A Conversation with The Weepies’ Steve Tannen and Deb Talan – HuffPost 9.15.10

Mike Ragogna: Steve and Deb, I’m a little shy introducing two people in the same group who are married because the last name thing gets tricky.

Steve Tannen: Definitely. No, Deb Talan was Deb Talan when I met her, and she will ever be Deb Talen. You know, if you’re marrying Joni Mitchell or Bruce Springsteen you’re not going to be like, “Oh, take my name too.”

MR: Joni Springsteen.

ST: Exactly, and I’m Steve Tannen.

MR: How are you guys? Are you doing well?

Deb Talan: Doing well, thanks.

ST: We’re doing great.

NR: So, let’s get to the new album. I think one of the best and subtlest lines on the record is in the first song “Please Speak Well Of Me”: “Don’t say words you don’t mean.”

ST: Thanks, that was one of the first songs we wrote for the record. I don’t know, it just set up the emotional balance of, “everything is good, but there’s a lot of longing going on.”

MR: Nice. An alternate way of looking at it is people fill up a lot of space with a lot of words, kind of like what I’m doing right now.

ST & TD: (laughs)

DT: But you have to, it’s your job.

MR: Hey, I have a sweet job today, talking to The Weepies for The Huffington Post here at solar powered KRUU-FM. Did you know we were solar powered?

DT: No, that’s so cool. What does that mean?

MR: That means we’re running off of solar energy, and we’re the only ones in the Midwest doing that.

ST: Aren’t you in Iowa?

MR: I am in Iowa.

ST: How does that work during the winter?

MR: There’s still a sun.

DT: That’s amazing. Both of us used to live, separately, in Colorado, and we were amazed at how much sun there was. It was like three hundred days a year, or something.

MR: Well, the interesting thing is if it’s functional in the Midwest, then there’s no excuse for anyone on the West coast, right?

DT: Los Angeles has almost an offensive amount of sunshine.

ST: There’s a song on the record called “Hope Tomorrow’s A Sunny Day,” and originally it was “Bet Tomorrow’s A Sunny Day.” It was sort of a cynical view of how many sunny days in a row you have in California.

MR: I moved here from California, I know exactly what you’re talking about.

ST: Wow.

MR: I think there’s such a thing as being too happy.

ST: Did you fall in love or something?

MR: As in what am I doing in Iowa?

ST: I love Iowa. That’s just an unusual path.

MR: (laughs) So far, I’ve had a beautiful time here in Fairfield, so I’m a-lovin’ the Iowa.

DT: We’ve really loved our time we’ve spent in Iowa too, though it’s just been passing through, playing shows and things.

MR: Where do you play when you pass through?

DT: We’ve played in some really tiny places. A little place in, what is it, Cedar Rapids. Kind of a coffee house type place that’s run by these two guys. We’ve played there a couple of times.

ST: And I think we’re going to be at the Englert Theatre in Iowa City. We visited Iowa City last time, and we were looking at housing prices when we were there thinking, “Gosh, look what you can get. That’s awesome.”

MR: Wait till I tell you about Fairfield.

ST: (laughs) Oh my gosh, I bet.

MR: We’re going to get a real estate agent here in a moment or two.

ST: (laughs) Get ’em on the line.

MR: I hear some good things are happening with Be My Thrill. It’s already topping charts, and there is much celebration in the land.

ST: You know, to be perfectly honest, we don’t follow it at all. The little we do is the label telling us what’s happening and we go, “That’s weird. That’s great.” A friend of mine said, “Hey, did you know you’re ahead of Eminem?” And I was like, “You know, I’m not.” It was never our intent to be ahead of Eminem, and we don’t even pay attention. We are now preparing for the road. We’re home, going through the last four records, and a couple of the solo records, deciding what we’re going to play this time through since we’ll only have two hours every night.

MR: Time to whip out the medleys.

ST: You know, I did that a while back and I was like, “That was cool.” But no.

DT: He was kind of playing and making fun of himself, right?

ST: Seeing how many songs he could play in the key of G.

MR: I guess when you do medleys, you have to be a Bacharach or a Jimmy Webb.

ST: Fair enough. We’re going out on the road with a huge bus and a full band, and we’re going to take the next five weeks here and really get this show on its feet. We’re really excited to be heading out on the road.

MR: Where are you heading?

DT: All over the place. We’re heading to thirty-six cities around the country. We’re starting with going up the West coast, then over and around.

MR: Nice. I remember getting turned on to The Weepies because one of your songs was onOne Tree Hill.

DT: Sure, yeah.

MR: Which song was that?

DT: They’ve used a few at this point.

MR: After I heard it, I was like, “Whoever they are, I need my fair share of Weepies.”

ST: Thanks. We’ve had a lot of support from film and TV. It’s a little inexplicable. I don’t know, it just seems to fit. We’re involved in many of the decisions that go on there. They show us the movie or the TV show it’s going to happen in, and in most cases, it’s really cool, beautiful stuff. There’s no commercial radio to speak of for indie artists, so, it really helps get the music out there too. You discovered it through a TV show…crazy, right?

