October 12, 2020 • 66 mins
This week on Night Call we have Sadie Dupuis aka Sad13 as our guest! But first it's an update to Pyramid Pals with a call about a recently demolished but also fairly recently built glass walled pyramid for a pharmaceutical company. Why wouldn't Amazon want to operate out of this futuristic pyramid building out of a dystopian movie, too on the nose? Then we're joined by Sadie to discuss haunted portraits, haunted studios in Texas, and isolation tanks (probably also haunted).
Notes:
Sadie's haunted painting inspo
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's twelve eleven am in torn Neo, Texas and you're
listening to Night Call. Hello and welcome Tonight Call, a
call in show for artist Tope in Reality. My name
is Emily Oshda. I'm in Los Angeles and with me
(00:22):
on the other line are Molly Lambert and Test Lynch.
And later on in the show, we're going to be
joined by our special guest, Sadie Dupu a k a.
Sad thirteen. She's here to talk about her new album,
Haunted Painting, also just ghosts in general, Haunted Studios, a
bunch of fun stuff, so stay tuned for that. But
right now, we're bringing back our new segment, Pyramid Pals.
(00:45):
We introduced it last week and it's definitely going to
be with us every single week from now on. You
can depend on a Pyramid Palace segment every week, just
like Cradam Corner. But we got a bunch of calls
after we talked about the Ames Monument and the Luxe
Tour last week, So let's take a Pyramid Call. Let's
take that Pyramid Call. High Night Call. I'm the first
(01:05):
time caller from Minneapolis. I'm an architectural historian, and what's
heard you talking about the Aims Pyramid designed by Henry
Hobson Richardson. UM, just want to call in a little
bit more information about Richardson because he's very important and
very weird. He has a style, an architectural style named
(01:26):
after him, which is called richardson Ian Romanesque UM. It's
growing off of the Romanesque style UM, but with his
own personal twists on it. And it's very medieval looking.
It's very heavy. It's known for having rusticated stone work UM,
which is like what you see at the Aims Monument.
(01:48):
And Richardson is considered part of the Holy Trinity of
American architecture. If you're into that kind of deifying architects
as geniuses, he's right up there with movie cull of them,
and frankly right both of him were influenced by his work.
Richardson was also kind of a weirdo. He later on
(02:08):
in his life, when he retired to Massachusetts to work
from home in his home studio, he would apparently whatever
clients would go to visit him, he would ring a gong,
or rather have his assistants ring a gong, and then
he would walk out to greet the clients. Wearing a
monk upfit like full ropes. Um. He's not a monk,
(02:30):
but he wanted to reinforce the sort of medieval nous
of his design and so some of his must Filam's
works are the Trinity Church in Boston, Massachusetts and the
New York State Asylum in Buffalo, New York are both
really good examples of his work. But it's very influential
and like the Minneapolis downtown has um several Richard's bunny
(02:55):
in Romanesque buildings. Um. So he suedually give him the
Google and see his monk outfit because it's very conneming.
The payments sounds cool. Can't wait to visit. Thanks. I
actually love Richardsonian Romanesque architecture. There's like a lot of it,
I feel, like in Brooklyn or like, you know, if
it's not designed by him, it's at least kind of
(03:15):
influenced by him. It's that kind of like any kind
of brick building that has a turret in it. Yeah. Yeah,
Like it's like the kind of Victorian cake house type thing,
except all like red brick looks fantastic. Um. I think
like the Tenet Bombs House and reyal Tenet Bombs I
feel like it's sort of in this vein. Oh, totally
(03:38):
that kind of thing. I like the they say that
they have the cylindrical towers with the conical caps, little
witch hats on top of your buildings. Yes, please more that.
I did not know he was such a weirdo though.
Why are so many Arctic architects weirdos? They're like directors
because they have crazy visions in their that mostly don't
(04:02):
ever get made, and they're obsessive control freaks and artists.
Architects are actually the most interesting people to me. I
know a lot of them for some reason. I have
a bunch of friends that are architects. Because you have
to be a math person, an engineering person, and a
creative person. Yeah. Yeah, that's the part that I never could.
(04:23):
You know. I'm like, I could draw a building, but
could I make it stand up? No? Right, yeah, think
about loads bearing and whatnot. Also very high stakes, extremely
high stakes in terms of art. It's like, that's art
that can kill people. All art can kill people too. Okay,
(04:45):
that's true, that's fair. This could kill a lot of
people all at once, so by accident. But yeah, I
mean these the the holy Trinity that the scholar is
talking about are amazing stone cold weirdos all total to
stone cold wirdos, but also yeah, they're remarkable for having
all built so much stuff. Yeah, and for so much
(05:06):
of its being standing. Yeah, and and and builds a
lot of stuff and then had so much stuff. That's
sort of a being in the style. I feel like
we get a lot, you know, we're It's funny because like, yeah,
he seems like most of his works on the East coast,
but then also a ton in the Upper Midwest. Sort
of similar with Frank Lloyd, right, uh like very like
I don't know, the Midwest seems like like upper Midwest, Illinois, Wisconsin, etcetera.
(05:30):
Feels like a good architecture zone. Um. But yeah, we
also got another pyramid email. This one was from Corey,
who wrote to us about a different pyramid, a much
more recent pyramid. Uh. They write, high night call, it's
my unfortunate duty to inform you about a recent American
pyramid demolition. The astro Zenica Pyramid and Westboro, Massachusetts, was
(05:54):
torn down this January. It was built in the late
two thousands and was always an important landmark to my
friends and I when we were teenagers. Delivering pizzas and
generally cruising around the suburbs late at night. It was
a tall, four sided pyramid made of blue mirrored class
that had a distinctly evil presence, which made sense seen
as it served as the American headquarters for a big farm,
a giant. The building was raised to make way for
(06:15):
a new forty million Amazon Robotics lab, which doesn't even
make sense because wouldn't you just keep the evil pyramid
if you were building an Amazon robotics lab. I'm attaching
some pictures to give you an idea of how truly
bizarre this office building pyramid in the middle of the
New England suburbs was um and they also sent a video.
But this is wild. Do you guys know about this?
(06:36):
I had in Westboro? Uh, it's I mean, it looks
like the like it looks like the Louver Pyramid. I
can't really get a sense of how big it is
from these photos in this article, which is in the
uh Metro west Daily News. I had to answer a
survey to read this article because that's the state of
(06:58):
local news, I guess right now. But yeah, they're like, like,
you know, you can see them in the photos, like
ripping it to shreds. For the picture of the pyramid
being shredded is pretty crazy. It's also weird to me
that it looks like it's built of either It's like
mirrored glass, is what it looks like. I just can't
imagine how blinding that thing must have been with the
(07:20):
sun bouncing off of it. Uh, but what a strange
thing to have in the middle of Massachusetts. And also
it is very what an odd decision to tear down
this strange, evil building. I mean it see it looks
exactly on brand for Amazon. It's like, you know, well,
I think maybe on brand, you know, in terms of
(07:42):
reality and what Amazon actually represents. But you know, am
soon is like really trying to rehab their image right
now in a very stupid way. Like they're running all
these ads out how they're trying to like green their
business or whatever, and how like Amazon is actually the
most virtuous company on earth or whatever, and like everybody
there cares about their children's future. I'm sure that many
people at amazon't care about their children's future, but come on,
(08:02):
uh yeah, so I think like this makes sense to us,
is like, yes, Amazon should live in the evil Pyramid.
It's what they deserve. But Amazon is like, no, we
should live in a heka a little cottage, like we
should be the cutie. It's still com Valley Giant pyramids
aren't evil though, they're just but this one looks evil.
(08:24):
This one does look evil. That's also because it's partially gutted,
so it's guts are spilling out and it actually the
way that it you know, in this one picture, it
looks like shredded paper is kind of coming out of
it because of the supports and like joys and stuff.
Uh and it looks like it's kind of being torn
to ribbons. But it also I mean, it's weird because
(08:47):
in l A you get so used to having such
a mix of architecture and there are just really no
rules kind of seemed to apply unless you're in a
historic preservation overlay. Uh so, but Massachusetts, you just it's
rare to see a mirrored pyramid in the middle of
the place, so should have kept the pyramid. People must
have been pissed about the mirrored pyramid. I would imagine,
(09:09):
Oh yeah when when that first went up. Well, it's
also so new. It was built in the two thousand's,
Like you built a pyramid, and it has a lifespan
of like fifth that's going to be the shortest lifespan
of any pyramid ever ever constructed pyramid, the least acient
pyramid because it's like post lux Or but got raised
(09:32):
before lux Or. Um. Yeah, we love getting calls and
emails about pyramids and architectural styles. Super interesting. Yeah, keep
them coming. More more mids. On the subject of aesthetics,
I wanted to talk about October's sweetie, the twelve foot
(09:57):
skeleton from Home Depot. Go on, have you guys seen him?
Have you seen it? You know? I even went to
Home Depot recently. I don't know what. They're sold out.
They're sold out everywhere. You have to look at the pictures.
My friend went to get one, they were all gone
and they were already putting out Christmas stuff. So this
also was written about in mel magazine. Miles Clee wrote
(10:19):
a piece called There's something about Home Depots twelve foot skeleton,
and there certainly is. They have animated I kind of glow. Um.
They twelve feet is quite tall when you really think
about it's strange height to pick It's not strange height. Yeah,
(10:40):
it's like I recently had this weird double take moment
where I saw in my rear view mirror or maybe
it was like on a truck that there was like
a photo on the truck, like it was a a
Ralph's truck or whatever. I had a lady on it, like,
you know, smiling, you know, like I don't know a
Ralph's employer or whatever. But it was just big enough
that I was like, that's a huge it over there,
(11:01):
and then I realized that it was just a painting.
But like when you're in that weird on candy zone
between where it's like truly just a giant thing, like
a big blow up inflatable skeleton or something. Also, we're
also like unfamiliar with the world again now that everything
feels a little bit like that. I hadn't experienced a
couple of days ago where I thought a squirrel running
(11:23):
towards me was a cat, and then when it got closed,
I was like, it's a very small cat. Oh no,
it's a squirrel. But just like I feel like, yeah,
my sense of size is all out of whack, and
so the twelve foot skeleton it just feels to me
(11:44):
completely right for our moment culturally, Yeah, what is it?
What is it about this that speaks to our moment.
Here's what I think. Here's what I as a as
a connoisseur of Halloween decorations. I just like when people
like put dumb it on their lawns. It's really that
for me. I like that people decorate their houses in
(12:07):
a way that is tacky. You know. I love similist
Halloween houses, yeah, exactly. And I love what people do
with like not that much stuff. You know. I'm not
that into the like expensive haunts or they're like fancy,
you know, things like that that people. You know, theme
park haunts are fine. But what I like is like
a Jankee yard display. So there's been a lot of
(12:32):
things in the yard display arena. There's been just like
more and more innovations. There was this period where they
were just like pumping out more and more Halloween things
that were like the inflatable giant black cats all of
a sudden, and then those things that let you project
on the house. There's just like an arms race for
Halloween stuff, and there was more and more of it,
(12:54):
and then it hit this like cliff in the past
couple of years, because everything's fucking depressing and scary and
maybe people don't want to spend people maybe hop less
money also to spend on Halloween garbage. So I felt
like last year there was no Halloween decorating. Did you
guys feel that way? I was like, so not tuned
(13:16):
into Halloween last year, and now I feel like I
missed out. It was there was a huge brew haha
in my neighborhood about Halloween and trick or treating, where
um neighbors were fighting over what was perceived to be
a lack of commitment to decorating houses during Halloween and
also a lack of commitment to children staying in their
(13:38):
own neighborhoods to trick or treat. Yeah. Really brutal, gossipy,
strange conversation, so weird. I just sat it out and
read all those emails and was like, that's super crazy.
That's like a Shirley Jackson story. It absolutely is. I'm
(13:58):
always reporting from the weirdest neighborhood in the world to
you guys. Apparently it's very plugged in. It was like
for years, every year there would be some new innovation
in Halloween decorating that I had never seen before, and
then it stopped. It was like, we've reached the limit.
There's nothing new. We have all these inflatables and projections
(14:19):
and things like we've this is as far as it goes,
and there's nothing new. Last year and then this year
the Big Boy appeared, the Big Boy, the gin Boy,
the Big Boy, and he has like light up scary eyes.
It's just the most ominous thing I've ever seen. It's
(14:39):
really scary, but it's so scary it becomes funny because
it's like totally unsettling, and it just feels like we
turned this corner into just plunging into the absurdity of
now there there is something about it formally, like it's
not an inflatable, it's not a thing that's like been
(15:01):
painted onto something. It is literally a skeleton, a solid skeleton,
and it's a fucking skeleton in a time when we're
having a plague. It feels medieval to me, you know,
at a time of like refrigerated body trucks, Like we
are going to put giant skeletons out on our lawns
just because let's go all the way. Uh. I don't know,
(15:23):
it's funny because it's so incredibly impractical. And I think
that with Halloween decorations. When Molly was talking about the
lack of innovation, I think it's also just kind of
I mean, at least in my neighborhood, you can feel
when people are getting tired of putting in the effort,
Like you can only do it so many years in
a row. If you're doing it for like neighborhood kids
(15:45):
or for your own kids. Eventually those kids are too
old and you're not going to care. But you have
to like stow all of that stuff for most of
the year, three hundred sixty four days, no rules, Like
we're living in crazy times. You can keep that out
twelve foot you don't. I'm hoping that some of them
(16:06):
stay up through Christmas and they just put Santa on
the can you can you pose them? Like, no, you can't.
