Podcast appearances and mentions of Chris Walla

Bootgaze, freak folk, whatever you want to call it, it's no secret country-leaning indie rock is having a major moment. So much so, it's becoming increasingly challenging to stand out in the ever-growing popular “genre.” Chicago's Ratboys met that challenge with their most transformative record yet. Recruiting acclaimed indie rock producer Chris Walla, The Window combines the perfect amount of twang and punchy riffs to create swelling, cinematic moments that the settle into comforting, front porch-sitting familiarity.Watch Ratboys perform “It's Alive,” “Black Earth, WI” and “Country” live at WNXP's Sonic Cathedral here. 

https://irishstartupweek.com/ Calling all Irish founders and New York tech enthusiasts! This episode is your one-stop shop for everything Irish Startup Week NYC 2024. We delve into this exciting event designed to bridge the gap between the Irish and NYC startup ecosystems. First, we chat with Chris Walla, formerly of Dogpatch Labs and the mastermind behind Irish Startup Week. Chris shares the inspiration behind the event, highlights from the successful 2023 edition, and what attendees can expect this October. He also offers invaluable advice for Irish startups looking to scale in the US and make the most of their Irish Startup Week experience. Next, we hear from Marie Toft, founder of Emotionise.AI, who attended the 2023 event. Marie provides a firsthand perspective, discussing the event's impact, the connections she made, and how she plans to leverage them to propel Emotionise.AI forward. Plus, she shares tips to help attendees get the most out of Irish Startup Week NYC 2024. Whether you're a seasoned founder or a curious entrepreneur, this episode will equip you with the knowledge to: Understand the vision and goals of Irish Startup Week NYC. Learn from the experiences of past attendees and organizers. Discover key takeaways and success strategies for Irish startups in the US market. Gain insights on maximizing your networking opportunities at the event. Don't miss out on this opportunity to connect with the vibrant Irish and NYC tech communities! Tune in and get ready to take your startup journey to the next level!

