We covered a lot of ground. His novel. His new Substack. What it’s like to play songs that are now older than you were when you wrote them. But the thing that stuck with me was his answer when I asked about the infrastructure that used to exist around music. Pitchfork, MTV, the music magazines, the labels that could actually put a new band in front of an audience. He compared musicians to canaries in a coal mine. The stuff everybody wants, the stuff that got monetized early, that’s what gets hit first when the economics shift. “They’ll go first,” he said.

And then: “Some of the stuff that we’re seeing in media, and especially legacy media, we already went down this road a decade or more ago with music.”

I think he’s right. And I think the version of this that’s coming for news is worse.

Here’s what’s left

In January 2024, Condé Nast merged Pitchfork into GQ. Editor-in-chief Puja Patel was let go, along with most of the editorial staff. Anna Wintour delivered the news wearing sunglasses. Andy Cush, one of the writers who lost his job, told The Needle Drop there was “this real sense of despair about ever having a place to do the kind of work you feel like you’re good at.” At the time, Pitchfork had the most daily active users of any Condé Nast publication. It wasn’t absorbed because nobody was reading it.

In November 2025, Stereogum paywalled its content. Its editor explained the decision in a piece titled “Getting Killed by AI.” Two months later, in January 2026, Pitchfork followed, launching a $5-a-month subscription and limiting non-subscribers to a handful of reviews a month.

That’s the infrastructure Geoff was talking about. Or what’s left of it. The system that used to find new music and explain it to people is either dead or behind a paywall. Sure, there are still influencers, but it’s less centralized and more scattershot. So what happens to the people who depended on the old ways?

So what do you do?

Geoff saw it coming early. When Thursday released War All the Time, their major label debut on Island Records, in 2003, it hit the Billboard Top 10 in its first week, selling around 80,000 copies. But the label had done something unusual: they hosted the illegal downloads themselves, just to measure what they were losing. On day one, there were 325,000. The label told him he probably would have charted at number one or two if all those downloads had been sales. “I don’t think that everybody who downloads our record is going to buy it,” he told me. “I just was like, well, that’s a pretty huge change.” He could see the graphs going in opposite directions. The label told him his audience would get hit first. “Country won’t be hit for another six, seven years” was the attitude. That was 2003.

If you’re Geoff, you adapt. “I’ve always admired bands like Fugazi,” he said, “but I’ve always been much more pragmatic. I just see what’s going to work.” He’s put out records on everything from small indies to major labels, ran his own label, published a novel (Someone Who Isn’t Me, a hallucinatory autofiction about heroin addiction that got serious literary attention in 2023). And most recently, he started a Substack called Solo Record, where he’s writing personal essays, serializing short fiction about life on tour, and posting demos.

Solo Record

Singer of Thursday. Author of SWIM. Producer of MCR. This is my solo record. Personal essays, demos & unreleased music, plus a serialized collection of short stories about growing up on tour.

By Geoffrey Rickly

His solo record isn’t music. It’s writing.

How he got to Substack is its own story. He’d been posting on Instagram about who writes the best sex scenes (research for his second novel), it went viral, Vice offered to run a column, but he decided to just do it himself. “My most successful endeavors in life have been kind of DIY,” he said. “Not doing it for a bigger platform.”

He’s not the only musician who’s ended up here. Patti Smith is on Substack. Jeff Tweedy has over 146,000 subscribers. Charli xcx, Tegan and Sara, Neko Case. When I asked Geoff why so many artists were migrating to a platform originally built for journalists and newsletter writers, he was blunt: “Giving it away on X or Instagram just feels so compromised. Like, I can’t believe I’m giving this corporation content.” He acknowledged that Substack has its own problems (”I know that Substack has gotten a lot of flack recently, and probably rightly so”), but said the environment just feels different from everywhere else.

There’s an irony here. The collapse hit music a decade before it hit news. But journalists found this particular lifeboat, as tenuous as it is, first. I started my own newsletter five years ago, back when it was mostly writers who’d been laid off, trying to build something after the institutions they’d worked for disappeared. And now here are the musicians, a decade after their own industry fell apart, landing in the same place for the same reasons. The destination is the same. The wreckage that sent them there just happened on different timelines.

But here’s what nags at me. When every artist is their own media operation, nobody is doing the work that Pitchfork, for all its problems, used to do. Nobody is telling you what’s worth your time and making a case for why. The curation is gone. The criticism is gone. What’s left is direct-to-audience communication, which is great if you already have an audience and invisible if you don’t.

I asked Geoff about that. About the bands who are where Thursday was 25 years ago, five kids with no following and no connections. “I often think about what the bands today that would love to be in a similar position, what’s their path these days?” he said. “And I think it’s just really different.”

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And then there’s news

Geoff doesn’t worry that much about the collapse of music media. He thinks people will keep finding ways to share opinions on music, and that the best writers will find audiences. What worries him is what’s happening to news.

“I have anxiety about the news, newspapers in general,” he told me. “I think there’s such a motive to be able to manipulate that and to paint everything in a propagandistic way rather than a fact-based way.”

This is a guy who has spent 25 years inside the collapse. And when he looks at what’s happening to news media, his reaction is: that’s worse.

He’s not wrong. Local newspapers are shutting down. The ones that survive are being bought by corporations with obvious political interests. The same people buying up CBS and CNN also control TikTok. And the music industry’s version of this collapse produced a world where every artist has a platform and nobody has an editor. The news industry’s version is producing a world where every politician has a newsletter and nobody has a reporter. The first one means you might miss a good band. The second one means something else entirely.

Toward the end of our conversation, I asked Geoff about Thursday’s upcoming tour. They’re playing (most of) Full Collapse. The album turns 25 next month. I asked him if it was weird that the record is now older than he was when he made it.

“Wow,” he said. “I hadn’t really grappled with that yet.”

“When you’re young, you don’t realize that when you get older, you don’t really feel different.”

That’s the thing about collapse, too. It doesn’t feel like a dramatic event from the inside. It’s a slow accumulation of things that used to work and don’t anymore, until one day you’re 47, writing a newsletter on a platform full of journalists, because the system that was built for you no longer exists. And you don’t really feel different. You just are.

Parker Molloy: All right, Taylor Lorenz is joining me today. Hey Taylor, how's it going? It is so great to finally talk to you face to face.

Taylor Lorenz: Hi, thanks for having me.

You've been consistently posting at your newsletter since July but just relaunched and rebranded as User Magazine last week. So tell me, what is User Magazine and how does it differ from other tech publications?

User Mag is a weekly tech and online culture newsletter. It's where you can find all of my reporting these days. It's a little different from what most people think of when they think of a tech news publication because I cover how people use technology. So it's less about the big tech shake-ups at Facebook's board or whatever, and more about how technology is impacting our culture, the business world, the political world, and everything around us.

I started publishing back in, I think it was the end of June or beginning of July, because that's when I made the decision to go independent. So I was trying to soft launch it back then.

User Mag

A tech and online culture publication featuring exclusive reporting, interviews, and insights about the online world.

By Taylor Lorenz

I noticed that. I was like, "Taylor's posting on her newsletter again. That's cool." Just kind of out of nowhere.

When I decided to quit my job, I was like, "All right, I should sort of grease the wheels a little bit." I wanted to experiment and see how it felt to write on Substack. And I really loved it. I was very quickly looking forward to my Substack posts more than my written work for legacy media. But yeah, it's officially launched under User Magazine just this week. This is the first week that I'm publishing.

And congrats on that! You've worked at places like The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Atlantic. What made you decide to go independent, and why now?

Well, I started as independent, and I never aspired to work at any of these places ever. I don't really consider myself a traditional journalist in any capacity, nor do I ever really want to be seen as part of that industry. For people like me that started as independent bloggers, there wasn't really a way to monetize your work back then. So sort of the only career path was to leverage your blog fame into a career in traditional media.

