“Geek rock/diet grunge master Brett Newski teases his fourth album and a quick run of American dates via "What'd Ya Got to Lose?" Hypnotic vibes and hints of optimism abound. For fans of the Thermals, Pavement, and Built to Spill.” -PopMatters (full story here)
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*photos: Max Hauser & Brandon Bjorkman
Sitting in traffic in Saigon, Vietnam truly feels like the end of the world. Thousands of motorbikes clog every breathable gap on the pavement. Buses blast exhaust into my face. There is a man with no legs asking for change on the sidewalk. His face is 11 inches from the exhaust pipes on the street bikes. It is dark. It is smelly. It is sensory overload in the worst way possible. The oxygen is void. This is the apocalypse.
But on the other side of the brutal motorbike traffic expanse, there is a mystical city of infinity. Jagged buildings and misaligned roofs somehow fit together without a blueprint. Electrical wires are duct-taped together by the thousands, wrapping the streets like Goliaths used electrical tape. Neon shop signs light the streets to the point where actual street lights aren’t necessary. There are virtually no rules when it comes to construction, engineering, traffic-flow, or well, pretty much anything. It’s easy to fall in love with the free-for-all.
Local men rip thru thick toxic coffee and cigarettes on the crumbling sidewalks. They sit on tiny fisher-price stools that appear to be built for Keebler elves. The cute old ladies cook hot breakfast soup while assembling bahn mi sandwiches for the crowds. A baby waddles down the street just barely in eyesight of his mother. There is no space leftover. The city moves fast but life moves slow. I am an American weirdo that the locals graciously let exist here. I am merely an oversized fly on the wall.
I lived here seven years ago and everything is just as I left it. Saigon is a time capsule that somehow let me back in for another glimpse. Most places change with the inertia of capitalism, or simply, time. Vietnam maintains its raw authenticity. Even though McDonald’s moved in just last year, you barely notice it amidst the chaos of the far eastern world.
Expats (I.e. foreigners living here) form a love/hate relationship with giant, intimidating, smelly, Asian mega cities. You walk a thin line. On one side of that line is the romanticism and freedom of a mystic lifestyle on mars. On the other side is fading mental health, bone crushing loneliness, and a longing for the comforts of the west. Now I’m on the cozy side of that line.
I am drinking 80 cent coffee on the sidewalk. There are four baby chickens eating crumbs around my feet. Two puppies wrestle under a soup stand. There is an old Vietnamese guy next to me. He has a five inch hair growing out of his mole. It is unlucky to cut the hair off your mole in Vietnam. He offers me a cigarette, so I smoke my 9th career cigarette. Why not? I’m already breathing in motorbike toxicity in every breathe. A whiff of cigarette can be a nice 3-second-break from the routine waves of steaming hot garbage. I think I'll start smoking this trip. 35 cents a pack. Maybe I'll start an import business and sell cigarettes on the merch table next to my records.
The old Vietnamese guy and I don’t have much to talk about. I know ten phrases in Vietnamese. He knows how to say “hello” in English. So the old Vietnamese guy and I surrender to concrete jungle of Saigon. We let it blow by. What else can you do as a tiny insignificant human in a sea of 16 million?
Tonight I will play my first gig in Vietnam in seven years. Almost no one tours here, so it should technically be an interesting thing for people to do. Who knows what'll happen. It could be packed to the gills or there could be 31 people drinking 4% BAC god water in a small concrete room. Either way it’s a win and I’m a happy camper. I walked off a wallowing depression late last night, so technically my emotional cycle should be an upswinging pendulum today. But you know how these human brain waves flow, teetering and unpredictable. It keeps it interesting at least.
Everybody gets down. Only recently have I accepted this as normal. I used to feel guilty when I felt down. My life is good, why am I down?...that type of shit. It's a vicious cycle when we are unnecessarily hard on ourselves. It's time to utilize the catharsis of the down-cycle in our emotions. The down-cycle is medicine. It's hard to acknowledge it when it's happening, but if I can capture that feeling and sit with it, I can use it to eventually feel better. Oh, I'm feeling down. This is normal. This is good. It's glorious on the other side. Plus, if a person never gets down, wouldn’t that make them a sociopath?
I’m trying to ride out the down cycles and remember they are temporary. The old Vietnamese guy smoking cigs with me is doing the same. We all are. The old Vietnamese guy and I continue our coffee and cigarettes at 7am on a Saigon sidewalk. I woke up strange and I'm happy it stayed that way.
