Kyle Meredith

Host of Kyle Meredith With… podcast. Heard weeknights at 6p ET on WFPK. Unreliable narrator.

[thekylemeredith]

“Try holding a dead person. Failure is not that big a deal.” Jack Antonoff said that with the kind of bluntness that doesn’t leave much room for motivational-poster nonsense. On the new Bleachers album Everyone for Ten Minutes, he kept circling grief, community, art, and the strange comedy of being alive long enough for strangers to start rewriting your origin story.

He told me he was trying to find his people, not everyone, and that live music still feels like the closest thing he knows to church, minus the wars and the merch-table piety. The whole thing came back to randomness, magic, bad odds, good rooms, and knowing when the demo already had the thing you spent months trying to improve.

Jack Antonoff: "Failure is not that big a deal”

Jack Antonoff on Everyone for Ten Minutes, Finding His People, and Getting the Joke

#JackAntonoff #Bleachers

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[thekylemeredith]

Tonight’s guests include Kevin Bacon, Suzanne Vega, and a look back at my talk with the late Robbie Robertson of The Band.

Plus new music, classics, news, etc.

6p ET on WFPK. It’s got pep.

[thekylemeredith]

“Don’t marry someone unless they’ll sing a harmony for you on a song about somebody else.” Maya Hawke said that while talking about Maitreya Corso, her new record that started as an album about ambition and work, then got ambushed by love, which is rude but very on brand for love.

She also got into the depression crash after Stranger Things ended, the fear of never working again, and the scarier business of actually being known by another person. “I didn’t know how to accept being seen so fully,” she said. The album, as she put it, wants to be “a little guidebook on how to give up and be loved.”

Maya Hawke: “I didn’t know how to accept being seen so fully”

Maya Hawke on Maitreya Corso, Secret Selves, and Letting Herself Be Loved

#MayaHawke #NewMusic

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Tonight’s guests include Bella Thorne, Chloe Cherry, and Izabel Pakzad.

Plus new music, classics, news, etc.

6p ET on WFPK. Pretty snazzy.

[thekylemeredith]

I’ve always loved talking with Tori Amos because every conversation feels like stepping into an entirely new world. This time she takes me inside In Times of Dragons, a sweeping concept album about democracy, tyranny, mythology, memory, and finding the fearless woman who wrote Silent All These Years. It’s one of my favorite conversations we’ve had.

Tori Amos on In Times of Dragons, Revisiting Silent All These Years, and Fighting Tyranny Through Myth: Podcast

Tori Amos joins the Kyle Meredith With podcast to talk her 18th studio record, In Times of Dragons, and revisiting her classic Silent All Th

[thekylemeredith]

Tonight’s guests include Beck, Isaac Brock (Modest Mouse), and Vince Clarke (Erasure)!

Plus new music, classics, news, etc.

6p ET on WFPK. That’s a honey.

[thekylemeredith]

“Same” was hiding inside “Elevator Operator” before Courtney Barnett knew it was there. She told me the new Creature of Habit track came from slowing the old song down in rehearsal and hearing one chord progression that suddenly wanted a whole life of its own.

That’s really where this record lives. Not as the big LA album, not as the grand reinvention, but as Barnett following the scraps that wouldn’t leave her alone. “Sometimes an idea needs 10 years to figure itself out,” she said. Flea shows up, Waxahatchee shows up, old songs leave fingerprints on new ones, and the whole thing feels like a songwriter opening the junk drawer and finding out half of it was treasure.

#CourtneyBarnett #NewMusic

Courtney Barnett: “Sometimes an idea needs 10 years to figure itself out”

Courtney Barnett on Creature of Habit, Flea, and Why the Songs Needed Time

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“I listen to the music and see where it leads me.”

Stephen Malkmus told me that was the whole operating system behind Traditional Techniques, a record that started with 12-string sketches and wandered into dusty folk, Afghan instruments, no-hole flutes, live vocals, Spooner Oldham, and the kind of loose studio logic where a flubbed lyric wasn’t a crisis. He wanted the songs open enough for the players to pull them somewhere else, which is very convenient when one of those players has a bag of flutes like he’s choosing wands in Harry Potter.

He also got into Led Zeppelin IV with the calm danger of a man willing to say “When the Levee Breaks” sounds like autopilot, while “Misty Mountain Hop” still knocks him out. Add in his daughter calling him a boomer, Pavement, and Malkmus sounding perfectly happy to follow the weird road instead of paving it over. Probably for the best. Pavement fans get nervous around too much paving.

Pavement's Stephen Malkmus: “I listen to the music and see where it leads me”

Stephen Malkmus on Zeppelin Heresy, Afghani Instruments, and Why His Daughter Might Be Right About Boomers

#StephenMalkmus #Pavement

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Disco, rage, roller skates, Nile Rodgers, Jake Shears, and Idina Menzel deciding she didn’t need to make a small record just because people didn’t expect this one from her.

Idina told me Drama Queen was her way of making a dance record without shrinking her voice down to fit the room. She wanted big. She wanted dynamic. She wanted a little anger in the sequins, too, especially on “Make Me Hate Me,” where she said she started thinking about why “Drama Queen” always had to be an insult. “I’m reclaiming what it means to be a Drama Queen,” she said. Which feels about right for an album that basically asks what happens when a Broadway powerhouse walks onto the dancefloor and decides the mirror ball could use more volume.

