Pushkin. Kim Deal is an indie rock icon. In the mid eighties, she joined The Pixies as the band's original bassist and co vocalist. After the release of their debut album, Come On Pilgrim in eighty seven, followed by the classics Surfarosa and Doolittle, Kim took a break from the Pixies to form her own band, The Breeders. With the help of Kim's twin sister Kelly on lead guitar, The Breeders released a couple of EPs and four studio albums, including
the platinum selling nineties hit Last Splash. After a run with The Breeders opening up for Olivia Rodrigo's worldwide Guts Tour this year, Kim Deal is once again heading out on her own with the release of her first solo album, Nobody Loves You More. The album was recorded by the late Steve Albini, a close friend and longtime collaborator of Kim's, and it features a slew of her other friends and collaborators, including Slint's Britt Walford on drums and The Breeders, Josephine Wiggs,
Jim McPherson, and of course, Kelly Deal. On today's episode, Lea Rose talks to Kim Deal about working with Steve Albini on The Pixie Surfer Rosa and why he always regretted a specific contribution to that album. Kim also recalls recording The Breeders' first two albums, and she remembers how a group of surfers on a druggy trip to Nantucket helped inspire her new lead single, Coast. This is broken record liner notes for the digital Age. I'm justin Mitchman.
Here's Lea Rose in conversation with Kim Deal.
Let's talk about the first song from that upcoming solo album, Coast. So tell me about that. How did that song come about?
Was the inspiration the song was written sort of in twenty nineteen something like that maybe, but sitting down riding the guitar chords and wanting to come up with what I thought it sounded like. And what I wanted to talk about was this period of time back when I was staying in Nantucket in the off season in like two thousand. I was living a very druggy sort of life in New York City and I thought I needed to clean up, so I went to Nantucket. What I did was I got a lot of drugs. I go
and put them on the island and did them. Eventually I just got I just decided I can't do this anymore. And one of the things I always will remember are these young island off season workers, you know, looking they were, you know, there was a daytime for them. They went out and enjoyed the outdoors and they were so nice and weird and I was like so depleted, but I was hanging out with them, and then they would be yelling about the wham. Checked the wham, We checked the wham,
and then they would take up the wham. Is a way, it's a mob a government model for wave action because they're on an attacket. There's no huge Portuguese sir, so they you know, need to know if there's some even a possibility of some waves. Then they would whatever they're doing, they're you know, painting job and they're getting the bar ready for the evening jobs, and they would run to the ocean, you know, get with their stuff and their
boards out and their wetsuits. They had the waters cold, yeah, and it was just like it was so the idea that people were doing an outdoor activity. It was really nice to see that. Yeah, And I always have a fond memory of that thinking about that, and I just like wham. I thought it was cool anyway, and I had always stuck with me, and so that's what the songs basically. I recorded it as Steve Albini's. Lindsey Glover
is the drummer. Mondo Lopez is the bass player. He's the base player for the Breeders Too Long Time.
Yeah, was he the one who was in the I watched an old documentary. It was like a Dutch documentary from I think like he was Yeah, yeah, yeah, from Yeah, Yeah. I liked Los Readers. I was wondering what happened to that lineup.
I was in New York City and I was thinking I would get I was recording trying to kind of Rivington and Christie down like a two about two thousand or something, and I was in a bar, surprisingly and there were some dudes in there. It was really close to the studio and I liked them a lot, and they told me they were playing with leaving the singer for Fear. They were in Fear. Now obviously this is the og guy's in Fear. But there was a show and they were playing, and now they were hanging out
in the bar and I their studio nearby. You guys want to go hang out? And we played all night long. They were such good players. And I told them, I'm going to follow you guys out. Where do you guys live? And they said East La. Wow. I said, I'm going to follow you out to East La. They were so surprised when I got there. I didn't even know what East La was, but I soon found out. When I got out there. In East La, everybody was so cool. I think they told everybody to be cool to us,
and everybody was. They were probably been cool anyway. And we would go to Vernon that was where a rehearsal space was and we rode up Title TK and all those guys were on Title TK and then got It also they were on Mountain Battles too.
Got It.
Yeah, But during I wasn't living there during Mountain Battles. I was living there during Title TK. I went to rehab after the tour for Title TK. I went to rehab, so then I moved back to my parents' house.
And you moved back to your parents.
