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Mark Stinson, host: [00:00:00] Welcome back friends to our podcast, unlocking Your World of Creativity. And when we travel around the world talking to creative practitioners, we certainly have seen a theme of storytelling and storytelling in so many mediums. But we're going to talk today about how art and music and storytelling all intertwine and really focus on the.

Characters and the character development. And we're talking with author Alex Pappademas and artist Joan LeMay about their new book, quantum Criminals. Alex and Joan, welcome to the show. Thanks. Thanks for having us. It's gonna be such a fun conversation. A I love these kind of rock biography review kind of books, but Steely Dan is right up on top of my favorite bands.

So I wanna start with quantum criminals. And I almost have to say the subtitle before we even jump into it, because I find myself even [00:01:00] singing the subtitle. It's Ramblers Wild Gamblers. Another soul survivors from the songs of Steely Dan. So Alex when you took on this idea of looking at all the characters, I, yeah, I'd certainly say Ricky and get back Jack and, maybe Dr.

Wu. But boy, the contents of these characters goes deep.

Alex Pappademas, author: Yeah, I think that was what was exciting about it because I, this started out, I was going to write a Steely Dan book before Joan came into the picture. But the idea to base it around characters was an idea that Joan had.

And then our illustrious editor, Jessica Hopper, who's a mutual friend of both of ours, put us together on this project and. That I think transformed what this book could be because once we had the, once the idea of basing it around these characters, because there are so many in all of these songs, and as you keep going and we've been, we had a, [00:02:00] Joan made a giant spreadsheet.

At the beginning of this process that had 160 characters on it, which is like a Robert Altman level of character. Yes. That we kinda told. It's too it's, it was really, what a great metaphor. Yeah. Too many people moving around in that picture. Yeah. But yeah, once we, so that was not my idea.

It was Joan's idea, but it made everything come together in a way that I don't think it would have. I might not be, th this book might not be done. At this point, two or three years after its inception, if that had not happened because it was just such a great organizing principle and it was such a really it was became such a fun way to think about the process of writing about this band's whole long history and all of this, all of the whole catalog and the, the whole magill, which is very big.

Yes. So I, it became just yeah, it made a lot more sense.

Mark Stinson, host: John, to say that they're colorful characters I think Rolling Stone called it Mind Bending. Other people have certainly seen the colorfulness of the characters, but wow. The High Impact [00:03:00] Graphics it does distinguish this book.

Joan LeMay, illustrator: Thanks. Yeah. I prior to diving into this I've always painted in a very high chroma way. All of these are gush paintings that are 18 by 24 or nine by 12. And I I've always. I've always painted slightly psychedelic in, in terms of pallet. So it it was an easy, it was an easy application of that natural tendency here, for sure.

Yes.

Mark Stinson, host: And the collaboration piece, this is almost like the songwriting, there's, the Witch came first. The music or the melody or the words, witch came first, the Fagan or the Becker. What did your collaboration feel like as this whole thing was unfolding? Yeah,

Alex Pappademas, author: Oh yeah.

We, we talked once a week as we were doing this and kept each other, in, in the loop of what we were working on and went back and forth and cer certain ideas evolved. We started from this spreadsheet that Joan had made with [00:04:00] all of these characters on it. And. As I started to write into it, we would say, oh, I don't know that I have anything for Charlie Freak necessarily.

So maybe we're not gonna do Charlie freak on this one, or, I had this idea that to talk about, hip hop samples of Steely Dan and. For that I was, it's for that one. It was like, oh, so what if Rudy from Black Cow is MF Dune, who's a rapper, who's sampled prominently sampled black cow and, just, we just talked around, how to do that.

And then I think, as I started to, Joan was done. With a lot of this work before I was, so as I started, I got the chance to see what it was gonna look like as it was happening because my piece of it was still unfinished because I'm a slow writer and e even though this was, we did this one kind of fast, but it still took longer for me to finish.

So I was able to see how it was coming together and I think that spirit informed how I wrote once I saw. Like you, you mentioned the psychedelic aspect of it, and there's a [00:05:00] surreal aspect to some of these that, that I really love and a kind but also a real humanity and a.

