Episode 1669 - Neko Case

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Lock the gates!

All right, let's do this.

How are you, what the fuckers?

What the fuck, buddies?

What the fuck, Nicks?

What's happening?

I'm Mark Maron.

This is my podcast.

Welcome to it.

What's happening?

How are you doing?

Where are we at?

No place good, but it's okay.

It's okay.

You can be okay.

You can be okay.

Don't let it collapse your brain.

Do not let the world burn hotter than it already is in the machine you're holding in your hand.

Don't let the interface between you and the machine you hold in your hand break your brain into thinking everything is immediate and in your yard.

It's just in your hand, and you can put it down.

Put it down for a minute, huh?

This feels like some sort of like, you know, motivational talk.

I feel like I'm some sort of eckhartolli of put the machine down.

It's like put the gun down, take it out of your mouth.

Put the phone down, take it out of your head.

Do it.

It's where we're at.

And I just want to say something

about thinking thinking about certain things.

You know, I'm kind of coming down from a publicity tour and, you know, saying my mind, speaking my mind in ways that I do, but I still live a

pretty small life in a lot of ways.

And it's just the way my brain works.

You know, I don't spend a lot of money.

I fester about simple things.

I think about ways of looking at things.

But

I'm starting to realize something about

sort of thinking about who you are and where where you come from on all levels in in a non-nostalgic way.

I just had this

weird thought, but I'll get to it in a minute.

Today I'm going to talk to Nico Case.

She's a singer-songwriter known for her solo work as well as being part of the new pornographers.

She's got her first album in seven years coming out next month called Neon Gray Midnight Green.

She also just released her memoir earlier this year.

It's called The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You.

And it was a great book.

And I generally don't read the books that

people are coming on to promote if it's a memoir, because I find I know too much.

Whether that was the case with this conversation or not, I don't know.

I have my feelings, but I couldn't put the book down because there was something poetic and emotional in terms of

what made her, what made her who she was,

and what makes her who she is in relation to the incredible sort of

kind of poverty and

insanity that she grew up with.

And it really made me reflect on myself because there were some similarities, even though we don't come from the same stuff.

But emotionally, sometimes it doesn't matter what the surroundings are.

Emotions are emotions.

Parenting is parenting.

How you sort of claim yourself in the midst of chaos or neglect is sort of the groundwork for who you become and how you enter the world.

And as time goes on,

you kind of chip away at that if it's faulty and you make different choices for yourself against your instincts, which are sometimes not great.

And that's the sort of struggle of a traumatized person.

Or I like to say broken, but some people are like, we're not broken, we're flawed, or you know, everyone's got trouble.

But I say broken

in the purely poetic sense.

You know, from broken things comes the process of restoration into a new thing.

That was sort of the theme of my last special that's out now on HBO, Panicked, in terms of how we designed the set and what inspired it, the art of Kensuki.

I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right, the restoration of broken ceramics with gold.

And that's a beautiful metaphor for anybody who's doing the work, is

not only making yourself better, but making yourself stronger and making yourself uniquely beautiful

in how you present who you are publicly and who you are from the inside.

And I've been thinking a lot about some of this stuff

in the sense of like,

you know, there is,

how do you comfort yourself in the midst of

American authoritarianism?

And what are you really doing?

Is it nostalgia?

Is it relief when you kind of dip into classic movies or old movies or music that moved you when you were younger or reconnecting with old friends or

or or or thinking about you know how you grew up and who you grew up with and all that stuff is it nostalgia or or is it really

kind of you know reaffirming to yourself who you are you know there's something about you know containing or controlling your emotional reactions or or through things that are comforting from different points in your life or just you know maybe if it's not just Pablom or just, you know, garbage you're kind of engaging with as a distraction, which I rarely do because I just have high expectations.

I don't really allow myself just to be jerked around emotionally for the sake of distraction.

I need there to be some meat there somehow.

But the thought I was having today

was

really about how much of that, how much of what you could call nostalgia, and depending how old you are,

I think nostalgia in a real sense really kicks in, you know, probably after 40.

You know, before that, it's just memories, you know.

But after 40, you know, on upwards from that, depending on what your life was, you can kind of see the sort of periods of your life of almost specifically different lives that you lived.

And I think that's sort of true.

I think that, you know, in the way that we change as people, in the way that we change our environment, in the people that we move through or stay with, there are these changes that happen.

And I just got hip to this idea, a new psychological idea called internal family systems.

And I'm waiting for a book to do a little more research on it.

And this kind of posits the idea that we are several different selves that we kind of maintain within us.

And how you treat them or what part they play in your life, you know, becomes sort of something to be worked on or a choice to be made.

Like if there's some part of you that you shut off years ago out of fear of pain, rejection, or just, you know,

the terror of vulnerability, that there's a way to sort of like get that guy up to speed, get that woman up to speed, whatever it is within you.

You know, you were built.

We are all sort of built through influences.

And I think right now, you know, the way that technology and just the sheer kind of force of the propaganda and, and

content-driven garbage that we let pound into our mind has an influence, but it's very visceral.

It just taps into kind of raw emotion and dopamine and panic and all that lizard brain bullshit.

But when you kind of take time

with things that mean something to you, whether it's

music, film, whatever arts you're involved in, writing, whatever that stuff is, and also people, that I think you're kind of reasserting for yourself, you know, who you are in the world.

And I think that it might be helpful to look at it like that.

You know, then when you play that old record or you watch that old movie, that you're not just being nostalgic or

trying to distract yourself, but you're literally checking in with

who you are and what made you.

And I think that anything that you engage with along these lines, that's a piece of you from whatever self it represents in in your history of you, that you are kind of reasserting yourself to yourself, reaffirming that you are built from something that means something to you.

Even if it's parents, if you have that kind of relationship with your parents, and even if it's negative things, I think there is an element that maybe,

and this is just an idea I'm putting out there that you can trivialize as nostalgia, but there's something about engaging with the stuff that moves you because it has a place in your life, that that stuff kind of is part of your design.

It's part of what made you who you were, whether it inspired you or it brings back feelings or represents a person or you use it as a foundation for your creativity or how you move through the world.

And that reconnecting with that stuff is not, it's not an act of self-help.

It's not an act of nostalgia.

It's an act of always reintroducing yourself to who you are and what made you and strengthening that and reaffirming that in real time in the midst of

forces that are constantly ripping apart at our senses of self, at our senses of principle and who we are, and just

leveling us to fear and panic.

So don't just

think about it as nostalgia.

Deepen your level of awareness of engaging in the things that mean something to because they mean something to you because they're part of your makeup.

I'm sorry to sound like some sort of motivational speaker, but I just found this, like people in your life, think back at them, people you lost, people that said things that changed your life forever, people that showed you things that set you on your trajectory to be who you wanted to be and do what you wanted to do.

Reflect on them with some depth and some meaning and not just sadness and not just nostalgia.

Be grateful for the things that impacted you to make you the the person that you are today in the midst of this annihilating psychic force that's going on so you can kind of hold on to yourself.

And I think if you look at it, those things with that kind of depth, it'll work that way for you.

