Episode 764 - The Handsome Family / Sam Pollard
Marc:Lock the gates!
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucksters?
Marc:What the fuck nicks?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my podcast WTF.
Marc:How's it going?
Marc:I am enjoying the winter here in L.A.
Marc:The winter takes the temperature down to the sometimes low 50s.
Marc:maybe even high 40s, and we're all bundled up here.
Marc:It is chilly, and I welcome it because I miss the eastern seaboard fall weather.
Marc:I miss it.
Marc:I'm just out here in the sun.
Marc:Today's show...
Marc:is interesting.
Marc:There is a theme.
Marc:There may not seem to be one initially when I lay it out, but there is sort of a connecting tissue.
Marc:Today we have Sam Pollard.
Marc:He's a documentary film director, also a film editor, worked with Spike Lee for years, but he's got a
Marc:documentary film called Two Trains Running.
Marc:It's opening at the Metrograph in New York City tomorrow, December 2nd.
Marc:And I hope that the interest in the film will get it a wider release so everyone listening to this can eventually see it.
Marc:But the way I heard about it,
Marc:was kind of interesting.
Marc:My neighbor, Adam Hawkey, I believe he works in a colorist, I think.
Marc:He does something in post-production with film.
Marc:And he hit me to this documentary.
Marc:So I'm working on this thing I think you'd be interested in.
Marc:This guy, Sam Pollard, it's about...
Marc:It's about the civil rights movement, but it's also about blues music.
Marc:And so I was like, really?
Marc:And I did a little research, and then I tracked down Sam Pollard and had him out here to talk about this documentary.
Marc:I got a sort of a cut of it, not a final cut, but I got to watch the film.
Marc:And it was an interesting...
Marc:Fusion of two very distinctly different, but similar.
Marc:I mean, how can I explain it?
Marc:The movie Two Trains Running.
Marc:I'll explain that in a minute, but I do want to give a little bit of lip service before we get into it to my next set of guests.
Marc:It's a doubleheader.
Marc:The handsome family.
Marc:are musicians now you probably know their work if uh if you listened if you watched um true detective uh it was a i believe it was the the theme song far from any road it was a handsome family song now they the handsome family are brett and rennie sparks they're a married couple and they live in albuquerque
Marc:where I grew up and occasionally go to hang out, see my dad touch base with the roots of my life.
Marc:Now, their music is very haunting.
Marc:It's very sort of gothic folk music, very kind of fueled by the ancient folk themes and stylings.
Marc:And it's beautiful.
Marc:And I had had several of their records.
Marc:That I listened to and I was sort of fascinated with because the packaging of the records is beautiful.
Marc:Because Rennie does all the artwork, all the painting, all the putting together of the packaging of the covers.
Marc:It's just...
Marc:It's a whole thing.
Marc:The handsome family, the music and the artwork is a whole world, and it's a beautiful world.
Marc:So when I was in Albuquerque, I got in touch with them.
Marc:I invited them over to where I was staying, Brett and Rennie, and we talked.
Marc:So that's the second part of today's WTF.
Marc:But getting back to the blues music and getting back to Sam Pollard,
Marc:I'm like I am.
Marc:I don't know when I first heard blues music, you know, the old style, but it is definitely part of my heart and mind and it's deep down in there.
Marc:And there were certain moments in my life with blues music.
Marc:That, you know, even as an older person where you find new stuff, I remember the first time I listened to those Robert Johnson recordings and I was like, I don't get it.
Marc:You can barely hear it.
Marc:And then it sort of grows with you if you if you have the template in your heart for for.
Marc:old traditional blues music, it kind of evolves as you get older and it sort of becomes more enriched as you get older and you find more in it and you kind of go to a place with it.
Marc:But not long ago in my life, I read a biography of Skip James.
Marc:I'm going someplace with this, people.
Marc:And I started getting into Skip James music, which is really one of the most
Marc:sort of unique and haunting, again, I'm going to use that word, blues that you can find.
Marc:He did the original I'm So Glad, which I think cream covered.
Marc:And it's just his voice was something beyond almost human understanding.
Marc:And the tone that he got with his songs was something completely unique and blues.
Marc:Now, this movie,
Marc:Two Trains Running tracks.
Marc:It's very interesting.
Marc:It's 1964, and it tracks the migration of civil rights workers and college students down to Mississippi for the civil rights movement, for the Freedom Summer, it was called.
Marc:That's one trajectory of the film.
Marc:And the other trajectory are these two sets of dudes
Marc:who had no real concept of what was necessarily going on in Mississippi at the time, but coincidentally went down there from two different places, one from the Bay Area that include John Fahey, the guitar player, and the other one from the Boston area, which included Dick Waterman.
Marc:And they were just coincidentally going down to find these old blues musicians because at the time...
Marc:There were just these record freaks that had these old 78s of this old music that seemed to disappear.
Marc:So in 1964, no one really knew in the collective mind about Skip James or Sun House.
Marc:But these musicians and blues freaks did.
Marc:And there was this constant sort of like...
Marc:as to whether they were still alive and whether they could find some of these guys.
Marc:And Fahey and his crew coincidentally went down looking for Skip James.
Marc:And Waterman and his crew went looking for Sun House from different parts of the country in the same basic area and in the same basic area of the Civil Rights Movement, of the Freedom Summer and the Voting Rights Movement.
Marc:You move through this search for these two blues musicians and the sort of fight for civil rights and voting rights, and it all culminates in, obviously, voting rights legislation and awareness of what was going on in the segregated South.
Marc:But then it also moves towards, on the other trajectory, the Newport Folk Festival, where they brought all these musicians that had not been heard from in decades—
Marc:up from the South and wherever they were, Skip James included, and he performed for the first time.
Marc:They found him in a hospital, and they gave him a guitar.
Marc:It's sort of a beautiful story.
Marc:And to see and hear Skip James at Newport that year was just mind-blowing.
Marc:And obviously, all this stuff that happened in...
Marc:From the activism in the civil rights movement sort of all happened at the same time.
Marc:But I'd never seen these two things put together.
Marc:And that's what this film does.
Marc:And it was a I loved it.
Marc:And the deal is, is that they these films, this film in particular.
Marc:look, if you want to see it, it's sort of hard to see it.
Marc:And I like the movie, and I'd love to help find it a wider audience.
Marc:So if you're a film distributor out there, you should definitely pick this film up because it's worth seeing, and it's a great sort of bringing together of two very important narratives in the cultural history.
Marc:So right now, I'd like to let you listen to me and Sam Pollard, the director of Two Trains Running.
Marc:So let's do that now.
Guest:You've been an editor for how long?
Guest:I've been editing since 1975, so it's almost 40, 41 years.
Guest:All the time in New York?
Guest:I spent some time here in L.A.
Guest:cutting a couple of feature films and some time in Boston and D.C., but primarily in New York City.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Now, when you started, where'd you grow up?
Marc:Where'd you come from?
Guest:I grew up in East Harlem, in New York City, in the 50s and the early 60s.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yep.
Marc:So you've seen a lot of changes in your lifetime.
Guest:You'll be surprised, Mark, how much I've seen.
Guest:Sometimes it amazes me all the things I've seen in my lifetime.
Marc:Well, I mean, how old are you?
Marc:You're a little older than me?
Guest:I'm 66.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:So you're alive and awake.
Guest:Yeah, I'm 66.
Marc:During the 50s and 60s.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:Dr. King, Malcolm X, Black Panthers.
Marc:Well, how were, so if you were 60, so you're born, so you're like a teenager.
Marc:I was a teenager.
Marc:When Malcolm and all that was happening.
Guest:Yep, I was.
Marc:Down the street.
Marc:That's right, up in Harlem.
Marc:Right, and how, like 15, 14?
Marc:14, 15 years old.
Marc:What events do you remember?
Marc:The tone of what was happening?
Guest:You know what I remember?
Guest:I remember 1964 when there were some riots in Harlem.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Being on the bus, going uptown, ducking when people were saying they're throwing missiles at the bus.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:That I remember.
Guest:I remember when Malcolm was killed and the tension I felt in the city and when Dr. King was assassinated.
Guest:All those things, you know, I remember growing up in Harlem.
Guest:I mean, also, I grew up in a community where I grew up loving Latin music and jazz and soul and all these things.
Guest:So it's a lot of things going on.
Marc:Well, in Harlem, yeah, always, right?
Marc:Because there was definitely a big mixture of ethnic forces, musically and otherwise.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:You know, there was...
Guest:Growing up listening to Tito Puente and Eddie Palmieri and Charlie Parker and Jesse Gillespie and Marvin Gaye and The Temptations.
Guest:A lot of music.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And was it a big family you come from?
Guest:Not in my immediate family.
Guest:I have two siblings, but my extended family, which goes all the way to Mississippi.
Guest:My father's from Mississippi, and he was one of nine children.
Guest:And then his siblings had lots of children, so I have hundreds of cousins.
Guest:Hundreds of cousins.
Marc:So when when you were director of a documentary, how does the relationship with with, you know, the the guy who the story, you know, like how does it how does it evolve?
Marc:Because the story to me was it was very it's beautiful balance.
Marc:Like this sort of like naive, you know, compulsive, nerdy journey of these guitar nerds and blues nerds to go find these guys, you know, alongside of a very brutal of the, you know, of the freedom, the summer project in 64 was a very interesting balance that, that lended a, you know, like it could have been very, you know, brutal, but it was, it had a balance to it.
Guest:Well, you know, one of the things that I have to tip my hat off to Ben Hadeen about is that it was his idea.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, he really came to me about three and a half years ago with this idea.
Guest:He wanted to do a documentary that looked at John Fahey and Dick Waterman and Nick Pearls searching for Sun House and Skip James.
Guest:But at the same time, he wanted to tell the story of the young white kids who went down for Freedom Summer.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Now, initially I thought, as a film editor and a filmmaker, I said, Ben, that's a lot to chew off to try to make those two stories work.
Guest:Really intense, really difficult.
Guest:But he was pretty tenacious about wanting to do it, so I finally got on board and I started to think,
Guest:I think we can make it happen.
Guest:One of the things that can help make this film come to life and to help that balance would be to find contemporary musicians to play the music of Son and Skip.
Guest:So Lucinda Williams, Gary Clark Jr., you know, and then find the people from both the aspect of understanding who Dick and Nick and John Fahey was and then finding people who were also down for the Freedom Summer so we can have these parallel stories.
Guest:And the really important thing to remember that Ben...
Guest:made us aware of was that the day that Sun and Skip were found was the same day that Cheney, Schwerner, and Goodman were killed.
Guest:Disappeared.
Guest:Disappeared.
Guest:So there's this confluence of things coming together.
Marc:And I think what's fascinating about it is that the ignorance of white people at that time was deep and cultural and had no idea.