MR: Yeah, and what’s interesting is that even though the intention of your song was probably not acted out by the actors, it perfectly conveyed the mood the scene needed, whatever that was, don’t really remember specifics. It was One Tree Hill, what can I say.

DT: Hopefully people are interested enough that their ears perk, and they can make their own associations in their own lives.

MR: So, what did you get that musical director for Christmas?

DT: (laughs)

ST: Again, this is so embarrassing, we don’t really know him. We do meet them once a year or something at an event, but mostly, we are so boring. We sit at home and write and play, and then we play out, and that’s all we do.

MR: Well, I have to tell you that I have shouted the virtues of The Weepies far and wide, and actually, I’ve turned my transcriber and his girlfriend onto it.

ST: Thanks very much, that’s how we survive.

MR: Let’s go back to the record. The title track to the album is an up tempo, flirty song, is that your single?

DT: It’s, I guess, one of them.

MR: Okay. What is your “single”?

DT: I don’t know what that means anymore. They send it out on it’s own, to bars around town, and see if they can hook up with anybody. The first one was “I Was Made For Sunny Days.”

ST: An artist named Colbie Caillat sang background on it, and I think that’s why they chose it as the single.

MR: Colbie had a hit with Jason Mraz.

DT: She’s certainly well established in her own right, I mean good gosh.

MR: Yeah, and the hit was “Lucky.”

ST: We’re hilariously ignorant about all that. Colbie is just like a nice woman from down the block with a great voice.

MR: About those singles…

ST: The second single was “Be My Thrill,” which the record company also really liked, and is another up tempo. So, they called it the second single, which just means that Deb did some more artwork for it, as far as I can tell.

MR: Right, because servicing these days is really just a digital link.

DT: Yeah. For singles, certainly that’s what it’s been.

MR: Your first single, “I Was Made For Sunny Days,” pretty much describes all of us.

ST: There’s a line there, “…and the streets filled with umbrellas, and we all look the same.” I think that was kind of a spark for the whole song.

MR: Nice, like a Magritte painting.

ST & DT: Very good.

MR: Are there a couple of songs on here that have interesting stories that the public is not privy to?

ST: Absolutely. One of the things that we do is write together, and write for each other. Some of these songs started off as slow, depressing, low songs that I was singing, and ended up as really poppy ones that Deb sings, and that sound really happy. One of those is “Be My Thrill,” which at some point, really had this dark…

DT: …a little Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen.

ST: Exactly, but if you listen to it, you can hear how it ended up.

MR: Speaking of Tom Waits, I prefer the Asylum years, though most hipsters prefer the Island years. I separate the period in that way because during the Asylum years, he was merely swallowing a glass of broken glass a day…

DT: (laughs)

MR: …but then he hits the Island years.

ST: It’s funny, he goes through these phases, but it’s all the same guy, and that’s what keeps him interesting.

DT: And probably keeps him interested still in what he’s doing.

MR: I love him. “Waltzing Matilda” is one of my favorite songs of all time. It’s such a gin soaked song.

ST: Absolutely, did he write that?

MR: Well, “Waltzing Matilda” is the nickname of a song that he wrote called “Tom Traubert’s Blues (Four Sheets To The Wind In Copenhagen),” in which he incorporated a tag from the folk song “Waltzing Matilda.”

ST: I think my favorite Tom Waits is The Heart Of Saturday Night. That’s my favorite record of his.

MR: Dude, that’s one of my favorite albums of all time. Every song on that record kills.

ST: It is such a whole. You can put the whole thing on and it just never breaks the mood.

MR: It’s like one big song cycle. “San Diego Serenade,” “Shiver Me Timbers,” the title track, “New Coat Of Paint.” How do you do better than that? That’s just an incredible record.

ST: It’s gorgeous. I read an interview with him, and he was talking about sort of moving on from there, and how he felt. I don’t know if this is true or not, but the interview said that he felt like he had sort of done what he had set out to do as a singer-songwriter at piano. So, it was like, “Yeah, I did that. Now I’m trying something else.”

MR: Joni Mitchell is one of those people where everybody wants another Court And Sparkor Blue or For The Roses, and she had no intention of ever doing those records again.

ST: They’re all awesome. Strangely enough, Larry Klein, who produced a bunch of Joni Mitchell’s albums and was married to her, plays on our record.

MR: Nice.

ST: On a bunch of the tunes. Obviously, Joni Mitchell is amazing, but Larry Klein is also an amazing hero of ours. We got his contact info and sent him a note, and he just called us back. He said, “Come on down.” Talk about a generous soul, and an amazing talent.

MR: Look at all the people he’s worked with like Madeleine Peyroux, Julia Fordham, many others. His style of production works inside out. He doesn’t gloss; he understands what’s at the root, and then he accents.

DT: Yeah.

ST: We’d love to work with him on that level, and we talked about maybe doing that down the line. This one, he literally just played bass for us. It was really sort of magical.

MR: He’s such a great producer that you forget he’s also a really amazing bass player.

ST: Incredible. The other guy we were able to hook up with was a guy named Tony Levin.

