A year ago today, I saw of Montreal perform at the Roseland Ballroom. They debuted three songs that would eventually appear on Skeletal Lamping, and the first of those numbers was “St. Exquisite’s Confessions,” an approximation of an R&B slow jam that begins with the line “I’m so sick of sucking the dick of this cruel, cruel city.” It was very stunning in that moment, but it had nothing on what the band did with the song almost exactly a year later at the same venue: Kevin Barnes came out to sing the song wearing virtually nothing and riding a white horse. Everyone in the audience was stunned. Everyone. I mean, have you ever seen a live horse on stage at a concert? Exactly. 

Stereolab “Neon Beanbag” – When you think about Stereolab, your first associations are probably “keyboards,” and then probably “vocals sung in French.” If you’re more familiar, maybe you think about Tim Gane’s penchant for vamping on chords. All of those are certainly crucial to the band’s identity, but the aspect of the band that comes most into focus in concert is the drumming. Andy Ramsey, who has been with the band since the Transient Random Noise-Bursts era, is a remarkable player who has not always been well-served by the mixes found on the groop’s studio recordings. Ramsey lays down his beats with impressive power and ease, which allows the band to come off as far more urgent and danceable in concert, but without sacrificing the elegance of Gane’s compositions, or drowning out Laetitia Sadier’s delicate vocal performances. 

Amanda: Well, virtual communities are such a new phenomenon, sociologically speaking — like the last fifteen years, tops. I wonder what kind of long-term ramifications it will have, both for art and just for humanity, in general.

Matthew: I definitely see a huge impact on music. I think online communities totally shifted how people think of musicians.

Amanda: Elaborate!

Matthew: Where things have moved towards appreciating styles, and embracing things that conform to certain expectations for whatever genre, and genius figures have been devalued or discouraged somewhat. I think the 90s was really focused on genius figures, this whole pantheon of larger than life icons.

Amanda: You’re right. I actually had an interesting conversation with David Berman about this — no new heroes, all that.

Matthew: I really think you see the sharp drop right around the time Napster kicks in.

Amanda: Which circles back to the disposability of music and, thus, the decline of the hero figure…

Matthew: How are you doing talking about the same thing all the time now? In doing interviews, I’ve found that you get asked the same things a lot and it’s easy to just zone out and answer automatically, like you’d rehearsed it. I did that on NPR at one point and impressed/freaked myself out.

Amanda: You know, it’s funny, because the book is very personal in some ways, and I felt quite comfortable, at the time, with writing in the first-person. But you spend two years alone with this thing, and then all of a sudden it’s out in the world and people are asking questions about it, and you feel naked and silly. I’m hoping it gets easier. I need to memorize some answers that make me sound way more together than I am.

Matthew: Do you think you could just snap and be like “No more Americana! I’m listening to classical or hip hop for a year!”

Amanda: Oh man, it is already getting to that point. That’s the danger of writing about something you really love. I still can’t listen to “Pink Moon.” Do you ever feel like you just need to shut music out for a bit, kind of cleanse the palate?

Matthew: Oh man, yeah.

Amanda: It’s the worst thing about this job, I’d say.

Matthew: The weird thing for me just recently with finishing the R.E.M. project was that I figured “that’s it, no more R.E.M. for a good long time!” But then I ended up listening to some songs that I simply had not heard in a year or so because of the way I was doing it, I’d finish writing up a song, and then put it away. I think that was kinda motivated by having Michael Stipe do the q&a though. I’m probably done with them for a while coming up soon.

Amanda: Well, that was such an incredible project — you should write a book about fandom.

Matthew: My listening habits tend to rotate things in and out, while dealing with a stream of new things. Part of the motivation for doing the R.E.M. project had to do with their music having been out of my rotation for a while.

Amanda: Yeah, that’s inevitable. I regret not being able to spend more time with records, to memorize every note and breath and beat like I did when I was 15.

Matthew: Yeah, I think that’s it too, I find I write pretty well about stuff I’ve known a long time.

Amanda: It’s really transporting to go back to songs that meant a lot to you at a certain point in time. I mean, people say that about smells, but music gets the job done, too. That perspective is priceless! And rare.

Matthew: Yeah, it’s funny to get a new sense of where you were at some point. And realize why certain things worked in a way you were maybe too close at the time to grasp.

Amanda: Well put. That’s also part of why I loved Rob Sheffield’s book so much.

Matthew: Yeah. I’m still kinda amazed by how much it must have taken to dive into those really dark periods. I guess I can’t really relate to having dark periods. I have bad periods, boring periods, but no really major traumatic events in my life thus far. Knock on wood.

