"Piss in the Wind" - new song out today
If there's one year that deserves an "end of the world" song, it's 2020. Here is my song about throwing in the towel gracefully, it's called "Piss in the Wind": Engineered by Spatola.
Photo- Kevin Goss Ross
LYRICS (Newski/Shaban)
Ignore the warning signs
Write off your alibis
Compartmentalize
Piss in the wind
Blow off your friends calls
Embrace your pitfalls
Put up some new walls
And piss in the wind
Don’t trust what your gut says
Sell off your soul instead
The voices in your head
Say piss on the wind
Sign on the dotted line
Get financially paralyzed
Lie lie lie lie lie lie
And piss in the wind
Fall in love easily
With liabilities
Don’t stop the heartbleed
And piss in the wind
Go point the finger
Let jealousy linger
Let’s all get together
And piss in the wind
STEPHEN KELLOGG on the podcast | can A.I. replace artists? Internet detox, art of self-avoidance and more
Glen Phillips (Toad the Wet Sprocket) on the podcast
DEAD HORSES Sarah Vos guests on the podcast
Sarah Vos (Dead Horses) tells Newski about playing a concert at an elderly swingers club. The two analyze energy burnout, growing up religious, quarter-life crises, and most free moments in life.
Dead Horses music: http://www.deadhorses.net/home
Support the pod: https://www.patreon.com/BrettNewski1
MANITOWOC MINUTE Charlie Berens on the podcast | fear of bosses, self-employment,
The Verve Pipe Brian Vander Ark (podcast) | disaster tour with Kiss, party with Mark Wahlberg, being your own boss
The Figgs Pete Donnelly on Dirt from the Road podcast
Pete and Newski in Jersey 2017
Pete and Newski in Philly 2018
The Figgs co-founder Pete Donnelly sits in with Brett Newski to discuss career highlights and lowlights of the 90's and early 2000's: opening for U2, being on the Weezer Blue Album tour in 94’, playing bass in Soul Asylum, Graham Parker, working with Train, anxiety around late night TV appearances, being signed to a major label.
*Subscribe to DIRT FROM THE ROAD wherever you listen to pods.
More on Pete: https://www.petedonnellymusic.com/
Pete and Newski in Neenah WI circa 2014
Pete Donnelly and Brett Newski circa 2015
EXCERPT:
Brett: What was going on the first Weezer tour like?
Pete: That was exciting. We were really revved up, just loving being on the road and playing. We were kind of out to destroy, as far as our energy goes. And Weezer is kind of, they were good sometimes, but they weren’t a particularly great live band. They didn’t have that iconic status at all at the time, they had just released their first single, so people were literally walking out after they were playing “The Sweater Song”
Brett: Wow!
Pete: But, on the other hand, they had so much buzz that nearly every show was sold out, if not every show. And they were pretty open to us. We got along well with the band, they were cool to us.
Brett: So you went in there with a mindset of “we’re going to mop the floors with these guys every night”?
Pete: *laughs* No, but for us, once you plug in and start playing, we can’t help it, something takes over.
Brett: It’s okay to admit that. I think any band would say the same, it’s this form of primal emotion that we have as musicians, where you are friends with these guys, but you think, “I’m gonna fuckin’ mop the floor with them if we can.”
Pete: And when you're skinny dudes like us, you really can’t mop the floor with anyone until you get a guitar in your hand. It really changes things.
Brett: You’re getting dunked on until you get the Telecaster.
Pete: That’s right.
Brett: And you had this funny story on how Rivers wasn’t fulfilling his contract most nights? Tell me about that, that’s hilarious.
Pete: Well there was one night in particular...well, Rivers wasn’t that socially interactive. You know what I mean? We were sharing a dressing room, and he wasn’t a dick about it ever to us, he was never a dick, but he was in his own world.
And you know how dressing rooms are. The chairs that you sit in are disgusting, and it’s cold and dirty, you're in the basement of some club under the bass bins, and we’re sitting down there after our show, and Rivers comes and plops in some puke-green arm chair that’s got cigarette burns in it, and his road manager comes down there and is like, “Rivers! Rivers! You gotta play for 45 minutes! You gotta fulfill our contract or we won’t get paid!”
And he’s just sitting there, like, “But I don’t wanna!”
Brett: *laughs* Love it!
Pete: “I don’t wanna!”
Brett: The man has had it!
Pete: After forty minutes. But they only had a 45 minute set. They didn’t have other songs at that point.
Brett: Yeah, like ten songs, that album’s only 33 minutes long or something.
Pete: Maybe they played a couple of covers, or a new song, but they didn’t have a lot of history as a band, not a lot to stretch out.
Brett: Well I love that story, I feel I’ve told that to a few people at this point. It’s so funny to hear about people walking out on WEEZER. One of the most influential rock bands of all time, having seen them before they found their stride and became swept up in pop culture.
