If you’re familiar with Bava, you already know the deal—good, bad, or ugly, it’s gonna be done with style. Ceilings stretch to the heavens, shadows lurk like chasms to another world, and bold fashion choices are made in this giallo oddity. It’s a psychological exploration of a killer, a suspenseful slasher, and a supernatural thriller rolled into one flawed-but-interesting package.

Meet John Harrington (Stephen Forsyth). He’s the head of a successful fashion house focusing on bridalwear. John’s got a problem. Well, two problems. One: his wife Mildred (Laura Betti) won’t give him the divorce he so badly wants. And two: he’s obsessed with uncovering the mystery surrounding his mother’s death, and the only thing that jogs his memory (a little at a time) is murdering brides-to-be. John is a self-proclaimed “paranoiac” and madman. His weapon of choice? If you guessed hatchet you’d be wrong. It’s a cleaver. Real shiny one, too. His favorite technique for getting rid of bodies is the incinerator located in his hothouse. Wanna spend some time with John? Suspicious Inspector Russell (Jesús Puente) sure does.

The opening credits are some of the coolest I’ve ever seen. A lovely orchestral piece plays as an animated montage of faces appear. Everything looks slightly corroded, like old photographs. It’s all blues with splashes of red like fresh blood spilling across the screen, stop motion style. Bava himself created this moody sequence.

We open on a train. A figure in black wearing a chain link belt (style, baby!) creeps through a corridor. We see a motionless boy further down. A hand slinks to a door handle, pauses. The figure’s meditative face is revealed—a clean shaven and well-kept man. We’re hit with a hazy flashback of a stairway and ascending footsteps, click clack click clack. Cut back to the man’s face, then to an over-the-shoulder shot of the boy looking out a dark window, his grim visage reflected like a ghostly omen. All the while a subtle, dissonant tune plays. Next thing ya know we’re on the other side of the door where a couple is making out, unaware of the intrusion. The woman’s wedding dress sits near some luggage. (By the way, these two are making out in a really stilted manner, almost as if they’re posing for a picture.) The man surprises them...

After the slaughter, another hazy flashback. This time we see a woman who seems to be in trouble. She calls out a name: “John. John. John.” Our man’s name is John.

Back in the present, John wipes a bloody cleaver on the woman’s wedding dress (loved that), puts a “do not disturb” sign on the door, and leaves.

What a way to start! Intrigue, gothicy atmosphere, awkward kissing, weird little boy, bloody cleavers!

Hatchet for the Honeymoon’s central mystery doesn’t end up being all that compelling, but it hardly matters when you have scenes like the one where John, having just introduced himself as a dangerous maniac, fishes a drowning fly out of a glass of water.

“Poor little fly,” he thinks in his vivid blue button up and yellow ascot. “Why are you so daring? You’re so fragile, and yet you’re born, you reproduce yourself, and you die like men. The difference is that you don’t think, and you don’t need to remember. You don’t fear death because you ignore it.”

​The fly’s life, he thinks, is simply a mere biological accident. Utterly without meaning. He looks at something off camera and approaches it. “But death exists I can assure you,” he continues.

We see what caught his eye now—a pet parrot whose bold colors are like an expansion of John’s outfit. “And that,” he says, feeding the fly to the parrot, “is what makes life a ridiculous and brief drama.”

It may not be profound, but it suits the mood well. It also sets up some interesting stuff later—is death as final as John seems to think?

Forsyth plays our man like a raptorial bird, allowing the character to become undone/vulnerable only when necessary. Our gentleman killer tells himself (and us) that he only takes life to shake loose the buried memories haunting his mind. However, there’s more going on than just that. For example, he’s got a chamber full of mannequins that he sometimes smooches. All of them are decked out in wedding gowns. And the faces on these things, let me tell you, are very chilling. Unsmoochable, really. The tension amps up whenever we’re in that room with him. It makes for some really fun imagery too. I do wish there was a bit more going on with this room. More scares/weirdness could have unfolded in it.

There’s still some humanity left in this creepo. It’s buried deep beneath his ego and his monstrous need to piece together the fragmented images tormenting him. This is especially apparent when he meets Helen (Dagmar Lassander), a young woman looking for a job. He seems to take an earnest liking to her despite, well, the urge to murder her. Will Helen end up in the incinerator, or will John overcome his homicidal compulsions?

John’s wife Mildred is reading a book titled Mediums and Spiritism when we meet her—this comes into play in a few ways, one of which being when she supposedly channels the spirit of John’s mother, totally freaking him out. Their first interaction tells us everything about their relationship—bitter, spiteful, and illusionary. And it only gets worse. She’s a constant annoyance, deriving pleasure in haunting him. Underneath all the sadistic joy, though, is the pain of ignored and abused love. Betti does a great job with this character, hinting at her woe but overlaying it with an amusingly smug impudence. Because of John’s proclivities, I couldn’t help but root for her the whole time. She was an unexpected favorite, an aristocratic specter relentlessly looming around John and making the movie all the better for it. One of my favorite moments is when she informs her fashion-forward husband she’s leaving on a short trip, taunting him that she’ll be back before he knows it. She’ll always be back. While goading him, she takes a small bite of a grape. She places the grape on a mirror-like tray and smashes it with her finger. We linger there with the reflection of her warped, overturned face. Ahh, cinema!

I can’t say too much more about Mildred without spoiling a major plot point, but let’s just say Bava takes her in a surprising direction. It feels a bit disjointed (I believe it was a last second decision in the creative process), yet I think she’s a big part of what makes this movie memorable. The couple’s darkly humorous battle for dominance was the most enjoyable part of the whole thing for me.

The score, by Sante Maria Romitelli, ranges from loungey to psychedelic to orchestral to fuzzy electronic. I liked it a lot. The camerawork is alive, sitting at unexpected angles, hanging low at a child’s height, or high up like a floating spirit. There’s a cool moment when Inspector Russell shows up with the husband of a missing woman at John’s mansion. John has just butchered someone who is still on the stairs above. Her hand slips off the baluster as she expires. Had either one of the uninvited pair simply looked up, they would have seen the hand, now dripping with blood, hanging over the steps (I wanted John to be caught, yet somehow felt nervous by that prospect). The camera cuts close to the hand as they’re talking, then zooms out until it’s as if we’re lying on our back at the men’s feet. Bava knows how to keep things visually engaging. (John’s watching a Bava movie--Black Sabbath--during this sequence too. Ya gotta love it!)

Hatchet isn’t generally considered Bava’s biggest or best, but it’s got enough going for it to make it worth your while. And if you’re already a Bava fan this is a no brainer. The kills aren’t all that exciting, so don’t expect a gorefest. This is more of a character study with a morbid, opulent flair. You’ll at least appreciate the aesthetic choices. How ‘bout John’s loungewear? You know the one. I’ll take two please.

