Those Gallagher siblings are moving on, and with The Bear, Jeremy Allen White’s making like Emmy Rossum in a very different way after the pair portrayed Shameless siblings for over a decade. Both were not easy roles, but Lip Gallagher had some tough seasons drenched in alcoholism, opening the door to some of the most heartbreaking moments of the otherwise dramedic show. Both White and Rossum are shaking off that show with Rossum taking a hard left into physical transformation-land to portray a billboard queen in Angelyne. That’s a splashy way to depart from a household-name role, but White’s leaving Lip behind in a subtler way. Don’t get me wrong, The Bear is not a subtle and calm TV show. It is, however, a lot more nuanced than portraying one of the f*cked up kids of William H. Macy’s strung-out patriarch character.
Yet as the saying goes, you can take a guy of out Chicago, but can’t take the Chicago out of… you catch my drift. The Bear does put White back into the Second City and into something vaguely resembling an underbelly. The show is, at once, a quick-and-dirty little ditty and a surprisingly layered story about how you can choose your family, rather than get stuck with a biological one that ain’t so great for one’s well-being. There’s some sweetness to be found here and there, but overall, this is a story about the tug-of-wars experienced by White’s character, Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto, a former NYC fine-dining chef who returns home following a family death. He undertakes running the family sandwich shop, where all hell breaks loose on a daily basis.
Carmy’s not used to this grind, where he’s struggling to balance the books and still attempting to express some sort of creativity through food. He’s got a loose-cannon of a cousin, portrayed by Ebon Moss-Bachrach, who’s prone to waving (dangerous) things around and brandishing megaphones in order to (paradoxically) calm down situations. This is where I say that Ebon Moss-Bachrach really is something else. He’s a versatile actor, but no matter how many varied roles (The Punisher, NOS4A2, The Dropout) he takes on, I can never initially see him onscreen without thinking of a certain “mature” scene on Girls. That’s clearly my problem, not his, because he’s pretty great in The Bear while giving us a taste of exactly why Carmy probably left home in the first place.
FX on Hulu
And you might wonder why this show called The Bear. Admittedly, I’m mildly disappointed to report that The Bear is not a reference to The Revenant, and the title doesn’t come from the name of the family restaurant, The Original Beef of Chicagoland. Let’s just say that there are some surreal interludes that explain the show’s title, but things really don’t come into full focus for those moments until the season finale. There’s plenty of some baggage involved with the fam, and Carmy’s got unfinished business, which probably will never be finished, although he will try to exorcise those demons by attempting to transform this sandwich shop into a food mecca while militantly addressing everyone as “chef,” and boy, he’s doing the work.
It’s a frenetically paced show with Carmy on an urgent crusade and pushing his motley kitchen crew to the brink while it’s apparent that his grip on reality ain’t all that. He’s got a lot of work to do on himself for, well, reasons. Fortunately for all involved, he hires a young up-and-coming talent (played by Ayo Edebir) as his sous chef who ends up being far more practical than Carmy, although they bounce off each other well. Both of them harbor pasts that could properly be described as “complicated,” and as their dynamic develops, their articulated revelations — about how they both ended up in this place — speak volumes about where their partnership could eventually take the joint.
FX on Hulu
This first season, however, is all about the urgency of running this heavily trafficked restaurant while beginning that journey in a flat-footed way. The camaraderie is part of the sheer fun of watching the kitchen crew interact, but emotions also run high on a regular basis. The show makes stunning effect out of the high-pitched, often steam-related noises at moments when tensions run high, often reaching a literal boiling point and even, at times, sparking fires. It’s a bubbling journey that occasionally falls into simmer mode during moments of Carmy’s quiet reflections, but that calmness never lasts long. The clattering noises, the chaotic visuals, and the grittiness of the work at hand all serve to bring us into the present after diving into Carmy’s mind about the past. He’s a messy guy who’s attempting to wrap his arms around an overflow and somehow keep it all contained, and it’s a fascinating train wreck to watch.
Ultimately, The Bear is a show where relationships, familial and otherwise, can stress one’s sanity to the max. Food frequently ends up being synonymous with the way that these characters communicate, although the show’s careful not to get preachy with its ultimate message to the audience. The first season’s the perfect length, as well, without feeling like it cuts corners to achieve 30-minute runtimes. Carmy, as a character, is a trip to witness, as he pushes himself to the brink in an attempt to absolve himself of (at first) a mountain of baggage. I do hope that, eventually, the guy can take a day off, but for the time being, Carmy keeps doing his thing and giving Jeremy Allen White a real opportunity to prove himself as a leading man. Although Carmy himself is no charmer, be careful because this show might just creep into you and give FX on Hulu another sleeper of a series, and another truly original one at that.
