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Washington Square. On air is the audio town square for the Washington Square Review. Lansing Community College's literary journal. Writers, readers, scholars, publishing professionals, citizens of the world, gather here and chat about all things writing. Hey there. This is Melissa Ford Luckin, editor for the Washington Square Review. I'm here today with poet Jill Bronfman, and her poem she Read It Wrong will be in our Summer 24 issue. Hey, Jill.

Hi. How are you?

I'm doing great. I'm here talking to you, which is pretty awesome. So tell us about your poem. How did you come to write it?

It has. It's called she Read It Wrong, as you mentioned. And it has a lot of elements of things that are going on in my life. I think all poetry is kind of a synthesis of things that you've been thinking about. I started with I've been writing poetry for a long time since like elementary school, and I have been committing pretty well to a poem a day for 2024. So I've been writing, getting up every morning with a seven o' clock alarm and writing a poem. And they're usually pretty short, like she Read It Wrong. It's just two stanzas or two sections. And this particular poem has a lot to do with love and. And with feelings about animals. We had some foster rabbits during the pandemic when the shelters couldn't bring volunteers in 2020 and 2021. So we had some rabbits in our house, which was enlightening. I had dogs and cats before, but never a rabbit. And these rabbits were very sweet, but also kind of like wild animals and not really tamed. And so the rabbit, the real life ra. Metaphorical rabbit in this poem are kind of wild and kind of a metaphor for an untamed love relationship between the humans and the house as well.

Asking what the significance of the rabbit in the poem is was my book club question I was going to ask you. Now you've already answered it. How many rabbits did you have in the house?

Never more than one at a time. It wasn't like a whole menagerie of animals, but it was one at a. They require a fair amount of equipment, so we had like an enclosure and hay and rabbit food, rabbit treats and rabbit toys. So that kind of took out over a whole area of the house. But, you know, a good thing.

You said the rabbits were kind of wild. Where did they come from?

They came from a rabbit shelter, so they weren't ones that we captured in the wild or anything. And they were in need of home. So we took care of them temporarily and, you know, it was enlightening as far as being introduced to a whole new species and not just a cartoon version of an animal, but a real life animal with, you know, issues. They have issues, they have personalities.

Were they different breeds of rabbits?

I think they're all domestic. You know, I'm not an expert in animal care, but I, you know, I did my best to help out my kids and, and the animal shelter.

Nice. Were there any. Did rabbits show up in any of your other poems?

Oh, that's an interesting question. I. I feel like I have written at least a couple of other poems about the backstories of these foster rabbits, including one named Madame Glam, who was a beautiful white rabbit with an ear tag that was like a piece of jewelry because she had month old rabbit that had been in a testing facility, so she had an ear tag. And I kind of created a whole backstory for her based on her glamorous life.

So you let me know that you're working on an mfa. Can you talk a little bit about that? And I was wondering also you mentioned writing many poems, one a day, and was that a class assignment? Was that connected with your mfa or that's just something that you did?

Yeah, not only was that particular exercise not connected to my mfa, my MFA is not the one in progress, is not in poetry. It's actually in fiction.

Oh, fascinating.

And I went into the MFA research process which was not as elaborate as it should have been. I've worked with kids applying to colleges and with 86, Valencia and Scholarmat, and I would not give them the advice that I gave myself, which was, you know, apply to one school and see what happens. That's what I did. Yeah, bad advice. Don't listen to that. But what I was thinking were two things. One, I had written and published a bunch of poetry, short stories, essays, a variety of academic writing. Since I've worked as an academic in a couple of. In a law school and in a college. And so I had experience with all these different kinds of writing. But the uniform aspect of all these kinds of writing was that they were very short. Right. With the exception of law review articles, which go on endlessly and unnecessarily. These were all short pieces. They were poetry and short stories and essays. And I won a postcard contest for About a Funny Postcard. I had a humor piece to mix Sweeney's. So they were all really short pieces. And I thought, how am I ever going to write a novel, right? It's going to take some superhuman effort. And I tried The Nan Nil, no Rainbow thing in November. And I tried various exercises to try to write a novel. And I just wasn't successful without the structure. And so I applied to this MFA program and I said, okay, I'm not going to do poetry or nonfiction, which were the other two options at Pacific University. I'm going to do fiction and I'm going to give it my. Give it a go. So the first semester, there are four semesters you go. Low residency program for people who don't know is you go generally twice a year for 10 days in this case, and the rest of the time you are home and turning in assignments. So I wrote a novel. I got a hundred thousand words.

