Alynda Segarra aka Hurray For The Riff Raff

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Speaker 1: Hey, I'm Norah Jones and today I'm playing along with Alinda Cigara aka Hooray for the riff Raff.

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Speaker 2: I'm just playing long wey, I'm just playing in lone weezy.

00:00:21
Speaker 1: Hi. Welcome to the show. I'm Norah with me as always as Sarah Ora.

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Speaker 3: Here I am. I like how you always point to me as.

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Speaker 4: If we're on TV.

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Speaker 5: It makes me feel so welcome.

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Speaker 1: You're welcome to Spain.

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Speaker 6: We're here.

00:00:34
Speaker 1: We're in Spain right now. Our bea beautiful The episode was recorded in Brooklyn, but our intros recorded in.

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Speaker 3: The intros from around the world. Our guest today is the very soulful and profound singer songwriter Alinda Cigara aka Hooray for the riff Raff.

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Speaker 1: Yes, I'm so in love with the music. I've been listening to Hooray for the riff Raff for a long time and their voice is just breathtaking to me.

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Speaker 3: Yes, they're from the Bronx, but you're gonna hear all about how they ended up in New Orleans. Their sound evolved into sort of a beautiful, powerful style that's really moving, and their songs and lyrics are so expressive or heart wrenching.

00:01:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, or kind of punk rock just yes, yeah, in just the right way.

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Speaker 3: Alinda's truly a masterful songwriter.

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Speaker 1: Yes, definitely. I'm really excited about this episode. We had a great time. This was my first time meeting them and we felt really like it felt like old friends.

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Speaker 6: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very natural.

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Speaker 1: It was fun.

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Speaker 3: They found inspiration in COVID times and wrote some music and you're going to hear some of those songs in the episode, and you're going to hear about their most recent projects. And there's also a surprise duet cover.

00:01:52
Speaker 2: Oh Yes day too.

00:01:54
Speaker 3: Yes, please enjoy and don't forget to like and subscribe to. Nora Jones is playing along like and we'll keep the music going.

00:02:02
Speaker 1: Hey, please enjoy today's episode with my friend Melinda Sagara. Hekay, hooray for the refraf.

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Speaker 5: Okay, I take my shoes off of course.

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Speaker 7: Why do won't do? Rooted Dungrin bloom in Jasmine, Dadline Nutshepe Fox Glover in a game, Rooted Dundrum.

00:02:53
Speaker 8: I can hear you speaking, you can feel me breathing, break my head, Open.

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Speaker 9: Money and Glory, Nikki Boys.

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Speaker 6: Limestone near the glade.

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Speaker 10: Boo boobis bercade oed Dan drim.

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Speaker 5: Well.

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Speaker 2: I can't look back.

00:03:38
Speaker 6: I lost it all on.

00:03:42
Speaker 2: This one with Cherag.

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Speaker 11: Don't turn your back on the main lamb. Don't turn your back on the main lamb. Don't turn your bag on the main lamp, roted Dan drem Ya.

00:04:13
Speaker 2: I wake up in a.

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Speaker 10: In a field of corn, just Stirner. I describe your boy, or spirit find me.

00:04:30
Speaker 2: Or spirit got me.

00:04:33
Speaker 12: I'm addicted to the.

00:04:36
Speaker 6: To the higher violence.

00:04:41
Speaker 12: Full Moon made book.

00:04:44
Speaker 2: Should be called perfume.

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Speaker 13: Wrap your limbses around me.

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Speaker 6: This won't be over soon.

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Speaker 11: Don't turn your back on the main lamp. Don't turn your back on the main lamp. Don't And you're beg on the main land.

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Speaker 2: Road.

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Speaker 14: It don't here. Not everything that.

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Speaker 9: Is going, and I don't know what it's gonna take to carry on.

00:05:35
Speaker 14: Not everything.

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Speaker 15: Is going, and I don't know what it takes to carry on, or I don't know what it takes.

00:05:51
Speaker 2: To carry on.

00:06:10
Speaker 5: Oh my god, that's like my favorite version of that. I love playing with you.

00:06:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, that song is so cool. The flowers, it's the flowers, it's so beautiful.

00:06:23
Speaker 5: They're very punk. It's so yeah, these specific ones. Yeah, like I was looking through this. It was just like a book of of like North American flowers, and I was like, there's a flower called naked Boys. That's so cool, you know.

00:06:37
Speaker 6: I didn't know that.

00:06:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is cool. And what's chimiko perfume?

00:06:43
Speaker 5: That's like. So I was looking at this book called Plants of the Gods. I think it's like, all, I don't like do psychedelic drugs, but like obviously everyone I am around it talks about them all the time.

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Speaker 1: Everyone does.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, but it was a book all about like all about psychedelic drugs, and they talked or you know, plant medicine I should call it is a more respectful way, yes, okay, But there was like all this stuff about the people who first like kind of introduced like psychedelic mushrooms to the Western world, and the Shamans would wear this stuff called chimiko perfume. Oh yeah. So it was just like I was on this plant journey.