I watched a video because I was very like, how
do you get them to stand up? What are they
mounted on? I wanted to know, So I watched an
unboxing video made by these like two kids, like a
couple of dudes that are like ten, you know, who
(16:27):
are like get the box. They're so excited and then
they unbox it and like show you how they build it.
You have to build it, Yeah, you have to build it.
It's twelve ft tall. It doesn't just stand up by itself,
because it's sucking twelve feet are They all the bones
and you put them together and it's so crazy. It's
like there's a there's like a base, and you mount
(16:49):
it to the base and then you put the feet
on and you build it upwards. And these kids, I think,
had to stand on something to get to the top.
This reminds me of this wood block, like one of
my favorites, Japanese wood blocks. Ever, of the giant skeletons,
like breaking down the walls and terrifying. Yes, and there's
something about a giant thing. I've just also been watching
(17:11):
all these theme park videos and I watched a bunch
about Kong Frontation, which was a King Kong ride at
Universal that had a giant King Kong animatronic. And it
looks just very terrifying and amazing to me because it's
like the scale of it is so big. You know,
there's something about just like taking the scale of something
(17:32):
and making it big. And again, the skeletons are like
it felt like for a few years people didn't want
to be reminded of how bad things were of death
and kind of felt like Halloween, you know, amped down
a little bit after maybe hitting this peak of just
all the haunt stuff in l A especially too, And
now it feels like it's good. It's like, yeah, we
(17:54):
shouldn't be able to not think about death right now.
To play Devil's Advocate, we can't not think about death.
It's I there have been a lot of conflicting opinions
um on social media about whether like Americans are having
to confront the fact that they they don't think about
death enough and now we're going to have to think
about death more versus like just acknowledge. I feel like
(18:16):
I think about death constantly. I'm never not thinking about death.
But I don't know. I mean, just to play Devil's
Advocate a giant twelve foot skeleton when you're having to
talk to your kids and mask them up and being like,
don't worry, everything's fine. There's just a disease that kills people,
and then being like, happy Halloween. Here's some giant, terrifying skeletons,
(18:38):
Like that might be a fun talk to have with
my kids. I think, I think, you know, in general,
I should say there's probably all sorts of different reactions
to this, But I think one if things kind of
if things managed to turn around and this isn't the
last like fifteen years of human civilization or whatever, I
think that the kids who are kids right now are
(19:00):
gonna be better equipped to think about death and and
life and death basically than that, certainly than we were,
and I think probably most generations in like modern you know,
I'm going to play Angels Advocate here. That's a nice thought. Okay,
I'm going to play you know, chaotic Angel the Devil
(19:23):
which advocate, which is what I always play in this podcast. Um,
but don't I do think that, like each generation of
children has its own thing like that. Like we grew
up around the AIDS crisis, and so I was definitely
very I felt like that kind of gives you this
like dose of realism when you're a kid, you know,
because they had how immediate was that for you? As
(19:46):
I guess you guys were a little bit older. For me,
it was I grew up in the West village, so
that that was like constant. And also my parents worked
in entertainment, so so many of their friends were you know,
in fact in HIV and had partners ive AIDS, like
when I remember being around eight years old or nine
years old and just having it be like a constant
(20:07):
thought for me. But I think this is different because
children during the AIDS epidemic, most of them did not
have to take too many precautions to like adapt their
own lives. There was a lot of television I'm specifically
thinking of. There was like a Sesame Streets segment. There
were a lot of segments about there was a kid
(20:28):
named Ryan White who was the first kid born infected
with HIV, and he was on television a lot, just
you know, to be educating people about the fact that
like HIV can be passed and then also it's okay
to like hang out with people who have HIV. That
was a big part of it, was I remember this campaign. Yeah,
(20:49):
and and there was a big thing where like Alissa
Milano kissed him on I think the Phill Donni Hugh
Show or something to like prove that like you can
kiss somebody who has HIV and you can hold hands
with them and you're not, you know, at risk of transmission.
But yeah, I mean think about the difference between us
experiencing the HIV and AIDS epidemic as children and how
(21:12):
children now are interpreting, in particular the world outside their
homes as being I just feel like they don't know
anything else they do. I mean, it depends on your
kid's age. I don't know. I definitely hope that at
least uh some good comes out of this in terms
(21:32):
of being able to recognize how people look after each other.
I mean, I think maybe one of the only good
things about being a kid and having to talk with
your parents about why people are wearing masks, which two
younger kids can look super scary, and to be able
to have a conversation about how that's taking care of
each other, and like kind of thinking beyond the visual
(21:54):
of like you see someone, you don't recognize them, you
can't see if they're smiling, And to just be able
to be like, oh, that's in order to protect other people.
That's like, you know, a community effort has been really
great and productive. But I do I often worry because
I'm I I have O c D and I can
be a little obsessive about germophobic things, and as a
kid that was definitely true as well. So I don't know,
(22:17):
it could be an interesting Halloween if your kid is
already a little freaked out. However, I'm still pro twelve
foot skeleton. Well, that just starts a whole new conversation,
you know. It's like the twelve foot skeletons just provide
an opportunity to release some of the fear and stress
and anxiety that's in the air for obvious reasons. It
(22:40):
just feels it feels right for the year. Well, it's
how like the best horror movie I think make you
laugh more than they make you like scream or be
genuinely scared. And I think there's something about the giggles
that you get when you see these twelve foot skeletons
that is very cathartic and very healthy. It's cathartic and
it's not like there are other things that are way
(23:02):
scarier to me than that. The thing I find the
scariest is when somebody puts like a figurine in their window,
like a human looking person, and it's not human, you know,
like a mannequin, like an home alone. I find mannequin
scarier than the twelve foot skeleton. Personally. I got a
fuzzy styrofoam cat, a black cat that you're supposed to
(23:22):
mount on a wall and uh if we've had it
for many years and at one point it's styrofoam leg
broke off and now it's a three legged Halloween cat.
And for some reason that made me that I was like,
now it's terrifying, anything terrified. It's just a handicapped cat.
It's it's because the legs out at an angle. It's
just people love those three legged dogs. They're like, oh,
(23:44):
look he's so cute and brave. That could be, that
could be. Yeah, well, we're going to take a quick
break and when we come back, we're going to be
joined by I guess this week's sayd we welcome back
(24:07):
to Nightcall. We are now joined by Sadie did we
a k A. Sad thirteen, which I just learned you
actually say sad thirteen. Um. She's also the front woman
of Speedy Ortiz and she's got a new album out
called Haunted Painting, which obviously is right up our freaking alley. Hi, Sadie,
(24:28):
nice to see you again. From the Hume distance, everybody,
I just get like reminded of what everybody looks like
when they're kind of like in work mode and at
home over zoom, which is like when we shot the
video a couple of years. Costume and makeup, well, it's
like it's like that or ultimate, just like rolling into
(24:52):
a studio at six in the morning, like you know,
I haven't had your coffee yet type of thing. So
it's the two extremes, but right in the middle. Today.
I'm definitely on the rolled out of bedside today but
nobody can see, which is great. Um so you have
(25:12):
a new album. It's been out a couple of weeks now,
two weeks today, two weeks. It's two weeks old. Happy birthday,
Thank you. It was like a year. Why is time
so messed up? Right now? I know, it's so crazy.
I was I was going back and listening to it
again and I was listening to um W t D,
which I remember you put out. I couldn't tell you
(25:34):
when you put that out, but I was like, that's
on this album. I guess, like feels okay, what the hell? Yeah,
I mean I love that song. And I was just like,
this is great. I remember hearing this, you know, two
years ago. It must have been two years ago, Like,
um yeah, it's sort of wild how that works. It's
(25:55):
it's definitely got to be weird. I think like really
seen stuff for like building anticipation for something like an album.
When time is meaningless, it's weird. And it's also, um
so much more internet time than I'm used to. I
think every time I've put out a record before, I'm
either already on tour or I leave the next day
(26:16):
and I'm not just looking at the computer all day
long giving myself back pain from hunching over. Yeah, screen
times are moving very fast, very slow. I think this
is a universal quarantine experience. Did you have a tour
set up for this album that you have to postpone?
I had touring through like starting in March through pretty
(26:39):
much the end of the year. Um, so who knows
when that will happen again? Is kind of the general feeling.
But what weird habits have you developed instead in Quarantine? Oh? No? Um,
going right into the dark star? Well I had. I
(27:01):
had a funny experience at the grocery store the other day.
Have you ever had Who's Who's from New York? Besides
Emily or I've spent a few years like as a kid,
was there tests from New York? But she doesn't claim it.
I don't like to claim it. I'm from New York too,
so okay, okay, and don't live there anymore. Wait, but
(27:22):
you also spend time in Connecticut, right, went to high
school there? All right? I went to junior higher there.
Oh where did you? Sharon? Oh weird? So yeah about
Dudley Town too, probably oh I do? Oh my god. Okay,
so we'll have to go there. I hope we're heading
towards Stu Leonards again. That's just my Oh. I was
just talking about stew Leonards because my my um a
(27:44):
friend just moved to test you. Maybe now we're stuff
pre Connecticut is you know? I know where It's not
really but I went to see her at like a
far away outdoor distance, and I was like, you're gonna
go to Stu Leonards now that you're living this podcast
goes deep New England. I like, it's like hieroglyphics in
front of my eye, like that. Stue Leonards is a
(28:07):
huge grocery store with so many animatronics. We've already kind
of made Emily sit through a Stu Leonards explainer, but
you can't really explain Stu Leonards. When I first got Instagram,
I only posted animatronic videos for like the first two years.
I had it, um, and I'm oh, my weird habit though,
(28:32):
because I am just eating like a jar of ricks
picks spicy pickled green beans like every single day and
it is nauseating my partner who hates the smell of them. Um.
But I go to the grocery They're like they really
ten dollars. Go to the grocery store and I buy
like six at a time, and the cashiers like pretty
(28:53):
is good, and I responded, I don't know, but they're
my hobby. It felt like a blue moment, right, metal health,
But how is your stomach lighting? Like I would think
all that app that's the only downside. That's what keeps
me from eating all pickles all day. It's horrible. But
I think I have ibs all the time, So I
just don't know what's the difference. Just throw fuel on
(29:15):
the fire, throw pickles on the fire. It's already gonna
feel bad. Let's just make it all go faster. Good hobby, right,
that's a great hobby. I mean it's all about Like
we talked about this on a Bonus podcast where we
had an entire episode about beverages. Like I feel like
you can get completely invested just in like, what's a
new beverage I'm into now? Like, what's a new thing
(29:38):
I never thought of getting before the store And now
this is like the height of entertainment. What's everyone's new beverage.
I've been drinking this very expensive juice, so I like
split it into thirds and mix it with seltzer um.
That's I forget what the brand is, but it's sweet
citrus and it's like it's pretending to be fresh squeezed,
(30:00):
but I think it's cold pressed. But at some point
I was having terrible allergies and I became convinced that
this was like the cure um. But now it's it's
awful because like I'll I'm like basically micro dosing this
juice because it's like six dollars for a small bottle. Uh,
So I'm making like shrubs with it. I'm trying to
like stretch the juice. Sounds nice. That's like, that's that's
(30:24):
like the good end of novelty beverage because you're also
like making something out of it, exactly cooking. It's an
activity and a thing that you're you're It's the best
of all hobbies. Sadie. I noticed that in your merch store.
You have hot sauce and hazelnut spread food and tea
as well. Really what kind of tea it's called? It
(30:46):
Haunted Breakfast, Scared Clothes in the Air, it's a it's
a lap saying sung and a couple other like black
teas that um, one of which was harvested under a
blood moon. There's this really great teamaker in Philly, UM
called craft Ty, and he supplies to all the local
(31:09):
music venues and a couple of different cafes, and he
started making teas to do as like pairings with records. UM.
So I reached out to him and we put this
together and he was like dropping off samples in my
front door like once a week for a couple of points.
I feel like a couple of months. UM, just tweaking
the formula so I can say it's been thoroughly taste tested.
(31:32):
It's really good, and I think it's sold out. So
I don't know why I'm going in on that right now,
but I have some personal tins maybe if you know
V I P T tins Um. That sounds great. I
mean I love I love edible tour merch or band
merch that's I guess it doesn't really serve the purpose
(31:54):
of like advertising my band in the way that like
a T shirt or like a wearable merched. Know, it
totally does, but I feel like people are more likely
to share that on Instagram though. It's like, look, I
have hazelnuts spread from my favorite musician question work. Cool. Yeah,
it makes perfect sense. It's like you can't go to
the show, so you sit at home and listen to
(32:15):
the album and grew your cup of Haunted tea and
something of nutella. Yeah, it's a lifestyle. Yeah. Yeah, We've
wanted to do food merch in the past, but it's
just not tenable when you're in a van for like
three months going through all kinds of different climates. So
as soon as this is honestly, as soon as like
(32:36):
touring was canceled for the foreseeable future, like it's finally
my time to do food stuff, that's amazing. Was the
hot sauce also a similar like was it like a
custom thing that you Yeah, it's they're speaking of Connecticut.
