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Hi, this is Keri Brownstein.
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This is DJ Premier.
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This is Darren Aronofsky.
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You got the RZA right here.
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Rose McGowan.
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Right here.
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Aisha Tyler.
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Tron Conquest.
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Fred Armisen.
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Fritz Paul.
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Javier Munoz.
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Frankie Cosmos.
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Flying Lotus.
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SPEAKER_03
Hi, we re Haim, and you re listening to the Talk House Podcast.
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Hello, and welcome to the Talk House Podcast.
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I m Josh Modell.
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On this week s episode, we ve got two incredible singer-songwriters who sprung from the same fertile late 80s, early 90s scene, and who are still doing it right all these years later, Joe Pernice and Bill Janovitz.
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Now, Joe Pernice first found notice in the countryish pop band Scud Mountain Boys, whose home-recorded records landed them a deal with Sub Pop in the mid-1990s.
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The Scuds weren t around super long, but their end was the beginning of the Pernice Brothers, Joe s long-running band that continues to put out excellent, often melancholy songs.
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The latest Pernice Brothers album, and by the way, he s really the only constant member at this point, is called Who Will You Believe, and it stands up there with his incredibly durable catalog.
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In addition to writing and playing songs, Pernice wrote a great novel a while back called It Feels So Good When I Stop, and he even had a short stint writing for TV.
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But for now, he s concentrating on music.
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Check out a little bit of December in Her Eyes from Who Will You Believe.
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I really should ve dragged myself downtown to see you, but I...
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The other half of today s conversation, Bill Janovitz, has been the singer and guitar player for the band Buffalo Tom since that band s inception back in 1986.
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And while there have been quieter periods in there, they ve consistently released records, including the new Jump Rope, which comes out May 31st.
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Buffalo Tom came out of the same incredible Boston-slash-Amherst music scene that birthed Pernice Brothers, Pixies, Dinosaur Jr., and Sabado, and many more, and these guys dive right into reminiscing about those fertile days.
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In addition to making music, Janovitz is also something of a rock historian, having written the comprehensive Leon Russell book in recent years, as well as a volume on the Rolling Stones.
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His next book is about the cars, which these guys talk about during this chat as well.
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Check out a little bit of the song Helmet from the upcoming album Jump Rope right here.
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Like I said, these guys dive back into the Boston days, talking about mutual friends and collaborators like Jay Maskis and David Berman of Silver Jews.
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They also try to remember their first encounters, one of which involves Pernice being a little ornery, and they talk about selecting songs for records and how they never know which ones people are going to react to.
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Enjoy.
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There s something very singular about the way you tell stories and your use of almost neologisms, if even that s how you pronounce it, neologisms, neologisms.
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Not necessarily new words, but how you...
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how you use words in storytelling and in telling jokes, but were your parents really funny?
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My mother s pretty funny.
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My old man s pretty funny too, but not as often.
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He has a good sense of humor.
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He has a very good hit percentage.
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He just doesn t swing that often.
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Oh, okay.
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But when he does, he hits, you know what I mean?
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Yeah.
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Yeah, but he has a good vocabulary.
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I guess people should probably know we ve known each other since 19... I thought back to when I first met you, and I m going to say it was 1986.
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We both went to UMass Amherst.
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I remember the really early meeting you.
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SPEAKER_02
That s right.
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So what year did you graduate high school?
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Same year as me?
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85.
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I m a year younger than you.
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We don t need to dwell on that.
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You ended up in Medfield, Massachusetts, right?
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From New York.
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Yeah.
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I moved to Medfield from New York when I was like 16 and it was a brutal move.
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I was already in bands and I ve complained about it publicly as often as I possibly can.
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But at the end of the day, as these things often work out, it proved to be one of the greatest things.
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It was hard because I came from
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being in bands since I was like 12 or 13 years old and like, you know, lifelong friends in this great town on the north shore of Long Island called Huntington with beaches and record stores and amazing pizza and bowling alleys and video games, all the things you want as a teenager, and in places to play music, in fact.
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And so I don t know, the summer before my junior high school, I moved and I didn t get to know anybody until high school started, except for a couple of weird weirdos in the neighborhood who are still kind of friends of mine.
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But it was really when I started high school that fall that I got to know Rich, Tim Donovan, Jay Tallerman.
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These guys are like, I still get together with them.
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Bill, you re friends.
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So you were born and raised in Holbrook?
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Holbrook, yeah.
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South of Boston, about, I don t know, what s it, 15 miles or so south.
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And I went to UMass in 85.
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Yeah.
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I don t think I had aspirations to be a musician, though.
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Did you think when you were at UMass that you would be in a band?
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I kind of got lucky hooking up with Buffalo Tom.
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But yeah, I mean, I wasn t proficient enough, nor did I have the aspirations to be a pro guitar player.
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I was never one of the better guitar players.
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I was always pretty good.
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But we grew up in this era of people would make fun of Keith Richards or even Jerry Garcia, which is weird.
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I remember Keith Richards or Neil Young, always primitive or this, but then sort of punk rock happened.
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SPEAKER_03
Virtuosity wasn t as much of a thing and songs were always a thing, right?
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But I didn t want to go, my whole point is I didn t want to go to Berkeley.
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I don t think, I don t know if I would have gotten into Berkeley, so I didn t want to major in music.
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But I wanted to be in a band.
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It s the only thing I know since I was a kid that I m doing the things I always wanted to do.
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I always wanted to be in a band and I always wanted to write.
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Those are the only things I m somewhat decent at.
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I don t think I touched an instrument until I was about 16 or so.
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I didn t even start playing music at all.
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My brother, who s five years older than me, has been playing guitar since he was six.
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I didn t realize it was five years.
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I think I was about 16 years old.
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I got a bass because I wanted to play.
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And I picked it up pretty quickly.
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And I think I started playing in bands right away.
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And it was coming out of that, like, listening to The Clash.
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And I wasn t a huge Sex Pistols fan, but I liked The Clash a lot.
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I liked The Jam a lot.
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I went to university to be an engineer because I was into bikes and motors and all that shit.
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And I wanted to be
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be an engineer, but then that was a long circuitous route.
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But I think I played, I never wanted to be in a touring band.
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And then as you know, my cousin Joe Harvard, who had Ford Apache, then I got to go in and record probably in, I don t know, I think I first made a recording, maybe, oh, before he started the Ford, he had it set up in his apartment in Cambridge.
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So I went to his house when I was a senior in high school.
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So I was probably 17.
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And I played with some people and he had an eight track set up.
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So those were my first recordings.
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And then then I got to go into the studio and he started where you guys recorded.
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How many records did you record?
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Where was Birdbrain made?
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I guess we did start that at South.
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SPEAKER_03
Yeah, we did start that at South.
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And then I think they were transitioning to Fort Apache North.
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So people should know your cousin is a legend around these parts from especially from that era, people that knew that era.
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And he was like a real catalyst, just like a lot of those guys were even before the studio, but certainly once they once Joe and Gary Smith, who we just had a memorial for here.
