It’s incredibly warm for early December and though the sky is dark and threatening on this Tuesday evening, the moisture remains in the atmosphere. Tucked in the back room of Remedy Coffee in Knoxville’s Old City, I sit down with Gene Priest and Derek Jones of Sharing Needles with Friends. This free podcast an overly exhilarating romp that moves between hilariously outrageous debates on the sillier parts of the music industry and interviews with up and coming as well as established artist in long format that plays more like a conversation between old friends than your typical question and answer reporting. Twice yesterday, at two completely different retailers in the city, the Sharing Needles with Friends podcast was praised to us by fans of the show. For those of you still wondering about the title, Priest and Jones are both vinyl enthusiast and dubiously clever in their wit. Typically a print interviews last fifteen to twenty minutes, as is the industry standard, though podcast are often granted thirty minutes. Tonight our discussion, that covered so much more than this sentence can encompass. Upon checking the time on the recording, we were all surprised to see that it had edged to just over two hours. To avoid to much of an explanation, we invite you to sit back, relax, and enjoy this open ended t traipse through all things music.
Common Ground
One of the things that caught my attention about this duo was their interview with Frank Turner. I spoke with Turner in 2013 just before his Asheville show at The Orange Peel and still look back on it as one of my favorites. The guys had a similar experience in 2014 before the Knoxville show at The Bijou Theatre. Theirs would last for over an hour and garner an invite to come back and hang out with Turner and his band, The Sleeping Souls, after the show. Check out their Frank Turner Podcast. “Something that we learned in doing interviews in a conversational way is that people bring out things that we wouldn’t be comfortable straight out asking. Honestly, most of the time we are lucky, because of the way we do interviews, things happen organically. The questions we want to ask come up in conversation and we never have to revert to our list. We come away from most interviews felling like we just made friends. We feel like we are better interviewers now than when we started. We approach every interview as if we know them. As soon as we get a phone call, it’s like, ‘hey how are you, awesome, cool now let’s get going.’ For example, the first time we got a really good long form interview was Bonnie Prince Billy (Will Holdham.) We looked into it and found out that he really doesn’t do interviews. He even brought that up in the interview, pretty early on I think, that he doesn’t do interviews and ‘that you guys reached out tells me that you guys really know about me.’ We asked him about his film work and I think that midway through the interview he realized that we really do know a lot about him. We talked to him for an hour and a half. That shows he was comfortable. We usually let them decide when it is over. Any time that any of these people give us is appreciated. If they give us fifteen minutes or an hour, we are appreciative. That’s why you’ve just got to start off with a kicker. A lot of times they will add us on Twitter or Instagram, so obviously we did something that stuck out in their minds.”
Getting Together
“We’ve known each other for fifteen years and went to high school together. We played in a band called My Lost Cause in the early 2000’s and we toured all over the place and lived in a van together for months at a time. I feel like the fact that we lived that life, we can relate to a lot of artist more so than just a regular interviewer. We know about life on the road, so when they talk about living on two dollars a day, we’ve been there. (Laughing) You had two? We had a dollar fifty to split between the five of us. For us it was pb and j. The dollar menu was a perk. If we had good shows we would allow ourselves Taco Bell every now and then. We toured a lot together and after that we continued to get together and write music, that we don’t do anything with, because we write well together. We always end up hanging out and talking about music. One night we had this idea, why don’t we just record this. It always gets funny heated, not like at each others throats. (We thought) At least we could have this as a recorded document. So we decided, let’s have guests, let’s have interviews, let’s make this bigger. Our first episode, we talked about five favorite albums. Luckily we’ve met super awesome PR people that give us great bands and we really don’t have to seek out bands unless we really want to talk to them. We were doing an episode every Sunday and decided, let’s do an episode midweek on Wednesdays and it will be shorter, like the B side of a record. We’ll call it B-Sides. (Laughing) It was supposed to be shorter. On B-Sides we talk about music news from the last week. It turns out those get listened to as much or more than the interviews, because if someone doesn’t know who the interview person is, then they won’t listen, but they’ll always listen to the news episode.”
Finding New Music and Favorite Albums of 2014
“The major label stuff is just off the radar, we don’t listen to the radio, we just can’t. We have always been people to seek out new music. We go to Youtube and check it out and if we like it, mark it down and go to the record store. (As to favorite albums of the year) We’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. We’re having several guest back to talk about their favorite albums of the year. (Jones) One is Jessica Lee Mayfield. That album has made my head sing. She’s got this beautiful voice with a grungy guitar over it. It’s just phenomenal. It’s really, really good. (Priest) One record, that is by far number one this year, is by a band called Midnight Masses. Autry Fullbright is the bass player of And You Will Know Us by The Trail of The Dead. This is his solo project. It’s been a revolving door of amazing musicians. Trail of Dead musicians have played on it. TV on the Radio musicians have played on it There are so many people who have helped make this record. This record moves from regular indie rock to soul. It’s the most diverse record this year. When it came out I said this is the number one record of the year and that was like six months ago and it still is my number one record of the year. It’s so good. We’ve had him on the podcast as well which was amazing because we got to hear about the journey to making this record. It’s called Departures. It’s unbelievable. Flying Lotus’ new record is warping my mind since the day I got it. It’s unbelievable. I’ve probably listened to it forty times and it doesn’t lose anything. Kendrick Lamar is on one track. Herbie Hancock is on it. Snoop Dogg is on it. All these people are on it that you wouldn’t expect on an electronic jazz influenced album and it works so perfectly and it’s incredible. (Jones) There’s a UK band called Childhood and they’ve got an album called Lacuna and it is phenomenal dream pop. It is super awesome. Another one is Hamilton Leithauser from The Walkman. He put out a record this year called Black Hours. I’m a huge Walkman fan and when they broke up, I was so bummed, until I heard a week later that he was putting out a solo album. Okay, cool, his voice and his lyrics are the big thing I like about The Walkman. Then the record came out and it was fantastic. It was everything I wanted a solo album to be. It was a lot like Heaven, the last Walkman album with more acoustic guitars.”
