Ep 42: Fischerspooner

that one out if you haven't already. Fascinating hearing about her experience of leaving home at seventeen, leaving Cardiff and going to Vegas to start in Michael Flatley's Lord of the Dance, amongst other things. Some great stories from Gueno, so do check that one out. We will have another podcast next week as well, so loads of Midnight Chats for you at the moment. But onto my guest tonight, someone who has seen a lot of life, as they say.

Back in the late nineties, Casey Spooner, an artist and photography assistant at the time, got together with the classically trained songwriter Warren Fisher in New York and formed the art pop duo Fisher Spooner. Unbelievably, that's two decades ago now, and as Casey says in the conversation, You're about to hear,

it was never designed as a career band. The group was supposed to be this conceptual, outlandish of the moment electro clash project that was deliberately timed with the turn of the millennium and all of the hedonism and the hysteria that accompanied that weird period. Fisher Spooner famously played their first show in a Starbucks in the East Village and were signed by the label Ministry of Sound for a fee that at the time was rumored to be

around a million pounds. Now, you've got to remember this was happening in an era when the newly connected world was getting very excited about the New York indie rock scene, The Strokes, YAA Yeahs, Interpol. Fisher Spooner were the flamboyant alternative to all that, both in the way they looked and the way they sounded, with tracks like Emerge and

their debut album Number One. So it's easy to forget their influence too on the likes of Scissor Sisters a few years later, and then much later the likes of Lady Gaga and Kati Perry. Two albums came after number one, Odyssey in two thousand and five and two thousand and Nine's Entertainment. That album in particular struggled to make an impact, and Casey goes into the reasons for that. But there

is a new album. It's called Sir, and it's out now, and while it's taken almost a decade, there is good reason for that, all of which Casey goes into, it's kind of extraordinary what's happened in between this and their

last release. Interestingly as well, Sir is produced by Michael Stipe, formerly of Rim of course, but on a personal level, he was Casey's first boyfriend, his first gay relationship, So he talks about that and what it was like going to Michael's studio in Athens, Georgia to make the album during a period where a lot of other things in

his life were not necessarily going to plan. So for all of the delays and the challenges, though, it does feel like all of that happened for a reason, and I've got the impression that this is very much the beginning of a new chapter. Thank you again to Casey He was great company, really entertaining. When he arrived for our conversation, he was wearing a spectacular bushy coat and some very cool aviators, great mustache as well. An amazing life,

an amazing character. This is Casey from Fisher Spooner on Midnight Chats. Casey, welcome to our Midnight Chats podcast. Thank you very much, thanks for joining us. You've pretty much just got into London, cold old London.

of phone calls, lots of friends. Went to the Esadine Aliyah show, which was incredible with a friend of my Jerome, and then I had a kind of a There was a photographer I met at the bar the night before and we did a photo shoot in the afternoon. So we did this great fun photo shoot. One of the photos just went live on Vogue dot com today three

days later. And then went had an amazing dinner this really cool little brasserie down by the river, and then I went to this cabaret in Paris that I love called the Manco, and had birthday cake and drank way too much vodka, and you know, ran home and passed out at four am.

great shows over the years that I love. I went to Paris and I just I've never felt like I've been able to see everything, and now even living there, I'm constantly you know, I've missed the Forsyth show, I got the Irving Pin show, and I still haven't been to the Oh my god, what's the museum. I'm Gustave Moreau. It was one of my favorite painters and he has

a museum that I didn't even know about. And I finally made it to the Rodain Museum, but it was during the Dior Ball, so I kind of have to go back.

a nice way to recover from work. So a group of us went down and I did two like little nightclub performances and DJed one night and did a fashion editorial, shot a music video for the song oh Rio, and then I raced back to New York. I packed a carry on for two days and flew to Paris to just comfort two days to see a premiere a friend of mine, Alex Eckman. It's a big choreographer and he had a peace premiering at the Gardnier, so I came in to go see his piece premiere at the Garnier.