A, a dignity or the, just, there's a sense of the way that these pe, these people looking directly in the camera and thinking about, trying, fleeting with you, with their eyes or something like that. And I think that really just, it spurred me to think more about the humanity of these characters as I was writing about them.

And so I think there's that's, sort of part of the, the mind melt that a occurs here, but. Yeah I loved doing it this way because writing books is really lonely and depressing, and you're stuck in a room with your feelings of inadequacy and wondering if this is gonna be any good.

And so it was, it was really amazing to, to be able to, to both, to see how this was gonna come to life and have that faith in how it was gonna come to life and to know that, but also just, just to have somebody to. Talk to it's look at this room that I'm in.

Mark Stinson, host: I was gonna say the lonely writer in the basement just clacking, clack, clacking away. But Joan Alex mentioned this humanity [00:06:00] factor, but I was curious as to your, I guess what we would call the creative brief. The book jacket calls 'em, rogues, creeps, schmucks, cold-blooded operators.

Were you trying to like, translate that into the art or bring your own interpretation of the characters?

Joan LeMay, illustrator: So I when this project started to I had thought about I, I'd start, I had started. Making a fanzine called Danze, where I was going to depict every single named character in the entire Steely Dan universe.

And I was doing that independently. And Alex had been working on a book the idea of what a book might look like with Jessica Hopper of University of Texas Press, who is a mutual friend of ours. And she put our projects together. So I had I've been a lifelong Steely Dan fan. They're, they've always been my answer to what's your favorite band?

And [00:07:00] that's largely because my parents didn't have that many records and I I gravitated towards them very early on and never strayed. So I've had images in my head. If not very crisp pictorial images of these characters. Just general vibe ideas of what they might materialize into for 44 years or whatever.

And it, it the figuring out how to Articulate. That had a lot to do with me and Alex's conversations. And a again, just to Alex's point, it being just so good to have somebody to talk to when you're undertaking a large thing and there's something like 120 paintings in this book.

He's in his garage. I made this in an attic as above, so below I was in a, I was in a really shitty attic with really crappy a [00:08:00] dormer ceiling. And it leaked and, it, it's, that's where I worked. And it's it's really been incredible to To have a project with somebody else, because I've never, I've always been a lone wolf, like all the way across the board.

And it's it makes you approach things differently and spurs you on when you're like, ah, look at this, ah, read this.

Mark Stinson, host: He gives you a little encouragement there. And some of these characters, clearly names like Josie and Peg stand out, but I guess as I was looking through the list, I guess I never would've thought of the major dude as a character I knew, obviously the song and what it's about, but I didn't pull out the persona like you have.

Joan LeMay, illustrator: Yeah. I think for years, Several friends and I who are Steely Dan fans have been like, oh, they're such a major dude. As a, as, just as a colloquial way to refer to [00:09:00] somebody referring to the song, but to refer to somebody who is a solid friend, who's somebody you're gonna call if you're in trouble.

But also the major dude is fallible, also the major dude maybe deals pot maybe. There, there's, there are a lot of ways the major dude can be, and I realized after I painted the major dude that he looks a lot like Mark Maron, which I didn't mean to have happen, but it happened and now I can't unsee it.

And now neither can anybody else, cuz I keep talking about it. But. Yeah, I it, to me, the major dude is both an archetype and refers to individuals and that is one possibility in the in the universe for who he might

Mark Stinson, host: be. Yes. And Alex Amia beyond just the creativity of it, there has to be research and rigor into, what did the writers of the song mean this character to be?

Not just maybe how we, the listeners interpret it. What was some of [00:10:00] the research for you behind these

Alex Pappademas, author: characters? Oh man there is a, there was a whole lot of rabbit holes to go down, even though Donald and Walter do, did not give us all that much information about who these characters are.

In a lot of cases you would just pull one little thread and then you would find all of these other things. And so I found myself reading a lot about, they've acknowledged, for example, that. The Kid Charlamagne is based on Oley Stanley, who's the sort of famous acid chemist who is a kind of a intimate of the Mary Pranksters and Ken Kei and then the Grateful Dead.

