Full Transcript:

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John Kennedy: Hello, welcome to Tape Notes, I hope you’re well.

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John Kennedy: We have got a very exciting new episode for you this week.

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John Kennedy: I caught up with Black Francis, aka Frank Black, aka Charles Thompson III, yes, the Charles Thompson, frontman, guitarist and songwriter of the legends Pixies.

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John Kennedy: Also part of the conversation was the band’s long time producer, often described as the fifth member, Tom Dalgety.

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John Kennedy: We were back at Strong Room Studios in East London early in the morning, and our conversation dug into the band’s new record, The Night The Zombies Came.

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John Kennedy: Fairly appropriate for Halloween, I think.

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John Kennedy: Charles and Tom were on great form and shared lots of great stories from their album writing process including the last minute track that Tom snuck onto the record, the inspiration that came from trips around the English countryside, and how they managed a couple of Charles’ temper tantrums, one of which included his songwriting notebook ending up on the studio roof.

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John Kennedy: To watch the full video of the podcast, head to the Tape Notes Patreon page at patreon.com/tapenotes, as well as access to the full video episodes, which often include screen capture of the band sessions and additional material from the conversations.

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John Kennedy: Becoming a patron also gives you access to episode gear lists, episode previews, and the opportunities to ask questions to upcoming guests amongst other things.

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John Kennedy: The support from patrons really helps us keep the show on the road.

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John Kennedy: So thank you to those of you who have joined us there already.

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John Kennedy: Thank you also to our partners at Tape It, the iPhone recording app for musicians, more on them later in the episode.

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John Kennedy: But now without further ado, let’s get started.

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John Kennedy: Hello, and welcome to Tape Notes, the podcast that looks behind the scenes at the magic of recording and producing music.

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John Kennedy: Every episode, we’ll be reuniting an artist and producer and talking through some of the highlights from their collaboration in the studio.

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John Kennedy: So join us as we lift the lid on the creative process and the inner workings of music production to see what lies beneath.

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John Kennedy: Hello, I’m John Kennedy, and joining me for this episode of Tape Notes are Pixies with producer Tom Dalgety to talk about how they wrote, recorded, and produced the album The Night The Zombies Came.

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John Kennedy: Pixies are an American alternative rock band formed in Boston in 1986, widely acclaimed as one of the most influential bands of the late 1980s alternative rock movement.

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John Kennedy: The band’s initial lineup formed when college roommates, guitarist Joey Santiago and singer and guitarist Charles Thompson, aka Black Francis, began jamming together.

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John Kennedy: They placed an ad for a bassist, which led to the recruitment of bass and vocalist Kim Deal, who also introduced them to drummer David Lovering.

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John Kennedy: Having established themselves in the Boston club scene, in 1988, the band released their full-length debut album, Surfer Rosa, produced by Steve Albini.

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John Kennedy: Their second record, Dolittle, arrived the following year.

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John Kennedy: Working with producer Gil Norton, the multi-platinum selling record became an immediate critical success, leaning heavily into their signature sound, a loud-quiet dynamic that combined aggressive searing guitars and Charles’ distinctive vocal style.

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John Kennedy: In 1993, Pixies disbanded, but their influence continued to grow, inspiring numerous prominent artists, including Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Radiohead, Weezer and The Strokes.

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John Kennedy: But in 2004, the Pixies reunited for a tour that would extend far beyond their original active years, performing to sold-out crowds worldwide for the next 15 years.

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John Kennedy: Since reuniting, the band have released a further five studio albums, working significantly with producer Tom Dalgety.

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John Kennedy: Their most recent release, The Night The Zombies Came, arrived in October 2024 with the band working with new edition bassist Emma Richardson.

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John Kennedy: Tom Dalgety is an English producer and engineer.

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John Kennedy: Cutting his teeth at the legendary Rockfield Studios in Wales, Tom quickly established himself as one of Rock’s most sought-after producers.

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John Kennedy: His breakthrough came with Royal Blood’s self-titled debut album, In 2014, which shot straight to number one on the UK Albums Chart and earned a Mercury Prize nomination.

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John Kennedy: His work on the album also saw him named Breakthrough Producer of the Year at the MPG Awards and earned him a nomination for British Producer of the Year at 2016’s Brits.

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John Kennedy: His reputation continued to soar with collaborations with bands including Pixies and Swedish theatrical rockers Ghost, the latter earning him two Grammy nods, Best Rock Album for Prequel and Best Rock Song for Rats.

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John Kennedy: Continuing his long-standing partnership with Pixies, most recently he has produced their 9th studio album, The Night The Zombies Came.

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John Kennedy: Today I’m at Strong Room Studios with Charles and Tom and what better way to start our conversation than by hearing something from the record.

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John Kennedy: This is Motorola.

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John Kennedy: It is Motorola by Pixies from the album The Night The Zombies Came.

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John Kennedy: And I’m very pleased to say that I’m sat in the Strong Room studio with Tom Dalgety and Black Francis, aka Charles from Pixies.

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John Kennedy: Hello, how are you?

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Charles Thompson: Good morning.

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John Kennedy: Good morning.

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John Kennedy: It’s great to have you both here.

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John Kennedy: Pleasure to be here.

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John Kennedy: When did you start thinking about this record?

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John Kennedy: When did you record it?

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Charles Thompson: Well, let me see.

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Charles Thompson: We recorded it about a year ago.

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Charles Thompson: Let’s see, we would have thought about it, I suppose, right when they were trying to pencil in the studio time, which would have been four or five months before that.

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Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

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Tom Dalgety: I think I came to your house, didn’t I?

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Tom Dalgety: Sometime in last summer, I came and did some demos at your place, and then we recorded it in October.

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John Kennedy: So you turned it around pretty quickly, really, I think.

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Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

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Tom Dalgety: I suppose it feels like ages ago now.

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John Kennedy: So, I mean, Dave Lovering from Pixies has described you, Tom, as the fifth member of Pixies, and this is the fourth album that you’ve worked on.

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John Kennedy: I know.

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John Kennedy: So that’s quite a long-standing relationship, maybe longer than any you had with any individual producer, Charles?

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John Kennedy: Yes.

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Charles Thompson: In fact, yeah, because we see, I guess with Gil, we would have done about, well, we did four records with Gil.

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Charles Thompson: So they’re neck and neck.

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Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

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Tom Dalgety: Look out.

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Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

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Tom Dalgety: I don’t know how they tolerate me.

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John Kennedy: But it’s clearly a relationship that has worked and works nice and easily, I presume.

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John Kennedy: How did it come about?

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John Kennedy: How did you end up working with Tom?

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Charles Thompson: We were making demonstration tapes, I believe, in Toronto some years ago, like 10 years ago or so, and we were looking for a new producer to work with, and I believe we had dinner.

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Charles Thompson: It was a band and management dinner with the new guy, Tom.

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Tom Dalgety: In Toronto, yeah.

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Charles Thompson: It was determined in the first 10 minutes that it would be just fine.

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Charles Thompson: I think that that was the general gist of it, was we just needed to meet Tom, and we didn’t really have a particular…

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Charles Thompson: When we first started to work with people, when we first started out, the record company would make a suggestion, and we used to just say, okay.

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Charles Thompson: And it’s not because we didn’t care, but we didn’t really have enough experience to really evoke a bunch of an opinion about it.

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Charles Thompson: We just wanted to do it, you know?

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Charles Thompson: So I think that by the time we got around of working with Tom, maybe collectively, you know, I had had enough experience that I suppose we could have asked a lot of pressing questions and that kind of thing, and listened to records that maybe he had worked on or whatever.

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Charles Thompson: But I have found that by and large, that when you’re making records with people, whether it’s the producer or the engineer or another band member, that as long as you kind of get on, you know, and kind of see eye to eye in the most sort of primal way, that’s really all that’s required, I think.

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Charles Thompson: You know, you don’t have to overthink it.

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Charles Thompson: We all know what we have to do.

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Charles Thompson: We have to make a record that’s not boring.

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Charles Thompson: I mean, that’s, we’re all in agreement.

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Charles Thompson: We all pitch in whatever we can do.

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Tom Dalgety: I thought you were going to say, I thought you were going to say, you know, in previous times, we had always like, you know, done whatever the label had wanted, but with Tom, we really, we specifically wanted him.

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Tom Dalgety: I was like, oh no, that’s not the case.

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Tom Dalgety: You’re just bored of the process.

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Tom Dalgety: I’m like, oh, this guy turned up.

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Tom Dalgety: He’s fine, you know.

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Charles Thompson: I mean, by that time though, by the time we started working with Tom, we had kind of, like a lot of people, we have moved on from the world of record companies.

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Charles Thompson: So even though we still deal with record companies and work with record companies, we more than ever before, we, with the advent of the internet and all that and streaming, you know, at least if you’ve been around for a little while, you could do whatever you want.

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Charles Thompson: You can kind of create your own menu.

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Charles Thompson: And so it wasn’t like there was a lot of pressure or from some office in some city somewhere, just sort of like, well, what are we going to do next?

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Charles Thompson: So we know we like working with nice people.

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Charles Thompson: And so he impressed us very quickly that he was a very nice man.

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Charles Thompson: And we thought, well, we felt comfortable, you know?

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John Kennedy: Yeah, yeah.

00:10:29.776 –> 00:10:31.256
John Kennedy: Crucial ingredients.

00:10:31.256 –> 00:10:32.716
John Kennedy: And clearly it’s working.

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John Kennedy: Yeah, because here you are, four albums in.

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John Kennedy: And with this new record, did you have any ideas about how you’re going to approach it?

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John Kennedy: Because after having made records together, you might be thinking, right, well, this time we’re going to do it this way, or this has worked, so we’re going to stick with that.

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Tom Dalgety: I mean, from my end, something that I feel like on the previous album, Dog Rule, we did, I did, I spent a lot of time at Charles’ house before we recorded demoing things in a kind of slightly more thorough way that we hadn’t done on the previous two records.

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Tom Dalgety: And that felt like it was a worthwhile thing.

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Tom Dalgety: So going into this album, we definitely spent a lot of, it feels like I spent a lot of time on your, on your couch with this laptop.

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Tom Dalgety: Yes.

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Tom Dalgety: You know, kind of berating you to do things.

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Tom Dalgety: And so I guess we kind of, for this time around, the songs were maybe a little bit more kind of organized and fleshed out before we went into the studio, I think, more so than previous ones.

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Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

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Tom Dalgety: So that, the only kind of like key sort of, that it felt a bit more, it feels like I had a little bit of an idea of what the whole record was going to be like before we hit record.

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Tom Dalgety: Whereas on the previous three, it was like, you know, a roller coaster.

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John Kennedy: Excellent.

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John Kennedy: Well, we’re going to look at three tracks today.

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John Kennedy: And the first of them is the Vegas Suite.

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John Kennedy: So maybe we could hear a blast of the master of that, Tom.

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Tom Dalgety: Yeah, absolutely.

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Tom Dalgety: Yeah, that’s fine.

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Tom Dalgety: Let me give you that.

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John Kennedy: It is The Vegas Suite by Pixies from The Night The Zombies Came.

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John Kennedy: We faded that down, just as it was lifting off.

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Tom Dalgety: Yeah, that’s my big keyboard moment was just coming in there.

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John Kennedy: Well, I’m sure we could sample it in just a minute, but where did it start with The Vegas Suite?

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Charles Thompson: Well, it is one of those kinds of songs where maybe there’s a little guitar figure or something, a little thingy dingy, that maybe someone else hears and encourages you.

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Charles Thompson: So I think I remember specifically the D chord with the capo.

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Charles Thompson: Then Tom just went, oh, that, you know what I mean?

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Charles Thompson: And it was like, or maybe I had told myself that also, and I was sort of stuck on that.

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Charles Thompson: Do, do, do, do, do, boom.

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Charles Thompson: And it’s just something about, not that it’s particular amazing or anything, but it just somehow, one sense of songwriting, Tom’s sense of it or my sense of it or our sense of it is like, oh yeah, that, that, we have to finish that.

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Charles Thompson: You have to kind of follow that trail where it leads and we’ll end up with a song in the end.

00:14:52.572 –> 00:14:53.732
Charles Thompson: But, yeah.

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Tom Dalgety: I just remember with this one as well, the kind of demoing sessions that I mentioned a minute ago.

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Tom Dalgety: This was the one where I think we’d finished, we were done and I’d put out all my stuff, packed up my neat little Peli cases and all that kind of thing.

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Tom Dalgety: And then you just sat there and you started doing that.

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Tom Dalgety: And I was like, oh, what’s that?

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Tom Dalgety: That’s good.

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Tom Dalgety: Okay.

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Tom Dalgety: Got all the stuff back out.

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Tom Dalgety: I was just looking forward to going back and having a five guys at the hotel.

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Tom Dalgety: And it was like, I’ve got to get the stuff out again.

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Tom Dalgety: So we put down a really, really rough, I think just that riff with a kind of blah, blah, blah kind of scratch vocal on it.

00:15:36.372 –> 00:15:40.052
Tom Dalgety: And yeah, that’s one that was not like what I just said.

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Tom Dalgety: And as in that it wasn’t like a thorough fleshed out demo.

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Tom Dalgety: It was kind of like a sketch that we then, you know, I don’t think you had a lyric on it until way later.

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Tom Dalgety: Right.

00:15:51.712 –> 00:16:01.452
Tom Dalgety: You know, that would be one of the, one of the Guildford sessions where I was kind of like, you know, banished you to that other, to the accommodation building.

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Tom Dalgety: Go and write me some lyrics.

00:16:02.652 –> 00:16:04.192
Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

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Tom Dalgety: I do actually have the demo.

00:16:05.652 –> 00:16:06.572
John Kennedy: Oh, wow.

00:16:06.572 –> 00:16:12.552
Tom Dalgety: There is blah, blah, you know, scat vocals if you don’t object to the world from hearing that.

00:16:12.692 –> 00:16:14.292
Tom Dalgety: I’m curious, yeah.

00:16:14.292 –> 00:16:19.132
Tom Dalgety: So here’s what I heard late at night, just before retiring.

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Tom Dalgety: So the riff changed a bit as well, I think.

00:16:51.909 –> 00:16:54.009
John Kennedy: I don’t know who’s doing the drums.

00:16:54.969 –> 00:16:56.229
John Kennedy: Is that Dave or is that Dave?

00:16:56.229 –> 00:17:02.129
Tom Dalgety: That’s a bit of my ham-fisted programming on a little midi keyboard, but yeah.

00:17:02.129 –> 00:17:06.429
Tom Dalgety: And I think we did do the other, we did that fast bit as well, maybe.

00:17:11.009 –> 00:17:15.069
Tom Dalgety: Which we didn’t do a vocal on that.

00:17:15.069 –> 00:17:15.949
Tom Dalgety: Maybe we missed a trick there.

00:17:16.049 –> 00:17:27.369
Tom Dalgety: But yeah, I mean, that’s usually what we, usually the kind of demoing process is Charles will just play like the most basic formation of the song.

00:17:27.369 –> 00:17:36.669
Tom Dalgety: And then I’ll kind of, you know, we do a lot of what we call sandwich stacking, which is, you know, experimenting with, maybe the bridge should be half as long this time.

00:17:36.669 –> 00:17:41.749
Tom Dalgety: And maybe the second half of the last chorus should be in a different key.

00:17:41.749 –> 00:17:49.969
Tom Dalgety: And, you know, just sort of like changing the arrangement at that stage and sort of hacking things around a bit, which I enjoy a lot.

00:17:49.969 –> 00:17:52.749
Tom Dalgety: It’s like one of my favorite bits of the process actually.

00:17:52.749 –> 00:18:06.629
Tom Dalgety: But then often after we’re done at night, I’ll then sort of just make a very rough drum idea, just so you kind of hear it as a song, you know, just to sort of embellish it a little bit.

00:18:06.629 –> 00:18:13.109
Tom Dalgety: And then sometimes Dave ends up completely sticking to what I do, which isn’t really my intention, but he’s like, oh, that’s great.

00:18:13.149 –> 00:18:15.009
Tom Dalgety: I’m going to do exactly that.

00:18:15.009 –> 00:18:18.609
Tom Dalgety: Even those stupid fills I’ve put in, oh yeah, yeah, great, you know.

00:18:18.609 –> 00:18:21.829
Tom Dalgety: So I’m like, oh, okay.

00:18:21.829 –> 00:18:24.989
Tom Dalgety: But it usually comes out pretty good, so it’s okay.

00:18:24.989 –> 00:18:25.549
John Kennedy: Yeah.

00:18:25.549 –> 00:18:36.389
John Kennedy: But it shows how a tiny little moment of kind of abstract thought of just strumming a guitar can then be turned into something much, much bigger.

00:18:36.389 –> 00:18:46.469
John Kennedy: So after getting that demo and going back, maybe adding those drums, and then do you go on to develop the song further, or did you wait until everybody’s there?

00:18:46.469 –> 00:18:47.729
Charles Thompson: Depends on the song.

00:18:48.449 –> 00:19:00.969
Charles Thompson: In this case, if you follow that, and you try to solve the riddle, then you go, ba-da-da-da-da-dum, ba-da-da-da-da-dum-dum.

00:19:00.969 –> 00:19:02.009
Charles Thompson: That sounds right.

00:19:09.609 –> 00:19:12.369
Charles Thompson: And then that becomes the cornerstone.

00:19:12.369 –> 00:19:17.669
Charles Thompson: So that’s like the whole song grows out, whatever the process is from that.

00:19:17.669 –> 00:19:19.829
Charles Thompson: But other times, you don’t have that.

00:19:19.829 –> 00:19:20.569
Charles Thompson: What you have is.

00:19:50.629 –> 00:20:00.149
Tom Dalgety: Something bad as well when sometimes there’ll be a completely developed idea with a lyric and a story and a middle section and everything.

00:20:00.149 –> 00:20:03.029
Tom Dalgety: And I’m just not that excited by it.

00:20:03.029 –> 00:20:05.889
Tom Dalgety: And then there’ll be one little riffy, da-da-da-da-da-da.

00:20:05.889 –> 00:20:06.849
Tom Dalgety: Oh, that’s great.

00:20:06.849 –> 00:20:08.449
Tom Dalgety: I’m like, that’s way cooler than all that.

00:20:08.449 –> 00:20:17.589
Tom Dalgety: That thing that you’ve been like slaving over and rewriting the second verse like four times, like that one little riff thing is that that’s worth pursuing.

00:20:17.909 –> 00:20:21.129
Tom Dalgety: And I can tell Charles is a bit like, really?

00:20:21.129 –> 00:20:22.709
Tom Dalgety: That thing?

00:20:23.129 –> 00:20:25.209
Tom Dalgety: But sometimes it’s worth it.