Idina Menzel: "I'm reclaiming what it means to be a Drama Queen"

Idina Menzel on Disco, Rage, and Reclaiming the Drama Queen Crown

#IdinaMenzel #DramaQueen

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“We finally get to see that Derek isn’t just this smiley face.”

Ted McGinley told me Derek started on Shrinking as a much smaller part, then kept growing because people responded to that weirdly calm, endlessly pleasant guy in the neighborhood. Season 3 let him dig underneath the grin, and McGinley had the right image for it. Derek is an iceberg. You see the happy top part, but there’s a lot more holding him up under the water.

He also got into the fun of playing opposite Michael Urie, who he said works because Brian and Derek are so completely opposite on the surface, and Christa Miller, whose scenes keep him guessing every time. Then there were his cast descriptions, Jessica Williams as a boxing match, Jason Segel as a warm chair that might suddenly shock you, and Harrison Ford like “working with a 16-year-old.”

Shrinking's Ted McGinley: “We finally get to see that Derek isn't just this smiley face”

Ted McGinley on Shrinking, Derek’s Hidden Depths, and the Joy of Playing Opposites

#TedMcGinley #Shrinking

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“I’m still trying to push the boundaries of what an electric guitar can be.”

Tom Morello told me that’s still the whole mission, not just to play the thing, but to keep dragging it somewhere new. That meant turning The Atlas Underground Fire into a full-on collision of heavy riffs, unexpected collaborators, and ideas that shouldn’t logically fit together until they absolutely do. He talked about teaming up with Bruce Springsteen and Eddie Vedder for “Highway to Hell,” which felt like kicking in the front door. He also got into sending metal to Damian Marley, working across genres without treating the guitar like some sacred museum object, and why after 21 studio albums he’s still not interested in repeating himself. Good news for anyone worried rock had gotten too polite.

Tom Morello: "I'm still trying to push the boundaries of what an electric guitar can be"

Tom Morello on Phones-as-Amps, ACDC with Springsteen, and Riffing Through the Apocalypse

#TomMorello #AtlasUndergroundFire

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Two days to pack. Seven months in Texas. Cowboy camp waiting on the other end. Natalie Alyn Lind told me that’s basically how Dutton Ranch started for her, which is a pretty efficient way to find out whether you’re built for the Yellowstone universe.

She said she “had to learn how to cowboy,” which meant cutting, roping, long rides, and being the only woman at camp while a bunch of guys cheered her on like overexcited big brothers. She also got into working opposite Annette Bening, the already-messy family machinery of the new series, and her other current obsession, producing Halloween Store, a slasher she called her love letter to horror.

Natalie Alyn Lind: “I had to learn how to cowboy”

Natalie Alyn Lind on Dutton Ranch, Cowboy Camp, and Building Her Own Horror Movie

#NatalieAlynLind #DuttonRanch

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“Come to My Window” didn’t even crack the Top 10 until a full year after it came out, Melissa Etheridge told me. It never hit number one either. It just refused to leave, which is pretty much the whole Yes I Am story in miniature.

For the anniversary reissue, Etheridge looked back at the album, coming out in 1993, the slow-burn climb from one million records to six million, and the Grammys eventually folding Best Female Rock Vocal back into the men. “I don’t buy the excuse there aren’t enough women,” she said. “I look around and see plenty.” Loud amps, long memory, still correct.

Melissa Etheridge: "Women have a lot of power in rock n' roll."

Melissa Etheridge on Yes I Am, Coming Out, and the Grammys Snubbing Rock Women

#MelissaEtheridge #90s

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“I believe in genius the way I believe in libraries,” Paul Bettany told me. In the new Starz Amadeus, he plays Salieri, the man standing close enough to Mozart’s brilliance to feel the heat and still not understand why heaven handed the lightning to somebody else.

Will Sharpe said he tried to play Mozart as “somebody who doesn’t believe in libraries,” and that pretty much gives you the whole engine. Bettany’s Salieri catalogs the world. Sharpe’s Mozart crashes through it, all playfulness, sadness, ego, and that awful little problem of being touched by something nobody else can explain.

Paul Bettany and Will Sharpe: “I believe in genius the way I believe in libraries”

Paul Bettany and Will Sharpe on Genius, Rivalry, and Reframing Amadeus

#Amadeus #PaulBettany

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[thekylemeredith]

Tonight’s guests include Jake Johnson, Jessy Hodges, Murray Bartlett, Brandon Flynn, and Brendan Hunt.

Plus new music, classics, news, etc.

6p ET on WFPK. Now we’re cooking.

[thekylemeredith]

Jane Kaczmarek joined me to talk about returning as Lois in Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair, working with Alfred Molina again in The Boroughs, and why she’s happily watching ducks, listening to Led Zeppelin, and enjoying a very hot second act.

Jane Kaczmarek on Malcolm in the Middle, The Boroughs, and Finding the Hotness in a Second Act: Podcast

Jane Kaczmarek talks Malcolm in the Middle, The Boroughs, and finding the hotness in her second act on the Kyle Meredith With podcast.

[thekylemeredith]

Tonight’s guests include Tatiana Maslany, David Gordon Green & David J. Rosen, and Alessandro Nivola!

Plus new music, classics, news, etc.

6p ET on WFPK. That’s first-rate.