This week on our Friday bonus episode the boys sit down with Josh Finlayson to pick his brain on working with Gord and creating the wonderful music they did together inside and outside the Country of Miracles.Transcript:Track 2:[0:17] Hey, it's JD here, and we're back again for a special bonus episode here on Discovering Downey. This is a really exciting one to share this week. It is with Josh Finlayson, who you've got to admit was one of Gord's shadows during his solo career and really extended that friendship onward into just a wonderful partnership. Partnership i won't waste too much of your time going into details because the boys craig justin and kirk are sitting around the table right now with mr finlayson and they are amped to get this interview into your ear holes i will say one more thing though we are getting very excited about our event july 19th tickets are on sale at discovering downy.com get them while you can they are 30 $30 for a ticket or $50 for a pair or hey, if you've got a group of friends that want to come out, you can save big bucks and get 10 tickets for $200. That's $20 a ticket or $10 off the single price. We've got some fantastic prizes that we are getting ready to announce for the silent auction. And of course, you'll see the almost hip and our special interview with Patrick Downey on the finale of Discovering Downey. Before we get into the interview, I'm going to spin a special track for you. This is the Sky Diggers, of which Josh Finlayson is in, along with Andy Mays and several others. They are going to get into some Sky Diggers talk in this conversation, no doubt. So let's listen to their version or rendition of Depression Suite before we head into the interview with Mr. Finlayson. See you on the other side.Track 7:[5:27] Welcome everyone to a very special episode of Discovering Downey. My name is Kirk Lane and I'm going to be here with our good buddies Justin St. Louis and Craig out in Vancouver. We're really excited today to have a very special guest, Mr. Josh Van Laysen from, well, from the Sky Diggers, I think is well most of you will know him from. But in regards to this adventure, Josh was very involved with several of Gord's solo albums that we have been discussing here on the pod. And uh we're just really excited to have him on board and just really talk about the his musical journey and and then obviously how it relates with his experience with with gourd solo projects not only with the recorded albums but also from a live perspective so um we've got lots of uh interesting topics and things we want to talk about and we're really thankful that he took took some time to join us today so welcome josh.Track 5:[6:28] Thank you thanks for having me yeah.Track 7:[6:31] I mean i guess i want to start with something that was recent and you had a pretty uh looked like a pretty good bill recently in a gig in toronto with uh with with your band the sky diggers and the sadies and paul and was band so i i think the group would love to hear a little bit about how that that went and and some of the other shows that you guys have been able to do together.Track 5:[6:54] Well we uh we um we played at a venue in toronto called the concert hall which is which is a venue that it's a it's actually a masonic hall and was built i'm not sure when i'm i'm assuming probably, late 1800s early 1900s it's right it's very close to young young and bluer um it's right downtown but it was used as a venue uh in the 60s um it was uh it wasn't the concert hall at that point it was called uh something else it just escapes me right now but i know led zeppelin played there like early days one of their first uh shows in toronto and many other acts you know like it's a pretty storied venue I saw I saw the stray cats there I saw it admit like that would have been 1982 Wow I know the the English beat played there the jam REM like tons of bands played there in the in the 80s and into the 90s there was the the hip did a.Track 5:[8:09] I think at the end of the Up to Here tour, they did a show there. And then they did three shows at the beginning of Road Apples. And I remember those shows. I was at at least two of them. And they were amazing shows, very memorable.Track 5:[8:30] And we actually had a show scheduled there in 1995 and had to postpone it. But it's a long story, but we had to reschedule it. And then it closed for a long time. It stopped. It was actually leased by a television station up here, and they filmed live television events there. So it stopped being a venue. And it just reopened, I think, in the fall of last year. And a friend of ours is booking the room. And so we thought it would be great to play there. It's about a 1,200-seat room. It's not huge, but it's a very cool room. And so we asked Paul Langlois, who we'd done four or five shows with in March and April of this year, shows that had been rescheduled in the fall. He fell and broke.Track 5:[9:28] A few ribs in the fall um and then we also asked the sadies to join us and the sadies are, uh old friends as well so it was a it was a very special night it's a great venue it was uh it's a lot of fun it's a great sounding venue it looks great and uh we did a bunch of collaborations as we had done with paul and uh i you know we've known the sadies for since they started actually Actually, I met Travis and got to know Travis when he was playing with his dad's band, the Good Brothers, in the early 90s. When this guy Deere started playing, we did some shows with the Good Brothers. And that's how I got to know Travis before he joined his brother Dallas in the 80s with Sean Dean and Mike Belitsky. And yeah, so that's kind of the background of that. I did lots of collaborations with the 80s and with Paul.Track 7:[10:22] We did.Track 5:[10:23] Some hip songs we uh did some covers uh yeah it was fun good night i.Track 7:[10:29] I really love seeing uh as we've gone through this like the connection that many of the canadian bands have and and the the gigs they do together and then the projects that they do together and and i that's been really great to me to see that community and uh i mean i guess you see it a little down down here in the States, but not to the extent that I think you guys have been doing it. And it's been really exciting to see all that and be a part of that. Let's go back to the beginning and you and your musical journey. If you wanna give us just a bit of a history, like when you started out, what really got you into music? And then talk to us a little bit about, as you'd mentioned, many of the other bands that you've been a part of, The Hip and Gord, and how that relationship formed.Track 5:[11:18] Um okay well i i was born and raised in toronto i'm the youngest of three boys um and everyone in my family played music uh and my i have two older brothers um my eldest brother's a music teacher he was a classical guitar player uh and my middle brother was uh he played piano at a pretty high level so i was and my mom played piano my dad played a little bit but had a very eclectic and very cool record collection uh so there's always music around and uh that was a big part of my uh you know i don't think i really understood at the time how enriching that experience was like it was just always around um and because my older brothers played i i just assume that anyone could play, you know what I mean? It was almost a strange thing. It's like sports a little bit. When you're the younger brother, you're always trying to keep up and, you know, you just, you think any idiot can do it because if they can do it, you can do it. So, um, I think I had this sense of, uh.Track 5:[12:30] There's a bit of fearlessness in it and it sort of coincided with an era of I'm 60 years old so you know I was in high school in the late 70s and finished high school in 1982 so I kind of came out up through that post-punk punk and post-punk era of music where it was all very DIY and people you know started bands as I did just joining them you You didn't have to play all that well.Track 5:[13:03] You just had to think you were playing well. And that was a good start. So, you know, I played in various outfits and eventually got recruited at the end of my high school year. At that time, Ontario still had a grade 13.Track 5:[13:24] And so in that year, a friend of mine, he was a musician that had played in a band that was kind of popular in our high school. And he had that band had uh uh ended and he kind of recruited me he said i want you to play bass in this band and uh i thought okay i mean i would i'd have just played guitar i'd never played bass but i thought sure i'll give it a whirl and that was sort of at the end of it was april of um, of the final year of school we started doing a bunch of gigs and kind of had this a bit of a built-in audience because he had he had been doing it for a while and we made a plan to the following fall of 1982 uh to uh move over to london england and you know have uh uh see what our uh see if we could find any luck doing that uh and uh and in fact i was just talking about at the concert hall we we did a show in the fall in i think october of 1982 which gave us the money to buy our plane texas to move over to uh to london and uh oh wow nice years and uh.Track 5:[14:41] You know that was an experience unto itself i said you know i was there for a couple of years it was you know like uh we ended up in brixton which was a which was a pretty uh rough part of town there have been a lot of riots there and race riots and um it was but over in the uk you can and a lot of europe you can squat which is basically paying no rent uh and uh so we did that we found a way to exist on very little money you know uh and stayed there and it was a great education you know i always refer to it as my university education really it was a good life education and a good musical one too um i lived it was all a lot of it was west indian uh and i lived above uh the squad i lived in was uh right above this great record store called desmond's hip city which ultimately became one of our our recordings and the song is about that not experienced living in Brixton with this band.Track 5:[15:49] And that sort of ran its course. When I moved back, I had heard about a mutual friend who I didn't know, but we had a mutual friend and this would have been 1985. He, was he was putting together his own home studio and in 1985 that was unusual you know like studios were still fairly um difficult to it was it was expensive to record it was uh but he had a he had an i think a half inch 16 track uh machine and he worked in a music store and he had he had a big uh you know a big plan to start a record label and it was all very cool and i thought well you know i'd like to do this i had done a bit of recording in the uk and um you know i knew that that was sort of the way forward with any anything so i i when i came back to canada to toronto i uh.Track 5:[16:50] Um you know i connected with him we rented a house and built a studio in the house and i mean And truthfully, we smoked a huge amount of marijuana, and I don't know, I spent a lot of time looking for the tape measure, as I recall. But we did, as a carpenter, I make a good musician, so I wouldn't be misleading you if I was trying to tell you that the studio we built had anything to do with me. But out of that experience, Andy Mays, who I grew up with, who's the singer and this guy, he and I reconnected. He had played in a band. He's a few years older than I am, but he played in a band and we had done some shows with him before we moved over to London. And we started hanging out and playing and playing with Wayne Stokes, who was the guy that owned the studio. Wayne drummed on our first couple of records before he left the band. And uh and that was really you know that was from sort of 86 to about uh 88 1988 we we started the band um and we did a residency in toronto a weekly monday night residency which eventually led to our, our first record deal with enigma records which was based in culver city in la just as It's, you know, part of L.A.Track 5:[18:18] And that record had a song on it called I Will Give You Everything, which kind of launched us into, you know, into having a career. And, you know, it's still a song that has been good to us. You know, like it's been used in lots of movies, and it's still a song people want to hear, and still a song I love playing. From there, when our first record came out, we did some shows with many bands, but one of which was The Hip.Track 5:[18:52] Uh we're i was just saying this the shows we did with paul we went back and forth introducing, paul's band and he would introduce us and uh and we were our last show with him was in ottawa, and uh our first show our first tour with the hip the first shows with the airport in montreal and Ottawa and that was 1990 1990 uh and that was 34 years ago and that was the first time we met and at that time uh Paul and Gord Downey were living in Toronto so you know they were they were just that was the tail end up to here and they were playing you know bigger rooms you know like and they had up to here sort of raised them up they often I think refer to that as their first record they had an EP before that.Track 5:[19:50] But that was I think they felt that was their first real offering as a recording and at the end of that tour we did with them they went in down to New Orleans and recorded.Track 5:[20:04] Road Apples and you know Gord and I at that, you know, and Paul, I mean, we all became friends and Gord and I in particular kind of hit it off and, you know, for whatever reason, as you do with, with friends and we, uh, you know, we kept in touch and those days we used to write letters to, uh, before email and, uh, texting. Um, and then Paul eventually a couple of years later moved back to Kingston and Gord stayed in Toronto and that was uh but we were both bands we were busy you know we were touring uh working musicians and not around a lot uh so you know our our time together was limited uh but but always uh great and and eventually led up to what became Coke Machine Shinglo, which, you know, there's sort of a story in that too. He, he wanted, we were looking to do, find a way to do a project together. Um, but the reality is that he, he had written a bunch of songs and the, and the hip, you know, they wrote as a collective, especially in those days. And, and that changed eventually Gord wrote more on his own and, um, and brought songs in and then he would write with them. It did evolve.Track 5:[21:27] And so he had written most of the songs from Coke Machine Glow he had written on his own. And eventually, he just decided, yeah, I should just make a record. And I think part of it was also.Track 5:[21:46] Besides myself, he didn't know a lot of musicians in Toronto, you know, because he was away a lot. He had a young family at that sort of by the mid, his daughter, Will, was born, I think around 96, 95. And so, you know, when he was home, you know, that was obviously a big part of his life. And I think he wanted to connect with the artistic community in Toronto. And Coke Machine Glow became the opportunity for him to do that. Which is why it's a pretty eclectic record eclectic musicians there's and he also wanted to explore the spoken word stuff which is a part of that record and and the uh uh and battle of the nudes as well it was sort of extended into that uh that record so um yeah i don't know that sort of gives you a bit of a an overview yeah.Track 7:[22:41] No we appreciate that and you know we just recently Obviously, having discussions on each of the albums, Coke Machine Glow specifically, it was such a discussion. We actually had to split up our discussion into two parts because there was so much to talk about. And again, because it was good for us to really take that in as that first offering from Gord and his solo effort. You have a producer credit on on that particular album and and the next one and then and then as mentioned I think as we go into the grand bounce that was Chris talk to us a little bit about that process and and and working with Gord and and how uh how that process went from either writing or recording or or things of that nature definitely we had our own discussions about it but it would It would be great to hear directly from the source on how some of that came about.Track 5:[23:41] Well... You know initially we were you know that we were trying to find a way into make a making a collaborative record but you know he had written these songs and um and at some point it was just like you know what like you should just do a solo record um because these.Track 5:[24:01] Songs he knew that uh they weren't going to be used in the in the hip and not because they weren't good songs but because their process was very much as a collective they would write songs together that was their that was how they did it gourd at that point uh gourd was pretty much writing all the words and uh um and they were they were you know playing they they would come up with the music and they that was just their process and um so you know we had these songs and and eventually it just became apparent that we should we should make uh the record and so we had he had had this cool little home studio set up you know this is 10 years after what i was talking about earlier and it was a like a digital i think it was a d80 da88 machine and a little board and so we were recording on that and um and then you know but realizing that neither of us were particularly good engineers and the hip had just mixed their record trouble at the hen house and I think Stephen Drake mixed that record and and he's a terrific talented mixer and a great musician and so Gord.Track 5:[25:24] Gord thought, you know, maybe we should get Stephen to engineer the session and the three of us will operate as co-producers.Track 5:[25:34] And which is what happened. So Stephen ended up coming and Gord really wanted to make the record in Toronto. Again, it was the sense of I'm living here. I've lived here for, I mean, at that point, it was probably over 10 years. Um and he had you know he had his his group of friends uh and artistic friends had grown just through meeting through you know through the hip but he thought you know if i if i do this project i can include them and i can uh um you know just sort of put down some roots in that in this community because at that point you know his creative outlet was the band and he would typically go to Kingston to to write songs and or to record and obviously all the road work they were doing so it was a you know at the time it was an attempt for him to put some roots down in in the city with other artists and other collaborators Gord was a very.Track 5:[26:44] Ambitious creatively is very ambitious and very always looking to evolve always looking to grow and and be influenced and inspired by other people so on that record you know we went in um you know the the idea was uh like initially it it uh the band was kevin hearn was there for kevin had just um he he just had leukemia and he had just he had like a bone marrow transplant and he was just in the recovering stage of that um and i'd met kevin before that but but you know um so but he was only available for a few days because he was going out with uh bare-necked ladies they were uh he was just joining back into the band and going out on tour um and uh.Track 5:[27:55] Don Kerr owned the studio with Dale Morningstar that we recorded at. It was called the gas station. And it was this cool old warehouse building down around King and Dufferin. It was on the top floor, all these open windows, really great view of the city. It's sort of looking south towards the lake through the exhibition in Toronto. And it just had a great vibe to it. And and don played a lot with ron sexsmith and ron was just about to make a record with steve earl in nashville his uh i think the record was blue boy and steve really wanted uh don to play on the record and to sing on it because he had seen don he's seen ron and don was playing with him and he loved their singing together and he loved his playing and a lot of ron's records at that point had been done in L.A.Track 5:[28:57] And their bands were put together for them. They're great sounding records, but Steve wanted Don to play on this record. So Don was only available the first couple of days, as was Kevin. And then Dave Clark, who at that point had played in the Rheostatics and left, was asked to come in and do the drumming. And Dale was just sort of around the studio to help as the assistant engineer, but he ended up playing on most of it. And then Julie Dwaran was asked to come and play on the record. She had sung on a number of hip songs and played in a band called Eric's Trip, who the hip had toured with.Track 5:[29:45] And then there was all these, like Travis Good played on the record. Travis at this point, I was talking about him. We had become good friends and he's a great musician and I thought, well, I want to invite Travis. And Gord, that's when he first met him. So this would have been 1999. As you know, the Sadies went on to make a record and do some touring with Gord as well. And they were very tight. And Travis played on Away Is Mine, the last record that Gord did that I, you know, we wrote together, um, and recorded at the bathhouse. Um, and so, and I, and then there was Adam McGaughan, who's a filmmaker who Gord had met, you know, really through the hip, but, you know, through, uh, maybe he used some hip song in a, in a movie. I can't remember the, uh, um, the connection, but he can.Track 4:[30:38] Yeah. Courage was used in the suite her after by Sarah Polly saying it.Track 5:[30:45] Right, okay. So, you know, he's another Toronto artist and Gord had met him. And so, you know, one of the, one of the, these sort of agendas of Coke Machine Glow and when it was trying to find a way to get into it because the, you know, Gord also released a book of poetry with Coke Machine Glow, but he wanted, he wanted to find a way to do spoken word stuff, which he had done. Yeah, you got it. He had done, you know, often at hip shows he was doing. He did a lot of those, like I know at Woodstock, someone was telling me all that was televised and he was reciting a lot of the Coke Machine Glow poems and a lot of the songs throughout pieces of, you know, instrumentals or whatever through that live show, as he was doing throughout that tour, I'm sure. And so he wanted to find a way to make the leap where he could do the spoken word stuff but you know of course the biggest potential obstacle was that it would be pretentious sounding so that was sort of the way that's that was this challenge.Track 5:[32:08] A couple of things ended up happening. One was that Adam Egoyan, who was a classical guitar player, when he grew up, he played classical guitar. So he brought down his classical guitar, and Gord asked him to just come up with some music, like pieces, little instrumental pieces. So he started playing, and the rest of us started improvising around those pieces. And Gord either would do the spoken word stuff.Track 5:[32:39] With us or we would find sort of this cool little section where it was it was just working and then he would use it and do do the spoken stuff the word stuff over that there was also a couple of there's a great I think it's I think it's the first first song on the record is accordion and pump organ and it's yarrow servinic who was the accordion player and the cowboy junkies and my neighbor uh at the time i invited him down and dale was playing the pump organ and um and it had it had this sort of uh, hinterlands who who kind of this funky weird kind of uh sound to it you know like it it uh and uh and it just somehow it worked you know like it was kind of charming and quirky and very much you know it was very much intended to be not it would have been a failure if it had been like a tragically hit record you know and you know because that would have you.Track 5:[33:52] They were doing that already, and Gord was doing that. This was an opportunity for him to expand his artistic palette, you know, and to challenge himself to be challenged, and challenge the other people around him. And so, you know, I think in that sense it was successful because it was very different. It was like a serious left turn. uh and i think you know from my memory people's reaction to it was like wow i didn't expect this and it's not it's not like the tragically hip which it wasn't and it wasn't meant to be um and i think it you know for a lot of hip fans it was like a real curiosity head scratcher and i think for people that weren't necessarily hip fans it was like wow i didn't expect this from gourd and it's cool and it's different and uh so you know it wasn't uh and really we just in the end we we uh we didn't we mostly toured in the states i think we maybe did one show in canada on that record um and uh and that was cool too because we were playing in a lot of smaller venues and it was a pretty eclectic band and it was a lot of fun.Track 5:[35:18] And it led in fairly quickly to what became, because he had written more songs, and a lot of those songs ended up on Battle of the Nudes. And at that point, the gas station had moved over to Toronto Island into this artscape, into this cool artistic community. Coke Machine Glow was the last record that was made at the Gas Nation. And I think it was 10 days that we made it in.Track 4:[35:50] I'm curious how different the two recording sessions were between Coke Machine Glow and Battle of the Nudes. Because in my mind, they sound very similar in that they sound like a band jamming, whereas the first one sounds like it's a little more acoustic, stick whereas the second one's like a full-on full-on band a little more you know experience under your belt was the actual were the actual sessions quite different.Track 5:[36:15] Um well uh one of the things that happened with uh so the gas station was uh it had you know it was a studio but um it didn't it had decent gear but it didn't have great gear and so what ended up happening was At that point, the hip had started to accumulate gear for the bathhouse, which was their studio in Bath, Ontario. And he brought up, there was a knave board and a bunch of microphones that he brought up and used it as, and we used his DA-88 machine I mentioned earlier. So it was eight tracks. We had eight tracks to use. so you know we could put as many mics into those eight tracks as we wanted it but and it was recorded live and it was acoustic and part of that was that you know when he and i were working on those songs initially before steven got involved it was typically two acoustic guitars and gordon had a very unique rhythm you know he always said he dropped he he played he strummed guitar like a drummer you know but his time was good you know he had great time uh he just did not strum like most guitar players he just you know it was not and i think part of that was singing and you know his phrasing was very unique too so there's a lot of syncopation going on.Track 5:[37:45] And um so initially that process was me kind of playing a more conventional rhythm which just gave the two acoustic guitars this fuller, kind of richer, solid bass. And then when Don and Dave drummed, that gave us another type of foundation. And then Steve and Drake played bass for most of that record. He played other things, too. And I think I played bass maybe on a song or two, but maybe Julie Dwarne played bass on something. But that was kind of the way it went and Stephen recorded it he had this nice gear and we used the DA-88 machine and we did a few overdubs like Paul Langlois came and sang on two or three songs and.Track 5:[38:41] And so that was an overdub. Travis Good was an overdub. Man, there was a couple of others, but I don't remember. But by the time we did Battle of the Nudes, we had done a lot of shows. And at that point, I was playing half the show on bass. Stephen didn't play in the live band.Track 5:[39:02] Partially because he was in Vancouver and he was doing other stuff. It was more of a practical decision than anything from my memory. And uh and i played guitar and julie and i and then at that point john press who's often referred to as dr p had also joined the band and those guys the dinner is around dale john press and dave clark and then myself and julie and uh and gordon uh and we did we did a couple festivals that summer we played like the edmonton folk festival but most of the shows were down in the in the states um and then when we went and recorded uh the gas station and moved to a portable on toronto island an old school uh school portable i don't know if you guys are familiar with with that phenomenon but in ontario they used to have their like boxes and they would be i guess it was It's just at schools, instead of adding, putting additions on schools, they'd have these boxes that would, you know, you'd walk out to your portable, your classroom. It was like a, it was like a cabin, you know, for lack of a better word. Obviously, it had electricity.Track 5:[40:18] But that's where the gas station moved into. And Dale recorded that. He recorded, I'd say, half of that record and mixed half of it or a third of it. And we also went to the bathhouse and recorded the bathhouse at that point. And a bunch of it was mixed there as well. Again, I'd have to look at the credits to sort of know what was done. And, you know, Gord was very taken with Dale. Dale was a very unconventional musician and very eclectic.Track 5:[41:00] And Gord loved that. You know, he loved that. He was just so outside. And Dave Clark is also a real free spirit. And John Pratt is an excellent, excellent musician, but also a free spirit, you know. So it was just it was a very different energy and even for me like it was like wow what a this is a total fucking trip you know this band can you know anything can happen at any point in time and i think gordon liked that you know like it was just it was um unpredictable and fun and uh, and yeah i think it was just and not to say that it wasn't fun in the hip it was just different and And it was exploring a different part of who he could be and his songs and his creative process. You know, that was a big part of it. So I don't know, Craig, if that answers your question, but...Track 4:[41:57] Yeah, yeah. And did you find your role in the band evolved over the years? Watching some of the live videos on doing our research, I noticed, you know, maybe a bit of a shift to playing some more bass near the end. How did you feel about your role and how it changed?Track 5:[42:15] I mean, it was really more the bass became, you know, I mean, I had played bass often on Scottie's records and the band I moved to England with, I played bass in that band. So it was not an instrument that I was unfamiliar with. And I was pretty comfortable on it. and uh and julie and i would swap uh run those first two tours and really even all the tours like she would play bass on certain songs i'd play uh guitar there's certain songs on that we toured with on coke machine glow like something like vancouver divorce i played always played acoustic as it was gore playing you know there's this cool uh interplay of the two acoustic guitars this sort of galloping feel, and Julie played this great solid bass part in that song, and Trick Rider, stuff like that. I always played acoustic on those songs, but then from Battle of the Nudes, and certainly when we did the Grand Bounce, I played almost, I think I played only bass. I don't know that I played any guitar, except for maybe, uh, uh, hello again, my friend. I'm to see you again. The East wind.Track 4:[43:37] So speaking of that song, from what I can tell, I believe there's like five guitars on that track. Does that sound right?Track 5:[43:44] If not more. You know, like it was, yeah, when the band kicks in, yeah, it was like a guitar orchestra, as I recall. It was a ton of good. I think Gord had his kids in there playing acoustic guitar. Yeah, that was for sure. Sure. And when we did it live too, I think I started playing acoustic and then it was like the guy and Rick Nielsen and Cheap Trick, you know, started playing acoustic at the beginning and then I'd, you know, Billy Ray would grab the guitar and I'd start playing bass. It was a bit silly, really.Track 5:[44:24] So I think it did just sort of evolve, Greg, I guess, really. But, you know, um dr pete was a great place bass player julie was a great bass player it was really not you know it wasn't like i'm the bass player and you know like no one else could play it was just the way it i love playing bass with dave clark drumming like he was dave is he's got a great command of many feels and uh and it was a you know the band really evolved too and and you know When you talk about the production stuff, it was also a natural. When we started, it was really Gord and I and then bringing Stephen in. But it was all very collaborative. There was no one saying, you have to do this. Gord was not that type of person. I mean, he would like something or not like it. But he was not the kind of person that would say, we're doing it this way. That was not really his MO you know like he was more into discovering what something could be rather than laying out like.Track 5:[45:36] Here's the here's where you're doing that it wasn't it wasn't like that at all rarely i mean he might have an idea that he wants to chase down you would try and do that which is of course cool but he was very open to suggestions and pursuing things and uh um and the more outside often the better he was attracted to often the diamond in the rough too you know he could see something in an idea i often couldn't you know which i always admired you know like you could see there was something there and he would keep he would keep pursuing it um and he he was very dogged that way and very persistent so.Track 6:[46:19] It seemed like you know you keep mentioning evolution and the band and um it seemed like the band took on a more significant role than just gourd downy this This is Gord Downie's band. And the name changed from The Goddamn Band to Country of Miracles. And then that even became more prevalent with The Grand Bounce. So did you guys bring songs to him? Or was it?Track 5:[46:45] Well, certainly, again, the spoken word pieces were often collaborative pieces. But the bulk of the songs were his songs. He and I maybe worked on some stuff. and I might suggest stuff in other situations. Maybe there would have been a co-writing. But for me, it was just like, these are your songs. You should, you know, like, I don't.Track 5:[47:11] You know like the uh they're great you know and you it was it you know he was at that point he was saying okay i'm putting my name on this i'm doing this book of poetry it was you know of course like any solo thing any songwriter any book of poetry there's there's a certain.Track 5:[47:31] Audacity to it all too right like it's uh and um there were collaborations on especially the first two records but by the by the time we did the grand bounce gordon had written these songs and that and there was you know it had been like four or five years before in between the grand bounce and um the battle of the nudes so he had collected more songs and i was aware of all these songs because we would still hang out and i'd come over we'd record them maybe but he had they were pretty finished songs and that you know he had gained a lot of confidence from making those first two records and he the story my my memory of um the chris walla connection was that the hip did a um there in pemberton just north ukraine there was a big festival there it would have been probably 2008 or 9 and i think tom patty was on the bill death cap for cutie were definitely on the bill because Chris sought out Gord they were on the bill he sought Gord out and said I'm a huge fan but I.Track 5:[48:42] Love your solo records, he knew them he had, Gord I think was a bit taken back and he thought wow this guy this is cool and he just as Gord did he was great at, you know, connecting with people and, um, and staying in touch with them. And, and I think in the back of his mind, he thought, man, you know, it'd be cool if, you know, cause at that point, I think Chris was just about to leave Death Cab for Cutie and he wanted to, he wanted to be a producer and kind of strike out on his own.Track 5:[49:15] And, uh, Gord thought, well, maybe it'd be cool to get him to produce the record and we'll do it at the bathhouse, which is what we did in 2010, I think.Track 5:[49:25] 2009 i can't remember the year now uh we spent you know it was august we spent i think three weeks at the bathhouse like the prime time of the year to be in southern ontario you know beautiful weather all the um the bounty of the you know the farming uh all the fruits and vegetables are coming uh and you know we spent and it was it was an amazing that was such a fun record not that the other records were not fun to make but you know we would start gordon had you know i think there's 12 14 songs on the record and we would do one song a day and we'd get up and he'd teach it to us and we start playing it and you know you know we get up around 10 in the morning and uh you know eventually you start working on the stuff and it would just the song would evolve all chris would make suggestions as we did it and then by the end of the day we'd find a um you know we it might be quick it might be a bit slower and take a few uh twists and turns but every day we got something cool down every day we got something that ended up on the record there's maybe one or two songs that didn't end up on the record but it was that was a you know i thought chris was amazing with everyone, because everyone, you know.Track 5:[50:48] Had made a lot of records at that point. And, you know, Dale produced records.Track 5:[50:55] But Gord was really good at, you know, Even choosing Chris, Chris sort of recognized everyone's strengths and their weaknesses and really empowered everyone into that. I just thought he was really great.Track 5:[51:14] That record I also love. It's a very different record. It was nice. I was mostly just a bass player on that record, but I love that.Track 5:[51:24] The opportunity to do that. And it was, again, you know, it wasn't his advice, but it was advice that I got from somewhere else. But, you know, the advice was play the gig you're playing, not the gig you think you should be playing. Just do what people are asking you to do and be the best version of that person you can be. And that was always a great thing about working with gourd like he he totally empowered you to be yourself and you know if he didn't like it or he didn't get it he would say but it wouldn't be like that sucks and i hate it and uh it would be you know we just find another way uh to, wherever that would be. It would just evolve. That was, again, a really great quality. And again, I think Chris Walla deserves a lot of credit for that record because he really kind of recognized everything. He was kind of the puppet master to a certain degree as well, really making sure that sorry.Track 7:[52:44] To interrupt yeah i just we had when we had our discussion about that about the grand bounce it was uh it was really felt like a band album and i think after i would imagine after you guys had done not only the two albums prior but you know playing together live and then having someone come in and being able to kind of shepherd that it it really came through i i think for me and i I think for us as a group, when we discussed it and, and it was, it was, I think we even talked about it when we, when we went over that particular album, like we were kind of bummed that we wanted the next, the fourth album. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that. Like what, what was that? Uh, was there discussions about that or?Track 5:[53:31] Yes um you know they're they're um so we we made i think it was 2010 we made the record in 2011 we toured we did a we did a bunch of summer shows um and we did some shows in the states but this that tour the grand bounce tour was almost exclusively canadian and um, And we did a bunch of summer festivals. And then we did a cross-country. We went coast to coast. So it was a pretty ambitious undertaking. It was not, you know, because Gord hadn't toured a lot as a solo act. It wasn't, you know, he hadn't really developed the, it wasn't the hip, right? And so it wasn't unsuccessful.Track 5:[54:17] But it's an expensive thing. You've got a tour bus. You've got a band. And, you know, it's expensive to, you know, with the hip, it was a different thing.Track 5:[54:27] And they could charge a different amount of money and it was just more established.Track 5:[54:32] So I think, I don't think the record was a disappointment for Gord. But I think the reality of taking a band out and touring and the costs of that were, I think that was maybe a bit sobering. I don't think he was unhappy with the you know the way the band played or or even the attendance or any of that i just think it was like you know it's it's not uh it's it it's it's more of an investment and i think it was like okay well where where do i go what do i do with this do i mean do i make another record like this and i you know he wasn't someone to repeat a process right that's the other thing like it was you know i can't say enough about working with chris was great and i thought he really brought out the best in everyone there he's really positive guy really understood everyone's kind of quirkiness and strengths and uh but so you know what happened was i think gourd we made that record and then was now for plan a that came next and then but but then what I what I remember because he he sent me we were talking about the songs from the secret path so the secret path was recorded in 2013 and.Track 5:[55:58] He had finished it and mixed it at that point. So he had this idea, and I think you probably know the story of this. So his brother Mike had found this CBC radio interview that was talking about a Maclean's article from 1966 that talked about Shani Wenjack.Track 5:[56:19] And Gord heard the documentary on the CBC and read the the mclean's article and sort of got very drawn to the story and you know he ended up writing you know again if you've watched any of the secret path stuff uh you know he wrote 10 poems and uh and that became the 10 songs for the secret path you know he ended up going there uh because he had a place just on in prince prince edward county just it was about a half hour's drive from the bathhouse and um he would come to the bathhouse and kevin drew from broken social scene where he was making a lot of records there and he kind of got to know kevin a bit and kevin said kevin uh was very much involved with arts and crafts he helped establish that label and i think he said well let's make a record and gourd had these songs and that's how that record was made so he finished it but i don't think gourd really knew what to do with the record and and my memory is more from nile spencer who was the engineer the house engineer at uh at the bathhouse i don't think gourd was i don't think he really talked about what that record was about out to any great extent i mean it was clearly a record.Track 5:[57:44] That was about a very heavy subject and he would have made rough you know he.Track 5:[57:51] Would have had some explanations for it but i don't i think he was very mindful about you know i'm not sure this is my story to tell um and uh.Track 5:[58:03] And I remember him sending it to me. They mixed it in like December of 2013. And he sent it to me early in January and just said, yeah, I did this. And I want you to hear it. And it's cool. And then he sat on it. He didn't know what to do with it. He had also been writing and recording songs with Pop Rock.Track 5:[58:32] Uh, since, um, after we are the same the hip record which led into uh the grand bounce and then you know spilled over into um the time that he he recorded um the secret path so he was doing a lot of stuff so when you say you know like it would have been cool to do another uh record uh with with the uh the country miracles and in that sense i i think it would have been but it wasn't like he was uh not doing it he was busy doing a lot of different things and and and that was very much you know he was loving all of that it wasn't like he wasn't saying oh i i will never do this again i you know but i think there's a lot of things going on and uh and and he was still being very productive and very creative. And then he got sick towards the end of 2015.Track 5:[59:33] At that point, you know, I mean, you know the story. I don't need to go through it. But, you know, he knew that he wanted, obviously, to do the last hip tour, but he knew he wanted to get the Secret Path record out. It was finished. But the graphic novel was another opportunity to provide an educational tour or for what the residential schools were in Canada. And, you know, these were things, I mean, these were things that we, Gordon and I, talked about a lot. I mean, we grew up being so ignorant of what had really happened in this country. And this was an opportunity to kind of pull the lid back a little bit and to have a discussion about that.Track 5:[1:00:22] And, you know, it's amazing. You know, like it just, you know, his illness and the attention that was brought to the hip tour and then consequently to the secret path project was kind of overwhelming, you know, like it was quite incredible to be in that sort of in the center of that, to be around him and to see the impact that it's had all of it. You know I mean like even with the hip tour you know like if you were in this country if you were if you were not a tragically hip fan you would you'd be touched by that story I mean who hasn't been uh impacted by a family member a friend who's had cancer and the story was just so incredibly touching and moving you didn't have to be a fan to be touched or moved by that story And then, you know, and then to carry on to do the, you know, the shows that he did for The Secret Path was, you know, that was amazing. I know I'm sort of going on to another subject now.Track 5:[1:01:29] Um, so just, yeah, I'm just kind of trying to bridge that time, time gap, you know, there was a, there was a lot going on for him. And, um, and you know, I think if the opportunity, if he had, if he hadn't gotten sick, I'm sure we would have made another recording, you know, I'm sure that would have happened. Maybe it would have been a different producer. Maybe it would have been something different, you know, like me was, uh, he was constantly doing things, you know, he was always working. Like he was, that was, you know, he was like a shark that way. He was always moving, you know, like he, very much part of his makeup, his DNA.Track 4:[1:02:11] So you were a part of the Secret Path live band.Track 5:[1:02:14] Yeah.Track 4:[1:02:15] And what was the lead up to that? Like, like the rehearsals, I know it seemed maybe Gord was, you know, he was quite sick at that time. were you guys you know were you ever worried that it it wouldn't work out or was there any hesitation.Track 5:[1:02:33] Well i think you know i even with the hip tour like i think you know when i mean i saw gourd all three you know from when he got sick and which was like november late october early November of 2015, he had his first operation, I think it was November, mid-November that year, and then it was a long recovery, and then he ended up having a second operation, and then, you know, went through radiation, and, you know, all the treatment that he did, so you know i saw him through a lot of that you know i you know i'd go over on a regular basis there's a time when the treatments were so he was sleeping a lot because you know they fucking kicked the shit out of you you know when he decided he wanted to do the the hip tour and you know i mean i think everyone i i mean there's it's all documented and you know in that uh show I mean, of course, everyone was concerned, could he do it? But, you know, man, the guy was a fucking force. Like, he was so strong physically and mentally. Like, he just, he was so determined to do it. And it was incredible, you know. I'm sure, Craig, you saw one of those shows, or, you know, like, it was a remarkable.Track 4:[1:04:00] I was at the two Vancouver shows. Justin was at the Ottawa show, actually, the second last one.Track 5:[1:04:06] Um, yeah, I mean, it, it, uh, I mean, to answer your question, was there concern for sure, especially for the secret past stuff, because he had never sung it beyond the recordings that he had done and when he wrote them. So as opposed to the, you know, the hip stuff where, you know, there's sort of a motor, uh, memory muscle that, you know, it's just, uh, but, you know, it's amazing like the brain is an incredible thing and you know gourd's short-term memory was impacted there were certain things that he struggled with but you know the music was it was pretty amazing what he was and he definitely made mistakes he definitely you know and it would could be counting in or waiting in it sir but we found out ways to make use or accommodate that and i I mean, it was amazing.Track 5:[1:04:58] Yes, there was concern that maybe it won't work, but it did, you know. And, you know, also, you know, Gord was not like, he could come in early on a verse when he was perfectly well. I mean, he was not a, those imperfections he often made work. You know, he adopted this philosophy, but, you know, what he used to say for a show to be interesting something something has to happen that neither the audience or the performer expects so a mistake can turn into a um an opportunity yeah and he often uh something happens and it's like okay here's my opportunity to make something of it not like not fucking freak out or fall apart and i mean that's a you know if you're a a seasoned performer, you understand that, you know, yeah, you don't have, I mean, everyone fucks up. I mean, that happens. So, yeah, I mean, it was... For all the shows we did with the secret pass stuff, there were very few mistakes. I don't think he made any more mistakes than anyone else made. Let me put it that way.Track 4:[1:06:14] Yeah, I know the show that's online is incredible. It is one of the best concerts that I've seen. I've actually made Kirk and Justin promise not to watch it yet. So we're going to watch it together one day online, I think. and it's so good. Yeah.Track 7:[1:06:35] Thank you, Justin. That's been something especially after we did the episode about the secret path and all the research we did. So yeah, when we had our recording of the secret path, that was one thing we had to make a little pack that we were going to wait. We're going to try and do a live stream of it, but it's been very difficult. Obviously watching some of the great documentary pieces that were done about the entire secret path project. And as you mentioned um you know where that kind of came in the timeline and and then obviously the it was recorded and then there was a few years break i think before it was released but um yeah we're we're very excited about seeing that that particular show and craig has has talked very highly of it so we're pretty excited to see that for sure yeah.Track 5:[1:07:23] Well it's very heavy you know it's It's not a, you know, and as it's meant to be, you know, it's a very heavy story. There's a lot to it. And it's being delivered by a guy that is well aware of his timeline, you know. And this was a part of his legacy that he was very aware that he he could have a positive impact you know any I think you personally really changed the conversation in this country and and I still see it you know I'm still very, I'm still involved with the Danny Wenjack fund and I'm actually doing a school event out of Vancouver next week next.Track 4:[1:08:17] Are you serious craig oh man craig's a teacher i'm a teacher i use it every year um, and uh i yeah so i watch that show every no no no go ahead i alternate between i'm sorry i was just gonna say i i go through every song with with the class and you know we talk and it's amazing every year there's like another another layer something else that someone will will see and we we talk a little bit about this artistic representation of this, of this boy's story and how it, it relates to the much larger, you know, issues that go back, you know, the things that we weren't taught when we were in school and it's, it's been really eyeopening and, and every year it's just a highlight of, of, of the year. A lot of students remember it years later. It's been really impactful and it's a way for me to dig into this topic that I, you know as a middle-aged white guy don't have a you know a personal connection to it gives me a way to sort of dive into this difficult material in a genuine way and students really appreciate that that um they can tell i mean i know i.Track 5:[1:09:28] Know it's in over 6300 classrooms across canada, the secret path and i know over 8 000 teachers are teaching that and i think really what's happening now is that they need to expand on the curriculum they need to build on it like the secret path has been a great introduction of course and it's a great tool but you can't teach the same thing over and over again you can't read the same book and expect you know so i think that's partially where they're at with it uh and that's a good problem to have.Track 5:[1:10:02] But you know it's it's just learning a truth that is important and a part of our history in this country that's important because you know as a canadian who spent a lot of time in the states you know i find that we are very we can be very sanctimonious and self-righteous about how fucking awesome we are and how our shit doesn't smell but you know and and you know.Track 5:[1:10:28] Canadians are the first to look down south and say well you know at least we're not fucked up like they are look at their medical system look at look at whatever you know like it's you know and and you know our shit stinks too and we you know we i just think this has been such an amazing opportunity to see how impactful uh this is and you know what's so interesting is that it's really ultimately not about gourd like and that was sort of his that was what was so incredible about this like he knew that he's he's telling the story and his illness and his celebrity and the connection to the hip were leveraging the the attention towards this but he knew that this was much bigger than him you know i i was just talking to the the guy that's organizing the uh event i'm doing out in uh in vancouver and he was saying yeah he's a huge hit fan big music fan and he's saying you know like a lot of these young kids don't know who the tragically hip are and it sort of breaks his heart you know because uh or doesn't they don't know who gourd downey is but they know the secret path and it's so interesting and truthfully it's really what it is the important part of the story is the truth of why that story had to be told and And I think Gord would be kind of smiling about that right now.Track 5:[1:11:54] I know with the graphic novel, I recall vividly him saying, in his mind...Track 5:[1:12:02] The graphic novel and the music could be played for grade fives. You know, that was sort of his target audience. That's good age. This could have a good impact. I mean, I think it's become much broader than that. And as you said, Craig, it became, you know, there are many layers to it and there's a lot to it. You know, with a lot of Gord stuff, it's very interpretive and very, you know you can really peel back the layers on it so i think that makes them happy and i know for me on a personal level to be able to they these are uh called uh artist ambassador that's part of the downey one jack artist ambassador program so i go i go into the schools and i'm introduced and i'm you know i knew gourd and i talk a little bit about my uh relationship with him and the connection to the secret path and i go around and i look at the work that the students do and i talk to them and i just it you know it fills my heart to know that i'm still connected to gourd through this project and all the other stuff i did but this was this was a special opportunity for him to leave his own legacy but not about him but the legacy of something that he felt.Track 5:[1:13:26] He felt like it's a story that needed to be told and it's a conversation that needed to be had.Track 7:[1:13:32] One thing that I was able to share with the guys yesterday, my middle daughter graduated from a local university out here, Cal State University, Northridge. And before the ceremony began, they actually had a recorded message from the indigenous tribe from the area saying, prior to the university being built. And they had partnered with them. And the leadership of the tribe actually sent out a blessing as well as a song to the university and to the graduates and to those of us that were there. And I was there with my mom, my 81 year old mom. And I'd been sharing a lot of the secret path story with her and, you know, gave her the graphic novel to read. And we talk about it because I go over and visit quite regularly. And we both were so taken aback as Americans, because we're aware of our ugly past, and we're aware how bad we stink down here. And too often, we don't get the opportunity to really recognize it and bring it to the forefront as much as we could. And for us, that was fantastic, especially after our discussion with this group about secret path to see something in the United States. And I've been to many graduations, and I've been to many events and whatnot. And that was quite literally the first time I had ever seen anything like that done in the recognition.Track 7:[1:14:50] And it really, it, it warmed our heart that it was, it's about time, of course, but it's going to take those like Gord and that project and what you guys did, um, obviously in what you're continuing to do to, to bring that recognition. So that was just, it was really great and timely. And I know Justin has spent some time i'm doing some research as well about about uh um some of the indigenous issues in the history and whatnot and it's been great for us as you know americans to have that open discussion as well and uh so we really appreciate you sharing that with us because that that was uh it was definitely emotional for us going through the secret path and having that discussion and and as as craig had mentioned you know us middle-aged white guys you know trying to pretend for a second that we We know what happened and what they're going through. The awareness, I think, was really important for us and to be able to discuss that. So definitely appreciate you sharing that with us.Track 5:[1:15:51] Yeah, yeah. I mean, I just read something or saw an interview recently and just talking about colonialism. And, you know, like, you know, our history is that is kind of the history of the world. I mean, it's not any more North American than it is. It happened in China 7,000 years ago. It continues that. You know, you can't change what has happened, but you can acknowledge what's happened. And, you know, what's amazing is, you know, I know, I mean, my mom is almost 94. for. You know, a lot of the discussions with her and people of her generation about First Nations people here was that, oh, you know, we give them so much and we give them money and they you know, there's all these sort of false narratives about.Track 5:[1:16:45] And, you know, she's just repeating things that she's hearing, right? So this is what happens. Like, you hear something enough, and it becomes the truth. You know, like, you know, and I mean, that's sort of the sad reality of politics these days as well. You get a message just fucking repeatedly all the time. And then before you know it, you're saying it yourself somehow. You're believing it. It's so weird. It's so fucked up. The truth is often difficult to accept and to acknowledge, and it's not just about being white and privileged.Track 5:[1:17:24] Which of course we are, or I am, I won't speak for you guys, but it's about being honest about what has happened. And the history is not as it often is. It's told through the eyes of the people that have been the beneficiaries of it. And this has been an amazing journey for me. I've ended up doing many different projects. And that's what I was doing with Kevin Hearn today. We do this collaboration with Chief Stacey LaForme, who's just retired, but was the elected chief of the Mississaugas of the First Credit. And he's a poet as well. And we did a collaboration with him when the 615 bodies were discovered in Kamloops. He wrote a poem and Kevin and I put some music to it and inserted his voice through that as well. I'll send it to you, Kirk. It's a very, very powerful thing. And we've done a bunch of performances with him and we're doing something with him in June again.Track 5:[1:18:36] And it's, you know, again, it's like it's just this ongoing dialogue and this process of, you know, realizing that people are people, you know. And it's very powerful to share these collaborations and these stories. And, you know, I mean, Greg, you're seeing it every day. I see it every once in a while when I go into these schools. But these young kids are hearing these stories. So they're not, they're not, they're hearing these stories firsthand. They acknowledge and accept what happened. So they're not denying it. They're not pretending it didn't happen. They weren't, as what was Gore's line, trained to ignore it.Track 5:[1:19:22] It's such a fucking good line. And that was, again, that's sort of the righteousness of our thing is, you know, if you just put it out of your mind, well, then you don't have, and you don't think about it, then it's not your problem.Track 5:[1:19:36] And, you know, lo and behold, it was, you know, like there's a very dark history to our relationship with the First Nations people in this country. And you know what's amazing is i remember travis good talking about this when he was touring with his dad's band the good brothers in the 80s and early 90s late you know mid to late 80s he'd go over to holland and they would be saying you know what's up with your country you fucking treat the natives like shit what's with the residential schools he had no idea you know like me he was sort of you know and he learned about it from another country you know like it's always amazing how you know where we can be so uh oblivious and ignorant of our own truth i know i i did i'm kind of on a bit of a rant but it was a very and still is a very moving part of uh that relationship uh with gourd and and very one i'm so i'm just so i'm so proud of him for finding the creative courage to to to make that record and then you know like just so blown away by his courage for sure but his tenacity to get it out there and to go out and do those shows that was uh that was a.Track 5:[1:20:59] Remarkable thing including the hip tour i don't i don't they're not one i don't see one is more exclusive than the other i just think.Track 5:[1:21:09] It was a remarkable feat to watch him go through that.Track 7:[1:21:12] Absolutely and and uh you know this whole project as we'd mentioned has been great for us as as tragically hip fans and already having an appreciation and a love for gordon and what he's done and the band had done and a