Bill Barr has emerged as a surprising critic of Donald Trump’s election fraud claims. The former attorney general’s name and testimony has come up several times in the ongoing January 6 hearings. Not only did Barr successfully convince Ivanka Trump that her father’s “Big Lie” has no evidence — Barr has reportedly referred to the claims as “bullsh*t” — but he also slapped down Dinesh D’Souza‘s new film, 2000 Mules. According to Mediaite, that last one was a bridge too far for Steve Bannon, who apparently thinks it’s a great idea to threaten a former United States attorney general in the middle of an insurrection investigation.
“We’re not going to be blown off by somebody like Bill Barr. Bill Barr, we’re coming for you, bro!” Bannon said on the latest episode of his War Room show. “You’re sitting there lying about this. If you had any decency whatsoever … you would have reached out to Dinesh D’Souza before you smeared him.”
2000 Mules has been heavily touted by MAGA supporters for making the highly dubious assertion that cellphone metadata proves that “mules” were stuffing ballot boxes with fraudulent votes. However, Barr effortlessly shot the whole thing down during a deposition for the Jan. 6 committee. In fact, he actually laughed at the whole thing.
Bill Barr laughs uproariously about the supposed evidence of election fraud “2000 Mules” — and explains why it’s bunk. pic.twitter.com/MHvHIcXnyJ
“The cellphone data is singularly unimpressive,” Barr testified via Insider. “Basically, if you take 2 million cellphones and figure out where they are physically in a big city like Atlanta or wherever, by definition, you’re going to find many hundreds of them that have passed by and spent time in the vicinity these boxes. And the premise that if you go by five boxes or whatever it was, that that’s a mule, is indefensible.”
This summer, Afropunk Festival will return to Brooklyn for the first time this year since 2019. Celebrating the diverse sound and style of the Black music community, this year’s Afropunk lineup boasts several of the best acts in music across all genres.
This year’s Afropunk festival marks Burna Boy’s first headlining set at a US festival and his first show in New York City since his sold-out Madison Square Garden concert this past April. He is expected to perform music from his upcoming album, Love, Damini.
For The Roots’ performance, the band will celebrate 30 years as a music group and will perform hits from their decade-spanning catalog.
Tickets for Afropunk go on sale Friday, June 17 at 10 a.m. EST. Citi Cardmembers will have access to an exclusive presale beginning Thursday, June 16 at 10 a.m. EST.
Check out the full line-up below.
Courtesy of Afropunk
Some of the artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music group.
Another Jane Austen novel is headed to the big screen! Well, as big a screen as you can get Netflix on. This time it’s Austen’s final novel, Persuasion, a classic tale of a family forcing you to break up with someone they don’t approve of. Of course, the leading lady Anne, played by the charming, lime-hating actress Dakota Johnson, she does NOT want to play by the rules.
Johnson and her British accent attempt (it’s decent, but she’s no Elijah Wood) stars alongside Henry Golding, Cosmo Jarvis, Richard E. Grant, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Mia McKenna-Bruce, and Ben Bailey-Smith in the adaptation, as she juggles a man from her past and her wealthy family. She throws in some deadpan stares directly into the camera for some extra pizazz. Here is the official description:
Living with her snobby family on the brink of bankruptcy, Anne Elliot is an unconforming woman with modern sensibilities. When Frederick Wentworth—the dashing one she once sent away—crashes back into her life, Anne must choose between putting the past behind her or listening to her heart when it comes to second chances. Eight years after Anne Elliot was persuaded not to marry a dashing man of humble origins, they meet again. Will she seize her second chance at true love?
It has been a busy year for Johnson, with her comedy Cha Cha Real Smooth coming out this week, and she is gearing up to go where all actors eventually end up: the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Plus, she’s accompanying boyfriend Chris Martin around the world on Coldplay’s massive tour. How does she even have the time to hate limes?
Persuasion will hit Netflix on July 15th. Check out the trailer above.
