The Department of Tangents Podcast

Jon Rineman started his career with as tumultuous and triumphant a 15-year run as a comic could envision for themselves. He started in 2003, then freelanced jokes for Jay Leno, wrote jokes for Seth Meyers including one infamous zinger at the 2011 White House Correspondents' Association dinner that earned the ire of a future president, and wrote for Jimmy Fallon at Late Night and the Tonight Show until 2018. He survived the vicious battles around late night, got to write for the WWE, got married, had his first kid, and then saw things deteriorate quickly, both personally and professionally. A lot of this is detailed in his new podcast, Here's What People Are Talking About. I would refer you to that for some of the more intricate workings of his writing role and departure from Fallon we reference here. We address that, but we also talk about his new comedy card game, Anti-Social Skills, his post-Tonight Show gig teaching at Emerson College in Boston, and what he learned about the future of late night from his students.  This one was a tough edit because we had so much to cover, so I'm hoping this gives you a taste of an extraordinary period in the life of a stand-up comedian and writer. You can find the podcast, Here's What People Are Talking About, on Apple, Spotify, and all the usual podcast locations. Jon's website is www.rinemania.com, and that's where you can find at least a partial accounting of his late night monologue jokes. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @rinemania. Anti-Social Skills is at asskills.com, which should be easy to remember, and on Twitter at @antiskills and Instagram at @antisocialskillsgame.

The Stay Scary Podcast is a silly podcast about serious horror, as described by host Lisa McGolgan. Every episode, Lisa and co-host Yinh Kiefer take a theme in horror films or horror lore, everything from insects to puberty, serial killers to doll parts, and have a ripsnorting good time going wherever that topic takes them. The show is as much fun to listen to as it is to be on, and taping this episode was the most fun I had in an interview this season. It devolves almost immediately, and it was a pile o' fun. That's right. Not a pile “of” fun, but a pile o' fun, which is orders of magnitude higher. We discussed that age old favorite question amongst us ghoul-lovers, “why horror,” the origins of our own fandom, horror as a cultural touchpoint, and what actual scares us (hint- very little, but for Lisa and Yinh, the movie Terrifier certainly fits the bill). But you can see from this interview that you don't have to be a fan of horror to enjoy the Stay Scary Podcast. Here's Lisa and Yinh! You can find Stay Scary on Apple and Podbean and iHeart Radio and various other podcast aggregators. The show is also on social media, on Instagram at @stayscarypodcast and on Twitter at @stayscarypod. You can find Yinh's podcast, Ten With Yinh at all of those same podcast locations.

At first glance, Rob Kovacs seems to have wildly divergent interests in music. His latest album, Let Go, is lush and rhythmic piano pop. It's organic and melancholy, and tells a very human story about snakebit would-be lovers who can't come together and yet can't quite find their way out of each other's orbit. It's built for sepia-tinged sunlight and dry scattered leaves. Look again, and you see his alter-ego, 88Bit, who orchestrates the mechanical soundtracks of throwback video games for piano. The music from Let Go seems as far as you can get from the three-channel ditties on your average NES system. But keep listening, and you'll hear how they blend together, how they merge in Kovac's particular style. We discussed both sides of Kovac in this conversation on a particularly nice day in his hometown of Cleveland – you can even hear the birds chirping in the background through his open window.  You can find his work at the places he just mentioned, but in case you missed them, his website is www.obkovcsmusic.com, and you can find him on Twitter and Instagram at @robkovacsmusic. You can find 88Bit at www.88bitmusic.com and on Twitter and Instagram at @88bitmusic. Follow him there for tour and new release info.

Last spring, I read a Tweet from author Paul Tremblay apologizing for his upcoming horror novel, Survivor Song. When he had turned in his final edits for the book months before, he could not have known how prescient it would seem, especially to his friends in the New England horror writing community. Survivor Song is set in Boston in the opening stages of an epidemic. A virus is spreading, hospitals are overwhelmed, the government is providing an inadequate response. I won't go into too much detail here since I read the Tweet into the record later, but he even mentioned a lack of PPE. That is where we begin the conversation, which also covers the reissues of his early comic noir novels about a narcoleptic private investigator, The Little Sleep and No Sleep Till Wonderland.   His new novel Survivor Song is out in paperback in July, and The Little Sleep and No Sleep Till Wonderland are out now wherever you get good books. His website is www.paultremblay.net, and you can follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @paulgtramblay

Being an artist often means you spend your life looking for a place that feels right, finding it, and then leaving it as quickly as you can. Creative fulfilment as Brigadoon. In 2021, Jenee Halstead released Disposable Love, an album that sounds in many ways like the one she was always meant to make. With producer Dave Brophy and collaborators like Susan Cattaneo, Halstead has crafted an elegant pop album with a sonic palette that spans from her earlier acoustic sound to horn-driven R&B to something more ethereal. She took some chances to do something different, part of which was allowing herself to sing happier pop songs, which she says can feel even more vulnerable than some of the more folky confessional songs she has written in the past. But then, she's always kept moving. She recently found new context in her writing after an Ayahuasca ceremony, and she's looking forward to incorporating chants into her next project. That is all covered in this conversation about the arc of her career and the sound of Disposable Love.  You can find her music on Apple and Google and Spotify and all the usual places. To keep track of the new stuff you can go to www.jeneehalstead.com and find her on Twitter and Instagram under @jeneehalstead. The new album is Disposable Love, and I can't recommend it highly enough.

I first spoke to Johnson in 2019 for The Boston Globe, and back then he was already an established headlining comic with a distinct voice. He is a smart joke writer at ease with his own vulnerability, and those are qualities that are only enhanced as he gets bolder as an artist. Most of this episode is centered around Elusive: A Mixtape, his album-length exploration of comedy and music. Johnson isn't a singer or a musician, but he had an idea that he wanted to put stand-up and music together, so he called some musician friends and made an album that is at turns silly and thoughtful, with live comedy punctuated by music recorded in a studio. It also couldn't have been easy writing for the Daily Show in a year when it felt like the world was ending, and Johnson shares how working with Trevor Noah has helped him both as a writer and a person. I should note that Johnson's new one-hour Comedy Central special, Trevor Noah Presents Josh Johnson: #, was released after out conversation. But there was plenty to talk about concerning Elusive, and I'm sure we'll be hearing much more from Johnson sooner rather than later. The new album is Elusive: A Mixtape, which you can find on Apple Music and Spotify and wherever you get your music. The new special, #, is on Comedy Central now. You can also see The Daily Show on Comedy Central. His website is www.joshjohnsoncomedy.com, and you can also find him on IG at @joshjohnsoncomedy and Twitter at @joshjohnson.

Season Two of the Department of Tangents Podcast coming Tuesday June 29! Six episodes, guests are comedians Josh Johnson and Jon Rineman, Stay Scary Podcast hosts Lisa and Yinh, author Paul Tremblay, and musicians Jenee Halstead and Rob Kovac!  New format! Tune in!

This week I speak with Bethany Van Delft, a comedian and storyteller and so much more. Bethany hosts Artisanal Comedy every Wednesday on her Instagram, and she's got a lot brewing she can't quite mention yet. She adapted her show to the online comedy world very quickly, partly because she's not willing to just give up comedy when real world stages are not available. We also talked about taking care of a family under quarantine and taking some time to pause as creative people to prevent burnout. The last part of the conversation revolves mostly around the Black Lives Matter protests, how social media has focused people's attention in quarantine because they don't have the usual distractions to move on to, and why this moment in history feels different from other flashpoints. It is always  a joy to speak with Bethany, and we frequently go over time, but I managed to stop us twenty-seven minutes into what was supposed to be a twenty-minute conversation. So thanks to Bethany for the extra seven minutes!

Welcome back to the Department of Tangents Podcast, a special new episode with Paul Hansen of The Grownup Noise. You may have noticed I haven't done an official episode of the Department of Tangents in several months. More recently, I've been doing the Artist Check-In Podcast which focuses on how creative people are dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. That series has a very particular focus, and this episode didn't quite fit that. Paul and I have been friends for nearly 30 years. I was the drummer in one of his first bands when he was in high school, and it has been amazing to see where he has gone since we were playing Aerosmith, Joe Walsh, and Eric Clapton covers at high school dances. Paul is the songwriter at the center of The Grownup Noise, a beloved and hard to characterize indie rock outfit in Boston. Over the years, the band line-up has changed, but Paul has always been out front with his guitar and voice. This week, on June fifth, Paul is putting out a new Grownup Noise with a very new sound. The music was mostly constructed on an analogue synth, rather than Paul's guitar. If you're a fan, you'll notice the difference in sound immediately. But you may also notice that, while Paul is challenging himself as a songwriter, this is still very much a Grownup Noise album. In this conversation, we cover writing and recording the new album, working with a new instrument, the decision to keep using the Grownup Noise name, and some of our own history. Much of this is focused on the music, but this is very much a conversation between old friends who know each other well. Which means the very first thing you hear is Paul asking me about my own process for writing fiction. I debated cutting the stuff where Paul asked me about my own work, but I think that also shows Paul's generosity and curiosity as an artist and a human being. You will hear three songs from the album sprinkled through the conversation. You can look for the full thing Friday, June 5th on BandCamp, and look for more info on www.thegrownupnoise.com and search for The Grownup Noise on all your social media.

This week I speak with horror author and storyteller Gregory Bastianelli. Gregory released his winter-themed horror novel Snowball at the end of January. He had planned a full slate of appearances and conferences to promote the book, and all but a couple of these wound up being cancelled because of a COVID-19 quarantine. That has left him without a direct line to fans, something that an independent author counts on to sell books. We'll talk about that, writing habits under quarantine, and the miserable New England winters that inspired him to write Snowball.

This week I speak with comedian, actor, and now kid's show host Corey Rodrigues. Corey was working on a cruise ship as late as mid-March,  just as the full weight of the pandemic was coming to bear, and he tells us what that was like. Like most every comedian, Corey lost his bookings for the year, which gave him the excuse to start Corey's Stories, the show he hosts every weekday at 7:30 now reading to kids. And if you're listening on May 21, the day this comes out, go to noweherecomedyclub.com to see him on The Best of Boston Stand-Up with Kelly MacFarland, Dan Crohn, and Laura Severse.

 This week I speak with book editor, writing coach, and self-described literary omnivore Tanya Gold about how her job has changed, and how it hasn't, during the quarantine. We get into the finer points of the job – why every editor isn't always a fit for every writer, the subjective nature of editing a poetry collection, the need for writers to strive for improvement. Tanya also went through a corona-like sickness without access to testing, which is something I'm sure some of you can relate to. Plus, book recommendations!

My day job is talking to artists for different publications, which means I know a lot of people whose livelihoods have been impacted by the quarantine associated with the Covid-19 pandemic. In this limited series I'll be talking with comedians, musicians, sound engineers, authors, and creative people about how they are handling this personally and professionally. This week we get the comedy club owner's perspective from Rick Jenkins, who owns The Comedy Studio in Somerville, a club that has fostered a lot of talent through the years. The Studio had to shut down in March, but eventually started doing regular streaming shows featuring stand-up, variety shows, and interviews. Rick is still showing up to the Studio in his vintage Johnny Carson suits, and we kicked off the conversation talking about masks and trying to keep a normal routine. 

My day job is talking to artists for different publications, which means I know a lot of people whose livelihoods have been impacted by the quarantine associated with the Covid-19 pandemic. In this limited series, I'll be talking with comedians, musicians, sound engineers, authors, and creative people about how they are handling this personally and professionally. This week it's Don White, musician, storyteller, and author. Don is a friend of mine and always a good conversation. Full disclosure, I work with Don on his PR, so I saw how gigs began to disappear in March when venues started to shutter. But as you will learn in this interview, Don adapted quickly to start doing Zoom shows, which may be something he continues to do once the pandemic has passed. You can support Don by finding him on his website at DonWhite.net and booking him for a Zoom show or buying his music, DVDs, and book from his online shop.