This week on the pod, the gang settles in to the project and describes their experience with Gord's 3rd solo release, The Grand Bounce.Transcript:Track 1:[0:01] Hey, it's Justin. You know and love us on the Discovering Downey podcast, right? So come hang out with us in person for the finale. Join us for Long Slice Brewing Presents, a celebration of Gord Downey at The Rec Room in downtown Toronto on Friday, July 19th. Craig is coming from Vancouver. Kirk is coming from LA. I'm driving from Vermont. And JD is like walking down the street or wherever he lives in Toronto. Tickets are available now on our website at discovererndowney.com. And when you get your tickets, that means you can come hang out with us and our very special guest, Patrick Downey. And you can bid on some incredibly cool silent auction items, all while jamming along with tragically hip cover band The Almost Hip. And most importantly, helping us raise money for the Gord Downey Fund for Brain Cancer Research. Crack open a long slice, put on some Gord tunes, take a journey with us on Discovering Downey, and then crack open another long slice on July 19th and hang out with us in the 6th. I always wanted to sound cool and say that. For more information, follow us on all the socials and visit DiscoveringDowny.com. Cheers.Track 2:[1:23] Thanksgiving. Victims and their victim-ears sit down to Turkey hungry for punishment full of mercury fullimate, serene after the screaming. Grace makes the mouth make shapes it's never made before. We give thanks for the poetry we read and write all day. For freeing us to drink with impunity a toast to no punishment replaces Amen. The prayer is swallowed away for the silence and the quiet carving serene after the was screaming, a little violent, but turkey nevertheless.Track 1:[2:08] Welcome, music lovers. Long Slice Brewery presents Discovering Downey.Track 2:[2:16] Hey, it's J.D. here and welcome back to Discovering Downey. This is an 11-part opus with a focus on Mr. Gord Downey, the late frontman of the Tragically Hip, but somebody who also gave to the world an extensive solo discography. Eight records in total. But have you heard them? That was what I sought out when I enlisted my friends Craig, Justin, and Kirk to discover Downey. These three are giant Tragically Hip fans, but they had little to no exposure with Gord's solo oeuvre. So every week, we get together and listen to one of the records in chronological order and see what we think. Did we miss out? Or did we make the right choice? We're going to find out on Discovering Downey. This week, we're going to dive into Gord's third solo release. This, with The Country of Miracles, it is the grand bounce. Now let's go to the team.Track 1:[3:27] Justin St. Louis, how are you doing this week? Week i'm worn out man and uh i'm ready for this thing to to take over my life tonight and just be back in the normal and enjoy the music and enjoy talking about it with you guys love it yeah kirk where are you headed off to next yeah actually heading off to the big apple nyc i'm uh going to be chaperoning my uh my youngest and they're going to be performing at carnegie so very proud pops Pops. And, uh, we just got back from a really cool trip in Memphis and Nashville and they did really, you know, they did fantastic there. So I've been surrounded by music and, um, that's inspired me, but I'm gonna, you know, concur with Justin and say, I'm definitely looking forward to a discussion about this album. I mean, uh, it's been a pretty cool journey so far, but this, I think this is gonna, this album is going to spark a pretty good conversation in my opinion. So, but doing well and looking forward to traveling again. It'll be interesting for sure. Craig, how are things on the left coast, motherfucker?Track 1:[4:36] Not too bad. Just got back from a family trip to Disneyland that was six years in the making. We tried it, you know, in 2020 and it didn't work out. And so we finally made it down with the kids and spent a few days in LA at the end of the trip and was lucky enough to have Kirk from Chino drive all the way out to LAX and we hooked up for.Track 1:[4:59] Little conversation and yeah, it was cool. It was a good time. Yeah. So first time meeting in person, which was a great night. It was really cool. Yep. No, it worked out actually great. I just got back from that trip with a choir that I'd mentioned and then, uh, hadn't seen my mom in a bit and she was actually staying, um, uh, doing some pet sitting at a house in garden Grove that had some good memories. So it kind of was a half, half the distance to LAX. So it worked out perfect to go and meet you and and i appreciated uh appreciated you giving up some time from your family for a little bit to have a good conversation so and i know it'll carry over tonight well this week on discovering downey we're here to discuss and dissect the june 2010 released from gord and his band the country of miracles consisting of the usual suspects canadian musicians oh.Track 2:[5:48] Man i'm gonna butcher this julie duaron right is that right yeah so she's on vocals guitar and bass then there is gourd's frequent collaborator josh finlayson.Track 1:[6:02] Dale morningstar on lead guitar dave clark on drums and dr p on keyboards chris walla a former member of death cab for cutie turned the knobs on this release but where do you start with the grand bounce it's been seven years and three albums since Gord's last outing, and The Country of Miracles sounds as though they've been chomping at the bit to jam with Gord yet again. This album, to me, is a band album as much as it is a Gord solo affair. As a result, it sounds more cohesive than the previous two releases. While it rarely reaches the heights of Battle of the Nudes, it is a remarkably consistent effort. It's worth noting that the songs on The Grand Bounce seem more structured and maybe even more thought out as three to four minute rock songs that are reminiscent of Gord's day job, The Tragically Hip. There's an energy on this record that's palpable. Perhaps it's the shorthand of working with the same band for three consecutive records?Track 2:[6:58] I'm not sure, but it's there. Now, once we get into the songs on this 50 minute, 13 song opus.Track 1:[7:06] It's tough not to get caught up in the sonic presence that Walla brings to the table. There's a depth to the maturity, And I'll use the term again, a cohesiveness that wasn't as pronounced on the prior two efforts. While the grand bounce is a perfectly fine listen, it's only after letting it grow on you. For me, it sat growing on me since I did the fully and completely podcast. And that to me is when it shows its real prowess, creating earworms and hooks that reel you in and invite you over for dinner just to hang out with the music.Track 1:[7:40] But what do our friends Craig, Justin, and Kirk have to say about the Grand Bounce? Let's not waste any more time and get right to them. Kirk from Chino, talk to me about your first experience with the Grand Bounce. Yeah, well, after we had finished up talking about Battle of the Nudes, I had had some travel for work, and then I was getting some other stuff ready for a very busy week. So I didn't get to jump on to a listen right away. I mean, it was a number of days. But I was doing a walk at night and, you know, cool walk with the dog and had it in my AirPods. And just right away, I was really taken by it. I really felt the maturity of it, you know, very reminiscent of what you had mentioned, JD, in your lead up to, you know, the discussion about the album is it just had a maturity to it. The band, it felt like a band album, exactly what you said. and I, as much as I loved the first two albums, I just felt a comfort. Like the whole time I've listened to this album, which is, I don't know, maybe 15, 20 times at this point, it just, it's a warm blanket to me. It's like, it now is okay.Track 1:[8:57] It's okay, I can like Gord Downie as a solo artist. You know, I just had a great experience with it. I really, really loved it. I could spend a lot of time talking, but I want to hear what the other guys have to say about it. Well, Craig, what do you think? Yeah, this was really a grower for me. I wasn't sure when I first put this on. I didn't think I would like it as much as I do. And overall, I really love this album. I have maybe a couple of critiques, which we'll get to later. Later but my my journey with this album actually goes back to 2015 when you may remember jd that we had a bunch of target stores open in canada in whenever 2010 maybe and they only lasted about four or five years and they went went under and when they were closing down they had cds on sale for five dollars you can get any it could get any cd and i happened upon the grand balance and And actually the next album we'll be doing next week and pick those both up for five bucks. And they sat on open for many years and I just opened them for this podcast. So I I'm lucky enough to have an actual podcast.Track 1:[10:05] Physical copy and the liner notes that came in them so i may be able to offer a few little nuggets um one i would just want to mention off the top chris walla is actually mentioned as a member when it says the country of miracles are and it lists all the members plus him so i believe he was playing guitar on wow much of the album wow very cool some of those videos he was playing so that i'm not surprised by that and i love that thank you for sharing because this is actually the only album that I couldn't get. I tried to get vinyl of everything, but I don't have a CD. So everything has been streaming or online.Track 1:[10:41] And I watched several videos with interviews and he talked specifically about the inlet, the vocal or the lyrics. And you just showed a picture of it, Craig, and it's not the standard sizing that you normally get. So I appreciate you sharing that. That was pretty cool. And I think also what I learned with this album is again, just to trust Trust, you know, Gord, you know, you may not like it right away, but give this album a good listen if you haven't before. It took longer to grow on me than the other two, but highly recommended. Yeah i think a good strategy with this record is to listen the fuck out of it for like two or three days and then put it on the shelf for a week and then pick it up and there's something like kirk was saying that's comforting about it you come back to it and you're like whoa this is really fucking way more hooky than i imagined when i first listened to it but let's uh talk to our friend mr st louis what do you say on the matter of discovering downey v the grand bounce So I also had the word warmth written down, and I did take your strategy, JD, of I listened to it probably 10 times. I started immediately after recording our last episode, which is how I had done the previous. I was like, okay, this is not Battle of the Nudes.Track 1:[12:04] And I immediately heard what I thought was Bob rock sound. But then I realized this isn't Bob rock sound and neither were those other two albums. This is the era that Gord was in with the hip and all of the Bob rock haters probably owe him an apology because this is the type of stuff that Gord was writing at that time. And so it did feel familiar and it did feel comforting and it did feel warm and I liked it. I also, you know, during this time, um, when the album came out i was listening to kings of leon and mumford and sons and stuff like that and there's a lot of that in this in this sound and i you know i was a uh death cab for cutie fan at the time and you know postal service and all that stuff i mean so it was very contemporary for for when it came out and it felt like it belonged in that 2010 range but.Track 1:[12:58] For me, it was a big letdown after Battle of the Nudes, because that album was so damn good. And because we didn't have seven years between recording these episodes for our musical tastes to change, it was like, whoa, this is a massive shift from what we had just digested into this new album. I don't hate it, but I don't think I love it.Track 1:[13:20] Wow. Yeah. I don't see it as such a massive shift. It's going to be interesting as we get into the track by track. Should we do that now, gentlemen? Let's go for it. Let's do it. Okay, the first track on the record is a great one for me in the sense that winter has ended. But when I think about winter, I think about that. I think about Gord standing on the edge of Riverdale Park and having somebody discuss this east wind with him, this strong east wind that blows in and is very cold. And we're going to hear from Craig first on this one. So, Craig, what do you think of the east wind? This is the one song off the album I was familiar with. I had seen maybe a video, I'd heard it quite a few times, and I love it. I think it's a great opener. I want to point something out really quickly that you guys wouldn't necessarily know without the liner notes, but there are Roman numerals, one through four, throughout the album. And at first I thought maybe it was to do with the record I thought maybe the four-sided record which it is, I looked it up but the.Track 1:[14:29] There's three songs per side on the records, and it doesn't quite jive with the numbers in the booklet. So what I think is, I've come up with a little story around, this isn't a concept album by any means, but it's definitely got a story to it. And so I've actually listed what I think the story is about, and I think section one is about a move. And so you've probably done the research too and and gourd at the time was moving up to glenora on the um on the great one of the great lakes so this this first section i think all the songs kind of relate to moving uh the east wind maybe not as much but also interestingly enough the east wind is the only song that doesn't have lyrics printed out in the booklet and i'm not really sure why that would be what yeah so there's a quote at the top it does say the the quote about the east wind is the laziest wind, but right under that is track two. And if you saw some of the video research or YouTube, he talked about it was a neighbor who was a farmer who was describing the east wind, the laziest wind.Track 1:[15:40] So I found that very interesting, Craig, when you proposed the theory of the story. Because I could think to several of the different interviews and different discussions about different songs and how he's definitely pinpointing some real life things that are happening. Like you mentioned the move and, and, uh, obviously some discussions about relationships and, and then he's got his kids involved in some of these songs too. So you may be onto something, my friend. Another theory theory I have is that maybe this song is meant to be like a little bit of an introduction sort of before the story starts. And maybe that's why it didn't have the lyrics in here or maybe it's a misprint who knows, but the song itself musically is, is great. Uh, very much a band jamming again, like we're used to from the previous two albums, but just more layering, more production.Track 1:[16:30] I really love how the guitars are layered. From my count, there's five guitar players on this track, including one who I couldn't find any mention of anywhere on the internet. Someone named Edgar Lewis played guitar, and I believe he plays the guitar at the end, the little guitar melody, the sort of New Order style melody at the end. I couldn't find anything about who he might be. The name Edgar, of course, made me think of Gord's middle name. So not sure if there's a connection there. But yeah, I could not track this person down online. Anybody out there knows who Edgar, what his name is? I apologize. What's his name again? Edgar Lewis or Louie.Track 1:[17:10] Edgar Louie. If you know who Edgar Louie is, shoot us an email at discoveringdowneyatgmail.com. I wonder if he's an acquaintance of Chris Swala. Possibly. Although they did record in Kingston, so it would have been quite the trip for one little guitar melody. But yeah, maybe he was someone working in the studio. Maybe he's a friend of the band or who knows. But yeah, the Chris Walla production is very noticeable on this song. The way things are, you know, I think Gord even mentions in an interview, he just keeps layering things every few bars and very evident. The drums are a good example of this in the song. They come in kind of lightly, but they're still pretty intense. And then the toms come in, and you've got that really almost tribal beat for the first few bars once the whole band kicks in. And then you get just sort of a regular beat. But it's always driving forward. There's always momentum with the drums. It's always picking up momentum right through the end of the song and really strong playing all together. Such a solid song. I think the second part of that build, when I first heard it, was like, oh, this is sort of like maybe some of the tone that was on Battle of the Newts, where it was kind of subdued and subdued.Track 1:[18:31] Just there. And then there's this massive sound, which really works. I do love the song a lot. And I believe you that there's five guitars in it. Um, cause if you have earbuds in and turn it up, you, you feel it. Yeah. And while the chords are quite simple, when you really listen, there's actually a lot going on, even with Gord's guitar. And I feel like on this album, he has matured as a player. You can tell, you know, he's got another seven years of experience and we never did really talk about on the previous episodes his guitar playing but when he first started playing guitar in the hip it was a bizarre thing to watch his strumming patterns it was so awkward to watch him as a guitar player and i'm not even sure he was really too much in the mix back in the early days but he has grown so much as a guitar player he's playing a lot in open tunings i believe i've read that open c was his favorite so i think a lot of the songs on this album or an open C. I noticed in the videos he was playing a Tele for much of this session rather than acoustic.Track 1:[19:33] And yeah, there is a lot of subtleties to the guitar playing, even though it's basically two chords through the whole song. I was going to mention, Craig, and we've all obviously did our research and saw the YouTube, but the bathhouse sessions when they were recording. And, and I'm honestly, it's like, it's a question to this group. They, they were all isolated, but they were all playing live. And you had mentioned how much he was playing guitar. And in the, that little six part series, I loved how Gord was so committed to playing guitar, as you had mentioned. Like there was typically when you're recording an album like you want to do the the vocal and the guitar separately and he was nope i'm going to do it together because the guitar strumming was creating some of the cadence of the vocals and and i loved how or i felt like that was demonstrated there so i think that's a great point that you brought up craig that he was really focused on that playing yeah that makes this album easier to sing to we had mentioned whether i don't remember if it was on air or off air, but we had all had trouble singing along with the first two albums. And this one is much more poppy and rhythm driven. And I think you're absolutely right, Kirk, that him playing the guitar as he sings and it's in every take really kind of made that happen. I also did notice if you, it's really low in the mix, but when this track first starts, somebody says, no more takes.Track 1:[21:01] Like, we have to do it this time, you know? I really, I picked up on that and I enjoyed it, especially after watching that six part series. I'm gonna jump on your story theme, Craig, and Moon Over Glenora.Track 1:[21:14] The next song on the album.Track 1:[24:18] I absolutely love this song right and he talks about the ferry ride and that really goes along when you think of the east wind and being off the lake and then now talking about the ferry, uh justin what'd you think about this song oh man this song solidified my crush on julie this is, such a great track and the duet through every word and then the live performances of this song that i I was able to find on the, on the hips now for plan a record, there's one lyric that's, we don't want to do it. We want to be it talking about the music and they are absolutely the music while they're playing the song. And it's just a lot of fun. And it's like a, it's like going to a club show, which it probably was. I really did love the song. And for me, the ferry ride across Lake Champlain is just a part of life here when you're going over to New York and it just, just talking about the spotlight, finding the ice in the water. I've been on that ferry and the song is really, I think, about two people falling in love, not knowing that they're falling in love. And they're kind of bickering and arguing about it. And they get outside in the ferry and it's cold and it's terrible and you got to stay warm, so let's complain about something.Track 1:[25:29] And they talk about the wolf and they've killed the wolf by the end of the ferry ride. You know um it's the the imagery is really cool and the dead lake right isn't that the last the ocean is dead the ocean is dead yeah yeah it's a great little song i really do love it but i think the star is julie and this really she's fantastic yeah i uh story-wise i actually had almost the opposite thought to me it was maybe um a couple falling out of love and maybe this is the the cracks are starting to show. Like maybe it's not totally fractured yet. And again, I'm not saying that this is about Gord or, you know, I don't know too much about his personal life, but I do know parts of this are inspired obviously by true events, you know, the move to Glenora. Did anyone watch the interview with Gord with Kim Mitchell? If you guys even know who that is? Yeah, I did. Do you know who he is?Track 1:[26:26] Well i had to look it up i didn't know who he was immediately and i got confused because it was that little two-part interview and he had mentioned something about being and i think like saint paul minnesota and it threw me off because it said toronto but then in the second part they they confirmed they were talking in toronto um the one thing sorry and i hopefully i don't derail your thought but the one thing that i loved on that particular interview is the reverence that gordon had for that particular guy so i definitely had to look him up you know to see the songs that he was involved with and and he was uh you know as he mentioned in that he's a hero so sorry go ahead i just wanted to bring him up because he's a you know a classic canadian artist i'm wearing my my cancon shirt here and uh he was definitely a a big part of you know the music scene here in in the 80s and 90s i guess i brought it up because um this was a song that he mentioned really loving that you know kim really loved it also i found it really interesting I'd never heard this before, but Gord references a song that the two of them wrote together.Track 1:[27:29] And by the sounds of it, it's a song that was never released. So it sounds like Kim Mitchell had a song he wrote and then Gord wrote the words too. And so there may be an unreleased song out there, or maybe if a listener's heard this or has any idea how to track this down, I'd love to hear it. So that was my only thing I wanted to add. Oh, and also Dale does some really really cool guitar, little shots on, on this sort of beat two and four. And then he does these little muted scrub scrubs. I'm not even sure how to.Track 1:[27:58] How to put in words what that sound is i'm you know what i mean kind of like a pick almost like a pick slide into the the bends i mean i don't know it it's almost it's a it's a technique it's not it's a rhythmic pattern that he's doing yeah and with with some notes in there but they're sort of muted but anyways i thought that added some nice accent but i agree with with you justin that julie really steals the show on this one it's such a good song on many of the songs on this album that combination of voice, to me, that was what I had mentioned earlier about how much I enjoyed this album, is when you feel that the band is now a band and you feel that connection. But we are so used to hearing Gord as part of the hip and that amazing combination of vocals that he has, you know, with Paul and then obviously with the guitar phrasing and how the hip is the hip and you can hear that. And I think with the vocals that he has with her on many of these albums, but especially on this particular album and several of these songs, to me, that really solidified like, okay, this is a great combination of musicians that are doing fantastic things. So I so appreciated this song.Track 1:[29:19] Another, Gord has that ability to do like an upbeat rhythm and kind of like Pascal's Submarine that we talked about in the last album, where it's kind of a dark subject, but it's a very upbeat song. So I really felt that with this particular song. I couldn't help but think, as he said, the ocean is, as they were repeating, the ocean is dead at the end. I was just thinking about all the water songs that Gord has and how water must be his Roman empire. There are a couple things that come up on this album over and over. Water is one, color is another.Track 1:[29:57] Um, and day and night is a third thing. There was a fourth, I can't remember right now, but there was some definite themes through the entire album. Kirk, what did you think when you first heard as a mover? What I loved specifically about as a mover is the buildup. I think Justin may have referenced in, in some of the, those interviews where, um, how the production was every four bars, you got to get something new. So this really was uh okay you know you get the train feeling that's going on it's that moving it's the transformation it's the sorry not transformation but him him relocating to glenora as we'd mentioned now we're going into this as a mover and you know this these lyrics not just specifically for this song but for for this all album and i think in one of our messages together.Track 1:[30:53] It was hard to pin down some connections on some of these there there are some that are that are there but I agree with that that that guidance on that so as a mover to me loved it you know the sarcasm hey baby want to kiss closes it out with that that that particular theme and it's It's a driving, great rhythmic song. Another thing that was clear in my memory in some of the interviews that we got to see was he was so excited about this album in that it was genre-less, right? You can't just say it's a country album. You can't just say it's a pop album. You can't just say it's a jazz album. It has a little bit of everything. And he even talked about touring for this particular album, that they were doing a bunch of festivals and that they were jazz festival, a pop festival, a rock festival. It was different. So he was pretty proud of that fact. And I got that feeling with that as a mover. Justin, what was your take on the song? So I found a note somewhere that when Gord was writing this album, he was reading a book about Custer. And the title of the album, The Grand Bounce refers to a phrase that was coined during the Custer's involvement, whatever, in the 1860s. Whenever they deserted the cavalry, they called it the Grand Bounce. And desertion and moving and all this stuff really tie in together and –.Track 1:[32:22] This song is kind of what really sparked my thinking about that. Like, you know, this is, there's something happening here and yes, the, the train, you feel like you're on a train as soon as the song starts. And, um, it's definitely a different sound. This song is way different than anything that Gord had put out previously. And I know, again, I, it, it kind of rubbed me the wrong way a little bit. I mean, I've, I've come into all this with an open mind, but it was like, what is he trying to do here? It didn't, the production of this album, And the sound of the songs just did not match up with the first two albums. And this doesn't even match up with anything else that's on this album. And my first reaction was, is he trying too hard with this song to sound different? But it certainly has grown on me. But the theme of moving and desertion and the grand bounce itself, this song tied the album title together for me. Craig, what do you think? In the lyrics, you've got the wife, you know, not wanting to move and you've got the kids wanting to move all that, you know, wanting to go everywhere. And he says he's in the middle, he's got no opinion. So I kind of like that tension in here. I also love the line where he rhymes pressure and less sure. Oh, and he does it in this low register the second time through?Track 1:[33:44] I'm even less sure. And when he says it, he's almost talking it. It's so great. Yeah. And I know I mentioned to you guys in text that when I first heard this song, I was not a fan.Track 1:[33:58] And JD, you were a bit surprised by that. And then it just grew and grew and grew on me. Like more than any other song on the album. I love the song now. I really was not a fan at first. Just love the whole feel of it. And the little drum shuffle with the brushes. And i think what i didn't like at first was just the chorus there was something weird about just those words as a mover it's just not very smooth sounding it doesn't roll off yeah and so that that kind of bothered me at first but really it's whatever feelings i had about it have totally changed now i think it's totally yeah it's a really cool song i was with you that you know At first, I just didn't like it. But then I remembered the song is now 14 years old. And when it came out, I was listening to Mumford & Sons and I was into that sound. And this could be on one of their albums.Track 1:[34:50] And I had to force myself to transport back to that time period. And I would have loved the song back then. And also the, you know, the title as a, as a mover, it made me think like a double meaning could be like a mover is also a dancer. And the next song we have is the dance and its disappearance. And this was another song that I didn't love at first. It's still not one of my favorites on the album, but once I read the lyrics, once I got into the CD booklet and started trying to figure out what it was about, I started to appreciate it a lot more. And so I just want to read you this quick quote in the booklet. There's a quote from Crystal Pite, who I believe is a dancer. And she writes.Track 1:[35:38] It is an extreme expression of the present, a perfect metaphor for life. And it goes on. Once I kind of got what that phrase meant, it just started making sense. And when you watch the live videos of this song, every single performance of this, Gord has something to say about people in the audience with their cell phones. And he's very appreciative when there's not too many people with their cell phones. And he talks about, if you're filming this on a cell phone, you're getting 10% of the experience. Put it away.Track 1:[36:08] And there was one show in Victoria and I wrote down what he said. He says, you like that things disappear as they're happening. I don't see any phones in the air trying to capture 10%. Your brain can handle it. Let it resonate. Let it sink in. Wait till tomorrow, the day after, it'll be all right. Yeah. And I love that message. Yeah, me too.Track 1:[36:26] Fuck. Kirk? This song, when I first heard it, and we've had this discussion on some of the other albums, You