Nate Mendelsohn (Market) and Dougie Poole Don’t Want to Seem Too Maudlin

Dougie Poole is a songwriter from New York — now based in LA — whose latest record, The Rainbow Wheel of Death came out last year; Nate Mendelsohn fronts the New York-based band Market. Nate produced Dougie’s recently-recorded new record, and with Market, is releasing his own: Well I Asked You a Question, out today on Western Vinyl. To celebrate, the friends/collaborators caught up about funny music, songwriting, basketball, and more.
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music 

Dougie Poole: So, you’ve got this record. How did you record it? You can tell that you recorded it in a bunch of different ways. 

Nate Mendelsohn: Can you? Tell me about that.

Dougie: Well, it just sounds like a beautifully stitched together quilt. You know, sometimes a record really is lovely for the fact that it captures one moment in a way that gives you a sense of the place. And then there’s another kind of record that can be lovely in the sense that it’s like a tapestry.

Nate: Yeah. This record definitely doesn’t have a place. This record’s place is, like, the internet or something. 

Dougie: That’s cool. That’s where it’s goin’.

Nate: [Laughs.] That’s where it’s going for sure. Do you think your record that we made together calls to mind Pasadena, Maryland, or Katie [von Schleicher]’s childhood living room?

Dougie: Yeah, I think so. I think that’s where it exists, even though I recorded some overdubs at home, and then we recorded some overdubs at your guys’ house. I think it recalls a place in the sense also that relationships can feel like a space, and obviously I associate that record very closely with working with you guys. I think it comes through in the sound, too.

Nate: Definitely. I mean, it’s funny because people ask sometimes who or what a song is about. But for me, the songs are pretty rarely about a person. Sometimes a place, but even that, less so. They’re usually more about a time. So every line is specific to something concrete, but from line to line, the thing that generally binds them together is they were happening to me or in my life around the same time. So when I sing an old song, I remember this week or this month in my life much more than, “This song is about my ex,” or “this song is about a member of my family,” or whatever. Which sort of reminds me of what you’re saying — the record doesn’t just elicit a place, it elicits relationships. And for me, place, relationships, and time periods all can get collapsed and etched into a song in different ways.

Dougie: Well, also, what you’re describing is kind of a neat little microcosm for how the album came together — each line can be addressing a different thing, but they’re all sort of joined by a time — that concept sort of stretches out to how it’s not all [recorded] in one place or recorded in one way.

Nate: This record was mostly — well, I did a lot of stuff alone in my room spread out over a bunch of time. And then once I realized that it was starting to become a record, I then took what already existed to a cabin outside of LA with Steve Becker and Adam Hirsch, two good friends and collaborators. We worked on it together in person for, like, two weeks. So when I say the location of the record is the internet, I’m kind of joking, because it feels that way a little bit. But it was a pretty in-person thing. But definitely the in-person collaborations from all different time periods and locations got stitched together, and I brought it back to New York and kept working on it, and brought it to other collaborators, like Katie, Natasha [Bergman], Mike [Haldeman], Justin [Felton], Helen [Newby] — big time people putting their stamp on it. But none of it was asynchronous, you know? I was spending time in rooms with people, which felt good. I remember all of those sessions and hanging out whenever I hear the music again.

Dougie: That’s cool.

Nate: So, let’s return to lyrics for a second. Do you find that most of your songs are focused around a character or event? Or are they more collage-y? And in either case, is that by design or just what happens, happens?

Dougie: Yeah. I’m very much of the [mindset], I’ll take whatever I can get. I’ve written songs about people, or I’ve been compelled to write a song not necessarily about somebody but because of an event or a thing. Those are the ones that usually hit me the hardest when I’m writing them. And kind of the looser ones don’t hit me as hard when I’m writing them, but they turn out nice in a different way. 

Nate: “Looser” being, they come in a little more fragmented?

Dougie: Yeah, or there’s not as much of a central idea. Looser logically or conceptually. 

Nate: I really like the lyrics to “Beth David Cemetery.”

Dougie: Well, that’s a place. [Laughs.]

Nate: Is the whole song about that place?

Dougie: Yeah, I guess so… Well, I find it sometimes easy to pick a thing to make a song about, and then if you’re lucky, it becomes about other stuff too. So I think I just was like, I’m going to write a song about going to the cemetery where my grandma is for a funeral. And then that’s more or less all it really means to me. But I think it means other stuff to other people that I couldn’t tell you. But, yeah, sometimes it’s easy to just pick a thing or a place because, I mean, a cemetery — then it’s sort of necessarily about death and family. The branches grow out of the stump in the middle.

Nate: I think you can write a song about something mundane, or that might not lend itself usually to great poetry, and then you find depth in it. That can always be a nice frame. But also in this case, it’s kind of the opposite, where you picked something that automatically has a heft to it — death, family, time — and then you’re talking about being on a Megabus and the hors d’oeuvres. I mean, I love that line: “If memory serves, there’s no hors d’oeuvres ‘til the services are done,” at the end of the chorus. So there is this heft inherent to the topic, but then it’s a really funny song, too.

