This Wednesday, June 7 on SuicideGirls Radio, hosts Nicole Powers and Bradley Suicide will be joined by Grabbitz, who blew us away with an invite-only preview of his live show!
**UPDATE**
ICYMI: Watch last night’s show feat. Grabbitz here or via the player below.
You can listen – and watch – SuicideGirls Radio live on Wednesday nights from 8 til 9 PM at our state-of-the-art, all digital home on zinna.tv.
For updates on all things SG Radio-related, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram.
About Grabbitz
Grabbitz is a one-man production powerhouse and rock band with an electronic heartbeart, loyal to no genre and inspired by all. He’s lived many lives in his 24 years on this planet and each Grabbitz song is a piece of his soul — his experiences and emotions wrung out like a wet rag. The result is stunningly authentic, the sort of music that brings universality to the individual’s experience of love and loss while miraculously managing to have a sense of humor.
The debut Grabbitz album Things Change is an alchemic and visceral reaction to the loss of the most important person in his life, a trip into the belly of the beast on his personal hero’s journey. He’s the sort of artist who’s creating all the time, so the temptation to stay in the woods of western New York and make music just for himself was great. Grabbitz made the choice to “Play This Game.” You can hear his frustration in the grindy guitar riff and fat bassline that opens the track and his desperation to cling to love of any sort on the hybrid pulsating drumstep ballad “Don’t Let Me Go.” He finally loosens his grip on reality and surrenders to the certainty of a pop progression on “i think that i might be going crazy” – and those are just the first few songs of a twelve track album.
It’s a good thing music is therapy for Grabbitz because he’s responsible for every single aspect of his songs, from writing to production to performance. Hot off the release of his track with deadmau5 “Let Go,” his live show debuted in his hometown Buffalo, NY with a guitarist (Sullivan King) and drummer (Morillo) in May. He’s probably the only artist to ever be compared to both Trent Reznor and Eminem in the same breath (by Billboard) so the unleashing of his full live performance means the pressure is on.
The World’s Leading BYOB Radio Show Is Sponsored By Mangria
“As a nightly consumer of red wine, I was shocked one evening to find I had just half a glass left in the bottle. So I did what any decent alcoholic, ex-con, American would do… I went to the fridge and the liquor cabinet, then poured, mixed and measured. Thus Mangria was born.” — Adam Carolla
SuicideGirls Radio / Carolla Drinks Offer
You can purchase all three delicious flavors of SGR’s fave luscious libation, Mangria — and the most excellent Endless Rant IPA — via CarollaDrinks.com. Fans of SG Radio can get $5 off any bottle of Mangria using this special discount coupon code: SG (unlimited use, code is good until December 31, 2017).
This Wednesday, May 31 on SuicideGirls Radio, hosts Nicole Powers and Bradley Suicide will be joined by Amir Derakh and Ryan Shuck of Julien-K, who’ll be taking about their new video, “Mannequin Eyes”, and their blockbusting Indiegogo campaigns — the latest of which has already exceeded their goal and offers fans a 4 disk, 60 song mega package featuring an entire album of unreleased original songs from the past 10 years!
You can listen – and watch – SuicideGirls Radio live on Wednesday nights from 8 til 9 PM at our state-of-the-art, all digital home on zinna.tv.
**UPDATE**
ICYMI: Watch last night’s show feat. Julien-K here or via the player below.
For updates on all things SG Radio-related, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram.
About Julien-K
Amir Derakh, Ryan Shuck and Anthony “Fu” Valcic have been musical collaborators for 15+ years. During their time together they have weaved in and out of mainstream music like a constantly evolving musical fashion house. In the late ‘90s they were responsible for massive radio and sales hits such as “Blind” (Korn), “Blue Monday”,” Stitches”, and “Fiction” (Orgy), and recently “Crawl Back In” and “Let Down” (Dead By Sunrise with their close friend Chester Bennington). After enjoying years of traditional music business success, they have spent the last decade methodically moving away from the mainstream approach that put them on the map, opting to carefully steer their fans in a new direction, towards their new independent alternative electro rock project Julien-K – which sounds more at home with acts like Depeche Mode, The Kills, Nine Inch Nails, New Order, The Presets, Wild Beasts, The Black Queen, Interpol, Phantogram.