00:07:25
Speaker 1: I can see that I can sell, but it's such a great way to describe them all, you know. It's just so cool to have all this in a song.

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Speaker 5: Yeah. It felt really like I love a lot of like herbal medicine, you know. And in the pandemic, Like the early parts of it, I was very much like I can't be around humans, but all these plants are like here and they're like within my body and they're trying to heal me and comfort me.

00:07:52
Speaker 1: So that's great. Yeah, that's a good thing to turn to. Yeah, totally beautiful. Do you live in New Orleans? Yes?

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Speaker 5: And how long have you lived there since? I left here when I was seventeen and I got there when I was like eighteen.

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Speaker 1: Okay, long time there your adult life.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, I spent a couple of years in Nashville and I was just like what am I doing? And I went back. But New Orleans definitely has like very powerful plants and trees, you know, and just vibes.

00:08:24
Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 5: Have you spent a lot of time there?

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Speaker 1: Not a ton, but a little oh wow. Yeah, it's a special place.

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Speaker 5: It's really like it's all the extremes, you know, the lows are very wow, life changing, and then the highs or like this is the most beautiful parade with like you know, beautiful weather. But that's where I started really playing music, was on the street there.

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Speaker 1: On the street. Yeah, I read an article that talked about you were busking and do you call it busking?

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Speaker 2: Yeah?

00:08:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, busking in New Orleans, playing on the street. And I had this weird flashback memory to walking kind of where the boats are at the edge of the quarter, the French Quarter, and there's like this tree in this little park and I had this like flashback to seeing someone there once and I was just like, I love their voice.

00:09:18
Speaker 5: And I'm like, was that you.

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Speaker 1: I don't know that that would be cool though, Yeah, it would be cool. In my mind I saw you like, yeah, you know, forever ago, but I don't really know.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean where we would play? Would we would play on Decatur? It's really funny. There's like politics of musicianship and it's like Royal Street is where it's like that's when you're like grade A. Really, so when I first started, we were like, we're not good enough for Royal, so we should start on Decatur where everyone's like drunk. Yeah, it's so funny, and then you like graduate till you're like playing on Royal Street. But I would play banjo with like a jazz band and stuff.

00:10:00
Speaker 1: So you did a lot of did you do a lot of old songs at first? Or were you always writing?

00:10:05
Speaker 5: I would write a little bit, but it was mostly old songs. I loved, like early blues songs. I was really obsessed with, like the Blues Women with Billie Holiday, with Bessie Smith. When I found Bessie Smith, I was just like, this is the most badass yeah, first and ever, and I just like loved that lyricism. I think I learned like a lot of my songs are very simple, but kind of like the Blues is like deceptively simple. It's like it's not actually you know.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not as simple as you think. Yeah, it's very deep.

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Speaker 5: Yeah. And since that's how I started to play, I never really felt like, oh, I want to show off my musicianship. Instead, it was like I just want to like get into a groove, you know.

00:10:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the best way.

00:10:48
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:10:50
Speaker 1: What brought you to New Orleans? You grew up here in the Bronx Yeah wow.

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Speaker 5: And I just felt like I couldn't survive here. I was kind of like being real with myself, being like I don't think I'm going to finish high school. I don't think I'm going to like be able to get a good job. I was very confused, like what do I do? And I was friends with all these like punk kids in Tompkins Square Park, and they were all these kids that were like, come hop a freak train with us. Wow.

00:11:19
Speaker 6: Yeah.

00:11:19
Speaker 5: So I was just like, well, that's what all my heroes did, so because I'll just go do that. And it like wow, it felt very normal. And now that I'm like thirty six, I'm just like, what are you talking about? It's so scary to me. It's so scary, you know, but your brain like doesn't understand danger at that age. So I was just like, okay, of course, extra scary.

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Speaker 16: Yeah.

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Speaker 5: So I kind of like wandered around like a little like homeless kid for a while and then wow, other kids told me that New Orleans was a great place to be like a street kid, you know. And people were saying, like, you can play music there on the street. You don't need a permit or anything. And so I was just like, oh, so I've always wanted to play music, Maybe I should do that. I feel like I had a lot of angels swiss me.

00:12:06
Speaker 1: You know, that's intense. So how long was that until you landed there?

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Speaker 5: Around when I was eighteen, So it was like a year of kind of wandering and then even when I got there, like I still was wandering around and not like.

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Speaker 1: You didn't have a place.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, not domesticated until I was like nineteen, I think, so where do you sleep? Abandoned buildings? And you know, I was really lucky that I had a good crew of other kids. But we formed a band, yeah, and then that became like my family. It was actually like very like wholesome. We were obsessed with learning songs and that's like how I don't know, it's interesting, like my relationship to music and having a band was that was like family like safety and safety.

00:12:52
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, well I mean it does sound like you had a lucky run absolutely, and to be surrounded by people who nurture each other, Yeah, that is that's like the ultimate. Yeah, especially when you're out there so like vulnerable, you know, I know, and it's really intense.

