Fenne Lily is a singer-songwriter based in New York; Whitmer Thomas is a comedian and musician based in LA. Fenne’s fourth record Win Win just came out last month (via Nettwerk), and Whitmer’s latest HBO special Terminal Crew of Dudes, as well as the accompanying record, came out this summer. To celebrate it all, the two friends got on Zoom to catch up.
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music
Fenne Lily: Where are you?
Whitmer Thomas: I'm at my house. Finally.
Fenne: Not doing your New York press tour?
Whitmer: No. I don't ever want to go back to New York. No offense.
Fenne: Dude, me neither.
Whitmer: I've been having to go back and forth from New York so much. But I’m happy to be in LA for a little while.
Fenne: How long are you going to be there?
Whitmer: Until Friday. I have to go to a wedding. I hate when people make you travel for a wedding.
Fenne: I think it's incredibly selfish.
Whitmer: If they, like, live in Alabama and I gotta go to Alabama for the wedding, cool. But if they live in LA and they want you to go to Tucson — this is my close friend and I love her to death, but she's making me go to Tucson. Especially in New York and LA where people are having to travel all the time, I'm like, Give me a break…
Fenne: Do a Zoom wedding. Lately I've been missing COVID quite a lot, because I liked it when you could have the choice to do things from a distance.
Whitmer: And you always had an excuse.
Fenne: I'm still using COVID as an excuse. “I got a tickle in my throat…”
Whitmer: The older I get, excuses are getting easier. They're, like, real. I'm not having to lie. When I was young, I'd have to make something up like, “I have anxiety,” or something. But now it's like, “No, I did throw my back out putting a sock on and I do have to have surgery.”
Fenne: I got the flu last week because I took my downstairs neighbor's kid to school. Which I thought was kind of like a sweet New York thing to put in my diary, and then I went through the doors of this school and all the kids are doing that kid cough where their whole tongue comes out. Then two days later, I was doing the kid cough. I had to tell people, “Can't come. Got a cold from a child.” It doesn't sound real.
Whitmer: Did you do the kid cough when you were a kid?
Fenne: I'm sure we all did. No?
Whitmer: I don't remember doing the kid cough. I do remember being sick in a way that I haven't really been since then. Everything was coming out of me. I would blow my nose anywhere, dude. Like, into my shirt. But it's so hard for kids to know not to cough that way.
Fenne: I grew up not knowing how to blow my nose. I thought the tissue was more like a shield, a privacy screen, so I'd just blow it straight down. I mean, it makes as much sense as catching it in a tissue.
Whitmer: [Laughs.] It's crazy how dumb children are. They're just not cut out for life. They have to have somebody there to help them out.
Fenne: I think it's crazy that you've had friends since you were a kid, and you've seen your friends at that stage where they don't know how to perform as humans.
Whitmer: But also they haven't really changed either. They're all pretty much the same, it's just we're moving a little slower and everybody's a little sleepier. I'd say I'm the last of the skaters — my friends will say, “the last true skater.” I think they've sort of lost their lust for that, which was really hard for me to get used to. But I have other close friends who skate now.
Fenne: I just talked to Palehound for this podcast, and we were both saying skateboarding is the hottest thing you can do with your body.
Whitmer: [Laughs.] Even when you're old?
Fenne: Kind of especially. When I lived in Bristol, my bedroom was right on the street, and I would hear skaters coming down the road and I would run to the window and look at them. I didn't care how old they were.
Whitmer: I've talked about this a bunch, but I know now that when I'm skating, the young people are looking at me going, “Who the fuck is this old fucker?” Which is tough. It does make you feel a little uncool. And then you look at how these skaters dress and you go, Oh, I gotta figure out how to dress like this child so they don't make fun of me. But then you look like an old man dressed like a child. So now I've decided I'm just going to dress in a way that is comfortable for me.
Fenne: Orthopedic.
Whitmer: Yeah. Find some of those fancy New Balance skate shoes.
Fenne: I think anyone older than you doing something you like doing, and they're doing it better because they're older — that's always cool. I'm sure they're looking at you like, “Woah.”
Whitmer: I'm not better than them.
Fenne: Do you skate all the time?