I felt like, especially throughout the 2010s, it was such an uphill battle to get people to take the internet seriously. I don't know if you remember, but even in 2020—I was getting in a fight with someone on Substack Notes this morning about this—there were all these big-time people who were just like, "Internet culture reporting isn't real journalism. What Taylor writes about is silly." They kept calling me a TikTok journalist, which I'm proud to be called a TikTok journalist. I am a TikTok journalist.

But it was really hard to get anybody to take online culture seriously. So I felt like, well, maybe if I write for these big-name places like The New York Times and other outlets, that will sort of force these people—these institutional powers—to take the internet seriously. Ultimately, that really didn't happen. I think their hand was sort of forced by the pandemic. When COVID hit in 2020, it forced everyone to recognize the online world. Our whole world got really online in a way that they just couldn't ignore.

The media ecosystem has flipped, and now the internet, I would argue, is our default reality. So I don't really need a job at, you know, the Post or the Times or any of these old-school places for my work to be taken seriously. And that's really something that has changed significantly in the past couple of years.

For better or for worse, the internet's kind of our reality right now. Your first post after your announcement was about the Snoopy fan account political war, which I thought was great. It's something that I think some people might look at and think, "This sounds silly. This is ridiculous." But you did a really good job of tying it back to how there are a bunch of architecture-themed accounts that push these right-wing views, and why they were successful in doing so is that they slowly peppered it in.

Meanwhile, this Snoopy fan account popped up and was just like, "Here's why I'm endorsing Trump," in this lengthy tweet. It was not very subtle. For people who might look at that and think, "This is silly; why do I need to know about this?" Why is it that something like this should be on people's radars?

User Mag

The Snoopy fan account political war

Over the weekend, @snoopyweekly, a semi popular Snoopy fan account that shares a stream of uplifting and funny images of the Peanuts character Snoopy, came out in support of Trump for president…

Read more

2 years ago · 149 likes · 2 comments · Taylor Lorenz

I've always felt like these things that people write off as silly phenomena end up having dire political consequences. I talk about the content creator industry, right? People dismissed it, especially just as a bunch of silly things or people taking selfies, right? And then we see the way it's weaponized by really bad actors in the world.

I think anonymous theme accounts are kind of the same story. It's silly—you think, "Funny Snoopy," like, "Haha, Snoopy account is for Trump." But when you look at it, there's actually a lot of anonymously run, fan-driven accounts online that do slowly pepper in political messaging. As I mentioned, there's other Snoopy accounts that lean conservative already that are pushing crypto or pushing other types of conservative messaging.

I think it's just worth looking at how these fandoms can be infiltrated and co-opted, and how information spreads online. It's funny and silly, and I think we can all laugh at the Snoopy political war, but I think it also says something about the internet and our information ecosystem and online influence. Those are all things I care deeply about. That's kind of what I try to do.

I think it's really hard to get people to care about this stuff when you're too serious about it because people just don't engage. I've written so many stories about the far right, and people kind of tune out. But if you're like, "Hey, here's this funny, kind of weird, crazy thing that's happening, and it actually says something about politics or culture or business," you're sort of spoon-feeding it to them. And it makes them look differently at, I think, their own information diet.

Absolutely. I love those kinds of stories because that's the exact kind of stuff that I like to be plugged into. So that is totally me. You know, I was thinking the other day—you had a post from July; it was about the Pop Crave-ification of news. This is actually what reminded me to be like, I should ask Taylor to do an interview. It was because I saw someone who was posting a video of Chappell Roan performing at the Austin City Limits Festival and was like, "Why isn't Pop Crave covering this?"

I saw the same tweet. There's such a narrative that Pop Crave is against Chappell Roan, and I think it's not true. I don't know why Pop Crave hasn't posted about that. I feel like they eventually will or did, but I know Pop Crave has really just become the definitive news source of our time.

It's funny, you know—the way that person was talking about it was just like the way that I might tweet, like, "Why hasn't The New York Times covered something?"

Yes, right—like, "Why isn't this on CNN?"

Exactly. Which brings me to my next question: What does it mean to actually be a journalist in 2024? Is it being tied to a legacy organization? Is it being an influencer who does original reporting? What is it, and does it matter?

I've always thought of journalism as something you do, not necessarily something you are. All different types of people can practice journalism. Obviously, there's citizen journalists documenting things on the ground when disasters happen, stuff like that. There's content creators that are also journalists—I consider myself definitely part of that realm. There are people that are full-time news reporters, and I think those people love to gatekeep the journalism industry.

I would say they're often doing the least interesting work. When I look at who's doing the most innovative work in journalism, at least on my beat, it is pretty much exclusively independent journalists or people that have left legacy media to start their own thing—people like 404 Media and stuff like that. So yeah, I think of journalism as something people can do, and anybody can do it, really.

It's a wide thing. I don't think that there's just one group of people that do journalism. And I hate this idea—I was canceled a few years ago when I said that journalists have to have personal brands, which they do. I didn't make that rule; this is the internet we live in. And I think it comes with a lot of downsides, but at the same time, it comes with a lot of upsides.

You were observing it.

It's sort of always been true that journalists have been public figures, right? We're writing publicly under our names, or we're on TV or YouTube publicly with our face. So it's a very public-facing job. I think that can be really difficult, but it can also be really great and rewarding.

And on that note, in talking about that, you've talked about how platforms can kind of be weaponized against journalists as you're so public. And as someone who's been attacked pretty viciously by trolls and bad-faith actors on the internet, what could legacy media outlets be doing to protect their workers that they're not?

Well, first of all, they should stop actively harming the workers, which is what they're doing now. They are throwing journalists under the bus. They're just putting them into the right-wing media meat grinder over and over again. Not only do they fail to recognize these vicious Gamergate-style harassment campaigns. They feed them. They enable them. The legacy media is really the linchpin in these hate campaigns.

This was like the classic Gamergate playbook, right? That we see used against women with institutional power, whether it's Claudine Gay, whether it's someone like Amber Heard, whether it's a woman journalist. The point is that the playbook is always the same: it's to viciously attack, often on personal grounds, the credibility of a woman in power, frame her as controversial, and push her out of those institutional positions of power.

Legacy news organizations allow their journalists to be picked off. They allow women to be picked off, people of color to be picked off, trans people to be picked off, LGBTQ people, generally. They will just allow these hate and abuse campaigns to foment, and they'll participate in them. You see one journalist will get targeted, and the rest of the media will hop on and launder an abuse campaign against that marginalized person.

I have seen so many people driven out of the industry through this, and it's disgusting. And I want to be able to vocally call it out. And to do that, I cannot be in legacy media.

Yeah, there are those guardrails that are sometimes harmful. And I know that I've seen that happen, especially seeing that happen to you. I think it was when you were at The New York Times, towards the end of when you were there.

It was recently—it's been constant.

Well, yeah, I mean constantly. But when you were at The New York Times, if I remember, there were reporters who were liking tweets that were attacking you and stuff like that. And it was just like, come on.

Yeah, yeah. Again, that did not stop when I left The New York Times. I have dealt with this my entire career. And again, that's why I don't affiliate—I don't identify as part of the legacy media because those people have shat on me my entire career. Those are the same people liking these negative tweets about me or trying to act like every single career move I make is framed as controversial.

Like, "She left in disgrace." I'm like, "Okay, yes, according to you guys, I've left every single job in disgrace." Meanwhile, it's simply not true. I really have a lot of love, especially for the places that I've worked and the people that I've worked for—rather maybe more than the places. I'm loyal to people.

When I was an independent writer in the 2010s, these were the same people saying that online culture journalism isn't real journalism or that I'm a joke, I'm a YouTube journalist. They used to say that I was writing about YouTube, a site for cat videos. "Why does she waste her time writing about this site for cat videos?" YouTube is one of the most consequential platforms, especially in politics today.