00:20:25.209 –> 00:20:30.089
Tom Dalgety: Not always, sometimes it’s a red herring and I end up kind of regretting it.

00:20:30.089 –> 00:20:33.929
John Kennedy: Yeah, but then that’s a good illustration of the kind of relationship that you have to have.

00:20:33.929 –> 00:20:38.149
John Kennedy: That ability to trust somebody’s excitement about something and also to-

00:20:38.149 –> 00:20:45.829
Charles Thompson: Well, you want the producer to be excited about what you’re doing, or you want the other people in the band to be excited about it.

00:20:45.889 –> 00:20:50.369
Charles Thompson: You don’t want them to just do it because we’re supposed to do it or something.

00:20:50.369 –> 00:20:54.509
Charles Thompson: You want it to be feel magical or something.

00:20:54.509 –> 00:21:07.049
Charles Thompson: So it’s hard for me to have songs rejected by the band or rejected by Tom because I’ll be really in love with it or whatever, but they have to be in love with it too.

00:21:07.049 –> 00:21:16.909
Charles Thompson: And so at the end of the day, I mean, I guess I could be pushy and stomp around and go, no, I’m the artist, I demand, I demand what I want.

00:21:16.909 –> 00:21:17.749
Charles Thompson: You know what I mean?

00:21:17.749 –> 00:21:18.109
Charles Thompson: Yeah.

00:21:18.109 –> 00:21:19.749
Charles Thompson: But, you know, fuck it.

00:21:19.749 –> 00:21:23.609
Charles Thompson: It’s just like, how many things can I micromanage and control?

00:21:23.609 –> 00:21:24.029
Charles Thompson: You know what I mean?

00:21:24.029 –> 00:21:24.869
Charles Thompson: It’s just sort of like.

00:21:25.209 –> 00:21:34.249
Tom Dalgety: Well, that’s something I was going to bring up though, is that something that I’m glad you did kind of kick up a fuss about was the getting the dryer drum sound.

00:21:34.249 –> 00:21:34.809
Charles Thompson: Oh yeah.

00:21:34.809 –> 00:21:43.949
Tom Dalgety: He’s been on at me ever since we did the album that’s called Beneath the Eerie, where in my defense, we were recording in this fucking gigantic church hall.

00:21:43.949 –> 00:21:51.349
Tom Dalgety: The drums sounded pretty big, and halfway through Charles was like, I want the drums to sound like Fleetwood Mac.

00:21:51.349 –> 00:21:52.269
Tom Dalgety: I want this.

00:21:52.269 –> 00:21:57.829
Tom Dalgety: And it’s like, okay, I’ve gone for the total opposite kind of thing.

00:21:57.829 –> 00:22:03.049
Tom Dalgety: So this time, I was like, okay, you want dry, I’ll get you fucking dry.

00:22:03.049 –> 00:22:07.209
Tom Dalgety: And so we put David in like a vocal booth, isn’t it?

00:22:07.289 –> 00:22:08.329
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, kind of, you know.

00:22:08.329 –> 00:22:09.289
Charles Thompson: They’re very small.

00:22:09.289 –> 00:22:12.829
Tom Dalgety: Everyone at the studio was like, oh, no one uses that live room, that sounds really weird.

00:22:12.829 –> 00:22:14.229
Tom Dalgety: Great, stick them in there.

00:22:14.229 –> 00:22:16.809
Tom Dalgety: We had like a really small dead drum kit.

00:22:16.809 –> 00:22:23.249
Tom Dalgety: And like, I actually like really went hard onto the dry drum sound thing.

00:22:23.249 –> 00:22:25.589
John Kennedy: I mean, are you, it may be able to play some of the drums that David did.

00:22:25.589 –> 00:22:27.589
Tom Dalgety: Yes, I can, I can do that, totally.

00:22:27.589 –> 00:22:34.669
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, the song that was the single called You’re So Impatient, that’s got a very good, that’s like the driest, I think.

00:22:34.669 –> 00:22:36.029
Tom Dalgety: But this is pretty dry, I think.

00:22:36.109 –> 00:22:38.269
Tom Dalgety: Let me, let me solo the drum thing.

00:22:41.249 –> 00:22:48.429
Tom Dalgety: Oh, I put a bit of spring on the snare that I hear there, but the core of it is pretty dry.

00:22:48.429 –> 00:22:49.429
Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

00:22:49.429 –> 00:22:49.569
Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

00:22:49.569 –> 00:22:52.629
John Kennedy: And why did you want a dry drum sound?

00:22:52.629 –> 00:22:53.509
John Kennedy: Why were you thinking that-

00:22:53.509 –> 00:22:54.509
Tom Dalgety: Just to shut him up, really.

00:22:54.509 –> 00:22:57.129
John Kennedy: No, that’s why, but why did you want it, Charles?

00:22:57.129 –> 00:22:58.489
Charles Thompson: I like dry drums, that’s all.

00:22:58.489 –> 00:23:00.589
Charles Thompson: I mean, I have nothing against big drums either.

00:23:00.589 –> 00:23:01.269
Charles Thompson: Yeah.

00:23:01.269 –> 00:23:19.349
Charles Thompson: But I think, you know, that sometimes it’s fun to have production and sort of high quality sounds and everything, but it feels almost like cheating or something.

00:23:19.349 –> 00:23:23.949
Charles Thompson: It’s like, we are the greatest, most powerful force in the world.

00:23:23.949 –> 00:23:26.469
Charles Thompson: We could go anywhere with our music.

00:23:28.009 –> 00:23:29.329
Charles Thompson: It just feels like that.

00:23:29.329 –> 00:23:29.849
Charles Thompson: You know what I mean?

00:23:29.849 –> 00:23:31.689
Charles Thompson: And it just feels like that.

00:23:31.769 –> 00:23:34.769
Charles Thompson: We’re the Carp of Pixies and it’s like…

00:23:34.769 –> 00:23:36.249
Tom Dalgety: I remember that was what you said.

00:23:36.369 –> 00:23:41.649
Tom Dalgety: You were like, yeah, sometimes it feels like we’re going to play rock music on Mars.

00:23:42.689 –> 00:23:48.529
Tom Dalgety: Like these big industrial machines, which they’re not.

00:23:48.529 –> 00:23:50.429
Tom Dalgety: So sometimes I feel that as well.

00:23:50.429 –> 00:23:55.829
Tom Dalgety: Sometimes I feel like, am I creating something that’s not actually naturally unfolding in front of me?

00:23:55.829 –> 00:23:56.709
Tom Dalgety: And sometimes it’s cool.

00:23:56.949 –> 00:24:04.549
Tom Dalgety: Sometimes on particular songs it works on some of those songs on Beneath Erie, that like in the arms of Mrs.

00:24:04.549 –> 00:24:10.029
Tom Dalgety: Mark of Cain, that wouldn’t work with a delicate, intimate drum sound.

00:24:10.029 –> 00:24:12.849
Tom Dalgety: It needs to be pretty full on.

00:24:12.849 –> 00:24:21.829
Tom Dalgety: But I think the songs lent themselves to a more kind of up close, intimate sound this time, I think, really.

00:24:21.829 –> 00:24:25.969
John Kennedy: And was there a particular era of Fleetwood Max that you were referencing, or just in general?

00:24:26.669 –> 00:24:28.669
John Kennedy: Just the general sound of Mick Fleetwoods.

00:24:28.669 –> 00:24:32.629
Charles Thompson: I mean, I like all kinds of production and records.

00:24:32.629 –> 00:24:37.149
Charles Thompson: So it’s not like I have my thang or anything like that.

00:24:37.149 –> 00:24:38.509
Charles Thompson: It’s, I like it all.

00:24:38.509 –> 00:24:38.989
Charles Thompson: You know what I mean?

00:24:38.989 –> 00:24:39.289
John Kennedy: Yeah.

00:24:39.289 –> 00:24:42.669
Tom Dalgety: I remember you doing a cool drawing of what you wanted.

00:24:42.669 –> 00:24:43.809
Tom Dalgety: The snare.

00:24:43.809 –> 00:24:45.189
Tom Dalgety: Do you remember this thing?

00:24:45.209 –> 00:24:46.129
Charles Thompson: I must have been.

00:24:46.129 –> 00:24:51.969
Tom Dalgety: The engineers at the studio were like really impressed by it, like, oh man, he’s really, really detailed about that.

00:24:51.969 –> 00:24:54.209
Tom Dalgety: And I was like, I’ve never seen him do anything like that before.

00:24:54.209 –> 00:24:55.249
Tom Dalgety: I don’t know where that came from.

00:24:55.309 –> 00:25:00.589
Tom Dalgety: And it was like, he drew what he wanted the snare to sound like, and it was like, kind of like a fried egg.

00:25:00.589 –> 00:25:02.369
Tom Dalgety: It was like a sort of a circle.

00:25:02.369 –> 00:25:05.769
Charles Thompson: I think I was a fried egg when I made that little picture.

00:25:05.769 –> 00:25:10.809
Tom Dalgety: And it was like, he wanted all the kind of, of the under snare to come through.

00:25:10.809 –> 00:25:14.989
Tom Dalgety: And I was like, but actually the way you drew it, I was like, I understand what you mean now.

00:25:14.989 –> 00:25:20.129
Charles Thompson: Every once in a while, the cannabis actually comes up with something, you know what I mean?

00:25:20.129 –> 00:25:22.129
Charles Thompson: Instead of just getting in the way.

00:25:22.129 –> 00:25:23.589
John Kennedy: So it’s not just purely medicinal.

00:25:25.609 –> 00:25:27.949
John Kennedy: What else should we hear, Tom?

00:25:28.729 –> 00:25:31.449
John Kennedy: Do you have any of that fried egg snare on this track?

00:25:31.449 –> 00:25:33.069
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, kind of.

00:25:33.069 –> 00:25:39.409
Tom Dalgety: There’s this moment that I feel like I have to mention, where you faded the track down a minute ago.

00:25:39.509 –> 00:25:51.449
Tom Dalgety: It was just this, like, my one little moment of doing a very kind of poor man’s Ray Manzarek kind of impression that I did on that kind of fast sixties part of the song.

00:25:51.589 –> 00:26:00.269
Tom Dalgety: But actually, when you were playing it in that session yesterday, I was like, oh yeah, there’s an organ thing there that obviously you’re not going to do live.

00:26:00.269 –> 00:26:00.729
Charles Thompson: Right, right.

00:26:00.729 –> 00:26:08.809
Tom Dalgety: Well, I kind of just heard it then and was like, yeah, so this is me doing some bad keyboard playing in that middle section, which-

00:26:15.252 –> 00:26:16.892
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, pretty snazzy, right?

00:26:21.952 –> 00:26:24.392
Tom Dalgety: So that’s, it’s not really very loud in the final thing.

00:26:24.392 –> 00:26:24.972
Tom Dalgety: It sounds, you know.

00:26:45.717 –> 00:26:52.397
Tom Dalgety: Yes, we slip into a total kind of 60s garage, nuggets kind of moment there.

00:26:52.397 –> 00:26:58.777
John Kennedy: It’s a kind of surprise within the song, where it suddenly kind of speeds up like that and goes crazy, because it doesn’t repeat.

00:26:58.777 –> 00:27:02.837
Tom Dalgety: I think we tried to get it to come back a bunch of times, didn’t we?

00:27:02.837 –> 00:27:08.417
Charles Thompson: It comes back at the end in tempo, at the end sort of almost like in sort of a more drugged out.

00:27:08.497 –> 00:27:13.357
Tom Dalgety: Same chords, but in a kind of slowed down kind of way.

00:27:13.357 –> 00:27:25.077
Charles Thompson: You know, as the outro, but there’s a lot of, obviously the song references Las Vegas, and so that’s kind of like the Vegas moment there.

00:27:25.077 –> 00:27:27.777
Charles Thompson: It’s a little instrumental montage there.

00:27:27.777 –> 00:27:34.137
Charles Thompson: You can see the whatever, the rock and roll band playing and the dancers or whatever.

00:27:34.137 –> 00:27:39.957
Charles Thompson: It’s just kind of like a, let’s sort of sum up Vegas here, summing it, you know what I mean?

00:27:39.957 –> 00:27:48.277
Charles Thompson: In some way without being too on the nose about it, just with some chords, you know, and a tempo change, you know?

00:27:48.277 –> 00:27:48.977
Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

00:27:48.977 –> 00:27:57.057
Tom Dalgety: I wonder if actually that, cause I can’t remember at what stage you wrote the lyric, because we had the kind of bones of it.

00:27:57.057 –> 00:28:02.957
Tom Dalgety: Maybe that kind of implied the Vegas thing to you, or did you have that up your sleeve already?

00:28:02.957 –> 00:28:08.697
Charles Thompson: I knew I was gonna go, Vegas hate us, forgave us, died or dade us.

00:28:08.697 –> 00:28:23.357
Charles Thompson: Usually I have some kind of syllable or consonant or whatever, some word, and I’ll be looking for rhymes in that general region maybe, and it will open certain doors to a finished lyric.

00:28:23.357 –> 00:28:24.037
John Kennedy: Yeah.

00:28:24.037 –> 00:28:27.317
John Kennedy: And how much do you have to finesse that?

00:28:27.317 –> 00:28:37.497
John Kennedy: How much does that go from having fun with sound to conveying meaning and making decisions about which words to choose?

00:28:37.497 –> 00:28:38.477
Tom Dalgety: That’s a big question.

00:28:38.477 –> 00:28:40.537
John Kennedy: I know, sorry.

00:28:40.537 –> 00:28:41.457
John Kennedy: Because I mean, with-

00:28:41.457 –> 00:28:45.677
Charles Thompson: I don’t want to have to think about it too much, and I don’t want it to make too much sense.

00:28:45.677 –> 00:28:57.957
Charles Thompson: I like things that are open-ended or triple meanings or things like that, so it doesn’t get too bogged down in a story or whatever.

00:28:59.557 –> 00:29:04.157
Charles Thompson: I only got a couple of verses to get it all in there anyway.

00:29:05.277 –> 00:29:16.057
Charles Thompson: It’s nice to have things that are open-ended and not completely one plus one equals two, because there’s not enough verses, at least in the kind of arrangements that we do.

00:29:17.097 –> 00:29:26.077
Charles Thompson: So, I don’t know, but sometimes you wrestle some topic, you really, it’s important to convey certain information.

00:29:26.077 –> 00:29:35.997
Charles Thompson: And so you fool around with it, keep fooling around with it and changing it and changing it and changing it till it all finally makes sense or something.

00:29:35.997 –> 00:29:45.357
Charles Thompson: But this would not be one of those, it’s enough to be just the mythology of, the mythology of a band on the road, I guess.

00:29:45.577 –> 00:29:54.677
Charles Thompson: You know, I remember there’s a Rock and Roll Hotel, which just got torn down in LA that we’ve stayed at a lot over the years.

00:29:54.677 –> 00:29:57.337
Charles Thompson: I think Tom has probably stayed there.

00:29:57.337 –> 00:30:02.777
Charles Thompson: And I remember staying there for some reason on tour or maybe I was at a recording session.

00:30:02.777 –> 00:30:07.957
Charles Thompson: And it’s not a particular nice hotel, it’s a kind of a motel really, that’s been…

00:30:07.957 –> 00:30:09.957
Tom Dalgety: We probably shouldn’t name it if you’re going to say that.

00:30:09.957 –> 00:30:11.437
Charles Thompson: No, no, it’s the Sportsman.

00:30:13.277 –> 00:30:13.697
Charles Thompson: You know what I mean?

00:30:13.697 –> 00:30:18.697
Charles Thompson: It’s a very old place from the 60s, even the 50s, I think.

00:30:18.697 –> 00:30:24.557
Charles Thompson: And so I think they just tore it down actually, the last couple of years, but Bayons like to stay there.

00:30:24.557 –> 00:30:29.797
Charles Thompson: But because you can park buses there and it’s not expensive hotel.

00:30:29.797 –> 00:30:33.157
Tom Dalgety: And there’s an amazing cheesecake place really nearby.

00:30:34.197 –> 00:30:45.097
Charles Thompson: But I remember going, I remember every time staying there and it was like two in the morning or three in the morning, I was coming back from a session and I was staying there for some reason.

00:30:45.117 –> 00:30:57.937
Charles Thompson: And I just seen this long, white haired figure kind of slowly, because he was an older gentleman, did not see his face.

00:30:57.937 –> 00:30:59.717
Charles Thompson: I knew instantly who it was though.

00:30:59.717 –> 00:31:01.717
Charles Thompson: It was like, oh, that’s David Crosby.

00:31:01.717 –> 00:31:09.837
Charles Thompson: It’s like, it was, it was just like, he’s going to like the Coke machine or whatever to like get a Coke at three in the morning or whatever he was doing, you know what I mean?

00:31:09.937 –> 00:31:12.397
Charles Thompson: And it’s just sort of like, yeah, here we are.

00:31:12.397 –> 00:31:23.137
Charles Thompson: We’re just like looking for our room, looking for the vending machine, looking for the laundry room, or on tour or where we have a recording session, whatever.

00:31:23.137 –> 00:31:31.457
Charles Thompson: So I think that that kind of kind of troubadour troubadour thing or whatever crops up a lot on this record.

00:31:31.457 –> 00:31:54.717
Charles Thompson: But throughout all the records I’ve made, there’s a little bit of kind of, it’s easy to talk about other artists, even if they’re completely different than you, because there’s some kind of shared experience there, whether it’s where we travel to or where we stay, or the places we record at, the places we eat at, the places we buy instruments at.

00:31:54.717 –> 00:31:57.917
Charles Thompson: It’s all kind of like, oh yeah, I know who that guy is.

00:31:57.917 –> 00:32:03.997
Charles Thompson: It’s like, great, we’re totally different, but we’re totally exactly the same at the same time.

00:32:05.057 –> 00:32:06.257
Charles Thompson: It’s validating, I guess.

00:32:06.257 –> 00:32:09.897
Charles Thompson: It feels like, okay, I’m in that club or whatever it is, you know what I mean?

00:32:09.897 –> 00:32:12.277
John Kennedy: Yeah, maybe staying at the Vegas Suite.

00:32:12.277 –> 00:32:13.877
John Kennedy: Yeah, exactly.

00:32:13.877 –> 00:32:17.757
John Kennedy: And is there anything else we should hear from the song production-wise?

00:32:17.757 –> 00:32:24.877
Tom Dalgety: Just something that I thought of, because you mentioned the dinner in Toronto when we first got together.

00:32:24.877 –> 00:32:32.837
Tom Dalgety: I was sat with Joey that night and we were talking a lot about the Troggs tapes, you know, the Troggs tapes, all the kind of outtakes of them in the studio.