Nice. Talk a little bit about the novel. What genre is it?

It's romance and science fiction. So that'll fit real well into, you know, all the existing publishing categories. I'm thinking about adding a mystery, too, just for fun. It is. It combines my two primary interests in literature. I wrote an undergraduate thesis in the history department in Berkeley about the romance novel publishing industry, which I find just sociologically fascinating. Fascinating and interesting from a women's history perspective. And, you know, I've always read romance, and then I read a lot of science fiction and write a lot of science fiction as well. But I have to say, this is not a love story in space. It is just a story about a family. It's set in the present day, in the beginning, and goes 70 years or so into the future. My main character is a young woman who got an internship at an art museum. And she realizes over the course of her life and the course of the novel that she's more than just an administrative assistant when it comes to art. She's really an artist herself.

Had you written any part of the novel before you started the MFA program?

No, actually, no. My. My faculty advisor the first semester says. Said something like, girl, you are not writing a novel your first semester in the MFA program. You're writing some more short stories. And then I didn't really start the novel at all until second semester, so I wrote it second semester. I edited and. And, you know, puffed it out with more decoration in the third semester. And then I'm going to try to polish it for my thesis. That's the plan. We'll see how it goes. Check back with me and see if I finish it.

All right. So you're still in progress then? You're still working on the mfa?

Oh, yeah, yeah. I've got one more semester, so.

And aside from writing the novel, you were Doing a lot of poetry writing while you're in the program? Did you. Are you friends with any of the poets? Are you part of a poet community or is. How's that work?

I'm a part of a couple of poetry communities. First of all. Yes, I befriended the other poets in the program and I actually rudely attend their meetup, their once a month meetup and I read poems in their group as well. And they're very welcoming. Even though I'm not officially part of the poetry program. I also belong to a Mechanics Institute group which is in San Francisco and is known for its writing communities. And I belong to Page street, which is another writing community with kind of work spaces in San Francisco and Berkeley and have read a lot of work with them and that Page street evolved out of Lit Quake, which is a big literary festival in San Francisco, and litcamp, which I had been accepted to. So I've done some poetry and short like micro fiction, borderline poetry with them. And then last but not least, I'm just finished last week my training for California Poets in the Schools, which is a program that brings poet, what they call poet teachers into the classroom in the K through 12 classroom. And that's the thing I have the least experience with. So I taught a third and fourth grade group of kids last week, which was wild because I've taught college students and graduate students and law students. I have never had primary control of a classroom of children before. And I think the answer is to channel Ms. Frizzle from the magic school bus and just be a full on geek and jump around and wear bright colors. And we did all sorts of movement activities in conjunction with the poetry.

So were you surprised by the experience of teaching those kids?

Yeah, I mean, they were really cute. They were really eager to express themselves. Some of them spent some time, as we all do as adults, looking at a blank page and going, I don't know what to write. But they all eventually came up with at least a word or a description or an image of something. And the theme of the class was nature. So we talked a lot about animals and plants and the sky and the, the forest and things I thought that the kids could relate to.

Very cool. So it sounds like you're a really busy, busy person. How do you balance all of that?

You know, I don't. It's usually the answer.

I don't know from here it looks like you do. You're doing the things.