And so that led me to rereading Tom Wolf's electric Kool-Aid acid test for the first time since college. And, that's, that was such a pleasure to go back to, cuz I, I didn't remember how good that was, even though I'm a big Tom Wolf fan. And then, Going into Leys history and kind of what ended up happening to him.

Cuz it is very much like the kid Charlamagne story. He winds up, at loose ends. Even though he's been this, such an [00:11:00] important figure to the counterculture and had such, had such an impact on the way the Americans lived and thought, and the American mind and everything.

He winds up a, sort of a. Depressing ending. He's he was actually very worried about climate change very early, like in the eighties. He was terrified of a great flood, he was sort, ahead of that. So I, yeah, that one, but all of these talking about Sayoko, Yama, Gucci, who's the cover of of Asia, the cover model from Asia, and like finding out which something I never knew.

I was like, I wonder who that is. And then it turns out like she really is somebody and has like an amazing story in the history of of in international fashion. It's the first Jaap, the first Japanese model to walk the Paris runways in the like for, I think is Miyaki, maybe in the, the late seventies, early eighties and like all that stuff.

It just seemed, it was, like I said, you just pull the one thread and then you chase it where it goes as Donald might say. And I and that was really fun and it really ended up being, I don't know that, I think I imagined it would be that, but I don't know that I [00:12:00] imagined it would be this much and it would end up being this much of a history of the period that these songs came out of.

As it tr ended up being, because I guess I, I wasn't sure, I imagined these being a lot shorter than they ended up.

Mark Stinson, host: And somehow it turns a substantial history. Yes. And thinking about that history, Alex, from the standpoint of the The timeline, from Jack and I think about Cousin Dupree is relatively recent as far as Steely Dan albums go, but did you find the characters changing over time or did the, tone or the angle that Donald and Walter took did they morph at all over that timeline in your view?

Alex Pappademas, author: Yeah, I think they do. I think that one thing that's interesting is that once you get to the reunion albums in the two thousands, once you get to everything must go and two against nature and everything must go. You've had a few years of solo work by both Donald and Walter. Not a whole [00:13:00] lot, but enough that you start to know them as separate songwriters in a way that you didn't.

Have the chance to before that, if you listen, you can really, if you listen to the nightly, if you listen to come Curad like you and then, and to Walter's 11 tracks of whack, it suddenly becomes a lot clearer. Who was bringing what to the table in the Steely Dan amalgam more so than I think it was prior to that.

You, so you get that, but I think you can also hear them. You can hear them getting older and you can hear them, their sensibility shifting and maybe getting a little more, there's a tiny bit of sentimentality creeps into it. And I think, I think about the narrator of shame about me.

Which is the song like Joan Painted Franny from nyu, who's the, the girl who comes back into the narrator's life after all these years. And they talk about, it's their group of friends and whatever. What happened to this guy and all these guys got rich and did this or whatever.

And Franny herself has become some kind of a. A star of stage and screen and [00:14:00] the narrator's just outta rehab and he is working at the Strand Bookstore in New York City and a little bit putting it back together, let's say, he's he's had, there's a, he's had been through some things and.

As much as that's a made up story, obviously it's a fictional narrative. It does mirror what happened, with Walter where he he got into some trouble over the years. There were some addiction issues and conquered that and then, restarted his life and career and by the time he was back with the Dan, things had shifted and.

So I think, it does reflect, even though they were still writing songs like Cousin Dupree, which is from told from the perspective of a guy who wants to make it with his cousin which is still, it's still still creepy after all these years. There's something different going on in with their relationship to those characters to be sure.

They're they're older and they're writing about, adult relationships in a different way because I think we, we forget that they're basically both 30 years old when Steely Dan ends for the first time. Right around gaucho. They're barely [00:15:00] thirties or when they're writing, Hey, 19.

That age gap is only like 10, 11 years. Something like that. Yeah.

Mark Stinson, host: Yeah. You tend to forget that cuz it does seem whiter. Yeah,

Alex Pappademas, author: Cuz they covered so much ground in such a short time, it's not really, that's basically just the seventies. But like they're, and we think of them as being old because I think they always presented themselves they acted like they were dirty old men when they were 24.

