Talkhouse Podcast

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got a songwriting and production wizard who’s having a big moment in conversation with a legend that he considers a huge influence: It’s Nate Amos and Bruce Hornsby.
Nate Amos may have caught your attention in the past few years with Water From Your Eyes, a duo he started about 10 years ago with vocalist Rachel Brown. Together they’ve released a bunch of tough-to-categorize records: One minute you’re singing along with an arty pop song, the next you’re on an unexpected, noisy tangent. Throughout the Water years, Amos also quietly amassed a solo catalog under the name This is Lorelei—putting out dozens of experimental albums and EPs that you had to dig on Bandcamp to find. But This is Lorelei poked its head into the real world a little more with 2024’s ⁠Box For Buddy, Box For Star⁠, a record so beloved that its recent re-release includes covers of its songs by Jeff Tweedy, Waxahatchee, and MJ Lenderman, among others. Those names are good reference points for the latest This Is Lorelei record, too: ⁠The Singer in My Band⁠ came out in September, and it’s a much more straightforward version of Amos’ fantastic songwriting. Check out “Billy Came Back” ⁠right here⁠.
An artist that Amos wanted to cover one of his songs for that reissue was the other half of today’s conversation, Bruce Hornsby. Hornsby liked what he heard, but unfortunately couldn’t make the timing work, as you’ll hear in this conversation. Hopefully you recognize his name: Bruce Hornsby has built an incredible career over the past 50 years. He smashed into the mainstream in the late ‘80s with huge pop hits including “The Way It Is,” but before that and definitely since then he’s been a musical wanderer who loves to mix it up. You’ll also get some insight into the music Hornsby has been making in the last decade, including the fantastic ⁠Indigo Park⁠, which features guest appearances from all sides of Hornsby’s world, from Ezra Koenig to Bob Weir. Check out the title track from Indigo Park ⁠right here⁠.
In this lively conversation, you’ll hear a lot of mutual admiration: Hornsby even asks Amos if it’s okay if he kisses his ass a little bit. They chat about Kmart mix tapes, weird time signatures, and their shared love of the band ⁠Palm⁠, among other things. Enjoy.
00:00 Intro
03:26 Start of convo, Zoom etiquette, and Nate’s guitars
05:10 The New Yorker, batting cages, and Nate’s mercury poisoning apartment
08:25 On Vermont and Virginia, Bruce’s nephew, playing cards onstage, Frank Zappa, and Captain Beefheart
13:03 On Nate’s introduction to Bruce’s music, improvising musically, and songwriting
16:03 On Bruce’s early influences, and John Mulaney supporting Bruce’s new album
19:40 On defying expectations, experimenting musically, making “weird” music, and Hunter S. Thompson
23:05 On what Bruce admires about Nate’s songwriting, how Nate tries out new ideas, microtonal music, and Ben Johnston
28:31 Breaking down the sounds in Water From Your Eyes’ “Playing Classics,” and the working principle of the project
30:53 On the producer Tony Berg, how different projects call for different sounds, and loving the group Palm
34:18 Bruce’s commentary on more Water From Your Eyes songs, how Nate got in touch about collabing, and his “swing for the fences” list
37:15 On Gerry Rafferty, The Cure, and commentary on “Hey Sara Is It Gonna Rain Forever”
40:13 On how Bruce influenced Nate’s early music, his covers of two of Bruce’s songs, and “Barren Ground”
42:55 On Bruce’s work with Bon Iver, playing at his festival, and how “Barren Ground” influenced “Beth/Rest”
45:03 On “Scenes from the South Side,” and enjoying your big moment
Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast and thanks to Nate Amos and Bruce Hornsby for chatting. If you liked what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform, and check out all the great stuff at ⁠Talkhouse.com⁠. This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan. See you next time!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On the latest episode of Nobody’s Ever Asked Me That, Nick Dawson sits down with the hugely talented English singer-songwriter Clara Mann, whose sophomore album, Wishbone, is out now. In a wonderfully open conversation, Mann talks about such topics as climbing the legendary French peak Mont Ventoux with her 80-year-old father, the spoon that taught her about selflessness in art, the fake skater personas “Darvid and Mikael” she invented wth her teenage best friend, how she recently ended up spending a short vacation in a garden shed, the time she stayed up all night on MDMA at End of the Road festival, and much more.
Nobody’s Ever Asked Me That now has a ⁠Substack⁠, so head there to check out all of our past episodes, plus ⁠subscribe to get access⁠ to exclusive audio and video content!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week’s Talkhouse episode, we’ve got some notable Canadians with tons of great music under their belts, including a recent collaboration—their first. It’s Ryan Hemsworth and Sara Quin.
Hemsworth—no relation to those Australian actor guys—is a musician and producer who’s made records with a really interesting array of folks over the past 15 years, creating beats and beds for everybody from E-40 to Mitski. Hemsworth just released his first solo album in nearly a decade, and ⁠Numbskull⁠ sounds like a guy who’s been bursting with pent-up creativity. It’s all over the map in the best way, with rock and even emo influences pushing up against his electronic tendencies. Unsurprisingly for a guy who gets around—musicially, I mean—it features lots of guest artists on various tracks, including the unmistakable voices of his fellow Canadians Tegan and Sara on one song. Check out that song, “Never Learned,” ⁠right here⁠.
One of those voices of course was Sara Quin, half of the twin-sister duo that’s been surprising and delighting its fans for the past 30 or so years. Beyond their extensive musical catalog, Tegan and Sara have done graphic novels, a documentary, and a TV show. As you’ll hear in this chat, Sara recently became a mom for the second time, and she learned some lessons about diving back into work too quickly.