House after rehab.
After rehab to take care of your mom.
Is that right?
No, I couldn't taken care of anybody. They picked me up from rehab and they drove me back home and they told me on the way home long was diagnosed. But she was fine. I guess once you've diagnosed, there are some obvious signs within the family that there's some trouble. But it wasn't huge. You know how thing have you ever dealt with anybody with Alzheimer's or dementia?
I have it.
It starts a little bit at a time and then it gets worse. So it was it was pretty new. So yeah, no, that she was. I wasn't taking care of her. Okay, Yeah, I landed there, got it? Yeah?
What was rehab like? Do you feel like it was effective? Did the rehab work? What was your experience like there?
Oh? I loved it. I loved being loved, I loved being sober. I loved not drinking. I had a great time. Haven't had a drink since so too.
That's incredible.
Yeah, I really liked it. I really like it still. Yeah.
Do you miss smoking pot?
I do I miss smoking cigarettes? Oh, got no serruts anymore. No, Sometimes I go past a big cigarette cloud and I'm just like, oh my god, that's soap god.
Yeah, so you miss it, you miss the weed, you miss the cigarette, the smoking stuff.
I've heard that the weed isn't the same and it's kind of a bummer, like you get too stoned or something. But I would smoke. I had to quit because I was awake and baked person, so like everything, Like, I didn't just smoke when I drank. I smoked, you know, two packs a day. Yeah.
Yeah, So I saw on Reddit people are saying that, I guess you have a collection of hundreds and hundreds of solo songs that you've written over the past, like twenty years. But is this collection the new Kim Deal album that's coming out. Is that all new songs or is that some of old stuff mixed in.
I don't have hundreds and hundreds of songs, so I wish I did, but I don't. Thanks for rubbing it in and now I feel like I'm just haven't been doing anything.
No, that was not the intention.
They are new songs, you know what, though, there are two that are not. But if you just follow me, you'll see why these two had to be on there. Okay, one of them is, are you mind that was a solo song that I've released on a seven inch okay, but I did it on a three eighty eight task Camp that's consumer grade. That is a quarter inch tape. The task Am three eighty eight looks like a huge four track machine and it's but it's got one driver and so it's consumer grade. It's not really no good.
That's what I recorded a seven inch on for Are You Mine? Lindsey Glover Mondo. This guy named Jeffrey played guitar on it. I played guitar on it, saying eight tracks we played at the same time, miked us all up. But it's an old dumb machine and it lost track eight. So the guitar player, Jeffrey, his beautiful guitar playing was gone. You can hear it when you play our in mind. You could hear it in the distance. It's like a ghost track. So of course I'm going to try to
fix it. So I take the quarters tape and put it on a different three eighty eight. That consumer grade. You can't go from one machine to the next. Basically, it's a cassette tape, a big, bigger cassette tape. It won't go and play it sounds warble and out of pitch. So to me, not recording always sounded a little broken. I like it, but to me it was like, oh man, too bad, yeah lah lah. So we re recorded it professionally. We recorded in Dayton, Ohio. I'm sorry, in Dayton, Kentucky. Oh.
We drove from Dayton, Ohio to Dayton, Kentucky. It's one and one minute, one minute away from one shitty place to an even shittier place, let's say that. And then we Londo was going through town. He was he was on stage with Morrissey. He was playing bass in the band, so he said he would do it. So we got some time. Lindsay flew out from LA and we recorded the basic tracks over again, and then I finished it up at Albini's and then there's a pedal steel on it,
and then there's strings added on to it. So I really like the way it turned out. So but that's why I recorded that song. And then which I was is the other song on the new album that has been released as a as a seven inch. Already got it, but it has vocals. It always had lyrics, but I never could make the lyrics sound cool. I'm sang on the seven inch version of Wish I Was. And Kelly told me it didn't sound good. Just release it as
an instrumental. Look, that's my sister telling me. It's like, yeah, it says not great, but still ash. That's harsh, Kel. But I did it and it sounded cool. I released it as an instrumental, but I always liked how you know. I even took wish I Was and I went to Australia. I was doing a Pixie's tour. I stayed over late. I went to the studio. I thought, I can get some Australian players. We can pull up wish I Was. This time I can sing on it. I have it,
I've got it unlocked. It's gonna sound cool like this three four short of a country song. There was even petal steel on it down there nice And I didn't like it. It is okay?
