60 Songs That Explain the '90s - Joanna Newsom — “Emily”

Episode Date: April 29, 2026

This episode is for all of the people who don’t know the difference between a meteor, meteoroid, and meteorite. Rob finally opens up about his hipster phase of life that nearly got him killed (his words, not ours). He recounts all of the “freak folk” music he discovered in the Bay Area, all of which led him to the harp virtuoso and wordsmith Joanna Newsom. He tries his best not to describe her unique singing voice while dissecting her ability to bend words and seamlessly expand her listener’s vocabulary. Finally, he is joined by music journalist and ex-h*pst*r Garrett Kamps, who recounts what it was like watching one of Joanna Newsom’s first shows and contemplates why fans may have felt protective over her. Host: Rob Harvilla Producers: Olivia Crerie, Julianna Ress, Chris Sutton, and Justin Sayles Additional Video Editing: Kevin Pooler Guest: Garrett Kamps Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I saw my friend on the other side of the street. I was heading to school with the kids. I let go of Mom's hand to wave. I had already forgotten their lunches. I ran over to hug her. She came out of nowhere. And then... It stopped.

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Plus, that signature, wait, for this price, moment. Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg. So it's Friday night, and we're all hanging out. at Smiley's Saloon, a bar and restaurant and tiny seven-room hotel in Bolinas, a gorgeous, cozy northern California beachfront town of maybe 1,300 people, some of whom are openly displeased that we've found this town at all. On the 90-minute drive north from Oakland, we see very few road signs for Belinas, because Belinas shuns the spotlight. There's a 2014 New York Times article with the headline, Bolinas, California,

the town that didn't want company. And in the article, somebody says, quote, they are pretty hostile to outsiders. I've heard of people's tires getting slashed. End quote. That article appears in the travel section. Nobody slashes our tires. Thankfully, we just get super lost.

We keep missing the turns because, yeah, the turns are suspiciously unmarked. And we finally stop at a gas station 20 minutes in the wrong direction, and the gas station attendant just laughs and tells us that Belinas residents probably stole all the road signs themselves. And then he grudgingly points us in the right direction. And then we roll triumphantly into town. We are indeed outsiders. We are interlopers. We are, and this is a nasty, ugly, almost pornographically insulting word, and I don't like using it, but I got to do it.

So mom, if you're listening, please cover your ears. We are hipsters. It is January 2005. It's an extra chilly Friday night. We have arrived in Belinas for a folk music festival. And some of our fellow patrons at Smiley's Saloon are not psyched about it. Puppies love me so happy to see me. Every boy and girl should have one to love.

So easy. So. See, Smiley's Sucley. Saloon is also a cozy little concert venue. In the dorky little alt-weekly music column, I write later about this show, I describe Smiley's as, quote, no larger than your average Taco Bell, end quote. I don't know why I put it like that. I am not in the habit of using Taco Bell as a standard of measurement for venue size.

I must have been hungry when I wrote that. Anyway, here on stage at Smiley's, we've got a folk singer named Peggy Honeywell. That song's called Puppy Love, offer 2002 album Honey for Dinner. In my opinion, Puppies Love Me is a great idea for a song. I dig Peggy's vibe tremendously. I dig her soft and plaintive voice. I dig her sweet and exceedingly chill vibe. I dig her hat.

I don't know if it's a bonnet or what. I'm out of my element here, but it's a cool hat. Peggy's playing a banjo this evening and genially doing her thing. Peggy's not the problem here. The problem here is us, the out of towners. This bar is overcrowded. This bar has been functionally invaded by us. This dude walks up to me.

He's an incredulous local, and he just goes, where are you from? And I say, Oakland. And he says, you drove from Oakland to here? And I say, yeah, I guess. And he goes, why? Well, sir, the thing is, and I apologize for this, and I will leave town immediately afterward. Please don't slash my tires.

But we all drove here for a two-day music festival called Quiet, Quiet Window Lights, curated by the psychedelic rock band Bright Black Morning Light, who don't sound at all hostile to outsiders or hostile to anyone else, for that matter. From their self-titled 2006 debut album, that's Bright Black Morning Light,

with a song called Every... Daylight. And by design, that's just about as raucous as these folks generally get, what with the handclaps, the extra jaunty Rhodes piano riff, and the audible drums. Usually when I'm at a bright black show, I forget they even have a drummer for long, mesmerizing periods of time. The two lovely, slurring, breathy, and trancing voices here belong to guitarist Nathan Shinywater, aka Nabob, and pianist Rachel Hughes, aka Ray Bob, who are semi-famous among Bay Area rocker types, because apparently they used to live in a converted chicken coop in Point Reyes, a slightly more tourist-friendly, gorgeous, cozy California coastal area. I guess the chicken coop was more of a cabin. It had bunk beds. Anyway, I read that somewhere.

Bright black morning light are from northern California by way of Alabama, and so they often sound like a southern soul band slowly emerging from a coma, or at least an especially heavy afternoon nap. A 2006 Los Angeles Times concert review will quite rudely suggest that Raybob and Nabob, quote, looked like the hippies in a pot-themed episode of Dragnet, end quote. That's an old 60s cop TV show. And again, wow, that's pretty rude. Though, yeah, okay, bright black kind of sound like that also. And I dig this vibe tremendously as well. Though yeah, it's more of a trance than a vibe.

It can induce outright hypnosis. We're dealing with absolute masters at creating and sustaining a mood here. And bright black ain't playing their own festival until tomorrow until Saturday night. But for now, Nabob's just chilling out near the smiley saloon sound man. We got Peggy Honeywell playing banjo and singing her endearing, lelting songs about birds and whatnot. But we got a problem because nobody can hear Peggy singing because all the Balinus locals clustered near the bar are talking way too loud. And finally, Nabob stops the show and he grabs a microphone. And Nabob tells us two things.

