Variety Mix; 578; Neko Case (recorded 2002-11-08)

That is Niko Kson, K-E-X-P. Deep red bells from the Ellen Blacklisted on Bloodshot Records. And she's here with John Rauhaus in the K-E-X-P studios. Welcome to both of you. Hi, thanks for having us. It's awesome that we have two superb musicians here. They're going to play Nikos on an acoustic guitar and John has a Hawaiian guitar. Oh, and a banjo. But just going to be able to do a couple tunes planned tonight at the crocodile they play last night there. I know tonight's a sold out show and I guess you guys would be gratified to know that we've received hundreds of email requests asking us if there's any way for people to get tickets to the show. Oh, I'm sorry people. Niko, you're just that popular. It's all because of my parents. They come every night when they bring all their friends. All my mothers and fathers come. It's great that the two of you ended up coming here because one of the questions I

had for you, Niko, is about the many collaborations you've done. I think a lot of times we think of you as a solo artist because you have that standout voice and yet you have nothing without John. No, I wouldn't say that, but I wasn't sure. You played with several well-known artists on this last release. You do a lot of collaborations and wondering if that's one of the reasons you might have moved to the Chicago area where your label blood shots located. That's a town that just seems to have even more collaborative efforts going on than almost anywhere else. At least it's a really large group of musicians that make up kind of a I don't want to say a scene because it's kind of more open in that. It's not very clicky, you know. There's a lot of people who play every week somewhere. A lot of working musicians and so I don't know. There's always somebody available to do something. It's pretty exciting. And the bloodshot community, this alternative, well, we're not

really on bloodshot, so they don't really have anything to do with it. It's mostly just other musicians and the places we hang out. It seems like artists, though, that, you know, are simpatico with that label, just the whole country scene. There's a lot of stellar artists and that scene in Chicago, too. Yeah, well, you got Kelly Hogan and Sally Timbs, you know. John Leiford. John Leiford. We've all been in the studio this year and Robbie Folks lives there, too. We don't see enough of Robbie Folks, though. He lives kind of out in the suburbs, because, yes, what is it? 40 children or something? 40 or 50 children? Yes. He's starting his own town. It's nice to provide her a home for all of them, though. Yeah, it is. He's starting his own town. It's going to be a circus town. It's going to be great. When we can all go visit there, hopefully. You are ready to do a tune. You're going to do a couple from you. If you want us to, I would love for you to lay onto you concur with that. Leon Berman's here in the studio. He says, yes. Are you allowed to speak?

Oh, you're not allowed to speak. He's not allowed to speak. He looks fantastically. You see what he's wearing right now. A flattering room, turtle neck with casual jeans. It looks great. Now I'll have John describe what Nico's wearing. What am I wearing, John? A gray sweater and casual jeans. You're using your FM DJ lady voice. I love that. And you do that. And apparently you're wearing a guitar. Yes. John is wearing some kind of mock, well, khaki-colored shirt. It's one of the, it's wrinkle-free. It's one of those subdued earth towns. Is it, is it, John? It's the wrinkle-free Eddie Bauer. Yes. Oh, that's awesome. He's got some less casual than Nico, or more casual than Nico. No, less casual than Nico, but more casually on. Yes. Kind of black jeans and some black shoes. Hello. So that'll, to boring the crap. Does that enhance your clothing to our world? Okay. What are you going to do? We're going to do outro with bees. Go ahead, guys. You ready? Count, John, you love it? Okay. Good day. I'm tired and sick of this place.

Red wine is fast. As the lip of your glass is now I'm going to eat. Every day, every day, every day. So it's better my sweet that we love her like these, because there's no show for me. Don't love I believe. That's one of the tracks off black listed your latest CD. We talked about some of the collaborations you've done. You did the corn