know, can this be a hip song? And that opening little riff on this particular song was very hip-like. And there was another interview that I had looked up, I think Alan Cross was his name. And he had even had mentioned that on this particular, he wrote simply a hip-like song. So I think that was one thing that I appreciated is there was not any fear anymore. Like, it's okay because I am the guy who writes the stuff for the hip. So there's going to be songs that sound hip like, and I think he embraced it. But I think that I, the thing that I loved about this, and as I mentioned on the other songs and you guys as well is the, the harmonies with, with, with Julie on this, like that's okay. This is Gord Downie. This is that sound where with the hip it's, this is what I sound like when I sing with Paul or whoever's doing the backup. And I believe that he really captured that in this album, but that song as well. So that was one thing that I noted in my research on this particular song. I think this is my favorite tune on the record.Track 1:[37:41] Gord had that theme, let it disappear into the night and let it happen, use it up. That is a decades-long theme in whatever he's done, and I love the message. I also love the word a squirrel. Holy crap. What a great way to convey that you can't settle down. My mind a squirrel. Holy crap. Did anyone else look up Sudbury yellow? Speaking of colors, I mentioned earlier that color is a huge theme throughout the whole thing. Also tying into the cover art, which was actually a painting by Gord Downie himself. So I think art was much on his mind during the recording of this album. And there is different mentions of colours in so many different songs. So Sudbury Yellow references the colour of the staircase at Sudbury Hall in England. And when you look up a picture of it, it's a very striking yellow. It's actually pretty neat to look up. And also another great So he rhymes the word orange with door hinge. Yeah. Blood orange with door hinge. Yeah. That's great. And I did notice the color theme throughout this and, and art is again, a decades long theme with, with Gordon. And there are many more examples through and we'll get to that.Track 1:[38:57] Well, let's stick with you, Justin, and move forward to The Hard Canadian. When I think of this song, I always, I can close my eyes and I picture, this is going to be lost on the two Americans, I apologize, but I picture Relic from The Beachcombers as The Hard Canadian.Track 1:[39:16] Beachcombers was a CBC show based in the West Coast, and there were some hard-living fishermen type, and there was one character who was sort of a scoundrel, and his name was Relic, And he just looked like a hard Canadian. He looks like the lyrics to this song. But Justin, what do you think of the hard Canadian?Track 1:[39:34] So I had two trains of thought on this. And one was that I thought Gord might have been singing about himself and just the fuck you today kind of thing. But I also thought it was about the weather, maybe in the winter. And go out to the plains and it's brutal out there. And the hard Canadian weather doesn't care about you. You know, and yeah, so the hard Canadian in my weather theory is the hard Canadian don't give a damn about you. What's a windswept face to the elusive presence of the sun to the hard Canadian? Like, you know, it's winter all the time in some places. It's dark all the time in some places, you know, north of 60, right? And it's the line, whether he's just mean or willfully dense, like the weather is controlling itself. self. It was like Mother Nature or whatever is doing this on purpose to test you. Let's see if you come out the other side. Again, the art theme, there's the quote, and it's in quotations from life nothing to death nothing, refers to a piece of art by Frank Stella, which is, forgive my Spanish here, but de la nada vida a la nada muerte. Is that how you'd say it? But that's what it translates to, from life nothing to death nothing. And it's this massive piece of art that's It's very 1965 looking and it's just another theme in there. And I don't know how it ties in other than it's a.Track 1:[40:59] You know, foreboding dark quote. That's just my, I don't know. That's my interpretation of it. But you know, Gord obviously was going through some stuff too. And, and it, it felt like this was almost a third person narrative of a first person point of view. There was two songs on the album that I'm familiar with. The hard Canadian is the first time I heard it. I had definitely had heard it before, but had not, you know, process that it was not a hip song. I think I thought it was like a deep cut hip song or something when I heard it years ago. But the other one is, and I know we'll talk about it, The Night Is Forgetting.Track 1:[41:36] He would sing it when he would do hip songs. He would sing some of his gourd songs. So when I read that story or heard about that story, I'm like, I know I've heard that song before when they played out here in LA or whatever. So, but anyway, the hard Canadian, what he had mentioned was it was Mike, Mike Clattenberg trailer park boys. That's that, that's it's one of the series that I haven't watched. I've watched letter Kenny and I've watched, you know, several other Canadian, but I have not watched the trailer park boys. And he had mentioned that it was one of the guys I guess is one of the creators and he's like yeah I got this new thing and it's hard Canadian it's dope and and so when I'd heard that description I immediately thought of like if you guys are familiar with letter Kenny like Wayne is he's hard Canadian it's just gonna smoke a you know go out and smoke and have a puppers have a dart yeah having a dart exactly so that that was the imagery that I got from it I want to point out that this is the first song in section number two lyrically in the lyric booklet.Track 1:[42:39] And I just noticed that there's a quote here from Walter von Tilburg Clark, night is like a room. It makes the little things in your head too important. And I just realized that's the second verse of the East wind. And then I glanced forward section three has the lyric from the third verse. So the lyrics from the East wind are in here, but they're, they're heading each sections. And so in my mind, and they're quotes from other authors. Is that what it is? Yeah. It was, um, he said that song was made up of the East wind I'm talking about was made up of quote, like three quotes that he, that he loved. And I had seen that somewhere. Yes. And so the hard Canadian to me is like what JD said, like I'm picturing like a relic type. I had a baseball coach when I was a kid who he's this older guy and he always had like this about one inch left of a, of a homemade smoke. And, uh, and that, that line where he says, takes a puff of puff of nothing and pick something from his tongue. Like I just picture Mr. Heller, my baseball coach who, you know, for four years, you know, first 10 minutes of practice, you don't wear a glove. You're, you're passing the baseball just with bare hands and, and just thinking back to those, those times, there was another line that I want to bring up the silences.Track 1:[43:55] He don't listen to them. Do you think that's a reference to Pascal? Maybe that's interesting. Uh, I hadn't thought that, But because I'm thinking now my mind is a squirrel and I, I'm almost thinking this is about, you know, that, that, you know, rural Canadian, um, you know, like a relic type. And in my mind, Gord is trying to say maybe that, that there's more, more to that person than, than maybe meets the eye. I don't be so quick to judge when he says he, he blurs the image, drags his brush through the wet pigment. To me that line saying you know don't be so quick to judge the hard canadian well right at the end he mentions remembering someone too and that's absolutely you know makes sense and i know a lot of hard frenchmen that are from quebec that have been through hell and you get down to it and they're just you know beautiful soft men inside but you got to get through seven layers of onion to get there.Track 1:[44:56] And that really ties perfectly into the next song, which is Gone.Track 1:[48:41] Because it has a very similar story behind it, which I'll get into it a little bit. But Kirk, what were your thoughts on Gone? Yeah, no, I love that you actually had mentioned that you're going to get into more of the meaning of it. Because I have some thoughts and ideas, but what I really wanted to talk about on this particular one, from the musician side, that I absolutely loved about it is – I'll give the note that I wrote. And I can't remember exactly who it was that mentioned it to Gord, but he said it sounded like a moose in the distance.Track 1:[49:16] And when you listen to this tune, which is a beautiful tune, another great example of the harmonies, it's another one where you just hear the range of Gord's vocals that are just phenomenal and how he can cover the spectrum with that. But the fact that Dale Morningstar was using a theremin and had several different layers of the theremin recorded on that and you hear it. And then when you get confirmation of it, you go back and listen to it and you go, oh, wow. Right. Because there's only a few songs out there that we all know and love that have the theremin. Right. There's only what the Beach Boys and Led Zeppelin or the, you know, have have really pulled it off. So it's cool to see them jump out from a musician standpoint, musicianship standpoint.Track 1:[50:05] The other thing that I wanted to mention before, and I definitely want to hear Craig's thoughts on the meaning of it, was that Gord had mentioned in one of his interviews that this and I think The Night Is Forgetting, he called it the grandma and the grandpa. So he'd had these songs for a long time and he'd matured with them. And so I think that that anticipation of so much time between the two albums, but then having songs that came, you know, at different points along the way. And I just felt like this one had, it had marinated and it was, what was presented was what had, he had settled on, because I think that happens anyone who's done music creation. You're, you write it with a thought, a producer takes a look at it, an engineer takes a look at it, the rest of the band, and it becomes something different.Track 1:[50:55] Anyway, Craig, your thoughts on some of the meaning behind it. In the booklet, there's a quote from a Polish writer named Bruno Schultz. And it says, He had not been rooted in any woman's heart. He could not merge with any reality and was therefore condemned to float eternally on the periphery of life in half real regions on the margins of existence. And apparently this was in reference to his own father. So again, coming out of the last song, it seems to kind of tie into that idea of, at the end of The Hard Canadian, where there's someone he was remembering. So this idea of, there's actually the lyric in the song, gone and feeling half real on the edge of your life. And that ties directly to that quote. quote musically the bridge that there's a building bridge with uh julie singing backup and.Track 1:[51:48] Really really great songwriting and this was another song that really grew on me it's just such a catchy kind of fun fun song uh justin what did you think no i loved it right from the beginning it yeah it builds and it starts really slow and then it gets really slow again in the middle and it's quiet. I didn't dive too deeply into the lyrics, but there's definitely, you know, this is a life story kind of thing. And maybe at the end of it. Yeah. I just, I really love the way the song made me feel and that's only surface deep, but sometimes that's all you need in a song. And I don't know, I could listen to this one over and over. And I have. Okay. Kirk, how about the drowning machine? What are your thoughts there? I think we have another nautical disaster, could we call it, on this next song? Yeah, yeah. Through Drowning Machine. Drowning Machine. Until I actually looked it up, I didn't really know what it was talking about. But apparently, the Drowning Machine is like a common name for a weir, which is a low head dam, which if you've seen pictures of them, basically what happens is the water just cycles. And just if you get if you end up going over one of these dams you're.Track 1:[53:02] Pretty much not getting out and so gourd had apparently read a story about um about some girls being saved from the the bow river in alberta and um there was actually i i kind of looked up this this bow river and there's this this notorious um spot on the river where where i believe it said had 14 deaths in 30 years and they actually had a there one story there was there was actually a boom across so if you if you're totally out of you know if you miss all the signs and you you keep going down you can grab on to this boom at one point a storm had washed it washed it away and so a couple of men died in in i believe 2007 because the the boom had been washed out and so finally they did some construction and they and they have now made it into uh an area called the Harvey, this is called the Harvey passage. And apparently people go there to do white water rafting. And there's actually two kind of, um, passages that go through now two channels, uh, at different levels of, you know, for, for different levels of experience, um, for, for rafters. I had, I had done some research on the, um, Glenora song and there's a very treacherous river that it's like, Hey, don't go there, fly over it.Track 1:[54:20] And this reminded me of, reading about that, it reminded me of Niagara Falls, just the immense force of the water at the bottom. And you're not going to get out of there if you go over the falls.Track 1:[54:37] We had a deer camp when I was a kid on the Huntington Gorge here in Vermont. And there's a plaque with a list of 30 or so names of all the people that have died in the gorge. And our deer camp was the spot where the state police would fish the bodies out of the river every time there was one that ended up there you know we we couldn't get to the to the camp because they would use the front porch to be their their base of operations oh yeah wild and i i have to say at the end um there is some lead guitar at the end by dale that really at this point in the album when I was, especially on first listen, when I wasn't totally jiving with some of the earlier tracks, this song was the one that immediately I loved, like right off the bat. And hearing that guitar when Dale finally cuts loose and really leans into that dissonance, I felt like, okay, I'm starting to get this. And Kirk, what did you think of this? Yeah, I am fascinated, obviously, with Gord's fascination with water and the nautical side of things. But again, I think this song was just another great example of their time together and how they really... And I don't know if you guys noticed this.Track 1:[55:58] I don't think they played this on that six-part one, but I really enjoyed that it wasn't like a monarchy. You know, it wasn't Gord was given direction. It was everyone was involved. And I really loved the different parts that you would see with Chris Swala and his just subtle, nice guy production tips. So, um, I really love that interaction of, of how now that they've been done.Track 1:[56:25] A couple albums together and now it had been a little bit. And I also read something about how, yeah, they wanted to definitely get that indie vibe and they definitely wanted to have a variety of different styles of music, but how they also, you know, they're also very accomplished musicians and they've spent some time with some big bands and have played in some pretty, pretty big arena. So they could bring that to the songwriting and, and, and, and the music within this. So, and I really felt that too, moving into Yellow Days, which was the next one.Track 1:[1:00:51] I love this tune. This tune to me, and maybe I'm hearing something wrong, but there was almost kind of like a jazz bossa nova, just a real kind of amazing groove to it. And I also loved hearing about the story about Josie Dye, I think was her name. And they had had a passing at a festival way back when, when I think she was a hip fan and he was just walking around and that that that's That's actually part of the lyrics in this particular tune. But I love this song. He talks about it in some of the interviews and the descriptions about just the Canadian summers and how much the Canadians love that summer, but it goes by so quick.Track 1:[1:01:36] And so they're really just trying to make the most of every time they have good weather and they have a good moment and also keeping with Craig's color theme, which I love that you brought that up and along with the storytelling that's going on uh you know this is the here we are and and enjoying that summertime and almost reminiscent of them recording this album right for the two weeks i think in august and in 09 so justin did you dig this song yeah because we have the same summer and winter pattern that that you guys would up north today you know inside baseball we're not recording this in the summer when this is coming out we're recording it well before and it was the first warm day this year and I wore shorts and it was only 61 degrees outside. It was very windy. I shouldn't have had shorts on. But you take those moments and you wrap your life around them when you can get them. And 61 felt like 81 today. And I know the Canada gray because we have that here. It's Canada gray. Even as it's warm today, it's Canada gray outside. And just the imagery of it is wonderful. wonderful yeah and i mentioned the earlier the you know the theme of of days and nights so you know that's very obvious here uh and going into the next song and um.Track 1:[1:02:53] A couple of things, Kirk, when you were saying, you know, that beat at the start, I had the same thing. I was actually trying last night to figure out what type of beat this really was. The word that came to my mind was Calypso, but then I looked it up and it was not correct. But like this South American, like it's something I've heard. Bossa Nova was what came to my mind. So, you know, Calypso Bossa Nova, it's definitely a Caribbean feel. And, you know, the fact that it's on a Gord album, you know, again, just really talks to, you know, we had your hardcore on the last one and now we're doing Calypso Bossa Nova, you know, jazz type stuff. It's brilliant in my opinion. It reminded me of my grandmother's organ, you know, had those big tab buttons that there's a there's a pre-programmed beat and it's really bad not that the song's bad but on the organ it is yeah kirk your story about the you know everyone you know in this you know having so few.Track 1:[1:03:54] Summer days in certain parts of canada it reminds me of back in 96 my band was was in winnipeg we were playing you know this show at a you know the club that all the you know the all the decent bands played at and so we were really excited about playing this this club and uh it was on a weekend we thought like this is great and it turns out it was the the long weekend in august and everyone in town leaves for the for the lakes and there was nobody in town like not just for our show but anywhere it was just bizarre so those are the the yellow days of winnipeg well let's Let's continue on with you, Craig. Keep this wagon wheel going and talk about Night is Forgetting, which is a great title. Yeah. So, so again, the day, day and night theme and we go from yellow days and tonight is forgetting.Track 1:[1:04:46] And it was really bugging me this song because I'm like, I know that I know this song and I couldn't figure it out. And then I felt so stupid a week ago when I actually looked in my, on my phone and I had the hip version of this, which is from about, I think 2005, it was just a single. As far as I know, it was just released out of nowhere. It was, uh, I think it was left over from in between evolution. Okay. So, so I did have it. So I definitely been listening to it, you know, in the past, but it never was a song that, that interested me very much. So this one again, grew on me. I think I prefer this version now. It's, it's a little more upbeat. I love the piano. So, so shout out to Dr. P, John Press, who I don't think we mentioned last, last episode, but he is such a great player. I actually looked him up last night. I couldn't find too much about him online.Track 1:[1:05:38] And he is so tasteful. He never overplays until this is like, it was almost like someone said to me, you know, just, just let loose. And you can actually see, I'm sure you guys saw on the, on the bathhouse videos, you can see him rehearsing this on his own, kind of coming up with a part and man, he nails those, those runs. It's very impressive. It's so good. So I wrote, or I heard, and I could have definitely stole it, but I heard piano flurries. And that's exactly what it sounds like as a piano flurry when it starts driving. That's exactly what my note says. Yeah, piano flurries. And the one line that stuck out with me or to me was the dew drops on the luminous veil. And I know he mentioned this in the Alan Cross interview and the luminous veil being the suicide barriers they put up on the Bloor Street street viaduct in Toronto. I guess it was a place where there was just mass amounts of suicides, just 500 suicides and they finally put up this barrier.Track 1:[1:06:41] It's a 10 minute walk from my house, the Luminous Vale. When you guys come here, I'll show you the Luminous Vale. At night, it's very pretty, but in sort of a, I don't even know, like an eerie way because Because the sections that hold the guy wires up all look like crosses. Yeah, it's heavy, man. And so my last thing about this song, in one of the interviews, Gord, he mentions that he read a quote from, I believe, Thomas Jefferson saying something about war is forgetting another country's resources.Track 1:[1:07:19] And he said, I just replaced war with night. On the hip version of this, he actually does sing war is forgetting in the last chorus. us. So he changes that for this version. But I was actually looking up quotes from Jefferson last night. I didn't find anything that resembled such an idea. So if any listeners know what he was referencing here, I'd love to hear from you. So when Gord passed, there was an interview on some news, whatever, with Ron McLean from the CBC, or I don't know if he's the CBC anymore, more, but I knew him from Hockey Night in Canada growing up. And what I think was a quote that Gord said, but I've never been able to find it attributed to Gord, was, night takes the chances, day the reward. I love that quote. And he wrote an op-ed about Gord's passing that included that line as well. And it's just a beautiful line. And I sort of.Track 1:[1:08:19] Think of myself with my work that way. I sleep three hours a night just because that's how my body works. And I'm up till one in the morning and then I get up at 5.30. But I also love that forgetting and forgetting are really just a great sound in the song that can be interpreted in any possible way. Yes, I love that part of it. And as I mentioned earlier, this was one of the songs that I know I had heard before. And honestly, until I just recently had either read or heard that it was a hip song or that it was used on a couple of hip shows, I feel 100% positive that one of the shows that I saw, they played this. I haven't gone back and look at all the set list yet, but I feel pretty confident of that. So yeah. But just love the musicality of the song. I mean, that's the only thing I would add is just the musicality is insane. I have created this little thing that I've called Gord's Annunciation Era, where he's got a section of his career with a hip where he absolutely nails every letter in every word. And think of the lonely end of the rink, and it's a very hard – and this song is a great example of that. You know he says every letter in every word in every phrase and it's just a it's very distinct this this section of maybe eight or ten years of his career whether it's with the hip or solo.Track 1:[1:09:46] And I just love how he really makes his body be an instrument with words. And also the line, he says, weird undercurrent, we're undercurrent. And again, another reference to water in a way, but just thought that was a neat little turn of phrase there. Yeah, he's so good at that. And he changes just little tiny tweaks throughout this album in many different songs with words and lyrics and how he, it sounds the same on first two or three listens. And then you realize, oh no, this is a completely different set of words. Christmastime in Toronto, he did that too on the last album. And at the very end of this song, I love how he's singing over and over. Night is forgetting and then forgetting. And then there's one time when they totally phrase it differently. There's pauses.Track 1:[1:10:37] Do you know what I mean? I mean, the very last line, I think it is just a neat little, I love songs that have just one little quirk like that. Yes, yes, absolutely. You know what? It really goes back to, I'll be leaving you or I'll be leaving you tonight. I mean, right from the beginning, right? It's just a really cool trick that he's always done. Well, another, one of the other tricks that he's famous for is invoking his children and lullabying them. The next song, Moon Show Your Lashes, to me is just the process of writing some of these lullabies and things about his children. That's what it means to me. Mr. St. Louis, how about you? I took it as his battle with insomnia, you know, which is also a common theme throughout his career.Track 1:[1:11:25] And yes, I definitely picked up on the thing. Like, you know, there's a, there's a book that my wife and I love called go the fuck to sleep, you know, talking about your kids, like just give us a break, man. And tonight, in fact, before we recorded, my daughter was taking a bath and she's trying to speak Spanish and she's yelling it and asking my wife questions in the other room in Spanish. And I walked in and Linda looks up at me and whispers, she needs to shut the fuck up. You know, just those moments of give it a rest, kid. But I think that it could be interpreted either way that like, yeah, he's talking about his kids. Like just, okay, relax. We get it. moon slow your lashes.Track 1:[1:12:09] But, you know, I think, The way that I took it was more of Gord by the lamp with a notepad trying to come up with the next song and wondering, you know, there's the line, what must he think? And no more, I think he thinks. And kind of judging himself or his work before it's even completed and just not being able to reconcile that. For what it's worth, I love the lyrics in this song. I friggin' hate the tune. I hate this song.Track 1:[1:12:39] It's so annoying. And I don't know what it is about it. And it's such an earworm. And it's the one I can't get out of my head. I can't stand the song. Get out of here. Wow. Actually just blown away by what Justin said, because I absolutely love the tune. Me too. And I think it's that 2010s, as you mentioned, you know, like there's such a massive influence from all of them individually as artists, but obviously Death Cab and that influence, but I think what they were listening to at the time. And so I mentioned that I really liked this album. So, you know, there's, there's no real duds on it for me. So, I mean, there's little things of course that I could critique, but to me, this particular album and, and, and even this song like this, this one's really up there. For me you know i'm still trying to decide what's going to be my favorite song from this and it's the first time that i didn't know instantaneously i particularly i enjoyed you know again just how it made me feel it gave me that that just that cool this is where we're at in this this time in music like it was it was it had it has some heavy lyrics but it it's i mean not crazy heavy but it was an upbeat song, I think, overall. So I appreciated it. So there was a story, Gord, in one of the interviews online I found.Track 1:[1:14:01] Talks about a radio essay he was listening to by, by someone named Neil McDonald. And he was talking about a woman who would go up to a place called high level Alberta. So when they, when he says high level in the, in the book, in, in, in the song, I had noticed in the booklet, it was capitalized. So it actually is a place up in Northern Alberta. And this woman would go up to um, Northern Alberta and, um, make, make some money. You can probably imagine how she's making her money and, and she would do this in order to support her kids. And, uh, and then when she got back to her kids, I just want to want to hold and smell. And another crazy example of how Gord writes these like incredibly upbeat, like you hear it and you fall in love with it because it makes you feel good, but it's dark AF.Track 1:[1:14:52] It's just got some real, real, real just black undertones in some of it, but the music just keeps you going. And that line that says, when, not if, after, when I get out of high level, when, not if. Yeah. And forget the, in the bridge, I think it is the forget the hawks, jaguars, the knife lickers and creeps. And yeah, it just really changed my perspective of the song and and yeah that that juxtaposition between the the sort of cute music and the dark lyrics some some more themes of um you know burgundy the color burgundy dance dance so again dance is the the one earlier that i was forgetting when i was talking about themes so themes on this album water you've got day and night you've got color and you've got dance and this song has a couple of those things in it and and to me it was like you know the things we do for our family oh like i like i said i i really love the story in the song and the lyrics and trying to figure out what i think i thought but just the tune i can't do it i don't know why man i'm sorry i'm i'm i'm not totally crazy about this song uh it's not my lead i'm actually we passed by my my least favorite without me saying but but to me um The Hard Canadian is the weak link on this album. To me, it's just a... Oh, wow. Yeah, it's just... I think it's the chord progression has just so been done before. Yeah, I'm not in love with it either. And that's the one song that I was familiar with on this album. This song, I wasn't too much of a fan of at first, but I do really like it now. It has grown on me, especially I think hearing that story. Well, are we ready to jump into Retrace?Track 1:[1:20:11] This song, my note, it just says vocally amazing. That's the note I have.Track 1:[1:20:18] I'm sure there's an amazing meaning behind the whole song. I really don't care. I just want to hear Gord sing the main line. I retrace my steps. And it just puts me in this amazing, wonderful, just warm place like we talked about in the beginning. And even Gord in some of his interviews talked about how the process and these songs were company to him. And that's what I felt with this retrace, this tune. And again, another great pairing from harmonies and also great build. And also, as we'd mentioned before, where that whole theory of every four bars coming up with something new, the retrace song, it definitely had additions and installations to create this. I just, yeah, maybe I'm dating myself, but I don't know if you guys are familiar with the band, the Smithereens.Track 1:[1:21:17] Kind of had a Smithereens vibe to it. Had a Lou Reed vibe to it. I know that there'

