The What Podcast at Austin City Limits 2021

It's almost surreal to think that a major music festival happened, but it did, albeit

in Texas.

ACL Fest Weekend 2 recap, which includes the silky smooth sounds of Mr. George Strait,

Aaron Frazier, Duran Jones and the Indications, and an incredible sushi dinner.

Plus one of the acts at ACL Fest was Modest Mouse.

Isaac Rock, one of the most interesting humans in the entire industry, today.

On the What Podcast, which bands this year that matter very much are Brad Steiner, Lord

Taco, it starts... right now.

Oh, and a glorious day to you, I'm Brad, Lord Taco, Barry Courter, the What Podcast.

I cannot wait to talk about my ACL weekend.

My guy, guys, this dinner.

Oh man, I can't stop talking about this dinner that I had.

And I'm not kidding about that.

This dinner was incredible.

This is sushi, right?

Yeah, sushi.

Yeah.

Sushi can't wait.

Yeah.

It was my headliner.

It was my headliner Saturday night.

Because when I'm thinking, you know, a podcast about festivals, about, you know, three guys

that love festivals, I can't wait to hear about the sushi dinner in Austin, Texas.

Yeah.

When I go to Austin, Texas, I love to get the sushi.

You think about sushi.

What have you guys been doing?

How's everything going?

What's new in Barry's life?

What's new in Taco's life?

I'm down in St. Simon's with my daughter and son-in-law and a brand new baby.

So hey, Taco, do you find it odd that Barry Courter always seems to vacation near my mom's

house?

I've been looking for.

It's not that odd if you think about it.

Is there a hurricane watch put out?

The flags are up.

Have you seen Hurricane Linda since you've been down there?

We have not.

But the flags are out.

The flags are out.

It is kind of weird, isn't it?

That your mom lives miles from my daughter, who is the only one in our family now who

doesn't live in the Chattanooga area.

I mean, if it's even stranger before the old lady moved because she lived down the road,

literally in the same neighborhood as Barry's family.

I mean, it's just bizarre of all the places that you could have chosen.

Wow.

You sure you weren't related?

Yeah, they lived within a half mile of each other, didn't they?

Yeah.

I mean, you had to pass Barry's daughter's house to get to my mom's place.

So strange.

So you haven't seen mom, huh?

I haven't seen Linda.

I thought she'd been your first call.

Yeah, no, we'll probably on the way out.

OK, yeah, directly out.

Yeah, directly out.

Look at the time.

Wave as you drive by.

Yeah, I go what's been doing except for going to, you know, wrestling bars, going to the

wrestling bar.

Yeah.

You like that?

I mean, I've never seen somebody enjoy just total shit like you do.

It is just bizarre how much you love going to a wrestling bar in North Georgia.

Man, it's so much fun.

And the funniest part is, so we pull up and haven't even gotten out of the bus yet.

It's still in the parking lot.

And the guy comes up and he's knocking on the window and I roll it down and he's like,

hey, man, I'm sorry.

You know, they just closed.

We were we were playing.

We were the band and we just finished.

And so, you know, it's done.

And he but he was like, but I'll give you a parking lot serenade.

So he plays like the worst drunken cover of Every Rose Has a Thorn.

And you know, my mind was blown and I was like, thank you for that.

And then we start to leave.

And then he comes back and he's like, wait, wait, wait.

I was wrong.

They're still open.

I was like, well, I thought so.

The science is open.

So Barry, Barry, he saw more music than I did at ACL.

I got a great story to this.

They do professional wrestling.

Oh, yeah.

You're using that word really loosely.

I have a story is the reason that I asked.

This is honest to gosh.

True.

I worked at a funeral home when actually my wife was pregnant with my daughter that I'm

here visiting.

I needed a second job and I got it.

I got a job in the first night.

There was a guy about my age who is also his first night.

He's one of these guys that never stopped talking.

He had a story about everything, you know, that opinion and all that.

And at one point he got on the phone and I realized he was talking to his wrestling partner

and they were talking about their upcoming match that weekend.

And I realized they could only afford one mask.

And my mind, I just pictured these guys tagging out and then sharing the mask.

I mean, that is a hysterical bit, though, if they did every time they tagged in, they'd

take the mask off and put it back on.

So I told you, hilarious.

I promise you, it was at that moment I realized I needed to start keeping a journal because

this was going to be one of the greatest jobs.

And somebody called Vince McMahon because that is a really, really funny idea.

And you get you just can't make that up.

No, I couldn't.

That's why I said I got to write this.

The reason I brought it up is because taco in his neighborhood, for some odd reason,

there is a bar slash restaurant that's literally a wrestling ring that you walk.

It's called, I think the wrestling bar or something.

It's called turnbuckles.

And it's just down the road from my house.

Yeah.

And I know where it is.

And when you walk in there are dudes actually physically wrestling in the wrestling ring

every time you walk in.

They're taking shots.

They're taking bumps.

They're taking chairs.

It's hysterical.

That's where Kevin wrestled.

Every time you send a picture of that place, no one is ever there except for the guys wrestling

and you and me.