sisters. That's one of my favorites with Carolyn Market. You recorded that right here. Yeah. It had his hat. That was going to be an informal project. And then the new pornography, which was, I think just neat because it showed a different sound, especially me. The band sound there is quite different. Oh, yeah. Any of your albums? Yeah. And I heard you're working with them too on a new release. Yeah. We just finished making a new record. They might be mixing, I think they got two more songs to mix and then I think it's coming out in May of next year, I'm pretty sure on Matt Adore here in the States. And we talked a little bit about other collaborators like on the new album. I know you work with how Gell from Giant San is a great friend of ours. Yeah. The station. The Gell. And you also, you co-produced this album. So I wanted to ask you a little bit about how you see your musical progression. I mean, I've heard different descriptions of this album. I think one thing that may be true is that it shows your whole range of emotion and all the vocals that you can do, whether it's the more ballity soft things or the

really belting out numbers that you do. You co-produced the album. So I'm just wondering how you see the progression. I've also heard people say it's a more dark release than the first. Yeah, I guess it's a little more bummed out, but it's kind of more hopeful too. I hope people hear the hopeful parts. I don't know if they do. I hope they do. I think the progression for me was just learning how to play guitar. I mean, I co-produced all the albums so far, so that wasn't really anything new. But having made the Canadian amp EP that we made in my kitchen, John and I worked hard to figure out how to engineer stuff. So I was a lot more prepared for this album. So the progression, I think, was more that I just felt a lot more confident and ready to go. And that made me feel a little more loose, and I was more ready to experiment with things, which was a really important thing when you're

dealing with people like how Galber collects a co- because they really like to work on the fly. They like spontaneity. They don't want to hear too much of the demos beforehand. They like to go with it in the studio, and that brings a lot of air to the record and a lot of space, which is what I wanted. I had read somewhere through that. That's more along the lines of your approach, too, that you come in almost free form with something. Yeah, well, I mean, I have a crappy handheld demo recording of me playing it on a guitar, which is, it isn't pretty. I got to say. And they listen to a few seconds of that and they, okay, stop, stop that. No, they don't. But yeah, and some songs I just wrote in the studio, and sometimes if you're working on vocals or something, and you think you're doing really crappy, you go, okay, well, I'm going to play the piano now for a while instead, and you just change to a new thing, and you don't waste your time that way, even though you probably waste a lot of time. I don't know. Niko cases live here in the studio with John Rauhaus,

does that, would you say Niko, do you played with her, would you say that describes? Yeah, yeah, there was a lot of, how was it coming in as the musician listening to the crappy team? Oh, they weren't as crappy, she said they were. Oh, they were super crappy. But she would always go, this is what I'm doing, guys. I'm going to go get some Mexican food, bye. That's not true. I didn't have a huge addiction to the Rose's Mexican restaurant. It's the enchilada sauce, it was so good. No, it was, it was really fun, and those guys are Craig Cheumacher at Wave Lab is so fun to work with, so it was, he's a brilliant guy. He's the master of sounds to tape. Yes, he is, so it was very cool, just, you know, it was very conducive to just hanging out and doing that, and getting really cool sounds to tape. It's nice to have this stripped down version of a couple of the new songs, you know, here in the studio for a change, but what can people expect at the show tonight as far as instrumentation? Well, there obviously he has a, this Hawaiian guitar and banjo, are you playing even more?

Hell, still, yes. And, and regular, hard to talk guitar too. Yeah, and I play, you know, a tenor guitar, acoustic and electric tenor guitars, and then Tom Ray will be playing upright bass, and he also plays tambourine with his foot, which is way more exciting than it even sounds. People always think it's digital. They think it's a tape. Where's it coming from? The tambourine with his foot? That's, that takes some dexterity. It does. I tried to do it, I can do it. Yeah, yeah. People think that's easy. You should try that at all. I don't know how he does it, but, you know, he's such a good bass player that he would probably get bored if he didn't figure out some crazy way to challenge him. Yeah, right. I think next he's going to be spinning plates on the top of the bass player. Yes. Well, that'll be a good, actually, you could do some of the opener for you guys, and then join the band for yourself. You're going to do another song off of Black Listed. Mm-hmm. We're going to do Ghost Wiring, which is a song about thinking about Washington State, and how sad it makes me sometimes, because I miss it. But, uh, so this is appropriate for now, seeing them wearing Washington State. I'm an idiot. Welcome to the show.