So these are idiots. These are people that don't matter. They're living in the world—they still think it's like 1995. They've never been able to amass any sort of influence or attention on their own. Their power solely comes through working, and their platform comes from the legacy media. And so they're very loyal to it, and they're very angry at anybody that critiques it.

Absolutely. Thanks so much for taking the time to chat. This has been great.

Thanks for letting me rant about all my pet topics.

Of course. I mean, in fairness, that's what I like to rant about too, so it works out. Well, thank you. Everyone should be sure to go subscribe to User Magazine. I will link it in this post. Just go subscribe to User Mag right now.

Also, consider becoming a paid TPA subscriber and join the exclusive election countdown group chat:

Parker Molloy: Welcome to The Present Age. I'm Parker Molloy. I'm joined today by author Jessica Valenti. Jessica writes the Abortion Every Day newsletter. Her latest book, Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies, and the Truths We Use to Win, is out now. Jessica, hello.

Jessica Valenti: Hi, how are you?

I'm doing okay! I'm so happy to finally talk face-to-face with you.

I know. It's funny—I was trying to think about how long we've been chatting online in one way or another, and it's been years and years, obviously. So it's always nice to feel like it's real life.

Yeah, it's really weird. It's weird to be like, "It's so nice to meet you," to someone I've talked to for 12 years or whatever.

I know.

But yeah, I thought this would be a great chance for us to talk because I got a copy of your book, and I really enjoyed it. One chapter that felt particularly relevant to what I try to do here is Chapter Three: "‘Pro-Life’ Language Is a Sham." That chapter—the whole time I'm reading it, I'm just nodding up and down, like, "Yes, yes, that."

In that chapter, you talk about how conservatives effectively won the decades-long language war to be branded "pro-life" instead of "anti-abortion," but are now retreating from "pro-life." Another example you mention is this new tendency to use euphemisms for the word "ban." Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Sure. As you said, I know this is something that you've been tracking for a really long time. I think for us, it's something that seems so obvious. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you know what words they're using in place of "ban," you sort of see it everywhere.

When I started , that was one of the things I noticed right away—this really insidious use of language, attacks on language. And it really did start with "ban." I saw that they really didn't want to use the word "ban" at all. At first, they weren't explicit about it. Then they sort of said, "No, we're not using 'ban.' We don't use 'ban' because there are no abortion bans in America." This is their whole thing—they say that "ban" means total ban without any exceptions, even for a person's life, and therefore Texas doesn't have an abortion ban; Tennessee doesn't have an abortion ban.

Abortion, Every Day

All things abortion. Feminist commentary & community.

By Jessica Valenti

Instead, they'll use language like "consensus," "standard," "restriction," and always "reasonable restriction," right? And it's really deliberate because bans are incredibly unpopular. Americans really, really overwhelmingly do not like abortion bans. And that's why they're using language like "consensus," for example, because it gives the impression that actually lots of people want these.

It's in everything they do. The thing that gives me a little bit of hope with it—it's really frustrating to watch—but the thing that gives me a little bit of hope is that all of those language changes are on the defensive, right? They can't stand behind their politics, and so they're trying to change the language around it.

Yeah, and I think that one of the things that they get a lot of help from is from the media. Many news outlets kind of prioritize this sort of "both sides" approach, often giving equal weight to anti-abortion talking points. Do you think this pursuit of neutrality ends up favoring the right's manipulation of language? And how should journalists balance fairness with factual accuracy in the abortion debate?

I do. I think that journalists and mainstream media publications are—maybe not deliberately—but are their greatest ally in this war on language, particularly when it comes to certain so-called controversial issues. We know abortion is not actually controversial. Their hope is that by giving equal column inches, by giving equal space, they are somehow being unbiased. But the truth is that actually those are biased decisions; those are political decisions.

If you put the word "ban" in scare quotes in a headline, that's a political decision. And it's something that they really are winning at. When I started warning about the word "ban," I said, "The thing I'm worried about is that they're not just doing this in their own quotes, but that they are launching this attack on media and journalists and saying, 'If you use the word "ban," you're biased.'" Like, that's proof of bias. And because mainstream media outlets are so, so concerned about appearing biased, it was a really easy attack for them. They sort of went along with it right away.

I think the thing that has changed, or the thing I've been glad to see at least, is that when you call them out, people are noticing it more. And so I think they are realizing what's going on to some extent.

Sure. Yeah, and I think that in talking to people in the media kind of more generally, the argument that I see put back is, “Well, if this language isn't correct, Democrats should speak more on it.” But the issue is that Democrats are so afraid to speak about abortion just generally, especially when you start getting into the deeper language that gets pushed.

In the book you discuss how the term "partial-birth abortion" gained traction despite being totally medically inaccurate. What do you think it says about our political discourse that a fabricated term can become so embedded in public consciousness?

It's really troubling, and I think you get it exactly right. Democrats have been so afraid of digging a little deeper on abortion and going beyond their standard talking points. I think we are seeing that change a bit just in the last few months; we're seeing some language changes. We have a presidential candidate who's not afraid to use the word "abortion," thank goodness.

But for so long, this was a third-rail issue. Again, even though abortion rights are extraordinarily popular, Democrats were sort of nervous to talk about it as such. And so we're left with the right just winning and winning and winning again and again and us not pushing back.

I think sort of the latest example of that is "post-birth abortion," right? This completely bizarre, fabricated thing that Trump talks about a lot. Democrats will sort of be like, "That's not a thing," and move on, but they won't dig into it. They won't dig into where that really comes from because they're so afraid to talk about abortions later in pregnancy.

But if we actually talked about where "post-birth abortion" comes from—which is they're describing palliative care for fatally ill newborns—Americans would respond to that, right? That is something Americans deserve to know and I think is actually one of our most powerful potential talking points that we're sort of leaving behind.

Definitely. As far as Democrats can do—or any politician that sees themselves as an ally or an advocate for abortion—what would an honest, effective conversation, politically speaking, about later abortions look like? What should they do?

That's a great question. I really think it comes down to, one, the overarching message of Americans don't want government involvement in pregnancy at all, right? This is not something that should ever be up to a politician, and Americans support that.

I think one of the things we've seen Democrats do when they're talking about abortion later in pregnancy is they either say it's completely rare, it almost never happens, and it's almost always these horrible tragic cases—both of which are true—but it doesn't help to combat the stigma, right? And it sort of leaves the door open for Republicans to say, "Well, we'll have exceptions for that. We'll have exceptions for people in these tragic situations." We need to have none of that, right? We're sort of handing them a little bit of a gift when we do that.

And the truth is, yes, a lot of these are tragic situations, but a lot of these abortions are also the result of Republican hurdles. And I think one of the biggest problems that Democrats have and one of the reasons that they won't go there is because they're still pushing restrictions. When they talk about "Restore Roe," they're talking about restoring something where later abortion patients couldn't get care or had to jump through ridiculous hoops in a horrific, really difficult time.

So I think that is part of the hesitancy—they're not willing to say, "Yeah, you know what? Sometimes people do need abortion care later in their pregnancy, and they should be able to get it." Until they're sort of willing to take that stance politically, it's harder for them to talk about it.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that one point that you make there is that by conceding things, by just going, "Well, it's rare," you're effectively saying, "It's rare, so if it's so rare, why not just ban this thing? Why not just ban abortions in the third trimester," say. Which, as you kind of talk about in the book, their definition of "late-term abortion" kind of means whatever they want it to mean.

And you also talk about how exceptions that they build in aren't really exceptions; they're almost impossible to use. I've seen that happen. I follow a lot of the discussion and the legislation that goes with trans rights, too, and it's similar in a lot of ways where Democrats are so afraid to kind of take up these issues that they concede things. They go, "I don't want to talk about sports," but it's not really about sports; it's about getting a foot in the door to start micromanaging how trans people can live their lives.