The Artist Check-In is a limited series of conversations with comedians, musicians,  authors, and creative people about how they are handling, personally and professionally, the quarantine conditions associated with the Covid-19 pandemic. In this episode, I speak with Chris Johnson, a musician and sound engineer, who is responsible for the sound of this show's theme song. He is also the bass player for Deafheaven, who had to cancel a tour and are trying to figure out how to record a live album when people can't gather to watch live shows. If you're a musician trying to record from home, there's a good discussion about what Chris can do for you remotely and what to think about in setting up a home studio.   To book Chris for mixing and mastering and other associated production duties, you can find him at The Electric Bunker. You can also check out his work as a musician in Doomriders and Summoner on BandCamp, and at Deafheaven.com.  

My day job is talking to artists, mostly comedians, for different publications, which means I know a lot of people whose livelihoods have been impacted by the quarantine associated with the Covid-19 pandemic. This is a limited series for which I'll be talking with comedians, musicians, sound engineers, authors, and creative people about how they are handling this personally and professionally. Up first is Dave Rattigan, a comedian, booker, and teacher.

I know I have said this podcast is on hiatus for the year, and technically, it is. I'm developing new ideas, both for the Department of Tangents Podcast and some new podcast projects. But, this interview came through after I had made that decision, and it has a bit of a special meaning for me as I get ready to head back to home to Bloomfield, New York for the holidays. Bloomfield is just outside of Rochester, one of the most hardcore classic rock cities in the nation. Foreigner was a staple on local radio there when I was a young fellow, at least in part because Gramm is from there. And, as I found out in this interview, Gramm still lives there with his family. The occasion for the interview is the release of a new Foreigner live album, Double Vision: Then & Now, a CD and DVD combo that includes the current line-up of the band plus a reunion of original members Gramm, Mick Jones, Al Greenwood, Dennis Elliott, Ian McDonald, and Rick Wills. The album was released November 15, and I hope you can head out to a local brick and mortar record store to pick it up. If you're in Rochester, you can try the Record Archive, Bop Shop, or House of Guitars. I just might see you there. Gramm was supposed to join the band again for some dates, but had to bow out due to illness. He's fully mended now and hopes to get another chance to do that in 2020. He's also got some new music of his own, which he says harkens back to his days in Black Sheep, his band before Foreigner. We talked about what it felt like to be onstage with the original members and the current members of the band, and I get to debunk at least one story told to me by a schoolmate from high school about meeting Gramm on the Canandaigua Pier years ago. Watching the video footage of the show, I was surprised how many of the songs I could sing along with, how many I remember hearing on my old stereo in my room on WCMF, which broadcast from Rochester. And I surprised myself in the interview by how much of a fanboy I became. I was not expecting that reaction from myself. Apparently, though, I'm not alone. Gramm says he gets people telling him stories about how Foreigner's music fit into their lives through the years. I thank him for his patience. 

This is the Department of Tangents special joy of Halloween and horror episode with Lamont Price. I love Halloween, and so does Price. And that's really the only inspiration for this episode. Price is an incredibly entertaining human being, so we sat down with no real notes and not much of an agenda other than to discuss why we love the holiday, horror movies and books, what scares us and what doesn't. We talked about trick or treating as kids, how that was part of the first taste of independence you get as a kid. And we go through all the major creeps and spooks to weigh in on how and why they scare us – ghosts, zombies, werewolves, vampires, serial killers, aliens.    To prepare for the episode, we went to a couple of Halloween stores before we taped. You can watch Price's Instagram to see if any of the videos from those visits pop up. Until then, enjoy Price rocking out as Slimer on his Twitter page. Ladies, why won't you let me love you? pic.twitter.com/YhBvP7JFqo— Lamont Price (@LPizzle) October 16, 2019     Look for his "Lamont's Boston" segments on nbcboston.com, and find him on Twitter under @lpizzle and on Instagram under @lpizzle12, and on his site at lamontpricelive.com.   Our featured track this week is “Collector of Things,” the first track from the new Even Twice album, This Is Boomerang. Believe it or not, Even Twice is just two guys – drummer/singer Pat O'Shea and bassist/singer Bob Hait. They make a beautiful rock and roll racket together, and for a two-instrument band, they cover a lot of different styles on Boomerang. There is a driving, punk edged sound at the heart of it. But sometimes it sounds like sludgy prog rock a la King Crimson's “20th Century Schizoid Man.” Sometimes, as on “Collector of Things,” it sounds like 60s garage rock, rough around the edges but with a solid melodic center. You can find the new album on Spotify or better yet, buy it on BandCamp. Find them on Twitter under @EvenTwice, and look them up on Facebook. This is “Collector of Things” off of This Is Boomerang by Even Twice.

If you ask a random reader to name foundational women horror writers, you might get two or three names. Mary Shelley. Shirley Jackson. Maybe Daphne du Maurier or Anne Rice. But as Lisa Kroger and Melanie R. Anderson point out in their new book, Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror & Speculative Fiction, if that's where our knowledge begins and ends, we're missing out on a lot. Eli Colter, who wrote, amongst other things, weird westerns. C.L. Moore who helped introduce swashbuckling rebels into the sci-fi canon. Angela Carter's re-imagining of folk tales. There are also works of literary fiction we might not put in the horror genre, like Toni Morrison's Beloved.    Kroger and Anderson give readers a primer on women writers whose work you may have missed, and puts it in a historical context. You can learn about the origins of the gothic story, the influence of spiritualism in writing and pop culture, how writers supported their families with their short works, a bit about pulp magazines like Weird Tales, and even how one writer put together a group of mystics (or mystic-adjacents) to help guard the coast of England during World War II. But beware – Monster, She Wrote is likely to add considerable height to your reading pile.    A note about the sound quality – we tried to do this interview with Skype, but it kept cutting out. So we had to do it the old fashioned way, the way I started recording interviews in the last century, on speaker phone with a recorder. I've sweetened it up a bit through some plug-in magic, but you'll notice the switch a few minutes in.   Monster, She Wrote is out now from Quirk Books and you can find out more about it at www.quirkbooks.com or wherever you get wonderful books. You can also keep track of Lisa Kroger's work at www.lisakroger.com and Melanie R. Anderson at www.melanieranderson.com. The Know Fear Podcast is at www.knowfearcast.com, and on Twitter under @knowfearcast.    This week's featured track from the new Best of Boston Stand-Up, Volume 1. Boston has a long and fine tradition of stand-up comedy, and this album is a good introduction to some of the funniest comedians you can see regularly around town. Veterans like Steve Sweeney, Don Gavin, Tony V., Kenny Rogerson, and Jimmy Dunn; more recent headliners like Kelly MacFarland, Will Noonan, Dan Crohn, Christine Hurley, and Corey Rodrigues, who you are about to hear.    This is a bit about Rodrigues going out for a day at the beach, and the reaction he got when he tried to put on sunscreen. I won't give away too much, but Rodrigues is black, and the audience at this taping was mostly white. That allowed Rodrigues to have a little fun with their expectations partway through the story. Look for more of Rodrigues's stuff on the Dry Bar Comedy YouTube channel, and find his album, My Turn, on Apple Music and Google Play. His Web site is www.coreyrodrigues.com.

Sue Costello is someone I saw early on in Boston, specifically playing a show organized by Jimmy Tingle that featured Costello, Patrice Oneal, and Steve Sweeney. She has always been tough, and she wears her Dorchester roots with pride. We got into some thorny topics here, including pervasive sexism in the entertainment industry and her dealings with CBS as the Les Moonves scandal was breaking. She has survived sexism in comedy and in the television industry and come out of it trying to find a way to get people to communicate more productively, to get to a truth. As she says, the empaths need to grow some balls, because the bullies are winning.   That's part of the philosophy behind her new talk show pilot, Simmah Down with Sue Costello. She wants people to be real about the ugly things in their lives and not be afraid to talk about them. The show is in a pilot stage now, but it's up on YouTube now. Watch it here: You can keep up to date on news from Costello at www.suecostello.com, and find her on Twitter and Facebook under Sue Costello and Instagram under iamsuecostello. She's also filming a new movie called Mow, which you can find on the social medias on @mowmovie.    Our featured track this week is “Living Rock” from Rebecca Turner, from her upcoming album The New Wrong Way, out November 6. This will be Turner's third album, and her first since 2009's Slowpoke. Since then, she has continue to write and play, but family and work concerns kept her from finishing a new album. The New Wrong Way is a culmination of ten years of writing and tweaking the songs, which were recorded starting last winter. The featured track is the opening song from the album, a riffy roots-rock tune called “Living Rock.” Find out more about Rebecca Turner at https://rebeccaturner.net.

Dave Ross has a fantastic new album out now called The Only Man Who Has Ever Had Sex. You can download it, but if you see him at a show, you can buy a download card with a special flipbook he's made with some beautiful photos and silliness. It's Ross's attempt to give you a little something extra for your participation, which is something he does in his comedy, as well. A few years ago, I reviewed the aptly-titled album Holy Fuck for the comedy review site The Spit Take. It was a who's who of alternative comedy taped at the recurring show of the same name, curated by Ross. But his new album was my first prolonged exposure to him, and I'm glad for that. The album captures his love for dumb comedy and his compulsion to try to say something meaningful. He talks about getting high and eating the best fried chicken he'd ever tasted at a gas station in Florida, but he also interrogates extreme masculinity, poking fun at the type of guys what might utter phrases like, “I want to marry violence” and “I wish I could be a truck.” It's an appealing mix, and there are a lot of lines that make me laugh just remembering them. I was happy to find that Ross was coming to Boston shortly after the album's release, to a Monday-night show called CitySide Comedy. I caught up with him there to talk about dumb and thoughtful comedy, the influence of punk, and, as we started the interview as he was finishing his supper, kale. I usually make at least some minor edits to a conversation to make it flow a bit better or cut out some pauses and stammers, but since we have near-constant background noise, the edits would have been noticeable and distracting. So this is the full thing, start to finish. You can find out more about him on his Web site at www.davetotheross.com, and also find him on Twitter and Instagram under @davetotheross. The new album is called The Only Man Who Has Ever Had Sex, and it's out on aspecialthing records now, and you can find them at www.astrecords.com. Thanks also to Sam Ike and Anjan Biswas of CitySide Comedy for bringing Ross to town. If you happen to live in the Boston area, you can find out about the show on Facebook by searching CitySide Comedy. This week's featured track is an early rehearsal version of “California Uber Alles” by Dead Kennedys. A couple of years before their debut album, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, punk pioneers Dead Kennedys got together and recorded a rehearsal of a lot of the music that would wind up on that album. That's being released on September 27 under the name Iguana Studios Rehearsal Tape – San Francisco 1978. Jello Biafra wrote the song about then California governor Jerry Brown, but has said in interviews he softened on Brown a bit once the Reagan era began, and even changed the lyrics to include the line “We've got a bigger problem now.” This version is a bit slower and a bit more sinister. The recording is from 1978 and includes the band's original line-up of Biafra, East Bay Ray and 6025 on guitar, Klaus Flouride on bass, and Ted on drums. It's a wonderful lo-fi punk slice of mud. There are a few tour dates planned for the beginning of October, but casual fans, if there is such a thing as a casual Dead Kennedys fan, should note the current line-up does not include Biafra. The album is out September 27 on Manifesto Records.  