00:32:32.837 –> 00:32:43.037
Tom Dalgety: And I just realized that there’s a good kind of, you know, a bit of fairy dust, that sort of 12-string thing on this song that I think was a last-minute addition to the chorus.

00:32:43.037 –> 00:32:45.957
Tom Dalgety: And I just realized that’s here and it sounds really lovely.

00:32:54.083 –> 00:32:57.663
Tom Dalgety: It actually sounds really troggs now when I hear it like that.

00:32:57.743 –> 00:32:58.423
Tom Dalgety: Love is all around.

00:32:58.423 –> 00:32:59.523
Charles Thompson: I forgot there’s a 12-string.

00:32:59.523 –> 00:33:01.143
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, I mean, yeah, because in there, it’s like…

00:33:09.003 –> 00:33:11.543
Tom Dalgety: This is where I want to go back and change all the mixes now.

00:33:11.543 –> 00:33:13.303
Tom Dalgety: I’m like, oh, that should have been really loud.

00:33:13.303 –> 00:33:15.443
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, but…

00:33:15.443 –> 00:33:17.503
John Kennedy: Maybe on the next record you can experiment with it.

00:33:17.503 –> 00:33:19.043
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, exactly, yeah.

00:33:19.043 –> 00:33:19.663
John Kennedy: Excellent.

00:33:19.663 –> 00:33:20.963
John Kennedy: Well, we’re going to move on.

00:33:20.963 –> 00:33:23.883
John Kennedy: The next song we’re going to look at is I Hear You, Mary.

00:33:23.883 –> 00:33:27.183
John Kennedy: We’re going to take a quick break and we’ll be back with that in just a moment.

00:33:27.183 –> 00:33:31.743
Tom Dalgety: Great.

00:33:50.403 –> 00:33:56.783
John Kennedy: This episode is being supported by Tape It, the ultimate iPhone voice note app designed specifically for musicians.

00:33:56.783 –> 00:34:08.163
John Kennedy: Tape It offers you features you won’t find in voice memos, including automatic instrument detection, easy marker tools, long form scrolling and collaborative mixtapes to share sounds with bandmates and co-writers.

00:34:08.163 –> 00:34:14.503
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00:34:14.503 –> 00:34:16.463
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00:34:16.463 –> 00:34:20.923
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00:34:27.483 –> 00:34:32.963
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00:34:32.963 –> 00:34:35.403
John Kennedy: That’s tape.it forward slash Tape Notes.

00:34:35.403 –> 00:34:36.443
John Kennedy: Now on with the show.

00:34:41.043 –> 00:34:50.403
John Kennedy: Hello, I have news of a brand new plug-in Natural Drums by Darcy and an offer for you of 20% off the full product if you use the code TapeNotes20.

00:34:50.403 –> 00:34:52.223
John Kennedy: But more about that at the end.

00:34:52.223 –> 00:35:00.303
John Kennedy: Whether you’re a new beat maker or a season producer, Natural Drums is a groundbreaking new tool for creating amazing beats really quickly.

00:35:00.303 –> 00:35:03.743
John Kennedy: And I’ve got Ed, one of the creators of Natural Drums here.

00:35:03.743 –> 00:35:04.643
John Kennedy: Hello Ed.

00:35:04.643 –> 00:35:05.723
Ed: Hi, thanks for having me on the show.

00:35:06.103 –> 00:35:07.823
John Kennedy: It’s a pleasure, tell us more.

00:35:07.823 –> 00:35:13.883
Ed: So we’re all musicians at Darcy and we felt like a lot of the tools out there for writing drums were quite limiting.

00:35:13.883 –> 00:35:19.123
Ed: So we created Natural Drums and it’s like having a drummer with you in your room when you’re writing your music.

00:35:19.123 –> 00:35:28.043
Ed: So you start by giving a basic shape and then you use two simple controls on the right side of the plugin to add notes.

00:35:28.043 –> 00:35:32.863
Ed: So for instance add some kick notes and then you can tailor those notes.

00:35:32.983 –> 00:35:38.503
Ed: So do you want them to be more in the pocket or do you want it to be a bit more syncopated like this?

00:35:40.403 –> 00:35:42.583
Ed: And then you can quickly add detail to other parts.

00:35:42.583 –> 00:35:44.063
Ed: So add some snares.

00:35:47.103 –> 00:35:49.883
Ed: You can change the hi-hat pattern.

00:35:49.883 –> 00:35:52.243
Ed: You can maybe add a cymbal pattern as well.

00:35:54.703 –> 00:35:56.223
Ed: And you can add fills.

00:35:58.583 –> 00:35:59.343
John Kennedy: That’s fantastic.

00:35:59.343 –> 00:36:04.603
John Kennedy: It really is like having your own drummer in the room with you, a bit like James Brown and Clyde Stubblefield.

00:36:04.603 –> 00:36:06.763
John Kennedy: So James might shout, make it funky.

00:36:06.763 –> 00:36:08.223
John Kennedy: And he would immediately respond.

00:36:08.223 –> 00:36:11.523
John Kennedy: But you can use this tool to do just that.

00:36:11.523 –> 00:36:14.803
Ed: Yeah, it’s great for really quickly workshopping ideas.

00:36:14.803 –> 00:36:17.943
Ed: And we’re really keen on preserving that creative workflow.

00:36:17.943 –> 00:36:22.063
Ed: And this doesn’t just apply to traditional acoustic drum sounds.

00:36:22.063 –> 00:36:25.043
Ed: So for instance, we load up an 808 kit.

00:36:26.383 –> 00:36:28.663
Ed: So adding a shape, adding some embellishments.

00:36:29.323 –> 00:36:35.603
Ed: And then we also, for trap music, we added a module called the Trapper File, which kind of does what it says on the tin to the hi-hats.

00:36:38.083 –> 00:36:39.683
Ed: And we can try a different genre.

00:36:39.683 –> 00:36:45.203
Ed: So for instance, as far as doing a garage track, you can start with a simple idea like this.

00:36:47.243 –> 00:36:49.863
Ed: And say, I guess, use your example of make it really funky.

00:36:49.863 –> 00:36:52.443
Ed: So crank all the busyness up.

00:36:54.303 –> 00:36:56.363
Ed: And you’ve got that result with that immediate feedback.

00:36:57.643 –> 00:36:58.563
John Kennedy: It sounds amazing.

00:36:58.563 –> 00:37:02.723
John Kennedy: And if it sounds exciting to you, all you have to do is go to darcy.com/tapenotes.

00:37:04.123 –> 00:37:11.003
John Kennedy: That’s daaci.com/tapenotes to get a special offer extended trial of natural drums.

00:37:11.003 –> 00:37:15.983
John Kennedy: And if you use the code Tapenotes20, you will get 20% off the full product.

00:37:15.983 –> 00:37:17.383
John Kennedy: Ed, thanks again for that.

00:37:17.383 –> 00:37:18.523
John Kennedy: Really, really interesting.

00:37:18.523 –> 00:37:20.823
John Kennedy: And now on with the show.

00:37:20.823 –> 00:37:26.543
John Kennedy: The next song we’re going to look at from The Night The Zombies Came by Pixies is I Hear You, Mary.

00:37:26.543 –> 00:37:29.583
John Kennedy: And Tom, maybe you could give us a blast of the master?

00:37:29.583 –> 00:37:30.083
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, sure.

00:38:36.554 –> 00:38:38.874
John Kennedy: A little taste of I Hear You, Mary by Pixies.

00:38:39.174 –> 00:38:41.354
John Kennedy: So, where did this begin?

00:38:41.354 –> 00:38:45.654
Charles Thompson: This was, I don’t know, Joey wrote the music to this one.

00:38:45.654 –> 00:38:46.674
Charles Thompson: Yeah.

00:38:46.694 –> 00:38:59.674
Charles Thompson: And so, we had finished a record in the States, but we were in England, kind of like the way we are now, to do some promotion or something like that.

00:38:59.674 –> 00:39:01.254
Charles Thompson: We were in Wales.

00:39:01.254 –> 00:39:06.434
Charles Thompson: And we had worked a long time ago at-

00:39:06.434 –> 00:39:07.054
Charles Thompson: Rockfield.

00:39:07.054 –> 00:39:07.674
Charles Thompson: Rockfield.

00:39:08.854 –> 00:39:16.594
Charles Thompson: And like a lot of the producers in the UK, many of them have worked at Rockfield.

00:39:16.594 –> 00:39:21.794
Charles Thompson: And so, Tom had suggested, let’s go to Rockfield for seven or eight days.

00:39:21.794 –> 00:39:24.054
Charles Thompson: And so, yeah.

00:39:24.054 –> 00:39:39.894
Charles Thompson: So, Joey had written some music that we put down, and I was not in a very good mood, because Tom wanted to work on things that I didn’t want to work on.

00:39:39.894 –> 00:39:41.014
Charles Thompson: And I was very grouchy.

00:39:41.014 –> 00:39:49.274
Charles Thompson: I remember I threw a couple of temper tantrums during that session, but he kept pushing me to kind of work on this song.

00:39:49.274 –> 00:39:58.334
Charles Thompson: And it’s kind of nice working on a song that Joey writes the music to, which is not often, but once in a while, he’ll write something.

00:39:58.334 –> 00:40:02.634
Charles Thompson: And so I just have to be like the singer guy, you know what I mean?

00:40:02.634 –> 00:40:04.614
Charles Thompson: And I’m not thinking about chords.

00:40:05.994 –> 00:40:14.514
Charles Thompson: And so, I mean, lyrically, it’s all just about Monmouth really, and the things that you see there as a band.

00:40:14.514 –> 00:40:23.814
Charles Thompson: And that would be like the fields of rapeseed, and there’s a very old graveyard, and the high street is really the old market.

00:40:23.814 –> 00:40:28.514
Charles Thompson: It goes up the hill, and it gets narrower as it gets to the top.

00:40:28.514 –> 00:40:30.334
Charles Thompson: There’s this beautiful church, St.

00:40:30.334 –> 00:40:43.374
Charles Thompson: Mary’s at the top, and we’re in the old days, that’s where they would have done the slaughtering as well for the lamb, for the sheep, as they’re going up that road that gets narrower and narrower to kind of pull them together, you know?

00:40:43.374 –> 00:40:48.634
Charles Thompson: And so, I don’t know why we know all these things, but from hanging out there, we know these things.

00:40:48.634 –> 00:40:51.234
Tom Dalgety: Absorb some of the kind of local mythology.

00:40:51.234 –> 00:40:54.734
John Kennedy: So that’s great, so the good people of Monmouth can claim this as their own.

00:40:54.734 –> 00:40:56.614
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, and the church is St.

00:40:56.614 –> 00:40:57.374
Tom Dalgety: Mary’s, right?

00:40:57.374 –> 00:40:59.634
Tom Dalgety: Yes, it is, yeah.

00:40:59.634 –> 00:41:19.914
Charles Thompson: But yeah, it was a very difficult track to put together because it had other sections and music, and we just were not happy with various versions, and it just kept getting edited and edited to the point where it was like a joke, and I was getting pissed off because I was like, here we go, then I’m fucking at it.

00:41:19.914 –> 00:41:20.394
Charles Thompson: You know what I mean?

00:41:21.134 –> 00:41:22.034
Charles Thompson: What’s the point?

00:41:22.034 –> 00:41:23.134
Charles Thompson: Let’s just start over.

00:41:23.134 –> 00:41:24.334
Charles Thompson: I became very grudging.

00:41:24.334 –> 00:41:24.874
Tom Dalgety: I think we did.

00:41:24.874 –> 00:41:27.234
Tom Dalgety: I think this is back to the drawing board.

00:41:27.874 –> 00:41:31.014
Tom Dalgety: Let’s go back to exactly how it was before we started questioning it.

00:41:31.814 –> 00:41:34.534
Charles Thompson: I forgot the track, all about the track.

00:41:34.954 –> 00:41:35.634
Tom Dalgety: I was sneaky on this.

00:41:35.634 –> 00:41:40.174
Charles Thompson: He was sequencing the record, and then he just stuck it in there.

00:41:40.174 –> 00:41:45.054
Charles Thompson: Then I was like, but enough time had passed, and my mood had improved, shall we say.

00:41:45.114 –> 00:41:47.574
Charles Thompson: When I heard it, I was like, Oh, actually, this is good.

00:41:47.634 –> 00:41:54.854
Tom Dalgety: I just put it in the drop box and sort of was like, I wonder if anyone notices this, because we weren’t really doing this song.

00:41:54.854 –> 00:42:05.314
Tom Dalgety: But yeah, it came from a Joey thing that he sent us, just to him acoustically playing the main parts, which I have here, actually, I think.

00:42:05.314 –> 00:42:07.874
Tom Dalgety: Annoyingly, there’s some weird glitch at the very top of it.

00:42:07.874 –> 00:42:10.154
Tom Dalgety: It’s like an MP3, so it doesn’t start straight away.

00:42:24.363 –> 00:42:26.843
Tom Dalgety: Very muso, actually, isn’t it?

00:42:26.843 –> 00:42:28.783
Tom Dalgety: You know, a lot of chords.

00:42:30.543 –> 00:42:33.323
Tom Dalgety: And then the main progression.

00:42:36.923 –> 00:42:46.003
Tom Dalgety: And I think it was when you were doing whatever you were doing in Wales, that it was like a BBC festival thing.

00:42:46.003 –> 00:42:56.423
Tom Dalgety: I was talking to Dave after, I think just at the hotel, and we were just talking about things you just enjoy playing for the sake of playing.

00:42:56.423 –> 00:43:09.223
Tom Dalgety: And Dave was saying that he really likes playing that kind of, sort of, go your own way, or like maybe a ticket to ride, kind of, kind of thing.

00:43:09.223 –> 00:43:20.803
Tom Dalgety: And Joey had just sent me this, and I was like, I’ve got a song where you can do that exact kind of groove, you know, and kind of, because I don’t think, like, we hadn’t even agreed that we were doing that song at that point.

00:43:20.803 –> 00:43:25.483
Tom Dalgety: So I was like, just trying to kind of fuel the fire a little bit and do it.

00:43:25.483 –> 00:43:34.423
Tom Dalgety: And then, yeah, so Dave plays that kind of, that kind of thing.

00:43:34.423 –> 00:43:38.843
Tom Dalgety: I was like, well, if you, you know, if you want a song where you play that, I’ve got just the thing.

00:43:38.843 –> 00:43:44.903
John Kennedy: And do you have any of those first versions that it went through, or do you want to just play how you restarted it?

00:43:44.943 –> 00:43:52.843
Tom Dalgety: It sort of jumped straight from Joey’s acoustic voice memo to actually playing it as a band.

00:43:52.843 –> 00:43:58.543
Charles Thompson: There was one very sort of jazz chord that became like a bridge section.

00:43:58.543 –> 00:43:59.683
Tom Dalgety: Did that bite the dust?

00:43:59.683 –> 00:44:04.363
Charles Thompson: It exists now only for literally like, Oh, I know.

00:44:04.363 –> 00:44:05.183
Charles Thompson: Like one beat.

00:44:05.323 –> 00:44:07.123
Charles Thompson: It just goes bong and then it’s gone.

00:44:08.043 –> 00:44:08.503
Tom Dalgety: It’s like…

00:44:17.689 –> 00:44:20.809
John Kennedy: So, that led to a whole other section.

00:44:20.809 –> 00:44:23.449
Tom Dalgety: That was like a recurring thing.

00:44:23.449 –> 00:44:27.109
Tom Dalgety: It was a kind of a sort of bookend that happened.

00:44:27.109 –> 00:44:33.969
Tom Dalgety: Every transition had this kind of little kind of jazzy moment, and then I think that was the main thing that was pissing you off.

00:44:33.969 –> 00:44:46.349
Tom Dalgety: And actually, I remember we were talking about it as being like, when you go to certain types of steak restaurants, where they’ll put like a big wedge of pineapple on it.

00:44:47.009 –> 00:44:49.829
Tom Dalgety: And I think you were like, that’s what that bit’s like.

00:44:49.829 –> 00:44:51.269
Tom Dalgety: It’s like this bit of pineapple.

00:44:51.269 –> 00:44:53.249
Tom Dalgety: And like, I don’t want the pineapple.

00:44:53.249 –> 00:44:56.309
Tom Dalgety: So I kind of removed it.

00:44:56.309 –> 00:44:58.989
Tom Dalgety: Well, I removed some of the pineapple.

00:44:58.989 –> 00:45:09.649
Tom Dalgety: But yeah, and I think I put some weird noisy stuff over the top of it to make it a little less sweet, so there’s some sort of ugly kind of, you know, stuff going on.

00:45:09.749 –> 00:45:15.689
Tom Dalgety: So it’s not all, you know, pineapple with maybe a bit of pepper on it or something like that, you know.

00:45:15.689 –> 00:45:17.469
Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

00:45:17.469 –> 00:45:19.229
John Kennedy: What else should we hear?

00:45:19.229 –> 00:45:20.869
Tom Dalgety: What else should we hear?

00:45:20.869 –> 00:45:31.449
Tom Dalgety: Well, another thing is that whilst I was already being kind of sneaky even submitting this song, I sort of added a load of stuff to it before sending it as well.

00:45:31.449 –> 00:45:41.509
Tom Dalgety: And one of the things was Emma’s kind of ghostly backing vocal thing at the beginning, which wasn’t in the previous version of this song that Charles would have heard.

00:45:41.509 –> 00:45:42.349
Tom Dalgety: That wasn’t even in it.

00:45:42.349 –> 00:45:56.569
Tom Dalgety: But because it was kind of had that kind of almost the lyrics kind of almost like about being maybe being haunted by this character, this Mary character, I was like, oh, we can have some ghostly Emma backing vocals in it.

00:45:56.569 –> 00:45:58.289
Tom Dalgety: So it could have sort of has this kind of thing.

00:46:10.503 –> 00:46:14.843
Tom Dalgety: So, that’s another thing I just sort of added at the last minute without running it by anyone.

00:46:14.843 –> 00:46:17.683
Tom Dalgety: And then no one, no one but an eyelid.

00:46:17.683 –> 00:46:19.303
Tom Dalgety: So I was like, okay, cool, fine.

00:46:19.603 –> 00:46:20.083
Tom Dalgety: That’s good.

00:46:20.863 –> 00:46:23.683
John Kennedy: Have you got that within the track?

00:46:23.683 –> 00:46:25.603
Tom Dalgety: That’s just over the intro, actually.

00:46:25.863 –> 00:46:32.823
Tom Dalgety: And also the intro is probably something I should mention because I was asking Joey, this guitar thing that happens.

00:46:35.303 –> 00:46:35.703
John Kennedy: Right.

