Rosanne Cash’s memory banks

Acclaimed singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash comes to the University of Louisville Kentucky Author Forum Monday for a well-paired interview with Nick Spitzer, the host of public radio’s “American Routes.” Cash recently published her memoir, “Composed,” and is already thinking about starting a second volume.

LEO: You’re coming to Louisville for a talk, instead of a performance.

Rosanne Cash: I know, I haven’t been to Louisville in a long time, so I’m really looking forward to it.

LEO: What kept you away from us for so long?

RC: I don’t know! (laughs) Someone tells me to show up somewhere and I go, and no one told me to show up in Louisville for a long time!

LEO: Do you have any fond memories of us?

RC: Well, King’s Record Shop, of course. That was a great moment, going to that store. I’m so sad it doesn’t exist anymore. There’s something to be said for brick and mortar record stores. I found a lot of records that way, flipping through the racks.

LEO: Do you enjoy doing interview shows, as opposed to putting on a full concert?

RC: I like it — it’s fun. I like the give-and-take. I particularly like the Q&A session. It interests me — what people think about, what moves them. I’m a social animal. I was doing one of these the other night, and some guy asked about the bass part on a song I had recorded. I love that!

LEO: You’ve got your book, “Composed,” to talk about, and (recent album) The List —

RC: And (greatest hits collection) Essential, that came out on my birthday.

LEO: Do you think it’s because of your age, or just your feelings right now about your career, that you’re in a reflective period?

RC: Well … partly? I mean, I’d hate to think it’s just that end-of-career, end-of-life thing, but I think I’m at the point where I have to reassemble — look at the past, draw from it, get another plan together, draw on the best of it to see the future, you know?

LEO: Absolutely. I wasn’t thinking about it as an end, more like a halfway point, where you —

RC: Yeah, re-gather your resources. But, see, some people tell me they don’t want an Essential done on them, because they think it means end-of-career, like it’s over. I didn’t take it that way at all.


LEO: How comfortable do you feel telling stories that not only represent you, but also other people, in your books and songs?

RC: Well, I don’t feel any responsibility for being factual in songs. I take poetic license left and right. I used to teach a songwriting workshop; a lot of young songwriters, I would suggest a change and they’d say, “That’s not how it happened,” and I’d say, “There’s no fact-checker here.” But, in the memoir, yeah, I felt a responsibility to be factual. In fact, I checked things out with my sister: “Do you remember it like this?,” because I think, if it’s got memoir on the cover, then it has to be factual.

LEO: Would you say that all songs are fictional by definition?

RC: No, I wouldn’t say they’re all fictional; they’re certainly drawn from my life. I haven’t written anything I got from television.

LEO: What do you think it is about writers that makes us want to describe things to other people?

RC: Oh, God, that impulse is as old as we are, isn’t it? To tell stories, to document, to observe … As an art fan, if I stand in front of a painting or hear a song that moves me and makes me think about my own life — that’s a common need in all of us, isn’t it?

LEO: Do you ever feel competitive toward other writers or songwriters?

RC: Is it awful if I say yes? (laughs) Of course I do! If I hear a song by Elvis (Costello) or Steve Earle and I go, “Damn! How did they get that one?”

LEO: And then you cover them later.

RC: Yeah, then I cover them later (laughs). Or, it’s inspirational. I want to get better, I want to say, “I want to write a song as good as that. I need to buckle down.”

Rosanne Cash
Monday, Sept. 26
Kentucky Center, Bomhard Theater
501 W. Main St.
www.kentuckyauthorforum.com
$20 (interview only), $100 (interview and dinner); 6 p.m.

c. 2011 LEO Weekly

They Might Be Genius

“Hello, Kentucky!”

They Might Be Giants’ John Flansburgh — the tall John of the group — is calling from his house in the Catskill Mountains of New York.

“We just finished two albums, and I just finished (producing) this Jonathan Coulton project as well, so my outbox is full,” Flansburgh says. Is he exhausted? “I’m kind of invigorated! It’s actually kind of an exciting moment — the songs are getting really good responses, kind of exceptional responses. You never know how things are gonna be received, or if the timing of what you’re doing is gonna be in sync with the world, but it feels like there’s a lot of interest — interest that has been dormant for a while.”

Join Us, the group’s 15th proper album, was released in July. It’s their first album for adults since 2007. The band, known for its prolific assortment of humorous, nerdy songs, has been the subject of a feature-length documentary, won two Grammys and, presumably, made a healthy amount of money writing the theme song for TV’s “Malcolm in the Middle.” They have also spent part of the last decade creating albums for kids and their Raffi-hating parents.