I get overwhelmed. I'm kind of on sabbatical from full time work, which I've done for many years. I mentioned I spent five years at a non profit called Common Sense Media, which a lot of people in education or parents will recognize. And before that I was running a think tank at a law school and before that I was, you know, an in house corporate, in house corporate job. So I've had a lot of full time jobs and I've always written whether you have to do it, you know, lunch hour, nights, weekends. I think you have to accept the ebb and flow of it. Like if you have two small children and a full time job, you have to accept that those years may not be your most productive years. I mean people do it. People there. I know people put out novels when they have two small kids in a full time, but that was not me. I definitely wrote more after my kids got older.

I think that's a really important thing to note is that when you're a writer, it's something that you do your whole life. It's part of who you are, it's your identity and that different times you will write more than other times. And that's just the way it goes. You know, it's a lifelong journey.

Yeah. And there's no retiring necessarily. I hear every once in a while a famous writer will say, I have retired from T3 from publishing books. And I'm like, okay, yeah, maybe in fact I even had an instructor who said something like that. But I think they still, even if they're like, okay, not going to take on the Herculean effort of writing a novel this year, but they still write, maybe write some short stories for publication or a couple of poems and they, or they even just write for themselves, you know, okay, I'm not going to publish this. I do say that. I have to admit that. I also say that to myself every once in a while. This is not. I'm writing this for myself, it's not for publication. But then I get sometimes get tempted and send it out on submittable or something.

How does it feel differently when you tell yourself, I'm not going to publish it, I'm just writing for myself. How is that process different? How does it feel?

Well, my parents, as a lot of writers say, well, my parents are still alive so that limits what I get. Right, Right. You think about your family. There's some limitations, I think, on what you can write about your parents, your children, your living relatives, you can sometimes disguise characters and create composite characters of people you know, and some people are better at that than others. But I do think there are some limitations to what you can publish. So sometimes, you know, there are levels. So sometimes I write literally just for myself. It stays in my computer or my notebook. Sometimes I might just read it to a small group, like a group at Page street or a group on a workshop or something like that. Like, it doesn't get published to the wide world. And then, you know, the third level is it gets published in your journal. And theoretically, anyone who reads Washington Square will know that. I was thinking about particular issues.

When you. The mid level, when you share it with a small group, do they help you decide whether or not to move it onto that last level of sending it into the world?

Oh, that's a good question. I never asked them. I'm like, does this. Can you tell this is about, you know, my family? Is it really obvious that it's autobiographical? Yeah, I should ask them that. How embarrassing do you think this would be if I actually published this? And do you think anyone would sue me? Maybe, yeah, that's a good thing to do. Like, if you're uncertain about whether this is ready for publication, ripe for publication, or just suitable for publication or it's too awkward to publish, you could ask to your little audience of writers group or something like that.

So it sounds like in those instances you're using the writing more as like a therapeutic tool to get the feelings out and to express yourself.

Well, yeah, I mean, I think every writer does that to some extent. And whether you choose to share it beyond that, that is always the question. But I think the vast majority of stuff that I write in, 95% of the stuff that I write, it's going to get submitted, it's going to be incorporated into a larger piece or at least read out loud.

How do you decide when it's time to submit it? When you know it's polished up enough?

Polished is not often my standard, actually. I like polished. If it's a poem, I absolutely, without question would read it out loud, at least to myself, because the sound of it and the. The rhythm of it are very important. Even if no one ever reads it out loud ever again. That is my quote unquote, proofreading more than how it looks on the page. But polished. You know, I hear stories about people writing the same poem over and over again for years or spending 10 years on the novel. And I'm like, some of the stuff I've had published has not been something I've held on to for a long time. Some of the stuff I've had published, I wrote it, I proofread it, of course, and if it was a poem, read it out loud. And maybe even if it was a short story, read it out loud. Oh, my God. Do I have to, Melissa? Do I have to read my whole novel out loud to myself? I'm just realizing that now. That sounds like an awful task.

100,000 words. That's going to take a minute.

I got to go now and read my whole novel out loud to myself. I'll think about that. But yeah. So in answer to your question, polished. Some pieces that I've had published, I would consider very polished and some kind of raw.