​When I was thinking about this interview project and what I wanted it to be someone that came to mind that I wanted to talk to was Ulrich Jesse K Baer. I’m a big fan of his writing and existing in this world. He’s the writer of Midwestern Infinity Doctrine (Apocalypse Party 2021) and At One End (Essay Press 2020) and an exciting new work someone should publish, like, right now!

KG: You’ve been in Europe for a while now. First Copenhagen, I think, then Amsterdam and now Berlin? Did I miss somewhere? Being from Sweden I feel like I should be more familiar with these places but I’ve only been to Copenhagen and that was when I was 18-20 and visited the Roskilde music festival a couple of times, which feels like it barely counts. I’ve been to Germany but not Berlin. What has your experience been with these cities and which one is your favorite?

UJKB: Germany is exactly a Caspar David Friedrich painting–desolate and unheimlich. Sometimes I’ll get this feeling that creepiness is seeping in from all around me, here. And exacerbated by the transition into fall. I watched people I was with in a park garden a few days ago talk about how the dark rain made them sleepy. I love Amsterdam, and I was disappointed by how large Rembrandt’s the Night Watch painting was irl. I think all of Europe is creepy, even.

Amsterdam was only a little bit like that scene in I think Sweet Movie with the communist and their canal boat and a bed of sugar you could die in.

Denmark: increasingly deranged as you take the trains in/to the interior. The Jutland. I met some really lovely queer artists in Copenhagen: less sleepy than the viking graves. I’ve been reading Genet’s Querelle because I think he’s the pre-eminent theoretician of shame, and I read and read it while I was lostly alone in the garden outside the royal library, waiting for a flixbus. I truly recommend the experience of radically compromising the self on the flixbus–take it. In the US, the megabus driver wakes you up around 1 AM and forces you off like a megastop, you wait in the harshing fluorescence of the truckstop snack aisles, like an awestruck child. It’s misery. On the flixbus from Copenhagen to Berlin, they woke us up and we were in this white industrial space as a British voice descended, shouting commands, and we went up the staircases. I had to wander for a while before I realized the bus had parked inside a ferry, and I felt that I had more in common (at least spiritually) with the two other passengers who spent most of the night with their heads bowed over the railing, watching the flecks of foam cut into the waves by the ship wake, the only visibility in the night, than I ever did with people who look more like me.

What do you miss most about Sweden? What was yr like phenomenological reading of the ABBA museum? Like Proust style, what feelings does it give you?

KG: “I truly recommend the experience of radically compromising the self on the flixbus–take it.” They should pay you for this promotional quote. Radically compromise the self, on the flixbus. This should be a quote that people find when they look you up after you’re dead

​I googled flixbus and they were founded in 2011, which is years after I left Sweden and Europe. I’ve been here a long time. And thinking of Europe as creepy made me remember this vague memory getting lost in a fog in the german landscape as a child. I just remember us driving, me and my sister in the backseat I guess, and the fog outside, and I don’t know why we ended up on these small roads, and those cliché black and white german buildings all around, that didn’t seem real. That’s how I felt when I first got to NYC too, the buildings looked fake, like they couldn’t possibly be real, but a movie set, and if you walked around the back they wouldn’t have a back, they would be hollow. Full of the American Dream. I still like to walk around storefront buildings here to see what’s behind. And the overgrown alleys in between.

I’ve never been to the ABBA museum and this feels now like a monumental failure. Did you go? What was it like?? Growing up ABBA felt too cringely Swedish and I thought I was too cool for ABBA and the joke is on me because ABBA is the coolest. I wish I could travel back in time and tell myself ABBA is cool. And Peter Gabriel. And the 80s. I turned on an ABBA playlist just now because you brought it up. Before they were famous, in 1973, they played in my mom’s small hometown on the back of a truck and I choose to believe she was there.

SOS playing: “When you’re gone
How can I even try to go on?”

I miss mostly people. I miss a more publicly available nature. I miss walking in Gothenburg (where I lived for a number of years) and Östersund (where I grew up). I miss riding the trolley and food and Swedish summer. I miss what might be a fantasy: a less violent-feeling society. But the violence is probably just different.

Where are you from, where did you grow up? How do you feel about that place? Also, in your IG bio it says Private Paranormal Investigator. Have you encountered/investigated any paranormal events lately? Ghosts? Have you found the Vampires? A sense of community? We’ve been watching the new Irma Vep series.
 
UJKB: That germanfog memory feels like a Fleur Jaeggy story to me. As a matter of fact, someone told me a similar story, but set in Veracruz, en route to Xalapa, which is fogheavied.

I’m so glad you brought up the cinematic landscape–I’m obsessed with flat spaces at night with the depth diminished like the sky was all backdrop slammed against the buildings. And I love imagining you checking to see if you’re on an abandoned movie set. What makes dirty alleyweeds so compelling?

We only have the empty substitution for an ABBA museum memory; I have never been. I only went to Malmo, I feel embarrassed by this but one of my happiest memories in Scandinavia was sitting at a table in a semi-crumbling mall complex there, eating a salad bar composition beside the cigarette kiosk, the dominos, busted up bathrooms. The anonymity of the liminal space, where you become dissipate with the atmospherics. Almost like a lyrical self.

I love stories about bands playing in truckbeds, now my idea of Scandinavia is superimposed with memories of Mexico. I’ve drawn strength from that ABBA song that goes “I believe in angels / something good in everything I see / I believe in angels / when I know the time is right for me / I’ll cross the street”. Of course I imagine these lyrics are referring to death.

How do you keep in touch with people across the oceanic distances? There’s a foggy sickle moon beyond the balcony where I’m smoking a cigarette and writing to you. I was going to write a poem but I felt this would be an equivalent act. Please tell me more about Swedish summer, especially in the 80s!

I grew up all over the v haunted southeast. My mother saw ghosts there. One saved her life and I’m still grieving the fact that another didn’t. I watched Drive My car, at your recommendation, today and I was especially moved by the way they acknowledge our responsibility for the deaths of the people we love, complicatedly love, and I want to express an idea that we’re all as humans collectively responsible for everyone’s deaths. In that sense, vampirism is the baseline. We are fed on by the dead feeding our context, the deaths that serve as the surround. I’ve only just started up the paranormal investigation work again. Do you have any European leads?

I reference Irma Vep briefly in the second space vampire book–when I talk about being unable to prevent the world from breaking down into circles and points, to stop running away in your stolen film costume.
​
Don’t feel bad about the ABBA museum–there’s still time. Thank you for being in my life and sharing that time with me. Where are you responding from?

Sending love!

KG: I was unfamiliar with Fleur Jaeggy so I picked a story at random and of course it ended up being a story about dying, a mother and the death of a son (“The Perfect Choice”), and read it while listening to a cover of Stayin’ Alive by 90s singer song writer Heather Nova. I’ve been listening to this cover album for days, and I really loved the story. I want to read more by her.