Number one, Peggy Honeywell, who we can't hear singing because we're too busy talking, Peggy is a medicare. woman, and she deserves our undivided attention. That's the first thing he says. I'm paraphrasing. And number two, the second thing Nabob says is, shut the fuck up. I'm not paraphrasing. That's a direct quote. Peggy's a medicine woman, ergo, shut the fuck up. Got it. And one of the locals yells back, no, you shut the fuck up. And another local guy yells, it's not your town. And Nabob says, quote, it's not your town either. Your people raped the red man, you Anglo-Saxon, son of a bitch. End quote.

He also says he's got a knife. Boy, that escalated quickly. Now we got two angry dudes yelling at each other from opposite ends of a folk music concert. And I'm pretty sure the local heckler guy has also announced that he's got a knife. And I'm paraphrasing, but pretty much now they're saying, I'll stab you. No, I'll stab you. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm standing there thinking, well, this is unpleasant.

I would prefer not to die, stabbed to death in a bar-wide knife fight that personifies the cultural tension between the music I like and the people actually living the small town life depicted in the music I like. You know, that tension, though it would be so me to die in this manner. Yeah, as I lie there bleeding out on the floor of a smiley saloon, I'll think, yeah, this makes sense based on decisions that I've made in the consequences of those decisions. And meanwhile, as I take my final gasping breaths, maybe Peggy Honeywell singing a lovely forlorn song about how she doesn't want to live on the moon.

I don't want to start. Yeah, me neither, Peggy. Everyone in this bar is now scared shitless. I'm projecting, fine, I'm scared shitless. And because I'm too scared to look at either of the yelling knife guys, I'm looking at Peggy Honeywell on stage, silent and motionless and clutching her banjo. This woman looks unhappy.

I don't recall ever feeling worse for a performer on stage than I do for her. her at this moment. And as these two dudes are yapping at each other, Peggy says, quote, I'm just trying to play my songs as fast as I can, end quote. And that's maybe the funniest thing I've ever heard, somebody say on stage. And somewhere in the midst of all this, this escalating imminent bar brawl, my buddy Nate, who's standing behind me, Nate leans in right next to my ear. And he nods at Peggy Honeywell on stage. And he says, her hat, looks like a delicious biscuit.

Okay, time out. Everybody cool it, but no, Nabob and the heckler guy physically confront each other back at the bar, and ah, shit, here we go, and then nothing happens. The two angry, allegedly knife-wielding men are separated by a couple good Samaritans, and everyone talks it out. I have no idea how they talk it out. At this point in my dorky little Alt-Weekly,

column about this. I mentioned that there's an NBA game on a TV over the bar. The Lakers beat the Warriors that night, 105 to 101. And I imply in my column that Nabob and Heckler guy bond over the basketball game. There's no way. Dude, nobody gave a shit about the Golden State Warriors until they drafted Steph Curry in 2009. I must have made that part up. Bottom line, no knife fight. Sorry. Peggy Honeywell plays the rest of her songs as fast as she can, and then she gets the hell out of there. But she ain't got to worry because we're all bros now. The salty Balinus locals and the sweaty Bay Area outsiders have found common ground.

Via our next performer this evening, Devendra Banhart. We certainly are nice people. They certainly are nice people. Nice people. Oh, nice people. Ah, yes, Devendra Banhart, beguiling, eccentric, worldly Houston-born Bay Area-affiliated singer-songwriter, regaling us here with a tune called Nice People. From his second album, released in 2002 and titled, Brace Yourself,

Oh Me, Oh My, Dot, Dot, Dot, The Way The Day Goes By, The Sun is Setting, Dogs Are Dreaming, Love Songs of the Crisp, spirit. I told you to brace yourself. I don't remember if he played that song in Bolinas, but I just wanted to say that whole album title out loud. Okay, Devendra, this guy's a whole lot to deal with by design. He sings with a lovely disconcerting falsetto trill that's so infectious that some of the Bolinus locals at the bar, they start imitating it. And I think they're doing it like affectionately. Devendra sings in both English and Spanish. He covers the LA 60s blues rock band canned heat. He covers Charles Manson, and he regales us with extra disconcerting stage banter. Like when he tells us all to go have sex, kill our lover immediately before climaxing,

and drink their blood. I'm paraphrasing. Everybody's really into all of this, obviously. Here's a song in Spanish. Dig the way he rolls the bejesus out of the R when he sings Peter Pan. That song is my favorite That's my favorite song 2004 breakout album rejoicing in the hands. My best shot at a translation there is All the Pains are fading away and the graffiti reads Peter Pan

and the rainbow zoo, it will rainbow, it will rainbow. Whatever he's saying there, it sounds cooler when he says it. Two fun facts about Devendra Banhart. Number one, also in 2004, he curates the influential compilation, the Golden Apples of the Sun, featuring cool, weird, low-key jams from folk artists like six organs of admittance, Esper's, Iron and Wine, and Coco Rosie. Fun fact, number two, Devendra dated Natalie Portman. for a while. That Golden Apples of the Sun record was so influential, in fact, so cool, so warm,

so eerie, so simultaneously ancient and startlingly modern, that it helped create a mid-2000s indie rock subgenre, and this is a nasty, ugly, almost psychedelically insulting name, so mom, please cover your ears again. Yeah, this record helped launch a mid-2000s indie rock subgenre called freak folk. Please don't make me say that name again. That first night in Bellinas at Smiley Saloon, we also listened to Michael Hurley, the ultra-rad 60s songwriter. And for those of us in the crowd who've got pitchfork bookmarked and have never carried a knife in public, Michael was actually living this weird folk singer life decades before any of us even started reading about people who actually lived this weird folk singer life. You feel me? Halfway through Michael's set, my buddy Nate,

who's standing behind me, Nate leans in right next to my ear and he nods at Michael Hurley on stage. And Nate says, he seems to have written a song for every car he has ever owned. That's a Michael Hurley song from 1984 called 54 Chevy. Back in the day, sometimes they called Michael Hurley outsider folk, which was medium insulting at worst. That guy seems pretty content with his place in the cosmos. But yeah, man, last time, freak folk is maximum insulting. Yo, nobody likes being called that.

