Rachel and Kasey
Rachel: Well, it is episode 172 of Adobe and teardrops, and I am so excited to be recording it with Kasey Anderson. We have struck up a friendship beyond music by talking about our favorite frustrating baseball team, the Yankees, although I guess everybody’s favorite team is also very frustrating. So when we were discussing a theme for this episode, baseball was the obvious choice. Rosa would love for us to call this episode “Kasey at Bat.”
Kasey: Okay.
Rachel: And I’m sure I’m sure you’ve gotten that one a lot.
Kasey: I appreciate it. Rosa. Thank you.
Rachel: All right. We don’t have to call it that.
If you don’t already know Kasey’s work, he just released his album Let the Bloody moon Rise, or I guess I should say more accurately, officially released it for the first time, even though it’s been around the internet for awhile. Kasey just got recently some new recognition for the song, “The Dangerous Ones” from his album from a couple of years ago, called From a White Hotel, that I really loved. So I’m really excited to get to play it again. And I think I had it on the anti-racist playlist a couple of weeks ago, so we’re just going to listen to it a second time for Patreon subscribers, because it’s good enough that you should probably listen to it once every couple of weeks. But before we get into the songs, Kasey, would you like to introduce yourself and talk a little bit more about the history of this album? And I would also love to hear more about the work you’re doing right now with people who are in recovery.
Kasey: My name is Kasey Anderson. I’m so happy to be here. I feel like now every thing that I do is just like a really thinly veiled excuse to talk to my friends. I mostly did my own press for this record and I really only like sent it to buddies and pitched it to buddies so that if I had to do press, I was doing it with people that I liked.
And it’s the same with the Artists in Recovery stuff. Like it’s mostly just me talking to my friends.
Let the Bloody Moon rise is a record that I recorded with my band, the Honkies, in 2011. Kirk Bloch produced it. Some of the folks who played on it were Tim Rogers from You Am I, Mike McCready from Pearl Jam, Jeff Fielder and the band was myself, Andrew McKeag, Mike Musburger, Eric Corson, and Ty Bailey. And those were all like guys from the Seattle music scene who I already kind of admired, looked up to, like those were heroes to me. So to get to be in a band with them and then have them bring other friends who I really admired was so just really humbling, but also really exciting. We made the record and then shortly after we made the record, I got into a fair amount of trouble and went into treatment for substance use disorder, then was incarcerated. And I think about a year into my incarceration, someone sent me a message that said the album was on Spotify and Apple music and whatever other streaming services people listened to at the time. And I was like, “Well, I don’t know how that would be.” Like, we didn’t ever master the record. It wasn’t finished. When I got out, I found it and it was like 17 unfinished songs, half of which I didn’t intend to be on the album.
I have two theories:
One is that, at some point in prior to going to prison, I gave someone a bunch of the songs and was like, “do whatever you want to with these,” not meaning release them, but like “here, you know, here’s this thing that I’ve been working on.” Another is that people who had done the crowdfunding thing for the record had been receiving rough mixes and demos as we recorded them.
So, it could be that someone sent those to CD Baby or one of the other digital distributors. At any rate, the record had been out, you know, since like 2014. But after “The Dangerous Ones” thing happened last year and I had more of an audience than I had had had since probably 2012, when we did that counting crows to her, I just thought like, “Okay. Cool. People are listening. Now is the time. I really love this record.” I had the finished version of it. Kirk Bloch and I had gone back to work on it. It was mastered by this guy at Brooks in Seattle. And I thought like, okay, cool. If I have people’s attention for a little bit, then this is my chance to put this thing out.
And if I’m in the mode of gradually winding my career down, then, you know, I want to make sure to get this out at a time when people hear it before I’m kind of done releasing stuff. It came out April 30th. I have one new solo record that will be out either late this year or early next year. And then I’m going to keep doing the Alano Club stuff, which you mentioned, which is that I work as the director of development and community engagement at the Alano Club of Portland, which is a nonprofit organization which provides services, supports and resources to people in or seeking recovery from substance use, mental health disorders, and disordered eating recovery from trauma.