Julien-K has toured the world with the likes of Linkin Park, Evanescence, The Sounds, My Chemical Romance, HIM, Placebo, Filter, Mumiy Troll, and more. Most recently Julien-K headlined the Rock Al Rio Festival in Colombia.
The band has a highly engaged and invested fanbase, having raised over $80,000 via crowdfunding for the expansive double concept album California Noir. The fundraiser was split into 3 campaigns, one for each “chapter” and one for a single / video. The response and growth has been incredible with the last campaign raising over $20,000 in the first few hours and over $43k total making it the 54th most funded music campaign on Indiegogo globally!
California Noir: Chapter Two debuted in the top 40 on iTunes Alternative Charts in the USA, Germany, and many other countries around the globe with ZERO label support — totally organic charting promoted solely by the band and it’s fans around the world.
Julien-K writes, directs, manufactures, produces, and ships all of their records, music videos, and merchandise around the world — and their fans have organically voted their self produced music videos onto MTV and MTV 2 multiple times. Many of Julien-K’s bigger self produced videos have hundreds of thousands of organic views.
The World’s Leading BYOB Radio Show Is Sponsored By Mangria
“As a nightly consumer of red wine, I was shocked one evening to find I had just half a glass left in the bottle. So I did what any decent alcoholic, ex-con, American would do… I went to the fridge and the liquor cabinet, then poured, mixed and measured. Thus Mangria was born.” — Adam Carolla
SuicideGirls Radio / Carolla Drinks Offer
You can purchase all three delicious flavors of SGR’s fave luscious libation, Mangria — and the most excellent Endless Rant IPA — via CarollaDrinks.com. Fans of SG Radio can get $5 off any bottle of Mangria using this special discount coupon code: SG (unlimited use, code is good until December 31, 2017).
This Wednesday, May 24 on SuicideGirls Radio, hosts Nicole Powers and Bradley Suicide will be joined by Canadian hiphop artist, Madchild.
**UPDATE**
ICYMI: Watch last night’s show feat. Madchild (of Swollen Members) here or in the player below. Madchild has a new solo album, Darkest Hour (produced by Evidence), which drops on July 28. Catch him on tour next month:
June 8th – Seattle, WA
June 15th – Fort Collins, CO
June 16th -Denver, CO
June 17th – Colorado Springs, CO
You can listen – and watch – SuicideGirls Radio live on Wednesday nights from 8 til 9 PM at our state-of-the-art, all digital home on zinna.tv.
For updates on all things SG Radio-related, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram.
About Madchild
After many successful years with hip-hop group, Swollen Members, Madchild creatively branched out as a solo artist in 2012 with his debut title track, “Dope Sick.”
The album was well received which earned Madchild the highest chart position of his career — #3 on the Canadian Billboard Top 200 and #7 on the US Heatseekers Chart.
Manchild immediately hit the road on a sold-out Canadian tour with Tech N9ne which was followed-up with a 40-date headlining tour across the country where he performed at sold-out venues to his beloved fans.
Madchild has relentlessly toured with numerous artists such as La Coka Nostra, Tech N9NE, Redman, and many others. His grueling tour schedule over the years has earned him fans in every single city, and to this day, his loyal fan base continues to grow.
As success grew, Madchild’s battle with his personal demons increased. However, with the help of his family, friends, and the unwavering support of his fans, he was able to grab hold of his life and renounced his former lifestyle.
Madchild found complete solace in the arms of his music, and he bunkered down in his home studio, secluded from the outside world, where he had his creative rebirth in crafting some of the best verses of his entire career.
Madchild continues to give back to his community, he speaks at local high schools in British Columbia as well as youth groups surrounding the perils of gang violence and drug addiction. He has helped and continues to inspire countless youth through his music, and community service. Madchild strives to help youth learn a lesson from his mistakes and have a positive impact on their futures.
Madchild currently resides in Los Angeles, CA and continues to release chart-topping music in Canada and Worldwide as well as performing approximately 150+ shows per year.
