\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p><\/div><\/div> \t\t\t\t\tThe New Pornographers (from left): John Collins, A.C. Newman, Neko Case, Todd Fancey, Kathryn Calder<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tEbru Yildiz*<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tThere was a vibe on this record which was kind of\u2026 maybe it\u2019s just the mood of the world, or maybe it\u2019s getting older, but there was a [theme] of dealing with and accepting loss. Or just dealing with the end, whether it\u2019s a friend\u2019s life, or democracy in America, or relationships. So when this happened, there was a part of me that went, \u201cOf course this shit is happening. Why would something good happen?\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tTell me about how Charley Drayton got involved.<\/strong> \n\tWhen and where did the re-recordings take place?<\/strong> \n\tWere there any logistical or technical challenges to re-recording the drums for this album? \n\tIs he going to be joining the New Pornographers full-time?<\/strong> \n\tTell me about the non-drumming parts of the album you felt compelled to re-do.<\/strong> \n\tWhere and when did you find out about Seiders\u2019 arrest?<\/strong> \n\tIt was dark, weird, and confusing. And it was terrifying, because there\u2019s three of us [in the band] that have kids. We all felt afraid. We were all like, \u201cWhen was our child with him?\u201d Everybody\u2019s going through their heads, \u201cWere our kids ever alone with him?\u201d Which was terrifying, like a horror movie where you can\u2019t see the monster. We didn\u2019t know what was going on. And then, as days passed and we were beginning to piece things together, there was just that liminal space of, like, \u201cWell, this is gonna explode.\u201d And we were just waiting. When I got word that it was public, I don\u2019t even remember\u2026 There wasn\u2019t even a sinking feeling in my stomach. It was just a feeling of like, \u201cWell, here it is. Don\u2019t go on the internet for a week.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHe was arrested on April 9, but it wasn\u2019t publicly announced until April 18. Were you told after the initial arrest?<\/strong>\u00a0 \n\tThe next weird step was when it went public. His now ex-wife, I\u2019m talking to her and she\u2019s saying, \u201cCan you get news out to people that we are going along with the police, that we were blindsided by this, that we have nothing to do with this?\u201d You realize, all of a sudden, there\u2019s these kids and this mother who need to be protected from the world. Because the world is coming after them. And then the guilt we felt as a band, because the band\u2019s name turned it from a private matter to a public matter. And then the realization that, \u201cOh, this is entertainment.\u201d What he did, and the fact that we\u2019re called the New Pornographers, it was \u2014 for lack of a better word \u2014 just too cute. It made it news that was going to go everywhere.<\/p>\n \n\tI didn\u2019t care that much about us, but it\u2019s difficult for [Seiders\u2019 ex-wife and children]. This nightmare that should at least be a private nightmare was a public nightmare. People were, like, doxxing and looking them up online. There wasn\u2019t much positive about it.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tTell me about the conversations you had with your bandmates. How did you find the right words to say it, and how did people react?<\/strong> \n\tWas the decision to cut ties and fire Joe immediate and unanimous? Or were there discussions about it?<\/strong> \n\tNobody wants to be the person that goes, \u201cI barely knew the guy!\u201d And it was horrible, but it didn\u2019t feel like it struck at the core of the band. Because we\u2019d been a band for 15 years before he joined. If it was John, it would have been like, \u201cWell, we\u2019re done\u201d \u2014 because me and John have been arm-in-arm every step of the way. That would have torn at the very foundation of our band.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tFor the first few days, I think a lot of people had the same reaction: There is something really jarring when there\u2019s this person you thought you knew, and then there\u2019s who they really are. And it took days to join those two together. To realize, \u201cNo, there are not two of those people.\u201d That person you thought you knew basically does not exist. Then slowly, those two people form into this one sole, solitary piece of shit, and then you can go, \u201cFuck that guy.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIt sounds like maybe the relationship was already a little strained before this.\u00a0<\/strong> \n\tOne thing I realized from this is, people like to think, \u201cThere must have been signs.