It's a covers only episode! You'll remember that last July in Chicago, Spencer Parks, Rachel Jones, Bob Nanna, Marcus Nuccio and I did a LIVE episode on Birdhouse in Your Soul. Covers sections don't work well in front of a crowd, but I figured it would be a shame to not curate and talk about a selection of Birdhouse covers since there is such a wealth to choose from! So Spencer and Rachel join me once again and we each pick and discuss our top 3 Birdhouse covers, with some honorable mentions as ...
Jun 13, 2020•32 min
Gareth Lyons from Dublin, Ireland makes his first appearance on the show and boy does he get his money's worth, with an episode on I'm Impressed that clocks in as the second longest episode of the show to date. Be prepared for some political discussion that this song inspires, as well as chit chat about other great bands before the extensive dissection of the song and a fantastic smattering of covers.
Jun 11, 2020•2 hr 23 min
Punk Till I Die is another show on the Punknews.org network, hosted by Greg's friends Tom Crandle and Neil McDougall. "Long time PunkNews producer and contributor Greg Simpson joins to chat about what he's been up to recently, especially his facebook tournaments of bands. With music by Bad Brains, Minor Threat, Social Unrest, Dead Kennedys, D.I. and Articles of Faith." It's a fun and spirited discussion by a bunch of old punks. Subscribe by searching Punknews or Punk Till I Die on any podcast pl...
Jun 04, 2020•1 hr 39 min
First time guest Bry Moroz visits the show to talk about the Apollo 18 banger Which Describes How You're Feeling. They discuss the demo version, crazy old drum machines, non-stop lyrics and general Linnell awesomeness.
Jun 04, 2020•1 hr 33 min
I promised my amazing Patreon subscriber friends that when I reached a certain amount of subscriptions I would throw a PARTY via video call for all of us Patrons to shoot the breeze with each other about anything TMBG. On this 3rd party we've got Becca Ganey of Boston and two international Patreon subscribers, Coleman Hegarty of Ireland and Maciej Taubert of Poland. TMBP 'round the world, baby! Listen in to the VIPs as we talk about the success of TMBG at preserving a fanbase through generations...
Jun 03, 2020•1 hr 10 min
Kurt and Denise Schiller of the Parents Just Don't Understand podcast come on the show to complete our crossover and they picked one of the greatest TMBG kids songs, I Am A Paleontologist. Many props are given to Danny Weinkauf throughout the episode as we dissect what makes this a perfect kids song, and we find a lot of charming covers including one by Greg's 1st graders from earlier this spring.
May 27, 2020•1 hr 47 min
Greg talks with Lesley Gouger, Dyana Claytor, Tara Trate and Acey Jane about their TMBG tattoos and the stories behind them. Also, Hanson comes up a lot for some reason and Greg contemplates the design of his upcoming full face tattoo.
May 23, 2020•22 min
First time, long- waiting guest Harley Rowan joins Greg to talk about the sleeper hit Flans song This Microphone. Lots of great conversation and a live on- air cover make for a fun episode.
May 21, 2020•1 hr 21 min
Adam Rivera joins Greg to talk about the amazing Glean song Unpronounceable, and also to promote a big TMBG tribute Kickstarter project he is putting together. Much love to all our cover artists in the community! Listen to us get glitchy and talk about complicated studio trickery.
May 19, 2020•1 hr 27 min
Greg breaks quarantine and flies to Germany (jk because this podcast makes a lot of money haha) to talk to Noah Daniel about the deep cut Whole Lot of Glean. We talk about the uniqueness of this song as a promoptional song NOT on the album Glean, we do an improve guitar jam live on air, and Noah covers the song.
May 14, 2020•1 hr 26 min
My bandmates in The Exquisite Dead Guys, my on again off again TMBG cover band, join me to talk about the hardest TMBG song we ever learned. Matt Monta and Jerome Hemersbach get silly with me to talk about the minutiae of this song that we had to delve into to pull off playing this song. We found the deeply buried demo, a couple live versions, and then we try to figure out why the heck Flans doesn't play guitar on this live. Also - covers and covers!
