Frank Portman sends me his new record a few hours before we’re set to meet up at a coffee shop on Market Street. The whole thing came together at the last minute at the tail end of a three week long work road trip, and I only have time to listen to three or four songs before checking out of the hotel and meeting him down the street. But it’s enough. It’s new and familiar. It’s self-deprecating and funny, bouncing sugary pop-punk with a humorously cynical bit. The second song is called “Sadistic Masochism.” It goes, “Sadistic masochism, that’s how its gonna be / Sadistic masochism, baby you and it.” After a dozen years, the Mr. T Experience is back.It’s a perfect sort of return to music for Dr. Frank, a soundtrack for the sequel to his hit YA book, King Dork. The album, (like the book) titled King Dork, Approximately, finds Portman inhabiting the voice of his protagonist, high school rock musician, Tom Henderson, on 12 songs that are unmistakably the work of the MTX starship.  Portman’s time away from the microphone was largely unintentional, the result of a changing record industry, the implosion of the beloved East Bay record label that had served as their longtime home, and a somewhat accidental career as an author. In this extra long edition of RiYL, the artist discusses motel laundry, the publishing industry and not being Green day. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’re back after an unexpected bye-week (sorry, I’ve been traveling a lot) posting up a fascinating interview with Laura “LP” Pergolizzi. The LA singer-songwriter has released a string of critically acclaimed albums, including, most recently, Death Valley, a five song EP released on Vagrant in June. In spite of such acclaim, the singer has struggled to maintain the commitment of major labels in a time when the music industry seems in the constant state of death rattle. While other artists are forced to look outside their own creative medium in order to make ends meet, LP has built a fascinating side career writing songs for some of musics big names like Cher and Rihanna. During a recent stopover in New York during a string of shows opening for Roxy Music frontman Bryan Ferry, the singer sat down for a long conversation about creativity, making ends meet in the music industry and pop song bootcamp. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Up to now, Miss Lasko-Gross and Kevin Colden had never professionally collaborated in any official capacity — not out of any conscious decision, the pair had just never found the proper vehicle. After all, there hasn’t been a tremendous amount of overlap between the married couple’s respective output. Lasko-Gross’ best known work is the autobiographical Fantagraphics series, Escape from Special and the fantasy series Henni, while Colden’s 2007 rue-crime Fishtown was followed by flirtations with the superhero side of comics. Penned by Lasko-Gross and pencilled by Colden, The Sweetness fittingly marks a departure for both, a grotesquely comic sci-fi work about intergalactic drug smugglers. The pair joined sat down to discuss their first collaboration and the ups and downs of trying to make a living as New York City cartoonists.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Somewhere between the first LP and last year’s self-titled EP, things really started getting serious, so Potty Mouth did what any self-respecting rock and roll group would, packing up things in their small Massachusetts scene and moved to Los Angeles. New York, it turns out, just wasn’t in the cards for reasons they were happy to explain on the hot summer day we sat down in the band’s midtown publicity office. The band started in earnest in 2011, a casual side project from a pair of Smith College students, neither of whom had ever actually played guitar. The duo recruited an experienced drummer and rounded out the quartet with a front woman who was still enrolled in high school. A perfect punk rock original story, really. Later that same year, the band recorded a demo, followed by a debut EP the following year and a full length, Hell Bent, in 2013. Last year’s EP found the band working with producer John Goodmanson, whose resume is a who’s who of music acts from the past two decades, from Sleater-Kinney to the Wu-Tang Clan. The trio joined me during a whirlwind trip through the city to discuss Hollywood, touring and Pokemon Go. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Back in 2008, two funny guys saying funny things into microphones with an optional third funny friend was the concept a podcast needed. But we’re living in the age of Serial, a time when show need a central idea to set themselves apart from millions of like-minded shows. Eight years after launching Stop Podcasting Yourself, comedian comic duo Dave Shumka and Graham Clark are giving their loyal audience even more bang for their podcasting bucks with Our Debut Album, a monthly podcast in which the pair force themselves to write and record a song in an hour. At the end of the twelve-part mini-series, the pair will have produced a full album, downloadable independent of the show.It’s as engaging as it is ambitious, both in term of content and monetization, a strategy that looks to generate income without a single mail order mattress ad. On this bonus episode recorded over Skype, the comedians join us to talk songwriting, supplemental income and what podcasting’s legacy will mean for future generations of Shumkas. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ruben Bolling should have been a lawyer. He graduated from Harvard Law School, he married a lawyer, and he even does some work in the field. But after seeing an ad in a school paper, the artist’s fate was sealed, creating the first installment of Tom the Dancing Bug in a flash of creative inspiration. This week, the comic celebrates its 1,300th installment. Thirty-years after its Harvard Law School Record debut, the the strip has become a staple in alt-weekly paper across the US, along with various online outlets, including, most notably, Boing Boing, where’s it’s syndicated weekly. Tom showcases a wide range of styles, satirizing politics, celebrity culture and his fellow cartoonists, as is the case with both the reoccurring feature God-Man: The Superhero With Omnipotent Powers! and Super-Fun-Pak Comix, which jams a page of Sunday strip-style work in a single comic. After a year or so of scheduling conflicts, we finally managed to sit down and discuss Bolling’s beloved strip, just in time to get real about the role of comic strip satire in one of the scariest political years in recent memory. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I feel obligated to say that I was very tired when we record this. I had just gotten off a plane from New York to LA, and Carrie Poppy was kind enough to let me crash on her couch for the night. We turned on the mics and started podcasting almost immediately, because hey, why not? We sat at the dining room table, which was littered with all manner of herbs and over the counter remedies. Research for the latest episode of Oh No, Ross and Carrie, the Max Fun podcast Poppy hosts with fellow skeptic Ross Blocher, which features a broad range of investigations, from organized religion to oxygen bars. The episode the pair were currently preparing for on the topic of nootropic smart drugs was a relative walk in the park after a multi-part series in which the pair infiltrated the Hollywood wing of the Church of Scientology, an act that garnered the attention of a number of best of podcasting lists -- and the church itself.  Naturally, we start the conversation with talk of plane crashes.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the decade and a half she spent contributing to This American Life, Starlee Kine transformed deeply personal aspects of her life into some of the show’s most memorable segments. There was the time she employed Phil Collins to evaluate the breakup song she wrote for her ex, and the oddly heart warming story of her family’s annual vacation to the Disneyland Hotel (but never Disneyland proper).  Last year, Kine kicked off her own show, debuting in May on fellow TAL alum Alex Blumberg’s Gimlet Media podcast network. Myster Show's six-episode first season follows the host as she attempts to solve low stakes mysteries for her friends, from a prank on a Welcome Back, Kotter lunchbox to what’s on Britney Spears’s reading list. Kine fancies herself an Encyclopedia Brown-style detective, unfolding mysteries through extensive research and on-the-ground reporting, giving her subjects the kind of exhaustive investigation traditionally reserved for government coverups and political scandals.  Busy at work on the show’s second season, Kine paid us a visit to discuss her mystery solving methods, the difficulty of podcasting and what its like going it alone. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When my sister’s beloved dog passed away just before my trip to LA, Minty Lewis did me a solid. When I wanted to commission a portrait of a Yorkie, no other artist made any sense. After all, the cartoonist had made a name for herself in the indie comics community filling minis full of the little terriers and talking fruit — much of which can be found in her 2009 Secret Acres collection, PS Comics. These days Lewis has a more profile gig scripting storyboards for the hit Cartoon Network series, The Regular Show, a job that’s also landed a voice over gig as Eileen, a shy bespectacled mole who waitresses at a coffee shop. The cartoonist has also parlayed the gig into her own pilot, Bottom’s Butte, starting Freaks and Geeks alum, Busy Philips. Lewis and I met up at a Japanese restaurant in Toluca Lake, to hand off the Yorkie picture and discuss her animated output. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s the long-awaited return of RiYL guest number two, the great Mary Roach, who was in town kicking off a press tour for her new book, Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War. The author’s latest volume explores a subject near and dear to her heart, exploring her frequent theme of the human body as viewed through the camouflaged filter of the military. It’s a subject that links most of her books, gross and glorious popular science writing on topics from dead bodies to the stress of long distance space travel. In her new book, Roach examines everything from caffeinated meat to penis transplants with, balancing her delightful sense of humor with a serious inquisitiveness. Roach, who graduated with a bachelor’s in psychology has made a name for herself as a science writer, with a steady flow of best seller’s on the subject — six in all beginning with 2003’s ode to dead bodies, Stiff — in spite of having no formal training. It’s a remarkable feat, and a testament to her own engaging writing and unending inquisitiveness. On the day before she kicked Grunt press into full gear, Roach sat down with us in the lobby of her Manhattan hotel to discuss military secrecy, angler fish, and precisely what make a given subject “Roachable.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I got more than I bargained for when I interviewed John Holmstrom — which is saying a lot when you know going into things that you’re sitting down with the guy who co-founded Punk Magazine for a couple of hours in an East Village watering hole. We kick things off with a conversation about Holmstrom’s time at SVA, which led to part time gigs working with comics legends Harvey Kurtzman and Will Eisner. In 1975, Holmstrom, publisher Ged Dunn and (past guest) Legs McNeil co-founded Punk, a magazine that helped cement the name for the burgeoning undergrounding music bubbling up around them. Holmstrom edited the magazine and contributed Mad-inspired cartooning that would become a trademark of the scene and also contributed cover art for the iconic Ramones records, Rocket to Russia and Road to Ruin. In the years following Punk’s folding in 1979, the artist has contributed work to a wide range of publications including Scholastic’s Bananas Magazine, Spin, The Village Voice and Heavy Metal, along with an extended stint at pot culture chronicler High Times, where he ultimately served as publisher and president. Holmstrom sat down at a table at Manitoba’s, the East Village bar run by the Dictators front man of the same name. It a long and fascinating look at an artist who bridges a wide range of cultural touchstones and who, thanks to events like the on-going Ramones retrospective at the Queens Museum, appears to finally be getting his due. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s hard to say whether their timing was extremely fortuitous or really unfortunate. After all, until this month’s Yep Roc reissue, Eggs Over Easy’s work had gone largely unheard in their own country. The UK, on the other hand, is another story. The California band’s country-tinged roots rock and explosive live shows inadvertently started a musical revolution in London, well after the band packed up and left, inspired the pub rock scene that would give rise to artists like Nick Lowe and the 101ers, featuring a pre-Clash Joe Strummer, making the band the unwitting link between Dylan’s Greenwich Village and British punk rock. All these decades later, Eggs Over Easy and their stellar and criminally under appreciated recorded work are finally getting their due, courtesy of a lovely reissue and a smattering of reunion shows featuring founding duo Jack O'Hara and Austin de Lone, two of the band’s three singer-songwriters (the third, Brien Hopkins, died in 2007), All of that only scratches the surface of a crazy rock and roll story that also includes members of the Jimi Hendrix Experience and songs with titles like "I'm Gonna Put a Bar in the Back of My Car (And Drive Myself to Drink).” Thankfully, both O’Hara and de Lone joined me at a friend’s East Village apartment to recount the story in all its gory detail. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Change isn’t always easy when you’re a punk rock band — particularly one with a sound beloved and well-defined as The Thermals. After a pair of well-received LPs that cemented the Portland band’s place as one a low-fi, distortion-laden indie power-pop trio, the group released its masterpiece, The Body, the Blood, the Machine. Produced by Fugazi’s Brendan Canty, the album was a dystopian concept record of sorts, that channeled Bush-era anger into the tale of a young couple forced to flee an authoritarian government. In 2010, the band offered up Personal Life, a far more somber and deliberate album that went a ways toward polarizing the band’s fanbase. This year’s We Disappear marks a return to form for the band after the somewhat disappointing performance of  2013’s Desperate Ground, both building upon the simple punk rock the band does best, while incorporating lessons learned from their more emotionally complex outings. It’s alternately anthemic and somber, a reflection on maturing while hanging on to one’s pop-punk roots.Lead singer Hutch Harris sat down ahead of the band’s fiery Bowery Ballroom performance to reflect on the ups and downs of the band’s illustrious career.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I haven’t seen Gabrielle Bell much since she moved out of the city. New York spoils you like that. Makes getting even a half hour outside of the city seem like a chore. It’s been a few years since we’ve sat down for an interview, and despite efforts to sync up, we just kept missing each other every time she was in town.  Thankfully, we were able to catch up following a memoir panel at MoCCA back in April, a sort of mutual lovefest, also featuring past guests Jennifer Hayden and Nicole Georges.  Though Bell’s classifying Bell’s work as straight memoir is perhaps something of a misnomer. For her, reality is only really a jumping off point into tales of something more casually fantastic, a sort of daydream come true.  We found the noisiest diner in all of Chelsea to discuss her magical realism, absent-minded sketching, and making friends outside of the city. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Delusions of Grand Fur is a sort of return roots. It finds the band experimenting with the sort of fast and loose improvisational set up that first gave rise to Rogue Wave. Like the band’s first record, which began as the result of a somewhat spontaenous cross-country trip by frontman Zach Rogue, upon being laid off from a startup at the height of the dot-com bubble bust, the latest record lacked a formal recording structure — even going so far as eschewing a producer. The result is breezier, looser, and more fun loving than the band’s recent work, thanks to both a change in recording techniques and the recent birth of Rogue’s son shortly after the release of the band’s last album. Back in April, Rogue and longtime drummer Patrick Spurgeon found themselves in New York for a few days, making the promotional rounds for the band’s latest record. The pair sat down at one of my favorite recording spots in the city to discuss the band’s return to form, musical experimentation, and how to separate the personal and the professional. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

He won an Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animated Programming, was inducting to the Art Directors Hall of Fame, and has drawn multiple covers for the New Yorker, but his most lasting legacy may be the mid-60s advertisements he created for Alka-Seltzer and CBS — a fact that makes R. O. Blechman a quintessential 20th century artist. This year, the swiggly-lined artist released his second graphic novel more than 50 years after his first. Amadeo & Maladeo is a whimsical prince and pauper story, charting the life of two musically-inclined half-brothers separated by vastly different circumstances. Blechman is quick to admit that he sees the product as only half-finished, a sort of storyboard for the animated film in his mind. Fittingly, the artist presented a truly incomplete film during an appearance at the MoCCA Festival in New York, debuting his attempt at a feature length adaptation of Voltaire’s Candide for the first time in public. It’s both a testament to the artist’s vision and a bittersweet look at what might have been. It’s a theme that has followed Blechman through much of his career. A victim of circumstance and a failure to fully embrace trends, it easy to imagine the New York City cartoonist having become more of a household name, but with a robust resume dating back to 1953, the Blechman has left an impressive mark on the fields of animation, production and cartooning. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A week or two after our interview, Penguin released the cover for Where Am I Now?, featuring a young, precocious Matilda-era Mara Wilson smiling for the camera. It’s the Mara Wilson most familiar to book browsing audiences, the one who will live on forever the hundreds of times every week Mrs. Doubtfire plays ad infinitum on basic cable The Mara Wilson who sits down for an interview is a million miles away. A professional writer eking out a living in New York City, having ostensibly given up the acting game decades early, she’s cultivated a large online following through published works, social media and frequent live story telling appearances. She’s become a regular on Welcome to Nightvale and recently made a return to TV with a cameo on Broad City, with an upcoming appearance on Netflix’s Bojack Horseman just over the horizon. In a sense, Where Am I Now? is where the two Mara Wilsons meet, the grownup, professional writer having finally found the proper distance with which to examine a childhood that has made her an iconic for a generation and the surreal subject of terrible internet clickbait.  During our hour-plus conversation, Wilson discusses the creative process, anxiety, and embracing the things that helped define us. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When I mentioned casually to a friend that I would be interviewing Ariel Schrag, her answer was less excited that confused, “you haven’t had Ariel Schrag on your show yet?” Fair enough. I don’t really have any great answer as to why I haven’t had had the cartoonist on in the three-plus years we’ve been doing the show, but I’m happy to say I finally managed to amend that at this year’s MoCCA Arts Festival in Manhattan. Following a panel on autobiography in comics, which Schrag sat out but was name-checked as an influence multiple times from the sidelines, we found a reasonably quiet spot in the hotel lobby to discuss the artist’s accomplished body of work, starting with 2014’s Adam: A Novel and working backwards to her precious comics creating youth. Along the way, Schrag has written for Showtime’s The L Word, been name checked alongside Angela Davis and Gertrude Stein in a Le Tigre song and been the subject of her own documentary at the tender age of 23. It’s a fascinating discussion about sexuality, comics, and writing what you know. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Heavy makes no bones about it. The Hurt & The Merciless is a breakup record, through and through, from the leadoff track that repeats “The raindrops won't stop falling from my eyes,” to the fittingly titled closer, “Goodbye Baby.” The pain of real life has seeped its way into the record’s marrow. But it’s celebratory, too. Granted, it’s not quite the giant middle finger that put the band on the map when “How Do You Like Me Now” became one of 2009’s monster hits, but the record does employ pounding the rock and roll neo-soul that’s defined the British group across four records, in hopes of finding catharsis somewhere on the other side. Lead singer, Kelvin Swaby joined me for a couple of pots of TV during a stop in New York just ahead of the band’s upcoming appearance at South by Southwest to talk love, loss, growing up, and the eternal importance of a great record collection. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When you write an open letter on your Facebook page about quitting the music business forever, it’s bound to be the opening line of every review of your next record. It’s just the way of of the world. Rob Crow looks great, for what it’s worth. He quit drinking and started running (losing a considerable amount of weight as a result) — as we make our way to the Knitting Factory green room, he asks somewhat distractedly how long the whole thing will take, as he has to fit some exercise in ahead of the evening’s show. But the prolific Pinback/Heavy Vegetable/Goblin Cock frontman hasn’t necessarily quit quitting music. The prospect looms large over his latest, Rob Crow’s Gloomy Place, along with practically every word he utters about the tour, a sometimes indecipherable mix of dry humor and melancholy, not so subtly hinting that he just can’t keep doing this forever. It’s a good talk, and tough one at times. It’s a reminder of the difficult touring life of an indie musician casual listeners so often takes for granted. As we finish and I begin winding up my cables, Crow strips off his clothes, throws on some neon exercise gear and takes off for a run down the Brooklyn streets. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Aladdin is a crowd-sourced paper mache fever dream. It’s both completely singular in Adam Green diverse portfolio of work and perfectly representative of an artist who has made a career or tearing down the barriers between conception and execution. After first making the scene as one half of the seminal anti-folk act The Moldy Peaches, Green has released a steady stream of terrific solo records, marrying a crooning singing style with often hilarious stream of conscious lyrics. In 2011, he made his feature length directorial debut with The Wrong Ferrari, employing an impressive cast of contributors, including Macaulay Culkin and Alia Shawkat, along with fellow musicians Devendra Banhart and Har Mar Superstar — all of whom also star in Green’s latest. Green and I met in his Brooklyn art studio, surrounded by hundreds of his paintings, to discuss the film, his music career, and the nature of creativity. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You don’t know Batman like Glen Weldon knows Batman, and the frequent NPR contributor has the book to prove it. Out now on Simon & Schuster, The Caped Crusader is a fascinating examination of one of the comics’ most beloved characters, from his early days as a pulpy shadow knockoff to today’s record breaking box office draw. After years of online correspondence, Weldon and I finally met face to face, while he was in town promoting the book. We grabbed a couple of seats at a tea place in midtown Manhattan and proceeding to talk Batman for an hour — or, rather, he talked and I just took it all in, from unique insights into the character’s creation to an appreciation of Joel Schumacher’s much maligned late-90s films from the standpoint of gay comics reader.  Weldon offers from fascinating insight into the dark knight’s long and storied history that likely holds some surprises for even the most knowledgeable of Batman fans. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I didn’t recognize Eszter Balint’s name when I got a PR pitch about her Airless Midnight, but I the record a quick listen anyway and shot her representation a note about getting her on the show. Lucky for me, the musician has the sort of backstory press release writers kill for, the daughter of experimental theater troupe members who moved her and the theater from Budapest to New York at an early age, putting her at the epicenter of the city’s late-70s avant garde scene. In 1984, friendships with musicians John Lurie and Richard Edson led to a leading role in Jim Jarmusch’s pioneering Stranger Than Paradise, with roles in Woody Allen’s Shadows and Fog and Steve Buscemi’s Trees Lounge following (along with a lesser-cited Miami Vice appearance). Disillusioned with acting, Balint dove headfirst into a musical career that found her collaborating with a wide range of musical visionaries, from Michael Gira to Marc Ribot, along with the release of two critically acclaim solo records more than a decade apart. 2014 also saw an unexpected return to acting, as Louis CK cast Balint as his violin-playing Hungarian neighbor in Louie. Balint was kind enough to sit down at a Manhattan cafe to cram as much of her fascinating life as possible into an hour-long interview. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The real Tromaville is an unassuming place. Located a few blocks from the East River, in an industrialized section of Long Island City still untouched by the rapidly encroaching gentrification of art galleries and speakeasies, the country’s longest running independent movie studio is headquartered in a Queens commercial space, extremely nondescript, save for the giant Toxic Avenger painted on the big metal security shutter. Inside, the walls are littered with old props like a makeshift living museum dedicated to 40 years of some of the most colorful movie making in film history. A few small spaces have been converted into makeshift movie sets, while the majority of the downstairs space serves as a complete film archive of Troma’s four decades of prolific output. Upstairs, it’s business as usual. Lloyd Kaufman is in the middle of an important business call. Even after all this time, the company’s cofounder, director, and long-time mouthpiece still has to hustle get things done. Nothing comes easy when you’re perpetually swimming upstream — and Kaufman’s disinclination to hold punches when discussing the big studio movie machine likely hasn’t helped matters much.It does, however, make for one great interview. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Note: Hey listeners, we’re launching a Patreon. Please consider supporting the show to help keep us afloat. By the 80s, the pinball machine had seemingly been all but replaced, making way for machines like Asteroids and Pac-Man, which quickly began to dominate the arcade landscape. Within the next few years, a home gaming console explosion led by the NES would deal the industry an even further blow. It was precisely around this time that Gary Stern doubled down. A second generation pinball professional (his father having served as the co-owner of the profoundly influential Williams Electronics), he launched Stern Pinball, Inc. in 1986, as many of the leading forces in the space began fleeing in droves. Thirty years later, the company is the one of the last producers of the game, having weathered the storm long enough to see a modern pinball resurgence, through an explosion in the popularity of barcades and home collections. It’s made the company a bit of an outlier on the floor of the Consumer Electronics Show, flanked on all sides by drone manufacturers and virtual reality companies. Stern took some time out of the show to discuss the game’s lasting appeal in an era of instant gratification.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sometimes things just come together. Sometimes one of the geniuses behind Broken Social Scene catches one of your ramshackle live shows and decides you’re the first outside band he wants to produce. Sometimes you line up SXSW and Coachella before you even get yourself a booking agent. Not bad for a three-year-old band whose members didn’t particularly know how to play their respective instruments when they sat down to record their debut LP. The relatively short story that is The Dead Ships plays out like a list of cosmic coincidences, culminating with last year’s excellent Brendan Canning-produced EP I and a small print spot on Coachella’s Saturday lineup, alongside names like Ice Cube, A$AP Rock, CHVRCHES and local favorites, Guns N’ Roses. It’s an an digital era when artists are struggling to make ends meet that good songs, hard work, and a little bit of luck can still put you on the map. The Dead Ships (all of them – plus a live guitarist and manager) joined us to talk about their slow rocket to stardom. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I first saw Eleanor Friedberger solo back in 2013, shortly after falling head over heels for her second solo album, Personal Record. Her band was an opener (for The Long Winters, featuring past guests John Roderick and Sean Nelson), but her voice is an unavoidable force of nature. It overpowers the instrumentation both on record and live, where, if you close your eyes for a few moments, you can trick your brain into believe that you’re witnessing Patti Smith in 1975. I’ve been trying to get Friedberger for the show since then, and we finally managed to sync up our schedules following the release of her terrific new album, New View. The musician was back in the city for a few days, having made an appearance on Seth Myers the evening before (as evidenced by the mug sitting on the counter of the apartment she was holed up in). Friedberger had gotten out of Dodge ahead of the new record, leaving New York City for the far more pastoral views upstate. We sat down on a cold February morning to discuss nature walks, home maintenance and the importance of getting out of town. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chip Zdarsky wore a felt crown during our interview because he was promoting his new Jughead series for Archie — and because he’s Chip Zdarsky, and that’s just like a thing Chip Zdarsky does. The cartoonist has been responsible for some of the the funniest mainstream comics work of the past decade and a half, with titles like Howard the Duck and the Eisner Award winning Matt Fraction collaboration, Sex Criminals. The cartoonist, who also publishing humor pieces under his given name, Steve Murray, was nice enough to take a few moments out of his exceedingly busy schedule to sit and chat about his reimagining of everyone’s favorite hamburger devouring prankster. Like Zdarsky, Matt Kindt has parlayed indie comics success into a prolific career on big books, including, most recently, a glut of titles for the recently relaunched Valiant Entertainment. The artist/writer sat down with us to talk about  his work with the publisher and the move from small publishing to mainstream books. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When I first met Dan Friel, he was working the front desk at The Onion. I was but lowly intern and he was tasked with, among other things, handing me a list of the newspaper boxes around the city that needed moving. Turns out the the guy was also pretty good at making music, too. For a decade Friel, was a driving force behind Parts & Labor, a raucous Brooklyn-based three-piece that released five terrific LPs of explosive, analog electronic-fueled noise pop. After the band’s dissolution in 2012, Friel has shifted his focus to his solo career, marrying pop hooks with sonic drone. The phenomenon is perfectly exemplified by Lullaby (For Wolf), the leadoff track to last year’s Life, which had its genesis in a bedtime song Friel hummed to his newborn son. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There’s an art to interviewing Douglas Rushkoff — and really, “interview” isn’t the right word. It’s akin of offering suggestions and watching him takeoff, explore an idea, and just blow the thing wide open. As with all of his books, every page of Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus is utterly bursting with ideas — and every conversation with the author follows the trajectory, as well. It’s impossible to keep up, but if you’re lucky, you can contribute the occasional thought and marvel as Rushkoff runs with the ball. In his latest book, the writer grapples with issues of economics and fairness in the digital age, exploring why the utopian promise of digital democracy and doing no evil never quite came to fruition as many late-20th century philosophers anticipated. But much to his credit, Rushkoff is forever the optimist on the topic of technology, presenting hopeful solutions for every issue the book raises. In this hour-long conversation, we discuss Kickstarter, what’s going on with Twitter, and how all of us lowly cogs can make a meaningful impact. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rosalie Lightning is one of this year’s most difficult and most important books. It’s the story of a parent grieving the death of his young daughter the best way he knows how — through making a comic. Tom Hart taught the form for a decade at Manhattan’s school of Visual Arts before opening The Sequential Artists Workshop, a Gainesville-based school devoted solely to the art of comics making, where he serves as Executive Director. Hart has been producing his own work in earnest since 1994, when Hutch Owen's Working Hard earned him a Xeric Foundation grant for self-publishing. Over the years, the titular Wall Street-battling protestor has earned the cartoonist numerous industry awards and landed a daily strip in Metro newspapers. His new book i easily his most potent and highest profile, having landed the top spot on The New York Times’ best selling graphic novel list. As with the book, this conversation is not an easy one, but it’s one well worth having. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Other ATI beliefs that I learned range from utterly bizarre to downright barbaric,” Brooke Arnold writes in the essay, I Could Have Been a Duggar Wife, “like the creator of Cabbage Patch Kid dolls is actually a Satanic wizard who implants demons into the dolls that then sneak into children’s bodies while they are sleeping — along with the old standard that rock music is inherently sinful.” The story’s subhed labeled Arnold a “real-life Kimmy Schmidt,” as she exposed a laundry list of horrors perpetrated by the Advanced Training Institute, a fundamentalist homeschooling program that helped give rise to reality TV stars, the Duggar family. A week later, Salon published a followup in which Arnold admitted that if she had know how large a splash the story would cause, she “ would not have had the courage to press ‘send’ on the pitch,” while adding that the positive response from women with similar backgrounds ultimately made the decision worthwhile. The story also, naturally, helped raise the profile of a comedian working to establish a name for herself in the big city, as well as helping to inspired the creation of the forthcoming comedic memoir, Growing Up Fundie. We sat down to discuss starting over again in the big city and creating comedy from personal tragedy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Not too long before our conversation, the Library of Congress appointed Gene Yang its “Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.” It’s the kind of announcement that makes everyone around the comics community cheer — another big moment in a space perpetually starved for legitimization as the institution chose its first ever graphic novelist for the post. Of course, they would have been hard-pressed to find a stronger candidate. Yang has been a fixture in the kids and YA comics scene since his 2006 book American Born Chinese became the first graphic novel to score a spot as a finalist for the National Book Award, Young People’s Literature. These days, Yang finds is at the helm of DC’s flagship Superman title and has released Secret Coders, an educational book that combines the cartoonist’s love of comics and passion for computer programming. We sat down at First Second’s triangular conference room in the Flatiron building to talk tech and the Man of Steel’s truly American immigrant story. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Friend of the podcast Nicole Georges joins us via Skype to discuss her brand new show, Sagittarian Matters, which combines her love of conversation, advice and eating food products past their expiration date. Just in time for Valentine’s Day, a conversation about love, punctuation, offering unsolicited advice, and the pitfalls of writing comic books about your parents. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We kick things off Noah Van Sciver, one of comics’ most exciting — and prolific — young talents. Last year alone, the Denver cartoonist released three books, all of which made their way to various best-of lists: St. Cole, Fante Bukowski and My Hot Date. The artist is also well-known in indie comics circles for his on-going series Blammo and the 2012 Fantagraphics title The Hypo, following the life of a melancholic young Abraham Lincoln. Released that same year on Abrams, My Friend Dahmer details Cleveland cartoonist Derf’s experiences attending high school with future serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. The book’s followup, Trashed, debuted from the publisher last year, offering a fictionalized version of the time the artist spent working as a sanitation working as a 19-year-old. Derf is also the author of the alternative weekly comic strip, The City, which ran in 140 paper before coming to a close in 2014. Finnish cartoonist Tommi Musturi made his Fantagraphics debut last year with The Book of Hope, which follows the life of a retired couple. The artist is also known for his wordless comic  Samuel, and for co-founding the publishing house Huuda Huuda, for whom he has translated a number of prominent English language artists, including Daniel Clowes and Edward Gorey. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s been several years since I last spoke to Bill Griffith. I’m fairly certain I spent much of that last interview attempt to talk the cartoonist into drawing a full length book — and while I certainly can’t take any of the credit, I’m happy to say that the artist was on-hand at this year’s Comic Arts Brooklyn to discuss just such a project. Invisible Ink marks, incredibly, Griffith’s first full-length graphic novel, after four decades spent drawing comics professionally. Of course, working on a daily strip ha kept the cartoonist plenty busy, producing a cumulative output that dwarfs any of his underground comics contemporaries. While others focused on floppies and books, Griffith took a more traditional approach to the medium, infiltrating national newspapers with the sublimely, absurdly subversive Zippy the Pinhead.  With Invisible Ink, Griffith explores his mother’s life, uncovering her diary, unfinished novel, and a “long and happy” affair she carried on with a fellow cartoonist. The conversation is a wide ranging and fascinating look at one of alternative comics’ most enduring and beloved careers. It’s a great way to celebrate episode 150. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“It’s woven very densely into the fabric of my life,” explains Josie Long. “It happens when you do your accounting every year. You look at your receipts, and everything there you’ve written about.” The comedian began her standup career at the tender age of 14, scoring a BBC New Comedy Award three years later. Having spent more than half her years on Earth as a standup, it’s certainly understandable that comedy has become the filter through which Long examines her life. I caught up with the comedian ahead during a week-long string of shows in New York. She’d been out swimming in the ice cold Atlantic in the midst of an autumn chill, her voice slightly worse for wear. But she happily spoke the cross section of the personal and professional, an area she had been mining heavily for the set she was performing later that evening.  Cara Josephine trades her often political source material in for stories about family and failed relationships, making for far away Long’s most personal show to date. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Eric Bogosian is not an easy interview — but he’s a good one. I came ready to discuss his recently published book on the Armenian genocide, Operation Nemesis — but the writer quickly made it known that he’s not keen to reflect upon something that’s already out in the world, particularly not with something new in need of promotion just over the horizon. Before we began, he sat me down and played a handful of examples of his 100 Monologues project, featuring a rotating cast well known actors from stage and screen acting out works written by Bogosian between 1980 and 2006, arguably the purest manifestation of the work at the hard of an incredibly diverse career. Over the decades, he’s written books and appeared in myriad films, sitcoms and stage productions , but its Bogosian’s career as a playwright that will almost certainly be his legacy. And here it’s shown bare for all the world, just his words and an actor’s performance cast against a black backdrop. The interview, conducted several months ago, has been waiting for the release of the 100 Monologues Kickstarter campaign to go live, timed to promote the project, which is currently seeking $25,000 to shoot and post the the second 50 monologues. It’s an ultimately a wide-ranging talk focused on Bogosian’s current passion project, while taking the occasional peek back at an utterly fascinating career in art and entertainment. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Walter Martin and I keep getting kicked out of coffee shops. It’s a strange thing. Over the course of the 50 minute interview, we close out two places in Manhattan. But as romantic as getting kicked out of two New York City establishments in under an hour with an indie rock star looks on paper, the whole thing is slightly mundane. Turns out the coffee shops in midtown like to shut their doors before eight. And Martin, for his part, doesn’t appear to be embracing the rock and roll lifestyle these days. The Walkman multi-instrumentalist has settled down a bit, starting a family and taking a step back from the heavy touring. In 2014, Martin issued his post-Walkman debut, We’re All Young Together, a delightfully catchy collection of all-ages kids tunes recorded with members of bands like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. The followup, Arts & Leisure, is due out next week. The songs are a joyful celebration of Martin’s love of fine art, filtered through the youthful passion of singer-songrwriters like Jonathan Richman. Coffee shop shut downs aside, we managed to have a fascinating conversation about rock band politics, playing solo and what it means to grow up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our final round of interviews from Baltimore Comic Con includes two artists who have had a profound impact on the American underground/independent comics community. Carla Speed McNeil has produced the sprawling, epic aboriginal science-fiction series Finder since the mid-90s, making it one of the longest running series in all of indie comics, with 10 printed volumes of output released through the artist’s Light Speed Press. McNeil has also collaborated on a number of series through the years, including Queen & Country: Operation: Stormfront with Greg Rucka and the recent Image miniseries  No Mercy, created with writer, Alex De Campi. Inspired by underground masters like Robert Crumb and Jay Lynch, Denis Kitchen began self-publishing comics in the late 60s. The artist would ultimately have more of an impact behind the scenes, through publishing companies like Kitchen Sink Press and Kitchen Sink Books, as well as serving as an agent for the works of comics giants like Will Eisner and Harvey Kurtzman. Kitchen also counts the founding of The Comic Book Legal Defense fund among his many industry-shaping accomplishments. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Dave Eggers describes the auditioning process for The Real World: San Francisco. The spot the McSweeney’s founder tried out for was won by another artist, a cartoonist who served a, perhaps, the moral compass for a reality show fueled by roommate strife. Most of us can count on a single hand the moments that had a truly profound impact on our lives. For Judd Winick, that key moment was spread out over an entire season and broadcast on MTV. But while the show put the artist on the pop cultural map, it’s the work he’s done in comics and animation that will be his lasting legacy, from his break through Graphic novel Pedro & Me, to his run a slew of DC Comics titles and his work as the creator and lead writer of the Cartoon Network series, The Life and Times of Juniper Lee. Released in September on Random House, Hilo marks his most ambitious work to date. The comic is fun, funny, and instantly engaging, a welcome embrace of all-ages comics from an artist with kids of his own. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Of course Chip Kidd put out a book with Art Spiegelman. In an age when the transition to digital seems all but inevitable, both artists have a vested interest in the book as object, crafting tangible experiences that cannot be recreated on a tablet or e-book. For his part, Kidd is probably best known for his book designs for cartoonists Daniel Clowes and Chris Ware, along with a who’s who of contemporary novelists, including Haruki Murakami, Cormac McCarthy and Donna Tart. But the designer is an author in his own right, having penned two novels, a tribute to Plastic Man creator Jack Cole (alongside Spiegelman), and  Bat-Manga, a collection dedicated to Japanese Batman esoterica. His latest release is Only What’s Necessary, a gorgeously designed volume that pulls together little seen work from Peanuts creator Charles Schulz, including sketches, unpublished strips, letters and merchandise. It’s a lovingly designed tribute to one of newspaper comics’ most beloved pioneers. Kidd joined me on the jam-packed floor of New York Comic Con to discuss the book and long standing love of print in a world gone digital. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“All you really want to do is get yourself excited, get your wife excited, get your friends excited,” Colin Hay explains with a smile. “Beyond that, who knows? You want to say to someone who’s upstairs, ‘hey, come and listen to this. This is cool.’ ” The crowds, the fans, the radio play, the record sales are secondary. Thirty-four years after the release of Men at Work’s debut, Business as Usual, Hay is a songwriter first and foremost, having settled in to a seemingly zen-like approach to the craft. Distribution methods and record industry nonsense be damned. Write a great song and it’ll find an audience. A decade and half after putting his band to rest for good, Hay has never failed to find an audience. Where many of his contemporaries have relied on nostalgia or quit the game altogether, Hay’s work has managed to attract new generations of fan through thoughtful, straightforward songwriting. Hay and I sat down at the bar in his hotel lobby ahead of a New York City show to discuss growing as a songwriter on his new record Next Year People, coping with loss, and why writing the perfect three minute pop song has never gotten any easier. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The artist has been something of a hero before I’d even heard his name, through his illustration work in the aforementioned classic children’s book and as the screenwriter of Robert Altman’s perfectly chaotic 1980 cinematic adaptation of Popeye. Since then, Feiffer’s work has been a constant in my life, from his four decades long stint as an editorial cartoonist for the Village, to his early apprenticeship with Will Eisner, and a stint of film projects like Little Murders, the artist’s work always seems to find its way back into my life. Now in his mid-80s, the modern day renaissance cartoonist is trying his hand at an entirely new endeavor, writing and drawing his first graphic novel 69 years after he first began working his way through Eisner’s The Spirit at the tender age of 16. Kill My Mother maintains the cartoonist’s loose approach in a far more sustained form than his other cartooning works, marking yet another remarkable turn for the octogenarian.   We pulled up a couple of seats in the lobby of the hotel where Feiffer was staying during Baltimore Comic Con to discuss his latest career and the important of perpetually testing one’s limitations. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

By all rights, the story of South Atlantic Blues should have ended in 1968. Released the same week as Van Morrison’s masterpiece of pastoral angst, Astral Weeks, the record failed to garner any notice, in spite of promises that its young singer-songwriter would soon become “bigger than Elvis.” A masterpiece of a soulfully sung, lush psychedelic folk, the record vanished into obscurity, thanks to a perfect storm of record company failure. Not even a chance encounter with acclaimed painter and fan Jasper Johns could rescue the album from the remainder bin. Thankfully, the story of the album and its creator don’t end there. Nearly 50 years after its release, South Atlantic Blues is finally getting the recognition it deserved — and unlike so many of these story, which recapture public consciousness posthumously, Scott Fagan is still alive, well, and singing at 70. In the intervening 47 years, Fagan has led a fascinating life, achieving some fame as a calypso singer, struggling with addiction and reuniting with his long, lost son, Magnetics Fields frontman Stephin Merritt. Fagan was already seated when I arrived a few minutes early to set up for our interview. What transpired was one of the most fascinating conversations I’ve had in some time. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two conversations with extremely talented — and patient — artists conducted at Baltimore Comic Con. Both were also prefaced by waiting quietly for their signing lines to slow down before taking time out of their signing schedules for a chat. In the case of the legendary Marvel artists Jim Starlin, it was a long, unbroken line of autograph seekers carrying armfuls of Silver Surfer and Warlock comics to sign. With most, Starlin simply signed and small talked, tossing off a few notes about each. On occasions, however, a fan would present a copy of Captain Marvel and discuss the book’s impact on a personal level, how the story of the hero’s battle with cancer impacted them as a young reader — a testament to the power of important stories filtered through the pages of superhero books. As I waited for Brian Stelfreeze, meanwhile, the Gaijin Studios artist walked a young fan through the drawing process, critiquing his portfolio and demonstrating how to draw without focusing too heavily on the details — a method he discussed with me, before giving some insight into the eagerly awaited Black Panther miniseries he’s working on with journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I’ve been wanting to have Lucy Sante on the show for some time now, and a recently appearance at the Brooklyn Book Fair finally afforded the opportunity to sit down with the author. Immediately after a panel with Vivian Gornick and David Ulin on the topic of writing about cities, Sante and I sat down in a courtyard on a windy Sunday. Published the same year I moved to New York, the author’s book Low Life might well be my favorite book I’ve ever read about the city, peering into the crime dens and slums often whitewashed out of portraits of Gotham’s golden age. Sante was at the show promoting her most recent work, The Other Paris, which offers similar insight into the city of light. She happily agreed to discuss the two vastly different, yet eternally link metropolises, while giving candid look into what keeps her writing. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It had been a while since I’d last spoken with Sara Varon. At the time, the artist had a handle of comics and kids books under her belt, including most notably — and recently — Robot Dreams, a delightful wordless buddy comic about a relationship between a robot and a dog. Since then, Varon’s been plenty busy, adding several more titles to her bibliography and teaching printmaking at her alma mater, the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. She also has a trio of books already planned for publication over the next two years, including a reissue of her 2003 short story Sweater Weather, a book about an anthropomorphic donkey for First Second and President Squid, the tale of a giant squid who runs for president. Varon and I sat down at her studio in Gowanus, Brooklyn surrounded by shelves of children’s books to discuss quitting her day job, writing for kids, and a failed TV pitch about unicorns. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.