Mike Watt is a bona fide punk rock legend. And he probably hates being described like that. His work with The Minutemen and fIREHOSE is seminal stuff, and hard to describe, especially The Minutemen. The second you hear it, you know it's punk, but it's also funk and jazz and so many other things, and completely in-the-moment music. It's as if all music, past and present, lives on the same plane, and he's filtering all of it at once. The reason for that, he says in this interview, is that when he and D. Boon started, they were innocent of genre delineations. They knew Creedence and Van Halen and a few other bands, but they weren't locked into FM radio expectations. When Watt heard jazz great John Coltrane, he thought he was listening to punk. More than anything, Watt is a seeker. On his new project, Jumpstarted Plowhards, he found a new way to collaborate. He recorded bass parts for a batch of songs and sent them to Todd Congelliere of Toys That Kill and F.Y.P. Congelliere then recorded vocals and guitar parts and found a revolving cast of drummers to complete the songs. The result is a tough and tuneful merging of their voices. The new album, Round One, is out October 4 on Recess Records, and that's where the conversation begins. Along the way, we talk about the different ways Watt has kept his creative juices flowing, the early days of The Minutemen and how he didn't even know what a bass guitar was when D. Boon's mom told him that's what he was going to play, what he learned from playing with The Stooges, making rock operas for major labels, the unreleased Minutemen stuff he's playing on his new tour, and the new Missingmen and Secondmen albums in the works. On a more personal note, it is wonderful to have Watt on this podcast. He was the first person I interviewed as a “journalist,” back in 1995. I had thought the tape of that interview was long gone, but I found it just this week. I have to admit, it's a little cringe-inducing for me to hear how unprepared I was for this interview. Fortunately for me, Watt is a warm and open guy, which comes across in both interviews. The interview took place on October 7, 1995, outside of The Showplace Theater in Buffalo, New York. Watt had made a big splash with his solo debut, Ball-Hog or Tugboat?, which featured Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, Dave Grohl just as he was getting Foo Fighters going, J Mascis, Henry Rollins, and a lot of other musicians that represented some of the best and most well-known alternative players at the time. Watt was on the Crew of the Flying Saucer tour with Nels Cline on guitar and Michael Preussner and Vince Meghrouni on drums. I had grabbed my tape recorder on my way out the door, but hadn't actually expected to get to speak with Watt. When I asked the door person at if Watt might be open to answering a few questions for the University at Buffalo campus magazine, they said “sure” and let me up into the green room. Watt was apparently getting a bit of rest in the van, and I hung out with Preussner, chewing his ear off until Watt came upstairs. Standing out on the street, Watt showed me his signature Econoline van, complete with bullethole in the bumper, as fans streamed into the venue and said hello. The new album from Jumpstarted Plowhards is called Round One, and it will be available October 4 on Recess Records, which you can find at www.recessrecords.com. Round Two is already in the works, and look for the band to start playing live once they've got to Round Five. And you can keep up with Watt and check his tour dates and news on his Web page at www.hootpage.com. We are approaching Halloween, which means it is time once again for the Daily Horror Film Fest. Every day through October, the Department of Tangents presents a different short horror film. If you have a favorite short horror film, or if you yourself have made a short horror film, tell me about it, and it may wind up in the fest. E-mail me at nick@nickzaino.com and show me what you've got. This week's featured track comes from stand-up comedian Dave Ross's new album, The Only Man Who Has Ever Had Sex, out now on A Special Thing Records. He's been on Drunk History, the WTF podcast, The Last Late Show with James Corden and a bunch of others. Ross is a storyteller, but with a lot of sneaky punches hiding in these looping kind of tales. He will be on the podcast soon, so you'll hear more about that. Find out more about Ross and the new album on his Web site at www.davetotheross.com. This is the track that sold me on the album. It's called “I Attack Strangers.”

David Demchuk's first novel, The Bone Mother, came highly recommended to me at NECON this year by Matt Moore, whom I interviewed in EP104. Demchuk and Moore are both on ChiZine Publications, which had a table in the dealers room. So I picked up The Bone Mother, not knowing what to expect, and innocently set about reading the first fifty pages later that evening. It's a novel told in short stories that, when taken together, form a story about a hunted and tortured class of people in Eastern Europe, many of whom happen to have supernatural traits or powers, and don't always do pleasant things with them. The first story presents Borys, who marries his brother. His brother then dies, and Borys is then forced to take his place working at the local thimble factory, which, it turns out, is a scary place all on its own. There is a black and white photo accompanying Borys's story, of two sturdy, emotionless gentlemen who look very much like brothers sitting with a bouquet of flowers between them. Most every story has a matching photo, taken from the archives of Roman photographer Costica Acsinte between 1935 and 1945, as the book's end notes state. They are evocative, and part of the impetus that sparked Demchuk to write the play, The Thimble Factory, upon which this novel is based. The strange quality of the photographs helped Demchuk write to some of his favorite themes, queerness and monstrosity, and wrap them in the familiar feel of folklore. He knew there would be parallels to the contemporary experience of queerness being labeled as “other” or even dangerous, but The Bone Mother turned out to be even more forward-thinking than he had originally planned. And it's also one hell of a horror story. The book is called The Bone Mother from ChiZine Publications. You can find out more about Demchuk at his Web site, www.daviddemchuk.com, and find him on Twitter under @david_demchuk. You can find more info on ChiZine Publications at www.chizinepub.com. Halloween is upon us! I am putting together my Daily Horror Film Fest, which means a different short horror film every day through October, and I need your help. If you have made a short horror film, or you just have a favorite you'd like more people to see, e-mail me at nick@nickzaino.com and let me know. And now, this week's featured track, “On the Counter” by Jumpstarted Plowhards, from their upcoming album Round One, out October 4 on Recess Records. This is a collaboration between Todd Gongelliere of Toys That Kill and F.Y.P. and Mike Watt of the Minutemen and fIREHOSE, who will talk about the project on next week's episode. Watt recorded the bass tracks and then sent them to Congelliere to add drums, guitars, and vocals. You can here both personalities mingling to create something slightly different than either would have produced on their own. Round Two has already started, and the band plans to tour once they've got five albums under their belt. I'm thrilled to give you your first taste of the project.

I have met my tangenting match. I went into this interview, backstage at the legendary Club Passim in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with a slate of questions for Steve Poltz, about his new album Shine On, about writing “You Were Meant For Me” with Jewel, about humor in music. I probably could have gotten a good hour with Steve with two or three questions. There is no telling where his mind might flash next. Just in terms of music, the conversation covered his early days with The Rugburns, Nirvana and 90s “goat music,” the Replacements, the Dead Milkmen, Mojo Nixon, Tom Lehrer, and Allan Sherman over the course of a few minutes. We talked about spirituality, Risky Business, Hyman Roth from Godfather II, Jesus, Marianne Williamson, Styx in another five-minute section. At one point, when I told Poltz the name of the podcast, he said, “We're living up to the name.” This breakneck tangenting is something you have experienced if you've seen Poltz onstage. I hadn't seen him play since he did an in-the-round show with Beaver Nelson, “Scrappy” Jud Newcomb, and Adam Carroll perhaps seventeen or eighteen years before. I certainly hadn't remembered this version of him. When he smiles, it splits his face almost completely, and he smiles a lot when he's not singing. He also jigs, which makes him seem like a Muppet version of Jimmie Dale Gilmore. The first several minutes onstage, he told stories, picked up his guitar and put it back down again, and threatened not to pick it up the rest of the show. It'll be there, he said, the audience would see it, but maybe he wouldn't use it. He played the Grateful Dead's “Althea” off the top of his head, which surprised even him. He apologized for the bad notes, but backtracked, saying, “Think of how many bad notes the Dead hit.” The new album is called Shine On, and you can find more info about that and Poltz on www.poltz.com, and find him on Facebook and Twitter under Steve Poltz. You can also find more about Club Passim at www.passim.org. And if you're intrigued by some of the music you heard in the background, that's Boston singer/songwriter Rachel Sumner, formerly of Twisted Pine, and you can find her stuff at www.rachelsumnermusic.com. I am currently putting together this year's Daily Horror Film Fest, for which I post a different short horror film every day in October. If you are a short horror filmmaker, or even if you just have a short horror film you love dearly, e-mail your suggestions to nick@nickzaino.com. And now for something completely different. Or maybe not. This week's featured track is "Comfort" from Secret Shame of Asheville, North Carolina, from their new album, out today, September 5th, called Dark Synmthetic. This new album would have sounded great in nestled somewhere in your collection with the Pixies, The Cure, and Nirvana. It's propulsive guitar rock, mixing glassy chorus and echo with heavy, distorted riffs to create this wide-open sound. From somewhere within that sound, singer Lena is trying to reach you through waves of reverb. Seven songs come in just under twenty-six minutes total. Not a note wasted. The band is kicking off a tour this week, and you can find them on BandCamp and Facebook to find out more.

This is the third and final interview I recorded at NECON 2019, which I have previously described as a mashup of a horror writers conference and summer camp with adult beverages. I attended NECON for the first time in 2018, and this week's guest, Matt Moore, was my roommate. Lucky for me, he is also a fine and thoughtful writer. His debut book is It's Not the End (and Other Lies), a collection of short stories about what Moore calls personal apocalypses. What Moore means by that is that these stories aren't necessarily about the apocalypse writ large with zombies or the annihilation of the human race, although it doesn't exclude those possibilities. They are more about a moment when a character is facing the end of their life as they have known it so far. There are elements of sci-fi, horror, and what has come to be known as speculative fiction. I would highly recommend picking it up. It is on the Toronto-based Chizine Publications, which has featured the work of some wonderful authors, including Gemma Files, Helen Marshall, Bracken Macleod, David Demchuk, Christopher Golden, Stephen Graham Jones, Paul Tremblay, Ed Kurtz, and many more. Moore and I took a deep dive on a few of the stories in It's Not the End, and also the craft of writing short stories. It's a magical art all its own, different from writing novels. Moore found a great quote for it, which he says in the conversation, “Short stories writers are like someone who knows how to make one cookie.” The stories in this book are concise, and they stop at exactly the moment the story is over. Which sounds obvious, but is a difficult thing to navigate in writing. Moore had another great quote for that he heard recently. “Perfection isn't when you can't add anything more, perfection is when you can't take anything more away.” Moore is currently working on a new novel, and I'm looking forward to see how he applies that to a longer work. I was happy to have gotten to read Moore's work and to have gotten to speak with him at NECON. You can hear a bit of the conference going on in the background. When we started the conversation, we were in an out-of-the-way spot where people weren't gathering. But there are giant bags of books that each attendee gets with their admission price, and people were scavenging the leftover bags behind us at one point. So you get a little bit of a feel for the festive and active atmosphere of NECON. Based on the joy of the folks around us, we got into a bit of the psychology of horror writers. You can find out more about Moore on his website at www.mattmoorewrites.com, on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook under @mattmoorewrites. You can find ChiZine Publications on their website at www.chizinepub.com. Also, if you make short horror films, we've got the Daily Horror Film Fest coming up in October, for which I present a new short horror film every day throughout the month. I am currently open for suggestions for your favorite shorts as I put together the 2019 edition. I will write about each one, and interview some of the filmmakers to give a bit more depth. Our featured track this week is “Windows of Halifax” by Steve Poltz from his new album, Shine On. I caught up with Poltz at Club Passim in Cambridge last week, and he will be the subject of next week's episode of the Department of Tangents. You will hear a bit about the background of this song in that episode. Poltz can write an earnest song or a write with a sense of humor, two things that can sometimes feel at odds, at least emotionally. There is a wistfulness in this song to start, but then you get to this kind of gonzo middle section, in which two windows are talking about their plight, and the unsavory occupants of their houses. Poltz was born in Halifax, spent a lot of time in California, and now lives in Nashville, and that means sometimes his accent changes in weird ways. You can hear that in the conversation between the windows on this song, and I am fairly sure I will never get the opportunity to write that sentence again. Find out more about Steve Poltz at poltz.com and on Twitter under @stevepoltz.  