I think they're from Willomantic. Um. Oh yeah, Dragon's Blood
Alickser and we had talked like five years ago about
(32:58):
doing a hot house together, but it was a similar
deal that trying to carry glass on tours like a nightmare.
So it's like literally the first piece of merge that
that I planned out as soon as the quarantine happened.
Can we talk about haunted paintings a little bit? Yeah,
what you got? What haunted paintings were you thinking of
(33:20):
when you were making this album? Was there anything in
particular or just the idea? It was more the idea
of a haunted painting UM And in fact, I think
I looked up once I had the idea for the title,
I did a bunch of googling, and I don't really
like any of the like haunted painting meme stories that
(33:40):
are going around. I don't know if you've investigated any
of these. Is this like a genre? I didn't know.
There's like two that UM have sold on E Day
for like very high prices because they're theoretically haunted, and
there was a whole disclaimer of like, we're not liable
for you getting murdered if you buy this painting, UM,
(34:02):
but they're not it is creepy or captivating. Is the
one that I named this after, which is a friends
stuck portrait of a dancer names to Harrett Um, who
we painted a couple of times. But this is one
on display at the the Fry Gallery in Seattle. Um
and probably the whole reason I even thought to frame
it is haunted. Not only is it surrounded by some
(34:25):
of his other work that's like really creepy looking. Um
the sin, I think is like one of his really
famous ones that's like a big serpent round room. And
I can't really look at that one. I can't look
at snakes. But uh, it's a few blocks away from
a hotel that I got put up in for a
(34:45):
poetry festival in Seattle, and I was staying with um
Darthy Alaski, who's a poet that's one of my favorites,
and she is also really into ghostly and haunted things
and has even like taught workshops on poetry and ghosts,
and I think a lot of poets have that particular fixation.
But the hotel is supposedly haunted by Alice by Tokalist,
(35:08):
which doesn't make sense at all. What hotel is it?
I lived in Seattle for a little bit. I can
speak Seattle more than Connecticut. It's like Google right now,
you're gonna hear all my typing, but I love the fry. Also,
the fry is like, I don't know, it's like a
very cool space. It feels really really like tucked away.
(35:29):
You can't it doesn't feel like you're in the middle
of town. It's the Sorrento Hotel. Do you know that?
Oh yeah, it's like apparently I used to live right
next to it. So yeah, so apparently als b Tocls
ghost did too. Um. Wow, I had no idea about that.
That's wild. So we walked around the hotel all night
(35:50):
trying to find like any ghosts and had zero luck. Um,
even though Dottie was staying on like the apparently very
haunted the floor. Uh. And I went to the museum
the next day and was like, this painting is more
haunted than this museum. And that's kind of how UM
came to the title and concept. I'm looking at this
(36:11):
the sin painting, It's like, this is a cursed painting.
This is like something from like a seventies horror movie.
It's so if you google friends on stock his work
is just even the Saherent portraits not theoretically supposed to
be creepy, but it just is. Aren't all paintings haunted
if they're painted by a dead person. Interesting by I
(36:37):
just mean, are isn't every painting in a museum haunted
in a way? I think that's important. Like I think
that in the poetic sense, a portrait, like if you've
ever seen a portrait that you know, like, I think
a lot of like John Singer Sergeant portraits feel like
very animated and like kind of charged to me because
(36:58):
I just think he was great at it. And I
think there's like a weird sense of time travel when
you're in a gallery with those portraits and you are
really confronting the fact that these people were all living once,
and like because this artist was particularly good at capturing
like a light in their eyes or something like that,
it really feels like they're right there with you. And
(37:20):
that can be a bit of an uncanny feel. I mean,
that feels more or less functionally like it's haunted. Um.
But yeah, I don't know, I don't know the the
the the rules though for haunt all accept I'll accept
this haunted for this reason. It's I mean, it's a
very natural human urge right to like, you know, capture
(37:43):
somebody in time or whatever. But it's also like it
feels almost like you're vending the laws of time. Now
I'm getting into the all jokes or time travel type,
all jokes of time travel. I've caught the but it's real. Uh,
paintings are time travel. I think also a lot of portraiture,
(38:05):
especially like a lot of its commissioned by like super
wealthy people, right who only want to be portrayed in
a very flattering way, in the same way with you know, photography. Now,
um so, I think to see the friends on stuck
paintings that in some ways they're kind of not flattering.
Like the portrait that I was really captivated by, um
(38:26):
Harrot's under circles are really exaggerated, her eyes and just
kind of enlarged in a way that it honestly reminds
me of like um jump scare face in a way.
It's like beautiful portrait and a jump scare. Um So,
I think I'm really interested in paintings that do that,
(38:47):
um yeah for their portrait. I have a weird a
print that is gigantic that I was given for, like
I think it was probably around the time I graduate
ated from college. It's um, this guy Alex Colville, who
is a Canadian magic realist and it's a woman staring.
(39:08):
She's on a boat and she has binoculars and she's
like staring out um. But it's it's such a huge
print and I didn't know where to put it when
we moved, so it's in the bedroom and like I
just every so often my kids are like, can you
cover that or because she's just like staring and then
it like faces a mirror, so she's like staring at
(39:28):
herself and it's like bouncing back. And at some point, uh,
one of my kids was like, does that ever give
you the creeps that there's like a giant head staring
at you with binoculars? And I was like, yeah, it
maybe I like that, Like maybe it's good. But I
also feel like the bigger the painting and the bigger
the portrait that they can definitely get some kind of
(39:49):
like a haunted quality because it's so like dominating and
it feels like it kind of just takes over the vibe.
You just made me realize. My bedroom is full of
paintings because my boyfriend is a painter. Some of them
are a little haunted looking, but I also find them
uh comforting and cozy. It's like you have friends around,
(40:10):
they're staring at you, and at least right exactly he
made them, he can put them back in. It's my test.
That just reminded me that, um my dad had an
Elvis bus when I was growing up that was in
the hallway like outside of my bedroom, and I could
see it while I was sleeping and instantly wake up
(40:30):
like terrified of the Elvis bus. Oh my god, that's
would stop. That's a liability. That's so spooky. You know
Elvis's ghost is in all of those busts. Yeah, every
single portrait of Elvis is haunted. I think we can say,
um yeah, um so you also, uh you You're The
(40:52):
haunting aspect of your album was not limited to its
inspiration in this painting. You also mixed the of them
at a haunted studio. Where was this and why is
it haunted? And how Emily and I were doing a
little text prep prior to this taping. I was like,
I feel like you've tread over all my haunted stories
(41:13):
on other podcasts on this album, which is great. I'm
happy that I'm finally getting to talk about ghosts on
an album, Psycho, but I have not talked about Sonic
Ranch which is where we mixed this album. UM. It's
in Tornado, Texas, recently famous for ice crimes against humanity. UM.
(41:34):
But it is the largest residential recording studio in the world. UH.
And it is on Pecan ranch that was in the
guy who runs it family for forever UM. So it's
still active with pecans. He sends them out to like
people who record at the studio every year for Christmas.
They're very delicious. UM. And apparently I didn't know this
(41:59):
when we all to mix there. I had just UM
toward it a couple of times. I feel like there's
some long stretch you do on every tour that is
between like Arizona. I feel like you play Phoenix and
then you play Austin and that's like a horrifying drive
in between, and you I just didn't you did it,
(42:19):
so you know exactly. Yeah, I saw that. You were
like you texted me at some point. You were like,
I'm so jealous of your road trip, and I was like,
You've probably done this so many more times than I have. Jesus,
so I've I've been able to tour that studio while
passing between Phoenix and Austin. UM. And I think I'd
(42:41):
even stayed there before, or at least we've had dinner there. Um.
And because it's residential, people are there for long stretches
of time. They have like like cooks on staff who
make perhaps the best salsa I've ever had in my life,
really really good breakfast tacos every day. I'm really good.
It's it's kind of heaven until I tell you about
(43:02):
the hellish aspects. I could not record vocals there ever,
because I would just have acid reflux from eating too much,
like really spicy sauce every day. So it's good that
we mixed. Um. So I've stayed there. It's like amazing,
so much cool equipment. Tony, who owns the studio is
an art collector, so there's like Picasso and Dega prints
(43:22):
and like every studio and even residents. Um. So we
got there on the first day and we're told the
rooms you're supposed to stay in aren't ready, like one
of the bands that's also tracking is staying a little later,
but you can move to the room you're supposed to
be in the next night. So Sarah, who makes the album,
and I were like, Okay, we'll stay in this. Like
(43:44):
it's like a newer built bedroom that's right off the kitchen,
and we're like, it's not as like fancy as the
old casita rooms, but like fine, we'll stay here. We're
fine with whatever. Only the next day we find out
that pretty much every other room has like some kind
of verifying haunting story, whether it's someone waking up and
seeing a man sitting in the corner just like watching
(44:06):
them sleep. Um, there are stories of a bed hovering.
There are stories of like a little girl floating above
you while you sleep. So and then there's the one
we were supposed to be in. There's like, uh, one
of the engineers we were working with was like, that's
my favorite room. But also there's like a presence that's
(44:26):
there all the time. Um, and yeah, so we wind
up not switching our rooms, you wanted to say, and
like the newly built one that surely wasn't haunted. I'm
totally into haunted things in like a situation I can control.
I just don't want to wake up and see a
guy floating above me sharing it you while you sleep,
(44:50):
or lose sleep worrying about it when you're supposed to
be like working and being at top like mental state
or whatever. We were working already really really long hours,
like he pulled it more than one all night, or
I just didn't want to deal with the floating guy.
But maybe if I go record there it would be
a nice inspiring and the other fun fact I told
(45:13):
Emily about the studio when I first went through, and
meant the guy who owns it um. I was like,
it's so weird, like he really reminds me of David
Carradine for some reason. And I said this, and then
like maybe a year later, found out that apparently, Um
Tarantino would like pass through this studio. Tony seems to
(45:34):
know like everybody, he's just a El Paso legend. Um,
he's like Buddies with Zazi Top and Billy Gibbons comes
to the studio all the time. So I had said
this a year before and then found out that apparently
Bill from Kill Bill is based on Tony was in
part inspired by him. I sent you, you guys, the
(45:55):
link to the picture of him, but it's like very
apparent when you say this picture. If you google him,
you'll see all kinds of pictures like what was Tarantino
(46:16):
doing there? Just hanging out and having the salsa and
the cons Like, so Tony seems to know everybody. He's
like a really lovely person who has all kinds of
incredible like stories that it's not always clear if they're
completely true about um like warez cartel activity. Uh. He
told us a very fun story about hand soup. Was
(46:41):
just someone a faster once so hand he's a soup
made from a hand, soup made from human hands. What wow,
pardon I just watched Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so this completely
tracks right. No, Like my has not flinched and listening,
(47:01):
She's like, yeah, that's Texas. You know they make hand
stoop down there. It's a true story, it said at
the beginning of the movie. It's like hand soap, but
handspe That's incredible. I see this all, even the ghost stuff,
even the spooky stuff, even the presence of Quentin Tarantino.
(47:22):
This all sounds kind of like right now. My latest
Quarantine era dream is to have like a home studio
or have like a residential studio, Like I want to
like buy a farmhouse in Iowa and let people come
through and like finished movies in it. This is the
first time I've spoken this publicly, but like I'm gonna.
I'm putting it out into the universe manifest once again.
(47:43):
I'm saying Texas chain saw massacre, be very careful with
those old farmhouses. We don't have um so many cannibals
in Iowa, but we have children of the corner rightly,
the fun reason why it will not fun. But um,
there's a couple of different like of course, once I
(48:04):
heard that this is faunt and I'm going on all
the weird like forums that look like they're from reporting
every ghost sighting in Tornado, Texas. Um, there's apparently a
little girl by the little little ghostly girl by the
train tracks. Um, there's there's a few outside of Sonic
Branch itself, but it's quite it's quite literally the border
like you could walk and be in Mexico quite easily. UM.
(48:28):
And apparently some of the buildings on site at this studio,
which is like pretty large, you have to there's like
trucks and stuff on site that you have to drive
to get around to some of the different studios. So
they've made use of some really old buildings and some
of them were apparently used um as like a holding
self for people um crossing the border. So there's like
(48:50):
probably some messed up stuff that happened prior to it
becoming this farm. Um, which maybe explains like, yeah, it's
a travel bad energy. They're in the corner. Yeah, so
there's apparently good and bad ghosts there. But I didn't
get to I didn't get to meet any boy choice.
So um, well let's we wanted to take a night
(49:14):
call with you. It's also a night email when you
guys want to read it. Yeah, this comes from London
Eddie High Night Call Crew. Longtime listener, first time email
or a big fan of the pod Heavy podcast. I
went to an isolation pod for my twenty one birthday
on a whim, decided to ignore any skeptical thoughts and
figuratively dived into the experience. During the hour long float,
(49:35):
I achieved more of a genuine meditational feeling than I
had ever gotten from traditional methods. I spent the following
three hours feeling the same floaty feeling across my entire
body slash consciousness. The feeling only started to wane after
I'd been in the cinema for a while and the
crazy third act of Sorry to Bother You came crashing down.