Yeah.

Isn't that great though?

You don't, you don't have to worry about running into somebody or, you know, and they got PBR

on draft.

Oh, thank God.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's actually sounds like a lot of fun.

It is.

And you get to yell and scream at him and hate.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think, yeah.

Look, there is a part of me as a kid who grew up on professional wrestling that has always

wanted to get into the ring and just take a couple of laps, you know, just do the back

and forth and the ropes off the turnbuckle.

You have wanted somebody to throw me into the turnbuckle.

I've always sort of wanted that.

You know, next time you're in town, I just don't want to, you know, putting it on the

list.

I've got a mask.

Yeah.

The PBR boys, the PBR.

PBR boys.

So I went to ACL over the weekend.

It was first festival since Lollapalooza.

And I don't know what it was, but I felt more freaked out about COVID there than I did at

Lollapalooza.

I think maybe because I was just in Texas, you know, and everywhere else that you went,

nobody gives a damn and that feels a little freaky.

Is it is it is, you know, tied up or as loose as I think it is not tied up as loose as I

think it is in St. Simon's, Barry?

Oh, yeah, it's loose.

I think I've seen three masks.

Yeah, it was really, it was really weird.

And you know, the whole time, you know, you just take one of those moments where you cough

or you stub your toe and like, do I have it?

Do I have it now?

Do I have it now?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's just very strange.

But, you know, all that being said, you know, ACL, just it always doesn't matter.

Really, it's it's just like Banra in that it doesn't matter the lineup.

It just feels right.

The space always feels right.

The energy is always good.

You never seem to have a bad time there.

And even though the lineup was was, you know, short, it felt like, man, I don't think anybody

gave a damn.

It was a exceptionally great time.

I'll start with the silky, silky smooth sounds of maybe the best set I have seen in two years.

Aaron Frazier.

I am in love with this kid.

I have a man crush on him.

I am obsessed.

Aaron Frazier is the drummer for Duran Jones, the indications Duran Jones, the indications

Duran is ironically from New Orleans, lived in New Orleans as a kid born in Lafourche,

Parish, I think.

No Ascension.

He's born in Ascension Parish and eventually made his way up to Ohio.

I think it was Ohio or is it Indiana?

One of those states met all the guys in the band, started the band.

And now, you know, they've got, you know, some success.

I think they're an incredible act.

I think I saw them on Thursday in an early show.

And, you know, you can tell their newer stuff is a little bit more up and, you know, moving

in and get you dancing.

The earlier stuff's a little bit, you know, more more in the 60s soul side of things.

But either way, they are so good and they are so tight.

Well, every now and then they turn it over to the drummer and the drummer has this falsetto

that is just unbelievable.

And it was so good.

Dan Arbok from the Black Keys found it and did an album with him.

And I remember when this album came out, mainly because it was Dan and I listened to it.

I'm like, man, this is really good.

This is blue eyed 60s do op soul.

And I can't get enough of it.

You know how much I love soul music, Barry.

So I really like the album.

I put it away for a little while and I saw him on the schedule.

It's like, oh, he's going to do his own solo thing.

Well, I didn't realize it was going to be only his second ever show with this group.

And oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

I was chills.

Every song.

It was like Smokey Robinson.

You know, it was like this.

This kid just plucked out of nowhere with this beautiful falsetto.

And everything was just so pitch perfect tight.

Oh, God.

And I said, I turned around and you saw the entire Black Pumas.

You saw all of Durand Jones.

You saw a guy in Duran Duran.

It felt like all of the artists knew what they had and they all came to see Aaron Frazier.

It was nuts.

Absolutely nuts.

You couldn't have given me one hundred dollars to think that was going to be the show that

I was going to remember.

Nice.

Now, you probably said earlier, did you go because I mean, because knowing you, you

had to make an effort to go.

So you did you make an effort or were you with people that said, we got to go see this

one?

No.

So because so I went to ACL because of the dinner.

I'm not going to lie.

I went to the dinner.

But along the way, I said, well, if there are a few shows that I want to see, I want

to see the Duran.

That's why I got there on Thursday night and Friday.

I wanted to see Duran Jones in the after show.

I wanted to see them versus from a club to a festival.

And then I wanted to see Aaron Frazier.

OK.

And if I got anything along the way, all in.

That's cool.

But along the way, speaking of Silky Smooth sounds as good in twenty twenty one as he

did in nineteen eighty two.

Mr. George Strait was fantastic.

There's no pretense on that stage.

There's nothing that you need.

Like there's there's no giant mileage.

It's just a weird contrast at the exact same time, Miley Cyrus is on the other side of

the festival doing, you know, God knows what.

But on the other side, it's just a man.

A few guys with a guitar.

Yeah, it was so simple, so silky.

And it, you know, just like we thought, hit after hit after hit.

And he still sounds great.

You know, it's three chords, three chords in the truth, right?

Makes it work.

Yeah.

You know, I just like I always found it so charming when he would like.

He's got this move where every time he hits like a note where he always says, hey, like

he's got this pull away from the mic thing that he does that I find to be so cute.