And

it might save your sanity.

It might save the sense and the reality of who you are, both for good and bad.

But I mean, don't just, you know, write it off as nostalgia.

It's life-affirming shit.

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Nico Case is here, and she's been on my radar for a long time, but I didn't really want to interview her until I really was sort of, you know, saturated with her work in all its forms.

So it took a while for us to get this together.

Her new album, Neon Gray Midnight Green, comes out September 26th.

You can pre-order it now and go to nicocase.com for her upcoming tour dates.

And her book, her memoir, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You, is a beautiful book.

And this is me talking

to Nico Case.

I think we're okay.

I think we're okay.

Do you sound okay to you?

I do.

Good.

Good.

Perfect.

Have you dealt with these kind of problems before?

No.

Yes.

Every

day of my life.

The sound?

The sound problem?

I'm pretty obsessed with it.

Yeah.

And the edges of the sound, especially.

Yeah, like, oh, because you can hear just

static.

I can hear electricity.

Yeah.

I have a lot of high-end hearing that I can, that, that drives me crazy.

A lot of people, I really hate auto-tune

because people often mix it and

put compression on it in a way that makes the edges of it like the rippled edge of a tin can in my ear.

Oh, yeah.

And it's just like,

yeah.

I don't hate the sound of it as much as when it's just like, no.

I don't even know what that stuff is.

But I'm pretty limited.

I'm just looking for tone.

I'm trying to figure out, you know, how to,

how do you write songs?

It's kind of tricky, isn't it?

It's pretty tricky.

Yeah.

The best way to start is to not know anything about it.

Yeah.

And just

start.

But like, how do you, like,

I don't mean to start like this, but like, I've recently, because this podcast is wrapping up and I've been playing for years, so I started playing with people.

And it was never something I did much of as a kid.

And I was always terrified of singing.

And I just, I realized, you know, I've been playing alone for my entire life, and I'm okay at it.

But like, you know, the rubber meets the road when you get on stage with humans.

So I've been doing that.

And

I don't like the idea of writing a song for myself.

I did once after my partner died.

And I thought it was pretty good.

But the validation necessary to really make you believe it's good is too much.

Well, that's why you have to just decide that you are the valid, like you are the judge.

And,

it took you a while, didn't it?

It did take me a while, but I also

kind of just realized fairly early, like, nobody gives a fuck what a girl thinks.

Yeah.

So nobody's going to notice what I'm doing.

Right.

So the freedom in that is pretty large.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's true.

I, I mean, I've, I read, I rarely read the whole books because sometimes I think it'll affect the conversation.

But I read your whole book in like one sitting, and it was, I think it, it,

it kind of had a life-changing effect on me.

Really?

Yeah.

Ah,

that really means a lot.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Because

it's kind of a rough time.

And then in the arc of your rough times, the sort of movement of self-discovery and where you landed is an inspiring thing.

Thank you.

Yeah.

And I read Kathleen Hanna's whole book.

And that was

fantastic.

It's crazy.

But both of you are very, you know, kind of clear on the life

and, you know, and the sort of

having no choice but to live it,

the life of rock and roll or music or whatever.

And both of your, your pasts are pretty harrowing, you know, and

but I couldn't put that book down either.

I think I read Kristen Hirsch's too.

I haven't read that yet, but everybody says it's fantastic.

It's on, it's on my list of things to read.

Well, we can start with this.

I underline things in books.

I do that too.

You do?

A lot of dog earrings.

Yeah, but like I don't, like in the moment, I don't know

why.

But, you know, I do it because as an effect, I guess it's in looking back on it.

I'm like, well, why did I do that one?

But this one's pretty easy.

I trusted animals so much more than people.

I wanted only to love them.

When it came to liking another human, I was perplexed as to why I would want to give my attention to something so unknown, so unpredictable.

Right?

Yeah, you don't know what they're going to do.

And all the things that they teach you that are supposed to happen don't happen.

Yeah.

The societal kind of

politeness or

what have you.

It just doesn't exist.

Well, that's like that line from Michael Clayton, which I quote all the time from Sidney Pollock, you know, after a guy supposedly killed himself, but didn't.

But he said,

people are fucking incomprehensible.

But doesn't it happen on kind of a spectrum of stuff?

I mean, you don't have very much control over anything, right?

No.

And you make assumptions about people based on you being one.

And then all of a sudden it's like, what the fuck is happening?

Yeah.

Why isn't this working?

Is what I would think a lot of the time.

Why isn't this working?

Yeah.

Am I, am I invisible?

What's happening?

Yeah.

Are they talking to their idea of me?

That's the most, I just was like, what's wrong with me?

Yeah.

Because, you know, being a girl in the 70s, like,

it just, I had no value.

So I just immediately was like, okay, I'm doing it wrong.

Yeah.

Whatever's happening right now,

I'm the problem.

Right.

And with animals, like, you know, they're unpredictable, but it's within the spectrum of that animal brain.

They don't lie.

Yeah.

They just don't.

Yeah.

They could be having a crazy day and they'll act crazy.

And you don't have to wonder.

I mean, you do wonder why they're acting crazy, but

you know what they're doing.

And you've had a lot of dogs and cats and horses now.

But don't you project onto them?

Horses made me stop

projecting because horses are very

deep.

Yeah.

And

there's a real safety issue there.

Like you have to be able to understand what they're thinking about you or just getting stepped on can kill you.

You know, like they, horses are,

and that was the other part of it is that horses are not.

Horses could just be killing the shit out of us all the time.

And when you think of the history of people and horses, horses should have made us extinct

based on what we do to them.

And they could have done it.

But their brains are not wired to attack and kill things

or to be vengeful or seek retribution.

They are into the safety of the moment and feeling comfortable and levels of anxiety.

Like they read you, they read your body, your heart rate, your temperature, your anxiety.

And so I had to really

just try to see it from their point of view.

And, you know, I had a lot of friends who really understood horses.

And I have this one woman in my life named Heika, who's German, and she would say things like, you can't expect them to not be a horse.

Yeah.

They're not to be a cartoon.

And so I took that very seriously.

And

now I really try to like

figure out what the cats and dogs are thinking from a cat and dog perspective.

And our communication is much better now.

Yeah.

And it's a lot easier yeah because a lot of times i like i've been having this trouble with my cats and like it it it unravels my life

because i have so much invested yeah like i have to constantly be told like no charlie's fine in the room he's not up there going like why am i in the room you know i'm sad this is horrible it's fine and i got to uh try and get out from under that Yeah,

he's having his own issues.

Maybe he's got a health thing.

Maybe he's got urinary tract problems that you don't know about yet.

They act out for weird reasons.

I think he's jealous and spoiled.

Jealous?

I have one of those.

I'm spoiled.

Yeah, I have a similar problem.

You do?

But my cats go outside because we live in the country.

Where do you live?

I live in rural, rural, rural Vermont.

Really?

In the Northeast Kingdom.

So you stayed up over there?

How far from Burlington?

Hour and a half.

Really?

Everything's an hour and a half from Burlington.

Yeah.