In 2017 alone, Madchild has completed a 40 show tour in Canada and in April will begin his US dates which will be followed by shows in Europe and Australia. In July, Madchild will team up with the mighty Swollen Members for some select dates in Canada and other special appearances throughout the rest of the year. The first appearance will be at the Canadian Gathering of the Juggalos on April 7th in Calgary.
Swollen Members have been an underground hip-hop anomaly for over a decade with worldwide success, winning 4 Junos Awards and adding a fifth nomination for their Dagger Mouth album. In addition to their Juno awards, the group has also received 7 Much Music Video Awards and 4 Western Canadian Music Awards.
Swollen Members have collectively racked up 35 million views on Youtube, and earned both platinum and gold sales certification for sales of their albums.
They have achieved success by performing worldwide tours with acts such as Ghostface of the Wu-Tang Clan, Nelly Furtado and the Black Eyed Peas. The group’s loyal and enthusiastic following of fans (known as Battle Axe Warriors), with many fans sporting the group’s battle axe logo tattooed on their body.
The World’s Leading BYOB Radio Show Is Sponsored By Mangria
“As a nightly consumer of red wine, I was shocked one evening to find I had just half a glass left in the bottle. So I did what any decent alcoholic, ex-con, American would do… I went to the fridge and the liquor cabinet, then poured, mixed and measured. Thus Mangria was born.” — Adam Carolla
SuicideGirls Radio / Carolla Drinks Offer
You can purchase all three delicious flavors of SGR’s fave luscious libation, Mangria — and the most excellent Endless Rant IPA — via CarollaDrinks.com. Fans of SG Radio can get $5 off any bottle of Mangria using this special discount coupon code: SG (unlimited use, code is good until December 31, 2017).
This Wednesday, May 17 on SuicideGirls Radio, hosts Nicole Powers and Bradley Suicide will be joined by Bay Area singer/songwriter Garrett Pierce, who’ll be talking about his new album, Dusk .
**UPDATE**
ICYMI: Watch last night’s show feat. live music from Garrett Pierce here or via the player below:
If you’re in the Bay Area, be sure to catch Garrett’s very special show at Grace Cathedral in SF on June 2nd. Tix/info here.
You can listen – and watch – SuicideGirls Radio live on Wednesday nights from 8 til 9 PM at our state-of-the-art, all digital home on zinna.tv.
For updates on all things SG Radio-related, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram.
About Garrett Pierce
Garrett Pierce began writing for magazines and playing in rock bands as a teen in Los Angeles before permanently relocating to the Bay Area in the early 2000’s. His first full-length album, Like A Moth, was a stripped down acoustic affair with guest appearances by notable songwriters Jolie Holland and Matt Bauer.
Garrett then traveled and toured Europe where he was honored to support Nick Cave in Greece. With a pocketful of songs, he returned to make All Masks (Crossbill Records) — a lush album recorded in the gold rush town of Columbia, CA. It featured strings, wind instruments, and a cast of over ten musicians.
Garrett’s 2012 record, City of Sand (Narnack Records), was largely biographical, commenting on his dizzying relationship with the city and growing desire to leave for more natural settings. During this period, Garrett began splitting his time between Sonoma County and San Francisco — playing clubs throughout the Bay Area at night and working in the wine industry during the day.
Garrett has completed his fourth record, titled Dusk, which was released on April 14, 2017 in partnership with Crossbill Records.
Garrett is a voracious reader of classic American authors like Richard Brautigan, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway and Henry Miller, and an avid mushroom forager. When he’s not in the studio you might find him somewhere in the redwoods of the Sonoma Coast walking through the damp earth.
The World’s Leading BYOB Radio Show Is Sponsored By Mangria
“As a nightly consumer of red wine, I was shocked one evening to find I had just half a glass left in the bottle. So I did what any decent alcoholic, ex-con, American would do… I went to the fridge and the liquor cabinet, then poured, mixed and measured. Thus Mangria was born.” — Adam Carolla
SuicideGirls Radio / Carolla Drinks Offer
You can purchase all three delicious flavors of SGR’s fave luscious libation, Mangria — and the most excellent Endless Rant IPA — via CarollaDrinks.com. Fans of SG Radio can get $5 off any bottle of Mangria using this special discount coupon code: SG (unlimited use, code is good until December 31, 2017).