I don't know why I like it so much, but he's got he's got this move.

And frankly, it's the only move he has.

Like there's not much other stuff going on, which I found it to be such a weird coincidence

that Miley Cyrus is on the exact same time as him.

So no Miley for me, Barry.

But I got you.

But I did.

I did go to the sushi dinner.

I can't stop thinking about this dinner.

So first off, I can't wait.

Yeah.

Start us off.

Walk us through it.

OK, so it's they only see 10 people and I can never get these words right.

Omakase.

Well, it's 17 courses and it's only with you and nine other people.

And you got the sushi chef.

You got her chef to her right and her chef to her left.

The guy on the left is packing the sushi or packing the rice.

The guy on the right is cutting the fish and she's putting it all together and preparing

it in these beautiful little ways.

So you get 17 pieces.

Now along the way, you also get a sake pairing every with every one of them.

And then at the end, you get it like a little matcha and you can have an extra piece or

two at the end of the dinner.

Well, I've never been so hungry after a five hundred dollar dinner.

I was starving.

Well, now to two questions.

But it was great.

Did she make the what is it, the volcano onion?

And did she flip the sushi into your mouth?

That is not the same thing that is a

because we tried to do that.

You're going to Camp I have Tokyo.

It's a different place.

OK, I obviously I know the difference.

There's the fish that she was choosing.

First off, they're just so unique and so interesting.

And she's doing so many weird and bizarre and brilliant things with them, like dried

marigold leaves on top of, you know, like the prawn.

But you know, these this fish is just it just butter.

They taste like butter.

You know, she's she's got them so well cured, like you just like they melt.

How do you get fish like this?

It was incredible.

Plus, you know, she is incredibly charming and she's telling the story about how she

came up with all these recipes.

She's the star of the show.

I mean, you just listen to her tell the stories and and it's worth every penny.

But then the weirdest thing talk about a small world, Barry, the guy, her chef to her right,

Chef Jeremy.

Owns a house five blocks away from my house.

Of course, he was telling me he's like, oh, yeah, I'm a I'm a I'm a tour.

May guy like where in tomato you live.

And he told me the address like, dude, I drive by that every day of my life to get to work

every single day.

I know exactly the house that he lives in.

That's pretty cool.

Tell me that seventy seventeen courses, where they all unique.

Yeah, well, I mean, everything I got tasted different.

I got one twice and it was just a sec.

It was like a little bit of a rearrangement the second time because there were two meat

pieces on there and I don't eat meat only fish.

So they she redid one piece specifically just for me.

And it was the toro.

Oh, the toro.

I'll take it all day.

I'll take that toro all day.

So that was incredible.

Man, I had a great dinner at Laundrette the first night in front of Duran Jones.

Man, that was then there's this incredible Italian place called Red Ash that I'm a pretty

big fan of.

There must have been red ass red, heavy red ash, red ash.

Sorry that we must have cleared through 10 bottles of wine, 10 bottles of wine.

Now it sounds like my week.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm with you.

I got home on Sunday.

I got home on Sunday and Hillary picked me up and from the airport and it was late.

I get in the car goes she goes, damn, you smell like booze.

I drank two nights ago.

That's how much we poured it on.

Yeah.

So so the ACL experience again, you know, I've always been pretty hard on Austin.

But you know, I was talking to some of the Austin people, they passed some sort of ordinance

to do something about the homelessness.

You know, it felt a little cleaned up.

It felt a little bit more like you could you could, you know, walk around without, you

know, tripping over literal people sleeping in the streets.

But man, I still contend everyone in Austin looks like a J. Crew ad.

I feel like I walk into J. Crew every time I'm in Austin.

Everyone looks exactly the same and not just that they look the same.

They're wearing all the same things.

They they go to the same places.

It was it's still a tad strange.

Now, with all that being said, I don't know, Barry, if you've ever been to Austin.

But the thing that I love so much about the city is that everyone seems to care a lot

about the things that I care about, like design and making something look right.

I mean, everything is cute.

I'll put it that way.

Everything is cute.

You know, they even the torches tacos are incredibly brilliant spaces.

You know, the details in that city, at least for user experience stuff is fantastic.

They're so well done.

So the gentrification hasn't ruined that yet.

I know the gentrification is all over the place.

All over the place.

OK.

Yeah.

And it's just getting it's just getting wider and wider and wider.

You know, you get Elon Musk moving his entire operation to Austin.

You know, all the software and the San Francisco is coming with him.

You know, it was a great weekend, though.

I'm trying to think of what else I saw that that I thought was really interesting.

I love Future Islands and I hope one day to be able to talk to him because I find him

to be unbelievably interesting.

But I'm to the point where if you've seen the Future Islands show once or twice, I don't

know how many more times I need to see that show.

I love him.

I and I love the band.

But you know, I saw it again and this is like the fourth or fifth time I've seen it.

And it's just the same bit over and over and over.

You know, it does.

It is fun, though, at this point to watch the crowd.

You look around and you watch them see it for the first time and they look around like,

what in the hell is this guy doing?