It's so tiny.

It's so pretty up there.

It is.

It's ridiculous how pretty it is.

Yeah.

So I guess we can kind of talk about what resonated with me in terms of how you were brought up.

Because your parents didn't want you.

No.

No, they did not.

And that was apparent both verbally and just in vibe.

Yeah, it was a lifestyle.

It was a lifestyle for sure.

Yeah.

But how old were they?

They were young.

They were like 17 and 18 or 18 and 19.

I can't remember.

They were definitely below 20 years old.

That's so crazy.

They were children.

When you think about it,

when did you realize growing up that they were young?

It was pretty young just because, you know, that was one of the reasons that they would give me for having been divorced by the time I was five is that, well, we were really young when we got together.

Yeah.

And, you know, I understood understood that as a young person.

It made sense.

Yeah.

But the sort of ongoing revelation of how broken they were,

it's sad but relieving, right?

Well, it is, yeah.

And there's when you figure out how much of the fantasy, quote unquote, you are helping perpetuate and you can go, oh,

Obviously, my mother didn't have cancer ever.

When she disappeared or whatever.

Yeah, she she didn't want a kid.

That is so crazy.

I did not realize how crazy that was until I told somebody when I was in my 20s.

So your entire family played along with this.

Yes.

Some knew, some didn't.

How old were you?

I think I was...

I was in third grade, so I don't remember what age that would make me.

And your parents were already split up?

They were already split up, and my stepdad was in the picture by that point.

Was his name Will?

Billiard.

Bill.

Yeah, Bill.

I just called him Billiam.

His name's William, but his name's is Bill.

Yeah, Bill.

And he's still around.

He's awesome.

He's fantastic.

His whole family.

He's an anthropologist?

Yeah, he's an archaeologist.

And his whole family, the Fortini family, have always treated me like old.

They're one guy.

You have one.

Exactly.

So what happened exactly?

She pretended to have cancer.

But you never saw her sick.

I never saw her sick.

She wasn't living with you.

No.

Right.

But apparently she was getting sicker and sicker.

And

so

I was at my grandmother's, my father's mother, one day.

And my dad came to pick me up and he was crying, which was terrifying to begin with because my dad never showed any emotion.

And he was like,

your mommy's dead.

And I was like, what the

what?

Yeah.

And, you know, I just,

it was really shocking.

And it's not something you can.

you can comprehend.

Yeah.

It takes a long time to comprehend that somebody's dead.

Yeah.

It's like...

Especially as a kid.

Yeah.

And you know, you could see somebody die in front of you, and it takes like

years to understand that they're dead.

And so I just went into this weird depression hallway based on nothing that I understood.

And but they told you he drove you and you went to like a funeral, like a memorial?

Well, a little while later, we went to a wake.

Yeah.

for my mom, my grandmother's house, her mother's house.

Right.

And there were people there and, you know, jell-o-salad and all that.

And

nobody seemed really as sad as I imagine they should seem.

Yeah.

And

I was really sad.

And, you know,

the only person who seemed like they kind of didn't understand what was happening or were on the same level as me is my uncle's wife, my aunt Sue, who was an incredible person.

She seemed sad.

And I think she was sad for me.

But when you look back at that,

did they all get on board for your sake that they thought somehow it was better that you thought this?

I guess so.

I mean, I still don't really know exactly what happened.

My family are pretty tight-lipped, and most of them are dead now.

So it doesn't matter.

Well, they must have known that she was like in trouble and chaotic and was leaving the country and she was running away.

And as opposed to tell you that, I just can't even wrap my brain around the logic of it that everybody would be on board with this heinous lie for your sake.

I always describe it this way.

It's like you cut yourself in the kitchen and then you build a rocket to go to the moon to get a band-aid and come back.

It's so bizarre and around the bend.

And that's, you know, that's the kind of

the way my mother was warped as a young person was pretty classic, patriarchal, American.

And, you know, you mean the

the trauma, the child of immigrants, you know, being raped as a young person and

all those other things and, you know, not mattering.

But you didn't find that stuff out till later.

That, you know, she's raped in anger, which I guess all rape is by your own dad.

Yeah.

That's punishment.

And, you know,

what's interesting in the book is that as you find this stuff out and the pieces start coming together, I mean, you can, you know, find bits and pieces of hope and also explanation, but

it doesn't reverse the damage.

It only informs it, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

So like after that,

you're just kind of left with your incommunicative dad.

But it seems like you had family that was good.

Yeah.

Like my grandmothers were really wonderful people.

My.

My grandfather, who was my step-grandfather, who was married to my mom's mom, was wonderful.

He also was very incommunicative, though.

He was just a really quiet.

The cancer guy?

No,

he was a farmer.

Jack Clyde?

Clyde.

Yes.

He raised organic beef.

And he couldn't eat his own cows because he was so soft.

So he would just buy crappy beef at the supermarket.

Because he was attached to them?

He was attached to them.

He was like, oh, I can't eat them.

But lovely human being, like lifelong volunteer fireman, just a really good person.

That's on your dad's side.

On my mom's side.

On your mom's side.

Yeah.

That was the person that

my grandmother married after she left my super abusive Ukrainian

grandfather, yes.

And but who was the one dying in the chair?

That was my dad's father.

He was kind of just one of those dad joke kind of Tenlin granddads.

He was nice to us, but I made the mistake of reading like the Korean War diary that his troop wrote.

And I was just like, this is horrifying.

That's a bloody war that no one knows about.

I know.

And

the way that they were taught to view people.

And the way, yes, and just the most racist, misogynist,

reductive evil.

And I just was like, I can't trust anything.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Nothing.

And you're alone.

And you've been moved moved around to different sort of versions of squalor with your father and at least some, you know, some order with your mom and

will,

but just isolated.

No siblings.

No siblings, no.

I think the thing that resonated with me and it's something I...

I keep trying to build on in my own sort of life, because my parents were, you know, they had money enough to live, but were

also had me when my mom was 22.

And you're still a little kid then.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah.

And, you know, there's, they just weren't ready for it and they had no capacity for selflessness in terms of parenting.

And I've always built on this thing that I read in this guy Firestones book, that if you have parents that are emotionally abusive or neglectful, that when you feel uncomfortable because of that, not knowing what that discomfort is, you're going to blame yourself.

And you're going to implant a parent inside your mind that tells you you're fucking garbage.

Yep.

Right?

Yeah.

And I think that, you know, your book is...

in terms of that and moving through that is like what that's about.

Right?

Yeah.

And I think that there were times that, you know, I think fundamentally, like my biological father was a really sweet guy,

really gentle, really, he loved nature, he loved animals.

But then there was this weird like macho military guy that lived in there.

And I remember.

No, just him.

Like just the guy that he thought he was supposed to be.

You know, the picture of manhood in the 50s and 60s.

And I remember one day he said to me, and he said it a few times after, he said, if I say black is blue, it's blue.

And I was like, you can't make black blue.

So like, I wasn't understanding the, you know,

the

you do it if I say it part.

Yeah.

I got that, but it was also

he kind of sold himself out because I knew he couldn't make black into blue.

