Beginnings

It's the dawn of a new era for Beginnings, and on today's show we talk to writer and musician David Grubbs. Starting in Louisville, Kentucky with the bands Squirrel Bait and Bastro, David has since released seven albums with Gastr del Sol, 12 full-length solo albums and has appeared on more than 150 records including recordings by Tony Conrad, Pauline Oliveros, Matmos, Will Oldham, the Red Krayola...

On today's show we talk to stand-up and writer Aparna Nancherla . Currently a writer for FX's Totally Biased , Aparna is a wonderfully absurdist comic whose credits include being named as one of LA Weekly‘s “12 Comedy Acts to Watch” and Last Comic Standing . She's also appeared around the country at numerous festivals including SXSW, the Bridgetown Comedy Festival and the SF Sketchfest. In mid-Jun...

On today's show we talk to filmmaker Hal Hartley . Since his first feature film, 1988's The Unbelievable Truth , Hal has been creating stylistically singular narratives that are rich in deadpan humor and poetic, measured dialogue. Since then, he has explored this style further with 11 more features and garnered a number of nominations and awards from places like Sundance and Cannes. Hal is also a...

We had a real blast at maybe one of my favorite live episodes that we've yet taped! A few weeks ago, we were joined by Joe Randazzo ( The Onion , AdultSwim.com), Larry Livermore (founder of Lookout! Records), Jamie Lee ( Girl Code , Last Comic Standing ), musical guest Brother JT (Thrill Jockey, Drag City), and a special appearance buy the great Talib Kweli. Listen and enjoy!   Also, check out our...

On today’s show we talk to cartoonist Lisa Hanawalt . Based in Brooklyn, Lisa has been making mini-comics for years, garnering a number of awards for her work, including Ignatz Awards in 2009 and 2010. Her cartoons have appeared in McSweeney’s , The Believer and many other publications, and this year, Drawn and Quarterly released her first book My Dirty Dumb Eyes . Last week, Lisa stopped by Andy’...

On today's show we talk to comedian Mary Mack . Graduating college with degrees in clarinet performance and conducting, Mary began her professional career as a music teacher. She soon gravitated towards comedy and since 2007 has performed at the Vancouver Comedy Festival and Montreal's Just for Laughs and on TV on Live at Gotham and Last Comic Standing . A few weeks ago, Mary stopped by Andy's new...

100 episodes! It's been a blast, and while Mark and Andy accidentally turned into hyenas recently, they went out in style with a great live episode taped earlier in May at UCB East featuring Sam Seder of Majority Report; J.J. Sedelmaier, the co-creator of the SNL cartoons; Austin Brown of Parquet Courts; and musical guest Dan Friel. Hopefully, our fretful hosts will find a magical cure for their h...

On today's show we talk to Daniel Zott and Joshua Epstein of the electro-pop band Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. Based in Detroit, Michigan, Dan and Josh met while performing in other bands, and in 2009 began to write music together. This would end up as their acclaimed debut album I t's a Corporate World , which was released in 2011. Since then, the band has extensively toured the US and Europe, performe...

On today’s show, we talk to writer and director Mitch Magee . With a background in visual art, Mitch makes comedic videos and short films with a very unique aesthetic. His works have been part of the New York Television Festival, Channel 101, and HBO’s Funny or Die Presents, and he’s directed videos for websites like College Humor and Funny or Die. His short film “Thank You, Cabbage” is now in pre...

On this episode of Beginnings: Field Guide, we talk about casting with Katja Blichfeld . For beginning – and even seasoned – actors, the world of casting can seem incredibly random and opaque.  To walk us through the ways in which casting contributes to the creative process of a project, we talked with Katja, who has cast a number of features and shows, including the The Carrie Diaries , as well a...

On today's show, we talk to cartoonist Bill Griffith . Bill began his comics career in the late 1960s in New York before eventually heading out west to San Francisco to be part of the burgeoning underground comics scene in the 1970s, where he co-founded the comics anthology Arcade with Art Spiegelman. Around this time, Griffith also created his brilliant daily strip Zippy the Pinhead , which runs...

Welcome to MoCCA Week on Beginnings! At the start of April, the Society of Illustrators helped us put together a live episode of the show at the annual Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) Festival , a convention in New York dedicated to indie comics, illustration and animation. We invited some of our favorite comics people on the show, and even had some surprise drop ins, and generally had a b...

On today's show, we talk to filmmaker and producer Michael Gottwald. Michael graduated from Wesleyan University in 2006 and went to work on a number of film and video projects - including producing Big Freedia's video for "Y'All Get Back Now" - before beginning production on the film Beasts of the Southern Wild with writer and director Benh Zeitlin. Since it's debut last year, Beasts has racked up...