After analyzing the influences of indie rock act Pouty (who we mistakenly misgeolocated to Philly... they're from Cali) and chatting about some ill-considered arena tours, we get to the matter at hand: recapping our three days at the Kilby Block Party music festival in Salt Lake City. Show reviews of LCD Soundsystem, Joanna Newsom, Courtney Barnett, Vampire Weekend, Guided By Voices, Death Cab / Postal Service (again), Belle & Sebastian, Santigold, and many more.

The solo piano: a sound that's been evolving for over 300 years. It's perfectly happy all by itself, but it also plays exceptionally well with others. Flexible by design, the piano has been a mainstay in classical music and jazz, and a key element in traditional and popular music. With the arrival of ambient, minimal and new age music in the 1970s, the piano was expanded and dematerialized through studio magic, and combined with ambient and electronic textures to create spatial sound images. On this transmission of Hearts of Space, the acoustic piano meets ambient atmospheres, on a program called CONFLATION. Music is by JON HOPKINS, TALE OF US, BEN LUKAS BOYSEN, ROBERT RICH & MARKUS REUTER, HAROLD BUDD & CLIVE WRIGHT, CHRIS WALLA, and CHRISTOPHER WILLITS & RYUICHI SAKAMOTO. NOTE: If you're thinking of buying one the new electronic/digital pianos, here's an excellent guide by Rob Beck. [ view playlist ] [ view Flickr image gallery ] [ play 30 second MP3 promo ]

