Archive for the Interviews Category

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On Tyranny: Garage-Rock Band Joudy Escaped Venezuela Cartel Violence, Found Asylum in US – but Still Live in Fear. Here Is Their Story.

Posted in Features, Interviews, On Tyranny, On Tyranny, Videos with tags , , , , , , on 06/29/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

Imagine your dream is to be a rock star – an aspiration that’s probably occurred to many readers of this website. Now imagine that you work as hard as you possibly can, exhausting all your drive and motivation, squeezing every drop of your creativity and spending every moment at your disposal to make your dream come true.

And it does, because there is still some justice in this world, and because perseverance and the human spirit can lead to extraordinary outcomes. You’ve established your heavy-psych/garage-rock band in your homeland of Venezuela, you’re continuing to put in the hard work, you’re gaining traction, you’re building a fanbase. And then – without any time to prepare or redraw the plan for your future that you’ve had all along – you’re upended by external factors that are totally out of your control, and threaten your life, the lives of those you love, and your lifelong ambitions. Marauding gangs of drug dealers and thugs with no regard for human life are willing, ready and able to extinguish yours without a second thought and the simple pull of a trigger or slice of a blade.

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Ripple Music Prez Details All ‘Beneath the Desert Floor’ Heavy-Psych LPs, Hints at New Fireball Ministry Album

Posted in Interviews, Lists, News with tags , , , , , , , , , on 06/28/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

Earlier this week, we brought you a long-overdue but hugely rewarding interview with Fireball Ministry co-founder and guitar virtuoso Emily Burton. The conversation revolved mostly around the desert-rock band’s big win in regaining the rights to their record The Second Great Awakening, which they then recently reissued in conjunction with their current label, Ripple Music (based in San Ramon, California).

Today, we focus on the series in which the reissue is part of: Beneath the Desert Floor, a program that Ripple Music President/CEO Todd Severin launched in January 2024. Best of all, said discussion revolves around an interview with – can you believe it? – Severin himself. Join us as one of most important figures in the world of heavy psych comments on each installment of the treasured series.

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Favorite Films: Dez Dare Digs Nicolas Cage, Mia Goth, ‘Moon,’ ‘Midsommar,’ ‘Ex Machina’ (and Puppets)

Posted in Favorite Films, Features, Interviews, Videos with tags , , , , , , , , , on 06/27/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

As we trudge through an cultural era of moribundity that will hopefully reach a conclusion some day, we rely more heavily on those of us who, while aware of the enshitification of the world, refuse to let it pop their bubble. One of the essential artists who lives his life in this regard is Darren Smallman, who goes by the name Dez Dare when performing his heartwarmingly zany, zest-for-life music with the reckless abandon of someone who refuses to let reality get him down.

Beginning in March, Dez started slipping out one song a month digitally, with the compiled result called These Days Are Wild & Blind and available now on Bandcamp.

Because we’ve interviewed Dez multiple times before about his music, we decided to rope him into our Favorite Films series this time around. Still, we’d be doing both him and you a disservice if we didn’t precede Dez’s film picks with this video for his new song “You Woke Up on My Side of Time.” (Pro tip: Never say no to puppets.)

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Built to Spill Bassist Melanie Radford Spent Years on Solo Debut – And Now She’s Already Planning Her Next One

Posted in Interviews with tags , , on 06/27/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

Yesterday saw the release of Sake of Stillness, the forever-in-the-works debut record by Built to Spill bassist Melanie Radford. Its poetic title reflects the care, time and patience the Boise musician put into an exquisite collection made available through Portland, Oregon’s Jealous Butcher Records.

The Bad Penny had never communicated with Radford, who now lives in Seattle and has a second band called Blood Lemon that started in 2018. That is, except for the time we obtained a quote from her in which she commented on Built to Spill’s performance at a Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rally held in neighboring Nampa earlier this year.

So, after seeing Radford perform with various projects at various venues on various occasions over the years, we were revved up to pick her brain and finally get to know her what makes her tick. We had the opportunity to do so on Wednesday, and what follows is the bulk of our conversation.