He's ripping off a mask from his face.

He's collapsing to the ground.

You know, you can literally hear him beating his chest while he's singing.

You know, he's punching himself in the face.

You know, it's a very physical.

He went to the wrestling bar.

It was the wrestling bar on stage.

He combined everything.

He's just sweating like a maniac.

He's falling down to the ground.

He noises.

It is a bizarre experience for a first timer.

But now, after I've seen like four or five times, I got it.

You know, I got it.

We've said that about a couple of bands, right?

I mean, St. Paul and I'm seeing St. Paul on Thursday.

I'll see.

I think that me and you have the exact same feeling about St. Paul as much as we love

them.

But I think that show is very different in a small, condensed space than the places that

we've seen it in the last few years.

No, no question.

Yeah, it's a great show up close for sure.

I think that we did Taco and I did Moon River.

And then the only show I've seen since then was the Santana, the Carlos Santana show,

which was which was terrific.

Yeah, but you can't dance there.

You dance places out.

You cannot do any dance.

That's right.

Stay in your seat.

No, stay in your seat.

Stay in your seat.

Stay in your seat.

Stay in your seat.

Stay in your seat.

Stay in your seat.

Stay in your seat.

Stay in your seat.

Stay in your seat.

Stay in your seat.

Stay in your seat.

And it was a very good show.

What aances and we

I thought every experience I've had with her has been this very low key down tempo singer-songwriter,

adorable little pixie with an acoustic guitar. Oh my God, that was Texas, you know,

roadhouse sort of stuff. She was on fire in front of Band of Horses. I did not know that it was

going to be that much of a, you know, I'm trying to do my as much Texas as I can barn burner,

but and then Band of Horses comes on. All right, look, I said this to Isaac Brock in my chat with

Modest Mouse, but I love Band of Horses. I really do. And you can't find an album that I love more

than Funeral. I think their early stuff is incredible, absolutely incredible. You could

listen to that dude sing all day, but when the new stuff comes on, I just had this visceral angry

reaction. And I think it's all because of a song called In a Drawer. They did a song with Jay

Maskus called In a Drawer that I swear to God, Taco, you can check the lyrics on, double check

my work here, but the lyrics literally go, I opened up a drawer. I looked in a drawer,

found it in a drawer. So I took it from a drawer. It is enraging. It's an enraging four minutes. I

have never, has there ever been something that makes you that angry that you listen to other than

me? Is there a song that physically makes you angry? Yes. Actually, there's an artist, Dave Matthews.

I can't stand it. What about it makes you mad? I have no idea, but it is the only act because his

band is terrific, but he's the only act. And it's been this way for years. If I can be driving in,

in one of those, you know, hypnotic states where I'm not even paying attention and something from

the radio will worm its way in and I will lunge for the radio dial. But that's an entire artist.

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. As far as a song, I can't think of one right off. Is there any song redeeming from

Dave Matthews that you like? The ones where he just lets the band play. Yeah. Well, the Warren

Haynes, what is the song that Warren does with the Neil Young song? So you have to hear some,

you have to hear Dave Matthews with someone else doing someone else's song for it to be passing

for you. Okay. Pretty much. I really loved Crosby, Stills and Nash when Crosby and Stills wasn't

there. It was great. I loved them. Yeah. No, there's a few like that. Yeah. Oh, we built this city.

That's a song that I hate. I love that song. I hate that song. That's my favorite song.

Yeah. Good for you. It's one of those, I feel like the band of that stature should have known

better. That's never, I think that's the point that I was about to make in that you guys are so

good at this and yet you put out that. Not that you put it out, that you keep playing it, thinking

it's one of your bigger hits. Yeah. I mean, they legitimately love this song. They love it. They

love playing it. They love the audience seems to like it. It still gets played on satellite radio.

It is enraging this song. I mean, I get the message of it. It's a message about like,

finding an old picture of your dad or your grandpa and it harkens you back to times of your past and

makes you feel that feeling that you originally felt in the picture. I get the whole gist of it,

but open up a drawer, found it in a drawer, looked in a drawer and grabbed it from the drawer,

closed in the drawer, then opened the drawer. It is just hokey nonsense. Yeah, I got it. Mr. Roboto

would be another one. And that one's funny to me because Tommy Shaw and the rest of the band won't

play it anymore. They hate it too. Yeah. There are some. Sure. You're talking about major hits. This

was like a mediocre hit. I just keep hanging on to and I, oh God, the point that I'm making is like,

and I get a lot of pushback from band of horses fans on this and I understand why, but for me,

whenever they try to be a rock band, it just doesn't work a lot of times for me. But when

they go back to funeral, maybe I'm just so partial to that album that I can't really hear them any

other way. And that might be on me, but man, when they start trying to be a rock band, I'm just like,

sing me a ballad. Make me sad. Yeah. Sad stuff. Go back to George Strait a little bit, I guess.