It's not really about "late-term abortions"; it's about getting some sort of restriction in that then you can kind of claw back at, and it just kind of works that way. You argue in your book that if we don't push back against terms like "abortion up until birth," they could become just as ingrained as "partial-birth abortion." So what strategy do you think would be effective in countering that type of language manipulation before it takes root?

I really do think that it is about going directly in and not being defensive but being proactive about it. I would love to see a politician say, "Trump keeps talking about 'post-birth abortion.' Let's talk about what this really means." We have to make it poisonous for them, right? They're trying to attack us in this way, but really it is an opening. We can make this poisonous for them—that whenever Trump says the term "post-birth abortion," people understand that what he's talking about is palliative care for newborns, parents' rights to decline medically invasive procedures for babies that are not going to survive.

Really, I think it's about telling the truth. And I think the point you make about the connection to trans rights and the same strategy is a really important one, because I don't think folks are making that connection often enough. I think one of the best places you see that is Democrats' hesitance to talk about young people, right? Whether it's gender-affirming care or abortions for younger people, conservatives know that Democrats get really worried; they're really nervous about talking about younger people.

But as you said, that is really how they get their foot in the door, right? They go after younger people first because they know that Democrats are going to be too afraid to fight 100% back, and then that becomes restrictions for all of us.

Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me. This has been great. Everyone should go get the book; it's a good book. I have it right here. It's a wonderful book. You can see I have all sorts of pages dog-eared. It's fantastic. It's great. But thanks again, Jessica.

Of course. Thank you.

Parker Molloy: Welcome to The Present Age. I'm Parker Molloy. Today, I'm excited to be joined by singer-songwriter Carl Newman, aka A.C. Newman, frontman of The New Pornographers and a solo artist whose work has shaped indie rock for years. In addition to his music, Newman has recently launched a Substack newsletter called Ballad of a New Pornographer, where he shares new songs, explores the creative process, and takes fans on a behind-the-scenes journey from idea to finished track. We'll be talking about what inspired his new project and how he navigates the balance between fun and madness in his songwriting. Carl, welcome.

Carl Newman: Hey, thanks for having me.

I'm excited to have you! For years, I had this really crappy MP3 player that whenever it would start playing, it would start playing your music, because it started with an A. So every single time I'd get into my car, I would hear just the opening drums of “Miracle Drug,” kind of that little beat.

You know, it's funny. I met Paul Rudd once years ago and he told me the same thing. Every time he turned on his car, it would be like, and I thought, That's cool. You know I exist.

And a much more embarrassing version of that story is years ago, I was DJing and I guess I had two iPods or whatever. Anyway, one of them started playing accidentally in the same way. And so I was DJing and I played my own song. “Miracle Drug” started playing and I had to just let it go. I had to go, “Yep, that wasn't a mistake. I meant to do that. I'm so confident in my own music that when I'm trying to get the party going, I put on my own music. Yep. I didn't mean to play Giorgio Moroder. I meant to play my own song.”

So tell me a bit about Ballad of a New Pornographer. You're actually the second member of your band that I know of that has a substack after Neko Case's Enter the Lung.

Ballad of a New Pornographer

A place where I – A.C. Newman bandleader of The New Pornographers – put new music not available anywhere else, try out new ideas, talk about process and how ideas transform over time.

By A.C. Newman

What do you want to know about it? Honestly, I don't even know anything about it yet. It feels kind of conceptual at this point. All I know is that I didn't want it to seem like all the other Substacks—maybe that's what everybody says. So I think I'm going to have to develop it and try to find my voice. Right now, I want it to be very music-centric. I don't think anybody needs me to do a lot of "Dear Diary" posts. Occasionally I will if something interesting is happening.

And it might be interesting if it's me complaining about my son's teacher—like, what's her problem? Why doesn't she get into a different field? I don't know, but does anybody really need to read that stuff?

You never know what people are going to be into.

So before I started it, I thought to myself, okay, this is going to be a lot of work, but I liked the idea of forcing my hand, being compelled to be creative. I liked the idea that—I'm not there yet—but at some point, I might think, "What am I going to post? I've got nothing to post." Then I'll go into my studio and say, "Well, do something. Start recording a song." It doesn't have to be finished; just do something. Or something that will make me go into all my unfinished songs and think, "Finish this."

One issue I have—I don't know if it's a very common thing—but I have so many unfinished songs that I've begun to wonder if I'm going to get them all out before I die. That's an honest thought I'm having. And I thought, if I'm only releasing ten songs every year or two, I'm never going to get them all out before I die. So I thought, I've got to figure something else out here.

I thought this would be a good spot for it. Also, I want to retrain my brain to be less of a perfectionist. Just tell yourself to put it out there. It doesn't even need to be the definitive version. You just put it out there and say, "There it is." Maybe I'm going to rewrite it, maybe I'll change the lyrics, maybe I'll toss out everything and just keep the lyrics. But I thought, okay, maybe that's interesting. Maybe for someone who writes music, it's an interesting glimpse into the process. You can do it for 20 or 30 years and still not feel like you know what you're doing.

I would never pretend to think I could ever teach anybody how to write songs, but you can hopefully help someone by just showing them things that you do. Like, sometimes your song isn't good, and you've got to toss out everything that doesn't work. Sometimes the only thing left is the drumbeat, or sometimes the only thing left is one line.

You mentioned finding that balance between creativity and madness where you're trying to get ideas flowing and you're always second-guessing yourself but knowing when to stop. Knowing when a song needs another idea or when you need to start subtracting ideas. Maybe it's got too many ideas; maybe everything you need is there, and you just need to take the lawnmower or the weed whacker to it.

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So why did you decide to go with Substack instead of Patreon or just posting on a YouTube channel or something like that?

Well, I talked to Neko about it. I think I never really thought about it until I talked to her. She seemed to be happy doing it. Then I connected with one of the guys at Substack, Dan Stone, and I talked to him. He seemed very cool because I had questions. I think I told him vaguely what I wanted to do because one of my questions was, is it just writing? What if I wanted it to be a place where I posted music more? People think of Patreon as more a place to do that, or maybe, like you said, YouTube. But he said, no, people do that. We went through various people's Substacks—he showed me Jeff Tweedy's and Kevin Morby's and a few others.

The Substack that really fascinates me is George Saunders's. I'm fascinated when one of your favorite writers is giving you writing tips. To me, that feels kind of priceless. And I thought, okay, I'd like to find more of those. Does David Mitchell have one of those as well? Does Murakami?

Yeah, there's one that I read that's really interesting for writing tips that is completely not applicable to anything I do, though—it's Chuck Palahniuk's. His is really interesting, his Substack. But the same kind of idea where you're getting writing advice from someone who is very good at it. But I guess that's kind of what you're doing with music.

Yeah, I mean... I don't know. I would hope so. But like I said, I would never pretend that I could teach somebody how to write a song. I don't think anybody wants me to be their songwriting teacher because I would be the person listening to their song and saying, "Well, you should just scrap it and start again." Also, I don't know. I can only tell you about a very specific kind of songwriting. Like, I was just thinking of it—who's the hip-hop artist who did "Turn Down for What"? You know, the Daniels did the video?

Yeah, Lil Jon.

To me, that's brilliant, but is it songwriting? To me, it seems more like avant-garde art—massively popular avant-garde art. If someone came to me and was trying to do that, I would say, "Yeah, keep doing that, but I can teach you nothing. I have no advice for you."

I guess if someone likes what I do, then yeah, I can tell you things I do that help me write. But the sad part is that I go into every song feeling like I don't know how to do this. And what's worse is I want it that way because I feel like if I'm writing a song and it feels like something I know how to do, and it's coming easy, I think to myself, "What is the point? Why am I just spinning my wheels here?" I mean, I'd probably be making much more money if I thought that way, but I'm always kind of disappointed in myself when it sounds like me because I'm trying not to.

So you described your songs as being the sum of many different ideas pulled from the air as they pass by. I'm kind of curious: how do you decide what ideas stay and what go in a song? Is it just what works for you? What sounds good?

