The Creative Asylum Podcast

Paul Leary co-founded one of the most gleefully deranged bands in American rock history — and came out the other end living a decades-long career producing other bands. As guitarist and de facto sonic architect of the Butthole Surfers, Leary helped build a catalog of cult-classic noise-punk landmarks throughout the '80. From Psychic Powerless...Another Man's Sac to Hairway to Steven and the band's brief brush with mainstream success via their song "Pepper," the Butthole Surfers left behind a stream of chaos that can only be celebrated for it's sheer audacity and mayhem.In this conversation, Paul dips his toe into how two Trinity University accounting students turned into art-punk provocateurs. The band's outrageous, legendary live shows are documented in the new documentary Butthole Surfers: The Hole Truth and Nothing Butt, directed by Tom Stern, which traces the band's history and cultural impact through interviews, archival footage, and multimedia elements. We also discuss Leary's parallel life and subsequent career as an alt-rock producer, with an impressive resume including bands like Sublime, Meat Puppets, Daniel Johnston, Reverend Horton Heat, the Toadies, U2, Weezer, and Jane's Addiction. In his current place in life as a "boring adult," we talk about what it takes to bring order in the studio after building a career on total chaos in his own band. This is a conversation about weirdness as a discipline, the accidental producer, and staying gleefully uncategorizable for over four decades. * * * * PLEASE FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA:Website: https://www.TheCApod.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheCApod/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/CreativeAsylumCA/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Steven McDonald picked up a bass at age 11, and along with his older brother Jeff, co-founded Redd Kross. Redd Kross made their live debut opening for Black Flag while basically still being in Jr. High. In this conversation, Steven and I discuss the creative process, the dynamics of juggling two bands at once, the brilliance of the Beatles and Redd Kross' 2024 self-titled double album, which is—in my opinion—one of the best records of the band's entire career.Steven and I talk about his parallel life as the touring and recording bassist for the Melvins since 2015, with King Buzzo and Dale Crover while Redd Kross is never that far in the shadows. For a period of time, Steven played in and was a founding member of Keith Morris's hardcore outfit OFF! from 2009 to 2021. We also dip into Born Innocent: The Redd Kross Story, director Andrew Reich's documentary tracing the band's four-decade history, and what it's been like having a camera crew — and now an audience — finally reckon with a career this tumultuous and this undeniably good. This is a candid conversation about being a lifer, a brother, a parent and a bass player who's somehow made it look easy since before he could drive. Photo of Steve McDonald by the inimitable Master Jaron: https://www.instagram.com/masterjaron/ * * * * PLEASE FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA:Website: https://www.TheCApod.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheCApod/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/CreativeAsylumCA/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Robyn Hitchcock has spent five decades making music with the kind of color and whimsy that sounds like musical paintings as much as being any kind of standard for quirky British art-rock. He's always been surreal, wry, and stubbornly uninterested in trends. As co-founder and songwriter for the critically influential Soft Boys (1976–81), Hitchcock helped forge an influential art-rock touchstone that outlasted the lifespan of the band itself. Decades later, the jangly, off-kilter psychedelia of the Soft Boys have influenced R.E.M., the Replacements, Uncle Tupelo, and a generation of songwriters who came after.In addition to being a musical painter, Hitchcock has also been an avid explorer of the written word, having penned TWO two acclaimed memoirs, both of which are available from Akashic Books: 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left, a hallucinatory account of the year he turned 14 and discovered Pink Floyd and Sgt. Pepper's while stuck at boarding school, and the recent follow-up, Stranded in the Future, which picks up the story from 1968 and continues through to 1978. the book chronicles his self-taught songwriting, doomed romances, and the formation of the Soft Boys against the backdrop of London as punk was taking hold and changing the very foundation upon which popular culture was being built. We talk about writing, music and the surreal experience of life itself. Robyn's remained one of the most singular, unclassifiable voices in British music, and with that' the Creative Asylum is lucky to have him on! * * * * PLEASE FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA:Website: https://www.TheCApod.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheCApod/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/CreativeAsylumCA/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Few couples have lived in the world of independent music from as many angles as Colin Newman and Malka Spigel have. Colin is the co-founder, voice and guitarist behind Wire, the art-punk originators whose austere, angular sound still sound pioneering today , even decades after their formation in the 1970s. Malka was the bassist for Minimal Compact, the Tel Aviv-born post-punk outfit that became a cornerstone of the '80s European underground. In this episode, I get to have a conversation with these two artists who have been together for decades now and have built a remarkable shared body of work including their long-running duo, Immersion, their collaborative project Nanocluster and their band - about to be revived - Githead. They are more independent that they've ever been, running their own record label, swim~. We spend most of the conversation talking about where they are now: Immersion, the electronic duo Newman and Spigel formed in 1994, built on a genuinely collaborative process where the music comes first and the ideas evolve organically between them. We also talk about their ongoing Nanocluster series — a rotating-cast collaboration project pulling in artists like Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab, Ulrich Schnauss, Scanner, and ambient trio SUSSThis is a conversation about staying restless after 40-plus years in music, and what it actually looks like to build a life and a body of work with your partner, and why neither of them has any interest in coasting on legacy. VISIT https://immersionhq.uk * * * * PLEASE FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA:Website: https://www.TheCApod.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheCApod/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/CreativeAsylumCA/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Prior to Grohl, Patty Schemel was Kurt Cobain's choice as Nirvana's (new) drummer. She ended up playing in Hole and changed the band's trajectory with a power and determination that anchored the band's music on stage. Outside of life in the studio and on the road, Patty was also fighting a war that most fans never saw. She was a powerhouse drummer (just listen to 'Live Through This' if you have any doubt), but as with so many others from the Seattle music scene, also found the allure of hard drugs, which sadly led to her departure from music and a brutal stretch of homelessness, living on the streets of L.A. for over a year.It's all laid out with unflinching honesty in the documentary 'Hit So Hard' from 2011 and the acclaimed memoir (from Da Capo Press) of the same name that followed.  Now over a decade living clean and sober, Patty is living a stable and happy life, is working on new craetive projects and is working in addiction recovery with homeless women from those same streets of Los Angeles.  * * * * PLEASE FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA:Website: https://www.TheCApod.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheCApod/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/CreativeAsylumCA/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.