Ep 97: Matt Berninger from The National

My dad he thinks he's going to take a walk. If he's like, oh god, a stream, where a stream nearby, Well let's go take a walk and see what's in the stream. And now as no day. That's my record for you.

If your cross section of interests include fishing, the National and embarrassing stories about meeting the president, not the current one a good one, then you are in the perfect place. With tonight's Midnight Chats, thank you for streaming episode ninety seven. My name is Greg and this evening's guest is Matt Berninger. We dialed each other up on the final day of August of this year Bank holiday in the UK. Matt was in his garage studio in California. I was in

I'm getting this weird. I think it's because of this acoustic guitar is hold on? Did you hear that? Oh yeah, there it goes.

I could hear it like a little yeah, yeah, that was the accus I was like, what is that?

As the acoustic guitar which I can't play, it makes that noise though.

It looks good. Record That study is lovely. By the way, study my.

Garage my man gave Slash Dojo Slash. This is actually the garage behind my brother's house. Okay, tables have turned. I'm living in his garage now, not really, this is my studio.

Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, you want to look around. I don't know what. I'm afraid what you might see, the.

Like big leather bound books and atlas I have.

Yeah, it's full of that cologne and petruli and art books and and vinyl.

Yeah, it's awesome.

I've been really enjoying the playlist that you've been putting out the last few months, the Social Distancing Distortion playlists, where you've been adding loads of the music that you've been enjoying.

Can you tell me a little bit.

About when you started that and how you've enjoyed putting that together?

Right when it started? Gosh, that's a good question. I think I just thought it was it was a funny title.

For Social Distancing.

I'm a big Social Distortion fan, and so I was like, oh, I should I should launch something, you know, thinking I'll just do this for like a like a one week or two weeks, and you know, and yeah, that was six months ago. So yeah, and I kept doing it, and I actually I've got I got addicted to making playlists, and so I've been I stopped that one a few weeks ago, just it's it's holding steady at twenty four hours. But I've also done another trying to do a hundred

That the sequence has to be just right.

Yeah, my playlists usually implode on shuffle just although you know, the sequence that only makes maybe makes sense to me, but that doesn't really matter.

But when I when I first came across the place that you were making the first few tracks, I was like, wow, this is an introduction to Matt's taste.

It was like Dizzy Rascal, fix Up, look.

Sharp and even I even kind of copied Dizzy's uh Boy in the Corner Boy in the Duck Corner cover for my cover a little bit. I was inspired by it, just like, well, you know, he's sitting there on the floor in the corner, and he's just like a boy in the corner. I'm sitting in a corner on like the cover of my album Anyway just is a little nod.

Him around a little bit.

I don't know if he knows who ever paid an attention to us at all, but yeah, I was a huge fan.

Yeah, how do they come together?

Do you sort of like do you rummage through Spotify, like looking through different sort of playlists and algorithms.

Or no, I mean sometimes it's I mean there's a lot of songs on the playlists that have that have just popped up because once once you start a playlist and then it suggests more things that you like, you know, and I would say, like one out of ten are just sometimes our discoveries from my own playlist, right, my own Yeah, yeah, so yes, the algorithm.

I guess. But but most every once in a while there's there's something like that.

For example, artists like Julia Jacqueline I didn't know anybody think about, or Hailey Hendrix or there's a lot, there's a lot, there's tons and tons of artists on there.

That I'm like, who is this?

And also there's a ton of artists that like, I know, I'm like friends with that. I suddenly an old song of there's like a Lucy Dacas. I don't know if I didn't put this one on the Social Distortion one, but the Lucy Dacas song just came up in my yesterday that I never heard it, and it's what is it?

It's it's an old one.

I just I just I've been listening to it for like, over and over and over again Forever half Mast, off of her record Forever half Mast, And I'm like, how have I never heard that song?

Even though she's open for us, she must have played it, but that's why. Yeah.

So yeah, it's that kind of way. Sometimes I'm just like, oh, where's that one song by Archers of Low for Oh, where's that one song by.

You know, Rancid or Little Kim?

You know?

Yeah, I put there's is Little Kim and Biggie Smalls on there.

Yeah, I think it is somewhere.

