Andrew W.K. is the King of Partying and a hardcore rock & roll musician who first made his debut with the international smash hit, “Party Hard.” He lives in Manhattan, New York City. Best known for the experimental pop sounds of Saturday Looks Good to Me, Fred Thomas is a Michigan-born songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He’s also made washed-out psych with City Center, made reverby surf-punk with Swimsuit and formed the internal gentle-pop duo Mighty Clouds with former SLGTM singer Betty Barnes. His new solo album All Are Saved was released by Polyvinyl Records in April 2015 and is available here. You can find Fred on Twitter here and Facebook here.
This edition of the Talkhouse Music Podcast features Fred Thomas, longtime mainstay of the beloved, idiosyncratic lo-fi indie-pop band Saturday Looks Good to Me, with musician, motivational speaker, producer, nightclub impresario, advice columnist, and TV and radio host Andrew WK.
It’s a little-known fact that Mr. Thomas and Mr. WK go back a long way — 20 years, to when they were teenagers in the very weird and wild Ann Arbor, Michigan, underground music scene. They’re still good friends, and WK even guested on a song on Thomas’ debut solo album All Are Saved, which came out this spring.
These are two very thoughtful, well spoken and very experienced musicians, and conversation is filled with really great insights about what it’s like to be a musician — any kind of musician. This is the kind of thing you won’t get in an ordinary interview, so listen closely for an explanation of why your audience is your enemy, a great discussion about the value of criticism, a realistic definition of artistic success, musings on the intersection of life and art, and an attempt to pin down the mysterious miracle of artistic inspiration.