Is Kelly usually the last person you play stuff for. Is she like the ultimate judge?
Oh? Because you know if somebody, you know, how many of you wear something, you said you like this, and somebody goes, yeah, you look good. You don't like it, you go okay, great, and you change totally because it doesn't. But it's nice to ask somebody, because when you show somebody, you look at the outfit differently, you know, in a different way. But it's not what they said. It's how you're looking at the whole thing yourself what I'm talking about.
Yeah, it's like your mind is already made up anyway, but you're just asking to ask, but you're already gonna do what you're gonna do.
I'm not sure it could be. This could be okay, but seeing it the process of standing there and with another person in the room, like whenever somebody's listening to it, I hear it in a different way. Yeah, in ir respect of what their experience was. They could like it. They could turn around and go, I really like that, and I could be cringing the whole time. It's odd, No, I understand that. Yeah.
Is Kelly on the on your solo stuff.
Yeah, she's on the lot, She's on Coast, She's doing the guitar on Coast and then Disobedience. There's a song she's doing guitar all over Disobedience, and she's doing bass pedals on a song called Crystal Math. She's got a cool set up, a cool bass pedal setup, and she's hitting those bass Pedals and Jim McPherson is too oh awesome.
Tell me about working with Albini. First time you met him.
I was giving him a nash from Urge over Kill. His room name's Nate. I was giving Steve and Nate a ride in Boston to the studio Q Division, and Steve was producing the Pixies at Q Division, and Steve was They were playing this cassette tape in the car because they had done some stuff in reverse or something, and they thought it was really cool. But then that's the first time I met him, giving him a ride to Q Division to be the engineer recordist. He would never want to use the word producer.
Yeah, I was curious about that. So he Moore was just an engineer and he liked to kind of stay out of things and not give his opinion.
Oh he has lots of opinions, he might say that, But you know, I think what happened, like okay, during that period of time, he had a lot of ideas and we did, and he had this thing that he was taping us that we didn't we knew he was taping, we didn't know which parts he was taping, and then he spliced it into the album, and it was hilarious.
It was really fun. I loved it. But then I think towards you know, later on, while he was working, I know that it bothers him to think that he would suggest anything to alter any decision that a band would make, or have any influence at all. He told Iggy Pop he was a plumber. He's not, you know what I mean. I don't know why he had to go all that way. I like his ideas. He had good, cool ideas.
You know, well, I think it came because of that Pixies album. He's I heard him talking to Mark Marin. He said, because he inserted himself so much made that suggestion. He didn't like the fact that for history, the rest of history, the band would have to answer to his decision and talk about why that was on the record when it wasn't their idea anyway. And I think that bothered him.
I have a feeling he doesn't know that we were choking. I think he thinks maybe I don't know, because I don't get it. He feels so much remorse about that. You know, there was this movie called Stripes where there was a guy named Francis and he was a real paranoid guys. Don't touch me, don't touch me, don't touch any of my stuff, don't even look at that sort of thing. And Bill Moorey looks at him and says,
lighten up, Francis. So me and Charles were doing a skit, and what's on there is him saying to me, don't touch my stuff something like that. I think Steve might have clips that moment and thought maybe it was a moment of real I could see him loving to put that moment on the album. He might have thought he was putting a real, vulnerable moment of us, right. I mean, I've told him it was I don't know, but I don't I'm not I've never heard him say that he
thought it was real. But why else would it bothered him so much? Nobody really talks about it. Maybe I make me think that there might have been something else he might have done that he hated that he maybe made a really bad choice, and he sees it. Maybe it came to realize that some of the I don't know some of Maybe there's some of the arguments he might have had in the studio that went his way. Maybe he realized, as I do it's probably everybody does that.
Listening to it at you know, five years later, it's like, oh my god, they were right.
Hmmm yeah, could be.
Yeah, but you said Mark barn that that specifically was bothering him.
Yeah, he talked about that exact thing, but.
That wasn't a problem for us personally. Maybe he didn't like to be asked about it, maybe he was being asked about.
It, or maybe somebody else in the band came to him and had an issue with it after and that's why no.
Knew.
Yeah, I don't know.
Yeah. Yeah.
He also said that you were one of the best people he's ever worked with, and you're the real deal.
And yeah, he really likes me. We're like family. We were like family. Yeah.