“He stayed up all night, it seemed to him that he had a great deal to do, in the doing of nothing.”

I feel like there’s some comfort in the alleyways and alleyweeds, spaces that capitalism has deemed unnecessary and discarded, where you can be unnecessary, useless. The dumpsters behind Dollar General are beautiful. I don’t remember having the same alley spaces and the same contrast between the front and back of buildings in Sweden. There capitalism has claimed all or most the spaces in the city, cleaned up the crime scene. Are they portals? How are the alley spaces in Berlin? Where do you go to be? Alley spaces feel like good places for poetry readings.

That Angels ABBA song feels dark and haunted to me. A lot of ABBA does or maybe it’s just me that’s detached. There’s like a sadness behind it. I imagine it playing on repeat while a character cries like that woman in Inland Empire watching TV.

I only really keep in touch with my mom, my sister and my dad, with video calls. My mom and sister visited at different times this summer and that was nice. Do you stay in touch with any family? I like that you decided to channel your poem-writing into this correspondence. When in the day do you find yourself writing the most?

I loved Drive My Car. I found it really moving in ways I can’t seem to put words to. Maybe in imagining community, even through all complications, a different way to exist together, which is really broad and vague. I also find I like long slow movies, like being exhausted and disarmed by art. I remember watching Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice when I was 16 or 17 and just being wrecked by it.

I remember Swedish summer as bearable, the humidity and heat in southern VA is not. I long for fall here. In northern Sweden some summers you barely got a summer and all warm sunny days needed to be experienced like a rare gift. One summer memory is working for my grandpa refinishing a house and planting trees, chopping wood, while listening to Leonard Cohen on whatever device people listened to music on at the time. One summer me and some friends biked from Ostersund to Stockholm and slept in the woods on the way.

“My mother saw ghosts there. One saved her life and I’m still grieving the fact that another didn’t.” I’ve been thinking about these lines and grief. I’m not even sure how to phrase questions about grief. How “do you process”, or how do you “work through”, feel gross, questions written by the overcoming/success ted talk individualism industrial complex. How do you DEAL with? The Power of The Deal? I don’t know by making a DEAL with vampires in weedgrown alleyways! A lot of older family members have died since I left Sweden and I never saw them again and I don’t know what to do or feel about that. A lot of other close people have died and their ashes live in our home. Maybe grief is a bit like Irma Vep climbing on the roof tops, walking through walls.

I love your space vampire books!

UJKB: I’m rereading you with a glass of the cheapest whiskey I could find at Aldi, I carried it home wielding it in front of me like a weapon. There’s a nice moment in Querelle where Genet says that the dull knife the teenage boy is carrying is more violent and powerladen than the useful knife, because it is a symbol. Yes, let me know what you think upon reading I Am the Brother of XX!!

To be discarded. To float in refuse use. To be uselessness. I think I found some dirtcracked alleys in industrial dereliction sections of Malmo.

Here is a question that has been haunting me, Kim. To what degree do we make, should we make accommodations to be legible to one another? We compromise ourselves, in coming to speak, entering communication. Bataille posits that we’re reaching towards (each other) across an abyss. We have to borrow from a repertoire of abbreviated signs. I think about this with respect to beauty. Whether you’re revising a text, or changing your body, your body’s language, when do the compromises become excessive? Unbearable?

Ambivalent desire, to not want what you want.

I have tried to fall through portals in the postindustrial midwest. Have you found any you’ve fallen through? Sometimes I came to the conclusion that all desiring is the affective traces of childhood (awe). Every oil refinery makes me into a reactionary because I imbue it with my memories of Louisiana (thinking about Benjamin talking about architecture in the arcades, the way it ideologically inflects us with its feelings). I superimpose Louisiana Louisiana Louisiana death songs over everything and cannot be faithful to (fidelity in) transcriptions of the real. Do you ever find Sweden where you are? I would book a plane ticket there if you were holding a poetry reading behind a Dollar General. The best poetry reading I ever did was with my friend Zeb at an art venue in Ohio–there was no one there except us and Zeb’s partner and the organizers of the space. We were just singing to eachother, then. Then, we walked through the dark, I think zeb covered me for a pack of cigarettes, we went to their place and talked about assemblage theory. I think there’s something spooky magical in the lost midwestern night. What’s the best poetry reading you ever did or went to?

The ABBA lament you mentioned earlier. Hollow pop grief, hyperreal and chromatic. Crying to the television is exactly what David Lynch is all about! Yes! I think about magnetism and distortion, the falling bands of color across the screen. Noisy cosmic background.

I don’t have any family except the family I’ve made everywhere since I left. I do long distance calls sometimes, zoom shared movie watching. I miss everyone when they’re gone.

I miss everyone when they’re gone.

I’ve been struggling to write poetry lately–I’ve been thinking too formally, or else resist feeling. I would really just like to write a sad poem everyday, at some point, before the day ends.

Have you seen Andrei Rublyev? I love endurance film watching, too! Slow iconography. Pressing at the limits of attention, in its holy aspect. To be pronate. And how long can you sustain it? And toward what?

I cried when Leonard Cohen died. He’s in the furnace of my heart now and forever. Which album(s) did you chop wood to? I’m putting on “The Old Revolution” as this ghostly internet transmission speaks (for me). “Even damnation is poisoned with rainbows” I was a guilty child looking for sacrificial narratives to lose myself in. In the austerity of thought and creed, like “The Partisan.” “Of course I was very young, and I thought that we were winning” to be a royalist ghost in the burgeoning mercantile age. It reminds me of ABBA’s Fernando–“Though we never thought that we could lose / there’s no regret”

ABBA’s angels. Remorseless consummation of what is, has been. Amor fati.

How did you feel sleeping in the woods on the biketrip? Please describe this feeling.

lol yes yr ted talk take! We are haunted by many selves. Irreconcilable. We are unfaithful to. My first night in Berlin in 2017 I went with some guys from a hostel to an ambient music festival, I think it was at tresor. I was all ghost eyes, moving through rooms, watching people pulsating against eachother in the dark, the light strobed. Chainsmoking sitting on the concrete floor pummeled by shimmering soundwaves. Now I feel more like a vampire sequestered, afraid of the burning world. Waiting for someone to approach me in the dark. With radar. In Toufic’s book on Vampires, he talks about how the threshold of the vampire’s castle is roving, an invisible line you (de)note when you stumble trying to cross it. Phenomenological interference. I’m listening to Slowdive’s “when the sun hits” like I was in Berlin in 2017 “it matters where you are.” Creeping through the labyrinth. Towards what infernal reception?

Thank you for locating me, through your questions, and your voice.