We hyped that up so much six months ago. We said, what's he got? 53 number ones. He's the

you know, Guinness Book. He can't do them all. What was the set in the crowd? I mean, was it

just one everybody singing along all from start to finish? So I'm glad you brought that up because

I there was something different about ACL Fest that is unlike anything else in this in the country.

You can bring chairs. Yeah, it was a lot. It's a lot of it's a lot of sitting and singing.

The crowd was definitely sitting and singing. So deep in the heart of Texas, of course,

that's the way that he started it. There were songs there that I did not know. I kind of thought that

it would be nonstop hits of stuff that I knew. Turns out I don't know the entire George Strait

catalog. To me, you can shut the whole thing down as I can still make Cheyenne. It's one of my

favorite songs of all time. He played that really, really early. I loved carried away. I think the

voice still carries the carried away. And then, you know, I won't lie, I didn't make it for the

second hour. Okay. Two hours, we got a good I mean, I feel like I got a good hour into it. I think

that I probably got to damn it. What is the name of that song? Amarillo by morning. I never heard

Amarillo by morning. So I curated. I missed I missed probably a bunch of his bunch of his

actual hits because I, you know, once I heard carried away, I was like, I've heard the two that

I love. Yeah, well, that kind of answers. So did it feel like a curated set or just to feel like a

you know, I don't think I don't think that I don't think that George Straits, you know, going off

the cuff too much. You know, I don't think I think it's pretty tight. I don't know if he's, you know,

just walking around the stage like, all right, let's do this. Yeah. I think they will stay with

me boys. Follow me. Yeah. Check. Yes or no. I wonder if I heard check. Yes or no. I don't remember.

Man, I mean, I hope I didn't leave as early as I did hear check. Yes or no. Yeah. Okay. I'm looking

at this. I'm looking at the setlist right now. I just I just found it. Check. Yes or no is six.

I don't know how I missed that. I don't know how I missed that. So I got through. Yeah, I just I

didn't get to Amarillo by morning. He played it way late in the set. I was I was gone probably about

an hour. You know, and the other thing too is the other thing I wish that I heard more of I kind of

like him when he's a storyteller and I don't feel like I got a lot of that. You know, but, you know,

he's never going to see George Strait again. So yeah, no, it's about that. That's about all I

wanted. You give me you give me carried away and still make Cheyenne and I'm going to be a pretty

happy guy. The other thing I have for you this week is I have re sparked my love with Modest

Mouse. I I know that I don't know if you've heard the big hit they've had this year. We are between

it's on the new album Golden Casket. So when the first when the album first came out, I was like,

you know, I don't know, Modest Mouse. The last couple albums have just been OK. Man, I love this

new album so much. It feels like they are so inspired again. And, you know, the impetus of

this album was how can I just go in there and make a whole bunch of noise and make a song out of it?

Literally, he's banging on a Coke can and one of the songs. So I just felt I've refelt in love with

the album and I saw the show at ACL and then they were did a show for me last night at the Film

War in New Orleans. I just love Isaac Brock so much. He is such a unique and bizarre and smart

and thoughtful dude, all while being fun and playful. I didn't anticipate this, Barry, but

last night I just walked in to say, hey, Isaac, thanks for the interview. I just get a picture.

Didn't say thank you for the interview. Never got the picture. We sat there and talked for an hour

and a half. You know, I just probably probably tell people who are just tuning into the show and

don't know when you say he did a show for me. What you mean for the radio station? Yeah, so

you probably let people know. That's for me. That's what I do. Did he make sushi as well for you?

I found him at a wrestling bar and he was in the parking lot flipping burgers. Yeah. So he so they

did a they did a show for the radio station and twenty two hundred people they sold out. It's one

of the few shows that have stuck through the fall mainly because they're one of the one shows that

sold out. Yeah, that'll do it. They it was a great crowd. I thought the set was incredibly tight.

They sound as good as they've ever sounded. Isaac feels inspired. I don't know. I just had such a

great time with it and I kind of wish I would have been I don't want to say more prepared,

but more prepared for my conversation with him because thinking about it now after I've talked

to him for an hour, hour and a half, I have so many more questions for him and and I now I've

just I've gotten re sparked with this with this guy in this band and it's made me go back and listen

to all the old stuff and now I want to do the interview over. I want to do over. I've got so

many more questions and more interesting things to talk about. But with all that being said,

it was still a fine chat and I'm going to play it for you now if you don't mind and then we'll

wrap it up for the day if there's anything else we need to get to before you get to Modest Mouse.

No, sounds great. Okay, let's do it. Modest Mouse. Isaac Brock on the what podcast.

Isaac, I'm so excited about this. It's kind of strange to say it, but you know, since you guys

have been around since 1996, you know, you've been like a thread in my life this entire time.

Yesterday at ACL, if I'm not mistaken, your first ACL was 2004 or five with Float On.