This is the second interview I recorded at this year's NECON conference, which is part horror author's conference and part summer camp. It is with Scott Goudsward, a very busy fellow. I've been trying to catch up with him for months, but as you are about to find out, Scott has a lot of jobs. He has written two novels -- Fountain of the Dead and Trailer Trash -- and many short stories, co-edited a series of guidebooks based on horror landmarks with his brother, David Goudsward, and is editor or co-editor of many horror anthologies. The latest anthology is hot off the presses as of August, and it is called Wicked Weird, weird, Lovecraftian fiction from the New England Horror Writers Press. That is available as an ebook and in print as of August 23, and includes a short from J. Edwin Buja, whom I also interviewed at NECON for EP100 of the podcast. It isn't easy being an indie writer, or an indie publisher. Scott talks a bit about the perils of the independent publishing world, having to jump from one house to another with a project, and publishers folding before a book can get published. But we also talk about a lot more positive things, like how welcoming the New England writing community can be, especially at NECON. And we also talk about how to approach zombies and vampires without retreading all the old tropes, The Walking Dead, Midsommer, musical inspiration, and more. Find out more about Scott and buy his works at Goudsward.com. The new anthology is called Wicked Weird and is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble online, and other retailers, and you can find this and other compilations at NewEnglandHorror.org. This week's featured track is “Red Drum” by Boston rockers Reverse from their new album What's Your Problem. If you like dark, muscular guitar riffs and a creeping sense that the world is about to fall apart, this album is for you. The chorus to this one is, “Way up high/Windows in the sky/And the sun's gonna fall out/Wave goodbye/And I don't know why/There's a name I call out.” There's a terseness to the riffs that reminds me of Queens of the Stone Age. These songs just move. Sadly, this will be the last album by the band, as we lost singer/guitarist Ian Kennedy last year. If you buy the vinyl of What's You Problem, all of the proceeds go to Kennedy's wife and daughter. You can find the music on BandCamp under reverse6.bandcamp.com or search for the band name and the album title on CDBaby and other sources.  

Pornsak Pichetshote edited other people's books for DC for years before he attempted to write his own. He didn't give himself an easy out. His first series, now collected as a graphic novel, is Infidel, a horror story that explores xenophobia. It's hard enough to do horror and politics well separately without trying to combine them in a graphic format, but Infidel is a complex and nuanced story that grounds its truly terrifying ghost story in a very real world. What really brings out these elements is the collaboration between Pichetshote and artist Aaron Campbell, whose imagery and inventive approach is the perfect compliment to the story. The characters in Infidel are not simple caricatures of racists. Pichetshote set the story in New York to put it in a more liberal environment, politically. The setting is an apartment building in the aftermath of a bombing, where distrust is running high. Aisha, a Muslim woman living in the building, is living not only with that xenophobia, but a more supernatural menace, as well. Her boyfriend's mother, Leslie, who didn't like her at first, seems to welcome her now, and tries to comfort her. But her boyfriend, Tom, is cutting his mother less slack than Aisha. Aisha's best friend, Medina, was also raised Muslim but the two share different views of their faith. The supernatural element parallels the xenophobic threat, and together, they make for a socially pointed story that is also truly scary. Pichetshote and Campbell address their collaboration and how they put these different elements together. And we also get a bit of news about the new Hellblazer, which Campbell is illustrating. He gives us a bit of insight about the upcoming book and how DC is bringing John Constantine back to his roots toward the end of the conversation. Pichetshote also worked on Two-Sentence Horror Stories for The CW, which is new this month on their streaming service, and some comics work that he was unable to get specific about just yet. Infidel is published by Image Comics, and you can find that at www.imagecomics.com and at booksellers and comic shops everywhere. Follow Pichetshote on Twitter under @real_pornsak and Campbell under @olmancampbell. This week's featured track is a song I heard just the day before I put this episode together, but it fits perfectly with the themes in Infidel. The song is “So Say We All” from Landroid's upcoming album, Imperial Dunes, which is coming out September 13th. Landroid is the duo of Cooper Gillespie, who sings and plays guitar and bass, and Greg Gordon, who handles drums and sequencing. In the press release, Gillespie identified the inspiration for “So Say Well All,” the opening track on the album. “‘So Say We All' was written in reaction to the current political climate where immigrants are demonized,” she says. “The message is that there is no such thing as race; we all belong to one race: the human race.” Not only does the message fit with Infidel, so does the music with its dark, throbbing synth backbone and dream-like lighter strings and keys floating over the top. Find out more about Landroid and pre-order Imperial Dunes at landroud.bandcamp.com.

In early July, rumors started to surface that MAD Magazine was going to cease publishing new material and just reprint old stuff with new covers. MAD has been around since 1952 and has influenced multiple generations of smart asses. The eulogies came quick and heavy, and they're still coming, even though we've never gotten a terrible clearly statement about the magazine's future. Everyone seems so sure it's dead, but what happens next with the magazine seems far from certain. I loved MAD when I was a kid, and I'm the proud owner of a rejection letter from sending in a bunch of ideas years ago. It was a formative publication for me. But what is MAD Magazine now, and why save it? That's the question I asked of Michael Gerber, editor and publisher of the humor magazine The American Bystander, and Ian Scott McGregor, an actor and filmmaker with a very personal attachment to MAD dating back to the early 90s, when he began to meet and befriend the writers and publishers in New York. He has been giving out “Stay MAD” stickers and trying to rally readers to help save the book. Gerber is leading a team of investors trying to save it. Since MAD has been around so long, parodying popular culture all the way, this conversation wound up covering everything from the comics code and the Red Scare right up to the current administration and the magazine's recent “Ghastly Gun” Edward Gorey parody. The new issue of MAD Magazine, which might be the final one with new material, is out on stands now. You can find out more at madmagazine.com. And you can find The American Bystander at americanbystander.org, and McGregor at ianscottmcgregor.com. The site to help save MAD is savemadmagazine.com. This week's featured track is “Dance Through It,” a grooving and uplifting tune about perseverance from the band Twin Peaks. The video for this, which you can find on the Department of Tangents blog, is also a kind of horror movie, in that it features a woman who wakes up having been knifed in the back and stumbles bloody through public places in what looks like hidden camera footage. Yes, the visual metaphor is a bit heavy-handed, but the video is breezy and fun, despite that, and winds up being a perfect compliment to the song. She does, after all, dance through it. The new album is called Lookout Low, and will be available September 13. You can find them on the Web at https://twinpeaksdudes.com/

This is episode 100 of the podcast, and I thought about doing some sort of compilation of previous interviews, as I've done a couple of times in the past, to commemorate that. I decided against that for a couple of reasons. First, I haven't accomplished everything I want to with this podcast yet, so it's not time to celebrate. Hopefully, that comes later. Second, I have so many great interviews waiting to be released, I couldn't see delaying any of them by a week. And third, this week's interview is representative of one of my goals with the Department of Tangents, which is helping to amplify the good works of independent artists, whether they are musicians, comedians, authors, filmmakers, or work in a visual medium. And J. Edwin Buja fits that goal perfectly. I recorded this at the 2019 NECON conference, the same place I recorded last year's David Wellington interview. NECON is part horror conference, part summer camp. People get to know each other there, whether they are horror writers, cover artists, publishers, or just fans. J. Edwin Buja has been a regular at NECON for years, but this year, things were a little different. Buja has written about technology for a living and released a couple of children's books, but he has always attended NECON as a fan and friend, not a writer. This July, he released his debut novel, book one of his new series, King of the Wood, and he has a short story in the Wicked Weird collection slated for release in August. King of the Wood created a buzz at NECON, and Buja had a seat at the author's reception, signing his own newly-printed work. It's an ambitious horror novel, taking place in a small town that's about to be best by a religious cult and a malevolent nature spirit. That's in addition to the troubles planned by a corrupt town official who is trying to create his own little fiefdom. And it all starts when the protagonist, Tom, finds someone tied to a tree outside of his picturesque home on a hill. Not a big deal, usually, since people have been doing that as a prank for years. This time, the victim is dead, and the scene is more gruesome than whimsical. You'll hear in the conversation everything that went into writing and revising book one, and the plans for book two, as well as Buja's experience as a first-time novelist at NECON. The new book is King of the Wood, published by Haverhill House Publishing, which you can find at haverhillhouse.com on the Web. Watch this space for future episodes taped at NECON with authors Scott Goudsward and Matt Moore. TC&I is a reunion of singer/bassist Colin Moulding and drummer Terry Chambers, who released an EP called Great Aspirations in 2017. Their new album, out August 9, is Naked Flames: Live at Swindon Arts Centre. There are plenty of great XTC songs on the album, but this week's featured track is one of the new songs from the EP, “Scatter Me.” The song is beautiful, lyrically and musically, a sort of metaphysical consideration of what happens to us after we die and those we leave behind. The CD is called Naked Flames and can be purchased exclusively through the Burning Shed Web site at burningshed.com once it's available on August 9. Unfortunately, it looks like there are no further plans for the band to record or tour at this time, but based on the quality of this tune, I hope that changes, the sooner the better.  

This episode was originally planned to be a minicast, but when Lucette and I started diving into her songwriting and her new album, Deluxe Hotel Room, the conversation went a bit longer than I had thought. Which is fantastic, because it means you get to hear more from Lucette about how this album reflects more of her true self as a songwriter, her approach to the arrangements and lyrics, the idea that this is an Americana album lyrically and more of a synth-pop album musically, and how she worked with producer Sturgill Simpson. As she explains in the conversation, her debut album, Black Is the Color, was much more guitar-driven than Deluxe Hotel Room. It was a fine album and established her as a songwriter to watch, but she also wrote and recorded that when she was very young, and it didn't necessarily reflect the musical influences she cherished growing up. In between those two albums, she has done a lot of touring and been through hell personally. You can hear that in the isolation and disillusionment on the title track. Simpson, who was an early fan of Lucette's, just let her be herself in the studio. To hear more about her and keep up with tour dates and new releases, go to her website at www.lucettemusic.net, search for her on Facebook under lucettemusic, and on Twitter and Instagram under lucettesings. This week's featured track is “Tough Love” from Alaskalaska from their debut album The Dots, which came out in May. The first thing I loved about this track was the opening groove, laid back but with a subtle drive to it. And then the contradiction carries over into the lyrics in the opening, “Who gives a shit about anything lately? So glad to meet you?” Then the chorus comes on heavy before it drops back into the groove and that lovely skittering guitar solo around 1:20. Hard to beat a smart, catchy song with a sense of humor. Reminds me a bit of Letters To Cleo, if not in sound, in musical disposition. Check out the trippy video by animator Callum Scott-Dyson, too, which I'll post on the blog. Find out more about them on their website at Alaskalaskamusic.com or find them on Twitter under alaskalaskaband.  