So knock it off on the second night of the Quiet Quiet Window Lights Folk Festival. After a day spent roaming the beach and hiking mere woods and further annoying the locals, we all gather at the Bolinas Community Center and we sit cross-legged on the hardwood floor and we enjoy the San Francisco band Vettiver, one of those bands whose name I'd read in print like 10,000 times, but I hadn't listened to them yet. well I shoulda That's a That's a

Nameless as the way we started I'd like to go That's a disarmingly lovely Vettiver song from 2004 called On a Nerve And the lyrical impulse there Nameless as the way we started I'd like to go

Back to Time before Name Name for All We Know That is a quite elegant and totally understandable lyrical sentiment, given the dumb genre name this band is often filed under. Maybe just forget all the names for everything. Then bright black morning light plays, and I feel so much more psychically attuned

to Nabob and Raybob after that whole almost knife fight business. Now we've truly shared a transcendent experience. That's another 2006 bright black song called Star Blanket River Child. And I'd have to say they named that song accurately. A lot of rainbow imagery happening in this universe. And look, I'm being glib and I don't mean to be. But sitting there on the Bolinas Community Center floor,

yeah, I dig all this music very much, all these baffling, endearing, folk-adjacent oddballs of various ages and temperaments, but there's an ever-so-slight layer of amused ironic remove to the way I'm digging it. I have never lived in a converted chicken coop. No, I have never written a song about any of the cars I've ever owned. I can't roll my R's. Puppies love me, but just like the nethered. normal average amount. I really enormously like all these people, but I also understand, I respect that I am not very much like these people. I am nowhere near as keenly attuned to the delightful, awe-inspiring idiosyncrasies of the universe. And thus, out of respect,

there is a hard limit on how intensely I can vibe with any of these splendid musicians like emotionally. And then she shows up. That the meteorite is a source of the light, and the media is just what we see. And the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the far that propelled it to thee. My name is Rob Harvilla.

This is the 43rd episode of 60 songs that explain the 90s, colon the 2000s. And this week we are discussing the song, Emily by Joanna Newsom from her 2006 album called Ease. Ease is just spelled capital Y lowercase S. Joanna Newsom sings and plays the harp, mostly. As it says in the Bible, if you know, you know. If you don't know, this song, Emily, is a 12-minute ode to Joanna's younger sister, Emily,

who is an astrophysicist, which helps explain why in the chorus, Joanna super helpfully explains the difference between a meteorite, a meteorore, and a meteoroid. And the meteorites just what causes the light and the meteors how it's perceived. And the meteoroid's a bone thrown from the void that lies quiet and offering to thee. And if you wanted to devote your entire life to parsing Joanna Newsom's songs lyrically and music logically, we could talk about the phrase, a bone thrown from the void. It's a possible reference to the notable 1968 Stanley Kubrick film, 2001, A Space Odyssey, when the ape tosses the bone into the sky and there's that super famous match

cut to the floating satellite. Earth versus deep space, the distant past versus the distant future, man versus machine, science versus magic, etc. Rabbit holes don't get much deeper and darker and more alluring than this one. Let's give this a shot. Excuse me a second. When you're a mid-sized business, you need every competitive advantage you can get. Like an AI solution that works for you, not against you.

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Because on Spotify, there's an audience that's different. Locked in, loyal, invested. They're called fans. Fans don't just listen to music. They feel seen by it like it belongs to them. So when your brand shows up on Spotify, that's who you're talking to. And you're right next to artists like me, Lizzo. So, are you ready to talk to,

fans? Spotify advertising. You're among fans. Okay, we're back. Joanna Newsom is born in 1982 in Grass Valley, California and raised in Nevada City, California. She's five years old when she first tells her parents she wants to learn to play the harp. And by the time she's 10, her parents finally believe she's serious, and she starts practicing on a smaller and more kid-friendly Celtic harp, before moving to the much larger and traditional and intimidating pedal harp, which will not fit in your car and very possibly costs way more than your car. She studies composition and then creative writing at Mills College in Oakland, but what she's interested in writing is far too fantastical and musical to be confined to the page.

And musically, it's way too melodic and harmonious to be confined to avant-garde classical composition. Starting in 2002, Joanna's playing shows mostly around the Bay Area. She drives her harp around in a truck, a Chevy 10 with a camper shell, and she self-releases a couple E-Ps. She's not writing pop songs, per se, but it's totally cool if at first you attempt to hear them that way. This song is called Erin, E-R-I-N. It is track one. on the first Joanna Newsom EP, self-released in 2002 and called Walnut Wales. Okay, her singing voice strikes you first, I think, then the harp, then the fact that she just sang the line, hail now, hail to the bitch, then the internal rhyme of hairy literary,

then back to the voice. I am profoundly dissatisfied with any of the words I've come up with to describe this person's voice. So I'm going to do both of us a favor and not use any. That song is called What We Have Known, off her second EP, self-released in 2003, and called Yarn and Glue. That line is quite striking in its casual implication. We know not now what we have known.

It feels like a trick of some kind, but she's not trying to trick you. Her singing voice is also striking. I am far more interested in hearing Joanna Newsome describe her own voice and her reactions, positive and negative, to the way various critics, positive and negative, have described her voice. She is not psyched, for example, about people who describe her voice as an affectation. Her voice is not trying to trick you either. In 2006, in a cover story for the rad art and underground music,

music magazine Arthur, which put out Devendra Banhart's Golden Apples of the Sun album. In a 2006 Arthur cover story, Joanna Newsom says that her first two EPs are, quote, officially blacklisted, end quote. So you can buy them, maybe, but she won't sell them to you. And then she says, quote, when I listen back to those first EPs, I'm like, well, that voice does sound fucking crazy. There is no way around it. but I know exactly what space I was in. I was so sure that I didn't know how to sing that I was just going balls out.