Interestingly enough, the isolation center was in the middle of
(49:55):
London's Central business district. By the look of the other customers,
it seemed like high powered execs have swapped their weekly
squash court lunches for hour long isolation sessions. I wish
I'd stayed to ask one if it helps to escape
or if it helps them visualize. I can't decide if
it's like a real I also misread this email the
first time, and I thought that while he was in
(50:16):
the chamber a while, he was in his meditative state,
like he had a flashback to the third act of
Sorry to Bother You. I thought he was using a
using it as a metaphor, and I was like, I
wonder what he means by I think right to the movies,
and he saw Sorry to Bother You, which seems like
a crazy thing to do after being in an isolation pod.
That's like a lot of movie. Um, but I didn't
(50:39):
know what was coming in the third yeah for us,
so maybe you know, he thought it'd be like it
brought everybody down. Um yeah, that's uh. I mean, this
is what have you ead in an isolation pod or
anything like that? Sadie absolutely not even here. The At first,
(51:01):
I was like, what is isolation pod? I thought it
was like an escape room, and then when you say
I was like, oh, it's a float tank. Even hearing
that expression at my heart rate. Are you claustrophobic or
is it just like I just have a hyperactive brain
that would not be able to cope. See, I wonder
because I always I feel like that too. And apparently
(51:24):
though when you have zero, like I think, maybe for
the first few minutes, you're kind of like your mind
is racing and this is what I've heard. But then
for some reason, the absolute lack of stimuli makes you
calm down. I'm very I want I would like to
experience that. I would also like to have a panic
button on hand. I think you think, yeah, I feel
(51:46):
like I'd be so like bored and then stressed about that,
and then angry that I put myself in the situation
to be bored and stressed and angry. I would think
it would be like meditation, though it's like you don't
do all that. Yeah, even if I'm like on a treadmill,
I have to be like listening to something and also
reading on the you know, yeah, I have. I managed
(52:10):
to actually meditate for probably like three minutes or something
for the first time I think in my life. When
I was in Iowa recently, uh, and I you know,
that was encouraging to me. I was like, oh, maybe
I can do this more. But I was always fairly
convinced and still fairly convinced that it's just not a
thing I do naturally too many synapsis. I'm sure it'd
(52:32):
be good if I could get to that point, but
not yet. Definitely. No. Well, what kind of are there
any kind of like holistic e or new age things
like isolation tanks that you would ever consider exploring? I mean,
I do all kinds of hippie ship. Um. What's the
best hippie ship? I guess you know. I get acupuncture, um,
(52:54):
which in some ways is you know that's that's just medicine. Well,
a lot of that stuff is stuffy. You just can't
do now. I mean, the isolation pod is probably like
one of the safe things you could do because it's
literally an isolation pod. But you know, when I was
in Vegas, uh, I was like walking through the like
one of these like malls that connects the two casinos,
(53:15):
and they had a bunch of those aqua massage tables
out um, you know, like the tube where the water
punnel pummels people. It's basically you get put into a
rubber bag and then like jets of water like massage you.
So you don't get wet obviously, but it's very disturbing
to watch because it just looks like a body in
a body bag getting washed with water. Um and it.
(53:39):
But it sounds like getting eaten by a water bed,
like it just wrapped in a water bed. I'm never
sort of the idea, but I was also like, sounds
nice though I think it's probably feels really good. And
I was also like, oh, this makes a lot of sense,
I mean, aside from like being in a mall. But
like you know, massages are sort of hard to come
by if that's something that you're getting regularly, or like
(54:01):
you know, something that you know your your muscles need
or whatever, like you can get pummeled by some water
instead of human hands. The machines will do all the work.
I'm not gonna put I guess I'm putting my mom
on blast a little bit here. I'm gonna tease my mom.
Uh sorry mom. She um Before all this, she has
(54:21):
a gym membership in Connecticut. And U she'll go on
the elliptical. She just fifteen minutes on the elliptical. Uh,
like you've been a very casual pace. And then she
goes there's like a water bed massage thing um at
the gym, and she'll go for like forty five minutes.
So I'm pretty sure she only has the gym membership
(54:43):
to use the like massage machines. That's that's legit, especially
in the before times. If you could get a gym
with the steam room in it, like that's the word,
that's worthsome membership. I miss I missed my gym. I
missed my weird steam room at the Glendale y m C.
I was gonna say, I'm Hollywood why over here? The
(55:04):
Glendale y was actively haunted, and that was part of
what I loved about. It had an empty hot tub
that had just lights flickering on it all the time,
like a David Lynch. Holes and hot tubs and steam
rooms are just haunted. Yeah, haunted hot tub is our vibe.
A lot of the y m c A s out
here feel haunted because the Hollywood one is very haunted feeling.
(55:24):
It's it's like a labyrinth and it's all of these
like very strange old buildings with like like Spanish style
building right, yeah, yeah, and it has like a lot
of like courtyards with kind of you know, all of
these like multi story buildings around it, so you see
like the little faces in the window when you're standing
in the courtyard. I thought it was haunted. My daughter
did ballet and it felt very That room was especially
(55:46):
like had a vibe, had a cool breeze. You sound nice.
I'm wishing I lived outside of Philly, where our wise
not nearly hopefully. Well, before we let you go, I
wanted to talk a little bit because I realized it
have been like a year since you were part of
this no Music for Ice campaign, which is really awesome
(56:10):
and it's still active apparently. But this was kind of
happening in around the the Amazon Music festival that happened
like in last December, which I recently saw like a
a billboard for that was still up because you know,
like no billboards are getting turned over. So I actually
saw like a billboard for the They have so much
money they probably just forgot to stop paying for it. Yeah, yeah,
(56:33):
they'll still be advertising this this music festival from December,
but apparently it was a massive flop and had almost
no attendance. They had to like give away a bunch
of tickets. Yeah, I heard that they were just like
giving out tickets, are are like deeply discounting them. Um.
But yeah, and it was it was this thing where
I mean I was kind of surprised that there wasn't
(56:54):
more of a at large, um rejection of that, Like
there were so many people who are like, oh cool, yeah,
Amazon's and the music festival business now instead of just
sort of like, I don't know, it just felt like
such a off tone thing to do, especially with how
(57:14):
much their involvement with Ice had been in the news recently.
It's like, really, you're going to go like do the
Halliburton Music Festival like it just I don't know that.
But I was really I really appreciated your, uh, your involvement,
like you know how vocal you were around that. Um. Yeah,
it was a cool Um. It was a cool thing
to be a part of. And it was amazing to
(57:36):
see how many people pretty instantly signed onto it. I
think we announced it and had about a thousand musicians
sign on like within the we Neilson on the Friday
and by Monday they were over a thousand signatures of
just a lot of musicians who pledged not to do
collaborative projects with Amazon um until they ended there. The
(57:59):
it's such a complicated net of like subsidiaries, but basically
Amazon technology powers not only the infrastructure that ICE uses
to track and deport people, but also a lot of
police departments used for like facial recognition stuff like that.
Just so a lot of like messed up surveillance, all
that paleer stuff. Yeah, exactly, Yeah, as I said, web
(58:22):
of company names. Um So, we did that project, and
it was kind of funny, like I was working on
this record while we launched that. It was a really
small group of people who started it, like maybe six
of us. Um So, I was tracking on the painting
when we launched, and I was in the studio doing
like strings and woodwind stuff for the first time in
(58:43):
my life, working like long studio days, and then immediately
getting on my email to like send out to press
about what was going on, and then waking up the
next morning, like four hours before studio time to like
continue to send press emails and spawned to them. Um So,
it was a very like kind of intense project to
(59:04):
take on in the middle of like a very intense
recording project, even like UM when the festival was happening,
we were trying to coordinate. We were able to get
a bunch of the No Music for Ice t shirts
on the ground to to festival attendees and sort of
explained to them, like why this is a problem. UM.
And that was all going on while I was at
Sonic Ranch. So I taped like a local news segment,
(59:26):
actually weirdly over stipe, like before the quarantine started. I
hadn't done something like that before. UM. I taped like
a Vegas news segment while I was mixing, like I
gotta go outside one second, just to talk about why
no one should be at this festival. And for the
most part, media didn't cover it. They didn't touch it.
We were leading the list of press names and it
(59:47):
was all like I'm the cannabis reporter for a college
and like Reno UM. So it was it was funny
to see it basically flopped. But a lot of the
people who are involved with No Music Ice has kind
of moved over to this Union of Musicians and Allied
Workers which launched in March UM and we're sort of
involved in a number of different projects that are not
(01:00:09):
only like trying to secure more ethical pay and treatment
for for music workers, but also um making clear our
stances on human rights abuses like this and why musicians
shouldn't collaborate with companies who choose to engage in them.
So it's been it's been a nice group to be
part of, and I'm really psyched on a lot of
(01:00:31):
the projects that we're working on. That's awesome. Yeah, I
mean I I don't really know the ins and outs
of all this stuff and how people are getting paid.
I mean, one thing I was hearing from musicians was
just like, oh, well, Amazon's platform like Amazon Music, not
necessarily I don't know about the streaming platform, but like
it's one of the lower paid. Uh, it's one of
(01:00:51):
the lower pays per like streamer or sale of any
of the online music retailers, but pretty abysmal, like for
sales you m m, they take one of the highest cuts. Wow,
I mean that's not surprising. I know, more books and
movies and yeah, you know their a monopoly. Yeah, it's
it's one of these things where it's just like that.
(01:01:13):
That's actually like kind of my biggest guilt point not Amazon.
I've basically removed Amazon from my life, but like Spotify
and all these other all the other streaming platforms and stuff,
it's just really I mean, I use it too, But
I also recognized that they could absolutely afford to pay
people a fair rate per stream and have chosen you too.
(01:01:33):
And I'm glad that a lot of people are starting
to talk about that. And I'm glad that. Um there's
a whole streaming subcommittee in in the Union that I'm
not part of. I work with the Venues UM Corner,
which is about basically trying to to make venues more
safe for patrons, workers, musicians, etcetera, UM, and a couple
(01:01:55):
other points. But the streaming of people have been really
really working on a campaign to basically request hire rates
for for the musicians such are part of the platform.
The other thing that the streaming services don't do is
like credits. So, um, there's all kinds of things they
could do to improve how people get paid from from
every part of the record and they have not done that.
(01:02:16):
It seems so crucial now too, because it's just like, oh,
you cut out to any way we're making any money. Yeah,
you have you done any like live stream shows or
zoom shows. I've mostly been avoiding it because I don't
even before this, I hate to play solo. It's just
like not fun for me. And there's now the component
where you have to like film and record yourself, so
(01:02:38):
I not only have to like produce a video, but
I have to like engineer and mix the song of
something I don't even like doing. So I've mostly been
saying no. But I did just do a big project
um that it took me like a week to get done,
where I did a full band set. It was hell,
but it's done, and maybe now that I know how
to do it, I'll subject myself to it again. It
(01:02:59):
just like like aside from the work of on the
musician side of like making your your perform making your
performance or whatever is, it's just like it isn't the
whole point of live stuff that you're getting. You know,
you're there's an exchange of energy between. It's a very
dry and weird but yeah, I mean this was fun
because I got to at least play with my bandmates
(01:03:21):
just like you know, removed in time and space. Yeah.
Oh um, well, thank you so much for coming by
the show this. Yeah, I'm so glad we finally had
you on uh, and everybody check out Haunted Painting. It's
really great, Like it's just genuine like there's so many
(01:03:42):
earworms in this album. It's just fantastic. Thank you. I
wish we'd got to do a video on it, but
I know I know next one. Yeah, you got like
we didn't even get into it. But you've been like
one of the most innovative music video like making people
right now too. It's like you really got over that
that COVID production ups. Look about they all took so
(01:04:06):
much longer than any music video I've done. Just yeah,
but no, it's like such a it paid off because
you're just like, how did you do that? It's so great? Uh?
And we put a song from your album on the
October Nightcall mix. Yeah, spooky Halloween times. So Sadie, where
(01:04:27):
can people find you online? Well? I have the best
U r L you can imagine. It's SAD thirteen, which
is spelled s A D one three dot horse What
it's dot horse. I didn't even know that there was
dot horse, but as soon as I knew, I was like,
(01:04:48):
I can't be sad third team dot com anymore. Um
and forwards. Um, I'm extremely overactive on all the social
media of platforms. Also at You're great. You're great on
Twitter great, follow you are, thank you, thank you, as
are you well. Thanks so much for being on the show. Yeah,
(01:05:11):
it was really fun and thank you for listening to
Night Call. You can find us on social media. We're
on Twitter at night Call pod and Instagram at Facebook
at Night Call Podcast. We should leave us a review
on iTunes if you are listening on iTunes, or even
if you're not listening to iTunes. We love a review.