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And yeah, Sean and Sean Slade and Paul Colbery, Lou Giordano.
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Yeah, once the Tim O Hare
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Tim O Hare, once these guys really kind of, it was sort of a cooperative, they put their shit together literally to make the equipment in the studio at Fort Apache South, which was in Roxbury.
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It was just called Fort Apache.
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They went out to North Cambridge, which old rounder record studio.
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And that was the great studio, that spot.
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You made the first whole album there, right?
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Yeah, we started making demos and we actually started that record before Jay Maskis came in.
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So yeah, for us that went to UMass, people think, oh, you guys, you came out of there, this guy, it s us.
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Sabadell, Pixies, but that s sort of like, you know, we know that this is like, this is a bit of mythology, because the only real band that was formed in Amherst that, well, that s not true.
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Let me back up.
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But we were all just sort of like kids.
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I remember coming up and visiting Jay Talerman, because they were a year ahead of me, when I was a senior in high school coming up to UMass and meeting Jay at that point, through Jay Talerman, to meet Jay Maskis.
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And he was already this complete enigma, you know, he had like this sort of
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birthday party, Nick Cave and the birthday party hair and beads.
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And I m like, Whoa, who s this guy barely said anything, you know, it was like a compelling figure.
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And they did, you re living all over me.
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They did you re living all over me.
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And I m like, it just blew my head off.
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I m just like, yeah, the marriage of guitars, like the stuff that we grew up with Neil Young was Hendrix, Black Sabbath, whatever, with these melodies.
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And it was just what a great group of songs.
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SPEAKER_00
For sure.
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I met Jay Maskis also in 85, and I ll never forget it because I went to a house party.
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My bet is you were there, but I didn t meet you in 85, and Jay was playing drums for somebody.
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I probably had a six-pack of moose head beer with me, and I offered him a beer, and he s like, no, I don t drink or anything like that.
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It was really funny.
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SPEAKER_00
But boy, you were something else.
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there were these great times, but it was a, it was not a great, uh, scene up there because it was college.
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It was the eighties.
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They, people did, if they were, if there were live bands, they wanted reggae or blues or things that made hippies dance and, and, and, you know, people spend money on beer.
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SPEAKER_01
And, but there were a lot of great bands that came through there.
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Black, Black Flag, Who s Could Do, Replacements, I saw Pixies and Flaming Lips at Sheehan s in the basement and so many great bands that came through.
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SPEAKER_00
I saw the Throwing Muses, I saw the Mighty Lemon Drops, Violin Femmes, you might have said them.
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SPEAKER_00
I saw tons of people there.
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Tons of people.
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So they got good music.
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R.E.M.
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with the DVs opening.
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What year was that?
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SPEAKER_01
I think that was the year before me.
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That would have been my freshman year.
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Before I went to school there, I went to see Elvis Costello solo at the Fine Arts Center too, which was fantastic.
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So the reason we got into Jay is because we were like, wow, this guy, you know, studios were so intimidating at that point, you know, but we didn t know anything about Fort Apache.
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SPEAKER_01
So I think we knew, actually, I think we did know a little bit about Fort Apache because Tim O Hare was in a band with Tom McGuinness called Plate of Mutton, and then they changed their name to Skylar Hinkle.
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SPEAKER_01
And they were like, Tom McGinnis was playing bass in clubs when he was like 16 or 17.
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I didn t know Tom and Tim were in a band together.
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We all went up on winter break to Andover to see these guys playing Tom s Mom s Basement.
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It was just a bunch of dudes with beer.
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SPEAKER_01
But they were playing these original songs.
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And it was, anyway, I was just very, these are kind of galvanizing moments where you can, oh, you can write your own songs and people will come and listen to them.
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SPEAKER_01
And, you know, it s all a bunch of dudes in the suburbs.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, sure.
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But anyways, Jay said, oh, you should come up over to Fort Apache.
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I think they had recently opened and we re becoming more of a thing.
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SPEAKER_01
So we started doing demos there with Tim and then Jay came in and did some subsequent sessions with Sean Slade.
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SPEAKER_01
And that s kind of how that got.
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SPEAKER_01
What year?
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SPEAKER_01
It would have turned fall of 86 into 87.
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SPEAKER_00
So summer 87, I think is when we were.
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SPEAKER_00
So you guys made a record pretty fast.
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SPEAKER_00
You weren t together super long before you made the first album.
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SPEAKER_00
Is that right?
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SPEAKER_01
That s kind of right.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
Somewhere in 87, we started doing, well, I mean, you know, we didn t, we didn t have that record done until like 88.
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SPEAKER_01
Did you switch from engineering to English pretty soon on?
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SPEAKER_00
In my third year, I dropped out in the first semester of my third year.
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SPEAKER_00
I was, I was literally sitting in a lecture at like the graduate research center.
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SPEAKER_00
I got up from the lecture.
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SPEAKER_00
went to the student union, bought a bus ticket, and literally didn t even go back to my room.
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SPEAKER_00
I just had a mild nervous breakdown, went to stay at my folks, got my shit in a pile, came back in 88 and just switched my major entirely.
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SPEAKER_00
We had a band together and we played with you guys one show.
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SPEAKER_00
It was outside at Log Town Road in Belchertown or Amherst, I m not sure.
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SPEAKER_00
We have a picture from there.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
It was May of 88.
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SPEAKER_00
I think the first song you played was Under My Thumb.
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SPEAKER_00
And the cops came and broke it up before you finished a song.
1
SPEAKER_00
That was it.
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SPEAKER_01
I probably wouldn t remember it having happened for the photos, but yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
So was this the Stadies that were playing?
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SPEAKER_00
That would have been the Stadies, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
But I don t think Spat was there that day.
1
SPEAKER_00
We all wore these big mirrored sunglasses.
1
SPEAKER_01
The Stadies is one of my favorite band names of all time.
1
SPEAKER_00
We never even wrote songs.
1
SPEAKER_00
Every gig, we only probably played five or six shows, and every single one was ad-libbed.
1
SPEAKER_00
The whole thing was madness.
1
SPEAKER_00
We re probably all baked and wasted off our trees.
1
SPEAKER_01
Let me ask you some questions.
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SPEAKER_01
How influential was Joe Harvard?
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SPEAKER_01
Were you guys like a tight family?
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SPEAKER_00
Was he around a lot?
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SPEAKER_00
Joe Harvard was my second cousin.
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SPEAKER_00
He s my mother s cousin, but he was as old as my oldest sister.
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SPEAKER_00
He was always an older guy to me.
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SPEAKER_00
until I got into my late teens.
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SPEAKER_00
So when I would go, as a kid, whenever we d go to East Boston to visit my grandmother, we always saw Joe s family too, because they were literally shared a wall.
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SPEAKER_00
No, an alleyway.
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SPEAKER_00
And so i always saw him and he was way into music like he i remember like i was a kid so it was like scary i remember going to it at some like fourth of july celebration and him and his friends this was probably seventy five or something you know they were playing like.
1
SPEAKER_00
at a stage somewhere.
