KP, the singer-songwriter at the helm of Black Belt Eagle Scout, joins the LSQ pod to talk about their beautiful new album, The Land, The Water, The Sky, recorded as KP was transitioning back to living in their homelands in the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, in LaConner, Washington. We talk about how KP first got into playing and writing music, learning to play Für Elise by ear on the piano as a child, figuring out that their favorite guitars are the ones that sound the warmest, learning to play drums at Portland's Rock n' Roll Camp for Girls and later teaching at the camp, getting involved in the house show scene, loving post-rock, being inspired by the musical flexibility of the great Buffy Sainte-Marie, and more.

Ryan Lott and Ian Chang from the experimental trio Son Lux talk about their Academy Award-nominated work on the score and soundtrack for the beautiful, epic film Everything Everywhere All At Once, which is as brilliantly unclassifiable as the movie itself. Their score is nominated for Best Original Score and the end credits tune (a duet between Mitski and David Byrne, who cowrote the tune with Son Lux) is up for Best Music (Original Song) at the upcoming 95th Annual Academy Awards. They also delve into their personal histories with music, from their childhood music lessons and impactful discoveries of artists including Radiohead, Jimi Hendrix, Ray Charles, Prince, Miles Davis, Jeff Buckley, Seal and more. And Lott narrates Son Lux's development from a solo project that he began in 2008 as a creative outlet while he was working as a composer for a dance company, to the full-fledged touring band and collaborative unit thanks to the addition in 2014 of Chang and their bandmate Rafiq Bhatia. 

Post-punk pioneer Gina Birch (bassist and founding member of UK band The Raincoats) joins the LSQ podcast on the eve of releasing her first ever solo album, the refreshing and irreverent collection I Play My Bass Loud, produced by Youth and out this week via Third Man. In episode 85, Birch talks about important music memories from her childhood (hearing her brother's Bob Marley records through the bedroom wall, seeing The Slits in concert and realizing that girls could also play in bands, and more), the early days of The Raincoats and how embracing their inexperience and enthusiastically presenting songs that were still "in the process of becoming" was a key part of their approach. We also talk about her work in visual arts, as a music video and short film director, and more recently via large scale paintings like the one you see a portion of on the new album's cover. Get a copy of I Play My Bass Loud and check out Birch's upcoming tour dates here. 

For the first episode of Season 6 of the LSQ podcast, I was honored to welcome an artist whose words and music I have admired for nearly thirty years now: the Mountain Goats' John Darnielle. In episode 84, John shares fascinating insight into his early creative inklings, the music he loved as a kid, and how he went from clinging to his Aristocats soundtrack to embracing Elton John and the Bay City Rollers and eventually unlocking a secret passion for heavy metal. He also describes his transition from writing poetry on its own to combining his verses with music, initially singing haunting melodies over the sound of static from his black & white TV, and then developing the boombox recording method he used when he started as the Mountain Goats in the mid-Nineties. And we dish about how he got involved with Rian Johnson's new mystery series, Poker Face. (He wrote the music for it with Jamey Jasta from Hatebreed, and also has a small acting role.) Darnielle and the Mountain Goats' Matt Douglas are currently on tour in the U.S. as a duo. Get dates and tickets here. 

U.K. artist Kae Tempest, on the first time they ever spit rhymes in public, at age 15: “I remember pushing through the crowd. I remember the tunnel vision. I remember reaching for the mic. I remember, like, the heat, the fever — your whole body beginning to like go into almost like unbearable minute precision-detail slow motion, and then the words. That was 20 years ago. More! And it's the same feeling that I have each time I'm about to approach the mic. It's this, like, deep connection to the word. And I remember the place transformed, people transformed, I transformed. And then from that night, until today, I haven't thought about anything else but rhymes. When you receive that much inspiration from something, and you're able to suddenly give something back, you're able to publish a book or make a record, and you can contribute — you can stand on that line that goes all the way back and your contribution can be felt going forwards. It's the most incredible kind of epiphany moment of achieving balance or things being right. It's my, kind of, life-force, really.” Kae’s latest album, The Line Is A Curve, is a powerful collection of musical vignettes that explore our drive for connection, and it’s one of my favorite LPs of 2022. Kae is on tour in Europe until mid-December and in Australia and New Zealand in early 2023. Get tickets here.

Bartees Strange reflects on important moments during his musical development, including: Learning to sing alongside his opera and gospel singer mother, who brought him to most of her performances as a child, until eventually he was singing alongside her. “There's something magical being a child in an opera Hall, hearing sound without microphones, bouncing off of the wood, bouncing off of the space, and then looking up on stage and seeing like a 5’2” black woman who's your mom just fill it. And it's like, ‘I know not everybody's moms do this.’” Seeing the hardcore band Norma Jean in a church basement when he was in middle school, and realizing that music — especially live music — has the power to make an entire room full of people feel an energetic connection. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is just a music thing. Like, this is just what happens when music works, regardless of a classical space, hardcore space, or like a gospel space, like music can just do this. And I was just like, ‘how do I wield this magical power?’” Moving to New York after a stint working in politics in Washington, D.C., and finding inspiration in the music scene he plugged into there. “I grew up in a very rural area of Oklahoma and dealt with a lot of racism and questions about who I was and who I was allowed to be, and I don’t think I was fully comfortable in my body until I moved to New York City and I started meeting all these artists — like are you familiar with the band L’Rain, Taja Cheek’s band, and Kia and Melanie Charles? These black artists in Brooklyn who I honestly fell in love with and was so inspired by, because I always felt so alone and singular. My whole life, I was the only black kid. And in my musical space, I was often the only black person. And when I was making records, I was often the only black person in the studio, and people didn’t listen to me, they didn’t think I knew what I was talking about. I was struggling with even trusting my gut on knowing if I knew what I was talking about. I had listened to the gaslighting so much that I don’t think I even knew who I was until I saw those artists and I was able to connect with them on a level where I was like, ‘Oh I’m like you. I’m not weird. Actually this is what *we* do.’ And being around them it kind of created the space for me to spread my wings and try some stuff and feel comfortable sharing music with people who understood my experience and where I was coming from, and then once that happened, I was kind of able to lay it all out.” How his goals have evolved between his 2020 debut album, Live Forever, and his recently released sophomore LP, Farm To Table. “Honestly, I wanted to kind of show people it wasn't a fluke, like, I could do it again. And that was also why I put it out so fast. I was like, ‘I’m not letting three years pass before I drop another one. Because I don't want people to think ‘Oh, like, that was cute,’ I want them to be like, ‘Oh, Bartees, this dude is a pretty serious cat. He’s gonna stick around.’” What he has planned for his first major headlining tour in North America, and why you have to see openers Pom Pom Squad, They Hate Change and Spring Silver. The tour is on the road until 12/19/22. Get tickets HERE.

