc:What happened?
Guest:Well, that was when the band Zwan formed and ultimately dissolved, you know, self imploded.
Guest:That was the Billy Corgan.
Guest:Oh, right.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:And Sweeney was in that.
Marc:Oh, he was.
Marc:I didn't realize.
Guest:And so he was sort of lost to us for a couple of years.
Marc:Probably lost to everybody.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then when that was over,
Guest:You know, I had missed playing with him and just said, how about if we try to make some songs up together?
Marc:And when you do that experience, I don't know how most of your records go, but obviously the Nashville experience is very different.
Marc:But when you settle in with a group of people, is it just like all day, every day for weeks, days to kind of come upon something?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:No, one of the things that thrilled me so much about the Nashville experience and the speed of it is that I've always, I've understood that many of the great records that, you know, are the great records are records that were oftentimes recorded in one, two days or five days or something like that.
Guest:And that's also a necessity if you're going to a recording studio in your 20s and you're on an independent label playing relatively underground music, you have budget and time constrictions.
Guest:And so...
Guest:Going into the studio, no one was throwing us, you know, 10, 20, 30 grand.
Guest:It's just you go in and you say, we've got this amount of time.
Guest:We have to make a record.
Guest:And I like the Nashville people because everyone's prepared to do that.
Guest:And this was like sort of...
Guest:We were always just forcing everybody to work harder than they're comfortable working.
Guest:So even with Super Wolf, we wrote for a period of time, long distance mostly, and would get together every once in a while and try to work out the songs.
Guest:But then when we went into the recording studio, which was my brother's studio in Shelbyville, Kentucky, we just, I don't know, five days or something like that.
Guest:He still got the studio?
Yeah.
Guest:He doesn't, no.
Guest:He decided he wanted to become a luthier and he moved out to Mesa, Arizona and then was on the West Coast for a while.
Guest:Now he's in North Carolina.
Marc:And when in this sort of arc of the music career do you start working with Kelly Reichardt?
Guest:I think so.
Guest:Again, Alan Licht, who gave me that Bruce Springsteen Dream Baby Dream bootleg song, and is one of my favorite musical artists as well.
Guest:He was working, I think, at Keno, and Kelly was working at Keno, I think, and they were friends, and she was working on...
Guest:She had made a movie called Rivers of Grass in her native Florida.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Had a little bit of recognition, but not much.
Marc:And she was in New York?
Guest:And then she was in New York.
Guest:And she was working on, she wanted to remake the movie Ode to Billy Joe, which had been a Robbie Benson, maybe even TV movie, you know, based on the song.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so she wanted to remake it on Super 16, maybe?
Guest:Might have been Super 8.
Guest:And asked Alan, because we were friends, if he thought I would be interested in making some music for her.
Guest:And so I was, you know.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Were you going to do a cover of that song?
Guest:No, just the score.
Guest:Just like the score music for it.
Guest:So she sent me an edit with Temp Music in.
Marc:Was that ever released?
Guest:I have a VHS copy of it.
Guest:I mean, it's pretty... It was very low budge.
Marc:Raw, yeah.
Guest:Everything about it was super raw.
Marc:So it was the grass one, the rivers of grass.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so then we just... We had a communication going on from that point on, yeah.
Marc:Because that...
Marc:That role in Old Joy.
Marc:Old Joy, yeah.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:Yeah, it was a great experience.
Marc:Your character was a slightly disturbing character.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:But the weird thing is, is that if you run in the circles that we run in at that time, you know that guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, in their own ways, both characters were kind of disturbing.
Marc:The one at the fire?
Marc:What was the other guy?
Marc:There's the two guys, the friends.
Guest:He's great, that guy.
Guest:Yeah, Daniel London, he's great.
Guest:But originally she had asked me to play that part, and I was...
Guest:deeply both parts are so intimidating because they're one of them is somebody who has kind of yielded to norm normie normie world and the other one completely hasn't and neither one is in a place where nobody's aspires to be where either of these people are so if you're thinking like as an actor oh how i'm going to enter in and and find the sympathetic aspects of this character and think like but what if i become either one of these i don't want to become either of these people you know
Guest:And so she couldn't find somebody for the part Kurt that I ended up playing.