\u201d And it\u2019s like, no. And that was a horrifying part. It could be anyone. A good resource we had was my wife\u2019s cousin, who is a high-ranking lawyer in the Los Angeles Family Court who deals with this kind of thing all the time. We learned so much from him about how widespread all of this is, like child trafficking and child pornography. And immediately we all wanted to scrub our kid off the internet. That\u2019s my message now for parents: Don\u2019t put pictures of your kid in a bathing suit on your Instagram, because creeps are gonna get off on that stuff. They\u2019re gonna find it. That was horrifying, because it makes you not trust anybody. These people are hiding in plain sight.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAnd another thing that my wife\u2019s cousin said was, \u201cThey always have their eyes open. They\u2019re always looking for an opportunity.\u201d We learned a lot more about the world than we wanted to learn. But it was a good lesson. Her cousin\u2019s big advice was, \u201cWatch your kids very carefully. Watch what they do online.\u201d Because the kids that are getting trafficked aren\u2019t just kids from broken homes and poor families.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tI was going to ask if there were any red flags, or if there was anything in retrospect about him that now seems off.\u00a0<\/strong> \n\tI think normal people let themselves be messy in public. But he seemed very straight, and you realize, \u201cOh, it was all a cover.\u201d You realize that so many of these people have covers like that. Some of them are Boy Scout troop heads. Some of them are priests. They\u2019re trying to create this friendly cover and they spend their life working on it. And it\u2019s very easy to fool people, because nobody\u2019s looking for it.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tWas cutting ties difficult from a business standpoint? Were there any contractual entanglements?\u00a0<\/strong> \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tFormer New Pornographers drummer Joseph Seiders at a 2017 show.<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMiikka Skaffari\/FilmMagic<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tEveryone in the band lives in different places. Did you feel compelled to get together in the aftermath, or were you just communicating over phone or Zoom?\u00a0<\/strong> \n\tThe last time I talked to John, I think it\u2019s been on his mind a lot. Of course, it\u2019s a hard thing to not think about, and I just had to tell him: \u201cMost people have forgotten. You\u2019re remembering this way more than most regular people have. The people that were coming after us online in late April, they literally don\u2019t remember it happened. They\u2019re attacking somebody else now.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBeyond pushing the album, did this force you to change any other plans? Did you consider going on hiatus?<\/strong> \n\tWe were gonna tour this year. So we had to tighten the purse strings a little bit all of a sudden. But I also realize, I feel pretty lucky. My wife has a decent job, and we don\u2019t have as much money as we did because of everything that happened. But all told, especially when you look around the world, and just the country, for everything that\u2019s happened, I have way more to be grateful for. We have a home, we have a roof over our head, we have money to buy food.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tTell me about the discussion about the band name and why you decided to stick with the New Pornographers.\u00a0<\/strong> \n\tThe more I thought about it, it just seemed like a bad-faith argument [for changing the name]. I named it after a Japanese movie by Sh\u014dhei Imamura [1966\u2019s The Pornographers<\/em>], so, should we go to the estate of Sh\u014dhei Imamura and say, \u201cYou should change the name of that movie because there was a band that named themselves after your movie, and this happened\u201d? And from a purely pragmatic point of view, if we changed our name, people would go, \u201cWho is this new band? Oh, it\u2019s the New Pornographers, they changed their name. Why did they change their name? Because of this.\u201d Or, we were gonna change the spelling of the name. \u201cWell, why did they change the spelling of the name? Because of this.\u201d It seemed to me, if you don\u2019t want to talk about it, the best thing you could do was just continue with our name. I\u2019m sure I\u2019m going to be saying this 50 times in the next year.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tDo you think there\u2019s any scenario in which you and the other members would talk to Joe again?<\/strong> \n\tDo you think you\u2019d ever be compelled to write about any aspect of this in a song?<\/strong> \n\tI have to imagine this is the most shocking thing you\u2019ve gone through in the nearly 30 years you\u2019ve been in the band. Is there anything you\u2019ve experienced that\u2019s been remotely similar?<\/strong> \n\tHas this made it difficult to engage with the music that you recorded over the past 10 years, or is it easy to separate those songs from the person who drummed on them?\u00a0<\/strong>