I don't know, because sometimes you make the wrong choice. There's a song I just finished—I can't talk about it because nothing's been announced yet—but we were mixing it, and we basically mixed it. And I thought, "Something's not right here. Something's bugging me about this song." I went back into older versions of it, versions from six months earlier, and I realized I had it six months ago. I had it completely nailed, but I just moved past it. I moved past it and changed the chorus. I was like, "Why did I change the chorus?" I changed the bass line; I changed so many things. It was there. What's wrong with me?

I think that is a problem. Sometimes you have it, and you just keep going. You don't know where to stop. Like the person who's painting and doesn't stop until it's just a pure black canvas—it's like, "I've added every color." It's hard to learn that lesson.

Another big lesson is trying to figure out when to listen to yourself and when to listen to another person. I guess that's being a good judge of character. Sometimes you've got to think, "Well, this person's an idiot. I shouldn't listen to them." And then, "I respect this person, so I'm going to listen to them." But also, sometimes the maddening part is only you know the solution to your problem. When you're writing a song, you're asking a question; you're building this puzzle that only you can solve. Sometimes you look outside for help to get you through this maze, but sometimes you realize, "Okay, this is mine. This is mine to solve." Other people don't know how to solve it; only I know how to solve it. Like I said, it's a road to madness.

And speaking of madness and chaos and all of that, you did say that the sweet spot of your creative process is somewhere between fun and madness. What do you mean by that?

Well, I guess for me, it's fun to just throw everything at a song. Sometimes I just don't know what it should be. Is it a ballad? Should it be a really minimal song, or should it have a lot of orchestration? Finding that can be fun. But also, like I said, sometimes you go past it. You just keep working, and you realize, "No, I'm making it worse." Then you start getting bummed out. It's like, "Why am I making it worse? What's wrong with the song?" That's when you have to dial it back and realize, "Okay, maybe you're going slightly crazy. Maybe you need to take a break and step away from it and then listen a little while later."

But yeah, I think sometimes it is kind of linked to mental illness. I think I have a lot of anxiety, which means my brain is moving very quickly, and it's not always moving in a very effective way. Sometimes ideas are flying through my brain, and some of them are musical, and some of it's good. If I can catch all the ideas and put them in order and work on them, I can use all those thoughts to do something good. But if I don't, it can just lead to anxiety. It's just a mess of thoughts; I have no order. So I think that's what I'm ultimately getting at. If you're a psychologist or a psychiatrist and asking what I meant by the balance between fun and madness, I think it's that.

And you also mentioned that your Substack could be the only place where some of your new music will be available. What led you to that decision? Was that just as you were saying earlier about trying to get so many songs out there in such a limited amount of time?

Yeah, I mean, I think so. Obviously, I don't want to bypass the record label—I love Merge—but I even like the idea that maybe there's a solo project, whatever form it would take, whatever the name would be. And maybe Merge would want to put it out, but maybe I'd say, "Hey, I'll pay for it. You don't have to give me any kind of advance, but I just want to sell it through my Substack." Maybe they'd want to do that.

I like the idea of it just being something kind of cool, kind of exclusive. When you're doing anything, you want it to be something that you can't get anywhere else. You don't want it to be just more of the same. So I thought, okay, that would be cool if I put out a record and there were only 500 copies or a thousand copies, and I said, "You can only get it here." And I wasn't concerned about making money; I was just concerned about getting music to the fans. I'm assuming the people who are paid subscribers of my Substack are fans—I don't know any other way to describe them.

So I like the idea of saying, "Here, here's a reward for being a fan. I will give you something that you can't get anywhere else." I like the idea of it being kind of like an old-fashioned fan club. I feel like when I was a kid, there was stuff like that. The Beatles used to make those Christmas singles that only the fan club got. I love that kind of stuff. And I'm sure people are doing that right now—I don't know who.

But yeah, I like it. I mean, it's a lot of work, but that's what I signed up for. I feel like I just got a job, actually. Do you know that Daniel Johnston song "First Day at Work"? It kind of reminds me of that. The boss is being nice to you, but that's just for today. It's your first day at work. You feel like a jerk.

Yeah.

I feel like I'm just a few days into Substack, but soon everybody's going to say, "Okay, pick it up. Learn how to do this." You only get to be a beginner for so long. Now I have to figure out how to keep it interesting. But it's kind of fun.

Sure.

It's a good way to procrastinate, too. I have a lot of work to do around the house, and I get kind of overwhelmed—painting and staining and sanding. This morning I thought, "Why don't you record a song from *The Slow Wonder*? Since the tickets for your tour are going on sale today, why don't you record 'Drink to Me, Babe, Then' and just play it and then post it?" It ended up taking me a few hours because I'm a Luddite, and like I said, it's my first day at work, and I feel like a jerk. I had to figure out how to post a video and things like that. But it was fun to get up in the morning and think, "Okay, what am I going to do today? What am I going to try and do? I'm going to try to do something interesting—or if not interesting, well, at least something."

Ballad of a New Pornographer

Playing 'Drink To Me Babe Then' In My Living Room (Neon Cloud Mix)!

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2 years ago · 42 likes · 7 comments · Carl

On that note, thanks so much for your time. Everyone should go subscribe to Ballad of a New Pornographer. Thank you so much, Carl.

Yeah, if you subscribe, you can buy the reissue of my album, and then maybe you can just sit on it for a year and resell it. Just make sure to keep it in mint condition, and maybe—what do you pay for it? Twenty-five? Maybe you can sell it for fifty in a couple of years. I don't even want people to open it; I'm thinking of it more as an heirloom.

Okay. There you go. Buy this investment. This is investment advice. [editor’s note: not actually investment advice]

Yeah, a good investment. What do they call that—return on investment? There's a word for it. Get a good return on your investment. It's better than crypto.

Yeah, exactly. Cool. It's better than crypto. I think that should be it: “The Slow Wonder”: It's better than crypto. There's your tagline.

Yes.

It's a low bar, but you crossed it.

Title…

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Today, for another edition of You Know, where I introduce you to someone who is starting a newsletter who you should know, I am joined by the insightful Maris Kreizman. Maris is the former host of the beloved podcast The Maris Review, the new head of the recently relaunched newsletter of the same name, and a celebrated cultural critic who bridges the worlds of literature and pop culture. With her extensive experience in book publishing and her sharp commentary on contemporary media, Maris brings a unique perspective to the world.

Can you share a bit about your journey from working in the book publishing industry to cultural criticism, podcasting, and now newslettering? What are some of the pivotal moments that sort of shaped your career?

Yeah, in my About Me section on my Substack, it starts, takes a long drag on a cigarette because I feel like I've really seen it all. I started out wanting to be a book editor and I did that through most of my twenties. And then I was laid off and had to find work that was more in and around books. So, I worked at barnesandnoble.com and Kickstarter and Book of the Month.

The Maris Review by Maris Kreizman

We're here to talk about books and do a little shit-talking.

And while I was doing all of that stuff, I sort of realized, as we all did back then, that it's nice to have a personal brand. It really is. And it's nice to have one that is not attached to your profession or the way you earn money. And I began to realize that I loved writing as much as editing. So I do some book criticism and some TV criticism and I started freelancing. And I started my podcast for Lit Hub because I was getting frustrated that I couldn't pitch conversations or profiles with authors anymore at most publications now that aren't paying that much attention to books.

I figured that was a way to talk to the people I wanted to talk to on my own terms. And this will be kind of a continuation of that. It won't be audio to start, but I get to talk about what I want and when I want to, and that's so freeing.

You've been really vocal about the intersection of literature and the broader pop culture. How do you think that relationship has evolved with the advent of digital media and social platforms? You know, “BookTok” and such.