May 07, 2020•1 hr 29 min
Adam Turla of the amazing indie Americana band Murder By Death joins Greg to talk about the classic tune Cowtown off of Lincoln. First we give a nice primer of Murder By Death for those not in the know, then we discuss the song at length including all the demos and some cool live versions, as well as amazing covers. Adam also talks about how the pandemic is affecting artists who make their living off their music.
Apr 30, 2020•1 hr 33 min
We all know TMBG have happy sounding songs about SAD things. But what TMBG songs are straight-up EMO? Tara Trate and Elizabeth Siegel join TMBP for the first time alongside the triumphant return of my wife Cara Kinnally to link TMBG to some of our favorite emo bands including Thursday, Elliott Smith, Bright Eyes, Front Bottoms and more. This is a simultaneously fun and SAD one...lol... so emo!
Apr 25, 2020•35 min
Greg appeared recently on Sadie Hawkins Pod to talk about Relient K's cover of Doctor Worm. To complete the crossover, here's Jess and Daniel Leary joining Greg on TMBP to talk about the early b-side For Science, a favorite of Daniel's. Strap it in folks, this is a long one with many funny tangents but a big payoff at the end... Let's get those missiles ready to destroy the pod-u-verse!
Apr 23, 2020•2 hr 6 min
Daniel and Jess Leary host a song-by-song Relient K podcast. As you heard way back on our 3rd episode, Relient K has covered Dr. Worm, so the couple asked Greg to come on Sadie Hawkins Pod's episode to talk about the cover and give Relient K fans some insight on the band that wrote the song.
Apr 16, 2020•1 hr 43 min
Professional podcaster and hilarious dude Justin McElroy of My Brother, My Brother and Me - and many other projects - joins Greg to talk about Pet Name, a song just resurrected for live shows this year. We even found a Yahoo Answers post about pet names to get him comfortable, and curated a boatload of great covers for you all.
Apr 14, 2020•1 hr 20 min
On a very special episode Greg is graced by Open Mike Eagle, art rapper, voice actor, Comedy Central show cohost and notable TMBG fan, to talk about the deep deep cut Weep Day. He helps give a good primer to people unfamiliar with his work, and as we talk about the song we cover some topics from silly to serious, like how this is a hyper samba tune to why the TMBG fanbase skews so white. CHECK ONE TWO CHECK ONE TWO
Apr 08, 2020•1 hr 31 min
A special guest stopped by for a short episode on one of their favorite songs. Surprise! Extra episode!
Apr 01, 2020•12 min
We continue our conversation on the Hotel Detective song series. Listen to episode 74 first, if you haven't already. So once again we join Jon Uleis and Matt Lee and on Part 2 we cover (She Was A) Hotel Detective In The Future and the nutty commentary track about that song. Ep 74 and 75 were edited by John Walker of the FYIZ podcasts.
Apr 01, 2020•1 hr 12 min
I promised my amazing Patreon subscribers friends that when I reached a certain amount of subscriptions I would throw a PARTY via video call for all of us Patrons to shoot the breeze with each other about anything TMBG. On this 2nd party we've got another gaggle of amazing tmbg and tmbp fans - Lisa Solecki, Chris Oliveira, Daniel Leary, and Jordan Morsberger. We get serious for a bit to talk about how COVID-19 is hitting our parts of the country, and roll that right into TMBG memes Daniel has ma...
Mar 31, 2020•1 hr 12 min
A year in the making, pt 2 of our TMBG art examination is finally here! I rounded up four awesome artists to discuss the TMBG art of the year 1990 - FLOOD, the ISTANBUL EP and its accompanying music video. On pt 2 we have: Shannon Graham, who has done stuff used by TMBG (a painting of Flans' cat The Governor, for one); Seymour Schmitt, fresh-faced artist and doll maker; Lauren Walton, my art teacher friend and coworker and creator of the cover art for the upcoming They'll Need a Crane live bandc...
