Ed Schraeder’s Music Beat
Ed Schraeder’s Music Beat are Ed Schraeder and Devlin Rice: two friendly, funny dudes who make serious music in Baltimore, MD. I first saw them at a First Unitarian Church show in Philadelphia a few years ago, but when I heard their most recent album, Riddles (recorded with Dan Deacon), and caught their set at Hopscotch I was more than a little impressed at how much their sound had evolved and expanded: this set of songs boasts jocund jams; jagged, juddering jazz; and other jaunty jewels. I caught up with them in Charlotte, NC, where they opened for hometown friends Future Islands. Ed and Devlin were outrageously generous with their time, their insights, and their tour bus seltzer.
[Edited lightly for length and clarity]
Pedal Fuzz: When I listened to the song “Seagull” it made me wonder: what is your songwriting process? When I hear it, I imagine coming up with that bass riff and building lyrically and vocally from there. So, do you guys bring different parts, do you take turns bringing things, do you both bring stuff, do you just wait for inspiration? How do you build a song?
Devlin: Well, that one specifically–we did a lot of different things for this record. For the first couple of records Ed had a vocal melody and then I’d write to that. You know, the “Seagull” bass line kind of mirrors the vocal. But for Riddles, basically when we started recording with Dan, we came in with a bunch of songs and then to a click track just kind of put everything together with just bass and voice. Then we started just making a map of the song. “Seagull” was the first one that we worked on where he was like “Oh, let’s put in a kick here,” or “Let’s repeat this part…”
Ed: I remember I was listening to this show called American Routes and I was hearing all of these old songs, and I was like “Man, it’s all about the melody!” Then I came up with this little dirge that’s like five-tenths of the song, you know [Ed hums the jazzy, descending and re-ascending bass line here]. It was our usual old process of humming it, Devlin thinking about his thing, but then inputting it to Dan’s formula of kind of taking each piece one at a time, deconstructing it, and kind of building in steps instead of like “Alright, cool, we can get this done and get lunch!” You know?
Devlin: Yeah. And each song on Riddles had a different, like, inception or birth, ‘cause half of it was written in the studio, some stuff that was brought in got tossed…
Ed: Yeah. And it was so weird making a song from the ground. There were a few songs that were made actually in the studio, which is not at all what I usually do. And it was really fun, very freeing, and it puts you in line with that sense of improvisation. You know, like when you’re really in the zone and you’re like “Oh wow, I could do this for living!” There’s those electric kind of moments where the flow is really good and stuff’s coming out, and you’re like “Wait, maybe this will stay, this is good.” And being comfortable enough in a studio to get to that place was an accomplishment, you know, because normally I feel uncomfortable, and I feel like this was the first time I really felt at home.
Devlin: Yeah.
PF: So, do you enjoy playing live more than you enjoy recording?
Ed: You know, I used to enjoy playing live more than recording but now I feel like Dan has really opened up the process and made it fun to the point where I actually like them equally, if not recording is actually a little more fun because it’s like–
Devlin: You’re making something new.
Ed: –yeah, you’re playing, you know, you’re creating, you’re making, it’s like being a kid with Play-Doh. [Switches to an excellent David Brent impression] “The philosopher, not the toy.”
PF: Speaking of which, I loved your Ricky Gervais voice onstage at Hopscotch. My friend and I had been joking about The Office all day, so when you started doing that, I was like “Is he reading my diary?”
Ed: Oh, that’s awesome! It’s like [Back to David Brent] “Is he having a laugh?” Yeah, I don’t know what’s going to come out once I get onstage! I just let myself go, like “You know what? Just be a goofball and don’t worry about it, be yourself,” more so than I am in real life. ‘Cause, you know, if you’re standing in line a Dunkin Donuts and you start like, screaming, people are going to get concerned.
PF: Ha, sure.
Ed: But onstage I’ve learned to let myself go within reason. Not like, boring people, or reciting The Canterbury Tales or something.
PF: Right, right, which I’m sure you could actually do.
Ed: I can only do, like, the first twenty lines. It’s been a while!
PF: It’s so interesting that you’re bringing up letting yourself be yourself onstage, because I feel like, if I’m playing onstage, I’m notoriously bad at banter, and being natural onstage, so it ends up like “Hey guys...uh, what’s up?” Luckily, I play with people who are much better at that than I am, but are you saying that’s not your personality normally?