Marc:And these kids, and they were all kids,
Marc:Like, if I really think about what it takes to motivate, you know, white college kids to do anything, it's obsession and feeling like they got to be part of something.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:So the naivete of the music nerds, you know, versus the righteousness and sort of, you know, the democratic thinking of the people that went down to March.
Marc:Because I know these people.
Marc:It's not that they're ignorant.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They're just narrow, they're just kind of isolated.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:So these guys had no idea, no idea what they were driving into.
Marc:They're just going, we're going to go find these guitar players.
Guest:Yeah, they just were on a musical mission.
Guest:Yeah, based on nothing.
Guest:Didn't know anything.
Marc:The one kid, they got something from Buck of White who, who knows what he was even talking about.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:But it was like a seed that made them say, wow, we can go on this journey.
Guest:And that kind of naivete is what helped them find these people.
Guest:And they weren't the only ones who were able to find people.
Guest:Mississippi John Hurt was found like this.
Marc:Yeah, a couple years before, right?
Guest:Yeah, to bring back these iconic musicians who had done such phenomenal music.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And I had no idea about that.
Marc:And I like Sun House and I like Skip James.
Marc:I've read biographies of Skip James.
Marc:But just culturally what was happening, it was very interesting to me to detail about how most of that folk resurgence was Irish folk music and British folk music and stuff that comes from that part of the world.
Marc:And these guys had not even been recognized as being part of American folk music.
Marc:No, not at all.
Marc:It's crazy.
Marc:And now I'm just getting all excited.
Marc:And the fact that there was actually a time where the guys who had these 78s were just sort of like, no one has these.
Marc:This is magic.
Marc:They were jewels.
Marc:Right.
Marc:They were jewels.
Marc:You don't even think about that.
Marc:No.
Marc:These acts.
Marc:These guys went to compulsive.
Marc:We defined rock and roll.
Marc:They defined jazz.
Marc:They defined everything.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And it was just these nerds, and it just happened simultaneously.
Marc:But I thought the balance of the respect for that art form and then the actual legislation that happened within the two years of those kids being killed.
Marc:When you come to this, and I know you work with Spike a lot, and you obviously have a history, and sort of like...
Marc:Like integrating these sort of separate actions of kind of privileged white people being pivotal in moving things forward.
Marc:How do you balance that?
Marc:I mean, because there were guys that you talked to in the movie that were like, we got to get the rich kid, the white kids.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:They're going to be fodder for the things happening.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I know.
Guest:You know, it's an interesting kind of challenge as a filmmaker and as an African-American filmmaker to tell these stories and to, you know, you're basically putting these young white kids at the forefront of the stories.
Guest:But the thing to remember is that they didn't do it out of kind of any sort of feeling like they were trying to make a name for themselves.
Guest:They were trying to, you know, say, well, we can do this better than black people.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They did it because there was a lot of emotional and psychological sincerity.
Guest:It was sincere.
Guest:When you have Dick and Nick Pearls and Phil Spiro, and you have John Fahey and Henry Vestine, and these guys searching for Skip and Son, it's sincere.
Guest:When you have these other young white kids going down to be on the front lines,
Guest:to be on the front lines, to know that their heads could be beaten in, their arms could be broken, they could be killed, but they were still going down there because they believed they had to fight for these rights.
Guest:It's the sincerity that's important to make sure this comes across.
Marc:Yeah, and it's fascinating that just in you talking about what you lived through is that
Marc:This is before the late 60s where everything blows open.
Marc:It's the early 60s.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So, yeah, these are kind of real.
Marc:All these the characters and the people that you talk about are real heroes of democracy in a way.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:And it was it was not fashionable.
Marc:It was it was it was not like, you know, we're going to grow our hair out.
Marc:It was like, you know, this is a problem in our country.
Guest:Yeah, and we want to do something about it.
Guest:We want to do something about it, which is an important thing to remember.
Guest:That kind of enthusiasm, that kind of naivete, you know, is what's galvanized people to support Bernie.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The same kind of attitude.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:And that's so important for a democracy like America, and particularly in these very turbulent political times.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Where do you like because I you know, where do you see, you know, the one thing a candidacy like Trump sort of reveals is just how much hostility and racial racist driven anger there still is in this country.
Marc:And they're willing to stand up and be identified if given the right platform.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, you know, listen, you know.
Guest:As a person who's 66 years old, you've seen a lot.
Guest:You would like to think that some of this stuff that you hear coming out of the Trump camp doesn't exist.
Guest:But I knew it exists.
Guest:I know it exists.
Guest:I'm not naive.
Guest:It just sort of saddens me that here we are 50 years later still going through this same kind of stuff.
Guest:It's just like, my God.
Guest:I thought it was going to change in the 60s and the 70s, but it hasn't.
Guest:But that's what makes human beings human beings.
Guest:There's certain things that people emotionally feel angry about.
Guest:And they've found a way to vent that anger now.
Guest:They've found a person who can help them voice that anger.
Marc:No, I get that.
Marc:And it's broad-based anger.
Marc:It's not all specific.
Marc:It's just sort of like, I'm fucked, so fuck everything.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:So when you direct a documentary, because you've done producing and done directing and you've done a lot of editing,
Marc:So the primary element is organizing, right?
Guest:There's two primary elements when you're doing a documentary, particularly like this one.
Guest:First is basically understanding what the concept is, which we knew as we developed it.
Guest:And then the deep dive is what I call importance in terms of historical documentaries, the research.
Guest:Really researching the subject that you're going to do.
Guest:Right.
Guest:What was going on in 64 Mississippi?
Guest:Who should we talk to?
Guest:You know, who were these musicians?
Guest:Now, me and Ben and David happen to know we were familiar with Ten House and Skip.
Guest:So we had that handle, but we needed to understand what was going on in the civil rights movement.
Guest:Who should we talk to?
Guest:You know, Bob Moses.
Guest:Right, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Who should we talk to?
Guest:Dave Dennis.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who are those people we should talk to to give us the inside story about what was happening down there?
Guest:So, you know, understanding your concept, doing your research, and then deciding who you need to interview to help tell the story, and then what kind of material archivally in terms of photos,
Guest:footage, newspaper headlines do you need to gather to help make that story visually come to life?
Guest:And the other thing that's important, particularly for this documentary, a lot of times now people are thinking about, do we create reenactments?
Guest:How do we make some stuff that we don't have, like the guy searching for Son and Skip, how do we make it come to life?
Guest:Now, one of the things that came up, and I think David was the one who thought about this, is that instead of doing reenactments, let's create animation.
Guest:Let's do animation.
Guest:Which, you know, we found a company in Europe that had done phenomenal animation.
Guest:They did, Mark, they did a great job.
Marc:Oh, no, it's beautiful.
Guest:And it comes to life.
Guest:It makes the film come to life.
Guest:Because we didn't have anything else.
Guest:So how do you do it?
Guest:So animation was the key.
Marc:Yeah, your only other option is just a montage of stills.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:Over and over again.
Marc:Different pictures of John Fahey.
Guest:That's been done.
Marc:Or else you can do that thing where the guy comes out of the still and floats for a minute.
Marc:That's been done to death.
Marc:But I thought the animation worked.
Marc:It almost had an underground comic feel, like almost an R. Crumb vibe to it.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:And I didn't realize that these stories, they're so tight.
Marc:They're so close together.
Marc:It transcends coincidence.
Marc:I mean, when Ben was laying this story out to you and you were hesitant, when you saw the dates, were you like, that's some sort of kismet.
Marc:That's like some sort of weird, magical coincidence.
Guest:It amazed me.
Guest:And I kept saying, we need to make sure and double check that it's correct.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:It's crazy.
Guest:Because it's crazy that it would happen.
Guest:It's crazy.
Marc:And then, like, you know, when they found those kids, when they found Chaney Goodman and Schwermer, that, you know, that was within, what, you know, days of the legislation passing?
Guest:That's right.
Guest:After they found the bodies, it was a few weeks after they passed the Civil Rights Act.
Guest:The next year, they was voting by that.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But it took that.
Marc:And then like that was the other thing that I think people forget and that I that I always forget because I live in my own fucking world is that, you know, there were people fighting hard all the time against those those acts and those bills.
Marc:They're like, this is not the way the South is good.
Marc:They had it in their head.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:See, because I don't, like, obviously I'm not African American, and in order for me to experience the proper amount of empathy, I have to watch a movie like this.
Guest:I know.
Marc:Because it's not my history.
Guest:But you know what's interesting, though, is that there's always these forces.
Guest:that are at play trying to untie the things that are happening.
Guest:Look at North Carolina.
Guest:Look at it.
Guest:The government is trying to say, you can't be a transgender person and go into a men's bathroom if you think you're a man.
Guest:There's always been these forces that are constantly saying, we want the status quo.
Guest:We want to stay the same.
Guest:We want things to not change.
Guest:That's why people are so grabbed onto Trump's, we want to make America great again.
Marc:It's already great.
Marc:It's already great.
Marc:And he forgets what's great about it.
Marc:It's actually progress moving forward.
Guest:So it's always these forces, as you know, that are trying to undermine progress constantly, constantly, constantly.
Marc:Right, but it's like, I guess it's just based on, it's ignorance, but it seems deeper than ignorance because, like I've been talking about this on stage a bit, that it seems that Americans fundamentally are relatively decent people because once change happens, even if they were furious about that happening, within a couple weeks, maybe a year, they're like, ah, I guess that's the way it is now.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And they, you know, they settle into it.
Marc:Right.
Guest:They can adjust.
Marc:Yeah, because it didn't really have that much to do with their life anyways.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Ugh.
Guest:But you've got to be able to say, okay, let's adjust.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But you know and I know is one of the things that's difficult for human beings is to deal with change.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It is.
Guest:On all levels.
Guest:Change is, even me sometimes.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Certain kinds of change in my personal life.
Guest:I say, whoa.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I don't want to deal with that.
Yeah, I know.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Don't take that away from me.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:That makes me happy, that thing.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:It was interesting, too, at the end to see that Robert Moses and David Dennis continue to fight the fight.
Guest:That's important.
Guest:It is important.
Guest:That's an important thing to understand, that they didn't stop in 64.
Guest:They understood that the mission, the journey is a long one.
Guest:It's a road that you've got to keep constantly stay on.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And these guys...
Guest:have my tremendous respect for being able to continue their fight.
Guest:I mean, here these two men are in their late 60s, early 70s, and they're still fighting a good fight.
Guest:And that's important.
Marc:And it was funny that the guys who were still alive, or historically, the musicians and the music nerds, they went on to create a music label, one of them managed Sun House, and Dick James.
Guest:Dick.
Guest:Dick became, I mean, listen, I don't know if you remember in the film where Son House mentions Dick.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Dick is very important to keeping Son's legacy alive.
Guest:Still.
Guest:You know, today.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If you go to his house, he has a table full of pictures and a lot of them of Son House that he took himself.
Guest:He is really a man who's kept that man alive.
