RiYL

We start by talking about food. Something most musicians take for granted on road, but Yoni Wolf’s struggles with Crohn's disease have made him acutely aware of what he puts into his body. It’s a subject that’s featured heavily in his work, including, most notably the decidedly dark Mumps, Etc. 2017’s Moh Lhean finds Wolf in a reflective state. Having embraced meditation, mindfulness and writings by American buddhist writers like Sharon Salzberg, the practices make themselves known throughout the record as sung mantras and snippets from teachers like Ram Dass. It’s spiritual in parts, without being overbearing, a complex mix of musical styles, including, most prominently, indie rock and hip-hop. And somehow it all works.On a down night during touring, Wolf and I sat down in a hotel room in rainy Brooklyn to discuss illness, spirituality and dealing with music critics.

2008’s Jesus That Looks Terrible on You was a delightful debut from a promising New York indie pop band. In the intervening decade, however, things have been fairly quiet on for A Big Yes and a Small No, aside from a single hard to find EP. I jumped at the idea of interviewing frontman Kevin Kendrick, if only to discover what, precisely he’d been up to for the past 10 years. With a new record Mise En Abyme just over the horizon, Kendrick sat down after work one day, equipped with several lifetimes worth of stories. There’s the heroin addiction, the kidnapping, a false imprisonment — all things he casually touches upon as he gets to more important subjects like the topic of songwriting. It’s a fascinating and fittingly manic conversation that runs the gamut from addiction to coming to grips with one’s own mortality.

I first heard The Devil Makes Three bleeding through the thin walls of Santa Cruz house all hours of the day and night. The trio had only just formed and practice seemingly nonstop a set of songs that would form the basis of their self-titled debut. There was nothing like them in Santa Cruz at the time, a music scene populated by freak folk, indie-noise and skater punk, but the band’s single-minded focus on stripped down, bluegrass inspired punk country was precisely what helped them stand out. And the fact that, in spite of those never ending practice sessions, they seemed to enter the world fully formed.  The world has, of course, come around to the band’s music. The band was perfectly positioned to be embraced by the indie scene’s newfound love affair with Americana, and had the songs and showmanship to back it up. When I met up with the trio, they were about to take the stage to an enthusiastic crowd at Brooklyn Steel, singing along to every song. Pete Bernhard, the band’s singer and guitarist sat down to catch up on the last 15 years and talk about what’s next for the group.

I first met Becky Stern back in 2011, when she appeared on the Engadget Show as a blogger for Make Magazine. At the time, she was showcasing a hoodie capable of turning TVs off an off when zipped. It was pretty standard fare for the maker — a project that explored the cross section of art and fashion. Stern left that gig the following year for a gig at open-source hardware company Adafruit, where she served as the head of wearable electronics. These days, she’s a content creator at Instructables and Autodesk, while teaching her trade at New York’s School of Visual Arts. We sat down to discuss the state of the maker community, the pluses and minuses of launching a startup and having garbage knees in the era of uncertain health care.

It’s been nearly five years since we sat down with Julia Wertz, and naturally plenty has changed. Her latest book, Tenements, Towers and Trash is a veritable love letter to New York City, written after the cartoonist had moved back home to California. The book is a history of the city, told through obsessively detailed architectural renderings of buildings. It the same funny cartoon story telling that put her on the map in her long running strip, Fart Party, while exploring far more meticulous black and white line drawings. In her return to the show, we weigh the benefits of living in New York vs. San Francisco, discuss her newfound (and only slightly reluctant) passion for meditation and mindfulness, talk Tinder and find out what’s next for the artist.

Vancouver-born and Toronto-based, Laila Biali has toured with some of the biggest names in music, from Sting to Suzanne Vega. The pianist/singer is also a well regarded color performer in her own right, having released seven albums, including a new eponymous record, which debuted in January. The album’s first single, “Refugee,” follows the plight of a child, the same age as her son, caught up in the Serbian refugee crisis. In addition to performing, Biali is also the host of CBC Radio 2’s Saturday Night Jazz, a weekly four-hour show that explores the broad expanses of the genre. In this interview, we discuss the state of jazz in 2018, programming music for a diverse audience and life on the road with a young child.

A decade after releasing Some Loud Thunder, Clap Your Hands Say took the album back on tour. A lot has changed for the band in the intervening ten years, of course — not the least of which is the fact that frontman Alec Ounsworth remains the band’s only consistent member. The short stint of shows kicked off after the band finished touring for The Tourist, the group’s most critically acclaimed record since breaking through as the poster children for blog rock. After that self-titled release, Some Loud Thunder fell on somewhat deaf ears — mostly a victim of the band’s own seemingly overnight success. I met up with Ounsworth on the final night of the tour, after watching the band meticulously reinterpret the album’s songs in sound check, so many years after their initial release.  The atmosphere put the singer in the perfect position to talk about those early years and his still evolving approach to writing a song.

2018’s Uncle, Duke and the Chief finds Born Ruffians performing with their original lineup for the first time in half a decade. Such a return is always an important turning for a band, but it takes on an extra weight for the trio, who began performing together as 15-year-olds in a small Ontario town. It’s a clearly joyful experience for the band, who managed to tap into the initial excitement that fueled the group in their earliest days. According to frontman Luke Lalonde, that sense of pleasure is an essential part of the music making process. Sure the fuel for the songs often comes from ideal circumstances, but he adds that he’d rather hang it up than feel as if he’s simple going through the motions. In this conversation, the front discusses the songwriting process and taking inspiration where you can get it.  

