Interview

I first met Larry Tee on April 22 at a dinner party in his honor, and everyone was talking about Miss USA. At the pageant a few days before, the California contestant, Carrie Prejean, was asked by judge Perez Hilton to supply her views on gay marriage. Perez didn't like her answer that "marriage should be between a man and a woman," and the exchange sparked a national conversation on the subject.

It so happened that Perez had recorded a song for Larry Tee's latest album, Club Badd (out May 5 on Ultra Records), "My Penis," which was meant to have premiered the next day. It's a funny little song, imminently danceable, in which Perez intones repeatedly: "My penis. My penis. My penis. Is famous." When Perez did premiere the song a day later, he was one of America's most-discussed personalities. It was a PR dream.

Larry Tee couldn't have predicted his good fortune, but he has a knack for being in the right place at the right time—with the right people in tow. He's got an impressive resume: Over the last twenty-something years—he's vague about the 80s—he's played with The Fans, who produced the B-52s' "Rock Lobster," co-founded the famous 90s Club Kid scene made of Fenton Bailey's 2003 film Party Monster, coined the term "electroclash," and helped to launch the careers of RuPaul and Scissor Sisters-and those are just the highlights.

On Club Badd, Larry plays host to a number of up-and-coming acts-among them Jeffree Star, Roxy Cottontail, Mel Merio, and Jodie Harsh—as well as Larry's longtime—don't call her "old"—friend, transsexual icon Amanda Lepore, and YouTube sensation Kelly (you know: "Shoes. Oh, my God! Shoes!"). The result is an album that is dense with personality. Princess Superstar's "Licky," below, had already gotten attention in DJ sets for weeks before the album was released.

It's easy to see how Larry made all these friends. You can hear the exclamation points at the ends of some of his sentences, and there's still a faint drawl left over from his days in Georgia. When I got back in touch with him a few days before the album's release, he was eager to talk about everything from his collaborators to Miss California's boob job.


ALEXANDRIA SYMONDS: What are you doing in Tucson? Are you DJing out there?

LARRY TEE: I'm going between Tucson and Phoenix. Basically, it's hot out here.

AS: Do you find that doing DJ sets is different from state to state? Do the crowds look different and respond differently to what you play?

LT: Oh, my God. You don't even know. I try to bring a little bit of everything, because you just never know what kind of crowd you're going to get. Sometimes I get more of a mainstream crowd that just is not moving to what I'm playing. I have to have crossover secret weapons.

AS: Can you give me an example of one, or is that a trade secret that you can't divulge?

LT: [Laughs] Oh, it's a trade secret. For example, I have this trashed version of "Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones that usually works. If they're really being stubborn, I can go and do that one. It turns Justice-style in the middle, but they're already dancing to it before it turns all crazy.

AS: Sounds like a good move.

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In the early 1990s, Bill Callahan helped pioneer lo-fi and was known as Smog, an alias he stuck with until 2005, with a few intervening years recording as (Smog). Clearly a man who spends a lot of time outdoors, Callahan-as-Smog sang about things like bullfrogs, tall grass, horses, and walking down to the creek. And Callahan's second full-length album under his own name, to be released today, hasn't abandoned these concerns—it's titled Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle. (Note the sneaky "we.")

After nineteen years in music and twelve beautiful, spare albums under his belt, Bill Callahan has earned the right to take his time. During our interview he speaks slowly, and waits for the right words—he knows you're listening. (LEFT: BILL CALLAHAN)

ALEXANDRIA SYMONDS: I was curious about your band's name. First you were Smog, and then for a while you used parentheses. For the last two albums, you're using your given name: What prompted the changes?

BILL CALLAHAN: I think it was mostly just for the change. I'd been using it for twelve or thirteen years, which seems really remarkable to me, that I would use it that long. It might have been appropriate for the first four or five records, but I realized that I'd been living with this thing, working under this thing, that didn't mean anything at all to me.

AS: Do you feel like by using your name, you're revealing more of yourself? You're not behind the mask of your stage name?

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Currituck Co. frontman and sometime Vetiver member Kevin Barker has a wicked sense of humor—his new film, The Family Jams, is named in part after an album released by the Manson Family commune. But the film is also something a lot purer than that: a documentary about Devendra Banhart's 2004 tour, featuring performances and pow-wows by Banhart, Joanna Newsom, Vetiver, Antony and the Johnsons, Espers, and Meg Baird, among others. Because the project boils down to Barker shooting footage of his friends, he doesn't have quite the detached eye most documentarians do. In this case that's a good thing.

When we spoke to Barker, he was in California, en route to the Sarasota Film Festival. The Festival will host the first public screenings of The Family Jams tonight and tomorrow.


AS: So who's seen the film thus far?

KB: Just friends.

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Image courtesy of La Société Expéditionnaire.

Leave Ruin, the debut album from the Pennsylvania-based one-man band Strand of Oaks, opens with a nightmare. "I thought I was too old to have dreams like this," singer-songwriter Timothy Showalter intones. "This is what it feels like to see the world end in flames." After multiple listens, it becomes clear that the true nightmare is a waking one—Showalter is singing, beautifully, about a messy breakup. (The literal element shouldn't be ignored either: Showalter's house really did burn down.)

The rest of the album reflects this first cut: it seems straightforward, but its complexities begin to unfold the third, fourth, and fifth times you hear it. Leave Ruin is perhaps best described as woodsy-appropriate, given Showalter's choice of stage name. There's drama in it-well-placed crescendos; a nine-minute love letter-but at heart it's a man and a guitar in the infinite tradition of men with guitars. Imagine a less dispassionate Damien Jurado, a quieter Neil Young, or a Bon Iver whose lyrics follow a discernible narrative thrust.

Showalter himself is a former Indiana Mennonite who's now a Hebrew-school teacher in Wilkes-Barre, PA. He drives the school bus for extra money, and leads singalongs with his students on the way to school. We caught up with him after work in the week leading up to his album's release.

ALEXANDRIA SYMONDS: The bio that your label provides is interesting, but it leaves out a lot of your life story.

TIMOTHY SHOWALTER: [LAUGHS]

AS: It basically says that you were in Indiana, and you were a Mennonite, and that now you're in Pennsylvania, and you're a Hebrew-school teacher-without giving any of the in-between. Could you tell me what in your life conspired to make those events occur the way they did?

TS: I moved to Philadelphia when I was a freshman in college, but I guess it boils down to having a girlfriend, and being too young and way more serious than I should have been at that age. Because of that, I was like, "I'm going to move back home to Indiana and marry this girl!"

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