For such an ostensibly nice guy, Logic sure does find himself embroiled in lots of beef speculation. The latest rumor circulating online involves TDE rapper Reason, who some fans believe Logic dissed on his new album, Vinyl Days. On the album’s title track, Logic raps, “Come on, homie, listen to the voice of reason / Yeah, you talk a lot of sh*t but don’t want the beef like a vegan.” This led podcaster Rory of the New Rory & Mal show to relay that the Del Amo rapper believed such lyrics were shots at him to Logic.
However, being the nice guy he is, Logic wanted to clear the air as soon as he was informed of the alleged misperception. “Hey bro @reasonTDE my boy @thisisrory said you thought I dissed you on my song Vinyl Days,” he tweeted. “If I was going to diss you, I’d diss you. I love you, you’re my brother. Let’s get ice cream together some time.”
Hey bro @reasonTDE my boy @thisisrory said you thought I dissed you on my song Vinyl Days. If I was going to diss you, I’d diss you. I love you, you’re my brother. Let’s get ice cream together some time.
Incidentally, Reason seemingly did diss Logic on his 2020 single “The Soul (Pt. 2),” rhyming:
N****s pronounce my name wrong, tell me that I ain’t did much
See y’all mistake my name for Logic’s, y’all got me f*cked up
How you compare a n**** that take from the culture
Versus a n**** that’s for it? This sh*t gettin’ borin’
However, in an interview with HipHopDX shortly after the song’s release, he denied that it was intended as a diss. ” I didn’t think that it was going to be perceived that way,” he explained. “If I thought it would, honestly, I wouldn’t have done it because I’m not into taking shots just to take shots at a n****. That’s not me. It’s just small wordplay, and reasoning is close to logic. That’s really as deep as I thought about it. It’s really just a lesson learned that we’re in a different day and age, and rap is different. It’s a little bit more sensitive.”
Meanwhile, Logic has seen friction with peers like Joyner Lucas, Joe Budden, and Freddie Gibbs over the years. Maybe Reason’s right; you’re damned if you and damned if you don’t in hip-hop these days. If regular wordplay can be taken as a diss, it’s no wonder Logic wanted to quit to play video games.
Tyler Perry has opened up about what went down in the aftermath of Will Smith slapping Chris Rock live on stage at the Oscars, a.k.a. The Slap. The prolific writer/director was photographed talking to Smith shortly after the incident, and there were reports of Perry praying with Smith, Denzel Washington, and others. However, Perry is setting the record straight that his involvement was not about nursing egos, but bringing the temperature down as quickly as possible. While speaking to Gayle King at the Tribeca Film Festival, Perry shot down the narrative that he was consoling Smith.
“There’s a difference between comforting and de-escalating,” Perry said via Rolling Stone. “Being friends with both of them, it’s been very difficult.”
According to Perry, he talked to both Smith and Rock in the moments after The Slap, and he told Smith he messed up big time. “I was there close up. I left early to go and check on Chris because it was wrong in no uncertain terms. I made sure I said that to Will, and when we walked over to him, he was devastated. He couldn’t believe what happened.”
While Perry doesn’t condone Smith’s violence, ultimately, he believes that it came from Smith not being able to protect his mother from his abusive father as a young boy.
“I know that feeling, I’m getting chills thinking about it,” Perry told King. “I know that feeling of being a man and thinking about the little boy. If that trauma is not dealt with right away as you get older, it will show up in the most inappropriate, most horrible time.”
Dating Donald Trump Jr. has been good for Kimberly Guilfoyle’s bank account — though all the money in the world wouldn’t be enough for me some people to cohabitate with the former president’s oft-amped up adult son/steak pitchman. In April 2020, Huff Post revealed that both Guilfoyle and Lara Trump (Eric’s wife) were being secretly paid $180,000 apiece through the Trump campaign. Presumably to continue making fools of themselves by doing things like this:
But the Trump gravy train reportedly didn’t end with that significant other salary. As Deadline reports, Guilfoyle was paid a whopping $60,000 to introduce her future father-in-law at the Stop the Steal rally on the morning of January 6, 2021 — the event which preceded the attacks on the Capitol — and people close to the disgraced former president don’t seem to be happy about it.
“I want to say two things about that,” New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman told CNN. “People in Trump world are sharing that clip, they are aghast that this is the amount of money she got for a speech to introduce her boyfriend. They couldn’t really get over — I had one former adviser say to me, essentially, these were folks raising money in small amounts from retirees telling them this was going to some legal fight that didn’t really happen, and instead Kimberly Guilfoyle is getting paid.”
