By the time the December issue hits stands, the election will be over, but it will still be 2016, one of the weirdest, most aggressive feeling years I’ve ever experienced. Between political upheaval, civil unrest, the deaths of heroes like Prince, David Bowie, Merle Haggard, and Alan Vega, along with global events like what’s happening in Syria and Brexit, it feels like one of the hardest, most difficult years in ages. It’s a good time for a speaking tour — there’s a lot to speak about.
My real question here is: has this actually been as unique a year as it feels, or do you think social media has just made our access to everything that much more overwhelming?
I think it is a mixture of both big events, like David Bowie passing away, Brexit, and an almost minute-to-minute accessibility to what’s happening. The woman putting her boyfriend’s death by cop on Facebook in real time as an example. The latter is key to considering a key source of unrest in the USA; it might look to some that suddenly, it’s open season on unarmed African American males, as seen by citizen camera and the occasional law enforcement body camera when they are actually turned on. I contend that this kind of thing has been happening to African American males for centuries. You just have more opportunities to witness it. You now have a choice: how much do you want to know? How many ingredients in your sausage do you want to know as you consume it?
This summer, you wrote a piece for your L.A. Weekly column called “White America Couldn’t Handle What Black America Deals With Everyday.” Is race a big topic on this tour?
Race is almost always brought up at my shows. There is no big piece on the topic night to night this time around. What could I tell you that you don’t already know? What dots could I possibly connect for you? The USA has known what’s what since 1865 when it had a chance to make things right with the Thirteenth Amendment and then nail it down with the Fourteenth in 1868. USA installed Jim Crow laws instead. Homo sapiens, apparently the most evolved monotype, still insists on using bigotry in everything from humor to elections.
Your radio show on KCRW is one of the most adventurous things going on the dial. You’ve played some incredible, far out stuff on the show. Have you ever gotten notes from the staff saying, “Okay, that might have been TOO much”?
Believe it or not, never. The only time you’re going to get a note is when FCC-unfriendly language somehow gets past you. I am sure if you played two hours of nose flute music for 25 shows in a row, someone might want to have a word but past that, I have been left to my own devices. I have also been bundled away to Sunday nights from 8 to 10 p.m., which is probably how they deal with me. I am miles from the main house, so am allowed to hoot and holler as loudly as I want.
Do you feel like there’s any sort of through line uniting what you play? Is there a specific quality you listen for in a song?
Absolutely. The song has to move me in some way, enough to hurl it in front of my wonderful listeners. You cannot dial it in. I make the show for only one person. I see them when I put a show together. It’s a young person, alone in a room in some culturally empty part of the world. They might be lonely or feel they don’t fit in. They have one thing going for them that night—two hours of radio that was put together to make it a little easier to breathe. That’s it. That’s how I make a radio show.
Your podcast, Henry and Heidi, with your longtime friend and assistant Heidi May, is great and has offered a lot of insight into the various eras of your career. Are you planning on revving it back up after tour finishes?
Heidi [May] and I celebrate 19 years of working together this month. She manages me and all my companies. We are hopefully going to resume the podcast when [the] tour ends, yes. My schedule tends to get overwhelming, so the podcast gets shelved for months at a time. For example, this tour is almost 13 months.
You’ve spent plenty of time in Phoenix going all the back to the SST Records days. Who’s your favorite band to come from here?
It would be the Meat Puppets. There is nothing like them anywhere