Right.

So on this other contextual level, I was like, I can't trust him because that isn't real.

Aaron Ross Powell.

Well, and I think that having that experience as a kid kind of informs your entire position about,

you know, what we're supposed to do and what we're not supposed to do.

Right.

If you had to live the life of

what society means to be a good girl,

you might as well just hang yourself from the shower curtain rod because

there's.

There's so many passion engines inside of you that are going to try to, you know, move you to places that are really wonderful.

Yeah.

And if you have to choke those out,

it would just be the most painful,

what's the point?

Yeah, because you can feel it choking from inside of you.

Yeah.

I literally sometimes feel like I'm being strangled from inside myself.

And I always,

when I think about why wouldn't I let go of that, I think it's because I spent so much time unsupervised in nature.

Yeah.

And I saw how nature functioned.

Yeah.

And there wasn't punishment for things, there were consequences for different things and the cycle of life and all that.

But nature just didn't act the way God supposedly did.

And so there was a big contradiction there.

But nature was consistent

in its strangeness, whereas

adults were just

always trying to make

some sort of dam around things.

Yeah.

You know, their boundaries were outsized and kind of

ridiculous.

Yeah.

Well, I think that's probably the gift of

having, you know,

irresponsible parents

in that way.

Yeah.

Like in terms of like, you'll be okay at the house for a day.

Yeah.

Or two.

I know so many people of Gen X and

older who, you know, are kind of glad for being raised that way, but also feel completely neglected at the same time.

Or like just the kind of danger that you could be in.

Right.

But like if you think about it,

if your parents aren't going to help you

by creating an environment or support so you can develop who you're supposed to be,

it's better that they don't hammer it out of you and just not be there in some ways than hammer it out of you.

Exactly.

I mean, it leaves it sort of an open container of, you know, you're kind of too open and, you know, again, you're going to, you know, kind of judge yourself really harshly, but at least you can kind of get a sense of the world that's honest to you.

And I think that it seems like those times where when you go back in your memory and really think about the impact of nature or what you were doing and even the patterns of behavior just out of boredom and also the manifesting of horses whatever that was you know early on that it gave you some kind of you know

need to have a a

poetic sensibility like it like it kind of unharnessed your imagination to make sense of the world yeah the the manifesting of horses um Maybe it was just coincidence.

What is that story?

Well,

I was so in love with horses from the time, like I remember the first time I ever touched one.

I was still a baby, but I remember touching it and just feeling transported and just, you know,

but I didn't have anything else to compare it to.

So I just thought, this is the world.

This is the world.

This world is great.

Of course.

Exactly.

And so I was sitting on the side porch of our house in Bellingham, Washington, which was still pretty small at that time.

And there was an alleyway that went past the back of our house.

And I wanted to see a horse so bad.

I just wanted to be near one.

And I thought, okay, I'm going to see a horse.

I closed my eyes and I said, I'm going to see a horse right now.

And I opened my eyes and I saw a white horse.

And it was coming toward me.

And next to it was a brown horse.

And there were two young women riding these horses up the alley.

And I was just like, yep, there we go.

Magic.

Magic.

Or just the way the world should be.

You know, like, maybe that's not even magic.

Maybe that's just something I should feel entitled to.

Yeah, women on horses.

Yeah, here they come.

Of course they are.

Yeah, I'm just glad they're here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, some of the stuff you write in the book about, you know, your dad's house and him just, you know, disappearing into a bong

in a place with like no furniture and the salt on the floor and all that shit.

I mean, did you, was that for years?

Years and years and years, yeah.

I don't really understand

how you came out with any sense of self at all.

I often don't either.

I mean, like I said, my dad, he had his moments, when I say black is blue, it's blue.

That would come out now and again, but it was like some other thing was making a voice come out of him.

Like, I knew that wasn't really his heart.

And I was always trying to reach the person who was at his heart, and I never could.

Because you can feel the weight of it not being there

because you know it's in there.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

And,

you know, I didn't know that my father had been horribly sexually abused.

Both your parents.

Both my parents.

And, you know, I didn't know what he was suppressing.

Yeah.

I just knew that he was.

And, you know, I didn't know he was.

I don't know if he was bipolar or just depressive, but he was very depressed my whole life.

And drank.

Later.

Oh, yeah.

That was later.

Weed was first.

Weed, yeah, weed was just like

constant.

I do not remember a time without like weed smoke in the house.

And this is all in Washington?

Yeah, Washington state.

Scary place.

Yeah, it's a really scary place.

Rural Washington State?

Well, that was like Vancouver, Washington, Bellingham, Washington, Seattle later.

But the really rural places I lived with my stepdad and my mom.

And that was safer, anyways.

Way safer.

Yeah, because of them.

Yeah.

And nature, which wasn't out to give me.

And that was in Vermont mostly?

It was eastern Washington, a little bit of Western Washington, Vermont.

Yeah.

All over the place, like wherever my stepdad's assignments were.

Yeah.

I think why

the book helped me is that you're very able to identify through sort of feelings, but a few sort of actions

that your mother resented you yes

and and i i think it's important to identify that and i don't know if it's easy

i think that i had been dealing with it for so long it didn't hurt more yeah it like i've i've done so much talk therapy and and also you know I'm a really open book with my friends.

Like my friends know these stories.

So

she was just so bizarre for so long that I just

kind of had to figure out what I was helping as far as the narrative by thinking, oh, no, she didn't want me to see her die.

So she left.

She didn't want me to see her die of cancer.

Always caring for her.

Because she loved me so much.

And it's like, no, she didn't want you.

And that's nothing personal.

Like, I've been a young woman who was pregnant before.

Yeah.

Like, it's not,

she should have had an abortion.

She should have gotten help.

She should have had her own life.

And I'm sure she never felt like she chose her own life.

Yeah.

But I think there is a generation or a certain type of person that doesn't see those options.

No.

And like there's so much of that that, you know, I have so much compassion for and forgive her for.

What I didn't forgive her for was the fact that she would keep coming back.

Yeah.

And she would pretend to want to have a relationship with me and then she would just pull pull the plug out of nowhere.

That's almost like torture.

It is.

It was torture and it was extreme cruelty.

Yeah.

And, you know, there would be little signs that she just didn't

like me.

Yeah.

And never did.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then it doesn't really end well for her.

No.

I mean, I don't know.

I, I, I don't.

Oh, so when you cut off, but is she still alive?

I have no idea.

You really don't know?

I don't know.

Huh.

And that doesn't bother me.

But I don't want to know.

Like, I just don't.

It just

doesn't matter.

Yeah.

You know, it's already happened and nothing will change.

And,

you know, I don't know if you have this

kind of thing where you choose your own family and you find people who are really reliable and close.

When you have that, it doesn't matter what biological happenings

have done done in a way.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: Well, I always frame my parents as, you know, I don't really see them as parents.

They're just these, you know, people I grew up with that had their own problems.

So I don't have the connection that most people do.

And now my dad has dementia, but there was no malice there.

You know, they're still around and they're okay.

