No Filler Music Podcast - Sidetrack: Mark Lanegan - Undertow

Episode Date: February 14, 2018

No Filler takes a well-rounded look at singer/songwriter Mark Lanegan's genre-spanning career, from the early days as frontman for 90's Seattle grunge band Screaming Trees & his hauntingly beautiful solo work from the same era, as well as his collaborations with desert rockers Queens Of The Stone Age. For more info, check out the shown notes: https://www.nofillerpodcast.com/episode/ep-4-foo-fighters-there-is-nothing-left-to-lose#sidetrack Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Why do you have the need to release solo albums when you get a good day job? I don't know if it's something I need to do. Something you want to do.

Something I can do, so. You have a lot of spare time, or do you just? Is it something that you just can't do when you're in the screaming trees? It was, you know, it's pretty different. It's kind of quiet and slow. Scrimmet trees are a little louder. And this is our sidetrack episode for the week. This is No Filler podcast.

My name's Quentin. I've got my brother Travis with me. How are you? Well, Q. I didn't know that we were going to talk about Queens of Stone Age until I just heard that intro song. I know. I wanted to surprise you. I'm excited. Didn't think we'd be talking about these guys for a while because we will do.

Well, here's the deal. We're not talking about Queens. Okay. We're talking about Mark. Fair enough. Fair enough. Mark Lanigan is his name. I wanted to do that Queens at the Stone Age song that his vocals are featured on.

it's off of their album songs for the deaf. The song's called Hanging Tree. Did you say songs for the death or deaf? Deaf. All right. Just want to make sure you said it correctly. Anyways. Yeah, this is all news to me, man.

I didn't know who this guy was. I just found out about him today. Because that was one thing I always wondered. Like, who the fuck is this guy that's showing? showing up on a handful of tracks on some of my favorite Queens of the Stone Age song. His, I mean, his vocals are incredible, man. They're so unique. Really? Yeah.

Like, he sings with, I mean, his voice is very deep, you know what I mean? Yeah. And which is perfect for hanging tree, you know what I mean? Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah. Some of my favorite, seriously, some of my favorite songs on songs for the deaf, Lannigan is the lead singer on it. Well, yeah. He sings on song for the dead.

Right. He sings on Hanging Tree and he sings on song for the death as well as God is in the radio. Yeah. Well, I mean, we're going to have to save our conversation, our full conversation, obviously, from when we do the episode on Songs for the Deaf because, uh, yeah, obviously we're going to. So our actual sidetrack is going to be from his first solo out. album that came out in 90, or I'm sorry, that came out in 1999. It's called The Winding Sheet.

It came out in 1990. What did I say? You just said 99. Oh, my bad. Sorry. Yeah, it came out in 1990. I just want to keep, I just want to throw another nine in there. Sorry.

It came out in 1990. Yeah. Called winding sheet. And yeah, you know, he's talking about his, other band called Screaming Trees. Did you ever get into them, Travis? I actually, I checked them out once I, I kind of did what you did and looked into this guy a few years back when I, you know, I kind of asked the same question, like, who is this dude? Yeah.

Who's doing these vocal tracks for Queens of Stone Age? And then, yeah, Screaming Trees is a pretty iconic, pretty iconic band from that era. Yeah. They're from Washington State. Yeah, so they played in Seattle a lot in the mid to late 80s, early 90s. They actually were together all the way until 2000. So they were together for 15 years. And I'm actually going to play just a little snippet.

It is a single. I'm sorry, I know this is no filler. but when I found out that Screaming Trees played this song, I had heard it. I want to say I heard it on some random movie. Who knows when. But I really like this song. It's called Nearly Lost You.

And it's off their sixth studio album called Sweet Oblivion. Yeah, this is their mega hit. It's their big hit. It's so good. Yeah? Yeah. So, okay, here's a little, just a little snippet of it. What's what I like about Mark's voice.

So many singers, you always wonder, like, is this really, like, is this their voice, you know? Or are they straining it? Are they holding back? Or, you know? Yeah. This is Mark's voice, you know? Like, he's not trying to hide it. This is just how he sounds.

Well, all the little imperfections is what makes it so genuine. I love it. Well, yeah, that's what makes it so great, you know. Is your cat popping into this episode? She sure is. Yep. She's saying, hey. Oh, my gosh.