Dougie: You know, I try not to get too maudlin without a little levity to counterbalance it. 

Nate: Definitely. I think you’re good at that. 

Dougie: Is that something you consciously do, too?

Nate: Yeah, I definitely don’t want any of the music to come across as overly serious or regal in any sort of way. But I don’t think I have to try that hard, because a lot of times the lyrical nuggets that come to me easiest, and often spawn a whole song, are because I thought of something that I thought was funny. And it’s usually not funny like haha, but it definitely has a sense of humor. It’s not supposed to be intensely poetic or anything. Then usually stuff will cohere around that. But just because that’s the seed, I usually don’t have to really worry about something being too self-serious or — I just looked up “maudlin” on my phone when you said that.

Dougie: Did I use it right? 

Nate: Yeah, I think so. It said “self-pitying or tearfully sentimental, often through drunkenness.”

Dougie: Well, that’s me. 

Nate: [Laughs.] Yeah, I think you used it good.

Dougie: I was actually thinking, as you were saying this — I played a show recently where I played one of my songs and it got laughs, and that really kind of threw me. I mean, people are allowed to feel however they want about stuff… Also, when I am funny in a song, I rarely think of it as a haha funny. It’s more like a heh.

Nate: Yeah, totally. I think that’s the key. But I wonder, do you like when they laugh? What did you feel?

Dougie: It kind of depends on how I feel at the time. If I’m feeling fucking blue and people are laughing at “Vaping on the Job,” that doesn’t feel very good.

Nate: It’s like, “fuck you.” Or maybe “fuck you” is an overstatement.

Dougie: No, “fuck you” is good.

Nate: But if you’re having a fun, jolly, energetic gig and people are chortling at some of the more chortle-able lines…

Dougie: But usually on a high energy thing, I can’t really hear what people are doing. I think maybe it was because it was sort of an intimate setting, lyrics laid bare… I think a lot of my own insecurity lies in the idea that my work is somehow not genuine or honest or true. When I make it, it feels like I’m being all those things. And then here and there over the years I’ve gotten, “Oh, he’s just doing a cowboy thing or whatever, and it’s shtick-y.” That pokes at deep insecurities of mine. That’s a hard thing to hear when you really feel like you are being genuine.

Nate: Absolutely.

Dougie: And so I think something about the laughing tickles that nerve a little bit.

Nate: Well, I think if somebody interacts with your music on a surface level, they’ll be like, “He’s doing country music, but there’s vaping and Megabuses and the rainbow spinny wheel on the computer — it’s like millennial funny country.” As in, “This doesn’t belong in the lineage of country.” And what I’m hearing from you — and staunchly agree with — is that a., you’re such a student of the genre and a lover of the genre; and b., when you listen back to old country records, they are littered with hilarious, amazing, true lines that are definitely more heh than haha. I feel like your music is just writing good country songs about your life and the world around you, very much in the way of anybody from Waylon to Dolly. 

Dougie: Thank you.

Nate: So I do think that anyone who engages deeper with it… Well, I have a particular view because we made a record together and became friends, but you taught me a lot about country music, and I think in a lot of my favorite music, there are moments that I find wryly funny, and at the same time as that is hitting, the music’s good, and the things combine in this greater-than-the-sum-of-their parts way, and it puts a big fucking smile on my face. And I feel that all the time listening to all sorts of artists that are not associated with haha in any regard whatsoever.

Dougie: Yeah, totally. This is a tangent, but the Megabus thing — people say “Greyhound bus” all the time in songs.

Nate: A lot more people I know take Megabuses.

Dougie: That’s what I’m saying, dude!

Nate: And it’s not a funny line or anything, but it sets it in a sort of mundane and modern zone. 

Dougie: It places it in time, that’s for sure.

Nate: Which I love, and feel that I do often purposefully.

Dougie: Yeah, I feel that. Your work, I feel like, definitely engages with New York. Or I guess maybe just because I know you live in New York, I hear it in New York.

Nate: Oh, it’s there. But on this record, I mention Twitter, I mention my SSRIs. I mention all sorts of shit that, if you’re trying to write a lofty, poetic song in the traditions of our forebears, might not be present. I like them being present because that’s part of our lives and our observations. 

I have plenty of lines where I think that people could laugh, and I don’t want them to every time, necessarily, but they do pretty rarely. And when they do, I like it. But I think that it’s a matter of context, because I also think, especially with certain past albums that I’ve made, there’s a starting point of this Sad Boy Indie Rock archetype, which is not one that I’m invested in. And if somebody realizes that what I’m saying is funny to them and it blasts them out of that, I like that. It also means that they’re engaging with me at the gig in a way that isn’t that serious, but is fun and collaborative and joyful. There’s a couple moments in the current set that I’m playing where I’m like, Are people going to laugh? And sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. 

Dougie: Have you noticed a correlation of do and don’t? Does that relate at all to location?

Nate: A little bit. Hometown shows with more friends and stuff, they’re more down because they know me. But if I was on tour and people are not sure if that’s what I want to happen, or how I want them to engage with the music, they might try to take it a little more seriously. But otherwise, not really. I think mostly when I play solo or stripped down in some capacity, the lyrics are more legible and then more people are like, “Oh, it’s like storytelling. Let me listen to what’s happening.” Usually when I play solo, more people are laughing. I’m telling more stories between songs and stuff like that.