1
SPEAKER_00
And it was scary, man.
1
SPEAKER_00
They were clearly taking a bunch of mesc and just being fucked up.
1
SPEAKER_00
I ve never seen live music and definitely never seen live rock and roll before.
1
SPEAKER_00
They were just high-heeled shoes and bell-bottoms.
1
SPEAKER_00
He was always good about, he gave me instruments and he gave me some stuff to record, like recording stuff.
1
SPEAKER_00
He was always pretty cool in that way.
1
SPEAKER_00
But again, I wasn t really that into it until I think when I was graduating university, my last year, when I knew I was going to go for an MFA, I was going to go to graduate school, I started playing music with him more.
1
SPEAKER_00
We played a lot, my brother and Joe and I. I would go to Boston once a week and do a thing at the Plow and Stars.
1
SPEAKER_01
I want to talk about this era of your life.
1
SPEAKER_01
You were an engineering major, you switched over, and then had you always been into writing or reading?
1
SPEAKER_01
Were you well-read?
1
SPEAKER_00
reading is still difficult for me just because i have like not dyslexia but i can t i have like an ADHD that makes words on a page just i can t focus on them so reading was always hard which i think maybe that s why i got into reading poetry ultimately because it was smaller it was shorter and for some reason it grabbed me but i took an english class you know
1
SPEAKER_00
I thought i might want to try fiction and i was writing short stories and i remember the the teacher made everyone who wrote fiction write a poem and everyone who wrote a poem write fiction and i wrote a poem and i never written one before and i was like wow i got really into writing and that s why.
1
SPEAKER_00
I wanted to be a professor and write poetry, write books, and so that s why I went to graduate school.
1
SPEAKER_00
We both had classes with Jim Tate.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was going to say, did you have undergrad, yeah?
1
SPEAKER_00
I took an undergrad class with him, and he pulled me aside one day and said, if you want to come to the MFA, you should come to the program.
1
SPEAKER_00
I did it because it was one of the only things that really interested me.
1
SPEAKER_00
I didn t know what I wanted to do and I was playing music for fun.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I went to graduate school and I got funded.
1
SPEAKER_00
So it was like an extended vacation.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was in the next couple of years where Northampton exploded as a scene.
1
SPEAKER_00
There were a lot of clubs.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so that s when the Scuds started.
1
SPEAKER_00
I took a year off and stayed out in Western Mass, and I worked at like a bakery or something, just kind of a dumb job back when you could live somewhere for 200 bucks a month, right, in a house.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I lived in Northampton, and while I was working there, Steve, who played in the Scud Mountain Boys, got a job as well.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so that s how we met.
1
SPEAKER_00
And we, I remember one of us said, let s do you want to play sometime?
1
SPEAKER_00
And we were both like, kind of cagey, because you know how that can be, you can play with someone, and it s a shit show.
1
SPEAKER_00
And you re like trapped with them for four hours.
1
SPEAKER_00
And you know, like, Hey, we were both circling each other, but we hit it off pretty well.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I think that first day we ever played, we played that scare song, Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves, which we later would record.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then from there, and then so we met that way.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then another person who worked at the bakery said, you got to meet this guy, Bruce Tull.
1
SPEAKER_00
And she knew him.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so we played, we ended up playing with him.
1
SPEAKER_00
And he was, Bruce was 12 years older than us.
1
SPEAKER_00
And he came from a whole other era.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like Steve was into like the frogs and like, you know, all sorts of, you know, bluegrass and like our tastes, his and mine definitely overlapped a great deal.
1
SPEAKER_00
Bruce was into Western swing and traditional old songwriters like Willis Allen Ramsey.
1
SPEAKER_00
I remember him playing Muskrat Love on guitar and Willis Allen Ramsey wrote that song.
1
SPEAKER_00
So we just hit it off and just started recording and it was all on four tracks and stuff like that.
1
SPEAKER_01
When did you meet Berman?
1
SPEAKER_00
Was Berman up there?
1
SPEAKER_00
I think we started the same time.
1
SPEAKER_00
He might have started a year after me.
1
SPEAKER_00
I did it in three years.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was a three-year master s.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think I did it in the right amount of time.
1
SPEAKER_00
I seem to remember us both leaving at the same time, which would mean we probably came in at the same time.
1
SPEAKER_01
You introduced me to him.
1
SPEAKER_01
I remember I got the Silver Jews CD at that point from him, I guess.
1
SPEAKER_01
I don t remember.
1
SPEAKER_01
We were back in Amherst or Northampton for playing, I assume, and I think that s when you introduced me.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m pretty sure you introduced me to him.
2
SPEAKER_02
I don t know how else I would have met him.
2
SPEAKER_02
Ah, okay.
2
SPEAKER_02
I wonder if we went to a show.
2
SPEAKER_02
Must have gone to a show.
2
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, I m sure we were playing like the Iron Horse or something like that.
2
SPEAKER_03
Or maybe we were playing like the UMass.
2
SPEAKER_03
Pearl Street or something.
2
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_03
And I remember around that era, like early 90s, talking to you about like, I think the Scud Mountain Boys record, what year did that come out?
2
SPEAKER_02
We recorded the first one in late 93, early 94, and then we recorded another one in 94, and they both came out at the beginning of 95, one in January, one in February.
2
SPEAKER_02
So we put out two records.
2
SPEAKER_02
Massachusetts?
2
SPEAKER_02
Massachusetts is the third one.
2
SPEAKER_02
That s when we signed to Sub Pop off of those two records, and we recorded Massachusetts in 95, and it came out in 96.
2
SPEAKER_03
Alright, because you did some shows with us with the Scud Mountain Boys before the Pernice Brothers, I think.
2
SPEAKER_03
I remember that.
2
SPEAKER_03
It was in Cambridge, I think.
2
SPEAKER_03
But I remember somewhere in those mid-90s talking to you about how struck I was by your lyrics, and I m like, you know...
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SPEAKER_03
So I said something like, did your MFA, did working on poetry, did it help?
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SPEAKER_03
Did it inform the lyrics?
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SPEAKER_03
And you re like, no, no, completely different.
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SPEAKER_03
I said, no, I understand that poetry and songwriting are different things, but you have the gift of a poet when you write.
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SPEAKER_03
And I felt like you were having none of it, or at least my memory of it was you were having none of that back then.
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SPEAKER_03
You were obstinate.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_02
Maybe I was just being a dick, but I think what I meant to say was like, what I meant was they come from a different place for sure.
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SPEAKER_02
It s a way different process.
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SPEAKER_02
Every single word had to matter.
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If it didn t make it, you cut it.
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If it wasn t the right word, you got the right word.
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And I remember taking that even into songwriting.
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I tried to pay attention to every word, every single word of lyrics, for better or for worse.
2
SPEAKER_02
Maybe I overthink.
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SPEAKER_03
No, I think you re consistently an extraordinary lyricist, whereas I feel like I wing it a lot.
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SPEAKER_03
And especially back then, I felt like in the early days, it was all stream of consciousness.