MR: I’ll always associate him with Paul Simon, but he’s done so much more.

DT: Peter Gabriel.

MR: Exactly.

ST: Another tremendously generous guy, and an amazing player.

MR: There are some really great humans that we could be spouting off about for the next hour, but let’s get back to The Weepies. The Weepies have a certain amount of popularity, as we know from all this chart action you’ve been having lately. But I think you might be influencing others now. How do you feel about that?

ST: Seriously, when Colbie Caillat contacted us and was like, “Listen, I really listen to your records.” That was really amazing.

DT: Amazing and surprising. I think we feel like we’re sort of a part of a songwriter milieu, a generation of songwriters. There’s sort of influence and counter influence that goes on, and inspiration by listening to each other. It definitely does feel like that.

MR: That’s fair. It is feeling like the singer-songwriter community is a giant cooperative right now.

DT: It feels pretty cooperative, yeah.

MR: Can I ask you an embarrassing question? This is like “let’s whip out the naked baby pictures” time.

ST: Uh oh.

MR: Can you talk about how you met in Cambridge?

DT: Yeah, Steve and I had each been doing the singer-songwriter life, I was in Cambridge and Steve was in New York City. A mutual friend said to both of us, “You need to listen to this other person.” We were both in very intense up-and-coming artist circles, hearing to a lot of music and listening to a lot of other people playing. It was really rare, for me anyway, to hear someone that I was really excited about; it happened, but it was few and far between. I put Steve’s CD on, and I became an instant fanatic. I heard that he was coming to Cambridge to play from someone at another show I was at, and I wrote it on the back of someone’s business card they had given me, “February 12th, Steve Tannen.” I went down to Club Passim where he was playing, and it was really exciting to meet him, and really frightening.

ST: Now can I tell what really happened?

MR: Uh oh.

ST: Deb Talan, in ’00, was a very up-and-coming, hot–in all senses of the word–songwriter. I had heard about her, and then somebody said, “You have to listen to her CD.” Like Deb said, you listen to a lot of CDs, and I was like, “Yeah, I’ll listen to her.” Then I saw her picture and I was like, “You know what, I’d better listen to her, she’s cute.” I did, and I felt a real kinship. I would sing along with her in the car all the time, I’d share her with everybody, I tried to do a cover of her with my band, then I went up to do a show in Boston and she freaked me out. She came and sat right in the middle of the show and I was like, “That’s Deb Talan, don’t screw up. That’s Deb Talan right there.” I literally don’t remember the rest of the show, I was so overwhelmed. We started writing together almost immediately, started playing shows together, and now we’re married and have two kids, it’s crazy. That’s a true story, an absolutely true story.

MR: I like stories like these. I want one of my own.

DT: Well, we want one for you, Mike.

MR: Aw, thank you. Is there anything in the news that you’re concerned about?

ST: Are you kidding?

ST & DT: Everything.

ST: Everything in the news is concerning us, and everybody.

DT: The state of health care, the fact that we’re still at war…

ST: Listen, here’s what I’m going to say: Everybody out there, be nice. Love one another because this is the only shot you’ve got.

DT: And drive safely.

ST: And drive safely.

MR: And buckle up.

ST: And take a jacket.

DT: Drive safely and respectfully. Don’t cut people off. It might make you feel a little rush of power for a moment, but don’t do it.

ST: You’re not going to get there very much faster.

MR: Having been a former Californian, it’s the only state I know where if you signal to change lanes or to get out for an exit, it’s a sign of weakness.

DT: (laughs)

ST: Yeah, people will speed up and hit you, it’s true.

MR: What is that? I don’t understand, I’ve never seen that in any other state.

DT: You’re right, it’s a very unique driving system out here.

MR: I hate it, I miss it.

DT: Sure.

MR: Out here in Iowa, we are much more refined than that. Or we don’t exactly have a lot of highways, so there’s not a lot of major freeway freakishness.

DT: Yeah.

ST: We can’t wait. We’re going to experience it when we come to Iowa in October.

MR: Please, would you?

ST: We are, we’re coming to Iowa City, Iowa, and we’re driving. So, we’ll experience the roads for ourselves.

MR: Come for the music, stay for the roads. One more question, got some advice to new artists that are jumping into this ring?

ST: That’s easy.

DT: Just keep doing what you’re doing…

ST: …every day, it doesn’t matter what your job is. Both of us had horrible, horrible jobs, and some not so bad jobs. But write every day.

DT: If you are doing work, and you’re enjoying the work, that’s it. If the world allows you to have a career at it, then that’s fantastic.

ST: Nothing has changed in the way we work other than I don’t have to get up and go to Starbucks to work. I can go get a coffee.

DT: I was the professional barista, thank you very much.

ST: Fair enough.

MR: You worked at Starbucks? Really??

ST: No, it’s true, it’s true.

DT: Insurance after six months, dude. For half time.

MR: I was addicted to Signature Hot Chocolate, and then they took it away. They pulled the rug right out from under me.

DT: How rude.

MR: And now I’m decaffeinated.

DT: Oh, that’s so sad.

Transcribed by Ryan Gaffney