Ed: Oh, it is, but being who you are onstage is tricky, because at first I’m like “Oh, I’ll get onstage and I’ll just be Ed!” But you do that thing where you kind of go above yourself, and you’re kind of watching yourself, that does happen sometimes. And you have to learn when that happens to still be free enough to keep in the zone and keep that flow going and not get into your head too much. I think years of touring taught me that, being in different situations on different stages. Just learning to, no matter what’s going on around me, create that little bubble where I can just be myself. I just pretend like I’m at my friend’s living room and we’re playing Mario Kart and smoking weed, then I’m like “I’m gonna get up and do a song now!” That happy space, that good space, I always try to keep that around me, and then hopefully emanate that to other people.
PF: You mentioned working with Dan, and that’s actually the second question I had written down, so: perfect, I anticipated this wonderfully!
Ed and Devlin: [Laughter, because I am hilarious]
PF: I was reading on your Bandcamp, and I’m going to quote back to you what it says on there: “Ed and Devlin dreamed of a fuller sound—layered, breathing arrangements their early rapid-fire compositions always seemed to imply, without yet having the tools to realize.” I’m wondering how exactly working with Dan–what tools he brought and what tools you discovered together–helped you realize that vision that you think you didn’t quite have before.
Devlin: I think a lot of it was just having the time to–and I alluded to this earlier, because previous records were like “Get it done as soon as possible…”
Ed: It’s all about the money, and worrying about the budget.
Devlin: ...where Dan was more like “Let’s take some time.” And you know, a lot of the earlier songs, there’s stuff going on that it’s almost like your imagination can fill in, like “Oh, I hear a guitar doing something over here, or whatever.” But for this I think we just wanted to write a record and figure out how to play it live later. Because, you know, Party Jail and Jazz Mind were very much like “We’re a live band, how are we going to do things live? It’s just the two of us.” We just wanted to expand the sound because I think we both appreciate artists who aren’t just doing the same thing over and over again. I’m not saying Slayer should make a jazz record, but, you know, I feel like I don’t need to hear another Slayer record, I’ve already got Hell Awaits. We want to do something interesting and do something different, and having [Dan] we were able to really show what we could do as musicians, too.
Ed: We were restrained by necessity before.
Devlin: Yeah. So it was like “Yeah, let’s bring in a mellotron!” And especially Ed’s vocal performances, they’re pretty different than what was on a lot of the other stuff because now he’s like “Oh, I don’t have to play the drums and sing this.”
Ed: [singing] Now I can be free!
PF: Haha, yeah.
Ed: And sometimes Dan and I would do whole days where I would just get in there and make a pot of coffee and he’s like “Hey, sing that Billy Joel song you were singing the other night!” And I’d ask why, and he’d say “Just do it!” and I’d say “Okay…’It’s nine o’clock [on a Saturday]...’” And he’d say “Now change the words...ok, now just focus on that one word...ok, now change that”, and then all of a sudden the melody’s different, and then all of a sudden we’re not even doing that song anymore. And then we’re building something, and then an idea forms, and then from that, you know, it’s like we start making the roots of a song, but making it coming from a place of fun and excitement, versus etching something out in stone, sitting there at a cafe like “I gotta write this fucking song!” Instead, it’s coming from a place of “Oh yeah, I feel like I’m at karaoke night, I’m having a good time!” It’s getting to a place where I wasn't feeling a need to filter or gate anything, and I was really being myself, letting my actual voice come to the surface, more so than I feel like I would’ve had I made the songs months in advance and had in my mind exactly what I wanted. Like, putting me in a space where someone was like “Hey, do this, try this, try that!”– it was fun, and it was like a cross between a coach and a magician or something. And it was like “this might be weird, but wait: it’s not weird, it’s cool! He tricked me into making a good song!”
Devlin: “You tricked me!” Do you want coffee?
PF: Uh, I just had one and I’ll die if I have another one, thank you.
Devlin: [Laughing] Gotta know the wall!
PF: Exactly!
Ed: But yeah, I think in general I just felt more free in the studio.
PF: Huh, that’s interesting! So, this is a complex, multi-part reply-slash-question: when I hear you talk about making an album without having to worry about performing it, without that being the primary concern, and then I hear you talk about Dan being this coach-magician, who sort of gets things out of you that you might not have gotten out of yourself, it really sounds like...well first of all, my first thought when you were talking about not having to record based on practicality–and this is the least original observation ever, but–it made me think about when the Beatles just stopped worrying about making songs they could play live and just started fucking with layers and tapes and multitracking things they couldn’t possibly have done live. Then that led me also to think about when you were talking about, again, the magician-coach: I was just having a conversation with a friend about how a good music producer can be like a good theatre director, they can elicit a performance from you that you couldn’t necessarily get from just, say, running lines by yourself. Is that crazy? Does that sound kind of like what you’re talking about?