00:13:10
Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 5: Like the older I get, I think the more the reality of the intensity hits me. It's like lately, I'm like I feel all the feelings of that time now, because back then I was just like I don't know, like you're kind of high on like being a teenager and like doing extreme things. But now I'm like that was scarier that, you know, all of a sudden, I'll feel it.

00:13:36
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:13:37
Speaker 5: Sometimes I still miss like that closeness with that band, you know, because now everything is very professional, which is normal and good. If you go back to your own hotel room, yeah totally. I'm like, we're not all going to sleep on the floor altogether and like share a sandwich. Yeah. But yeah, I feel like now in my writing, those days are coming up. I don't know if it's like that for you, Like, yeah, all of a sudden, the past has become a lot more of like my present in my writing.

00:14:06
Speaker 1: It all comes out eventually, right, Yeah, totally. I just want to go back now and let's you and sing with you.

00:14:13
Speaker 5: I know, I know, I mean it's it's been a wild ride. But when I started that first band that I had, like they really encouraged me to write, and then I started writing and just like making burned CDs and so cool. Yeah, and then it's been like this crazy ride where I'm still doing it. So I love that you.

00:14:35
Speaker 1: Somebody told you if you go to New Orleans you don't need a permit to play music. Well, I like music. I'll play I always wanted to play music. Yeah, yeah, you had never played before that.

00:14:45
Speaker 5: I played like a little guitar in middle school and I was obsessed with Hole and Nirvana.

00:14:50
Speaker 1: Do you sing all the time?

00:14:52
Speaker 5: Like just I did as a kid. But once high school hit that was when like, you know, the blues like hit me in the way that like I just got really shy, I got really insecure. And I my dad he was a musician. Oh, he was like a jazz musician and stuff. I didn't grow up with him, but we would play a lot when I was really little. And then when I hit high school age, like we just went on these different paths obviously, you know. So it was in me, but I kind of thought I like missed the boat. I was like, oh, I didn't go to school for it, and you know, so I'm just glad that I realized seventeen is not too old to learn, so oh it's not. At the time, I was like, I didn't go to school for this. I don't know how to play music, but.

00:15:41
Speaker 1: It's okay, Yeah, yeah it doesn't matter. I love them that song Living in the City because I was thinking, yeah, you grew up in the city.

00:15:50
Speaker 5: Yeah, this really has the vibe. Yeah, that's like those lyrics are definitely like characters from my past. It's kind of like all of the characters of Tompkins Square Park that I grew up. Yes, yeah, like Big Danny and there was a guy named Hatred, and like a bunch of like the there was like the biker alley, and then like the old polishman like playing chess.

00:16:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I used to live over there, probably when you were Yeah, you were in high school, because really I'm that much older. I feel like I moved to the city when I was twenty and I lived in the East Village. That was in nineteen ninety nine.

00:16:26
Speaker 5: Wow, So I bet I it's a cool time to live there.

00:16:30
Speaker 13: Yeah.

00:16:30
Speaker 1: I used to walk through the park and do you remember the blackout?

00:16:35
Speaker 5: Yeah, but I was out of town.

00:16:36
Speaker 1: I was on tour. I was on tour.

00:16:38
Speaker 5: It was so fun, I know, I was. I've never been more jealous to not be in the city. I'm sure I remember.

00:16:44
Speaker 1: It was just so like civil and everybody was kind.

00:16:47
Speaker 5: Everybody was like at one point they like started a bonfire in the park, but like the cops were okay with it. It was just like this weird truce where everyone was like, sure, drink and start this fire and never would eat your ice cream, and like, you know what I mean?

00:17:02
Speaker 1: Nice wasn't that It was just a year or two after nine to eleven Maybe I think I set people were all scared at first, and then everybody was extra nice to everybody.

00:17:11
Speaker 5: Totally.

00:17:12
Speaker 1: There's so weird dynamic there that was happening.

00:17:15
Speaker 5: For me, Like at that age, I look back like I just didn't comprehend how serious anything was.

00:17:21
Speaker 1: You know.

00:17:21
Speaker 5: I was in I was a freshman when nine to eleven happened, and I was so just like, Wow, something's happening. Like the gravity of Now it's so different to like go through world events, you know. Yeah, because at that age I was just like, oh, this is an adventure instead of like understanding gravity of stuff.

00:17:41
Speaker 1: That's interesting. I feel like kids now understand the gravity of everything and they take it so much harder. Yeah we did when we were kids.

00:17:49
Speaker 5: I know. It must be like access to information.

00:17:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a lot of that. It's intense for well, it's intense for adults now.

00:17:58
Speaker 5: Oh, it's intense for all of us.

00:18:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, life is crazy. So you're working on a new album.

00:18:04
Speaker 5: Yeah, I finished recording it. So we're like mixing Now, Okay, that's great. I'm so excited.

00:18:10
Speaker 1: Is it New Orleans made or is it nowhere else?

00:18:14
Speaker 5: I've been recording in North Carolina and Durham Wow, yeah, fun. Yeah. My friend Brad Cook lives out there, okay, and he's who I made Life on Earth with. And it was just like that whole experience was like life changing for me. You know, I'd never had such a like therapeutic experience with like making a record, you.