What was it like working with him? Like, how was it different than other engineers or I know, he doesn't like the word producer, but other people you had collaborated with.
Well here's why. Okay, people might think he's a big dick about not liking it. He was a big asshole from not liking the word producer. But back in the day as a producer, if I was to produce Natalie Cole, I would hire out the studios and the musicians. I would also have worked closely with Natalie to pick out all of the songs that people have submitted that we would be covering and trying out with the new musicians
as we rehearse this record together. I would probably also have hired the musical director to work over the arrangements with her. Maybe we'd start with the piano, just me as a producer of the record in Natalie and a pianist and a musical arranger or something a musical director. So the producer is very involved. I think in the old days that's what a producer did. So there are bands that just love Albini and he is available to anybody.
You call up the studio, he might answer and book your session, or somebody there who's at the desk will just book it two days. You know, you want to go in without being this is what it costs. Okay, see you there. And so they come in and he's never heard of them, He's never you know, he'll do it professionally. I'll make sure he has the tape. Then he'll know how many, what the setup, the mic setup will be, so it will all go quickly as possible. But you know, if they put produced by Steve Albini
on the record. Then it kind of sometimes can look like they went there to get produced by Steve Albini on the record sort of sometimes because it's not really true. And so you know, he recorded it and he did he was the engineer, but he wasn't the producer. Who right, I mean he had never heard the songs. How could he produce it without ever hearing the songs? He didn't produce the recording at all. He recorded the recording, right, So I think that's what he was saying that It's
not like he doesn't like producer. It's like he doesn't produce. So it's just would bother him because it's not true, right.
It's not technically what he's doing, It's not at all that makes sense.
Yeah, after a quick break, we're back with more from Lea Rose and Ken Deal. We're back with more from Ken Deal.
When you first started working on the first Breeders album, how is that different than you had when you had worked with the Pixies.
We were up in Edinburgh and Scotland and we were there for I think eleven days, and I had Tanya and Josephine and Carrie and Britt Walford. You know, Steve is the one who introduced me to Britt Walford to be the drummer of the band. You know, he loved you know, Slint and Britt. He's an eighteen year old kid out of Kentucky. Jorl Lane is so jiller. He's not a good drummer, bread awesome drummer. It's insane. He's
so cool. He's on some of the solo stuff, you know, that's one thing I really and he's on this record. That's one thing I really think. It's cool about this record. Like I've played with I've known Britt in the eighties. It was eighty nine. He passed out at the pub down the road and they do this thing with blacked out your face if you pass out. He came back to the Edinburgh studio and he had black ash all over from the chimney sort all over his face. It
was done with love. I mean they loved it, of course, but they totally shooded them up. So it was really we had a good time. It was really fun. I loved it.
How did it feel for you just creatively, like leaving or not leaving it because you weren't leaving the Pixies yet right, you were still in the Pixies like on a break, that's right. How did it feel for you creatively to have this different band?
That's a weird question, Like how did it feel to get your hair cut? It felt like the wind and blowing. It's just like, I don't it didn't feel I don't know what. I don't have an answer to that question. How did it feel to do music?
Was it exciting? Because now I was exciting.
I mean, it's always exciting. It's exciting to do records with the Pixies too, super exciting. Yeah, I was excited. I was excited to be in Edinburgh in a new place and.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I'm just guessing from the outside what it was like for you to have a totally new lane where it's all coming from you.
I didn't feel like it was all coming from me though, because we went to where Josephine lives in biggles Way, the family manor. It's run down. It was a rundown. I had thirty two rooms or something of rundown. But it was so it was they were her mom and dad were so sweet and we cleared out one of the rooms and she left. We played there, we rehearse there.
Britt had drums which we had our stuff there, so we rehearsed at Josephine Spot and then we left biggles Wade and Steve came for a minute and then we left biggles Wade and went to Edinburgh. So it just felt like we just were recording what we were doing. So but it was cool to be in Edinburgh.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And then at what point, how soon after that did you start playing shows? Like when did you start playing the songs live?
You know, we didn't do it. We did two shows for POD or maybe one, I don't know, and I thought it was weird. I remember those two shows and I remember thinking, this feels weird. I don't know why shows we were over there. I was nervous. We didn't have the album, wasn't out or anything. We just were there, had recorded and then also like we don't have a whole set, we have a twenty eight minute album or whatever.