Dougie: Yeah, I don’t see a lot of laughing with the band. It’s definitely more of a solo thing. 

Nate: Have you historically liked, or grown up on, any haha music instead of heh? Weird Al, Flight of the Conchords, Tenacious D? 

Dougie: Yeah. Weird Al and Tenacious D were pretty big for me when I was in, like, fifth grade. 

Nate: That music works because it’s also good.

Dougie: Totally. I mean, Weird Al is just playing the best songs out there with funny words.

Nate: [Laughs.] Yeah, that’s a bit of a hack.

Dougie: Spinal Tap was also huge for me — maybe the biggest of any of those. Weird Al and Tenacious D haven’t aged as beautifully to me as Spinal Tap. I can still throw on Spinal Tap and have a really good time, for sure.

Nate: Tenacious D — I still think the music rocks in a fundamental way, but the dick jokes don’t go quite as far as when I was in middle school. Flight of the Conchords also really continued that tradition in a way that I admired. I think that their songs were really good and they still pop into my mind sometimes, the melodies and stuff. They knew what they were doing. It’s not just writing some jokes and setting it to music; it’s structuring the song and the jokes so that they serve each other, which all those people did really well. That same shit eating smile on my face as if I’m listening to a non-comedic musical act, but then there’s something just a little bit wry in there and it syncs up with enjoying the sounds — it’s the same thing as when I’m listening to Tenacious D or whatever and it’s funny, but then also there’s a killer melody. And Jack Black’s an amazing singer — his crazy melismas and his weird syllables…

Dougie: Well, it’s back to Weird Al and the polka stuff — I mean, it sounds funny.

Nate: Yeah, absolutely. That helps.

Dougie: Anyways, what else is new? Obviously basketball. I don’t know, something changed in me — I have to follow it, but… last season I just watched so much basketball.

Nate: But your boys are looking kind of good, though.

Dougie: Yeah, they’re looking good. I gotta see it through. But when you’ve been losing for this long, it’s just kind of like… sometimes I think about, What would it be like if they won? And I guess I would just stop watching basketball.

Nate: Well, I’m faced with that scenario right now. Not to brag.

Dougie: How’s it feel?

Nate: So, for the imagined reader, I’m a Celtics fan and Doug is a Knicks fan. I mean, honestly, I thought it would be kind of anti-climactic, and it was, in fact, pretty climactic. I watched them win the championship in a room full of people, many of whom were other Celtics fans, and it was so much fun. It felt so good to finish the job. And then, you know, there’s inherently a little bit of anti-climax because afterwards, everybody’s writing pieces about it and it’s like, “Who cares what you think about what happened? It happened and now, it’s over.”

Dougie: Yeah, I think that’s where my mind goes. It’s just like… it’s over.

Nate: Well, I think it starts to get at the fundamental thing with sports — which is what kept me from being a sports fan for a long time, until some switch flipped — for me, it’s fundamentally weird to be watching a real thing that you really care about the outcome, and have absolutely no effect over. When we’re reality-TV-voting for American Idol or whatever, people are invested in what they think should happen and having some sort of effect. Then there’s pure fiction entertainment — like you’re just watching Succession and you’re wondering what will happen, and you have things that you want to happen, but you know that you don’t have any say in the matter, and it’s not real anyways. Sports are somewhere in between, where it’s this drama that’s out of reach for you, but you’re rooting for your team, as if you can somehow push them forward slightly. And if you’re in the stadium on a game-by-game basis, you maybe sort of can.

Dougie: Yeah, there’s the guys who wave signs behind the free throw line or whatever. [Laughs.] I mean, I know I’m gonna watch it. But my whole life, I go in and out, and sometimes I’m just like, “I can’t fucking do this.”

Nate: But then you always watch.

Dougie: Not always. I mean, it’s been easy over the course of the Knicks past 30 years to take a few years off.

Nate: [Laughs.]

Dougie: It’s always remarkable to me that it has the ability to make me feel real and powerful emotions. 

Nate: Yeah, absolutely. I’m still not used to it eliciting strong emotions in me, because I didn’t care about sports for such a long time, from kind of when I got into music in middle school until the pandemic. So I’m still watching the Celtics and feeling real joy and pain, or watching the US Open and my heart is pounding and pounding I’m like, Wait, what the fuck? Why? 

Dougie: I really can only get there with the Knicks, and I think the only reason I can is because there’s some deep childhood thing of watching the Knicks lose and being devastated. And I’m just sort of reliving that, or reliving the hope of somehow rectifying that. 

Nate: This also would be your first Knicks season since you moved to LA, and presumably you’d be watching the Knicks from a permanent home location that is the furthest away from New York that it’s ever been.

Dougie: Yeah. I actually had a few friends out there who are Knicks fans. We watch it together. There’s a whole Knicks bar, but that doesn’t really appeal to me. But I like watching a game or two. 

Nate: Well, there’s about one billion games coming at you soon…