The Self Portrait Gospel :: Podcast

After relocating to the Bay Area in 1970, multi-instrumentalist, author, and sound artist Jim Nollman began his melodic practice in the avant-garde under the intense influence and surrealist spell of the late great John Cage. Eventually branching into the natural world of the animal kingdom after gaining wide attention and high praise for his 1982 debut on Folkways Records, "Playing Music With Ani...

Multi-instrumentalist and melodic mind behind the crimson curtains of UK-based label Bella Union, SImon Raymonde is a household name in creative culture and poetic production. The veteran musician joined the unparalleled universe of Cocteau Twins in 1984 for the band's third album "Treasure," helping secure the iconic lineup we've come to love and wildly worship today. With the recent success of h...

Cincinnati, OH-based animator, illustrator, journalist, and longtime Aquarium Drunkard collaborator Mark Neeley has blessed viewers with iconic illustrations and awesome animations for several years. Having released his debut animated short "Fragments" (2020) and the minute-long masterpiece "Pure Animation For Now People" (2024), which featured sounds from the great Mark Mothersbaugh, Neeley retur...

I first became of aware of longtime Nashville artist Kevin Guthrie's work when Pavement played two sold-out shows at the Ryman in late July, and later realized how important his relationship not just with Berman, but with both bands and their close communtiy family and friends truly is. Guthrie relocated to NYC in 1990 with Steve West, where he soon met Berman, Nastanovich, and the rest of the gan...

Born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, American film director, writer, producer and son of Bill Pellington, an All-Pro linebaker who played for the Baltimore Colts, Mark Pellington crash-landed in the music industry as an MTV intern only a couple of years into its dynamic development in the early 1980s. The industrious artist began blending unused clips, bits, and lyrical leftovers from music vid...

Longtime member of Nashville's beloved Lambchop and Silver Jews, multi-instrumentalist, and southern gentleman Tony Crow has been sharpening his tonal tools and wild weapons of melodic magic for almost half a century. We could have talked to the veteran musician about Lambchop for an hour and a half; maybe one day we will, but we stayed the course as he pulled back the creative curtain to reveal h...

Maybe you've seen his work while endlessly doom scrolling through the mundane matrix that is social media, or maybe his intense illustrations have pierced through your portable phone and into you're eyes as you gaze out the window, hoping the world isn't what you see on Instagram. Jesse Duquette is a brilliant illustrator based in the Windy City who's earned the title of Meta's most "shadowbanned...

Drummer extradordinaire Brian Kotzur, one half of the mighty Nashville duo Country Westerns, and Ultra Frog, among several other groups, and projects, first joined the Silver Jews a few years before the band recorded its fifth studio album "Tanglewood Numbers," back when the late great Steve McNair, who earned NLF Co-MVP, three Pro Bowl selections, and led the Tennessee Titans to Super Bowl XXXIV...

We're joined by Nick Sutton, who famously played Tummler, for this two-part episode to explore the endless enviroments of an atmospheric apocalypse where character and personality complete and revolutionary relationships. Sutton is based in Portland, OR, where he provides endless services to folks who've fallen on extremely hard times; instead of turning his back on these individuals, as society h...

An intimately inspired continuation of 2024's beloved "Somthing In The Room," "Materia," which was released just this past weekend on Domino, is a melodic meditation on the ghostly harmonies of the past, present, and future, and how expressing a lyrical language to the community can heal time's endless wounds better than any over-the-counter medicine on the market. LA-based singer-songwriter and m...

When delving into the unparalleled universe of David Berman, you've probably run across the name Gate Pratt several times in your research. A fundamental fixture in our poetic pursuit to better understand the melodic mysteries and artisitc attitudes of the late great David "Cloud" Berman, Pratt attended UVA in the mid-1980s as an architecture student, where he met Stephen Malkmus and Bob Nastanovi...

Journalist, documentarian, scientific researcher, and transcendental trailblazer in psychedelic phenomenon, Hamilton Morris has explored spirituality and the esoteric ecosystems of enlightenment around the world for nearly two decades since the publication of his first article, "The Magic Jew", in 2008. Since then, he's established himself as one of the world's leading psychoactive drug journalist...

Some of you may have kept up with our series "The Burning Never Ending Magic Podcast" - A Sun City Girls Story, so we'll start there with our most recent guest on the "And The Nights Were Perfect, Too" - A Silver Jews Podcast, Matt Hunter. Born, and raised in Phoenix when groups like J.F.A., Meat Puppets, Poet's Corner, and of course, the Sun City Girls, to name a few, creatively controlled the su...