They're on the new one anyway.

I love their romance. I used to live in the same neighborhood, the Underhill up and off of Vanderbilt up in uh sort of that neighborhood in Brooklyn where they used to hang and stuff, and so I've always had a Biggie small as Little Kim, sort of like feeling their presence back when I was, you know, living in Brooklyn and stuff. Yeah, and I love all that super sex positive stuff. I mean, yeah, there's a lot of dirt this is These are definitely adult playlists.

Was it almost like a therapy starting doing that at the beginning.

Yeah, totally. I mean I actually didn't think of it as a therapy at the beginning.

I started because I was just I was like, you know, that'd be a funny name for a playlist, social distancing distortion, and you know, I put tons of social distortion on there. Yeah, But then it became and since then music, throughout the last six months months, music and books and art and art books and stuff have definitely been have definitely been I think for me, the thing that's kept me most

All works of art. The Bibles have a great work of art that.

Provided great guidance, you know, and then the industry ruined it so that religion industry or whatever. So so now music and painting and movies and that stuff is genuinely where I find guidance.

You know.

It's like Nick Cave. I've gotten more from Nick Cave than the Bible. And Nick Cave just has devoured the Bible inside and out. You know, he knows every tool of the Bible to tell stories. And yeah, so I definitely art is where I find wisdom and expression and Catharsis.

Yesterday I went into central London for the first time in months. I'm speaking to you from home in northeast London, so it's not a not very far away it's short tube journey and that's felt quite strange, although it's a bank call today where I.

Am, and I've been on a log long tube journey in my mind lately. But anyway, that's a good name for a song. Short anyway, Yeah, go ahead.

What's it like where you are?

And like how does it compare, Like, just tell me a little bit about the circumstance and how things are where you are.

Well, I am very lucky, in privileged to have a backyard, you know, to have a to have a home, to be to be a housed person, and a lot of Americans don't even have that.

And so especially in my neighborhood in Venice, it's.

A mixture of a lot of extreme wealth and a lot of extreme poverty, and a lot of extreme mental illness. And it is a lot of people who have succeeded and a lot of people who've fallen through the cracks.

And it's a very stark portrait of America.

I think Venice is. But I'm from Cincinnati. That's always felt like a stark portrait. I feel like every place I've ever lived Brooklyn has felt like a stark microcosm of America. And I would assume almost everybody I don't know, you know, everybody. I mean, people in Mobile, Alabama probably feel that way too, that their community is a microcosm of America. So yeah, that's where I am, and I've been I've been lucky to spend a lot of time in the sun.

I've been you know.

I've also been sleeping at my own pace, which means I go to bed really early, and I wake up really early, and I usually take a pretty good nap during the day. And I'm kind of like a by phasic sleeper. Apparently Jeff Tweety is also just like, I can only sleep for four hours at a time then and then I wake up and have to do something for ten, you know, or eight, and then I go back.

To sleep for four, work for eight.

That's how I, you know, And sometimes it's I'm not on the schedule the rest of the world or my family. My for a family, My wife and daughter are night ours, so they're always up till like, especially during this they're up to like midnight, both of them, just like watching Gilmore Girls or whatever, you know, and doing their thing, and I, you know, I wake up shortly after some sometimes I wake up just a few hours after they all fall they fall asleep.

It's but it's good. Everybody's kind of everybody's making it work for themselves. My daughter's in online school, and that's tough. She misses friends. But we've been we've been doing okay.

So at the moment, what does an average day look like for you, you're obviously getting up early, but you are you trying to use those early hours to be productive, to create, or to just give yourself a.

Bit of space? How are you using that time?

Yeah?

I wake up usually around fourish, I mean around four to twenty, and I will lay there and uh yeah, and I sometimes I won't I won't even I won't even move for forty five minutes.

But you know, I just slowly. I don't use alarms anymore, you know, alarm waking you.

Up out of your natural bi rhythm or pace is like and when you're on tour, all it is is a series of alarms, and all day long, it's just like, Okay, you have fifteen minutes to nap, then you have to do an interview, then you have forty five minutes to get back to the hotel. Then you have eight you know, you have an hour then at the hotel to eat and nap. Then and another alarm goes off because you got to get back for sound check. It's you're always

I mean, this must be the longest stint that you've actually spent at home for that.