You know, I had these incredible two days. I came in, I went and recorded with Mere Way. I you know, had this amazing fitting with this new designer Ludwick, who made an evening gown for me to wear to the opera. And then I just had this like kind of magical night where we had the run of the Garnier. We drank way too much champagne. We took all of our clothes off. It was a scandal. I was hungover. I had a bit of a romance, and I just woke up the next day and I didn't feel like leaving.

I knew I also didn't want to be in New York for the winter, and so it was a lot of things. It was also being outside of the political climate of America felt really nice. I was out of kind of the crazy zone, not hearing about American politics all the time, and so I sort of relaxed a little bit. And my lease was coming up on my apartment, and you know, I'm single and didn't work. Was kind of done, so it just weirdly was this moment where.

wouldn't let me on. So I knew when I missed that flight because I had scavenged to find a return flight and everything was sold out and extremely expensive because it was a week before Christmas. So then I missed that flight. I went back into the city and I ran. I went to an opening at a gallery Bleiche Hurtling and Danielle like Bleiche's an old friend of mine. And when I got there, he was like, what what are you doing here? And I, you know, I was like, well,

I just missed my flight. And he was like, where are you staying? And I was like I don't know, and he was like, well, you're moving in with me and I was like okay, and he's like, what are you doing for dinner? And I was like, I don't have any plans. And he was like, well, you're coming to dinner and I was like okay. And then he said and you're moving to Paris. And when he said it, it was like one of those moments where you're just like.

never really sinks in. So I know, the only way I'm really going to learn French or Spanish or you know, any of these Romance languages is I have to be immersed in it. So this is a way for me to not be xenophobic.

and so I was going to leave New York. Basically, I was looking for an apartment in New York last November and I kind of decided that I was gonna leave New York because it was too difficult and too expensive. And I kind of reluctantly went to look at an apartment and it was a great apartment, and my friends

were like, you really should take it. I had an appointment to meet the landlord, the landlady, and it was supposed to be on the Tuesday of the election, and she slid the meeting to eleven o'clock on the Wednesday after the election, and so I was up all night long from the election, and I went to meet her. And when I went to meet the landlady to talk about the apartment, you know, I was like, listen, I don't know why I'm meeting you. I don't know why I would rent an apartment. I don't know why I

would stay in the United States. I don't know why I would stay in New York. You know, I'm I'm I'm out. I got money in the bank, I can go anywhere. I'm I was like, I'm I'm leaving, and the landlady was very aggressive and she was like, no, you're staying. You should stay. And I don't know if it's because she was a Polish immigrant and she had feelings about the United States or but she really was very aggressive with me, and I did everything I could

to not take the apartment. I was like, look, i'm an artist, I have terrible credit. I'm not going to get approved. She was like, no problem, we'll figure it out. Someone will make someone else sign something. And then she was like, the rent is X amount of dollars. I was like, I can't forward that. She's like, fine, I'll lower it, you know, six hundred, I'll lower the rent. She lowered the rent. No one does that in New York.

She lowered the rent, and then I even avoided I was busy in rehearsals getting ready for show Mexico City. I avoided filing the application for the apartment, and she asked me to file applications. So finally, you know, this sweet, sweet Polish woman kind of forced me to stay in New York and rent this gorgeous apartment for one more year. And I think it was good because it well, I needed to finish the album. I needed to finish mixing. I needed to kind of finish everything that had been

in process. But you know, it also gave me the opportunity to I don't know. I mean, I felt bad about leaving New York. And the thing that I deliberated was, was I being you know, disloyal or unpatriotic because I'm not there kind of fighting for the nation that I believe America that I believe in.

a lot of tolerance. And New York is such a magical place because it's this you know, all these extremes of like wealth and power, but also this kind of earthiness. It's I mean, my life in New York. I really mix with a lot of people, and so you feel that is the best kind of America. And so I have a lot of faith in the kind of the

ideals of democracy and American values. But a friend of mine, Kate Hardy, an artist, said something that's really stuck with me, and it's something that I'm trying to put into practice, is that I come from the South. I come from a very conservative family. They're all Trump supporters. They all voted for Trump. I said the name, let's see, it's bad.