00:46:35.703 –> 00:46:36.903
John Kennedy: I can hear Emma there as well.

00:46:36.903 –> 00:46:40.603
John Kennedy: And it’s interesting because I was gonna ask about the intro, because trying to work out what it is.

00:46:40.603 –> 00:46:43.003
Tom Dalgety: Well, I was trying to work out what it is yesterday.

00:46:43.003 –> 00:46:44.023
Tom Dalgety: And so I was asking Joey-

00:46:44.023 –> 00:46:46.383
Charles Thompson: To me it sounds like the sheep going up for the slaughter.

00:46:48.903 –> 00:46:49.563
Tom Dalgety: That is exactly-

00:46:49.563 –> 00:46:51.523
Charles Thompson: Oh yeah, he put the sheep in there!

00:46:51.523 –> 00:46:52.723
Tom Dalgety: That’s what I was going for.

00:46:52.723 –> 00:46:54.903
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, you got me.

00:46:54.903 –> 00:47:01.483
Tom Dalgety: But yeah, that intro, I was trying to remember, I was trying to remember what it was, and me and Joey were scratching our heads trying to remember what it is.

00:47:02.483 –> 00:47:14.063
Tom Dalgety: I thought it was this Moog pedal called a MIDI Murph, but he said that it’s not, it’s an Eventide H9, which is a really modern looking pedal.

00:47:14.063 –> 00:47:22.443
Tom Dalgety: The kind of thing that I usually shy away from, to be honest, but it does all that cool modulating stuff really well.

00:47:23.343 –> 00:47:26.863
Tom Dalgety: I think he had literally just got it before we recorded this song.

00:47:28.003 –> 00:47:41.043
Tom Dalgety: We were spending a few hours just scrolling through all the presets, going, oh, this is cool, and then one just happened to come up that was like, oh, that would sound good at that kind of picked intro on that new idea.

00:47:41.043 –> 00:47:46.843
Tom Dalgety: This is probably whilst you were walking into Monmouth in a bad mood, getting ready to come back and-

00:47:46.843 –> 00:47:48.243
John Kennedy: Thinking about slaughtering sheep.

00:47:48.323 –> 00:47:50.123
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah.

00:47:50.123 –> 00:48:07.263
Charles Thompson: My lyric booklet had to be retrieved from the rooftop of the studio, because I threw such a tantrum that I just threw the lyric booklet on the roof of the studio, and then the studio manager, she like, just on her own, or I think maybe my girlfriend sent her up there to retrieve it.

00:48:07.263 –> 00:48:07.783
Tom Dalgety: The funny thing is-

00:48:07.783 –> 00:48:09.523
Charles Thompson: Went up there with a ladder and got it back down.

00:48:09.523 –> 00:48:19.303
Tom Dalgety: I actually didn’t know what was going on, but I could see that bit of the roof from the control room, and I remember suddenly just seeing loads of people climbing out onto the roof, I was like, what the hell is going on?

00:48:19.303 –> 00:48:21.023
Tom Dalgety: It’s retrieving a lyric book.

00:48:21.023 –> 00:48:21.583
Tom Dalgety: Wow.

00:48:21.583 –> 00:48:22.263
Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

00:48:22.263 –> 00:48:27.103
Charles Thompson: I’m usually not that bad in the studio, but whatever, I was having a rough week.

00:48:27.123 –> 00:48:28.263
Tom Dalgety: It was good.

00:48:28.263 –> 00:48:30.063
John Kennedy: Fair enough.

00:48:30.063 –> 00:48:45.903
John Kennedy: It’s interesting, all these lyrical ingredients that are taken from what’s outside the door, in effect, going on a walk and noticing the rapeseed and the daffodils and know that it’s amazing, and then putting it together with the music.

00:48:46.003 –> 00:48:48.463
John Kennedy: Is there anything else we should hear from?

00:48:48.463 –> 00:48:48.763
Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

00:48:48.763 –> 00:48:58.183
Tom Dalgety: I mean, we should probably shine a bit of a light on some of Joey’s stuff because he does some really great sounds in this song.

00:48:58.183 –> 00:49:13.403
Tom Dalgety: Like does a very Joey thing that I think he tends to maybe shy away from, and then I encourage him to do, which is where he does a droney thing underneath the chorus, where the main chorus guitar is going.

00:49:18.123 –> 00:49:22.823
Tom Dalgety: So that’s just Joey and then Joey and Charles together doing that.

00:49:25.763 –> 00:49:29.023
Tom Dalgety: Then I always get him to do this droney thing in the middle of it.

00:49:29.023 –> 00:49:35.363
Tom Dalgety: I think it’s a weird feedback echo thing that he was doing, which is like this.

00:49:41.148 –> 00:49:47.768
Tom Dalgety: Which, in amongst all the guitars, Sounds really cool.

00:49:48.828 –> 00:49:50.008
Charles Thompson: Oh, that’s what’s doing that.

00:49:50.008 –> 00:49:51.648
Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

00:49:52.108 –> 00:49:54.048
Charles Thompson: I was trying to figure it out.

00:49:55.168 –> 00:49:55.928
Charles Thompson: That’s what it is.

00:49:55.928 –> 00:50:02.208
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, there’s just something that just sort of, you know, makes the chords a little bit more sour there, that kind of like tension.

00:50:02.208 –> 00:50:07.388
Tom Dalgety: And yeah, I always get him to do it, and he’s like, oh, that’s such a me thing, I shouldn’t do that.

00:50:07.388 –> 00:50:09.288
Tom Dalgety: And I was like, and that’s exactly why you should do it.

00:50:09.808 –> 00:50:10.728
Tom Dalgety: Come on.

00:50:10.728 –> 00:50:23.508
Tom Dalgety: And yeah, because I think a lot of the, because Joey wrote the music for this one, I utilized him, you know, and kind of made the most of the fact that Charles was in a bad mood.

00:50:23.508 –> 00:50:29.028
Tom Dalgety: So I was like, well, Joey, you’re gonna have to play a lot of guitar on this song because we need to pretty much finish it and then present it to Charles.

00:50:30.348 –> 00:50:31.688
Tom Dalgety: And yeah, it paid off in the end.

00:50:31.688 –> 00:50:33.628
Tom Dalgety: I think it sounds great.

00:50:33.628 –> 00:50:34.948
John Kennedy: And how is that sound created?

00:50:34.948 –> 00:50:36.268
John Kennedy: Do you know how that sounds?

00:50:37.208 –> 00:50:43.288
Tom Dalgety: With a guitar and some pedals and some amplifiers, I think.

00:50:43.628 –> 00:50:45.248
Tom Dalgety: I can’t remember exactly.

00:50:45.588 –> 00:51:11.168
Tom Dalgety: We do a lot of stuff where I’ll sort of mess around with his pedals whilst he’s playing and kind of like sort of swell the echo for an ending and maybe kind of change the speed of things so there’s a bit of kind of like modulation in what he’s doing and there’s definitely some of that going on in there, which I’ll solo and see if we can hear.

00:51:11.168 –> 00:51:29.568
Tom Dalgety: Actually, I do a really cheesy, obvious bit at the end of it where I do exactly that, like slow the repeats down on like an echo pedal, so that gives it that weird pitch effect.

00:51:29.568 –> 00:51:31.508
John Kennedy: Are you doing that while he’s playing?

00:51:32.068 –> 00:51:34.248
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, sometimes.

00:51:34.248 –> 00:51:37.748
Tom Dalgety: If I forget the impression that I’m pissing him off, then maybe I’ll stop.

00:51:37.748 –> 00:51:40.368
Tom Dalgety: But usually he’s pretty hard to distract.

00:51:40.368 –> 00:51:44.068
Tom Dalgety: Usually he’s in the zone and I’m on the floor fucking around.

00:51:44.608 –> 00:51:46.988
Tom Dalgety: But yeah, I’m trying to think exactly what it was.

00:51:47.168 –> 00:51:58.548
Tom Dalgety: And he likes some, we both have them actually, an MXR carbon copy, which is like a bucket brigade echo pedal, that we use that a lot.

00:51:58.548 –> 00:52:11.808
Tom Dalgety: And just looking at the arrangement now, there’s another thing that I always thought was kind of interesting about this song in that when it gets to the last chorus, it’s kind of like a major version of the chorus that you’ve heard before.

00:52:11.808 –> 00:52:23.368
Charles Thompson: Well, the little jazz chord section left it, somehow guided it so that somehow we went, oh, so out chorus, let’s just make it major instead of minor.

00:52:23.368 –> 00:52:23.728
Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

00:52:23.728 –> 00:52:30.888
Charles Thompson: So then I didn’t like it, but then you left it in there, and then now it sounds good.

00:52:31.008 –> 00:52:36.208
Tom Dalgety: And he basically, he just forgot that he didn’t like it, and here we are.

00:52:36.208 –> 00:52:40.068
Tom Dalgety: But yeah, so the first two choruses have this minor.

00:52:47.768 –> 00:52:49.668
Tom Dalgety: And then when it reprises at the end.

00:52:58.728 –> 00:53:01.928
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, so it just kind of, I remember it being quite different.

00:53:01.928 –> 00:53:07.948
Tom Dalgety: It was kind of felt like we were shoehorning it in there for a while, and then it eventually felt good.

00:53:07.948 –> 00:53:10.248
Tom Dalgety: I think the harmony helps a lot there actually.

00:53:10.448 –> 00:53:14.848
Tom Dalgety: There’s, Emma does a really nice thing there that kind of sweetens it even more.

00:53:28.388 –> 00:53:40.928
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, that kind of sweetens it even more, makes it kind of, almost kind of makes it a caricature of like, we know this is going really, really major now, and you know, kind of bangs the nail in.

00:53:40.928 –> 00:53:43.008
John Kennedy: And all the time Dave gets to play his drums that-

00:53:43.228 –> 00:53:48.188
Tom Dalgety: He’s just, yeah, he’s, Dave’s just playing his favorite, you know.

00:53:49.508 –> 00:53:54.648
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, with a crash there, but yeah, he’s doing his thing the whole time.

00:53:54.648 –> 00:54:05.348
Charles Thompson: But it’s satisfying that sometimes you want magic and lightning to strike and oh, we was the second take, and that’s all there was, and we moved on.

00:54:05.508 –> 00:54:06.808
Charles Thompson: You want it to be like that.

00:54:07.248 –> 00:54:11.568
Charles Thompson: But sometimes you gotta like beat it to shit, you know what I mean?

00:54:11.568 –> 00:54:19.668
Charles Thompson: Just beat the horse till it’s dead and dead and dead, and then somehow it rises again and has light.

00:54:19.668 –> 00:54:22.248
Charles Thompson: It’s like, oh, it’s back, he’s alive again.

00:54:22.248 –> 00:54:28.308
Charles Thompson: And it’s like, well, actually, no, I like this zombified Frankenstein that’s come back to life.

00:54:28.308 –> 00:54:29.788
Tom Dalgety: Skeleton horse that you’ve been flogging.

00:54:29.788 –> 00:54:32.328
Charles Thompson: And so there’s no rules, you know what I mean?

00:54:32.328 –> 00:54:34.068
Charles Thompson: It’s okay, it’s okay to beat to shit.

00:54:34.188 –> 00:54:39.408
Charles Thompson: It doesn’t mean that your result will be bad in the end.

00:54:39.408 –> 00:54:41.988
John Kennedy: Shall we have a blast to the ending just to round things up?

00:54:41.988 –> 00:54:42.728
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, why not?

00:54:42.728 –> 00:54:42.888
Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

00:54:42.888 –> 00:54:49.208
Tom Dalgety: When I play that sort of major chorus till the end, it comes back into the ghostly bit as well.

00:55:35.500 –> 00:55:47.180
John Kennedy: Really interesting to hear you talk about that and how the struggles that you have to go through sometimes for a song to end up on a record, be it not sharing it with Charles and then kind of surprising him with it again.

00:55:47.180 –> 00:55:50.420
John Kennedy: So time has elapsed that he can hear it again.

00:55:50.420 –> 00:55:56.220
Tom Dalgety: I think I’m abusing the, I’m making the most of the fact that we’ve been working together for a while now.

00:55:56.220 –> 00:56:00.600
Tom Dalgety: And I think I can do those cheeky little maneuvers.

00:56:00.600 –> 00:56:07.360
Tom Dalgety: I wouldn’t do that with a, if it was the first time making a record with a band, I wouldn’t be like, oh, you know that thing that you totally forgot about and you told me you hate it?

00:56:07.360 –> 00:56:11.480
Tom Dalgety: Well, here’s a completely finished mix of it with loads of stuff you’ve never heard before.

00:56:12.120 –> 00:56:16.800
Tom Dalgety: I wouldn’t try that with a new band, but I just about feel comfortable enough to do it now.

00:56:16.800 –> 00:56:20.040
John Kennedy: But that’s the beauty of having a longer relationship with someone.

00:56:20.040 –> 00:56:29.400
John Kennedy: But it also illustrates to me, your choice of language, Charles, that has always been a really distinguishing aspect of Pixies and your songwriting.

00:56:29.400 –> 00:56:35.900
John Kennedy: Just the fact that you use a word like cobblestone in that song, and you talk about sweet flesh on the bone.

00:56:35.900 –> 00:56:40.980
John Kennedy: Those are phrases that don’t crop up often in other people’s work.

00:56:40.980 –> 00:56:41.460
Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

00:56:41.460 –> 00:56:42.180
Charles Thompson: They rhyme.

00:56:43.060 –> 00:56:43.860
John Kennedy: And they rhyme.

00:56:43.880 –> 00:56:44.740
John Kennedy: Amazing.

00:56:44.740 –> 00:56:49.520
Tom Dalgety: Also, the sweet flesh line is over that kind of pineapple jazz chord as well.

00:56:49.520 –> 00:56:59.880
Tom Dalgety: So it’s quite nice having a grizzly lyric over that kind of slightly loungy chord, kind of like just offsets it a bit, I think, which is nice.

00:57:00.960 –> 00:57:01.860
John Kennedy: True.

00:57:01.860 –> 00:57:02.340
John Kennedy: Right.

00:57:02.340 –> 00:57:08.000
John Kennedy: We’re going to take another quick break and look at Jane, The Night The Zombies Came next.

00:57:08.000 –> 00:57:08.320
Tom Dalgety: Got you.

00:57:11.340 –> 00:57:16.860
John Kennedy: This episode is supported by Museversal, an amazing new service for working with session musicians remotely.

00:57:16.860 –> 00:57:22.600
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00:57:30.980 –> 00:57:34.240
John Kennedy: I’ve got David from Museversal here to tell us more about it.

00:57:34.240 –> 00:57:35.620
John Kennedy: Hi David, great to have you on.

00:57:36.060 –> 00:57:38.240
John Kennedy: What is Museversal?

00:57:38.240 –> 00:57:39.740
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00:57:39.740 –> 00:57:41.180
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00:58:04.180 –> 00:58:09.240
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00:58:09.240 –> 00:58:13.780
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00:58:13.780 –> 00:58:16.500
John Kennedy: Can you tell us more about the musicians that they’ve been working with?

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00:58:21.400 –> 00:58:29.320
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00:58:59.640 –> 00:59:05.860
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00:59:05.860 –> 00:59:08.960
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00:59:08.960 –> 00:59:12.040
John Kennedy: And David, can you remind us of the offer for Tape Notes listeners?

00:59:12.040 –> 00:59:19.620
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John Kennedy: To get the offer, find the link in any of our recent episode show notes.

00:59:35.580 –> 00:59:42.480
John Kennedy: The next song we’re going to look at from The Night The Zombies Came is the title track, I guess, Jane, The Night The Zombies Came, in brackets.

00:59:42.480 –> 00:59:47.580
John Kennedy: We’ll find out how it’s and why it’s titled like that, but maybe you could give us a blast to the master.

00:59:47.580 –> 00:59:48.120
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, why not?

01:01:08.920 –> 01:01:10.240
John Kennedy: It is Jane, The Night The Zombies Came.

01:01:10.270 –> 01:01:27.730
John Kennedy: The zombies came, and earlier on, we were chatting before we started recording, and you were trying to work out when it became Jane, and transitioned from being The Night The Zombies Came, and which way round it should be, and which song title you prefer.

01:01:27.730 –> 01:01:31.590
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, were you always referring to it as Jane, when we were putting it together?

01:01:31.590 –> 01:01:32.690
Tom Dalgety: I can’t remember.

01:01:32.690 –> 01:01:36.170
Charles Thompson: I think it became Jane The Night The Zombies Came pretty quickly.

01:01:36.170 –> 01:01:38.710
John Kennedy: Because Jane is mentioned a lot in the song.

01:01:38.710 –> 01:01:38.870
Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

01:01:39.630 –> 01:01:41.570
John Kennedy: So, where did it start with Jane?

01:01:41.570 –> 01:01:47.430
Tom Dalgety: This one, I remember it’s kind of not dissimilar from-

01:01:47.430 –> 01:01:48.010
Charles Thompson: Vegas.

01:01:48.010 –> 01:01:54.490
Tom Dalgety: From Vegas, in that there was like you were just messing around on playing that kind of fluttery tick tick tick tick tick tick thing and I was like-

01:01:54.490 –> 01:02:04.930
Charles Thompson: I think I went, as soon as I played the down, down, down, bong, to that minor, the one, two, two, two, two.

01:02:04.930 –> 01:02:05.910
Charles Thompson: Is that how it goes?

01:02:05.910 –> 01:02:06.490
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, yeah.

01:02:07.750 –> 01:02:09.030
Charles Thompson: It was sort of like, oh, that’s the song.

01:02:09.030 –> 01:02:14.110
Charles Thompson: It’s like, so the song is already done even before I wrote it.

01:02:14.110 –> 01:02:17.630
Charles Thompson: Just that ba, ba, ba, ba.

01:02:17.630 –> 01:02:18.550
Charles Thompson: We have to have that.

01:02:19.850 –> 01:02:21.170
Charles Thompson: That’s in it.

01:02:21.170 –> 01:02:28.530
Charles Thompson: Then I think, I don’t know which came first, but then the other part, the verse has a sort of dissonant.

01:02:30.310 –> 01:02:36.770
Charles Thompson: I’ve been, the previous record, I wrote most of the songs of the capo on the third fret.

01:02:36.770 –> 01:02:41.330
Charles Thompson: So this time I went to second fret to make it different.

01:02:41.410 –> 01:03:06.630
Charles Thompson: On an acoustic, I fiddle around a little too much sometimes for my own good, and I start playing bass lines or whatever in the chord progression, and for a rough and ready band like the Pixies, if I’m playing too much, then I remember this was hard to get everyone to find their note without stomping on everybody else.

01:03:06.630 –> 01:03:12.590
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, there’s a kind of a kind of dissonant clashing thing where the melody rubs.

