Larry, with an 'L'

Angry email of the week

In response to this:

FEEDBACK:
thanks for giving us the game with your errent prediction. Also, we are wise enough know that if you live under sea level one should make sure your dikes and damn better not be left to rot.

Angry email of the week

FEEDBACK:
I am now closer to death because I wasted valuable time reading your article when I could have watched a WNBA game or an episode of Ninja Warrior on the G4 channel.

fun trivia question, courtesy of dad

“Name the four universities that graduated both a U.S. President and a Super Bowl-winning quarterback. Hints: one is really easy, one is reasonably easy with a little bit of thought, one is figure-out-able for avid readers of the WSJ editorial pages and one is impossible.”

Answer tomorrow.

UPDATE: Forgot to post yesterday. The answer:

Stanford: Herbert Hoover, John Elway/Jim Plunkett

US Naval Academy: Jimmy Carter, Roger Staubach

Michigan: Gerald Ford, Tom Brady

Miami (Ohio): Benjamin Harrison, Ben Roethlisberger

Separately, I was not previously aware that this country was once led by an individual named Benjamin Harrison.

The LD five-word movie review: Watchmen

So very, very, very long.

Meanwhile, I owe a bunch of these for flicks I saw during my late-December/early-January hibernation. So: Tyson (“As one-sided as Tyson/Bruno”), Charlie Wilson’s War (“Too glib for my taste”), Up In The Air (“Acceptably glib for my taste”) and Julie & Julia (“I seriously love my wife”). Three books you should read: Blood’s A Rover, Dear American Airlines, Another Bullshit Night In Suck City. The Tom Petty live CD is road-trip-certified and I heard that one Billy Joel song just before and it made me happy.

That is all.

Freedy Johnston: The LD.com interview

So LD favorite Freedy Johnston has a new record, Rain On The City, coming out on Tuesday. And how better to celebrate than by serially harassing his publicist until he consents to a quick phone interview?

Freedy was kind enough to toss me a bone and graciously chatted for 25 minutes yesterday afternoon. The interview was almost certainly a hell of a lot more fun for me than it was for him. I avoided “Chris Farley Show” territory… barely. Hopefully it’ll prove interesting to Freedyphiles as well as fans of singer/songwriter types who are struggling to be heard in today’s world of American Idols and homogenized radio. In particular, Freedy has a really intelligent, progressive take on the commoditization of music. That part is about halfway down.

Anyway, the transcript has been edited for brevity, clarity and, on the interviewer’s part, coherence. Buy Rain On The City here or here.

*****

LD: Not in any negative sense – but what took you so long to get Rain On The City out? I know you were mentioning it a few years back at shows.

Freedy: (laughs) Oy-yoy-yoy. Who knows? It’s done. As it says in the bio, I tried to make it myself a couple times but I didn’t quite get it right.

What were some of the challenges along the way?

I don’t know. I was as baffled by it as anybody else. It just wasn’t working out. I don’t know. I had trouble finishing songs for a long time. It’s sort of like overcoming a disability. Now I’m in a much more steady work cycle, if that’s the way to say it.

When I was younger, I just had the ability, for whatever reason, to finish songs: boom, boom, boom. For a long time now, it has not been easy. But I got through that. I’m back to my old ways. I was just working on a song before this interview.

Now I feel like a jackass for interrupting you in the middle of a writing session…

Not at all, not at all. Don’t feel guilty. It’s both of our jobs.

So what got you over the hump?

I was just kind of keeping at it. I wasn’t going to let it get me. I moved to Nashville for a while, for a year. I was hanging with guys there for whom not finishing a song is a weird thing. When they get together to work on a song, it will be done. It’s just assumed.

That helped me. I didn’t do too many co-writes, but when I did it was really refreshing. “This song is done. We did our best. These are the best words we’ve got.”

The new record is on Bar/None, which is where you started out. How does it compare to the major-label thing?

I don’t want to be too sort of bubble-gummy about it, but it’s good to work with those guys again. To be honest, there’s really no difference in making the record under either system. When I made this record, it was just like making a record for Elektra. Same studio. Maybe it took a little longer. People from Elektra were looking over my shoulder and poking around the studio.

When the record’s done, there’s no difference, either. You hire a publicist, you try to get some interviews and reviews, you go out on the road. It’s the same thing. Elektra had nicer offices. I would get a gift at Christmas (laughs). I’m sure I paid some kind of recoupable fee for that gift.

What’d you get?

I don’t want to gift gossip. I can’t even remember. It would be a basket. There’s no sense making fun of them, because I never get gifts. When you get a Christmas gift from your boss, that’s fine.

Hey, that world still exists. The music biz has changed, but they’re still there. There’s still a lot of music around. Maybe the office is a little smaller (laughs).

That environment – how have things changed for a guy like you? You’re a critical favorite, you have a hard-core base of fans, but there aren’t radio stations around anymore…

It’s definitely a different thing. But you still have a release date. At least for the next year, you still have a hard-copy CD with a cover that you sell to a person. Up to now, still, for guys like me, that’s what you do. I don’t know if that’s the future. Maybe the future is some other thing, like you just make singles.

Your question is, how does a guy like me make it? I have a publisher. They have a film-placement office. They look through my songs and say, “This one might work…” That’s the future for guys like me. To go on TV – I haven’t done much of that for a long time, so it’s good to be back trying to do it.

Of course, I have pretty little overhead. So I get by (laughs). I’m doing it, man. I’m perfectly happy.