​KG: Thank you for your amazing, wandering answers and questions back. This feels a bit like sending correspondence out of war trenches but the trenches are alleys behind Dollar General and Aldi’s. When I lived in Gothenburg I used to buy cheap, terrible cigarettes in a german discount store called Lidl that tasted like ashes. Is Lidl still a thing? I have this one haunting memory that was probably a dream but felt more real than real, staying alone at my sister’s apartment, eating nachos, and waking up in the middle of the night to watch a car, on fire, slowly rolling down the hill outside.

I will drink a whiskey toast to you and this interview later. It keeps expanding, not just with each answer, but away from the formal toward something more mysterious, and probably an inevitable collapse. Toward something useless. The interview is growing weeds.

I like thinking about Genet’s teenage boy’s dull knife being more violent than a useful knife. The power of spectacle?

I don’t know the answer to your question about what accommodations we should make to be legible to one another? I feel like it depends. We protect ourselves and we try to reach out, “open up”, and get hurt, and try again, and don’t get hurt, maybe. We are harmed and trauma sets in our bodies. I’m trying to reach out by doing this, here. Is the internet an abyss? Feels like a graveyard. It feels risky to try, to approach people. The alternative can seem safer but is it really? I’ve been identifying as introverted all my life but lately I’ve been wondering if actually I’m extroverted. I keep wanting to facilitate connection in different ways.

And I like to think of this as a creative collaboration instead of getting to “know another”, to meet in a kind of ceremony. I don’t know if that’s a good way to look at it but it feels less transactional, more communal. The swedish woods don’t feel like the woods here but I don’t know how to describe it. Slower and quieter maybe, drier. There are less vines. At night, in sweden, the mosquitoes are ruthless.

ABBA’s Fernando sounds like the score to a 70/80s’s fantasy movie. Actually Benny and Bjorn made the score to Mio min Mio (or Mio in the Land of Faraway) which terrified me as a child. It’s a weird english/russian/swedish collaboration starring child Christian Bale and a terrifying knight played by Christopher Lee with a stone heart who turns children into birds. His pale face and metal claw hand. What scared you as a child?

“Even damnation is poisoned with rainbows” – I took Cohen’s death hard too. A sense of humor in the bleakest. I started Andrei Rublev not that long ago but never finished, I should start over.

Tell me what you’re hoping will happen in Berlin. Are you staying much longer or have to head back to the states? How do you imagine an ideal life would be, for you?  

FJKB: I. One of my friends described the last space vampire book as a loving / erotic gesture
And that gesture, which someone else characterized as psychotic enlightenment
Consists in what begins as a question

Can you love me
To which the response is received
Not if you are what you say you are parenthetically if what you say
you are reveals the instability at the core of what I am, or hope I am
And I say,
Here
Let me hold you so you can come apart

I take some things Bersani gave me (unfortunately-somewhat in spite of
himself) and make them into diabolicalbeautiful tools for trans boys
And this being what it means to top
A field of precipitating flora—the body becomes
To father selves into the world by fathering the bodies of the others
we begin to intricate in
Flowers
​
The problem that ended the book was a hand that swept in from outside,
that started destroying the heart I thought I’d safely preemptively
reduced away it was still/beating and the hand destroyeddestroyed it
and I couldn’t find anyone to hold the trans boy in the book or in
real life
While he fell apart

And that’s what I’d like,
A material hand.

That having been being said, in order to answer your question
I listened to the bjork podcast we discussed the other day—the one on
Vespertine she describes how the work predicts the domesticity it
prepares a space for
That sort of predictive insight, the foresight when you’re at one in
harmony with the work the way she
Captures the crunchy music box sounds
I think of music boxes constantly love like self perpetuating music
the soul in Phaedrus, its justification as everlasting—that it’s self moving
The music box of love similarly seems to come alive via its own will
So I’m like a little deleuzian animal sick in the burrow of a world
that doesn’t want me but I’m drawing a line of escape
By learning everything I possibly can
About how to love.

Ii. Syllabus (so far)

The double life of Veronique
Through the olive trees
Phaedrus
Lacans seminars on transference
A thousand plateaus, revisited (skip their horrific misogynistic thoughts on Zelda Fitzgerald)
What else? Black and white fairy tale movies that take place in the tundra with-deer

What do you suggest Kim? What’s on your syllabus for learning how to love well, for how to prepare a space for love?

III. Answers

I have a Lidl sim card but I prefer Aldi. I’m very particular about my cigarette brands.

Do you think the car is still rolling down the hillside on fire???

As for the knife:
Also because of the relationship between the symbol and what infernally magnetically, sidereally, guides identity. I’m so glad you’re talking about this issue of reaching toward other people (weapon aside). I think it’s probably a spectrum (intro to extro), and that where we are on the spectrum between wanting company and deferring it does cor/respond to our traumatic experiences, like concussive aftershock, of trying to touch other people and getting hurt. Maybe we always meet in a graveyard. I’m glad you’re still trying, it means you’re still alive there, I think. Zeb and I have put Mio min Mio at the top of our movie list. All of my antiantianti novels are structured after b movies. What do you think it is that’s so enchanting about bad movies?

I agree I think that clotted wet vininess is more characteristic of the states than here.

Definitely finish Andrei Rublyev! I love iconography. An ideal life for me would be so many real material hands and presences, with-mine, to love and be loved by. Hylic ensembles.

I hope that I leave Berlin in mostly one piece and that I find somewhere with a stronger community where I have to travel alone much less often, and where I can support myself.

The creepiness isn’t romantic–it’s the fascist weather (forecast:same as ever).

When I was a child I had nightmares about vampires.

<3
​
PS I’m Friedrich now, I’m borrowing Nietzsche’s strength

Ulrich Jesse K Baer received his MFA from Brown University in 2017. He was born in Georgia and grew up beneath southern power plants. He is the author of the chapbooks Holodeck One with Magic Helicopter Press and At One End with Essay Press as well as the full length doctrine Midwestern Infinity Doctrine with Apocalypse Party. He has been included in journals such as Prelude, Pinwheel, Bathhouse, Baest, The Tiny, and Bone Bouquet. He loves horses.

He offers creative writing classes sometimes on his website www.ulrich-baer.space

A note on this project: The idea was simple. I wanted to reach out and talk to friends more, in whatever way they're most comfortable: via email or voice calls. And maybe make new friends. I wanted to ask questions about things people are passionate about, focusing more on side interests. I wanted to call it Making Friends because its corny and earnest and makes me think of being kids trying to make friends. -Kim Göransson

Catherine Backus is one of my favorite humans. She's a musician, singer and writer of songs as Catherine the Great and member bluegrass folk trio After Jack as well as the skipperdees. From her bio on the Catherine the Great site: 

While the project primarily exists as a repository for her feelings, her sad songs have drawn numerous accolades, including 1st place at the Merlefest Chris Austin Songwriting Contest, 4th place at the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival Songwriter Showcase, and finalist in the Bernard/Ebb Songwriting Awards. Over the course of her career, she’s shared stages with folks like Molly Tuttle, Kim Richey, Willie Watson, and Ben Sollee. She would love to see a picture of your dog.