Give us a nice review. It helps me more people
(01:05:31):
find our show and of course I'm Scar. If you
aren't already wherever you get your podcasts, you can also
join us on our Patreon. We're in Patreon at www
dot patreon dot com slash Nightcall, where you can get
our newsletter, our mix tapes, our bonus episodes. We've got
all sorts of pot stuff there for you and we
shall see you all next week. Thanks for listening. Bye
(01:05:54):
bye s
It's twelve eleven am in torn Neo, Texas and you're
listening to Night Call. Hello and welcome Tonight Call, a
call in show for artist Tope in Reality. My name
is Emily Oshda. I'm in Los Angeles and with me
(00:22):
on the other line are Molly Lambert and Test Lynch.
And later on in the show, we're going to be
joined by our special guest, Sadie Dupu a k a.
Sad thirteen. She's here to talk about her new album,
Haunted Painting, also just ghosts in general, Haunted Studios, a
bunch of fun stuff, so stay tuned for that. But
right now, we're bringing back our new segment, Pyramid Pals.
(00:45):
We introduced it last week and it's definitely going to
be with us every single week from now on. You
can depend on a Pyramid Palace segment every week, just
like Cradam Corner. But we got a bunch of calls
after we talked about the Ames Monument and the Luxe
Tour last week, So let's take a Pyramid Call. Let's
take that Pyramid Call. High Night Call. I'm the first
(01:05):
time caller from Minneapolis. I'm an architectural historian, and what's
heard you talking about the Aims Pyramid designed by Henry
Hobson Richardson. UM, just want to call in a little
bit more information about Richardson because he's very important and
very weird. He has a style, an architectural style named
(01:26):
after him, which is called richardson Ian Romanesque UM. It's
growing off of the Romanesque style UM, but with his
own personal twists on it. And it's very medieval looking.
It's very heavy. It's known for having rusticated stone work UM,
which is like what you see at the Aims Monument.
(01:48):
And Richardson is considered part of the Holy Trinity of
American architecture. If you're into that kind of deifying architects
as geniuses, he's right up there with movie cull of them,
and frankly right both of him were influenced by his work.
Richardson was also kind of a weirdo. He later on
(02:08):
in his life, when he retired to Massachusetts to work
from home in his home studio, he would apparently whatever
clients would go to visit him, he would ring a gong,
or rather have his assistants ring a gong, and then
he would walk out to greet the clients. Wearing a
monk upfit like full ropes. Um. He's not a monk,
(02:30):
but he wanted to reinforce the sort of medieval nous
of his design and so some of his must Filam's
works are the Trinity Church in Boston, Massachusetts and the
New York State Asylum in Buffalo, New York are both
really good examples of his work. But it's very influential
and like the Minneapolis downtown has um several Richard's bunny
(02:55):
in Romanesque buildings. Um. So he suedually give him the
Google and see his monk outfit because it's very conneming.
The payments sounds cool. Can't wait to visit. Thanks. I
actually love Richardsonian Romanesque architecture. There's like a lot of it,
I feel, like in Brooklyn or like, you know, if
it's not designed by him, it's at least kind of
(03:15):
influenced by him. It's that kind of like any kind
of brick building that has a turret in it. Yeah. Yeah,
Like it's like the kind of Victorian cake house type thing,
except all like red brick looks fantastic. Um. I think
like the Tenet Bombs House and reyal Tenet Bombs I
feel like it's sort of in this vein. Oh, totally
(03:38):
that kind of thing. I like the they say that
they have the cylindrical towers with the conical caps, little
witch hats on top of your buildings. Yes, please more that.
I did not know he was such a weirdo though.
Why are so many Arctic architects weirdos? They're like directors
because they have crazy visions in their that mostly don't
(04:02):
ever get made, and they're obsessive control freaks and artists.
Architects are actually the most interesting people to me. I
know a lot of them for some reason. I have
a bunch of friends that are architects. Because you have
to be a math person, an engineering person, and a
creative person. Yeah. Yeah, that's the part that I never could.
(04:23):
You know. I'm like, I could draw a building, but
could I make it stand up? No? Right, yeah, think
about loads bearing and whatnot. Also very high stakes, extremely
high stakes in terms of art. It's like, that's art
that can kill people. All art can kill people too. Okay,
(04:45):
that's true, that's fair. This could kill a lot of
people all at once, so by accident. But yeah, I
mean these the the holy Trinity that the scholar is
talking about are amazing stone cold weirdos all total to
stone cold wirdos, but also yeah, they're remarkable for having
all built so much stuff. Yeah, and for so much
(05:06):
of its being standing. Yeah, and and and builds a
lot of stuff and then had so much stuff. That's
sort of a being in the style. I feel like
we get a lot, you know, we're It's funny because like, yeah,
he seems like most of his works on the East coast,
but then also a ton in the Upper Midwest. Sort
of similar with Frank Lloyd, right, uh like very like
I don't know, the Midwest seems like like upper Midwest, Illinois, Wisconsin, etcetera.
(05:30):
Feels like a good architecture zone. Um. But yeah, we
also got another pyramid email. This one was from Corey,
who wrote to us about a different pyramid, a much
more recent pyramid. Uh. They write, high night call, it's
my unfortunate duty to inform you about a recent American
pyramid demolition. The astro Zenica Pyramid and Westboro, Massachusetts, was
(05:54):
torn down this January. It was built in the late
two thousands and was always an important landmark to my
friends and I when we were teenagers. Delivering pizzas and
generally cruising around the suburbs late at night. It was
a tall, four sided pyramid made of blue mirrored class
that had a distinctly evil presence, which made sense seen
as it served as the American headquarters for a big farm,
a giant. The building was raised to make way for
(06:15):
a new forty million Amazon Robotics lab, which doesn't even
make sense because wouldn't you just keep the evil pyramid
if you were building an Amazon robotics lab. I'm attaching
some pictures to give you an idea of how truly
bizarre this office building pyramid in the middle of the
New England suburbs was um and they also sent a video.
But this is wild. Do you guys know about this?
(06:36):
I had in Westboro? Uh, it's I mean, it looks
like the like it looks like the Louver Pyramid. I
can't really get a sense of how big it is
from these photos in this article, which is in the
uh Metro west Daily News. I had to answer a
survey to read this article because that's the state of
(06:58):
local news, I guess right now. But yeah, they're like, like,
you know, you can see them in the photos, like
ripping it to shreds. For the picture of the pyramid
being shredded is pretty crazy. It's also weird to me
that it looks like it's built of either It's like
mirrored glass, is what it looks like. I just can't
imagine how blinding that thing must have been with the
(07:20):
sun bouncing off of it. Uh, but what a strange
thing to have in the middle of Massachusetts. And also
it is very what an odd decision to tear down
this strange, evil building. I mean it see it looks
exactly on brand for Amazon. It's like, you know, well,
I think maybe on brand, you know, in terms of
(07:42):
reality and what Amazon actually represents. But you know, am
soon is like really trying to rehab their image right
now in a very stupid way. Like they're running all
these ads out how they're trying to like green their
business or whatever, and how like Amazon is actually the
most virtuous company on earth or whatever, and like everybody
there cares about their children's future. I'm sure that many
people at amazon't care about their children's future, but come on,
(08:02):
uh yeah, so I think like this makes sense to us,
is like, yes, Amazon should live in the evil Pyramid.
It's what they deserve. But Amazon is like, no, we
should live in a heka a little cottage, like we
should be the cutie. It's still com Valley Giant pyramids
aren't evil though, they're just but this one looks evil.
(08:24):
This one does look evil. That's also because it's partially gutted,
so it's guts are spilling out and it actually the
way that it you know, in this one picture, it
looks like shredded paper is kind of coming out of
it because of the supports and like joys and stuff.
Uh and it looks like it's kind of being torn
to ribbons. But it also I mean, it's weird because
(08:47):
in l A you get so used to having such
a mix of architecture and there are just really no
rules kind of seemed to apply unless you're in a
historic preservation overlay. Uh so, but Massachusetts, you just it's
rare to see a mirrored pyramid in the middle of
the place, so should have kept the pyramid. People must
have been pissed about the mirrored pyramid. I would imagine,
(09:09):
Oh yeah when when that first went up. Well, it's
also so new. It was built in the two thousand's,
Like you built a pyramid, and it has a lifespan
of like fifth that's going to be the shortest lifespan
of any pyramid ever ever constructed pyramid, the least acient
pyramid because it's like post lux Or but got raised
(09:32):
before lux Or. Um. Yeah, we love getting calls and
emails about pyramids and architectural styles. Super interesting. Yeah, keep
them coming. More more mids. On the subject of aesthetics,
I wanted to talk about October's sweetie, the twelve foot
(09:57):
skeleton from Home Depot. Go on, have you guys seen him?
Have you seen it? You know? I even went to
Home Depot recently. I don't know what. They're sold out.
They're sold out everywhere. You have to look at the pictures.
My friend went to get one, they were all gone
and they were already putting out Christmas stuff. So this
also was written about in mel magazine. Miles Clee wrote
(10:19):
a piece called There's something about Home Depots twelve foot skeleton,
and there certainly is. They have animated I kind of glow. Um.
They twelve feet is quite tall when you really think
about it's strange height to pick It's not strange height. Yeah,
(10:40):
it's like I recently had this weird double take moment
where I saw in my rear view mirror or maybe
it was like on a truck that there was like
a photo on the truck, like it was a a
Ralph's truck or whatever. I had a lady on it, like,
you know, smiling, you know, like I don't know a
Ralph's employer or whatever. But it was just big enough
that I was like, that's a huge it over there,
(11:01):
and then I realized that it was just a painting.
But like when you're in that weird on candy zone
between where it's like truly just a giant thing, like
a big blow up inflatable skeleton or something. Also, we're
also like unfamiliar with the world again now that everything
feels a little bit like that. I hadn't experienced a
couple of days ago where I thought a squirrel running
(11:23):
towards me was a cat, and then when it got closed,
I was like, it's a very small cat. Oh no,
it's a squirrel. But just like I feel like, yeah,
my sense of size is all out of whack, and
so the twelve foot skeleton it just feels to me
(11:44):
completely right for our moment culturally, Yeah, what is it?
What is it about this that speaks to our moment.
Here's what I think. Here's what I as a as
a connoisseur of Halloween decorations. I just like when people
like put dumb it on their lawns. It's really that
for me. I like that people decorate their houses in
(12:07):
a way that is tacky. You know. I love similist
Halloween houses, yeah, exactly. And I love what people do
with like not that much stuff. You know. I'm not
that into the like expensive haunts or they're like fancy,
you know, things like that that people. You know, theme
park haunts are fine. But what I like is like
a Jankee yard display. So there's been a lot of
(12:32):
things in the yard display arena. There's been just like
more and more innovations. There was this period where they
were just like pumping out more and more Halloween things
that were like the inflatable giant black cats all of
a sudden, and then those things that let you project
on the house. There's just like an arms race for
Halloween stuff, and there was more and more of it,
(12:54):
and then it hit this like cliff in the past
couple of years, because everything's fucking depressing and scary and
maybe people don't want to spend people maybe hop less
money also to spend on Halloween garbage. So I felt
like last year there was no Halloween decorating. Did you
guys feel that way? I was like, so not tuned
(13:16):
into Halloween last year, and now I feel like I
missed out. It was there was a huge brew haha
in my neighborhood about Halloween and trick or treating, where
um neighbors were fighting over what was perceived to be
a lack of commitment to decorating houses during Halloween and
also a lack of commitment to children staying in their
(13:38):
own neighborhoods to trick or treat. Yeah. Really brutal, gossipy,
strange conversation, so weird. I just sat it out and
read all those emails and was like, that's super crazy.
That's like a Shirley Jackson story. It absolutely is. I'm
(13:58):
always reporting from the weirdest neighborhood in the world to
you guys. Apparently it's very plugged in. It was like
for years, every year there would be some new innovation
in Halloween decorating that I had never seen before, and
then it stopped. It was like, we've reached the limit.
There's nothing new. We have all these inflatables and projections
(14:19):
and things like we've this is as far as it goes,
and there's nothing new. Last year and then this year
the Big Boy appeared, the Big Boy, the gin Boy,
the Big Boy, and he has like light up scary eyes.
It's just the most ominous thing I've ever seen. It's
(14:39):
really scary, but it's so scary it becomes funny because
it's like totally unsettling, and it just feels like we
turned this corner into just plunging into the absurdity of
now there there is something about it formally, like it's
not an inflatable, it's not a thing that's like been
(15:01):
painted onto something. It is literally a skeleton, a solid skeleton,
and it's a fucking skeleton in a time when we're
having a plague. It feels medieval to me, you know,
at a time of like refrigerated body trucks, Like we
are going to put giant skeletons out on our lawns
just because let's go all the way. Uh. I don't know,
(15:23):
it's funny because it's so incredibly impractical. And I think
that with Halloween decorations. When Molly was talking about the
lack of innovation, I think it's also just kind of
I mean, at least in my neighborhood, you can feel
when people are getting tired of putting in the effort,
Like you can only do it so many years in
a row. If you're doing it for like neighborhood kids
(15:45):
or for your own kids. Eventually those kids are too
old and you're not going to care. But you have
to like stow all of that stuff for most of
the year, three hundred sixty four days, no rules, Like
we're living in crazy times. You can keep that out
twelve foot you don't. I'm hoping that some of them
(16:06):
stay up through Christmas and they just put Santa on
the can you can you pose them? Like, no, you can't.