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SPEAKER_02
That s not nothing.
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That s a whole other type of thing.
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SPEAKER_02
I don t even think I could do that.
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SPEAKER_02
I don t think I have that in me to be that kind of free, to be honest with you.
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SPEAKER_02
I m too uptight.
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SPEAKER_03
Let me ask you this.
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SPEAKER_03
The way I ve written songs has mostly stayed the same, though.
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SPEAKER_03
It has evolved and changed, and I do different things.
2
SPEAKER_03
But what is your process?
2
SPEAKER_03
Do you ever go back to the written page in a journal where you ve written stuff down, or is it all from, does the music come first?
2
SPEAKER_02
I never write a journal and I rarely write anything down.
2
SPEAKER_02
It s all just memory.
2
SPEAKER_02
For me, it s always 99 percent of music first, and then you ll get an idea, you ll get a word, except for the song that I wrote, the country song that my mother came up with.
2
SPEAKER_02
That was one of the only ones that has been the hook, the lyric first.
2
SPEAKER_02
And what about yourself?
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SPEAKER_03
It s rare that it all comes out at once.
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SPEAKER_03
And when it does, it s usually something I love.
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SPEAKER_03
Like, wow, I felt like it s that thing that songwriters talk about where you just feel like you re a channel for something else.
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SPEAKER_03
All these words poured out as I m playing the guitar into a recorder.
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SPEAKER_03
And I barely change anything, you know, but I couldn t necessarily always tell you what the meaning was.
2
SPEAKER_03
But my songs in particular have always been sort of opaque.
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SPEAKER_03
And I mean, not like, I mean, Berman is always always funny, but not like Malkmus.
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SPEAKER_03
his his buddy who was really kind of opaque almost like in a by design but it was that era where it was like I don t know I was really influenced by like blonde on blonde type Dylan like yes this like it all pours out everything he s ingested is like sort of coming out and somehow the symbolism of it all is is coming together I suppose but it ll do the work for you
2
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, but I never was like a precise songwriter like you are.
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I never was into stories either.
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I don t have very many stories in a song.
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Like I m not into songs that are, you know, about the legend of such and such.
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You know what I mean?
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I always felt like I had like, you know, a little bit of a wispy storyline and a few
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images that maybe you can hang on to very much like, like, I ve probably wrote lyrics like poetry in a way.
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SPEAKER_02
And I don t mean that they re poetic.
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SPEAKER_02
I mean, I always liked imagery.
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SPEAKER_02
And I always liked metaphor and simile, and compression, like don t say too much, instead of trying to cram the world into a paragraph, that s how about make a line be indicative of the world, you know what I mean?
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The other way about
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Try to do something small that blossoms into something universal.
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That s what I think I aspire to, but I ve never been a story guy.
2
SPEAKER_02
We came out of a weird era.
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SPEAKER_02
Like I say, my brother who s five years older than me, his era is way different than mine.
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SPEAKER_02
He couldn t believe you could put a record out that you made on a four-track.
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SPEAKER_02
A four-track was what you demoed to go to the next thing, to go to the next thing.
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SPEAKER_02
Like, all of a sudden, you know, my first album was made for $60, which was the cost of mastering a cassette tape.
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SPEAKER_02
We slid into indie music of the 90s, where you could, you know, you could do a lot, you know, you could get away with a lot.
2
SPEAKER_02
When we signed to Sub Pop, we had made one record on a four track
2
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one record on an eight track.
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We had spent no money to make them.
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SPEAKER_02
And we were on a label that was kind of, you know, indie major that was just like, sure, keep doing what you re doing.
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SPEAKER_02
Whereas had it been 10 years earlier, we would have been making demos for the rest of time.
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SPEAKER_02
And, you know, you know, I don t hear the hit, you know, that kind of thing.
2
SPEAKER_02
But it just, you know, it just became a good era to make music.
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SPEAKER_03
Yeah, we were in this sort of in-betweener time where it was like, I remember one of my earliest conversations with you, and I think I talked about this recently, was I remember having sort of a discussion with you.
2
SPEAKER_03
In my memory, it s outside of Sheehan s, and it may very well have been, but I think I was wearing overalls, like, you know, blue overalls, and you re like, oh, it s like, I think the replacements had just been on
2
SPEAKER_03
And we talked about what a big deal that was that they were on SNL.
2
SPEAKER_03
It s sort of the context for that time of indie labels were starting to really explode.
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SPEAKER_03
I mean, there were some really significant ones, Sub Pop, SST, Homestead, and then Matador.
2
SPEAKER_03
I mean, Merge was not around yet, but there were other ones that are gone, like Coyote, and Bar None, and Restless, Touch and Go.
2
SPEAKER_03
I always try to put it in context before Nirvana for people.
2
SPEAKER_03
It s like, no, our expectations were to just be able to, if we could get a record out, period, number one.
2
SPEAKER_03
if we could get a headlining gig at TT s or something.
2
SPEAKER_03
Now this is the era where Boston was just insane from the 80s through the 90s.
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SPEAKER_03
We were headlining in London, I always tell people, before we could even get a headlining gig in our hometown Boston.
2
SPEAKER_03
But it was like, I just remember when we formed the band, I think REM had just signed to Warners, maybe Booster Dew had, and Sire for the replacements, but those were like
2
SPEAKER_03
like tectonic shifts for these indie sort of snobs, you know?
2
SPEAKER_03
But then years, you know, 92 is when Nirvana breaks through and everything, of course, changes.
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SPEAKER_02
Everything changed.
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SPEAKER_02
Everything.
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SPEAKER_02
It s crazy to be part of that, for sure.
2
SPEAKER_00
Hey, this is Josh Modell, host of the TalkHouse podcast.
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SPEAKER_00
We love it when musicians come on the show and talk about process, and often they ll get into the nuts and bolts of being a working artist, which can sometimes be fun and sometimes feel more like a business.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, this episode of TalkHouse is brought to you by DistroKid, which is an amazing service for musicians looking to get their songs out into the world in an incredibly smart and cost-effective way.
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Go check it out today.
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Seattle in the 90s, a tidal wave of iconic music roars out of this sleepy city and launches a pop culture revolution.
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Here s a story you haven t heard.
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Let the Kids Dance is a new podcast about the rise and fall of Seattle s teen dance ordinance, the law that made it illegal for young people to go to concerts.
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A story of moral panic, grassroots activism, and an unstable
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music community that fought for its freedom.
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Listen to Let the Kids Dance from KUOW and the NPR Network.
3
SPEAKER_01
How close were you with Berman?
3
SPEAKER_01
And did you guys hang a lot in Northampton?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, we hung out a pretty good amount, but barely ever talked about music.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, he had The Silver Jews going.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think when I first met him, the Arizona record was out.
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SPEAKER_00
And then he probably was recording Starlight Walker.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I was still, I think the Scud Mountain Boys had played, had made a record at that point.
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SPEAKER_00
But mostly I was still thinking about being a poet and being a writer.
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SPEAKER_00
We didn t talk too much about music.