I had been thinking a lot about how sound - the score and incidental music - effect the mood and even the story in horror movies and looking for a way to discuss that on the podcast when I came across the book Blood On Black Wax: Horror Soundtracks On Vinyl, written by this week's guest conversationalists, Aaron Lupton and Jeff Szpirglas. It is, as the name would imply, a guide to horror movie soundtracks, including scores and compilations, that can be found on vinyl. But it's also a history of the changing styles of horror films, a peek into the minds of composers like Jerry Goldsmith, John Carpenter, and Goblin, and an art book with beautifully rendered reproductions of album art work. The book covers everything from The Shining to Street Trash, from the incidental sound collage of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre to symphonic scores like Goldsmith's brilliant work on Gremlins. Both Lupton and Szpirglas review soundtracks for Rue Morgue magazine, and they have an expansive knowledge of their subject, and somewhat different tastes. Their descriptions can be fairly granular, down to describing common horror soundtracks instruments like the waterphone, which we talk about here. I'll post a demonstration of that instrument on the blog so you can hear it for yourself. They also talk about details like how good George Romero was at finding the perfect library-sourced music on a budget, how many genres of music horror soundtracks cover, the resurgence of soundtracks on vinyl, and even the complexities of reproducing soundtracks live with the movie playing on a screen behind the musicians. And I also ruin Avengers: Endgame for Aaron. Sorry, Aaron.. You can find Blood On Black Wax at all the good bookstores, and some record stores, and online in all the usual places. And you can also find more of their ongoing work in Rue Morgue magazine. I discovered this week's featured track while I was getting ready to produce this episode. I'd had another song in mind, which you will hear in a future episode, but this one is perfect for this episode. With its chaotic guitar riffs and punk attitude, it could easily be the lead single from a horror movie soundtrack. And it is, in a way, because the video is a short horror movie itself, featuring a young couple looking for a place for an amorous tryst in what looks like a creepy concrete warehouse, as young couples often do. And, also as young couples often do, they find themselves menaced by ghoulish employees who just won't let them be. Miss June's debut LP, Bad Luck Party, will be out September 6 on Frenchkiss Records. I think you'll be hearing a lot more from them. Keep track of them on their website, and you have to love this, at www.ihatemissjune.com, on Instagram also under ihatemissjune, and on Facebook under missjunenz.

If things had worked out as Lucy Isabel had originally planned, she would be firmly planted in New York right now, using the theater degree she got from Yale as a working actor. Instead, shortly after graduation, the New Jersey native left theater behind and moved to Nashville to become a touring singer/songwriter.If things had worked out as Lucy Isabel had originally planned, she would be firmly planted in New York right now, using the theater degree she got from Yale as a working actor. Instead, shortly after graduation, the New Jersey native left theater behind and moved to Nashville to become a touring singer/songwriter. She spends a lot of time on the road, which is partly why her new debut full-length album is called Rambling Stranger. A lot of the songs deal with Isabel traveling, or being in one place and thinking about another, playing music. There is adventure but also isolation in that life. To start her new life, Isabel and her now husband endured a long-distance relationship until her could join her in Nashville. The lyrics to “Lucky Stars” reflect that, as she sings, “I slept with my guitar in my arms last night/because I didn't want to think I was alone with you not home.” Her theater degree taught her how to tell other people's stories – now she is telling her own. And Isabel is a fast learner. You can hear the progression in Isabel's songwriting and performing from her two EPs, Along the Way and Kane, to the new album. The playing is more crisp, the imagery better defined and more evocative. I'm happy to have captured a couple of the songs as she played them in Boston at A Concert for Clean Water, a show sponsored by a local apparel company that donates some of their profits to efforts to clean up water supplies. You get to hear them stripped down here, but I would highly recommend checking out the studio tracks as well. this week's featured tracks, taken from Lucy Isabel's live You acoustic performance in Boston! When I first started this podcast, I was hoping to feature more tracks like this, intimate live recordings done at the site of the interview. That didn't work out as I'd hoped, so I'm glad to be able to present these to you. This is an edited mini-concert of sorts. I took three songs from the set – “Something New,” “How It Goes,” and “Don't Ask Me Why” – because I felt they flowed well together. go from a lighter touch to more of a rocker, and then “Don't Ask Me Why,” which is a piano song on the album, played on acoustic guitar. So you get to hear a different version of it here. Enjoy these three live renditions of songs from Rambling Strangers, and please do check out the studio album, as well. You can find Isabel on Facebook under @lucyisabelc, on Twitter under @lucyisabelmusic, and on her site at lucyisabelmusic.com.

If you want to make anything funnier, just add Lamont Price. It certainly made watching Godzilla a much more enjoyable experience, which is the point of much of this podcast. This one has been brewing for a couple of years, starting with a conversation we had after a more formal interview with Price when he organized the comedy portion of the Boston Calling festival a while back. We were going to talk about Ringo Starr as a drummer, the Beatles, and celebrate the history and vibe of P-Funk. Then I ran into Price at the movies when the Godzilla trailer was new, and we added that to the mix. Then P-Funk came to town and their farewell tour. We saw that, and then a couple weeks later, we made plans to see Godzilla and sit down immediately afterwards to talk about all of these things, just a few days shy of Ringo's birthday. We also flesh out what a Rambo vs Terminator crossover would look like. I'm glad we got all of these things in, but it doesn't even really matter what you talk about with Price. It's always an entertaining conversation. And Lamont will be back, hopefully around Halloween and Christmas, times of year that we both enjoy. Look for his Lamont's Boston segments on nbcboston.com, and find him on Twitter under @lpizzle and on Instagram under @lpizzle12, and on his site at lamontpricelive.com. This week's featured track is from next week's guest, Lucy Isabel. Isabel has a great backstory. A few years ago, Isabel left behind a degree in theater from Yale to move from New Jersey to Nashville and become a singer/songwriter. Her debut full-length album, Rambling Stranger, came out in June, and has produced a couple of great tracks like “How It Goes” and “Something New,” which both have official videos now. My favorite song on the album is “The Between,” which features the line, “Is there something between hitting big and just going home broke.” Isabel's got a great Americana sound, with disparate influences from Brandi Carlile to Judy Collins, and we explore that a lot more in the conversation next week. And there will be a couple of live tracks in next week's episode from her recent Boston show. Follow her on Twitter under @lucyisabelmusic, on her site at lucyisabelmusic.com, and also search for her on BandCamp.

It doesn't happen often, but sometimes in this job of talking to notable people, you get kind of a day off. You talk to someone with such a long history, with such a broad view of the world of entertainment, with so many stories, that your presence is barely required. That was the case with Christine Ohlman. I just needed to pitch a topic or two out there and get out of her way Since 1992, Ohlman has been the singer with the Saturday Night Live Band, watching generations of cast members from Adam Sandler up to the current cast with Aidy Bryant and Kate McKinnon. She's seen Sinead O'Connor tear up the photo of the pope, Alec Baldwin doing Trump, and everything in between. She can tell you about Paul McCartney and his band playing at rehearsal, dancing with Chris Farley, and all the private jams and cast parties. But SNL alone does not define her. She has shared a stage and/or recorded with just about anyone in the rock and pop world you can think of. She gave a nervous and incredibly polite Eddie Vedder permission to sing next to her backing up Neil Young on the Bob Dylan anniversary show. Elvis Costello, Ian Hunter, Levon Helm, Maceo Parker, George Harrison, Ronnie Spector, Lou Reed, Brian Wilson, Bruce Springsteen. She fronted Big Brother and Holding Company. She was almost in the B-52s. And when she's not backing up someone else, she's leading her own band, Rebel Montez, recording and gigging around the country. She's also a songwriter, with new music in the works after a long recording absence, and that was one of the most interesting parts of our conversation to me. When you've seen the inner workings of some of the best songs in the history of American popular music, as a collector and a collaborator, what happens when you sit down to figure out your own sound. You can find out more about her work at christineohlman.net, and you can find her on Twitter under @christineohlman. She'll be heading into the studio to record the new album this fall, so keep that in mind for 2020. This week's featured track is “Eggshells” from comedian Erica Rhodes' new album Sad Lemon. It's a very tight, well-written set of comedy, and I chose this track because it's one of the riffs we talked about when she was on the show in episode 91. In this track, she talks about her father and his Multiple Sclerosis, and how they can joke about it, but how audiences sometimes get a bit uptight about it. As I have mentioned once or twice on this show in the past, I have MS myself, and though it hinders me less than it does many others, there is still a bit of anxiety over how it might develop in the future. I'd like to think that if that next attack does finally come, I'd like to be able to have a sense of humor about my predicament the way Rhodes' father does, and that people would feel safe to mention it. There are a lot of tracks off the new album I could have used, but this one has a bit of a personal edge for me, and I hope you enjoy it, too. You can find out more about Rhodes at ericarhodescomedy.com and on Twitter under @ericarhodes and look for her on the upcoming NBC comedy competition Bring the Funny, which debuts July 9.

Face it. Bernard Fowler has a better job than you. Not only does he release his own solo work, like his new album, Inside Out, he has also toured the world singing with the Rolling Stones for more than thirty years. He first started working with Mick Jagger on his solo album, She's the Boss, in 1985. Producer Bill Laswell had told Fowler he had a job for him in London, but didn't tell him with whom until he got in the same room with Jagger. As he tells me, he was more than surprised. But he aced the job, so when the Stones were getting ready to record Steel Wheels, Fowler got the nod to sing in the studio and on tour. He took charge of his part in the recording, going so far as to tell the guys to stop rolling tape so he could make suggestions. He has been firmly ensconced in that world ever since, touring and recording on Stones albums and solo albums, and writing with Ronnie Wood. As he says, he's watched their children grow up. The new album is a tribute to the Stones done in a spoken-word style, which helps brings out the stories in the lyrics. And it's not just a greatest hits package. He does “Sympathy For the Devil, which you heard on last week's episode, but other than that, Fowler takes a deeper dive with cuts like “Dancing With Mr. D,” “Sister Morphine,” and “All the Way Down.” Fowler is happy to report that after his recent heart problems, Jagger is looking pretty spry onstage. And Fowler thinks the Stones are a better band now than they ever have been, and tells me why later in the interview. He says what he's mainly learned from the band is that if you love what you do, you can do it for a long time, and at a very high level. He also says there are a few songs on the new tour's set list that might surprise people. Although it's obviously a big part of his world, there's more to Fowler than his work with the Stones. “When I'm not singing for the Rolling Stones,” he says, “in my world, I'm the Mick Jagger.” Over the years, he's been a part of bands like Tackhead, Nicklebag (that's “bag,” not “back”), and Little Axe. He's also done session work on albums by Herbie Hancock, Bootsy Collins, Philip Glass, Duran Duran, Public Image, Ltd., and many others. We even talk about a short stint working with Steven Seagal, which Fowler was not at all happy I brought up, but I do love his reaction to that line of questioning. I spoke to him before a rehearsal with the Stones in London for the new tour, which kicks off this week at Soldier Field in Chicago. You can actually hear him getting his things together to go toward the end, and there are a couple of places where the connection dips a bit, but I hated to lose any of the great stuff Fowler was saying.

Nathan Ballingrud has a wonderfully demented imagination. He has a way of reaching into your brain and finding all of those creepy little corners where you hide the things that make you cringe and make your skin crawl. In his first collection of stories, North American Lake Monsters, there was a bit more realism in his stories and characters. Hulu has optioned that, and will start shooting an anthology series this summer. In Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell, he goes for broke, to the point where he was worried he might be going over the top. Not worried enough, though, to pull anything back. In “Atlas of Hell,” a decapitated skull allows a mob lackey fetch demons and objects from the underworld. In “The Diabolist,” a young girl is left alone in her scientist father's mansion when he dies with an imp trapped in a tank, and starts to fight back against the town that has always ostracized her. In “Skullpocket,” flesh-eating ghouls sponsor a deadly fair for children. In “The Visible Filth,” which is now a film called Wounds on the festival circuit starring Armie Hammer, Dakota Johnson, and Zazie Beets, a bartender in a New Orleans dive fights his own jealousy and a mysterious stranger who contacts him through a phone left behind at the bar after a fight. Nightmare creatures attack a town and flay its inhabitants to make giant, singing skin structures in “”The Maw,” and pirates take, quite literally, a journey to the shores of Hell in “The Butcher's Table.” I talked to Ballingrud about his inspiration for these stories, which included Stephen King and Mike Mignola, how they're all connected, the new film, and more. He finds all of this creepiness quite fun, which is good for us, because he's got more stories on the way, and a full-length book he's working on to release in 2021, which he says is set on Mars in 1930. You can find out more about his work on nathanballingrud.com and find him on Twitter under @NBallingrud. Our featured track this week is a cover of the Rolling Stones' “Sympathy for the Devil” from their longtime backup singer Bernard Fowler. This is a spoken-word version of the song, as are all of the Stones covers on the new album, Inside Out. Fowler has been singing with the Stones for more than three decades now, and had the idea that he could put the lyrics up front by covering the songs in this style. He started doing it at soundchecks on tour with the Stones, and told Mick Jagger at one point he planned to cut an album. Jagger apparently gave his blessing, and the album was born. Fowler is getting ready for the new Stones tour now, and I caught him before a rehearsal to talk about his album and his history with not only the Stones, but Herbie Hancock, Bootsy Collins, and more. Tune in next week for that. If you want to check out more of his work, you can find it on Spotify and check out his site at bernardfowler.com.