[This is where LD embarks on a stunningly disjointed ramble about digital music, complete with the phrase “beaming yourself to people via iTunes.” The question should have been: How do you go about embracing the digital boom?, or something. Anyway.]

There’s no choice as far as whether I want to embrace it. I was talking to my friend Colin [Brooks], who’s in a band called The Band of Heathens in Austin. He was talking about how they were doing a seven-song thing – he wanted to give it away at shows. And the rest of the band was just adamant: “No way we’re going to give this stuff away. This is crazy.” He said, “It’s going to cost us 500 bucks to make or whatever. It’s going to more than pay for itself.”

First of all, you put the songs out there. Someone will hear it. They might want to put it on their radio station, they might want to put it in their independent film. Who knows? You just gotta get it out there. The money you make from it is people coming to see you live and buying your t-shirt. The music has value only if people have it in their hands and they’re listening to it, is the point. You gotta just basically hand it to them: “Here’s the record.”

Take Prince: you’d come to see him live, he would give you the CD. Genius! Don’t sell it, just hand it to them. And they will buy your t-shirt, buy your hot sauce, your salsa, and whatever the hell else you’re selling. Your stuffed animals. You know what I mean? I don’t want to be a huckster about it. I’m trying to write really good songs, but I’m also trying to pay the bills.

I wish I was a writer. Books still exist as something that you buy. You can’t rip off a book. [LD note: This is where my wife, who is a book publisher, will let out a derisive snort.] My medium is rip-off-able. You have to roll with it, basically. I’m going to have a whole bunch of other stuff to sell you (laughs). The main thing, again, is that people will put the music on and have it to listen to.

There’s so much music, God. Don’t you agree? There are so many people trying – it just really gets me down sometimes. I have to not think about it sometimes.

You mention t-shirts. That Freedy Johnston pancake t-shirt has incredible longevity.

It was designed by a guy named Dave Richmond – I’m trying to find him, frankly, I hope he reads this. He designed it. We’ve had that one for years. Who knows? People love it. I like pancakes. Everyone does. There’s no person I’ve ever met who doesn’t love pancakes. You’re on everybody’s side right there.

With Rain On The City, is it fair to say that the record is more straightforward than a lot of what you’ve done?

The songs or the writing? I don’t know. I’m just doing what I do. With this record, the final mixes were done probably almost two years ago. That’s a long time.

I don’t know what to say about that. The best songwriters I met in Nashville and Austin, they think the best song you can write is the simplest, most direct, elegant song. That’s truly the goal, anybody knows that. Hank Williams songs are that. I aspire towards that.

I also listen to my fans, honestly. They’ve said, “Freedy, you know, you used to write songs differently. Nothing rhymed.” Basically it was me, pretentious, just writing, I don’t know, different types of writing. “Why don’t you write more songs like that?” I listen to that. You gotta serve your public. I like the idea of making the most compact, perfect pop song in the world, but I have to remember that I used to make these other kind of odd, not-pop songs. If that’s what the people want…

What kind of things do you hear from fans, whether it’s at shows or when they come up to you on the street or whatever?

Oh, I don’t know. What any other musician hears. My performing, my guitar-playing has really improved in the last couple of years, which means a lot to me. Playing with these guys every week in Austin, it was very intense. It was a leave-it-all-on-the-stage kind of thing. I loved getting back into that.

Every gig has just been better and better and I’m loving it. I’m completely reenergized. I’m not really over the world about it, because I’ve been down this road before. I know how this shit goes. I’m not really optimistic about anything. I’m just happy to be doing it and not be in constant pain and so forth. Worried, blah blah blah.

So the time in Nashville and Austin helped?

Those two towns, you have to get to know them. I had to give each town a year, to soak in the vibe, I guess. I was really grateful and really flattered. I went to both towns and had real fans there, other musicians. In Austin, there are so many good bands. “Oh, this new guy comes to town?” You have to prove yourself.

I may not make much money, but it’s nice to hear the compliments. Those were things that helped me get over troubles or worries I was going through, when I realized how loved I was. It helped me work.

What’s your favorite song, or your favorite stretch, in your catalog?

I like playing them, all of them, but I don’t listen to my own music often. I come around to Can You Fly. There’s some true desperation from the guy on that record.

The other record I like listening to is Blue Days Black Nights. I was a pretty fortunate dude, playing with the great Jim Keltner and the great T-Bone Burnett. Recording “The Farthest Lights”, there was this real moment when we got the take we used. It was one of those classic studio moments: the producer looked at the drummer, the drummer looked at me. I am a lucky guy. That is the kind of thing I would’ve dreamed about when I was listening to Steely Dan at age 18.

Is there a song or record that you listen to now and think, maybe I should’ve done this a little differently?

I’m not going to say that. That’s too easy. I don’t think that would help at all.

The last thing I want to bug you about is the future. What’s up next?

Well, I’m going to the studio tomorrow to work on a new song. It’s great to be back in the studio; I wish I was good enough to be a studio musician, but I don’t have the chops. Then we’ll play some shows and who knows? I want to get back on the old [making a record every] one-and-a-half years, two years schedule I had for a while. Hopefully I’ll have something 18 months from now.

nice and not angry but vaguely racially stereotypical email of the week

FEEDBACK:
Re: True Yankee Loved your piece. Insightful, funny, driven by intelligence and a great knowledge of baseball history. Halladay to Yankees? Sure hope so. Competitive balance will be restored in five years, when fans stay home and TV ratings suck. The Boss will just about ruin the sport, but not quite. Larry, you’ve got what appears to be a shortened-down Polak name, but the wit and charm of the Irish. God bless.