I was like, I'm going to sing my heart out, as crazy as it sounds, and I'm not going to care because there's no hope of sounding anything like what people consider beautiful. I sure as hell wasn't affecting anything. I mean, the institution of singing is inherently an affectation.

End quote. Moving on then to Joanna's earliest work that is not officially blacklisted. The side of bridges and balloons makes calm canaries irritable and night, afternoon. This song is called Bridges and Balloons, as it appears on her 2004 full length debut, released on the prestigious drag city records and called the milk-eyed mender. Okay, her singing voice strikes you first, I think, then the harp, then maybe the alliteration, calm canaries, caw and claw, then the words themselves, catanaries and derigibles. A catenary is the wire or rope or whatever between two poles, like saying on a bridge. A derigible is a giant balloon, I think.

you go back to her voice. Oh my, to be to sing. That's the chorus to bridges and balloons. And Joanna will not exactly be relying on simple verse chorus-verse song structure for terribly long. So enjoy this one while it lasts. To of is the key word in that chorus, I think. To be the ones to have seen. What I dig immediately about Joanna Newsom is the radical deconstruction of, but also radical expansion of the English language.

The $50 vocabulary words, but also the new life she can casually breathe into the simple contraction, too of. Not to have seen, to have seen. It's not that she sounds like she's saying a word for the first time. It's that you feel like you're hearing that word for the first time. Like this word. Should we go? Should we go out? Like the word interrested there.

That song is called Sprout and the Bean. That's the chorus. Starting in 2003, I'd see Joanna Newsom playing at small folk clubs in Berkeley or San Francisco, and it's an unavoidably striking monumental visual, right? This woman alone on stage singing while playing a giant towering harp, And then people in the crowd would laugh out loud at interrested. Laugh with her, not at her. They'd laugh with surprise, maybe even with delight.

Same deal with the line, I killed my dinner with karate. I killed my dinner with karate. Kick them in the face. Taste the body shallow is the work that I do. This song is called The Book of Write On, Write On, I can vividly remember people laughing out loud with surprise and delight at I Killed My Dinner with karate. Talking to the San Francisco Culture magazine, The Believer in 2004, Joanna talks about a bunch of her influences. The American 1960s folk singer Karen Dalton, the English 1960s folk singer Vashti Bunyan. Plus, you know, Dylan, Donovan, Kate Bush, etc.

She also mentions an Appalachian folk singer named Texas Gladden, whom Joanna digs because, quote, her voice is so powerful and so affecting and so devastating and so untrained and so different from the conventional idea of a pretty voice. That's Texas Gladden singing a song called Cold Mountain. recorded by folk archivists Alan Lomax and Shirley Collins in 1959. And beyond the power and devastation in this voice, there is a wisdom and authority. Joanna says, quote, she was a grandmother when she got recorded.

She was in her 70s. And I've had some people say they couldn't tell if I was 70 or 13, which I prefer. I like hearing that because it's closer to how I feel. when I sing." End quote. Specifically, Joanna prefers that she might be 70 or 13 line to critics, positive and negative, who describe her voice as innocent or childlike. This is an old song.

This is not my tune, but it's mine to use. That's one of the more beloved lines on the Milk Eyed Mender album from a song called Sadie, which is a song in part about Joanna's childhood dog. But looking through the eyes of a child does not make you a child. In that believer interview, Joanna says, quote, I'm certainly not interested in innocence at all. I get very upset when people tell me that my records all about innocence. If I'm interested in childhood, it's not the innocence. It's the part of childhood where you have this huge capacity to be sad. You understand an innate sadness in a lot of things.

And you also understand an innate beauty in a lot of things. You pick apart something dead that you find on the side of the road or you ask really embarrassing questions at the dinner table. There's this curiosity and this lack of embarrassment and lack of self-censorship. That's interesting to me. But not innocence. because I think innocence in music is something that exists in a vacuum. Like it hasn't been exposed to any ideas.

And it would be a huge affectation, too, because I'm 22. I live in San Francisco. I watch television. I drive a truck. End quote. She likes her truck. The best song on the first Joanna Newsom record is the last song. It is called Clam Crab Cuckle Cowrie.

I dig the way she sings the words, Slightly Bored. This is one of the simplest, slowest and least flashy harp songs on the milk-eyed mender. And one of the coolest things about this record is that by the last song, you're fully convinced of the harp's singular power as a solo instrument, as a pop song adjacent instrument, the fleet fingered barrages, but also the crystal clear melodies, the delicacy of it, but also potentially the thunderousness of it. There is an utter pristine simplicity to this song especially and to this whole album generally

that you should not expect from Joanna Newsom going forward. is about to get genuinely wild as hell conceptually and otherwise. So enjoy the relative serenity while it lasts. The serene way she sings the adverbs hourly, sourly, and dowerly, for example. That's why I love this town. We'll just look around to see me serenaded sound. I don't quite know what this song is about precisely. have always resisted finding out. Sometimes I prefer less explanation. Sometimes I want uncertainty and plausible deniability. I just dig the way she blends fantastical imagery, uh, the Lord and his sword mincing up the morning, slightly bored, with lines that are painfully direct and might

have come from a 70 year old or a 13 year old. A line like, oh, will you just look at me? I really dig that line. You could write a college thesis about, oh, will you just look at me? Or maybe it's that you don't need to write a college thesis about, oh, will you just look at me? You know exactly what she means, even if you've no idea what she's talking about. I suppose it goes without saying that the milk-eyed vendor is not a chart-topping blockbuster proposition. This record shows up on a lot of year-end critics' polls. It starts a lot of message board arguments you ain't want nothing to do with. Trust me, don't get involved. But if you think

Joanna Newsom's generating a lot of baffled conversation now, just wait until she starts her next album with a 12-minute song that includes the phrase hydrocyphilitic listlessness. My spell-chellate listlessness ants mop up their brow. My spell check is not at all psyched about the word hydrocyphalytic, but that's just too bad. Do you want to even sit here and try to parse the phrase hydrocyphalytic listlessness, or should we just enjoy it? The ants are wet. The ants are soggy. Perhaps it has been raining. Embrace the mystery. The second Joanna Newsom record is released in 2006, and is called Ease.

