The Creative Asylum Podcast

I moved to Seattle in 1981 and met Charles Peterson the following year, pretty sure it was through U-Men, but you know - memory... He was already shooting pics and had a camera everywhere he went — front row, flash popping, catching the sweat and blur of bands nobody outside Seattle had heard of yet. Years later, as Sub Pop's de facto house photographer (at the same time that I was working there - EARLY on), he didn't just do...

From Keith Moon parading in an SS uniform to Siouxsie Sioux flashing a swastika armband, rock 'n' roll has been flirting with fascist iconography for decades — and nobody's called it out with this much rigor until now. Award-winning music historian Daniel Rachel — former musician turned best-selling author whose previous books include Too Much Too Young: The 2 Tone Records Story, Isle of Noises: Conversations with Great...

She was the red-haired firebrand fronting Lush when shoegaze was a dirty word and "the scene that celebrates itself" was getting mocked in the British press. Lush's demise was a story partially of pain, but decades later, Miki Berenyi is back at it and is playing some of the most compelling music of her career. In this episode, the singer/guitarist behind much of Lush's gossamer dream pop and shoegaze guitar pop talks about the ban...

When the republic is on fire and the algorithm keeps handing Zuckerberg a bucket of gasoline, who do you call? Meet Jesse Duquette — Chicago-based political cartoonist, creator of The Daily Don, and the most shadow-banned cartoonist on META — a distinction he's earned by doing what the mainstream press too often won't: holding a funhouse mirror up to the authoritarian clown show currently occupying the White House.

F...

If the L.A. music scene of the early '80s had a secret weapon, it was the Philadelphia-born Steve Berlin. Having cut his musical teeth playing R&B with some of the City of Brotherly Love's finest sessioneers before heading West and landing in the ranks of the Blasters — one of the most ferocious roots-rock outfits to ever come out of Southern California, Berlin had bigger wolves to run with. He took leave from the Blaster...

If the story of underground/industrial music had a patron saint, it might as well be Chris Connelly. Born and raised in Edinburgh, Scotland, Connelly began his journey in the early 1980s with his band Fini Tribe. In the early 1980s, be became deeply entrenched in the universe of Chicago's legendary Wax Trax! Records — the incubator of industrial music's most celebrated and defining sounds. After meeting Al Jourgensen in Londo...

Indie filmmakers are a special breed. 

What happens when a husband and wife and their two young daughters choose to ditch Hollywood and load everything into an RV to make movies entirely on their own terms? You get The Adams Family — no, not the ones that probably first comes to mind. Toby Poser, John Adams and their daughters Zelda and Lulu, have built one of the most fiercely independent filmmaking operations in the...

Before he ever put brush to canvas, Chet Zar was building monsters for Hollywood. Over a career spanning more than two decades, Zar worked as a makeup effects artist, sculptor, painter, digital effects artist, and creature designer, racking up credits on some of the most visually iconic films of his era — Hellboy I & II, The Ring I & II, X-Men 3, Planet of the Apes, and Men in Black II. He also served as special makeu...

Some artists make music. Some make art. Jon Langford makes history — and then records it and paints it. 

Born in Newport, Wales, Langford studied Fine Art at Leeds University alongside future members of Gang of Four — and has spent nearly five decades proving that punk, country, folk as a founding member of the legendary Leeds punk band the Mekons.

Founded in 1977, the Mekons became one of the last original p...

Few artists have left as indelible a mark on experimental and avant-garde music as Jarboe. She rose to prominence as a core member of the legendary New York experimental rock band Swans in 1985, remaining one of the group's two constant members alongside founder Michael Gira until their dissolution in 1997. During that era, her presence on acknowledged Swans classics like Children of God (1987), White Light from the Mouth of Infini...

Are you a fan of comics? When I first discovered Love and Rockets, it was an absolute revelation, so getting to have a conversation with Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez — the legendary Los Angeles-based brothers behind Love and Rockets, one of the most celebrated and enduring comic book series in American literary history, needless to say I was deeply honored and excited to get to speak with both brothers together.

Since self-...

There are few things more thrilling than getting to have a conversation with one of your musical heroes from your own musican youth. In this episode, a conversation with David J — bassist, songwriter, producer, poet, and one of the true architects of post-punk and gothic rock. As a co-founder of Bauhaus, David helped create one of the most influential and groundbreaking bands of the late 1970s and early '80s. He later went on...

Have you ever asked yourself what is the purpose of art and creativity in our lives? Dutch artist, novelist, and activist Adriaanse (Bette A.) has spent her career asking exactly that question — and living the answers both in her day-to-day life as well as in the book that she collaborated with Brian Eno on, "What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory." 

Born in Amsterdam and trained at the Rietveld Art Academy, Bette studie...

She screamed "Everything's fine!" through the MTV universe of 1996, and the world screamed it right back. Tracy Bonham is today's guest on the Creative Asylum. A classically trained violinist, a two-time Grammy nominee, and the singular force behind the era-defining alt-rock anthem "Mother Mother," the lead track on her major label debut The Burdens of Being Upright, Bonham is an artist who refused to allow the downsides of major l...

Tough, sultry and fearless, Gina Gershon took an instance of cult infamy and transformed it into a celebration of cinema, sometimes gritty and always distinctly her own. Gershon is a true Hollywood original, with a career spanning literal decades with an iconic filmography that includes Showgirls, Bound, Face/Off, The Insider and The Player, one of my personal favorites from the iconoclastic director Robert Altman. She has acted in...

In this episode, I have a conversation with with Dave Catching — legendary Joshua Tree musician, producer/engineer, and one of the key figures behind the evolution of the desert rock sound. Best known for his work at the legendary Rancho de la Luna, Dave has helped create music with Queens of the Stone Age (who he was an original member of), Eagles of Death Metal, Foo Fighters, Arctic Monkeys, Iggy Pop, Mark Lanegan, and so m...

This is the first time we've had a comic in the Creative Asylum, and I'm still delighted with who it's with! In this episode I got to have a conversation with the unstoppable Margaret Cho — comedian, actor, writer, musician, activist, LGBTQIA+ icon, feminist firestarter, and one of the few people in American comedy who has never once mistaken “polite” as necessary tool for acceptance in a world full of intolerance...

This episode is a special one for me, as it's with Gary Taxali a huge personal favorite artist of mine, somebody I've been following since the '90s. Gary is a Toronto-based artist, illustrator, and visual satirist whose unmistakable retro-pop style has made him one of the most celebrated illustrators working today. 

He's done work with The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, GQ, TIME, Newsweek, and The New York Times and has done co...

In this episode, I spend some time with an old friend and one of my favorite conversationalists, the legendary (and always funny) Pacific Northwest producer and musician Steve Fisk. In a behind-the-scenes candid chat with one of the architects of some of the region’s most adventurous and influential music, we discuss his working with Nirvana, Soundgarden, Beat Happening, Unwound, Screaming Trees and Carseat Headrest. Known fo...