Pete: I think that goes for all the most iconic bands at the time. People were not getting them. Like Led Zeppelin getting panned all the time, or John Coltraine playing his heart out to six people in the audience. Greatest jazz musician of all time, but at the same time people are like, “Huh? What? Well I gotta go.”
Brett: I kind of gives you hope, that you gotta stay in the game,you know?
Pete: How many times have you heard that, Brett?
Brett: Well I just tell myself that on repeat. Even if it’s false *laughs*.
THE THERMALS Hutch Harris on Dirt from the Road podcast
Frontman of alt-indie legends The Thermals sits in. Newski and Hutch discuss quarantine drinking habits, conversational awareness, accepting criticism, mosh pit survival, psychedelic experiences, and taking a break from the music industry.
More on Hutch: http://www.thethermals.com/
Support the pod: https://patreon.com/brettnewski1
Pick up Life Upside Down (CD or vinyl), produced by Hutch Harris…
Life Upside Down (CD or Vinyl)
from $10.00
EXCERPT:
Brett: Did you ever see mosh pits get out of hand, to the point where you’d have to coach the mosh pits into not killing each other?
Hutch: We played Beachland in Cleveland a bunch, and that definitely got out of hand a lot. There was a crew of kids who would just bring glitter, shaving cream, and water guns, an arsenal of shit they would bring. And the owner got super-pissed, because there were a lot of shows where it was just trashed at the end of the night. And we had this guitar player who sprained his leg, and was on crutches the rest of the tour, because he slipped in shaving cream when he was on stage.
All these kids planned it, they were interspersed throughout the audience. They weren’t just in one area. I forget the song, but when we started this song we were just bombarded with water and shaving cream and glitter and confetti and all this shit. It was coming at us from all angles.
I remember seeing one of the girls in that group later at another venue in Cleveland, and she was saying how the owner of Beachland hated all those kids.
Brett: Oh yeah.
Hutch: Because they were making such a mess.
Brett: They were like the plant at a peaceful protest.
Hutch: Right! Yeah, exactly!
Brett: Cleveland’s a tough town. Hard-nosed people.
Hutch: I like it, they’re crazy there.
Brett: I can see the Midwest taking to your meat-and-potatoes guitar rock very well.
Hutch: For sure, it’s the same way they love The Hold Steady, who we did a bunch of shows with in Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago. So that make sense.
Brett: You know, I think the first show I ever crowd-surfed was your show in Madison when I was a little guy. I did an interview with you when I was twenty years old.
Hutch: Right, yeah, I remember that. That was at...not Blind Pig, where was that?
Brett: It was at the High Noon Saloon. I interviewed you for the Badger Herald.
Hutch: Right.
Brett: I remember being so terrified to crowd-surf. Because you watch it in movies, you hear about it, you see it at metal shows, and kids get dropped. I remember the anticipation of that, thinking, You’re going to crowd-surf, you’re going to do it, you’ll do it, and what a liberating feeling.
BARENAKED LADIES co-founder Steven Page guests on the podcast
Barenaked Ladies co-founder Steven Page and Newski chat mental health boosts, hilarious jobs before music, and why bombing on stage is fun.
More on Steve: https://www.stevenpage.com/
Support the pod: https://patreon.com/brettnewski1
SNIPPIT:
Brett: I’ve seen your solo shows. I love your humor, I love that it’s more reserved and dry. I’m curious, do you like to write jokes or bits between songs? How much do you leave for improv, versus a teed-up story?
Steven: Well I never used to repeat a story. In the Barenaked Ladies days especially, that was a thing. We didn’t want to repeat anything that happened between songs. We wanted to leave it open to improv. Some of it was musical ideas that the guys would play as a basis to play an improvised song or rap. We’d say, “I did this thing today” and that would kind of morph into an improvised song.
I’ll still do that kind of thing. But when my third solo album came out in 2016, the first gig we had on that tour was a two week residency at the Cafe Carlyle in New York City. It’s a super fancy, Upper East Side place. It’s where Woody Allen plays every week. It’s a little, tiny, classic New York cabaret. Super expensive, way too expensive for my family to spend $120 plus dinner and drinks.
Brett: Yeah
Steven: The New York Times reviewed the show on the first night, which was horrifying to me. I’m thinking, “Wait until we have a few nights under our belt before you review us!” But their cabaret reviewer reviews like a theater reviewer does. They basically review your opening night. So the audience can decide whether they want to come to the show or not.
But what I realized with the cabaret audience is, they kind of expect to see the same show that was written about. So over the course of that I learned to develop kind of a “show.” Some of that meant having bits. They evolved into a few written bits that became part of the intro or the song itself, which I did use for some time.
But even with all of those, I’ve done them so many times now that the next time I’m on the road, they’ll see different bits written around them. But that was new for me! And kind of odd...but I grew to love doing it. You start to learn where the beats are, or the laughs, or surprises…
Brett: Exactly, exactly. And when you come up with a banter bit that’s solid gold, I feel the crowd the next night deserves to hear that! I think early on in an artist’s career there’s this shame about using something twice. It’s cheating, it’s a magic trick. The fact that Barenaked Ladies did that for so long, with such a strong rule of never repeating anything from the night before, it’s risky, but I can imagine how it honed your chops. Plus you probably came up with with some insane stuff that you would never come up with otherwise.