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Shoegaze Sensation Novulent Lacing Up for First Boise Show Tonight

Posted in Concert Previews, Interviews with tags , , on 06/27/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

More and more musicians seem to be playing their first gig in Boise these days, no doubt a sign of the city’s growth (150,000 more people live here now than in 2020). That gives Novulent, an up-and-coming shoegaze musician, an opportunity to convert many attendees into fans – whom the singer/songwriter affectionately refers to as his “novas.” The Bad Penny caught up with Novulent, who hails from Dallas, about playing Boise for the first time, what’s on tap for tonight’s show and which record is the tops.

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Hiya Novulent. I can’t seem to find any indication you’ve played Boise before. Did you decide to come here simply because of routing, or were there other reasons why you chose to grace this city for the first time?

Honestly, I came here ’cause I wanted to explore [new places] this tour. Ninety-nine percent of these stops are in cities I’ve never been to. I’m a shut-in that stays in the house all day, playing with my cats, so [when it comes to] tour, I’m like, “Fuck it, let’s go anywhere.” My novas [fans] are worldwide, so I’m sure they appreciate me coming to their home.

Aside from integrating new material, is your set on this tour gonna be different in any other ways than in tours past?

Mainly songs off Vol. 3, my final Vol album [released in February]. It’s my most underrated work yet – too many sleep on it – so what better way to show it off then touring with it?

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Steve Albini Didn’t Give a Shit About Tambourines, Toadies Bassist Doni Blair Attests

Posted in Interviews, Videos with tags , , , , , on 06/26/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

Earlier this month, The Bad Penny caught up with Toadies bassist Doni Blair (who is a very cool dude, wouldn’t ya know) while the band was on tour with fellow ’90s-era alternative rock bands Local H and Sparta. The consummately down-to-earth bassist regaled us with a story about Steve Albini, who engineered the most recent Toadies record (The Charmer) – and that was just one of many jaw-dropping war stories he told in our freewheeling conversation.

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The Visionaries: Lux Says ‘Joy’ Propelled Him to Make Post-Black Metal Split Release With Kindred Spirit Sadness

Posted in Features, Interviews, The Visionaries with tags , , , on 06/25/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

The greatest embarrassment a music journalist can experience isn’t accidentally misquoting what an artist said in an interview. It’s not asking a thoroughly banal question during an interview and not realizing how dumb it was until after the conversation concluded. It isn’t even rocking out at a concert, hard, for everyone to see, because the line between critic and fan can be so paper thin.

No, the real, deep-seated — even primal — despondency that courses through a music journalist’s body, shakes them to the core and compels them to reevaluate whether their opinion actually has any value whatsoever comes when the purportedly professional scribe “discovers” an exceptional musical talent, only to realize that thousands, or tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of people caught onto the musician or band long before the supposedly intrepid journalist stumbled across them.

No one seemed to notice, but yours truly felt utterly ashamed in December after stumbling across blackgaze phenom Sadness and thinking the artist’s career was nascent. Turns out Damián Antón Ojeda (a.k.a. Elisa) launched the one-person project all the way back in 2013 and has released piles upon piles of records between then and now. Sadness also has a rabid fanbase, as evidenced by the 3,400 people who viewed our conversation on YouTube.

After sulking in self-pity for a spell, a new way of coping with the Sadness oversight arose. As Ojeda/Elisa frequently collaborates with other musicians who must be talented in their own right if Sadness chose to join forces with them, it made sense to start exploring some of those comrades. The experiment proved to be a success right away; after spinning a split EP called Dusk Garden that came out in October, we became introduced to the other participant, a musician from the Scottish Borders, south of Edinburgh, who goes by the name Lux and, like Sadness, has an affinity for post-black metal.