Amanda: I can’t even conceive of it. It’s brave and honest, and I think that’s what people responded to in the writing. Today is my third wedding anniversary, incidentally. I remember trying to read Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking on my honeymoon, and I couldn’t make it through. And then with Rob’s book, I couldn’t finish the first time through, either. I actually just read the whole thing recently. I mean, it is just so devastating.

Matthew: So where are you going from this point? Are you working on anything now?

Amanda: I’m writing an article about hill country blues for Preservation Magazine, which is published by the National Trust for Historic Places. I’m actually heading back down to Mississippi in early October to do some field research. I’m also working on a project about 78 collectors. I got in cahoots with some of these guys while I was researching It Still Moves, and it’s just this incredible subculture — a real oddball fraternity. But the work they do is so priceless. We wouldn’t be able to listen to Skip James “Devil Got My Woman” if it weren’t for 78 collectors. We wouldn’t have The Complete Works of Charley Patton. They’re driven by some mysterious (maybe neurological? definitely uncontrollable) urge, and it yields tremendous results for the rest of the world.

Matthew: So you went all over the country, you visited all these major hotspots. Was that something that was totally necessary for you? To have some first-hand experience?

Amanda: I thought this book made the most sense as a travelogue. On a really selfish level, I wanted an excuse to drive around listening to old records and eating barbecue sandwiches — that always seemed like something fun that boys got to do. I’m a sucker for that whole canon of road literature, from Kerouac to Bryson to McPhee to William Least Heat-Moon. But I was also really interested in the relationship between art and place, and how Americana music reflects specific landscapes. This is going to sound both terribly pretentious and way cheesey, but I do think I understood Delta blues better — or at least I understood it differently, or on a more concrete, visceral level — once I’d spent just a week in Clarksdale. Americana music is so tied to place, it just didn’t seem like there was any other way to tell its story.

Charley Patton “I’m Goin’ Home”

Matthew: How did things change for you in Clarksdale?

Amanda: Clarksdale is an incredible place. In some ways, it feels unchanged, it feels stuck — it’s still impoverished, it’s still struggling, it’s still 1935, to an extent. It’s hard to be there and not feel the blues in your gut, your heart, your teeth. It’s a tough place. But the spirit of the people who live there is humbling.

Robert Johnson “Ramblin’ On My Mind”

Matthew: That’s quite a contrast with visiting Graceland.

Amanda: Oh, for sure! I love Graceland, too, though. I love the ridiculous, stupid commercialism of it, I love the 300 gift shops, I love the souvenir shot glasses, I love that they sell fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches. I love the Jungle Room and its carpeted ceiling and fake waterfall and monkey statues. The really haunting thing about Graceland is that Elvis is buried there, in the backyard — it’s like this whole hilarious circus of memorabilia and glitz, and then you get to the end of the audio tour, and you’re standing there in your T-shirt and headset, taking dumb pictures of yourself doing a thumbs-up, and all of a sudden you’re in a graveyard.

Matthew: Did you end up going anywhere that didn’t get into the book?

Amanda: There were lots and lots of small stops along the way. I spent a lot of time driving around Mississippi hill country, trying to find fife and drum bands. I also got really caught up in the history of the civil rights movement in Memphis. I made several visits to the National Civil Rights Museum, which is in the Lorraine Motel, which is also where MLK was assassinated. There’s definitely a whole other story out there about the way in which history is memorialized in this country and what we do with our sacred sites, whether it’s the Lorraine or Graceland or whatever.

Matthew: Yeah, I was just thinking about how these things either end up commercialized, neglected, or recede into the background.

Amanda: Exactly. There’s a gift shop or there’s nothing.

Matthew: So, as you said, you ate a lot of food, and it figures into the book somewhat. What really knocked out? What do you think people really have to go for if they’re in the vicinity?

Amanda: Oh man, in my secret life I’m a food writer. I actually don’t eat much meat normally, but that idea kind of imploded the minute I arrived in Memphis. Actually, asking people for restaurant recommendations is a great way to break the ice in an interview, and obviously cuisine can communicate a lot about a region. In Memphis, I would recommended Charles Vergos’ Rendezvous, which is a pretty well-known barbecue place, but it’s awesome. In Clarksdale and the surrounding Delta towns, you’ve got to try hot tamales (and sing Robert Johnson’s “They’re Red Hot!” while you’re cramming one in your mouth) — almost any stand on the side of the road will be good. In Nashville, Prince’s Hot Chicken is mind-altering (literally, it is crazy-hot) and the Loveless Cafe has the best biscuits and preserves I’ve ever had. Oh! And a hot brown in Louisville, Kentucky. For sure. At the Brown Hotel.