In 2023, Ratboys released their latest album The Window, and it was our fav of the year. We also got to see them perform at Johnny Brenda's in Sept last year. So when the opportunity came up for us to interview frontwoman and lead songwriter Julia Steiner we were so pumped!We spend time to hear more about the latest album, how they met producer Chris Walla and how he inspired them to try new things, and the stories behind some of tracks (can't believe they did "Black Earth, WI" in only 2 takes!). She also shares her passion for album sequencing and how she goes about selecting the order for the tracks on the album.We also learn more about her story finding her music path, how she met Dave Sagan in college, and how the rest of the band formed across their catalog of albums.In addition to "Black Earth, WI", we share the official video of "It's Alive!", some video we captured at the Johnny Brenda's show of "Charles Bernstein" (a deep cut off their first album), and close the show out with my fav track off the latest album "Empty".This is such a fun convo with one of the best out there right now - you won't want to miss it!LinksWebsite: ratboysband.comYouTube ChannelSpotify ChannelNepco Guitars: nepcoguitars.comAs always, our hope is to bring you "your next favorite band". If you tuned in today because you already knew this musician - thank you very much! We hope that you enjoyed it and would consider following us and subscribing so we can bring you your #nextfavband in the future. And check out nextfavband.com for our entire catalog of interviews!If you have a recommendation on who you think OUR next favorite band should be, hit us up on social media (@nextfavband everywhere) or send us an email at nextfavband@stereophiliastudio.com.Thank you to Carver Commodore, argonaut&wasp, and Blair Crimmins for allowing us to use their music in the show open and close. It makes everything sound so much better! Let's catch a live show together soon!#nextfavband #livemusic #music #musicinterview #musician #singer #guitar #song #newmusic #explorepage #instamusic #bestmusic #musicismylife #musicindustry #musiclife #songwriter #musiclover #musicfestival

Join our PATREON for bonus episodes.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ This week we have Matthew Caws of Nada Surf on to talk about the debut Luna record Lunarpark. We also talk about: costa or costa, Olde England, the home of the Bayonne Bees, kids accents, The Pom Pom Squad, Nada Surf track 1's, sequencing theory, which Pete, getting stuck on side A, recent listens, the André 3K flute record, scoring a film, tuning a Kora, Chris Walla, “Take the Skinheads Bowling”, Galaxie 500, Dean Wareham's voice, I believe in you man, and so much more. ________ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Order our Gatekeep Harder shirt here!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ // Follow us at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@danbassini⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@mysprocalledlife⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, @matthewcaws ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@runintotheground⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Ratboys, Chris Walla, and me.

Join our PATREON for bonus episodes.⁠⁠⁠  This week we have Hutch Harris of The Thermals on to talk about the Subhumans album From The Cradle To The Grave. We also discuss: the dawgs, Portland quadrants, missing the road, worst shows, Song Exploder, Marc Maron has Neil Young over, venue merch cuts, Fantasy Metal TM, Skate 3, music videos, selling out, Burn To Shine, Brendan Canty, NJ recording studios, Yo La Tengo, Chris Walla, Hurricane Sandy, first punk bands, The Decline, reinventing something new, punks vs the monarchy, oogles, and so much more. ________ ⁠⁠⁠Order our Gatekeep Harder shirt here!⁠⁠⁠⁠ // Follow us at ⁠⁠⁠@danbassini⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠@mysprocalledlife⁠⁠⁠, @instantanxiety ⁠and ⁠⁠⁠@runintotheground⁠⁠⁠.

On this album, The Window, Ratboys recruited one of most sought after producers in indie rock, Chris Walla. He produced breakthrough records like The Decemberists' The Crane Wife, Tegan and Sara's The Con, and both Transatlanticism and Plans for his former band, Death Cab For Cutie. Walla's touch on The Window maximizes the ten years of Ratboys coming together to make the transformative album of their career. It's earthy and comforting. It accomplishes big moments without sounding like it's trying too hard. Moments soar, moments wander, moments come back to earth and settle in. Webpost

Ratboys are set to drop their new album The Window via Topshelf Records on 25th August. Lead singer, Julia Steiner joins David Hogg to discuss the record, what it was like leaving their hometown of Chicago to record with their hero Chris Walla in Seattle and all the weird and wonderful vinyl varients of the album You can catch A Little Alternative on RNIB Connect Radio every Friday at 9pm or Saturdays at 7pm.  Photo shows Ratboys in front of an off white bcakground with Julia lying in front of the other three members. Photo Credit: Alexa Viscius

A born and raised New Yorker, Chris Walla moved to Ireland in 2017 to join the founding team of Dogpatch Labs, a startup incubator and innovation lab in Dublin. Over five years, Chris helped build Dogpatch Labs into Ireland's top incubator and one of Crunchbase's ‘Top 10 Incubators Around the World You Need to Know', leading their business development unit. Chris works at the intersection of startups and corporates. He has worked hands-on with 100+ startups as well as 10+ corporate partners on innovation activity. He has secured innovation partnerships with some of the world's largest companies globally, including Unilever, Fidelity Investments, IBM, Huawei, and more. Chris has a track record of winning landmark contracts spanning the domains of startups, corporates, and government, notably a €17M contract to run Ireland's national startup accelerator This episode is hosted by Dave Byrne

For the 20th anniversary of Nada Surf's third album, LET GO, we take a detailed look at how it was made. After Matthew Caws and Daniel Lorca formed the band in 1992, they eventually linked up with drummer, Ira Elliot. They spent several years grinding it out in their hometown of New York City where they worked multiple jobs and hustled to get their music heard. During a chance encounter with Ric Ocasek at a show at the Knitting Factory, Matthew Caws gave him a demo tape. A couple weeks later, Ocasek got back in touch with Matthew and offered to record them if they were able to sign to a label. Luckily, Elektra Records offered them a deal soon after and they went on to release their Ocasek-produced debut album, HIGH/LOW in 1996. Due to the unexpected success of the first single, “Popular,” Nada Surf found themselves under a lot of pressure for their follow-up album. THE PROXIMITY EFFECT was released in Europe in 1998 but Elektra got cold feet and decided not to release the album in the U.S. and ended up dropping the band. With no record contract, they found themselves back in New York, working odd jobs and calling in favors for help recording their third album, which ended up becoming LET GO. In this episode, Matthew Caws joins us for an in-depth conversation about this pivotal moment in the band's history when they went from being a major label success to suddenly being completely independent. Matthew describes how this period of his life was completely music-focused as he worked at a record store and spent all of his time going to shows and writing songs. The low pressure situation that they found themselves in inspired a more diverse group of songs and a more relaxed feel to their recordings than ever before. From sprinting home to remember song ideas to obsessively listening to a Sony Sports Walkman to writing a song in an Amsterdam bathroom to Chris Walla's mixing skills to gratitude for recorded music, we'll hear the stories of how the record came together.

Ungfolene i Virkelig er svært erfarne. Sånn går det når man starter band i tidlige tenår – og holder sammen. Bodøbandets tredje langspiller «For ung til å vær trist» er rett rundt hjørnet, produsert av Death Cab For Cutie-gitarist Chris Walla. Den reflekterte musikknerden, låtskriver og vokalist Tobias Aamodt forteller om å jobbe månedsvis med sin største helt, koronadepresjon, å droppe ut av musikklinja, Bergen-Manchester-Seattles hellige treenighet, å skrive sangtekster som filmscener, perfeksjon vs. nerve, fotballkarrieren, balansen mellom forberedelser og nuet, og mye mer.  Av og med: Einar Stray

Chris Walla's life today is very different from where it has been in the past. The musician and producer isn't in the Pacific Northwest, for instance, where he grew up and lived for many years. He's in Trondheim, Norway, where he is putting down roots and continues to compose and produce. And while that happens, Death Cab for Cutie, the band he co-founded in the 1990s, is in the midst of a 71-stop international tour.In this interview, Chris talks about music instructors and academic experiences that didn't quite kill his love of making music. He weighs the thrill of playing music with his friends to the painful drudgery of touring and the experience of losing connection with the songs. And he details his struggles with depression, alcohol, and, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the nagging feeling that people don't really want to hear what he makes.Learn more about Chris Walla and his Seattle recording studio by visiting HallOfJusticeRecording.com. Listen to Chris Walla's music on the streaming service of your choice. Follow Chris on Twitter @calculizer.Thank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of Maximum Fun.Check out our I'm Glad You're Here and Depresh Mode merchandise at the brand new merch website MaxFunStore.com!Hey, remember, you're part of Depresh Mode and we want to hear what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at depreshmode@maximumfun.org.Help is available right away.The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988 or 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-273-TALKCrisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.International suicide hotline numbers available here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlinesThe Depresh Mode newsletter is available twice a week. Subscribe for free and stay up to date on the show and mental health issues. https://johnmoe.substack.com/John's acclaimed memoir, The Hilarious World of Depression, is now available in paperback. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250209566/thehilariousworldofdepressionFind the show on Twitter @depreshpod and Instagram @depreshpod.John is on Twitter @johnmoe.

Pinegroves emotionaler Indie-Rock von Chris Walla von Death Cab For Cutie produziert? Im Minimum eine gute Kombination! Sänger Evan Stephens Hall widmet sich auf dem 5. Album «11:11» dem Klima der USA: Ganz wörtlich, aber auch der politischen Grosswetterlage und sozialen Spannungen.

Incredibly excited to announce that Chris Walla is our guest for 108! The Seattle born musician, producer and composer was one of the co-founders and the original guitarist of indie rock royalty Death Cab for Cutie. He's also produced seminal records from bands like The Decemberists, Youth Group and Tegan & Sara. In today's episode, we're speaking with Chris about the music scene in Norway, what he's looking for when choosing new projects, his solo record Tape Loops and we discuss the 20th anniversary of The Photo AlbumYou can listen to Chris's playlist here.You can find his solo record Tape Loops here.You can revisit The Photo Album here.Chris Walla Instagram: @chriswallaThanks again to Chris Walla for his time. We also want to give a special shout out to Connor at Next Wave Management for his assistance with this episode.You can follow us on This Song Is Yours socials below:TSIY Insta: @thissongisyoursTSIY FB: @thissongisyoursTSIY TikTok: @thissongisyours See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Death Cab For Cutie came as a trio: Ben Gibbard sang, Nick Harmer played bass, and we wheeled in our piano for Zac Rae. This intimate set included two new songs — including "Black Sun," the first single from their new album Kintsugi. The album title refers to the Japanese art of reassembling broken pottery and making the breakage part of the newly formed pot. Death Cab For Cutie, a groundbreaking band formed in 1997, has gone through its own rebuilding of sorts. Chris Walla, a founding member of the band, has left, after contributing music to Kintsugi, but that's his farewell offering. Death Cab For Cutie is still strongly defined by Gibbard's words, and that couldn't be more evident in this beautifully stark performance, which also includes "No Room In Frame" from Kintsugi, as well as two stripped-down favorites from the past. One, "Your Heart Is An Empty Room," is from Plans, while a beautiful love song from Transatlanticism, "Passenger Seat," moistened more than a few eyes in the crowd. Set List "Black Sun" 0:07 "No Room In Frame" 5:13 "Your Heart Is An Empty Room" 9:23 "Passenger Seat" 14:00 Credits Producers: Bob Boilen, Maggie Starbard; Audio Engineer: Kevin Wait; Videographers: Maggie Starbard, Carlos Waters; Assistant Producer: Emily Jan; photo by Emily Jan/NPR Team UNPLUGGED.

In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy get a little more modern with Foxing's 2018 album Nearer My God. The second most-recent album the guys have explored, Nearer My God ranked atop Jake's 2018 album rankings and near the top of his all-decade list. Find out more about Foxing's growth across three albums, where there was drama around some bagpipes, and how the band so capably creates a space to sink into anxiety on this week's podcast.Come join the Patreon family for bonus episodes, mailbags, show notes and even more goodness: https://www.patreon.com/columbiahouseparty Follow @ColumbiaHP on Twitter! While you're there say hello to @BlakeMurphyODC and @JGoldsbie. If merch is your thing, be sure to check out the store: http://bit.ly/chpmerch Or reach out to the show and say hey: podcast@columbiahouseparty.com If you enjoyed today's show, please rate Columbia House Party 5-Stars on Apple Podcasts.See you next week for an all new episode of CHP.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/4114831/advertisement

In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy get a little more modern with Foxing's 2018 album Nearer My God. The second most-recent album the guys have explored, Nearer My God ranked atop Jake's 2018 album rankings and near the top of his all-decade list. Find out more about Foxing's growth across three albums, where there was drama around some bagpipes, and how the band so capably creates a space to sink into anxiety on this week's podcast.Come join the Patreon family for bonus episodes, mailbags, show notes and even more goodness: https://www.patreon.com/columbiahouseparty Follow @ColumbiaHP on Twitter! While you're there say hello to @BlakeMurphyODC and @JGoldsbie. If merch is your thing, be sure to check out the store: http://bit.ly/chpmerch Or reach out to the show and say hey: podcast@columbiahouseparty.com If you enjoyed today's show, please rate Columbia House Party 5-Stars on Apple Podcasts.See you next week for an all new episode of CHP.

In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy are joined by Lauren Denitzio of Worriers (@worriesmusic) to discuss Tegan and Sara's 2007 album The Con. Yes, we're finally getting back to the one remaining winner from the Patreon CanCon arc voting. Find out more about how The Con came to hold such a special place in Canadian indie-emo, what the album meant to Lauren and our hosts, how Tegan and Sara dealt with The Con's reception very differently, and more on this week's podcast.Come join the Patreon family for bonus episodes, mailbags, show notes and even more goodness: https://www.patreon.com/columbiahouseparty Follow @ColumbiaHP on Twitter! While you're there say hello to @BlakeMurphyODC and @JGoldsbie. If merch is your thing, be sure to check out the store: http://bit.ly/chpmerch Or reach out to the show and say hey: podcast@columbiahouseparty.com If you enjoyed today's show, please rate Columbia House Party 5-Stars on Apple Podcasts.See you next week for an all new episode of CHP.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/4114831/advertisement

In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy are joined by Lauren Denitzio of Worriers (@worriesmusic) to discuss Tegan and Sara's 2007 album The Con. Yes, we're finally getting back to the one remaining winner from the Patreon CanCon arc voting. Find out more about how The Con came to hold such a special place in Canadian indie-emo, what the album meant to Lauren and our hosts, how Tegan and Sara dealt with The Con's reception very differently, and more on this week's podcast.Come join the Patreon family for bonus episodes, mailbags, show notes and even more goodness: https://www.patreon.com/columbiahouseparty Follow @ColumbiaHP on Twitter! While you're there say hello to @BlakeMurphyODC and @JGoldsbie. If merch is your thing, be sure to check out the store: http://bit.ly/chpmerch Or reach out to the show and say hey: podcast@columbiahouseparty.com If you enjoyed today's show, please rate Columbia House Party 5-Stars on Apple Podcasts.See you next week for an all new episode of CHP.

