It’s been a few days since a white nationalist rally resulted in violent outbreaks and the death of a counter protester in Charlottesville, VA. Nerves are still pretty raw, and Dylan Marron has skipped this third week of his limits run podcast, Conversations With People Who Hate Me. It’s a constructive show, in spite of a somewhat cheeky title, but it simply didn’t feel write airing a that sort of idealogical back and forth in the wake of such a grave and fundamentally upsetting event. The show is tough to listen to in moments, but it feels important. It clear serves a purpose for Marron and a parade of guests who’ve sent him online hate mail — but it’s also a template for difficult conversations in an incredibly polarizing time. And Marron is the ideal host, both due to the notoriety he’s gained through web video and the insanely popular Welcome to Nightvale (where he voices the character Carlos), and because of the incredible patience he displays with his combative interview subjects. If you’re anything like me, you’ll find yourself yelling at the podcast while Marron patiently hears people out. In a long and wide ranging conversation, Marron discusses tackling difficult topics, being an ally and trying to love someone who hates you.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the 80s, Glenn Morrow was at the forefront of Hoboken’s burgeoning college rock scene. The musician moved to Jersey while attending NYU and watched as Frank Sinatra’s hometown blossomed into a burgeoning indie rock scene, thanks in no small part to his own pioneering groups, The Individuals and ‘a,’ the latter of which would blossom into power pop darlings, the Bongos. After a few flirtations with major label success, Morrow eventually bowed out from performing, and moved to the other side of the desk, joining forces with Bar/None records. His first task found the label signing Brooklyn upstarts, They Might Be Giants — a fairly auspicious start that eventually led him to rise through the ranks to label owner. This summer, Morrow made a surprise return to recording — his first in 28 years. Glenn Morrow’s Cry For Help is a tight and compelling rock record that shows none of the rust one would expect from a musician who’s spent the better part three decades on the sidelines. Ahead of a show at the Bowery Electric in Manhattan, Morrow and bassist Mike Rosenberg sat down to discuss their return to recording and the embrace of “post-dad rock.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s a beautiful day in Cambridge, MA when we sit down for an interview at a local dumpling shop (his recommendation). It’s all very serene in Harvard Square, a music singing acoustic classic rock songs through a small amplifier. These days, Clint Conley seems about as far from the manic energy of Mission of Burma as is humanly possible. Shortly after the end of the Boston post-punk band’s explosive four year run, the bass player became a house painter, ultimately finding his path again as a communications major. For the past 30 years, he’s worked as a producer for local television magazines, producing narrative segments on everything from artist colonies to the opioid crises. Of course, there have been flirtations with music since — including, notably, Burma’s reunion that kicked off in 2002, and continues in fits and starts to this day. It was an unexpected return to seemingly everyone including Conley, who’d mostly confined his guitar to the closet as he focused on raising a family and his production career. For now, the band is on indefinite hiatus, but as Conley will happily admit, when it comes to Mission of Burma, there’s no such thing as “never." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A stint in rehab moved Frank Conniff from New York City to Minneapolis, derailing his standup career for a bit and ultimately kickstarting his career as a TV writer. In the Twin Cities, he met the Mystery Science Theater 3000 team, ultimately joining the show in its second season as a writer, and more notably to fans, mad scientist’s assistant, TV’s Frank. After leaving the show (the only cast member to do so amicably, by his own account), Conniff went on to write for an incredibly diverse series of shows. After a year long Hollywood dry spell, he restarted his career with an Elvira TV movie and eventually scored gigs on Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Invader Zim and a string of progressive radio shows on Air America.More recently, Conniff has reteamed with MST3K expats for the movie riffing series, Cinematic Titanic, gone full bore into the lucrative world of podcasting and recently published his second book, Cats V. Conniff: A chronicle of the historic lawsuit brought against Frank Conniff by his cats, Millie & Barney.Conniff also hosts the monthly Cartoon Dump at Q.E.D. in Astoria, where we met up along with an extremely loud air conditioning unit to discuss his unlikely career. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Right now, I’m in an unchecked creative zone,” Phoebe Bridgers says with a laugh. It’s a sort of cautious half joke, but one that describes her current songwriter state quite well. Our conversation was record a couple of months before the release of her debut LP Stranger in the Alps.  The buzz has already kicked off from high profile outlets like NPR and Paste, but it doesn’t yet belong the world. So the 22-year-old is taking full advantage of the time ahead of touring to work on record number two, knowing full well from seasoned mentors like Ryan Adams that things are about to get really real for a while. Bridgers takes it all in stride, from the surprise early excitement to opening shows for the likes of indie rock legends like Bright Eyes and War on Drugs to playing Willie Nelson's strange little ghost town in Luck, Texas. The musician is still in awe of it all and eager to take it all in, even as she pens songs like a veteran who’s been through this rodeo before.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ted Leo balks slightly at the notion that The Hanged Man is a more personal record than previous efforts. He chalks much of the idea up to the media surrounding the self-released record, and his particular candidness in recent interviews. But Leo’s done a lot of living in the seven years since the release of The Brutalist Bricks, and many of those stories manifest themselves in very real and raw ways on his new record. Since 2010, the musician has left New York City for more spacious digs in Rhode Island, found a new songwriting partner in Aimee Mann and grappled with some personal tragedy. The record is also the first in some time to bear only Leo's name, putting his long time band the Pharmacists on temporary hiatus and holing up in a newly built home studio. The new album also finds Leo without a label, opting instead to fund the record through a Kickstarter campaign. But while all of this sounds like the making of a four-track bedroom album, The Hanged Man is anything but. It’s one of his most luscious and fully realized records to date. Ahead of the album’s official release and his subsequent tour, we sat down in my Queens apartment to discuss the changes in Leo's life over the past several years and how a lifetime of adhering to a DIY ethos helped him prepare for his new album. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The building across the street was on fire the night we sat down to talk. The entire floor smelled of smoke and if you looked out the window, you might have thought the world was coming to an end. It's probably as good a backdrop as any for a interview that quickly shifts into an impending sense of gloom during this age of Trump. Honestly, I can’t remember what was in the news that week, but I’m sure it was plenty bad. Kotis has a knack for timing. His best known work, the dystopian satire Urinetown: The Musical opened on Broadway September 13th, 2001. Sure, everyone in New York has a 9/11 story, but his seemed strangely appropriate given the subject matter.  As Kotis tells it, that timing sometimes works to his advantage, as the musical was something of a Hail Mary pass for himself and Mark Hollmann, one final shot living the life of a playwright before the realities of adulthood really settled in. Kotis discusses his early days in New York, as a writer turned location scout, and the importance of satire even when it seems that all is lost. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For Katie Skelly, comics have always been something of side hustle — something she’s never expected or even wanted as a full-time career. During the days, she works at a beloved New York City film house, a gig that gives her front row access to some of cinema’s most impactful work. The influence has clearly bled into her comics work, perfectly exemplified in her new work,  My Pretty Vampire, which draws heavily upon the sexy/surrealist horror aesthetic of 70s films of Jean Rollin. Prior to this, Skelly sought a career in fine art, working as a docent at a gallery in the city. She ultimately abandoned that path when it became clear that, even after additional schooling, she’d be hard pressed to earn much more than a career cartoonist — which is saying a lot. Over the years, however, she’s found outlets for her art criticism, from her (now on hiatus) podcast Trash Twins, along with frequent reviews in places like The Comics Journal. All the while, she’s continued her own work in earnest, including the upcoming Patreon-supported work, Summer of Felines. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When Frankie Rose began work on Cage Tropical, she was living in Los Angeles, employed as a caterer — the struggling actor, Party Down kind. Not exactly the triumphant rock start victory lap of the artist who released one of of the best LPs of the best half-decade. But, then, these things rarely work out as planned. But the former Vivian Girls/Dum Dum Girls/Crystal Stilts managed to pull things together. Her new record ranks among her best, a testament to putting one’s head down and focusing on art in the face of uncertainty. It’s big and sprawling and personal, all at once, juxtaposing the her ups and downs, as exemplified on the second single, Red Museum, an existential sort of love song. Rose sat down in the lead up to Cage Tropical’s release to discuss the journey that led to the new LP and how she’s since resigned herself to the fate of being a musician for as long as she can sing into a microphone. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Every so often, my work obsessions bleed into my extracurriculars, and Annalee Newitz was more than happy to help me geek out about robotics. We sat down a few months back in New York, while she was visiting for Book Expo America, in advance of their first novel, Autonomous. The book tackles questions of civil rights in a world where people own machines that are virtually human, exploring the cross section of her longstanding interests in technology and social justice. Newitz has been writing professionally about technology since the 90s, with a lengthy resume that includes top names like Popular Science and Wired, along with a stint as an analyst for the Electronic Frontier foundation. In 2008, they weretapped to launch and run iO9, a Gawker (now Gizmodo)-owned blog steeped in their love for science fiction. In this conversation, Newitz discusses the state of artificial intelligence and robotics and addresses of the tough questions society will have to answer as our creations become more and more like us. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 2014, Manchester Orchestra released Hope, a new album with an identical track listening as its predecessor, Cope, released the same year. The two albums represented dramatically different musical takes on the same songs — the first was the band’s hardest edge record to date, and the second wholly stripped down. The pair of albums was the work of a band looking to shake things up a decade into its existence. The following year, the band was given the opportunity to think entirely out of the box, scoring the soundtrack to Swiss Army Man. The tale of a young man and his farting corpse of a best friend required an equally off-beat set of songs, so Andy Hull and Robert McDowell performed the whole thing a capella, layering as many as 150 tracks to accomplish the task. I met the duo on the eve of a record listening party, for their latest work, A Black Mile to the Surface. The album finds the band newly refreshed and introspective. We sat down in a soundproof booth and recorded a wide ranging conversation with the aid of the event’s whiskey sponsor, which helped ensure a free flowing conversation about musical work ethic, movie passes and starting a family. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Here’s a conversation recorded a while back and initially intended for publication. While the story never actually appeared in print, the subject matter was just too interesting to let it languish, so I’m presenting it to you as a bonus episode. Cartoonist Mike Diana is known less for his work itself as the fallout it caused, when he became the first artist in the US to receive a criminal conviction for artistic obscenity. Diana’s self-published work raised red flags due to its extreme violence when it was found discussed during a traffic stop at the height of a serial killing spree in nearby Gainesville, Florida. Diana was cleared of any suspicion in the then unsolved murders, but his book, Boiled Angel, soon became the subject of an obscenity trial. The cartoonist was found guilty and the repercussions follow him to this day, nearly a quarter of a century later. In this episode, recording in a Manhattan tea shop, Diana takes us through the trial and the sentencing, which barred him from drawing for three years and has made it impossible to return home to Florida, all these years later. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Comics are hard — doubly so when you live in a place like New York, where holding down a day job is a necessity. By their early- to mid-30s, most opt to pack it in. It’s not a personal failure or flaw, so much as an admission that the world just isn’t equipped to support its artists, particularly in a field as marginalized as indie comics. A few years back, Julien Fitzpatrick found himself at a crossroads, ultimately leaving comics for a newfound passion of coding. It was sad to see him go. My Brain Hurts was always a personal favorite among the comics that emerged from the 00s New York comics scene, a heartfelt and funny look at life among queer punks in the big city. But Fitzpatrick seemed to find success in record time in his new field. He moved to Portland to be among the startup community and found himself presenting at conferences in no time. Turns out life after comics does exist. In this we discuss moving to the Pacific Northwest after a lifetime in NYC and the emotional tolls of making a major career change in your 30s. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kate Stables’ Earl of Lemongrab wallet is on the table when I sit down for our interview at Baby’s All Right — so naturally, we spend the first several minutes of the conversation discussing Adventure Time. It was some she discovered independently, but it’s since become a nice source of bonding for Staples and her daughter. Stables happily discusses the ways in which having a child have impacted the music of This is the Kit, from decisions to take her on tour in her younger days, to a hand clapping pattern she and a school mate brought home that inspired “Moonshine Freeze” the lead off single and title track from the band’s new album.Then there’s the utter lack of alone time, something the musician says she requires in order to thrive as a songwriter — though she’s found enough of it to put together her fourth and strongest record to date. And, thankfully, we were able to grab a few relatively quiet moments ahead of her most recent New York appears to discuss the songwriting process and what it means to be in a band. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On the heels of the second issue of Resist, we hopped on the line with publishers Francoise Mouly and Nadja Spiegelman to discuss the free comics protest newspaper. The first issue arrived alongside the Presidential inauguration in January, as a broadsheet process and sequential catharsis. Eight months later, issue two finds the paper exploring similar themes in a world where the reality of Trump has truly settled in. The list of primarily female contributors includes some of comics’ top names, including Roz Chast, Alison Bechdel, Lynda Barry, Daniel Clowes and Art Spiegelman. Mouly and Spiegelman joined the show via Skype to discuss online political discourse, the importance of print and discovering one’s own patriotism when things seem the darkest. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

No Resolution is an album about heartbreak. It’s raw and real, delving into break ups and fears of settling down, topics that Tim Kasher is set to explore even more deeply in his upcoming film of the same name. His directorial debut (soundtracked by the accompanying album) tells the story of an engaged couple breaking up over the course of a New Year’s Eve. For his part, however, the sometime Cursive/The Good Life frontman seems pretty content — at least over the course of our hour-long conversation. He’s newly married, living in Los Angeles and generally drinking less than he did in his indie rock glory days (though we are speaking over a couple of beers — he’s not made of stone). But as he is on record, Kasher is open and honest about the ups and downs of his existence as a professional indie rocker in his early 40s. Over the course of our talk (next to the highway in the backyard of a Williamsburg bar), Kasher discusses creative roadblocks, drinking in Omaha and the looming terror of children. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Of course Catherine Burns has a good story about getting her current gig. It involves MTV and 9/11 and parents in Alabama who were slightly befuddled that their daughter had moved from a planned career as a documentary filmmaker to something called “storytelling” (“like for children?). The Moth’s long-serving Artistic Director helped shepherd the storytelling event from New York City curiosity to cultural phenomenon. These days the organization runs events in cities across the globe and produces one an intensely popular NPR show and podcast. The name has also become synonymous with the show’s unique storytelling style. Fresh off a book tour in support of the organization’s second book, The Moth Presents All These Wonders: True Stories About Facing the Unknown, Burns sat down to discuss story crafting, driving a car off a (small) cliff and how storytelling is like dancing with fire (literally). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When I hit up cartoonist Jim Rugg before a quick three day trip to Pittsburgh, he sent his apologies. He was leaving town the same night I arrived, but helpfully sent along a list of fellow cartoonists in the city. The city’s comics community is a diverse but tight knit one, and the artists will champion their fellow Pittsburghers any chance they get. I’d totally forgotten that Frank Santoro lived there. He’d moved away from the city for a while, publishing his first works in the mid-90s, as part of the San Francisco comics community. But unlike the Bay, his hometown is actually livable for an artist. In fact, he own two houses on the same street.  The second, a mirror image of his own residence, is the headquarters of the Rowhouse Residency, an off-shoot of his long standing comics correspondence course that he likens to “a dojo for students much like a martial arts academy.” It’s an immersive school from which Santoro broadcasts lessons and publishes the work of the artist in residence, fueled by home cooked meals prepared by his mother who lives up the street. Santoro and I met up at his row house to discuss Pittsburgh comics, self-publishing and the shadow of Andy Warhol. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Before it helped elect a president who teetered on the bring of nuclear war with every subsequent tweet, Twitter was an important testing ground for young comedians, honing their one-liners 140 characters at a time. Ashley Bez will be the first to admit that she owes much of her career to the social medium platform.Through Twitter, she’s found steady work and writing gigs for online magazines and TV shows, along with her most recent gig, an online radio dating advice show through Anchor.fm. And really, it’s a pretty good microcosm of a career that she’s put together piece meal through a variety of different online mediums, from a daily clothing blog to a surprise viral video hit that found her microwaving string cheese through a faux-drunk emotional roller coaster. In our first face to face meeting after several years of following one another on social media, Bez comes in from the pouring rain to discuss comedy, New York City, day jobs and the power of Twitter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Scott Westerfeld didn’t move to New York expecting to become a writer. He’s dabbled in politics, music and software design, but after 18 novels, it’s pretty safe to say that he’s found his calling. Over the years, his work has largely gravitated toward the young adult end of the bookstore, most often dealing with science-fiction themes, as is the case with his best known series, Uglies and the Leviathan. Westerfeld’s most recent work is the two-part graphic novel, The Spill Zone. Like a number of his past works, the book uses a sort of post-apocalyptic setting to tackle topics like alienation, paired with good chase scenes featuring psychedelic monster dogs and the like. The author sat down ahead of his book tour to discuss writing, life in the city, math textbooks and catering to young readers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Everything is running about an hour late, and the opening band has already started by the time two-thirds of The Coathangers show up back stage for the interview. Complicating things even further, bass player Meredith Franco has a nasty cough. The life of a touring rock and roll band is pretty far down the list things any rational individual would want to do for a could. But it’s already cycled through the band once before, and the show must go on.  Guitarist Julia Kugel, who does most of the speaking during the conversation, explains helpful that it’s all just part of life on the road. And besides, the trio (recently down from four) only just got over some nasty parasites. It was a miserable experience — tired muscles, hair falling out. But at least the group got an EP name out of the whole thing. All in all, The Coathangers have been remarkable resilient over their 10-plus years. The band start as something of a lark, with the help of a stolen drumset (long story). The group, Kugel explains, had to be coerced into playing its first show, hoping the space would flood or some other act of god might mercifully intervene. But the group has held on, and somehow manages to get better with every release. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’re back from a brief hiatus for a conversation with cartoonist David Lloyd. Recorded at an Irish Pub a few blocks from the MoCCA Fest art show that brought him into town, Lloyd discusses his on-going work as the editor of Aces Weekly, an online anthology he believes hold the key to post-paper comics reading. Lloyd is, of course, best known as the artist on the seminal 1988 Alan Moore collaboration, V For Vendetta. The book inspired a 2005 film and created the iconic Guy Fawkes mask that has since become an online calling card for the hacktavist group, Anonymous. The artist says he has no qualms about being most strongly identified with the work, given the opportunities its opened, including the ability to better promote Aces. The last time we spoke, Lloyd was out promoting Kickback, a book a he’d both written and drawn, whose timing perfectly coincided with the V for Vendetta’s DVD release. A series of unfortunate incidents tied to the book played a key role in the artist’s decision to turn his back on mainstream comics. A few years later, opportunity presented itself once again in the form of online publishing. These days, the artist solely plays the role of editor, having largely abandoned the artist side of things. And from the sound of it, he’s mostly content — aside, of course, from a somewhat heated debate toward the end of the conversation about experimenting with mediums. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“My method is slowly eliminating my style from the work,” R. Sikoryak explains during our long and wide-ranging interview. As with nearly every other creative pursuit, style is one of the key elements of expression, but the cartoonist has spent much of his life working against developing his own. After all, his best known pieces like Masterpiece Comics  work in opposition to original stylistic sign posts, instead immersing themselves fully into a rotating cast of existing artists. The book plays with juxtaposition of high and supposed low art, casting some of the world’s great works of literature with characters from the Sunday comics page. Sikoryak’s latest work, Terms and Conditions finds the artist taking a similar approach, albeit with a widely distributed but largely ignored work: the fine print that arrives with every new Apple device. The new book is a perfect springboard for a conversation about originality, sampling and the ways our brains are wired to find narrative where none exists. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“I’m a Texan and I don’t dislike Texas,” Frank Stack explains. “But I don’t like those sons of bitches.” The artist’s first major work sums up his feelings toward attitudes in the Lone Star State. First published in the pages of University of Texas paper, The Texas Ranger, The Adventures of Jesus is often regarded as the first underground comic. The strip is seen through the eyes of a Jesus newly returned to Earth. It was, predictably, controversial subject matter in Stack’s backyard, as it tackled issues of religious hypocrisy. The stories were first collected by fellow UoT student and underground comics luminary Gilbert Shelton and decades later by Fantagraphics. Stack also found acclaim for his work with Harvey Pekar, both in the pages of American Splendor and in the groundbreaking book, Our Cancer Year, co-authored with Joyce Brabner. But his cartooning career has been sporadic, broken up by long comics droughts, due to struggles with publishers over the decades. The artist has, however, found success as a fine artist and had his most steady gig as a professor at the University of Missouri, from which he retired roughly a decade ago. Record on the show floor of Big Apple Comic Con, this conversation covers much of Stack’s long and fascinating career in and out of comics and manages to drop a wide range of references from Picasso to Mystery Men. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You’re bound to raise some fan suspicion when the first track off your new album A Band Is Something To Figure Out has a title like “What do the People Want,” particularly when the thing is released on the 10th anniversary of your band’s existence. Hallelujah the Hills frontman Ryan Walsh admits that the album’s name was intended to raise some questions about rock music in general. And for full effect, Walsh adds, he first suggested it in the middle of practice, when a writer from the UK was in Boston getting material for an upcoming book on the group. But then, Hallelujah the Hills has always put on a good show. The band has released a half-dozen records in their decade-long existence, coming out of the gate with 2007’s Collective Psychosis Begone, which made them something of a media darling right at the apex of the 00s blog band boom. But while the group has maintained a steady fanbase (who’ve helped fund the last couple of records), Walsh has held down a day job for nearly all of its existence. These days, he’s also jammed book writing into his already-packed schedule. Walsh is adapting a 2015 Boston Magazine piece in a full-length book for Penguin, documenting Van Morrison’s late-60s self-imposed New England exile that gave rise to Astral Weeks, one of rock and roll’s most beloved masterpieces. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“[Depression] is something I’m comfortable with now,” Los Campesinos singer Gareth David explains during our conversation backstage at the Warsaw in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. He’s remarkably open and funny about the subject, adding, “the best thing for my mental health has been Pokemon Go.” It’s clear that his time serving as the lyrics writer for the joyfully woeful seven-piece has gone a ways toward opening him up over the course of six albums. And indeed, titles like We Are Beautiful , We Are Doomed, Hello Sadness and Sick Scenes perfectly reflect the balance of musical excitement and melancholy subject matter that have long defined the group’s work. It’s also clear that the band’s longevity is the product of sheer love for the music. The group, formed in Cardiff, found early success among the blog band boom of the mid-00s, with an early single appearing in a Budweiser advert. These days, its members have gone on to support themselves with day jobs, reforming for the sheer love of playing. But the continued commitment to the group has resulted in a band that seems to get better with each subsequent release. The group on this year’s Sick Scenes is clearly the one found on 2007’s Sticking Fingers into Sockets, but the decade since its release have found the group operating with far more maturity and depth for the most fully-formed songwriting of its career. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“We never make a decision because we want to alienate the audience,” Tim Kinsella explains. “But we also never make a decision according to what we think the audience wants.” That sums up the musician’s career as any review. Though it only accounts for a bit of the outright animosity found in pieces like Pitchfork’s take on Joan of Arc’s latest opus, He's Got the Whole This Land Is Your Land in His Hands, referred to by the site as a “troll manifesto.” But the way Kinsella tells it, he’s just doing his thing. Joan of Arc, and with the prolific Chicago musician’s numerous other outlets like Cap'n Jazz, The Owls and Make Believe — which found him playing a wrestling heel — have never shied away from experimenting as a method for shaking up the doldrums of music writing. This latest record is the result of hours of jamming, a loose confederation of friends playing freely and exchanging instruments — having fun making music. The result is challenging, confusing and sometimes sublime, as in the case of Kinsella’s stream of conscious, which seem to invoke Trump’s tiny-handed insecurities well before the subject became national news.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After touring around with prominent outfits like Yeahsayer and Of Montreal, Sinkane’s Ahmed Gallab really come into his own on 2012’s Mars. The breakout record found the multi-instrumentalist embracing musical selections as diverse as his background, from the polyrhythms of Sudan to the punk, indie and funk of the midwest. Released in February, Life & Livin' It builds upon his myriad influences and finds the artist crafting one of this most personal records to date, released amidst a cultural upheaval in a United States now turning its back on the immigrant cultural that helped build it. Sitting down in a coffee shop in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Green Point that he now calls home, Gallab discusses a childhood split evenly between Sudan and the States and how confusions over culture and identity helped shaped his unique musical voice. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tommy Stinson is exhausted. It’s the tail end of a long day of interviews, with appearances on high profile outlets like Fox News, and the Bash & Pop frontman isn’t not entirely sure he’s going to make it through one more. Things get off to a rough start, and for a while only get rougher from there, tethered only by the calming force of friend and Cowboys in the Campfire co-conspirator Chip Roberts. There’s talk of The Replacements and an off-handed mention of Chinese Democracy that doesn’t go over particularly well, for obvious reasons, but when the conversation turns his nine-year-old daughter, things calm down a touch. Her presence is clearly a grounding one, one that brings the musician back down to earth and puts everything into perspective. When he’s not touring or recording, he’s a full-time father, a sense of stability for musician whose lived most of his life on the road since joining up with the Replacements at the tender age of 12. It’s been a sometimes hard life, but a rewarding one, and when he reflects back on it, he laughs, “none of these mofos thought I’d live past 30.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Reverend Jen Miller was a Lower East Side fixture when I moved to New York more than a decade ago, an elf-eared, chihuahua-toting being who seemed to show up everywhere in those first few years, from The Village Voice to cable access. She ran a Troll Doll museum and wrote books, served as the sec columnist for nerve.com, starred in low budget films with names like Elf Panties: The Movie and Lord of the Cockrings. These days, her vibrant and idiosyncratic output has taken a major hit courtesy of sky rocketing Manhattan rent prices. When we sat down for an interview, Miller was grappling with a recent trip to a psych ward, spurred on by the recent passing of her beloved dog, Reverend Jen Jr., a pocket-sized chihuahua that rarely left her side. In spite of everything, she lights up when time comes to discuss her varied career as a performance artist, author and one-time professional submissive at a Manhattan S&M dungeon. Miller discusses coping with the changing state of the city and the first time she ever put on a pair of fake elf ears. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jon Ronson confesses with a laugh that he feels at least partially responsible for the rise of Alex Jones, the once-fringe Texas-based radio show host who since has become a central figure in Donald Trump’s political rise and the development of his subsequent White House policies. It’s a strange claim coming from the This America Life contributor behind The Men Who Stare at Goats. Ronson speaks in a soft Welsh accent, and in many ways seems the exact antithesis of the radio conspiracy theorist who growls loudly to millions of devoted listeners about Obama and Clinton smelling of sulfur. But it was Ronson who helped Jones grow from local radio personality to national phenomenon, as he recruited the right wing ideologue in his mission to infiltrate Bohemian Grove, a playground for the super rich, which helped launch both men’s careers, almost 20 years back. The pair’s link is at the center of Ronson’s latest work, The Elephant in the Room, a Kindle single exploring the rise of Trump and the alt-right, using his relationship with Jones as a springboard into the strange and scary world once simply dismissed as the fringes of the Republican Party. It’s perfect fodder, really, for a writer whose work has centered on themes like internet shaming, extremists and psychopaths. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Punk rock resumes don’t get much better than Kid Congo Powers’. The Southern California-born musician has been playing music professional for nearly 40 years, since the then-president of the Ramones fanclub was recruited by Jeffrey Lee Pierce for the band that would soon become the Gun Club.Soon after, Powers was recruited by fellow punk rock weirdos, The Cramps as rhythm guitarist, staying with the band for two of their most influential records, Psychedelic Jungle and Smell of Female. After another multi-album stint with The Gun Club, the musician joined up with Nick Cave, recording two records as a member of The Bad Seeds. For the past decade, Powers has served as the front man for The Pink Monkey Birds, an amalgamations of decades of music influence, including the Southern California Chicano rock sound that helped ignite his love of music.  To celebrate the release of the band’s latest, La Araña Es La Vida, Powers sat down for a far reaching interview about his long and storied career. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“I think about music as joy” sounds like one of those things that musicians just say. But then you go see Adele Bertei live, and there’s really no other way to describe. She ought to be rusty, out of shape and out of practice after a long hiatus, but when she took the stage at Le Poisson Rouge in Manhattan a few nights after out interview, she was a goddamned force of nature at 5’0 tall and dressed to the nines in a full suit and tie.A surviver of Cleveland art-rock, New York No-Wave and radio pop, Bertei’s solo may continue to be the thing she’s best known for, but the musician has seemingly leapt from one fascinating gig to the next, working as a personal assistant to Brian Eno, singing backup for Tears for Fears and Blondie and directing films for Playboy. Her next gig finds her embracing a number of past artistic passions, writing, directing and composing music for a web series about an all-female punk group and enamored with one member’s No-Wave surviving grandmother. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The latest Fuzz and Pluck (last year’s The Moolah Tree) begins with a rough visual — one I’m admittedly a bit hung up on during my conversation with Ted Stearn a few months ago. In it, Fuzz, the hapless teddy bear character, is unraveled until he’s little more than a long thread and a pair of eyeballs. I’d seen in before in an old issue of the Fantagraphics anthology Mome, and it had stuck with me ever since. Admittedly, it ultimately proves a dream sequence and one of the darker scene in what’s a fairly lighthearted fairy tale, but it’s a fairly good insight into Stearn’s sense of humor and visual sensibilities. The Moolah Tree was seven years in the making, with the odd seen (like the aforementioned dream sequence) popping up here and there, while Stearn focused on his day job, working on big budget network animated shows like King of the Hill and Futurama. It’s a testament to seeing a project through and the power of the comics media to allow an artist to see every aspect of a creation through, from beginning to end. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When I arrive backstage at Le Poisson Rouge green room, Charles Watson is digging into a pre-set dinner, with  Rebecca Taylor seated in the back on the phone with another interview. He’s asking her about Brexit — seeking advice, really, a mere day or so after our own shattering electoral upset. The duo flew in on election day, the whole thing feels like an unwelcome bit of deja vu — but they’re happy to help us through it nonetheless.Taylor, for one, has never shied away from the intimate in her own work, even as Watson’s contributions to Slow Club tend toward the fantastic.Their opposite approaches to music and life have ultimately proved one of the group’s greatest strengths, with two strong and divergent approaches coupling nicely on record, including last year’s fittingly bluntly titled, One Day All of This Won't Matter Anymore, that finds their sound stretching out and mellowing slightly (in tone, if not content) from the pop sensibilities that have defined previous efforts. Their distinct but complimentary personalities are on full display during a deep but light hearted backstage conversation that finds Taylor experiencing the wonders of American cold medicine for the first time. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It was important to me that we have a special guest for episode 100. They Might Be Giants fitted the job perfectly, a band that played an incredibly important role in the early development of my musical tastes, as strange and idiosyncratic as they might ultimately become. With episode 200, the camera gets pulled make even further, to a man and a magazine that, for better or worse, let an indelible mark on my impressionable young mind, as they have for generations before and since. Weeks before I sat down to record this interview in Al Jaffee’s amazing Manhattan studio, upcoming guest Kid Congo Powers made reference to a club “looking like a scene out of Mad Magazine.” I knew what he meant immediately. The strange cross section of the human experience filtered through the lens of the Usual Gang of Idiots. And at their center is Jaffee. The cartoonist is now 95 (“closer to 96,” as he handily points out during the interview), with his signature fold-in having appeared in virtual every issue between 1964 and 2008, along with his other mainstays like "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions.” The longest working cartoonist in history kindly agreed to sit down for wide ranging interview about life, death, cartooning and the importance of a steady gig. It’s one my absolute highlights of doing the show and great way to spend episode 200. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mari Naomi sat down for an interview a matter of days follow the election, a fact that unavoidably colored the conversation. It’s pretty clear listening back almost two months later that we were only beginning to process our thoughts at the time — not that most of us have made all that much progress in the meantime. For a cartoonist whose work deals so often with issues of cultural and sexuality identity, there were a number a of topics we likely would have broached over the course of our 50 minute long conversation even if the election had gone a different route entirely. But all of the recent goings on do have a way of bringing such concerns into sharp relief. As such, it’s a sometimes depressing, sometimes funny and always enlightening conversation with the cartoonist, who says with a laugh, “The worst part was that I couldn’t even draw a comic about it,” when referring to a recent accident that resulted in their breaking both of her hands. Hopefully it’s the sort of combination of darkness and light we can all use as we cast aside the darkness of a recently ended year and look toward the potential for hope in the months to come. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dame Darcy’s got a great comics show gimmick. While cartoonists look on sad-eyed as show goers flip through their work and move on, the artist offers up tarot readings through her own custom deck, giving curious parties insight into their future and perhaps selling some books in the process. She’s engaged and curious, and even if she didn’t manage to move any books at Comics Arts Brooklyn, she clearly would have enjoyed the experience nonetheless — a unfortunately uncommon trait in the often introverted world of comics artists. But this work is only one aspect of her multi-faceted career. Darcy has lived many lives, both figuratively and, to hear her tell it, literally. This time around, she’s been an activist, a model, a designer, a screenwriter and a sailor, all the while producing her underground indie comics series Meat Cake for more than 20 years. These days, she makes her home in Savannah, George, the aesthetic embodiment of her work and the cultural opposite of New York City and Los Angeles, where she made her home for some time. In this wide ranging interview, we discuss witchcraft, mermaids, 9/11 and the importance of finding fellow weirdos. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There’s no real podcasting precedent for Welcome to Night Vale. In the decade or so since I started podcasting, I’ve never seen a phenomenon like it. The show seemingly came out of nowhere and shot to the top of the iTunes chart with loyal fanbase built up around Tumblr communities, creating fan art and fiction and dressing up as their favorite characters whenever the show rolls through town. The brainchild of writers Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, the show centers on the goings on of a small desert town somewhere in the southwest, an impossible place where occult creatures are commonplace and conspiracies are the law of the land. Baldwin, a Neo-Futurist actor based in New York, portrays Cecil Palmer, the host, main character and moral center of the program, imbuing the character and show with a hypnotic voice and elements of his real life personality that have become a rallying point for so much of the show’s communal nature. In honor of Night Vale’s 100th episode, we sat down with Baldwin to discuss the show’s origin, his acting history and the recent announcement that he is HIV positive. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We struggle to find a decent spot to set up shop on the New York Comic Con show floor — finally opting to do the whole thing standing, leaned up against the reception desk at the Dark Horse booth. Baker is fresh off a signing with Fifth Beatle collaborator (and past guest) Vivek Tiwary. The conversation quickly turns to the business — the hustle of comics, something that’s seemingly always at the front of the cartoonist’s mind. After all, Baker has managed to remain staunchly independent after decades in the business, even after countless industry awards and successful stints on books like Plastic Man and Deadpool. And fittingly, it’s Baker’s own creations that have been his most lauded, from his 1990 breakthrough, Why I Hate Saturn to his family strip The Bakers and 2005’s Nat Turner, a retelling of the 1831 slave rebellion produced at time when big publishers wouldn’t touch the story with a ten foot pole. In the midst of the busiest day of one of the county’s biggest comic shows, Baker explains how he’s managed to maintain his independence for two and a half decades. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Neutral Milk Hotel two albums surely cast a long shadow on all involved. Multi-instrumentalist Julian Koster has never shied away from his role in the band — both reuniting with the group and supporting frontman Jeff Mangum in recent years — but all the while the musician has been building a singular body of work all his own, both as a solo artist and through his on-going project, the Music Tapes.For anyone who’s seen the latter in a live setting, it’s clear that Koster is, above all, a storyteller. The band act features a seven-foot-tall metronome and a talking tube television. It’s a living circus built around strange tales and Koster’s songs — very much a product of the Elephant 6 Collective from which it sprung, while remaining uniquely his own. When it was first announced that Koster was working on a podcast with the team behind Welcome to Nightvale, it was clearly serendipity. Three episodes in, podcasting has proven the perfect medium for the musician’s world building, manifesting itself as a sort of classic radio drama beamed from the top of the Eiffel Tower. It’s idiosyncratic and fascinating, a perfect encapsulation of what Koster does best. And yes, he wore the hat. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bobby Rush is a storyteller. At 83, he’s no doubt told many of his best ones hundreds if not thousands of times, but as the consummate perform, he spins each one as it were the first time – even something as old and simple as the tale of how the son of a pastor became one of the foremost bluesmen of his generation. And while the musician has never taken himself too seriously, from his 1971 gold record, “Chicken Heads" (“I love that gal / I love them chicken heads too”) to this year’s Porcupine Meat (“Too fat to eat / Too lean to throw away.”) – but these past few years have given the musician opportunity to reflect on the importance of the blues and his role in the genre.   Last year, his friend B.B. King passed on, and passed the torch in the process, playing some of his final shows with Rush and bestowing upon the musician the ‘B.B. King Entertainer of the Year’ award. And Rush is keenly aware of his place as the one of the last of a breed, still playing performing out with the energy of a man a third his age. On a stop over in New York, Rush sat down to discuss his six decade long career, the importance of the blues and, of course, how he got a song called “Chicken Heads” on the radio in 1971. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Vivien Goldman’s New York City apartment is a shrine to decades of music journalism, bookshelves overflowing with seemingly every title ever published on the subject. This particular evening, former Chantage bandmate Eve Blouin is over for a visit, discussing their days in Paris and the myriad ways in which even Queens has become virtually unlivable for artists. The two still perform music when they get together from time to time, but Goldman spends most of her time these days writing about and teaching music history.  The fact that we were able to get together when we were was something of a minor miracle, as she was devoting most of her time to piecing together a syllabus for incoming NYU freshman for her gig as the school’s adjunct professor of punk and reggae. All the while, Goldman has been enjoying a new round of interest in her wonderful, if sporadic music career, courtesy of Resolutionary, a new collection of her singles recorded between 1979 and 1982. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I must have been 12 or so when I first saw the Pansy Division. The band was opening for Green Day at a benefit show in Oakland, a return to the Bay Area following the triumphant Dookie tour. I had no idea what to make of the band at the time — and my dad, who’d kindly agreed to chaperone, was, I believe amused. He may or may not have said, “don’t tell your mother about this.” But that was always the Pansy Division’s MO — in your face sexuality backed by songwriting that rarely took itself seriously. The band no doubt blew the minds of young teens all across the country as the opening act for the soon to be biggest rock band in the world, and it appeared to have a hell of a time doing it. This year marks the group’s quarter-century anniversary, a milestone it celebrated with Quite Contrary, its first album in seven years, which is both celebratory and reflective, featuring a cover shot in the same room that graced the band’s seminal 1996 album Wish I'd Taken Pictures, starring the same two cover models. Frontman Jon Ginoli already did a thorough job reflecting on the band and its influence in his wonderful 2009 memoir, Deflowered: My Life in Pansy Division, but a twenty-fifth anniversary offers yet another opportunity to recognize how far he, his band and the world around them have come in the last few decades. We sat down at a cafe in Manhattan following a recent appearance in the city to discuss the band, its music and mission. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Of all of the bizarre sights at this year’s New York Comic Con, you’d be hard pressed to find one more serendipitous than the droves of show goers milling around IDW booth in bright orange cardboard Donald Trump masks – including, in one moment of heightened verisimilitude, a Darth Vader sporting the face of the Republican nominee.  The masks were being handed out to promoting Tom Tomorrow’s latest offering, Crazy is the New Normal, a paperback collection of the political cartoonist’s work from 2014 to 2016. The neon orange, Hulk-inspired rage monster is really the perfect distillation of Tomorrow’s strip, This Modern World, a cross section of biting political satire and hilarious comic book premises. The strip in a rare bright spot in the often anemic world of political cartooning, running weekly since the late 80s in alt-weeklies across the country and left leaning magazines like the Nation. These last couple of years have seen the cartoonist’s profile continue to grow, in the face of shuttering print publications, including a spot on the list of Pulitzer finalists, a crowdfunded career retrospect and the beginnings of an animated series based on his long-running strip. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sometimes you finish an interview not quite sure how things went. Other times you just know. With Sarah Assbring, it was pretty clear from the first seconds, when she belted out a song when asked to do a soundcheck. With all she’s been through in her life, the driving force behind El Perro Del Mar clearly sees no point in holding back. Assbring’s new record KoKoro, which dropped last week, is the sound of an artist bursting at the seams with creative inspiration. As she notes during the interview, she rented out a music room in a children’s museum to experiment with international instruments in an attempt to capture her feelings about a world in turmoil following the birth of her son. But music didn’t always come easily. During this conversation recorded prior to an intimate performance in New York City, we discuss battles with depression and the slog of existential thought that have gripped her life and stifled the process at various points. It’s one of the most candid and frank conversations with had in this show’s nearly 200 episode history and a fascinating insight into a singularly creative musical voice. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 2008, Dash Shaw arrived seemingly out of nowhere and the indie comics community feel in love almost immediately. His Fantagraphics debut, the 720 page opus Bottomless Belly Belly Button, was a wide ranging, following the lives of a family over the course of three generation, which landed the young artist on numerous book of the year lists. Since then Shaw has regularly bounced back and forth between comics and animation, maintaining a singular vision with one ambitious project after another. This fall, the artist marks two major releases, a college of his book Cosplayers and the animated film, My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea. The film, which premiers at the New York Film Festivals this months, features an impressive voice cast, including Jason Schwartzman (as Shaw), Lena Dunham, Reggie Watts, Maya Rudolph and Susan Sarandon. Shaw joined me at a Manhattan tea house on a recent visit to the city to discuss his work, collaboration and moving from New York to an artist commune. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I’d known Alex Segura for a few years, before I found out about his not so secret passion. We’d work together in the comics world, we as a journalist and him as a PR rep, first for DC and then for Archie. We were drinking together at some comics after party, when he casually mentioned that he was about to head down to Florida for a crime writers convention – and not just as a casual observer. This year Segura released his second novel, Down the Darkest Street, the second installment of his Pete Fernandez Mystery series set in his hometown of Miami. In this casual chat at a coffee shop in Astoria, Segura takes me through the world of mystery writing of which I know very little, while discussing side passions as his continued work as a writing on various comics titles, like the newly released Archie meets the Ramones. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.