Ahead of Bleachers' 2022 tour, Jack Antonoff caught up with The Current's Mac Wilson about recording at Paisley Park, his love of Facetime as a way to connect with loved ones, and how he looks at touring: "It's like throwing a wedding every night."

Interview Transcript

Edited for clarity and length.

MAC WILSON: Hello, I'm Mac Wilson from The Current from Minnesota Public Radio and I'm joined via the power of the internet by Mr. Jack Antonoff. Good morning, Jack.

JACK ANTONOFF: Morning!

You're a busy fella, as always, and you've got a lot going on. And there's so much to talk about. First and foremost, just a couple of days ago, you announced you'll be hitting the road with Bleachers this spring, in what you say is going to be your biggest and best tour yet. So congratulations in advance on that.

It's really exciting. There's a really thrilling anxiety every time you put up a tour. It's a huge ask to put a bunch of people in a room. It's like throwing a wedding every night. It's wild.

I was gonna ask about the folks who will be hitting the road with you, but just within your own right, with Bleachers—as you played shows over the last year, like you said, it's like putting together a wedding every night. I definitely sort of got a feeling like you gained a new energy with every subsequent stop that you played over the last fall, and that you really gained strength and you're coming into your own right. That kind of makes sense then that you're bringing it out for another leg. Do you indeed feel like you evolved as a band, like you basically gained strength with each subsequent night? Am I picking up on the right vibe?

Yes. I've always felt that way my whole life touring. However, on that past run, just fully due to COVID—I think that every show is a miracle. I'm sure you know this from your work, people don't see the behind the scenes, what it takes to get it all together. So when I think about touring, I think that it's just a miracle every time the band gets on stage, whether you're playing club, or an arena—any band, any night. When I was a kid driving from city to city or this stuff now. Absolute miracle, takes so many hands and acts of faith for the show to even happen. COVID obviously took something that was already so special, and kind of sacred, and somehow doubled that or just built upon it. And it just made you feel very focused on every stop because truly, on the last tour, we had to cancel a bunch of shows because of COVID. So like, there was a very—this is not poetry, there was a real feeling of like, we don't know if we're playing tomorrow, but we know we're playing tonight, because we get to the venue and we get there and my tour manager says, "Okay, we're good for today. No one has COVID." And I would say to myself, "Got it. Okay. No clue if tomorrow happens, but I just got word that we're playing tonight." And that attached an importance on to the shows that—I didn't think there was any room for more importance on shows. And we found more room, so you're totally picking up on a real thing every night, which got stronger and stronger and stronger and kind of tougher. And I mean, the pandemic's not over, and this tour is no different.

A few weeks ago, we had The Current’s 17th anniversary show where we were able to welcome some artists to First Avenue and play. Even one of the artists at the end said, "Well, we didn't know if we'd get to this point. But here we are on stage, it's a miracle that this show is happening." And you know, I'm trying to keep things optimistic, but there's sort of this vibe when you go to a show, "Well, what's my own personal risk calculus in going out tonight, it's sort of a miracle that I am allowed to be, and able to be here in the audience.” It's a mutual feeling for audience as well.

It goes all ways and there's a lot at risk. And to be honest, people who don't want to go to shows right now—I respect it, it's really a personal choice. I see live gatherings as an important thing for people to feel alive and happy, no different than we'd have this conversation in all areas of life. So in my corner of the world, it's about playing music and celebrating and feeling big feelings as a group of people. Now it's the risk is higher for everyone and therefore the reward is higher too.

Jack, you work with a lot of people doing production work and you're hitting the road with many wonderful bands this spring, folks like Charly Bliss and Beabadoobee and Wolf Alice, The Lemon Twigs—that would be a great festival it even in its own right. And I'm curious whether you—in your mind whether you put up a wall in your brain between folks who you really want to work with in the studio versus hitting the road or whether it's both ways, whether that precludes you from working with them in the studio in the future, or how does that relationship set up in your mind with all these artists who are in your orbit?

There's no rules in my head about it. But this is a different concept because if I'm going to work with someone, it's going to be because I've met them and we've talked about the future. That's what inspires me to do work with them. Whereas if I want to tour with someone, it's because I love the music they've already put out, so it's already opposites. When you work with someone, obviously, you can love what they do. But the deciding factor in whether you work with them or not, is not what they've done. It's where they're going, which you can only know from knowing them. The bands of this tour, I've never met The Lemon Twigs, but I love The Lemon Twigs and I listen to their music all the time. So I asked them to come on tour as a fan. That's the case with all the people who are opening the shows, it's only stuff that's just on my personal playlist. Whereas if there was a world where I was gonna work with The Lemon Twigs, I would immediately stop thinking about the records I know, and start thinking about this uncharted future. So it's almost exact opposites in a weird way. And I'm not sure I've ever had to cross it, right? I can't think of it. I mean, I've definitely done shows with people I have made records with, but I can't think of a scenario where I toured with a band, and then we worked together, or vice versa. So maybe there is more distinction than I am giving credit for.

It's been tough to maintain personal connections of all different sorts over the last couple of years with the ongoing pandemic, and Jack with a number of people who clearly think very, very highly of you, whether they want to tour with you whether they want to work with you, what are some of the personal strategies that you've used in maintaining personal relationships over these last several months and years?

FaceTime. Not a joke, seriously. I think that there's so many elements of modern living that have been a disappointment, and like a trojan horse of hell, but FaceTime is not one of them. I'm not doing a joke at all, I think FaceTime is one of the greatest modern inventions. I've been criticized for FaceTiming too much, but I think it's a really nice way to just see people and see what they look like and how they're moving and have conversations that are a little bit more connected and special. I'm sure you were expecting a less clinical answer. But literally all the people I love and care about—try to just FaceTime here and there, even if it's for a couple minutes. It makes me feel just a little bit more connected. Seeing what someone is doing.