Whitmer: I haven't been lately. I've been too busy shooting stuff, and it's a liability to skate, so I don't do it. But I'll get back into it, hopefully. This year has been crazy. I've been so busy I haven't been able to do a lot of the meditative chill things that I normally would do. Right now, I'm working on something and then I do shows every night, short stand up sets. I'm not complaining or anything — I'm happy to do it — but it's just funny to be so busy every day. I'm like, God, how do I have another day of stuff I gotta do?
Fenne: I've been too busy to do grocery shopping and I went to the fridge and was like, I guess I could have a tortilla wrap with feta cheese on it and some lemon. That's just going to have to be it for a while. Also, the kind of busy that I am is so fucking boring. People will be like, “What have you been up to? Pretty busy?” And I'm like, “Yeah! I've been… talking about myself… Writing about myself… Getting everyone ready to play shows about me… Getting people to be in the room to watch me do my thing…”
Whitmer: It's funny how delusional we are, to think that whatever we have to tell people is more special than any thought they've ever had. I guess you hope that people relate to it, but still, especially with stand up, it's like, “You could probably do this, and you might be better.” Because you don't have to know how to sing or play guitar. You just go on stage and you tell a story as if you were, like, at Thanksgiving.
Fenne: That's the most magic thing in the world, though. I don't think I could do it. Whenever I watch good stand up, I feel like I'm in a dream sequence.
Whitmer: I bet you you could do it. You probably do a little. I've actually never seen you live — isn't that weird?
Fenne: That is weird.
Whitmer: But I bet you do a bit of it in between songs. How's your banter?
Fenne: It's strong. Someone told me that I should stop because it's cheapening the music.
Whitmer: Oh, I hate that, though. I hate it when I have friends who are musicians who aren't necessarily mysterious people, but then their stage presence is that they are.
Fenne: It’s boring.
Whitmer: I’m like, “You phony. I know that in reality, you just want to make fun of something.”
Fenne: Have you put your foot in your mouth on stage between songs or in stand up and been like, Wow, I wish that hadn't happened?
Whitmer: I'm sure I have. I'm not good at thinking off the cuff. I can't do crowd work, really. I'm not a good improviser. I have to plan what I'm going to say. And if I start to make fun of myself or be self-deprecating in between a joke that didn't go well, people usually don't really laugh. It all has to be pretty scripted for me… I'm always I'm trying to go, OK, everybody in this audience wants this to be good. They don't hate me. Which is a huge hurdle to get over. I don't really like when comedians will talk about, “Oh, you didn't laugh at that? You're not laughing over here.”
Fenne: That's so embarrassing.
Whitmer: Yeah. Everybody's here because they want to laugh. And I do jokes where the point is how unfunny it is. Then there's some sort of tag at the end where people go like, Oh, I get it. Or I often will do a joke that is bad, but what's funny — at least to me — is committing to hard to it.
When you play a song, how often have you fucked it up so bad that you had to start it again live?
Fenne: [Laughs.] I mean, I've started in the wrong key, like I've just put the capo in the wrong spot. But I try and play with people that are better than me, so they just catch up. But I don't think I've ever started anything really bad. I feel like it can get really bad, and I wish I could just stop where I fucked up. Like, I have this habit of writing bridges that go really high in my vocal range, and then I can never sing them. So I'll get to a bridge, like, two-and-a-half minutes into the song and be like, It would be sick if I could just leave it here.
But I've said stuff on stage where I'm like, Brother, why did I… Now everyone will know too much about me or think I need to be loved too much. Like I was playing in — where's Jeffrey Dahmer from? It's relevant to the story.
Whitmer: Minnesota or something?
Fenne: Milwaukee? Right at the top of the set I said, “Thank you for coming. I put Jeffrey Dahmer on the list, but he didn't show up.” And no one laughed. Then at the merch desk — and I wasn't selling much merch at all, like way less than usual — this guy came up and was like, “I don't think people liked that thing that you said about Dahmer. I think you might have upset a few people.” I was like, Why are we all so sensitive about Dahmer? But then I thought, That makes sense. You don't want your place of origin to be known by that guy.