It's like they just, and which is a way to never seem like you're aging, cuz you just grow into the thing that you've always presented to be.

Joan LeMay, illustrator: Absolutely. And an obsession with the past and an obsession with the future, but never presence in the presence.

Mark Stinson, host: That's right. Yeah. And Jones, from a visual standpoint, many of these character, there were as you mentioned in the book, no, M t v at the beginning many of these characters are being visualized for the very first time.

You really have to conjure up your own image of this. How was that informed for you?

Joan LeMay, illustrator: So I had a I had. A folder on my computer called the [00:16:00] Dan Casting Gallery, and it was populated with found photos and images from advertising catalogs and sewing catalogs and things from sixties, seventies, eighties.

And I had pictures of friends and I took a lot of pictures of myself for just body image reference stuff. I. Have had generalized ideas of these characters in my head for a really long time. But for finishing, putting them together and for, for looking for inspiration in the instances where I hadn't, I hadn't visualized pixel previously, for instance.

The person who who is Pixel in the book is this woman I know named Kathleen, who is. I could see her being that character for Halloween, and she's a buddy of mine and she's, I'm, I think I'm like 13 or 14 years [00:17:00] older than she is. And she's full of UA Viv, and she's this like impossibly gorgeous Creature who I just, I made an a, b and I used her face.

So they're the phases of people I know throughout as well. And it, every day I sat down to paint and ended up with these cats on the page and it was delightful and fun for me also because, In the process of painting, I tend to make choices intuitively a lot of the time.

I don't do much ever in the way of sketching things out, although I'm told that I should. I certainly didn't for this. Thanks

Mark Stinson, host: for the advice

Joan LeMay, illustrator: folks. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of the time, things would just materialize and And get painted. Yes.

Mark Stinson, host: I think as a writer type myself, not at the level you are Alex, but I think about much has been written about [00:18:00] you need to get up, you need to write so many words.

You need to, get your creative rhythm. And Joan you've touched ever so briefly on your, painting your graphic development style. Do you have that kind of rhythm or habit that you find that you need to keep the work moving? For me,

Joan LeMay, illustrator: One, one thing that I really like to keep in mind that I, God, I'm trying to think of what book I read this in.

Oh, it's gonna bother me. I'll think about it and I'll send you what sounds good. This comes out of, and you can put in show notes or whatever. Yeah. But I was reading about the idea of Parade of human beings. We're all sponges and we have to be really cognizant of the fact that we need time to soak things up and then when we're full, we must be rung out or else.

And once we're totally rung out, then we're ready to soak things up again. So there has to be a natural rhythm of and that can happen several times per [00:19:00] day. Or that can be a process where you're bringing yourself out for months and then you're soaking things back up for months. And it's really It changes throughout your life, what that rhythm looks like.

For me, what my daily habit is and what things look like varies wildly to depend my in my life at the time and what my environment is and all that kind of good stuff. If I'm left completely to my druthers, if I have no nobody. Nothing, no other, any forces at all pulling me to do anything other than work.

I will work all night long. I will sleep all day and I will work all night. I have done that at various times in my life and it has really worked for me. When I was making this book, I had a very regimented schedule. And I would wake up and get right to it and it would, treating it like a nine to five.[00:20:00]

And that worked. So I think what's important in terms of I. Tips for people listening. Wanting to hear about people's creative habits. You really have to find what works for you and you have to be you have to have a lot of grace with yourself when what works for you no longer works for you.

And know that you are the only authority on what works for you and know that you need to. Change it until it does work for you or else you're gonna cheat help out of your own work.

Mark Stinson, host: Wow, great advice. The sponge image is a strong one, isn't it? Where it's like, whenever it's full you gotta get it out.

Yeah, you gotta

Joan LeMay, illustrator: get it out or you'll go bananas. Yes.

Mark Stinson, host: Folks, my guess is Joan LeMay and Alex Papa Dimus, they are the author and illustrators of quantum criminals. It's just out this month from University of Texas Press. Thinking about the now release of the book, it's a whole nother phase, isn't it?

You've got the creative phase, we gotta get this [00:21:00] thing done. We got deadlines, we got editors to keep happy and publishers to satisfy. But now the book is done and it's out. There's no better feeling than when you see it in real life, huh?