Hit save on your English lit essay and close your history textbook. In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy are joined by Jake's friend Wilson to revisit and reprocess The Decemberists' 2006 album, The Crane Wife. There is a lot going on here, with two sprawling, multi-part songs that lean heavily on historical (or mythical) source material and a few stand-alone tracks that do the same. Find out more about which Shakespeare play The Decemberists built upon, just how many people die (in album kayfabe) over the course of an hour, and what Wilson's full name is on this week's podcast. Come join the Patreon family for bonus episodes, mailbags, show notes and even more goodness: https://www.patreon.com/columbiahouseparty Follow @ColumbiaHP on Twitter! Say hello to @BlakeMurphyODC and @JGoldsbie as well. If merch is your thing, be sure to check out the store: http://bit.ly/chpmerch Or reach out to the show and say hey: podcast@columbiahouseparty.com If you enjoyed today's show, please rate Columbia House Party 5-Stars on Apple Podcasts.See you next week for an all new episode of CHP.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/4114831/advertisement

Hit save on your English lit essay and close your history textbook. In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy are joined by Jake's friend Wilson to revisit and reprocess The Decemberists' 2006 album, The Crane Wife. There is a lot going on here, with two sprawling, multi-part songs that lean heavily on historical (or mythical) source material and a few stand-alone tracks that do the same. Find out more about which Shakespeare play The Decemberists built upon, just how many people die (in album kayfabe) over the course of an hour, and what Wilson's full name is on this week's podcast. Come join the Patreon family for bonus episodes, mailbags, show notes and even more goodness: https://www.patreon.com/columbiahouseparty Follow @ColumbiaHP on Twitter! Say hello to @BlakeMurphyODC and @JGoldsbie as well. If merch is your thing, be sure to check out the store: http://bit.ly/chpmerch Or reach out to the show and say hey: podcast@columbiahouseparty.com If you enjoyed today's show, please rate Columbia House Party 5-Stars on Apple Podcasts.See you next week for an all new episode of CHP.

Gab Strum, AKA Japanese Wallpaper, is a music producer, songwriter, and artist based out of Melbourne, Australia. In this episode, Gab shares his journey, from getting started really young to working with tons of artists. He talks about his approach to production, remixing, advice for up-and-coming artists, getting unique tones and so much more! Check it out!You can learn more about Gab at https://gabstrum.com/You can follow Gab on Social MediaIG - https://www.instagram.com/gabstrum/Japanese Wallpaper IG - https://www.instagram.com/japanesewallpaper/?hl=enYou can listen to the song we discussed in the "Sauce" segment in its entirety here: “Swing of Things” by MAY-A - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIWl60YsGko&ab_channel=MAY-ASubscribe to the podcast and get my free guidebook "Music Production Essentials" here - https://mpe-ebook.benwallick.com/free-downloadJoin the Secret Sonics Facebook community here - https://www.facebook.com/groups/secretsonicsIf you'd like to help support Secret Sonics, you can do so by visiting https://www.buymeacoffee.com/benwallickReferencesAndrew Maury - https://www.benwallick.com/podcast-episodes/2021/7/18/secret-sonics-104-andrew-maury-mixing-with-intuitionAsher Parkes - https://www.benwallick.com/podcast-episodes/2020/4/20/secret-sonics-006-asher-parkesWafia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WafiaMcCartney 3,2,1 - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13679628/Tame Impala - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tame_ImpalaBen Allen - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_H._AllenMix with the Masters with Philippe Zdar - https://mixwiththemasters.com/dm26The Mitchells vs the Machines - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7979580/Alex Lahey - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_LaheyGordi - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordi_(musician)Chris Walla - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_WallaGeoff Swan - https://www.instagram.com/geoff_swan/?hl=enRuby Smith - https://www.benwallick.com/podcast-episodes/2021/3/26/secret-sonics-090-ruby-smith-blending-artistry-and-engineeringWaves pitch shifter - https://www.waves.com/plugins/soundshifter#creating-dance-risers-and-mixing-different-bpmsMojava MA 200 - https://mojaveaudio.com/ma-200/Sketchcassette - https://aberrantdsp.com/plugins/sketchcassette/Daniel Anglister - https://www.benwallick.com/podcast-episodes/2020/11/22/secret-sonics-073-daniel-anglister-how-to-make-impactful-recordsEduard Kort - https://www.benwallick.com/podcast-episodes/2020/4/20/secret-sonics-005-eduard-kortThanks for listening to this episode of Secret Sonics! I hope you enjoyed this episode :) Look out for new episodes weekly. Consider rating and reviewing our show on Apple Podcasts and sharing this or any of your favorite episodes with a friend or two.Thank you to Zvi Rodan, Mendy Portnoy, and Yakir Hyman for contributing to the new podcast theme music!You can find out more about Secret Sonics and subscribe on your favorite podcast app by visiting www.secretsonics.co***If you want the show to continue to improve, feel free to fill out a listener survey here: https://forms.gle/BWKmS4YmESYid5rh8 ***Follow along via social media here:Facebook: www.facebook.com/SecretSonicsPodInstagram: www.instagram.com/secretsonics/Feel free to email me at secretsonics@gmail.com with any questions and feedback you might have. I'm open to learning about what topics you'd like to hear about and which people you'd like to hear from. In pursuit of making this podcast truly helpful to anybody looking to improve at music production, all suggestions are truly welcome! Have a great week, stay safe, and dig in!-Ben

Welcome to The OC, listener. In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy are joined by comedian Lauren Mitchell (host of the @cavernofsecrets podcast) to discuss Death Cab For Cutie's enormous 2003 hit Transatlanticism. The podcast will explore bands that performed at The Bait Shop on the hit show The OC, which served as a snapshot and elevator of the early-2000s indie rock scene. Find out more about Ben Gibbard's workmanlike songwriting approach for Transatlanticism, what character Lauren compares Jake to a grown-up and divorced version of, and what teenage attachments the group has to Death Cab on this week's podcast. Come join the Patreon family for bonus episodes, mailbags, show notes and even more goodness: https://www.patreon.com/columbiahouseparty Follow @ColumbiaHP on Twitter! Also please follow this week's guest @internetlauren.While you're there say hello to @BlakeMurphyODC and @JGoldsbie. If merch is your thing, be sure to check out the store: http://bit.ly/chpmerch Or reach out to the show and say hey: podcast@columbiahouseparty.com If you enjoyed today's show, please rate Columbia House Party 5-Stars on Apple Podcasts.See you next week for an all new episode of CHP.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/4114831/advertisement

Welcome to The OC, listener. In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy are joined by comedian Lauren Mitchell (host of the @cavernofsecrets podcast) to discuss Death Cab For Cutie's enormous 2003 hit Transatlanticism. The podcast will explore bands that performed at The Bait Shop on the hit show The OC, which served as a snapshot and elevator of the early-2000s indie rock scene. Find out more about Ben Gibbard's workmanlike songwriting approach for Transatlanticism, what character Lauren compares Jake to a grown-up and divorced version of, and what teenage attachments the group has to Death Cab on this week's podcast. Come join the Patreon family for bonus episodes, mailbags, show notes and even more goodness: https://www.patreon.com/columbiahouseparty Follow @ColumbiaHP on Twitter! Also please follow this week's guest @internetlauren.While you're there say hello to @BlakeMurphyODC and @JGoldsbie. If merch is your thing, be sure to check out the store: http://bit.ly/chpmerch Or reach out to the show and say hey: podcast@columbiahouseparty.com If you enjoyed today's show, please rate Columbia House Party 5-Stars on Apple Podcasts.See you next week for an all new episode of CHP.

In this week's episode of Columbia House Party, Jake and Blake go deep on one of the most well-regarded side projects of the 2000s, Give Up from indie supergroup The Postal Service. With Dntel synths, Ben Gibbard's vocals, and Jenny Lewis', well, everything, Give Up withstands the test of time as something greater than a pit-stop before Death Cab for Cutie blew up. Find out more about how the recording process fed into the name, the weird concert performance that resulted, and why despite teases we never got another album from the trio on this week's podcast. Come join the Patreon family for bonus episodes, mailbags, show notes and even more goodness: https://www.patreon.com/columbiahouseparty Follow @ColumbiaHP on Twitter! Say hello to @BlakeMurphyODC and @JGoldsbie as well. If merch is your thing, be sure to check out the store: http://bit.ly/chpmerch Or reach out to the show and say hey: podcast@columbiahouseparty.com If you enjoyed today's show, please rate Columbia House Party 5-Stars on Apple Podcasts.See you next week for an all new episode of CHP.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/4114831/advertisement

In this week's episode of Columbia House Party, Jake and Blake go deep on one of the most well-regarded side projects of the 2000s, Give Up from indie supergroup The Postal Service. With Dntel synths, Ben Gibbard's vocals, and Jenny Lewis', well, everything, Give Up withstands the test of time as something greater than a pit-stop before Death Cab for Cutie blew up. Find out more about how the recording process fed into the name, the weird concert performance that resulted, and why despite teases we never got another album from the trio on this week's podcast. Come join the Patreon family for bonus episodes, mailbags, show notes and even more goodness: https://www.patreon.com/columbiahouseparty Follow @ColumbiaHP on Twitter! Say hello to @BlakeMurphyODC and @JGoldsbie as well. If merch is your thing, be sure to check out the store: http://bit.ly/chpmerch Or reach out to the show and say hey: podcast@columbiahouseparty.com If you enjoyed today's show, please rate Columbia House Party 5-Stars on Apple Podcasts.See you next week for an all new episode of CHP.

Jeremy Bolm interviews Conor Murphy, musician and vocalist of the band Foxing.    During this episode the two discuss upcoming tours and album rollouts as Foxing is preparing for the release of their new album Draw Down the Moon, growing up and going to shows in St Louis, Weird Al, the impact of Radiohead on his musical journey, the influences behind making Foxing songs so musically expansive, having a fanbase that loves some records and hates others, the difficulties of criticism, learning trumpet and his love for French horn, how he became a singer, first recording experiences, So Many Dynamos, being on autopilot when performing, working with Matt Bayles and Chris Walla, working with Andy Hull, and so much more!    Discuss this episode with Jeremy and other listeners:   Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thefirsteverpodcast   Twitter - https://www.twitter.com/thefirsteverpod   Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/thefirsteverpatreon

The guys welcome Lindsay Murray (Gretchen’s Wheel) to talk about Nada Surf and “Let Go.” Plenty of other discussion including discovering Nada Surf, Sassy Magazine & Matthew Sweet, Lindsay’s covers album, what we learned from Tim’s Twitter Listening Party, Chris Walla, stream of consciousness, missionaries, and singing in French. Check out Gretchen’s Wheel at: http://www.gretchenswheel.com/ Check out Nada Surf at: http://www.nadasurf.com/ Check out other episodes at RecordsRevisitedPodcast.com, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Castbox, iHeartMedia, Google Podcasts and Spotify. Additional content is found at: Facebook.com/recordsrevisitedpodcast or twitter @podcastrecords or IG at instagram.com/recordsrevisitedpodcast/ or join our Patreon at patreon.com/RecordsRevisitedPodcast

Getting to chat with @calculizer #ChrisWalla this week was a truly joyful experience. The @dcfc founder and producer talks us through his (rather traumatic) early music life and just how Death Cab began in a basement with a 4 track, grew into the multiplatinum giant it became, and some reasons why he decided to step away. Enjoy.

2-on-1 Joe Biden & Chris Wallace vs. THE TRUMP, 1st Debate 'Rundown' on POLITICALLY INCORRECT w/ Andy ShecktorThis is Andrew Shecktor's #EATruthRadio show from Thurs, Oct 1, 2020 ... Thank you for tuning in. You can listen to these shows LIVE every Thurs. at 10pm EST / 9pm Central by downloading the EXCLUSIVE Podbean App and searching for (EA) Eternal Affairs TRUTH RadioPlease join us chatting on social media about our shows using hashtag #EATruthRadioWho do you think won the 1st debate with President Trump vs. Joe Biden AND Chris Wallace? THE TRUTH SHALL PREVAIL ~ WE ARE THE STORM! Our Independent Media Operation & End Times Ministry has been online for 10 years now since Curtis "Ray Biselliano" Bizelli FOUNDED EternalAffairsMedia.com in 2010 as a simple survivalist site after he woke up and became a pioneer preaching the truth, even when it was NOT popular ... PLEASE CONSIDER SUPPORTING US WITH A ONE TIME DONATION or SIGNING UP AS A PATRON AND DONATING MONTHLY HERE! Check out our Online Store and get some COOL GEAR! If there is anything you'd like to see that isn't there, message us! We wish to hear from you! We join THE SILENT MAJORITY around the Nation in praying for President Donald John Trump!!! PRAY WITHOUT SEIZING! HUGE SPIRITUAL BATTLE OF BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS going on right now!!! People are waking up! This is THE GREAT AWAKENING! God bless you & your loved ones! Thank you again for tuning into our show & GOD BLESS TRUMP & GOD BLESS AMERICA! Support the show (https://donate.eamedia.online)

This week, Jeff Gipson (@mrgipson) drops in to discuss the first two Death Cab for Cutie LPs ("Something About Airplanes," and "We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes"). We discuss being young, how to cook chicken thighs, buying things at Hot Topic, what it's like to be the head honcho, and more. Plus we review the Belgian music charts and play a Family Feud game because no other podcast more popular than ours has done anything like that yet!Buy Death Cab's second record, "We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes," or just buy some of their merch.Follow us on Twitter: @CHIDSPIN, @SighFieri, @RoundingDownListen to Dune Boys.Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. Support the show (https://cash.app/$roundingdown)

For our sixteenth episode, Jon & Harrison take on an album requested by one of their past interview guests! Patty Lynn of The Wind + The Wave requested Transatlanticism, the 2003 concept album by indie darlings Death Cab for Cutie. Over the course of an hour-long discussion, we cover… The silliness of “Death Cab for Cutie” as a band name, and other silly band names of the aughts Whether this truly counts as a concept album, and what even is a concept album, anyway? The occasionally clunky word choices permeating this album The contrasting energies of Ben Gibbard’s lyrics as Chris Walla’s expansive musical arrangements More bad impersonations by Jon - Millhouse van Houten, President Bill Clinton, and Zero Mostel How the lyrics do not show Ben Gibbard (or the character he’s playing) in a very flattering light Some speculation over different interpretations of “Tiny Vessels,” “Transatlanticism,” and “Passenger Seat” Harrison and Jon reveal their picks for Key Track The Request Lottery and a preview of next episode's album Come join us for an hour of thoughtful and good-humored commentary, and we'll catch you on the B-side! The dice roll from this episode's Request Lottery can be found here: https://youtu.be/tYc4_Z4HWk8 The spreadsheet Request Lottery picks and their associated numbers can be seen here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xOiYNZduLxz7L2CtNUPK1YOu63ni2XTWpcy1cdB6EQw/edit?usp=sharing You can get your request on this list by donating to our Patreon account at any level. Support us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/PlayDiscPodcast Follow us on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/PlayDiscPodcast/ Follow us on Twitter! https://twitter.com/PlayDiscPodcast Email us at playdiscpodcast@gmail.com This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Chris Walla is a musical all rounder. He was a member of Death Cab For Cutie for 17 years and produced all their records during that time while also playing in the band AND writing songs, that’s a lot of jobs in one! These days he is producing records, songwriting, mentoring, being an all around legend and lovely guy. We sat down to talk about the elusive ’Smash’, piano teachers sucking the fun out of learning music when you’re a kid, singing your heart out until you pass out and plenty more.   All music on the podcast by Joshua Moriarty & All The Colours.   ‘Tape Loops’ by Chris Walla: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dxw8A7Y53hA   ‘Stable Song’ by Death Cab For Cutie (one of my faves): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9QFznUvYQA   Lil Nas X surprising kids: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9lYQ-j_Trk   The song Chris sung live recently ’The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vST6hVRj2A

NSFW! Buzz Burbank from Buzz Burbank News and Comment is back from vacation; Everything sucks and the congressional Democrats are napping; Trump's Fourth of July wank session; Revolutionary War airports; French people chant 'fuck Trump' on Fox News; Jeffrey Epstein, Alex Acosta and Donald Trump; Trump feels badly for Acosta; Everything is shovel fight; The latest polls show Trump inside the margin of error; Swalwell out, Steyer in; With music by Chris Walla and Cover Two Cover; and more!

Working Class Audio #233 with Beau Sorenson!!! Beau Sorenson is a freelance audio professional (producer/mixer/ engineer) based in California. He also writes, records, and remixes music as Beaunoise. As producer/engineer, He's worked on multiple albums for Death Cab for Cutie, Bob Mould, and Superchunk, as well as albums for Tune-yards, Thao and the Get Down Stay Down, Mac McCaughan, Mike Krol, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, The Dodos, Sparklehorse, Field Report, Jars of Clay, Yellow Ostrich, Camera Obscura, and many more. I’ve engineered sessions for Chris Walla, Merrill Garbus, Tucker Martine, Butch Vig, John Vanderslice, Dangermouse, Ryan Hewitt, and Al Weatherhead. While studio recording is Beau's primary focus, He's also composed and recorded soundtracks for films and podcasts mastered music for release, worked as a studio tech, taught audio engineering, and consulted on studio construction and design. Beau spent six years as a staff engineer at Smart Studios in Madison, WI before leaving to work freelance. He is currently a staff engineer at John Vanderslice’s Tiny Telephone studios but he also works at other studios as well. About this interview: Beau joins me for coffee to discuss hardware stores, being kind, respect for studio owners, having patience, and getting out of town to record. Enjoy! -Matt Links and Show Notes: Beau's Site: www.beaunoise.com https://www.workingclassaudio.com/wca-119-with-tucker-martine/ https://www.workingclassaudio.com/wca-220-with-butch-vig/ https://www.workingclassaudio.com/wca-047-with-john-vanderslice/ https://www.workingclassaudio.com/wca-156-with-justin-perkins/ Current sponsors & promos: https://bit.ly/2WmKbFw Working Class Audio Journal: https://amzn.to/2GN67TP https://www.omnigroup.com/omnifocus Credits:Host: Matt Boudreau Guest: Beau SorensonWCA Theme Music: Cliff Truesdell Announcer: Chuck SmithEditing: Anne-Marie Pleau & Matt BoudreauAdditional Music: The License Lab

In Nearer My Pod episode 4, Foxing's Conor Murphy and Eric Hudson have a deeper discussion about the making of "Nearer My God." Chris Walla, producer, also joins the program. Nearer My Pod is an in-depth look at the making of new Foxing record "Nearer My God." It includes conversation with Conor Murphy, Eric Hudson, album producer Chris Walla and is hosted by Dan Ozzi (Noisey).

Bill and Brian get into the indie-pop bliss that is Nada Surf's The Weight Is a Gift (2005, Barsuk)! Bill talks about this album accompanying him on long drives home in NJ, and Brian breaks down his new knowledge about guitar effect pedals. And of course we have a track by track review, discussing this work by Matthew Caws, Daniel Lorca, Ira Elliot, Louie Lino, and Chris Walla.

