Joe Keery (Stranger Things) Talks with Wayne Coyne (The Flaming Lips) on the Talkhouse Podcast

"You have to listen to your own music!"

We’ve got a bit of a strange one for you on this week’s Talkhouse Podcast. Back during the darkest days of the pandemic, we hosted an Instagram live chat between Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips and actor/musician Joe Keery, who at the time was best known as part of the cast of Stranger Things.

Keery is also a musician, having released music with his band Post Animal, and he was just starting to release music under the name Djo. Keery had a pretty big viral hit with a Djo song this year: You may have heard “End Of Beginning.” If you haven’t, check it out right here.

Anyway, we figured that a lot of folks may have missed that conversation, so now would be the perfect time to resurface it in slightly edited podcast form. These two had never met, but they jump into a great chat about songwriting, Miley Cyrus’s house—which is where Coyne was dialing in from—and lots more, including how Coyne and his Flaming Lips bandmate Steven Drozd are like french fries and salt, about how listening is equally vital in music and acting, and much more. Enjoy.

0:00 – Intro
1:40 – “This is Wayne Flaming Lip” getting himself connected
6:25 – Joe’s thoughts on the Flaming Lips’ live show, which Wayne thinks isn’t really about the band
10:57 – Wayne asks Joe how making music is different than being directed
22:52 – “You have to listen to your own music!”
29:41 – Making music and creating art shouldn’t be a sacrifice

Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Wayne Coyne and Joe Keery for time traveling from 2020 for this episode. It was produced by Myron Kaplan, and the Talkhouse theme is composed and performed by the Range. See you next time!

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