Devlin: No, that’s right.
Ed: Yeah, and also I think also a person who is either A) good at observing, which I think Dan is, and then B) has known me for a long time, and is also an avid fan of the music, is perhaps seeing things objectively that I might not see from sitting in the cockpit. “Hey man, you’ve been singing out of your nose for the past two albums; that’s cool, sounded groovy!” And you know, there were definitely some sonorous, kind of a capella moments on those first two albums, because I grew up listening to Billy Joel, Elton John, Sting, Patti Smith, REM...you know, a whole slew of things, but a lot of these pop musicians who are writing these three minute, encapsulated ballads, where I was doing these thirty second songs, like [delightfully staccato] ‘ba-da-dah-da-dat! Wa-wah-wa-wah-WA!’ So, going from more noise-experimental into this thing that was the thing that drove me in the beginning...I mean, it’s funny: my first experience singing live was Montell Jordan’s “This Is How We Do It”.
PF: Excellent start, excellent start!
Ed: Yeah, it was at an open mic and I sang it and got asked to join a band! Then, we did a bunch of Smashing Pumpkins covers and stuff like that.
PF: This keeps building, I love this setlist!
Ed: We didn’t have any shows, we just practiced. Then I tried doing dance moves, and they kind of kicked me out of the band! But in any event, the initial dragon that I was always chasing was trying to be those people, like I wanted to be [Michael] Stipe, you know, I wanted to be up there. But then, as I got older, I ended up working doing dishes and tough jobs and stuff like that, and being like “Oh, I guess I’m not going to be famous but I’ll work on this as a craft.” And I remember I took an art appreciation class, and I was just like “Oh, art!” And I watched this Jackson Pollock movie: “Oh, interesting!” You’re just learning more about being quote-unquote an artist, and that’s interesting. So, stepping away from, like, the indie-rock/Smashing Pumpkins stuff I was doing, and moving to Baltimore and seeing performance artists, minimalists, and noise musicians who were more in the performance art realm, and going into that world, that kind of shaped the pop thing that I was doing, and, I feel like made it better because it forced me to deconstruct, and then in that deconstruction re-amalgamating who I was. I was actually thinking about it much more than I was before, when I was just trying to sound like Built To Spill or whatever. If that makes any sense…
PF: No, it makes a bunch of sense, and you just name-checked a billion bands I like.
Ed: Hahaha!
PF: I’m really glad you talked about Stipe because I hear so much Stipe when I hear you sing, in all the best ways, so I’m glad I wasn’t wrong about that. The Billy Joel ties in too, we’ll definitely talk about that later on. So, you were talking about Baltimore. It seems like–again, when I was watching you guys at Hopscotch and listening to your superlative stage banter–you were talking about how a lot of the songs were inspired by a particular place. “Kid Radium” you said was about Baltimore, and “Culebra” is about Puerto Rico, so I just wondered if the sense of place, of spatial association, informed a lot of what you do?
Ed: You know, I’ve actually never thought about it, but even going back and thinking about “Sermon”, that was a lot about red tape and Baltimore politics and people trying to do good things and not being able to get them through because of bureaucracy, and so that’s about a place. “Rats” was about my fear of rats when I lived in a warehouse space where I would see rats and be like ‘Ahhhhhh!’, but then also metaphorically it was about communing with God. I saw this Tori Amos video-–and she might have been stoned out–but she was talking about this one religion where people would let rats actually crawl on them, because they felt that that was a way to kind of commune with God, and I found that interesting. And it’s a very limited understanding from a VH1 interview, but I just thought that’s an interesting thing juxtaposed next to this fear, because we look at one end of the spectrum and it’s like “Rats! Vermin!” And then it’s like “GOD!” And it’s just kind of interesting, there’s got to be something there. But you, know, for ‘place’ in that song, it’d probably be the warehouse space I was in. And then I was also listening to Swans a lot at that time–that guy’s always singing about God and power, you almost feel like he’s an X-Men character or something, like Thor.