Amount of time. Ten probably a decade. Yeah, since my daughter was born. I don't think. Yeah, I've never been I've never been home this long of a stretch with with my with my own kid. Yeah, and that's when that's as that's dawned on me. It's made me realize that maybe this is a time to rewire everything anyway.

Yeah, I think a lot of people have had that, like inself included. You just sort of stopping the pause to think about like how much energy you exert doing things that maybe you don't want.

To do or we don't need to do so much of what I'm.

Trying not to argue, I'm also I mean, I'm yeah, I'm trying to not to not to get into too many unnecessary arguments over over unnecessary things, you know, I mean like and trying to be more professional and less emotional and all that kind of shit, you know, with everything, with everything, with my career, with my friends, with my family, with my.

I'm not being more professional with my family.

I'm being more personal with my family, but more professional with everyone else.

For the last decade, you probably spent I don't know, one hundred, one hundred and fifty days out of every three hundred and sixty five on the road away from home with the National. So how has it been. I mean, you had plans to tour this year that obviously have not happening. Have you missed just I mean you spend so much time with them so that you're you know, you're.

I miss my friends. I miss the guys I miss. I think we all miss each other. I don't think any of us miss airports or hotels. I think all all five of us and or seven of us including Kyle and Ben in the National, if you're talking about the National specifically, everyone's so grateful to be home with their families the same.

Way I am. So, Yet we all do.

I think we miss each other some and we definitely miss we miss we miss playing, we missed the fans. I miss the faces. I missed the spit, I missed the wine and the and the getting. You know, I missed it jumping into that crowd. And I don't know how what a national show would be like if it was all spread out or socially distanced, and I just it wouldn't feel like a national show. And that's got everybody really depressed. And but I know no one misses, you know, airports, I know that for sure.

On the subject of live music, I mean, I've missed it a hell of a lot, and I missed it even more on Saturday night, my wife and I and watched Mistaken for Strangers and just the visceral I mean that we can till get in a second about that film.

There's the poster. There's the poster back there.

Oh fantastic, it's right above my bald spot.

It made me really viscerally miss live music, seeing like the performance extracts in the movie.

But also, but conversely, it also made me it.

Really cheered me up because it's just such a heartening, funny film.

Human film.

Thanks.

Yeah, I mean, are you thinking about would you like to do something like that again? That was the thing that reminded me of of really just how much I miss it.

Tom is, well, he's still asleep, but he's when he's awake, he's usually working on Mistaken Changers too. Yeah, and he's also doing He and he in his roommate Chris are sort of this filmmaking duo Chris Croy and they're they're doing all my videos and they did all of it there. Tom did all my videos for ELVI. So Tom, Tom and I have in careern my wife have continued to develop the Mistake in for Strangers thing, and so yeah, Mistake Change Too is coming out some some year. Yeah,

My favorite line in the first movie, I think actually is delivered by your daughter, which is where.

Yeah, like exactly so.

Where your brother Tom is having this kind of crushing He's in the middle of the edit for the film and he's having this period of real crushing self doubt and he and he says to your daughter, you know, am I going to be a big famous director one day? And she just cuts him down and just says no.

And she was.

Just mad because she wanted her she wanted her Grover phone back, I think, and she's just that's all she wanted, and so he was, yeah, and he was. She was also mad because Tom in that scene was moving into her room and he was moving in with us, and so that was her bedroom and we were here to move her out so Tom could move into her house. So she was she was like, what the hell is she? She was not a fan of Tom that day. Now she loves Tom. They're the best.

Yeah.

Now she's now she's almost twelve, and yeah, uncle Tom is like one of her best friends.

Cool.

Oh, I'm really pleased to hear that this work on a follow updown, I'm really excited.

We're trying to get a TV show made too.

Okay, along a similar line which.

Mistaken for Strangers, the show, the show would be would be much, would be less, would be less documentary, and be more scripted, you know. I mean, as everyone knows, there are parts of Mistaken Strangers one that we're sort of recreated or you know, there's there's yeah, there's.