But I don't feel that, you know, I would never go to them for advice or anything.

Right.

Ever.

Right.

And it's so crazy to think about them as younger people and totally

imagine

the absolute vacuum of

education about like, okay, we're going to talk about feelings or this is what it's going to mean to be a parent.

It's literally they're pushing you to just have a baby while you're still a child.

Yeah.

Our society is.

Yeah.

Or was then.

I don't know if my parents were pushing me for much of anything with any consistency.

You know, and I feel like

I don't like when people say their parents did the best they could because they didn't.

No, mine didn't either.

But people always fall back on that as some sort of

path, portal to, you know, acceptance

that they did the best they could.

And I'm like,

I don't know.

They could have done a little more work.

Yeah.

They could have thought about like, what it.

They could have thought about maybe having a kid before they had a kid.

Sure.

Kind of a thing.

Yeah, totally.

But, you know, they weren't taught to do that either.

I know.

So it's kind kind of like, God.

You got to let them off the hook a little.

I let them off the hook for that.

Just the continued damage?

No, I don't.

I thought at some point in the book, I wanted to bring it up when you weren't developing as quickly as other girls, do you think you were malnourished?

Probably.

You know, because when you talk about what you're eating,

I was like, of course she wasn't growing, right?

She wasn't eating anything.

Well.

Oh, my God.

I mean, I just thought everybody was different.

So, you know, eventually I was kind of a late bloomer.

Right.

Like one day I was totally flat-chested.

And then the next day, it's like when I turned 17, I suddenly had huge boobs.

It just happened.

Yeah.

And boys at school were calling me the shelf.

And I was like, what the fuck just happened?

Yeah.

And then also, you know, the sort of not struggle, but, you know, how long it took for you to acknowledge or understand that you were raped.

Yeah.

That because

you were this untethered wild child in a way, that there was this assumption, well, that's the way it happens.

Aaron Ross Powell,

I think there's that, but then there's also what we were talking about earlier, where you just decide it's my fault.

Right.

So clearly I should not have taken a ride home from my friend's brother because I'm just telling him he can have sex with me.

Right.

Which is not at all what I was doing.

And did you, was it therapy that started to reframe your thoughts around this stuff or did you figure it out?

No, I just

just one day I just finally said it in my 40s.

I was like, no, I was raped.

Yeah.

And made to feel really bad about it.

And just by

I really worshipped this guy was 19 and I knew him because I was friends with his sister at school and she was 17 and she was this really beautiful, cool new wave girl.

And she loaned me her Nina Hagen record.

And I was just like, I I can't believe she's talking to me.

This is so cool.

And

then, you know, I'd met him through her somewhere.

I don't remember where.

And then

I was in Seattle and ran into him.

And my friends wanted to go somewhere, and I needed to go home.

And he said, oh, I'll give you a ride home.

And I thought, oh, I can trust this person.

Yeah, his sister's cool.

Yeah.

And then so.

When I came back to school after being raped by her brother, she acted like I was a non-entity.

And because I brought her record back to her, and she just kind of ripped it out of my hand and was talking to her friends, like, and I tell my brothers, stay away from idiot little girls

and stuff like that.

And I was like, oh, I really did fuck that up.

Wow.

Because, you know, she was a big deal to me.

And yeah, you wanted acceptance.

Exactly.

So there's just like,

it's just like, there's no end to the heartbreak, Nico

of your life.

Well,

I think it's probably most people's experience, to be honest with you.

I don't know any women who haven't been sexually assaulted or

had dudes drive up in their car jerking off at them.

Or I just don't know any.

And

the more I get close to other people, I don't really know any men.

Like a lot of the men I know had the same experiences.

Like there's just this

absolutely unacceptable sickness around children

that people take for granted, like, oh,

you know, so I don't,

I don't know.

It's just, it's so wrong and gross.

And obviously the current climate of our

country is,

you know, people just don't care if women get raped.

Yeah.

They just don't.

And we're kind of finding out that they don't really care if children get raped either.

Right.

Like it's supposed to be our great moral compass as Americans that we really, we wouldn't have that.

But we don't really have a a moral compass.

That's true.

We're just kind of comfortable and gross.

Yeah, more gross.

Well, white people anyway.

There are plenty of uncomfortable people now.

Yeah.

But the dominant forces

doubling down on horrific immorality.

Yeah.

So when does music become the salvation, though?

I mean, because it like you, we went to art school, but it didn't seem like you were moving towards that.

It seemed to happen kind of like bam.

Well, music was always there and I always loved it.

Yeah.

And singing along with things.

I was always alone, so I could do that.

And I just loved playing in bands.

I was a really butch little kid.

But you remember these moments where rock and roll kind of blew you away.

Yeah.

Music.

Yeah.

Back in black.

That's a good one.

Yeah.

Just the feeling of the whole room and, you know, just watching every kid kid in the room just be like, yes, this is great.

Some kid just brought it in.

Yeah, Rudy.

Yeah.

You need Rudy's.

Rudy was the best.

And

Rudy made a great memory that day.

Yeah.

It's a good record.

It's such a great record.

I still listen to it all the time.

I heard some of it yesterday.

It just came up on some, I listened to Black Sabbath and then the phone just kept picking things.

And it came up and I was like, all right, I'm kind of a Monscott guy, but I'll take that album of Brian Johnson's.

We can have both.

Yeah.

But I don't find myself engaging with the catalog post Back and Black.

Not so much.

A couple songs here and there, but not so much.

But I'll go back and listen to high voltage daily if I could.

Dirty Deeds.

Yeah, that's a good one.

So good.

So, but in terms of women in rock, you know, because I felt like in Kathleen's book, there was...

you know,

a void there and also, you know, what you dealt with, there's also this,

you know, fuck you.

There's also the maleness of the whole world of music.

But what was a time, I know you talk about in the book meeting

one of L7,

right?

Yes.

And you felt small.

I felt small, but in a way that it was weird because it was jealousy.

And so I didn't want to meet her.

But not jealousy because you did the same thing, jealousy because you hadn't, you couldn't do it.

I felt like

I want to be as great as you, but I'm not great yet.

So fuck you.

It wasn't, I resented the situation.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

But I'm sure I did resent her too, because like I wasn't

developed enough to understand the difference between the two things.

It's just like feeling bad feeling.

It's her, yes, her.

Right.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

So it was a little more caveman than the way I understand it now.

Right.

But it's interesting to me that, because I didn't come up in music, but it just seems like a lot of people, like when you were in Vancouver in college, that there are people that aren't necessarily good musicians, but they want to play, so they figure it out.

And I find that to be impressive.

Because you weren't, I mean, you played drums,

but you weren't necessarily a drummer until you decided.

No, I really wanted to be a drummer.

And it's really, like, I really put my identity there.

Yeah.

But I couldn't separate my hands from my feet.

Oh, and I still can't.

Oh, so everything happens at the same time.

So like I couldn't, you know, separate.

And so there was no,

you know, offbeat or

it just didn't work.

Right.

I'm great when I don't have to use my feet.

Right.

But it worked good enough to be in a band that won a prize in college.