00:18:34
Speaker 1: Know, really, so I feel like when I listen to that album, I feel that oh good. Yeah, it's a really special one. And that song too, Oh yeah, should we do that? Yeah, let's do it.

00:18:48
Speaker 5: I'm going to try you try a different guitar. I'm gonna try this Nylon.

00:18:53
Speaker 1: Do you play piano on it?

00:18:55
Speaker 5: Are you cool?

00:18:55
Speaker 1: If I play piano? No, that is not me, that's not you.

00:18:58
Speaker 5: That's actually Brad's brother, Phil Cook, who is like such an angel.

00:19:03
Speaker 1: That sounds great.

00:19:05
Speaker 5: Yeah, he It's like very It's such a great experience recording there because you're just like hanging in the backyard and he's like, hey, Phil, like in the studio in the back they want to come lay down a piano part and then it's like a heartbreakingly beautiful, really sweet. That sounds nice.

00:19:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, is that my Yeah, that's my Willie Nelson dart. I did a I did a whole tour. This is in maybe twenty No. Two thousand and nine, and my band at the end of the tour it was Sasha Dobson, Smoky Hormel, Joy Warnker and Gus Seifert and John Kirby. They bought me that nylon string as a gift. It was like a year long, you know, crazy tour. Yeah, they bought me that and it's it's like a Willie Nelson model. Wow, I mean they I was trying to be Willie Nelson. Basically. They bought me that guitar and it's definitely not warn as trigger, but it's meant to.

00:20:09
Speaker 5: Be that at time though.

00:20:10
Speaker 1: I don't think it'll ever get like that.

00:20:13
Speaker 5: Oh it's so nice. I got to play this with Preservation Hall. Have you ever played with that?

00:20:20
Speaker 1: No? But I was wondering who's on the record, because I hear Lawren's on the record.

00:20:24
Speaker 5: Those those are all Durham guys. Oh, there's like an incredible scene in Durham of jazz musicians. But we got to do another version with pres Hall in New Orleans. Nice, I got. It'd be so fun if you played there.

00:20:38
Speaker 1: Well, now that I know you, I'm coming to New Orleans really now I have a few friends down there.

00:20:43
Speaker 6: Oh cool.

00:20:43
Speaker 1: Do you know the Tank in the Bengals Crew.

00:20:45
Speaker 5: I've never met that?

00:20:46
Speaker 1: Oh you should.

00:20:47
Speaker 5: I mean, like, they're so mind blowingly talented.

00:20:52
Speaker 1: They are, but they're also just great people. They'd love you and you'd love them. It would be fun.

00:20:57
Speaker 5: Let's I'm definitely a big Her name is Tank. Her name is Tank. Yeah, I love her like spoken words.

00:21:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, she's really Her brain is like floating with stuff all the time. Yeah, you guys should hang Maybe I'll come down there and I'll hang out. Oh my god, that would be fun. Let's start a band. I'm down. I need a new band. Why not just add them?

00:21:25
Speaker 5: Add them to your wallet.

00:21:27
Speaker 1: I love doing music. I love music.

00:21:29
Speaker 5: Okay, let's should we just try it? Yeah?

00:21:34
Speaker 1: You want me to start it?

00:21:35
Speaker 5: Yes?

00:21:35
Speaker 1: That weird?

00:21:36
Speaker 5: No, that's great.

00:22:06
Speaker 17: Sky trees and birds and lobbies, live ownerzies along.

00:22:21
Speaker 7: Rivers and lakes and floods of quays, live owners.

00:22:31
Speaker 16: This long.

00:22:35
Speaker 6: Han o mine not me, they.

00:22:49
Speaker 18: Leaveving beon drabs.

00:23:02
Speaker 6: Won't you hold me? So can't see.

00:23:17
Speaker 19: The lining, the massket, the desk with a flask sings li Foruner is long, and.

00:23:31
Speaker 2: The girl and a cage with the mon sings Lie foruner is long.

00:23:45
Speaker 17: And not.

00:23:47
Speaker 6: Lie, not me.

00:23:51
Speaker 20: They two feel the breathe and breathe the Oh it's in May.

00:24:20
Speaker 14: And fitly.

00:24:27
Speaker 2: Monarchs in fly, the downs, early light.

00:24:34
Speaker 21: Lie forn Earth is long and the sun in the west and the white.

00:24:46
Speaker 22: Love best all Liner.

00:24:51
Speaker 5: Is long.

00:24:55
Speaker 6: And not mine, not me, you that.

00:25:09
Speaker 23: You're spared, blinded, bad space?

00:25:21
Speaker 16: Who about the lightning strikes a little my name, it's the name.

00:26:04
Speaker 5: And not mine, not me.

00:26:10
Speaker 24: That through thelxies of song and pray.

00:26:31
Speaker 13: Be lost in time, growing of vine, Egyptian spring.

00:26:50
Speaker 25: Loving Beijing, li fners is all All for honors.

00:27:12
Speaker 2: Is low.