And as part of that job, I developed a cooking series with chefs in recovery, teaching people how to cook. A lot of people in early recovery are on a fixed income or use government benefits. When I was first in recovery, like I didn’t have a great idea how to eat, how to make healthy eating kind of a part of my new lifestyle.
So there’s that program and then there’s Artists in Recovery, which is where I talk to artists who are in recovery from substance use, mental health disorders, disordered eating, and recovery from trauma. And that has been really cool, especially during the last year or so of the pandemic. It’s been something that I really look forward to. Once or twice a month, I get to kind of talk to a friend who is an artist, people who I have become friends with over the years, but who are also in recovery. Today I talked this morning to Allison Russell, whose solo record comes out Friday, May 21st.
Now, Allison Russell’s record will be out when, when you hear this podcast And that it addresses a lot of trauma. She experienced as a child who endured physical abuse, sexual abuse from her caregivers. I’ve talked to my buddies, like Jason Isbell, I’ve talked to BJ Barham, I’ve talked to Anjimele…a bunch of other folks who are really public-facing in their recovery and also make art that I really love. And so that has been a cool thing to do. And I hope that, you know, even after things open back up and people are touring more often that we’ll still be able to do these via Zoom because that way I can record them and then get them up on Vimeo and YouTube and people can see them if they miss the original thing.
So that’s been fun. That’s really rewarding. And it has kind of carried me through. It’s been one of the things that I have really come to look forward to over the last year.
Rachel: And you also have a little baby, so I know that’s been taking up a lot of your time.
Kasey: I have a little six-month-old baby who has two teeth coming in and we just got the go-ahead at her six month checkup to feed her whatever she seems curious about and to try and figure out like, if there are any allergies or things like that. So it’s really exciting, but it’s also now like, my wife, Kate is like, “I want to have her try eggs.” I’m like, “Oh, what if she’s allergic? You know, like, we know she’s not allergic to breast milk. How long can we stay with that?” But it’s cool. The doctor at her six month checkup asked us what we had been feeding her. And, you know, to that point, it was like a little bit of avocado, a little bit of banana.
And he was like, “you know what? That’s really boring. Whatever you’re eating, I want her to try a little bit.” So that’s cool. So now when we make dinner, we like, let her try a little bit of it and that’s really exciting.
Rachel: That’s cool. Yeah, just a whole new world for her to explore.
Kasey: Yeah.
Rachel: So Kasey suggested “Older Guys” from Let the Bloody Moon Rise because there is a discussion of baseball’s older step-cousin, cricket.
Before we listen to it, Kasey, do you want to talk a little bit more about the song?
Kasey: “Older Guys” is a song by the Australian band You Am I, who also have a new record coming out. This was a good segue because I think their record is out May 21st in the States. The new You Am I record is called The Lives of Others. For a long time, they were like the biggest Australian band that wasn’t ACDC.
They had huge, huge hits in the nineties. Played to huge, huge crowds in Australia. We toured with Tim Rogers, the front man and songwriter a few times in the States. They weren’t like mega popular in the States, but they have dedicated fans. And I became one of those dedicated fans through listening to their records with Andrew McKeigh and then through meeting Tim and touring with Tim.
When I met Tim, he had just taken an interest in baseball, like he had really gotten into it. And for some reason he had really taken an interest in the Phillies, which I don’t understand how a person who is not in Philadelphia, or from Philadelphia, or has no real connection to Philadelphia gets interested in the Phillies, but he was, and still is.
The last time he was in Seattle, which was 10 years ago, when we were making this record, I took him to a Mariners game. And I don’t know, he had maybe been to a pro baseball game before. But he was still really new to it and was like really excited about it. And that was a really fun experience.
“Older Guys” is a You Am I B-side. It’s not one of their most popular songs, but it’s one of my favorites and it’s a song that was pretty squarely in the Honkies’ wheelhouse when we were making this record.
Rachel: Yeah. So we’ll listen to that and Patreon subscribers will also listen to “The Dangerous Ones” from From A White Hotel. And then we’ll listen to one of Kasey’s picks, which we’ll talk about after this: Todd Snyder’s “America’s Favorite Pastime” from The Excitement Plan.