01:03:19.270 –> 01:03:33.410
Tom Dalgety: Just like one of those little half step was kind of, if everyone did it, it sounded super ugly, but we had to kind of find the right balance of like, if bass, both guitar and vocal all do it, it just sounds horrible.

01:03:33.410 –> 01:03:38.570
Tom Dalgety: But then if only one person does it, it doesn’t really get the point of the theme doesn’t come across.

01:03:38.570 –> 01:03:41.830
Tom Dalgety: So we had to, we tried that a few different ways, I think.

01:03:41.830 –> 01:03:51.270
Tom Dalgety: But this is one where, as soon as I heard you play the rough kind of beginnings of it, I was like, oh, I know exactly what I want this to sound like.

01:03:51.270 –> 01:03:57.790
Tom Dalgety: And the demo for this one is actually pretty close to what we ended up with.

01:03:58.690 –> 01:04:04.770
Tom Dalgety: I got maybe a little bit too carried away with the demo, to then…

01:04:04.890 –> 01:04:05.810
Charles Thompson: To make a point.

01:04:05.810 –> 01:04:06.430
Tom Dalgety: We were kind of just…

01:04:06.430 –> 01:04:09.970
Charles Thompson: You wanted it to be like an early 60s, y’know?

01:04:09.970 –> 01:04:17.150
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, I wanted it to be like a Phil Spector, Ronettes, Be My Baby, y’know, that kind of big, kind of wall of sound thing.

01:04:17.730 –> 01:04:27.670
Tom Dalgety: Which was like, I kind of created a rod for my own back, cause I’d been established this like, I really want this album to have this like, crisp, dry, intimate drum sound.

01:04:27.670 –> 01:04:33.510
Tom Dalgety: And then I’m like, oh yeah, but I also want to go full on Spector crazy and do this song.

01:04:33.510 –> 01:04:45.630
Tom Dalgety: So I had to like, after establishing this, this really sort of dry sound, I had to like then break my own rule and be like, yeah, but this song, we got to go full bombast.

01:04:45.630 –> 01:04:54.950
Tom Dalgety: And yeah, I think we’re like, it’s one of the ones, it’s the only time ever with Pixies where I’ve been kind of chasing the demo a little bit.

01:04:54.950 –> 01:04:56.990
Tom Dalgety: I remember that the demo had something cool about it.

01:04:56.990 –> 01:05:03.810
Tom Dalgety: Whereas every other time the demo has just really served as a kind of way for everyone to get to know the song.

01:05:03.810 –> 01:05:07.970
Tom Dalgety: Whereas with this one, it was a bit like, oh no, this is, this is pretty cool.

01:05:07.970 –> 01:05:10.370
Tom Dalgety: You know, there’s something, something in the demo.

01:05:10.490 –> 01:05:17.050
Tom Dalgety: I think we kept a little bit of the guitar from the demo even because it was just like my, you know, I’ll play it.

01:05:17.050 –> 01:05:17.710
John Kennedy: Yeah, let’s hear it.

01:06:24.473 –> 01:06:28.913
Tom Dalgety: The bells are a little bit more obvious there, than they ended up being, yeah.

01:06:28.913 –> 01:06:31.013
John Kennedy: So, I mean, that’s just the two of you putting that together there.

01:06:31.473 –> 01:06:31.653
Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

01:06:31.653 –> 01:06:32.053
John Kennedy: Yeah.

01:06:32.053 –> 01:06:32.573
John Kennedy: Yeah.

01:06:32.573 –> 01:06:32.753
Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

01:06:32.753 –> 01:06:36.633
Tom Dalgety: So, I kind of, I fell in love with it straight away, and it was definitely my favorite early on.

01:06:36.633 –> 01:06:40.253
Tom Dalgety: I kind of put a bit more time into the demo of this one than all the other ones.

01:06:40.253 –> 01:06:44.873
Tom Dalgety: So, that’s why, if there was ever any hint of like, oh, maybe we won’t do that one.

01:06:44.873 –> 01:06:45.933
Tom Dalgety: I was like, no, no, we have to do that one.

01:06:45.933 –> 01:06:47.273
Tom Dalgety: We have to do that one, you know.

01:06:47.273 –> 01:06:51.013
Tom Dalgety: And then it ended up being the title track of the record.

01:06:51.013 –> 01:06:54.733
Tom Dalgety: So, it was worth waving the flag for it.

01:06:54.733 –> 01:07:05.733
Tom Dalgety: But this has got, I mean, I kind of broke all my own rules and went really quite kind of kitchen sink, with, you know, just threw everything at it.

01:07:05.733 –> 01:07:14.633
Tom Dalgety: You know, layered up all those like tubular bells and like tons and tons of acoustic guitars that I think, I remember you didn’t like that at one point.

01:07:14.633 –> 01:07:17.493
Tom Dalgety: You were like, oh, it’s like a fucking swarm of bees coming out the speakers.

01:07:17.493 –> 01:07:19.393
Tom Dalgety: And I was like, yeah, but it’s great.

01:07:19.393 –> 01:07:24.193
Tom Dalgety: You know, like, I want those bees to attack me, you know.

01:07:24.193 –> 01:07:30.133
Tom Dalgety: But yeah, there’s tons of, I mean, I could like solo bits of this one for days, which might not be a good idea because it might be like, you know.

01:07:30.173 –> 01:07:31.953
John Kennedy: But it would be a good idea to do a little bit.

01:07:31.953 –> 01:07:32.313
Tom Dalgety: Sure.

01:07:32.313 –> 01:07:33.913
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, yeah.

01:07:33.913 –> 01:07:36.793
Tom Dalgety: So the drums are still at the kind of core of it.

01:07:36.793 –> 01:07:41.853
Tom Dalgety: There is a dry drum sound nestled in amongst it all.

01:07:45.133 –> 01:07:55.773
Tom Dalgety: But then they had this great reverb tank at Guildford, which was like a modded Fender reverb tank, which I just put all the drums through.

01:07:55.913 –> 01:08:02.333
Tom Dalgety: So that’s sloshed over pretty much everything.

01:08:02.333 –> 01:08:04.293
Tom Dalgety: And also a chamber as well.

01:08:04.293 –> 01:08:07.333
Tom Dalgety: So there’s all, yeah, it’s, yeah.

01:08:07.633 –> 01:08:11.933
Tom Dalgety: I’m trying my best to do the wall of sound thing with this one.

01:08:11.933 –> 01:08:13.753
Tom Dalgety: And there’s loads of percussion as well.

01:08:13.753 –> 01:08:21.973
Tom Dalgety: And we did this cool thing where, when we were doing some of the guitars, Joey was like unplugging something on his pedal board.

01:08:21.973 –> 01:08:28.673
Tom Dalgety: But because there was loads of reverb on his amps, the sound of him unplugging the pedals sounded great.

01:08:28.673 –> 01:08:33.813
Tom Dalgety: And I was like, oh, can we do that in time with the snare?

01:08:33.813 –> 01:08:40.553
Tom Dalgety: So there’s a kind of this weird spring effect here, like that.

01:08:40.553 –> 01:08:46.933
Tom Dalgety: And that’s kind of, I kind of layered that on top of the snare in the chorus.

01:08:46.933 –> 01:08:49.553
Tom Dalgety: So it’s kind of all in there.

01:08:49.553 –> 01:08:50.853
Tom Dalgety: Sounds like it’s part of the snare.

01:08:57.873 –> 01:09:04.993
Tom Dalgety: Over that being a fun thing to do, like kind of like again, hands and knees going in time with the tune.

01:09:04.993 –> 01:09:06.993
Tom Dalgety: And then, yeah, tons of percussion.

01:09:06.993 –> 01:09:11.593
Tom Dalgety: I’m a bit embarrassed about how much fucking stuff I put on this one actually.

01:09:11.593 –> 01:09:13.693
John Kennedy: But is it all played by Dave?

01:09:13.693 –> 01:09:15.333
John Kennedy: I mean, are you getting him to do those?

01:09:15.373 –> 01:09:18.253
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, all that kind of all the additional percussion stuff.

01:09:18.373 –> 01:09:32.253
Tom Dalgety: We, I think we kind of messed with some of the, there was a drum kit that we weren’t using, that we kind of tuned the two floor toms down to try and make them sound like timpani, which sound pretty good actually.

01:09:32.253 –> 01:09:33.953
Tom Dalgety: I think I’ve got them here.

01:09:33.953 –> 01:09:39.313
Tom Dalgety: So like, sort of got that kind of wrong resonance to it.

01:09:39.413 –> 01:09:44.173
Tom Dalgety: So that’s in, what does that remind me of?

01:09:44.173 –> 01:09:47.593
Tom Dalgety: Is that like that Hawaii Five-O or something?

01:09:47.593 –> 01:09:48.913
David: Oh yeah.

01:09:50.913 –> 01:09:52.933
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

01:09:52.933 –> 01:09:56.013
John Kennedy: But the whole soundscape that you create has a real drama to it.

01:09:56.013 –> 01:10:03.293
John Kennedy: You know, it enhances the drama of the story because it seems to have a kind of sinister edge to this story.

01:10:03.293 –> 01:10:04.713
John Kennedy: Like you’ve got the goods on Jane.

01:10:05.113 –> 01:10:06.893
John Kennedy: You know, it’s The Night The Zombies Came.

01:10:06.893 –> 01:10:08.973
John Kennedy: Somebody doesn’t survive.

01:10:08.973 –> 01:10:10.113
John Kennedy: Yeah, yeah.

01:10:10.113 –> 01:10:10.573
John Kennedy: It’s kind of dark.

01:10:10.573 –> 01:10:14.253
Tom Dalgety: And this is one where I think I first heard it.

01:10:14.253 –> 01:10:17.613
Tom Dalgety: I think it had a finished lyric from like the word go, didn’t it?

01:10:17.813 –> 01:10:18.753
Tom Dalgety: I don’t remember.

01:10:18.753 –> 01:10:23.653
Tom Dalgety: It wasn’t one where you did a kind of scratch vocal of the melody and then wrote.

01:10:24.393 –> 01:10:25.773
Tom Dalgety: I think you had it all.

01:10:25.773 –> 01:10:26.333
Charles Thompson: Yeah.

01:10:26.333 –> 01:10:28.533
Charles Thompson: It kind of wrote itself kind of a thing, you know.

01:10:28.533 –> 01:10:36.213
Charles Thompson: I think sometimes if I know exactly what it is, what it’s about, maybe it’ll just be very fast.

01:10:36.213 –> 01:10:36.733
Charles Thompson: You know what I mean?

01:10:37.253 –> 01:10:38.833
Charles Thompson: And I don’t fight it.

01:10:38.833 –> 01:10:54.853
Charles Thompson: And it was the only thing, usually the title comes from a lyric or the title of one of the songs and none of the titles of the songs worked and none of the lyrics worked for the entire record.

01:10:54.853 –> 01:11:04.173
Charles Thompson: They all sounded like stupid cliche titles, except that parenthetical The Night The Zombies Came.

01:11:04.173 –> 01:11:07.873
Charles Thompson: When I saw that, I was like, well, it’s kind of a title.

01:11:07.873 –> 01:11:09.513
Charles Thompson: I mean, you can’t really, you know what I mean?

01:11:09.513 –> 01:11:10.913
Charles Thompson: That’s, you can’t fight that.

01:11:10.913 –> 01:11:13.093
Charles Thompson: It’s The Night The Zombies Came.

01:11:13.093 –> 01:11:20.353
Charles Thompson: That’s like pretty, I didn’t know if it was too much, but as soon as I presented it, everyone went, oh yeah, that’s fine.

01:11:20.353 –> 01:11:20.893
Charles Thompson: That’s good.

01:11:20.893 –> 01:11:21.113
Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

01:11:21.113 –> 01:11:31.573
Tom Dalgety: I remember we, we were the last to leave the studio and we kind of had a listen through to everything on the last night, kind of looking for like, what could the title for the record be?

01:11:31.573 –> 01:11:33.993
Tom Dalgety: And that was one of the first things you said, oh, The Night The Zombies Came.

01:11:33.993 –> 01:11:37.313
Tom Dalgety: And I was like, well, that’s obviously going to be too stupid, so we’re not going to do that.

01:11:37.313 –> 01:11:39.473
Tom Dalgety: And then kind of like went through loads of other options.

01:11:39.473 –> 01:11:46.913
Tom Dalgety: There was one, there was a lyric from Primrose that I think I suggested that was like, in sweet repose.

01:11:46.913 –> 01:11:47.613
Tom Dalgety: And I was like, I like that.

01:11:47.613 –> 01:11:49.593
Tom Dalgety: And you were like, no, that’s far too pretentious.

01:11:49.593 –> 01:11:51.253
Tom Dalgety: And I was like, oh yeah, okay, whatever.

01:11:51.253 –> 01:11:52.653
Tom Dalgety: The Night The Zombies Came, you know.

01:11:52.653 –> 01:11:56.873
Tom Dalgety: And then it was like, no, that actually is the coolest one.

01:11:56.873 –> 01:12:00.773
John Kennedy: It is called title because it conjures up so many different ideas in it.

01:12:00.773 –> 01:12:01.513
John Kennedy: Yeah.

01:12:01.513 –> 01:12:05.373
Tom Dalgety: And zombies appear in more songs than just this one.

01:12:05.373 –> 01:12:06.133
Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

01:12:06.133 –> 01:12:08.853
Tom Dalgety: So it’s kind of a theme.

01:12:08.853 –> 01:12:10.193
Tom Dalgety: Not really a concept album, is it?

01:12:10.193 –> 01:12:10.653
John Kennedy: Yeah.

01:12:10.653 –> 01:12:10.833
John Kennedy: Yeah.

01:12:10.833 –> 01:12:13.553
John Kennedy: Not one that you had thought through before, but it emerged.

01:12:13.553 –> 01:12:20.813
Charles Thompson: Sometimes there’s like a phrase or a word or an idea that is in the sessions.

01:12:21.633 –> 01:12:26.933
Charles Thompson: And it’s sort of, it isn’t like you were a slave to it or too uptight about it.

01:12:26.933 –> 01:12:32.973
Charles Thompson: You just kind of go, yeah, the whole zombie movie thing or whatever it was that was kicking around.

01:12:32.973 –> 01:12:35.913
Charles Thompson: Then every time it comes up, you’re like, oh, there it is again.

01:12:35.913 –> 01:12:37.493
Charles Thompson: And you don’t fight it so much.

01:12:37.493 –> 01:12:39.913
Charles Thompson: You don’t push it either, but you don’t fight it.

01:12:39.913 –> 01:12:45.293
Charles Thompson: And then maybe in the end, it does kind of create a kind of atmosphere.

01:12:45.293 –> 01:12:45.753
John Kennedy: Yeah.

01:12:45.753 –> 01:12:58.573
Tom Dalgety: I just remember also with this one, when I said about keeping some elements from the demo, one of those is that kind of like Springsteen-y guitar thing you did, which Charles has got this little Vox practice amp.

01:12:59.033 –> 01:13:01.333
Tom Dalgety: I mean, like a tiny little thing.

01:13:01.333 –> 01:13:16.773
Tom Dalgety: And when we’re doing demos, usually I’ll just grab the vocal mic and kind of chuck it on the floor somewhere near the amp and literally like sort of zero care and attention to getting a good guitar sound.

01:13:16.773 –> 01:13:19.213
Tom Dalgety: And somehow it turned out really great.

01:13:19.293 –> 01:13:28.713
Tom Dalgety: And that’s ended up being this kind of like broilbziny kind of…

01:13:31.293 –> 01:13:34.733
Tom Dalgety: So that’s just like the vocal mic on the floor somewhere in front of this little practice amp.

01:13:34.733 –> 01:13:41.293
Tom Dalgety: And, you know, we tried to get a similar kind of sprangy sound in the studio and nothing was beating that.

01:13:41.293 –> 01:13:44.353
Tom Dalgety: So I was like, well, let’s just let’s leave that in there then, you know.

01:13:45.793 –> 01:13:49.213
John Kennedy: There’s a couple of elements in this song that I wanted to ask about.

01:13:49.233 –> 01:14:00.353
John Kennedy: One is the bit where the backing, your backing cry of Jane, and the kind of the snare hit at the same time, if it’s a snare.

01:14:00.353 –> 01:14:15.513
John Kennedy: And that’s something I’ve always really loved about the world of Pixies, the sound world of Pixies, because that is a kind of crucial element to some songs that crop up over the years, that kind of almost holler that you get.

01:14:15.513 –> 01:14:19.853
John Kennedy: Noah, I was interested in when you came up with that idea.

01:14:19.853 –> 01:14:27.373
Charles Thompson: As soon as he put down the full spectrum drums of Jane, it’s like that all, it just happened.

01:14:27.493 –> 01:14:29.873
Charles Thompson: It’s just like, so that was a good thing.

01:14:29.873 –> 01:14:36.733
Charles Thompson: The rough drum that he put down immediately just sent me off in the correct direction or whatever.

01:14:37.133 –> 01:14:37.593
John Kennedy: Yeah.

01:14:37.593 –> 01:14:40.853
Charles Thompson: And so all that Jane, Dave sang all those bits.

01:14:40.933 –> 01:14:41.573
Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

01:14:41.573 –> 01:14:44.513
Charles Thompson: But it’s all from the demo.

01:14:44.513 –> 01:14:50.793
Tom Dalgety: We made good use of, Dave’s got a really great deep baritone voice and we made a bit of use of it.

01:14:50.973 –> 01:14:54.153
Tom Dalgety: We got him to do a Jane sounds.

01:14:54.153 –> 01:14:58.853
Tom Dalgety: I remember telling him to try and sound like Bela Lugosi when he was doing it.

01:14:58.853 –> 01:15:00.693
Tom Dalgety: It is Jane.

01:15:01.953 –> 01:15:03.733
Tom Dalgety: Which is great, you know.

01:15:03.733 –> 01:15:04.293
John Kennedy: It is great.

01:15:04.293 –> 01:15:05.993
John Kennedy: How much echo?

01:15:05.993 –> 01:15:07.153
Tom Dalgety: Oh, there’s everything on it.

01:15:07.153 –> 01:15:07.753
Tom Dalgety: Everything.

01:15:07.753 –> 01:15:08.333
Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

01:15:08.333 –> 01:15:09.753
John Kennedy: We got to do that again.

01:15:09.753 –> 01:15:10.073
Tom Dalgety: Hang on.

01:15:10.073 –> 01:15:10.893
Tom Dalgety: Wait, where is he?

01:15:13.093 –> 01:15:13.653
Tom Dalgety: It’s great.

01:15:13.653 –> 01:15:17.033
Tom Dalgety: There’s a ton of fun backing vocals going on here.