I don't think we did every song. It was weird and I don't remember it really clearly, but I remember not enjoying it and I thought it was weird.
Yeah, how soon after did you start working on Last Splash?
Well, we recorded POD and the December of nineteen eighty nine. Then it came out in ninety and then we did let me guess, I'm going to guess, I'm gonna say. Then I began rehearsals for Bosonova and La and then and then recording Safari in New York City and recording Bosonova and Los Angeles and then recording Trump Lamont in ninety one. So we did. I did touring with YouTube, thirty two shows with YouTube. That's in ninety two. We opened for them, and then I was in the studio
in ninety three. Like we drove out in January nineteen ninety three. So that's what happened between POD and Last Splash to record it.
And you recorded Last Splash in San Francisco, Yeah, and you drove from Dayton.
Yeah. We had to take a box truck pull a gear careening through the mountains in the snow. It was really really scary, and Jim was driving and we were yelling and the wyoming passed it was blocked and we had to spend the night since it was really harrowing. I mean, there was a lot of snow there. I think we went the weird way, like we didn't go like, I don't know what way you go. Then we went into San France.
How long did it take to record Last Splash?
A couple of months. It was really fun. It was a lot of work. I remember, We're just going to the back room just so I couldn sist it for a minute. There were so many decisions to be made and so much to do, you know, I just like again, then it's coming. It was a lot of work. Yeah, we had two studios going because you know, Coast Recorders was a strip. It was in a strip mall, Like this little strip wasn't a strip a huge but the little strip mall buildings. So it was like a jazz room.
It had a really low ceiling. I had got, you know, I had got by looking at the specs. I didn't think about the ceiling height or anything. So I was looking for something that had a little bit more air in it for drums, you know, because I don't really use outboard gear that will gate and also give you a reverb on your share. You don't, you know, it's not it's not an outboard gear. It's like it's in my positioning, you know, and having a nice drum sound in a room, because a drum is an is an
acoustic instrument in a room. So if you have an acoustic instrument in a room, you need to mike it and you need to make it properly for to sound good. So usually that's how I, you know, get the verb, unless it's to be funny or you know, to have some sort of crazy thing going on. But anyway, I wanted out another studio call Brilliant, with a big room. We had to heavy curtain and we did some drumming.
There is the drum sound the most important sound for you on a project.
Usually, I think for me, if the drums, if drum can sound shitty, actually they can, if they sound shitty, cool and if they're played cool and the song is cool and it's cool. B yeah, it can sound shitty, but it's not cool to have shitty drums on every single song. I mean, it would be bad if the whole record had like shitty drum sound, I think. And I'm not used to the shitty drum sound. I'm used to the acoustic drum sound. So if it sounds like
not like that, then it's like that sounds. You know, things are built to go on top of this acoustic drum sound, so it's not going to sound right if it's got a weird it's sensitive, it's touchy. Put reverb on the snare in an outboard gear, it's just like, excuse me, what, Wait a minute, what's what's that sound? It's like what? Maybe? No, I don't think so, but it could be cool.
Before you started recording Last Splash, were you thinking about the project and what you wanted it to sound like or was it all sort of happening organically? How does that work? How does an album come together?
Usually? Well, I don't really think about albums. I just think about songs. I think for me that makes sense more sense. Although I guess people think of albums, don't they, But they've probably got their shit together way more than I do. Well, I don't think about albums because it's just it's like, you get enough decent songs together, you're lucky, and you put it out and you always are looking. I'm always looking at the run time. How much is it?
Is it near forty at all? Forty minutes? Oh my god? How many minutes to twenty eight minutes? And then you hear the inevitable.
Well, Sun's albums twenty eight minutes long. We don't need to do it any longer than that.
Oh my god, I think they're not even twenty eight minutes the Black Sabbath albums. I think they might be fucking twenty minutes long the albums, or like twenty two, because then you get somebody thing. Remember more than eleven minutes one side of an album.
It's really sobers. The audio soffers along later the track is on the album, the audio really suffers.
We shouldn't make it long at all. That's me.
After this last break, we're back with the rest of our conversation with Kim Deal. We're back with the rest of Leo Rose's conversation with Kim Deal.
I want to ask you a little bit about growing up. If you're okay to talk about that, sure, tell me a little bit about your parents. Are they both from West Virginia?