I watched a video because I was very like, how
do you get them to stand up? What are they
mounted on? I wanted to know, So I watched an
unboxing video made by these like two kids, like a
couple of dudes that are like ten, you know, who
(16:27):
are like get the box. They're so excited and then
they unbox it and like show you how they build it.
You have to build it, Yeah, you have to build it.
It's twelve ft tall. It doesn't just stand up by itself,
because it's sucking twelve feet are They all the bones
and you put them together and it's so crazy. It's
like there's a there's like a base, and you mount
(16:49):
it to the base and then you put the feet
on and you build it upwards. And these kids, I think,
had to stand on something to get to the top.
This reminds me of this wood block, like one of
my favorites, Japanese wood blocks. Ever, of the giant skeletons,
like breaking down the walls and terrifying. Yes, and there's
something about a giant thing. I've just also been watching
(17:11):
all these theme park videos and I watched a bunch
about Kong Frontation, which was a King Kong ride at
Universal that had a giant King Kong animatronic. And it
looks just very terrifying and amazing to me because it's
like the scale of it is so big. You know,
there's something about just like taking the scale of something
(17:32):
and making it big. And again, the skeletons are like
it felt like for a few years people didn't want
to be reminded of how bad things were of death
and kind of felt like Halloween, you know, amped down
a little bit after maybe hitting this peak of just
all the haunt stuff in l A especially too, And
now it feels like it's good. It's like, yeah, we
(17:54):
shouldn't be able to not think about death right now.
To play Devil's Advocate, we can't not think about death.
It's I there have been a lot of conflicting opinions
um on social media about whether like Americans are having
to confront the fact that they they don't think about
death enough and now we're going to have to think
about death more versus like just acknowledge. I feel like
(18:16):
I think about death constantly. I'm never not thinking about death.
But I don't know. I mean, just to play Devil's
Advocate a giant twelve foot skeleton when you're having to
talk to your kids and mask them up and being like,
don't worry, everything's fine. There's just a disease that kills people,
and then being like, happy Halloween. Here's some giant, terrifying skeletons,
(18:38):
Like that might be a fun talk to have with
my kids. I think, I think, you know, in general,
I should say there's probably all sorts of different reactions
to this, But I think one if things kind of
if things managed to turn around and this isn't the
last like fifteen years of human civilization or whatever, I
think that the kids who are kids right now are
(19:00):
gonna be better equipped to think about death and and
life and death basically than that, certainly than we were,
and I think probably most generations in like modern you know,
I'm going to play Angels Advocate here. That's a nice thought. Okay,
I'm going to play you know, chaotic Angel the Devil
(19:23):
which advocate, which is what I always play in this podcast. Um,
but don't I do think that, like each generation of
children has its own thing like that. Like we grew
up around the AIDS crisis, and so I was definitely
very I felt like that kind of gives you this
like dose of realism when you're a kid, you know,
because they had how immediate was that for you? As
(19:46):
I guess you guys were a little bit older. For me,
it was I grew up in the West village, so
that that was like constant. And also my parents worked
in entertainment, so so many of their friends were you know,
in fact in HIV and had partners ive AIDS, like
when I remember being around eight years old or nine
years old and just having it be like a constant
(20:07):
thought for me. But I think this is different because
children during the AIDS epidemic, most of them did not
have to take too many precautions to like adapt their
own lives. There was a lot of television I'm specifically
thinking of. There was like a Sesame Streets segment. There
were a lot of segments about there was a kid
(20:28):
named Ryan White who was the first kid born infected
with HIV, and he was on television a lot, just
you know, to be educating people about the fact that
like HIV can be passed and then also it's okay
to like hang out with people who have HIV. That
was a big part of it, was I remember this campaign. Yeah,
(20:49):
and and there was a big thing where like Alissa
Milano kissed him on I think the Phill Donni Hugh
Show or something to like prove that like you can
kiss somebody who has HIV and you can hold hands
with them and you're not, you know, at risk of transmission.
But yeah, I mean think about the difference between us
experiencing the HIV and AIDS epidemic as children and how
(21:12):
children now are interpreting, in particular the world outside their
homes as being I just feel like they don't know
anything else they do. I mean, it depends on your
kid's age. I don't know. I definitely hope that at
least uh some good comes out of this in terms
(21:32):
of being able to recognize how people look after each other.
I mean, I think maybe one of the only good
things about being a kid and having to talk with
your parents about why people are wearing masks, which two
younger kids can look super scary, and to be able
to have a conversation about how that's taking care of
each other, and like kind of thinking beyond the visual
(21:54):
of like you see someone, you don't recognize them, you
can't see if they're smiling, And to just be able
to be like, oh, that's in order to protect other people.
That's like, you know, a community effort has been really
great and productive. But I do I often worry because
I'm I I have O c D and I can
be a little obsessive about germophobic things, and as a
kid that was definitely true as well. So I don't know,
(22:17):
it could be an interesting Halloween if your kid is
already a little freaked out. However, I'm still pro twelve
foot skeleton. Well, that just starts a whole new conversation,
you know. It's like the twelve foot skeletons just provide
an opportunity to release some of the fear and stress
and anxiety that's in the air for obvious reasons. It
(22:40):
just feels it feels right for the year. Well, it's
how like the best horror movie I think make you
laugh more than they make you like scream or be
genuinely scared. And I think there's something about the giggles
that you get when you see these twelve foot skeletons
that is very cathartic and very healthy. It's cathartic and
it's not like there are other things that are way
(23:02):
scarier to me than that. The thing I find the
scariest is when somebody puts like a figurine in their window,
like a human looking person, and it's not human, you know,
like a mannequin, like an home alone. I find mannequin
scarier than the twelve foot skeleton. Personally. I got a
fuzzy styrofoam cat, a black cat that you're supposed to
(23:22):
mount on a wall and uh if we've had it
for many years and at one point it's styrofoam leg
broke off and now it's a three legged Halloween cat.
And for some reason that made me that I was like,
now it's terrifying, anything terrified. It's just a handicapped cat.
It's it's because the legs out at an angle. It's
just people love those three legged dogs. They're like, oh,
(23:44):
look he's so cute and brave. That could be, that
could be. Yeah, well, we're going to take a quick
break and when we come back, we're going to be
joined by I guess this week's sayd we welcome back
(24:07):
to Nightcall. We are now joined by Sadie did we
a k A. Sad thirteen, which I just learned you
actually say sad thirteen. Um. She's also the front woman
of Speedy Ortiz and she's got a new album out
called Haunted Painting, which obviously is right up our freaking alley. Hi, Sadie,
(24:28):
nice to see you again. From the Hume distance, everybody,
I just get like reminded of what everybody looks like
when they're kind of like in work mode and at
home over zoom, which is like when we shot the
video a couple of years. Costume and makeup, well, it's
like it's like that or ultimate, just like rolling into
(24:52):
a studio at six in the morning, like you know,
I haven't had your coffee yet type of thing. So
it's the two extremes, but right in the middle. Today.
I'm definitely on the rolled out of bedside today but
nobody can see, which is great. Um so you have
(25:12):
a new album. It's been out a couple of weeks now,
two weeks today, two weeks. It's two weeks old. Happy birthday,
Thank you. It was like a year. Why is time
so messed up? Right now? I know, it's so crazy.
I was I was going back and listening to it
again and I was listening to um W t D,
which I remember you put out. I couldn't tell you
(25:34):
when you put that out, but I was like, that's
on this album. I guess, like feels okay, what the hell? Yeah,
I mean I love that song. And I was just like,
this is great. I remember hearing this, you know, two
years ago. It must have been two years ago, Like,
um yeah, it's sort of wild how that works. It's
(25:55):
it's definitely got to be weird. I think like really
seen stuff for like building anticipation for something like an album.
When time is meaningless, it's weird. And it's also, um
so much more internet time than I'm used to. I
think every time I've put out a record before, I'm
either already on tour or I leave the next day
(26:16):
and I'm not just looking at the computer all day
long giving myself back pain from hunching over. Yeah, screen
times are moving very fast, very slow. I think this
is a universal quarantine experience. Did you have a tour
set up for this album that you have to postpone?
I had touring through like starting in March through pretty
(26:39):
much the end of the year. Um, so who knows
when that will happen again? Is kind of the general feeling.
But what weird habits have you developed instead in Quarantine? Oh? No? Um,
going right into the dark star? Well I had. I
(27:01):
had a funny experience at the grocery store the other day.
Have you ever had Who's Who's from New York? Besides
Emily or I've spent a few years like as a kid,
was there tests from New York? But she doesn't claim it.
I don't like to claim it. I'm from New York too,
so okay, okay, and don't live there anymore. Wait, but
(27:22):
you also spend time in Connecticut, right, went to high
school there? All right? I went to junior higher there.
Oh where did you? Sharon? Oh weird? So yeah about
Dudley Town too, probably oh I do? Oh my god. Okay,
so we'll have to go there. I hope we're heading
towards Stu Leonards again. That's just my Oh. I was
just talking about stew Leonards because my my um a
(27:44):
friend just moved to test you. Maybe now we're stuff
pre Connecticut is you know? I know where It's not
really but I went to see her at like a
far away outdoor distance, and I was like, you're gonna
go to Stu Leonards now that you're living this podcast
goes deep New England. I like, it's like hieroglyphics in
front of my eye, like that. Stue Leonards is a
(28:07):
huge grocery store with so many animatronics. We've already kind
of made Emily sit through a Stu Leonards explainer, but
you can't really explain Stu Leonards. When I first got Instagram,
I only posted animatronic videos for like the first two years.
I had it, um, and I'm oh, my weird habit though,
(28:32):
because I am just eating like a jar of ricks
picks spicy pickled green beans like every single day and
it is nauseating my partner who hates the smell of them. Um.
But I go to the grocery They're like they really
ten dollars. Go to the grocery store and I buy
like six at a time, and the cashiers like pretty
(28:53):
is good, and I responded, I don't know, but they're
my hobby. It felt like a blue moment, right, metal health,
But how is your stomach lighting? Like I would think
all that app that's the only downside. That's what keeps
me from eating all pickles all day. It's horrible. But
I think I have ibs all the time, So I
just don't know what's the difference. Just throw fuel on
(29:15):
the fire, throw pickles on the fire. It's already gonna
feel bad. Let's just make it all go faster. Good hobby, right,
that's a great hobby. I mean it's all about Like
we talked about this on a Bonus podcast where we
had an entire episode about beverages. Like I feel like
you can get completely invested just in like, what's a
new beverage I'm into now? Like, what's a new thing
(29:38):
I never thought of getting before the store And now
this is like the height of entertainment. What's everyone's new beverage.
I've been drinking this very expensive juice, so I like
split it into thirds and mix it with seltzer um.
That's I forget what the brand is, but it's sweet
citrus and it's like it's pretending to be fresh squeezed,
(30:00):
but I think it's cold pressed. But at some point
I was having terrible allergies and I became convinced that
this was like the cure um. But now it's it's
awful because like I'll I'm like basically micro dosing this
juice because it's like six dollars for a small bottle. Uh,
So I'm making like shrubs with it. I'm trying to
like stretch the juice. Sounds nice. That's like, that's that's
(30:24):
like the good end of novelty beverage because you're also
like making something out of it, exactly cooking. It's an
activity and a thing that you're you're It's the best
of all hobbies. Sadie. I noticed that in your merch store.
You have hot sauce and hazelnut spread food and tea
as well. Really what kind of tea it's called? It
(30:46):
Haunted Breakfast, Scared Clothes in the Air, it's a it's
a lap saying sung and a couple other like black
teas that um, one of which was harvested under a
blood moon. There's this really great teamaker in Philly, UM
called craft Ty, and he supplies to all the local
(31:09):
music venues and a couple of different cafes, and he
started making teas to do as like pairings with records. UM.
So I reached out to him and we put this
together and he was like dropping off samples in my
front door like once a week for a couple of points.
I feel like a couple of months. UM, just tweaking
the formula so I can say it's been thoroughly taste tested.
(31:32):
It's really good, and I think it's sold out. So
I don't know why I'm going in on that right now,
but I have some personal tins maybe if you know
V I P T tins Um. That sounds great. I
mean I love I love edible tour merch or band
merch that's I guess it doesn't really serve the purpose
(31:54):
of like advertising my band in the way that like
a T shirt or like a wearable merched. Know, it
totally does, but I feel like people are more likely
to share that on Instagram though. It's like, look, I
have hazelnuts spread from my favorite musician question work. Cool. Yeah,
it makes perfect sense. It's like you can't go to
the show, so you sit at home and listen to
(32:15):
the album and grew your cup of Haunted tea and
something of nutella. Yeah, it's a lifestyle. Yeah. Yeah, We've
wanted to do food merch in the past, but it's
just not tenable when you're in a van for like
three months going through all kinds of different climates. So
as soon as this is honestly, as soon as like
(32:36):
touring was canceled for the foreseeable future, like it's finally
my time to do food stuff, that's amazing. Was the
hot sauce also a similar like was it like a
custom thing that you Yeah, it's they're speaking of Connecticut.