Okay. I think there's a piece of advice kind of tucked in there, and that is don't necessarily wait for some magic moment to submit the piece. Maybe just trust your intuition, and when it feels ready to go, it's ready to go. Because it sounds like what you're saying is if you just keep polishing and polishing, you keep working on the same poem for so long, you may. You may kind of flatten it out.

I'm a reader for the Master's Review, which is another literary journal. So I read sometimes. I read almost every week, 15 stories. So I have a pretty good idea of what I like and what I don't like. And I've read and listened to a lot of poetry, and so I. I think it's always difficult to judge your own work, more difficult than to judge other people's. But I do think I also have a pretty good idea of whether it's good or not, like, whether it works. And for me, personally, if I can write something and I get kind of choked up, you know, like, moved by my own writing, it sounds really silly or geeky to say that about your own writing, but if I feel moved by something I wrote, then I know it's going to have some effect on other people, or I assume it will.

Right. I think that's really important to trust your. The way that you respond to your own writing, because ultimately, you know, like you were kind of saying, like, your pieces of yourself are going to be tucked in there whether you put them in there intentionally or not. So you're working on your MFA now. You're polishing up that last draft and apparently getting ready to schedule some reading time where you'll be reading it aloud. When do you anticipate finishing the mfa?

It finishes. The program finishes in January with a last. With a fifth residency after the last semester. And then you do a little graduation thing. And then, you know what I. What I would love to do with my novel is What I've done with all my academic writing, and that is turn it over to someone else and let them edit it. But it has come to my attention from talking to a lot of novelists, including a program I just did last month in North Carolina, the Looking Glass Writers Conference, working with Jason Mott, it has come to my attention that I need to spend a lot more time editing my own work, particularly the novel. And before I send it out to anyone else to be edited when this is very overwhelming. But I'm going to give it a shot.

Yeah, a novel is a very different kind of beast from a short story. Just the way. Yeah, it's a thing for sure. So aside from that, what kind of stuff are you working on right now? Some more poems or academic work?

The poem a day for sure. I get up, I have like 7 o' clock on my calendar, write, you know, poem a day. And I. I do that. Just the methodology. In case anyone's interested, I open a Google Doc. I fought the whole Google Docs thing for a while. I'm a copyright attorney, so I have issues with that. But I. It's really easy to use. I use. I open up a Google Doc and write a poem in that. And also I like to do a belt and suspenders thing and I download it to my hard drive and sometimes if it's a good one, I'll email it to myself. And if it's a really good one. So maybe just a handful of times this year I have gone right to Submittable and submitted the poem. So I'm doing that poetry work. I also use the Discover function on Submittable to generate writing prompts. So I'll send something in a short story, a poem. Microfiction. As I mentioned, I just love microfiction. You'll see. For anyone who looks at my website, you'll see lots of little short pieces that I think are entertaining.

Very cool. All right, well, we'll be sure to include the website in our show notes and LinkedIn in case anyone wants to get in touch with you maybe to ask about some of the writer groups that you participate with. Sure, yeah. So thanks a lot for stopping in today and I had a great time talking with you.

Thank you so much, Melissa. This was really fun.

Thanks for stopping by the audio town square of the Washington Square Review. Until next time, this has been Washington Square on air from Lansing Community College. To find out more about our writers, community and literary journal, visit lcc. Edu wsr Writing is messy, but do it anyway.

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LCC Connect voices, vibes, Vision. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Now Spinning, the official podcast of the Lansing Community College Vinyl Record Club. We meet twice a month to listen to vinyl and talk about music. Stay tuned to learn about how you can get in touch with us and attend our meetings. All right. Hello, everyone. Welcome back. I'm here today with our good friends

Iris Maurici, Leo Ackerman.

And I, of course, am Simon Medina. And today we're going to be talking about a very special person, A friend of the club.

Friend of the club. About time.