“Kid Radium” is definitely Baltimore, but also at the same time I saw a play called “The Radium Sisters”, and it was about women that worked in a factory who were exposed to radium, and so just about the toxicity of an environment, using that as a metaphor for the kids being in an environment that was toxic, and the long-term effects of that, similar to working class women whose bodies were falling apart because of this exposure to radium. And toxicity comes in different forms, be it verbal, mental, emotional, and is affecting people in those ways.
So, as far as location goes, maybe it’s not the centerpiece for every song–but even “When I’m In A Car” is about driving around Utica, upstate New York in a car. It’s kind of the first time I’ve actually ever thought about that and it’s a really good point. Location is...you know, I remember as a writer, they’re like ‘Where are you? What’s in the room, what’s around you? Describe it–don’t overdescribe it, but describe it.’ I guess location is there at least two-thirds of the time unless I’m singing out something very abstract. Like air!
PF: Again from the Bandcamp–sorry, but the Bandcamp is a goldmine–it sounds like all three of you went through kinda some shit while this album was being recorded. One of the the things I noticed when I was listening to it in my kitchen while I was making dinner is that a lot of the stuff is either very anthemic, or it felt like it was very sort of meditative, with loose and repeating phrases, and I wondered if any of that could have been either consciously or subconsciously a way to...well, things that are either very exuberant or very repetitive are good ways to shut down the mind for a second and escape. Not that you haven’t tended to sound like that anyway, I just didn’t know if you guys found any of that to be the case while you were recording, or if that was intentional, or if it was a means of escape to clear your mind of things, or if I’m just pulling all of that out of my ass.
Ed: I think moments of introspection and meditation kind of go tandemly with intense life things like death or big changes or transitions and things of that nature. They’re so intense that you almost need to recoil and go into that meditative state to process it. So, it goes from “Griiiieeeef!”, to “Now I’m going to think about the grief” to “GRIIIIEEEEF!!!” again.
Devlin: That’s just the cycle of grief, it oscillates.
Ed: Yeah. The grief snake!
Devlin: The closer you are to the event, the more your swings are completely erratic; you know, petal on the water kind of thing. Also, at the time, I was living in Rhode Island.
PF: Yeah, so you were commuting back and forth, right?
Devlin: Yeah, so we weren’t even seeing each other. It was like every six weeks or so.
PF: Were you driving that, or flying, or bussing?
Devlin: Driving. I think a couple of times I took the bus. It’s six or seven hours depending on the traffic in Connecticut and New Jersey. But I think that every session all of us had something else that was happening, or had happened, or we were experiencing a certain peak or valley. Like, ‘Riddles’ for instance, we were working on one other song and Dan was just like “All right, I’ll be back in an hour, I just gotta say ‘hi’ to my girlfriend. Here’s the setup and things, just dick around.” And we came up with the chorus for that sort of by accident, we didn’t set out to make a U2-style anthem. So I’d say it wasn’t all necessarily by design, it was just sort of what came together, and we were excited about it, and we followed it that way.
Ed: Yeah, and I feel like kind when we first met with Dan a lot of the stuff was more the concise, beat poet, kind of slam style that we usually did in terms of just like one minute little haikus or whatever, or like a minute and a half with a little bridge, verse-chorus-verse. I think he manipulated space and composition to make the songs, to give more space to them, to let them breathe more, and then they developed more richness and nuance because of that. But I think it was also with him changing the composition, it made me also think differently about the song itself.
Devlin: Yeah, like how you’d sing it and everything.
Ed: Yeah, and to live in the space of the song for a little bit longer, and therefore to maybe contemplate some different things in terms of melody and structure, like ‘What am I saying here, and how do I want this to end?’ And making it feel more natural too, because I feel like with the earlier songs, they’re great, but because they’re so short–and I wanted it to be that way and I think it was a good reflection of the time, because I’ve always liked songs like “I’m On Fire” by Bruce Springsteen, which is like a minute and forty-eight seconds, and it doesn’t need to be any longer, and I always thought “Well, I’m just going to make music like that”–but, you know, started myself listening to things more along the lines of Massive Attack where space is definitely in the mix in terms of what makes it good, just giving it room. And I feel like that for us was good because we were just like [in a spitting staccato] “DAT-DAT-DAT-DAT-DAT!” And then Dan would be like [crooning in a smooth legato] “Daaaaah, da-dah-di-daaaah, di-da-da-dum, let’s unpack it a little bit and slow down, and have fun!” Not that there’s nothing wrong with, like, a one minute Buzzcocks song, but it was nice to put on a different hat, and I feel like that brought out different things.