This Wednesday, May 10 on SuicideGirls Radio, hosts Nicole Powers and Bradley Suicide will be joined by LA-based singer/songwriter Miranda Lee Richards, who’ll be talking about her forthcoming album, Existential Beast.
**UPDATE**
Watch last night’s show featuring LIVE music from the beautiful Miranda Lee Richards and her accompanist Christoph Chertik here or via the player below.
You can listen – and watch – SuicideGirls Radio live on Wednesday nights from 8 til 9 PM at our state-of-the-art, all digital home on zinna.tv or on our Facebook page via Facebook LIVE!
For updates on all things SG Radio-related, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram.
About Miranda Lee Richards
Miranda Lee Richards is a gifted Los Angeles-based singer songwriter. Born in San Francisco after the summer of love and before the dawn of disco, she grew up in an artistic and bohemian environment that has informed her adult life and work. Her parents are well-known underground comic book artists Ted Richards (Forty Year Old Hippie and Dopin’ Dan) and Terre Richards (Suzi Skates and Wimmen’s Comix) — R. Crumb is their most famous contemporary.
After graduating from the San Francisco School Of The Arts, she travelled to Paris to do some modeling, but soon returned to the US to pursue a musical career. A series of chance encounters with influential people began when she became friends with Kirk Hammet from Metallica who taught her how to play Mazzy Star songs on the guitar. Early demos of her songs reached the ears of Anton Newcombe, and she soon joined his band The Brian Jonestown Massacre. She sang on their early albums Give It Back, Bringing It all Back Home Again, and Stung Out In Heaven, and appeared with them in the seminal documentary DIG!.
In 2001, Virgin Records released her full-length debut album The Herethereafter. The album was a mix of folk, psychedelia, country and indie pop, and found fans worldwide, especially in Japan where the single “The Long Goodbye” reached the Top Five.
Her critically-acclaimed sophomore album Light of X, the title of which came from a dream about harnessing beams of light to travel in time, followed in 2009. The music was a progression from the template laid out on her debut album, anticipating the symphonic pop music that came later with the likes of Anna Calvi and Agnes Obel.
Richards’ third full-length album, Echoes Of The Dreamtime, released January 29, 2016 on the UK based label Invisible Hands Music, was recorded at her home studio with husband and producer Rick Parker (best known for his work with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Lord Huron). It brought together eight pastoral, atmospheric epics into a work that once again garnered critical acclaim and international attention.
At the beginning of 2017, in the post-US election climate, Richards has delivered what is arguably her most impressive work to date. Of Existential Beast, slated for release June 16, 2017 on Invisible Hands Music, Richards states:
“It is a political album to the core, examining the issues of our time, but with an intent of tackling those difficult and sometimes taboo subjects in a poetic and heartfelt manner. The title is also a mash-up of terms, referencing the existential crisis that has in turn arisen. In essence, we are all still working with the animal urges of fear, competition, survival, and sexuality, which are deep-seeded and manifesting in varying ways and degrees, depending on where one is at. Perhaps a more endearing comparison would be to see this as working with our own inner child, who can at times behave like a wild beast! But like it or not, these tendencies have been revealed, within our leaders, our countries, and ourselves; it is indeed a pivotal and transformational time and there is much work to be done.”
The World’s Leading BYOB Radio Show Is Sponsored By Mangria
“As a nightly consumer of red wine, I was shocked one evening to find I had just half a glass left in the bottle. So I did what any decent alcoholic, ex-con, American would do… I went to the fridge and the liquor cabinet, then poured, mixed and measured. Thus Mangria was born.” — Adam Carolla
SuicideGirls Radio / Carolla Drinks Offer
You can purchase all three delicious flavors of SGR’s fave luscious libation, Mangria — and the most excellent Endless Rant IPA — via CarollaDrinks.com. Fans of SG Radio can get $5 off any bottle of Mangria using this special discount coupon code: SG (unlimited use, code is good until December 31, 2017).
You can listen – and watch – SuicideGirls Radio live on Wednesday nights from 8 til 9 PM at our state-of-the-art, all digital home on zinna.tv or on our Facebook page via Facebook LIVE!
For updates on all things SG Radio-related, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram.