Jimmy Tingle is one of the first people I interviewed in the Boston comedy scene years ago. He was hosting and producing a stand-up show on race relations that featured, among others, Patrice O'Neal and Sue Costello. During my twenty years covering this scene, Tingle has always been a community-minded guy, whether it's been as a theater owner for five years or his Humor for Humanity comedy benefit shows. So it wasn't a surprise when he declared his candidacy for Lt. Governor of Massachusetts in the Democratic primary last year. He eventually lost, but garnered 41.3 percent of the vote as a first-time candidate in the primary. His new show, 20/20 Vision, recounts his campaign, surreal moments like having Matt Damon and Paula Poundstone record robocalls on his behalf, and presents some of his out-of-the-box ideas, like using exercise bikes as a power source or windmills near highways to power traffic lights. Tingle is a political comedian, but he's never been a fire-breathing, tear-it-all-down satirist. He's always been optimistic and upbeat. It is no easy feat to look at the divisions in this country and offer optimistic solutions. I sat down with Tingle in the Podcast Kitchen and asked him how he remains so hopeful, the one time I ever saw him get angry in a political discussion, about his early days in the Boston and New York comedy scenes, about the campaign, how recovery inspired his political bid, how he believes in government, his cameo on VEEP, and a lot more. You can find out more about where he's going to be and what he's up to at jimmytingle.com I am very pleased to present you with this week's featured tracks, excerpts from the audiobook of Nathan Ballingrud's latest collection, Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell. Ballingrud has a remarkable imagination and a delicious vocabulary. Take the subtitle seriously – these are lovingly rendered tales of the horrific. Severed heads with lolling tongues that induce a feeling of violence in anyone around them. Angels who tear apart their hosts to be born into this world. And child-eating ghouls. About that last one. You may have heard rumors about Jonathan Wormcake. About how he and his friends attacked the Cold Water Fair in 1914, what he does up there in that mansion, about how the children are drawn there by ghastly visions. Maybe some of it is true, but Wormcake is dying, and he'd like to set the record straight on a few myths about ghouls and how the Skullpocket Fair came to be before he goes. And that brings us to the beginning of “Skullpocket,” one of the six stories in Wounds. You can find him at nathanballingrud.com or on Twitter under @nallingrud. He'll be a guest on the podcast next week Audio excerpts courtesy of Simon & Schuster Audio from “Skullpocket”, read by Danny Campbell in the compilation WOUNDS by Nathan Ballingrud. Copyright © 2019 by Nathan Ballingrud. Excerpted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

If you have not heard Erica Rhodes's comedy, you have the perfect excuse to dive in on June 18, when her new album, Sad Lemon, comes out. Rhodes has been performing in some fashion since she was a kid, modeling at five and playing the voice of Garrison Keillor's conscience on Prairie Home Companion at ten. She was a dancer as a child, then dedicated herself to playing cello before discovering acting and attending the Atlantic Theater Conservatory. That's where she got some advice from David Mamet, that she needed to fix her voice if she was ever going to have a career, an experience that wound up as the subject of a joke on the new album. Turns out, she says, he was right. If Rhodes' voice, high-pitched and friendly-sounding, was a liability in acting, it's an asset in comedy. It allows her to speak honestly about subjects like aging, living alone, and revising your life's expectations and keep the mood light. There's a natural buoyancy in her stand-up. And she writes smart stuff. When you're thirty, you start talking about how you're old, she says. Then when you're forty and realize you really are old, you realize you could have been young for an extra ten years. Her mother is relieved that she never had to face abuse by Harvey Weinstein. “She's like, ‘I know you weren't ‘cause I told your father, if she had been, she'd be a lot more successful.'” Sad Lemon is Rhodes' first comedy album, but it is the work of a seasoned performer. The jokes are tight, the performance is loose, and you get to know some of who Rhodes is through her material. And she has only been doing stand-up comedy for roughly six-and-a-half years. Rhodes says she is not afraid to fail, a hallmark of any artist who wants to improve in their craft, and that has allowed her an accelerated growth rate as a comedian. She also loves language – as illustrated by her grammar material on the album – and that doesn't hurt either. We covered her beginnings in show business, acting in horror movies, and he dedication to her true craft, stand-up comedy. Look for her Sad Lemon on June 18. You can find out more about her on her website are ericarhodescomedy.com, or on Twitter under @ericarhodes. Our featured track this week is “Daylight Matters” from the new Cate Le Bon album Reward, which is out as of May 24 on the Mexican Summer label. When I first listened to this, to me, it had a kind of breezy, summer song vibe. If you're listening casually, responding to the laidback groove and Le Bon's airy vocals as she sings, “I love you, I love you, I love,” you might be forgiven for thinking this is a nice feel good track. If you're listening a little closer, you hear Le Bon is singing, “I love you, but you're gone/If I'm never going to see it again/It's too late now/Your money's lent/Dreams I've had and never shared/Sacrificed/The daylight matters.” There's a wistfulness that tugs at your heart. Take a look at the video, as well, which opens on a concrete building on what looks like a snow-laden field. A few shots later, you find out that it's a barren beach at low tide. Le Bon wanders around in a bright red hoodie, the brown grass turning momentarily green as she passes. It's a groovy, playful lament. Le Bon is heading out on tour in support of the album in June, and you can find the dates on her website at catelebon.com, and follow her on Twitter under @catelebon.

Carole Montgomery is 61, and she won't hesitate to mention her age onstage. That is somewhat unusual in an industry obsessed with youth. But Montgomery is proud of her age. She has been doing comedy for roughly forty years, slugging it out in the clubs and balancing stand-up and family. She told Forbes online she once had to leave her baby son with a bouncer while she did her set, and found the bouncer rocking him in his car seat afterwards, afraid to pick him up to comfort him. That's part of the experience of the comedians on the Funny Women of a Certain Age tour Montgomery has been producing for the past couple of years, which led to a Showtime special of the same name with Montgomery, Fran Drescher, Vanessa Hollingshead, Kerri Louis, Lynne Koplitz, and Luenell that premiered in March. I sat down with her when she came to Laugh Boston for a local edition of the tour, along with Boston comedians Christine Hurley and Andrea Henry. Christine Hurley has played the Comics Come Home benefit at the TD Garden with local luminaries like Lenny Clarke, with whom she frequently shares a bill, and Denis Leary. Andrea Henry was on Nickelodeon's Search For America's Funniest Mom, co-wrote the book Real Kids Jokes By Real Stand-up Comics with Myq Kaplan, and writes short films. Part of what makes this show so funny is the fact that, while all the comedians might have some shared experiences, their perspectives are all different. You'll get a taste of that in the following interview, taped in the Green Room of Laugh Boston after the show. You can find the Funny Women of a Certain Age special on Showtime and find out more about the tour on Twitter under @woacacomedy and on the tour's webpage at funnywomenofacertainage.com. You can find Montgomery at carolemontgomery.com and on Twitter under @nationalmom, Hurley at christinehurleycomedy.com and on Twitter under @churleycomedy, and find Andrea Henry at andreahenrycomedy.weebly.com. Our featured track this week comes from Lucette, and it's the title track from her latest album, Deluxe Hotel Room, which is available wherever you can get good music as of May 17. I first got the chance to see Lucette when she was opening up for Alejandro Escovedo in Portsmouth, New Hampshire at The Music Hall's more intimate blackbox room. She played an exquisite solo set on piano supporting her 2014 debut album, Black Is the Color, which was produced by Dave Cobb. I've been looking forward to her follow-up ever since. It turns out the past four years have been a fairly dark period in her life, and that's what the album is about. She mentions on Facebook that this track is a bit of a Rosetta Stone for the rest of the songs. “The title track itself pretty much encapsulates it all,” she writes, “it explains the past 4 or so years for me, and explains a lot of where the other songs came from.” She wrote it in Toronto, where she was put up for a gig in a hotel room she couldn't have afforded on her own, with a “massive deposit” on her credit card. She started humming, and then writing that song in that hotel room about how the experience made her feel small. Sturgill Simpson produced, and you can hear Lucette expanding her palette of sounds. You can hear the full album on Spotify, or find out more about it and Lucette's upcoming tour dates on lucettemusic.net.

There is so much to explore in Karen Haglof's career. She started out playing with a band called The Crackers in a Minneapolis scene that included Curtiss A, The Suicide Commandos, The Suburbs, and Flamingo before bands like Soul Asylum, the Replacements, and Husker Du put that scene on the map nationally. If, like me, you're unfamiliar with that bit of history, seek out a new documentary called Jay's Longhorn, for which Haglof is interviewed. It's the most Midwestern story you could imagine – a bunch of writers and musicians and fans deciding they want a punk and indie music scene, and then forming committees and canvassing neighborhoods to find places receptive to hosting music. And it worked. Haglof eventually left that scene to pursue music in New York City, where she joined Band of Susans and created some heavy music with fellow guitarist Paige Hamilton, later of Helmut. Haglof was a hired gun guitarist and working at restaurants when she decided she needed to grow up and have a career. She didn't choose an easy path. She went to med school eventually became an oncologist, a job she still does full time in New York City today. She had left music behind while she studied and made her way into her profession, but got the itch to play guitar again after seeing the guitar documentary It Might Get Loud with Jimmy Page, the Edge, and Jack White. This time, she started making music for herself and writing her own songs. The new album, Tobiano, shows a blossoming of Haglof's skills as a songwriter. The style and feel shifts from song to song, from the cool and groovy indie rock of “Tobiano Twirl” to the twang and train beat of “Humbled and Chastened,” the bouncy country of “Foothold” to the Jimmy Page-esque riffing of “These Are the Things” and the charging Velvets sound of “Favor Favor.” She enjoys the contrast, which is the story behind the title “Tobiano,” a term used to describe a horse with white and brown contrasting colors. You could apply that more universally to Haglof's life as a rock and roller and oncologist. She finds time for music and she's always writing down ideas, but she would never tour while she had patients to tend to. You can find out more about her work at karenhaglof.com and find her on Twitter under @karenhaglof. This week's featured track is “What Yer Doing To Me” from Florida's The Woolly Bushmen off their brand new album, In Shambles. Got to love that twangy reverb right off the bat on this track. It's a certified garage guitar rocker, and if the name Woolly Bushmen makes you think of Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs' hit “Wooly Bully,” you're in the right territory. Singer Simon Palombi has that same kind of bit and playfulness in his voice. The background vocals are also drenched in reverb here, which makes me think of that eerie sci-fi sound of the Pixies on “Where Is My Mind?” It's great new music for your hi-fi, and you can find it on BandCamp, which pays the artist a bit better than some other platforms, or Spotify and iTunes, and keep up with them on Facebook.