And my friend Kate, her mother is a judge in Texas, and Kate said to me, she said, you know, if we can't convince our families not to vote for this person, who can we convince. So now as we go into midterm elections, I've sort of taken it upon myself to try to figure out how to engage with my family and to have political discussions and how to convince them that when they support this administration, they're actually working against me on a very personal level.

anger isn't the way. And so I'm trying to grow because of this situation and use this horrible experience as a way to change the way I talk about politics and change the way I relate to people that disagree with me.

I had never experienced like being in that kind of a space with that kind of energy kind of gave me a different perspective and a renewed faith on protest. I always kind of looked at it. It's like, I don't know, like drudgery or like work or an obligation. I never thought of it as like therapeutic and a release and community and connection and kind of spiritual and

so you know, that's a positive. I think it's made people really think about how to make changes and how to People are being more thoughtful now, I think because if you if we're lazy and we're not vigilant, you end up with, you know, a situation like this. So now it feels like, oh, we've got work to do.

create boundaries before. I didn't know how to maintain a kind of personal balance when I've gone through press before I was actually thinking about it reasons. It's one of the reasons why it's I chose to stay in Europe.

Also is because in the past, whenever I had to do European publicity, I would have to cram it all into like a week, and it would be really difficult, and I would sort of allow publicists and managers to book up schedules, not really knowing that I could turn things down or I didn't have to do ten interviews a day in a different city every day for two weeks. I thought that I had to in order to be successful. You know, the more I did what I was told,

the better things would go. And I've kind of learned, you know, I don't know, I'd feel like I don't work that way anymore. I'm and I'm determined to enjoy success because in the past I've had a lot of success and I didn't enjoy it at all.

that have like, quote unquote real jobs. You know, when you're an artist, it's a job that can completely you know, consume you and so yeah, so now I've just kind of learned, like if there's something that doesn't get done, because there's kind of always something that's not getting done, that it's okay.

business wise it was a mess. And then so you know, and the music business was not It wasn't I just it wasn't working for me. So I was really had kind of moved on.

music business. And also never really felt like my process fit in the music business, quote unquote, or that they could fully kind of comprehend all the facets of what I did, which was, you know, not just music but also film and photography and performance and how they were all one big, kind of cohesive endeavor. So anyway, I had moved on from music and was focused on other things.

Warren asked me to work on a song, and I reluctantly agreed to it, and I also said, you know, if we're going to work on music, he's famous for dragging out the process, and I was like, I'm not going to work on a record for two years, So you know, let's make a couple songs, Let's make an EP, let's do it quickly, you know, I'll commit to this for six months. That was January twenty thirteen. So then

we started working. And when I went into it, I had it was I matured in a way because I almost I knew what the record was about before I started it, which isn't always the case. A lot of times I go into writing kind of looking for what something is about. But this I knew. I don't know why. I knew I wanted to make a record about queer narratives, and I was living a really exceptional, beautiful, amazing queer life.

I felt like I was having these experiences that I had never really heard about, were you know, had felt that they had been properly portrayed, and so I was going into it trying to make very clear queer narratives. The other thing was I knew that I wanted to change my recording kind of process because when I work with the Wooster Group, you work on a performance and

every day and rehearsal you're required to perform fully. So it's not a traditional kind of theater process where you kind of mark through or you learn your lines, or you know, you get the costume two days before. When

you work with the Wooster Group. You rehearse in the costume, you rehearse with full sound, with full light, and you rehearse in full kind of full focus, full character, full energy, And it seems crazy, but what it does is it really kind of elevates all the elements and they become so interconnected. And also you really develop the kind of

a stamina you know. It's just it was something I wanted to bring to the recording process, and so I thought, Okay, when I record, I'm not gonna because a lot of times I would record and I write a lot on the mic, and sometimes it's more sketching and not fully committed vocally, and so I knew when I was going into record that I wanted a more committed vocal that I was delivering almost from the get go, and those

kind of two things had a big impact. I think ultimately the record was like being more committed to a vocal performance, not relying on trickery and trying to perform a song well, just with a raw vocal. And then also this kind of queer narrative. And then I set about writing for I would say that was about a

year and a half. I worked through twenty thirteen, and then I think in the spring of twenty fourteen, I was pretty much felt that I was done, and there were twelve songs and Michael came in in the spring of twenty fourteen. There was a last song was a track called Empty that I love that still hasn't made it out of the studio, but a very difficult piece