About time. And this man's name is. I'm trying to read this here. What's his name? Iris, what's his name?

Sorry, I forgore.

You forgot. This is. Okay, what's his name?

I think it's Will Wood.

Oh, my God. How could I have forgotten?

Will would. What?

I guess we'll have to find out.

We'll have to find out.

Well, I guess we'll have to find out. And I think a good place to start here would be, well, at the start of his discography. And that's a very interesting album here that's called Everything Is a Lot. And let's talk about that for a second.

So I have not exactly a history with this album, but upon listening to it as much as I have in the past month and a half, including, he pulled a lot from it for his concert, which I saw in Kalamazoo on Saturday.

Well, goody.

It was great. More on that later. It may have accidentally become my favorite of his albums and it's been a very, very close race for my favorite. Any particular things jumping out at you guys immediately?

Well, I mean, the album art itself is quite interesting. I don't really know what to describe this as.

Quite wacky and zany is what you could describe, which I think is a good launching off point to talk about one, one key part of Will Wood. He's a little bit quirky, he's a little bit weird with it.

A strange, strange person. One Thing I want to talk about here is just the. The song titles on this album.

The song titles on all of his album.

Well, like, especially this one. I feel like this one's out there. Do you want to. Could you name off some of your favorites here?

Yeah. So I'm a big fan of 6up, 5o, cop out, parentheses, Pro Con. I'm a big fan of Thermodynamic Lawyer, Esquire, comma gfd. I'm a big fan of. And some of these had different names on his Amazon kind of live performance, documentary situation.

As if it wasn't hard enough to

read these already, I could pull that up. That's the real Will Wood, of course.

But before we get to the real Will Wood, we should probably talk about this first Will Wood album here. And I just want to talk about the musical influences that he draws from. There is a lot going on here.

That's not a part.

I am.

I mean, that is, like, the name of the album. I guess it's in the name. But there's just so many different. It's probably being pulled in so many different directions at the same time, but it all. But it's still cohesive enough to the point where it's just. You have to wonder, like, how did he do this? Yeah, it's insane.

It's everything.

I mean, he loves his Tom Waits. He loves his Billy Joel.

Yes. I was gonna say Billy Joel's. He's all over this. Like, the one song. Was it Red Moon? I listened to. I thought that one was. Sounded. Yeah, a lot like a Billy Joel song, which was kind of shocking to me. But again, the other thing about it, not just, like, the diverse influences for it, but it's just. There's just an insane amount of energy behind this. Like, every song is just, like, all the way up to 100. Like, the first, like, few seconds of it. Like, he doesn't hold back at all. Like, it's very interesting. It's a. It's tiring to listen to it because you're just, like, being taken for a ride the whole time until the very end of the album.

Mm. Thankfully, he does follow up 6 up 5o, which I'm just gonna stop there from. From here on out, which I have played at a meeting. Also, he does follow that up with Skeleton Appreciation Day, which is less. Less high energy. Still kind of exhausting emotionally.

Right? Maybe,

but so it's not. It's kind of a roller coaster. It's a lot of high energy, low energy.

Yes, it is. I noticed that. That's what I'm saying. It's so tiring. Like, just when you think, like it's calmed down for a second, you just

back into it, the disparate elements of it. Like, he pulls from so many influences, obviously, but Will's energy as a performer and also his backing band, the Tapeworms, which I feel like we have to mention a little bit more on selfies when we get to it. His backing bands energy as. As well as him carry the record. Like. Like you just said, the first and second song, very different. But with Will's energy, it. It feels cohesive, no matter how different the songs may appear to be at first glance.

Yeah, I agree with that statement. And then just the. The whole thing, it's a. It's a very. Everything is a lot. That's just the name of it. I think it sums up the album quite perfectly.

It's a lot going on.

There is a lot going on. And by the time you think you get it figured out, the album's over and you. You're just kind of sitting there like, what? I don't know what that was. That was.

Oh, that sure was a lot of references to alcoholism.

Yeah.