00:27:18
Speaker 1: Song makes me want to cry. Yeah, I felt such a beautiful song.

00:27:24
Speaker 5: Thank you?

00:27:25
Speaker 1: How did you feel?

00:27:26
Speaker 5: Oh? No good? I was just saying, like from since recording it, I was like I sang that low. That's crazy.

00:27:34
Speaker 1: Oh yeah you raised the key.

00:27:35
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, no, that song is very much. That was like my pandemic. How to get out of this song? Yeah, trying to write like a love song for like humanity and beautiful. I hear that in it.

00:27:50
Speaker 1: It's really it makes me cry. I read something about you coming back to yourself during that time. Yeah, and there's a line in one of your other songs it's been a terrible news week. Oh yeah, mine. It made me think of that and related to this, and yeah, it's a real it's a real like zoom back out into yourself kind of thing, which I kind of can relate to, you know.

00:28:16
Speaker 5: Yeah, I feel like we were all going through that, like you know, it's kind of what I was saying before about taking stock or feeling things that happened a decade ago. It was like just this really incredible moment where we're all kind of having a montage of our entire life being like all the times and all the bad times and all the good times. And I mean, I think we haven't really been able to fully feel what happened to all of us, you know. I agree.

00:28:47
Speaker 1: It's funny because I remember in the beginning, I have two small kids, and so in the beginning of the pandemic, you know, there was a certain point in time where it was like we spent it with a couple friends. Oh y begin which I was like, this is amazing.

00:29:03
Speaker 5: We could to hang out with our friends.

00:29:04
Speaker 1: We're doing totally okay considering all things. Considering we're doing totally fine. I looked at back at pictures recently. In hindsight, I'm like, we were a mess, but I didn't realize it, you know, like my kids were a mess. We were a mess. My friends were as Yeah, we were all a mess. I was drinking so much wine.

00:29:25
Speaker 5: Oh my god, with the wine. I know that was like the one place that didn't close. Yeah, exactly, Yeah, Yeah, I feel like we're all so scared and we were also, I mean, New Orleans and New York both got hit so hard and there was so much gratitude that I felt, but also like mixed with this like panic and yeah, I just had like this whole album got me through and it was kind of this It sounds really intense, but it was like this feeling of like if this is the end, this is like the I'm capsule. I want to leave for the aliens, you know.

00:30:02
Speaker 1: Sweet, this feels like a love song to your life, you know, and to all life on earth. Yeah, I'd love to do that song so.

00:30:14
Speaker 5: Totally.

00:30:15
Speaker 1: This is also from Life on Earth.

00:30:17
Speaker 5: Yes, okay, yeah, yeah, this is like my song for like little Alinda. I talk about like getting into other people's songwriting. I've been writing the song for years and I couldn't figure out how to write it.

00:30:31
Speaker 6: And then.

00:30:33
Speaker 5: Heroes was playing, like in a coffee shop. I was like, oh, I'll just like try to do that, but change it, you know, So I just like played Heroes and then was like, Okay, something happens, like when you're like copying something and then it becomes a photocopy of a photo, you.

00:30:49
Speaker 1: Know, like, yeah, it's not the thing at all anything.

00:30:51
Speaker 5: Yeah, totally. But that was the song that like unlocked this for me.

00:30:55
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, that's awesome.

00:30:59
Speaker 5: Cool. Should I just start out?

00:31:02
Speaker 1: I was coming.

00:31:19
Speaker 5: Take it.

00:31:21
Speaker 2: They always want you to take it.

00:31:25
Speaker 26: Just close your rasp, baby, fake it, burning inside out, shaking, screaming, hysterical racket lost in an option of requid, burning, inside.

00:31:45
Speaker 6: Out, cold feet.

00:31:51
Speaker 8: I was a kid, I smallly would have done an illegally to be by.

00:31:59
Speaker 6: His well, I can't speak.

00:32:06
Speaker 14: I get the feeling, my horary.

00:32:09
Speaker 6: It's been a terrible news week, man.

00:32:18
Speaker 5: Do I don't know how.

00:32:25
Speaker 6: Or no, no, hew, he.

00:32:33
Speaker 5: But I.

00:32:36
Speaker 6: I don't this to be.

00:32:39
Speaker 9: The song of my life, the song of my life, the song.

00:32:47
Speaker 5: Of my.

00:32:50
Speaker 8: I just want to be free, Get over it in time, push it out of mama.

00:33:18
Speaker 2: Cold faith. I was a kid out only he pushed me down on the car creep.

00:33:32
Speaker 6: Now I can't speak.

00:33:35
Speaker 14: I get to feel mord bet.

00:33:39
Speaker 6: I'll just make it through this week and I'll get it out a life.

00:33:47
Speaker 22: But I don't, honey, I don't know how, Oh, Dona, Donna, don't.

00:33:58
Speaker 6: Don't know how.

00:34:02
Speaker 5: But I.

00:34:05
Speaker 6: Don't want this to be.

00:34:08
Speaker 9: The song of my life, the song of my life, the song of mynd.

