The Bad Penny (beta)

What do The Residents, The Go-Betweens, Steve Reich, Sade, Moondog, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Sun Ra, Cate Le Bon, The Stranglers and Dizzy Gillespie have in common? Why, they’re all artists responsible for creating songs that have inspired the development of Baltimore band Crying Laughing’s utterly unique experimental jazz-rock-meets-post-punk sound.

The Bad Penny had the good fortune to catch up with drummer Jen Kirby and alto saxophone player/percussionist Christian Best about all things under the sun in a recent interview. The band members discussed their music backgrounds, their chemistry, the Baltimore music scene and much more over the course of our conversation. We staged it in anticipation of Crying Laughing releasing their new full-length, Talking, eight days ago on Hausu Mountain, which is rapidly becoming one of our favorite record labels.

As a bonus, today we bring you a special playlist of songs that have inspired Crying Laughing and that Best assembled exclusively for The Bad Penny. (Thanks again, man!)

Take a gander:

(Note: This playlist can only be accessed on YouTube. To check it out, click on the below image, and you’ll get directed to the right place.)

For more on Crying Laughing – and to snag a copy of Talking – go to their Bandcamp page.

Crying Laughing photo credit: Josh Sisk

This entry was posted on 09/19/2026 at 2:07 pm and is filed under Interviews, Lists with tags Cate Le Bon, Christian Best, Crying Laughing, Moondog, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Sade, Steve Reich, Sun Ra, The Go-Betweens, The Residents. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.