I felt like I got hit. Hit in the head with a hammer when I finished listening. Listening to it.

A comical kind or like a. I

mean, I liked it, but.

No, it was a joke.

I got hit with a hammer because there was just so much going on.

Yeah.

Like, there's so much to dissect, like, lyrically. And he is. He is erratic on his early stuff.

Yeah.

Oh, he's. Yeah, definitely. But I think the. The album that follows this up, though, that one was, I want to say, even kind of went a little bit crazier than the first one did, which was terrifying to me, but I liked it a lot, actually.

My personal favorite self.

Yeah.

Yes.

This one. I. I took a friend with me to the concert and they bought his entire discography on CD while we were there. Yeah. So we got to listen to Selfish, you know, more Willwood after the Willwood on the way to Taco Bell. And then we listen to the rest of Selfish while eating Taco Bell.

It's a good post. Wilwood meal, I think.

Oh, yeah. I got two crunchwrap Supremes.

We're not sponsored.

Not sponsored.

We're not sponsored.

Might as well be.

I would sell you guys for even one that's.

I completely understand that. But.

But.

But this.

This album is so good also.

It's like Simon said, it is more overwhelming than the first One. The first one, in a lot of ways, felt put together. It was definitely his first album. He had a lot of great ideas and so did the rest of the band, but it was like, okay, we're stepping foot into this. Let's see how we can do this. Is Will Wood going, okay, I got it. Let's go as crazy as we can.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

This song does contain at least one of my top three songs. Hand me my shovel, I'm going in. It also contains some of his longest songs.

Yes, I like that quite a bit. I like when Willwood, like, lets the songs, like, sprawl out and, like, yeah, they demand your attention. I'm forgetting the name of it. But track three off of that album, that's Cotard's Solution. Oh, my Lord.

Yeah. That one was incredible, so. I love that one.

Yeah.

But I just want to read off a song title from this album and in full, and I'm gonna try my best to pronounce this. Mr. Capgras encounters a secondhand vanity Tolpam answers prosopagnosia pareidolia as direct result of trauma to the fusiform gyrus. What does any of that mean? Can you explain that to me, please?

So I do believe Capgras Solution.

Just say. You can just say Capgras.

I think it is, I believe, a mental disorder where you believe that someone close to you has been replaced by a perfect imposter.

A tulpa, essentially.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay, Yeah.

A tulpa is like a. I'm forgetting where it's from, but it is like a folklore term for, like, an evil clone of another person, more or less.

Okay, no, this is the first I've heard of this. This is educational, actually.

Maybe not necessarily evil, but clone nonetheless.

Yeah, I understand what you mean.

I enjoy, like, kind of the implication of some of these song lyrics. When you do, like, that little bit of research, it's like, okay, so, Mr. Crabgrass, does that mean that this is a person who believes they themselves are the imposter? Like, in Among Us?

Who's to say?

Please don't ever say that again.

Sorry.

But the entirety of this record is.

It's wild.

It's so much. It's so much. It absolutely rewards repeated listens. And you really have to pay attention to what's going on because there are so many layers and the song titles are so much and the lyrics are so much. It's almost sensory overload, but it never becomes, like, negatively overwhelming. Once again, very quirky guy,

and sometimes he just Hits you with a bridge. And I remember the first time I listened to Hand me my shovel specifically. And it went into the kind of. It's slower than the rest of the song. The part that builds up to going fast again. I remember the first time I heard that. I had to stop, like, everything else completely. I wasn't. I'm not like a full listener. Listener. I have to be doing something else in the background. I had to stop.

Yeah. One thing I really like about, like, all of his songs really, is he's a very theatrical guy.

Oh.

Yep. He will grab your attention. You will pay attention to what he's saying. You don't get an option when you're.

When you. And I'm going back to the tour again. This will go back to the tour.

From what I've read, his live performances were a staple in his early career. Like, he would have fake mental breakdowns and have, like, plants in the audience that would fight with him while he was performing.