Matthew: Do you think there’s kind of an alternate version of your book that’s all about food, and its place in culture? It seems like in ways, bbq and soul food are going through a similar sort of revival, particularly in more urban areas where the food is desired, but the tradition doesn’t exist in the same way.

Amanda: Well, it’s hard to have a real barbecue pit or smoker in the middle of New York City. I think we’re seeing a lot of inherently unfancy food gussied up and served on a china plate and given a big price tag, at least in New York, right? There’s definitely a huge trend towards American comfort/soul food being reinvented as gourmet here, which is weird but also really interesting, from a cultural standpoint. In some ways, it feels ornamental — I mean, look what happened with PBR five years ago — but I also think that southern food is just uncommonly delicious. It’s also time-intensive, which is maybe where the comfort comes in — when it’s made right, you know it took a lot of time and effort.

Matthew: Yeah, I agree that in many cases, it’s one more exotic food to get a make-over, to get pulled into this unrelated magpie tradition. It doesn’t seem like much can exist in the context of NYC without being integrated and changed.

Amanda: Absolutely. That says a lot about New York City, doesn’t it? It’s like one big vacuum.

Matthew: Did you feel it as much when you were growing up? We’re from more or less the same area, and I know that I always felt really compelled toward the city. I wrote about this one the site recently, that living relatively close to the city and always seeing NYC media, it made me feel like maybe the more rural/suburban area I was from didn’t matter as much.

Amanda: Yes — compelled and terrified at the same time. I remember taking the train into Grand Central and the subway down to St. Marks Place to buy Manic Panic and Sex Pistols t-shirts and Fugazi records. I was overwhelmed and transfixed. There’s nothing like the suburbs to instill that sense of being from a noplace. Not that I feel that way about my hometown, necessarily, but it was within commuting distance so it did feel like a support system for New York, in a way.

Matthew: Yeah. I mean, you’ve been to my hometown! It’s a really specific place and yet it still had that feeling.

Amanda: New York casts a pretty big shadow, is the thing. Even now when people ask me where I’m from, I always define it as being X miles north of New York.

Matthew: Yeah. Sometimes I fudge the details somewhat — my hometown is basically the first town out of Westchester in Putnam county, but people know Westchester, and I’ve been known to just use that as shorthand. Or I say “across the river from West Point,” and people either know that or they don’t.

Amanda: Yup, I do that, too. I just say “Westchester,” which is ridiculous.

Matthew: I think the thing I try to get across in addition to proximity to the city is that I’m not from Long Island or “upstate.” I think upstate begins once the Hudson Line is up. Once you’re beyond Poughkeepsie, you’re upstate.

Amanda: Ha! That’s a good barometer, actually. I wonder how actual upstaters feel about saying they’re from New York.

Matthew: Yeah, the state really changes a lot the further north you get. I mean, there’s a pretty big change just going from Rye and White Plains to Peekskill and on to Beacon, Duchess County.

Amanda: Sure, it’s really quite rural in spots, and the demographics totally switch.

Matthew: And then you have bits that are basically Canada, or New England.

Amanda: If I learned anything driving up and down the east coast, it’s that this particular stretch of America is tremendously varied, geographically and otherwise.

Matthew: I think that’s kind of a microcosm of something that’s clear in the book — that we’re just living in this loose collection of disparate regional cultures, and they come together just as much as they have nothing to do with each other. But the regional cultures are something to be proud of.

Amanda: Right. Of course, regionalism is being challenged in a lot of ways — the internet takes a lot of the blame for that, culturally (things are less insular now, so they spread faster, meaning there’s less time for a movement to take on real regional distinctions) but things are also getting commercially homogenized (every town has it’s Chili’s, etc.). I do think the pendulum will swing back, and people will get tired of that sameness and re-embrace local things. I think that’s already happening.

Matthew: Where do you see that happening?

Amanda: It’s a collection of vague impressions, honestly. I think there’s a Michael Pollen-led/environmentally-conscious trend towards eating locally, for sure. And then in terms of art, I think we’re seeing a little bit of a resurgence in the notion of the regional scene — like what’s happening around the Smell in LA or Wham City in Baltimore. I do think human beings require a certain amount of community. Obviously, that’s something that’s always existed for religious groups, but even for people who aren’t religious, it’s important to feel like you’re part of a place, I think.