In May of last year, Land of Talk returned after a seven year hiatus. At the height of her powers, following tours with bands like Broken Social Scene and The Decemberists, Elizabeth Powell took a break. Between her vocal polyp and a laptop crash that result in the loss of an album’s worth of demos, it was time to step away. Of all things, however, it was yet another personal tragedy that ultimately brought the music back. Powell’s father suffered a major stroke, and Powell began playing again as a kind of rehab. Her father pleaded for her to start making music again, and the resulting record, Life After Youth was became one of her strongest and most personal to date. We caught up with Powell, ahead of a show opening for a reunited American Football to discuss the healing power of making music.

Five years between in records is a drop in the bucket for many groups. For Minus the Bear, however, it marks the longest gap between albums in the band’s 17 year history.  The making of Voids was marked by both personal and professional changes, as the group shuffled members and began to settle down and have kids. But there’s a fresh energy on the record, kicked off by “Lass Kiss,” which find the band in peak form. It’s a document of a band that still has has something to say. In this short interview, the group sat down back stage, following an opening slot for The Silverspun Pickups in Brooklyn to discuss changing dynamics and Donald Trump.  

The track list for Playing Chess is nothing if not bold. The 11 tracks that make up Elise LeGrow’s debut LP represent some of the legendary Chicago Record’s biggest names, including Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Etta James. The collection of covers is both and a risky and savvy move for the singer. Of course, LeGrow’s not exactly new to the industry — the Canadian musician signed with Sony back in 2009, but this record, released early this month, marks a major step, after years of singles and LPs. It doesn’t hurt that, this time out, she’s joined by Betty Wright, Questlove and members of Sharon Jones’ legendary backing band, The Dap-Kings.In the lead up to the record’s release, LeGrow sat down to discuss her curation of covers and the pitfalls of trying to break into the music industry.

When I first encountered Gina Wynbrandt’s work at MoCCA Fest a few years back, the Chicago-based cartoonist seemingly came out of nowhere. Here debut book, Someone Please Have Sex With Me was the hands-down hit of the show — and for good reason. The book is an unflinchingly and often brutally hilarious look at sex that turns some of alternative comics’ most unshakable tropes on their head. “I read so many comics about the ugly male cartoonist in live with hot women,” she explains during our chat, “and I wanted my shot at it.” A followup minicomic, Thank You, follows in a similar vein, with the artist beginning the reader to help her foot the cost of a handsome male escort for the night. She debuted the book at Comic Arts Brooklyn, where we sat down for our chat — one she was finished setting up the giant Justin Bieber blanket on her table.  

“Do not listen to people’s idea about what you can accomplish,”  Emil Ferris insists as we wrap up our interview. “ You must do the thing you were sent here to do.” We’re short on time during the quick conversation. Someone’s stopped by to whisk her off to her next appointment. But, she adds, it’s important that she get that one simple and powerful message across. Ferris’ brief career as a cartoonist is nothing if not a lesson in perseverance. In 2001, she was paralyzed by West Nile Virus contracted from a mosquito bite. After a hopeless diagnosis from doctors, she learned to walk and draw again, eventually receiving a creative writing MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2017, at age 55, Ferris release her debut graphic novel, My Favorite Thing is Monster, a painstakingly crafted coming of age story that led Art Spiegelman to call the cartoonist, “one of the most important comics artists of our time” in a lengthy New York Times piece. Since then, the book went on to become far and away the most lauded book of the year, with a second part due out this August. In this brief but fascinating conversation, Ferris relays a message of hopefulness for aspiring artists and those dealing with seemingly insurmountable health issues. The cartoonist also expounds on her love for classic horror movies and how to overcome demons of negative thinking.

I’ve been eagerly awaiting Joseph Remnant’s debut graphic novel since he began collaborating with underground comics pioneer Harvey Pekar for the online Pekar Project anthology back in 2010. The moment finally arrived last year when Fantagraphics published Cartoon Clouds, the tale of recent art school graduates grappling with the realities of adult life. Of course, the cartoonist has been busy in the meantime, working on his on-going floppy series, Cartoon Clouds and working on Pekar’s final book, Cleveland, a fitting send off for one of the medium’s most influential writers. Remnant and I sat down at the CAB show in Brooklyn to discuss his work to this point and the process of setting out to create a debut graphic novel after years of shorter work and collaborations.

“Without nostalgia,” Torquil Campbell explains, “I don’t know how you make pop music.” It’s an inescapable dimension of Stars music, if only because the band essentially grew up together in Toronto.  Plenty has changed, of course, in the nearly 20 years since the group formed. Two members married one another, and Campell became the sole member to move away, relocating part-time to Vancouver and a spot near Niagra Falls for his wife’s theater acting career. But the indie-pop group’s career has remained strong. Stars’ ninth studio album, There Is No Love in Fluorescent Light is among their strongest, and we meet up backstage at Rough Trade in Brooklyn, fans are already lined up, waiting to get into one of multiple sold out shows. Back in the city where the spent so many of its formative years, the singer seems especially reflective. “Pop music without nostalgia,” he adds in almost a whisper, “Is like coffee without cream."