It is 56 minutes long and contains five songs. The longest song called Only Skin runs almost 17 minutes, and I'm still absorbing that one, if you want the truth. I'll get back to you on Only Skin. Matter of fact, I'm going to do both of us another favor and stick with Track 1. Every time I put this record on, I am so thoroughly, emotionally rung out by this song, Emily, that I cannot really process the next four songs at all. That is a compliment.

I describe albums and songs and people as a lot, a lot, but this record and this song in particular, this is the most a lot I have yet encountered. Also a compliment. Set to the sky. So Emily starts like this. Joanna lists three birds, the second of which, the chimjury, that's more of a child's name for a bird or a child's name for a bird that does not yet exist.

The casual internal rhyme of set to the sky in a flying spree. A pharaoh shows up, and you don't even blink. Of course there's a pharaoh. And what immediately strikes me is the startling new depth and richness and darkness in Joanna's singing voice. She sounds way closer to 70 than 13 now. Even the saddest songs on the milk-eyed mender, the one about her childhood dog, for example,

they've got a bracing brightness to them. And that fit the mood perfectly for that record. But the mood on East is drastically different. And even the warmest and loveliest images in this song, Emily, have a palpable heaviness. Even the image of Joanna's kid sister skipping stones. Even the very first word right here, the word AND, cracks dramatically like an egg. And meanwhile, dig the full swooping orchestra we've got, backing Joanna up now.

We got Van Dyke Parks, the famous avant-pop composer, known for his very cool and weird and expensive and influential 1967 album Song Cycle. And he's worked with everyone from the Beach Boys to Randy Newman to Harry Nilsson to Rufus Wainwright to Scrillex. Scrill Xx is later. We got Van Dyke Parks handling all the orchestral arrangements

here and also playing accordion. This record arrives with a fancy pedigree with an absolute seriousness with unabashedly ambitious masterpiece Peace Energy. The East album cover is an oil painting of Joanna by the California artist Benjamin Veerling. A Drag City Records press release, later quoted by the New Yorker, announced that Benjamin, quote, did the cover painting Old Master style with layers of egg tempera and glazes, strictly 16th century processes,

just like the recording of the album? End quote. That's a joke. But is it though? Browning at the angle where they were lost and slipped under forever in a cloud, Micah's fangled like the sky'd been breathing on a mirror. But part of the magic trick here is that in one album, we've gone from mostly a lady and her harp and her truck

to a lady and her harp in a 32-piece orchestra plus guitar, electric bass, banjo, mandolin, various percussion instruments, and accordion. Plus Emily Newsom herself on backing vocals. But then Joanna describes a river as a mud cloud, Micah Spangled, like the Skide Been Breathing on a Mirror. And once again, her voice is all you hear and all you need. Just the word Skide there, the contraction. She doesn't sing Sky had been breathing. She sings Skyed Been Breathing.

I am jumping around. I suspect that each and every line in Emily is somebody's favorite, and I'm sorry if I don't play your favorite. Emily works whether you treat it as a 12-minute linear narrative or an infinite jumble of rad, startling, confounding images and micro-moments. I'm always floored by the painfully vulnerable and not quite stumbling, but almost stumbling way. Joanna navigates the phrase,

gone healthy all of a sudden. In row through the night time so healthy, gone healthy all of a sudden in search of a midwife, who can help me, who can help me. In that interview with Arthur Magazine talking about both Emily the song and Emily the person, Joanna says, quote, in some ways this song is a tribute to her, and in other ways it was like a plea, a letter to her about some stuff that's happening close to home, and a reference to the fact that a lot of the little structures and kingdoms and plans we built when we were younger are just falling to fucking pieces. End quote. So Emily, the song, is a kingdom unto itself

to more carefully document all the childhood kingdoms falling to pieces. The song ends with Joanna remembering what Emily taught her about meteorites. meteors and meteoroids. She's singing a little faster and more frantically now, though. The knowledge is weighing heavier on her all the time. Most knowledge does. Center the night after the almost knife fight. In early 2005, East won't be out for a year and a half, but she probably played new stuff in Bolinas. I don't remember a goddamn thing, honestly. And it's one of my most cherished concert memories, honestly, because all I've got is a vague memory of my genuine astonishment. We know not now what we have known. I'd say I had

an out-of-body experience, but that's exactly wrong. I had a frighteningly intense and direct emotional experience. And I am forever grateful for that. And when it was over, I got back in my car and drove away from the place where I didn't belong. We're so thrilled to be joined today by Garrett Camps, semi-lapsed veteran music journalist, former music editor for the SF Weekly back in the 2000s. He's written for the Village Voice, Deadspin, Billboard, and many other fine places. He's currently the co-founder of Third Bridge Creative and the CEO of the Small Bow Media Network. Also, I sang a Billy Joel song at his wedding. Garrett, thank you so much for being here. It is great and surreal to be here, Rob.

Extraordinarily surreal, but I'm grateful to you for giving this. It's possible the last time we were, I'm sorry to interrupt you, I know this is your show, but it's, it's possible the last time we both or in front of a mic was that Billy Joel song that you sang in my wedding. And yeah, I appreciate that. I did pretty well. The tempo was slower when I sang it than when I had practiced it. And so I had some breath control issues.

It was just the way you are. And I just struggled with the ends of lines just because I didn't have the proper breath control. But I don't think anybody noticed. People were really drunk at that point. Yes, they were. Yes. Correctly, yes.

