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On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got a popular comedian, podcaster, and actor in conversation with a musician-slash-director who released their first song together earlier this year: Marc Maron and Paige Stark.
Maron is of course the host of the long-running interview podcast WTF, but that’s really just the headline on a long and winding career. He was of course first known—and is still known!—as a top-tier stand-up comedian whose shows are often discursive explorations of his own psyche while also being wildly funny. He’s also an actor, having been a regular on the Netflix series GLOW and a lead in a couple of dramatic movies, including To Leslie, which comes up in this conversation, and Sword of Trust, which was directed by Maron’s girlfriend Lynn Shelton, who died unexpectedly in 2020. That fact worked its way into Maron’s latest stand-up special, last year’s brilliant From Bleak to Dark. Oh, and he also dabbles as a musician, having played guitar in bands in his school days, and keeping it up mostly as a hobby since.
That’s where singer and songwriter Paige Stark comes in. A friend of Maron’s, she recruited him recently to play some “searing” guitar and duet with her on a cover of Love’s 1966 song “Signed DC.” Stark has been kicking around the L.A. music scene for years, most notably as part of the band Tashaki Miyaki, whose name is the subject of discussion in this podcast. Stark only recently began releasing music under her own name, including a bunch of singles this year that feature friends like Cherry Glazerr, Jon Brion, and of course Maron. Stark is also an actor and director who’s working on a narrative short at the moment. Busy busy. Check out the duet she did with Maron on “Signed DC.”
This funny, wide-ranging conversation covers everything from the recording of this duet to Maron’s guitar setup to Stark’s substance-fueled nights out in Los Angeles. They also clearly love talking about music, dissecting everything from Nick Cave to Bob Dylan and beyond. Enjoy!
0:00 – Intro
2:27 – Start of the chat/Trying to figure out Talkhouse
8:14 – Periods of self-doubt and Maron’s confidence in singing
20:16 – “I don’t know that many comedians.”
29:20 – Paige’s party years
33:26 – “You’re one of my favorite actors”—Stark
37:18 – Maron’s junior high and high school bands
45:55 – New bands Maron has recently seen
Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Marc Maron and Paige Stark for chatting. If you liked what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform, and check out all the good 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!
(Feature Photo Credit: Aislyn Murray, edited by Keenan Kush.)
