Song Exploder’s Host Hrishikesh Hirway Plays Track Star

Testing 1, 2, 3, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, test, test, test, test, test. Before we start the music, introduce yourself. I'm Rishi K. Shereway. How are you feeling? Great. What's been going on? Just finished my tour at the last show this weekend. Your tour was pretty unique, because it was half music, half conversation. Yeah, I don't know how many times I'll get to tour at this point, you know? And so I wanted to make sure for this one that it had all the different parts of me in it. Close to service. That's correct, yeah. What do you know about that song? Well, that was the first episode of Song Exploder. So I know some stuff about it. Jimmy Temberello, he's half of the Postal Service. Over time, we became friends, we met, then we went on tour together. A little while after that, I started working on the idea for Song Exploder. And I asked Jimmy if I could interview him for the pilot episode. And there's a song we talked about. What drove you to say like, oh, not only do I have an idea for a show, but also it's going to be a podcast. For one, I had this existential crisis, what writers block. Going on with my own music. I had been doing it for over a decade at that point. I had had this idea for a long time of wanting to hear artists talk about the way they make music. In a way that felt like relevant to my own experience of making music. And so much of it is just like these little decisions of like, how do I take this part and put it into an instrument? I just started to work on it while I was hoping music stuff would sort itself out in the background. You're one for one. Crosby Still's Nash and Young. I mean, you just want to sing along? Yeah, this is one of my favorite Song Exploder episodes of all time, getting to talk to Graham Nash about this song. Why was that one of your favorite episodes? He knew every detail. Like it was yesterday. He spoke with such respect and love for his collaborators and for Joni Mitchell. And it was also like a turning point for the podcast, because it was the episode where I started leaving a little bit more of myself in the show, as opposed to always cutting myself out. What'd you grow up on? When I was younger, I just kind of got the music that my sister would listen to, which was like top 40. When I started to find my own music, suddenly in the mainstream, there was all this stuff that felt like really exciting and kind of dangerous and transgressive public enemy and Metallica and Nirvana. We're all hitting the radio. And so I got really excited by that. Pearl Jam. They were a band, one of the early bands where I started to dig in to be like, what else is there? And like, what came before this? And I remember there was a tribute to Bob Dylan. That was on PBS. Eddie Vetter sang "Masters of War" with G.E. Smith. I thought it was so awesome. I taped it off TV. And for like a while, that was my favorite, you know, Pearl Jam song. The reason that I played that is you mentioned like kind of discovering punk rock. Yeah. I don't necessarily hear punk rock in your music. Yeah. What is it about that drew you to that culture? In college. I played in bands that probably was easier to trace the influence. But I think the way that punk kind of just continued to live on in my life is more like in the way that I chose to do music. Everything about their kind of like ethics really inspired me. Punk felt more like an attitude than necessarily a genre of music. I thought that I was dreaming when you said you were. It was Frank Ocean. What do you think about him? Amazing. I'm curious what made you pick Frank Ocean other than he's amazing. He creates such a pop, appealing sound, but it isn't like a traditional thing by any means. Yeah. And so I think that's what's interesting to me about him. I apologize if this is like too nerdy of a thing to say. But he changed my relationship to the sound of DI'd guitar. First of all, don't ever apologize for sounding nerdy on the show. Tell us more. When you plug the guitar in right into like the audio interface or something, there's no amp. The amp is usually what gives the sound of the electric guitar character and there's some air and I had not heard it in a context where I love the song so much. When you listen to a song, are you trying to think about how did they make that sound? What tool do they use and where does that curiosity come from? First I just was. I was playing drums in a band. When I started hearing electronic music for the first time, I was just like, why do those drums sound so different than when I played the drums? I just was trying to figure out what I was listening to. Did you think at that point music was going to be always be a part of your life? Yes, I did think it was probably always going to be a part of my life but I didn't give it too much thought. It was just, this is who I am. I played drums. When it keeps on hitting me like my. That's Ken Pogroy. She's been on your show. Yeah. And she's amazing. She's amazing. I first heard Ken's music in an episode of the show, Reservation Dogs. And I was like, what is this? I ended up finding out that it was Ken Pogroy. It was a song "Sacadas." It's such a good song. That's so good. I was looking for people to collaborate with and especially people who I felt like might be kindred spirit. I sent her some music and we talked and she invited me to come to Tulsa. We wrote two songs. And I went to record the album and she came and played in the band. Not bad. Pretty good. Yeah. All right. I'm going to play you a song that I love. Okay. I know what you want to say. It's Sharon Venet and Seventeen. Also a favorite song, "Exploder" episode. It's a really emotional song and emotional story. The majority of the episodes that you do, it's not someone saying, yeah, we wrote that in five minutes. Right. And it was nothing. Most of the songs are going through this process. And that's true of anything that you make. Yeah. It's about the process. The thing that is most exciting to me is when the very beginning of the song, you hear the very first voice memo that they made and it just sounds so far removed from what the song ends up being. It makes me look at some of my starting ideas where I'm like, "Oh, that's so bad." Okay. But what happens on day two? It makes me look at some of the things that I do. Big beef. Her solo album, "Songs and Instrumentals" was so huge for me that I reached out to Phil Weinrobe who co-produced it, see if he would work with me on my album. And he did. And the experience of working with him didn't just change the way my music sounded, but life. That's the best producers. Right? They're like therapists. Yes. Last song. I got an idea. I am to do play this artist every single episode. You got to know in the first three notes born in the USA. Yeah. That's, to me, that's an important drum song. Yeah. Tsh. Tsh. But you know, this is also a song that I reference in my album partly because Bruce Springsteen was kind of like my first understanding of what a rock star was. Yeah. So good. What's next? Going up to work with Phil Weinrobe on some more music now. After this. And that's going to be interesting because, you know, he records live, which is the reason why it was so scary for me. Because I was used to doing everything in my own bedroom, Phil's idea was like, makes the music feel more exciting when you listen to the recording. I wanted to try and see what it would be like to do that experience again without having all of that fear or at least not as much, you know. You trust the process a little bit more. You've seen the results. Exactly. Yeah. I can appreciate parts that I missed last time. You've already written the songs and you're laying them down. Yeah. So you're ready to rock and roll. Yeah. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. So great to meet you. Nice to meet you. So fun hanging. It's very cool that you get to do both of these things. Doing both of the things isn't how it started. Yeah. You know, it really felt like for a long time. I just felt disconnected from music and I didn't know if I would ever get back. And so now to be in a time of my life when I get to do both, I feel like I get all the things. You get to use this. Oh, yeah. And follow this. Yeah. That's what it's all about. You're sure. No, you're hard.