3
SPEAKER_00
I remember going to his house and teaching him how to play a major seventh chord.
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SPEAKER_00
He s like, what is that chord?
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SPEAKER_00
I was sitting in his room and showing him how to play a major seventh.
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SPEAKER_00
We recorded with him.
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SPEAKER_00
The Scud Mountain was, I guess it was after he had, I don t know if he had officially or if he ever, I don t really know the story because I wasn t that into it.
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SPEAKER_00
the guys from Pavement who played with him, I guess he wanted to play with other people and he asked us to record with him.
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SPEAKER_00
So we did a session with him, we came to my house and we set up, Tom Monaghan was there and he had a half-inch A-track and we set it up in the house and we played
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SPEAKER_00
I don t know, three or four songs.
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SPEAKER_00
I think we did The Killing Moon, which he later did, I think, or Mount Miss later did.
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SPEAKER_00
We recorded that.
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SPEAKER_00
We recorded two songs that would be on his record, The Natural Bridge, but he didn t use ours because rightly so.
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SPEAKER_00
They sounded too much like our band.
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SPEAKER_00
We had a very distinct sound.
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SPEAKER_00
And it wasn t it wasn t the right thing.
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SPEAKER_00
So I don t know if he ever destroyed the tapes.
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SPEAKER_00
It s quite possible he just destroyed them.
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SPEAKER_00
But maybe the reels exist somewhere.
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SPEAKER_00
But we lost touch after, after he moved away.
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SPEAKER_00
And you know, we kept in touch here and there.
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SPEAKER_00
We were never like super great friends.
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SPEAKER_00
But we were certainly certainly kept in touch.
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SPEAKER_00
And, you know, but mostly talked about poetry.
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SPEAKER_00
And we told each other jokes.
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And he used to like to hear me swear and rant in my Boston accent.
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He s like, come on, call someone a cocksucker or something like that.
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SPEAKER_00
And I was like, really?
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SPEAKER_00
All right.
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SPEAKER_00
So I said, whatever.
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But we got back in touch.
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We were closest, I would say, in the last few years before he died, we were been in touch with him more than I had been in a while.
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SPEAKER_00
We used to write to each other.
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SPEAKER_00
We used to mostly just email and text.
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I saw him a few times, saw him a few times on the road and stuff like that.
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And then Peyton.
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who played with me.
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Peyton played on a couple Jews albums and he played in the band when they finally toured.
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SPEAKER_00
David would never tour and then finally I think he decided he wanted to tour for the first time and they toured all over the place.
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SPEAKER_01
It s great to see this resurgence.
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I was down where you and I rode bikes in Woods Hole that one time.
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I m riding my bike down there and there s a kid of all maybe 25
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wearing a silver jews sweatshirt and it was just like you know it s not brooklyn it s it s it s you know i m sure he lives in brooklyn visiting his parents in woods hole but it s something but it was just like it was just this like i m just this old guy driving riding by him on a bike i m like you know it s just kind of like
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these are people I kind of knew, you know, but it s cool.
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Like I went to go see, you know, my kids are into pavement, you know, and it s just to see like this resurgence and appreciation of these guys by 20 something year olds and younger is, is, it s like rewarding.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
And I think if you think about it,
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I remember the first time i heard a cd like i don t remember when they came around but someone in my high school had a disc man and she let me listen to the unforgettable fire at lunch and i was like what the fuck is this
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SPEAKER_00
But prior to that, if you think about it, if a song left the radio, which a lot of music I listen to never saw radio, if a song wasn t getting radio play or you didn t have a copy of it, it vanished from the world, right?
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SPEAKER_00
Now you can be
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You know, for all of the evil of streaming as far as the disparity in the distribution of the money, the idea of it and the actual mechanics and the reality of it is unbelievable.
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Music never goes away.
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SPEAKER_00
Someone could pull up probably your B-sides or your alternate cuts that maybe one time were on a flexi-disc that came as a beggar s giveaway.
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SPEAKER_00
But now there it is.
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If someone wants to hear it, they can go find it.
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If you have an appetite for a type of music, think of the picks you can get because you can hear it all whenever you want.
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You can go down that rabbit hole immediately, rather than schlepping to borrow a tape from somebody or trying to find a vinyl record that is no longer around.
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SPEAKER_01
I m not sure if you re tying this together with the appreciation of these bands of our peers, but I think that s really what you re striking on.
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all music exists now without being tethered to a period necessarily.
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Or the way the industry used to work, and that s not a knock on it.
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SPEAKER_00
You go into a record store and there was only so much space.
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If your record isn t selling after a while and someone else s record needs that space, your record gets returned.
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SPEAKER_00
You remember what it was like when you re like, probably what was your first?
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SPEAKER_00
What would you say?
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SPEAKER_00
Let me come over to the big that broke you through to the next level, right?
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SPEAKER_00
So yeah, pretty much.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
So remember how important it was that yours band was on the road when this album was in the stores when the single was being pushed?
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SPEAKER_00
Everything had to be done just right.
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SPEAKER_00
Because there was a shelf life to that stuff.
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SPEAKER_00
Now it s like, there s a different shelf life.
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SPEAKER_00
I m not sure what it is.
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SPEAKER_00
But I don t think it s about maybe if you re in like the most high level pop music, and there s huge investment in breaking it, that you have to have everything lined up exactly right.
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SPEAKER_00
You know, but now music, like you said, it just doesn t go away.
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SPEAKER_01
People disparage whatever the new format is, and streaming has certainly, you know, Spotify, let s put aside the technology, but for a while it was the technology that people were really harping on, like, you know, oh, it s not lossless, it s MP3, but whatever it is, like, but I remember when CDs came out, and most CDs really kind of did sound very harsh back then, because they weren t mastered properly.
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SPEAKER_00
I never had a CD player until I signed a record deal.
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SPEAKER_00
I never had a CD player until I signed to SubHop.
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SPEAKER_00
So I never had CDs, I had vinyl until I signed to SubHop and I bought a CD player and then I went out and bought Sgt.
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SPEAKER_00
Pepper s and I bought Nick Drake s Way to Blue, the compilation.
3
SPEAKER_01
So you were listening to a lot of English, you talked about The Jam as a kid, so that was for me as well.
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SPEAKER_01
Huge band for me, huge.
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SPEAKER_01
I wasn t into the Boston hardcore scene, I think I was a little too old for that.
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SPEAKER_00
I always liked a melody that I could hang on to regardless of the style of music.
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SPEAKER_00
So if it had a decent melody, but there were things that just made me angry in a good way that I liked.
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SPEAKER_00
I was a kid once, but I always liked the melody and I never stopped listening to Burt Bacharach ever.
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SPEAKER_00
I never shied away from that.
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SPEAKER_00
There were certain Bee Gees era of the Bee Gees that I always liked.
3
SPEAKER_01
I just, yeah, because I hear a little bit of bread on the on the scotch.