Foxing's Conor Murphy talks the making of the music video for “Slapstick,” shot by former Foxing member Josh Coll. "Slapstick" hails from the band's upcoming full length, "Nearer My God." Nearer My Pod is an in-depth look at the making of new Foxing record "Nearer My God." It includes conversation with Conor Murphy, Eric Hudson, album producer Chris Walla and is hosted by Dan Ozzi (Noisey). Preorder "Nearer My God": www.foxingtheband.com/

Foxing's Conor Murphy and Eric Hudson discuss their upcoming record, "Nearer My God," and break down the second single and title track. Included in that breakdown are isolated segments of the track, along with how the song was once on the chopping block. Nearer My Pod is an in-depth look at the making of new Foxing record "Nearer My God." It includes conversation with Conor Murphy, Eric Hudson, album producer Chris Walla and is hosted by Dan Ozzi (Noisey). Preorder "Nearer My God": http://www.foxingtheband.com/

Foxing's Conor Murphy and Eric Hudson discuss their upcoming record, "Nearer My God," and break down the first single, "Slapstick." Included in that breakdown are isolated segments of the track, with commentary, along with how the song gained its title (and how that title then changed the lyrics). Nearer My Pod is an in-depth look at the making of new Foxing record "Nearer My God." It includes conversation with Conor Murphy, Eric Hudson, album producer Chris Walla and is hosted by Dan Ozzi (Noisey). Preorder "Nearer My God": http://www.foxingtheband.com/

Sam Stewart is a tasteful shredder who plays guitar in Lo Moon. They released their debut album earlier this year and it’s a ripper! The record was produced by Chris Walla from Death Cab For Cutie and Francois Tetaz and sounds lush. We sat down to discuss being a curmudgeon, having parents who were famous in the 80s, always trying to be a ‘purple cow’ and thinking Drake is rubbish. All music on the podcast by Joshua Moriarty & All The Colours

Nada Surf scored a quirky one-hit wonder with "Popular," and as with most one-hit wonders, pressure from the record label to follow it up caused a divide. In this case, Nada Surf were dropped, record in hand, which they were able to release on their own label. While The Proximity Effect received some positive press upon release in 1998 (in the UK, 2000 in the US), it went mostly unnoticed. It wasn't until Let Go in 2002 that the band fully arrived, garnering rave reviews, following that up with Chris Walla-produced The Weight Is A Gift in 2005. Upon reflection, The Proximity Effect comes across as a transition album, with the band sound clearing, fuller and more confident, while not quite hitting the highs they would reach on their next two releases. Special thanks to Sudio Sweden for providing our May giveaway - a pair of Regent headphones. Join us at Patreon by May 15th to be eligible to win, winner announced on episode 384. We’re following up on our previous Tre and Regent reports, if you like what you hear and want to grab a pair, use the code DIGMEOUT for 15% off your purchase. Intro - Hyperspace 14:34 - Firecracker 21:23 - Dispossession 28:18 - Spooky 36:29 - Amateur Outro - Robot Facebook / Twitter / Instagram   Zazzle Merch Store   http://www.digmeoutpodcast.com

Nada Surf scored a quirky one-hit wonder with "Popular," and as with most one-hit wonders, pressure from the record label to follow it up caused a divide. In this case, Nada Surf were dropped, record in hand, which they were able to release on their own label. While The Proximity Effect received some positive press upon release in 1998 (in the UK, 2000 in the US), it went mostly unnoticed. It wasn't until Let Go in 2002 that the band fully arrived, garnering rave reviews, following that up with Chris Walla-produced The Weight Is A Gift in 2005. Upon reflection, The Proximity Effect comes across as a transition album, with the band sound clearing, fuller and more confident, while not quite hitting the highs they would reach on their next two releases. Special thanks to Sudio Sweden for providing our May giveaway - a pair of Regent headphones. Join us at Patreon by May 15th to be eligible to win, winner announced on episode 384. We're following up on our previous Tre and Regent reports, if you like what you hear and want to grab a pair, use the code DIGMEOUT for 15% off your purchase. Intro - Hyperspace 14:34 - Firecracker 21:23 - Dispossession 28:18 - Spooky 36:29 - Amateur Outro - Robot Facebook / Twitter / Instagram   Zazzle Merch Store   http://www.digmeoutpodcast.com

Working Class Audio #155 with Andrew Maury!!! Andrew Maury is an American record producer, audio engineer, and mixing engineer based in Brooklyn, New York. Maury has worked with artists such as Lewis Del Mar, Ra Ra Riot, Shawn Mendes, Grace Mitchell, Strange Names, Post Malone, RAC, Panama Wedding, Atlas Genius, Kimbra, Delicate Steve, Milagres, High Highs, Penguin Prison, Kisses, Satchmode, COIN, The Kooks, and CRUISR. In the summer of 2009, he worked on Tegan and Sara's Sainthood alongside producer and Death Cab for Cutie guitarist Chris Walla at the world-famous Sound City Studios in Los Angeles. Maury also spent years mixing front of house on tour for artists such as Ra Ra Riot and Givers, and has mixed shows for bands such as Delicate Steve, Surfer Blood, and Chairlift. About this Interview: Andrew talks to me from his home in Brooklyn, NY about  management, health, working in the pop world as a rock guy, gear lust, Sound City, and much more.  Many thanks to listener Chad Wahlbrink for suggesting Andrew.  Show notes and links: The Patchbay I mention in the monologue: https://www.flocktechnologies.com/

Casey Cavaliere (The Wonder Years) spins the epic Death Cab for Cutie album Transatlanticism for Brian and Brian. All transitional music today is from The Wonder Years. Their latest release Burst and Decay (An Acoustic EP) is available on a few different gorgeous wax variants. Send us pics if you have it! Death mails for cuties: volcanovinyl@gmail.com Twitter (where disappointment and regret collide): @volcanovinyl #vv122

Previous guest Levi Seitz of Seattle's Black Belt Mastering has an impressive résumé, including work with Chris Walla of Death Cab for Cutie, Macklemore collaborator Wanz and doing vinyl cutting for last year's Pearl Jam Vault Series release and Mother Love Bone reissues. This past December, another previous guest Rocky Votolato recorded three nights of performances at Levi's home, which has now been spun into "Live At Black Belt," Rocky's first live album, cut to vinyl by Levi and limited to 500 vinyl copies on pink/white swirl. This week, Levi returns to discuss how this new project came to be and how it was recorded, the distinct difference between "vinyl mastering" and "mastering for vinyl," working recently with Halo composer Marty O'Donnell, true sound differences between 1LP or 2LP releases cut at 33RPM vs. 45, how you can tell if records in your own collection have had to be re-cut, the importance of matrix numbers within the deadwax, the myth of the "hot stamper" and a fun Paul McCartney story.  

  When Seattle-based singer/songwriter Rocky Votolato began releasing solo albums in the late 90's -- at a time when vinyl was all but out of the mainstream consciousness -- it was important to him that every single release of his was pressed to wax. Fast forward to 2016, and he's now celebrating the 10th anniversary reissue of "Makers" on Barsuk Records -- his favorite in his discography, and viewed as his crowning achievement among his fans -- with a tour fronting a talented band that gives new thrilling dynamics to that album's intimacy. Downstairs at Chicago's famed Schubas Tavern, Rocky and I chat about his DIY aesthetic, the idea that music isn't truly real until it's on vinyl, sharing records with his brother and Waxing bandmate Cody (who later went on to form The Blood Brothers), motorcycle movie soundtracks, raising his kids on Neutral Milk Hotel, recording a recent seven-inch live directly to lacquer, recording stories with Chris Walla and Casey Foubert, bouncing around between some of indie-rock's most prolific labels, the differences between himself now and the Rocky who wrote and recorded "Makers," and much more! Visit RockyVotolato.com for all his music, social media and current tour dates.   SPONSORS: Pinwheel Records, 1722 W. 18th St. in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood; KeepersRecordClub.com, where you can save 10% on all subscriptions with promo code VINYLEMERGENCY at check out.   If you like the show, leave us an iTunes review or donate to keep us up and running and you'll be entered into the Mint Condition Coalition, giving you entry into a gigantic giveaway at the end of 2016 for records and swag from Vinyl Me Please, Warner Bros., Topshelf, Wax Mage, Hey Mercedes and much more. Visit vinylemergency.com and click 'donate' for more info! Follow @VinylEmergency on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Show questions and feedback are welcomed at vinylemergency@gmail.com. 

These year end lists are always difficult.  But at least the top 3 spots this year were easy selections -  Alva Noto - Xerrox, Vol. 3 Max Richter - Sleep Chris Walla - Tape Loops It doesn't really matter which one grabbed the top spot, I listened to these three over and over in 2015.  Noto is known for his electronic minimalism but Vol. 3 is beautiful and lush. Max Richter's Sleep is a recording of epic proportion - 8 hours long, it amazes me each time I listen.  Tape Loops by Chris Walla(drummer for Death Cab for Cutie) has an old school ambient feel.  It reminds me of Eno's Music for Airports and Music for Films.  As large as the first two albums on the list can sound, Tape Loops is just the opposite - simple and intimate. A few albums worth mentioning - Brian Eno: Discreet Music by Contact is an orchestral arrangement of Eno's 1970s Discreet Music.  Like Bang On A Can's cover of Music for Airports this one is familiar yet fresh and different.  Worth checking out.  I've used Sine Dust tracks in several mixes and I will probably use them for years because I love the classic, spacey edge to this EP from 36. I made a few different end of the year lists, which I will post soon.  One is Best Of 2015 - Instrumental, which is a combination of ambient, electronic, classical and jazz.  For this mix I pulled out the 15 ambient albums on the list and mixed them in the order that I ranked them in that list.  The mix flows very well considering I had the order already selected for me. I'll post full year end lists soon. Enjoy T R A C K L I S T :00:00   Alva Noto - Isola from Xerrox, Vol. 3 07:20   Max Richter - Return 2 from Sleep 12:35   Chris Walla - Kanta's Theme from Tape Loops 17:05   Benoit Pioulard - Shut-ins on Sunday from Sonnet 19:20   36 - Sunriders part 2 from Sine Dust  23:40   Olan Mill - Live at the Millenium Barn from Cavade Morlem 29:00   Mikael Delta & Hior Chronik - How to Define Existence from The First Ray 33:00   Bersarin Quartett - Bedingungslos from III 36:06   Contact - Brian Eno: Discreet Music 44:22   Marconi Union - Aftermath from Departures 48:40   Spheruleus - The Railroad from Chronota 55:05   Goldmund - Turncoat from Sometimes 57:57   Nils Frahm - Merry from Solo 61:45   Adam Bryanbaum Wiltzie -  The endless battle of the maudlin ballade part 2 from Travels in Constants Vo. 24 64:40   Horizon Fire - Earthlight from Earthlight 67:26   end

There are musicians in Portland who seem like they've played with everyone. And then there's Dave Depper. His resume is a who's who of local acts: Menomena, Loch Lomond, Fruit Bats, Laura Gibson, and at least 18 others. He's also toured with national names like Ray LaMontagne.But now he's stepping onto a bigger stage— much bigger stage. Last year, Death Cab for Cutie announced that Chris Walla, it's original guitarist and primary producer, was leaving after 17 years. Then it asked Depper to take Walla's place for the world tour of its newest album, Kintsugi [kint-SU-gi]. Depper made the late night rounds with the band. He's and just returned from a month long tour in Europe. He has a few days off before playing Edgefield in Portland and Les Schwab in Bend.Then he's on the road for basically the rest of the year. State of Wonder producer Aaron Scott sat down with him to find out what it's like to be an overnight rockstar.

The Thermals originally began as Hutch Harris's solo recording project. He sang and played all the instruments on the 2003 Thermals record More Parts Per Million. In this episode, Hutch breaks down his lo-fi recording of the song No Culture Icons. The track was later mixed by Chris Walla, who's known best for his work with Death Cab for Cutie, and we’ll hear some thoughts from him as well. I spoke with Hutch in front of a live audience at the XOXO Festival in Portland, Oregon.

FeedBack w. Wes Nyle. EP20. Ben Gibbard. 07.20.122With eight albums in the books from his most notable project Death Cab For Cutie, one of the hardest working men in the indie rock scene is trying his luck with flying solo once again.The story for Ben Gibbard starts in Bremerton, WA where he developed an affinity for bands like The Pixies, Daniel Johnston, and Fugazi.  His first official band went by the name Penwheel, and only released one six song demo.A year later Ben was creating low-fi sounds of his own under the name All-Time Quarterback and released two EPs one, self-titled and the other titled The Envelope Sessions. That same year Gibbard change the name of his solo project to the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band song titled Death Cab For Cutie.The first album of Death Cab’s was another solo project of Gibbard’s released on a cassette.  Ben thought the reception of this collection of songs merited a full band and recruited Chris Walla; who had helped on the original cassette; Nick Harmer, and Nathan Good to round out the four piece.  Throughout their career the group has been nominated for 16 various awards but have only walked away with a Woodie and the Larry Award for 2003’s Break Through Artist. Even though the band had been around for almost 6 years at that point.In 2001 Gibbard was introduced to electronic protégé Jimmy Tamborello, known as Dntel (dɪntɛl).  The two worked on a couple of track with Ben on the vocals. Dntel was very happy with how they turned out and a few weeks later Gibbard was receiving CD-R’s in the mail with some of Tramborello’s, beats and melodies on them. Gibbard was given liberty to create what he wanted from the tracks and decided that his long-time partner and fellow guitarist Chris Walla would be an asset to whatever this creation happened to be. Every two months or so Ben was receiving packages that he would edit, add then mail back. Ten month of this would manifest into what we now know as The Postal Service: A heavily electronic oriented group dripping with romantic lyrics, and sprinkled with guest vocals from Jen Wood and Rilo Kiley’s Jenny Lewis.Ben’s appreciation for the writing of Jack Kerouac would land him a in a studio with Son Volt’s Jay Farr where they would create a tribute album Kerouac’s famous novel Big Spur, titled One Fast Move or I’m Gone.Currently Death Cab is on tour for their 2012 release Codes and Keys, and once the band is finished with the year-long world-wide tour, Ben and his overactive creativity will be at it again with an album that will be titled Former Lives. The album will feature tracks that have been marinating for the past eight years as Ben has made some major life decisions like ending his marriage, and cutting back his alcohol use.  Even if the official track list has not been released or even discussed, fans can hope that the album will harvest songs that are as introspective and creative as all of his other ventures.This is Ben GibbardTrack Heard In This Podcast: Pinwheel - Honey & Acetylene All-Time Quarterback – Rules Broken Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band – Death Cab For Cutie Death Cab For Cutie – Two Cars The Postal Service – Clark Gable Ben Gibbard & Jay Farrar - Big Sur Ben Gibbard – Set Yourself on Fire

Project Song participants only have two days to write and record a song, but Death Cab for Cutie's Chris Walla and Jawbox's J. Robbins had it even tougher: They had never met before entering NPR's performance studio. Watch as the two create "Mercury," a soaring song inspired by a cataclysmic scenario.

Our gala 51st podcast continues our series of VegNews musician spotlights, featuring an interview with Chris Walla, one of the two vegetarian founders of Death Cab for Cutie, a band whose Number One album Narrow Stairs is finally bringing them to the attention of the world at large. We also hear a tune from Chris from his solo projects, and there is a Science Fact about the disease fighting combo of veganism and a gluten free diet.

Our gala 51st podcast continues our series of VegNews musician spotlights, featuring an interview with Chris Walla, one of the two vegetarian founders of Death Cab for Cutie, a band whose Number One album Narrow Stairs is finally bringing them to the attention of the world at large. We also hear a tune from Chris from his solo projects, and there is a Science Fact about the disease fighting combo of veganism and a gluten free diet.

Lazysundays, l’unico podcast condotto in pigiama, cerca di darsi un tono. E così, tra un Passengerseatparty! funambolico e una partita di pallone, riprende possesso degli studi di Corso Sempione 50 in una puntata speciale. Metteremo a tacere le malelingue, che da tempo ipotizzano che questo programma sia una succursale milanese di Polaroid, e per dimostrare la falsità di tali accuse, ospiteremo ai microfoni proprio Enzo, oltre al padrone di casa e ideatore della festa Francesco, naturalmente. Si parlerà di Svezia, manco a dirlo, ma soprattutto di facili equazioni. Da “la Danimarca è la nuova Svezia” a “pop orchestrale is the new indie”, passando per “nu-rave is tamarro”, e per questo, secondo qualcuno, consono alle passerelle. Lato A: 1) Evangelicals “Skeleton Man” 2) A Classic Education “Best Regards” 3) Envelopes “Party” Lato B: 1) The Teenagers “Wheel Of Fortune” 2) Let’s Wrestle “I Want Lie To You” 3) Chris Walla “Geometry & C” 4) Yuppie Flu “Yellow Hills” 5) The Parallelograms “Pop The Bubbles” http://nomoreclouds.blogspot.com http://www.indieforbunnies.com

Edpisode 2 features tour dates for Bayside, Punchline, Kenotia, Rascal Flatts, Ryan Gillmor, Fletch and Parannoyd and January album releases by GWAR, Alesana, Hot Water Music, Cat Power, The Whigs, A kissforjersey, The Mars Volta, Protest the Hero, Simple Plan and Chris Walla. http://ia360602.us.archive.org/1/items/KrosseyedKimGaffActionEpisode2/GaffAction.mp3

While you the Bad at Sports listener only get a taste of it, the interview portion of this week’s show demonstrates precisely why Richard needs to be present to be a jerk for these things or they devolve into chaos. Luckily our cut rate production staff pulled it together and it sounds something akin to coherent. This week Duncan, Amanda and Chris Walla, talk to, or at least try to talk to Steve Lacy, Anthony Elms and Philip von Zweck about Steve’s show at VONZWECK, Academy Records, and lots of other stuff..  ALSO Emily Heath and Christian Kuras from Bad at Sports London check in.  AND Mike Benedetto reviews Goundhog Day in time for Groundhog Day. Also The BAS video of the week: http://youtube.com/watch?v=pj66XgK3NvE

Richard interviews Amanda Browder, Chris Walla, Aris Georgiades and Gail Simpson about Art 44/46: Curated by Stuart Keeler, Art 44/46 is a public art exhibition that will be featuring a variety of artists who are showing pieces publicly. Some are performances, some are sculptural pieces, some are video installations, etc.! All in the 44th and 46th Wards of Chicago. The wards are roughly between Clark and Broadway (and up Broadway) , and Belmont and Diversey. Please check the website for more info. ALSO  We talk about Bad at Sports BASECAMP: our forthcoming residency/series of events at Three Walls. We also touch on Bridge Miami. We publicly ahpolohgise for our spelling. Terri Griffith announces the first selection in the Bad at Sports Book Club!!! Nathan Rogers-Madsen discusses things he isn't qualified to talk about but does it oh-so-well.Richard, Duncan and Amanda beat up on Massive Change at the MCA. When did the Museum of Science and Industry open a North Michigan Avenue annex? Did we miss a memo? The announcements make the show super long, sorry, it's all good, honest.  

Duncan and Amanda interview Dan Devening about his current "editions project", what printmaking is today, and his new exhibition space.Everyone talks to Chris Walla, all around kickass guy and professor at Moorhead State University in Moorehead Minnesota.And Duncan and Richard have a show that opens Saturday at the Suburban and an open Bad at Sports mic WTF?  The Suburban is Located at 244 West Lake Street, Oak Park, IL.On the "El" it is the Ridge Land Stop on the Green Line.You should check it out.Chris Walla Dan Devening devening projects + editions UIC Robert Meijer Curator of En/Of Editions Infra-Thin Catalog from College of DuPage Northwestern SAIC Art Chicago Mark Booth Laura Letinsky Pamela Bannos Ken Fandell Peggy Casey Friedman Julia Hechtman Carol Jackson Judy Ledgerwood Markus Linnenbrink New Catalogue William O'Brien Michael Pfisterer Joe Pflieger Jason Pickleman Christine Tarkowski Tony Tasset Philip Vanderhyden Block Museum Richard Rezac David Mickenberg Marcel Duchamp Whitney Biennial Randolph Street Gallery Olafur Eliasson Tacita Dean Thomas Demand Julia Friedman Gallery Printed Matter Pamela Bannos Minnesota State University Moorhead MCAD Art Museum Annie Sprinkle Glen Williams Studio Iolo David Bartley gladys beltran