If you follow the Department of Tangents Blog, there's a good chance you've seen some of Christina Raia's work. I featured her delightful ghost story Hello on October 23 of 2017, and another of her horror shorts, Night In, a month later. This past November, Raia debuted a different kind of film for her, a heist film called Enough with an ensemble cast. Raia says she loves to direct horror, and she's got a new horror short called “Gaze” and a new horror/comedy feature called “Silent Night” in the works. But she also hates to be pigeonholed to any particular genre or style. Which is why on May 7, she released a feature-length family dramedy she directed called About A Donkey, written by Kelsey Rauber. You can find it on Vimeo now, and look for it on Amazon Prime and Seed & Spark in June. About a Donkey (Official Trailer) from CongestedCat Productions LLC on Vimeo. When matriarch Ann Owens announces to her husband Tim and three adult children, Celia, Burgh, and Annie, that she has been diagnosed with depression, no one is surprised. Ann has been keeping to herself for a while, and the kids treat the announcement with humor. What does surprise everyone is Tim's announcement that he has bought a donkey, one with deep brown eyes, just because he'd always wanted one. And he thinks it'll help. Mostly it will help Tim feel a bit more useful, having something to take care of now that his kids are grown up and he can't figure out how to help them with their problems. It's a charming comedy, born out of a desire to quietly counter an increasingly combative and unkind social and political climate. I spoke with Raia about this film and her short films, what horror and comedy have in common, Jordan Peele's work, and, of course, donkey wrangling. What good podcast doesn't include a chunk about donkey wrangling? You can find out more about her and her movies at congestedcat.com and find her on Twitter under @Craia9. You can also find Congested Cat on Twitter under @CongestedCat. And if you liked this or any other episode of the Department of Tangents Podcast, please subscribe and/or give us a positive rating on iTunes and Stitcher. This is one of the best ways to let other people know they should tune in and give us a try. This week's featured trackis "Tobiano Twirl" by next week's interview guest, songwriter, guitarist, and full-time oncologist Karen Haglof. Haglof has a great story to tell, starting in the Minneapolis music scene and moving to New York to join Band of Susans before leaving music to study medicine. About ten years ago, inspired by the documentary It Might Get Loud, she picked up her guitar again after a decade of it gathering dust and started making beautiful music in a variety of styles – heavy, bluesy, twangy, folky, indie angular. This week's conversation was About a Donkey, our song is about a horse, particularly one with a white and brown coloring. Or it's about driving a racecar. Or both. You'll have to tune in next week for the full story and more about the new album, Tobiano.

I have been working on this one since last fall when I saw Jim Breuer at the Comics Come Home benefit show in Boston. For those of you unfamiliar with the event, it's an annual event hosted by Denis Leary with an all-star lineup of stand-up comedians, many of whom have local ties. Lenny Clarke is there every year, and the 2018 edition featured Brian Regan, Robert Kelly, Jessica Kirson, Billy Gardell, and Christine Hurley, who will be a guest on next week's full episode. Since it's a benefit for the Cam Neely Foundation for Cancer Care, there are often a few life-affirming moments. Breuer's set last year was exactly that, but in a strange way. He talked about how he wanted people to celebrate life, and when he's dead, throw a party. Shoot his body out of a cannon over a lake and have fireworks and music. That's not a new sentiment, but coming from Breuer, it was beautiful. The man has been through hell losing his father after a battle with Alzheimer's and a stroke and then sister to cancer five weeks later in 2014. To top it off, his wife is also battling cancer. That's enough to make anyone a bit cynical. Those tough times have had an influence on Breuer's comedy, in a completely positive way. You can hear it on his new album, Live In Portland, which, as mentions in this interview, he didn't even intend to make. He hadn't planned this material as a special, necessarily – he doesn't even remember exactly what he said. Breuer is still as playful and silly as ever, but from a new perspective. He's grateful for what he has, and even what he's lost. Also for opening for Metallica on tour, and even that fits the theme. Those guys aren't getting any younger, either. The conversation was delayed by Breuer's schedule and some of my own health issues, but I'm so glad it finally happened. You can find out more about the album and find out if he's coming to a venue near you at www.officialjimbreuer.com.   The Clips: “Seeing Metallica Now” “51 Years Old” “Nursing Home” “Holding Dad” “The Cardinal”

If Nat Freedberg's voice sounds familiar, it may be because you've heard him on this podcast way back on EP32, when I interviewed his band, The Upper Crust. Of course, back then, he wasn't speaking as Nat, he was speaking as his character, Lord Bendover, the snarling 18th century aristocrat in a powdered wig and finery that wielded his Gibson SG like a rocque n' roll weapon. That band got some national exposure on the late night talk show circuit, opened for Tenacious D, and, as Nat mentions here, nearly had their own reality show. Freedberg was somewhat relieved when that didn't work out, and he's very happy to talk as himself here, avoiding the pressure of having to improvise as a character that was a lot more fun to play onstage than off. Unfortunately, The Upper Crust is no longer a going concern, on a kind of permanent hiatus. The good news is, that means we get Freedberg's first solo album after almost forty years rocking in bands like the Satanics and the Titanics in the Boston scene. And it's worth the wait. The adjective that pops up most in reviews of Freedberg's Better Late Than Never is “tasty,” and that's well deserved. It's still a rock album, but one with a lighter touch. Guitar drenched in rich tremolo weaves around electric piano on the opening track, “Devil Rockin' Man.” There's a more earnest, occasionally optimistic tone that Lord Bendover would never cop to on songs like “Only Takes A Minute,” “If That's the Way You Want It,” and last week's featured track, “Something Good About Love.” The biggest thing that doesn't change is those sweet, sweet riffs. Freedberg is skilled at filling the spaces between phrases with melodies and lines that really connect all the pieces and keep you humming long after the music stops. The album almost didn't happen when Freedberg suffered nerve damage and wasn't sure he'd be able to play again. He recovered with a new dedication to get these songs out into the world, and he's already working on the follow-up album. You can find more about the new album on Rum Bar Records' BandCamp site, and find more of Freedberg's stuff on his BandCamp site, and find more about The Upper Crust at www.theuppercrust.org. This week's featured track is “Colonoscopy Pt. 1” from Jim Breuer's new album, Live From Portland. I caught Breuer at last year's Comics Come Home benefit in Boston where he did an inspiring riff on life and death. Things got complicated over the holidays, but I finally caught up to speak with Breuer for a minicast that will be out next week about love and mortality, two themes which figure heavily on the new album. You get the tiniest of hints of that in this track. Colonoscopies are necessary, yes, but not fun. Unfortunately, I speak from experience on that account, but we'll leave that topic be so you can enjoy this instead.

If you are a fan of music or comedy, you should already know Geoff Edgers. He was a longtime arts writer with The Boston Globe before moving to The Washington Post, where he has written some extraordinary pieces on Roseanne Barr, Chevy Chase, Norm Macdonald, and the article that his new book, Walk This Way, is based on. He makes it clear he is a reporter, not an analyst. So what you get from his writing is the facts about fascinating subjects. You hear from both Chase and his detractors. You see text exchanges between him and Macdonald. You see Roseanne speaking publicly in Israel. He doesn't have to dress up a story because he knows how to show you the most interesting and relevant parts. There are some who say the subtitle to Edgers's book, Walk This Way: Run-DMC, Aerosmith, and the Song That Changed American Music Forever, is hyperbole. I can attest that it is not. I was in seventh grade when the Run-DMC/Aerosmith version of “Walk This Way” came out, and I could see the impact firsthand, starting with myself. We discuss this in the conversation, but I can tell you I was a kid who didn't think rap was music because it didn't have guitars or “real instruments.” That made me a prime target producer Rick Rubin wanted to reach, and it worked. Not just on me, but others I knew as a kid who reacted to that song the way I did. It opened up my world a bit, and if that didn't happen knowingly for everyone, it did make them shake their ass, which is a damn fine start. The conversation picks up with Edgers in his home office talking about a Clash podcast narrated by Chuck D, and how the timeline for how music changed from the 60s to the 80s moves so briskly. You can find him on Facebook and Twitter, read his work in The Washington Post and The Boston Globe, and find Walk This Way at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Powell's Books, and all the hippest booksellers. This week's featured track, “Something Good About Love” by Nat Freedberg. Some of you might know Nat better as Lord Bendover from The Upper Crust, guest on EP32 of the Department of Tangents Podcast and hard-hitting purveyors of rocque n' roll who performed for years in their powdered wigs and finery. Freedberg has taken off the golden coat, but he still wields his Gibson SG, and he has put out an incredibly tasty solo album called Better Late Than Never. I don't want to give too much away before next week's episode, when you can hear about the Crust and this, Freedberg's first solo album in nearly forty years of recording music. But your homework is to listen to it in full, with all of its wonderful surprises, so you can full enjoy the episode.  

This is the last of the four podcasts I taped last November at the NorthEast Comic Con and Collectibles Extravaganza, which happens twice a year out in Boxborough, Massachusetts. Philo has had a long and varied career, and we get into his resume straight away in the interview and drill down from there. You've seen his animation work on Disney's The Little Mermaid, The Smurfs, Super Friends, and more. You may even have heard his voice if you're a fan of early animated video games, but I will make you listen to find out more about that. Barnhart comes from a family of animators – mother Phyllis was an animator and cel painter, and Philo used to go with his dad Dale when he worked as a background artist for Disney. Which is how he was nearly the voice of Winnie the Pooh. We are also both huge Yellow Submarine fans, which I enjoyed exploring with him. He is a delightful and colorful conversationalist. You can find out more about his work at www.silverphoenix.net, or search for him on Facebook. And you can find out more about Northeast Comic Con's guests and schedule at NEComicCons.com, or search for them on Facebook and Twitter. This week's feature track is “Permanent Crush” from Matt York's upcoming album, Bruisable Heart. York is an exceptional songwriter and performer, which you already know if you heard him on EP49 of the podcast and checked out his music. I've had the pleasure of playing with Mr. York on a few occasions, and I can tell you, he is a prolific and musically restless fellow. I've heard a couple of different versions of this song and some of the others he's working on, and you're in for a treat when the final album drops early this summer. Look for news about that and York's other work at mattyorkmusic.com and on Facebook and Twitter.  

If you are used to our usual theme song, do not adjust your iPod at the beginning of this episode. This week, we open music from this week's guest conversationalist, Micropixie. It is the title track to her latest album, Dark Sight of the Moon, and yes she does realize that sounds like another album you may have heard of. Throughout this episode, you will hear a few other songs sprinkled into the mix, including “Nocturnal Concrete Mountaineering” from her first album, Alice In Stevie Wonderland, as well as “New Year's Day” and “Back To Our Future” from the new one. Micropixie is one alter ego of musician, artist, and self-identifying intergalactic pop tart Neshma Friend. Micropixie is an alien come to Earth to study humans, perplexed at our behavior towards one another. She is not alone. Friend's other alter ego, Single Beige Female, isn't having a good go of it, either. Through the eyes of these characters, Friend is both pointed and playful, taking on weightier topics like gender politics and global conflict. And she does all of that over instrumental tracks that are laidback and groovy. As I say later on in this interview, this is definitely headphone music, ideal for a good set of old fashioned cans on a home stereo. Or these days, some noise-cancelling headphones Bose or Beats. Either way, this music demands your attention. We start the conversation talking about one of Friend's earlier jobs, exchanging currency for tourists in Paris, which she did not enjoy nearly as much as making music. You can find out more about what she's up to at micropixie.com, and search for her on Facebook and Twitter. She's be hosting an album release party at Hyde Street Studios in San Francisco on April 9. Dark Sight of the Moon will be available as a BandCamp exclusive on April 12 and will get a wider release on April 26. Our featured track this week comes from comedian Jess Salomon, whom you may remember as our guest on episode 54 of the Department of Tangents Podcast. Salomon has an interesting back story. Before she started comedy, she studied law and worked for a U.N. tribunal on war crimes. A Canadian transplant, she now lives in New York, where she recorded this album in November at the New York Comedy Club. Her comedy can be political, but also a bit silly, as you'll hear on this track, “Duels.” The album is called All the Best Choices, and it was released earlier this week. Find out more about Jess at www.jesssalomon.com, and look for her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

I interviewed Daniel Sloss a few weeks back for the Boston Globe when he came to town with his new show X, a deeply funny and sometimes devastating look at masculinity and the #MeToo movement. You can find that piece in the archives at bostonglobe.com in the February 21 edition. There are two segments I wanted you to hear that didn't make the final story. The first is about offensive jokes, and the second is about “dad jokes,” some of the dumb things that make Sloss laugh, and why didn't wind up being a squeaky clean TV comic. Sloss has never been one to shy away from a joke that might offend someone. He's not looking specifically to offend anyone, but he loves making an audience uncomfortable. I asked him about this, and he had a great response, much of which was unprintable for the Globe. Sloss has a tendency to say he's not very smart, even though he has a lot of what I think is pretty smart material. He was quick to say that while he is a curious person and might study a subject to inform himself, he never went to university and he can't change a fuse. He also talked about the silly and stupid things that make him laugh, something I have found isn't uncommon amongst even the sharpest of comics. He now appreciates his dad's humor because he sees how it tortures others the way it tortured him as a kid. We also spoke about how some of his first big breaks came from television appearances for which he had to work clean, and how he had to leave that behind to become the comic he is now. To find out more about Sloss, his Netflix specials, and where he'll be appearing next, go to www.danielsloss.com.  