A poetic license to shape the noun.

There's craft involved. But the story is all true, you know, the story, you know, all that is I would definitely say Mistaken Strangers is a very true story. Even though some scenes we had we kind of we had to sort of fill in the gaps, you know, and Tom's a good actor.

So yeah, yeah, so what have you learned in the process of trying to get a TV show made.

Then I've learned never to ever try to get a TV show made.

Really, is that dispiriting?

Not dispiriting, it's a oh god, I have too many it's too much of a mountain to climb.

It's too much of a Yeah. I mean, we've been we've we've taken.

Versions of Mistaken for Strangers. We've gotten this close, you know, with Netflix, all all of them, with all the players, the who lose, the all of them, the hbos and and there, and it's been fun. It's been We've learned how to pitch, We've learned how not to pitch. We've also learned that there's a lot of marble turners, meaning just like people say, oh, we love your idea, and then like they turn it and they like here and they hand it back to you. Now it's our idea

We wanted to do.

And you know they still my marble, still my idea. No, I don't want to turn it into uh, you know, indie rock sitcom. You know, I don't want a writer's room. I don't want a writer's room, you know. And I mean we took my wife and I went out to a Sundance episodic lab a few years ago with this concept and hung up and talk like literally sitting in

And I was like, Hi Bob, Matt, and he's like hi on Matt, and we.

Just had this little conversation about about the TV show and he's had that sounds and then and then we had this so we spent like a week out there Sundance and that was my only own the interaction with Robert Redford. But it was it was I really.

I relive it all the time. I relive it all the time. Yeah.

I also got a hug from Michelle Obama once, and I relived that.

There's those are two things. I'm like, Oh, go back to that moment for just ten seconds.

Yeah.

Yeah, anytime you just need a little bit of a Yeah.

It's not like I can give Robert Redford a ring and chit chat about his ideas for that, you know, how do I get this show made? But maybe maybe I'll maybe I'll cast him as my dad or something.

You could think although, because you've said before that he reminds you of your dad, right, Oh my.

God, Well my dad reminds me of Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, my dad reminds me of I don't know John.

Muir and Walt Whitman and Robert Redford and uh, I don't know John Candy, I don't know.

My dad's the best.

Yeah, we're gon.

Talk a bit about your dad in the second because I know that, like, it's a big part of the reason for Jane Goodall.

My dad's a very Jane good Old type of type of monkey man.

Yeah, and then let's talk about seventeen Prison.

So it's your first side of album.

And it's kind of rooted in family, the origins of the inspiration and the reason for kind of wanting to do it.

But can you just tell.

Them tell me a little bit about how originally you'd intended this of being like a collection of covers, right, You're master group of songs that you really wanted to do versions of and that was sort of in your mind for quite a while. And he wants to do that, and it hasn't turned out like that, obviously, But tell me a little bit about the original plan.

But it turned out.

I mean, it's a it's a serpentine story, it's a securitest story, but I would tell it.

Yeah.

So about twelve years ago, I got an email inviting me to sing on a Booker t record called Road from Memphis and to do a duet called Representing Memphis

And but the elevator doors open, Lauren Hill was standing there.

She let me get out, and then she got in and left. I was like, I think that was Lauren Hill. Then I go in the room and there's Questlove and lou Reid had just left. Sharon Jones came bursting in just like a like a sunshine and tornado at the same time.

You know.

And then and uh yeah, And I was only there for about three hours, and Booker and his wife and everybody was just so warm.

And it was a chaotic thing.

And and and I just I hit it off with Booker and be recorded and Sharon and I sang right into the same microphone live, you know, and we only did a few takes. And He's just like, go, go go, you know, He's he's being in this studio with Booker is like being in a swimming pool.

With a with a dolphin or a whale who just knows, you know, but it's like being the ocean, you know, with with with just with a whale and just just follow the whale's He's.

Incredible and so so jumped ten years and I was really thinking about it's time to make this coverage record and it was Chris.

Right before Christmas is twenty eighteen.

My dad and I had been arguing a lot and fighting a lot that particularly Christmas.

My dad's birthday is Christmas December twenty fifth, by the way, So.