Yeah.

Like, his live performances are a lot.

They are. And it's so much. Even when you're just listening to the music when you are there and you're watching him do his theatrical little, Little moves. And he's, like, doing a line about how cool he is, and he, like, does the lean back, pulls. Pulls back the hair. Or when he slams his face into the piano, which he does repeatedly.

Okay.

It is a sight to behold when you're five foot five and there are several people taller than you in front of you. But it's also a sight to behold when you're just, like, you're there seeing

a man smash his face into a piano.

It was, I hate to say, cool, because I'm pretty sure what he's doing is, like, stopping right before he hits the piano and just hitting it with his hands. He has a habit, as far as I can tell, of hitting his piano a lot. I know that part of his piano is broken. I know that there was one performance that he did for TV where he was going to do. You can see this aborted motion where he was about to lift his foot up to slam it into the piano, and then he remembers he's on TV and puts it back down.

They didn't get the real experience. They didn't. But, yeah, selfish is overwhelming in the best ways. I think it's where Will really starts to come into his own as, like, a theatrical performer and a songwriter, too. Which then leads us into the next one.

Oh, boy.

The next one.

I've heard a lot of this one actually.

Pretty handily is most famous, I think.

I think so.

Yeah. For sure.

It's if I'm remembering right as I am pulling it up and not stalling for time. Yes. This is the one that I have brought into record club almost every meeting for the past two years. This is the normal album and it has been my favorite for a very long time. I know that I've been like, oh, this one's my favorite. This one's my favorite. Everything is a lot is newly my favorite. This is like. This is the introduction album. You don't really. If you're a new fan, you probably start with this one.

Yeah, this. I mean it's a very normal album. Obviously. You just look at the title.

The most normal.

And he's just hanging out of the window in that picture. In the picture and I waving.

He's so happy normally.

Exactly. One thing I found about this one is that the theatrical stuff from the first few. I know we keep saying every time he cranks it up and you think that he can't get it can't get any like. I don't say worse but like I can't get any more insane. It does. It gets even stranger with this one. He manages to bring in a lot more like I want to say in his early albums, obviously there's a lot of like the piano rock, like the jazz kind of thing going. But this one he brings in a lot of like 50s, like rock and roll kind of stuff, which I guess goes with like the suburbia theme.

It starts with Suburbia Overture, which is a three act song. Yeah, it's basically like three songs in one. And it's so good. I accidentally. It accidentally became my boyfriend's favorite.

It's accidentally.

Accidentally. You know how it is.

I know that the 2020 version. Was it 2020 or was it more recent?

He just recently for this, this album is from 2020. He just recently, for its fourth anniversary, did like a remix.

Okay. I know that the first song on that remix has something about like Blue Velvet in it, which is a David lynch movie about like the dark underbelly of suburbia. And I'm wondering if you have more knowledge about like the lore of this record because clearly there's a concept going on and I feel like you're best equipped to explain that there is kind

of a concept to this one. Me and my limited media literacy. I can try to explain it. A lot of it is mental health stuff. Like there's, there's. There's a lot of that kind of theme, particularly with things like. I think it's. Marcia, thank you for the dialectics, but I think you should leave. But I need you to leave. There's a lot of that. But then, like, Suburbia Overture is about,

like,

how the HOA are, like, vampires or something.

He didn't say anything untrue.

Yeah, right. No, I believe that 100%. Yeah. But I think that especially, like, with the musical influences anyway. I feel like he's kind of doing a little bit of, like, a pastiche on, like. Like, the 50s and how. Like that. Who. Like, idealized era and that kind of stuff. But he's really. He's going in deep with, like, you know, the darker stuff, obviously, which that's something he does with every album he does. Obviously, it's a lot of stuff about, like, mental health and that kind of thing. But this one, I think the contrast

between, like, the doo wop stylings of this record and the. And the. He has more pop sensibilities on this record as well. His songs are a lot less aggressive and theatrical, and I think a lot of them are catchier.