Niko Casey, she's live here in K.E.X.P. with John Rauhaus. He's now playing the banjo on this one. Oh, boy. That's right. What happens once I've gone away? Needles drops off the shot, and leaves just this way. No ceiling moves in, and circles back. Great, great tree. This town is counted so many days. So many days. When shoes drag you off to school, shoes that never dry,

it grows close and beat their wings. Why can't you be smarter, girl? Lift up your face. Don't feel sorry for yourself. How is late for you? Your goal is still a large show at night. All the grand you need and whoever is watching, at the driving side, who they come for now, since I've gone away.

Niko Casey and John Rauhaus live here in the K.E.X.P. studios doing a couple of tunes from the album Blacklisted, that's Niko's latest release, and different from Furnace Room lullaby, and that you wrote except for the covers you did. I think you wrote most of the songs yourself without collaborators. Most of them, I had a bit of collaboration here and there, a little bit with John, and a little bit with Tom who were playing with me tonight. When we were talking about instruments you play, we didn't mention that Niko started as a drummer, and on the new release you play the saw, don't you? That's a toughie. Well, it's a toughie only if you're trying to find the notes, but in my case, I just found two notes and then I used them, but you can figure out how to make it make noise. It's a pretty exciting instrument to play though. Yeah, I could see you with maybe a theorem in the future. I don't know if I'm coordinated. John's going no more instruments, please. So Niko is doing a sold-out show tonight at the Crocodile, but you might be able to follow her

down the coast and get in on one of her other shows. She's moving on to Portland, San Diego. It's at the Aladdin, San Diego, and John Roundhouse, I might mention, has a disc out called Steel Guitar Air Show, which I played just a little bit earlier in the set before we let into this interview, and he did that summer samba song, which always makes people feel, I don't know, like you need a genetic. Yeah, yeah, look, it is a separate John who doesn't drink, but it's his way of having a genetic. That's exactly it. That's exactly it. Let's take a look at that, maybe you'll hear that later on, shake the shack this evening. So you did the new panographers, you've completed work with them on their next release, and you're touring down the coast, and I think finishing up in Arizona, where you recorded this album, our last show is on Tucson, which should be an incredible balancing act of how many people can fit on the stage at once. So it'll be exciting, speaking of circuses.

And then back to Chicago, I was going to say back home to Chicago, but, you know, of course, it's like partial home. We in the northwest always are going to claim that I feel like him from here, I consider it my home. So you tell people, people say, where are you from originally? I say Washington State, yeah. Good to know, so we can, we can claim Neekah, Missy, Washington State. Hey, come back any time. Thank you. I will. I'll come back a lot. I mean, I have to. And hopefully, hopefully you'll be back to the KXV studios as well. Yeah, I'll catch up with your latest. All right. Well, thanks for having us today. Yeah, thanks for being here. It's Neekah, okay. It's in John Rauhaus playing tonight at the crocodile. It's a sold out show, but sure, people will be up front begging for tickets. And like I said, you can follow him down to Portland, because it'd be well worth the trip. And it's at the lovely Latin theater, which is really beautiful. So one, you have a personal invitation from Neekah. Yeah, come on over. It's 90.3 FM KEX PC at all. So I just go now. Okay. Hi, I'm Neekah Kase, and you're listening to KEX PC at all.

And then, okay. All right. Hello, this is Neekah Kase, and you're listening to swinging doors. That's good. No damage. Do you want me to do that one again? It was good with the smashing CD in the background. Hi, this is Neekah Kase, and you're listening to swinging doors. Is that good? I know they're boring, but I can't advertise. I'm not good at it. I can't act. Do you want me to stay swinging doors on KEXP? Okay, that's fine. Hi, this is Neekah Kase, and you're listening to swinging doors on KEXP. Is that good? I can hear you barely. Okay, sure. Hi, this is Neekah Kase, and you're listening to swinging doors on KEX PC at all.

Okay, and then they have one for you. Hi, this is Neekah Kase, and you're listening to the best of Ballard with Ms. Amanda Wild on KEX PC at all. Is that good? Well, there's no, I can't say dirty honky talk, I can't do it. No offense, but I can't. I don't know, I just can't come out of my mouth. I'm going to fucking beat your ass, Mark, is what I'm going to do. This is the queen of beating Mark's ass with KEX PC at all. you

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