Yeah, and it was really fun.

Yeah.

And great exercise.

And

touring was what I needed to learn about.

And that got me there.

Yeah.

Like, when does that start, though?

Because it seems like you have the desire to do it no matter what.

And you kind of innately knew that that's how you were going to get good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, you know, just it was part of music was going on tour.

And all my friends were doing it.

Yeah.

And I was hoping I would get my chance.

And finally, being a drummer made that possible.

And I toured with a band called Cub because their drummer couldn't go.

And we went on a couple really long, really amazing tours.

And I just took to it like a duck to water.

I just, I loved the lifestyle.

I loved, you know,

the adrenaline and the long hours and the driving from place to place and seeing new things.

Like I was seeing the world.

Yeah.

Places I'd never been to.

And then when you walked into,

through, you know, connections with, you know, different musicians and different people at studios and producers that you had a community, it seemed, in, in Canada for a minute,

that you got an opportunity to, you know, do a solo project.

And then you were kind of, you know, the, the, the life was dangled in front of you and then taken away.

Yeah.

I had the great fortune of not being signed to a major label.

But after they put you through the whole like, you're the one.

Oh, yeah, you're going to be great.

You're, Yeah.

You know, and they would buy me stuff and take me out to dinner and fly me to LA.

And I thought I was pretty cool.

And then they didn't.

And then after that, was that the first real kind of

breakdown?

Well,

I had been dumped by my boyfriend who I'd been with for quite a long time, I thought, and dumped by his family also.

And so I was just like, fuck.

Yeah.

You know, I'm really fucking up.

Like, I must be a bad person.

Like, this is, you know, I must be a shitty musician.

And I must,

I just, but, but the way they, the way the people from the record company handled it, they handled it so badly that I didn't trust that either.

Yeah.

So I'm kind of glad they, they did handle it badly.

They just kind of ghosted me.

Right.

And so

I just kept going.

Because I didn't know what else to do.

Yeah.

You kind of weren't committed to the life.

And you chose country initially.

I did because I loved it and I grew up with it.

And,

you know, country music, there was something in it that was so much more punk rock than what was going on in punk rock.

Right.

Like, that was all dudes at that point.

Yeah.

And they were all saying the same shit.

And

you know,

it was really boring.

But it's interesting on this record, on the new record, I think it's The Rusty Mountain.

It's interesting because

when I think of love songs of any kind,

a lot of them are country, like the real ones.

I think that the punk rock element of country is the humanity of the feelings expressed.

Yes, exactly.

And that's been beaten out of country media.

Sure, it's been beaten out of most things.

Yeah.

You know,

it's almost like

an angry acceptance of the fragility of

life, right?

You know, like it's not quite the blues, but it in the sense that that was kind of a different life.

But it seems like country, it was just par for the course

that, you know, someone's going to get murdered, someone's going to leave you, someone's going to fuck your friend.

And it was just, that's the narrative.

It's real human.

And in that song, though, I noticed that there is this sort of idea that, you know, love songs aren't really enough.

Not at all.

They usually fall pretty short of the mark.

But it doesn't mean that the really good ones aren't

really good.

Well, I mean, just like, even if you just go

back to like that, you know, whatever, that kind of minimal catalog of Hank Williams, you're like, it's sort of, most of it is there.

And it's true.

And it's simple.

And it's like, you know, Johnny Cash can do it too.

And

you go,

and the Carter family can do it.

Oh, my God.

So good, right?

Yeah.

And

everybody wants to do that.

Yeah.

And it's like, no, you got to do your own love song.

That's why it's not working.

Yeah.

Right.

And your love song, maybe your love song is like a chair with two legs on it.

You know, you really just, you got to get in there.

Because throughout your story, there's an influx of different art.

You know, both musically, visually,

whatever.

There's an education going on there that comes from being around creative people

that, you know, whether it's punk rock or

women doing their

kind of personalized version of whatever it is they're going to do that's outside of mainstream kind of guy rock and then just visual arts and other kinds of things, because it seems at some point, like, what was that early live record?

Which one was that?

Furnace, which is the one.

Oh, the tigers have spoken.

Yeah.

Because like I listen to that, I'm like, and you're fucking on fire.

And it's so clear that you know when I read the book that you know all that energy you know that converges in confidence of delivering those songs that you know you had a sense of what it takes to get people you know paying attention on the dance floor coming to see you and just rocking their fucking head off right and that was important

yeah and that was important to me

And I might not have had the kind of self-confidence to do that yet.

And that's what the Sadie's brought to that record.

Yeah.

Is I knew that they were undeniable.

They were absolutely undeniable in their talents.

And you felt carried?

I felt carried.

I felt like part of the gang that I wanted to be a part of.

Like I never,

ever at any time, like I had the kind of the opposite experience of you.

Like I didn't really play by myself.

I didn't enjoy it.

I wanted to be in a gang.

And you had to figure out how to be in a band.

Yeah, you had to figure out how to play guitar.

Exactly.

And that took a while, and I kind of did that a little by myself.

What is that guitar you use?

It's a tenor guitar.

I never knew what they were.

I never knew about them.

I didn't know about them until I was 30.

So believe me,

I was dumbfounded and excited and just like, okay.

What's the tuning?

Is it like a ukulele?

It's like...

I think the standard tuning for it is like a mandolin, but you can do it like the high strings of a guitar, so DGBE.

Right.

So you can play, if you learned chords on a regular guitar in that standard tuning, you can play it easily.

Just play the the bottom.

Yeah.

And

it does the job, and my tiny little fingers were able to get around.

And now that I've played that for a long time, I can actually play a full-size guitar, but it took a long time.

And I just was an impatient ADHD kid.

And

the amount of discipline and practice that it would have taken to play a six-string guitar, I did not have it.

I did not have that focus.

You had the voice.

I guess I did.

You didn't seem to love at the beginning.

I loved doing it.

It was the passion of the doing it, the feeling of doing it, because it felt like you could just levitate off the floor while you were doing it.

When does,

because the albums do get

more sophisticated musically, at some point, do you make a conscious decision to kind of move away from the confines of country?

Do you remember the records you did that with?

It was more

that I wasn't just a musician, I was a a producer.

Yeah.

And I was very much in love with ideas.

And ideas make ideas.

They breed like rabbits.

And the rabbit holes are so worth exploring.

And I wanted all the sounds that there could be.

And I was really interested in Eastern sounds and specifically Bulgarian singing.

And there's something about the drone that gives you whiplash.

You're like, what is that sound?

Humans make that sound.

It's an arresting sound.

Totally.

And

when I found that music,

I suddenly, you know, that Disney cartoon of the ugly duckling, where the duckling is all sad and then the swan comes along and kind of pokes it and it feels better.

Like, I felt like that little duckling, because I have a very nasal voice.

Yeah.

And I never felt like I sang pretty, you know, and

that didn't bother me, but I never knew where I fit in either.

Like, I didn't understand what my voice was for.

And then, when I heard these ensembles of women making these sounds, and each of them, minus, say, Georgieva, in Boutriel Burgarka, they have very nasal voices, and that is their strength, is they just project this laser sound out of their foreheads.