Guest:When I did this blues documentary years ago with Scorsese as executive producer, that's when I first went down to Mississippi and met Dick.
Guest:Which one was that?
Guest:It was called the Blues Series.
Guest:It was a seven-part series.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I watched some of that.
Guest:Yeah, the first one I did was Scorsese directed.
Guest:And we went down to Mississippi to sort of follow the journey of the Mississippi music and where it came from.
Guest:Then we ended up going to Mali.
Guest:Mali?
Guest:Mali, West Africa.
Guest:Yeah, West Africa.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right, so you track the rhythms all the way back down.
Guest:Back to Molly, yeah.
Guest:And so that's when I first met Dick.
Guest:I spent a whole day at Dick, talked with Dick, talking about Son and how he met Son.
Guest:So this was really great for me to go back almost 12, 13 years later and spend more time with Dick.
Marc:Sure, it's always good when people are still around.
Guest:I think Dick has something in common with you.
Guest:He loves cats, man.
Guest:Does he?
Guest:I got a few.
Guest:Yeah, there's a lot that he loves cats.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, it's...
Marc:You know, the blues is like, you know, I talked to another guy about that.
Marc:The thing about watching Sun House and even in the footage that you had in the movie, which I think I had those on videotape.
Marc:Those were Yazoo, didn't they release some videos of Fuka White and Lightning and those guys?
Marc:Lightning and Hopkins.
Marc:Yeah, I think I had them.
Marc:But like, the...
Marc:You know, these were not, the dialogue was not about race, really, was it?
Guest:No, it was about love.
Marc:Love and lost, man.
Marc:Right, but also, you know, God.
Guest:And God.
Marc:You know, like that thing about, you know, where, I don't know if it was Dick who said that, no, it was the other guy, he said that son had a hard time
Marc:You know, bringing together the God part and the blues part.
Marc:So there's this struggle.
Marc:That little key to Son House, when you see him just singing a cappella or with the guitar, that he's doing something that he's not sure God would approve of.
Guest:That's right, because he's struggling inside with the forces of good and evil.
Guest:Right!
Guest:Constantly.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Good and evil.
Guest:Right!
Guest:And he's not figuring it out.
Guest:You know, it's interesting.
Guest:Here's a man at that time in his 50s and his 60s still struggling.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know?
Marc:tap right back into it that's right that's why he had to tip to use that you know booze all the time that's right oh my god who am i yeah who am i and he was like he was like like on some level when you when you realize that these guys hadn't played in 20 years that they they got tired of the struggle they were probably relieved like all right i'm just gonna let this shit go it might haunt them but when these guys show up and say let's let's bring you back to that yeah
Marc:You know, because I assume that when Son got sick at Newport, it was nerves, right?
Guest:It was both nerves, but he had some intestinal problems.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:He had some intestinal problems.
Marc:That Newport footage, man, it made me cry.
Marc:You know, the Skip James thing, he got Guralnik there.
Marc:And I've talked to him in here.
Marc:Oh, Peter?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And he's like, it was like he's seeing all these stars.
Marc:Then Skip James gets on stage, erases everything.
Guest:Everything.
Guest:Because his sound, his vocal sound is so haunting.
Guest:It's so unique and so special.
Guest:He's so special.
Guest:I mean, he really is one of the great, great blues musicians.
Marc:Oh no, it's amazing.
Marc:So he must have been young when those guys- He was young.
Guest:And after he did those recordings-
Guest:I think for him, spiritually, it was just too taxing and too emotional.
Guest:That's why he walked away from it.
Marc:Yeah, because he's doing something more than just playing music.
Marc:It's not like, you know, let's sit and dance music.
Guest:Well, that's the thing you got to remember about these blues musicians.
Guest:It's always more than just playing music.
Guest:It's living.
Guest:It's living and feeling, you know, internalizing the music.
Guest:That's why these guys still are so iconic and so precious today.
Guest:You know, and for me growing up,
Guest:in New York City, it took me a while to really start to listen to the blues.
Guest:After I went through Soul and R&B and Charlie Parker, then I came back to listening to the blues and said, whoa.
Guest:Yeah, back to the source.
Guest:Yeah, I came right back to the source.
Guest:When I first heard Charlie Patton, I said,
Marc:Whoa.
Marc:Oh, man, like Bo Evil Blues.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's crazy, man.
Marc:And the amazing thing about it is what you have to mentally kind of put aside just to hear the intensity of those performances still comes through those shitty records.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Because even the best recordings sound like shit.
Guest:But, you know, that's what's so special about those analog records.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're getting everything.
Guest:You're getting the hiss, you're getting the noise.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I'm back in it.
Guest:Yeah, that's what makes it so special.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, we got the digital stuff now, but in some ways, the digital stuff has homogenized the music.
Marc:No, no, definitely.
Guest:Cleaned it up in such a way that it just feels so clean.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But when you go back, you hear the hiss.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:You hear the hiss.
Guest:You say, whoa, that's the real thing.
Guest:So when did your relationship with Spike start?
Guest:It started in 1988.
Guest:I was producing on a series called Eyes on the Prize about the Civil Rights Movement up in Boston.
Guest:And one day I was in my apartment and I got a phone call.
Guest:My son, who was 10 at the time, picked up the phone.
Guest:And he said, Dad, it's Spike Lee on the phone.
Guest:And I thought he was pulling my leg.
Guest:And I said, Jason, don't pull my leg.
Guest:And I said, Dad, seriously, it's Spike.
Guest:And Spike got on the phone.
Guest:He had just finished Do the Right Thing.
Guest:and he was getting ready to do a film about jazz musicians with Denzel and Wesley Snipes, which became Mo' Better Blues.
Guest:And he had known that I was into the music from a production manager friend of mine that worked with him, and he asked me if I would edit Mo' Better Blues.
Marc:And why do you think it was, what did you bring to it by knowing about the music that he couldn't get to?
Guest:I don't, you know, he's pretty good on the music because his father's a jazz musician.
Guest:You know, Bill Lee is a great jazz musician.
Guest:So Spike knew the music.
Guest:I think what I brought to it basically was an ally, a musical ally.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:So when he said to one section of the film, he said...
Guest:I want to use, and I said, Mingus' goodbye pork pie hat.
Guest:And he said, yeah.
Guest:Or all blues.
Guest:Miles is all blues.
Guest:And then at the end, when we used Love Supreme by Coltrane, I was just in sync.
Guest:Because I play an instrument, too.
Guest:What do you play?
Guest:I play a little saxophone, a little flute.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I studied music.
Guest:So I know about music.
Guest:So we were just in sync on the music.
Guest:We were just in sync.
Guest:Because he's not a talkative man.
Guest:No, he's not a talking man, but he has very strong, visceral ideas that he knows how to get across.
Guest:Oh, definitely.
Marc:Yeah, because he's got a very unique way of working a camera.
Guest:Oh, he's learned to be, to me, one of the great film stylists.
Guest:Oh, definitely.
Guest:Definitely.
Guest:He's got a great visual sense, and his politics is so strong throughout all of his films.
Guest:You don't even have to agree with it, but it's there.
Guest:It's in your face.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's what makes him so special and so unique.
Marc:Now, you did a few movies.
Marc:You did Jungle Fever with Spike.
Guest:I did Jungle Fever, Clockers, Girl 6.
Guest:Bamboozled.
Guest:Bamboozled.
Marc:That thing.
Marc:That doesn't get enough credit, that bamboozled.
Guest:Well, it's one of those films that I think as it ages, it's going to become more and more relevant every day.
Marc:You know why I think that is?
Why?
Marc:Because the attention taken and put into the production value and the execution of the minstrel shows.
Marc:Oh, they were fantastic.
Marc:Unbelievable.
Marc:Yeah, they were fantastic.
Marc:Because you literally had to battle yourself while you were watching it to not be entertained.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:It's walking a very thin line.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Very thin line.
Guest:Because think about it.
Guest:I mean, you just saw Shuffle Along that was choreographed by Savion.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he choreographed all those dance scenes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And bamboozled.
Guest:Elevated.
Guest:And they're fantastic.
Guest:Elevated.
Guest:They're fantastic.
Guest:Part of you wants to say, wow.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:Part of you wants to say, ooh.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I think that, to me, that blew my mind.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But that's what Spike's all about, though.
Guest:He never is going to give it to you so you say, oh, it's terrible.
Guest:He's going to make it ambiguous.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you as an audience say, hmm.
Guest:Confronted.
Guest:How should I deal with this?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That's how he is.
Marc:Well, that's the, he lets you do the thinking.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:And wrestle with yourself.
Marc:He does.
Marc:Every time.
Marc:And it's weird because, you know, people like you said, like his politics are defined and they're and they're they're they're, you know, they're hard hitting.
Marc:But he's still going to.
Marc:And I think that's what a documentary should do in general.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That's what they should do.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They should they should force you as a viewer to think.
Guest:about where do you stand on this particular issue.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They shouldn't say, this is how you should feel.
Guest:This is what it should be.
Guest:They shouldn't be agiprop.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They should give you the perspective from different angles so you walk away as a viewer saying, hmm.
Marc:I don't know if that guy was a bad guy.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:He seemed like a bad guy.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But he'd maybe not be 100% a bad guy.
Marc:Right.
Yeah.
Marc:So what do you think about this kind of explosion of docs?
Marc:Like, which is, you know, like, it just seems to be the new thing.
Marc:It's like you talk to anybody, like, I'm working on a doc.
Marc:Are you?
Guest:I think it's wonderful.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:I mean, listen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It takes a lot of these doc filmmakers who are basically working with very little money.
Guest:It takes them years to get these things done.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, but you have to applaud the stories they're tackling, the issues they're tackling, the fact that people, the general public,
Guest:is understanding what a documentary does and is all about, and they're engaging in it, both on the small screen and in the big screen.
Guest:I think it's great.
Guest:I mean, I come up in a time when docs were just on PBS.
Marc:Right, that was it.
Guest:That was it.
Guest:Now you got them on Netflix, you got them on Amazon, you got them in the theaters.
Guest:They're just coming out of everywhere, and I think it's fantastic.
Guest:Now, the reality is doc filmmakers don't make money.
Marc:Right, and some are better than others.
Guest:And some are better than others, but the fact that they're out there, I think it's great for docs.
Marc:And you're a documentary filmmaker.
Marc:I mean, that's what you do.
Marc:You're an editor, but primarily... I'm a doc filmmaker, and I love documentaries.
Guest:Now, you know, you think about, you know, talking about growing up in the 50s and the 60s.
Guest:I grew up watching Hollywood movies.
Guest:I grew up watching Bird Lancaster and, you know, Kirk Douglas and Joan Crawford.
Guest:You know, so when I got into the business, initially I thought I want to just make feature films.
Guest:I want to edit feature films.
Marc:Did you?
Marc:At the beginning?
Guest:I worked as an apprentice on a low-budget feature film, but then the editor on that film introduced me to the world of documentaries.