Charley\u2019s just one of the best drummers in the world, and I\u2019m lucky that I knew him. His longtime girlfriend and my wife are really good friends. I think a couple of days after it all happened, he said to my wife, \u201cTell Carl to call me. I\u2019ll do it.\u201d And he\u2019s such a big deal that I think I needed that. I would have felt weird cold-calling him and saying, \u201cHey, I know you\u2019ve played with Dylan and the Stones and Neil Young and everyone else, but would you lower yourself?\u201d<\/p>\n
We did Charley\u2019s at a studio called Area 52 outside Woodstock with a guy named Dave Cook [in June or July]. What was funny about that was, Dave was the engineer on B-52\u2019s \u201cLove Shack\u201d and Charley was the drummer. They had literally not seen each other since they recorded [that].<\/p>\n
<\/strong>There was a little bit of a push and pull, because you\u2019re kind of overdubbing, but you\u2019re kind of not overdubbing. The new drums changed the vibe a bit, too, and then you\u2019re trying to figure out how much can you keep, how much do you ditch? Being a person who can\u2019t let go, there was part of me that was glad I was going back and fixing things. Any horrible thing, you try and figure out what good you can take out of it, and the record is better than it would have been. Which is not a thumbs-up for what\u2019s happened by any means. But Charley is such an amazing drummer, it was so cool to have tracks where I felt like I didn\u2019t need to do anything to them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
No, no. I would never want him to do that. That\u2019s a much bigger ask to say, \u201cGet in the Sprinter with us and travel around America for three weeks.\u201d Maybe he would, but he\u2019s got some pretty good gigs going on.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a song on the album that\u2019s very much a ballad called \u201cWish You Could See Me I\u2019m Killing It.\u201d It\u2019s kind of autobiographical, but semi-fictional, and it\u2019s about a person buying flowers for their parents\u2019 graves and talking to their parents. I guess it\u2019s a song about how we talk to the dead and the people we\u2019ve lost. I felt like I had to re-sing that. It doesn\u2019t matter to anybody else, but it was a song I was singing to my parents, who I\u2019ve lost, and this had happened, and what I was singing about in the song seemed more true. It seemed more current. I just felt like I had to re-sing it with a certain feeling. Even if nobody else would spot it, I would spot it.<\/p>\n
I was at home and I got a text from his brother. He texted me and our manager, and said there\u2019s some bad stuff coming down, some bad charges. [He sent] a link to the charges and it was kind of vague. It was charges that had [criminal code] numbers. My wife, who\u2019s just that kind of person, immediately went, \u201cI\u2019m gonna go through all these and figure out what they are.\u201d Then it started getting bizarre. Like, \u201cWhat the hell is going on here?\u201d And it kept getting worse.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yeah, it was probably the next day. And then I started calling everybody, which was just bizarre. Trying to prep somebody for this, saying, \u201cFirst off, nobody\u2019s died, but you\u2019re going to be so shocked. What you are imagining in your brain right now is not as bad as reality.\u201d<\/p>\n
I was pretty matter-of-fact. These are people I\u2019ve known for a long time, and it\u2019s like, \u201cWhat I\u2019m about to tell you is super fucked-up.\u201d You know, a lot of stunned silences. I remember Kathryn crying. That felt like the harshest moment. Sometimes, you\u2019re dealing with something and you\u2019re so used to it that somebody crying all of a sudden \u2014 the reality of it hits you. I do remember, it\u2019s kind of a funny thing, but it\u2019s so hard to get Neko to text me back. I remember texting her going like, \u201cThis is an emergency. Do not ignore this text. I cannot stress to you how serious this is. I\u2019m not asking you to sing right now. This is an emergency.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yeah. It didn\u2019t feel like there was any doubt. It\u2019s funny, I was talking to a band member recently and they were saying, \u201cWell, it was no secret that you didn\u2019t like him.