DoT EP105: Steve Poltz On Songwriting, Goat Singing, Spirituality, Tom Cruise, and Much More, Plus New Music from Secret Shame

The Department of Tangents Podcast

I have met my tangenting match. I went into this interview, backstage at the legendary Club Passim in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with a slate of questions for Steve Poltz, about his new album Shine On, about writing “You Were Meant For Me” with Jewel, about humor in music. I probably could have gotten a good hour with Steve with two or three questions. There is no telling where his mind might flash next. Just in terms of music, the conversation covered his early days with The Rugburns, Nirvana and 90s “goat music,” the Replacements, the Dead Milkmen, Mojo Nixon, Tom Lehrer, and Allan Sherman over the course of a few minutes. We talked about spirituality, Risky Business, Hyman Roth from Godfather II, Jesus, Marianne Williamson, Styx in another five-minute section. At one point, when I told Poltz the name of the podcast, he said, “We’re living up to the name.” This breakneck tangenting is something you have experienced if you’ve seen Poltz onstage. I hadn’t seen him play since he did an in-the-round show with Beaver Nelson, “Scrappy” Jud Newcomb, and Adam Carroll perhaps seventeen or eighteen years before. I certainly hadn’t remembered this version of him. When he smiles, it splits his face almost completely, and he smiles a lot when he’s not singing. He also jigs, which makes him seem like a Muppet version of Jimmie Dale Gilmore. The first several minutes onstage, he told stories, picked up his guitar and put it back down again, and threatened not to pick it up the rest of the show. It’ll be there, he said, the audience would see it, but maybe he wouldn’t use it. He played the Grateful Dead’s “Althea” off the top of his head, which surprised even him. He apologized for the bad notes, but backtracked, saying, “Think of how many bad notes the Dead hit.”

The new album is called Shine On, and you can find more info about that and Poltz on www.poltz.com, and find him on Facebook and Twitter under Steve Poltz. You can also find more about Club Passim at www.passim.org. And if you’re intrigued by some of the music you heard in the background, that’s Boston singer/songwriter Rachel Sumner, formerly of Twisted Pine, and you can find her stuff at www.rachelsumnermusic.com.

I am currently putting together this year’s Daily Horror Film Fest, for which I post a different short horror film every day in October. If you are a short horror filmmaker, or even if you just have a short horror film you love dearly, e-mail your suggestions to [e-mail].

And now for something completely different. Or maybe not. This week’s featured track is "Comfort" from Secret Shame of Asheville, North Carolina, from their new album, out today, September 5th, called Dark Synmthetic. This new album would have sounded great in nestled somewhere in your collection with the Pixies, The Cure, and Nirvana. It’s propulsive guitar rock, mixing glassy chorus and echo with heavy, distorted riffs to create this wide-open sound. From somewhere within that sound, singer Lena is trying to reach you through waves of reverb. Seven songs come in just under twenty-six minutes total. Not a note wasted. The band is kicking off a tour this week, and you can find them on BandCamp and Facebook to find out more.