Whitmer: I guess. But people need to cut you some slack there. That's so wack. I always feel like with music, at least whenever I'm opening for a band and I'm only playing music, the expectations are so much lower for a musician to be funny. I always enjoy it. But people do get really confused [about] what I do. I've been having to use TikTok — which is really hellish. It's a terrible place. I post stand up clips from my new special, and there's a band behind me, and a lot of the people, I’d say, on TikTok are much less in-the-know. They're much less willing to Google somebody.
Fenne: They don't want to get off the app. They can't get off the app.
Whitmer: Yeah. So they'll be like, “Is this guy just a singer who is telling a five minute story?” Now I’ll get in the comments and go, “No, this is a thing,” and I'll explain it to them a little bit.
Fenne: You should make the caption of the videos, “Singer tells another five minute story.”
Whitmer: [Laughs.]
Fenne: Yeah, I can't do the TikTok thing. I feel like I can be personable until there's a camera in front of me or a screen, and then I just want to be still and not say anything. And I feel like that about TikTok, where I'm like, What part of my personality belongs here?
Whitmer: I know. And often the people who thrive on TikTok are able to forget that in a way that I can't. And I always feel like I already let people in so much with music and my stand up that I don't want to do that with a front-facing camera video. I'd rather have a little bit of mystery. So I try to keep music off of TikTok. Also, I don't really believe in TikTok blowing up a song. I don't believe in an artist doing that. I don't think that really exists.
Fenne: I Googled this earlier: 82% of the top 200 Billboard songs went viral on TikTok first. Disgusting.
Whitmer: Oof.
Fenne: I've had friends have a song blow up on TikTok, and then they're like, “Well… now what? I have to do it again?” And maybe that song will get a bunch of streams in a month. But like you said, no one's going from the TikTok app to then see where they're playing near them or whatever. They're just being like, “This is cool. Maybe I'll put this on a video of me making eggs.”
Whitmer: And it's often it's not the artist blowing the song up. It's like some teenager who plays a sad song over a video that he's filming without his family's permission of his grandfather's last breaths or something. And then that becomes viral and the song blows up.
Fenne: Wait, I want that. [Laughs.]
Whitmer: My last special that came out was in 2020, and HBO sent me a trailer and they were like, “Just post this and then people will go watch it.” And I did, and it was great. This time, it's a whole social media rollout of every joke they could find that they can clip out. And some of the jokes do well online, but the way that the internet is now and social media, it doesn't mean people are going to watch the joke and then go find HBO Max and scroll through it and watch a full special. I think people just like the joke and then they forget about it.
Fenne: And maybe they'll follow you and eventually down the line see that you're doing something that they can be a part of. But probably they’ll just leave it.
Whitmer: Yeah. It's a totally different landscape than it was six years ago. And I'd say it's definitely worse. [Laughs.]
Fenne: Yeah. I feel so like such a bummer troglodyte being like, “In my day…” Because also, I slipped in the opening door of streaming and it did me loads of favors. So I'm sure there were people five years older than me being like, “Fuck this.”
Whitmer: I never did music when there wasn't streaming, professionally at least. So I don't really know a difference there. But stand up-wise, when I started in 2012, it might as well have been the 1970s. You’d do a show and maybe an agent would be there and then you get discovered or something like that. There was no social media aspect to it. It does feel ancient compared to how it is now. But I guess at the end of the day with all of this stuff, it's cool to at least be able to make somewhat of a living doing it, so I'm happy for that. Nowadays I'll just post whatever I'm supposed to post, and then I delete the app and I try not to look at it. But because I delete the app, I miss all of my friends’ birthday parties and those kinds of things.
How are you feeling about all the music coming out? It's so good, by the way. I listen to it all the time.
Fenne: Thanks. I feel great about the record, and I feel just complete, overwhelming dread at the thought of something that I care about being ignored. I feel like this every time — apart from the first record that I released and didn't expect anyone to hear — and more people listened to that than anything I've ever made since… I feel like as I've gotten older, maybe in the last two years, I was like, Oh, shit, this is either my job for a while or I have to stop and get a real job. I always felt like I was in front of the curve of the expectation of my age, and then I got to mid-20s and was like, Yeah, people are expecting me to be good and continue putting in loads of work. And I did, but there's always that feeling of, Well, if no one does listen to this, I will have to just do something else. And that sucks.