01:15:17.053 –> 01:15:18.013
Tom Dalgety: Let me try and find them.

01:15:18.013 –> 01:15:18.993
Tom Dalgety: Hang on a sec.

01:15:18.993 –> 01:15:20.433
Charles Thompson: By Jane.

01:15:33.533 –> 01:15:41.013
Tom Dalgety: We’ve got Emma being the Renette and Dave being Bela Gosi and you just shouting, Jane.

01:15:41.013 –> 01:15:41.553
Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

01:15:42.173 –> 01:15:48.393
John Kennedy: I guess a related question, is the role of Emma and the different women that have been part of Pixies.

01:15:48.393 –> 01:15:57.093
John Kennedy: Now, that whole contrast between the female voice and your voice, Charles, seems to be such a crucial ingredient in the Pixies sound.

01:15:57.093 –> 01:15:58.113
John Kennedy: It’s such a nice one.

01:15:58.293 –> 01:15:59.353
John Kennedy: It works so well.

01:15:59.853 –> 01:16:05.333
John Kennedy: It’s so nice having your voice contrasted with Emma’s voice in this instance.

01:16:05.333 –> 01:16:09.013
John Kennedy: Emma, the new addition to the band, sounds fantastic, doesn’t she?

01:16:09.013 –> 01:16:09.273
Charles Thompson: Yeah.

01:16:09.273 –> 01:16:21.653
Charles Thompson: She’s a great singer and coincidentally, she came recommended to us by both of the producers that we had worked with the most, Tom and Gil Norton.

01:16:21.653 –> 01:16:25.693
Charles Thompson: They both said separately just by coincidence or whatever.

01:16:25.693 –> 01:16:26.433
Charles Thompson: We were asking around.

01:16:30.093 –> 01:16:31.553
Charles Thompson: Tom said, I think I’ve got some on my mind.

01:16:32.073 –> 01:16:37.093
Charles Thompson: I happen to be calling Gil just to chit chat as we do once in a blue moon.

01:16:37.093 –> 01:16:40.093
Charles Thompson: I said, oh yeah, we’re looking for a new bassist.

01:16:40.933 –> 01:16:42.313
Charles Thompson: He said, oh, Emma.

01:16:42.313 –> 01:16:44.873
Charles Thompson: We’re like, oh yeah, we’ve heard about this, Emma.

01:16:44.873 –> 01:16:50.433
Charles Thompson: That confirmed it, just having both producers mentioned the same person.

01:16:51.893 –> 01:17:02.893
Charles Thompson: But yeah, we’ve always had that yin and yang of female, male vocal and I can’t really take any credit for it or anything in terms of that being much of a concept.

01:17:02.893 –> 01:17:06.953
Charles Thompson: I think maybe I thought the talking heads were cool.

01:17:06.953 –> 01:17:14.693
Charles Thompson: Tina Weymouth, I don’t know if I even can think of her, I don’t really think of her as really being much of a vocalist in that group.

01:17:14.693 –> 01:17:22.793
Charles Thompson: But her presence on their stage presence or whatever, maybe when I first put together the band, I was aware of it.

01:17:23.253 –> 01:17:25.493
Charles Thompson: I thought it was cool or something.

01:17:25.493 –> 01:17:26.793
Charles Thompson: It just seemed right.

01:17:26.793 –> 01:17:27.373
Charles Thompson: Yeah.

01:17:27.373 –> 01:17:35.153
Charles Thompson: So that’s what we looked for, was a woman bass player who would obviously sing as well.

01:17:35.153 –> 01:17:45.313
Charles Thompson: The audience, when we started to perform shows and put out records, responded hugely to Kim Deal.

01:17:45.313 –> 01:17:46.013
Charles Thompson: You know what I mean?

01:17:46.033 –> 01:17:50.813
Charles Thompson: And she really stood out in a way.

01:17:50.813 –> 01:17:58.893
Charles Thompson: And so even though we went our separate ways with her, it just was like, yeah, we could never not have a woman bass player.

01:17:58.893 –> 01:18:04.113
Charles Thompson: It just, we don’t have a lot of rules in the band, but that’s kind of like maybe one of them.

01:18:04.113 –> 01:18:13.153
Charles Thompson: It’s like, yeah, we have to have a woman playing bass to cover, and also to cover the other vocals.

01:18:13.153 –> 01:18:20.033
Charles Thompson: The occasional lead vocal, the occasional harmony, the occasional use in line, whatever happens naturally.

01:18:20.033 –> 01:18:22.833
Charles Thompson: But yeah, we’ve always had that.

01:18:22.833 –> 01:18:32.233
Tom Dalgety: I was just going to say the other kind of rule that you do have, which I really like, is that all four members play on every song.

01:18:32.233 –> 01:18:32.593
Charles Thompson: Oh yeah.

01:18:32.593 –> 01:18:41.873
Tom Dalgety: So remember the first time working together doing Head Carrier, there was one song that I was like, oh, this would be really nice if it’s just you, like just acoustic and vocal.

01:18:41.873 –> 01:18:44.153
Tom Dalgety: And it’s like, no, no, this is Pixies.

01:18:44.153 –> 01:18:46.573
Tom Dalgety: It has to be all four.

01:18:46.573 –> 01:18:47.453
Tom Dalgety: And so we kind of-

01:18:47.453 –> 01:18:50.053
Charles Thompson: We didn’t know that either until you hear it.

01:18:50.053 –> 01:18:51.413
Charles Thompson: And then you go, what’s wrong?

01:18:51.413 –> 01:18:57.913
Charles Thompson: It’s like, oh, because we’ve never not had all four members playing on a track.

01:18:57.913 –> 01:19:02.673
Charles Thompson: So I was like, okay, so we have to, sorry, we can’t do the acoustic version or whatever.

01:19:02.933 –> 01:19:03.093
Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

01:19:03.093 –> 01:19:04.713
Tom Dalgety: And I remember being annoyed at the time.

01:19:04.713 –> 01:19:06.953
Tom Dalgety: I was like trying to get this kind of Neil Young thing with you.

01:19:06.953 –> 01:19:11.433
Tom Dalgety: And I was like, I don’t want more guitars and drums and stuff on it actually.

01:19:11.433 –> 01:19:12.473
Tom Dalgety: But you’re right.

01:19:12.473 –> 01:19:16.873
Tom Dalgety: It just didn’t sound, it didn’t sound right when it was just you unaccompanied.

01:19:16.873 –> 01:19:17.753
Charles Thompson: Right, right.

01:19:17.753 –> 01:19:18.393
Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

01:19:18.393 –> 01:19:19.293
John Kennedy: And it’s interesting, isn’t it?

01:19:19.293 –> 01:19:25.253
John Kennedy: After so much time, know how important it is to be Pixies.

01:19:25.253 –> 01:19:27.833
John Kennedy: No, it’s not just a collection of songs.

01:19:27.833 –> 01:19:33.353
John Kennedy: It’s a collection of songs by Pixies and it has to have certain ingredients for it to be that.

01:19:33.353 –> 01:19:33.933
Charles Thompson: Yeah.

01:19:33.933 –> 01:19:37.153
Charles Thompson: And we don’t know what those ingredients are necessarily.

01:19:37.153 –> 01:19:39.193
Charles Thompson: We know some of them.

01:19:39.193 –> 01:19:54.513
Charles Thompson: But like I said, when something is missing or when something has been, when there’s too much information there, the wrong information, kind of little flags go off, little warning flags go off.

01:19:54.513 –> 01:19:56.073
Charles Thompson: There’s something wrong here.

01:19:56.073 –> 01:19:57.673
Charles Thompson: And like, oh, that’s a rule.

01:19:58.793 –> 01:20:00.753
Charles Thompson: We didn’t know about the health care.

01:20:01.793 –> 01:20:04.973
Charles Thompson: We probably have like 10 rules now, but there’s probably more.

01:20:04.973 –> 01:20:07.373
Charles Thompson: But we don’t know them until they get broken.

01:20:07.373 –> 01:20:09.593
Charles Thompson: And then when they get broken, they go, oh, that’s not right.

01:20:09.593 –> 01:20:10.613
Charles Thompson: We can’t do that.

01:20:10.613 –> 01:20:12.173
Charles Thompson: You know, it’s interesting.

01:20:12.173 –> 01:20:15.493
Charles Thompson: Yeah, we don’t have a manifesto or anything.

01:20:15.493 –> 01:20:17.913
Charles Thompson: We’re just like doing what we always do.

01:20:17.913 –> 01:20:23.553
Charles Thompson: But every once in a while, some rule get broken and it won’t make sense.

01:20:23.553 –> 01:20:24.953
Charles Thompson: And we’ll just say, yeah, we can’t do that.

01:20:24.953 –> 01:20:25.213
Charles Thompson: Sorry.

01:20:25.633 –> 01:20:26.173
John Kennedy: Yeah.

01:20:26.173 –> 01:20:26.393
John Kennedy: Yeah.

01:20:26.393 –> 01:20:30.953
John Kennedy: The four, the elements have to be there for it to be what it is.

01:20:30.953 –> 01:20:32.733
John Kennedy: Until they’re missing, you don’t realize.

01:20:32.733 –> 01:20:33.033
Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

01:20:33.033 –> 01:20:34.513
John Kennedy: It’s fascinating.

01:20:34.513 –> 01:20:40.333
John Kennedy: We have a series of questions that we ask everybody who comes on the podcast, which we will go into in just a moment.

01:20:40.333 –> 01:20:43.513
John Kennedy: We’ve got some questions from some of our patrons on Patreon as well.

01:20:43.513 –> 01:20:48.733
John Kennedy: But should we have a blast to the master of Jane, or is there anything else that you’d like to highlight before we just-

01:20:48.733 –> 01:21:00.633
Tom Dalgety: I just realized when I talked about that kind of stack of loads of layers of different acoustic guitars, and Charles saying it sounded like a swarm of bees, I should probably give you a blast of that, just so you have that.

01:21:00.633 –> 01:21:09.813
Tom Dalgety: So this is like, I don’t know, basically every acoustic instrument that we had in the building, it’s like a 12 string, loads of six string acoustics.

01:21:09.813 –> 01:21:15.033
Tom Dalgety: There might have even been, was there like a little mandolin-y thing or something like that?

01:21:15.033 –> 01:21:15.473
Charles Thompson: I don’t know.

01:21:15.473 –> 01:21:25.733
Tom Dalgety: I was kind of trying to get like a little bit of that sound that on like Ocean Rain by Echoing The Bunny Men, there’s loads of like layered up kind of guitars and stuff.

01:21:25.733 –> 01:21:27.253
Tom Dalgety: And so I was trying to get that with this.

01:21:27.493 –> 01:21:28.493
Tom Dalgety: This is the swarm of bees.

01:21:36.721 –> 01:21:41.841
Tom Dalgety: So that’s like one main guitar here.

01:21:43.921 –> 01:21:48.681
Tom Dalgety: And then a couple of other guitars there.

01:21:48.681 –> 01:21:51.061
Tom Dalgety: And then I think this is the one where.

01:21:56.761 –> 01:21:59.821
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, a bunch of, and they’re like slightly out of tune deliberately.

01:21:59.821 –> 01:22:03.141
Tom Dalgety: So it’s kind of, you know, sounds like a little bit disturbing and strange.

01:22:03.821 –> 01:22:09.821
Tom Dalgety: But yeah, it should like just give you a blast of like the, the kind of chorus into the outro or something like that.

01:22:09.821 –> 01:22:10.661
John Kennedy: Yeah, that would be great.

01:22:10.661 –> 01:22:18.121
John Kennedy: I mean, do you record those in a special way to create a kind of buzzy effect or is that, is it only buzzy because Charles described it as?

01:22:18.121 –> 01:22:21.581
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, I don’t think I did anything particularly unusual with them.

01:22:21.581 –> 01:22:21.981
Tom Dalgety: I don’t know.

01:22:21.981 –> 01:22:24.521
Charles Thompson: I’m not the cleanest acoustic guitar player.

01:22:24.521 –> 01:22:28.381
Charles Thompson: So you’re going to get some buzzy from me.

01:22:28.381 –> 01:22:29.001
Tom Dalgety: But it’s really nice.

01:22:29.381 –> 01:22:35.701
Tom Dalgety: He sort of plays in a very kind of everything has conviction.

01:22:35.701 –> 01:22:46.981
Tom Dalgety: Even when there are kind of a few buzzes and some fret noise and stuff, he kind of plays with a lot of charisma that kind of I’d always prefer that.

01:22:46.981 –> 01:22:53.181
Tom Dalgety: I take that over really precise acoustic guitar playing, especially in this kind of music.

01:22:53.181 –> 01:23:02.021
Tom Dalgety: So yeah, when you layer up 10 tracks of it, there’s lots of but that’s what sounds fun, I think.

01:23:02.021 –> 01:23:02.621
John Kennedy: Yeah.

01:23:02.621 –> 01:23:03.241
Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

01:23:03.241 –> 01:23:06.241
Tom Dalgety: I’ll play into from the second verse.

01:24:08.801 –> 01:24:11.561
John Kennedy: It’s ominous, The Night The Zombies Came.

01:24:11.561 –> 01:24:18.381
John Kennedy: It is Jane by Pixies from the album of the same name, I guess, in effect.

01:24:18.381 –> 01:24:24.161
John Kennedy: And before we get on to our regular question, we’re going to ask a couple of these questions that have come through via Patreon.

01:24:24.161 –> 01:24:33.561
John Kennedy: Hello to Dominic who says, what is the biggest difference in how you write songs today versus when you started as a band, either through process or equipment?

01:24:33.561 –> 01:24:34.741
John Kennedy: Is there a difference, do you think?

01:24:36.481 –> 01:24:39.341
Charles Thompson: I don’t think so.

01:24:39.341 –> 01:25:01.641
Charles Thompson: I mean, there may be differences that occur along the way because you accessed a different paradigm or something, you know, like the longer you go, the more different types of studios you end up in or whatever and maybe you get better instruments, you know what I mean?

01:25:01.641 –> 01:25:08.361
Charles Thompson: And maybe you get more instruments, maybe you’re able to spend more time in the studio.

01:25:08.361 –> 01:25:13.361
Charles Thompson: But really at the end of the day, I think it’s all kind of the same.

01:25:13.361 –> 01:25:20.581
Charles Thompson: There’s, you get chord progressions, you got riffs and you need a song at the end of the day.

01:25:20.581 –> 01:25:25.521
Charles Thompson: You need a singer on the mic most of the time, 99% of the time.

01:25:25.521 –> 01:25:29.121
Charles Thompson: Occasionally we have an instrumental, but usually we get to have a singer on the mic.

01:25:29.901 –> 01:25:33.721
Charles Thompson: So I can’t really say that it’s changed at all.

01:25:33.721 –> 01:25:37.261
Charles Thompson: Every song is a little different in how it comes together.

01:25:37.261 –> 01:25:47.701
Charles Thompson: But I can’t say, I feel like I’m doing the, I was up at three o’clock this morning with my notebook trying to write a song.

01:25:47.701 –> 01:25:48.381
Charles Thompson: You know what I mean?

01:25:49.021 –> 01:25:51.961
Charles Thompson: And I just felt like, there’s no more songs up, they’re all done.

01:25:53.361 –> 01:25:55.261
Charles Thompson: I got nothing, you know?

01:25:55.261 –> 01:25:57.181
Charles Thompson: And it’s like, I’ve been here before, fuck.

01:25:57.261 –> 01:25:58.141
Charles Thompson: You know what I mean?

01:25:58.141 –> 01:26:07.761
Charles Thompson: And so you just kind of, you just sit there, you know, you just sit there until something happens, and then something happens.

01:26:07.761 –> 01:26:08.861
Charles Thompson: And then you get excited again.

01:26:08.861 –> 01:26:12.921
Charles Thompson: And then once you get excited again, then it flows.

01:26:12.921 –> 01:26:16.581
John Kennedy: And is there a drive that forces you to keep at it?

01:26:16.581 –> 01:26:18.381
John Kennedy: Is there a motivation?

01:26:18.381 –> 01:26:20.621
John Kennedy: Do you have things that you need to get out?

01:26:21.181 –> 01:26:24.561
John Kennedy: Or is it Tom with a whip thing, right?

01:26:24.561 –> 01:26:25.921
Charles Thompson: Mostly I enjoy it.

01:26:25.921 –> 01:26:26.421
John Kennedy: Yeah.

01:26:26.421 –> 01:26:34.141
John Kennedy: Because, I mean, you’ve been crazily prolific really, with all, not just with Pixies, but with all the different things that you’ve done.

01:26:34.141 –> 01:26:41.921
John Kennedy: It always seems to me that, you know, what seems like a quiet period, actually you’re busy doing some other project, trying to explore some other ideas.

01:26:41.921 –> 01:26:50.921
Charles Thompson: Well, you know, I guess I could, if someone were to lodge a criticism at my songwriting, you could say that maybe I’m not the best self-editor.

01:26:51.021 –> 01:26:51.821
Charles Thompson: You know what I mean?

01:26:51.821 –> 01:26:56.341
Charles Thompson: That I tend to kind of put out more than I hold back.

01:26:56.341 –> 01:26:57.041
Charles Thompson: You know what I mean?

01:26:57.041 –> 01:27:06.781
Charles Thompson: And occasionally I do regret things that I have written and wish I would have done better or something like that, but I enjoy it too much.

01:27:07.901 –> 01:27:20.881
Charles Thompson: And, you know, I learned from some painting people that if you really wanna like cut the bullshit and be a real painter, then you can’t really be afraid to fail.

01:27:20.881 –> 01:27:23.341
Charles Thompson: You can’t be afraid to suck.

01:27:23.341 –> 01:27:24.461
Charles Thompson: Just fucking do it.

01:27:24.461 –> 01:27:25.481
Charles Thompson: You know what I mean?

01:27:25.481 –> 01:27:26.021
Charles Thompson: Just do it.

01:27:26.021 –> 01:27:27.321
Charles Thompson: That’s all that really matters.

01:27:27.321 –> 01:27:33.281
Charles Thompson: And so when I learned that in painting, I went, ah, okay, that’s what I do.

01:27:33.281 –> 01:27:34.621
Charles Thompson: I already do that.

01:27:34.621 –> 01:27:36.801
Charles Thompson: I already, I’m not afraid.

01:27:36.801 –> 01:27:37.641
Charles Thompson: I’m not afraid.

01:27:37.641 –> 01:27:43.121
Charles Thompson: So does that mean that every song is gonna give everyone a goose bump?

01:27:43.121 –> 01:27:45.021
Charles Thompson: I don’t, no, it’s not.

01:27:45.021 –> 01:27:46.861
Charles Thompson: It really isn’t.