There was a lot of making do in that moment. That's right. That's right. Okay. Gary, I met you in 2003. You were writing then for the East Bay Express, another Bay Area Alt Weekly, and you wrote one of the first articles about Joanna Newsom. You were one of the first people to interview her way back in 2003. Like, how did you first find her?

And what was it like to encounter this person, you know, with no warning, no context and, like, no body of work already written about her? Yes. I first discovered Joanna because I was writing about Devendra Banhart. who was kind of the person in that scene who was kind of the forerunner, the first kind of freak folk person who started getting some attention. And so I had written an article about him for SF Weekly and was just sort of following him around. And I very distinctly remember he was headlining a show at Cafe de Nord, which I'm sure we'll talk about.

Various things happened in that place. and Joanna was the opener, like the third or she was like the opener's opener opener, the kind of person that nobody ever shows up for. But, you know, the group of us who had shown up for DeVendre, we were all very earnest and swarthy and whatnot and showed up on time and ready to see everybody who was playing. And here this woman came out with a harp, none of which, you know, none of any of us had seen that before. this, uh, and, uh, we were very befuddled. And I think the first couple minutes was just, you know, people looking at one another, wondering what the heck this was going to be. I would later learn, I think this was like her second or third show.

Um, so not only had I had not seen her, but really nobody had, um, but within a couple minutes, it was one of those extremely magical rare moments that I can count on one hand. and my 25 years of going to shows where the entire room went from jittery and buzzy and half paying attention to completely locked in and dead silent for the next 35 minutes. And it was, and I left that show just flabbergasted. And I think I wrote to my editor the next day. I'm like, we have to write about this person. It was just one of those moments that I've had very, very few of in my,

career, but I recognize it instantly. Yeah. What do you think it was primarily? Like, as you say, like, the harp element is not familiar to most people in, like, a pop context at all. But there's also where voice, there's also just her lyricism already. Like, was it just the total package that can make an entire room of jittery people shut up? That's what I kept encountering over and over with her in the early years. Like, you don't know what's happening. And within 90 seconds, like, everyone is transfixed. Like, what was it about her? that caused that.

Yeah. In those early days, I don't know when she stopped doing this, but in those early shows, she would start by singing acapella, which is a pretty wild thing to do as a musician, let alone an opener.

She came up and just, you know, started singing this, this acapella song before she even sat down at the harp. And I think, you know, she just completely, I don't even want to say commits to her, because that would imply it's like a bit or something.

It's the level of presence that she brings to her performance, it's transfixing. As you mentioned, the lyrics were not like anything I had heard before. And I was listening to this record on her first record on the way over here and just all of these phrases that are just embedded in my brain, like to this day, 25 years. later, I think even hearing those for the first time, they just stuck right in there. And it was just the whole package. It was this. And then, of course, her playing, like, I remember, I don't think I talked about this in my

article, but she was a, she played harp at weddings. Like, she was like, you know, Joe Satriani of the harp. It wasn't like she was learning the instrument in front of all of us, you know. Like, she showed up and she was fully, you know. a complete genius when it came just to playing the instrument. And so you combine that with the lyrics. And then, yes, the voice, which I had forgotten, you know, how strange her voice sounded at that time.

It doesn't sound strange to me now, but I think in those early years when people were discovering her, there were just very few people to compare it to. Right, because when you're writing for an all-weekly, you know, this is the job is to like find the next big thing, right? And then you, you know, the hot new band, like you either read about them elsewhere and you go see them or ideally you write about them yourself. Like I, you were discovering, you know, writing about people in their very early phases all through your time, you know, writing for the Bay Area music. There was so much happening at that time.

Like, was there anything to compare this to like how much different was this than just seeing like whatever the hot new indie rock band of the moment was? Well, it was a very special time, for me at least. I mean, and you as well, which we have to talk about, but we'll get to. But, you know, like I mentioned, Devendra came up right around this time. Joanna came right on his heels. There was a lot of exciting things happening in the Bay Area at that time. Weird electronic music, weird noise rock. I'm just blanking on.

all the bands, but you could, you know, you could rattle them off. And it was an exciting time. And then, you know, I think that that little initial movement, that kind of freak folk movement as it started to become known, broke out and then sort of merged into this larger thing that was happening around that time in the middle 2000s, when all of a sudden indie rock bands had accordions and, you know, banjos and zithers and dressed like they were delivering, you know, milk.

And so it all kind of, you know, merged together at that point. But, but yeah, so you did feel that. I mean, those Joanna Newsom shows very quickly took on this surreal type of, you know, we were all witnessing history kind of feel to them. And there were several bands around that time that had that feel to them. So you mentioned the idea of a scene. Like I was curious, since you talked about Joanna and Devendra so early, as they're starting to get national attention, as they're starting to be associated with a scene.

And as like it's, I think it's 2000. I forget when, but the New York Times calls Devendra Banhart the Pied Piper of Freakfolk. And so now it's like a movement with a name. Like when you first encountered these people, you know, I guess they're playing together and that counts for a lot. But did you see it as like a distinct movement? Like, did you, did the freak folk framing make any sense to you at all when it became a national thing? I think it was just the latest thing that people were grouping together, you know? Like, it wasn't long before that that there was the New York rock thing.

And, you know, yeah, like, like thinking of it kind of coalescing, I think I just saw it as, well, that's this thing for, you know, until the next thing. You know, but it, which is not the way that, you know, anybody who's experienced this when a scene becomes sort of a media darling and kind of breaks out, right? It's the initial qualities that made the scene so special start to get diluted and they start to get, you know, interpreted by various people. Like it belongs to the larger world now. And that's a good thing, especially for the music.

who are trying to, you know, make a living in, you know, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, when, you, you know, when, when, when, when, when, de vendor starts playing, you know, you know, large auditoriums as opposed to 150 person venues, it's, it's, it's, it's, um, and it's what you, you, you hope for, um, but you can't help it be a little bit nostalgic for the special scene that was that, that, that birth those things. Because I remember very distinctly, like, standing with you at, like, these small clubs, like, the freight and salvage, you know, in Berkeley or whatever. And we're, like, really tense and annoyed by people who are talking while she's playing. Like, I remember, like, having to, like, shush people. Like, this is a show, Joanna is a show that more or less requires, like, total crowd silence.