—-
"I will always appreciate bad days like this. Because they grant me a point of reference in regards to my happiness." -Andrew Jackson Jihad
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The kids are on drugs. All of em. There is a plump Japanese guy sleeping facedown in his underwear outside the club. His plumper, slightly-less drunk friend begins slapping him in the face to wake him up, slurring some insults in Japanese. He begins to take off his friends shirt and rub his belly.
The club is called Buttobi, which translates loosely to “going off the rails.” It is something like a budget hostel meets a punk squat. This is the club I will perform at in five minutes.
The aftermath
There are those gigs that should just be written off as a “drive by”. That’s right. You just slow down the van in front of the venue, take a peek at the bleak club, and keep on driving. Never look back. Burn a bridge with the promoter. Don’t bother getting paid. Drive by the gig. It ain’t worth the pain. This was one of those nights. The perfect cocktail for a drive by: shitty PA, no pay, drunk rave kids with no cash to buy Merch, and a massive language gap.
To prep for the show, I take a nap on a street bench. I am shot. Jet lagged. Newly single and alone. There is a bone-crushing loneliness to Asia that trumps all other forms of loneliness. Almost no one speaks English and life moves at lightning pace. You are invisible amongst the millions. It is life on mars.
But I’ve come too damn far to throw in the towel. I’m in Japan! Playing here has been on top of the bucket-list my whole life. I don’t care if I’m playing for 18 drunken psycho Japanese delinquents, it’s going to be worth the story.
The 18-year-old promoter informs me that there will be no pay tonight. Something about that didn’t surprise me.
The PA is completely shot. The wiring is all fucked up, power keeps going out, and the guitar tone sounds like the Fischer-Price acoustic starter guitar I bought with my McDonald’s allowance when I was 14. Must persevere. I decided to just plug into the guitar amp and turn the distortion on full-blast.
“Ahhhhhhhh!” the hammered Japanese chaps start to freak out. At this point the mic stand was falling apart, so this mop-top dude just grabbed the mic and started holding it for me. He was singing along right in my face to some song he’d never heard, in a language he didn’t know. For only a split second, I thought we were going to kiss.
Meanwhile, a girl standing 4’4’’ is peaking on lsd right in my face. She is twitching with her eyes crossed. Is this good? Is she going to pass out? She looks happy. I think this is good. I’d like to believe it was my freakish guitar playing that made her see God, but it might’ve just been the drugs.
A giant sumo looking guy has isolated himself in the corner doing a rain dance. He is ten beers deep and he’s still their best option for a ride home.
Amidst the mayhem, I look down to find the promoter at my feet, unplugging shit from my guitar-pedal-board. I squeeze his head with my hand and try to signal for him to leave it alone. English isn’t working. He rips out a plug that eventually shuts off the guitar, leaving a violent buzz in the speakers. I think he was trying to turn up my volume (god bless him) but he just ended up almost getting kicked in the head by me. I plugged back in, started playing, and the people immediately started jumping around like the true liabilities they are.
To my right, there are three tiny Japanese girls double fisting 20 oz beers. They have built what appears to be DIY bleachers out of some tables. They look twelve but have to be at least 26. Their craftsmanship should be celebrated for decades.
The room is completely disjointed, people raging in all directions. At this point I just ditch the spot on the floor I called my “stage” and started walking around on the couches, playing grunge riffs with Cobain levels of dementedness.
Ditching the acoustic tone and going full grunge has scored me scene-cred with the Japanese youth.
The people are freaking out. Is it the drugs? Is it my billboard chart topping acoustic punk songs? Whatever. Things are going in the right direction. Six minutes ago I was crying over my ex-girlfriend on a cold street bench in Tokyo. Now I’ve become a cult legend to at least three unemployed 25-year-olds that don’t know who the Beatles are.
I cut the last eight songs from my set and finish with a razor-tight, 15-minute, four song set. Leave the people wanting more, they said.
With anything, there is a point when you have to relinquish control. Just let it all go with good intentions and let the universe dictate your fate. I realized I probably wasn’t going to sound good in that room, so I just stopped trying. I need to do this with other aspects of my life. Just let it go. I try too hard too often and I just end up being disappointed and anxious. I don’t wanna do that to myself anymore.
Tonight I had fun and the people followed suit. Fun is contagious. Gotta remember that. The victories are often small and not so obvious. We have to find them under a microscope sometimes. They are under our nose everyday. We can close our eyes from the mayhem and just breathe in the sweet tiny victories. They might smell like butter, or coffee, or stale-beer on a hardwood crusty floor in Tokyo.