- “The Old Guys” – Kasey Anderson, Let the Bloody Moon Rise (9:59)
- “America’s Favorite Pastime” – Todd Snider, The Excitement Plan (13:43)
So I knew that story about Dock Ellis, like in passing. I’m sure I’ve read references to it enough times, but I guess I’d never looked into it. So this song is wild.
Kasey: It is, well, then the whole, like the Dock Ellis thing, like you said, I think everybody is at least like tangentially aware of it because it’s become such a big part of baseball lore. Todd does such a good job of putting the story into the song. Dock didn’t think he was going to pitch that day. So he and his wife kind of tripped and then he shows up at the ballpark and it’s his day to pitch. And Todd does the thing that Todd does so well, which is like, it’s poignant. It’s funny. The story is told really beautifully. And you know, like it is about Dock Ellis, but it’s not. The refrain is about whether or not you can judge a book by its cover, et cetera, et cetera. Like it just is such a great telling of this story.
And there’s an interview where Dock said that like this is the most famous of the games that he played under the influence, but he said that he played almost every game of his career on something. I mean, like, he threw a no-hitter and he was super tripping.
Rachel: I mean, it is kind of a boring game, so whatever.
Kasey: Yeah. I mean, like what better way to spend the four and a half hours it’s going to take? Especially if it’s not his day to pitch. You know what I mean?
Rachel: What draws you to baseball? I feel like there’s a big overlap, of course, between people who are into Americana and baseball and also maybe comic books.
There’s something kind of quintessential about all of it.
Kasey: For me, baseball is so, so soothing to watch and listen to. Like, you just said, it’s kind of a boring game. I think even people who love baseball have made that joke or have made that observation. And it is a game where like, if I walked away from the TV for an hour and then came back, there’s a pretty good chance that not much has changed. Like the score is going to be still pretty close to where it was when I left. You know, the game is still going to be about a suspenseful as it was. But to me, I grew up in the Northwest. So the Mariners were the closest that I had to a home team living in Portland, but the Cubs were on because my family got WGN and then the Braves were on because we got TBS.
And so I grew up with these great, like Dave Niehaus for the Mariners, Harry Carey for the Cubs…I grew up with these great broadcasters who just made all four hours of it captivating somehow. And I think that that’s what drew me to it.
And then when I was a teenager and in my early twenties, when I was working in projection booths in movie theaters, I would have the radio on because like working in a projection, it’s not dissimilar from a baseball game in that there’s like 20 minutes of action, right? Where you’re threading all the projectors and you’re starting all the movie. I worked in a six-auditorium theater. And so the times were pretty staggered by like 15 minutes. But, you know, for 40 minutes or an hour, and there would be action where I would be threading the movies. And then it’s two hours of like, kind of just sitting around and that’s a perfect baseball listening environment. Like it’s dark, the projectors are whirring behind me. It’s really soothing. And I would just listen to baseball. And so for me, a lot of it now is nostalgia. Which I, you know, like that can be a pretty dangerous drug, nostalgia. But I don’t know. There’s something so soothing about it.
And Kate, my wife grew up in Queens, so she’s a Mets fan. And so she, you know, like suffers the same way. Rosa does.
Rachel: Yes, we should put the two of them in a support group!
Kasey: We should! Oh, you should make one for the Patreon subscribers. She goes through the same thing that Rosa goes through, I’m sure. Like, especially this year. The Mets were supposed to be so good. And it’s looking like they’re, I mean, gonna kinda Mets it. And so she’s like, it’s just miserable, but she still wants to watch it unfold.
And that’s another thing about baseball fans. I’m a big Portland Trailblazer fan having grown up around here, but there comes a time point where like, if I’m frustrated, I just will not watch the game. Like I’ll just shut the game off or I’ll tune out for like a week. You know, like if they’ve lost a few in a row, I’ll be like, “Tou know what? I don’t really need to watch two hours of this every night.” But with baseball, it seems like baseball fans, we can’t do that. Like, no matter how rough it is, I’m going to watch all nine innings if I can. If the Yankees or the Mariners or whoever have dropped seven in a row, I’m still watching the games every day.
And I cannot explain why other than it’s really soothing, too.