And I was like, wow, that is so ancient and so arresting.

And I wonder if it was weaponized in ancient cultures, like to scare people, because it's terrifying.

Almost like a magical power.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And, you know, that is our magical power.

It's one of our magical powers as human beings.

Like, you know, how you might love to watch Planet Earth and David Attenborough's talking about cheetahs.

Sure.

And he's, you know, talking about how wonderful they are.

Like, if there was a show about humans like that, harmony singing would be one of those things.

I think I see it in sumo wrestling.

Sumo wrestling?

Yeah.

The grunting, sort of the physicality of it, even though it's,

you know, it has rules and a sport, but there is something that I think really shows the human animal element.

Yeah, the kind of feral part.

Yeah, yeah.

I know, that's so cool.

And

or those, the dances that the natives of New Zealand do.

That kind of aggressive, I guess.

The haka?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's powerful stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, you know, harmony singing would be one of those things.

Or, you know how when a big group of people who can't sing sing at the same time, like you feel like you want to start crying?

Yeah.

That weird, like,

like you catch your breath.

Like, that's one of the things we can do that's absolutely magnificent.

Oh, anytime harmonies happen or musicals happen or anytime there's a lot of people singing all at once,

I can't help but like tear up.

It's fucking nuts.

And I love it.

Yeah.

It's like I'm still a human animal.

I love this feeling.

So that kind of reconfigured the way you approached music?

I just felt a little more confident.

Like,

you know,

I follow a lot of

indigenous people who talk about their spirituality and, you know, their view of the world.

And

it's kind of the closest thing to like

old Ukrainian stuff.

Yeah.

Which is where you come from.

Yeah.

And a lot of people, especially people who are indigenous, talk about the importance of ancestors.

And I don't have any ancestors.

I'm a settler.

You know, I'm a child of immigrants and

I'm an invasive species here in North America.

And

so many people have this background here where you're just cut off from your ancestors, especially because we came in the era where You know, you're not supposed to publicize your ethnicity.

You need to blend in with America right now.

We're Americans now.

We don't speak speak Ukrainian.

We don't talk about it.

We're Americans.

And so I had no

ancestral support

or foundation whatsoever.

But in finding Trio Bulgarka, I felt like I had an ancestor.

And I felt legitimate somehow.

Yeah.

And then you found your great aunt that was a wrestler.

Yes.

Yes.

Those two things.

Absolutely.

Aunt Ella.

How did that happen again?

It was the craziest story.

My friend Ruth,

Ruth Lightman, she was making a movie called Lipstick and Dynamite about, you know, kind of the first, the forerunners of

the females in wrestling, the women in wrestling.

And

she

sent Kelly Hogan and I some footage so that because she wanted us to be part of the soundtrack, I was watching it.

And my aunt's like the third person who comes along, she's like, my real name is Elsie Shevchenko

from Costa, Washington.

And I was like, that's my last name.

And I was like, we were the only Ukrainians there.

And my grandmother, luckily, was still alive at the time.

So I called my grandma.

I'm like, grandma, do we have a wrestling relative?

She's like, oh, yes.

Elsie, she was quite famous.

I'm like, why would you never tell me?

This person, I don't know.

You didn't ask, you know?

And so.

You could have had a hero.

Well,

she's definitely one of my heroes now.

Yeah.

And I did get to meet her, and it was really lovely.

And I got to know a lot more about her through my friend Ruth, who's very generous.

And has told me a lot more about her.

But

what years was her wrestling?

Was it spectacle wrestling or was it?

It was like 50s and 60s.

So she started as a roller derby person and then she made her way into wrestling.

And then she

accidentally,

in a match, killed her opponent.

And

it wasn't her fault.

There was something going on with the woman.

And so she was made to be this horrible villain

and a horrible person.

And she actually felt really terrible.

Right.

It wasn't something that was meant to do.

But, you know, wrestling is very physical and dangerous, even if you aren't

doing it.

Right.

Even if it's spectacle wrestling, it's still super dangerous.

Oh, no, it's real.

It's It's real.

It's real sport.

Yeah.

And when you met her, did you see yourself in her?

Well, I saw myself in her when

Ruth told me that she's really a softy and she really likes to write poetry.

And I was like, oh, it was super butch, like

poetry writing ding-dong.

And, you know, who I did.

I felt really validated to know that Elsie Shevchenko, like, who goes out to become a wrestler in the 50s when you're a woman?

Yeah.

Yeah, like, who does that?

Well, I mean, the same kind of person that goes into rock and roll.

I suppose.

Like, rock and roll is basically mainstream compared to being a wrestler in the 50s, though, as a woman.

Like, that's.

It feels like roller derby was pretty

something.

And I think wrestling was always something because it was always happening to the side,

but it was kind of a thing.

I mean, I remember growing up in New Mexico, and I did it.

I was on the show Glow, the Gorgeous Ladies.

I did.

I watched that.

Yeah.

And but before that, I just remember growing up and there was always a local station that had wrestling.

And it was just Unitards and, you know,

dudes.

And I remember those wrestling magazines.

So it's always been sort of a fairly...

at least marginally popular American spectacle.

And I remember Rower Derby too, and that was always women.

So I, right?

So it was kind of like the companion to male wrestling must have been this rower derby world.

Yeah, because they did have male roller derby, but it wasn't popular.

Right.

Only the women's events were popular, which is kind of, you know, the opposite of how things usually are.

So I guess somebody at some point said, like, you girls are tough.

Let's try this wrestling thing.

And they figured it out.

Yeah.

And my aunt grew up farming, so she was pretty buffed.

Pretty tough.

Yeah.

So, like, when you look at the arc of like the records that got you here, I mean, how do you feel your songwriting is different now?

Do you, like, because, you know, it seems like through the book, you landed a place of, you know, wisdom and a certain amount of confidence

in

how you're interpreting your life.

How is it different for you?

I question myself a lot less.

As far as my intent,

but the little things, like the technical things, I'm always working on those and I question myself on those things.

In writing a song?

Yeah.

Like once, I usually start by singing into the air or writing lyrics first, but sometimes I'll start on a guitar.

How does melody happen?

I just sing that into the air.

Really?

Yeah.

Huh.

I was one of those kids who was always singing.

And just kind of riffing, making it up.

Yeah, just making it up.

And then, you know, now I just kind of sing it into my phone.

And

I don't have musical education, so I can't, I can, I know some chords on a guitar, and I know things about engineering, and I know things about production.

But if I were to go, I'm going to play every single chord that could happen underneath this particular line, I couldn't do it because I don't have the chops at all.

But luckily, I have a great friend named Paul Rigby, who is a trained jazz musician, who loves nothing more than to tell me which, like, could play me every single chord that could go under a certain part.

Oh, wow.

And so we have this nice partnership where I'm like, Paul, this isn't working.

What's every single note that could go under there?

Yeah.

And so we figure that out, or I'll have two kind of disparate pieces and I want them to go together,

but I don't know how to put them together.

I'll be like, Paul, how do we do this?