of music, kind of brutalist. Has this big kind of booming section and then it has another section that's very pretty and lilting, and so it's a very interesting and extreme piece of music that Warren made and I could not figure out how to write over it. I had Jake Shears come in try to work on it. I had Coded Creechlow come in and try to work on it. I had a lot of people come in, and nobody could figure out how to work on this piece of music. Michael came in and within an hour he knew how

to write over this music. Wrote something incredible, and he had a very unique process that I had never seen, where he recorded in the room with the engineer on an s M fifty eight with no monitors, no headphones, so he wasn't isolated in a booth. So he had like a technique, and so he instantly kind of figured

out how to attack this piece of music. He was coming in to work on that track, which was supposed to be the last track on the record, and every time he was busy and traveling and this and that, and so he would come in every so often, and when he would come in, I would be working on one of the other twelve songs, doing you know, quote unquote like final vocals, and so I was going through and like reperforming or editing or cleaning up or doing arrangement,

and he would come in and he you would hear what I was working on, and then he would get distracted and he would say, you know, can I give you notes on you know, what was originally Top Brazila was originally called grinder Blues. And he was like, can I give you notes on grinder Blues? And I was like sure, And so then we went through and he got pretty aggressive and he would really chuck out big sections and rewrite parts with me and push the melody

and the performance. And he did that on which was tough because I had been working on these songs for a year and a half and I basically thought I was at the finish line, and then he was ripping them apart and rebuilding them. I think part of it was because he had disbanded RAM. He wasn't working in music, he was focused on visual art. But I think he

couldn't resist the process. And I think also there was some kind of a freedom in it that it wasn't him, and it wasn't his moniker, and it wasn't his character, and that he was able to kind of access all of his knowledge and love of music but via me and I kind of became a mask for him. At a certain point, I mean there was I would say there were stages. So anyway, he came in, he messed around on like four or five of the twelve songs, never finished the first song that he came to work on.

And then at a certain point, you know, I was like, do you want to get more involved formally? Do you wanna you know, how do you want to be credited for this? Or do you you know? And then Warren was like, should we ask him to be the producer on the record? And I was like, I mean maybe, I guess, And so then we asked him if he wanted to be the producer and he said definitely no. He was like, no, I'm not. I don't work in music anymore. I am just here giving you know, advice

as a friend. I don't expect credit. I don't expect you know. It was very casual and yet compulsive. Then a couple of weeks later he came back around and he said, you know what, I would consider being the producer on the record. And I said okay, and he said, but I have to have final say on everything, and I was like okay. And then Warren agreed to it

as well. And then once we did that, then everything clicked over from him being kind of doing song doctoring as a friend and then things got serious and he was like, okay, I'm the producer. I have final sand everything. And then he took basically, you know, half of the record I had written and threw them all out and was like these songs are not going on and I was like, uh, okay. And then process shifted where we moved.

I had been writing in this little room in New York and Michael we went to Athens and we started working in Athens with Andy LeMaster. I would kind of get locked into Michael's compound and we would go in these very intensive writing and recording sessions with Andy. Then we moved into kind of more of like a co writing phase where Warren would send a track and then Michael and Andy and I would write lyric and melody and do arrangement, and that went on for a year.

I would say maybe, and then while we're working on that too, my personal life is going through a lot of stuff. Like it's almost the minute Michael kind of jumped on his producer, I started having difficulty at home. I was happily in a relationship for fourteen years and that started to kind of unravel as we were working on this latter half of the record. So not only was my time in Athens sort of a writing retreat, it was also a kind of a safe space as

my personal life went into chaos. So we wrote through a lot of you know, we wrote through a big breakup, we wrote through the aftermath of that, We wrote through there were a lot of things that happened in the next year, and so through twenty fifteen into twenty sixteen, we continued to write. Then it kind of moved into a phase later towards the end of the writing. Andy and Michael really they have a very intense musical connection.