And then now you're back at ACL 15 years later in front of Jack Harlow and Billie Eilish,

two people who probably were what three, four, five years old. That has got to be a really weird sort

of mind screw for you. I try not to let it get into my head, you know, which is to say it should

and it doesn't. Is there something refreshing though about it? It could, it could send you down

a dark path, but the refreshing part of it is that you're still there, you know, you're still

as relevant as ever. I mean, yeah, it's a dude, honestly, it's all the same to me. Like it doesn't,

I'm a pretty big Billie Eilish fan. So, you know, so that's exciting. You get to watch how

we're a band and we all get up there and we, you know, like just bang it out and try and figure out

how to deal with it. I'm sure that you watch something that's like kind of more pop based.

It's like, how are they going to do this? Cause you know, it's still got to be entertainment.

If it's like one person singing that is fascinating to me. What else did you see other than Billie

over the weekend? Honestly, the only thing I saw from the front of stage was Billie Eilish.

Reason being not a big fan of crowds, ironically. Turns out none of us are in 2021 these days. It's

right. Not where we want to be. I begged it different, man. There's looked like there's a

lot of people who were pretty happy. Well, also Texas doesn't seem to understand COVID's happening.

I don't know if I saw a mask the entire weekend. It was a bizarre. I mean, you would get plucked

out of New Orleans and dropped into the middle of Texas and nobody seems to give a damn about

anything that's happening in the world was kind of weird. Yeah. That made what's making some people

a little edgy on the tour and things. I'm a bizarrely optimistic. So what has it been like

touring inside of this COVID thing? Yeah. I mean, we kind of like set up a system of our own that

keeps us pretty safe. It's tricky from town to town, venue to venue, state to state.

The rules are different so that the stakes are higher or lower and things. But we're pretty

realistic about the fact that if one of us gets on the bus with COVID, we've just tanked it.

And possibly those ripples might even go a little farther than just our own situation. It might

affect other people. So we've kept this as a pretty insular tour, which is fine for me.

I mean, for the anti-crowd guy, yeah, this is working for you.

Yeah. Basically, I haven't noticed. I mean, before COVID, I rarely went in the building,

except for the play. It's because I don't like being in, you know, like kind of

rural buildings. I end up hanging out in the parking lot.

I think that might be a name of a modest now song, Hanging Out in the Parking Lot.

I'm such a big fan of yours and the bands. I think it's because of a point that you touched

on a second ago. There's no pretense. I don't feel like I'm ever being talked down to. I don't

ever feel like I'm being... It feels real and weird all at the same time, which is almost the reason

why Golden Casket works so well. It feels optimistic, dare I say. It feels like you might be happy.

Well, you know, in all fairness, you know, I have a two and a four year old and

I had to correct myself a few times and just be like, look, Mr. Cynical, like,

if you brought two people to the planet and you're just gonna, you know, like,

cast shade on it the whole time, like, what do you got to offer? Like, what are some positive

inputs to this and things? Can you, you know, can you with a clear conscience actually even be

optimistic? And I decided, yes, I could. And so, you know, it actually required me to do a little

work on myself. And also, you know, like I was recording and writing this record during this

pandemic and I'm sure as hell, I didn't want to, you know, like, I don't know, toss gas on the

fire of depression and things. And so I started looking past that to see what I did like that I saw.

When you look and see how much optimism, you bring a two and a four year old into the world, right?

Right. You start to think, I don't have children, so I don't know what this click is like. What is

the click when you say to yourself, well, I do have something to feel optimistic about.

And you do that deep dive, almost like a body check from body scan from top to bottom.

Maybe you were pretty optimistic to begin with, right?

No, we've got a long road to home, man, as far as like, you know, blind optimism where it's just like,

I choose to be optimistic because that is a nicer, nicer way to be versus there are solutions, even if

we haven't figured them out and whatnot. And it's worth doing. And that's kind of, that's kind of

where I landed is that that all our worrying and hand wringing is, you know, probably not enough,

but we can we can we can make a good world for Europe and the future if we want.

How are the kids doing now? Where are they right now?

They're at home. Yeah, they're at home. And they're doing they're doing great.

I mean, I brought them out as much as I could.

Do they get into this kind of stuff? Do they do they like this? Do they like you playing

a soda can in the studio? Well, they they they yeah, they really get excited by shows. That's like,

yeah, that's it's pretty phenomenal. And so now they put on their own little concerts at home.

One of them, one of them doesn't even really know words, so they're really good.

I always found you to be playful to begin with.

Do you think that having children has made you even more playful, even as a songwriter,

as a composer? No children made you sillier.

I'm trying to trying to be sillier because it's it's funner. But I go between being like, you know,

trying trying to like change myself into someone who speaks properly and uses, you know, like

use the proper name for everything because I don't want to blow it for them and have them,

you know, like see it and, you know, just just making the D in school or something.

Because because I thought it was cute not to know what, you know, the nickname everything.

So and then at the same time. Yeah, you want to be more fun.

So, Isaac, I'll give you a gets that's a good lesson to have with the children because my father

used to have this running joke. And for my the period of until I was 13, 14 years old,

he would laugh and go, oh, that hurts me in my ovaries. And it took me till a mid teenager

to realize I said that in response to them in the moment, just like dad would.

And the right talks were like, what did what did you just say?