Rachel: Yeah, definitely like the nostalgia and ASMR of it. And then also there’ve been so many times where we’re both, we’re watching a game, we’ll both be hanging out on our phone. She’s like, “do you want to keep watching?” Like, yeah, of course I want to keep watching. I’m just on my phone. And I can be on my phone for four hours and not feel bad about it.
‘Cause I’ll take breaks. So I’ll watch baseball when something interesting happens, like not, I guess I’m just not the kind of fan who can cares as much about pitches and pitch placement?
Kasey: Yeah. I don’t keep score while I watch or anything like that. Like I know I have friends who are really like diehard baseball fans. I’m not into the minutia of the game that much, I’m not keeping a score book, but you know, like I, I do like a well-pitched game. I like watching a pitcher adjust to what kind of stuff they have that day?. You know, whether the fastball was working or the off speed pitches working or whatever, like I like the strategy of it. And I think that there is a lot of adjustment on the fly that happens in baseball that people don’t see because the game moves so slow. So they just assume that everything is just moving slowly, but there’s a lot of strategy to the game, which also it makes it really appealing to me.
Rachel: Yeah. I mean, now that I’ve been watching it more closely for a few years now, I’m starting to understand how that unfolds.
So speaking of strategy, I was looking at the list of songs we both come up with and I was like, there’s a way to diversify this. And then it hit me. Like, I can’t believe, I almost forgot about this song! Caroline Spence’s “Softball” from Spades and Roses, which I think is about four years old now.
I feel like a lot of my favorite music was pre-Trump.
Kasey: Yeah.
Rachel: With a few exceptions. I feel like the Trump years was either really great or really difficult time to make music. And I guess we’ll see what comes out of this. So when you listen to it, you’ll see the way that she uses softball as a metaphor for sexism, but it’s so smart. So good. The whole album is incredible too. So we will listen to that and then we will make it funky with some Sam and Dave.
- “Softball” – Caroline Spence, Spades and Roses (23:57)
- “Knock It Out of the Park” – Sam and Dave, Sweat and Soul (28:18)
So yeah. What led you to pick that one, Kasey?
Kasey: The metaphor is so clunky to me, but the delivery is so good.
And I feel like it’s a great example of, you know, like maybe the material is not my favorite, but the delivery of the material is so good. You know, unlike the Caroline song. Both the material and the delivery are perfect. That is kind of what a song I think is supposed to be like. Caroline’s song is so good and it’s sung so well and performed so well.
This Sam and Dave song is not my favorite set of lyrics I’ve ever read, but the song sounds so good. I just love the delivery. I love the way the song sounds. I love that era of soul music very much.
Rachel: Yeah. And I appreciate that you brought in some music to kick it up a notch because I feel like everything I picked was sort of like sad folk music. Including this next one Two Cow Garage called “Movies” and that’s off their most recent album Brand New Flag. And then we’ll get into a band that I’m sure they’ve listened to it because they are into hip hop and that’s totally not my wheelhouse. We’ll listen to the Ultramagnetic MCs, “The Saga of Dandy, the Devil and the Day” from their album The Four Horsemen. And it’s a fun with, for sure.
- “Movies” – Two Cow Garage, Brand New Flag (32:15)
- “The Saga of Dandy, the Devil and the Day” – The Ultramagnetic MCs, The Four Horsemen (35:24)
I think the lyrics on “The Saga” are perfect and it’s definitely a saga. I think it’s pretty self-explanatory why it belongs here, but what about the song resonates with you?
Kasey: I mean, I love Ultramagnetic MCs and I love that the way that they deliver the story of like the Negro Leagues and, and of all these players, all these Hall of Fame-caliber players who contributed in such an enormous way to the game. I don’t think casual baseball fans, they know, like, I think Satchel Page is a name that probably a lot of people know.
I don’t know if people know Josh Gibson and Josh Gibson was like maybe the best pitcher ever, you know, Josh Gibson was an incredible, incredible pitcher. So I mean, this for me is just such like a, you know, like all these mentions of Cool Papa Bell, Rufus Lewis, all these great players who casual fans don’t know and who contributed in such an incredible way, not just to the game of baseball, but to the Civil Rights Movement, to the movement for equity and equality. And so I felt like that this was a good time to try and work that in.