Yes, my whole where we're from. They're from West Virginia. Yeah, they're from Tator Holler. And my brother's the only deal that never worked the coal mine, the first male deal that never worked at the coal mines. He was born down there too, everybody's down there. We go Thanksgiving, Christmases, everything goes, we go there. Okay, they came up to Ohio because after the Korean thing, my dad met my mom and then you get the gi Bill. You know, isn't that a great thing? Yes, So they put him
to school. So he was a math professor at Marshall University. And then friend of his from West Virginia was hiring White. Patterson Air Force Base is a huge air force base in Dayton, Ohio, were the right piece accords resigned and for you know, and the Serbian stuff. So he had a job there. And so Kevin and my mom and dad moved up to Ohio and then me and Kelly were born like a year later.
So okay, so your parents originally met in West Virginia. Yeah, have you heard stories about their childhood? What did they tell you about growing up?
Oh? For sure, they out for each other, do you know, poor people, they out for each other. They try to outdore each other. So I listened to my mom and dad try to outdoor each other. You know. My dad would always give it to my mother. Now, you know, he did a good thing. They would go back and forth and back and forth, but I remember he always ended up saying you win. She's sure. What really was
way poor. But Dad had like he was like talked about putting up a newspaper on the inside of the walls because the wind, the cold wind blowing to it. So I don't remember him having a good time either. And they were up in the mountains, because even if it's a holler, you're still up the low part, you're still high, I mean the mountains of West virgin or crazy, I mean, because you just you look out and it's like there's no horizon line anywhere in Westernchinia. You never
see where the sun is setting. Not where they took me.
Do you know, like their romance story, like how they got together.
Yeah, she was a great dancer. And his first words supposedly were, do you want to go to Helen Back? Which is a movie to Helen Back. That was the first thing he said. You know, he was asking her for a date. You want to go to Helen Back? Yeah, to the drive ins or whatever they do.
I was gonna say, that's pretty racy, it is.
And she danced till her ankles were black, which you do because it's coal mining, so there's a lot of coal dust around, so everybody got dirty. So she played in the sand piles when she was young near the tracks. She grew up in the American coal mining camp that has a company store and stuff like that. And her granddaddy was a cool miner. He died a black lung. Wow. And dad lost us an out of the key on the side of the mountain because he just hit something
that or cicheted off while he was dangling. Just the front take from hair to hear like one like two, pass the incisors and then of all the front teeth. Yeah, with the c ciche of the hammer when he was hitting something or other vein or something of coal. I don't know.
So he worked in coal mine, but then he went to college.
That's right. He was signed on as a physicist. I believe that right, Patterson Air Force Base.
Wow.
Yeah, then he ended up being I think I was the director of the avionics lab up there, and he was responsible for the down pilot system and some radar. My brothers all about it because he really likes that stuff.
And yeah, did you feel pressure as a kid to like follow in his past.
No, because he would never discuss any of that with me. I don't know if he discussed it with Kevin that much either until he got older. Yeah, it's a depression Eric, you know. So he didn't really talk that much. He didn't talk about work. He didn't talk about you know, down pilot projects as he was working on. To me, he did try to take he took guitar lessons, and that's where he would have the guitar on the floor.
I was certain, and I picked it up and started playing it, and there was a folder there and there was a tableature for King of the Road. And that's when I started picking it up. And he did say, you're that guitar quicker than I am, so, and I did. I don't even know if he ever learned how to play guitar.
Actually, So, do you feel like you had sort of just like a natural knack for guitar.
I didn't feel like it, but maybe I did because he didn't learn it and I did, so it would sound easy to me. There's a little picture with the little dots, a little tablature, and you put your little dot on the dots. It's fun. Oh yeah, yeah. So then you just keep doing and it's just sitting there. It's a quiet thing to do. It was nice and I enjoyed the strings resonating and the guitar body resonating. I think it's a really relaxing, peaceful sound. I like it very much.
Yeah, what were you like when you were in high school?
Like?
What was your style? Like, what were you into?
Well, we lived in Juber Heights. It was a sebs and it was a smaller town, you know, I think I said thirty thousand smiling people. It was a community of brick homes and little streets, and the kids played out outside on the street with each other, and there was a lot of other children to play with, so there was you know, teams of kids running around the streets. So that was nice. And we got called in you know at the when the street lights came on. Yeah,
and catching lightning bugs. And there was a stand up swimming pool in the backyard. Kids came over and we.