Yeah, yeah, I got a lot of trouble because of because of this sort of stuff, too. I actually

was remembering that I had a this dude my mom dated after after divorce had all these

cute cartoon t shirts and I did not know what they meant. And I got like I'd get I'd have to get on

different like save it, save a tree, eat a beaver, had no idea what was going on there.

And things even when I was getting reprimanded for it, I'm just like, I'm not getting it.

Like apparently we don't like, you know, like I had a t shirt one time that said Pat McCrotch

across the front of it. And I wore it to. Oh, that's funny. Yeah, it was. And I wore it to school.

I thought it was just a friend of my dad's. I thought it was just like a no, it was not a real

person. Yeah, I didn't know that t shirts could be trouble. Yeah, big trouble. I I do want to just

to touch a second again on the on the new album, because I can't stop listening to it and thinking

about it. You this is not uncommon for you to just start pulling shit out of thin air and playing it

on an album. But does it feel like you did more of that this time than you've done in the past?

Yeah. And the end question, the end point of this is I just don't understand where these things start

for you and then how they get to where they are. That sentence kind of says it all because I didn't

either. I didn't I didn't have the patience to like want to sit down all, you know, all of the

Beatles or whatever. And like, so craft a song on a guitar. I just wanted to make interesting noises

and see if they could become a sound, a song and whatnot. And, you know, like the thing is, is like

before we did end up putting like chords of some actual instrument on, it was just interesting.

There was there. It wasn't necessarily music, you know, but it was really fun.

You know, it's like any any any start like it's really just through repetition. Now, there's a

there's a lady she teaches about like an illusion, sounds of it, you know, illusions created by sound.

And one of the things that happens is almost anything like if you were to just say, take

a few words from any sentence we've said and just loop it, it becomes music. Yeah. And whatnot. And

that doesn't mean for like banging on a bowl. If you if you loop it, it becomes music. Yeah.

If you if you loop it and you got the time right, all of a sudden there's music there. And it's

really, you know, really, I've gotten into during the process before I even started working on this

record, I've spent Jesus, like better part of like a few years just trying to learn like forensic

software and for sound audio. And it does that thing where you're it's loop, you'll be looping

something. I'll be like, like, that's a song I should sample that. That's a song I should sample

that. So it is completely non-musical. I mean, this is just like taking like the audio from a room

and things and then looping it, trying to dig out interesting stuff. Yeah. There was music.

Yeah. I mean, James Murphy did with the LCD sound system. He took the fan that is above his head

in his bedroom and turn that into a song on the new album. Do I mean, like the Beast Boys did a

lot of the Dust Brothers, you know, the people like that, like, you know, that there's a lot of that.

Yeah. A lot of that going on. It's really cool. So what song on the album is closest to where it

started? Back to the Middle. Back to the Middle was something that I very, I wrote in a very

traditional way and I produced it and we produced it in a very traditional way. There was no,

you know, all elements of it existed prior to studio type thing. Did you say that consciously?

Like I need to have something that has some basic structure on this or did you just. Yeah. The most.

No, no, no. It was well, it wasn't. Yeah, I didn't go in there with like, I have to go.

There's like there's something I needed to fix. But in order to feel like I was showing up to the

show, showing up to the show with something that we didn't have to ask what the what is,

like, here it is. This is obviously a song like and let's move on and get weird.

Yeah. And it kind of breaks the ice for something like takes a little

a little bit of tension away from the process to know that you at least have something.

Well, yeah, I mean, but but I don't it's not something you had to do. It's just something

that you felt it was a responsibility to anything. I could put out a record of just fan sounds

that aren't musical. It's just not what I want to do or what people I listen to me.

But that's really what I hear. So I do think it would be fascinating to hear some of the first

rounds of cuts, though. Man, oh, man, I'm actually working on I'm working on something,

an inside out record of this, because so many of the crazy sounds like because they weren't

necessarily music, you know, or like they were taking up too much real estate for singing and

something else to happen. And I just want to like, I really want to do something that really like

contrast all the really cool, weird stuff that gets buried or like, you know, some gets cut just

because you don't have so much weird. Yeah, absolutely. I love that idea. The speaking of

weird stuff. I think that you're so I find you to be really brave with your song titles. And I

wonder if you I wonder how much trolling you're doing sometimes. Or how well, like, for instance,

are you are do you ever put in because your song titles are so odd, right? And they're so off,

off of the beaten path of what a normal person, a normal album you pick up in a store, right?

I wonder if there's secret messages hidden in some of these song titles. Like there's

guilty Cocker Spaniels is my favorite song title of all time. Right. I wonder if you start with an

idea that is so strange and then you sort of like work it around backwards from there.

Yeah, that one you want to know the honest to God truth. OK, lifted it from literature.

Yeah, that was that was that one sentence where they're guilty Cocker Spaniels was from a poetry

book that someone wrote called Drunk by Noon and things and then none of the rest of it. But

but that one part. So, oops, now we know. I wish I wish you'd picked any other one

that's fun doing the cockroach. OK, that one was that one was easy.