​KG: Hey Catherine! I want to ask you about a couple of things but when I first proposed we do an interview you mentioned talking about FEMSLASH, so let's start there? In the past we've chatted about the tv shows Fleabag, Killing Eve, Dead to Me and Hacks (objectively amazing shows) but what is your current TV obsession? Why? And is it translating into fan fic?

CB: Kim!!! I am a noted expert in lesbian subtext in popular media, this is true <3 

Let the record show I think I only watched the first season of Killing Eve, and that it lost me after PWB left, so I can't speak to the overall quality (and I am in general too squeamish for shows with a lot of violence lol). 

I think my current obsession is probably the new A League of Their Own TV Show- I watched it twice in the span of a week lol. Interestingly enough, though, the canonical queerness is so satisfying that I have zero desire to seek out or engage in transformative works! 

I think it's rad that I could name a dozen shows I genuinely enjoyed that had solid queer/trans rep, but a part of me is nostalgic for the era of Reading Too Much Into Every Interaction Between Two Women™️ of the the early aughts. 

For me, TV I consider myself a fan of has two categories: 

1) this is great and I enjoyed it a lot and am perfectly happy to simply appreciate canon (Rutherford Falls, Somebody Somewhere, and The Other Two fall into this category for me). 

2) I need to make my character barbies kiss or i will never know peace- there's less of a rhyme or reason to this; sometimes the show is simply Not Good but something about the characters compel me. Sometimes there's a video game where two minor characters share a moment of interaction and i need to read 100,000 words where they find their happily ever after. 

Is that anything? IDK! 

KG: Yes that is something! And I thought you made it further in Killing Eve, but yeah, my interest has been slowly going down with each season and I haven't watched the last one, I just want them to be happy!

I watched the original A League of Their Own movie last week because I thought I should watch the movie before the show but we haven't started the show yet. I'm excited to try it. The movie felt familiar from childhood. Do you know it well? We also rewatched Point Break not that long ago and now I feel like I should watch Tank Girl and Free Willy to complete the Lori Petty 90s collection. 

Somebody Somewhere is also on my list to try but I'm picky with the comedies.

I love that AloTO's canonical queerness is so satisfying that you don't have any desire to seek out transformative works. Is there anything falling into that second TV fan fic category now? Also do you only read fan fic or write as well? And what are your Fan Fiction Origins from the early aughts?

CB: The original Penny Marshall ALOTO is VERY important to my wife, so we were skeptical about the show, but it wasn't trying to "redo" the original, but expand on the actual queer histories of the era! and the stories of Black and Latinx ball players of the era! great show, a+++, hope it gets a second season. 

Joel from Somebody Somewhere is me, I am him, if you don't absolutely love it i'll be personally offended <3 

I'm honestly in a bit of a fic drought at the moment! been dealing with lots of big life stuff that has sapped my focus beyond scrolling twitter endlessly or playing two dots on my phone a;sldjf;laksjd. but there are certain fandoms like dragon age (video games; extra nerdy) where there's a million characters and a million pairings that are fun to play around with, that if i'm bored i'll just click on a tag and go wild. 

I started reading fic as a closeted teen and am now deeply ashamed that Law and Order: SVU was my queer awakening (i don't watch cop shows anymore! but the propaganda was strong in 2006!!!) and i am an alex/olivia truther. 

I didn't start writing fic until my mid twenties, when finally a pairing happened where i was like "damn if you want something done you gotta do it yourself, huh?" but i shan't reveal my otps here <3 

I've also written a few songs inspired by fiction- "Tomatoes" (arguably my biggest success) was inspired by a character who had a tomato allergy. my mom wrote me asking if my wife and i had broken up after i posted the demo and i had to explain that i was just really into a mediocre canadian cop drama at the time :/ 

A question I would like to ask media at large is: WHY CAN'T WE HAVE QUEER WOMEN REPRESENTATION THAT ISN'T COPAGANDA??? 

Like, there's some (shoutout to A League of Their Own (TV 2022) for being explicitly ANTI-cop, as they should), but a LOT of either canon or subtextual femslash pairings exist in police dramas. Which, maybe the problem is simply the huge presence of copaganda in television overall? But yeah, that sucks, i hate it. 

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE????

​KG: These are all valid important questions. I don’t know. Why does the answer always seem to be: more cops? The copaganda is unending but I think it’s ok to exist with the stories we grow up with and are given (and critique them, and queer transform transgress them?) and a lot of people relate to SVU, I think for valid reasons.

I’m listening to the Tomatoes song now and your first solo album Personhood and I love that you wrote this about a mediocre Canadian cop drama and that it was read by your mom as a break up song. I like to imagine a lot of songs we’ve projected onto actually come out of things like this. But maybe also they’re entry points that you can fill with other things, and listeners can fill with theirs? I find starting writing songs incredibly hard, like, often its about making a fairly simple, familiar phrase feel new or urgent again? Which is almost like a fan fic in a way. I wonder if there are connections between those two writing worlds for you? Also, now that you’re part of the bluegrass folk trio After Jack, are you still writing songs for Catherine the Great?

I’m sorry you’ve been going through a lot of big life stuff lately. You recently got a MS diagnosis, do you want to talk about that at all? How has it changed how you do your life?

Important update: We watched the first episode of ALOTO last night and I like it so far!

CB: I think about songwriting like gardening (i am a terrible gardener); i plant a seed (usually a hook, or phrase that i meditate on like a jesus prayer) and it germinates into the full thing. it's rarely a quick process, although it's a quiet growth; by the time i sit down and play and sing until it's done, it's usually fairly quick. i read an interview with Fiona Apple once where she talked about how she never writes down her songs bc if they're good she'll remember them, and i stole that hahah.

writing a story feels like a more steady, active job; like going on a hike or something. you have to keep putting words on the page and there's generally a starting and ending point; songs feel more cyclical and simple, like you're trying to distill everything down, whereas writing fiction feels a lot like building from the ground up. they're sort of opposites in a way, which is why i think practicing writing in fandom spaces has been helpful to my songwriting, because i'm often coming at the same subjects (every song is a love song after all) with very different techniques. 

​wow that was pretentious as hell lmaoooooo

Re: Writing songs, I don't generally assign a song before it's written, but often my gut will say "this is solo" or "this will work for the full band." I'll play songs I do with AJ in solo sets, but not vice versa haha. if it's pretty dark/personal/weird it's a solo song, and if it's a bit more accessible it fits better with after jack. we had plans to make a new AJ record in early 2020 and i had a bunch of songs i'd never recorded ready to go with that but that got derailed and i'm not sure when/if it's happening. we'll see! 