“In the last few years, we’ve been doing these family projects. We’ve kind of been off the scene for a while, in that radio sense. So it’s really interesting now — ‘They Might Be Giants on the radio? What?’ We have to make a video! No one’s said, ‘You have to make a video for your song,’ in like 10 years! The era of the rock video ended a long time ago — except when your song is getting played on the radio,” Flansburgh says. “So we’re rejoining Rihanna in the weird world of having to make videos. It’s kind of exciting. It’s always nice to have new material and be going out on tour, but … I don’t know, maybe the world’s catching up with us again.”

Flansburgh suggests that part of the secret to They Might Be Giants’ longevity is their inability to achieve the kind of success that Guns N’ Roses and Britney Spears found.

“I know where the money is — it’s not in music! Everybody can just relax. We figured out a way to not be broke. Getting through this world without being broke is still occasionally a struggle. Just being on the road is very expensive. I can’t believe how much money we can generate and still not be profitable. That’s the ultimate weird thing — we do very well in the U.S. in terms of live shows, but the expenses are just brutal. It took us a long time to get to where normal bands are — it took us a long time to graduate to a bus. We were in the van for 10 years.”

They Might Be Giants have been a thing since the early ’80s. “I would have a hard time recreating our early stuff,” Flansburgh says. “There’s some things about it that seem vaguely dated. I just don’t have that much love for gated reverb.”

The two Johns who lead the group have seen many eras come and go, surviving by doing
only what makes sense for them at the time.

“We’re the worst judges of where we land in the culture. I don’t know anything about how we’re understood, or misunderstood — there’s part of me that ... I get why we can do what we do, but I can’t imagine trying to explain that to a teenager. So much of music is caught up in identity politics, people are so concerned with whether people are truly ‘livin’ it.’

“I remember somebody on the road crew, in the early days of Marilyn Manson, saying he really liked him because ‘Manson was livin’ it.’ I just thought, like — living what? We are truly living the mild, lightly depressed, adult, prosaic lives that we explore in our songs.”

Flansburgh may be a veteran, but he’s still seen as a misfit in popular music. “It’s always struck me as really unfair that, if you’re in a band, you’re in competition with Prince. I can’t compete with Prince! Prince and I are the exact same age. He’s tiny, but loud — he’s an impressive dude, he’s like a superhero! It’s like being in competition with Thor. What we have to offer is so different from what’s being offered by so many others.”

"Waterfront Wednesday" with
They Might Be Giants,
J. Roddy Walston & the Business, and The Deloreans
Wednesday, Sept. 21
Waterfront Park, Big Four Lawn
www.theymightbegiants.com
Free; 6 p.m.

photo by Shervin Lainez

c. 2011 LEO Weekly

Rock ’n’ soul gives back

The Tedeschi Trucks Band began last year so that blues singer/guitarist Susan Tedeschi and her husband, Allman Brothers Band guitarist Derek Trucks, could spend more time together. Their merged band comes to Louisville for a special event on Saturday. LEO called Trucks at a hotel in Wisconsin last week.



LEO: You’re coming to Louisville for a benefit for cystic fibrosis. What is the band’s personal connection to that?
Derek Trucks: We try to do at least a handful of dates a year connected to either charities we’re familiar with or just situations where we feel like we’re giving back in some way. We got contacted about that show; it’s not a situation I was familiar with before, but it seemed like a good setup.

LEO: Do you ever feel guilty about being able to make money off of playing music?
DT: No. We work our asses off (laughs), and we aren’t making that much money! I’d feel more guilty if I was working in an office and trading numbers and making untold millions. When you show up and play music for people, it’s a positive experience for everybody. It’s not a zero-sum game where if we win, you lose (laughs). It’s one of the few things in life I think everybody can walk away from feeling better about.

LEO: Between your family, this band and your other bands, you’re one of the most family-oriented musicians I can think of.
DT: We try to keep it that way. A lot of that is circumstance, and a lot of it you have to nurture, too. We make sure that the people we’re on the road with are people you wanna … (laughs) … spend a huge part of your life with. With your family, you don’t choose who your family is, but you can choose how you deal with everybody. We’re pretty fortunate that way.

LEO: Do you feel you’ve learned from examples that you’ve seen around you, and in rock ’n’ roll and soul history, as far as seeing problems you can avoid?
DT: Oh, yeah. You learn a lot more about what not to do from the hundreds of thousands of stories out there. There’s a lot of career success stories, but not a lot of life success stories. Being around a lot of those people, playing in bands with some of those people, you get a real first-hand account of what went down, what works and what doesn’t. A lot of times, you have to go with instinct and buck trends, which we seem to do a lot. The conventional wisdom of “Don’t start a band with your wife,” or “During a recession, don’t put an 11-piece band together” (laughs) — these are all things people would say, “Not the best idea.” But it’s been great, man. It’s more than worth it.

