The press copy describes Factory Summers as Guy Delisle’s “most personal book.” It’s a strange phrase for a cartoonist whose work often tends toward the autobiographical — but it’s hard to ignore. What begins as a memoir of teenage summers spent working the floor at a Quebec City paper factory ultimately grows into something deeper. Ultimately, the book is a mediation on the relationship between a son and his distant father. That dynamic is the heart of the story — a fact the cartoonist says he only truly recognized as he was deep into the work. 

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Episode 485: Guy Delisle

Fictional Father begins with an apology of a kind — or, at very least, an acknowledgement. Told as a self-effacing autobiographical strip, the preface notes the accidental similarity to the real life story of Dennis the Menace and the 1999 novel, The Funnies. But maybe some stories are too good not to tell through a different lens. “I’m sure you’ll make it your own,” Seth tells Joe Ollmann in the piece. And that certainly proved fortuitous. What happens when your life is made the focus of a parents’ ultra-saccharine comic strip? How does one square a true and fictional father when the two are seeming polar opposites? The cartoonist joins us to discuss the work and some broader truths it brings to the front.  

Episode 484: Joe Ollmann

2017’s What I Found in a Thousand Towns finds Dar Williams tackling urban studies. It’s new territory for the singer-songwriter, but one that builds on decades of fascination with the small towns she frequented on tour. The book has taken on a special sort of resident over the past two years, as the pandemic has spurred countless think pieces about the future of life in cities. It’s certainly top of mind as we discuss the force stasis of life during Covid-19, and something Williams is clearly thinking about as her latest album (her first in six years) I’ll Meet You Here is returning her to the road again. This, perhaps, is where the book and album converge, around the concept of “meet[ing] life as it arrives,” as Williams puts it – however and wherever that might be.   

Episode 483: Dar Williams

“We are the apes that are starting to understand the universe and our place in it,” José González says in a statement released ahead of his latest album, Local Valley. The comment refers specifically to the track “Visions,” but the sentiment can be applied to many of the thoughts that occupy this mind. A one-time PhD student for biochemistry, the musician’s social media outreach reflects the sentiments of a person deeply consider with climate change and the state of the world he leaves for his young daughter. As quiet and thoughtful in conversation as in song, Gonzales discusses altruism, the pandemic and teenage years spent playing in hardcore bands.

Episode 482: José González

This month, Numero Group issued I Shall Wear a Crown, an expansive five-LP set that explores the life and work of T. L. Barrett, a Chicago-based Pastor and musician. It’s a testament to the musical genius and master communication of an overlooked artist getting a long-overdue second life. It’s what the label does best, through compilation series like Eccentric Soul and Wayfaring Strangers and spotlights on artists like Barrett and fellow should musician, Syl Johnson. Cofounders Rob Sevier and Ken Shipley join us to discuss the new collection and life as an archival record label in an ever-shifting musical landscape. 

Episode 481: Rob Sevier and Ken Shipley (of Numero Group)

The success of Azure Ray’s self-titled debut seemingly took everyone by surprise — not least the band itself. Following the breakup of their group Little Red Rocket, longtime friends Maria Taylor and Orenda Fink reconvened to pen a set of songs aimed at coping with the recent death of Taylor’s boyfriend. Heartfelt and emotional, the sad, dreamy songs would form the foundation for a duo now celebrating its 20th year. There have been hiatuses over the years, finding the musicians focusing on solo and side projects. After releasing three albums in three years, seven would pass between their third and fourth LP. It would be another 11 until Azure Ray released album number five, Remedy, in 2021. But the pair have remained close friends throughout and another album has almost always seemed like an inevitability — even if it takes a move across the country and a pandemic. 

Episode 480: Azure Ray

Every time I speak to Mary Roach, I invariably get hung up on some minor detail — some story or person she’s teased out to unlock a fascinating new world. This time out, it’s the dried tiger penis lady, and really, how could it be anything else? The writer has a world class knack for finding fascinating tales in edges of the scientific world, from the dead bodies of Stiff to the space travel of Packing for Mars. With Fuzz, Roach finds herself exploring the intersection between the natural world and human law, from burglarizing bears to killer trees — and, naturally, dried tiger penis.  Roach joins us once again to discuss the methods of her pop-science madness. 

Episode 479:Mary Roach

For 20 years, Ben Snakepit has been building a magnum opus. Day in, day out, the musician-turned-cartoonist draws another daily strip recounting a scene from his life. It’s rare bit of constancy in a chaotic world. Of course, as with everything else, SnakePit does the strip his way. Bucking the ubiquitous world of webcomics, the artist releases the strips as a collection every three years, allowing for a kind of binging of three years of his life in a single sitting. For the past 17 years, Snakepit has also drawn a comic for the Razorcake fanzine, soon to be collected as the straightforwardly-name, One Hundred Columns for Razorcake. Though, while he finally plugged the plug on that work, he plans to continue drawing Snake Pit until the bitter end. 

