Stereo Embers: The Podcast

“The J.D. Salinger Of New Wave?” It’s a fair question. When Bailey sang for the Thompson Twins in the ‘80s, he was everywhere. But in the ‘90s, he was nowhere to be found. Like Salinger, his hiatus was by choice. After years fronting one of the biggest bands in the world, Bailey was nowhere to be found. But while Salinger’s absence from the creative life was an inexplicable mystery punctuated by occasional sightings and not a word to the press, Bailey’s was more domestic. After the Thompson Twins’ demise, he married his bandmate Alannah Currie, had a few kids and moved to Currie’s native New Zealand to start a family. The couple recorded two albums as Babble and then Currie gave up music for environmental activism and art, while Bailey spent his time on scoring film soundtracks and producing other acts. After a 2014 appearance at the Rewind South Festival where he played Thompson Twins songs for the first time in 27 years, Bailey got the pop bug again and rediscovered his love of the paradigm. His first solo album is called Science Fiction and it’s a lush pop wonder filled with big hooks and Bailey’ s trademark voice. Bringing to mind Bowie, Roxy Music and Crowded House’s Together Alone, Science Fiction is stirring and rhythmic. Bailey talks to Alex about dropping out of pop music, learning to write 3 minute songs again and what his record collection was like in 1980. He also talks about The Sex Pistols, why Science Fiction is hopeful, and whether or not he’ll be writing more pop songs in the future.

“David J Says Peter Murphy Is Keeping Everyone In Stitches” Although it’s hard to imagine the Dark Prince of Goth is also a fountain of chuckles, David J says his bandmate Peter Murphy has been in fine form and keeping everyone laughing while on tour. The two former Bauhaus members have teamed up with a full band for an extensive tour to commemorate 40 years of Bauhaus and they’re crushing it everywhere they go. The former Love and Rockets/Bauhaus bassist/singer talks to Alex about how his reunion with Murphy came about, his relationship with former bandmates Daniel Ash and brother Kevin Haskins and why he’ll never retire. He also talks about reading Ian Curtis’ love letters, the sadness of the Beach Boys and his work with the Jazz Butcher Conspiracy. Alex also tells David J that he’s interviewed 3/4 of Bauhaus and now just needs Peter Murphy to complete the Goth Grand Slam… Photo Credit: Judy Lyon

“A Punk Who Reads Proust” As a member of The Heartbreakers, Walter Lure may have tenured in one of the most hedonistic, wild and downright feral punk bands of all time, but there was a lot more to this native New Yorker than met the eye. For one, before Lure joined the Heartbreakers he had finished college, graduating from Fordham with an English major and a minor in Chemistry. Lure survived the Heartbreakers and went from being a punk rocker to being a stockbroker. Not a normal punk trajectory, but Lure is a man of great texture and he speaks frankly and honestly to Alex about working on Wall Street, getting off drugs and how a nice college boy found himself in one of the wildest bands on the planet. He also talks about Johnny Thunders, his relationship with Richard Hell and why you shouldn’t trust anything Nick Kent writes. And speaking of writing, the interview ends with a reflection on Proust….

"When You're At Your Darkest Point, Write A Children’s Book” Everyone copes with the darkness a different way. For Shannon McArdle, after her divorce to Mendoza Line guitarist Timothy Bracy, she lost her band and her marriage. So she did the only thing she could at such a bleak moment in her life: she wrote a book for kids. But that’s not all she did. Roaring back from the abyss with the stone-cold classic Summer Of The Whore, McArdle announced her solo career in a big way. The follow-up Fear The Dream Of Axes was no less lethal and now her new album A Touch Of Class completes her winning sonic hat trick. In this interview McArdle talks to Alex about unwanted guests, hiking with her sister and why she might ditch it all and move to Ireland. She also talks about the making of A Touch Of Class, teaching high school English and why she thinks she’s a boring person (she’s not).