Alex Pappademas, author: It's been pretty awesome. It's been pretty cool. I've yet to actually see it in a bookstore, and I'm really looking forward to that.

When that happens it's not, I've not run into it on a shelf, but, I'm excited. I'm ready to scan for this bright yellow

Mark Stinson, host: everywhere that I get. That's right. And we were talking about the media blitz or the media. Parades and all the telling about the book.

How do you find that part of, now this process where you're reflecting, you're talking about the craftsmanship how are you finding that, Joan, maybe if I start with you,

Joan LeMay, illustrator: It's fantastic. I love it. And I being completely honest, I was a music publicist for 17 years. I worked in music [00:22:00] for most of my adult life up until I started painting full-time, which was about six and a half, seven years ago.

With some other little things in between. And I've always been on the on the side of supporting artists, musicians and I've been a freelance writer. I've played in bands. I've done all kinds of stuff. But having a thing that you worked on with somebody else out in the world is.

Such a great feeling, and it's not really one that I've had the privilege and honor to have before. Outside of you have a, you have illustrations published, you have a. I've had a ton of gallery shows and art shows and weirdo spaces for the last, whatever it is, 20 years and having shows is really satisfying.

Selling paintings is really satisfying, all that stuff. But this is a whole, this is a whole different [00:23:00] and beautiful animal because the con it just being able to talk about The work you do with other people who are also interested in that is just a joy. It, there's so much to learn through these conversations.

Mark Stinson, host: What do you think, Alex? Holding a mirror up to the work now? I,

Alex Pappademas, author: Yeah, it is interesting cuz I also have, for different reasons, I've spent way more time in your seat asking the artist about their creative choices and why they did it and how that maybe try, and trying to get it something about them through that.

That's what I've, that's the bulk of pretty much all the writing that I've done, in, in my career, which is 20 years now too and it's. Interesting and weird to be on the other side of it. It's really, it's super positive because everybody's really excited about this book and you get to talk to people that love Steely Dan, and that's, and are just stoked that this exists.

And [00:24:00] that's, there's nothing better than that because like I said, you, like I said earlier, it's very lonely to be writing in a room alone and hoping people like it. And that part where people tell you that they like it so far is not getting old. I'm pretty into it. So I think, we'll see how I feel after, the, as the circus moves on from town to town.

But yeah that's been really fun. But it's also, it's it's fun to have the, to have people tell you what your book is about. I really do enjoy that. And that's been really, that's been really gratifying because people have. They're the, what they find interesting about it.

Cuz also when you work on something for this long, you lose any perspective about what's good in it and what's what, and you're like, any of this good. It's like you, sir, I have that problem. Like things really do start to feel like dead work. The longer I'm working on them.

And it, so it's nice to have. It's, it reinvigorates your relationship with it because people are discovering it for the first time and they're like, I can't believe like you did the, like all of this. Like people are [00:25:00] there's a chapter in the book because Steely Dan is named after a dildo in a William Burrow's book.

So there's a chapter about dildos in history and literature in literary history. And the previous, the most famous literary dildos. And as I was writing that eventually I was like, is this even is this the worst chapter of the book? Is this the I didn't

Joan LeMay, illustrator: even know. It's my favorite chapter.

It's my favorite chapter. It's genius. It's a

Mark Stinson, host: lot of people's never gets old does it, Joan? Just keep going. That's a lot of

Alex Pappademas, author: people's favorite chapter. It's crazy. But yeah, it's it's and but that's the, that's the thing. It's like you get to almost open the present. With them at the same time because they're experiencing this thing and they're like, oh my God, I had no, I like, I've it's so you get to, that sense of discovery I think is really nice and it's not Yeah.

So I, I think that's been the funnest part of it of being on the other side of the interview thing is that, that all of these, all the enthusiasm that, that people have had for it so far, we have not been interviewed by anybody who's not a Steely Dan fan.

And I dunno that so right. It's, it helps that [00:26:00] all of these Steely Dan fans are in positions of. Power in the media now they've moved in their all. Yeah, there you go. These kinda intellectual as beats who've moved up through

Mark Stinson, host: the ranks of everything with that great musical taste. Yes. Yeah.