00:34:19
Speaker 8: I just wanted to be free, Get over it in time, push it out of my mind.

00:34:30
Speaker 23: Mine and nobody believed me. Nobody believed me. Nobody believes me. Nobody believes Oh, nobody believed me. Nobody believed he believe nobody believed me. Nobody believed.

00:35:23
Speaker 5: That was good.

00:35:25
Speaker 1: It's beautiful. I'm glad you wrote that song.

00:35:28
Speaker 13: Thank you.

00:35:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, this song is so so heavy, and it's just I don't know. Do people come up to you a lot about it?

00:35:40
Speaker 5: Yes? Have you gotten a lot of Yeah, A lot of people telling me like that. They relate to it or that they feel seen by it, and it's you know, and it's like, of course about my particular experience, but it can lend itself to any like traumatic life moment that you're just like, you know, I was writing, I was just trying to express like I identified with traumatic events in my life for so long, and then I reached a point where I was like, I don't really want to identify with this anymore, Like I'd love to identify as like an adventurer.

00:36:18
Speaker 1: Like that's what I love about this now, the way it's addressing how you really feel at this point in your life about it. Yeah, I could see people relating so much to it.

00:36:29
Speaker 5: Yeah, because I think we're afraid to let go of hard times because then they do become At least for me, I was afraid of like letting go. Maybe I was afraid of feeling happiness, or maybe I was afraid like then what was it all for if not wearing it as like a badge of honor or something. And then I realized like, oh, it's always in me, It's always within me, Like it's okay to like set it free. Yeah, you know, And I think I was afraid of well, then what's next If I like embrace healing or happiness, then I can be let down.

00:37:07
Speaker 1: You know. Oh, it's true.

00:37:09
Speaker 5: So it's like this vulnerability of like let's just jump off the cliff and like see what happens.

00:37:14
Speaker 1: You know, it's very vulnerable. It's not a unique perspective because I'm sure a lot of people relate to it, but it's it's a unique framing of something in this form, this art form.

00:37:28
Speaker 5: You know.

00:37:28
Speaker 1: It feels so good to encapsulate things like this in some form, I think, And yeah, I just think it's such a you should be really proud of it. It's very oh, thank you, very liberating song. It's really beautiful.

00:37:42
Speaker 5: Thank you. Yeah. I felt so relieved when it was recorded, just like you must have, you know, yeah, because it took me a lot of years. I mean, it took me a lot of years to feel like that, and then it took me years to write it. It's that thing about like simple but but complicated, you know.

00:38:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's life. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's really an interesting feeling to be inside listening to the song, you know what I mean.

00:38:10
Speaker 5: Well, thanks for playing it with me.

00:38:12
Speaker 1: It's a great one.

00:38:15
Speaker 5: Yay.

00:38:16
Speaker 1: We were friends though I know we do.

00:38:19
Speaker 5: Even when we were texting, I was like, wow, I feel like we already are from Yeah.

00:38:22
Speaker 1: When you texted me back, I was like, Okay, this is gonna be awesome.

00:38:26
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's such a relief I know about feeling. Should we do living in the city.

00:38:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's do that one limn in the city.

00:38:38
Speaker 5: Yeah.

00:38:39
Speaker 1: Should we do the response to yeah?

00:38:41
Speaker 5: Will you okay? Yeah? Okay, cool?

00:38:43
Speaker 4: Wow, dude, Wade, I got hurricane.

00:39:07
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm big name.

00:39:08
Speaker 12: He's wasted, he said, I'm the sweetest thing.

00:39:15
Speaker 15: That is new.

00:39:16
Speaker 6: The tasted.

00:39:19
Speaker 12: Mya buzzer, singing love songs.

00:39:23
Speaker 27: All in her dark apartment, fourteen floors of birden and fourteen floors a die.

00:39:35
Speaker 18: Living in the city, Living in city, Wei, just living in the CD live it in the city, living.

00:39:43
Speaker 6: In the city.

00:39:44
Speaker 2: Boy, Well, it's hard, it's hard. It's hard.

00:39:50
Speaker 12: I take you to the stairwell.

00:39:54
Speaker 6: I'll give you something I can offer.

00:39:58
Speaker 24: You know.

00:39:58
Speaker 2: The heart, it's not the hope.

00:40:02
Speaker 13: The heart is a lonely hunter.

00:40:06
Speaker 2: How long summer days.

00:40:09
Speaker 12: We're just sneaking by the river.

00:40:13
Speaker 6: Overlock my dreams away.

00:40:17
Speaker 12: And I'll watch the city quibb.

00:40:22
Speaker 18: Living in the city, living in switches living in the city, living, and.

00:40:29
Speaker 14: It's all living in the city boy.

00:40:32
Speaker 2: Well it's hard, it's sold it's hard.

00:40:36
Speaker 12: You know, Gypsy bit the dust, you know the shit he had it was poison.

00:41:08
Speaker 6: Now everybody wants.

00:41:12
Speaker 28: Just a taste of what we saw now standing on the rooftops, which is yelling till the morning, all surrounded by the visions.

00:41:28
Speaker 14: Oh keeper fool them.