Did you do whirlpools where everyone runs out?
Yeah, yeah, and the water splashes out and the dad would getting mad because they have to with hose back in. Yes, definitely.
Were you a musician already in high school? Were you known as sort of like, you know, someone who plays.
Yeah, I was playing Yeah. I wasn't a known musician in high school though, but I had a guitar and I was writing stuff. I would have died if if somebody had heard me, you know, died.
What were you writing about?
Stupid shit? Just horrible stuff.
Do you remember any of your songs from back then?
Yeah? I do so long. Yeah, And there was a place called hair Or Arena, and that's where all the hard rock. There's a big culture of hard rock in the Midwest and the sevs. I mean we saw black og Ark and saw Brownsville Station, Sammy Agar, Marshall Tucker Band, Rush, Nugent, the Outlaws, Rainbow. I mean it was just part of the touring circuit.
Were you into it, UFO?
Yeah. I liked the hard rock bands. Yeah, some I liked more than the others. You know. I loved Zeppelin and Sabbath and Journey. I loved back then when host did I like, I liked Floydster Cult Don't Feel a Reaper. The Queen News of the World album was huge for me.
Yeah.
Would you always hang out with Kelly, Like, who was your crew? To like go to two shows?
Sometimes I went with Kelly. Sometimes I didn't, you know, I remember being seeing Kelly like on stage during Marshall Tucker Bant like she was somehow sitting on the PA or something. It was crazy, that's cool.
Did you think like back then, like, oh I want to be on stage one day, I want to be a professional musician.
Oh no, absolutely not, I don't. Yeah. No.
Then how did you and Kelly start playing around town? How did that come about?
Probably the first thing we did probably is I think maybe my mom, who was an early early childhood education teacher. She was very involved. She was in parents co op and she was a teacher. She organized it all. And I think they had a booth at the community park for a summer fourth or something like that, and I think there were two stools, and also weddings. We were asked to play weddings for adults. Any song was big.
Kelly could sing alvam Maria, Wow. Kelly sang the rose Bet Midler and we would play like the ground round. It's like people at tables and you would drink eat peanuts and you would the shells would just fall on the floor and do four sets a night.
Wow.
And there wasn't a PA, I don't think there.
So you're ambiance while people are saying there eating peanuts, drinking.
Absolutely and we would sing original songs that you know, as well as other songs that were playing.
I wanted to ask you about the Big Sur the Big Surch show that you just recorded.
Didn't that turn out great? Those animations it's beautiful, Yeah, it really is.
It's really really nice and you look like you're having so much much fun.
I was really nice. You know. The show was canceled because there was so much rain. It was just raining and raining, and everything was sort of flooded, like the stage itself. Some of the cabling was just sitting in water because it was outdoors and it just be there was a deluge for so long. If you imagine people walking in there was just huge puddles of mud just even standing where they would be standing. Oh yeah, so
it's like, let's call it. And I guess it happens quite often, you know that there's so much train.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So our tour manager, a guy named Rory, I knew symb Ellas and they were interested in recording us, and there was an ideal about it and they said, you know, we can come up to Big Sur and record the show, and then the show wasn't happening, so we just went into the woods and they did that and it turned out so good.
Yeah, everybody seems so happy and it sounds so beautiful.
Yeah.
How did you pick what songs to play out there?
We wanted to do them. You know, the violin is a good one, you know, stuff to do with violin because we have the violin there, and it kind of picked the ones that work with the instrumentation that's available, so it was pretty easy to pick them.
I love do You Love Me?
Now? Yeah?
That song is so beautiful when you write like a song like that, is that come from a personal experience or is it just a fictional thing?
That is one of the songs me and Kelly would sing during being sort of you know, Joe's is a fish house days really Yeah, And I remember like we were doing many sets in one day, you know, in one evening, did you got to do three sets or something?
And I remember I think if they were traveling for work, because one of the guys came up and just who you know, we did a lot and they were sitting there in the hotel or when nearby or something, and they I remember somebody specifically saying they really liked that song. It was good, but then that's not the song that's on the record, though it's been changed a little bit because I went back at it, you know, in my twenties.