Re: Multiple Sclerosis- i'm good to talk about it! i'm p early in both the progression and treatment of my disease, so i don't know what the long-term trajectory for me might look like, but i'm fortunate to have taken some disability studies courses in undergrad that i think helped to dismantle a lot of my internalized ableism prior to getting sick. so, yeah, it sucks, but being disabled doesn't mean my life is any less valuable or full now. At the moment, I can still play and sing competently, and other than needing a few accommodations (sitting while playing, not doing outdoor gigs in the heat of summer) I think I'll continue to gig, albeit not very ambitiously, until I feel like my symptoms and relapses are under control. 

the best summary of my 2022 is probably my neurologist telling me "make sure you don't schedule your spinal tap too close to your wedding!" real ups and downs over here! 

i think i might write some songs about the process eventually, but it usually takes me several years to work through things to get to the point of being creative about them (I think I wrote "Pensacola" 5 years after my grandmother's death, for point of reference). It's kind of funny though, that I spent many years of my adolescence working through depression and occasional suicidal ideation to get to a point where my brain and I were getting along pretty well, then my nervous system decided to attack itself! This is thirty!!! 

Developing a chronic illness or disability is a great way to become even more radicalized about the need for single payer healthcare and the abolition of the insurance industry, though, i can tell you that much! 

KG: That’s a lot! Dealing with healthcare in this country feels like such a nightmare but I’m glad you finally got answers so you can get treatment. Thank you for sharing all of this and being so open. This is exactly the sort of interviews I want to do. And I agree with that stolen Fiona Apple idea. If I’m writing a song I will obsess and sing the line over and over trying to find the next line until it sticks and I don’t write it down usually at first. I like the thought of this obsessive repetition being almost like a religious ritual, and similarly, for me, singing can feel close to something spiritual too.  An out-of-body or in-the-moment feeling. No thoughts! 

Early on in the pandemic you started skateboarding again, if I remember correctly, or just more than before? And that lead to Feels on Wheels VA which is described on IG as “Creating inclusive skateboarding and quad skating community in the Roanoke valley for queer, trans, women, and other non-traditional skaters.” Which is so amazing. How is that project going? And tell me a little bit about your own skateboard journey? I regret not getting into that when I was young (I know, its never too late! But it feels kinda late. And risky without health insurance!) Anyway, I love watching your skate clips. It also feels like an ideal activity and passion in these prolonged pandemic super late stage capitalism times? 

CB: Re: out of body experiences— every time i've had a high stakes performance I've dissociated during it? Just floating in the clouds singing my lil songs i guess. 

Re: Skating- not starting again, just more than before because i was stuck at home and under employed! I skated as a kid (ages 9-13 i think?), but it was kind of isolated bc i was literally the only girl at the park, and my mom brought me and made me wear full pads; not super conducive to making sk8rat friends. 

I actually picked skateboarding back up when i was around 23-24 (i'm 30 now, oof), when I moved to Bedford and learned there was a huge concrete park right down the road. I always wanted to learn to skate bowls as a kid but we didn't have any around, so I bought a board again and learned to drop in and carve in my mid twenties lol. 

The pandemic is why I started Feels on Wheels, though, because there's an amazing org called Skate Like a Girl that started in Seattle, and during the pandemic they offered an online program. Since I don't live anywhere near the west coast, I was excited about connecting with people that way, and we had these weekly q&a's . One week the guests were two queer and trans skaters who have done a lot of community building through skating, and I asked them if they had advice about organizing in a rural area, since our scene out here looks pretty different from Seattle or Portland. They told me "a community starts with two people," so I basically just made an insta account and asked people to tell their friends. I think our first meetup was April 2021? Tbh I haven't put in as much work with it as I could, but I did achieve my initial goal of making friends to skate with hahaha. 

I love skateboarding bc I'm very bad at it. I have to work so hard for every trick, and I'm very risk averse, so I learn slow and have a hard time pushing myself. Now that my nervous system is being goofy, I think pushing myself will look different, but I still have ways to challenge myself and enjoy my time rolling around. It's been really fun coming back to skating as an adult bc w/social media there's so much more visibility for women and queer and trans skaters. Like, as a kid it was like, Elissa Steamer on THPS, and now I could tell you my fave 20 professional women skaters, and probably have left out a bunch of rad folks. I was never really bullied or anything as a kid skating, but there also weren't a lot of models for girls who wanted to skate, which I think kept me from progressing as much, because I didn't have that model. 
​
Anyways, I recommend everybody have a hobby they're bad at! no pressure to monetize it or turn it into a hustle, and it builds character. 

KG: I love this so much. If there’s a photo of 10 year old Catherine in full skateboard pads I need to see it. “A community starts with two people” and “I did achieve my initial goal of making friends to skate with” resonates with what I’m trying to do with these interviews too. Without the skateboard part. I’m taking up the hobby of interviewing people badly.

Rounding out this interview for now but I will keep you updated as we continue to watch ALOTO. A couple of final questions: what’s one of your favorite women skateboarders at the moment, who should I check out? Also: do you have anything coming up that you’re excited about as a musician or personally?

Thank you so much for participating and answering so openly and for your friendship. Appreciate you!

CB: This interview feels good to me! You're doing great!!! 

My personal favorite skater rn is Nicole Hause, who just went pro for Real this past weekend. She's a really talented transition skater and it's a joy to watch her rip. And as far as street skaters go, Alexis Sablone has to be the GOAT. Their switch flips bring a tear to my eye. 

Uhhhhhhh excitement, huh. I've got a couple small gigs I'm looking forward to, but I'm trying not to overcommit and stress myself into another MS flareup, lol. But my wife and I are going on our honeymoon to the UK this winter! I'm excited about that. I've actually got a lot of friends over there I met through fandom (lkasjdflkajsd) and I'm looking forward to seeing them all and eating delicious vegan food with A. 

Thank you for your questions and generosity! You rule!!! ​

Check ​out Catherine the Great's latest album Jigsaw Puzzles & Pink wine below or wherever you listen to music!

Bio: Jesse Bradley cartoons on Instagram @questionabledecisioncomics

“All my favorite stuff is sad and funny and cool and weird,” says Jason P. Woodbury. “That’s what I love in art. I don’t want it to be just one thing, and that’s not what I want to hear right now.” 

Woodbury is no newcomer when it comes to writing about music. As the music editor for Aquarium Drunkard, the Arizona native is a veteran of interviewing both musicians and comedians alike. I spoke with Woodbury on the phone and what soon became clear in our chat was the writer who elicited humor from idiosyncratic voices of standups comedians and musicians in his writing. When it came to our interview, however, it was Woodbury who was answering questions, this time as a musician about his own forthcoming debut album Something Happening/Always Happening. 