Steven: Well it also kept the wheel spinning in our brains. You play these songs how many times, and there’s a stereotype that’s true, especially when you're playing arenas and amphitheaters, bringing full production with you—it really truly looks exactly the same every night. It’s pretty easy to fall into that trap of feeling almost invisible in front of a huge crowd.
But there’s an element that “I have to be on top of every word he’s saying, every beat he’s saying, because I’ve never heard any of these before, and I have to respond, and I have to try to keep up, and make it just as funny or musically surprising” then you stay engaged in the show.
Brett: You avoid burnout, for sure. Now with improv, inevitably it involves bombing. Is there a moment where you’ve bombed miserably? Or did you have Ed to rescue you, or Creegan to play a bass solo?
Steven: The unspoken rule was you’re always there to catch the other guy. Part of my schtick was that I was a terrible rapper. So I would set myself up to bomb. Have a few great, surprising, hilarious lines, and then just run over into the next line, or fall apart, and that was part of the schtick.
But solo, I started to learn to love bombing. Or at least the appearance of bombing.
Brett: I love bombing too!
Steven: I love, A-if it’s bombing, they’re paying attention, and then it’s a challenge to dig yourself out. The digging back out is so much work, and it’s rewarding. I never feel like, “Oh, you’re an idiot, you bombed.” Part of the schtick I’ve developed is, even though sometimes I am bumbling and don’t know what I’m doing, if I can make people become attached to the part of me that is struggling to keep it all together, when I nail it, we’re all in it together.
Everyone in the room feels like it’s a triumph. It’s not about lowering their expectations, it’s about creating a relationship with the audience where they still don’t know if you’re going to pull it off. But you know you are.
*hear full audio above
NOAH GUTHRIE on the podcast | traps of Youtube, finding confidence, how to weird out celebrities
South Carolina songwriter Noah Guthrie sits in to discuss growing up wobbles, finding oneself, traveling internationally with his pops, and America's weird obsession with fame culture.
More on Noah: https://www.noahguthrie.com/
EXCERPT:
Brett: One thing I’m not familiar with is the TV world, I know you’ve done some TV work. Have there been any celebrities that you were nervous to meet, or maybe ones who were more of a trainwreck than you might have expected?
Noah: *laughs* Yes to both. I was on Glee for their sixth season, and that was really great. But I also did America’s Got Talent, and meeting Tyra Banks in person? That was so strange. She was wonderful, she was amazing, just very warm and nice and great. But...have you ever met a famous person who is so famous that they have this thing around them?
Brett: Autopilot?
Noah: Well it’s more of an aura around them, they have this aura to make you go, “Oh, yeah, you are famous.” You can look at them and see they’re a famous person.
Brett: Sure.
Noah: With musicians you don’t get that as much, you can see Jason Isbell in a coffee shop, and he looks like a normal guy. But Tyra Banks would be in pajamas on the set, and still look like she’s made to be famous. And she was very nice.
Brett: Do you think you’re born with that, or is that something that happens from being in the public so much?
Noah: I think there’s a personality that is very good for being famous, that you’re probably born with? But I don’t know, it’s very strange. She was very nice, though!
Brett: I’ve noticed that. I don’t know if I’d call it an aura, for the more famous people I’ve met, though I’ve not met someone like Tyra Banks. There is that celebrity where they’re nice, but they’re on robot-mode, because they’ve had the same conversation so many times, people just coming up to them.
Noah: Oh yeah I’ve had that a lot.
Brett: They know they have to be nice. You can tell nobody’s home, but they’re just sort of smiling and talking to you.
Noah: That’s for sure, I think.
Brett: You can understand. At the same time it’s bizarre, kind of makes you feel like an idiot.
Noah: It kind of makes you feel like, oh right, nothing I’m saying is worth anything to you. You should just leave.
Brett: There’s an art to talking to celebrities, or micro-celebrities, where I feel that you have to be prepared to bomb. You go up to Eddie Vedder and talk about breakfast cereal, or you come up to Wayne Coyne and start talking about the best types of foam padding for gymnastics with the art exhibit he’s building three stories up at the Santa Fe Art Museum. That’s the ice breaker to me. “How can I weird this person out without offending or boring them.”
Noah: That’s a good tactic. Because I’m not good at going up to celebrities, when I’ve had those chances. Because all I want to do in my heart is to say how influential they’ve been to me, and how much I love my work. But I realized a while ago, they don’t want to hear that. They just want a normal conversation, and I’m not good at normal conversation! Like “How about that...pizza sauce?”
Brett: I got one for you. My icebreaker I use when I have nothing else- I just ask...how’s morale.
Noah: How’s morale. Yeah. That’s good!