01:27:46.861 –> 01:27:55.101
Charles Thompson: But that’s how we get to some pretty weird places or at least eccentric places or interesting places.

01:27:55.101 –> 01:27:56.441
Charles Thompson: See what I mean?

01:27:56.441 –> 01:27:58.361
Charles Thompson: How do we come up with that?

01:27:58.361 –> 01:28:00.261
Charles Thompson: What were we thinking when we did that?

01:28:00.261 –> 01:28:14.561
Charles Thompson: I think it’s we weren’t thinking and we weren’t afraid to be silly, for example, or to be a little too loud or a little too quiet, or a little too short, a little too long-winded.

01:28:14.561 –> 01:28:21.941
Charles Thompson: Whatever it is, whatever the quirk is, don’t be afraid if that’s what you’re feeling in the moment, then just do it.

01:28:23.101 –> 01:28:35.021
Charles Thompson: Hopefully, if you’ve got a producer there in the producer’s chair who you get along with, they’ll do some editing for you and that’ll help give it some integrity, I think.

01:28:36.161 –> 01:28:46.081
Charles Thompson: That’s why I think that we’ve always worked with the producer, too, is because that brings David calls Tom the fifth member of the Pixies.

01:28:46.081 –> 01:28:47.941
Charles Thompson: But it’s an appropriate title, I think.

01:28:47.941 –> 01:28:51.121
Charles Thompson: If you’re getting along with the producer, they are the extra member of the band.

01:28:51.961 –> 01:29:04.921
Charles Thompson: They’re the band member that’s maybe not playing anything so much, but they’re paying attention and they’re bringing some perspective that gives it some integrity, like I said, that otherwise would not be there.

01:29:04.921 –> 01:29:08.841
Charles Thompson: It would be completely your ego.

01:29:08.841 –> 01:29:09.641
Charles Thompson: You know what I mean?

01:29:09.641 –> 01:29:12.021
Charles Thompson: Without any kind of softening or anything.

01:29:12.021 –> 01:29:25.061
Charles Thompson: So I stand by my lack of self-editing, because otherwise I wouldn’t get to where I would never come up with a song like Jane, you know, The Night The Zombies Came.

01:29:25.061 –> 01:29:26.381
Charles Thompson: Like how the hell?

01:29:26.381 –> 01:29:30.281
Charles Thompson: I wouldn’t have dreamed of ever writing a song like that.

01:29:30.281 –> 01:29:32.601
Charles Thompson: Even now I wouldn’t dream of writing a song like that.

01:29:32.601 –> 01:29:35.501
Charles Thompson: But that’s what happened, because that’s what happened.

01:29:35.501 –> 01:29:36.841
Charles Thompson: And so you just go with it.

01:29:36.841 –> 01:29:42.341
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, if you were like nano-focused on like three songs, that might not have been one of them.

01:29:42.341 –> 01:29:50.221
Tom Dalgety: But because we were working on 20, it kind of gives you a bit more leeway, a bit more scope to sort of…

01:29:51.021 –> 01:30:09.681
Charles Thompson: I am thankful for the LP format, even though you would think that with streaming, it would have gone away, but even people that have grown up only with streaming music still associate the LP with a kind of a picture, a montage of the artist’s life in a particular season.

01:30:09.681 –> 01:30:11.761
Charles Thompson: That was his divorce record.

01:30:11.761 –> 01:30:14.681
Charles Thompson: That was the record that he was on drugs.

01:30:14.681 –> 01:30:24.221
Charles Thompson: That was the record that, you know, whatever, where he was, doesn’t, it’s a seasonal kind of grouping, you know what I mean?

01:30:24.221 –> 01:30:33.981
Charles Thompson: And so I am thankful for the LP format, because if it was just singles with B-sides or whatever, then that, you really have to hyper-focus, you know what I mean?

01:30:33.981 –> 01:30:38.361
Charles Thompson: But yeah, I got 35, 45 minutes to fool around with here.

01:30:38.361 –> 01:30:50.841
Charles Thompson: So, and he likes to, sometimes we want to get carried away and do double LP or something like that, but he’s always thinking more, what does this actually sound like on a vinyl?

01:30:50.841 –> 01:30:56.081
Charles Thompson: You know, we can’t go over like, you know, 42 minutes or whatever, it’s going to sound like crap.

01:30:56.081 –> 01:31:01.061
Charles Thompson: So, he’s kind of already got this fixated Tom take he, I mean, Tom.

01:31:01.061 –> 01:31:01.601
John Kennedy: Yeah.

01:31:01.601 –> 01:31:06.581
Charles Thompson: He’s got to kind of like, it’s got to be 35, 40 minutes, more than that, it’s bullshit.

01:31:06.581 –> 01:31:08.961
Charles Thompson: We’re not going to be able to put that on a vinyl.

01:31:08.961 –> 01:31:13.141
Charles Thompson: So, he has his own romantic feelings about what an LP is.

01:31:13.141 –> 01:31:18.281
Charles Thompson: Even though I haven’t fucking listened to a vinyl record, who knows how long, but we all have this idea.

01:31:18.281 –> 01:31:36.121
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, there’s kind of a sweet spot in that kind of about 40 minutes of music, that’s like, it’s not, with a few exceptions, most of everyone’s favorite records are about that long, and there’s a reason for that, I think.

01:31:36.121 –> 01:31:43.181
Charles Thompson: Half the time, you only end up listening to write to your favorite three, but you need to come up with that 40 minutes to get to those three.

01:31:43.181 –> 01:31:44.221
Charles Thompson: You can’t just write the three.

01:31:45.081 –> 01:31:54.501
Charles Thompson: No, it just isn’t, you have to go, you have to let it all out and everything, and then maybe, hopefully, the whole thing is amazing, you know what I mean, from beginning to end.

01:31:54.501 –> 01:32:04.521
Charles Thompson: You hope for that, but it’s hard to tell if it’s really amazing until you could look at it five years later and go like, oh yeah, we really nailed it that time.

01:32:04.521 –> 01:32:06.761
Charles Thompson: It was like, from getting to end, it’s smoking.

01:32:07.261 –> 01:32:10.181
Charles Thompson: At other times it’s like, oh yeah, it’s interesting.

01:32:10.561 –> 01:32:14.141
Charles Thompson: These are the top three and this is the B-list.

01:32:14.141 –> 01:32:16.061
Charles Thompson: You know what I mean?

01:32:16.061 –> 01:32:17.361
Charles Thompson: That’s just the way that it is.

01:32:17.361 –> 01:32:30.381
Tom Dalgety: I remember I did that on, when we were doing the record we did in Woodstock beneath the Erie, I remember making the mistake of revealing what my A and B-list were when we were still in the process of making it.

01:32:30.381 –> 01:32:31.761
Tom Dalgety: Then I won’t do that again.

01:32:31.761 –> 01:32:32.681
Tom Dalgety: I was like, what?

01:32:32.981 –> 01:32:34.301
Tom Dalgety: Why is that on the B-list?

01:32:34.301 –> 01:32:35.081
Tom Dalgety: I don’t know, maybe it was good.

01:32:35.181 –> 01:32:40.941
Tom Dalgety: Maybe that gave you a poke to make some of the songs to promote some of the B-list to the A-list.

01:32:40.941 –> 01:32:43.461
Charles Thompson: But now we know what he’s up to.

01:32:43.601 –> 01:32:45.401
Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

01:32:46.361 –> 01:32:47.081
Charles Thompson: But it’s good.

01:32:47.081 –> 01:32:51.741
Charles Thompson: It’s like, okay, you do your thing and we’ll do our particular thing.

01:32:51.881 –> 01:32:53.261
Charles Thompson: You see what I mean?

01:32:53.261 –> 01:32:58.441
Charles Thompson: It’s good that I can just focus on writing music instead of doing everything.

01:32:58.701 –> 01:33:00.981
Charles Thompson: We don’t want to like, what’s the artwork going to be?

01:33:00.981 –> 01:33:02.181
Charles Thompson: Fucking, let’s hire an artist.

01:33:02.281 –> 01:33:03.341
Charles Thompson: How about that?

01:33:03.341 –> 01:33:05.721
Charles Thompson: To do the artwork for the sleeve.

01:33:05.721 –> 01:33:07.781
Charles Thompson: You know what I mean?

01:33:07.781 –> 01:33:09.161
Charles Thompson: Do everything.

01:33:09.161 –> 01:33:11.041
Charles Thompson: When you first start out, you want to do everything.

01:33:11.041 –> 01:33:13.201
Charles Thompson: You want to be involved in every decision.

01:33:13.201 –> 01:33:15.041
Charles Thompson: It’s so precious everything.

01:33:15.041 –> 01:33:19.801
Charles Thompson: But then you get tired of doing that and you realize, oh yeah, there’s a lot of other good people that do good things.

01:33:19.801 –> 01:33:27.321
Charles Thompson: So maybe just do the thing that you’re really good at and then let other people do what they’re good at.

01:33:27.321 –> 01:33:28.401
John Kennedy: Yeah, totally.

01:33:28.401 –> 01:33:40.341
John Kennedy: We ask everybody who comes on about tech or equipment, whether there’s a particular favorite piece of equipment or technology that relates to this project or any project that you can’t do without.

01:33:40.341 –> 01:33:49.741
John Kennedy: In a way, Charlie Thacker has come up with a question that relates to this, which is what item of gear has stayed in your studio setup or touring rig the longest?

01:33:49.741 –> 01:33:52.061
John Kennedy: The answer to that could be the answer to our question.

01:33:52.061 –> 01:33:55.141
John Kennedy: I mean, from both of you in your individual perspectives.

01:33:55.261 –> 01:33:56.621
Tom Dalgety: Have you always had those?

01:33:56.621 –> 01:34:00.041
Tom Dalgety: Is it been the same AC 30s for a long time?

01:34:00.041 –> 01:34:00.701
Charles Thompson: Yeah.

01:34:00.821 –> 01:34:03.021
Charles Thompson: I guess AC 30 amplifiers.

01:34:03.021 –> 01:34:10.061
Charles Thompson: But even more than that, I’ve noticed the last few sessions, I don’t even care what amp it’s going into.

01:34:10.061 –> 01:34:11.721
Charles Thompson: I don’t want to know.

01:34:11.721 –> 01:34:16.081
Charles Thompson: I just want to play the guitar part, and I’ll just be like, yeah, whatever.

01:34:16.501 –> 01:34:18.021
Charles Thompson: Go in there and just turn it on.

01:34:19.301 –> 01:34:21.481
Charles Thompson: What does it sound like coming out of the speakers, right?

01:34:21.481 –> 01:34:22.201
John Kennedy: Yeah.

01:34:22.201 –> 01:34:40.121
Charles Thompson: The one thing that I can’t get away from now is ever since I had, in about the 1990s sometime, I was in Nashville and I bought my first ever nice acoustic guitar.

01:34:41.281 –> 01:34:43.181
Charles Thompson: It was a Martin acoustic guitar.

01:34:43.181 –> 01:34:44.981
Charles Thompson: It was like six grand or something like that.

01:34:44.981 –> 01:34:48.441
Charles Thompson: It was 1956 Martin.

01:34:48.441 –> 01:34:56.881
Charles Thompson: So ever since then, that’s the most important thing to me, I think, is at the very least, I got to have one really good acoustic guitar.

01:34:56.881 –> 01:35:03.761
Charles Thompson: Because if I got that, I can do my job of writing songs, playing rhythm guitar, and singing it.

01:35:03.761 –> 01:35:06.121
Charles Thompson: I don’t have to worry about anything else.

01:35:06.121 –> 01:35:07.601
Charles Thompson: I don’t even need an electric guitar.

01:35:07.981 –> 01:35:15.381
Charles Thompson: If I really want to, I can plug the acoustic guitar into an amplifier and voila.

01:35:15.381 –> 01:35:17.241
Charles Thompson: Electric guitar, you know what I mean?

01:35:17.241 –> 01:35:23.741
Tom Dalgety: Just to completely contradict you though, that the kind of what you refer to as the shit acoustic, that tachamini.

01:35:23.741 –> 01:35:24.261
Charles Thompson: Oh, yeah.

01:35:24.261 –> 01:35:25.421
Tom Dalgety: You’ve had that for ages, right?

01:35:25.421 –> 01:35:27.461
Tom Dalgety: Haven’t you had that since the first record?

01:35:27.461 –> 01:35:27.861
Charles Thompson: Sure.

01:35:27.861 –> 01:35:29.081
Charles Thompson: Yeah, I guess I’ve had that one long.

01:35:29.081 –> 01:35:29.861
Tom Dalgety: We use that a lot.

01:35:29.861 –> 01:35:38.881
Tom Dalgety: There’s a lot of times when things just sound a little bit too posh and a little bit too nice on one of the Martins, and we end up using that, which is like a kind of beaten up.

01:35:38.881 –> 01:35:48.381
Tom Dalgety: You know, there’s like, you’ve almost like gouged a hole in the bottom of where, I guess, there probably should have been a scratch guard.

01:35:48.381 –> 01:35:49.821
Tom Dalgety: It’s just like a kind of dip.

01:35:49.821 –> 01:35:50.281
Charles Thompson: Yes.

01:35:50.281 –> 01:35:51.041
Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

01:35:51.041 –> 01:35:51.281
Charles Thompson: Yes.

01:35:51.281 –> 01:35:55.881
Charles Thompson: I’ve even destroyed one, collapsed finally, but I had two.

01:35:55.881 –> 01:36:13.841
Charles Thompson: But yeah, sometimes guitars that you’ve played, at least as a rhythm guitar player, I’m not really much of a musician, but I’ve noticed that if it’s a guitar that you’ve played a lot, sometimes that’s the one that the producer will pick.

01:36:13.841 –> 01:36:14.981
Charles Thompson: Let me say, oh yeah, that one.

01:36:14.981 –> 01:36:17.961
Charles Thompson: It’s like, yeah, but that’s not my 56 Martin.

01:36:17.961 –> 01:36:20.041
Charles Thompson: That’s like my other Martin.

01:36:20.041 –> 01:36:21.961
Charles Thompson: That’s like not quite as cool.

01:36:22.841 –> 01:36:27.641
Charles Thompson: But it’s like, oh yeah, I guess I played that one five years longer than the cool one.

01:36:27.861 –> 01:36:32.301
Charles Thompson: So you’re just that much better at switching the chords.

01:36:32.301 –> 01:36:37.061
Charles Thompson: That’s why the producer’s ear will go, oh no, no, that one, play that one, you know.

01:36:37.061 –> 01:36:43.781
Charles Thompson: For me, I feel like if I don’t have one good acoustic guitar, then I feel like I’m missing something, I suppose.

01:36:43.961 –> 01:36:48.601
Charles Thompson: If I was gonna pick one piece of gear only to bring to a session, that’s what I would bring.

01:36:48.601 –> 01:36:49.381
Charles Thompson: Yeah, yeah.

01:36:49.381 –> 01:36:50.921
John Kennedy: What about you, Tom?

01:36:50.921 –> 01:36:53.381
Tom Dalgety: I mean, for me, I was just trying to think of that actually.

01:36:53.381 –> 01:37:00.821
Tom Dalgety: Something that I think I’ve used on every Pixies record I’ve done is a Shure SM7 microphone.

01:37:01.661 –> 01:37:08.721
Tom Dalgety: I think with maybe a couple of tiny exceptions, that’s what Charles’ lead vocal is every time.

01:37:08.721 –> 01:37:14.961
Tom Dalgety: Just because it just sounds very direct and has a very unpretentious sound.

01:37:16.441 –> 01:37:18.161
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, it’s just a practical thing.

01:37:18.421 –> 01:37:27.841
Tom Dalgety: It’s not like a thing where I’m particularly in love with its sound, but it’s just a very rugged, practical thing.

01:37:28.801 –> 01:37:32.961
Tom Dalgety: I think I’ve used that on pretty much every recording I’ve done with Charles.

01:37:32.961 –> 01:37:46.521
Tom Dalgety: Then maybe for this record specifically, that Fender Reverb Tank, I think that’s on every song and on multiple instruments, drums, vocals, guitars, obviously.

01:37:46.521 –> 01:37:48.781
Tom Dalgety: But that was a mainstay of that.

01:37:48.781 –> 01:38:02.181
Tom Dalgety: I unlocked a lot of the sounds on the record, especially on the slower ones like Chicken and Mercy Me, that kind of expanded the sound in a really nice way.

01:38:02.181 –> 01:38:04.441
Tom Dalgety: I like Spring Reverb on tons of stuff.

01:38:04.441 –> 01:38:09.001
Tom Dalgety: It just has a bit more identity than other things, I think.

01:38:09.001 –> 01:38:10.721
John Kennedy: Do you have a routine?

01:38:10.721 –> 01:38:14.401
John Kennedy: Is there a routine to unlocking creativity?

01:38:14.401 –> 01:38:16.261
John Kennedy: You write an awful lot of songs, Charles.

01:38:16.261 –> 01:38:21.561
John Kennedy: No, is this something, you said you’re up at 3 AM trying to write a song.

01:38:21.561 –> 01:38:23.761
John Kennedy: Do you put yourself in that situation all the time?

01:38:23.761 –> 01:38:24.701
John Kennedy: Is that how you do it?

01:38:24.901 –> 01:38:29.841
John Kennedy: Do you like to have a routine to do things, or do you want to be more ad hoc?

01:38:29.841 –> 01:38:44.601
Charles Thompson: An inkt session, if it’s inkt on the calendar, then there’s an expectation from people that are going to show up at the session that the main songwriter brings something.

01:38:44.601 –> 01:38:49.221
Charles Thompson: That’s really what gets me going is an inkt session.

01:38:51.321 –> 01:38:57.321
Charles Thompson: If I don’t have a session booked, I tend to not play the guitar much.

01:38:57.321 –> 01:39:00.001
Charles Thompson: I don’t tend to write songs.

01:39:00.001 –> 01:39:09.441
Charles Thompson: I suppose in the earliest times of being a musician, it would maybe not have been a recording session, but we would have gotten a gig.

01:39:09.441 –> 01:39:14.481
Charles Thompson: We got a gig Friday night at Green Street Station we’re going to play next month.

01:39:15.941 –> 01:39:26.381
Charles Thompson: We got a 45-minute slot and we practiced and we times everything and we have 35 minutes, but we need 10 more minutes.

01:39:27.621 –> 01:39:30.101
Charles Thompson: In a sense, that’s like an inked session.

01:39:30.101 –> 01:39:34.321
Charles Thompson: There’s an expectation that you’re going to play the full 45 minutes.

01:39:34.321 –> 01:39:45.781
Charles Thompson: That’s always been the thing that’s propelled me to write is the need to do it, as opposed to some inner longing to get something out.