“I've played music pretty much my entire life,” says Woodbury. “Ever since I was a teenager I played guitar in my spare time or whatever, mostly just goofing around, but at various points I actually did have other bands.“ 

While Something Happening/Always Happening is Woodbury’s first solo release, it is not, however, his first time with music itself. Woodbury is also part of the band Kitimoto , whose album Vintage Smell is out on Fort Lowell, the same label set to release Something Happening/Always Happening. 

“What was funny was this album was born out of me stepping into the role of a guy whose job is just add cool parts and make exciting little sounds and accompany his songs,” says Woodbury. “I found myself charged by this idea that I had spent so much of my youth trying to play music, whatever that means, in a really kind of self-conscious manner.” 

Something Happening/ Always Happening synthesizes Woodbury’s different modes of self expression. It is an acoustic rock record with folk elements and sometimes island vibes reminiscent of both his interview subjects and album reviews of similar albums of the genre. It is also reflective of Woodbury’s interest in science fiction in that Something Happening/Always Happening presents music evocative of the 60s and 70s with a twist. Woodbury also creates the feeling of those past sounds emerging in the present.

“I’m playing with a lot of traditional kind of sounds and nostalgic sounds,” says Woodbury. “I wanted it to have a sense of that sort of idealized nostalgia but really playful about it. Some of the musical touches get to nod to that, and that was a part of it that was really fun for me.” 

Though a native of Arizona, Woodbury insists that his album is not a desert record. “I didn’t want it to be the desert music with a capital DM because that’s kind of an aesthetic, and it’s definitely an appreciated one on my part,” says Woodbury. “The sound of the desert for me is Lee Hazelwood and Al Casey and Duane Eddy. So, it was like, I’ll lean into that too. I did want it to have a mid, Space Age kind of element to it, kind of as the Space Age is fading into folk rock. That’s definitely a sweet spot for me melodically and in my record collection. That was an important thing.” 
 
Everyone brings their history with them in what they do, and even though Woodbury tapps into his experience as a writer, he also fully leaned into making music as a musician. 

“I realized I had been pretty self-conscious in my approach to music and was very self-critical about a lot of stuff,” says Woodbury. “I was nervous about being cool or whatever! And the side benefit of the pandemic was it kind of just robbed me of the fear of being not cool enough to do something in a weird way. That's what this record really was born out of, that spirit.” 

Woodbury adds, “Part of what makes for good art as I understand making it is not taking yourself too seriously.” 

What follows is a discussion about each song from Something Happening/Always Happening. Woodbury’s debut solo album arrives in September. 

1. “Something Happening” 

I couldn’t help but think of [“Something Happening’] as a writer in addition to a musician. it's funny when the tricks [pour] over from thing to thing in a certain way. End where you started is always a good trick as a writer and it's a way to give a feeling of a complete, certain narrative. I didn't want the album to be extremely prescriptive where it tells you exactly what to think. “Something Happening” is kind of upbeat and it’s very free sounding. It's a really bright, melodic moment and that doesn't really repeat on the record. I was nervous about even including it, but at the same time, it just felt like that it was a recognition of the song that birthed that spirit. That song was birthed in 15 minutes or whatever, maybe less time than that. When that happened, I thought this was a cool thing. That doesn't normally work that way for me. 

1. “Wealth of the Canyon” 

Most of the lyrics on the record I wouldn't say aren't particularly autobiographical necessarily. They all are in whatever senses, you know what I mean, but “Wealth of the Canyon” is an autobiographical song. There's an eagle sample in it! It's goofy. That's a very silly choice but it's also a really deliberate choice, because I wanted this record to be fun to listen to in addition to whatever else it was. 

I thought a lot about sound design, and I'm a big fan of Arthur Russell and a big fan of him as a composer and a big fan of him as a thinker. I read this great book by Matt Marble where he was talking about Arthur Russell basically incorporating his mediation practices into his music. That’s one part of it. It’s a meditative record, but I also wanted there to be eagle caws and occasionally a breakbeat, you know what I mean? Just because that’s the world we live in. 

I love paying attention to the way a place sounds and I wanted there to be some of that on the record. I got to embrace story telling without even having to even ascribe words to it. I could scene-set just by asking Zach [Toporek] to play a farfisa organ or Michael Krassner, who produced the record and is sort of the Obi Wan, to go off on guitar or whatever. A song like “Wealth of the Canyon,” which was built on a sample of Krassner and Danny Frankel and Stephen Hodges, one of my favorite drummers, we treated it as sample. I stripped it down and I arranged it with my buddy Zach. We added drums and [some] organ and added guitars, kind of like this whole thing. So yeah, it was another freeing moment where it was working with someone else, a real collaborator like that. 

I’m based in the Sonoran Desert area. Phoenix is a part of it. The Phoenix-Metro area is like a defiant suburban sprawl against the Sonoran desert, which is not my favorite part about living here. “Wealth of The Canyon” absolutely is inspired by trips out into the desert, but specifically to a place called Sycamore Canyon. 

[Sycamore Canyon] is this canyon where I've had all sorts of profound experiences from slicing my hand open on accident to just experiencing a mystical awakening, that feeling of true one-ness with the universe. I wanted that to be in the song, but I also wanted it to be funny because I also drink a lot of beer there with friends. That to me is the feeling of that song. We often separate those high and low experiences, but they’re all part of it. I’m really so proud of that song. It’s one of my favorites. It’s one where I just sing on it. I didn’t write the chords or whatever. I got to feel like Mick Jagger! 

When people talk about desert movies, of course they’re thinking about Paris, Texas or Until The End of the World, these Wim Wenders movies. I absolutely love that stuff. That’s a huge influence on me. I won’t deny it is. I also think of Bevis and Butthead Do America or whatever. That’s also a style I like. I think I wanted it to have a sense of that sort of idealized nostalgia but really playful about it. Some of the musical touches get to nod to that, and that was a part of it that was really fun for me and made me feel like it wasn’t because I didn’t want to be the guy who wasn’t taking itself too seriously. 

1. “Cruel in Time”  

“Cruel in Time,” the next song on the record, it tumbled out of its own. It was like a bunch of halfway finished songs that I had and it tumbled out. It was right after we got done finishing the Kitimoto  record. When the songs come like that, for me at least, when they come so easily and seem to present themself, it was just like, you’ll figure out a way for this to have a narrative as it comes together, and that’s definitely what happened. Then we hand it over to collaborators like the people we work with, [like] Laraine [Kaizer-Viazovtsev] who plays strings on it. 