And it’s also, you know, like, same as you said, when I was thinking about baseball songs, like I came up with a bunch of Americana folk music. And I find that especially when I’m putting a record out, I have to make a really concerted effort to listen to stuff other than either my own mixes or the people that I might be seeing at festivals or on bills with, whenever shows happen again.
And so I was like, “Oh, let me go back to this Ultramagnetic song. I think people maybe have a better handle on who Cool Keith is, but would maybe not know that that Ultramagnetic was a group that Cool Keith was in in the late eighties, early nineties.
I would say if you’re into Cool Keith, go take a couple steps backwards and check out Ultramagnetic. Also Rahzel was with the group for a while. This is part of the evolution of hip hop too. It’s so incredible to trace and still so fascinating and still very much in progress. I also just wanted to hear the song. Like, I don’t think I’d listened to this in a few years, so I wanted to cheat and listen.
Rachel: I’m always happy to provide an excuse to listen to new music. I was listening to an interview with Andrea Williams the other day, who both just wrote a book about Effa Manley, the first and only black woman to own a baseball team, It was, I want to say the Newark team from the Negro Leagues, but was it the Eagles or was it the Black Yankees?
Kasey: It was the Eagles.
Rachel: Yeah. So she wrote a children’s book about that and was on a podcast called Burn It All Down. For anyone who’s listening out there who is looking for a more lefty interpretation of sports news and a feminist interpretation of sports news, that is a great podcast.
But anyways, so in the interview she, and the person who was interviewing her were talking about what was sort of taken away when the Negro Leagues disappeared. This idea that integrating the Major Leagues as a path forward, came at a very heavy price. And I think that’s how a lot of people are starting to look at the significance of what happened with Jackie Robinson integrating the Major Leagues.
And I feel like this song really speaks to that idea like that, like talking about how this is a piece of history that’s been forgotten, but it shouldn’t be.
Kasey: Yeah, exactly. I will correct myself. I incorrectly said Josh Gibson was a pitcher. Josh Gibson was a catcher. So I misspoke but I don’t want anybody to go looking for it who may not know. Bob Gibson was a pitcher, but Josh was a catcher.
Rachel: So yeah, so that’s it. Usually the podcasts are six songs with a couple extra for the Patreon subscribers, but I wanted to make sure everybody listened and that we played out on this last song. So before we talk about it, we’ll do the housekeeping stuff.
Kasey. How can everybody find you? ‘Cause I know that you have a story behind your social media name, that a lot of people seem to have trouble with.
Kasey: I appreciate you bringing that up. So if you want to follow me on Twitter or Instagram, my name is the same on both of those platforms is leasdef. L E A S D E F, which is a play on Mos Def. I did not think it would be lost on that many people, but it seems to be lost on a lot of people.
So I’m Lea S D E F on Twitter and Instagram. KaseyAndersonmusic.com or Kaseyanderson.bandcamp.com. My records are on all of the places where people now listen to music. The only place you can find Let the Bloody Moon Rise on vinyl or CD is my website, but I think it’ll wind up in stores here in the next few months. So if you are a patron of a local record store, then it should be easy. You don’t have to order it directly from me if you want to support your local business, but you can order it directly from me. And I’m excited for this song. You have chosen a 14 minute song to close out the episode.
Rachel: Thanks as always to Alma Contra for putting the opening together. It’s from a different Two Cow Garage song called “Stars and Gutters.” Thanks to them for letting me use it. If you want us to send me music, do that through Submit Hub. Anything that I like is going to be a blog post instead of a podcast thing, usually, but that’s better for you as a musician because then it’ll be on…what’s it fucking called?
You know what I’m talking about? That website that aggregates all the blog posts and SoundCloud play with hyper or something.
Kasey: Hypebeast? I know what you mean.
Rachel: I literally don’t understand what this website does or why it’s important, but apparently it does feed back into Spotify algorithms. So for a while, I don’t think anyone really cared when SoundCloud was important, but
Kasey: It’s HypeBot.