“Danny O’Reilly Of The Coronas Returns!” We’ve been at it here at Stereo Embers: The Podcast for a little under a year and we’re proud to announce our first return guest. The Coronas’ Danny O’Reilly sat down last year with Alex for a frank discussion about self-doubt and it remains to date the episode we’ve gotten the most letters about. That a high profile musician like O’Reilly was willing to talk about the doubts he had in his creative process was particularly resonant with our audience and many of you wrote to say you go through the very same thing. Now eight months later O’Reilly is back to talk to Alex about his love of the National, paying Lollapalooza and how he spent his summer. He also talks about The Coronas’ new EP, watching the World Cup and why he’s been more creative than ever.

“Going Through A Ghost Phase” After getting divorced and moving out West with her young daughter, singer/songwriter Jessi Williams found herself going through a ghost phase. Whether she was reading or writing about ghosts, that seemed to be the subject matter she’d landed on for the time being. And Williams’ new EP with her band Coyote is full of those ghosts—they weave in and out of the five songs that comprise the self-titled effort with a mysterious spectral muscle. In these compositions Williams surveys the broken landscapes of our pasts—romance, friendships, and shifting geographies—and she finds that all of them have their own species of ghosts that need to be reckoned with. In this conversation, Williams talks to Alex about motherhood, sleep paralysis and reading Frankenstein. They also discuss her friendship with Nashville singer/songwriter Margo Price, the #Metoo movement and whether it’s easier to be creative early in the morning or late at night.

“Roger Joseph Manning Jr. And I Love Elvis Costello For Different Reasons” Roger Joseph Manning Jr. is one of the great sonic architects in modern music. From his work in Jellyfish to playing in Beck’s band to his own solo material, Manning continually evinces an inherent and complex understanding of music composition. So it’s no surprise that when he listens to Elvis Costello he doesn’t really hear the lyrics—he thinks of them as part of the song’s instrumentation. But for Alex, who’s an author he only hears the lyrics. That said, Roger and Alex talk not only about their love of Costello but how they appreciate him in totally different ways. Manning also talks to Alex about his new EP Glamping, how he marveled at Andy Sturmer’s genius and his tenuous relationship with writing lyrics.

“Jerry Slavonia Doesn’t Light Candles When He Writes Songs” In this interview singer/songwriter Jerry Slavonia, who fronts the L.A. outfit The Honey Cane, tells Alex that his creative process has less to do with nuance like lighting candles and adjusting aesthetic, and more to do with letting the songs flow through him. While Slavonia admits that sometimes that approach requires patience, his band’s debut album Make Wonderful was clearly worth the wait. A cascading eleven song collection, Make Wonderful is an album that’s redolent with rich, rootsy rock, harmonic intelligence and wave-riding jams that roll smoothly into the stratosphere with a spacey sonic shimmer. That said, this album is a modern California classic, fitting perfectly between The Grateful Dead’s Shakedown Street and Counting Crows’ August And Everything After. In this chat, Slavonia talks to Alex about growing up with the Crows’ Dan Vickrey, laboring over the sequencing of Make Wonderful and whether or not he’d play in Des Moines….

“Graham Bonnet Likes Doo-Wop” That’s a fact that might confuse metal fans, but the legendary singer not only talks to Alex about his love of doo-wop, the Beach Boys and Billy Joel, he touches on his departure from Rainbow, his lasting power as a vocalist and his penchant for perfectionism. One of the most enduring, muscular and downright feral singers of all-time, over the course of his long career Graham Bonnet has always prowled the stage with pure metal menace. A slinky red wire of a frontman who has a land-clearing hard rock howl, Bonnet also tells Alex about being a self-taught singer, why he grew up listening to opera and how long its been since he’s spoken to Ritchie Blackmore.

“Tony Kaye Plays The Net Now” Tony Kaye was a baseliner on the tennis court for years, but then he figured out the efficacy of playing the net and he was hooked. Kaye was hooked on music at an early age, starting his formal classical piano training at the tender age of four. When he signed on to be an original member of Yes in 1968, his classical roots were long behind him. He’d been playing jazz for years and after seeing Graham Bond stomp away on the Hammond, Kaye realized that playing rock and roll meant not treating his organ like a piano. In this conversation, Kaye talks to Alex about his relationship to his instrument, what it was like playing clubs in Germany at the same time as The Beatles, and why he admires Geoff Downes so much. Kaye also talks about why he’s chosen isolation, why friendships are hard to maintain in rock and roll and what he thinks of the #Yes50 tour.