On the heels of their excellent latest LP, LA indie-pop trio MUNA (Katie Gavin, Josette Maskin and Naomi McPherson) call into the LSQ podcast from the road, to talk about their individual experiences falling in love with music as kids, how they came together to form MUNA, and how their approach has evolved over the years. The original ethos remains: “We decided to make music that made us feel good, for sure, but that also had an audience in mind, and that could be useful to an audience,” Katie says.  Adds Josette: “Songs that can be used to dance to or that can be used as a mantra to say to yourself when you’re at a really low place. When we say we had an audience in mind, people who need to hear those things are the audience we’ve always had in mind, and that’s always been a guiding force. MUNA has become for the people, and I think that’s why we’ve been able to do this for so long.”  *** After releasing a single I loved earlier this year called “Blocked,” the Womack Sisters (BG, Zeimani and Kucha) shared their debut EP, Legacy, in early September. When I caught up with them this summer, they had just pushed back the release a bit, so they could add their cover of “A Change Is Gonna Come,” the song made famous by their legendary grandfather, Sam Cooke. We chatted about what it was like growing up on the road with their parents, Womack & Womack, and how they went from roadies to back-up singers to forming their own group. They plan to release a debut LP next year.

This is a special bonus episode for LSQ listeners of a podcast I had an excellent time collaborating on, as producer, with alt-J. Things Will Get Better is a five-episode podcast miniseries that explores the U.K. band's early days, and the making of their incredible, groundbreaking debut album, An Awesome Wave, in honor of its tenth anniversary. Within the series, the band revisit Ash Grove, the old college house where they played their first gig and wrote songs like "Matilda" and "Breezeblocks," as well as other favorite haunts in Leeds; they discover and listen back to long lost demos, including for the song that lends the series its name and fan favorites such as "Portrait" and "Hiroshima"; they catch up with their longtime producer, Charlie Andrew, and their former bandmate, Gwil Sainsbury; and in the episode I'm sharing, I interview the band, LSQ-style, focusing on their childhood encounters with creativity and how their music practices and passions evolved from there. If you like this one, check out the others at anchor.fm/anawesomewave

"As young, upcoming artists, we aim to be the examples we saw, but as you grow in your artistry, you realize that example was only there to show you you could do it. Now it's time for you to take that example and interpret it into who you are. So, the less I tried to be like Lauryn [Hill], the more I could be Sampa. And the more I could see what I love, the stories I love to tell, the music I grew up on and love sharing, and the more I could solidify myself as an artist," says the Zambia-born Botswana-raised poet and rapper Sampa The Great, reflecting on her creative path, in episode 79 of LSQ. "And so that journey has continued and grown within the past six years, and I think it's taken a really beautiful turn in relocating back home. Because now the context isn't me trying to represent different groups of people in a country I wasn't raised in, to bring people something different than what's shown on the mainstream. You're bringing African artists to the mainstream in a country like Australia, that's huge work, and I know it was a huge weight for me, even though we broke a lot of walls. I realize it took a huge toll on me and it was a huge weight, that, when I relocated back home [to Zambia], that full-circle moment of being in a place where the dream actually started forced me to go back to the mindset of the kid who dreamt it, and how happy I was to express the music and share music, in general, without the opinions or weight of anything else, and really forced me to take a look into representing Sampa for a change, versus everybody else. I mean, everybody else didn't even ask me to represent them, if we're being honest. And just taking a chance to look at who I am outside of my music, my own happiness, and making sure that I actually love what I do. And those all are important ingredients to the world of self-discovery, and just being transparent with myself, and aiming to be my freest self are some of the thought processes that went into As Above, So Below." Sampa The Great's awesome new sophomore studio album, As Above, So Below, is out now. Tickets to her upcoming European headlining tour are available HERE.

One of the most influential guitarists and songwriters of all time, Johnny Marr (The Smiths, Electronic, The The, Modest Mouse, The Cribs) delves into major moments in his creative evolution, from discovering his love of guitar at age five to finding favorite artists like Marc Bolan and Patti Smith and The Only Ones as a teenager to joining his first band (Sister Ray; he was fourteen, playing with a group of adults) to the early days of The Smiths and how he dealt with the pressure of their fame, when it came to making The Queen Is Dead, in particular. He also explains what aspects of his songwriting practice he's retained over the years, and how he approached his excellent latest album, Fever Dreams, Pts. 1-4. Marr is on tour in North America this month. Get tickets here.