California congresswoman Zoe Lofgren shared the details of this financial windfall while chatting with Jake Tapper on CNN. The Democratic lawmaker estimates that Guilfoyle’s mini-speech lasted about two-and-a-half minutes, meaning that she was paid $400 per second for her work that infamous morning. “I’m not saying it is a crime,” Lofgren told Tapper, “but it’s a grift.”
The information was part of a discussion about Trump’s fundraising in the wake of the 2020 election. The lame duck president reportedly received about $250 million in donations from supporters under the guise that the money was being used to help Trump prove there was voter fraud. (Spoiler alert: There wasn’t.) In reality, much of that money was shoveled directly into the Save America PAC, which helped pay for events like the January 6 rally — and Guilfoyle’s ridiculously high speaking fee.
“People were conned by the former president,” Lofgren said. “They were conned into believing that the election had been stolen and that they should go to the Capitol once the president asked them to. I think the average donation from those … false email requests was something like $17. These weren’t rich people. They were conned by the president. The big lie was also a big ripoff.”
BTS are as busy as just about anybody in music, but now it looks like they have a period of dormancy coming up: The group has announced they are taking a hiatus. This is a bit of a bad-news-good-news situation, though. The aforementioned is the bad news, while the good news is that the reason for the hiatus is so BTS members can focus on their solo careers (as NME notes).
The announcement was made during the Festa dinner, which the band has annually as part of a celebration of their founding. There, RM said, “I always thought that BTS was different from other groups, but the problem with K-pop and the whole idol system is that they don’t give you time to mature. You have to keep producing music and keep doing something.”
He also said the band would use this time to consider their next direction, both as a group and individually.
Jimin also noted, “We can’t help but think of our fans no matter what. We want to be the kind of artists that are remembered by our fans. I think now we’re starting to think about what kind of artists we each want to be remembered by our fans. I think that’s why we’re going through a rough patch right now, we’re trying to find our identity and that’s an exhausting and long process.”
The gears on BTS solo endeavors started turning before this announcement: J-Hope is headlining Lollapalooza by himself, Suga teamed up with Psy on “That That,” and RM has long kept busy with material outside of the band.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average salary for a full-time worker in the United States is $53,490 per year. Kimberly Guilfoyle made more than that for a two and a half minute speech at the January 6th rally.
House Select Committee member Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) told CNN that Guilfoyle — the loudest member of the extended Trump family (which is saying something) — was paid “a $60,000 speaking fee for introducing Donald Trump Jr., her fiancé, at the ‘Stop the Steal’ rally on the Ellipse that acted as a precursor to the US Capitol riot.”
Speaking with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Lofgren said the panel has evidence that members of the Trump family and inner circle — including Guilfoyle — personally benefited from money that was raised based on the former President’s false election claims. The California Democrat, though, would not say whether she believed that a financial crime had been committed.
Speaking on CNN on Tuesday, the New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman revealed that “people in Trump world [are] aghast that this is the amount of money she got for a speech to introduce her boyfriend. They couldn’t really get over — I had one former adviser say to me, essentially, these were folks raising money in small amounts from retirees telling them this was going to some legal fight that didn’t really happen.”
Instead, the money went to people like Guilfoyle.
In April, Guilfoyle reportedly spent nine hours speaking to the House committee investigating the failed MAGA riot; she was with Donald Trump the morning of January 6 and is considered a key witness. In her under-three minute speech, Guilfoyle said, “We will not allow the liberals and the Democrats to steal our dream or steal our elections.”
The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow, and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.
Tim Heidecker is an interesting bunch of guys. There is Tim Heidecker, the inventive co-star of the pioneering Adult Swim program Tim And Eric Awesome Show, Good Job! There is Tim Heidecker, the egomaniacal co-host of the popular web series On Cinema. There is Tim Heidecker, the L.A.-based husband and father who oversees the amiable podcast Office Hours. And then there’s Tim Heidecker, character actor and surprisingly (even shockingly) earnest singer-songwriter.