On today's show, we talk to actress and comedian Aisha Tyler . Starting stand-up in the early 1990s in San Francisco, Aisha's first break in TV came in 2001 when she began hosting Talk Soup . Since then, she's kept incredibly busy with roles on shows like Friends and Ghost Whisperer , and as Lana Kane on FX's Archer , as well as co-hosting CBS's The Talk and hosting her own hit podcast Girl on Guy...

I know that a large portion of the listening audience doesn’t live in New York, but holy heck are these live shows a lot of fun. And this recording still retains a guaranteed 75-85% of that fun, so please enjoy how great  Jessi Klein (head writer of Inside Amy Schumer ), Alex Karpovsky ( Girls ), Jake & Amir (College Humor) and our musical guest Savoir Adore were last Tuesday at the esteemed UCB E...

On today's show, we talk to writer and artist Nicholas Gurewitch . Nick began writing and drawing his comic the Perry Bible Fellowship in his college paper, and since then, the comic has appeared in a number of newspapers and magazines and was released in two anthologies by Dark Horse Comics. Nick has also won some of the top awards in comics for the Perry Bible Fellowship including the Ignatz Awa...

On today's show we talk to artist Steve Keene . Based in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Steve has been called the "Assembly-Line Picasso" by Time Magazine because of his unique mass-production painting style. Steve likens this method to the way musicians work, and he's painted the album art for many indie rock bands, including Pavement, The Apples in Stereo, The Silver Jews and many others. A few weeks ago...

On today's show, we talk to UK comedian Lou Sanders . Based in London, Lou has been performing stand-up for many years, with a number of appearances at the Edinburgh Fringe, where she had one of the top 10 jokes of the 2012 Festival. She also writes for TV and has worked on two series of C4’s Stand up for the Week , as well as BBC3’s Laughtershock & a number of pilots. A few weeks ago, while she w...

Ka-zoink! My eyes just popped outta my head like a cartoon character thanks to this last live show at UCB East. We had a weird blast, and now you can join in on the fun we had with author and bon-vivant Dave Hill , Abbi and Ilana of the newly-announced Comedy Central show Broad City and Catherine and Amy of the band Hilly Eye . Not even a missing middle of the show can take away from our charming...

On today’s show we talk to filmmakers Rob Hatch-Miller and Puloma Basu. Rob and Puloma are accomplished filmmakers and documentarians, and along with Best Show creator Tom Scharpling, they make up Production Company Productions. Over the last few years, the three have created a large number of funny and interesting music videos for acts such as The New Pornographers, Ted Leo, Ben Gibbard and Aimee...

On today’s show we talk to Jonathan Mitchell. Jonathan is a radio producer, composer, and co-creator of the amazing podcast The Truth . As a producer, he's created pieces for many shows including Radiolab , Studio 360 , This American Life , and All Things Considered . As a composer, he's written music for PBS' Nova and the videogame The Sims , and his radio drama podcast The Truth was named as one...

On today’s show we talk to author Ben Marcus . An Associate Professor at Columbia, Ben's work has appeared in Harper's , The New Yorker , The Paris Review , The New York Times , and many other publications, and he's won numerous awards including an NEA Fellowship. Ben's also penned four fantastic books: The Father Costume , The Age of Wire and String , N otable American Women , and his latest, The...

On today’s show we talk to musician Hayden Desser . Hailing from Ontario, Hayden released his first album Everything I Long For in 1995. Somewhere in-between alt-country, indie rock and any other number of genres, Hayden simply writes beautiful and emotionally-involving songs, and since 1995, has recorded six equally engaging albums. His latest, Us Alone , was just released on Arts and Crafts earl...

Yow! We celebrate our one year anniversary of the live show at UCB East with our most packed line-up yet including head writer of The Colbert Report , Opus Moreschi; indie rock guitarist Marnie Stern; host of The Chris Gethard Show , Chris Gethard; musician Andrew W.K. and comedian Reggie Watts. Holy heck! Here's to 1000 more years of live episodes! Subscribe on iTunes and follow Andy and Mark on...

On today’s show we talk to playwrights Hannah Bos, Paul Thureen and Oliver Butler, collectively known as The Debate Society . The Debate Society is a Brooklyn-based theater company that specializes in creating unexpected stories set in intricately-detailed, cinematic worlds. Named Ars Nova’s 2013 Company-in-Residence, Bos, Thureen and Butler’s latest show Blood Play will be featured at ArtsEmerson...