About Eric Freedman
Eric Freedman is a stand up comedian and one of the creators of Tomorrow’s Nobody. He has been writing and producing cartoons, sketch comedy, digital series, and more since 2001, helping create the popular cartoon series Tomorrow’s Nobodies while still in High School. His newest cartoon series Court Ordered was recently featured on Funny or Die and The Laugh Factory and stars an amazing cast of comedians. Comedy is Eric’s first love and when he was fifteen, instead of just playing with his dick all the time, he started writing jokes about it. Currently he tours the world with the band Sublime With Rome as their Road Manager, performs stand up all over the country, and can be seen in the offices of many powerful Hollywood Executives being told “No”.
The World’s Leading BYOB Radio Show Is Sponsored By Mangria
“As a nightly consumer of red wine, I was shocked one evening to find I had just half a glass left in the bottle. So I did what any decent alcoholic, ex-con, American would do… I went to the fridge and the liquor cabinet, then poured, mixed and measured. Thus Mangria was born.” — Adam Carolla
SuicideGirls Radio / Carolla Drinks Offer
You can purchase all three delicious flavors of SGR’s fave luscious libation, Mangria — and the most excellent Endless Rant IPA — via CarollaDrinks.com. Fans of SG Radio can get $5 off any bottle of Mangria using this special discount coupon code: SG (unlimited use, code is good until December 31, 2017).
Amanda Palmer is in the process of redefining the nature of artistic freedom. Having escaped the gilded shackles of her major record label, she famously made her 2012 album, Theatre Is Evil, with the help of 24,883 fans who crowdfunded the recording via Kickstarter to the tune of $1,192,793.00. However, the hype surrounding the record-breaking fundraiser almost suffocated the album, as the media focused on the money rather than the artistic merits of the music — a huge shame given that it’s undoubtably one of her best.
Seeking a less transient form of funding that would embrace one of Palmer’s greatest assets, her relationship with her fans, in March, 2015 she joined Patreon. The alternative crowdfunding platform helps creators fund their work via a subscriber base of patrons who are either charged monthly or per item created (Palmer chooses to charge per “thing”, since it allows her to take time off guilt-free). In the two years since she joined, Palmer’s incredibly loyal fanbase have helped her become one of the top 3 content creators on Patreon by number of patrons. At the time of writing, Palmer has 9,386 patrons who give her a total of $36,598 per thing.
This has bought Palmer an incredible amount of freedom to create what she wants, when she wants. But with it comes a new set of constraints and responsibilities — many of them self-imposed. Because this form of artistic funding is so new (albeit that it’s based on a concept that’s as old as the ages), Palmer is still in the process of creating her own rules.
On May 5, 2017, her latest Patreon-funded project, I Can Spin A Rainbow, will be released into the ether. The haunting and heartbreakingly beautiful, atmospheric and melancholy album is a collaboration with one of her heroes, Edward Ka-Spel, the co-founder and frontman of The Legendary Pink Dots. The record was recorded in the UK at the Essex home studio of Palmer’s friend Imogen Heap.
I caught up with Palmer by phone to talk about the creative process and the challenges that come with the freedom of patronage.
Nicole Powers: I first saw you on June 30, 2007 at the Greek Theater with the Dresden Dolls on Cindy Lauper’s True Colors tour. It’s a very special year for us. We’re celebrating our ten-year anniversary.
AP: Oh. Awesome… I remember that tour very well. It was a total hodgepodge of amazingness and weirdness.
NP: You’ve had a fascinating journey since then. I was just watching a 2005 documentary on the Cloud Club [a residential artist commune based out of a brownstone in Boston where Palmer lives and where her band The Dresden Dolls was nurtured]. Do you miss those days?
AP: I still have that apartment. It hasn’t changed a bit. Actually, I’m driving there on Sunday… I mean, the days have definitely changed. I have a child and a husband and a house out in the country now, in addition to my bohemian apartment. Philosophically, I think it’s important not to spend a lot of time missing things. There’s too much going on right now for me to think that it’s a good idea to spend energy on those things. I loved my free-wheeling, bohemian existence, but I also wouldn’t want to be stuck in it forever. It would get stale.