This week's episode is a conversation with Michael Gerber, publisher and editor of humor and satire magazine The American Bystander. There are hundreds, maybe thousands or more places to get satire and humor online. But The American Bystander is the one place dedicated to it in print. You can subscribe to a PDF version, but everything flows from the print version – its design and construction are part and parcel of its identity. It's a throwback, most recognizably to The National Lampoon, but in a long tradition that included magazines like Punch and Spy. This is the vision of the magazine's publisher and editor, Michael Gerber. Gerber and I spoke about this long tradition, and the Bystander's impressive array of contributors, including Michael Ian Black, Al Jean from The Simpsons, Merrill Markoe from Letterman, Drew Friedman from MAD, M.K. Brown from the Lampoon, and even former US Poet Laureate Billy Collins. You can probably tell from that list that the Bystander isn't established on the sense of humor of just a few people controlling everything. It casts a wide net in terms of format and sensibility. That's something Gerber believes will make it more durable and not seem quite as dated as its predecessors when, somewhere down the road, we look back on these early years of its existence. Of course, Gerber had a life before Bystander as a humorist, author of many books including the Barry Trotter series of Harry Potter parodies. We talk about his own history, and even touch on his changing attitude towards horror as a former fan, and how similar humor and horror can work in a mechanical sense. That's mixed up in a discussion of the difference between your comedy brain and your regular, every day brain, and how the comedy brain can be more reductive and in some cases, even cruel. Gerber has a lot to offer, and the conversation skitters into a lot of different corners. This likely won't be the last time we speak for this podcast. You can subscribe to and support The American Bystander through its Patreon account, which you can find at www.americanbystander.org. Start looking for issue ten next week, and you can keep up with the latest American Bystander news on their Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This week's featured track is “Como Minimo” by next week's guest Micropixie from her upcoming album, Dark Sight of the Moon, out April 9. Micropixie, an alter-ego of Neshma Friend, is an outsider character, an alien come to Earth trying to understand why we treat each other so poorly. I say “an” alter-ego instead of “the” alter-ego, because Neshma also inhabits Micropixie's Earthling counterpart, Single Beige Female, a woman trying to grow and prosper amid her own struggles to understand her fellow humans. We go in-depth on these characters on next week's episode, and she explains this much, much better than I do. I would strongly suggest listening to all of Micropixie's music with a nice pair of headphones so you can get the full effect of the layered sound, and so you can catch everything she has to say. This particular song is a good example of that. “Como Minimo” translates to “at the very least,” or “at the minimum,” and the message is “yes is the minimum.” In other words, fellas, you need to do more. As Micropixie sings, if the mantra is “boys will be boys,” that will eventually turn into “men will be creeps.” But it's just locker room talk right? Which is boorish at best. The Department of Tangents Podcast with Micropixie is out next week, and the album Dark Sight of the Moon is out April 9th. ‘Til then, enjoy this preview.  

I first became aware of Ted Drozdowski when I was working at the Boston Phoenix, reading his reviews and features as I helped to transfer them from the print edition to the Web. It wasn't until later, when I put together a benefit show and Ted stepped in as a player and an organizer, that I really got to see how powerful a guitar player and songwriter he was and is. Then I got to see how he put the two together, doing a show on the history of the blues at a local museum, and using his guitar to illustrate different periods and styles. For years, Ted has led recorded and gigged with his project, Scissormen. But with this new album, Coyote Motel, he has expanded his musical landscape. There are more players, deeper textures, more ambitious songwriting. The psychedelic sounds from previous work are at the forefront here, which you might have heard on last week's featured track, “Still Among the Living.” He's also still a prolific music journalist, now an editor with Premier Guitar. If you're a guitarist and gearhead, you've likely read his stuff in the magazine's excellent “Rig Rundown” series. You will hear about all of that and more in this conversation, as well as Ted's heartfelt explanation of what moving to Nashville has done for him, as a musician and a human being. You can find out more about Coyote Motel and all of his work at teddrozdowski.com, on Twitter at @scissormen, and on Facebook under Scissormen. The featured track this week is an excerpt from Sarah Moss's new book, Ghost Wall. It's a short read, and a short audio – just under four hours – but this is a thick and thorny story. The set-up is that a family of three has joined an anthropology professor and a handful of students on a field trip in the North of England to live as the inhabitants would have in the Iron Age. Teenaged Silvie and her mother are just passengers here for father's obsession with a time when England was, in his estimation, pure. He insists that Silvie and her mother adhere to the rules of the age, even if the land and local conditions have changed to make that impossible. Silvie's father uses Iron Age mores as a cudgel and a means of control, a way to shame Silvie and her mother into obedience. Her father is never proud of her unless she is acting as an avatar for his limited view of the world. But out amongst these college students, especially the free-spirited Molly, Silvie is finding her own philosophy, her own sexuality, her own self. The studies become metaphors for the dangers of nationalism, racism, gender inequality, and romanticizing the morals of a bygone era. The locals used to sacrifice what they love most to the bog, and build walls topped with skulls and bodies to scare off the enemy – their “most powerful magic,” as it's referred to in the book. We pick up the story here as Silvie is returning from foraging to find her father and the professor talking around the fire. You can find the book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powell's, or your local bookstore, and the audio on Audible.

This is an inadvertently Nashville-themed edition, as featured interview subject, comics artist/creator and musician Guy Gilchrist, and the musician behind this week's featured track, Ted Drozdowski, ply their trades in Music City. And for the second week in a row, the featured guest has a Jim Henson connection. A bit from his bio – Gilchrist created the Muppets comic strip and worked on Fraggle Rock and The Muppet Babies. But he also took over the comic strip Nancy for a number of years and worked on cartoons from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to The Pink Panther. And if that weren't enough, he's also an accomplished singer/songwriter. Which is why I brought my guitar, in case I could convince him to play a tune or two. Which he does just before the conversation begins, and then later, in separate segment, at his booth at the NorthEast Comic Con and Collectibles Extravaganza. I was fortunate to sit down with Guy in front of a live audience at the Con, and Gilchrist was also one of the first people I met there. We talked at his booth where he was doing custom drawings for fans. He looked down at my laminate and said, “You're underdressed.” I handed him the laminate, and he drew Kermit in a Red Sox cap. The Sox are his favorite team, and since they had just won the World Series, Gilchrist was in a great mood. It makes sense he would appreciate such a pastoral game. It became clear to me as we spoke how much he treasures gentleness and how much he sincerely wants to help make the world a more loving place. Just don't mention zombies to him. You can hear for yourself why. He is passionate and irrepressible. I directed this interview the way a bumper directs a pinball. “That's why they have a panel with just me,” he says at one point. “Everybody gets pissed off.” Later on in the Con, I went back to Guy's table to try to get him to sing one of his own songs. I didn't get that, but I did get him singing “Poor Jenny,” originated by the Everly Brothers, which you'll hear in the short second segment. You can find out more about him at www.aguygilchristproduction.com, or search for him on Facebook and Twitter. And you can visit Guy at the NorthEast Comic Con this weekend, March 15-17, in Boxboro, Massachusetts. And thanks as well to Gary Sohmers for allowing me to tape my first live episodes at the Con. I've got one more, with artist and animator Philo Barnhart, coming up in the next few weeks. This week's featured track is "Still Among the Living,” from Ted Drozdowski's new album, Coyote Motel. It's an evolutionary step forward from what Drozdowski has been doing with his band, Scissormen. It's more psychedelic, more textured, and at times, more emotional. I don't want to say too much about this, because Ted is the guest on next week's episode and you'll get to hear the story behind this track directly from him. I will say the reasons I chose this track, which opens the album, are that I love the main lyrical conceit, “I'm here, so you're still among the living,” he sings, and because it features Ted's epic guitar playing. It's out It's out now, and you can find it on CDBaby, so pick it up!

Greetings and welcome back to the Department of Tangents Podcast! We are turning 80 today with this episode, featuring an interview with writer, puppet creator, producer, and all around problem solver Bill Diamond, whom I interviewed live back in November at the NorthEast Comic Con & Collectible Extravaganza, which is happening again next week out in Boxboro, Massachusetts.  Diamond had a wonderful room full of puppets, from a giant Audrey II used in stage productions of Little Shop of Horrors to a Vincent Price puppet to his own creation, the Moonshins, which he is resurrecting as a television series in the near future. Diamond worked with Jim Henson early in his career, but he always wanted to run his own operation. Which is what he does as head of Bill Diamond Productions which does everything from Diamond's own shows to windshield wiper commercials. We get into the nuts and bolts of that in front of an audience at the Con. Diamond faces a new challenge every day at work, which is how he likes it. He says you could never pin him down to doing the same job forever.  This week's feature track comes from the tuneful crunch and swagger of Teardrop City. I had a very hard time choosing which track to feature from the band's new album, It's Later Than You Think. Every track is a winner. It's headed up by Tyler Keith, who I remember from Tyler Keith and the Preacher's Kids hard rocking album Romeo Hood. Keith had left the Neckbones and recruited Blue Mountain to back him under the name Preacher's Kids. We're actually just a week out from the album's 18th birthday, as it was released February 27, 2001. That's relevant here because two of the Preacher's Kids – Laurie Stirratt and George Sheldon – are Teardrop City members. The quartet is rounded out by drummer Wallace Lester.  If you liked Romeo Hood, you can probably just bypass my spiel and go right to the song. You won't be disappointed. But if you don't know Keith or Blue Mountain, you're in for a treat. I'm playing the title track, “It's Later Than You Think,” a gloriously ragged tune with plenty of hooks. Stirratt and Keith trade vocals throughout the album, and this one is Keith caught somewhere between Frank Black's spleen-letting and Mick Jagger's cool. It's about, what else? Love gone wrong. You can find out more about the band and the album on Facebook at teardropcityoxfordms or on Twitter at @teardrop_city. Pick it up!  This is the first Department of Tangents episode in a couple of months, and for those of you who have been looking forward to new stuff and wondering what happened, I had a hell of a couple of months. I've been recovering from an illness that put me in the hospital twice. It took a lot of energy to get through it, and I decided the forced break might be a good thing. I spent some of that time gathering more interviews and music, comedy, and book excerpts for the featured track. Thanks to everybody for listening, I appreciate your support.