Rachel: Yeah, something like that.
Kasey: Oh, but you had me on the podcast instead of writing about it for the blog. That means she doesn’t like, I see now you didn’t like the record.
Rachel: I can embed a SoundCloud file and that I’ll do it!
So yeah, so feel free to send stuff through SubmitHub free or paid. I’ll listen to it. If you want to support the podcast financially, you can do that through Kofi or a Patreon. And there’s also t-shirts and stuff now on the Adobe and teardrops website, they look very cool.
One of these days I will get off my butt and make a social media campaign around them. Will Bennett designed them. So if you liked the way the website looks, he also made a bunch of beautiful logos for t-shirts.
Kasey: You do have to do a campaign around this. Like I was unaware of this completely And we are, we are good —
Rachel: We talk a lot Twitter. Yeah. Yeah. I’ll get there.
Kasey: These are dope!
Rachel: Yeah!
Kasey: I’m looking at them right. now. These are great. Yeah.
Rachel: I guess I should add that if you’re a Patreon subscriber or Kasey, because I’ll send it to you, you can get a discount code for the merch. It’s all print on demand. So the discount code will be at-cost instead of you paying more for it. So you’ll still be paying a little bit, but it was the best I could do. ‘Cause I don’t just have a box of t-shirts that I can send out for free. Yeah.
And you can find out more about me or my comic on the link tree. Rainbow Rodeo is also for sale. I need to make a social media campaign around that too.
It’s just a lot. I have a day job. When do you do at all?
Kasey: I don’t know. It is a lot. I’m remembering now that our first conversations were actually about your comic because I bought your comic and then reached out to you and then learned from that that you wrote about music and had the podcast. But our first few conversations were just about how much I love the comics.
Rachel: That’s such a weird coincidence because when you had emailed me, your PR person had emailed me like the day before or something like that. So I was like, “why is this guy emailing me again? He’s trying to contact me through the comic website! What the hell?”
So there’s three issues of that. And this week I’m committed to typing up my draft of issue four. So that can be out in the world at some point.
Kasey: I’m going to hold you to these goals now! We have documentation! I want to see a social media campaign around the shirts. I want to see some promotion for the comic. And you can let me know when draft four is finished.
Rachel: Yes, I will do that. Also, if you’re listening and you like posting things to social media schedulers, reach out! I can pay you a teeny little bit to do a teeny little bit of it for me. Cause I don’t like doing it. So. The very kind Patreon subscribers are subsidizing this podcast so that I can pay for people to do things I don’t like.
So this 14-minutes song is from Vigilantes of Love, another band I’m obsessed with, although it’s really hard to find information on them. I think they’re out of the Athens, Georgia kind of REM-type of scene. But Bill Mallonee, the lead singer, was raised a Calvinist. So his early music is very Christian, including this song. But it’s also beautiful and. He writes volumes and volumes of liner notes for all his stuff on Bandcamp. He puts out like at least three albums a year, maybe three to five, and they’re all good, but that’s what kind of songwriter he is.
So there is a studio version of this song, but I’ve never listened to it because this version is the only one I want to hear. It’s from a bootleg of a show from the year 2000. And it was on some kind of BBC show. It’s called “Give it All Your Heart.” And it is to me, the quintessential baseball song, because it also goes into life and religion and how that all ties back into baseball.
Kasey: I did not know this song until you suggested it in our email thread. It’s so good. And I too, have I only listened to the live version. So I checked that out and I have not listened to the studio version. But I love a long song. This is great. I love a 14-minute song. Let’s do it.
Rachel: Yeah. I mean, I think as you’ll listen, you’ll hear it. Like, there’s definitely verses that are like preplanned, but a lot of it seems to be really off the cuff. And I think that’s what I appreciate about it. So be patient with it all the way through, I hope you find it as beautiful as we both did in music we trust in music, we believe take care of each other out there.
Kasey: Right on. Thank you so much for having me on.
Podcast intro by Alma Contra, music from Two Cow Garage’s “Stars & Gutters”
Send me music via SubmitHub! Send me money via Ko-fi or Patreon. Find Rachel and her comic via https://linktr.ee/rachel.cholst