Am I getting anywhere? Maybe. Am I cracking the Japanese market? Maybe. Maybe not. Am I on my way to some nuanced form of underground success? I am if I tell myself that in my head. I think that’s all I need tonight. For myself to be nice to myself in my head. Tiny victories.
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Friends! Pleased to bring you my fourth studio album, Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down, out April 3 via Nomad Union. Check out all the goods below :) -Newski
Photo: Alejandro Albuernes
How do you feel when someone starts playing on their phone while you’re talking to them? It’s a dark moment. It’s a seemingly small, yet significant moment when we realize we’ve got work to do as both individuals, and as a species.
BRETT NEWSKI’s fourth studio album Don’t Let the Bastards Get you Down is a call to arms against whatever destructive forces we may find ourselves battling, from our individual struggles with toxic relationships, low self esteem, loneliness, and apathy to the more global challenges facing us in 2020: The erosion of face-to-face human connection, the breakdown of the proverbial village, the destruction of the planet, and the myriad ways in which our social media addictions amplify these problems. Depression and anxiety are at all time highs, with many, if not most of us, struggling to preserve our optimism.
So how do we regain control and stay hopeful in the face of these challenges? Perhaps it’s less screen time. Perhaps it’s changing the way we approach our tiny pocket TVs. Perhaps it’s discovering or recommitting to our passions. Perhaps it’s getting our hands dirty in pursuit of real solutions to our problems (instead of just complaining online). Perhaps Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down can shed some positive insight.
In Last Dance (cowritten with Grammy nominated songwriter Pat Macdonald, ‘Future’s So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades’), Newski lays bare the highly relatable challenge of trying to stay informed and engaged while simultaneously staying afloat psychologically: “I ain’t trying to build the ark, I just really wanna learn how to swim / Thru a sea of plastic bottles, all the refuse, the mess we are in.” In Grow Your Garden, Newski issues a wake-up call from the hypnotic, numbing effects of living with our eyes glued to our screens: “If I was the dirt beneath the sneakers on your soulless feet / I’d nudge you far from the mirage so you could see the water”.
In Lousy T-Shirt, Newski describes the traps of social comparison in these “tiny TV times”, in which we so often compare ourselves to the “greatest hits” of others’ lives. (“I ain’t making any headlines / It’s a failures parade / I drove all the way to Hollywood and all I got’s this lousy t-shirt.”) He doubles down on this theme in Buy Me a Soul, singing “Step out from behind these little screens that rule our lives / I’m sick of highlights / Cause we’re an empty shell and we’re on earth but we’re in hell / Can anybody hear me? / Is this a permanent bad dream? Or is it too much reality?”
What could topically threaten to amount to “too much reality” for the listener is buoyed by Newski and collaborator Spatola’s signature blend of largely up-tempo, guitar-driven alternative with splashes of what they describe as “Geek Rock”, “Happy Punk”, and “Diet Grunge”. The band has had a busy few years, playing alongside acts like PIXIES, Courtney Barnett, Violent Femmes, Better than Ezra and Manchester Orchestra, and will be touring extensively in 2020 in support of this latest release.
“Newski's live shows are part rock n' roll, part stand up, and part therapy. In the end, the room is won over,” says Jim McGuinn of The Current in Minneapolis.
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photo: kelly bolter
We just touched down on snowy American soil after a weird n wacky tour of Japan and Vietnam. While we were there I played a few unlicensed shows on the streets of Tokyo. Enough people freaked out, a few got pissed. Here’s a clip:
*Today marks the anniversary of Tom Petty's passing, so I thought I'd share my bizarre encounter with Petty and his management on his final tour. This was written shortly after it all happened. Story below.
Milwaukee Summerfest | July 7, 2016
Violent Femmes have taken us out for a short tour around the midwest. After two packed-sweaty shows at First Ave in Minneapolis, we touchdown in Milwaukee, WI.
Photo: NBC news
We’re playing "the worlds largest music festival," Summerfest. This fest is a Bohemeth. 11 days. 800+ acts. I witness seas of drunken Wisconsinites teeing up another liter-a-beer and polish sausage. Holy grail traditions of the Badger state. Cigar smoke is in the air. The signature cocktail of Wisco festival smells basks thousands of concert-goers.