Born in Reading, PA, in the spring of 1963, Chris Stroffolino is an American poet, scholar, writer, multi-instrumentalist, and author, among many other things. His creatively confident career in the arts has spanned four decades, from literature to music to publishing poetry to appearing on the Silver Jews' 1998 masterpiece "American Water". Having met Berman in the early 1990s, the two poets imme...

For the first episode of "And The Nights Were Perfect, Too" - A Silver Jews Podcast, we travel back in time before all the fame and fans in the mid-1980s to speak to one of Berman's oldest friends, Kylie Wright. A staple student in the infamous "Red Haus" scene, located on 14th St. near "The Corner", while the gang attented the University of Virginia (UVA) during the Ectoslavia/Silver Jews/Pavemen...

While conjuring the soothing sounds of Carly Simon's 1972 classic "No Secret" and balancing her own poetic place in this world, singer-singwriter Haylie Davis has been cutting her teeth on the LA scene for several years, with early projects such as Lady Apple Tree, Sylvie/Sam Burton, and collaborations with artists from Drugdealer to Alex Amen. But it's her 2026 debut, "Wandering Star", that truly...

Barnes has been incredibly busy all summer long with AFC-related projects and performances, their recent split cassette collaboration with LA-based duo Law, and the transcendental takeover of the beloved Gun Outfit all across the West Coast. But with all the excitement of our present times comes the feverish feedback of the past's poetic prolificacy. Barnes takes us through the process and atmosph...

From one end of the shore of some spiritually secluded sanctuary, resides a melodic memory of a time that has long since passed. Where world-renowned National Geographic photographers carefully captured the elemental essence of the natural world, a melodic meditation was eventually born from its atmospheric ashes. LA-based psych pirates and students of the sonic sunset Allah-Las have been creative...

Portland, Oregon-based singer-songwriter, teacher, and DJ, Jeffery Silverstein, first came on the scene during his participation in groups such as the Brooklyn-based duo Nassau and Baltimore's Secret Mountains, before releasing his 2020 solo debut "You Become The Mountain." Since living in "Rose City," he has carefully crafted his atmospheric artisry within the cinemtaic cascades of spiritual soun...

Bulverde, Texas-based singer-songwriter, producer, and beverage connoisseur, Jerry David DeCicca, has been intimatley involved in music for more than two decades, tending the gardens of a creative career that has seen him both on the scene as well as behind it, working with folks such as our mutual friend Ralph E. White, Larry Jon Wilson, Bob Martin, and our main focal point for this episode of Th...

Longtime friend and cosmic collaborator on such works as 1997's "Thorny Path" and 2024's "Rising Phoenix" Erik Shumpert, and his twin brother Paul first met Snarb in the early 1980s, and would soon all move in together in a tiny, historic abode on Brooks St. in LA county where Barnes had been laying down some of Amps For Christ's earlier works like "Plains Of Alluvial," and "Beggars Garden." Influ...

This episode takes place right in the harmonious heart of Barnes' liberating laboratory at the legendary Folk Music Center and Museum, located in Claremont, California, where he's worked as a luthier specializing in the setup and repair of sitars, banjos, mandolins, and volins, fret replacement and fret dressing of all stringed instruments, neck resets, electronics, and pickup installation for ove...

Having first met the late great David "Cloud" Berman sometime in Dallas in 1984, poetic painter Chris Kysor has been an incredibly important individual in the world of the Silver Jews before they even lifted off the ghostly ground in the 1990s. Friends since high school, Kysor tells us about his dear friend, and poet, the only way he knows how: through his intimate connection and precious friendsh...

Logtime Providence-based rockers Deer Tick have been releasing aggressively atmospheric, sonically seductive music for over two decades now. Since forming in the winter of '04 as a duo dynamic for McCauley's melodies, the group has spiritually secured a poetic place in the creative cosmos, alongside their peers and critical contemporaries. We had the chance to sit down with McCauley to talk about...

Hailing from Claremont, California, a suburban city in eastern Los Angeles County, Henry Branes (Ranger Barnes, Enid Snarb) first began connecting with the meditative melodies of music through his incredibly talented parents. With a mother who played guitar and a father who was a member of the local collective The Real Jazz Band, Barnes' exciting enviroment eventually led him down the endless path...