The Creative Asylum Podcast

Daniel House
  • 5.0 (22)
  • Society & Culture
  • Updated Weekly

The Creative Asylum is a weekly podcast for people interested in conversations with creative types of EVERY stripe (musicians, actors, filmmakers, artists, creative disrupters). We have unscripted conversations that explore attitudes, intentions and strategies around living authentically and keeping creativity alive - in life and in work. NEW EPISODES DROP every Tuesday at 10 (pst)! Your host is Daniel House, co-founder, bassist and primary songwriter for the band Skin Yard and also the president and owner of C/Z Records (the label that launched the careers of Built to Spill, 7 Year Bitch, The Gits, Soundgarden, Melvins, Coffin Break and yes of course. Skin Yard). We would LOVE IT if you would please subscribe to our channel for weekly doses of creative disruption and endless inspiration. YOU are the reason why this channel exists! Your host is Daniel House, co-founder, bassist and primary songwriter for the band Skin Yard and also the president and owner of C/Z Records (the label that launched the careers of Built to Spill, 7 Year Bitch, The Gits, Soundgarden, Melvins, Coffin Break and yes of course. Skin Yard). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. 22h ago

    Larry Crane (Tape OP) - EP240 - The Creative Asylum

    Larry Crane started out scrappy, playing bass for the Chico, CA-based Indie-darling band, Vomit Launch. The band called it quits and Larry moved to Portland, where he became a producer and engineer, and was also where he founded Tape Op Magazine, a publication devoted to the process of making records and the creativity that goes into the process of recording. Hi interviews include conversations with John Cale, Steve Albini, Talking Heads' Jerry Harrison, Herb Alpert and Danny Elfman just to name a few, His recording credits stack up just as impressively: Elliott Smith, Sleater-Kinney, The Decemberists, Cat Power, Stephen Malkmus, Quasi, Jenny Lewis, M. Ward, the Go-Betweens and so many more. We explore what it takes to earn trust from artists across many decades, and—as the archivist for the Estate of Elliott Smith—his examination of the history that he's played a part in. Tape Op is released six times a year and is essential reading for musicians, producers, and engineers, specifically if you want to explore how others think about how they capture their creative output in the studio.  This is a conversation with an old friend who has a deep appreciation for the values of building community tempered with the perspective of working DIY and the understanding that sometimes you have to be open to stepping beyond your tribe, because sometimes you're forced to work with other kinds of interests that arrive with a different set of expectations. * * * * PLEASE FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Website: https://www.TheCApod.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheCApod/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/CreativeAsylumCA/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Larry Crane (Tape OP) - EP240 - The Creative Asylum

  2. Sep 29

    Paul Leary (Butthole Surfers) - EP239 - The Creative Asylum

    Paul Leary co-founded one of the most gleefully deranged bands in American rock history — and came out the other end living a decades-long career producing other bands. As guitarist and de facto sonic architect of the Butthole Surfers, Leary helped build a catalog of cult-classic noise-punk landmarks throughout the '80. From Psychic Powerless...Another Man's Sac to Hairway to Steven and the band's brief brush with mainstream success via their song "Pepper," the Butthole Surfers left behind a stream of chaos that can only be celebrated for it's sheer audacity and mayhem. In this conversation, Paul dips his toe into how two Trinity University accounting students turned into art-punk provocateurs. The band's outrageous, legendary live shows are documented in the new documentary Butthole Surfers: The Hole Truth and Nothing Butt, directed by Tom Stern, which traces the band's history and cultural impact through interviews, archival footage, and multimedia elements. We also discuss Leary's parallel life and subsequent career as an alt-rock producer, with an impressive resume including bands like Sublime, Meat Puppets, Daniel Johnston, Reverend Horton Heat, the Toadies, U2, Weezer, and Jane's Addiction.  In his current place in life as a "boring adult," we talk about what it takes to bring order in the studio after building a career on total chaos in his own band. This is a conversation about weirdness as a discipline, the accidental producer, and staying gleefully uncategorizable for over four decades. * * * * PLEASE FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Website: https://www.TheCApod.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheCApod/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/CreativeAsylumCA/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Paul Leary (Butthole Surfers) - EP239 - The Creative Asylum