Marc:Through what?
Marc:Through whose work?
Marc:What did you see first?
Guest:Well, the films that we were working on together.
Guest:But then when I started to explore documentaries, I went to the work of Al Maisel, the Maisel Brothers, Salesman, Gimme Shelter, Penny Baker, Robert Drew, who did Primary about the Kennedy family.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Did you ever see that Friedkin doc about the death row prisoner that he, like William Friedkin, I haven't seen it either.
Marc:I've never seen it.
Marc:His first experience was doing a doc for TV.
Guest:Oh, when he was in Chicago.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I don't think I've ever seen it.
Guest:I haven't either.
Guest:You know, but then Michael Aptit's Seven Up series.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So when I started in my early 20s, when I got introduced to doc, I just fell in love with him.
Marc:Well, when you first got introduced to it, did you find that was the alignment that you could educate and that you could further the dialogue about civil rights specifically or just that you like docs?
Guest:Specifically, it was the fact that as an editor.
Guest:As an editor, I felt more empowered editing a doc than a feature film.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because when you get a feature film, they give you a script.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They give you the scenes with the actors.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And unless you're really a knucklehead, you know how to put it together.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, with a doc...
Guest:Nine times out of 10, a director or producer would come in and say, I have this great idea.
Guest:I shot all this footage.
Guest:I'm not sure how it should go together.
Guest:I'm going to go away.
Guest:I'm going to let you wrestle with it.
Guest:And I loved that challenge.
Guest:At first, I was terrified of that challenge.
Guest:Oh, my god.
Guest:What if I fail?
Guest:What if I fail?
Guest:But then I started to embrace it.
Guest:And the idea of being sort of the director in absentia, being able to sit there and shape and mold the footage and give it rhyme or reason became such an exhilarating feeling, even when I failed.
Guest:It was like, wow, I helped make a film.
Guest:And I know David must have felt like that when she was doing this film because she was a force in helping shape the direction of the story.
Guest:The editors, they're almost all of it.
Marc:All of them.
Marc:It all happens with you guys.
Marc:Always.
Guest:Always.
Guest:The truth of it, always.
Marc:Yeah, because like all you got, you're just hoping you got coverage.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:And then you go to a guy like you and you go like, I think I got all the coverage.
Marc:Put a rough cut together and then let's see what we got.
Guest:Let's see what we can make of it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And then it's sort of like, you got that other thing?
Marc:I do.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:So when you started, you were cutting film.
Guest:I was cutting film.
Marc:Oh my, I can't even imagine how long it would take.
Guest:It didn't take long.
Guest:No?
Guest:No, it didn't really take long.
Guest:It just took a certain amount of patience to know when not to make a cut because you didn't want to have a lot of little pieces.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you had to be able to say when you were going to make a cut.
Guest:It's sort of like, you know, Bresson, the photographer, is talking about the decisive moment.
Guest:That moment, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You had to have the same attitude when you used to edit film.
Guest:Right.
Guest:When was the moment to make the cut?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:You got to find it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:At first, in the beginning, you would be sort of like...
Guest:You know, should I make it here?
Guest:It would take you 10 or 12 minutes to make a cut.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:If you got more experience, you could do it faster.
Marc:Right, oh, right.
Marc:And I guess it's just like anything else, you adapt to the technology available.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Now, like, when you do, like, when Spike does a documentary, right, did he do Four Little Girls?
Guest:He did Four Little Girls and When the Levees Broke.
Marc:Oh, I thought The Little Levees Broke.
Marc:You did that one, too, with him?
Guest:Yeah, and the sequel, If God is Willing and the Creek Don't Rise.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Who did the Emmett Till documentary?
Guest:That was Stanley Nelson.
Marc:That was a hell of a documentary.
Guest:Yeah, great filmmaker, great filmmaker.
Marc:But when you do a documentary like Four Little Girls, which is a story that should be retold over and over again, that when Spike does something like that as opposed to a scripted feature, what's the dynamic between you guys?
Guest:The dynamic is a great one.
Guest:In that one, he said to me, I want you to be really engaged in this, not only as an editor, but as a co-producer.
Guest:So when we went through the whole research process and finding the archival material, I went down with him on the first shoots, the first interviews and stuff.
Guest:He would have a particular strategy.
Guest:After we shot all these interviews, we would go into the editing room for like two or three weeks straight, like seven in the morning from seven to 12, and just watch the interviews together and talk about what we liked, what I liked, what he liked.
Guest:And we would do that through all the interviews.
Guest:And then we would talk about how do we see the film unfolding.
Guest:One of the first questions Spike asked me when we were shaping the film, should there be narration?
Guest:And I said, I didn't think so.
Guest:I thought that the people of Birmingham can tell their own story.
Guest:So the challenge was how to make sure we told the story.
Guest:And it was, again, sort of like what we did with two trains.
Guest:It was to tell a story of these four little girls at the same time as we gave the audience the bigger context of what was happening in the civil rights movement at that time.
Guest:And to bring it together with that church bombing.
Guest:Again, the confluence of ideas come to the church bombing.
Guest:The horror.
Guest:Yeah, and we were in sync with that.
Guest:So it was always this give and take with Spike and I on that and on when the levees broke.
Marc:And I guess he's coming to you in that situation and the relationship you built as the guy with the experience.
Marc:Yeah, that I'd done a lot of docs.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:I did a lot of docs.
Marc:Did he like doing it?
Marc:He loved docs.
Marc:He loves them.
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:He loves all kinds of films.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:He loves making films.
Marc:And the Levy documentary...
Marc:to to sort of like you know really kind of isolate that narrative that you know through negligence or whatever this is you know going to change the the the the composition of that city and push you know the the the people that that live there and built the history of it out and they're going to let that happen yeah
Marc:So that was what had to be shown.
Guest:That's what had to be shown.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, again, he's not afraid to uncover and dig into every aspect of an issue.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's what makes those films work.
Guest:That's what makes when Levy spoke such a great film.
Marc:So what do you do with this movie now?
Guest:What's the life of a documentary?
Guest:These films need exposure.
Guest:They need exposure.
Guest:They need to go to festivals.
Guest:They need to go to markets.
Guest:They need to go any place where people can have an opportunity to see it.
Guest:We also want to not only get distribution in the United States, but around the world.
Guest:Any place that may feel the connection to this music, we hope that someone will buy it and show it.
Marc:Well, I love the movie, and I wish you the best of luck with it.
Marc:What does it take to get it on Netflix?
Guest:It takes somebody from Netflix watching that film and picking up the phone and calling Ben.
Marc:People need to not only rediscover or discover for the first time that music, but also to remain freshly aware of the struggle that is ongoing.
Marc:It's like the Jewish thing.
Marc:I'm a Jewish guy, and I'm not religious or anything, but the never forget thing applies across the board.
Marc:Never forget.
Marc:Never forget.
Never forget.
Marc:So I hope that Two Trains Running gets distribution so everyone can see it.
Marc:I hope it maybe ends up on Netflix or somewhere where you can watch it.
Marc:It's good.
Marc:It's very good.
Marc:Roots music is definitely something at the foundation of the Handsome Family Sound.
Marc:It was very exciting for me to talk to Brett and Rennie in Albuquerque at the Los Poblanos farm and ranch there where I stay.
Marc:And I love their records.
Marc:Their most recent album is called Unseen.
Marc:It's available now.
Marc:And this is me and Brett and Rennie Sparks.
Marc:The handsome family talking about music and depression and art and New York and stuff.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So listen.
Marc:When I knew you lived here, I'm like, if I could go to their house, I pictured a gloomy place with a lot of things, maybe some carnival relics.
Guest:It's like that room that Van Gogh made for Gauguin with the enormous sunflowers all around it.
Guest:Yeah, she's done that before.
Guest:How'd you end up in Albuquerque?
Guest:I'm from here.
Guest:You are?
Guest:Yeah, I grew up in the Southwest.
Guest:I was born in Texas and grew up around.
Guest:Well, that's not that close.
Guest:Well, Panhandle.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Dust Bowl.
Guest:Perryton.
Guest:Little tiny oil town.
Marc:In Texas.
Guest:My father worked in the oil fields.
Marc:Really?
Guest:I grew up in Odessa.
Guest:Really?
Guest:No kidding.
Marc:Odessa, Texas.
Guest:So that sparse kind of... Hobbs, New Mexico.
Guest:Hobbs.
Guest:Yeah.
Hobbs.
Guest:Last Picture Show territory.
Guest:It's a wonder I got out, yeah.
Guest:I spent every summer in a town right next to where the last picture show was shot in McInerney, Texas.
Guest:How close to reality was that?
Marc:Very.
Marc:Too close.
Marc:It's hard to watch.
Marc:So there was literally like, what, 150, 200 people in the town or more?
Guest:Oh, the town my mother grew up in, where my mother and father met, had a population of about 70.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:They had a Baptist church and a Methodist church, a post office, and a bank.
Guest:And that was it?
Guest:And that was it.
Guest:But I thought the old men played checkers in the bank.
Guest:There wasn't any commerce going on in there.
Guest:No, they just played dominoes because the banks failed during the Depression.
Guest:So it was just a shattered, burnout building where these old men just played dominoes.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:This is real.
Marc:So when you were a kid, what was the dream?
Marc:Just to get out?
Marc:I mean, what the hell do you do?
Marc:Like, I know that those towns existed in America, and I've driven past them.
Marc:But I have no sense of, like, what do you do with the space in your mind?
Marc:I can hear it in your music now that you bring it up.
Guest:Yeah, it's there.
Guest:And it's where I learn how to sing.
Guest:I mean, in the Baptist church.
Guest:I mean, I don't cling to those values anymore.
Guest:Well, that's probably good.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I just, you know, all these weird accidents happen to you, and I just kind of stumbled on classical music, and my mother started me playing piano when I was real young.
Guest:So there was a piano teacher.
Guest:Six or so.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:There's always a piano teacher.
Guest:There was a really good piano teacher in Odessa.
Guest:That didn't be a lifesaver.
Guest:Just one person in town.
Guest:That's right, right?
Guest:It's true.
Guest:I started really getting into Beethoven and Chopin and Bach and all that stuff.
Guest:And I started playing music.
Guest:You started getting beat up regularly.
Guest:Yeah, I started getting my ass kicked like every day in Odessa, Texas.
Guest:By the riggers.
Marc:By the jocks.
Guest:Rigger kids.
Guest:Well, I'm in Odessa, Texas.
Guest:That's Friday Night Lights territory.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's mojo.
Guest:Permian high school.
Guest:So you were sort of the nerdy music kid?
Guest:I was beyond nerdy.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:There's an album title.
Guest:I was the object of derision.
Guest:You were the one.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:There was no other.
Guest:There was no crew.
Guest:There was no support.
Guest:There was Darren and there was some other dorks, you know, big, tall, like lanky.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Red hair, you know.