But not just the boomers. I think you also have caught on to this new, appreciation, a new generation of steely Dan fans. Huh? This cult following that has built a little bit wider

Alex Pappademas, author: now. Yeah, it feels, it's, feels like this was a cult thing when we started. In some ways, at least among, people it, I read about this in the book, but there was a point where, to me I'm 45, turning 46, like I am the tail end of Gen X, like right before it becomes, the millennial but I don't identify that way.

Identify as a young x. Rather than and I feel like for me, for a long time and the way that I was, I always felt like I was part of a cult, at least among people my age, the way that, who felt this way, who loved Steely Dan when I was starting to get into them, it felt like a [00:27:00] weird thing to get into.

And even when we started this project on the book it seemed oh, this is gonna be pretty niche in some ways, but I feel like over the, in the time that we worked on it, things built and now it really feels like you can, you can drop a Steely Dan meme on Twitter and everybody's gonna get it in a way that, maybe they wouldn't have before.

There's some kind of, a weird thing has happened with that, which is obviously good. From our perspective. Yes. And I have some, there's some speculating I do in the book about how this came about. And I don't know that it's any one reason necessarily. I think there's societal factors and factors having to do with the way people consume music now versus even a few years ago, even, maybe 10 years ago.

It's it's so radically different and I think the idea of the cannon has been blown open by streaming and by the, yes the way people experience

Mark Stinson, host: it. And Joan, you mentioned the working together piece, in the collaboration, ha has [00:28:00] this work kindled now an interest to more collaborations, no more lonely working in the ATS or basements.

Joan LeMay, illustrator: I I, Alex and I hope to work together on some stuff again in the future. I. When you're a painter or when you're a writer or when you're a potter or when you're, there are so many different creative disciplines where at the end of the day, it's you versus you and the actual making of the thing, even when it's in a collaborative framework.

You are still, you're still there yourself with the work? I just finished I'm finishing officially in a couple of weeks a year of study in London at City and Guilds of London art school, and it was. Mind blowing to be working in a studio space with several other people. There was this huge, [00:29:00] expansive Victorian studio and about 15 other artists all working in this same studio space.

And we all had our own little corners and our own little spaces, but I had certainly never. Painted around any other human beings before, and I was really trepidatious going into that experience. Because I'm easily distracted. I, if I'm interrupted I, it takes me a while to get back into it.

But it completely retrained my brain in terms of what it is to discuss work with others in real time. So that's, it's, yeah, it's every, everything from where I am. Now to pre-book it, it's a different ballgame. And and yeah, collaborating in the future is definitely, is something that I want to do more of, which I think is healthier because it's not necessarily so healthy to to self isolate when you're any [00:30:00] type of creative person, even though many of us are prone to it.

Mark Stinson, host: Yeah. Ultimately it is you and the work, isn't it?

Joan LeMay, illustrator: I love that always. Yes. The battle of boxing

Mark Stinson, host: all the time. What a terrific conversation, guys. I really appreciate you coming on the show and Alex and Joan, I think like anytime when you finally meet the people behind the work, now I hear the voice differently now.

I'll see the illustrations differently, so I really appreciate the personal connection.

Alex Pappademas, author: Oh, we appreciate you having us, mark. This has been awesome. Absolutely.

Mark Stinson, host: And continued. Good luck with the book. It's just release folks this month from University of Texas Press. It's Quantum Criminals, the Ramblers Wild Gamblers, and other Soul Survivors from the songs of Steely Dan.

And as it says on the book Jacket, it is funny it is discerning and it is visually stunning. So congratulations. Thanks so much, and listeners come back again next time. We're gonna continue our around the world journeys, talking to creative [00:31:00] practitioners of all kinds. We've talked to writers and songwriters of course, but we've also talked to restaurateurs and game show host, even a celebrity dentist about their creative process, how they get inspired and how they organize their ideas, and most of all, how they gain the confidence and the connections to launch their work out into the world.

So until next time, I'm Mark Stinson and we're unlocking your world of creativity. We'll see you soon.