On the forthcoming album High School,due Friday, Heidecker the singer-songwriter has made his most straightforward and autobiographical album yet. A song cycle that looks back on his early ’90s adolescence with the sort of wistful sensitivity and wry specificity associated with ’70s soft rock titans like Paul Simon and Randy Newman — both of whom Heidecker has cited as personal favorites — High School evokes a pre-internet, Middle American, suburban world buoyed by references to Kurt Vonnegut, fiscal conservatism, Gulf War-era CNN reporter Peter Arnett, and Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon.” Depending on the age and background of the listener — Heidecker and I are around the same age and come from similar communities — it will feel eerily familiar and vivid 30 years after that world started to fade away forever.
Working with indie-rock ringers like Mac DeMarco and Weyes Blood’s Natalie Mering, Heidecker evinces none of the chaotic irreverence toward show business that characterizes his comedy. While his early output as a musician — in combos such as Heidecker & Wood and the Yellow River Boys — can be classified as either parodies or jokey, character-based musical bits, High School essentially is the work of a traditionalist proudly situating his songs in the continuum of iconic, confessional writers dating back to the ’60s and ’70s. He’s come to salute his inspirations, not savage them.
While Heidecker has been moving in this direction for several years now, dating back to 2016’s In Glendale (which was inspired by becoming a parent, an extremely singer-songwriter subject for a singer-songwriter), an album like High School still might strike some Tim And Eric fans as strange or confusing. After all, isn’t Tim Heidecker alsothe monstrous caricature of a hack stand-up who complains about taking his wife to the opera? On his upcoming tour in support of High School, he will further muddy the waters by performing both his satirical stand-up and his “serious” music, side by side, across two separate sets.
When I spoke with Heidecker on the phone last month, he admitted that always using his own name no matter the project might have been a mistake, though “there’s part of me that thinks that’s interesting at the end of the day, that it is on you to figure out what’s going on here,” he said. “And maybe that’s ultimately more satisfying.”
Either way, it’s too late to change course now. “I think it would be stupid,” he added, “if I had a singer-songwriter persona that was named Dave Sexton or something.”
In your comedy, a lot of the humor comes from taking conventions of the media and show business and deconstructing them and putting them back together in these surreal and even grotesque shapes. But as a musician, you go in the opposite direction. You have an obvious reverence for the continuum of singer-songwriters going back to the ’60s and ’70s. What is it about this lonely corner of show business that inspires such devotion?
I don’t know if I have a great answer. I think even in the Tim and Eric stuff, there’s love — you got to love it and know it to make fun of it. But it really is two completely different parts of my creative brain. Making fun of things and pointing out the hypocrisy or the grotesqueness of certain elements of media, that’s one part of how I have expressed myself. With the music, it is about trying to make a record that I’m genuinely proud of, that I would want to listen to. I enjoy working with very talented musicians who also like that kind of music. I’m letting another part of my personality come out in a less veiled way, though it still ends up being confusing because people don’t know if this is part of the joke or not.
I know you’re a fan of Randy Newman, who is among the best songwriters at melding humor with music. But generally speaking, that’s a really difficult combination to pull off. If you push too far in either direction, it’s either not funny or it rings false on an emotional level.
Newman’s songs generally come from a point of view that isn’t necessarily him. He’s playing characters a lot of the time, but sometimes he doesn’t, and that’s always interesting. I got to interview him a few months ago for Office Hours, and he was super nice. There’s a song of his called “My Country,” it’s on Bad Love, I think. There’s a line about how when his kids come over, he’s always happy to see them, but he’s also relieved when they leave. And I was like, “Is that you?” And he’s like, “Yeah, that’s me checking in.”
Obviously, there’s Yellow River Boys and a few Trump songs of mine that are more like a character singing. But in my songs it’s more or less me, or at least the way I’m thinking that day. It’s not so much a character. The big mistake I made is that I have just adopted my own name in all these different parts of my expression. You have Tim Heidecker the standup comedian and Tim Heidecker the guy from On Cinema and Tim Heidecker from Tim and Eric. Some of them aren’t me at all, and some of them are closer to me.
You and I are around the same age, so the numerous references to very specific early ’90s pop culture on High School really hit home. First instance, in the song “Stupid Kid,” you write about seeing Neil Young on television playing “Harvest Moon” backed by a guy sweeping a broom, and being inspired by that to play music. Are you referring to a specific performance? I have clear memories of him playing that song on Saturday Night Live and MTV Unplugged.