"Rock Strong 4 Life"
With The Tedeschi Trucks Band, Gustavo Renovalez and
The G-Drive Band
Saturday, Sept. 24
Cardinal Stadium
2800 S. Floyd St.
www.facebook.com/RockStrongforLife
$34-$50; 6 p.m.

photo by James Minchin

c. 2011 LEO Weekly

Brothers, without a doubt

The Decline Effect will play their first show on Saturday, at Cahoots. Vocalist Dave Johnson, known for The Glasspack, tells LEO how he joined ex-members of Kinghorse and Malignant Growth to start Louisville’s newest supergroup:

“I found out (brothers) Mark and Chris (Abromavage) were starting a band. I sent Mark a bit of lyrics and links to pass to Chris since I did not know Chris very well. I obviously knew of Malignant Growth, but I had never known Chris. I had been going to school, studying philosophy with a concentration in social sciences and a minor in social change. My higher learning made me reconsider how I approach bands and lyrics. It made me discover how the nation’s ideology (subtly based on freedom and equality) is so ass-backwards to the way things really are (inequality and arbitrary meritocracy). I then came to the conclusion that with the new band, my voice was not just an instrument but a tool — to make people think and question why it could be that a few have everything while many have none, and the gap keeps widening.

“I do not think any longer of my voice as just an instrument or lyrics as unimportant. I have always felt that I wanted to say something more, but I needed a band, the opportunity to be an authentic frontman, and the knowledge to be more ‘MC5.’ Chris and Mark are those musician brothers that are tight as a knot on guitar and bass — and bicker a lot. I love it.

“The band is fun. We took the necessary time to put quality in front of quantity. The music itself, mostly riffs written by Mark, is wonderful. I stepped on this band-scene expecting some type of classic rock, but I got good old-fashioned Louisville hardcore punk-metal at its best, by definition, because these guys contributed to its origin. The rest of us contribute a bit to arrangement and everyone speaks their piece — balls-to-the-wall style.”

Find more info at www.facebook.com/TheDeclineEffect

photo by Sherry Ambromovage

c. 2011 LEO Weekly

An awkward chat with Hannibal Buress

Hannibal Buress has written for “Saturday Night Live” and “30 Rock,” released a CD, performed stand-up on late night TV and all over the world, and is currently developing his own TV series. He is 28 years old.

Chris Rock said, “If Steven Wright, Mos Def and Dave Chappelle had a baby, that would be disgusting, but it would sound like Hannibal Buress.”

Q: Do you like people? All the everyday stuff people do seems to bother you, and gives you your best material.

Hannibal Buress: Yeah, I like people, yeah. Everybody has stuff that bothers them about other people. That doesn’t mean I hate people.

Q: Yes, but most people don’t write it down and turn it into jokes.

HB: Stand-up comedians do. So yeah, I like some people.

Q: You were in the documentary “The Awkward Kings of Comedy.” How do you feel about that label?

HB: It’s alright. I think it helps get the project attention and brand it a bit. I don’t consider myself awkward.

Q: You seem comfortable onstage. Do you get stage fright?

HB: No, I don’t — I mean, it depends on the show. I’ve enjoyed it for a while, so I feel pretty comfortable whether I’m trying out new material or it’s TV. Every now and then when I get on TV, I get a little nervous about being on TV but, for the most part, I just go to the gigs and see what happens.

Q: You left “30 Rock” recently. Do you have plans, or are you just concentrating on stand-up now?

Q: I’m concentrating on stand-up now, and trying to do more acting. I’m going to audition for some stuff, and hopefully my friends will put me in stuff.

Q: Do you have any interest in trying to get your own show?

HB: That would be really cool, to have my own show. I would like to come up with some ideas and see what happens.

Q: Would you want a network show, or something more off-beat?

HB: Depends on what I’m able to come up with, and where it would fit. If I had a really good network idea, that’d be great. If I had a really good cable idea, then that’s great also. If I had a show, I would want it to go in a place where it could flourish and grow. The network isn’t that important to me.

Q: Who are some comics you like these days?

HB: I’m a big fan of Patrice O’Neal. John Mulaney is great. Sean Patton. Another guy, Damien Lemon, in New York, is really funny. Jeffrey Joseph. There’s so many, man.

Q: Have you been to Louisville before?

HB: No, I haven’t.

Q: Do you have any ideas or expectations about people here?

HB: No, I would just expect that people would come to the comedy club and laugh and buy drinks and leave. That’s what happens when I go to most cities.

Q: I’ve read that you’ve become known for mocking journalists and their dumb questions, sometimes, after the interview. What’s my worst question so far?

HB: Your worst one was opening up with “Do you like people?” That was pretty bad. (laughs)