Hey, Travis, you haven't fed me yet. Tell her, hold off like another 10 minutes and we'll be done. All right. So the reason I picked Mark Lanigan for our Foo Fighters sidetrack episode is thanks to a interview that Dave Grohl did. We referenced it in the Food Fighters episode. I don't know if it's just an internet publication or if it was a magazine or what. But Dave Grohl was interviewed on Melody Maker back in 2000.

And basically he was listing his favorite albums at the time. one of him being Mark Lannigan's The Winding Sheet which was released on sub-pop records in 1990 and Dave sums it up

nicely he says oh man it's the most beautiful record it's a Sunday morning acoustic soulful blues record the guy has so much soul and the most beautiful voice

you imagine this is what your heart would sound like if it could sing. It's so fucking beautiful. This album came out just after I moved to Seattle. So to me, it represents that whole time. And he goes on to say, Mark sang for the screaming trees. So he had his flip side. But there was also a lot of appreciation in Seattle at that time for the purity and truth of real music. So Dave's a big fan of this album. That's a great description of it, man. Right? And yeah, we haven't even...

I think soulful is a good, a good word to use for his voice. Yes. And yeah, we haven't even really... I mean, all you've heard so far is his screaming trees and Queens of the Stoneage. But his, yeah, his solo stuff is really pretty. A lot of... It's very... mostly acoustic. According to the wikis...

on the one of the singles on the album, uh, the track's called Down in the Dark. Good friend of Mark Landigan's Kurt Cobain. You ever heard of this guy? Um, a couple times, yeah. Yeah,

yeah, he was in this band called Nirvana. Uh, he sings, I was in Nirvana. He sings on, uh, on that single.

And the song I picked, I picked it mainly because, I really like the guitar on it. It's really pretty. It is track three on the record. It's pretty short. I guess a lot of these songs are pretty short. It's just under three minutes long.

It's called Undertow. And yeah, here's a clip of it. That's great. Right? Yeah, that's good. It's awesome, man. I like, I'm a, sucker for humming in songs when it's just like a light hum that the singer will do along with

the guitar line. It reminds me of a lot of stuff that Nick Drake did with that kind of finger-picking guitar style. Yeah. I'm definitely going to check out more of his solo stuff. He's still spitting not records as a solo artist. And he's been doing stuff with Queens of the Stone Age for a while now, too. I know he was in Lullabies to Paralyze as well. He shows up on the first song on the album, This Lullaby. Yep, yep. So, yeah, this sidetrack ended up being more just a showcase of what Mark Lannigan's been doing

over the last several decades. But yeah, I stumbled upon him just today. I didn't know who he was. I couldn't have given you a name. But I was just looking for stuff that Dave was into. Excellent sidetrack, my friend. Thanks, brother. So that should do it for us midweek here.

Our sidetrack episode for Foo Fighters. Thanks for tuning in. As always, be sure to hop over to our website, no fillerpodcast.com. You can check out the show notes for this episode and for all of our episodes. We'll have links to any articles, any videos that we reference in the episode. Also hop over to our playlist section and you can listen to our Spotify playlist for January, which features our episodes on Allison Chains and Tycho. And next week, we will be doing our first down-tempo episode on Tosca.

Well, Tyco was down-tempo. I guess so. Let's say we're doing our episode on one of the pioneers of the genre, the forefathers of Down-Dimbo. Yeah, that's true. Tycho has down-to-bo elements to his music. But, yeah, Taska is... They're on the front lines, man. They're the forefathers of Down-Tibo for sure, so...

Yeah, I can't wait. Yeah. I can't wait to share some Tosca music with you all. Yeah. It's so good, especially that album, Suzuki. Yeah, it's a group that you and I have shared an affinity for for probably close to a well over a decade now, man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's going to be good. I can't wait. So, thanks again for tuning in. I think we're just going to fade out. I'm just going to fade out with

some more hanging tree because I love that song. Yeah, man, that baseline. We're going to have to that might be one of our picks when we get around to covering it, that album. So, yeah, it wasn't a single. Right. And there's a lot of singles on this one. Yep. All right. Thanks again for tuning in. My name is Quentin. My name is Travis. Take care. Unwrap holiday magic at Holt Renfrew with gifts that say I know you.

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