And for instance, like on the song I Need Love, there used to be a point where it's like on try Again, you know, it'd be like I'd write a line, Michael write a line, Andy write a line, you know, strut,

I'd write a thing, Andy write a thing. We kind of bounce around, and then by the time we got to I Need Love, at that point it felt like Michael had gotten so into my head and so into my world and so into my persona that he could write as me for me, and he and Andy really went into a very focused writing period on I Need Love, and there was kind of a moment where it would be like I thought we were in our you know period where we would you know, bounce off of each

other and Michael write a line and Andy write a line, and then I'd be like, oh, I have an idea, and they'd be like, you know what, it's okay, just just stand, just smoke weed and stay in the corner. And then you know, they have an idea, and then Andy have an idea and they'd be like, I have you know what. So then so kind of as we got towards the end, which was fine because I also you know, a lot of great songs, the singer didn't

write the song. They're songwriters that write songs for singers, and that's more of what the history of music has been. So I fine sitting back and having you write for me because you also know exactly what I'm saying and where I am and what I'm going through. That was kind of a moment where I stepped back. But then the last song that we wrote in kind of the

most intensive period was Butterscotch Goddamn. Michael wrote almost all the words and I wrote the majority of the melody, and they happened really fast and like at three o'clock in the morning, in a one hour period, so you know, so there were different phases of writing, and so that was kind of the process. And then we finished the record in February two thousand and sixteen. We waited and waited and waited for the record to release. We waited

for the deals to come in. We waited, and it took a really long time, was very slow, and then finally we signed a deal in February of twenty seventeen. So for a year I sat around waiting for the record to release, which made me absolutely crazy. Because also in that year, my building was sold in New York and I got evicted. So I kept losing. I kept losing my relationship, I lost my pets, I lost my home, I lost my mind. It was like I kept losing

everything I had while working on this record. But the thing that was great was that because the record was postponed a year later than I thought, the election happened, and all of a sudden, making a queer record became way more relevant. Kind of all the delays and all the problems have paid off, and I have this new motto which is really working for me, is that I love my problems. I've got great problems. It's like, what's your problem? My record got delayed a year. That's an

awesome problem. Because then the thing that was also exceptional that happened it was a great problem that got delayed a year is then Boots got involved and exactly a year later from the record being finished, we ended up writing Half Fun Tonight. And that was also a big result of me getting trapped in Fire Island because I

lost my home. So basically I was like a beach hobo in this gay resort and it kind of tweaked my ear for gay culture, and I was really struck by Ariana Grande's So Into You, and so I was like, oh, I need to make like a queer version of an Ariana Grande song that's going to play, you know, for all the queens on the floor. So anyway, Boots got involved, and then because Boots got involved in Stuart White got involved. And then when Stuart got involved, then we redid the

mixes on all the singles. So it was like, that's so. So the record took a really long time, and there were a lot of problems and a lot of delays, but basically they were all exactly what needed to happen.

was great to work with him. He's such an amazing creative and I mean it was a little intense because you know, I was sort of trapped in his celebrity compound, and so it times it was very claustrophobic because we were working together, we were living together in this very confined environment. It was kind of like boot camp and kind of like a spa and kind of great and kind of awful because he worked crazy hours. We would work from six o'clock at night till six o'clock in

the morning. I wouldn't get a lot of sleep. I would usually wake up around noon. Then I would do some kind of like physical training because I had made my body a big theme, so I needed to stay in shape. So I would do pilates or some kind of body work, and then you know, I'd happy to be time to go back to the studio and we did that, you know, at some days, twenty three days straight, and so by the time we get to like the twentieth,

the twenty second day, I'm not sleeping. I'm fatigued. I mean, I think it was a technique for him also because it made me super emotional and very raw, and so I think he sort of intentionally exhausted me and made me a little bit crazy because it led to better writing and a better performance.

nine project. So I was like, okay, if I'm gonna die, you know, and everything's gonna like every computer chip isn't going to work, and every elevator is going to stop, and there isn't going to be any water, and it's over. You know, the city is stockpiling body bags. I was like, I am gonna be I'm gonna go out dancing in a motherfucking jockstrap covered in sweat and glitter. That was the initial impulse. So no, I was supposed to have

a serious career as a gallery and museum artist. Was not supposed to be some kind of you know, showbiz party sex clown.