We were I was up in Seattle, where my sister lives and they my parents live there now, and my whole family was there, and my dad and I were just I spent most of the time in the hot tub and not talking.

To anybody for good reason. And no, it was not that bad.

And my dad and I because they moved out of Cincinnati and they sold our house, and just I was a little bit raw about all that's about the house and stuff. And so that's when I was like, you know what I'm gonna I can't talk to my dad right now, but I'm going to make him a I'm going to make him something for Christmas for I was joking I was going to make him a TV show or a thing or something, and I posted something about it and then and I realized, you know what I

And I figured out that Booker. I remember that Booker produced an arranged start Us so and then I had like, oh my god, I know Booker. So on December eighteenth, I wrote to him. That's why, cause I saw the email I wrote it. I went to his website Booker t Jones dot com and there's a big management button clipped on that and said, hey, this is Matt Berninger. I worked with Booker a long time ago.

I was wondering if he'd want to play or help me make a covers record because I'm a big fan of Startis blah blah blah, wrote his daughter, who's now his manager, wrote back the next day said he'd love to, and that's how it started.

And then we worked on covers for a while.

And then I also had a bunch of half baked sketches with a bunch of people from my first band from the national from Elvi for my favorite band, The Walkman.

Just old friends, just.

Like tons and tons of friends, and I had these and I started sharing with him and he's like, well, let's let's also start focusing on those.

And so when we went into the studio.

About him, i'd say almost a year after that email, we had a bunch of covers, we had a bunch of originals ready to go in and do and we did it all in fourteen days, and everybody came into Venice was in and out, and Booker played that role of that sort of shepherd inside of the chaotic tornado, you know, or that person. Everybody just followed him. And I needed somebody with more presence and more just someone that everybody would I needed the record.

To sound of one piece. I wanted you to be able to sound the room.

Hear the room Booker team, the MG's records are just you can I always say this, you can hear the musicians look.

At each other, you know. And that's what it's like with Booker.

And we did it so fast, because like we do three or four takes and he's like, Okay, that's the one, and.

I was like, are you sure, And he's like, oh yeah, he's like, he's like, we could get it a little better, but we'd waste so much time, and like nothing's supposed to be perfect, and the confidence just to move fast. So we did a bunch of covers we did.

We did a Cure cover, we did a we did a Morphine cover, We did a Betty Swan cover, we did a Eddie Floyd cover.

We did a Velvet Underground cover.

We did some other things that are tender covers but are originals, and that's all coming out in the Deluxe, So it's all coming out together.

The cast of players that you got together for that fourteen days, like you just described, just sounds like magic and what what an amazing opportunity for you to sort of to assemble those people.

You know, we're talking about.

People like Gail An Drsy of course, he played with David Bowie, the booker himself, like you say, Andrew Bird, like all all of Mickey.

Rafael plays harmonica. He plays harmonica on Start Us too. He plays harmonica on like every classic with Dylan. He plays harm He's all over it too. He's incredible.

So the first morning of those sessions, you walk in all these people are there. How does that feel to you, the fact that they're there to help create some magic with you. We're full of a Did you have any anxiety? Did you just feel that because you know most of those people for a while, did that all feel quite family orientated?

What was he.

Explained, Well, honestly, the first day, I went to the studio and my engineer, Sean O'Brien met me there, and.

It was just Booker.

I think it was just Booker and Sean and I at least for the first half of the first day. And I hadn't seen Booker in ten.

Years or whatever, you know, eleven years. At that point.

We'd been exchanging files through email and he'd been working on all the arrangements. The arrangements were pretty done, but he was he was putting it all into so everybody had music in front of him, even though most of the players don't really read music, but he made sure that that was all written. So he was like pro capital p producer, you know. He did so much work, so much prep before we got in there, and I

Like, oh my god, he's really here. This is actually happening.

He wasn't just some impostor that's been you know, I wasn't being catfished by somebody with you know.

It was actually Booker t And I was like yeah, and it was.

It was so funny and right away he's.

It was just like instant warmth, instant sort of art.

You know.

We just started working right away and then and.

Then people started coming in and not and I only had about a couple of people at a time. I flew everybody, and so there was a tiny studio, so I couldn't have everybody there the whole time.