NP: When I last spoke to you, in 2009, it was just after “Oasis” had been released. The song was based on very disturbing events in your life that happened when you were 17, and you spoke about how you sought solace in your favorite band, The Pink Dots. It’s wonderful that things have come full circle and you actually get to work with your hero. How did that come about?
AP: Its original seeds were planted ten years ago, probably. I’ve been in touch with the band ever since I was a teenager. When I was 20 I went out on the road and did merch for them in Germany for a couple of days. I knew them and they knew me, as people. They did a tour opening up for the Dresden Dolls in Germany in the mid-2000s — it was probably 2006. During that tour I floated the idea that it was on my fantasy list to someday collaborate on a record with him. He said, absolutely, someday, let’s do it.
In the list of projects that I wanted to do before I died, it was up there towards the top, along with making a record with my dad. I actually knocked off two Bucket List records in one year — I’m really proud of myself. And they couldn’t be more different. I made this super sweet, sincere, fancy guitar and piano record with my dad, and this album with Edward is completely different — a completely different mood, much more electronic. Maybe there’s also something important in my life; having a child and recognizing my various fathers in various incarnations.
NP: I was reading an interview that you did a while back where you spoke about the internal battle that you have between musical inspiration and meditation, and how often very complete ideas came to you when you’re alone during your practice. How does that work when there’s another person in the room? How did the actual creative process work between you and Edward?
AP: It’s a fantastic question, because I didn’t know how it was going to work when I went into making this record with Edward. Because I’m not a co-writer. I’ve always been a real lone wolf as a songwriter, mostly by choice. Because, for me, songwriting is such an incredibly intimate, personal act that the idea of doing it with someone else doesn’t make any sense to me — as much as it would make sense to do anything. So I was nervous because I just didn’t feel like a seasoned co-writer and collaborator, whereas Edward has made records with tons of people.
For that reason, I just showed up completely open-minded and ready to work — ready to write and ready to do anything. I brought old pieces of things, and I brought little bits of text, and I brought voice memos, you know, sung to myself on walks five years ago. I just brought a junk box of interesting bits. Edward had a similar pile of thoughts and fragments and we just played a game of creative ping pong. Sometimes he would start the ball rolling and he would give me a piece of text and I would try to fit it into some kind of arrangement with the piano. Sometimes I would just sit and play something and he would dream up and imagine a story to go on top of it.
As I imagined — as I feared even — it was incredibly intimate, personal co-processing. You have to have an immense amount of trust and respect for someone to sit around and go to your vulnerable, creative place. But Edward and I had such an immense amount of respect for each other that it worked. He really taught me to be a lot braver about doing my process in front of another person. I may be not afraid to walk around naked in public, but I’m actually very afraid to write songs in front of people.
It just feels so incredibly emotionally naked, to sit there writing lyrics, and chucking them out, and futzing with melodies, and playing wrong chords. It’s just something that I’m really only used to doing alone in a room by myself, so to do it in front of someone else felt scary and thrilling — and ultimately really rewarding because what we got out the other side was a record that we’re both so, so proud of.
NP: I imagine too, when you’re working with another person, it’s hard to hide behind abstraction. When you’re working on something that’s difficult for you to deal with in a song, you can be abstract about it — you know what it means, but you leave the world to interpret it. But, when you’re bringing an idea in a room to share with another human being and you’re going to work on it together, I guess you actually have to explain what the abstraction means.
AP: Either that or you have to not question the other’s poetic motives. We didn’t have to discuss and dissect every single lyric and every single adjective. We didn’t always question each other’s dressings, you know? We wrote in a way that made sense, and made sense for that particular song.
One of the things that I loved so much about writing with Edward is he actually rewound me back to a songwriting space that I was in more in my 20s where I had a lot more dressings and opaqueness in my lyrics… The first Dresden Dolls record, there are some songs on that that are just impossible to understand unless you’re me — and even if you are me. Fast-forward 20 years from the writing of some of those songs and the material that I’m writing now, some of it is so incredibly literal and soapy, which is wonderful. It is its own skill to write a good, easily digestible, literal song, but I’ve really strayed away from my more loose, poetic songwriting. It was almost like working with Edward gave me a hall pass to go straight back to 19 and write the way I used to write, especially when I was under a heavier Pink Dots influence. It was always better to say things in a way that could be interpreted six different ways than directly.