Guest:And ultimately she's like, would you just do it?
Guest:Because I think I can get Daniel London and he's going to be great as Mark.
Marc:Well, the part of Kurt is like that guy who's just a little too old to be in that mindset.
Marc:It's a tragic but very specific character.
Marc:And if you are in art worlds or around those people, everyone knows that one of those guys.
Marc:And it just doesn't end well for them.
Guest:No.
Guest:And, you know, whatever age I was was something, I don't know, 33, 34.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Still thinking like...
Guest:could I be this guy?
Guest:You know, I mean, you know, anything, I don't know what it's happening in this world.
Guest:I don't know what I do in my, you know, I'm, you know, I don't have a, you know, a retirement plan or anything like that.
Guest:Is this potential, you know, it's so it's unrealistic, but I was, you know, I was paranoid that you might be, you could, yeah, not only do I know this guy, but I could be becoming this guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So when does that change?
Marc:When do you realize that you're not that guy?
Marc:What record?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think probably around... Maybe it was cathartic.
Guest:And I think when Old Joy came out, I think it was around the same time that I made this record, The Letting Go, in Iceland with Valgeir Sigurdsson, who I'd met because I'd opened for Bjork when he was doing a lot of production and arrangement things with her.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and worked with this woman, Dawn McCarthy, who's got a group called Fawn Fables that are based in, like, Cotati, California now.
Guest:And first time I worked with Emmett Kelly, and Jim White was on that record, my brother, and yeah, we took this thing.
Guest:There's a guy named David Tibet who has a musical project called Current 93.
Guest:And at the time, he was kind of collecting... He was in this period in the early 2000s of collecting...
Guest:The wildest ensembles that at one point Sweeney was a part of, but, and Baby D. And so it was just like, all of a sudden I knew every day that I wasn't desperately trying to figure out how to find a place for my family.
Guest:songs brain no my brain you know my consciousness to go instead thanks to people like david to bat or being able to make or kelly reichert or uh or getting to go to to iceland and make this letting go record that every day i could wake up and get in right away you know just jump in all the way and then and then it was like well if i can hold on to this oh that's the rest of my life so you learned a sort of discipline for yourself exactly and
Marc:And it was because of other artists.
Marc:Because of other artists, yeah.
Guest:I mean, you can't go to college.
Guest:I mean, maybe Black Mountain College in the mid-century of the 20th century.
Guest:But where can you go and really learn to do this work, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's only by somehow...
Marc:kind of getting past your insecurities and entering, you know, that, that moment where you're like, I got to fucking show up for this and be who I am.
Marc:I mean, that's the trickiest part.
Guest:And surround yourself with people who are, who have, you know, who are further along in figuring things out or at least appear that way.
Guest:Not that everyone, you know, or they figured something out so that you can think, okay, well,
Guest:They're doing it.
Guest:This is what Jim White puts in his suitcase.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Which album was that?
Marc:The Letting Go.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:So in terms of—because I think it's important because I can't speak to it, but maybe you can if you are willing—
Marc:Because you have such a significant catalog, and I imagine a lot of people listening to this may not know much of it, you know, outside of getting the new record and maybe that, you know, I See a Darkness record.
Marc:You know, in between, what would you think are the significant records for you?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:To introduce people.
Marc:I like the Blueberry song, but I don't think people should start there.
Marc:That was fun.
Marc:That was so much fun.
Marc:Oh, my gosh.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I was like, look at him lighting up.
Marc:He's lightening up.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He's singing about blueberries.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But what do you think?
Guest:Well, also, thank you so much for – I'm really grateful to be here with you.
Guest:Thank you so much.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, so between I See a Darkness and the new record?
Marc:It's like 30 records.
Guest:Well, the Greatest Palace music is a big deal.
Guest:It was a really big deal to me, and I know it's effective.
Guest:I hear the kind of feedback I hear from people.
Guest:I think, oh, that record works.
Guest:The first record?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The first one I did in Nashville with the full thing.
Guest:So that's called Bonnie Prince Billy Sings Greatest Palace Music.