So I had like a couple of.

People there for the first week, and then we would work on their songs with Booker, and then they would leave, and then other people would come in and whoever was there that week would work on whatever song we were working on, including the song that they brought. So and we did everything in fourteen days and it was it was wild and awesome, and we had took breaks walking down to the beach.

It was you know, it was fourth of July.

We were in there during for the July and we all went went and watched the fireworks on the beach and Booker was wearing a black Nike track suit in protest, you know, in solidary with Colin Kaepernick, and that was so awesome.

Yeah, he's just he's just the best.

You've described the album as being it's not about your dad, but it is for your dad.

Have you have you have you gifted it to him yet? Have you know? Have you have you have you played it to?

No? Actually, I think I sent my mom a link, a drop back links links to it all, but they they I think they Mom just figures that barely knows how to do it. Nobody's been figured out how to put anybody's phones there. I keep asked my sister, just put it on their phone. I think I sent them a stream, but they don't know what.

The stream is. You know, my dad, my dad. He thinks he's going to take a walk if you if He's like, oh, good, there's a stream.

Where's a stream nearby, Well, let's go take a walk on see.

What's in the stream. And I was like, no, no, that's my record for you anyway.

Yeah, so but he's you know, they they've heard it.

They love it. And I talked to I talked to my dad. I've been talk to my.

Dad a lot lately during COVID, and my parents have been really uh, it's been really nice. I've always been really close with my mom and dad, and my sister and my brother. My sister Rachel, who was not in mistaken for strangers the first one, and only because because she we didn't get anything that we could use where she was in and she was so mad that she wasn't in it.

But she's they're the best. But I have a very, very very close family.

COVID's made me really.

I think I was quite protective over my parents before COVID and made me really. I don't know if it was like the same view in the early days when it was locked down. I was like video calling and every other day, just what have you been doing today? And how are you doing today, as if just like it was like accelerated, as if like a decade had passed and I was suddenly sort of looking active. And it hasn't. Really, it's sort of stuck that way. Has it been like that for you?

Well, my parents are so funny, like we I just I you know, I send them, I just call my mom and I was like, hey, are you still alive? You know, and we just make fun of it, and and you know, and they're like, oh, I am, let me check on your father, you know, and she's like, yeah. So we're very a lot of dark humor about all the that's the burning is always sort of just managed to take the darkest things and find what's what's bright about them or or and just learn how to lean

It's like stands beyond DNA.

You know, family becomes a lot very very it's a very fluid word.

And what do you think you're trying to say to your dad with this album? Is it?

Is it?

Because you mentioned that you were arguing quite a bit over the family.

I think it's just an album.

It's not like I said, it's I'm not trying to communicate to him. I'm just I'm I'm I'm writing about myself, you know, and a lot of different things.

And I just I think he'd like it. You know, he's a big fan.

He's a big fan of the National He's a big fan of of everything. My mom is just obsessive. My mom comes to every show and the front row screaming every word, and my dad likes to sit back and just kind of watch everybody else watch me.

You know. He's really he loves that.

Yeah, So it's not about him at all, but it's it's I just I just knew he would like it.

And all those people you kind of reeled off earlier in terms of like give your dad reminds you of the like Robert Redford and you know Jane Goodall, et cetera. Like that is just because he's got the characteristics, Like you know, what characteristics does he passed down to you.

He's a lawyer professionally, he's a lawyer.

I mean, he's I mean, he's.

Oh my god, I could tell some many funny stories with my dad. My dad worked at a caddy shack Western Hills Country Club caddy shack at which I ended up working at that caddy shack too when I for a while, when I was in high school and when he was in high school. Pete Rose, the baseball player for Cincinnati Reds, probably maybe one of the best baby possibly the best baseball player of all time. But he's not in the Hall of Fame because he bet on

That's my dad.

And then but you know, but if my dad is also the guy who's just like he's in a golf league and all of his friends in his golf league in Cincinnati are Republicans, and he and he was the only Democrat, and he's the guy who slammed he he had he just put his fist on the table and stand up and walk out on them, you know, recently and all his best old friends. He's like, I can't hear what you guys are saying. And it's my dad. He's a badass. Yeah, like his best friends, he just

Your dad sounds fantastic. Yeah, right, I'm guessing.