NP: How long did it take you to find your groove working together? And what song did you find that groove on?
AP: Funnily enough, it took us five fucking minutes to get comfortable with each other. There was just so much love in the room — especially since our first attempt to make the record, actually our first couple of attempts to get together, were torn apart by acts of god. Our second real legit try to get together involved me showing up at Edward’s place and on day two getting a phone call that I had fly back to the States to be at a friend’s deathbed. It was very ill-starred. By the time we actually were sitting in a room together, having tried for so many years and having such a close call, we were just so excited to finally get to work after so much had already gone down — we were already really emotionally attached. The interesting thing about our first day of work is that the day before that had actually been a year before that and I was eight-months pregnant and sobbing in Edward’s arms at a train station that I had to go watch my friend die. So we had become quite close and we just slipped into a groove very easily. Edward’s really easy to work with.
I’ve luckily never been in a nightmare collaboration. I’ve been blessed with really delightful, easy to work with collaborators, from Jherek Bischoff to Jason Webley and all of the other people that I have arranged with and co-written with in the last ten years or so. But, with Edward, there is an incredible sweetness about him. He is really not self-conscious about his process and he has no ego whatsoever. The two of us just got to amuse, and impress and delight each other. Why else would you create a record together?
The older I get, and the more projects I do, the more concerned I am about the process itself being enjoyable. When you’re a professional musician you realize that that’s actually the content of your life. The desire to work with good, compassionate collaborators starts to take importance over whatever is going to come out the other end of the tube. That starts to matter less and whether or not you want to sit down and have dinner with this person starts to matter more — because this is your life. You’re like, oh right, if I don’t like the people I’m working with, my life is going to be miserable.
NP: You once said, “A perfect song is a captured moment of inspiration barely touched.” On this album, what song would you say most embodies that?
AP: Probably “The Clock At The Back Of The Cage,” which is far and away my favorite track on the record. I had the general idea for it brewing the entire time Edward and I were working on the record. I even mentioned to Edward that I wanted to write a song like it. It was just an unformed, fetal-being just bouncing around in my brain as we worked. Then Imogen had this beautiful glockenspiel in her studio, and it was like the song was just waiting there to come out one night. I grabbed the glockenspiel and wrote the opening part on the glockenspiel thinking that that would just be a cute introduction and it would probably be a piano song, and it would probably have Edward’s looping, and it would probably sound a lot like the rest of the record. But it was such an emotionally painful song that it just wanted to stay sounding small. So we left it that way. But then we put that really foreboding underbelly of sound beneath it. Sometimes you finish a song and you just know that you have a completed, perfect piece of work — and that’s the way I felt after that one.
NP: What was the nugget of inspiration that kept visiting your head and not leaving you?
AP: I’m not sure I can discuss that one… Let’s just say that it is a very, very personal song and leave it at that.
NP: Fair enough. When we last spoke, you were looking ahead to life beyond a major label. Since then, that philosophy has come fruition, first with your blockbuster Kickstarter, and now with Patreon, and your TED Talk, The Art of Asking, which you’ve expanded into a book. How do you think your process has changed from making a record for a label versus making a record for your fans?
AP: It’s actually quite an easy answer, which is, being on a label never changed my process. If anything, getting off the label gave me an immense amount of freedom — maybe too much freedom, because I was just following every last whim for so many years. I was just drunk on my ability to create music and put it out, especially given the digital free-for-all of the internet. Knowing that I could make music and literally put it out that day was so delicious after being in the golden handcuffs of a major label.
Sometimes I look back on my musical track record post-Dresden Dolls and it just looks like an insane patchwork, a random-ass shit show with no forethought. And that’s exactly what it was. But I was so fucking happy. I was just like, I want to make a record of Radiohead covers, I want to make a fucking weird-ass musical concept record about conjoined twins, I want to do this, I want to do that — and then I would just do it.
It was so delicious to be able to do what I wanted that I didn’t care. Then I sort of set all of my serious songwriting in one box and I collected it all together for Theater Is Evil, which is the Kickstarter record, which I still think is far and away one of the best records that I’ve ever made. I am just so, so proud of it. Then, you get this interesting twist in the story; I was convinced that because I captured everybody’s attention because of the Kickstarter that everyone would also pay attention to the record. But, mostly, all the media discussed when they discussed me was money. That was really disheartening. That was a shitty year.