And he's a problem solver, and that's like what gives him his music boner, for lack of a better term.

And so it's a really fun collaborative thing.

Yeah.

And I think it seems like, you know,

once you locked in with that original band, you certainly appreciated collaboration.

And that just probably expanded

as you get older.

Yeah.

And I thought for a long time, like, if I didn't write the song by myself, I was not a legitimate songwriter.

Yeah.

So I wrote songs by myself.

It was lonely.

Yeah.

I didn't enjoy it as much.

Yeah.

So I, like, I always wanted to be in a gang.

Like I said, I didn't

want to be alone.

Sometimes you'll come in with lyrics and just bang it out with him.

Yeah.

Or I'll just like sing it into my phone and go, what, what key is this in?

Right.

You know, I could figure that out myself.

And how did the

pornographers help?

The pornographers was a masterclass in singing and

odd melody and harmony.

I somehow kind of missed the, you know, the impact of them.

And I listened to it recently.

And it's just like wild, powerful pop stuff.

You kind of got thrown into that?

Well,

I was going to school in Canada and playing in a band with my two friends, Karina and Toby.

We were a band called Mao.

And everybody knew each other.

Yeah.

Because Canada, though it may be the largest country in the world, it has one of the smallest populations.

And so it was absolutely opposite of what America was like.

America looked at music like sports and being competitive.

Whereas in Canada, it was like potluck.

It was like, okay, if we're going to have a band and we're going to ask this person to be the bass player, we're going to have to accept that they're already in three other bands

because there's just not the personnel.

The personnel pool is very limited.

But it was really a great way to learn things.

And the sense of community from it was amazing.

And I'm so glad I unlearned the American way of doing things.

Oh, yeah.

So

free to you.

So freeing.

And being able to accept other people and being happy for other people when they would be successful.

You know, those things are really important if you want to grow.

Yeah, Canadians

are pretty good.

There's a ceiling, you know, that it's not Americanized in that greedy, competitive, kind of, you know, fucked-up way.

I've noticed that across the board.

I mean, there are people there like that.

Sure.

But, you know,

this was very practical and very, very friendly.

Yeah.

And great.

And it gave you

a sort of

an education in possibilities, but also confidence in singing, I imagine.

Yeah.

And I was, you know, Carl, the main songwriter,

he was in a band called Zimpano.

Yeah.

And before that, a band called Superconductor.

And both of those bands were so huge for me.

I was so into them because Carl could really sing.

And at that time, a lot of bands were not interested in melody.

It was mostly about being punk rock and tough and all this other stuff.

Whereas, like, Dan and Carl, they would openly admit to liking things like poetry in interviews.

Yeah, and I was just so blown away because nobody was man enough to say that they liked poetry.

Oh, wow.

They just were not.

And so I was, they kind of threw me for a loop.

But the melodies were so undeniable and so wonderful.

And I was such a fan of both of them.

So when Carl asked me to be in the band, I was really taken aback.

Yeah.

And I felt very special.

That's great.

They're great records.

You know what other song I like on this one that struck me was the spider one, Little Gears.

Yeah.

I like that song.

Thank you.

It's almost like a Leonard Cohen song.

Well, I noticed that you notice all the little ecosystems going around your house, too.

And it's like when you're a person who notices things,

you have a connection to your world.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But also like to sort of kind of expound on it and metaphorize it.

It's good.

Yeah, if we can't take lessons from little spiders,

you know,

we're not that important.

I know.

It's also heartbreaking, though, sometimes.

I know, it is.

But when you realize how small you really are, it's so comforting.

Oh, God.

It's so nice.

Well, it's good talking to you.

Nice talking to you, too.

You feel all right?

I do.

I have to tell you a story about a dream I had about you.

Really?

Yeah,

it was the nicest dream.

Oh, good.

So I had this dream that I was late for something.

Yeah.

And I was going to miss this thing, or I was going to this thing that was really, really, really important.

Yeah.

And it meant the world to me.

And it would mean that I did something good or something.

So I was at like this weird gymnasium or something.

And I went into the gymnasium.

And nobody was there.

I had missed it.

And I walked into the middle room and I was like, oh, it was like a dance or something.

And then you were there.

Yeah.

And you were like, oh, hey, I think you missed it.

And I was like, yeah, I can see that.

And you were like, ah, that sucks.

And I was like, yeah.

And you were like, you want to dance?

And I said, yeah.

And so,

and it was one of those moments, like, there wasn't like

sexuality behind it.

It was like true friendship, like a non-gendered, beautiful.

And

we slow slow danced to

it was a combination of Twilight Time by the Platters and If I Could Be With You by Louis Armstrong.

Nice.

And I felt so much better.

And then I woke up and I felt really good.

Oh, I'm glad.

So thank you for that.

I'm glad I showed up.

You did.

You totally showed up for me.

I appreciate that.

Yeah.

And the book, too, those dreams that you recounted at the end were great.

Dreams are great if you can hold on to them.

Yeah.

And then the whole sort of, you know, the continuing, the finishing of the arc of this sort of putting horses and women into context was pretty great yeah like we don't want to horses we just want to be horses man

all right thanks for coming you're so welcome thanks for having me yeah

There you go.

And just if you, if you're curious and you want to know what's up with Nico, you can go to NicoCase.com for her tour dates and to order her new album, Neon Grey, Midnight Green.

You can also get her memoir, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You, Wherever You Get Books.

Hang out for a minute, folks.

Hey, people, we did a bonus episode for Fulmarin subscribers this week covering the making of my four comedy albums from 2002 to 2011.

It's a good one.

Final Engagement, which, all right, this is going to sound dark, but if you had died before WTF,

you would be remembered for this album.

Like, it would be one of those things that people talk about that are like, that guy, he burned hot and fast, and that was the end of him.

But man, that fucking, you got to listen to that fucking thing.

Like, it would be one of those legendary things.

And I think only the fact that you have a different story in your life now that happened, you know, by way of the podcast and by way of just your growth and everything, it does not become a defining point in your legacy.

But look, I just listened to it again.

It is bracing.

And I will still, I've said this to you before.

It's got absolutely some of your best stuff in it.

It's got some of your wrongest stuff in it, for sure.

But that part about how racism is just about fucking.

Yeah.

White racism is founded in a fear of fucking.

White racists are paralyzed with fear that brown people would out fuck them and surround them and make them powerless.

And that's just a horrifying nightmare to them.

But on a deeper level, white racists are afraid that brown people will fuck them and make everybody brown.

And then they won't know who to hate anymore.

And that's a deeper fear.

Because you can brown up white in one generation.

You understand that, right?

All it takes is one brown load to make white brown.

And a white racist knows that it takes eons to unbrown white.

If that's even possible.

To get every bonus episode and all episodes of WTF ad-free, sign up for the full Marin.

Just go to the link in the episode description or go to wtfpod.com and click on WTF Plus.

And a reminder before we go, this podcast is hosted by ACAST.

This is a one-take guitar riff.

I'm in a hurry.

I got to go to the doctor.

Boomer lives, monkey and the fonta, cat angels everywhere.