  3. Sep 22

    Steven McDonald (Redd Kross, Melvins) - EP238 - The Creative Asylum

    Steven McDonald picked up a bass at age 11, and along with his older brother Jeff, co-founded Redd Kross. Redd Kross made their live debut opening for Black Flag while basically still being in Jr. High. In this conversation, Steven and I discuss the creative process, the dynamics of juggling two bands at once, the brilliance of the Beatles and Redd Kross' 2024 self-titled double album, which is—in my opinion—one of the best records of the band's entire career. Steven and I talk about his parallel life as the touring and recording bassist for the Melvins since 2015, with King Buzzo and Dale Crover while Redd Kross is never that far in the shadows. For a period of time, Steven played in and was a founding member of Keith Morris's hardcore outfit OFF! from 2009 to 2021. We also dip into Born Innocent: The Redd Kross Story, director Andrew Reich's documentary tracing the band's four-decade history, and what it's been like having a camera crew — and now an audience — finally reckon with a career this tumultuous and this undeniably good.  This is a candid conversation about being a lifer, a brother, a parent and a bass player who's somehow made it look easy since before he could drive.  Photo of Steve McDonald by the inimitable Master Jaron: https://www.instagram.com/masterjaron/ * * * * PLEASE FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Website: https://www.TheCApod.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheCApod/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/CreativeAsylumCA/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Steven McDonald (Redd Kross, Melvins) - EP238 - The Creative Asylum

  4. Sep 15

    Robyn Hitchcock - EP237 - The Creative Asylum

    Robyn Hitchcock has spent five decades making music with the kind of color and whimsy that sounds like musical paintings as much as being any kind of standard for quirky British art-rock. He's always been surreal, wry, and stubbornly uninterested in trends. As co-founder and songwriter for the critically influential Soft Boys (1976–81), Hitchcock helped forge an influential art-rock touchstone that outlasted the lifespan of the band itself. Decades later, the jangly, off-kilter psychedelia of the Soft Boys have influenced R.E.M., the Replacements, Uncle Tupelo, and a generation of songwriters who came after. In addition to being a musical painter, Hitchcock has also been an avid explorer of the written word, having penned TWO two acclaimed memoirs, both of which are available from Akashic Books: 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left, a hallucinatory account of the year he turned 14 and discovered Pink Floyd and Sgt. Pepper's while stuck at boarding school, and the recent follow-up, Stranded in the Future, which picks up the story from 1968 and continues through to 1978. the book chronicles his self-taught songwriting, doomed romances, and the formation of the Soft Boys against the backdrop of London as punk was taking hold and changing the very foundation upon which popular culture was being built. We talk about writing, music and the surreal experience of life itself. Robyn's remained one of the most singular, unclassifiable voices in British music, and with that' the Creative Asylum is lucky to have him on! * * * * PLEASE FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Website: https://www.TheCApod.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheCApod/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/CreativeAsylumCA/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Robyn Hitchcock - EP237 - The Creative Asylum

  5. Sep 8

    Colin Newman & Malka Spigel - EP236 - The Creative Asylum

    Few couples have lived in the world of independent music from as many angles as Colin Newman and Malka Spigel have. Colin is the co-founder, voice and guitarist behind Wire, the art-punk originators whose austere, angular sound still sound pioneering today , even decades after their formation in the 1970s. Malka was the bassist for Minimal Compact, the Tel Aviv-born post-punk outfit that became a cornerstone of the '80s European underground. In this episode, I get to have a conversation with these two artists who have been together for decades now and have built a remarkable shared body of work including their long-running duo, Immersion, their collaborative project Nanocluster and their band - about to be revived - Githead. They are more independent that they've ever been, running their own record label, swim~. We spend most of the conversation talking about where they are now: Immersion, the electronic duo Newman and Spigel formed in 1994, built on a genuinely collaborative process where the music comes first and the ideas evolve organically between them. We also talk about their ongoing Nanocluster series — a rotating-cast collaboration project pulling in artists like Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab, Ulrich Schnauss, Scanner, and ambient trio SUSS This is a conversation about staying restless after 40-plus years in music, and what it actually looks like to build a life and a body of work with your partner, and why neither of them has any interest in coasting on legacy. VISIT https://immersionhq.uk * * * * PLEASE FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Website: https://www.TheCApod.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheCApod/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/CreativeAsylumCA/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Colin Newman & Malka Spigel - EP236 - The Creative Asylum