Guest:And then where'd you grow up?
Guest:I grew up on Long Island, so yeah, the chances of our meeting were pretty slim.
Guest:Which town?
Guest:I'm from Smithtown on Long Island on the East Shore.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:On the North Shore, sorry.
Guest:I haven't been there in a while.
Guest:But yeah, I'm a New York Jew, no connection to Texas or Mexico whatsoever.
Guest:Couldn't understand a word he said when he showed up in New York.
Guest:It was like he spoke another kind of English.
Guest:We had...
Guest:That was probably the attraction.
Guest:My daddy is like, you know, hello.
Guest:And her father is just like, I can't understand a word.
Guest:Forget it.
Guest:So you went to New York and you met her there?
Guest:When did you start in the music?
Guest:Well, this is so sad.
Guest:He went to Long Island, to SUNY Stony Brook, where I was going to college, thinking, because it's 60 miles from New York, but it's Long Island, which is a long 60 miles from Manhattan.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's another world.
Guest:So he went there thinking, well, 60 miles in Texas isn't very far, so he'd be right outside of the city.
Guest:It's true.
Guest:But it was a dust bowl.
Guest:So you went there for college?
Guest:Yes, graduate school.
Guest:In what?
Guest:Music history.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Did you finish?
Guest:Not even applied.
Guest:Yeah, I have a master's degree.
Guest:You have a master's degree in music history?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, that's impressive.
Guest:It's okay.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:It's like gravy train.
Guest:Well, it's like...
Guest:Yeah, I spent whatever, like seven years just not even... It's not even playing music.
Guest:It's thinking about music.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And writing music and looking at the way it unrolls over time.
Guest:But that informs something.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I just wanted to do it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You didn't have plans.
Guest:When I went to UNM, where I graduated from, they were always trying to encourage people, oh, you'll never get a job doing this, so you should go into music education.
Guest:I was like, I don't want to be a fucking band teacher.
Marc:The drunky kind of like...
Marc:Angry dude trying to get a bunch of freshman degree music.
Guest:Now we're going to learn Rite of Spring.
Marc:That's right.
Guest:One, two, three, four.
Marc:What's that song?
Marc:The Baby Elephant Walk.
Guest:The Baby Elephant Walk.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:It's like always a stage band number.
Marc:It's awesome.
Marc:Yeah, that's it.
Marc:So...
Marc:But you're not making music or you are when you go to graduate school?
Marc:You went to UNM here.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I went to UNM and I did all kinds of music.
Guest:Most of it kind of weird, avant-garde.
Guest:What year?
Guest:I graduated from there in 85.
Guest:From UNM?
Guest:So I went to New York in 86.
Wow.
Marc:Really?
Marc:So you were doing like noise music?
Guest:Yeah, it was also in a new wave band that I wrote all the songs for.
Guest:It was a real new wave band.
Guest:What band?
Guest:Just you?
Guest:It was a band called Sleep.
Guest:There's a band called Sleep, strangely enough, from Albuquerque that's actually very popular.
Guest:They tour internationally.
Guest:But that was your band in the 80s, your art rock band?
Guest:It had nothing to do with me, but that was the name of my band, yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They took it later.
Guest:Right.
Marc:it was probably just some weird zeitgeist or something i knew a guy who here who did experimental music that when i was in high school changed my life this guy steve larue and he he had a band called jungle red that played twice a year this is kind of familiar it's just him and another dude who i think has since passed and uh and they would uh it involved there was guitars that were taped with duct tape and hit during the show there was um
Marc:pottery breaking, fiesta ware destroying.
Marc:That's great.
Marc:So this is an avant-garde situation.
Marc:Very much so.
Guest:People like that can change your life.
Marc:They do, man.
Marc:They really do.
Marc:And what was your musical background?
Guest:The Ramones.
Guest:They were just a local band I saw every weekend.
Marc:Did you go?
Marc:You were part of it?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So I had no concept that there was a punk rock movement.
Guest:It was just we all liked the Ramones and the New York Dolls.
Guest:She wouldn't sell the Ramones when they were like, you know, their audience was like girls.
Guest:And before there was a mosh pit.
Marc:Like in the mid 70s?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I remember going to London in like the early 80s and seeing somebody with the Ramones, like the Ramones, one of their albums painted on the back of their jacket.
Guest:And I was like, oh, my God, it's somebody from Long Island.
Guest:Never occurred to me.
Guest:Someone else might have heard of the Ramones.
Guest:So it's like, you from the island?
Marc:No, no.
Marc:Well, it's interesting how that like that whole time that like how much the American thing did inform the British thing.
Marc:Like I didn't I've only put that together recently.
Marc:I just talked to Lex McNeil a couple of weeks ago because they reissued a new they did another new issue edition of Please Kill Me, which is the greatest book ever written.
Marc:And, but like I talked to Chrissy Hine, I've talked to people about that, that when the Heartbreakers showed up in London, it was like a huge game changer when Johnny Thunders and those junkies.
Marc:But you were watching them when you were a kid, basically?
Guest:Yeah, you know, it was just, that was local music and it was great.
Marc:You go into the city.
Guest:Yeah, you go to, you know, you take the train into the city and then, you know, you get the 5 a.m.
Guest:train back and you say you slept over your friend's house and here you are.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You used to see them on Long Island.
Guest:Yeah, there was a lot of clubs all over.
Guest:My father's place and just weird little cheap clubs.
Guest:Yeah, it was really a sad moment when suddenly these guys with skinheads showed up and pushed us girls to the back of the room.
Guest:But these were our boyfriends for a long time.
Guest:These were people we just loved.
Marc:It was, because it was just rock and roll at that time.
Guest:But Joe Ramone, I mean, he did some really, really pop, beautiful, sweet songs.
Guest:We were all in love with him.
Marc:Joey, Joey.
Marc:And he's so like, I just watched some stuff.
Marc:I just watched a documentary on Danny Fields and they had a lot of footage of Joey dancing and stuff.
Marc:And he was so sweet.
Guest:It's pretty lovable.
Marc:Yeah, it is.
Marc:I once saw him and his father at Viselka eating soup opposite each other.
Marc:And it was just so cute because they were just having lunch, but the profile was the same.
Marc:Just a little Joey Vobode dad.
Marc:Amazing.
Marc:So did you play in rock bands then?
Guest:I played bassoon.
Guest:What?
Guest:I don't know why.
Guest:I think I wanted the oboe, but I said the wrong name, and then I wasn't too embarrassed to take it back.
Marc:But this is starting to make sense, though, with his education, and then you played bassoon, and this sort of weird, dense, almost atmospheric music you do now kind of lends itself towards both your skill sets.
Marc:Maybe so.
Marc:Come on.
Guest:Maybe there's some sense to it.
Guest:But no, I just wanted to have a boyfriend who was in a band.
Guest:Maybe that was the height of dreams I had.
Guest:When we met in college, we definitely had record collections that had the Venn diagram, you know?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's like, oh, you got the Meat Puppets Cool.
Guest:Yeah, which one?
Guest:It's like, oh, you got the Minutemen.
Guest:Up on the Sun.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Meat Puppets 2, of course.
Guest:I talked to Kirk.
Guest:We toured with him.
Guest:That was interesting.
Guest:They are interesting.
Guest:They don't commit to any sound.
Guest:They just do what they want.
Guest:Not a lot of people do that.
Guest:They're kind of into it.
Guest:I think that's great.
Guest:Trippy shit.
Guest:It is trippy shit.
Guest:When I was in his presence, we were in another dimension.
Guest:That was Kirk's dimension.
Marc:He's one of those guys.
Marc:This guy's own time zone.
Marc:Well, he's seen it all.
Marc:Well, what other stuff were you guys going to see?
Marc:Butthole Surfers.
Marc:We used to go see Butthole Surfers.
Guest:We used to go to CBGBs.
Guest:Really?
Guest:You like those guys, huh?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I like it all.
Guest:But then I think you maybe played me one of your dad's eight tracks of Patsy Cline, and that was it.
Guest:I was ruined.
Guest:Well, there was that time when everything kind of collapsed, like before...
Guest:the whole indie rock explosion like before nirvana yeah like and after punk was definitely dead and post-punk was even dead there was this period that really sucked and we were everyone was kind of casting around for something to listen to
Guest:And then, yeah, you start listening to your dad's old Hank Williams and Patsy Cline stuff, and you're like, this is the shit.
Guest:Right.
Guest:This is the same thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I know that's a cliche and everybody says it, but the first time I heard Hank Williams, I was like, man, this is badass.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's only cliche to this small community of people that would consider it a cliche.
Marc:To most normal people, or not normal people, mainstream people, it's like, you listen to who?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Hank, you mean Bo Savas?
Marc:Right.
Guest:I think there's generations of people over and over again who find Hank Williams, who find the Harry Smith anthology of American folk music, things that are these gateposts that open up worlds to people, but over and over again, people find them and think they're the only ones who's ever heard this, but we all end up just on this time travel backwards and backwards.
Marc:And it's cyclical.
Marc:yeah it's never ending like i'm just now starting to get into like like i listen i'm i'm back buying vinyl you got vinyl yeah of course and like these uh those tammy winette records the george jones records and the patsy clime records then these folk records that guy hurley is his name mike hurley do you know that guy yeah he's a guitar player yeah yeah that first album on young folk i don't know that's like destroyed i don't have that record yeah bert janch i just started listening to it's
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, then you get into all that Scottish, British Isles kind of stuff.
Guest:That stuff's awesome.
Guest:Next thing you know, you'll be looking at 16th century broadsides trying to read the music.
Guest:Go back to stage band.
Guest:I got it.
Guest:Ready now.
Guest:We've gone down that rabbit hole, you know, with the whole English folk.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, Martin Carthy.
Guest:Trying to trace some of these folk songs backwards, it goes forever and it goes across, you know, it goes into other countries and Scandinavia.
Marc:And it comes here through Appalachia.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right?
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Appalachia.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it must be here from the revolution.
Marc:Scott's Irish.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you can hear it all through the country music.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:It's wild, man.
Marc:You know what else fascinates me is the accordion in Mexican music coming from the Germans.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Polish, yeah.
Guest:Why were the Germans in Texas?
Guest:Oh, this is good.
Guest:Not a very nice story, but the Mexican government paid Western Europeans to come have some land if you agreed to kill some Indians.
Guest:So basically they were like, kill some Apaches, you can have a farm.
Guest:So these Germans and Poles and a lot of Europeans came and were Mexican citizens.
Guest:And then they decided, well, we've killed all the Apaches.
Guest:Now let's kill the Mexicans and become our own country.
Guest:And that's kind of why Texas wanted its independence.
Guest:But they became part of America.
Guest:And so that was what the Alamo was kind of about, too.
Marc:Right.