00:41:32
Speaker 6: Living in the city.

00:41:34
Speaker 18: Then it is witches living in the city, all live it a city.

00:41:42
Speaker 2: Boy, where it's hard, it's hard, it's hard.

00:41:48
Speaker 6: Living in the city. It is swizes living in the city.

00:41:55
Speaker 18: Its all live it in city boy, where it's hard.

00:42:00
Speaker 2: It's hard, it's hard, it's hard, it's hard, it's hard.

00:42:14
Speaker 5: Yeah, fun, I could taste the city right like that hot garbage smell.

00:42:20
Speaker 6: Yeah, I feel it.

00:42:23
Speaker 5: It's crazy.

00:42:25
Speaker 1: And last night you did a show at Joe's Pub.

00:42:28
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:42:29
Speaker 1: It was a special show with actors ye for the Navigator album.

00:42:34
Speaker 5: Yeah. So when I wrote the Navigator, I always had it in mind where I was like, I want this to be a play somehow, like not quite a musical, kind of like rock musical, but like the soundtrack to the story. And everyone around me was like I think you're losing your mind lovingly. Yeah, yeah, but so I wrote this play, but I've never written a play before. And then finally that was in like twenty seventeen. Finally, in twenty twenty, I connected with Joe's Pub and they connected me with a playwright see Julian Jimenez. Cool, and we've been creating it since the first week of Lockdown, like you did it, yeah, yeah, And we were able to do it this past weekend at Joe's Pub with four actors and it was just like a dream come true. It was so cool.

00:43:26
Speaker 1: That is cool. Do you have any plans to do it some more?

00:43:29
Speaker 5: Well, we hope that that was just the beginning. We're kind of presenting it as like a work in progress, and hopefully this is like a long process of us making it a real thing.

00:43:39
Speaker 1: You know. Great, Yeah, it's a really cool yeah, and you're in it and you're seeing Yeah.

00:43:43
Speaker 5: Me and the band were like, you know, we kind of see ourselves as like the jazz cats in the alley.

00:43:49
Speaker 1: You know.

00:43:50
Speaker 5: My friend Lynn Legamari played a saxophone and it was just like so cool.

00:43:55
Speaker 29: You know, it felt very New York. It's a very like city story. So yeah, yeah, yeah that album too. Yeah, total, yeah, this is super fun. I know you want to do Drunken Angel, Yes for sure.

00:44:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny. You grew up in the Bronx, but you got country in your soul.

00:44:14
Speaker 5: I really I don't know where, you know. Me and my aunt and my dad, we used to drive to Florida every summerh and that'll do it. Something really happened in that, like mini van you know. Yeah. They would make jokes about how like we'd get to waffle House and all of a sudden, I'd take on like a fake Southern accent and be like morning like to everybody, just like you're a Puerto Rican from the Bronx, what are you doing? Well?

00:44:40
Speaker 1: Florida's pretty country, it is, yeah, when you get down there. I grew up going to Florida in the summers.

00:44:46
Speaker 5: Oh really. We would go to Sarasota.

00:44:48
Speaker 1: Okay, I've never been there. Oh yeah, because Dallas that's where your friend how is my aunt lived in Gainesville?

00:44:54
Speaker 5: Oh okay, I'd go there a lot. Lucinda's one of my favorites though. I got to meet her and play music with her one time. Really it was it was so cool.

00:45:04
Speaker 1: What did you guys play?

00:45:06
Speaker 5: We played we were on a cruise, which is god yeah, Sah Williams. We played, we played a Whitty Guthrie song. We played another one of her favorite of her songs. That's my favorite is people Talking one. Okay, so for this should we trade? Yeah? Is that cool? I love that? Yeah?

00:45:29
Speaker 1: I love her so much too.

00:45:31
Speaker 5: Yeah. And I was saying, gosh, I should have brought you the book, her memoir. Oh yeah, so she you just were reading it?

00:45:38
Speaker 1: She didn't memore? Is it new?

00:45:40
Speaker 5: It really?

00:45:40
Speaker 1: Okay, I'll get it on my kindle like a couple of months old. Okay, I would love to read that.

00:45:46
Speaker 5: Yeah cool, should we give it a go? Yeah?

00:45:56
Speaker 1: So you recorded this song?

00:45:58
Speaker 2: Yeah? For that?

00:46:00
Speaker 5: Blaze? Fully my god, that was so surreal. I just got an email one day that was like, Hi, this is Ethan Hawk. Just like cool. So someone's email got hat because what are you talking about? And he's just like, do you want to play Blaze Foley's sister. I'm just like, I'm obsessed with Blaze, Folly, this is and Towns in that whole world, you know, Like so it's just such a dream. And then Chris Christofferson was my dad's. Now every time I see him in a movie, I'm like, there's my dad, So you were in them.

00:46:32
Speaker 1: I didn't see the movie.

00:46:33
Speaker 5: Oh it's really in the movie. Yeah, I mean to see it.

00:46:36
Speaker 1: And I can't watch movies anymore, Like I know, I want it.