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SPEAKER_00
Sure.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, loved a little love, love some bread, raspberries, that kind of stuff.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
But uh, so I just always like the song, I think, or a good, some kind of melody I could, I could latch on to.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
So are you writing any more?
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SPEAKER_01
I know you were writing for TV there for a while, but are you writing anything aside from music lately?
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SPEAKER_01
Is there going to be another novel?
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SPEAKER_00
I have one cooked up, but I just don t feel like doing it.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, you re writing a lot of prose now, so do you like the isolation of it?
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SPEAKER_00
Because I don t really enjoy that part of it right now.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, writing nonfiction about bands, it s nothing like.
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SPEAKER_01
creative writing of a fiction.
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SPEAKER_01
It s like I m interviewing people and there s not enough isolation.
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SPEAKER_01
I need more isolation to actually start making cuts and revisions.
3
SPEAKER_01
But the writing, it s almost like it happens itself.
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SPEAKER_01
I m telling a story that s already there.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t have to make up a story.
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SPEAKER_01
For me, I love trying to piece it all together, having all these different voices, and trying to distill it into a story.
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SPEAKER_01
So that s easy, but it s not like what you do for creative writing.
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SPEAKER_00
I don t think I m that good at it either, to be honest with you.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t think I, right now, love it enough, and I m having so much fun writing.
4
SPEAKER_01
writing music, and I m writing more music than I ever have.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I m just gonna I think I m gonna stay with this for a while and see what happens.
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, I mean, you were always sort of doing both.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, even when you wrote it feels so good.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was you re still writing Bernice Brothers.
4
SPEAKER_00
No, I didn t write it.
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SPEAKER_01
I didn t write a single song.
4
SPEAKER_01
I said to myself, I m putting it aside because I m not good at multitasking.
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SPEAKER_01
I can t do two things.
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SPEAKER_01
I m a scatterbrain in that regard.
4
SPEAKER_01
So if I if I was going to write a book, I would have to just stop writing music.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I m not good at I m not good at two things.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I m obsessive.
4
SPEAKER_01
I never listened to my own music.
4
SPEAKER_01
But I ll play a song 150 times before I record it.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then, you know, I m playing it and playing it and playing it and playing it and refining it and refining it.
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SPEAKER_01
Just I don t write a lot of things down, but I ll just go over it and over and over it.
4
SPEAKER_01
to the where it ll take, I ll play three songs the whole day, you know, or four songs, you know, I get I get kind of obsessive like that.
4
SPEAKER_01
Or if I hear a song, like I listened to from a Buick six one time, I think 29 times in a row.
4
SPEAKER_01
I just couldn t stop listening to it.
4
SPEAKER_00
You mean like later in life or like you d always known the song or the first time you heard it?
4
SPEAKER_01
No, not so long ago.
4
SPEAKER_01
It just hit me again how heavy that song was to me or something about it.
4
SPEAKER_01
I couldn t pinpoint exactly what it is but I could not
4
SPEAKER_01
stop listening to it.
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SPEAKER_01
I counted.
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SPEAKER_01
I was like, that s fucking, I guess, listen to it like almost 30 times over and over and over.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s many fascinating things about Bob, but one of the fascinating things is like he started talking fairly early on in his career about like not knowing where those songs came from, not even knowing who that guy was that wrote those songs.
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SPEAKER_00
I believe it.
4
SPEAKER_00
Do you ever feel a similar alienation or detachment from the songs you wrote?
4
SPEAKER_01
you know sometimes you think where the fuck did that come from but not not too often not not often like i don t feel like i m some some conduit or anything like that but you do feel a buzz like you know when you crack one when you re writing a song and it might be eluding you eluding you and then you crack it and that s a kick like that yeah that s a jolt i that s one of my favorite things like i kind of live for that engagement in the song but i don t
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t really feel like it s from some otherworldly, but on the occasion you get like, where the fuck did that come from?
4
SPEAKER_01
Or what am I talking about?
4
SPEAKER_00
There s a great book on songwriting.
4
SPEAKER_00
Have you ever read Bill Flanagan s Written In My Soul?
4
SPEAKER_00
No.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s a classic.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s a classic of the genre.
4
SPEAKER_00
So it s got Dylan, it s got Richard Tompkins, Townsend, Keith Richards.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, Elvis Costello.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s amazing.
4
SPEAKER_00
I probably got it when I was in my early 20s.
4
SPEAKER_00
Just reading about how these two different poles, you ve got Keith who says, hey man, you put the antenna up and you just tune into the radio waves and the shit comes, and then I have a few words and Mick finishes it or something like that.
4
SPEAKER_00
Whereas Pete Townshend was like, no, that s bullshit, man.
4
SPEAKER_00
Excuse me, is it them talking about the songwriting in the book, or is someone writing about them?
4
SPEAKER_00
No, it s all interviews with Bill Flanagan about the songwriting process.
4
SPEAKER_00
I highly recommend it.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, Randy Newman s in it.
4
SPEAKER_00
But then Pete is like, no, it s all about craft.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s all about sitting down and there s nothing about magical stuff about it.
4
SPEAKER_00
It sounds like we re sort of like, we both gravitate sort of one way or the other there.
4
SPEAKER_00
I have to be writing.
4
SPEAKER_00
I have to be playing.
4
SPEAKER_00
I don t have a song idea.
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SPEAKER_00
Me either.
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Rarely.
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I don t even think it ever works that way.
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I have to be kind of sitting at a piano.
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I happen to have a guitar in my hand.
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guitar, or a piano, or something.
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And sometimes a guitar is too much, you have to go do something else.
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I mean, that s when I started using capos or other tunings.
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Yeah, but for me, it s like the Buddhist thing.
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You have to, he who
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He who digs the channels controls the waters kind of thing, you know, so you gotta be there.
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You gotta be doing it.
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So it s both.
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It s the craft, but you re much more of a craftsman.
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I m much more of a, well, I don t wanna say hack.
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I don t wanna be self-deprecating, but more just like a messy.
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I always have to feel something, you know, like, and then I would sit back and say, what can I make out of this?
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You know what I mean?
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They re not all true.
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You know what I mean?
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You re making something up.
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You re trying to evoke something.
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But it always has to come from a bit of some truth or a feeling, something I connect to emotionally.
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I remember someone saying, oh, write kids songs.
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I m like, you can t do it.
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It s not easy to do yet.
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Those people who write good kids songs, they feel that shit.
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You know what I mean?
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Or people who write children s books,
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The ones that are good, you can tell they mean it, you know what I mean?
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You can t fake it.
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But I ve written for hire before.
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We have a theme song for Michael Malley s NBC show right now called Extended Family.
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It s just a sitcom, and I did one for a show that he was on that he wasn t a showrunner for called Yes, Dear.
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It s very frustrating to work with guys that are trying to get a message, like advertising or something like that.
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To me, it doesn t feel like, yeah, oh, you did.
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I did that for a movie.
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I had to write a one-minute song for a scene in a movie where someone sings it, so I had to know what it was.
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So I did do that, but what were you saying?
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I mean, in that way, what you just said, that use is kind of, I could see that as being sort of inspirational.