Guest:remember oh my god see like i'm glad you're teaching me history i i a lot of people in texas will tell you oh yeah my family used to be mexican citizens because they and they think that maybe they have some kind of spanish roots but really it's just that their families agreed to come over and kill indians sure well
Guest:And, you know, there was money for scalps, too.
Guest:That was when the Mexican government was giving money for any dark-haired scalps.
Guest:So that was kind of a bad thing.
Marc:Even Mexican indigenous people.
Guest:Yeah, if you found a long-haired, dark, black-haired scalp, you could get money for it.
Marc:Wow.
Guest:That wolf pelts were pretty good commerce back then.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Because there's that bit in... Is it...
Marc:Which Peckinpah movie is it?
Marc:The Wild Bunch?
Marc:Maybe.
Marc:Where the Germans bring the cannons?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But that's where all the polka came from.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:That's amazing.
Guest:The Mexicans did some good stuff with that music.
Guest:Great.
Yeah.
Guest:amazing so all right so you're not in bands you're playing bassoon she was writing i was always wanting to be a writer which you know another worthless pursuit in a lot of ways but come on now didn't know what to do with it you know but you do right now you have books yeah i do well she writes all the lyrics yeah uh all that i don't write any lyrics no you're the music guy
Guest:I come from a long history of, I think, you know, dark storytellers.
Marc:Well, that's the thing about, like, because I think most, at least a few records I listen to, I don't know, I don't go back to the 90s with you guys, but they seem to be concept records in that they're whole pieces.
Guest:I hope so.
Marc:They're records instead of albums.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And they, you know, the last one was, is that the one in the box?
Guest:Yeah, with the animals, yeah.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Guest:People kept asking me if it was a children's record, though, so it got a little confusing, but it is not a children's record.
Marc:It would be one of those children's records that's a life changer.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:She wanted it to be like a medieval bestiary, but everybody's like, oh, it's a kid's record.
Guest:One of the things that informed my childhood was my parents, they had two sets of records.
Guest:We had either Jewish comedy records.
Guest:Ellen Germann.
Guest:alan sherman tom lara or we had folk music like from the 50s in greenwich village so they had they had peter paul and mary and they had the kingston trio and they had burl ives and they put those records for me to go to sleep to thinking of them as very calming records but if you listen to the lyrics to those songs they're usually quite terrifying songs yeah i made the mistake burl burl's a little haunting yeah
Guest:Burl is.
Marc:Like, I kind of remember him from variety shows when I was a kid.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:That voice is quite otherworldly.
Guest:And those songs that he sang were always about, you know, little things happening in the woods.
Guest:Swimming in the water.
Guest:And then he, you know, the whole story of Burl Ives is even scarier because he was the one who testified before, like, some Senate committee that...
Guest:Pete Seeger was a communist.
Marc:Yeah, he's a namer of names.
Guest:So then he became a sort of persona na grata.
Guest:Yeah, so he kind of gets swept to the side.
Marc:And then Pete Seeger.
Marc:So that's really the difference between sort of populist music about issues and then fairytale music.
Guest:Yeah, it is.
Guest:I was saying a lot of fairytale music is what I would say.
Guest:Fuck your mind up.
Guest:Well, I feel like I've kind of found Burl Ives again in my life.
Guest:So I was looking for him.
Guest:Oh, thanks a lot.
Guest:No, in a beautiful way.
Guest:He's everything to me.
Guest:That was when I shaped everything about my life, was late at night listening to those Burl Ives records and just frozen in fear.
Guest:The kind of terror you can only have when you're a little kid and you can't move.
Guest:You're so terrified of the songs.
Marc:Oh, so they really hit you like that.
Marc:Because that's what fairy tales were.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:They were these portals into the dark, morally slippery universe of humans.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:yeah they can open open up doors that maybe you don't remember a song that just made you go like oh shit oh what's the little black bug yeah the little black bug swimming in the water that one's quite terrifying but even like on top of old smoky the ones that you know they my darling clementine those songs are really terrifying people die in them and like my darling clementine not only is she drowning but her father's watching her going sorry okay
Guest:Dreadful sorry, but I ain't coming in there to get you.
Guest:You look so pretty when you're drowning.
Guest:Those songs have become muted over time and don't have that.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Until you really look at them, it's like, whoa.
Marc:But they've got to connect with you on that level.
Marc:Yeah, they do.
Marc:And they did you.
Marc:I mean, I know those songs kind of, but I don't register them in that same way.
Guest:We're not supposed to anymore.
Guest:We're supposed to just...
Guest:enjoy the pretty melody, but I made the mistake of listening.
Marc:I think that was always the point on some level.
Marc:I don't think they were made to terrify children.
Guest:Certainly not.
Guest:My parents wanted me to go to sleep.
Guest:They didn't want me up in their room screaming at night about things under the bed.
Marc:I wonder what the intent was.
Marc:Why those stories?
Marc:I think that must come from the English and Gaelic tradition of living a hard life.
Guest:Some of them were like newspaper stories.
Guest:They were about actual events.
Guest:I mean, there may have been a theory that if you terrify the child enough, they'll be too scared to get out of the bed.
Guest:So that could have worked as well.
Marc:Or maybe it's more like, you know, buying a pet so the kid will learn about death.
Guest:I'm not telling my kid about death, but listen to this record.
Guest:I'll come back in an hour and see how you're doing.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Life is hard.
Guest:Here's a fun way to learn that.
Guest:We need that now, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it is important.
Guest:I think kids need to.
Guest:Do you feel like you're on a mission?
Guest:Well, I mean, I wouldn't say that, but I do think that we have a strange reluctance to discuss mortality in America as if we just don't say it, it won't happen.
Marc:Oh, yeah, we hide old people.
Marc:It's not the case.
Guest:Yeah, and we're very, yeah, we're not even death, but old age we're afraid to even say anything about.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Yeah, well, there was a time where, you know, where people... Grandma used to die in the living room with everybody around her, yeah.
Marc:In a hospital bed.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Did you have that in your life?
Guest:No, no.
Marc:That must have been small town, though.
Marc:I mean, like, how did people die in Odessa, Texas?
Guest:Well, Odessa was bigger.
Guest:You'd plant dominoes in the bank and just keel over?
Guest:You'd go look at them in the church, you know, and then you'd carry them to the graveyard, which is 200 yards away, and you'd put them in the ground.
Guest:When did you start making music together?
Guest:We were married for five years before we ever wrote a song together.
Guest:And you were playing your avant-garde music?
Guest:I was always doing my thing.
Guest:Oh, I was playing pop bands in Chicago.
Guest:You had a good heavy metal band.
Guest:I played rockabilly bands.
Guest:When did you get to Chicago?
Guest:We moved to Chicago.
Guest:She went to graduate school in Ann Arbor for creative writing.
Guest:Oh, that's a good town.
Guest:It was a good town.
Guest:And it's good for that.
Guest:It's a good program for that.
Guest:It's a good music history there.
Guest:And it's a nice college town.
Marc:There used to be a pretty good comedy club there.
Guest:It was a nice town.
Guest:It was an easy town to be a kid in.
Guest:Only so much trouble he could get into.
Guest:Yeah, it's a college.
Guest:Yeah, we wanted to live somewhere a little realer, and Chicago was as real as it got back then.
Guest:I like Chicago.
Guest:Yeah, I love Chicago.
Marc:It's my second home.
Guest:It's a great place to try to be an artist.
Guest:It really is an encouraging place.
Marc:How so?
Marc:Because I talk to a lot of people from the comedy world, but I haven't talked to anybody really about the music world of Chicago.
Guest:Well, when we lived there in the late 80s, early 90s, it was just sort of deserted.
Guest:So you could get your own huge warehouse space and open a theater.
Guest:You could have a band practice there.
Guest:You could do whatever you wanted.
Guest:Nobody really cared.
Guest:So it was great sort of...
Guest:A lot of raw space.
Guest:Yeah, we would just go to people.
Guest:Everyone had a loft space and everyone was just doing their thing there.
Guest:And it was really, really exciting.
Marc:So you had one of those sort of like, you know, home slash loft slash environments.
Guest:Yeah, it was a dump.
Guest:It was 3,000 square feet and it was $500 a month.
Guest:And you didn't have shows, you had parties?
Guest:There were parties and shows.
Guest:They were happening.
Marc:Just leave the door open and see if people come.
Marc:They were parties.
Marc:And who were some of the people on the scene there?
Marc:Anybody that kind of transcended?
Guest:It's like, hey, look, Liz Phair's here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, when all that stuff was coming up, it was like Liz Phair, Smashing Pumpkins, Surge Overkill, and Lounge Axe was like in full effect, the club Tweedies.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Great bands from Drag City.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Everybody in Drag City played there.
Guest:The Palace played there on a regular basis.
Guest:Bloodshot Records, all those bands.
Guest:All the Insurgent Country stuff was coming up.
Guest:at the time too bloodshot just got founded i mean it was a really i get a lot of records from bloodshot records they're definitely a uh there's definitely a context there yeah yeah the americana kind of yeah yeah yeah we're all friends um and we contribute usually to their like compilations oh you do but
Guest:And Jeff really seemed like he was really inspiring to so many people.
Guest:He was sort of helping a lot of people.
Guest:Jeff was a big factor in our lives.
Guest:He was then?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was how we met him.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:It was in Chicago, yeah.
Guest:And did you work with him?
Guest:Yeah, and he loaned us a lot of equipment.
Guest:I think his wife passed a demo to me.
Guest:his wife uh ran lounge acts which was the great club in town and so um yeah through her we met him and a lot of bands met him and he just was so helpful to everybody anybody he could help he did and he gave a lot of people great support slots and he gave us all the equipment we used for our third record he lent us for like six months we got all this equipment we could have never afforded
Marc:But initially, where was Wilco at that time?
Marc:What year are we talking about?
Marc:This was the beginning.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But he already set up shop there.
Guest:Well, actually, we've supported Uncle Tupelo, so we knew him back then.
Marc:I loved Uncle Tupelo.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I just met Jeff for the first time.
Guest:Yeah, he's a great, smart guy.
Guest:And yeah, so right after Uncle Tupelo, when they'd broken up, he was kind of, I think he was sort of like, we knew he'd formed another band, but nobody had heard it yet.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then Sun Bowl came out, and they were really doing well.
Guest:And we thought, oh, poor Jeff.
Guest:Well, I hope he's going to be okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He landed on his feet.
Guest:He did all right.
Guest:He sure did.
Guest:He's okay.
Guest:You don't have to worry about him.
Guest:He's got enough people following him.
Guest:And Jay kind of kept doing his thing, and he kept doing it, and he kind of stayed in that place.
Marc:But yeah, that's what happens.
Marc:It's weird.
Guest:That's cool.
Guest:I mean, on every record, there's some stellar songs.
Marc:I don't really understand people that stay in a groove if it's not working and they're not being forced to stay in that groove by a record company to be redundant.
Marc:I mean, I understand.
Marc:I guess if that's the music you play, there's a dedication to it.