Yeah, I have to admit that I am a lurker on BookTok, [but] have not participated. I started out on Tumblr, and that was really my main platform. And since I started out on Tumblr, I think social media in general has gotten more toxic and digital media has gone from an industry that was booming to one that I hope is still around tomorrow. So it becomes really important to have a way to talk about books that doesn't rely all the time on those platforms. … There are so few platforms now to talk about books other than BookTok. BookTok has become so big that you might start thinking those kinds of books are the only books out there. And there is a vast world and it would be so wonderful if there were a platform for all of the kinds of books that I enjoy.

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Yes. Which brings me to my next question. With so many new books being published every year, how do you decide which titles and authors you'll engage with? Are there any particular trends that excite you?

Parker, this one keeps me up at night and makes my apartment a wreck. It's really hard. There are some books that I know are coming and they're written by someone I already admire and that's really exciting. But getting a first novel from someone I haven't heard of is so exciting and I don't have time to read them all. And sometimes it's really just luck of the draw. I pick one and then I'm in it. And that's why book criticism is so important that we need as many people as we can to be picking out those debut novels and small press books and telling people about them. Because I'm not looking at trends.

I'm just looking at whatever looks interesting to me, which is specific.

Finally, tell me about the Maris Review, the newsletter and how does it differ from your podcast (RIP) of the same name and what can readers expect format wise, frequency, et cetera.

I think my main challenge with my Substack is going to be that I have become so disillusioned with the publishing industry and the digital media industry. And I just have to always try to keep my love of books and the excitement around books away from that.

And so the Maris Review will be a place where you can see what I'm reading, see what I'm going to read next, hear my thoughts on the latest scandal — scandal's a big word for the book world, but kerfuffle, perhaps. I hope to talk about adaptations because that's such a big way that people find their way into books. I hope to do author interviews and perhaps audio once again.I'm so excited to figure out what my own constraints are going to be. I have so much freedom now and I'm getting ready to kind of wheedle it down.

The Maris Review by Maris Kreizman

The Maris Review: A Relaunch

When you work in and around books for as long as I have, it is incredibly easy to become disillusioned. There are so many problems with media, with the publishing industry, with feeding into the apparatus that I’ll call the art-versus-commerce-blues. I’ve really been feeling it lately…

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2 years ago · 92 likes · 16 comments · Maris Kreizman

That’s it for me today. Thanks again for reading!

Today’s newsletter is another edition of “You Know,” the regular feature I do where I interview the voices behind new newsletters by people you may already know. Today’s guest is musician, author, and singer-songwriter Rhett Miller of the Old 97’s.

Here’s the part of the newsletter where I say The Present Age is reader-supported. Please consider subscribing to the free or paid versions. Thanks!

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Rhett and I had a chance to chat about his new Substack newsletter, Time & Temperature, his upcoming posts, and a bit about his appearance in the MCU.

Time & Temperature with Rhett Miller

You’ll get behind-the-curtain glimpses into my world and process, songwriting insights, guitar lessons, exclusive previews of new songs, as well as words and music unearthed from the vaults. This will be a community forum. Please join the discussion.

On who he is and where you know him from:

So, my name is Rhett Miller. I sing in the band Old 97’s and have for 30 years now. Yes, I'm a seventh-generation Texan. I grew up in Dallas, but I've lived now for 20 years, which seems unlikely in itself, in the Hudson Valley, just north of Manhattan. I've got these three acres and these two kids and this one dog, and it's been a pretty sweet life.

I've been able to eke out a living, sort of month-to-month, being a musician with occasional writing gigs. I've got a couple of children's books, No More Poems! and The Baby Changing Station, out via Little Brown Young Readers. And I've recently started a Substack that I really love because it gives me a reason to write consistently, and I'm very excited about that.

Both of my kids are going off to college, so I'm trying to figure out ways to fill my time when I'm not on tour, which is a little rare, and also try and figure out ways to add to the hustle. And the Old 97’s have a new record coming out in April, a record called American Primitive that is pretty fantastic.

On Time & Temperature:

The title comes from a song called “Big Brown Eyes.” That's a fan favorite. One of the handful of songs that I have to put on every set list or I'll get in trouble. There's a line in Big Brown Eyes, well, a box of red and a pill or three. Golly, it's funny, it's hard to do it without a guitar.

Well, a box of red and a pill or three
And I'm calling time and temperature just for some company

I don't know if anybody remembers, but back when I was a kid, there would be a bank-sponsored phone number that you could call. And, of course, it was pre-10-digit dialing. So you would use the rotary phone and dial and listen to the numbers go click, click on their way back around the circle. But you dialed seven numbers, and then you would have a voice tell you, “Hello, you've reached City National Bank, time and temperature, the current time is…” And it was crazy. It wasn't even a robot voice, but it was obviously a prerecorded voice that was triggered by whatever pre-computer situation they had going on. I remember I was very lonely, and I was thinking about different people I could call at 4 a.m. when I was writing that song.

I thought that Time & Temperature could be more than just a fan website or a... I do remember when people would just have an email list and blast out an email randomly to fans, but it was almost always just a dates update. And so when I first heard about Substack, I thought it was just some version of that, and I'm really glad it isn't because to me that always felt kind of impersonal and grabby, and my impression of the Substacks that I've found and loved myself is that it's the opposite; it's very kind of giving, and I really love that. I love the idea that there's a place to share that isn't driven by the commerce that drives the social media platforms.

On his first entry on Time & Temperature, which included analysis and alternative lyrics to of one of his new songs:

It seems like such a perfect fit for Substack to do that kind of thing. And I do feel like there's a handful of people that will inevitably wind up following and subscribing to my Substack without being super familiar with my music beforehand. And I don't ever want to forget about that, but I think that the core is going to be the people that immediately signed up because they're deep-cut specialists, and so I want to give them super service as well. I think there's a way to do both. I do think there's a way for me to talk about the songs on the new record and let it be a universal thing too about writing and the process. I do think there's interesting stories behind probably all songs, but for me on this record, there's a lot of funny stuff.

Time & Temperature with Rhett Miller

"Where The Road Goes"

Howdy y’all. You’ve reached Time & Temperature. “WHERE THE ROAD GOES” is the first song to drop from the Old 97’s new album American Primitive. I wrote it in Montana at a bend in the Blackfoot River. I found myself playing a simple chord pattern on a loop and meditating on the gratitude I felt for having survived so long…

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2 years ago · 144 likes · 41 comments · Rhett Miller

There was one other big lyric change. The opening track on the album is a track called “Falling Down Around You,” and it had a giant f-bomb in the chorus. It was so fun to sing it. It was just such a stomp-your-foot kind of statement of having entered a room in a very loud way. But I realized like “Where the Road Goes,” where I took out the word “bullshit,” I realized, “Man, it's too much. It's just too much.” So I tapped the brakes a little and I rewrote that one and I found a way to make it effective without having to rely on — I didn't have to work blue, Parker. You don't gotta work blue!

On why he started with that post and what he’s looking forward to doing with his newsletter:

One thing I really love that George Saunders does, who was the very first Substack I ever followed and subscribed to, George Saunders takes questions as if we were auditing his MFA writing class. And the interactivity offered by Substack is something that really appeals to me.

My next one I've got lined up to go out later this week is a guitar lesson.

So again, it's because the new song, “Where the Road Goes,” is the one that's just out. It's also really easy to play. As much as any song on guitar is easy to play, there's a lot of callous building that goes into it, and remembering shapes with your fingers and all that. But so I'm doing a guitar lesson video as my next song.

After that, I'm opening up a discussion thread that I'm really excited about. Because I feel like to me, the opportunity to talk to fans and even just friends and, you know, fellow lovers of words is really amazing. And I almost only ever get it at like a merch table after a solo gig. I don't after the band gigs, but after a solo gig, I'll go sign, and I think that this would give me a lot more time to get in-depth with people.