NP: I can see that that must have been incredibly frustrating.
AP: Well, amen. So, yeah, that’s one of the things that I feel is a really hard won lesson. My dialogue with my hardcore listeners, and my dialogue with the mass media and the mass internet, they are parallel conversations but they’re different conversations. And you wait six months and the landscape changes right before you, especially in terms of how things are coming out.
It’s why I am so grateful to have this group of 10,000 people who just trust me. They trust me not to screw them. They trust the fact that I’m an authentic artist and that my heart is in the right place and I just want to make work that I believe in. And that relationship is a hard won relationship. Just like the Kickstarter. It’s not something that just happens overnight because you have a hit single. It’s something that happens because you toured for years and years, and you hang out with everybody, and you prove that you’re a lifer.
I’m really proud of this space that I built where all of those people want to support me. Sometimes I can’t even really believe that it’s real — and it’s been going on for two years. In a sense, nothing has freed me up artistically as that security — of knowing that I don’t have to, all of a sudden, hop on a tour bus and tour in order to pay for a project. I will never need corporate sponsorship. I will never need to compromise because I have enough. I have enough support. It’s such a wonderful feeling as an artist to know that there are enough people there to easily float your ability to create. It’s awesome.
NP: It has also broken the mold that you have to have an album, with three singles for the label to market, to have a “thing” that someone will buy. One of the lovely examples of that is your “Angel Gabriel” recording and video that you released over Christmas. I could imagine that if that had been in the context of a major label, they would have wanted you to do a whole album of schmaltzy Christmas songs and you would have lost the entire point of it. That song and video is so much more of a statement on its own than it would be if it was buried amidst ten other songs that you were forced to throw together to make a thing that a major label would accept.
AP: Yeah. Exactly. It’s really wonderful deciding what to do with everybody’s money as well, and just challenging myself to be as ethical as possible. Because on the one hand I have this wonderful freedom to know that I can sit down at the piano at any time, make arrangements anytime, write music anytime, and know that I have a guaranteed audience, not only to listen to it, but to pay for it. But on the other hand, I feel this mighty responsibility that I don’t want to let people down and I want to spend their money ethically, you know? Because there I am, basically doing a bunch of artistic curating. I’m deciding who to hire, and who to engineer, and who is going to photograph, and who is going to video, who is going to design the sets. There is something really nice knowing that that’s not the label’s money, but it’s the people’s money. As I’m hiring a whole bunch of artists in Cuba, who are really grateful for the work, I love that that money is coming from my fans and not from some corporate boss in the sky. It just feels really good.
NP: You spoke earlier about the parallel conversations you have between your fans and the mass media. Obviously you have a very special relationship with your fans, and sometimes a comment that you make, that is completely understandable within the context of your fanbase, will get completely taken out of context by the mainstream media. For example, the whole “Trump will make punk rock great again” thing. I absolutely know what you’re trying to say, but seeing it taken out of context for clickbait was kind of offensive. I imagine you don’t want to self-censor, so how do you deal with that?
AP: I just work on the running assumption that people are going to misunderstand me and I try not to give a shit, honestly. And as far as Donald Trump making punk rock great again — we should be so lucky. That was more of a call to my fellow artists that we need to up our game in the face of this insanity. I hope we all do.
NP: It’s so hard to live in a world where we’re seeing hard won rights being taken away from us and society regressing rather than progressing. Do you feel more of a sense of urgency now that you’re a mother to try to shift things in the right direction?
AP: No. I have always felt a sense of urgency for change. In fact, if anything, having a child has forced me to slow down and be more mindful and smell more flowers with my baby. Because his childhood feels incredibly precious to me. He’s not going to appreciate a mother who is spending too much time trying to be a warrior hero. I mean, I will do what I can do, but I also sometimes feel like the biggest gift I can give to the world right now is being a good mother to my child. As hokey as that may sound, it’s how I feel.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity, and is published here under Creative Commons License 4.0. It may be reposted freely with attribution to the author, Nicole Powers, and this notice.