Whitmer: Right. And it doesn't really matter how good it is. It has nothing to do with any of that. It's funny to think, This is completely out of my hands. There's no real rhyme or reason to why sometimes it works for some people and sometimes it doesn't. I will find a band every now and again on streaming and I'll be like, This is the best record I've heard in the last year. And then I go look at the streams and it's got, like, 400 streams a month. I'm like, How the fuck? Why doesn't anybody know about this?
Fenne: And then the industry or whoever will be like, “Well, if they'd kept up their TikTok presence, maybe things would have been different…”
Whitmer: Hopefully they've proved that that isn't the way to go anymore. But I try to remind myself that, in the grand scheme of things, nobody will remember any of this. All you'll be able to look back on is all the music that you made that you're proud of. I try to go, OK, I don't have this massive career. I'm not like fucking Matt Rife or something.
Fenne: I don’t know who that is.
Whitmer: He's this really handsome comedian who does crowd work on middle aged single women, and he plays arenas. I don't want to do that anyway. But at least in 50 years I'll be able to look back and go, I'm actually proud of most of what I did, even though I kind of regret all of it. Some people listened and some people watched. But it's hard not to constantly compare yourself to people in showbiz. Because it really doesn't make sense. You're often punished for having integrity. And it's often the same integrity that got people interested in the first place. It's not a healthy place. [Laughs.]
Fenne: I was venting to my friend the other day and I was like, “I've got another record written. I'm just going to do that and then I'm going to move to Greece.” And she was like, “That would be so sick to have five records that you've made. That's a really cool body of work.” And I was like, “Interesting that you're listening to that as a positive thing and I was like, ‘I'm going give up after making my fifth record.’” But she was like, “That's awesome. You made five things. Enjoy Greece or whatever.”
Whitmer: OK, say your fifth record becomes this massive hit. Do you immediately turn that off and go, “Actually, I'm not moving to Greece. I'm just going to keep cruising here.”
Fenne: Yeah, probably. [Laughs.] I don't know. I would like to have more a conscious grasp of how I'm spending my time in general and make future plans that aren't just, “I will be touring North America in August.” It would be cool to be like, “For eight months, I'm going to learn how to make rope.” That would be great. And I think it would be good for my brain to be not thinking about myself all the time. I've been thinking about myself since I was 17. Like, every single day, I'm like, How can I make something or make something about what I've made? And I think it's making me into a weird person. Like a child star. It's creepy.
Whitmer: I'm kind of the same way. And now I drink coffee and I start to freak out. I think if I wasn't thinking about myself all the time, I might drink coffee and then go, I don't know, help somebody or something.
Fenne: Make some rope.
Whitmer: I joke around like, “OK, this happened and now I'm going to focus on my skating.” Which I actually do really want to do, because it is a thing where I'm like, OK, I'm not very good at this and I can just like chill out and support my friends and hang with them. I can feel a lot of that slipping away, and I'm sick of it. I get why Leonardo DiCaprio goes on vacations for 18 months after every project.
Fenne: So sick.
Whitmer: Yeah, it makes people go really nuts. But I guess what makes people also successful is how much work they're putting into all of it…
Did you start playing guitar when you were super young?
Fenne: Yeah. Well, my first instrument was piano and then saxophone for three years.
Whitmer: Woah. Do you still pull that bad boy out every now and again?
Fenne: I don't, but yesterday I remembered that I had that skill and maybe I could do that. It would be pretty antisocial, but…
Whitmer: Why antisocial? Because it's loud?
Fenne: Really loud. I could get on the roof, I guess. I should do that — instead of moving to Greece, I should just start playing the saxophone again.
Whitmer: Well, I love your new music. I love all your music.
Fenne: I love yours! And I love your new special. I played your record on my record player.
Whitmer: Thank you, and thanks for playing it. I drive around LA and listen, but I gotta get the album.
Fenne: I'll bring you one if I see you in LA.
Whitmer: We'll definitely hang in LA. It's always fun doing these kinds of things with your friends, because this is just a conversation we probably should have had at a bar.
Fenne: And we will probably again!
Whitmer: To be continued.