On the band’s appearance in the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special:

It was amazing. The makeup process was long. It was about three hours every morning. What I didn't realize was that they create a fresh — it's not just one mask, it's like a three-part silicone head structure that goes on from the middle of your chest all the way up. But they create a new one of those each day and then they have to throw away, at the end of each day, they throw away this multi-thousand dollar item. There's reasons that those budgets are in the hundreds of millions.

That was one of the coolest things we've ever done. James Gunn and I met at an industry event years and years ago when he had just made or he was about to make Slither which was a low-budget horror movie. And he used that song, “Big Brown Eyes,” I think, is the closing credit song in the movie. And James and I have stayed friends over the years, and to watch his rise has been so gratifying because it's built on hard work and it's built on somebody who's really coming from a good place and, you know, seems to be doing it the right way.

A few years ago, I had stopped by the set because I was playing Atlanta. He was in Peachtree, Georgia, filming Suicide Squad. And I went by this — they built a rainforest, first of all, inside a massive warehouse on this studio lot. And I went in and watched it, you know, the little video village where the director watches. I watched them filming this scene and it was all the stars, which is a very star-studded movie. And when they all came out of the rainforest, covered in mud and after having worked all day and he's introducing me to John Cena and Idris Elba and all these amazing actors and to every one of them, he would say, “This is my buddy Rhett Miller. He sings in the world's greatest rock band.” And I was like, you know what? He really does think that. It’s very sweet. He's a big shot. He didn't have to think stuff like that. I only tell the story because I feel like there's a really good lesson in it.

At the end of that day, I told him, “Look, I really admire what you do. I always have, but just seeing you do it on such a large scale today really drives it home. If there's ever a way that I could be a part of this, if you ever need me, I would love to — I'll give myself to you in any capacity, to acting or singing, whatever.” I felt stupid saying it, is my point. I put myself out there. I didn't want to — I feel like I had known him long enough that I didn't feel like I was imposing on him and putting him in a weird position. But I was also putting myself out there in a way that I'm loath to do normally.

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It was about two months later that he called me and he said, I've got this idea for a holiday special. Do you think your band would be willing to go in full alien makeup? I couldn't say yes quickly enough. Then he wanted to write a song together, and we wrote about eight versions, Parker, of this song, “I Don't Know What Christmas Is,” And each one, actually, each one was less messed up and disgusting than the one before it because Disney was giving us notes, and the notes were like, “Yeah, gee, you know, Santa Claus can't be wearing a suit covered in children's blood.” I was like, but it's so funny! And so the one we wound up with is a little bit subversive, but it was a hard one, and that was a super fun thing to do.

That’s it for me today. A special thanks to Rhett Miller for taking the time to chat with me! Please be sure to go subscribe toif you haven’t already!

Parker

Today’s edition of You Know features Ben Lee and Ione Skye, the husband-wife duo behind the long-running Weirder Together podcast. The two of them have just started a newsletter on Substack, also called. In today’s email, we’ll learn more about the podcast, newsletter, and, of course, where you know them from.

As always, free su…

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I’m back with another edition of You Know, the series where I try to bring attention to new newsletters from voices you (may) already know.

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Today’s newsletter includes the second installment of “You Know,” a segment about people whose work you may know from somewhere else who’ve recently gotten into the newsletter game. My guest this week is Krista Burton, who just launched. Paid subscribers can listen to our full conversation at the bottom of this newsletter.

Here’s the part of the newsletter where I ask you to consider signing up for the free version if you’re new here and ask existing free subscribers to consider upgrading to the paid version.

Subscribe now

On where most people recognize her from:

She is the author of the book “Moby Dyke: An Obsessive Quest To Track Down The Last Remaining Lesbian Bars In America.” People may know her from her blog, Effing Dykes. She’s also written for Rookie Magazine and The New York Times.

O Caftan My Caftan

A twice-weekly queer newsletter with recurring columns, perfume talk, and strong opinions!!!! about trivial shit – from Krista Burton, author of Moby Dyke

By Krista

On the most surprising thing she learned while researching “Moby Dyke”:

“There were two incredibly surprising things,” she tells me. “Number one, I was very surprised at how many people will continue to talk to you after you clearly have a notebook open and you've asked them their full name, their pronouns, like where they live, how they identify, and like all this, and they are seeing you write down, freehand, everything that they say, and they continue to talk.

“It is amazing to me because if that happened to me, I would turn around and walk out the door. So I was really surprised at how willing people are to go on the record at the drop of a hat with absolutely no warning. And it was really great, honestly.”

“And the other thing that really surprised me goes hand in hand with that, and that is how willing people are to talk to you if you approach them, but never the other way around. In all these lesbian bars that I was in, it was so rare that anyone came near me or even spoke to me unless it was the bartender. I think it happened once, but strangers, especially in the Midwest and on the East Coast, no one talked to me. And I understand that because I've been going to dive bars for 20 years. I know that as a people, in general, as a massive generalization, we do not approach one another. But like, I thought it was so fascinating that as soon as I got over myself and started being the person who was initiating things like saying hi, or the smallest amount of conversation starters, or like, ‘I like your hoodie,’ anything. If I spoke first, people would go. You could make friends immediately, but I was never going to make friends until I was the one willing to initiate. And I think that is a really great lesson.”

On her favorite lesbian bar in the U.S.:

“I have several, but my number one top spot goes to The Back Door in Bloomington, Indiana,” she says. “If anyone is considering a road trip, this bar is phenomenal. Go on a Friday or Saturday night, catch their drag show. I've been watching drag for decades, and I saw hands-down the best drag show I've ever seen. Just on a random Saturday night in Bloomington, Indiana, it was, I've never seen performers work that hard.”

On what people can expect from her new newsletter,:

“It's like a twice-weekly newsletter, and it's me basically just finally writing about whatever I want. And that will usually include recurring columns like there's going to be a queer etiquette column. There's going to be a running installment about me learning how to drive a Zamboni.”

O Caftan My Caftan

Zamboni Thoughts #1

Last fall, the city of Northfield, Minnesota posted something intriguing on their Instagram. Something irresistible. I showed the post to Davin. “Ha ha,” I said. “What if I became a Zamboni driver?” Davin peered at my phone. “Yeah, what if?” he said. Polite. Non-committal. He looked back down at his…

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2 years ago · 19 likes · 8 comments · Krista

“There's going to be a lot of perfume talk because I love and collect perfume and have for over 10 years. And I'll literally talk about it to anyone who even whispers the word perfume to me. … I think that the number one thing I'm most excited to write about is queer-specific perfume recommendations. I am so excited to pick very specific instances at which you might need to smell a very particular way and be able to recommend the shit out of those instances. Like ‘I need to go to a gay wedding and three of my exes will be there and I need to smell fucking devastating.’”

O Caftan My Caftan

Incredibly Specific Queer Perfume Recommendations

Hi, y’all! This is the maiden voyage of Incredibly Specific Queer Perfume Recommendations, a column that’s going to be a recurring feature here on O Caftan My Caftan. I am so, so excited for this, and I’m delighted you’re here, going on this scentventure (sorry) with me…

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2 years ago · 16 likes · 17 comments · Krista

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First Five will be back next week, but I didn’t want to wait another day to launch this segment that’s been in the works. It’s called “You Know,” and the goal is to take writers, actors, YouTubers, comedians, and creatives you may already know from somewhere else and let you know that they’re getting into the newsletter game. There can be a real discoverability challenge in the newsletter world, even for bigger names.

This, just like my recommendations, is going to be platform agnostic, so while I’m sure a great many of these You Know segments will be Substack newsletters, I’m definitely open to interviewing people launching on other platforms, too. If you think you’d be a good fit (or know someone planning to launch a newsletter who would), feel free to send me an email at readtpa@gmail.com.

You may know my first guest as the award-winning host of the CNN docuseries United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell, the driving force behind Showtime’s We Need To Talk About Cosby, or more recently, the HBO documentary 1000% Me: Growing Up Mixed. He’s a New York Times bestselling author, a member of the board of directors at Donors Choose, and the ACLU’s Artist Ambassador for Racial Justice.