00:46:41
Speaker 5: It's really heartbreaking too. This is just such a like beautiful and tragic story. And we all know a drunken angel, you know, somebody that you're just like, you're so lovely and you're like haunted by this addiction. But yeah, so I got to cover the song and like be a part of the whole thing.

00:46:58
Speaker 1: It was so cool. He said, makes good music choices. Yeah, he loves music.

00:47:05
Speaker 5: Yeah, and he was just so like wonderful to work with and it was really great. And Blaze's wife, Sybil, was like a part of the whole cool thing and like wrote it with him. So it was just amazing to like be in that world, you know. Yeah, because I've been listening to the song forever and then being and like once I found out who was about, I just love the mythology of like I didn't know that. Oh yeah I wrote about Blaze. Yeah, and you know he had he had a thing about like duct taping his shoes. He like kind of had a vow of poverty is what they called it. He's like, I'm a man of the people type thing, so he would like not not get new shoes, and like, you know, just yeah, very it's it's a very New Orleans vibe.

00:47:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, did you guys shoot at New Orleans.

00:47:55
Speaker 5: We went to a place in western Louisiana.

00:47:57
Speaker 1: Okay, but okay, I want to watch it now.

00:48:00
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm only I'm in it very short amount in the middle, but special thing is so gorgeous.

00:48:05
Speaker 1: And Chris, oh my god, yeah, the best.

00:48:10
Speaker 4: Why dude, three.

00:48:32
Speaker 2: Sun came up? It was another day when.

00:48:36
Speaker 12: The sun went down, you were blown away.

00:48:39
Speaker 13: Why'n't you let go of your guitar?

00:48:42
Speaker 14: Why did you ever let.

00:48:44
Speaker 2: It go that far?

00:48:45
Speaker 13: Drunken Angel.

00:48:49
Speaker 6: Could add on it, the.

00:48:51
Speaker 30: Long smooth neck, let your head, remember every bread fingers touching it, shiny stream, but you let go of everything.

00:49:02
Speaker 13: Drunken Angel, drunk it Angel.

00:49:09
Speaker 31: You're on the other side. Drunk it Angel, You're on the other side.

00:49:41
Speaker 32: Followers would claim me hang around just to meet you. Some through loses at your feet, watched you pass out on the street.

00:49:54
Speaker 13: Drunk in Angel. Feed you and.

00:49:59
Speaker 32: Pay off oil nets, kiss you, bawn, taste you, sweat, ride about your soul your guts, criticize you, and wish you like Drunken Angel.

00:50:14
Speaker 13: Drugging Angel.

00:50:18
Speaker 14: You're on the other side.

00:50:21
Speaker 13: Drugging Angel.

00:50:25
Speaker 33: You're on the other side, some kind of savior, singing the blues. Derelict in your duct tape shoes, your orphan clothes and your long dark.

00:50:59
Speaker 13: Hair, looking like you didn't care. Drunken Angel.

00:51:06
Speaker 30: Blessed out from the hole in your heart, over the strings.

00:51:11
Speaker 26: Of your guitar, the worn out places in the wood, the ones that made you feel so good.

00:51:19
Speaker 34: Drunken Angel. Drunking Angel, You're on the other side. Drunking Angel.

00:51:33
Speaker 2: You're on the other side.

00:51:37
Speaker 6: Son came up.

00:51:38
Speaker 9: It was another day when the sun went down.

00:51:42
Speaker 6: You were blown away. Why'd you let go out of your guitar? Why'd you ever let it go that far?

00:51:50
Speaker 13: Drunken Angel, Dunking Angel.

00:52:05
Speaker 5: Yay, yay, oh my god, thank you so much for having me awesome. Yeah, thanks for doing this. Of course, I'll.

00:52:14
Speaker 1: Tell you very soon.

00:52:15
Speaker 5: I don't want to say goodbye, I.

00:52:17
Speaker 1: Know me neither, Like get a room at the hotel. Well, we'll hang okay good Yeah cool. Now now that we know, yeah, totally, we're good match.

00:52:30
Speaker 5: We can meet friends. Yeah and reson.

00:52:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, hey, thanks for listening to the show.

00:52:36
Speaker 6: That was so fun. That was so great.

00:52:38
Speaker 3: I wish we had time for so many more songs.

00:52:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, they'll be more. I feel like, well, we'll meet down the road and do some more. If you're wondering about the what songs we did do today, we did a song from their twenty twenty two album Life on Earth called Rhododendron, another one from that album called Life on Earth, and Saga all so from that album. We did a song from the album The Navigator from twenty seventeen called Living in the City, and then we did the Lucinda Williams song called Drunken Angel. Lucinda's version was from a nineteen ninety eight album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, and Alinda also has a recorded version of the song from the Blaze Foley movie called Blaze. This episode was recorded by Matt Marinelli, mixed by Jamie Landry, edited by Sarah Oda, Additional editing and mixing by Matthew Vesquez. Artwork by Eliza Frye Photography by Shervin Lenez, Produced by Me and Sarah Oda. Babysitting by Steve Angus,