Beginnings

On today's episode, I talk to musician Emilie Rex and musician/filmmaker Rick Alverson AKA Lean Year. As a musical duo, Emilie and Rick have been making music together for a number of years, and their first self-titled album was released in 2017 to acclaim from publications like Pitchfork and NPR Music. In addition to their musical work, Rick is also a lauded indie film director, whose movies incl...

On today's episode, I talk to author Lincoln Michel. Originally from Virginia, Lincoln's fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, Pushcart Prize anthology and his essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, The Believer, The Guardian and many other places. His debut story collection, Upright Beasts, was published by Coffee House Press in 2015, and his debut novel, The Body Scout, wa...

On today's episode, I talk to musician Attia Taylor. Originally from Philadelphia, Attia is a writer and musician based in New York City. She is the founder of Womanly Magazine, a publication dedicated to providing accessible health information to women and non-binary people through visual and literary art. She is also half of the psych-pop band Strange Parts, and has been writing and releasing mu...

On today's episode, I talk to musician Karl Blau. Originally from Samish Island, WA, Karl grew up in a family of amatuer musicians and at first thought he was going to be a fine artist. But by the end of high school, Karl was all in on music, and his band Captain Fathom began playing in Anacortes. It was there he met Beat Happening's Bret Lunsford and a pre-Microphones/Mount Eerie Phil Elvrum and...

On today's episode, I talk to musician Tim McIlrath of Rise Against. Originally from Indianapolis, Indiana, Tim grew up about an hour outside Chicago in the suburbs where he started playing in punk bands. In 1999, Joe Principe and Dan Wieklinski formed Rise Against out of the break-up of their former band 88 Fingers Louie, and invited Tim to join. Though the early days were tumultuous, they persev...

On today's episode, I talk to musician Kevin Barnes of Of Montreal. Originally from Ohio, Kevin eventually ended up in Athens, GA where he became part of the Elephant 6 collective, a group that included Apples in Stereo, Neutral Milk Hotel, Olivia Tremor Control and many others. Kevin's music has transformed over time, as his own aesthetic beliefs have changed. Starting off as a Kinks/Paul McCartn...

On today's episode, I talk to musician John Ringhofer AKA Half-handed Cloud. Based now in Helsinki, Finland, Half-handed Cloud started as a home-recording project in Chattanooga, TN in 1999. Since then, John has released almost two dozen albums and EPs, many of them on Asthmatic Kitty and Sounds Familyre. He's also been a member of Sufjan Stevens' touring band, and his latest album Flutterama is o...

On today's episode, I talk to actor Britt Lower. Originally from Heyworth, Illinois, Britt's first big role was on the short-lived 2010 Comedy Central show Big Lake. This launched her into the world of being a working actor, which included a regular role on Man Seeking Woman, as well as recurring roles on shows like Casual, Ghosted, and High Maintenance. Currently, Britt stars in the Emmy-nominate...

On today's episode, I talk to Eisner and Harvey Award-winning comics creator Mike "Spike" Allred. Originally from Oregon, Mike began his career in comics while working as a journalist. He created his well-known character Madman in the early '90s, and since then has drawn on books like Sandman, Fables, Silver Surfer and numerous others. He co-created two wonderful series: iZombie and X-Statix, and...

On today's episode, I talk to TV writer Casper Kelly. Originally from Burlington, North Carolina, Casper started working at Adult Swim in the early 2000s, writing for shows like Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and Squidbillies, as well as non-Adult Swim shows like Archer. He's co-created two series, Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell and Stroker and Hoop, as well as the inc...

On today's episode, I talk to musician Victoria Park AKA Pictoria Vark. Originally from Cresskill, NJ, Victoria started playing in bands in high school and then college, eventually becoming the touring bassist for indie rock bands like Squirrel Flower and Pinkshift. A few months ago, her first album The Parts I Dread was released on Get Better Records, and it's great! This is  the website  for  Be...

On today's episode, I talk to artist Steve Keene. Originally from the DC metro area, Steve wanted to be an artist from an early age, taking off on a path that eventually led him to Yale art school. But it wasn't until his early 30s that he realized what he actually wanted to do as an artist, and since then Steve has become the most prolific American painter of all time, producing more than 300,000...

On today's episode, I talk to musician Kasie Shahbaz AKA Kisskadee. Originally from San Diego, Kasie first started playing music under the name Coyote Run. As Kisskadee though, her first release was just last year, a short EP entitled Ambient Music For Bedrooms. And her first full album Black Hole Era just came out in May on Anxiety Blanket Records, and it's great! This is  the website  for  Begin...