What I realized later after writing it — and I didn’t go back and change it because it just worked out too well — is that I thought it was him on SNL, playing solo. But there was another version that was him with a small band. I think it was on The Tonight Show, and he did have a guy with the broom. Do you remember that? It was the percussion element of that song. And it was sort of like the brushes on a snare, but it was a broom. It was very memorable. I’m sure somebody had to mike the broom.
After doing some research I think it was actually MTV Unplugged.
Well, then that’s the unreliable narrator in the telling, a total mash of two different experiences. But the core of it is the same. It was back in the day before YouTube and places where you can find chord sheets and lyrics. You had to do it on your own and figure it out by watching it and writing the lyrics down. What he’s doing is in some ways very attainable. I could figure out those chords and I could do that cool harmonic thing he does. Though there’s an ocean of difference between me doing it as a 16-year-old kid and him doing it on TV.
There’s a funny line in that song about how you didn’t like the studio version of “Harvest Moon” at first because it sounded too slick. It made me think about the style of your own records, which really emulate that specific kind of impeccable ’70s SoCal studio craft. One of your collaborators, Jonathan Rado, is a real student of that production style. What do you like about that style?
When I started with Davin Wood, we were in my little studio garage with Logic and MIDI and simulated sounds. You can do fake organs or fake synths or fake strings or whatever. Hooking up with Jonathan, in his garage, he had an actual tape machine and he had microphones and a piano and a bunch of good, vintage instruments. It was how they used to make records. It was capturing a performance. You weren’t going in there and editing and changing and doing all this work — you were getting a few people together in a room, hitting record, playing it four times, getting the take and then going back and working on that take.
It’s so much fun to do it that way, because you’re playing together and looking at each other and reacting to each other. There’s a magic in that recording. Everything on the last three records I’ve done, you are listening to a moment in time when people came together. I just am so grateful and lucky that there is this community of players out here that love doing that, too, and are around. Rado gets really busy and he’s producing people like The Killers. This record was me and Drew Erickson, who did Fear Of Death with me, and Natalie Mering [of Weyes Blood] and Mac DeMarco, who also has a similar setup as Rado.
Kurt Vile is also on the new record. How have you formed relationships with all of these indie rock people?
I think I’m lucky in that I’ve done a body of work that all those people like and grew up with. Some of them are a little younger, some of them are around my age, but they all are coming from being fans. They appreciate what I do and they’re supportive. I sent my record to Kurt because I sent him my last record and I got to know him a few years ago through friends and him reaching out. And I like sharing my music with him because he’s very supportive of it and very positive about it. I feel safe with these people, I guess. We’re all trying to do the same thing and they have validated my journey a little bit. I’m in awe of them. Certainly Kurt, I think his past few records have been fantastic. Weyes Blood, in my opinion, she’s just a generational talent. Kevin Morby is another guy that I love who has been very supportive of my music. And I’m like, well, I’m a fan, too. Let’s figure it out, let’s do something together. It’s pretty organic. I’m trying not to be manipulative or strategic about it.
To go back to Neil Young for a second, the thing I find most fascinating about him is looking at the arc of his career and noting all the things he’s done, and just his willingness to fuck with his audience time after time. The same can also be said of Bob Dylan, obviously. I imagine that aspect of those old singer-songwriters must have been inspiring for you.
This is a joke on my podcast, because at one point I said, “I’m like Dylan.” And now the guys have that as a sample because every time I say anything, they play the clip of me saying, “I’m like Dylan.” But Dylan did make me understand what I wanted to do, and to not really worry about how it’s received, and to not cater to an audience or be afraid to step out of my boundaries, of what people expect from me. It’s not a guarantee of success, but you can’t think about what people expect from you or what you’re supposed to do. He did that so early in his career. Two years in, he’s already throwing out the playbook and starting over or giving people what they don’t think they want.
Some people are very comfortable and good at just doing this one thing. The example that makes the most sense to me is Larry David. Larry David is just Larry David and he’s been doing it for his whole life and it totally works. There’s no reason to expect him to do anything else. Good. But I’m not built that way. It’s depressing to me to think about getting stuck in a mode and just being that one thing over and over again. I’m much more interested in just exploring and experimenting and trying to grow and get better.
It’s hilarious to me that the Grammys gave Bob Dylan a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1991, a few months before he turned 50. The assumption at the time was that he was washed up. And here he is, more than 30 years later, still going.
I mean, the last 30 years, in a lot of ways, have been more interesting and better than his first 20 years.