I mean, you've always been like really kind of like politically active with the band, and like, you know, it sounds like your dad has kind of got strong beliefs in that area as well. Like, I mean, we're not that far off for a couple of months away from the election now, not not even that long.

Yeah, do you talk to your family a lot about that? Is that?

Are you tuning into the election much? Are you trying to distance?

We don't. I mean, we don't talk about Trump that much because none of us just want to get we're just getting my dad is. I mean, I'm probably furthered, I'm further.

To the left than my dad is.

But sometimes we'll argue, sometimes we will argue viciously about points that we're both so far we're both, we're both we're just so close to each other in terms of where feelings on things. Yet well, we'll fight about minutia and we're like, we're on the same side.

Why we fight?

So we like we actually don't dig into it too much because we'll end up we'll end up just arguing over like we're on this, why are we arguing? You know? And the Catholic Church, it's like, I have a I have a lot of mixed feelings about the Catholic Church, and my dad does as well, but you know, I have harsher feelings towards it than he does, and he's always trying to explain his perspective on it, and I

My dad's best advice to me has.

Always been he's He's like, my boy, you need to slow down. And I always am trying to slow down and that's hard to do, but that's that's that's always his thing.

Slow down. Also, keep a smile on. That's this other thing.

Always says that little expression just remind yourself, keep a smile on. Another question on Serpentine Prison that the album opens with a song called My Eyes Are T Shirts, And I think.

I wrote that with Scott from the From the Nail, Yeah right.

The first couple of lyrics of that song like, I hope don't mind is going to read them out ahead. My eyes are like T shirts, They're so easy to read. Aware them for you. That they're all about me is possibly one of my favorite opening lines of any album this year.

I had it on this morning.

Can you tell me a little bit about that song, because it's a It's a beautiful way to open the record.

I think I think that song.

Is a lot about about honesty and about meaning.

I'm not a good liar. I'm not a good card player. I have a tell.

I mean, Brian Devendorf anytime I've ever played cards with actually anybody. If I play cards with like bad poker players, they like they know my tell within like three hands, and I don't.

Know what it is.

And so for whatever reason, just the truth is always just written all over my fucking face. You know, you can to see it in my eyes whatever it is, So I generally haven't I don't get away.

With lying because I'm a bad liar. I think that's what this whole song is kind of about.

Earlier one, you mentioned how there's a couple of things that are kind of just firmly in your memory, that meeting the shallow Obama get out from the shallow bambas one.

Is it true that when you met Bush?

Go ahead, go ahead, Yeah, I.

Was going to say, is it true that you called him mister President?

I did. I was so nervous. We're all standing in a line in a tent.

It was in Iowa, and it was I think I think it was I think it was the midterms and we were there to perform. Chris Cornell was also there and his family, so it was really interesting. So it was it was. It was Chris Cornell, his family, in the national all standing there in this like tent in the middle of a cornfield and waiting to meet the president for the first time. And that was crazy. And we're all, you know, and then we hear his voice.

Shaking your hand.

And he came up to me and he looked me right in the eye and I said, I said, son, honor to meet you, mister president, and and and.

He looked at me. He was like, you fucking with me? And I was like what I think I did? And then he it's like, nice to meet you, mat and they moved on.

I was like, fuck, it was just I was so dry mouth, and I think there was I think he might have thought I was. I was saying he was being too wasn't being aggressive enough or something, And that wasn't.

I was just dry mouth.

Luckily I was able to make up for it and for in future conversations.

And yeah, this period spending it kind of like the elongated period, not touring, not like this year you would have played a bunch of shows with the National, you would have marked for ten years of high violet.

High violet.

Yeah, and you know it would have been a year full of kind of yeah, like festivals and touring plans and everything else. And it hasn't been so like it was just just to understand a little bit of like your mixture of emotions on that front, the.

National needed a break.

We made sleep Out Beast and then at the same time we right when we finished sleep ol Beast, Mike Mills reached out.

We started making I Am Easy to Find.