I look back at that thing that I used to sing at Jose as a fish house, and I just went, this is almost good. But it's so dumb. But the sentiment that what it used to be. The sentiment makes me feel so it's like, I don't know. It was so easy to like relate to the song in a different way, like in a more of a snarling way.
I think the way that you first sang it it was more snarling, or the second way.
The second way, I think was more snarling. There was something innocent and sort of benign about the first way I did it, although I liked, I like to song, and I wanted to do it. But it was easy to just change the arrangement a little bit, make it more menacing and to me that the meaning of the song has changed for me, and it doesn't sound like, you know, instead of like when two hearts have torn away, now sothing like a bloody horns just thar. It's just so stupid.
It's also jump.
And that I enjoyed. That was not the song we sang at Jose's offishals. It was a little different. But this is if that makes sense.
Do you remember who you wrote it about?
Not really? I mean I didn't really write it about anybody. They're kind of somebody, but not enough to Actually it was, you know, not really, And I think that's why it kind of it was easy to bend into something different because it wasn't sobdenly about really anything other than you know, oh, this is a song goes like this, but now the transformation of it being menacing and stuff. Oh, it's definitely about some stuff now. Oh, definitely. It means way more
now than it did, which is weird to have. That's a nice successful song, something that meant nothing before that, I don't makes itself now. Good job.
Success.
Yeah.
What was the melody like at first?
It's pretty similar. The melody was pretty similar. Yeah, yeah, it's the same melody. The arrangements were different, and it's just a versus were a little different. Stuff like that.
Is there anything else you want to talk about with the new album? Any songs you want to talk about.
Or you know, one of things about the record that I like is that I'm proud of the good relationships I've had with people that I've been playing with in my life, like Mondo and Lindsay just working with Tee I've known in the eighties, and Kelly and Jim McPherson's been on it, and Josephine actually played bass on Disobedience, but her bass guitar was weirding out and so I had replayed it. And then some new people the Jack Lawrence, you know he plays bass for Racontourskay, and it's Kentucky.
He's from the Green you know, Green Horns, since it's sort of a Cincinnati band. I used, you know, the Teenage Fan Club. Yeah, there's a guy named Raymond who's the guitar player, and I used him on the guitar. It was the first time i'd used had played with Raymond. And then like when coming up with the songs, like I I had sang at Albini's wedding with Heather, Me
and Kelly went to Hawaii. We were like family, sang at the wedding and we played a song that she wanted for her wedding song at Dolly Parton song and we did the bridal march. I played the Bridal March on guitar, and I went to the island and got a bunch of ukuleles and handed them out as so all of us, you know, because there's a lot of musicians can play along, you know.
With the ut you know, and that's such a good idea.
Yeah, it was really fun. It was good there. It was such a great such a great time. And for a wedding gift, Steve and Heather got us quite like nice ukuleles, you know. And I was packing my stuff up, my gear to go someplace, and I threw with the ukulelean. It wasn't even mine, it was my one my sister got.
There was a sheet that came in the package, that laminated chord sheet, and I just started picking it up, found how to shoot my dog has fleas, and then had the laminated chord sheet and started playing around with it, and I wrote this song on it, the ukulelean in my head. It had these melodies and these incredibly complicated orchestral movement happening all the way through it. And I just and I was like Joseph being she was up, you know. We were going to rehearse for some stuff.
I think it was doing all nerve stuff or something, and I grabbed the ukulele. I have written a song on ukulele and she looked at me. She went, absolutely not, it's just funny. So then I knew, like that song would be a solo one. It wouldn't be a Breederish one. You know, It's like and that's yeah, on the way to thinking about an album.
You know, is there new Breeders music coming out or working on?
Or we play Disobedience in the Breeders shows. Well they're all on it. Yeah, it gets confusing, It gets confusing. It is confusing.
So yeah, yes, and yeah, thank you Kim. It's so nice to talk you and.
I love talking to you. Thank you.
Yeah, thank you for doing this and best of luck with all.
Thank you for doing this. I really appreciate it.
Thanks Token Deal for chatting through her career and the making of her new solo album, Nobody Loves You More. You can hear all of our favorite tracks from the Pixies, the Breeders, and Kim solo work on a playlist at Broken record podcast dot com, and be sure to follow us on Instagram at the Broken Record Pod. You can follow us on Twitter at Broken Record. Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing help from Erek Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Tollinday.
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