And in case the name didn’t give it away, he’s the man behind the brand-new newsletter, W. Kamau Bell!

W. Kamau Bell asks, "Who's With Me?"

Come hang out with a pop-culture-obsessed, antiracist, lefty, OG Blerd who lives in Oakland, CA.

Below are some highlights from our conversation, edited for length and clarity. Paid subscribers can listen to the full audio of our conversation at the bottom of the newsletter.

But first, real quick: here’s the part of the newsletter where I ask you to consider signing up for the free version if you’re new here and ask existing free subscribers to consider upgrading to the paid version.

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So without further ado…

On where most people recognize him from:

I would say at this point, it's generally United Shades of America. That show was on CNN for seven seasons, which nobody can believe because it was either on all the time or they never saw it. Seven seasons, and CNN, especially when I was on, was sort of everywhere: like doctor's offices, the subway platform, lots of airports.

So even if you didn't know me, you saw my face in lots of places. So a lot of times, people go, “Hey, you're the CNN guy!” I was like, “I don't think I get paid enough to be called the CNN guy. I think that's more of an Anderson Cooper title.”

On whether he has a favorite, most impactful, or most memorable episode of United Shades of America:

It's funny. There's a handful of them that I think that if I was to tell stories about, they would come up. But really, the first one that really impacted me personally was in the first season. We were supposed to do an episode about biker gangs, which shows you how different the show was back then. And the biker gangs basically threatened to beat up one of our producers, so we had to cancel that episode.

And then we sort of pivoted, and we ended up doing an episode about San Quentin prison. And I remember that I'd never been in a prison before. And I remember really being afraid that we were going to do the thing that happens in prison shows, especially back then. MSNBC did a lot of this, like the prison pornography shows, basically, “Look at how crazy and scary and violent and awful these people are.” And as a Black man, I knew I can't go into a prison and do that. And so that episode was not that.

I didn't realize San Quentin was actually one of the best places for rehab in prison. Like not only drugs and alcohol, but also your mind, and inmates learn skills. I became friendly with one of the guys there and stayed in touch and he's out of prison now, his name's Rahsaan Thomas. And so we've become friendly, and I've been back to San Quentin several times. I didn't go during COVID, obviously, but I just went back last year for the first time. It really changed my ideas about how prison can work and really affected my life in a big way.

So that was the first episode that affected me that I was like, “Oh, this is not just me making this show. It actually is going to change my life, too.” And then every season, there were two or three episodes that would be really significant.

On if he had any regrets while making United Shades of America:

Oh yeah, my life is run by regret. From the very first episode, there were regrets about how the production happened and my level of control over it. And so from the first episode to the very last episode, I had to really flex and push in and demand, not a full-on tantrum, but go, “If we do this again, I'm not doing it.” And so from the very first episode, which was famously the KKK episode, I really felt like we could have done that funnier, but the producer at that time was really like, “We want the Klan to look scary.” And I was like, “I think they've already accomplished that on their own.”

The fun is in the fact that I'm making them funnier, like that I'm making fun of them, and I'm in control of this experience, but they really want to do “Grrrrrr, he might get lynched.” So that was that.

And then every episode, I really was always pushing CNN like, “Look, we've shot way more than we can use in 42 minutes. Can we just put stuff up online?” [They’d] already paid for this content.

They didn't really understand content in that way at that point. I don't know if they understand it yet, but I think I was looking ahead to the current era of everything being content and using all of it. Nobody cares if it's out of focus, nobody cares if there's “ums” and “ahs.” And there's a lot of stuff that just sits somewhere on a hard drive that has great content and great conversations. Sometimes we would interview people, and for some reason the show went a different direction. And so whole conversations didn't make the show, that were good conversations, just because they didn't fit in the 42 minutes.

My big regret is that I wasn't able to convince CNN that all of that should have been up online. All of that should be on YouTube.

On what he would do if given the chance to make a 55th episode with an unlimited budget and a worldwide audience:

I would actually do one out of the country. We never really got far out of the country. We went to Canada and Mexico. And Mexico, when we really stepped a foot in and stepped out, we weren't really in, but Canada, we did a whole episode in Canada.

I'm really fascinated right now about Black expats, especially people who have left recently, within the last five years — probably since 2016. I follow people on Instagram; there's just waves of regular Black people, not rich Black people who are just like, “I'm done with America.”

And there's a history of black artists doing that. You know, Nina Simone, James Baldwin, and Josephine Baker. And I'm just curious about people doing it now. I would have loved to have done something about that. And it's an idea I still have, but if they were going to give me an unlimited budget, I would do that specifically.

On why he’s starting a newsletter now:

I mean, I've had one for years. I had an email list back when you would put out a clipboard. So I've had one, and also, the way in which my career worked, when I really started to understand myself as a writer was one year, this is over 10 years ago, my wife was like, “Start a blog and write,” maybe decide to write something. I don't know if it was once a week or every day, but I started regularly writing, and I really found myself as a writer at that point in ways that I just thought of myself as a standup. And then I had this newsletter, and it was sporadic, but I would sometimes send out more, I'd send it out to talk about when United Shades was running; I'd send it out every week. And I really liked that connection to people. And I really like what it does to me as a writer to give me something like, “What would you write about if you had to write today?”

And that's the kind of writing I really enjoy. And it's a way to get ideas out to you that I wouldn't use anywhere else. This week I'm writing about, I think I'm writing about this one about the George Carlin quote-unquote, “AI standup comedy special.” I normally would tweet about it or Instagram about it and call it a day, but there's like, I have a lot of thoughts about it, it turns out.

W. Kamau Bell asks, "Who's With Me?"

George Carlin Has Nothing Left to Say

Years ago, when I was still figuring out my stand-up comedy career, I took a day job at The Punch Line Comedy Club in San Francisco. It was my job to call people and tell them they had “won” free tickets, the fine print being that you could only use your “winning tickets” on a night when the club wasn’t going to already be packed with a paying audience…

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2 years ago · 250 likes · 14 comments · W. Kamau Bell

So, this is an opportunity to use those thoughts in a productive way. I'm really into the idea of talking to the people who want me to talk to them and not just throwing it out into the randomness of social media anymore. I'll still do some of that, but I really want, that's where we got the “Who's With Me” name from. I was like, I want Who's With Me. We can have productive arguments, but I'm not here for the trolling that has become social media.

On what he looks forward to writing about:

2024, as we know, is already a beast of a year, and it's only gonna get more beastial. And like a feral beast, not like a kind beast. The thing that I used to like about Twitter is that you could be more on top of the news. So Trump does something or Biden does something, you can sort of like send out 15 tweets. I don't do that anymore because I don't want to waste my time. This is a way to sort of still put those ideas out in a rapid response way that doesn't just feel like you're just blowing it into the wind.

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On where people can keep up with him:

I am still on Instagram. I'm still at Twitter — you might find me on there a little bit, but really like most of my social media-ing happens on Instagram at W. Kamau Bell and, go to Donors Choose, I’m on the board of directors at Donors Choose. If you want to support me, go to Donors Choose and support a teacher out there who needs to help her students get what they need. So that's how you support me.

On his appearances on the upcoming season of ABC’s What Would You Do?

I taped it last August and didn't know when it was coming out. And it's really, it's funny to get a call from your agent or whatever, like, “Hey, do you wanna be on What Would You Do?” And I was like, “Of course, I wanna be on What Would You Do?” It's such a, I never thought that opportunity would be presented to me. John Quiñones, who's the host, who's been the host of that show forever, invited me and Sara Haines in. And the great thing about the episodes I'm in is they were all filmed in and around Alabama, where my dad lives. So for me, it was like, it wasn't just doing like a random episode. It was like, I actually got to go have dinner with my dad every night and actually show off the Alabama that I know, which was cool.

Premium subscribers can listen to the full conversation below:

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