Marc:People do what they do.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:I think you don't really...
Guest:It takes a lot of guts to go all over the place.
Guest:Well, I think a lot of people do what they think they're expected to do, too, which is kind of a bugaboo.
Guest:Yeah, but who's expecting you to?
Guest:Yeah, I don't know.
Guest:Your audience.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's like, I need more up-tempo songs on this record.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Because it's going to be boring.
Guest:I don't think anybody thinks about that anymore.
Guest:I'm going to lose my alternative country fans if there's not enough honky-tonk numbers on them.
Marc:I guess that's true.
Guest:I don't do that anymore, but I used to.
Guest:Yeah, you don't do that anymore.
Guest:I don't think about that anymore.
Marc:Record sales aren't important anymore, so.
Marc:Well, I know.
Marc:Well, that's it.
Marc:That's very true.
Marc:The people you're playing to, you're inventing them, first of all.
Marc:They're in your head, usually.
Marc:That's true.
Marc:If there is guys that are thinking like you, who the fuck needs them?
Marc:Right.
Marc:Like, you know, those four people like, sold out, huh?
Marc:There is no selling out anymore.
Marc:I mean.
Marc:Well, yeah, but that's like if you have a certain type of brain that's insecure or dark, that instead of going like, we're doing new things and this is great, you're going to be like, no, that one dude, Stu, is going to be upset.
Guest:Yeah, he's going to be pissed if I don't have the ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, you know.
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:I mean, any kind of creative life is so hard to navigate and survive in that you might as well do what gives you joy because...
Guest:There's no other reason to do it.
Guest:Well, you know, it's like you find your voice over time, though.
Guest:You do.
Guest:And then you stop worrying about shit like that.
Guest:You do.
Guest:And you say, this is what I'm doing now.
Marc:Yeah, I'm surprised.
Marc:And you make a decision, and you carry on.
Marc:Yeah, I'm surprised that there are definitely waves of insecurity that continue to come.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Oh, my gosh.
Guest:I don't think that ever ends.
Yeah.
Marc:It's crazy.
Guest:It just kivots, as they say.
Guest:Everyone I've ever been jealous of, and when I've met them and talked to them, they're always just as trembly as I am.
Guest:So it never ends.
Marc:They're all fucking nuts, and they hate themselves, and they're having a hard time.
Marc:It's sort of like this disappointing, it's a disappointing moment when you realize you wasted all that energy, assuming things were so amazing.
Marc:This person is having an amazing life, and you meet them, and they're like, oh, I'm at the end of my rope.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It kind of made me love all my idols even more, realizing that we're all just doing this because this is what we want to do.
Guest:There is no... Which idols, though, did you get to meet where you were sort of... Lou Reed, I think, was one especially that, you know, he was somebody... Yeah, I thought, well, if I was ever Lou Reed, everything would be okay.
Guest:But he had problems, obviously, just like anybody else.
Guest:And, you know, we played some big shows with him.
Guest:We did some Leonard Cohen shows with him where we were all doing Leonard Cohen songs.
Guest:So we spent a lot of time backstage because we were all doing like one or two songs.
Guest:So talking to him and just... Just talking about nothing.
Guest:Just a sweet...
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Generous.
Guest:Because you don't go up to Lou Reed.
Guest:Gentle man.
Guest:Was he?
Guest:Man, I'm your biggest fan.
Guest:Because when somebody comes up to you, I mean, it's nice and you appreciate it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But when people come up to you and say, oh, I love you, man.
Guest:I love you, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:It's like there's a little spark in you that says, well, that's cool.
Guest:I'm the shit.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But...
Guest:You know, you've heard it, and it's like, this doesn't really advance the plan at all.
Guest:And then you've got to be gracious.
Guest:You go from, like, on the ship.
Guest:That's cool, man.
Guest:Thanks.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's a bit of a burden.
Guest:Nick Cave, I did the same thing.
Guest:I asked him about a question about, what are those bells on Let Love In?
Guest:And he's like, oh, yeah, we had this big thing in the studio.
Marc:He's excited.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it's like, yes, people, you know.
Marc:So Nick Cave and Lou Reed, now we're getting into the area.
Marc:That's the idol area.
Marc:Now we're getting into the tone.
Guest:There's like a transcendent grace in this music that isn't in the person when you sit down and talk to them in everyday life.
Guest:They're not shining.
Guest:They're not glowing.
Marc:They're the vessel.
Marc:They might be an asshole.
Marc:They might just be a racist.
Marc:Regular guys.
Marc:Right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I remember hearing recently, I heard Loretta Lynn on a show for a record she had just put out.
Marc:And they started talking to her about politics.
Marc:And I was like, don't do it.
Marc:Well, because I didn't like, of course, she's going to be who she's going to be.
Marc:She comes from where she comes from.
Marc:And it didn't necessarily even taint her for me.
Marc:You know, like I would have assumed as much.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:It makes it more mysterious, though, I think, in a way.
Marc:If you don't talk about it.
Guest:No, I think I'm saying when I hear the person and I realize they're just a person that isn't extraordinary in any way, shape, or form, except when they do this one thing where suddenly the world takes on another dimension.
Marc:I use music as a drug in a way.
Marc:It's taken me just getting older to get into the depth of even listening to lyrics.
Marc:I like a hook.
Marc:I like, you know.
Guest:You like a more visceral thing.
Marc:I do.
Guest:So Leonard Cohen's a lot more intellectual, maybe.
Marc:I'm getting there.
Marc:I'm getting there with some of these folk singers now.
Marc:But I still have to pay attention.
Guest:You want to feel it in your gut first.
Marc:I definitely do.
Guest:I want to feel it in my heart first.
Guest:So maybe it's like an emotion comes from, for me, words first.
Guest:So...
Guest:I'm going top down and you're going bottom up.
Marc:Yeah, I guess so.
Guest:But we can meet in the middle occasionally.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:That's what's kind of interesting.
Marc:That's definitely it.
Marc:But when did you make the first record?
Marc:The late 90s?
Guest:Early 90s.
Guest:Early 90s.
Guest:93, 94.
Guest:And that wasn't like the records you're doing now, though.
Guest:that was kind of wandering around in the forest oh yeah but not defining the forest the seeds were definitely there of what we were going to do later but there was a lot of well shit on there too it's an interesting document but it's kind of like and it was recorded well but it's like we were under the influence of a lot of Seattle kind of bands and you were like mentally different
Guest:Yeah, definitely a pre-medication, post-medication.
Guest:Pre-bipolar experience.
Guest:You were bipolar your whole life and you didn't know it or did it get worse?
Guest:That's when I... It gets worse.
Guest:That's when it came to a head.
Guest:You get caught when it gets worse.
Guest:The year after that, 1995, was when it reared its head.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Where it was tangible?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:where i was untenable he got locked up where i couldn't function basically they came out with the big where i was a danger to myself and others really was it a mania or was it a mania oh you don't get arrested for depression it's the mania that's gonna get you locked up yeah the mania is what gets you yeah and and what uh what how how how how grand was it
Guest:Well, I was committed to a state facility.
Guest:For what action?
Guest:What did you decide that made people go, maybe he needs help?
Guest:It was a combo.
Guest:It was combo number five.
Guest:It started out when you drew that little pencil mustache.
Guest:I was real belligerent.
Guest:I kind of assaulted a big security guard kind of person in the Mag Mile.
Guest:This was in Chicago.
Guest:I was driving around my car drinking champagne and eating cat food.
Guest:Totally jubilant.
Guest:I don't know why.
Guest:You didn't have to eat cat food.
Guest:It was easy.
Guest:It was convenient.
Guest:You didn't have time to make a sandwich.
Guest:And I was at a place where I thought feeding my body, obviously I've gotten over that, that was a nuisance and a distraction that I could no longer deal with.
Guest:So you had a good manic system in place.
Guest:Yeah, I was going to consume only what I needed to to stay.
Guest:Enough for a small kitten.
Guest:And I was drinking that black champagne that comes in the black bottle.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:That cheap shit, Freshinette.
Guest:They sell it wide in.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so I was at Freshinette.
Guest:And you were building a portable recording studio in the car.
Guest:Your sponsor, Freshinette.
Guest:A portable recording studio in the car?
Guest:In the car, yeah.
Guest:So I think you were not planning.
Guest:You had big plans.
Guest:Yeah, I had a lot of big plans.
Guest:He had a lot of diagrams around the house with electricity and pyramids.
Marc:Strangely enough, I was listening to Daniel Johnston, too.
Marc:Yeah, pyramids and electricity, schematic diagrams.
Guest:Yeah, he had some things figured out.
Guest:A beautiful mind.
Guest:I was working on another level.
Guest:Some kind of like psychic battery.
Guest:It was weird because every now and then I would hit on something that would be...
Guest:pretty dolphins and pillows various but most of the time it's just gibberish yeah and then you get to this place where you know like you just and you guys are married and you're put you're dealing with it yeah yeah you know you thought maybe maybe he does have something well i mean the pyramid could be a battery well how am i i can't argue with that
Guest:Remember this thing about teepees and reverse cones and vortexes.
Guest:And also crucifixes were electrical.
Guest:Crucifixes, positive and negatives.
Guest:There was some physics involved that wasn't completely crazy.
Guest:Yeah, he created a personal cabala.
Guest:On top of everything, I was drinking a lot and doing drugs that were misprescribed.
Guest:I think you were prescribed antidepressants and that wasn't helping.
Guest:They were giving me antidepressants.
Guest:They don't take you down.
Guest:That was just taking me over.
Guest:Yeah, it may have been a mistake.
Guest:So I was fucked up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Were you making any music?
Guest:That's the thing.
Guest:I mean, people have this.
Guest:You don't get a lot of work done in this phase of life.
Guest:You've got diagrams to make.
Guest:Since I made this public, you always get this thing.
Guest:Oh, you must get a lot done.
Guest:You don't get anything done.
Guest:No, you don't.
Guest:And it's like you mentioned Byron.
Guest:It's like this whole, you know, fiery genius, crazy diva.
Guest:That's a dangerous ideology to me.
Guest:My advice is take your meds.
Guest:You're right, especially if you're the only one that thinks that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because when you're... Mental hospitals are not full of artists.
Guest:No, they're full of really tortured people.
Guest:And it's hard to get work done when you're...
Guest:When your brain is totally disconnected.
Marc:Do you remember the elation of it?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And so you were in the hospital for a while?
Marc:Two weeks, yeah.
Marc:And they got you level?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, he kept saying to me, he seems like he's pretty rational.
Guest:He was talking about that he's going to tour Europe with his band.
Guest:I was like, no, that one's actually true.
Guest:The rest about the batteries and the pyramids isn't true.
Guest:I've got to get out of here, doc.
Guest:I'm supposed to go to a tour of Germany.
Guest:And it was like, he's clearly still delusional.
Guest:That was the real part.