Vinyl
Records are a wonderful throw back to the times when you bought an entire album and listened to it front to back. I remember pouring over the liner notes, learning nerdy things about the band and digesting all of the lyrics. Today the single is king. Most people never take the time to discover anything more than the “hit.” With so much music freely downloaded, often the truth is the whole album is dismissed and with it sometimes the best songs. I remember buying Weezer’s Sweater Song cassette single after hearing it on Channel One in the ninth grade. That lead me to buying the whole album and seeing their first tour when it came to Knoxville’s World’s Fair Park Amphitheater the summer of 1995 with That Dog.That was my first rock concert that I attended on my own and the catalyst for much of the enjoyment I find in live shows today. (Priest) “For example, today I was listening to the new Godspeed You black Emperor record and I didn’t realize until today the amount of auxiliary stuff that came with it. I put the record on and was listening to it and pulled out two or three different sheets. Most of it is cryptic and makes no sense, but it’s cool to look at, because that’s what they do, but it was cool to look at. Then I discovered that this record had an extra seven inch in the liner notes. When I got it, I guess I just looked at it and assumed that that was it. I have had this record for two years and never listened to that. That’s the thing about records that I love, the art work is bigger and everything has a purpose. When they put together this record they had a purpose for putting in these weird schematics that make no sense to the listener that looks at it. That’s the fun part too, finding that stuff and figuring out what is the connection to the music. For some reason, I’ve gotten back into “Godspeed You Black Emperor.” Maybe it’s because I watched 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later and they did some music for those. (Jones) I’m gonna go home and check all my records for a seven inch.”
Ahh Memories…
Both Jones and Priest are themselves musicians who have spent extensive time on stage and on the road. This allows for a very inside perspective on the life of a touring artist which in turn makes for a wildly entertaining and insightful program. “(Jones) We had a confession one time that somebody, and well keep the names innocent here, but it’s on the podcast so if someone could find it. Someone told us that they didn’t like the Black Keys because, Dan Auerbach slept with his girlfriend. As he was saying it, we were like, should we let this go, and we were thinking that they know this is live and that we are recording and everything that is said gets put out because we don’t edit. We were looking at each other like, ‘this is great!’ That was definitely a big moment in, ‘were getting this.’ (Priest) There’s been a lot of amazing things that have come up. There was this thing with Britty Drake where people were coming on stage and kissing her. It was Pity Sex and Tiger’s Jaw and both have females. There was this one guy who jumped on stage while they were playing and everyone made a big deal about it. We asked her about it and she was grateful for that, because everyone had been talking to her male bandmates about that, like ‘How does it make you guys feel when they did this?’ It was pissing her off. She finally got to talk about it and she ranted for about twenty minutes. (Jones) One of my favorite moments ever was that we got to talk to Judy Greer. She is one of the funniest human beings ever. It was nothing that we expected. We would ask a question and she would take it in a million different directions. We probably got through two or three of the questions. She was really animated. She answered every question ten times more than we asked. When we were done with that conversation we felt like, we know her. We even sent her a little care package with a Sharing Needles with Friends shirt, mug, and slip mat. We’re friends now. (Priest) We’re best friends with Judy Greer.”
Sponsors
Seemingly, these guys have found the perfect paring of sponsors. Both fit every criteria wanted for a podcast about vinyl and music as a whole. It almost feels like there is a large corporation in which they make up an arm. (Priest) “With Nothing Too Fancy, I’ve been friends with Dustin for eight to ten years. Every band I have ever been in, everything I’ve ever done where I’ve gotten t-shirts or anything printed, has always been through him. We approached him and said we’re going to be doing these t-shirts and we’re looking for sponsors if you guys are at all interested. He and Lisa were like, ‘Yeah, we’d love to!’ Vinyl Me Please is a vinyl of the month club that Derek and I are into. One day we were thinking, as far as sponsors go, that was kind of the perfect sponsor. We could help them out because people that listen to this probably listen to vinyl records, and we are a vinyl record podcast. We reached out to them and they were awesome. They loved what we were doing. We don’t want to get sponsors we don’t care about. Vinyl Me Please, we’ll talk all about it. They’re super cool people and we 100% support what they do. (Jones) We’d probably talk about them even if they weren’t sponsors. We want more people to realize that there is a vinyl record of the month club that is well worth your money and that you can be assured that for 23 bucks you can get an awesome record. They do throwback records. They do new records. You’re going to get a mix of stuff. Who else would we go to?” Over the almost three hours that we actually talked, I learned so much about vinyl, music, new bands and so much more. You would be doing yourself a disservice to not peruse through the Sharing Needles with Friends podcast collection. They are all incredibly entertaining and full of facts that otherwise would be missed by a majority of the pubic. While you’re at it, check out Nothing Too Fancy and Vinyl Me Please. Both will offer you so many things that any music collector and/or over of incredibly unique items will instantly fall in love with over and over again.