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It s like, Oh, I don t need to come up with my own prompt.
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Somebody is giving me a prompt.
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Somebody is giving me inspiration.
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Whereas, you know, if you re writing, like I ve written a theme song without words for this old house.
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And I mean, it s fun, but it s fun to a point, but it s not like for me, it s like I compartmentalize it.
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This is like, it s almost like a completely different job.
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It s not like being a musician, like the vocabulary to be able to take what they re giving me in vague
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And whenever you re talking to these guys, it s always something vague.
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You know, make it sound like, you know, sort of badass or, you know, whatever it is, you know.
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But not too much like the Black Keys or like, and I don t want to be somebody else anyway.
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So it s like, well, if you re hiring me, you want something that s going to sound sort of Buffalo Tommy, you know, somehow.
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I don t know.
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It s not, it s a very rewarding loop in terms of financial reward, but it s not rewarding at all.
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I think i have to say i kind of enjoyed i ve only done that one time i have the actual music written i didn t have any of the words but i had been messing around with this melody and this.
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Change and i hadn t finished the song and they only wanted a minute.
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They were only wanting a minute anyway, so I m like, bingo.
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I got it made.
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And then I had the storyline, and I just went with it.
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But I liked it because I also knew I wasn t going to sing it.
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I knew that it would be for someone else to sing.
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Yeah, for sure.
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And when I ve written score work or songs that are supposed to be words for something that s actually genuinely inspired, like an indie film or something, that s a lot different.
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SPEAKER_00
So you were writing for TV for a while.
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Are you going to do that again?
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I don t know.
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I might.
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I m still in the Writers Guild, the union up here, so I could.
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But again, I m not feeling it right now.
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It was fun.
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I was only on one show up here for
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In the writing room and it was really i enjoyed it and i like.
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working with the people were great.
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And it was really cool to write a script and have a script made into a TV show.
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You know, and you re on the set when they re shooting it.
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And you re, you know, like seeing it come to life.
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I had never done that before.
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So that was pretty fun.
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And I would I would do it again.
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But if I can write songs and make records and make music and keep doing that, like, I m not getting any younger.
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So you start thinking about like, you know,
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I feel like I have like four albums written that I d like to get out.
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I love your brother opening the show with you and saying, you know, this is like, Joe s got nine cast offs for every one song he s written.
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And here s a cast off that he probably, I don t even know if he remembered.
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SPEAKER_00
Did you remember it when he played it?
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It was one of mine?
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Yeah, you might have been like in the back room.
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He played, he played a song.
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And he said, this is a, this is a song that Joe sent me years ago that he never did.
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And I finished it.
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Oh my God.
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I was talking to my friend from a college buddy.
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I missed it.
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I didn t say anything to him.
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Holy shit.
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Now I have to freaking call him.
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Now that you mention it, I remember him mentioning to that to me years ago that I sent him song and I just kind of said, I m not going to do anything with it.
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And he said, can I finish it?
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And I didn t realize he had, was it any good?
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Oh, it s great.
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I mean, I ve got drawers full of songs, but they re usually in the drawers for a reason.
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This didn t seem like a song that should have been cast off.
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He probably did a lot of work on it.
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He really did.
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And he s got such a beautiful voice, too, and a way of playing guitar.
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Such a gentle sort of approach.
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But I think you re like me.
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I feel like I can write the same song in five, six, eight different versions.
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I didn t envy Buffalo Tom back in the day because I would send them everything, pretty much everything that I thought was at least presentable, stuff that I finished.
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They would choose 10 or 12 to do on a record and I d be like, well, what about these other 12?
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I m like, well, we can t do a double album of Bill s songs every time.
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But it was hard for me to let go of them.
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SPEAKER_01
You sound very disciplined about that.
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I ll record 20 songs and then you have to choose 10 for an album.
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I m not the best at that.
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At some point, they re all the same to me.
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I really mean that.
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If I go through the act of finishing writing a song and recording it, and then it s done,
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SPEAKER_02
I can t tell which song is better than another song.
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I might have my favorites or the ones that I think that speak to me, whatever, but I m not good at sequencing records and all that kind of stuff.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I m the same way.
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And I mean, it s good to be part of a, I mean, art by committee s rough, but I mean, we ve always been a pretty great democracy in Buffalo, Tom.
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But you know, when you hear the people, whenever you hear whatever team you re working with, whatever the label, blah, blah, blah, whoever you re working with, when they start to tell you which songs they want, oh man, that song, you re like, really, that song?
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SPEAKER_01
It s like, that one?
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
I would never guess that one.
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One of our biggest songs, Taylor Swift, for me, it was one of these dark, deep album tracks.
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SPEAKER_01
I didn t think that would be a song that people-.
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I just don t know.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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I ve just started asking other people, what 10 songs out of these would you pick?
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SPEAKER_02
And invariably, they re always different than what I would have picked.
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SPEAKER_02
I focus grouped it quite a bit on this last record, quite a bit, because I had no clue.
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I was just like, I don t know.
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SPEAKER_02
I think we retract 15 songs and cut a few from it.
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SPEAKER_02
But I also meant that I m not a good engineer, but I m getting better at it, because you know how you said, what about those other songs, like the ones that don t make your record?
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SPEAKER_02
I want to still record them.
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SPEAKER_02
There s some that might not make this record, but I think they could be on a record or I just feel like I want to document them, whether I give them away for free or whether I do them.
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SPEAKER_02
I hate to have them go like songs disappear.
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SPEAKER_02
And I think as the older I get, the more of them I want to get down because I m in my 50s.
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SPEAKER_02
So I don t want you to start thinking, how many more years am I going to do this?
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think there s a lot of songs.
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We ve got like, what, 10 records now and plus a couple solo records.
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And there are songs that I ve forgotten about that are on records that I totally forgot about them.
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But meanwhile, there are songs that I haven t recorded that are still nagging at me.
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SPEAKER_02
Yeah, but me, I feel like I have to empty the pipes.
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I feel backed up.
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Sometimes I finish recording and I say to myself,
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I never have to think about that song again, and it s like a relief.
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SPEAKER_02
It s like a real relief, you know?
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SPEAKER_02
Yeah, you need a fiber supplement.
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SPEAKER_02
Exactly.
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SPEAKER_02
All right, Joe.
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SPEAKER_02
Hey, wait, so I didn t even ask you about your Cars book.
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SPEAKER_02
Oh, yeah, yeah.
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SPEAKER_02
So yeah, I m working on the Cars book.
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SPEAKER_02
So where are you at with that?
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SPEAKER_02
I can t, that s awesome.
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Because I, I mean, I don t read a ton of music, uh, books on music, mostly because like I said, reading is a challenge for me.
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SPEAKER_02
So I, you know, if I do read, I m, I m tend to be reading like stuff on biking and mechanical stuff, but so where are you at?
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SPEAKER_01
I ve been reading more and more music books in the last five years or so since I ve been writing more music books, because I want to know Will Hermes  Lou Reed book, or I want to know the good ones that are coming out.