Episode 478: Ben Snakepit

It’s been a big couple of years for Shirley Manson — not something every artist can say, as a global pandemic stretches into its second year. Nor, is it something many bands can say staring down their third decade of existence. Our call is scheduled early — another rarity in this world. When we connect, the musician explains that’s she set to go exploring on a rare off day for Garbage’s tour with fellow alternative icon, Alanis Morissette. In June, the band released its well-received seventh LP, No Gods No Masters, which found Manson’s lyrics taking no prisoners in a world that too often appears to be coming apart at the seams. Late last month, the singer also kicked off a new season of her critically acclaimed interview podcast, Jump, which features frank conversations with artists like Patti Smith and David Byrne.   

Episode 477: Shirley Manson (of Garbage)

More than 30 years after Trots and Bonnie ended its decades-long run in National Lampoon, the strip finally gets a worthy collection. Shary Flenniken has moved on from the work in more ways that one, but the story of a teenage girl and her talking dog still feels as vibrant as ever. While she might be the last to admit it, Flenniken’s life has been every bit as fascinating as the work she’s created, as a member of the Air Pirates comics collective in the early 70s, editor at Lampoon at the end of the decade and a long-time illustrator and cartoonist across a wide range of titles. Flenniken speaks fondly about her time working at a hardware store and frankly about the time she worked in end-of-life care. 

Episode 476: Shary Flenniken

When the interview suggested he might be a spiritual person, Ben Chasny blanched, explaining, “I'm actually a total nihilist.”Sixteen years later, he confesses that the answer was contrarian to a fault. It’s easy to arrive at the conclusion, listening to a lengthy back catalogue that finds him releasing the 20th album under the Six Organs of Admittance moniker. But he’s also very much someone who refuses to be pigeon-holed, as the industry was clearly attempting to do at the time, amid the burgeoning freak folk scene. But Chasny and Six Organs continue to break new ground, drawing on a wide range of influences, from the industrial bands of his youth to the hexadic card system he developed for composing music. 

Episode 475: Ben Chasny (of Six Organs Of Admittance)

My Begging Chart finds Keiler Roberts exploring the in between moments. She’s content to mind the little things that would not only find their way on the cutting room floor of most memoir, but might otherwise be forgotten by the end of the day. It’s not for lack of material. Conditions like bipolar disorder and multiple sclerosis can loom large in her life, as they would anyones, but the cartoonist possesses a laser focus for finding hilarity in the mundane. It’s a gift that makes so much of her work wildly relatable. Kicking off her virtual book tour, Roberts joins us to discuss untangling life from internal conflict, letting go of old work and the downside of nostalgia. 

Episode 474: Keiler Roberts

When it comes time to record, Laura Stevenson is honest to a fault. 2019’s The Big Freeze may well have been her most personal record to date, but the album has nothing on her recently released self-titled followup. Plenty had happened in the intervening years — some things she’s happier to speak about than others. Stevenson is clearly protective of the people around her, but when it comes to her own life, she’s much more of an open book. Born just as the pandemic was beginning to shut down businesses in the States, her daughter wakes up from an afternoon nap about halfway into our conversation. The difficult timing was, perhaps, fortuitous, stuck at home with a young child at a time when touring was an impossibility. With a new album in the world, touring is a possibility once again, but Stevenson is more than happy to take things one day at a time. 

Episode 473: Laura Stevenson

Like many of us, Danny Elfman had big plans for 2020. For the first time in forever, the musician paused many of his perennial obligations, clearing all film scoring jobs from his calendar. The new year would be all about touring. And then the once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic hit. Relocating his family away from their longtime home of Los Angeles, Elfman buckled down and got to work on something new. Big Mess is, at once, something familiar and entirely new. His second record and first studio album since the waning days of Oingo Boingo, the LP finds him returning to guitar-based composition. There are notes of his beloved band, including a reworking of the song “Insects,” but unique time signatures and dives into the avant-garde find the musician exploring new sonic realms.

Episode 472: Danny Elfman

The way Mike Doughty tells it, it’s a bit of a minor miracle Soul Coughing lasted for eight years. It was long enough, however, to generate three LPs, a handful of alternative rock radio hits and enough stories to fill a few memoirs. Attempts to reunite have, predictably, fallen short, but Doughty has carved a path as an extremely prolific singer songwriter, culminating in last year’s Ghost of Vroom 2 EP. A collaboration with Andrew "Scrap" Livingston produced by Beastie Boy mainstay Mario Caldato Jr., the project finds the duo excited exploring new shades of the "deep slacker jazz” pioneered by his long bygone band. Doughty returns to the show to discuss the new project, his most recent memoir and the pandemic year. 

Episode 471: Mike Doughty

Longform conversation with musicians, cartoonists, writers and other creative types.

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