PF: So let me ask you then: what’s it like playing the songs without Dan? It seems like you guys were all a unit while you were recording it. Is it difficult or weird?
Devlin: No. I mean, it’s definitely a new setup, playing to backing tracks.
PF: Right, you guys have the tracks, obviously.
Devlin: What’s interesting [is that] I was always resistant to it because it was just sort of like ‘What’s really happening [live on stage]?’ But then when I actually listened to the tracks [by themselves] without the bass or the vocals it was like, ‘Oh,wait, those things need to be there.’ It’s not like at any moment we could stop performing, or stop playing–the bass needs to be there because otherwise it just sounds completely bonkers, and realizing that, it was like “Ok, this isn’t really too far; even though we’ve adapted and added this other layer, the essence of the band is still really just Ed and I.” And I think even a lot of the melodic content, some things that Dan and I would be kicking around like making up chords or experimenting with different things, there was more of a back and forth in terms of composing that stuff, so it was more of a collaborative thing, and not that he was just like “Do this, do that.” Because we always knew that it was going to be just us, anyway. So I guess I haven’t really thought that.
Ed: Yeah, that would be fun. I would love, love, to do it with Dan, but he’s got an album to record, he’s on the road. And in terms of being pragmatic, you know, at the point we’re at now we’re still a band that’s coming up, so having two people makes it something that’s feasible and sustainable on the road, you know, versus like if we had all the instruments that are on the album. It would be awesome, but that would be like a ten piece band. I don’t think we’d be able to even cover everyone’s transportation!
PF: Right, right.
Devlin: Some people would only be playing two songs, you know what I mean?
PF: Right, ha! Like, flugelhorn guy would pop in…
Ed: Down the road it would be cool, knock on wood, to get to the point where that is a possibility, but in the meantime wanting to evolve and make something new but at the same time finding a way to bridge that until it’s reality–I feel like Dan did a good job of giving us the tools to do that on the road. You know, and going forward, I think we’ll be bringing back live percussion into the mix, which I’m excited to do. But I think for this phase, we needed to do that–just the two of us go out there with the backing tracks and do our thing on top of it. And there’s so much show on top of what’s there, in terms of what’s physical, Devlin’s putting a lot of texture and style and working with the energy that’s right in the room too, and then I’m cracking jokes between songs [chuckling].
PF: I have a weird tendency to describe band dynamics in terms of romantic relationship dynamics, but it sounds like–well, the whole time I’ve been thinking “Man, it sounds like they had a really successful threesome, like: they brought another person into the bedroom, and it was cool, and no one was weird about it, and they moved on or whatever, and everything’s fine now.”
Devlin: Ha! Yeah, we’ll call each other again sometime!
Ed: It challenged us!
PF: Exactly! It expanded your horizons, but in a good way. You know yourselves a little better now.
Devlin: That’s funny.
Ed: That’s a good metaphor, yeah.
PF: Ok, I’m going to ask you two more questions. This is something that I ask all of my friends, or really anybody interesting I’m talking to–and it doesn’t have to be cool, because my answer isn’t particularly cool, but I’m curious: what are the first albums you ever bought? Like, with your own money, you went to the store and bought this. I will tell you right away that mine was Billy Joel, Storm Front. I was in the fifth grade…
Ed: [singing] “There’s a storm front coming…”
PF: Exactly, yeah!
Ed: Downeaster Alexa!
PF: Man, you’re just naming the tracks! Delightful.
Ed: The first thing that I actually bought was [REM’s] Monster on cassette tape, I think. That was the first thing that I didn’t borrow from my sister and/or find like, in the garbage, I bought it new, like a brand new album. I think the first thing I got was Elton John’s Greatest Hits Volume II, but that was used, like one dollar. This was Monster, brand new, sealed, ten dollars: “Oh wow, that’s expensive!” I got that and I played it over and over. The second album was Sting, The Dream of The Blue Turtles. I bought it in Spanish for my friend who hated Sting and was having trouble in Spanish class, so I was like “Here you go, Happy Birthday!” as a gag gift. He was like “I don’t want this” so I took it home and listened to it, and I was like “Wow, this sounds good in Spanish, maybe I’ll try it in English. Whoa, this is actually a pretty cool album. He was in this band called The Police...oh, they’re really good, this is really good stuff!” and from there, then kind of discovering other things. But I’d say yeah, Monster and The Dream of the Blue Turtles were my first two purchases. That’s pretty weird…
PF: No, I love it, it’s a pretty good mix. What about you, Devlin?