That's a really interesting way that you put it because every few months it seems that somebody will have one of those prompts up on Twitter that's like, "Name one way that the world has gotten better over the last 25 years." And it's like, well, when we were kids, we thought that everybody would have camera phones, that we'd be able to have these conversations like this, and now we can actually do it on an everyday basis, and we totally take it for granted. And in your case, you're expressing actual appreciation for it.

Well, I think with everything going on a lot of modern inventions are really hurting the world, obviously. So it's interesting to take stock. I think social media is a net negative, right? So obviously, it's nice that everyone can blast out their thoughts and opinions all over the place. But if you look at the whole picture, I think net negative, we probably would've been better off without it. Microwave—net positive, you know? It turns out that it wasn't really giving that many people cancer and it was kind of cool. And FaceTime, I think it's just like a big net positive, I think it really enables a lot of really special things. You get to see people—I FaceTime with my grandmother every day.

We've all read these articles about the world advancing more in the next five years than it did in the past 100 years, or whatever it is. So it's very fair to really keep tabs on these things and ask yourself the question if any of these things are interesting or good. Look at even the music industry, we're having so many conversations about NFT's, and holograms, the metaverse. At this moment in time, there's no evidence to me that substantiates the idea that these things are any bit more interesting than just a band getting on a stage. And so, I think it's very fair to be looking at everything. Obviously, I'm not getting into a full rant but as these things have had massive effects on our lives or mental health in the world, it's really fair to take a look at everything going on and being like, do I even like this? The pandemic part of that, like the whole Netflix and chill concept kind of died in the pandemic? I don't know. Whether you're in like Arkansas, Japan, Jamaica, or wherever, I don't know a person right now whose idea of a good time is to sit at home and order food. It kind of leaves you with this feeling of like, oh, this idea that we've been pushed of this exciting future—maybe it was a net negative. Maybe the movie theater was pretty cool. But not FaceTime. FaceTime I stand by. Spent enough years, and I think it was a lifesaver during the pandemic.

You chimed in a few days ago about this horrible new NFT scam. Did you find out about it the way that everybody else did? Like, were people texting you like, "Hey, by the way your music is on here." Did anybody else tip you off? Or did you just stumble upon it on your own?

There's a couple. There's some Bleachers fans that are kind of like, real from the beginning—important fans that have fan pages and stuff like that and I check in with them. My Instagram is basically I follow my friends, my family, and then these five or six Bleachers fan accounts that just kind of somehow know more about the band than I do, which is great. But as soon as it came up, they were just, you know—stuff like this, whether it's scalpers or NFT stuff, they just said, "Hey, this site..." I didn't realize they were doing it for all these bands. I was just like, "Oh, someone's selling Bleachers NFTs. So I just right away was like, ‘This is not real.’“ It would be comedy if it wasn't indicative of bigger issue that we've reached a point where you could wake up one morning and someone's selling your art that you didn't even know existed.

Jack, I know that you have you have a lot going on. But I want to take a look back at the past for a minute, because one of our digital producers, he said, "Oh, you're talking with Jack Antonoff. You've got to talk with him about ‘Super Why!’" And I'm like, what does "Super Why!" have to do with anything? But I mean, when my kids were younger, that song was on repeat in our house. So folks may be listening to this and go, "Wait, that's a non sequitur." So you had a project a couple years back where you took the "Super Why!" theme song, and you did different variations on it. Am I reading into this right?

Yeah, so right before—it was probably 2010-ish, somewhere around there. My band at the time, which was Steel Train, did a few shows with “Yo Gabba Gabba!” because they would have bands come and do a little section—we did a couple tour hits, which is really fun. And rest in peace, Biz Markie, was on the tour, it was really cool. But the producers of that show, somehow it linked to “Super Why!” and I got asked to make the live music for the show. So I did like 30 “Super Why!” songs. Some I was reimagining, some I was writing from scratch. It was just this really weird project, which I've literally never been asked about, and no one knows. A lot of people who have kids have had “Super Why!” music on loop. And it's just another way that I've crawled into your home.

Well, that that is indeed the case where it's—I've talked with other musicians where they've maybe done one song for a soundtrack and I'm like, "Well, congratulations, this is a song that plays of yours the most in our household." So that's how you've made the biggest impact. So through “Super Why!” that's definitely made an impact.

Kids are a whole different thing. I was on Sesame Street and it's the thing that I still probably get the most excitement about from people. When it's through the lens of your kids, it's like, "Oh my God, my kid watches that Oscar the Grouch episode, all the time." Also kids do things different—like if a kid gets obsessed with something, it's not a private thing. You don't go into the room and listen to it. They blast it in the house all day long. So yeah, “Super Why!” and “Sesame Street,” by far, very important things to me.

Well as somebody who lives in a household where Rick Astley's "Never Going To Give You Up" is playing on constant repeat I get that very so that's all we hear. Well Jack, whether through ”Super Why!” whether with Bleachers, whether within the other projects that may have come down the pike, thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to chat with us here at The Current today.

I want to add one thing—which is last time we were in Minnesota we got to spend two days at Paisley Park and we just set up and recorded all this live stuff and it's a ways away but those recordings we did at Paisley Park turned out to be kind of the bedrock for what's the next Bleachers album.

Well look at this, so Jack Antonoff and Bleachers out of Paisley Park—all the pieces are coming together. We are really looking forward to seeing whatever is next, Jack. Thank you again and good luck on the road.

Thanks Mac, nice talking to you. Take care.

External Links

Bleachers - official website

Credits

Guest - Jack Antonoff
Host - Mac Wilson
Producers - Jesse Wiza, Derrick Stevens
Technical Director - Eric Romani