At the same time, my wife and I were writing all these songs along with Aaron Embrace, and they were done all the music for so your know de Bergerac Musical and that's got twenty five songs in it, or well we've written twenty five songs or twenty or thirty songs for that, and and Aaron's got big red machine stuff. I've got this stuff, the devn doors have Landsdorf, It's we were going to spend twenty twenty one on our other on our other things, and the fact that twenty

And we were one of that.

I was reading Bryce and Aarron's comments about their work on folklore and just how top secret that whole thing had been.

Yeah, people they were able to tell about it, you were.

No, no, no, I mean there was there were a lot of people that did know about it, but no. Aaron called me the night before we talked about a lot of things. We hadn't talked in a long time, and we talked about a lot of things, and then he mentioned it and he said it was coming out soon. And I was really excited because I take one of my favorite musicians with one of the greatest songwriters, and I said that that's incredible. And then I woke up the next morning and it was out.

So yeah, it was a huge surprise, huge surprise, and it's it's beautiful. I love it.

I just love the thought that like it was so it seemed like such like top security around it that they couldn't eat.

It wasn't that top security.

But yeah, certain people were informed and certain people weren't.

Final question is just to hear a little bit about I mean, apart from obviously going out and speaking to people about Serpentine Prison. Now for the next few weeks, what is kind of coming up for you? Like, what are the next kind of weeks and months looking like? And you're going to be in one place and you.

Know, I'm working on playlists, riding my bike a lot about a fishing rod.

I've been fishing a few times, haven't caught anything.

No success, well, yes, a lot of success, because most of the point of that is just staring at water without looking like a weirdo, without anybody wondering why what you're doing.

That's the point. I think that's why people go fishing. And I mean some people are needed.

A lot of the guys that are out there fishing in the morning because they're feeding their families, you know, And so I'm learning.

I'm watching these guys.

There's these all these Japanese guys that I have this really long telescopic line pole that's like twenty five feet long and with a little and it's just they're putting little peas, just peas on the on the thing, and.

They're they're they're the ones catching the most. The guys with all the me with all the reels and the I'm not catching anything.

So I think I might go a Japanese telescopic rod with some green peas. It seems to be working for those guys. Yeah, and then they keep all the fishing they take it.

I think they're making there. There's certain fish where I fish that you.

Can eat and most you can't, and so I don't know which ones are witch yet, so I won't be cooking any yet quite. I used to fish, you know, three day, three times, three or four times a week for fifteen years or for ten years between like age you know, six and sixteen.

I really kind of got into like slow TV during the beginnings of Lookdown, like watching stuff that was really like unmantally challenging. And one of my favorite shows is about fishing. Oh yeah, it's the British comedians Paul white House and Bob Mortimer. No basically okay, so that they did a show and Paul white Has did a show called The Fast Show many years ago that was a big hit in the UK like a sketch show. And the whole premise of this show is just simply these

All it is. But it's it's such like relaxing, like funny TV.

I want to fight, tell me, tell me with that? That is. There's also I'm also was.

A big fan of fishing with John Lewie obviously that where John Lourie from Lounge Lizards, and he's fishes with Tom Waits and stuff, and they're all just out of his dudes, just talking ship in a boat.

And it's great.

I watched there's a YouTube guy named bears G who I think he fishes out of like sort of northern California, San Francisco area, the Bay area, and I watched his fishing chanin all the time, and just I just I'm relearning how to fish at a higher level by watching this guy. And I also just sometimes when I'm too tired to go out and actual fish, I'll just sit there in bed watching other people watching bears gefish.

Yeah.

Anyway, it's the next best thing, isn't watching other people fish on YouTube?

Yeah?

Yeah, my daughter, who's got me watching this show called Get Out of My Room, which is these two people come in and redesign kids' bedrooms like yeah, it's really and their brothers and sisters get to decide like what they think their brothers sister is gonna like.

It's awesome. Yeah, it's called Get out of My Room.

I'm gonna get and check it out. Well, listen that thanks very much for doing the podum.

Yeah, it's time for you to get out of my room, I think, and I just kidding. Yeah, this has been great. It's fun. Cool man

Anyway, good night,