The Creative Asylum Podcast

If the story of underground/industrial music had a patron saint, it might as well be Chris Connelly. Born and raised in Edinburgh, Scotland, Connelly began his journey in the early 1980s with his band Fini Tribe. In the early 1980s, be became deeply entrenched in the universe of Chicago's legendary Wax Trax! Records — the incubator of industrial music's most celebrated and defining sounds. After m...

Indie filmmakers are a special breed.  What happens when a husband and wife and their two young daughters choose to ditch Hollywood and load everything into an RV to make movies entirely on their own terms? You get The Adams Family — no, not the ones that probably first comes to mind. Toby Poser, John Adams and their daughters Zelda and Lulu, have built one of the most fiercely independent fi...

Before he ever put brush to canvas, Chet Zar was building monsters for Hollywood. Over a career spanning more than two decades, Zar worked as a makeup effects artist, sculptor, painter, digital effects artist, and creature designer, racking up credits on some of the most visually iconic films of his era — Hellboy I & II, The Ring I & II, X-Men 3, Planet of the Apes, and Men in Black II. He...

Some artists make music. Some make art. Jon Langford makes history — and then records it and paints it.  Born in Newport, Wales, Langford studied Fine Art at Leeds University alongside future members of Gang of Four — and has spent nearly five decades proving that punk, country, folk as a founding member of the legendary Leeds punk band the Mekons. Founded in 1977, the Mekons became one of th...

Few artists have left as indelible a mark on experimental and avant-garde music as Jarboe. She rose to prominence as a core member of the legendary New York experimental rock band Swans in 1985, remaining one of the group's two constant members alongside founder Michael Gira until their dissolution in 1997. During that era, her presence on acknowledged Swans classics like Children of God (1987), W...

Are you a fan of comics? When I first discovered Love and Rockets, it was an absolute revelation, so getting to have a conversation with Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez — the legendary Los Angeles-based brothers behind Love and Rockets, one of the most celebrated and enduring comic book series in American literary history, needless to say I was deeply honored and excited to get to speak with both brot...

There are few things more thrilling than getting to have a conversation with one of your musical heroes from your own musican youth. In this episode, a conversation with David J — bassist, songwriter, producer, poet, and one of the true architects of post-punk and gothic rock. As a co-founder of Bauhaus, David helped create one of the most influential and groundbreaking bands of the late 1970s and...

Have you ever asked yourself what is the purpose of art and creativity in our lives? Dutch artist, novelist, and activist Adriaanse (Bette A.) has spent her career asking exactly that question — and living the answers both in her day-to-day life as well as in the book that she collaborated with Brian Eno on, "What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory."  Born in Amsterdam and trained at the Rietveld...

She screamed "Everything's fine!" through the MTV universe of 1996, and the world screamed it right back. Tracy Bonham is today's guest on the Creative Asylum. A classically trained violinist, a two-time Grammy nominee, and the singular force behind the era-defining alt-rock anthem "Mother Mother," the lead track on her major label debut The Burdens of Being Upright, Bonham is an artist who refuse...

Tough, sultry and fearless, Gina Gershon took an instance of cult infamy and transformed it into a celebration of cinema, sometimes gritty and always distinctly her own. Gershon is a true Hollywood original, with a career spanning literal decades with an iconic filmography that includes Showgirls , Bound , Face/Off , The Insider and The Player , one of my personal favorites from the iconoclastic d...

In this episode, I have a conversation with with Dave Catching — legendary Joshua Tree musician, producer/engineer, and one of the key figures behind the evolution of the desert rock sound. Best known for his work at the legendary Rancho de la Luna, Dave has helped create music with Queens of the Stone Age (who he was an original member of), Eagles of Death Metal, Foo Fighters, Arctic Monkeys, Igg...

This is the first time we've had a comic in the Creative Asylum, and I'm still delighted with who it's with! In this episode I got to have a conversation with the unstoppable Margaret Cho — comedian, actor, writer, musician, activist, LGBTQIA+ icon, feminist firestarter, and one of the few people in American comedy who has never once mistaken “polite” as necessary tool for acceptance in a world fu...

This episode is a special one for me, as it's with Gary Taxali a huge personal favorite artist of mine, somebody I've been following since the '90s. Gary is a Toronto-based artist, illustrator, and visual satirist whose unmistakable retro-pop style has made him one of the most celebrated illustrators working today.  He's done work with The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, GQ, TIME, Newsweek, and Th...