Did you get the sense that even from the earliest age, her earliest fans, like you were sort of, like, weirdly protective of her, like, both during her shows and also as more people started. writing about and opining about her? Yeah, there's something, there's something to that. I think that Freight and Salbage show, I think she opened for smog. Do you remember that? Which, that would make sense. Which, meaning like, you know, there were, who, you know, as an artist who is also very hushed and kind of, but like, yes, I think, I think that there was a certain, I mean, we'll probably

get to this. but I think as Joanna's career evolved, there was a sense of like, okay, maybe we were mistaken to try to put her in this box of being this childlike person or sensibility that, you know, infers that, oh, you know, as I remember, there were like crowd police type people who would, if somebody was talking,

would be like, you need to shut up. Yes. So I think, you know, and I was certainly guilty of that as a fan of her. you know, feeling kind of needlessly protective, you know, and we can talk about why that might be, but I don't think I was alone in that. Most people first heard her through the first record, through the Milk Eyed Mender, but as somebody who had been at like maybe her second or third show, you know, this all happened

pretty quickly, but there's still a big difference between like her voice, her sound on those first EPs and this first Drag City album. Like, what did you make of her early development? Did that record sound the way you would always heard her, like at shows and in your head? Well, it's so funny because, yeah, like I remember her first, the first recorded music that I heard of hers were these self-recorded CDRs. I know you have to explain what those were. No, I'm not explaining that to anybody. That is, if you don't know what that is, it's too late.

And if you don't know what that is, you certainly won't appreciate that at one point you could go, to Amoeba Records in San Francisco. And because there were maybe a couple hundred of these CDRs floating around and they were on sale for $75 or $150, which is crazy to think at this time. But anyway, but yeah, so they were very low-fi. They were very stripped down. And I remember hearing the Malkide Mender and there's a track, I'm terrible with track names, but where she double tracks the vocals.

It's like almost entirely. Peach plum pear. Thank you. Thank you. That's what it is. And so it's almost entirely stripped down, but I heard those double-tracked vocals, and I was like, oh, she's, she's so polished now. Yes, yes. She's sold out.

Yeah, yeah. It's a big studio. I mean, there's probably like, you know, 30 seconds to a minute of additional instrumentation on that music, besides, on that album besides her voice and heart. But I was like, ah, it's too much, you know, which, which is crazy considering what her next album. sounded like. Well, that was what I was going to ask you. Like the Ease record, it's hard to think of an example, like a starker difference between someone's first and second record. Like just in terms of ambition, you know, the Van Dyke parks of it all, all this orchestration, you know, these songs are like up to 17 minutes long. Like, did you see this second record coming at all

based on what you've known of her even up through the Milk Eyed Mender? No. And yes, though, because it wasn't like the idea of going and working with Van Dyke Parks makes so much sense, right? And again, I think that's even something where she was ahead of the curve. I could be wrong, but I don't remember. Van Dyke Parks had a moment, you know,

and I think she was ahead of that curve. But when you, you know, when you think of the collaborations on that record, I believe Steve Albini, I think, recorded it, engineered it. I could be wrong. Yeah, I think the engineer, and that he'll, he'll, he'll produce her records later. But yes, he's involved, I think,

just as the engineer of ease. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, it makes sense the people she's picking to collaborate with, you know, right.

Did I see, you know, nine minute songs coming? Like, what is it? Five, five songs, nine minutes, a piece thereabouts. Something about, yeah. Yeah.

Longer. I, and it, but it's so, so satisfying. the progression from the first record to that record. I mean, I said, when I wrote this piece for you in the voice, I was thinking about this,

I believe the last line of that piece about Ease's best album since Pet Sounds slash Appetite for Destruction, which I stand by. Good line. Those three albums somehow make total sense together. Okay. Go ahead and explain the Pet Sounds is a little easier to grasp than appetite for destruction.

How is this record specifically Joanna Newsom's appetite for the story? I think partly it's the brazeness, the brashness of it all. I mean, it's not a record that you would typically associate with volume in the sense of it being loud, but it is in the sense of it being this

insanely loud statement, right? I mean, it's, there is something that is just, you know, that feels almost like a primal type of roar about the way that ease comes across. And it's, and it couldn't be different, more different, you know, sonically and, and in all other ways. But it just, it feels momentous and the way that appetite for destruction does. I sort of batted around what the song would be for this episode. Like there is not, I, do you feel that there is a definitive Joanna Newsom's song, her best song or her biggest song.

Like if you know one thing, yeah, is that the right frame for this at all or maybe it isn't? I just picked Emily because it's my favorite, but is there like any kind of consensus here? That's a great question. And I do not have an answer. You know, for me, it's, Emily's a great pick. Thank you.

The, that first record to me, it's almost. And this is because it's just hardwired into my brain, those lines from clam crab cockle cowery and, that's the one for me. Cassiopeia and Sadie and, you know, there are just lines in there that just tattooed on my heart type lines. So for me, but at the same time, you know, again, just a completely different experience of ease.

you know, it's, you almost can't even compare them. Like, I'm in awe of her as a songwriter and an artist on both records for like completely different reasons in a way. Right. Yeah. I agree. I agree. What about her writing, like, when you think, whether or not you remember the lines verbatim,

like, what is it about her songwriting, her lyric writing, just the phrases that jumped out to you immediately and have stuck with you, you know, for 20 plus years? What is it about her songwriting and her lyric writing in particular? So the line on Sadie that I was listening to that just was as a, this is an old song, these are old blues and this is not my tune, but it's mine to use. Mind to use. Like, I just get, I get chills. I get chills thinking about it. Yeah, totally, totally.