That’s just one of the many topics these two chat about: In addition to the joys and difficulties of parenting as a touring musician, they talk about the horrors of social media—Sara is not a fan—plus Ryan’s early Tegan and Sara fandom. Enjoy.
00:00 Intro
02:06 Start of conversation, setting up Sara’s studio, and Ryan’s room
04:03 On the most expensive thing they’ve bough for music, and recording in strange spaces
07:24 On getting to know each other, Ryan’s Tegan & Sara t-shirt, discovering music in high school, and starting to collab
10:36 On listening to and collaborating with very different artists
12:48 On Sara writing a book, and trying different things artistically
16:29 On promoting creative projects, hustling, and passion
19:00 On how having kids changes creative work and touring
24:14 On touring with Neil Young, Sara’s first tour, and how it compares to touring with her kids
27:40 On how artistic identity, promoting work, and using social media have changed, and on hating algorithms
33:49 On “going viral” horror stories, and how book promo compares to music promo
36:07 On pressure to stay present in the media and “prove you’re still alive”
38:17 On how their partners react to their downtime, when they find time to work, and pressure to work again immediately after having babies
42:18 On what they’re doing next
45:32 On big production tours and branding vs. more stripped back performances and artistic identities
48:09 On Sara’s ideas for her next tour, and creating good experiences for audiences
51:28 On eating in movie theaters, working together, and quiet gigs
Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Ryan Hemsworth and Sara Quin for chatting. If you liked what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform, and check out all the great stuff at ⁠Talkhouse.com⁠. This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan, and the Talkhouse theme was composed and performed by the Range. See you next time!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On the latest episode of Nobody’s Ever Asked Me That, Nick Dawson sits down with husband-and-wife writing and directing team Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson, whose brilliantly inventive new movie, Wicker, starring Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgård and Peter Dinklage, is out Friday. In a lively and unpredictable conversation, they talk about Alex’s history with night terrors (and the injury they caused him just before Sundance), medieval polyphasic sleep rhythms (obviously!), Eleanor’s love of the Australian magpie, the unfortunate mullet Alex got last time he was Down Under, and much more.
Nobody’s Ever Asked Me That now has a ⁠Substack⁠, so head there to check out all of our past episodes, plus ⁠subscribe to get access ⁠to exclusive audio and video content!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week's Talkhouse episode we’ve got four guys who have tons in common—including lots of soundtrack work— but who, surprisingly, hadn’t met before. It’s Son Lux and Dan Deacon.
Son Lux started out as the solo electronic project of Ryan Lott back in 2008, but by 2015 he’d been joined by fellow travelers Ian Chang and Rafiq Bhatia, expanding the group’s sound into something reviewers loved to call both “dense” and “orchestral.” So it makes sense that the trio would find its way into writing and performing scores for film, and they got a huge, high-exposure job with the massive Everything Everywhere All At Once. The film’s score involved a hundred cues and some killer collaborators, including David Byrne, Mitski, and Andre 3000. Nominated for an Oscar, it naturally led to other film-world work, including the score to the superhero movie Thunderbolts. But that hasn’t stopped Lott, Chang, and Bhatia from itching to write original Son Lux music, and last month saw two big releases—one the score to a new movie called Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother and then a brand new Son Lux record called ⁠Out Into⁠. Check out “Want You To Love” from that record ⁠right here⁠.
The other half of today’s chat, Dan Deacon, has gotten so busy with scoring films and TV that he hasn’t released an artist album since 2020—as you’ll hear in this chat, he’s reasonably content with those circumstances, though he does plan on getting around to it. Deacon found audiences in the early 2000s with frantic live shows of his experimental electronic pop, and his entrance into the scoring world was incredibly strange, another story he recounts in this conversation. A blind email from Francis Ford Coppola led to his first job, but that movie—called Twixt—put him off soundtrack work for a while. He’s since become a staple in the scoring world, though, with a bunch of projects coming out right around now, including a new soundtrack for a documentary called Great Photo, Lovely Life.
In this lively conversation, the three members of Son Lux and Deacon talk a lot about creating music for other projects versus making their own records, including some interesting behind-the-scenes thoughts on how music gets used in movies versus, say, bus noises. Also, is every director the equivalent of Wormtongue from Lord of the Rings? Probably not. Enjoy.
0:00 Intro
02:52 Start of conversation & how often they put out albums
03:38 On work schedules, confidence, and momentum
05:46 On Dan’s solo and collaborative scores, music editors, and documentary scores
08:28 On how they got into scoring movies, how scores differ from other music, and working with Francis Ford Coppola
12:40 On improvisational and collaborative scores, and how scores influence their own projects
15:20 On the Venn diagram of creativity in film scoring, their record processes, and bad mixes in scores
19:37 On the dub stage of scoring and Everything Everywhere All At Once
23:08 On Dan’s future music plans, creative pressure, and exploring the ideas and skills Dan discovered through scoring
28:40 On writing songs, and why directors/composers are like Lord of the Rings characters
31:49 On Justin Vernon’s writing process and if records need stories about their process
33:03 On the pros and cons of touring
35:41 On Son Lux’s new album and upcoming score, and Dan’s crazy schedule for scoring Venom
38:20 On good manager relationships, and wanting people to find their new music
41:12 On future regrets, letting go of stress, types of fun, and making plans to check in again
Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to the guys from Son Lux and Dan Deacon for chatting. If you liked what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform, and check out all the great stuff at ⁠Talkhouse.com⁠. This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan, and the Talkhouse theme is composed and performed by the Range. See you next time!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.