Part of the whole thing of not taking yourself seriously is allowing yourself to open up to people too and playing with them, because playing music with people is just such a great thing. The bass player on two songs, Zane Gillum, I’ve been playing with this dude for more than 20 years. We play together on Kitimoto . We literally learned how to play the guitar together in Coolidge, Arizona. It just felt so good. I was just like, “I’m not gonna beat myself up. I’m not gonna be so serious about this.” That was crucial, and I also wanted to make sure it sounded like me. For good or bad, this is me. 

1. “The Road That Knows No Law”  

We were definitely thinking of a [producer] Daniel Lanois thing in a lot of ways, whose influence I’m not embarrassed of. I grew up listening to his stuff, be it U2, Emmylou Harris, Willy Nelson. I did want to play with some of the tones on that song. It’s a real collage-y one too. I grabbed a Spain Rodridguez comic book and pulled some words off the cover. I think it was something like, “Raw action on route… the road that knows no law.” 

I just started thinking about the I-17, which is a freeway here. It’s not hard for that song to be post-apocalyptic. I found myself sort of imagining this weird kind of world and that was the sound of it and I was really excited. 

I was thinking of the outlaw. Judee Sill is one of my favorite songwriters, and I love the way she talks about the outlaw, the person who is outside of the line. Obviously, we have been thinking so much with concepts of the law as a society as we’re taking fascistic turns often in terms of these ideas of the law. I wanted to play with that archetype and the sort of desert Southwest Apocalypse, Terminator 2 style. Krassner played such cool guitar on it. I really like that one. It’s a weird one. 

1. “Guesswork at Sundown”  

“Guesswork at Sundown’ is you’re setting up camp and daylight is dwindling. It’s a joke! It’s a joke about death a little bit too. The idea of fake it til you make it or whatever. The ultimate making it is when you’re done. There’s a little bit of goofiness to it. 

That was a meditation jam with me, Zach, and Zane, the guy who I’d mentioned I’ve been playing with for the last couple decades. We were sort of doing this endless summer kind of thing in our head. We just played that loop for a long time and let it roll and selected a little bit of that. Krassner re-arranged and brought in Larraine Kaizer-Viazovtsev. She did that beautiful raga like string arrangement, sort of this weird L.A. noire thing, but also very much about setting up camp as your daylight is running out. 

There were words to it and they felt extraneous. I was kind of like, “Well, I don’t want to necessarily put an instrumental.” “Something Happening” and “Always Happening” are pretty limited vocally, but they both have words. So I was kind of like, “I don’t know if i want a straight up instrumental on the record.” Ultimately, it felt like a nice thing to do. 

Krassner, independent of me mentioning the Verde River and places like Sycamore Canyon, was like, “This really gives me the feeling of the 1970s.” He grew up here too. 1970s on the Verde River on a Friday night. I could imagine these Phoenix kids driving in their Camaros or whatever to the Verde River. I was like, “That’s a good image.” So, when he said that it was a weird metaphysical cue that that one was good. I stopped thinking if I whether or not I should come up with words. 

1. “Clarifying Word” 

I was thinking side-A and side-B the whole time as well. Something Happening/Always Happening, I was thinking of it as A/B, this two syllable mantra. I wanted “Clarifying Word” to have sort of like an introductory quality. I grew up leading songs in church and it would be an Introductory hymn kind of thing, which is sort of what I’m playing on there, maybe subconsciously. 

Krassner plays, again, beautiful piano on it. His piano work on it is gorgeous. He really brought so much care and skill to the record and accentuated my melodies so honestly. He was a real generous musical ear. The fact that the record sounds as good as it does is entirely due to him and the other guys who play on it with me, even though a fair amount of it was me in my room. I don’t want to not give myself any credit, but also think they deserve much more for sure. 

1. “Halfway to Eloy” 

It’s not even specifically about Eloy, Arizona. It’s just a scene that I imagined in my head. Some sort of Philip K Dick kind of thing where a guy’s been awakened to the cosmic light and is driving to Eloy or from Eloy. I’m pretty vague about it. That one was a lot of fun. That was in a jam with Zane and Zach. Then we fade into that Beastie Boys breakbeat. That was so much fun. I love that one. 

I did grow up in Pinal County and I do feel like there is a sense of this. You have to drive through Pinal County to get to Oracle where Kitimoto  recorded. Driving that road with Zane down for the Kitimoto  record, before this one even started, I think those trips were real inspirational to the record. There is a sense of place about it. It is sort of a Pinal county record in a weird way. 

You create your own world in your head. That’s a lot of what Dick writes about, and with something like this, you have this beautiful excuse to do so and to populate with all sorts of weird scenes or whatever. That one was a lot of fun. That’s a good collaboration with Zach, especially on that back half, and then with Zane really holding on that bass on the first one. That’s a fun one. 

1. “Addressed By The Multi-Formed Image.” 

This was one where it kind of came later in the album. I have a weird, fitful relationship with singing. Just like everything else I’m talking about, it’s taken me a long time to admit how much I love doing it. This album was a great chance to re-engage that with myself. Like I said, I grew up singing in church, and for all the weirdness that might bring to the table, it has implied for me the relationship between expression and spirit and all that stuff. I really do think that singing is a form of expression that does mean a lot to me. It was always tough to come up with anything that I felt comfortable putting word wise to melodies. 

1. “Always Happening” 

It’s the third thing that was recorded for the album actually. It’s a drone that was built on this loop of a Link Cromwell song, “Crazy Like a Fox,” which is Lenny Kaye, the music writer and guitarist of Patti Smith’s band, and assembled the Nuggets compilation. Just a huge icon in this world of record dude culture that I’m a part of or whatever. I looped just a small sample of that and wrote the mantra over it. I knew I was almost risking psych-rock… parody is hopefully not the right word… but I knew I was really explicitly invoking most of those psych moves. 

The loop of the Link Cromwell thing also puts it into a sort of tape loop setup which lends itself well to the psych rock thing, which again, I let it go. It was incredible because I reached out to him. When it comes to incorporating a sample, it can be difficult and a lot of people opt to not try to contact the rights holder. I decided I was going to and reached out to him and he was kind enough to respond and allow for it to happen and he seemed to like the song. If the guy who produced Nuggets doesn’t hate the song, who am I to argue. I love that song. It’s a lot of fun. We’ll probably release it at some point, but there’s an extended cut too that goes on even longer and it’s beautiful! That’ll probably come out when the single comes out. 

I remember being a teenager in Coolidge and learning how to play guitar and reading something in Guitar World that was like, one of the best things you can do is leave the audience wanting more. So, I did want to put a really cool one on the end to reward people who spent time listening to the record. It was that way for me. I always sort of knew that the book ends were going to be “Something Happening” and “Always Happening.” This was such a fun project and I’m really excited it’s getting out and that some people will hear it. It’s a pretty fun thing to finally be on this side of sharing something. 

​