Like, there's something, and I, we talked about this a little bit, like, that first article that I wrote about her, I was. I was probably a year or and change into my career as a music journalist. I was a fumbling idiot, right? And I and I. And are we all. Yeah. But, you know, and I regret a couple, a lot of the lines in there. But the thing that I was trying to get at that, that is she taps into this universality,

this thing that really great art and poetry and music do where where you hear a line like that and you just, it feels like it's been written forever, you know, and it just, this person, like, transcribed it or something. And the best art has that feeling, and it's simple. And yet it's, it just hits you so hard. You're like, you have that moment of like, well, why didn't I think of that? But of course you didn't. Like, only this person in this moment with, even though the, you know, this is my, it's not my tune, but it's mine to use. Like, it sounds simple saying it, but when you hear her sing it and her voice kind of cracks on the album when she sings it a little bit, like as if it's like a confession.

Like it, and I was trying to, you know, get at that and fumbling. And I think the fumbling was worth the effort. But yeah, that's, that's what makes her a very special artist. Yeah. Well, as you said, you wrote about her for the village voice for the East record, you know, and so now you've interviewed her before. or almost anybody else's interviewer.

And now you've interviewed her when she's had this whole hype cycle. She's on her second album. You know, there's been a lot of discourse. And she's not crazy about a lot of it. She's understandably not psyched at all about even people who love her music describing her as innocent or childlike. Did she seem like frustrated with the way people talked about her, even people trying to praise her, right?

Like, did she seem a lot more guarded now necessarily, given that she? she's now like a much bigger star on this second record? Not to me when I talked to her. I mean, I remember that interview. I drove from San Francisco to Nevada City where she's from and I think was living at the time. And she was just wonderful and pleasant. And what was the line, the Hill and Dill and the Peripet? Hey Hill, hey Dill.

Yeah, they had some sort of secret code that they were using. in front of you, yes. Yeah, I think, yeah, I know around that time I was reading things and I would be surprised maybe if they were coming from her and not sort of this more ambient sense of, but I think, gosh, it seems very common that artists go through this, you know, where just certain phases and then they get put in a certain box and then the next phase is sort of getting out of that box and we see that, you know, even in plenty of artists today. And I think I experienced it at the time, I know I wrote about it in the Village voice piece. It was like, you know,

the backlash, if you want to call it that, but I experience it as a big deal. And now I see it as actually quite a common thing. Right. Do you think it's interesting, though, so like the Milk Eye Mender comes out and everybody writes about it, do you think that the East album in any way is a reaction to the way people wrote about the first album? The fact that it's so dense, and so orchestral and so ambitious. Like, is any of that in reaction to people just thinking that she was singing these simple little songs? Or does this seem, to me, it seems like somebody who was so focused who knew exactly what she wanted to do that she can be annoyed by the discourse but not affected by it? Do you know what I mean?

Like, do you think that it mattered at all to her? Did it affect the way the music progressed, the way people wrote about her initially? I don't think so. I think you're right. Yeah. You know, to whatever extent I think, to whatever extent I know, Joina, I think, you know, yeah, like the moment of going, like, the idea was, okay, my, my first record did well. Now I can go work with Bandite Parks. Hell yeah.

Right. You know, let's make something huge. And, you know, and it wasn't a reaction to anything. It was just like, heck, yeah, let's go, like, get the coolest toys that I've always wanted and do something with that. Just to wrap up, I came up, I came across this picture of her at a hockey game with Andy Sandberg, like when they were first dating. And I remember this weird sort of dissonance in my brain, like trying to reconcile, you know, this woman who I'd seen play the harp, you know, for 50 people or whatever. Like, now she's in Paul Thomas Anderson movies. You know, now she's a celebrity to an extent.

He's being interviewed by Larry King. Like, how it's surreal is it and how difficult is it for you to reconcile, like, the singer from those. super early shows with this person who is now like a public figure. Yeah. So fun fact, I think I've told you this, but I was in the same, I went to college, same college as Andy Sandberg. And he was, he was, uh, it was NYU film school. And so he was the guy that, you know, rented you the camera that you went out and shot with.

So, so I get that on both sides. I get, you know, the guy that used to rent me the cameras, uh, and, you know, this person that I saw playing for 50 people, um, you know, but, So, yeah, it's surreal. I think, you know, that, you know, this experience for me was unique in my career of getting a chance to, that was like my kind of almost famous moment where it's like, you know, we were going to those shows in Bolinas and there would be the show and then there would be the jam session after the show. and we'd all sit around up at the second floor of the, you know, crusty pants hotel and someone to play piano and, you know, and it was just like, oh, we're, you know, we're in this thing,

we're in the middle of the scene or whatever. And then, yeah, like two or three or five years later, you know, it's celebrity gossip picks, you know. There's a surreal aspect to it. But I don't know. That's life, I guess. People grow up. It's been wonderful talking to you, Garrett.

I think we did a great job. I have to be honest and say we completely nailed this. And I think it's going to be clear. And I think it felt a little too professional to me. Yeah, I know, I know, I know. I've sold out in my way, I thought this was going to be more of a, I should have done more to, you know, push us in these weird directions. I really, I promised that and I didn't deliver.

It's okay. We'll have you back. We'll talk about the bravery. We'll do something with a little less emotional freight to it. And we'll get messy later. But Garrett, this has been wonderful. Thank you. Thanks, Rob. Thanks very much to our guest this week, Garrett Camps. Thanks to our producers, Juliana Ress, Olivia Creary, Chris Sutton, and Justin Sales. Additional production by Kevin Pooleer, animations and graphics by Chris Calleton. Additional art by Matt James. And special thanks to Cole. Kushna and thanks to you for listening. And now let's all go listen to Emily by Joanna Newsom. We'll see you next week. Hey y'all. It's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if? Like what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.ca.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home.