In this episode, I spend some time with an old friend and one of my favorite conversationalists, the legendary (and always funny) Pacific Northwest producer and musician Steve Fisk. In a behind-the-scenes candid chat with one of the architects of some of the region’s most adventurous and influential music, we discuss his working with Nirvana, Soundgarden, Beat Happening, Unwound, Screaming Trees a...

This episode is a special treat with an old friend: A conversation with Chad Channing, the drummer who helped usher Nirvana into the world with their debut record, Bleach. We dive deep into his pivotal role on the band’s bands beginnings, and the creative spark that defined those early Sub Pop years. Channing reflects on his time in those sseminal of the Seattle scene, and what it meant to be part...

In this episode, a super-fun conversation with the San Francisco–based “Heavy Metal Quilter,” Ben Venom, an artist who stitches together the worlds of metal, punk, skate culture and fine art quite literally. A long-standing fixture in the Bay Area’s punk rock art scene, Venom repurposes band tees and battle jackets into intricate, hand-sewn quilts that blur the line between craft and cultural arti...

In this episode, we’re joined by Latina feminist punk pioneer Alice Bag for a fierce, fun and deeply insightful conversation about music, identity, and resistance through art. A breakout presence in Penelope Spheeris' debut film, The Decline of Western Civilization, Alice was one of the earliest artists that defined the confrontational energy of early L.A. punk with her band The Bags. We dig into...

In this episode, I sit down with an old friend, rock journalist and author Adem Tepedelen to dig into his latest and most anticipated project: Screaming Life: Into the Superunknown with Soundgarden and Beyond, which is the authorized autobiography of Kim Thayil of Soundgarden which Adem worked on with Kim over the period of three years. Adem discusses how the project came to fruition - writinga bo...

Prepare to go deep with Michael Hill — the incendiary guitarist, singer, and founder of Tombs , a band that has relentlessly pushed the boundaries of metal, hardcore, and intense and experimental heaviness for close to two decades. In this conversation we trace Michael’s musical evolution from the early days of forging his current sound in the present moment, where his creativity continues to thri...

In this episode we sit down with the immensely creative co-founder of The Posies , Ken Stringfellow . A songwriter and guitarist whose harmonies and songs have been a critical element to some of the best power pop to ever come from the Pacific Northwest, Ken and Posies co-founder Jon Auer, were part of the resurrection of Big Star, a band that was hugely influential on both of them. Beyond Bi...

This week we sit down with Hiro Yamamoto — co-founder and original bass player of Soundgarden, one of the most important bands from the Seattle Music explosion that changed the course of rock forever. Hiro’s musical journey is rich and expansive. From the thunder of early grunge to the expansive psych-rock of TRULY, and his instrumental surf-punk band, the Bellingham-based Stereo Donkey, he's now...

In this episode, a deep and wide-ranging conversation with V ictor Krummenacher — songwriter, bassist, and creative heart behind Camper Van Beethoven , co-founder of Monks of Doom , and a singular voice in alternative music with a remarkable catalog of solo records to his credit.  Victor’s musical journey has always been adventurous, exploratory and deeply human and with that, we talk about T...

Few cartoonists have captured the anxious, abrasive, and darkly hilarious spirit of American life quite like Peter Bagge . Best known as the creator of HATE , the iconic Fantagraphics series that defined a generation of alt-comics readers, Bagge’s work blends elastic cartooning, savage satire, and razor-sharp social observation. Mentored early on by R obert Crumb during his time editing Weirdo, Ba...

Kira Roessler is a rare artist whose creative impact started in the 1980s as the bassist for Black Flag during one of the band’s most explosive and influential eras. She later co-founded dos with her then-spouse, Mike Watt, writing deeply personal, minimalist music that pushed punk’s emotional and structural boundaries to new areas of exploration. Beyond the world of SoCal punk, Kira has managed a...

This is a fun one - a conversation with Jeff “JD” Pinkus, best known for his work with the legendary Butthole Surfers as well as his stint as the bass player with Melvins. Jeff's approach to music is unique - he has his own sense of warped psychedelia, a genuine reflection of his sometimes wildman mind. In this episode, we begin to understand his fearless spirit and boundary-pushing ethos, qualiti...