Devlin: Ones that I bought by myself that I remember...I think it was Nevermind and Bush’s first record?
PF and Ed simultaneously: Sixteen Stone?
Devlin: Yeah! And then those got taken away.
PF: Did they? Like, by a parent?
Devlin: Yeah. I used to just listen to like, oldies radio, all the way up until high school; I just was not down with contemporary music at all, so that was my “Well, people like these, let me try that,” and then I was like “Yeah, I really like this Nirvana, this sounds crazy!” Then I ended up finding out what I really liked by going to punk shows and stuff like that. And then, you know, fucking Ride The Lightning comes along…
PF: Yeah, yeah, it’s a jump from The Swingin’ Medallions to Ride the Lightning for sure.
Ed: Ha, there’s a little in between!
PF: Yeah, some space to be filled in for sure.
Ed [once again in Gervais mode]: A bit of a chasm!
PF: Bit of! The last thing I want to ask is–whatever, I was super touched by this. Again, when you guys were playing at Hopscotch, and I don’t know if you do this all the time, but at the end of the set you shared this wonderful hug–I wasn’t even drunk but I thought “Man, that’s so awesome!” The shows are super high-energy, and you give it everything, and you spend so much time together. How do you manage to...I mean, I’ve been on the road with people I wanted to kill eighteen hours into it, you know, “I might stab this motherfucker to death in the car right now.” How do you guys–again with the relationships–but how do you keep it fresh?
Ed:I think it’s like...I think we’re lucky because we are actual friends. I mean we’re best friends in real life, we get along and actually hang out anyway. Being in a band with anybody, yeah, there’s going to be times where it’s like “Oof, I just need a minute to decompress,” or it’s like “What were you saying? I’m sorry, I’m zoning.” Everyone needs their Zen time and their space, even if the relationship is perfect. It’s like family, you know? You’re going to drive each other crazy sometimes, that’s just the nature of being on the road and you’re both going through a very stressful thing where you have to be vulnerable and there’s just going to be moments when you’re like “Dude, I need a minute,” but in general I think that we do have very good chemistry as friends. Devlin’s even looked us up on astrological charts.
Devlin: Yeah. I forget exactly what it is, but it’s supposed to be like fire and air signs. I think that in the Secret Book of Relationships it was like “As a working partnership this pairing tends to make something that’s familiar and recognizable but completely different. The Week of Genius is always floating up in the air and The Week of Balanced Strength is the centering thing.” As I was reading it I was like “Man, this is pretty right on…”
PF: Yeah, that’ll work.
Ed: I also think Devlin has a lot of patience, and I actually learned a lot of patience too growing up, I just had a real smorgasbord or personalities I dealt with. I think both of us had challenges we dealt with, and I think it taught us both to have more patience, perhaps, than most people do, coming from those different situations where we had to be not the center of attention and/or giving to another person and/or kind of a nurturer, in a sense. You know in most relationships I tend to be like “let me cook,” or “I got it!” or this and that, but there are definitely times where I’m like “I need some help today”. I feel like we’re both those types of folks, I like to think that we put others before ourselves and we go out of our way to help people. Coming from a big family, for me, being youngest with seven kids in the house, getting the hand-me-downs of the hand-me-downs, having an older brother who was autistic and needed to be looked after at times–it’s like, it’s not about you and you’re not the center of attention. From that experience growing up, and I think from just knowing an array of different personalities and situations, and having different jobs, we had a lot of life experience prior to the band to learn that kind of patience too. But getting back to Devlin: yeah, I think he is very patient, and I think that there’s definitely times where a lot of people would’ve thrown me into the river, where Devlin was like “Alright man, I just need a minute. [Pause for a beat] Arrrggghhh!” A lot of grace under fire.
Devlin: Our favorite sitcom.
Ed: Also, our favorite sitcom!
PF: Isn’t it the best? Well, I think that’s it. Thanks so much guys, it was fun!
Melvyn Brown is a musician (Toothsome, Broads, NONCANON, Ladies Auxiliary) and writer from Greensboro, NC who is also passionate about the Four Ts: taking photographs, Thai food, technology, and thrift stores. His appreciation of Scotch whisky is not necessarily related to Steely Dan. You can follow him on Twitter at @metaquasiproto, Instagram at @generalclearinghouse, or at generalclearinghouse.com