I think they're from Willomantic. Um. Oh yeah, Dragon's Blood
Alickser and we had talked like five years ago about
(32:58):
doing a hot house together, but it was a similar
deal that trying to carry glass on tours like a nightmare.
So it's like literally the first piece of merge that
that I planned out as soon as the quarantine happened.
Can we talk about haunted paintings a little bit? Yeah,
what you got? What haunted paintings were you thinking of
(33:20):
when you were making this album? Was there anything in
particular or just the idea? It was more the idea
of a haunted painting UM And in fact, I think
I looked up once I had the idea for the title,
I did a bunch of googling, and I don't really
like any of the like haunted painting meme stories that
(33:40):
are going around. I don't know if you've investigated any
of these. Is this like a genre? I didn't know.
There's like two that UM have sold on E Day
for like very high prices because they're theoretically haunted, and
there was a whole disclaimer of like, we're not liable
for you getting murdered if you buy this painting, UM,
(34:02):
but they're not it is creepy or captivating. Is the
one that I named this after, which is a friends
stuck portrait of a dancer names to Harrett Um, who
we painted a couple of times. But this is one
on display at the the Fry Gallery in Seattle. Um
and probably the whole reason I even thought to frame
it is haunted. Not only is it surrounded by some
(34:25):
of his other work that's like really creepy looking. Um
the sin, I think is like one of his really
famous ones that's like a big serpent round room. And
I can't really look at that one. I can't look
at snakes. But uh, it's a few blocks away from
a hotel that I got put up in for a
(34:45):
poetry festival in Seattle, and I was staying with um
Darthy Alaski, who's a poet that's one of my favorites,
and she is also really into ghostly and haunted things
and has even like taught workshops on poetry and ghosts,
and I think a lot of poets have that particular fixation.
But the hotel is supposedly haunted by Alice by Tokalist,
(35:08):
which doesn't make sense at all. What hotel is it?
I lived in Seattle for a little bit. I can
speak Seattle more than Connecticut. It's like Google right now,
you're gonna hear all my typing, but I love the fry. Also,
the fry is like, I don't know, it's like a
very cool space. It feels really really like tucked away.
(35:29):
You can't it doesn't feel like you're in the middle
of town. It's the Sorrento Hotel. Do you know that?
Oh yeah, it's like apparently I used to live right
next to it. So yeah, so apparently als b Tocls
ghost did too. Um. Wow, I had no idea about that.
That's wild. So we walked around the hotel all night
(35:50):
trying to find like any ghosts and had zero luck. Um,
even though Dottie was staying on like the apparently very
haunted the floor. Uh. And I went to the museum
the next day and was like, this painting is more
haunted than this museum. And that's kind of how UM
came to the title and concept. I'm looking at this
(36:11):
the sin painting, It's like, this is a cursed painting.
This is like something from like a seventies horror movie.
It's so if you google friends on stock his work
is just even the Saherent portraits not theoretically supposed to
be creepy, but it just is. Aren't all paintings haunted
if they're painted by a dead person. Interesting by I
(36:37):
just mean, are isn't every painting in a museum haunted
in a way? I think that's important. Like I think
that in the poetic sense, a portrait, like if you've
ever seen a portrait that you know, like, I think
a lot of like John Singer Sergeant portraits feel like
very animated and like kind of charged to me because
(36:58):
I just think he was great at it. And I
think there's like a weird sense of time travel when
you're in a gallery with those portraits and you are
really confronting the fact that these people were all living once,
and like because this artist was particularly good at capturing
like a light in their eyes or something like that,
it really feels like they're right there with you. And
(37:20):
that can be a bit of an uncanny feel. I mean,
that feels more or less functionally like it's haunted. Um.
But yeah, I don't know, I don't know the the
the the rules though for haunt all accept I'll accept
this haunted for this reason. It's I mean, it's a
very natural human urge right to like, you know, capture
(37:43):
somebody in time or whatever. But it's also like it
feels almost like you're vending the laws of time. Now
I'm getting into the all jokes or time travel type,
all jokes of time travel. I've caught the but it's real. Uh,
paintings are time travel. I think also a lot of portraiture,
(38:05):
especially like a lot of its commissioned by like super
wealthy people, right who only want to be portrayed in
a very flattering way, in the same way with you know, photography. Now,
um so, I think to see the friends on stuck
paintings that in some ways they're kind of not flattering.
Like the portrait that I was really captivated by, um
(38:26):
Harrot's under circles are really exaggerated, her eyes and just
kind of enlarged in a way that it honestly reminds
me of like um jump scare face in a way.
It's like beautiful portrait and a jump scare. Um So,
I think I'm really interested in paintings that do that,
(38:47):
um yeah for their portrait. I have a weird a
print that is gigantic that I was given for, like
I think it was probably around the time I graduate
ated from college. It's um, this guy Alex Colville, who
is a Canadian magic realist and it's a woman staring.
(39:08):
She's on a boat and she has binoculars and she's
like staring out um. But it's it's such a huge
print and I didn't know where to put it when
we moved, so it's in the bedroom and like I
just every so often my kids are like, can you
cover that or because she's just like staring and then
it like faces a mirror, so she's like staring at
(39:28):
herself and it's like bouncing back. And at some point, uh,
one of my kids was like, does that ever give
you the creeps that there's like a giant head staring
at you with binoculars? And I was like, yeah, it
maybe I like that, Like maybe it's good. But I
also feel like the bigger the painting and the bigger
the portrait that they can definitely get some kind of
(39:49):
like a haunted quality because it's so like dominating and
it feels like it kind of just takes over the vibe.
You just made me realize. My bedroom is full of
paintings because my boyfriend is a painter. Some of them
are a little haunted looking, but I also find them
uh comforting and cozy. It's like you have friends around,
(40:10):
they're staring at you, and at least right exactly he
made them, he can put them back in. It's my test.
That just reminded me that, um my dad had an
Elvis bus when I was growing up that was in
the hallway like outside of my bedroom, and I could
see it while I was sleeping and instantly wake up
(40:30):
like terrified of the Elvis bus. Oh my god, that's
would stop. That's a liability. That's so spooky. You know
Elvis's ghost is in all of those busts. Yeah, every
single portrait of Elvis is haunted. I think we can say,
um yeah, um so you also, uh you You're The
(40:52):
haunting aspect of your album was not limited to its
inspiration in this painting. You also mixed the of them
at a haunted studio. Where was this and why is
it haunted? And how Emily and I were doing a
little text prep prior to this taping. I was like,
I feel like you've tread over all my haunted stories
(41:13):
on other podcasts on this album, which is great. I'm
happy that I'm finally getting to talk about ghosts on
an album, Psycho, but I have not talked about Sonic
Ranch which is where we mixed this album. UM. It's
in Tornado, Texas, recently famous for ice crimes against humanity. UM.
(41:34):
But it is the largest residential recording studio in the world. UH.
And it is on Pecan ranch that was in the
guy who runs it family for forever UM. So it's
still active with pecans. He sends them out to like
people who record at the studio every year for Christmas.
They're very delicious. UM. And apparently I didn't know this
(41:59):
when we all to mix there. I had just UM
toward it a couple of times. I feel like there's
some long stretch you do on every tour that is
between like Arizona. I feel like you play Phoenix and
then you play Austin and that's like a horrifying drive
in between, and you I just didn't you did it,
(42:19):
so you know exactly. Yeah, I saw that. You were
like you texted me at some point. You were like,
I'm so jealous of your road trip, and I was like,
You've probably done this so many more times than I have. Jesus,
so I've I've been able to tour that studio while
passing between Phoenix and Austin. UM. And I think I'd
(42:41):
even stayed there before, or at least we've had dinner there. Um.
And because it's residential, people are there for long stretches
of time. They have like like cooks on staff who
make perhaps the best salsa I've ever had in my life,
really really good breakfast tacos every day. I'm really good.
It's it's kind of heaven until I tell you about
(43:02):
the hellish aspects. I could not record vocals there ever,
because I would just have acid reflux from eating too much,
like really spicy sauce every day. So it's good that
we mixed. Um. So I've stayed there. It's like amazing,
so much cool equipment. Tony, who owns the studio is
an art collector, so there's like Picasso and Dega prints
(43:22):
and like every studio and even residents. Um. So we
got there on the first day and we're told the
rooms you're supposed to stay in aren't ready, like one
of the bands that's also tracking is staying a little later,
but you can move to the room you're supposed to
be in the next night. So Sarah, who makes the album,
and I were like, Okay, we'll stay in this. Like
(43:44):
it's like a newer built bedroom that's right off the kitchen,
and we're like, it's not as like fancy as the
old casita rooms, but like fine, we'll stay here. We're
fine with whatever. Only the next day we find out
that pretty much every other room has like some kind
of verifying haunting story, whether it's someone waking up and
seeing a man sitting in the corner just like watching
(44:06):
them sleep. Um, there are stories of a bed hovering.
There are stories of like a little girl floating above
you while you sleep. So and then there's the one
we were supposed to be in. There's like, uh, one
of the engineers we were working with was like, that's
my favorite room. But also there's like a presence that's
(44:26):
there all the time. Um, and yeah, so we wind
up not switching our rooms, you wanted to say, and
like the newly built one that surely wasn't haunted. I'm
totally into haunted things in like a situation I can control.
I just don't want to wake up and see a
guy floating above me sharing it you while you sleep,
(44:50):
or lose sleep worrying about it when you're supposed to
be like working and being at top like mental state
or whatever. We were working already really really long hours,
like he pulled it more than one all night, or
I just didn't want to deal with the floating guy.
But maybe if I go record there it would be
a nice inspiring and the other fun fact I told
(45:13):
Emily about the studio when I first went through, and
meant the guy who owns it um. I was like,
it's so weird, like he really reminds me of David
Carradine for some reason. And I said this, and then
like maybe a year later, found out that apparently, Um
Tarantino would like pass through this studio. Tony seems to
(45:34):
know like everybody, he's just a El Paso legend. Um,
he's like Buddies with Zazi Top and Billy Gibbons comes
to the studio all the time. So I had said
this a year before and then found out that apparently
Bill from Kill Bill is based on Tony was in
part inspired by him. I sent you, you guys, the
(45:55):
link to the picture of him, but it's like very
apparent when you say this picture. If you google him,
you'll see all kinds of pictures like what was Tarantino
(46:16):
doing there? Just hanging out and having the salsa and
the cons Like, so Tony seems to know everybody. He's
like a really lovely person who has all kinds of
incredible like stories that it's not always clear if they're
completely true about um like warez cartel activity. Uh. He
told us a very fun story about hand soup. Was
(46:41):
just someone a faster once so hand he's a soup
made from a hand, soup made from human hands. What wow,
pardon I just watched Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so this completely
tracks right. No, Like my has not flinched and listening,
(47:01):
She's like, yeah, that's Texas. You know they make hand
stoop down there. It's a true story, it said at
the beginning of the movie. It's like hand soap, but
handspe That's incredible. I see this all, even the ghost stuff,
even the spooky stuff, even the presence of Quentin Tarantino.
(47:22):
This all sounds kind of like right now. My latest
Quarantine era dream is to have like a home studio
or have like a residential studio, Like I want to
like buy a farmhouse in Iowa and let people come
through and like finished movies in it. This is the
first time I've spoken this publicly, but like I'm gonna.
I'm putting it out into the universe manifest once again.
(47:43):
I'm saying Texas chain saw massacre, be very careful with
those old farmhouses. We don't have um so many cannibals
in Iowa, but we have children of the corner rightly,
the fun reason why it will not fun. But um,
there's a couple of different like of course, once I
(48:04):
heard that this is faunt and I'm going on all
the weird like forums that look like they're from reporting
every ghost sighting in Tornado, Texas. Um, there's apparently a
little girl by the little little ghostly girl by the
train tracks. Um, there's there's a few outside of Sonic
Branch itself, but it's quite it's quite literally the border
like you could walk and be in Mexico quite easily. UM.
(48:28):
And apparently some of the buildings on site at this studio,
which is like pretty large, you have to there's like
trucks and stuff on site that you have to drive
to get around to some of the different studios. So
they've made use of some really old buildings and some
of them were apparently used um as like a holding
self for people um crossing the border. So there's like
(48:50):
probably some messed up stuff that happened prior to it
becoming this farm. Um, which maybe explains like, yeah, it's
a travel bad energy. They're in the corner. Yeah, so
there's apparently good and bad ghosts there. But I didn't
get to I didn't get to meet any boy choice.
So um, well let's we wanted to take a night
(49:14):
call with you. It's also a night email when you
guys want to read it. Yeah, this comes from London
Eddie High Night Call Crew. Longtime listener, first time email
or a big fan of the pod Heavy podcast. I
went to an isolation pod for my twenty one birthday
on a whim, decided to ignore any skeptical thoughts and
figuratively dived into the experience. During the hour long float,
(49:35):
I achieved more of a genuine meditational feeling than I
had ever gotten from traditional methods. I spent the following
three hours feeling the same floaty feeling across my entire
body slash consciousness. The feeling only started to wane after
I'd been in the cinema for a while and the
crazy third act of Sorry to Bother You came crashing down.