Guest:So it's all these insane pros, one of whom is actually on the new record as well, a guy named Stuart Duncan, who's a fiddle player, mandolin player, just brilliant musician.
Guest:And, yeah, that was me just saying, like, I'm going to own this Bonnie Prince Billy life, you know, and bring it to Nashville.
Guest:But then also I took the tapes around the United States to have different friends, family, colleagues that I'd worked with over the years at that point and asked them to overdub on it so that it was this, you know—
Guest:A fully realized thing.
Guest:Yeah, a quilt.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Oh, that's good.
Guest:And then, yeah, the Superwolf record.
Guest:Great.
Guest:He just did another Superwolf record.
Guest:And then we did another one, which is... I have full respect for that first one that we did.
Guest:I think it's a one-of-a-kind, and I know that people get something out of it.
Guest:But there's something that happened for me musically just since COVID, kind of, where...
Guest:I think that's Super Wolves' record, the second one.
Marc:And that's post-Mokhtar, too, right?
Guest:Well, Mokhtar's on it.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:They're on it, yeah.
Guest:On three or four songs.
Guest:And that, yeah, I think that's one of the, I mean, you know,
Guest:I think it's a really good record.
Marc:Oh, good, good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm glad you can say that.
Guest:I am too.
Guest:You know, when we had finished it, I remember like listening to The Master at home and just... Because it was... I think that we mixed... We were tracked in February of 2020, November of 19 and then February of 2020.
Guest:So we mixed...
Guest:In lockdown.
Guest:So we were listening to The Master in lockdown.
Guest:And I remember just laying, sort of laughing helplessly on the floor of my kitchen, listening to this record, because I'm thinking, this is a really good record that we've made.
Guest:Like, this is a record that is good in ways that I have never been able to put into a record before.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I feel like, and then there was this series of singles with Bill Callahan where we did these 19 singles also during lockdown, each with a different guest artist, all covers.
Marc:He's a genius, right?
Guest:Indeed, yeah.
Marc:And, yeah.
Marc:The urgency of lockdown is not nothing.
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:I mean, I'm so grateful to lockdown for many things.
Guest:I'm kind of globally and societally grateful that it seemed to put many, if not all, Americans closer to an understanding of the urgency of lockdown.
Guest:our existence right and maybe making making i mean more so than in 2019 sure and now there's this uh fascistic pushback which oddly i think the new record speaks to in its way it i believe it does and i believe you know as as we were coming up with songs for it i was also getting giddy thinking because some of the the songs that most directly indirectly address the
Guest:The new reality.
Guest:The new order.
Guest:You know, we were aware that it was encroaching.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we're sitting around making up these, I'm making up these songs with these older, amazing songwriters.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm getting giddy because of the subtext of some of the songs.
Guest:I'm like, this is cool.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:I definitely felt it and I definitely heard it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, it was great talking to you, man.
Marc:Good talking to you.
Marc:I think we did all right.
Marc:We did all right.
Marc:We did good.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:Great talk.
Marc:Enjoyed it.
Marc:Enjoyed it.
Marc:The new Bonnie Prince Billy album, The Purple Bird, is out now.
Marc:Hang out for a minute, folks.
Marc:Hey, listen, over the years, we've had some amazing musicians perform here in the garage.
Marc:And on the full Marin this week, we put together another live music mixtape with 11 of those live performances, including this one by Billy Strings.
Guest:Hardwood pub coming on the main, mama getting back his walking cane.
Guest:Lord, Lord, I got them browns, fairy blues.
Guest:Well, he throwed it away and he went to town to see that woman and now he's down.
Guest:Lord, Lord, I got them browns, fairy blues.
guitar solo
Marc:To get bonus episodes twice a week, plus all WTF episodes ad-free, sign up for the full Marin.
Marc:Go to the link in the episode description or go to WTFpod.com and click on WTF+.
Marc:And a reminder before we go, this podcast is hosted by Acast.
Marc:Here's some kind of droopy, grungy guitar.
Thank you.
guitar solo
Marc:Boomer lives.
Marc:Monkey in the Fonda.
Marc:Cat angels everywhere.