Guest:So, I mean, yeah, that's a Catch-22 situation.
Guest:So now you have a new record coming out?
Guest:We do, yeah, September 16th.
Guest:Is it going to be in a big, pretty box?
Guest:Yes, I hope so.
Guest:Yeah, the LPs are on their way.
Guest:I would have brought you one, but we will send you one.
Guest:Vinyl's getting hard to do lately.
Guest:We got transparent green vinyl on the way.
Guest:Everybody's doing it.
Guest:Very slow.
Guest:Those vinyl factories are way back up.
Guest:Yeah, see-through green vinyl.
Marc:Yeah, it's pretty.
Marc:Yeah, I'll get one.
Marc:I'll get one.
Marc:So how many records did it take?
Marc:So the first record was post you being properly medicated?
Guest:No, before.
Guest:Two before.
Marc:Two pre-medication records.
Yeah.
Marc:And then after you leveled off, was that when you sort of found the groove that you kind of built on?
Guest:I think medication, without it, we wouldn't have a band.
Guest:We wouldn't have a marriage.
Guest:For both of us, I'm on medication too, so it's not just him.
Guest:Well, that's nice.
Guest:You can have something to do together in the morning.
Guest:We shop for pill cases together.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:You can buy pill boxes.
Guest:I do think it's important to realize that medication can save people's lives.
Marc:No, absolutely.
Guest:There's some really amazing drugs out there.
Guest:Not all of it is necessary, but for us, it's been... The difference between life and death, for sure.
Marc:And you can function, and if you don't romanticize the madness... Yeah.
Marc:Well, that's the hardest thing, I think, for the bipolar thing.
Marc:It's like you like the manic.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, but... You kind of miss it.
Guest:I'm nostalgic for the schematic.
Guest:But he got far enough into it where it wasn't fun anymore.
Guest:You were on fire.
Guest:You know, it's like the waves are like...
Guest:this small way the roller coaster wasn't fun anymore instead of like this right right i get it i get it's a few days yeah yeah yeah you're always gonna be bipolar essentially it's about the work too i mean when you make a record it's not i mean and i record every i write the music i record it i basically play almost everything
Guest:So it's like, this is work.
Guest:This is not some... Right.
Guest:No, you gotta... Nonsense, you know?
Marc:And you've got fans now, and you've got people that enjoy the records, so you gotta do the work.
Marc:It's your job.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But we enjoy doing the work.
Marc:Of course.
Guest:Well, you're an artist, so that, you know, I'm not saying... So I enjoy being sane, is what I'm saying.
Marc:It's not like... Yeah, but then you can at least manage it, and you know your limitations, and you know what you like to work within.
Marc:So, like, on this record...
Marc:the last record as you said was sort of a animal record yeah yeah because i i and i like i had the songbook like it's weird because i don't know you guys that well but when like i was very obsessed when i i couldn't find my handsome family songbook i was like that thing's a real thing i need where is it where did i put it like i have like because like there's certain records where i'm like
Marc:I'll listen to it, but then I'm like, that's a precious item.
Marc:Is it like the blue book?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I don't know where it came from.
Marc:Was it in the box?
Guest:Yeah, we probably sent you a bunch of things.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And I was like, this is important.
Guest:Yeah, it's cool.
Guest:It took forever to do that because it was before Pro Tools.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, so I had to use this.
Guest:It was a mess.
Guest:I just feel like our songs, the way we write songs and the way we want our songs to be perceived, I want them to be things that other people can sing, that they're not about us.
Guest:They're just about songs that should live on, be bigger than us.
Marc:But also, they are simple to a point, but the sound is kind of, you do whatever is left from the darkness.
Marc:There is a haunting quality to the music, and not in a bad way, in an atmospheric way.
Guest:How could haunting be bad?
Yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, you know, they're not Burrow Ives scary.
Guest:We got work to do then.
Marc:No, they are.
Guest:No, I like classic rock and classic country.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Those are probably my biggest.
Guest:We like songs.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But there is a tone that you guys seem to get.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:And you're aware of that.
Marc:you do what you do you know i think that's really all you it's probably pretty deliberate so how how are you working you record all over your house and you have a studio set up is it are you an analog freak or what do you do um i get a lot of analog outboard gear but it all goes in the box you have to right i don't know i can't do tape yeah yeah it's too expensive it's too hard to maintain
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I do appreciate the importance of warming the signal up before you go in.
Guest:But in this day and age, it's like... It's silly not to pretend computers don't exist.
Guest:Everything's going to get dithered down eventually to digital anyway.
Guest:Because that's how everyone... Everyone's listening on earbuds from YouTube on their phone.
Guest:Everybody's going to be listening to the record on Spotify at like, you know... Yeah.
Guest:128K.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like MP3 quality.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah, to spend that kind of money to do it analog is kind of crazy.
Guest:Although I appreciate the fetishistic aspect.
Guest:Yeah, I wouldn't take that away from somebody if that's their thing.
Marc:It's cool.
Marc:Well, it's funny because Jack White will make those direct to acetate records, but there's always buzzes and fucked up things on them.
Marc:But that's part of what he's looking for.
Marc:I don't mind it, but you do notice it and you're sort of like, oh, that's just a live performance.
Marc:I guess that buzz is going to be all the way through this record.
Marc:And it's kind of cool.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So what's the new record?
Marc:Is it a whole piece?
Guest:Yeah, it's about, well, it's mostly about colors.
Guest:And this was my basic theme.
Guest:But yeah, it's stories about things that aren't easily seen, things that are just on the edge of visibility.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:like for instance the title says well maybe i don't know if you remember have you been to the state fair here when you're a kid did you remember seeing this world's smallest horse yeah tiny tina yeah well every year i went there's a song about tiny tina so 75 cents for a few years a dollar they went up to a dollar and i still didn't go and then one year i said this is the year i'm going to go see tiny tina and then she wasn't there oh no so i never saw tiny tina i was obsessed with human oddities
Marc:So when I was a kid, when Ronnie and Donnie were still touring, the Siamese twins.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:I saw Ronnie and Donnie.
Marc:I saw the world's smallest man there.
Marc:I saw the guy with the elephant feet.
Marc:I saw, like in Humanities, they're not easy to come by.
Marc:It was sort of the end of it.
Marc:I saw the wild woman.
Marc:That was sort of a sad moment.
Marc:Yeah, it was.
Marc:It was just a little woman who was in a box.
Guest:It's a job.
Marc:Well, that was it.
Marc:That was the funny thing.
Marc:The box is the killer.
Marc:No one was going to see her.
Marc:They just weren't interested in her.
Marc:But I went.
Marc:So I had tickets.
Marc:And I walked up the ramp to look in.
Marc:And she was just doing some organizing stuff over in the corner.
Marc:And then she turned around.
Marc:And she saw me.
Marc:And she kind of went like, all right.
Marc:And she picked up a snake.
Guest:And went, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:I'm like, thanks for the show.
Marc:I appreciate it.
Marc:But Ronnie and Donnie, that was trippy, man.
Marc:Because they would just sit in their trailer.
Marc:They had a fully furnished trailer.
Marc:And they were living Siamese twins.
Marc:And they were just sitting there watching television.
Marc:And you would just go like, what?
Marc:And they'd have it fairly visible where they were connected, but they wouldn't look at you or nothing.
Marc:They'd just sit there and watch TV.
Marc:And the world's smallest man was about the size of a slightly large basketball, but he had that weird crippling ailment.
Marc:I don't know what it was.
Marc:And he went to sit and talk to him.
Marc:And you'd ask questions.
Marc:And then the guy with the feet...
Marc:You know, he had these huge deformed elephantiasis feet.
Marc:And the toes were all mangled and weird.
Guest:This was the only job he was going to get then.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And he was wearing like a loincloth.
Marc:And he'd walk in.
Marc:He goes, you can touch him.
Marc:And I'm like, no.
Guest:It's five bucks extra to touch him.
Guest:That's cool.
Marc:I'm good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then the babies in the jar exhibit, that kind of stuff.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Yeah, I remember that at White City down by Carlsbad Caverns.
Guest:Or like The Thing.
Guest:There are places like that.
Marc:The Thing.
Guest:Right, the roadside attractions.
Guest:These things are disappearing.
Guest:I mean, they're getting cleaned up and people are like, oh, you can't do that.
Marc:Well, they rarely took care of them, too, because you go to those roadside museums and a lot of times they're all dusty.
Marc:Oh, it's nonsense.
Marc:I'm often afraid that my garage is going to start looking like that if I don't do that.
Marc:Just this weird attraction that used to be relevant.
Marc:Oh, well.
Marc:So we got the Tina song.
Guest:So, yeah.
Guest:But did you see Tiny Tina?
Marc:I didn't.
Marc:No, I did say.
Marc:I saw Tiny Tina, yeah.
Guest:Compared to the world's smallest man, I mean, would the smallest man be able to ride her?
Guest:What size are we talking?
Marc:Yeah, he would have, but it would have been awkward because he wasn't like Tom Thumb.
Marc:He wasn't a dwarf.
Marc:He didn't have dwarfism.
Marc:He had something else.
Guest:So he wasn't a horse rider.
Marc:I didn't look like a horse rider, no.
Guest:I regret seeing her, but I don't regret seeing her.
Marc:That's like so much in life.
Guest:Diffidence.
Marc:And what's it going to be called, the album?
Guest:It's called Unseen.
Guest:There's some historical stuff about William Crooks, who's one of my favorite scientists, who basically...
Guest:designed a vacuum tube in the late 1800s in Victorian England to try to capture ghosts.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was a ghost cage.
Guest:That's the origin of the vacuum tube.
Guest:Really?
Guest:All guitar amps are really ghost trappers.
Guest:He put a filament inside a vacuum tube and was trying and moved it around the room and became excited.
Guest:He was like, oh, there's a spirit.
Guest:But what he was really detecting were like ions in the air or other kind of RFs.
Guest:So he wasn't really wrong.
Guest:No, he wasn't wrong.
Guest:Not really.
Guest:But that turned into the tube, which that to me is a total trick.
Guest:That we all just bought again.
Marc:We're back to ghosts in the glass.
Guest:Ghosts get a kickback from it, so they're making money on the other side.
Marc:Well, thank God.
Marc:I knew there had to be a conspiracy to the return to analog is that the ghosts needed money.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It was great talking to you guys.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It was a real treat.
Marc:That's your double header WTF.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Go to WTF pod.com for all your WTF pod needs.
Marc:I'll be in Chicago this Saturday day after tomorrow.
Marc:If you're listening to this on Thursday, I think there's still tickets available for the second show.
Marc:I believe there is.
Marc:You can go to WTF pod.com slash tour to get a link to those tickets.
Um,
Marc:I'm not going to play guitar today because I got to go do some painting.
Marc:I'm going to help my buddy paint my bedroom.
Marc:All right?
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Boomer lives!
Marc:Boomer lives!
you