Interestingly enough, the isolation center was in the middle of
(49:55):
London's Central business district. By the look of the other customers,
it seemed like high powered execs have swapped their weekly
squash court lunches for hour long isolation sessions. I wish
I'd stayed to ask one if it helps to escape
or if it helps them visualize. I can't decide if
it's like a real I also misread this email the
first time, and I thought that while he was in
(50:16):
the chamber a while, he was in his meditative state,
like he had a flashback to the third act of
Sorry to Bother You. I thought he was using a
using it as a metaphor, and I was like, I
wonder what he means by I think right to the movies,
and he saw Sorry to Bother You, which seems like
a crazy thing to do after being in an isolation pod.
That's like a lot of movie. Um, but I didn't
(50:39):
know what was coming in the third yeah for us,
so maybe you know, he thought it'd be like it
brought everybody down. Um yeah, that's uh. I mean, this
is what have you ead in an isolation pod or
anything like that? Sadie absolutely not even here. The At first,
(51:01):
I was like, what is isolation pod? I thought it
was like an escape room, and then when you say
I was like, oh, it's a float tank. Even hearing
that expression at my heart rate. Are you claustrophobic or
is it just like I just have a hyperactive brain
that would not be able to cope. See, I wonder
because I always I feel like that too. And apparently
(51:24):
though when you have zero, like I think, maybe for
the first few minutes, you're kind of like your mind
is racing and this is what I've heard. But then
for some reason, the absolute lack of stimuli makes you
calm down. I'm very I want I would like to
experience that. I would also like to have a panic
button on hand. I think you think, yeah, I feel
(51:46):
like I'd be so like bored and then stressed about that,
and then angry that I put myself in the situation
to be bored and stressed and angry. I would think
it would be like meditation, though it's like you don't
do all that. Yeah, even if I'm like on a treadmill,
I have to be like listening to something and also
reading on the you know, yeah, I have. I managed
(52:10):
to actually meditate for probably like three minutes or something
for the first time I think in my life. When
I was in Iowa recently, uh, and I you know,
that was encouraging to me. I was like, oh, maybe
I can do this more. But I was always fairly
convinced and still fairly convinced that it's just not a
thing I do naturally too many synapsis. I'm sure it'd
(52:32):
be good if I could get to that point, but
not yet. Definitely. No. Well, what kind of are there
any kind of like holistic e or new age things
like isolation tanks that you would ever consider exploring? I mean,
I do all kinds of hippie ship. Um. What's the
best hippie ship? I guess you know. I get acupuncture, um,
(52:54):
which in some ways is you know that's that's just medicine. Well,
a lot of that stuff is stuffy. You just can't
do now. I mean, the isolation pod is probably like
one of the safe things you could do because it's
literally an isolation pod. But you know, when I was
in Vegas, uh, I was like walking through the like
one of these like malls that connects the two casinos,
(53:15):
and they had a bunch of those aqua massage tables
out um, you know, like the tube where the water
punnel pummels people. It's basically you get put into a
rubber bag and then like jets of water like massage you.
So you don't get wet obviously, but it's very disturbing
to watch because it just looks like a body in
a body bag getting washed with water. Um and it.
(53:39):
But it sounds like getting eaten by a water bed,
like it just wrapped in a water bed. I'm never
sort of the idea, but I was also like, sounds
nice though I think it's probably feels really good. And
I was also like, oh, this makes a lot of sense,
I mean, aside from like being in a mall. But
like you know, massages are sort of hard to come
by if that's something that you're getting regularly, or like
(54:01):
you know, something that you know your your muscles need
or whatever, like you can get pummeled by some water
instead of human hands. The machines will do all the work.
I'm not gonna put I guess I'm putting my mom
on blast a little bit here. I'm gonna tease my mom.
Uh sorry mom. She um Before all this, she has
(54:21):
a gym membership in Connecticut. And U she'll go on
the elliptical. She just fifteen minutes on the elliptical. Uh,
like you've been a very casual pace. And then she
goes there's like a water bed massage thing um at
the gym, and she'll go for like forty five minutes.
So I'm pretty sure she only has the gym membership
(54:43):
to use the like massage machines. That's that's legit, especially
in the before times. If you could get a gym
with the steam room in it, like that's the word,
that's worthsome membership. I miss I missed my gym. I
missed my weird steam room at the Glendale y m C.
I was gonna say, I'm Hollywood why over here? The
(55:04):
Glendale y was actively haunted, and that was part of
what I loved about. It had an empty hot tub
that had just lights flickering on it all the time,
like a David Lynch. Holes and hot tubs and steam
rooms are just haunted. Yeah, haunted hot tub is our vibe.
A lot of the y m c A s out
here feel haunted because the Hollywood one is very haunted feeling.
(55:24):
It's it's like a labyrinth and it's all of these
like very strange old buildings with like like Spanish style
building right, yeah, yeah, and it has like a lot
of like courtyards with kind of you know, all of
these like multi story buildings around it, so you see
like the little faces in the window when you're standing
in the courtyard. I thought it was haunted. My daughter
did ballet and it felt very That room was especially
(55:46):
like had a vibe, had a cool breeze. You sound nice.
I'm wishing I lived outside of Philly, where our wise
not nearly hopefully. Well, before we let you go, I
wanted to talk a little bit because I realized it
have been like a year since you were part of
this no Music for Ice campaign, which is really awesome
(56:10):
and it's still active apparently. But this was kind of
happening in around the the Amazon Music festival that happened
like in last December, which I recently saw like a
a billboard for that was still up because you know,
like no billboards are getting turned over. So I actually
saw like a billboard for the They have so much
money they probably just forgot to stop paying for it. Yeah, yeah,
(56:33):
they'll still be advertising this this music festival from December,
but apparently it was a massive flop and had almost
no attendance. They had to like give away a bunch
of tickets. Yeah, I heard that they were just like
giving out tickets, are are like deeply discounting them. Um.
But yeah, and it was it was this thing where
I mean I was kind of surprised that there wasn't
(56:54):
more of a at large, um rejection of that, Like
there were so many people who are like, oh cool, yeah,
Amazon's and the music festival business now instead of just
sort of like, I don't know, it just felt like
such a off tone thing to do, especially with how
(57:14):
much their involvement with Ice had been in the news recently.
It's like, really, you're going to go like do the
Halliburton Music Festival like it just I don't know that.
But I was really I really appreciated your, uh, your involvement,
like you know how vocal you were around that. Um. Yeah,
it was a cool Um. It was a cool thing
to be a part of. And it was amazing to
(57:36):
see how many people pretty instantly signed onto it. I
think we announced it and had about a thousand musicians
sign on like within the we Neilson on the Friday
and by Monday they were over a thousand signatures of
just a lot of musicians who pledged not to do
collaborative projects with Amazon um until they ended there. The
(57:59):
it's such a complicated net of like subsidiaries, but basically
Amazon technology powers not only the infrastructure that ICE uses
to track and deport people, but also a lot of
police departments used for like facial recognition stuff like that.
Just so a lot of like messed up surveillance, all
that paleer stuff. Yeah, exactly, Yeah, as I said, web
(58:22):
of company names. Um So, we did that project, and
it was kind of funny, like I was working on
this record while we launched that. It was a really
small group of people who started it, like maybe six
of us. Um So, I was tracking on the painting
when we launched, and I was in the studio doing
like strings and woodwind stuff for the first time in
(58:43):
my life, working like long studio days, and then immediately
getting on my email to like send out to press
about what was going on, and then waking up the
next morning, like four hours before studio time to like
continue to send press emails and spawned to them. Um So,
it was a very like kind of intense project to
(59:04):
take on in the middle of like a very intense
recording project, even like UM when the festival was happening,
we were trying to coordinate. We were able to get
a bunch of the No Music for Ice t shirts
on the ground to to festival attendees and sort of
explained to them, like why this is a problem. UM.
And that was all going on while I was at
Sonic Ranch. So I taped like a local news segment,
(59:26):
actually weirdly over stipe, like before the quarantine started. I
hadn't done something like that before. UM. I taped like
a Vegas news segment while I was mixing, like I
gotta go outside one second, just to talk about why
no one should be at this festival. And for the
most part, media didn't cover it. They didn't touch it.
We were leading the list of press names and it
(59:47):
was all like I'm the cannabis reporter for a college
and like Reno UM. So it was it was funny
to see it basically flopped. But a lot of the
people who are involved with No Music Ice has kind
of moved over to this Union of Musicians and Allied
Workers which launched in March UM and we're sort of
involved in a number of different projects that are not
(01:00:09):
only like trying to secure more ethical pay and treatment
for for music workers, but also um making clear our
stances on human rights abuses like this and why musicians
shouldn't collaborate with companies who choose to engage in them.
So it's been it's been a nice group to be
part of, and I'm really psyched on a lot of
(01:00:31):
the projects that we're working on. That's awesome. Yeah, I
mean I I don't really know the ins and outs
of all this stuff and how people are getting paid.
I mean, one thing I was hearing from musicians was
just like, oh, well, Amazon's platform like Amazon Music, not
necessarily I don't know about the streaming platform, but like
it's one of the lower paid. Uh, it's one of
(01:00:51):
the lower pays per like streamer or sale of any
of the online music retailers, but pretty abysmal, like for
sales you m m, they take one of the highest cuts. Wow,
I mean that's not surprising. I know, more books and
movies and yeah, you know their a monopoly. Yeah, it's
it's one of these things where it's just like that.
(01:01:13):
That's actually like kind of my biggest guilt point not Amazon.
I've basically removed Amazon from my life, but like Spotify
and all these other all the other streaming platforms and stuff,
it's just really I mean, I use it too, But
I also recognized that they could absolutely afford to pay
people a fair rate per stream and have chosen you too.
(01:01:33):
And I'm glad that a lot of people are starting
to talk about that. And I'm glad that. Um there's
a whole streaming subcommittee in in the Union that I'm
not part of. I work with the Venues UM Corner,
which is about basically trying to to make venues more
safe for patrons, workers, musicians, etcetera, UM, and a couple
(01:01:55):
other points. But the streaming of people have been really
really working on a campaign to basically request hire rates
for for the musicians such are part of the platform.
The other thing that the streaming services don't do is
like credits. So, um, there's all kinds of things they
could do to improve how people get paid from from
every part of the record and they have not done that.
(01:02:16):
It seems so crucial now too, because it's just like, oh,
you cut out to any way we're making any money. Yeah,
you have you done any like live stream shows or
zoom shows. I've mostly been avoiding it because I don't
even before this, I hate to play solo. It's just
like not fun for me. And there's now the component
where you have to like film and record yourself, so
(01:02:38):
I not only have to like produce a video, but
I have to like engineer and mix the song of
something I don't even like doing. So I've mostly been
saying no. But I did just do a big project
um that it took me like a week to get done,
where I did a full band set. It was hell,
but it's done, and maybe now that I know how
to do it, I'll subject myself to it again. It
(01:02:59):
just like like aside from the work of on the
musician side of like making your your perform making your
performance or whatever is, it's just like it isn't the
whole point of live stuff that you're getting. You know,
you're there's an exchange of energy between. It's a very
dry and weird but yeah, I mean this was fun
because I got to at least play with my bandmates
(01:03:21):
just like you know, removed in time and space. Yeah.
Oh um, well, thank you so much for coming by
the show this. Yeah, I'm so glad we finally had
you on uh, and everybody check out Haunted Painting. It's
really great, Like it's just genuine like there's so many
(01:03:42):
earworms in this album. It's just fantastic. Thank you. I
wish we'd got to do a video on it, but
I know I know next one. Yeah, you got like
we didn't even get into it. But you've been like
one of the most innovative music video like making people
right now too. It's like you really got over that
that COVID production ups. Look about they all took so
(01:04:06):
much longer than any music video I've done. Just yeah,
but no, it's like such a it paid off because
you're just like, how did you do that? It's so great? Uh?
And we put a song from your album on the
October Nightcall mix. Yeah, spooky Halloween times. So Sadie, where
(01:04:27):
can people find you online? Well? I have the best
U r L you can imagine. It's SAD thirteen, which
is spelled s A D one three dot horse What
it's dot horse. I didn't even know that there was
dot horse, but as soon as I knew, I was like,
(01:04:48):
I can't be sad third team dot com anymore. Um
and forwards. Um, I'm extremely overactive on all the social
media of platforms. Also at You're great. You're great on
Twitter great, follow you are, thank you, thank you, as
are you well. Thanks so much for being on the show. Yeah,
(01:05:11):
it was really fun and thank you for listening to
Night Call. You can find us on social media. We're
on Twitter at night Call pod and Instagram at Facebook
at Night Call Podcast. We should leave us a review
on iTunes if you are listening on iTunes, or even
if you're not listening to iTunes. We love a review.
Give us a nice review. It helps me more people
(01:05:31):
find our show and of course I'm Scar. If you
aren't already wherever you get your podcasts, you can also
join us on our Patreon. We're in Patreon at www
dot patreon dot com slash Nightcall, where you can get
our newsletter, our mix tapes, our bonus episodes. We've got
all sorts of pot stuff there for you and we
shall see you all next week. Thanks for listening. Bye
(01:05:54):
bye s
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