01:39:45.781 –> 01:39:47.321
Charles Thompson: No, I like music.

01:39:47.321 –> 01:39:48.181
Charles Thompson: It’s fun.

01:39:48.181 –> 01:39:49.581
Charles Thompson: I don’t need any inspiration.

01:39:49.581 –> 01:39:52.981
Charles Thompson: I’m already inspired at the whole concept of it.

01:39:52.981 –> 01:39:53.981
Charles Thompson: I’ve heard The Beatles.

01:39:53.981 –> 01:39:55.381
Charles Thompson: It’s like, yeah, like that.

01:39:55.381 –> 01:39:56.821
Charles Thompson: You know what I mean?

01:39:56.821 –> 01:39:58.301
Charles Thompson: I just want to do that.

01:39:58.301 –> 01:39:59.661
Charles Thompson: Whatever that is.

01:39:59.661 –> 01:40:01.881
Charles Thompson: You see what I’m saying?

01:40:01.881 –> 01:40:09.441
Charles Thompson: If I don’t have something inked though, then I suppose maybe I’m lazy or something.

01:40:09.441 –> 01:40:11.201
Charles Thompson: I don’t know.

01:40:11.201 –> 01:40:14.561
Charles Thompson: I don’t know if that’s the right word, but I don’t tend to write.

01:40:14.721 –> 01:40:21.081
Tom Dalgety: That’s why I’m always like, you know, just sending you a text saying, looking forward to seeing you next week.

01:40:21.081 –> 01:40:21.861
Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

01:40:21.861 –> 01:40:22.581
Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

01:40:22.581 –> 01:40:25.041
John Kennedy: Do you have a routine or do you, you mean because you have-

01:40:25.041 –> 01:40:25.441
John Kennedy: I do.

01:40:25.881 –> 01:40:30.101
Tom Dalgety: I think I work better now when I have a routine.

01:40:30.101 –> 01:40:31.041
Tom Dalgety: I didn’t used to think so.

01:40:31.201 –> 01:40:38.921
Tom Dalgety: I used to like the idea of being this kind of like chaotic, sort of, you know, oh, whenever the mood takes me, I’ll do something good.

01:40:38.921 –> 01:40:51.481
Tom Dalgety: But I think now, I think I do better stuff when I kind of, you know, I realized that like, especially doing the more solitary stuff, like, you know, mixing, I’m usually on my own.

01:40:51.481 –> 01:41:00.301
Tom Dalgety: And I now know that I’m never going to do something brilliant in the 14th hour straight in the studio.

01:41:01.321 –> 01:41:11.581
Tom Dalgety: I’m better when I work in kind of relatively short bursts and constantly listening to other music and going for a drive and, you know, having breaks.

01:41:11.581 –> 01:41:17.261
Tom Dalgety: I definitely feel like I get better stuff quicker that way.

01:41:17.261 –> 01:41:19.401
Tom Dalgety: So yeah, I guess I do have a bit of a routine.

01:41:19.401 –> 01:41:19.841
Tom Dalgety: Yeah.

01:41:19.841 –> 01:41:21.641
Charles Thompson: He brings the routine to the session.

01:41:21.641 –> 01:41:25.081
Charles Thompson: We have very, what are the word is, routinized?

01:41:25.601 –> 01:41:26.261
John Kennedy: Rigorous or?

01:41:26.261 –> 01:41:26.881
John Kennedy: Rigorous.

01:41:26.881 –> 01:41:33.701
Charles Thompson: We have a schedule like after breakfast or whatever, we start work and then round about dinner time.

01:41:33.701 –> 01:41:35.041
Charles Thompson: That’s kind of the end.

01:41:35.041 –> 01:41:35.541
Charles Thompson: You know what I mean?

01:41:35.541 –> 01:41:40.241
Charles Thompson: Even if you’re excited and you want to keep going, it’s like we should cap it off there.

01:41:40.241 –> 01:41:44.581
Charles Thompson: It’s like, no, we’ve done our 10 hours or whatever.

01:41:44.581 –> 01:41:51.081
Charles Thompson: And like he just said, pretty much if you go beyond a certain point, you’re not going to get any returns.

01:41:53.021 –> 01:41:54.521
Charles Thompson: You’re just going to be more tired tomorrow.

01:41:54.521 –> 01:41:56.521
Tom Dalgety: It just gives you a bit of distance.

01:41:56.521 –> 01:42:00.801
Tom Dalgety: So when you’re listening the next morning, you’re like, oh, I haven’t heard this song for a while.

01:42:00.801 –> 01:42:02.101
Tom Dalgety: And have I missed it?

01:42:02.901 –> 01:42:07.881
Tom Dalgety: Rather than if you’re like, oh man, we were listening to this at 3.30.

01:42:07.881 –> 01:42:09.341
Charles Thompson: He won’t even give us roughs.

01:42:09.341 –> 01:42:10.341
Charles Thompson: You know what I mean?

01:42:10.341 –> 01:42:15.561
Charles Thompson: Unless we’re like writing something that’s missing, guitar part or lyric or something like that, he’ll give us a-

01:42:15.701 –> 01:42:20.761
David: I need a formal written request for rough mixes.

01:42:20.761 –> 01:42:27.221
Charles Thompson: And he used to rub us the wrong way, because we were, I wanna smoke pot, listen to my record tonight.

01:42:27.221 –> 01:42:27.761
Charles Thompson: You know what I mean?

01:42:27.761 –> 01:42:30.241
Charles Thompson: And think about how great it is.

01:42:30.241 –> 01:42:36.161
Charles Thompson: And I was just like, no, I’m tired, I’m gonna go to bed and no rough mixes.

01:42:36.161 –> 01:42:37.701
Charles Thompson: But then now we’ve gotten used to that.

01:42:37.701 –> 01:42:41.441
Charles Thompson: And now we appreciate that, because we’re so much better the next day.

01:42:41.441 –> 01:42:43.601
Charles Thompson: We’re so much fresher, our ears are fresher.

01:42:44.481 –> 01:42:46.341
Charles Thompson: We just do better work, you know what I mean?

01:42:46.341 –> 01:42:48.041
Charles Thompson: Just like a job.

01:42:48.041 –> 01:43:00.581
Tom Dalgety: I guess my thinking for that is that, George Martin wasn’t putting a load of MP3s into a drop box of half finished songs for people to obsess listening over and over again at night.

01:43:01.281 –> 01:43:10.321
Tom Dalgety: I think a little bit of that kind of overlisting, that kind of OCD thing isn’t really that useful a lot of the time.

01:43:10.321 –> 01:43:14.141
Tom Dalgety: It’s kind of better to have a degree of separation.

01:43:14.141 –> 01:43:20.161
Tom Dalgety: And also doing rough mixes is a pain in the ass, so I’d rather not do it.

01:43:20.161 –> 01:43:21.661
John Kennedy: Do you have any advice?

01:43:21.661 –> 01:43:24.201
John Kennedy: We ask everybody for advice.

01:43:24.201 –> 01:43:33.281
John Kennedy: Live lessons that you would pass on to other people, or maybe you receive some sound wisdom that you’ve always clung on to, that you’d want to share.

01:43:33.281 –> 01:43:34.441
Tom Dalgety: I’ll let you take the lead on this one.

01:43:34.521 –> 01:43:35.921
Tom Dalgety: You’re definitely better for advice.

01:43:35.921 –> 01:43:43.181
Charles Thompson: Well, I don’t know about that, but I would say, even in terms of making records.

01:43:43.181 –> 01:43:46.141
John Kennedy: Well, anything, really.

01:43:46.141 –> 01:43:53.501
John Kennedy: But yeah, it can be to do with making records, or just to keep what’s kept you saying, what’s kept you doing what you do.

01:43:53.501 –> 01:43:54.541
Tom Dalgety: Dental floss.

01:43:54.541 –> 01:43:54.801
Tom Dalgety: Oh no.

01:43:56.501 –> 01:43:57.821
Charles Thompson: I don’t know, really.

01:43:57.821 –> 01:44:02.661
Charles Thompson: I mean, because everyone does it differently.

01:44:02.661 –> 01:44:05.841
Charles Thompson: I don’t want to say that my ways are the best way.

01:44:05.841 –> 01:44:06.461
Charles Thompson: They’re not.

01:44:06.461 –> 01:44:07.981
Charles Thompson: They’re just the way that I do things.

01:44:09.601 –> 01:44:18.381
Charles Thompson: So I definitely have, like I said, we have learned to stay away from rough mixes and not listening to those so much.

01:44:19.061 –> 01:44:22.521
Charles Thompson: This would be my advice if you have a producer in the producer’s chair.

01:44:23.321 –> 01:44:26.441
Charles Thompson: You don’t need to go to the mix.

01:44:26.441 –> 01:44:37.461
Charles Thompson: And that is something that is probably really hard for some people to be able to do that, to like have that much trust in the producer and control, self-control.

01:44:37.461 –> 01:44:39.701
Charles Thompson: It’s like, oh no, I’m not even going to go to the mix.

01:44:39.701 –> 01:44:43.141
Charles Thompson: But we don’t even go to our mixes.

01:44:43.141 –> 01:44:44.581
Charles Thompson: We’re not even in the same country.

01:44:44.581 –> 01:44:47.561
Charles Thompson: We’re just like, yep, enjoy making our record.

01:44:47.741 –> 01:44:48.561
Charles Thompson: You know what I mean?

01:44:48.561 –> 01:45:00.741
Charles Thompson: And it’s scary the first time you do that, I don’t know when the first time that happened to me, but after you do that, it’s like, oh, there, nice.

01:45:00.741 –> 01:45:09.441
Charles Thompson: You really get to enjoy your record a lot more, I think, rather than listening to a thousand times from every fucking angle.

01:45:11.421 –> 01:45:14.241
Charles Thompson: When you sit there through the mix, all right.

01:45:14.241 –> 01:45:16.001
Charles Thompson: So you learn a couple of things early on.

01:45:16.001 –> 01:45:21.301
Charles Thompson: But once you learn a couple of things, it’s like, if you’re not an engineer or producer, you do not need to be there.

01:45:21.921 –> 01:45:23.281
Charles Thompson: You just do not.

01:45:23.281 –> 01:45:28.701
Charles Thompson: They can always send you a rough mix and you can go, something’s too loud, something’s too quiet, whatever.

01:45:28.701 –> 01:45:37.981
Charles Thompson: But, oh my God, sitting there through everything and just weighing in on every little blip that occurs, it’s just like, it’s not worth it.

01:45:37.981 –> 01:45:44.881
Charles Thompson: Just go write, use that time to go be with your family or write more songs or whatever it is that you like to do.

01:45:44.881 –> 01:45:46.621
Charles Thompson: But you do not need to go to the mix.

01:45:46.621 –> 01:45:48.841
Charles Thompson: You do not need rough mixes.

01:45:48.841 –> 01:45:50.401
Charles Thompson: Just trust the process.

01:45:50.561 –> 01:45:55.861
Tom Dalgety: All the future bands that I’m going to be working with, can everyone just listen to what Charles is saying here?

01:45:55.861 –> 01:45:56.721
Tom Dalgety: You don’t need to turn up.

01:45:56.721 –> 01:45:57.341
Tom Dalgety: It’s fine.

01:45:57.341 –> 01:46:00.021
Charles Thompson: If you don’t trust them, then it’s moon.

01:46:00.021 –> 01:46:08.301
Charles Thompson: If you trust the person who’s driving the production bus, then fucking trust them and just do it.

01:46:08.301 –> 01:46:14.101
Tom Dalgety: It caught me out actually when we doing the first record I did with them doing Head Carrier.

01:46:14.201 –> 01:46:26.421
Tom Dalgety: We finished in Rack and I drove straight home to get some, you know, not roughs, but like first proper mixes done thinking like, you know, I’ve got to impress this band, you know, I’ve got to turn it around really quick and send it off.

01:46:26.421 –> 01:46:27.821
Tom Dalgety: And then didn’t hear anything.

01:46:27.821 –> 01:46:31.001
Tom Dalgety: And I was like, oh no, they obviously hate it.

01:46:31.241 –> 01:46:34.301
Tom Dalgety: They can’t even put it into words how wrong I’ve got it.

01:46:34.301 –> 01:46:36.541
Tom Dalgety: Then no one’s saying anything.

01:46:36.541 –> 01:46:42.001
Tom Dalgety: And then like a little bit more time went by and I sort of checked in with the manager and he was like, oh no, that’s it.

01:46:42.001 –> 01:46:43.601
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, they’re happy with everything.

01:46:43.601 –> 01:46:44.921
Tom Dalgety: That wasn’t like a single comment.

01:46:44.921 –> 01:46:46.461
Tom Dalgety: And I was like, what?

01:46:46.641 –> 01:46:57.141
Tom Dalgety: You know, used to like having some bands send me like a kind of annotated PDF document of mixed tweaks and this was like, you know, 14 Pixies songs.

01:46:57.141 –> 01:46:57.961
Tom Dalgety: Yeah, great.

01:46:57.961 –> 01:46:58.421
Tom Dalgety: Cool.

01:46:58.421 –> 01:47:00.001
Tom Dalgety: Thanks.

01:47:00.001 –> 01:47:12.481
Tom Dalgety: So now, now I’m kind of a little less trigger happy with, I make sure I’m happy with things before I, before I send them to anyone else because I was like, oh, the band are happy, but I’m not really happy yet.

01:47:13.121 –> 01:47:19.021
Tom Dalgety: I was just assuming that there was going to be loads of back and forth and stuff like that, and there just never really is, is there?

01:47:19.021 –> 01:47:20.681
Tom Dalgety: It’s usually kind of, you know.

01:47:20.681 –> 01:47:24.101
Charles Thompson: It’s usually always, it’s always like 95 percent there.

01:47:24.101 –> 01:47:26.061
Charles Thompson: It’s always like, oh yeah.

01:47:26.061 –> 01:47:38.961
Tom Dalgety: I kind of mix things, especially with Pixies as I go and trying to get it so like the what you hear on the last day of tracking, it’s never going to be miles away from the first mix.

01:47:38.961 –> 01:47:46.281
Tom Dalgety: I’m not going to pull any crazy stunts and make it sound totally different apart from putting those backing vocals on and stuff like that.

01:47:46.281 –> 01:47:55.441
Tom Dalgety: But it’s not like it’s ever going to be this complete unrecognizable departure from what everyone’s been hearing.

01:47:55.601 –> 01:48:00.001
Charles Thompson: I suppose if there’s a rule, we talked about Pixies rules earlier.

01:48:00.001 –> 01:48:07.941
Charles Thompson: It’s not that we have, you heard them today, we have overdubs and embellishments and things like that on our records.

01:48:07.941 –> 01:48:25.761
Charles Thompson: However, having said that, I guess in general our records do not take on a so-called Sergeant Peppery kind of nature or whatever, and nothing against Sergeant Peppers, but we’re a band that has been in the cycle of make a record, go on tour, make a record, go on tour.

01:48:25.761 –> 01:48:31.761
Charles Thompson: So we don’t like to make records that we can’t replicate in an honest way.

01:48:31.781 –> 01:48:38.021
Charles Thompson: It’s just a four piece, we have to be able to represent what we recorded in a decent enough way.

01:48:38.021 –> 01:48:39.421
Charles Thompson: So people go, yeah, I heard it.

01:48:40.001 –> 01:48:42.461
Charles Thompson: I heard the song just like we heard on the record.

01:48:42.541 –> 01:48:47.961
Charles Thompson: It may be not exactly like the record, maybe it’s missing the little keyboard thing or it’s missing the extra percussion or whatever.

01:48:47.961 –> 01:48:51.141
Charles Thompson: But in general, the vibe is the same.

01:48:51.141 –> 01:48:55.261
Charles Thompson: It’s the same basic recipe.

01:48:56.501 –> 01:49:00.701
Charles Thompson: So that would be a good advice, I think, for at least guitar bands or whatever.

01:49:00.701 –> 01:49:03.321
Charles Thompson: It’s like, don’t make it too complicated.

01:49:03.321 –> 01:49:08.561
Charles Thompson: Make it so that this is what we’re going to go play in front of a live audience.

01:49:08.961 –> 01:49:12.281
Charles Thompson: Try to keep those two things compatible.

01:49:12.281 –> 01:49:15.401
Charles Thompson: I’m not saying you have to do that, but it helps us a lot.

01:49:15.641 –> 01:49:21.201
Charles Thompson: So when we go do a tour, it’s not like, we can’t do that song.

01:49:21.201 –> 01:49:26.101
Charles Thompson: When we start to add too much stuff, that is like, it’s too much hassle.

01:49:26.101 –> 01:49:26.721
Charles Thompson: You know what I mean?

01:49:26.721 –> 01:49:27.001
John Kennedy: Yeah.

01:49:27.001 –> 01:49:27.761
Charles Thompson: We’re not into that.

01:49:28.421 –> 01:49:29.521
Charles Thompson: We just want to play.

01:49:29.521 –> 01:49:30.541
John Kennedy: Yeah.

01:49:30.541 –> 01:49:31.321
John Kennedy: Totally.

01:49:31.321 –> 01:49:32.401
John Kennedy: Thank you so much for your time.

01:49:32.401 –> 01:49:35.721
John Kennedy: Thanks for coming in and telling us all about this new record.

01:49:35.721 –> 01:49:40.681
John Kennedy: We should round up by playing one more song as a kind of goodbye, an outro song.

01:49:40.681 –> 01:49:41.701
John Kennedy: What should we go for?

01:49:41.701 –> 01:49:43.321
Charles Thompson: How about Primrose, the first one?

01:49:43.321 –> 01:49:43.741
John Kennedy: Yes.

01:49:43.861 –> 01:49:45.361
John Kennedy: That’s a lovely track.

01:49:45.361 –> 01:49:45.741
John Kennedy: Excellent.

01:49:45.741 –> 01:49:46.201
John Kennedy: This is it.

01:49:46.201 –> 01:49:47.101
John Kennedy: This is Primrose.

01:49:47.101 –> 01:49:49.861
John Kennedy: It’s Pixies from The Night The Zombies Came.

01:50:08.828 –> 01:50:14.088
John Kennedy: Thank you for listening, and in particular, thanks to all of you who have signed up to support us on Patreon.

01:50:14.088 –> 01:50:18.588
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01:50:18.588 –> 01:50:26.588
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01:50:26.588 –> 01:50:30.388
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01:50:30.388 –> 01:50:35.188
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01:50:35.608 –> 01:50:39.088
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01:50:39.088 –> 01:50:40.628
John Kennedy: Once again, thank you for listening.

01:50:40.628 –> 01:50:41.948
John Kennedy: Until next time, goodbye.