I rally my band together. Always nervous to play with the band at this point. I have my solo show ingrained in my subconscious. I've done it 1000 times. No one can stop me. No heckler. No grouchy ponytailed sound man. My tones are dialed in. My banter is ready. I am not scared of even the hippest crowd of pitchfork bullies judging my dorky ham-fisted jokes and non reverb-laden songs.
That said, I'm working with a brand new band lineup. Getting a new set together with a new band is terrifying. It takes so long for any band to get tight. I dwell on these worries and they do me no good. I get so far down the rabbit hole of anxiety, sometimes it's impossible to have any fun. I'm a control freak when it comes to music. I gotta learn to delegate. Must have faith in others. Freaking out is for dentistry patients and Hollywood publicists. Gotta roll with the punches and make sure the show is fun for all.
On this night, the place is gonna be jammed. Milwaukee legends Violent Femmes haven't been back to town in several years.
The show goes off great. We play tightly as a unit and get a warm response as the crowd gets into 4-beers-deep territory. Post-show, I run back to the merch table to sell shirts and records (aka shift some units) and get bum rushed by people. Merch is flying off the table.
I made this really dumb shirt that says "Tom Petty May or May Not be Jesus" (long before his passing). It’s my best seller. People are buying these like hotcakes, whether they like my band or not. I've worried about copyright infringement, but not enough to stop selling the shirts.
Coincidentally enough, Tom Petty had just played Summerfest a few days before us.
I finish selling and go to cash out with the festival merch manager, Marky. Marky says "Brett, I love your 'Tom Petty May or May Not be Jesus shirt!. I took a picture of it and sent it to Tom Petty's management."
My heart stopped.
"Noooooooo!" I shouted. "Why'd you do that?!"
I'd been very concerned about getting sued by Petty's management for some time. I couldn't believe Marky would throw me under the bus like that. But Marky calmed my nerves...
"No Brett, it's cool. Petty's management loves the shirt...they want to buy 12 of them", “twelve!”, Marky says.
Holy shit.
So I sold the rest of my "Tom Petty May or May Not be Jesus shirts" to Tom Petty's tour management on his 40th anniversary tour. I went on my way. A good days work.
I was later informed Petty's crew wore those shirts around Tom Petty's final tour. Petty has been a long standing hero of mine. The master of minimalism. What an amazing guy and an amazing crew. Gonna miss that dude. Cheers Tom. I know you're livin' it right wherever you are.
----
*New live album Going Solo Is Better than Being Alone has just been released...
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TOUR
10/4 - riverfront terrace - WI DELLS, WI
10/5 - bloody mary concerts - LACROSSE, WI
10/18 - mona records - TOKYO, JAPAN*
10/19 - ongaku no jikan - TOKYO, JAPAN*
10/20 - buttobi - ASAKUSA, JAPAN*
10/26 - soma art lounge - SAIGON, VIETNAM*
11/7 - iceland airwaves festival - REYKJAVIC, ICELAND*
11/16 - trip around the sun fest - MPLS, MN
12/20 - redbar all request show - ST FRANCIS, WI
12/27 - three sheeps - SHEBOYGAN, WI
12/28 - rock river tap all request show - HORICON, WI
12/31 - pabst theatre w/ the Gufs, Willy Porter - MILWAUKEE, WI
1/7 - stone cellar all request show - APPLETON, WI
1/10 - ohio music temple - CLEVELAND, OH SOLD OUT*
1/11 - port clinton listening room - PORT CLINTON, OH*
1/17 - masonic temple - VIROQUA, WI*
1/24-29 - rockboat - MIAMI, FL SOLD OUT
2/7 - slow poke lounge - SPRING GREEN, WI
2/8 - papa joe's house concert series - MARSHFIELD, WI*
2/16 - mason city brewing - MASON CITY, IA*
art: Time Cote
Iceland Airwaves performance Nov 7 @ KEX Hostel
Hey Pals, we are heading out east with alt-rock heroes BETTER THAN EZRA this July. They were a major influence on me growing up and informed the way I learned the guitar. See you out east.
7/10 - Paradise Rock Club - BOSTON, MA
7/11 - The Paramount - HUNTINGTON, NY
7/12 - Baltimore Soundstage - BALTIMORE, MA
Video footage has surfaced from our unlicensed pop-up show at the LaCrosse nursing home. Thanks to the friendly staff for not booting us.
Hats off to Greg Tooke of Pop-Up Podcast for organizing. The song is 1995 classic "In the Blood" by Better Than Ezra.
Get a tour shirt + secret tour journals + new demos by supporting monthly on PATREON here.