  6. Sep 1

    Patty Schemel (Hit So Hard) - EP235 - The Creative Asylum

    Prior to Grohl, Patty Schemel was Kurt Cobain's choice as Nirvana's (new) drummer. She ended up playing in Hole and changed the band's trajectory with a power and determination that anchored the band's music on stage. Outside of life in the studio and on the road, Patty was also fighting a war that most fans never saw. She was a powerhouse drummer (just listen to 'Live Through This' if you have any doubt), but as with so many others from the Seattle music scene, also found the allure of hard drugs, which sadly led to her departure from music and a brutal stretch of homelessness, living on the streets of L.A. for over a year. It's all laid out with unflinching honesty in the documentary 'Hit So Hard' from 2011 and the acclaimed memoir (from Da Capo Press) of the same name that followed.   Now over a decade living clean and sober, Patty is living a stable and happy life, is working on new craetive projects and is working in addiction recovery with homeless women from those same streets of Los Angeles.  * * * * PLEASE FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Website: https://www.TheCApod.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheCApod/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/CreativeAsylumCA/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Patty Schemel (Hit So Hard) - EP235 - The Creative Asylum

  7. Aug 25

    Alex Kuno - EP234 - The Creative Asylum

    Working out of his studio in the Arts District of Saint Paul, Minnesota, Alex Kuno has spent over two decades building a visual language all his own. Alex's figures look like they wandered out of a medieval medical textbook and into a fairy tale gone strange. His characters sprout, mutate, and dissolve into hybrid states — part specimen, part storybook creature, wild and often as organic as the flora in the frame.   Kuno works primarily in oils these days, but we discuss a time in his development when he was experimenting with watercolor and colored-pencils as well as with acrylic. Adam Jones from TOOL noticed Kuno's remarkable work and has used his images on over a dozen concert posters. Alex Kuno has one of the most distinct visual styles in contemporary lowbrow and pop-surrealist art. It's dark, but maintains an element of humor, and it never quite explains itself. This is a conversation about making weird, personal work and building a career out of a life that is dedicated to making art.  * * * * PLEASE FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Website: https://www.TheCApod.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheCApod/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/CreativeAsylumCA/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Alex Kuno - EP234 - The Creative Asylum

  8. Aug 18

    Sharon Renold - EP233 - The Creative Asylum

    Swiss-born and Berklee-trained, Sharon Renold was Grammy-nominated before she'd even graduated Berklee. In this episode, Sharon and I talk about growing up in a Berklee household with international musicians as parents, an environment where she was surrounded by jazz legends throughout her musical journey which started with her learning to play bass at the age of four. She is one of the founding members of the Grammy-nominated Berklee Indian Ensemble, in which she's composed and performed on the group's acclaimed album Shuruaat, including her own original piece "Aakash." That group cracked open a world of Indian classical and fusion influence for her, pulling in artists like Tigran Hamasyan and A.R. Rahman, an experience that's informed the genre-blurring approach she's done since.  In this conversation, we talk about her parallel life as a fixture of Scott's Bass Lessons, the massively popular YouTube channel where she's become a go-to voice for breaking down iconic basslines and albums for bass players worldwide — from Esperanza Spalding deep-dives to technique tutorials watched by hundreds of thousands.  Renold gets candid about balancing session work, content creation, and her own songwriting, including her original track "Open Letter" and her long-awaited debut solo album. This is a conversation about groove as a language, the low end as a form of storytelling, and what it takes to build a career as both a world-class player and a creative explorer at the very beginning of what is bound to be a very long musical journey.  * * * * PLEASE FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Website: https://www.TheCApod.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheCApod/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/CreativeAsylumCA/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Sharon Renold - EP233 - The Creative Asylum
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5
out of 5
22 Ratings

About

The Creative Asylum is a weekly podcast for people interested in conversations with creative types of EVERY stripe (musicians, actors, filmmakers, artists, creative disrupters). We have unscripted conversations that explore attitudes, intentions and strategies around living authentically and keeping creativity alive - in life and in work. NEW EPISODES DROP every Tuesday at 10 (pst)! Your host is Daniel House, co-founder, bassist and primary songwriter for the band Skin Yard and also the president and owner of C/Z Records (the label that launched the careers of Built to Spill, 7 Year Bitch, The Gits, Soundgarden, Melvins, Coffin Break and yes of course. Skin Yard). We would LOVE IT if you would please subscribe to our channel for weekly doses of creative disruption and endless inspiration. YOU are the reason why this channel exists! Your host is Daniel House, co-founder, bassist and primary songwriter for the band Skin Yard and also the president and owner of C/Z Records (the label that launched the careers of Built to Spill, 7 Year Bitch, The Gits, Soundgarden, Melvins, Coffin Break and yes of course. Skin Yard). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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