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On Tyranny: Low Co-Founder Foresaw Tyranny Taking Hold in the US a Decade Ago, Widower Alan Sparhawk Says

Posted in Features, Interviews, On Tyranny, On Tyranny, Videos with tags , , , on 06/25/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

Any fan of indie pop worth their salt is familiar with Low, the legendary band that almost single-handedly created the indie subgenre known as “slowcore.” And any music lover who is familiar with Low, which reached its conclusion in 2022 after the heart-wrenching death of co-founder Mimi Parker, knows that her widower husband, Alan Sparhawk, launched the singular project together in 1993.

More than three decades later, Americans are stuck with Donald Trump ambivalently tanking the United States in every conceivable way, as ambivalently as he did with the litany of business ventures he bankrupted and otherwise destroyed over the course of decades. As a result, the (admittedly justified) shouting and anger dominating the public discourse is increasing in volume exponentially.

So what better time to check in with the soft-spoken Sparhawk, arguably one of the greatest musicians of our time who knows the value of, and is an expert in, taking a calm and measured approach to his art and his life. Don’t confuse his demeanor with being content about the state of the country, which is declining so rapidly that comparisons to the fall of the Roman Empire must be taken seriously. In fact, Sparhawk – as we learned when we interviewed him this very morning – is as heartbroken, disappointed and shocked as the vast majority of Americans.

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Video Interview: Fireball Ministry Fought for Their (Album) Rights – and Scored a Big Victory

Posted in Interviews, News, Videos with tags , , on 06/24/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

The track record of musicians suing the record labels that employed them is pretty dismal. The reason is obvious: Artists generally aren’t very wealthy. Meanwhile, the companies that hire creators for their services – and not uncommonly have a sick fetish for screwing them over when the relationship sours – have more money than they know what to do with.

That’s why it’s such a cause for celebration when artists defeat their employers, which are typically corporate controlled, in David-beats-Goliath fashion. One of the most heartwarming examples of an underdog band scoring a major court victory over their former label recently transpired when pioneering stoner-rock squad Fireball Ministry won back the rights to what is largely considered their best record, 2003’s The Second Great Awakening.

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On Tyranny: Black-Metal Band Qasu Says Release of Anti-ICE Song the Day After Renée Good’s Murder Was ‘Chilling’

Posted in Features, Interviews, On Tyranny, On Tyranny, Videos with tags , , , , , , on 06/23/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

Is it redundant to say that black-metal bands don’t fuck around writ large? If that question is bouncing around in your brain, try to shake it out of your ear – or at least save yourself a punishing amount of embarrassment, and maybe even your life, by never posing that question to Qasu. Well, at least when they’re not draped in cloaks. The British/American trio refer to their harrowing sound as “ancient future black metal,” the most badass name for the subgenre of another subgenre.

If the above pic doesn’t make it abundantly clear, Qasu take their music very seriously. That fact is evident over the entire duration of A Bleak King Cometh, Qasu’s recently released debut LP created by Aldous Daniken (the trio’s so-called “instrumentation” pro), Rahsaan Sagan (voice and electronics) and Nikhil Talwalkar (drums). The tour-de-force is distributed in North America by Season of Mist, and released as a collaboration effort between Phantom Limb and Apocalyptic Witchcraft.

As with their music, Qasu appear to be equally serious about politics – that is, if the term still has any meaning given the existentially terrifying times in which we live. Mega props go to Qasu for speaking their mind about today’s unprecedented social ills, and refusing to self-censor or obey Trump America’s fascist authority figures in advance. And while we’re at it, shame on the artists, entertainers and Hollywood executives who aren’t addressing the most important debate of our lifetimes: what is right and what is wrong, not what is left or what is right. Their cowardly calculations to not stand up for their neighbors and defend civil rights are making it all the more difficult for those of us fighting the good fight.

When we came across Qasu earlier this year, we knew right away that the band gets its. And yet, for all the seriousness with which Qasu treat their music and beliefs, we discovered Daniken to be a ye olde merry jolly good fellow. (That’s how they talk in the United Kingdom, right?) Lucky for us, he carved out some time to speak with The Bad Penny for our ongoing series called On Tyranny. And now we bring you our conversation with Daniken (which we didn’t videotape this time around).

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