Many of the songs on the record are vignettes from your childhood. What moved you to write about that period of your life?
What’s happened lately with music for me is there’ll be a song that really comes from out of nowhere. Like “Buddy,” for whatever reason that was in my head. There are some people from high school that I have not thought about or checked in with, and I wonder if they’re okay. They didn’t seem great last time I saw them. And then I’ll have some other songs that aren’t really about anything and I’ll realize, oh, maybe I should start thinking about those days. And then it gets pretty literal.
It was interesting to see what were some of the things that made me who I was that I hadn’t thought about for a while. Like Kurt Vonnegut — I hadn’t thought about or read Kurt Vonnegut in a long time. Or Neil Young and classic rock radio. Or my relationship with my parents and their supportiveness and their encouragement. Just all that stuff that with some distance, it’s not cringey anymore. It’s beautiful.
I grew up in the suburbs. I did not have a deep well of culture available to me. I had what was at the record store, what was on MTV and some older cousins and older friends who were into cool things. That turned me onto cool things.
I had a similar childhood around the same time. It’s pre-internet, not a lot of culture, there’s a couple record stores in town, but you’re really relying on MTV and music magazines. And it does seem maybe more precious now because that world is gone, and as bad as it was in a lot of ways, there’s that melancholy because you can’t go back.
I remember I would get Rolling Stone, and there would be an essential album section. And that’s where I heard about Pet Sounds. It’s where I heard about the first Velvet Underground record. And Astral Weeks. The records that are on all the lists, but they’re really great. And they blew my mind. Listening to the Andy Warhol Velvet Underground record, I really needed that record when I found it. It was really important to me. I wouldn’t have found it without Rolling Stone. Somebody might have turned me onto it, but that’s how I found out about that.
There are definitely downsides to having a music canon, but those lists really did have value at the time when you couldn’t just go online to learn about music.
I don’t even know if the internet is helpful in that regard. It’s not pointing people towards taste and it’s not shaping taste. It’s just there for you to learn more about something if you found it, but I don’t know how people discover the past or what was great in the past.
You reference Kurt Vonnegut in the song “Sirens Of Titan.” I wanted to ask you about this lyric: “I was a little shit, a little right wing / When he said he loved Clinton. I couldn’t help but disagree / I was fiscally conservative until I got that college degree.” That, again, seems like a relatable Middle American experience growing up in the ’90s.
I mean, I was at a Kurt Vonnegut lecture that he was giving at Lehigh University, and he did make a remark about voting for Clinton. And I booed. This was Clinton versus Bush. I did something that I think actually caused him to walk off stage. I was a product of my family at that point. My parents were always very cool about cultural issues for the most part. It wasn’t like a Christian fundamentalist home. But my dad was a Goldwater Republican — small government and business-minded.
I think the dam was about to break there a little bit for me. R.E.M. and that kind of activism liberal perspective was starting to seep into my brain and make me feel like, wait, what do I believe in? But it took a while and I think it really was going to Philly. I was assigned the Howard Zinn book and I was educated about history and about sociology and why people do things and it opened my mind to different points of view. It made me more empathetic and more hopeful that there can be civic-minded solutions to people’s problems.
I thought it was gutsy to write about that, because that’s a pretty common trajectory where you just adopt your parents’ politics until you get to a certain age.
It’s funny that when I am an outspoken critic of the right, people assign that to me being this Hollywood liberal and I’m like, I’ve been like this well before I had any breaks in this business.
You’re going to be playing music and doing standup on this tour. Do you find that the audience who likes your comedy also likes your music? Or are those separate constituencies?
The stand-up character is a character, a little one-act play. You’re going to see this awful, toxic, terrible person. What happened when I did the show in New York was fascinating, because the crowd was so on my side as a comedian and they were pretending to be on my side because you’d have to be an idiot to be entertained and enjoy his point of view. So, that’s the first half of the show. And then there’s a very short break, and I come out and play music. I’m not up there super serious, either. I’m able to tell jokes and be a little loose, but treat the music seriously. The band is fantastic. They’re really good players who are having fun. So it’s 45 minutes of stand-up and an hour and a half of music. Just for me and for the people I talked to at the show, it wasn’t confusing. I mean, I changed my outfit. When you look at the pictures, they do seem like two completely different people.
I guess you have to quickly unslick your hair?
I put a hat on and it’s a total magic show. It’s like a Clark Kent/Superman thing.
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