\u201d And then I said, \u201cThat\u2019s so nice of you to say.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Maybe not for everybody. I think it was just kind of normal. When you\u2019re in a band, there\u2019s always people that annoy you. I\u2019ve had band members who annoyed me way more than him, but obviously he was the worst of them all.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hindsight is always 20\/20, but he kept up an act that was very convincing. He had been with his now ex-wife since high school, they had two kids. When he joined the band, I liked that he was such a normal guy. I just wanted a normal person who was good at their job and was not going to cause a lot of shit. And of course that backfired horribly.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was pretty clear cut. I think we had something written in the contract \u2014 not a morality clause, but something like that. Like, if you had reasons to cut them out, and this was a very good reason. I just felt like, \u201cI would like to see that motherfucker challenge this.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-rollingstone-2022\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
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Some of us did. Me, Kathryn, John, and Todd did that. I think Neko just wanted to do her own thing [and] deal with it however she chose to deal with it. But even when we had a Zoom call, there wasn\u2019t weeping and gnashing of teeth. It was just friends hanging out and going, \u201cWhat the fuck?! Seriously, what the fuck!\u201d We did that a few times and realized, \u201cWell, we don\u2019t need to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Well, we are on hiatus. This is the first year since 1990 that I have not played a gig. So we were just forced on hiatus. For me, making music is what I do. So the band can go on hiatus, but I\u2019m still going to be sitting at home writing and recording.<\/p>\n
The day [we found out], we were all like, \u201cObviously we can\u2019t call ourselves the New Pornographers anymore.\u201d And then time passed. A few weeks later, I ran into my friend Zach Djanikian, who played on this record and Continue as a Guest<\/em>, and I was talking about the band name possibly changing, and he had the first violent reaction, which was, \u201cNo! You can\u2019t change your name. You worked too hard for that name.\u201d And I thought, \u201cYeah, you\u2019re right.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think there\u2019s anything I have to say to him. It fucking sucks that he dragged us down with him as much as he could. But yeah, I don\u2019t have anything. Nothing good. Nothing that he hasn\u2019t heard. He brought this upon himself. He destroyed his life.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s tough. If I did, it would take a long, long time to figure out. There\u2019s a song on this record called \u201cBonus Mai Tais,\u201d which I wrote about something that happened in 2012, when I was hanging out with a friend of mine who was dying of cancer. I would come back to it and think about it all the time, but it took me over 10 years to write that song, because I felt like I had to do this correctly. So if I was ever going to write about what happened, I would not enter into it lightly. I would be very careful. And it would be hard to artfully communicate that kind of anger and betrayal. I\u2019m not in a hardcore band. It\u2019s trickier for us to do anger.<\/p>\n
No. Although what\u2019s shocking is that you find out how many families have these stories. Ours became a news story, but this is more common than people know, which is terrifying. But I also feel like it\u2019s somebody else\u2019s tragedy. Within hours of it happening, I realized, \u201cWe are not at the center of this.\u201d We are getting dragged in because we are called the New Pornographers, and how that connects vaguely to what happened. But realizing this is not our tragedy, and seeing what we can do to help the people who are at the center of this tragedy. If people decide they\u2019re going to turn on us because of what happened, I can\u2019t control it. I don\u2019t think we deserve to be treated like pariahs, but if you want to, it\u2019s like, who cares?<\/p>\n
I think it is. When he joined the band, I wanted somebody who was just normal and professional. On songs, I would bring him in and go, \u201cThis is what I want you to do.\u201d I\u2019d usually have demos worked out and if I didn\u2019t have a drum part worked out, I\u2019d be like, \u201cI want it to be this vibe.\u201d I listen to those songs and there\u2019s nothing that I hear and go, \u201cOh, that\u2019s such a Joe moment.\u201d I feel like he was just one of the carpenters that worked on the building. <\/strong>He wasn\u2019t one of the architects.<\/p>\n