Mar 29, 2020•27 min
The human TMBG encyclopedia and archivist Jon Uleis with cool dude pod newbie Matt Lee tagteam Greg with TMBG knowledge and opinions to talk at great length about ALL the Hotel Detective tracks, of which there are four. On this first installment we talk about the original Flans-penned (She Was A) Hotel Detective off of TMBG's debut album, and the parenthesis-free, Linnell-penned She Was A Hotel Detective off of the 1994 Back To Skull EP. Part 2 with (She Was A) Hotel Detective In The Future and ...
Mar 26, 2020•1 hr 30 min
As the other half of the Giants Confirmed crossover, Trevor and Matt join Greg to talk about the Factory Showroom b-side, written for the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers movie soundtrack, and things get... nutty. Featuring an appearance by Greg's baby, and a special twist ending!
Mar 20, 2020•1 hr 54 min
Giants Confirmed is an album-by-album They Might Be Giants podcast. Listen as Greg guests on their Factory Showroom episode, talking to hosts Matt Rebeiro and Trevor Ikrath about EVERY song on that album. This is a companion episode to the coming-in-twelve-hours episode of TMBP for Sensurround, a b-side to Factory Showroom, and a song on the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers movie soundtrack. Crossover tiiiime!
Mar 19, 2020•1 hr 53 min
Greg is joined by Gur Samuel - who you heard on the Mink Car Debate Patreon episode - and he's now finally getting his first weekly song episode. Gur picked an interesting one, a short song that was collected onto Album Raises New And Troubling Questions. For such a brief tune, Gur and Greg get into the depths of this strange little ditty, not to mention going on some entertaining tangents.
Mar 13, 2020•1 hr 36 min
Greg was asked to be on the parenting podcast Parents Just Don't Understand when host Kurt Schiller found out about TMBP, figuring I knew a lot about TMBG's kids albums. I told him I did know them well, and also I'm an elementary music teacher! So we were off to the races and had a great evening talking about our childhood music, what our own kids are listening to, and what we think is good for kids to jam on from our point of view as parents. TMBG kids songs are the focus, so give it a listen, ...
Mar 09, 2020•1 hr 36 min
Last Saturday, Greg and friends converged on Bloomington, IN, in the southern half of the state and home to Indiana University, to record our third live episode at The Bishop Bar. With a roundtable made up of TMBP newcomer and regional comedian extraordinaire Jon Hancuff alongside TMBP veterans Cari Hearn, Dana Williamson and Scott Currie, listen to Greg attempt to wrangle the rowdy crew as we discuss They'll Need A Crane in great detail with hysterical moments along the way. The episode ends wi...
Mar 05, 2020•1 hr 23 min
On December 3rd, 2019, without warning, TMBG released a new song called Social Media on their Particle Men YouTube channel. Obviously it's about social media as a platform for opinions, so returning friends of the podcast Cari Hearn and Mari Morton join Greg to get meta and talk about the response to this song... on social media! We read YouTube comments, Facebook comments from the Misc T group, and have a fun and goofy time talking about a pretty odd song. Dive in to social media!
Feb 26, 2020•55 min
I'm beyond excited to finally present to you all Part 2 of this series of Misc Trans episodes, where a group of trans folks talk about TMBG song lyrics they have personal connections to regarding gender identity themes. Our guest host is Avren Keating, who leads a roundtable discussion with returning guest Mari Morton, and first time guests Seymour Schmitt and Martha Riding. We discuss everything from hits like Snail Shell to obscure tracks like Impossible, and our guests provide a unique insigh...
Feb 22, 2020•29 min
I've been sitting on this one for awhile and I'm so excited I can finally unleash it on the TMBG fan community! Drummer of TMBG from 1993-1996, Brian Doherty played on John Henry, Factory Showroom, Severe Tire Damage and two EPs. He's here to talk about Bells Are Ringing, the final song on his final album with the band. We also talk about his full time with the band, and our shared current profession of music educator. Strap it down and enjoy!
Feb 19, 2020•2 hr 2 min