The latest latest. You know, I don't know. OK, so so what you're trying what you're telling me

without telling me is that there is a method to the words that you choose to identify these pieces

of art and work that you do. Absolutely. Absolutely. There's they are not random.

OK, they're part of the story and that makes it more fun and stuff. And

I try not to do anything where I name a song something that doesn't take place in the song

because it's freaking confusing. Otherwise, then then then then I then you're in danger of like

getting into the pretentious art zone. Yeah. It's like, you know, the song is called The Chair

and you just describe places that have chairs. Isaac, don't get me started on what is the song

that I hate and loathe more than anything. I love the band so much. I found it in a drawer.

I opened up a drawer. I looked in the drawer and I got it in a drawer. Band of Horuses literally

has a song with Jay Mascis in a drawer. I can't for the life of me understand why people like

this song. It makes me physically angry just to think about it. I'll ask Ben next time I see him.

I love I love them so much. But man, that song makes me so angry I had to walk away from the show

yesterday. Oh, really? I mean, I honestly am not familiar with this song, although those series of

words, I guess drawer isn't a good reputed repetitive word because it did. Well, I'm very

excited. The Modest Mouth show in New Orleans at the Fillmore. It is one of the few shows that we

have this fall. We had a lot scheduled and so many have gone by the wayside. But you guys have kept

yourself healthy and kept yourself on the road. And I can't wait for it. I think that you guys have

hit some sort of next level inspiration right now. And I'm just so excited to see it now for the

you know, now for the third time. I'm really, really happy about it. I'm really looking forward

to being there. I've got I love New Orleans. Yeah. Oh, yeah. What's your favorite spot?

Favorite spot. Last time we went there, me and my family got an Airbnb and I don't even know what

neighborhood it's out of. It was out of town. There was a giant sinkhole in front of the place.

And I just I just the neighborhoods are so nice. I don't know. Yeah, I've been really just a special

place all around. I like I like getting to boat around, you know, like the swamps and such.

I'm actually in the buyers and change.

Isaac Brock, one of the most interesting human beings in this entire industry,

modest mouse on the What Podcast or taco Brad Steiner, Barry Courter. If you you know, if,

if I have, I'll just put it this way, go see modest mouse if you can. You know, I think there

are sometimes in the years past, a set has not been the best or this work this did this didn't

whatever. But I feel like they're really in the pocket right now. So they're shaking these right

taco. What weekend is correct? That's in two weekends is October 22 to the 24th. And they're

playing Sunday. Yeah, do it. Do it. Yeah, it is totally worth it. I find them to be so so good.

And the other thing too, about them. They work in every space. I don't care if it's an arena or or a

theater or a bar or a festival. That sound works anywhere. That's they're not can't say that about

everybody. Yes. True. Yeah. And the other thing too is although some of the songs are very weird,

like, you know, but I finally all of them are catchy enough for a non fan to get it. So I was

with a non fan last night. And she was like, Oh, I didn't realize that was them. Oh, I, I really

like that song. And he said in the interview, you know, we try to have enough to get to the weird

stuff. You know, I think of it a lot like the Coen brothers, the Coen brothers do a movie for

the industry so they can get the nomination then they can do the movies they really want to do.

Yeah, that's right. That's cool. Yeah, very cool. All right. Go see a modest mouse anything. What's

a vacation? Why don't you get on schedule for the vacation, Barry? We're here for another day or two

going to get back Friday evening so we can have a couple of days to ourselves. Are you beaching?

Are you sitting out and you know, that's the thing about the beach down here. There's really not so

much a beach. No, we're we're doing a lot of eating a lot of bike riding and sightseeing.

You're not going out to places there. We are. We're going to go to the oyster bar tonight and

maybe one place tomorrow. But no, Kelly's Kelly's cooked. Zach is cooked. Yeah, we like to go to the

store. It's not the culinary capital of the world. I'll put it that way. We've got a couple of these.

We've got a couple of good spots. Yeah, it's not New Orleans. You go across the causeway to Brunswick

at all to eat? Never to Brunswick. We went to Jekyll for the first time. Last time we were here

and had brunch at the Rockefellers used to at that hotel. Yeah. Oh my God. That place is just that

whole place is amazing. There are a couple of spots across the causeway in Brunswick that are

actually really good. There's this one place called the Shanti, the sea shanty or something

like that. Terrific lunch. The other thing is they've got a brewery there. I've only had one

of their beers, but their space is super, super fun. Is that like silver bluff? Is that the one?

It might be. It might be. It's right there. So the downtown area is only like, you know, four

square blocks, right? It's right there in that in that downtown area. Go over. It's worth the

two hours that you're going to spend in the day. Okay. All right. Yeah. Give it a go. It's a nice

one. The last section of the boat is they're about to, they're working on it for people who are familiar

and seeing that it's so strange. The boat that lost Barry, but what he's talking about is a,

there was a crashed boat. They, they've been trying to extract it for two years. And you can

see parts of it there when you drive by. It's very odd. I think that's our cube taco. Frozen Barry,

I think is our cue. All right. There you go. We'll talk to you next week. Love you. Bye.