On today's episode, I talk to musician Joe Rainey. Originally from South Minneapolis, Joe is A member of the Red Lake Nation of Ojibwe people and began attending and singing at pow wows from an early age, as well as becoming a pow wow singing archivist. Eventually ending up in Wisconsin, Joe began guesting with different musicians, working with people like Alan Sparhawk of Low, Bon Iver, Chance th...

On today's episode, I talk to musician Shaun Fleming. Originally from Agoura Hills, CA, Shaun started out their creative life as a child voice actor on shows like Fillmore!, Kim Possible and Lilo & Stitch. As a musician though, they first started playing professionally as the touring drummer for the indie rock band Foxygen. Soon after, Shaun formed Diane Coffee as an outlet for their own music, an...

On today's episode, I talk to comics writer Ryan North. Originally from Osgoode, Ontario, Ryan was on a path to a career in computational linguistics before a small webcomic he started, Dinosaur Comics, launched him in a somewhat different direction. Since then, he's become a New York Times-bestselling and Eisner Award-winning writer whose work includes the non-fiction book How To Invent Everythin...

On today's episode, I talk to composer and singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane. Originally from Venice Beach, California, Gabriel has been making albums for almost a decade and a half, starting with his self-titled album which was released on Family Records in 2008. Gabriel comes at much of his songwriting from a conceptual standpoint - on his 2014 album The Ambassador, he used ten addresses in LA to...

On today's episode, I talk to Eisner Award-winning comics writer Kelly Thompson. After graduating with a degree in Sequential Art from The Savannah College of Art & Design, Kelly began her career as a novelist, penning two books in the early 20-teens, The Girl Who Would Be King and Storykiller. She soon began writing comics with some creator-owned series through Dark Horse and Boom, as well as on...

On today's episode, I talk to musicians Kathryn Calder and Mark Andrew Hamilton. Kathryn and Mark have been making music in different bands for years. Kathryn is a member of The New Pornographers, has released three albums under her own name and was in the indie pop group Immaculate Machine from 2003 to 2011. Similarly, Mark's primary band since the mid-aughts has been Woodpigeon, who have release...

On today's episode, I talk to rapper, academic and politician Mariah Parker AKA Linqua Franqa. Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, Mariah wears many hats. As an academic, they earned their master's in Linguistics at the University of Georgia in 2017 and are currently a doctoral student in Language and Literacy Education at the University. As an activist and politician, Mariah ran for and won cou...

On today's episode, I talk to musician Carey Mercer. Originally from Okanagan, British Columbia, Carey formed the band Frog Eyes in the early 2000s out of the ashes of his former band Blue Pine. From 2003 until 2018, they wrote and released almost a dozen albums and EPs on labels like Absolutely Kosher and Dead Oceans. And in that time, Carey also released a number of solo albums, as well as with...

On today's episode, I talk to TV writer and actor Andrew Farmer. Originally from Florida, Andrew is a recipient of the 2018 Jonathan Larson Grant, and his work has been produced at The Museum of Modern Art, Ars Nova, Playwrights Horizons Downtown, Joe's Pub, The Williamstown Theatre Festival, The Walker Space, Theater Aspen and The Yale School of Drama. As a podcaster, he hosted the long-running F...

On today's episode, I talk to TV writer Dan Erickson.  Originally from Olympia, Washington, Dan earned a Masters in Dramatic Writing from NYU's Tisch School before moving to LA where he worked a number of day jobs and journeyman writing jobs for places like Super Deluxe and things like Spike's Lip Sync Battle Pre-Show. In 2016, his hourlong pilot, Severance, became the first TV script ever include...

On today's episode, I talk to actor, writer and improviser Lennon Parham. Born in Marietta, GA, Lennon was acting from a young age, but it was when she moved to New York and started improvising at UCB that her career began in earnest. Performing on a number of house teams at the theater, Lennon eventually moved to Los Angeles, where she booked a regular role on the sitcom Accidentally On Purpose....

On today's episode, I talk to rapper Rollie Pemberton AKA Cadence Weapon. Born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta, Rollie began rapping as a teenager, and released his first mixtape Cadence Weapon Is the Black Hand at the age of 19. He released his first album Breaking Kayfabe just a little later, and since then he's released four more albums, all of which were nominated for Polaris Music Prizes, wit...