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I always wanted to read the ones of the bands that meant the most to me.
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But now I m more like even casually reading about bands I don t even necessarily love.
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SPEAKER_01
And that was also like with documentaries there for a while.
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SPEAKER_01
I ve never liked Iron Maiden really, but that Iron Maiden documentary is fantastic.
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SPEAKER_01
It s about the human relationships and the balance.
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SPEAKER_01
But yeah, I m at this point in the book where... Wait, let me back you up.
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SPEAKER_01
Why did you pick the cars?
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SPEAKER_01
Well, it s a good question.
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SPEAKER_01
I was looking for another book to do after my Stones book, which was the last book I had done was 2013, before the Leon Russell book.
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SPEAKER_01
But I have been working with this agent in New York who really liked that stones book for six, seven, eight, nine years, like whatever, to try to come up with another idea.
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SPEAKER_01
And I don t want to do this.
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SPEAKER_01
I don t do this full time.
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SPEAKER_01
I don t ghost write.
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SPEAKER_01
I don t just take any projects.
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That s something I do as a labor of love.
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So I was waiting around for the right idea.
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SPEAKER_01
And while I was doing that, I played this benefit guitar at this thing called the Wild Honey Benefit out in LA.
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SPEAKER_01
And it s the kind of benefit where it s like, oh, they re doing a tribute to the Beach Boys.
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SPEAKER_01
And Brian Wilson himself shows up.
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SPEAKER_01
It s this crazy benefit.
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SPEAKER_01
So the guy that asked me to come out and do it, I was like, yeah, thrilled.
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SPEAKER_01
He s like, well, you can have maybe Pete Thomas on the drums.
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SPEAKER_01
And how about Elliot Easton on guitar?
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SPEAKER_01
So I had Elliot Eastland on guitar and I actually had Dennis Dykin from the Smithereens on drums and crazy, you know, like some Wallflowers guys on keyboard, Jordan Summer, and just this great resource, like you tap into these great LA musicians.
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SPEAKER_01
So I had pitched this idea.
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SPEAKER_01
I mean, Elliot is just like one of these guys whose heart is on his sleeve.
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He s just an open, he s like a Long Island guy like myself.
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SPEAKER_01
And we just, I think he hits it off with everybody, but we just hit it off.
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SPEAKER_01
Had you met him before or was that your first?
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SPEAKER_01
No, no.
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SPEAKER_01
The first night in rehearsal hall, I was just, we started, I just went up to him and said, Hey, I m the guy with blah, blah, blah.
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SPEAKER_01
And they had just gotten inducted.
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SPEAKER_01
They had learned that they were going to be inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame finally.
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SPEAKER_01
So I asked, Hey, congratulations.
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SPEAKER_01
And he.
5
SPEAKER_01
he was like tearing up talking about what it meant to him and his mother and being a musician.
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SPEAKER_01
But Ric Ocasek was still alive, and he was still very much in charge of this whole thing.
5
SPEAKER_01
So I had said to Elliot, hey, I wrote this article about the experience, and he loved it.
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SPEAKER_01
And I said, what about doing a Cars book?
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SPEAKER_01
Because I think they re one of the most important bands that has not been covered in a book since, like, 86.
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SPEAKER_02
That s what I was wondering.
5
SPEAKER_02
There s a hole there, probably, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I mean, some guy wrote this guy named Joe Milliken wrote a book about Ben Orr of all subjects, just just Ben kind of covered a lot of the cars, but it was mostly just kind of, it s almost like an oral history of people talking about Ben.
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SPEAKER_01
So but there s no I mean, David Robinson came from the modern lovers, you know, and like that, that alone is like a story.
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SPEAKER_01
And
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SPEAKER_01
But Rick didn t know who I was, he wanted to maybe go with a bigger name, I m sure.
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SPEAKER_01
But then he passed away, and in the interim I did the Leon book, and then I stoked the idea again, and all the three surviving members have been participating, cooperating with me, and giving me endless interviews.
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SPEAKER_01
So it s been great.
5
SPEAKER_02
That s awesome.
5
SPEAKER_02
And so where are you at with it?
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SPEAKER_02
Is it done?
5
SPEAKER_01
I m at the point where I hate myself for all the stuff I ve written, and now I have to go back and start bringing it down to something more palatable.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, as big as the Leon Russell book was, it was probably almost a third or more bigger than it was when I handed in its manuscript, because I thought I would have this collaboration with my
5
SPEAKER_01
Editor brent rumble a great great name brent rumble at hatchet but he was more like this i this is what do you think you re doing handing this in his first email back then he was this is not a book and it wasn t but i thought we would start to get into the back and forth now i m more like okay don t write too much to begin with
5
SPEAKER_01
But yeah, I m a chip away type guy.
5
SPEAKER_01
I have to put a lot of clay out there and chip and chip and chip.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s just the way I write.
5
SPEAKER_02
You know, Norman from the fan club, it reminds me of Norman said, when I recorded with him, the fan club had an expression called underdubbing, where you record all this shit, and then you underdub, you just start peeling stuff away.
5
SPEAKER_01
Taking it out, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_02
So underdubbing, that s what you re doing, underdubbing.
5
SPEAKER_02
So are you close?
5
SPEAKER_01
No, no.
5
SPEAKER_01
I m just through my first draft, really.
5
SPEAKER_01
I just interviewed Paulina Portskova this past week, and I ve gotten all the sort of key interviews that I wanted to get.
5
SPEAKER_01
And that s a big part of it.
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SPEAKER_01
I got to say, I was really sort of nervous when I started doing music books, you know, about interviewing.
5
SPEAKER_01
I m so used to being interviewed, but I was never like, oh, my God, I m going to talk to so-and-so.
5
SPEAKER_01
But it becomes an addiction.
5
SPEAKER_01
Interviewing becomes an addiction.
5
SPEAKER_01
You could probably tell by the way I m talking.
5
SPEAKER_02
Especially the story you must hear, especially if you re fascinated by the subject, like you re writing a book about them, for Christ s sake, and then you re talking to people who are either in the band or people who were, you know, were right there.
5
SPEAKER_02
Of course, it must be, you might just want to talk all day.
5
SPEAKER_01
And once you talk to like Elton John, like I did for the Leon book, then it s like, okay, Bruce Springsteen is not so much of a big deal.
5
SPEAKER_01
I got Bruce, I mean, he was a big deal.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I was nervous before all those guys, but Willie Nelson, you know, Randy Newman, and then
5
SPEAKER_01
They re just people that want to talk about, I mean, especially during COVID, everybody s home.
5
SPEAKER_01
They just want to talk about Leon and talk about songs and it was great.
5
SPEAKER_00
Thanks for listening to the TalkHouse podcast and thanks to Joe Pernice and Bill Janovitz for chatting.
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SPEAKER_00
If you liked what you heard, please follow TalkHouse on your favorite podcasting platform and make sure to check out all the goodness at TalkHouse.com.
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This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan and the TalkHouse theme is composed and performed
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by the range.
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See you next time!