Yeah, I was gonna say that this is an insanely catchy album.

There's the. I think it's the Beatles reference that starts Second Sightseer.

Yeah, that one.

So, yeah, there's. There's certainly some of that.

Yeah, no, they go. They go crazy about that in this one. And then there was like, a. I think, like, a couple songs where he, like. He really shows his, like, vocal range in this one because he hits some insanely high, like, falsetto notes on this one. It is insane to listen to.

Oh, yeah.

I don't. I don't know how he does.

It also can, like. He goes from growling.

Yeah. The Tom Waits thing. Into just, like. I want to say, like, the Beach Boys thing, where he gets, like, an insanely high note, and then he just goes back to just the.

Yeah.

Like, again, the Tom Waits thing, he's. He's got range, insane range.

He's just such a good performer. And I feel like that it needs to be emphasized the most throughout this incredible performer, like, he's made to be seen live.

I wanted to be further up front than I was because he is such a good pianist. Anything that you, like, listen to in this album, when you're listening to it and you're like, wow, that is, like, a really complicated piano run that he just did. He does that live. He does that at the speed that is on the recording. In a lot of cases, I think Second Sightseer, he kind of slowed down because it's one of his fastest songs. It is my number one favorite. It is ridiculous sometimes with the stuff that he does on the piano. And I love it so much.

It's so technically demanding, like, on every level.

And then he's singing at the same time, which insane lyrics and that kind of stuff. It just. I just can't grab my head around how someone's able to do all that at the same time.

It's inspiring to me personally, because the two instruments that he plays live, the ukulele and the piano, those are both instruments I play. And I'm not even half at his level yet, and I aspire to be. And I've been playing the ukulele for, like, 10 years.

Well, you get. Well, you still got some time. So after the Normal album, we take a little pivot into a much more mellow record. I think this feels like a comedown after the high of the first three records he did.

Yes. And I know that this was also written at kind of like a point where he was in a better headline space. So, like, a lot of it is still so sad. And, like, I know less about this album than I do about the other ones, because the high energy stuff is kind of what I'm there for.

Yeah.

But I will say that the main character, which he opened the Kalamazoo set with, and also that was hilarious poetically, because my introduction to Will Wood was through a Cult of the Lamb edit on TikTok of the main character that fits again.

Love finds a way

Love finds a

way the fan base there, it's a Venn diagram. There's a significant overlap, I feel, but

perhaps from what I've heard of this record, it takes the pop sensibilities of the Normal album and. And kind of does away with the manic stuff. And you're left with just Will reflecting on himself, really. Yeah, it's. It's kind of sad.

I mean, the other ones, obviously, they have, like, the undercurrent of, like, the depressing reality underneath it, but, like, it's going so. Like, it's going so fast, you don't really have any time to, like, dwell on it. But this one, they really just. You, like you said, they strip away all of the, like, the manic stuff and it's really just. You're just left with the emotion of it.

I do believe it's also longer.

Yeah, it's like an hour and 10 hour and 12 minutes.

It's pretty long. I have like a top three here I can kind of talk about. There's the main character, which I already talked about. There's against the Kitchen Floor, which I love because it attacks me personally. Of course, I identify with it heavily, which is probably not something that he wants to hear about this song. And it's also just good. And I'm learning it on the ukulele also.

That's cool.

And then there's Tomcat Disposables, which is about a mouse that is trying to survive the winter. And it's extremely sad, and I cry every time I listen to it.

I don't know what to say about this record, really. It's from the bullet speed of the first three. You can be distracted with the virtuosity or his wild performances and the extravagant art direction, the theatricality of it all. And when you strip it back, it's just. I don't know, there's something there.

It's vulnerable in like a. Am I being kind of coy about it?

He.

He's trying to be vulnerable, but at the same time, he's still theatrical.

He's wrapped up in the irony of it.

It feels like he's playing off his own sadness is somewhat of a joke. Yeah, for sure. Makes. It's depressing. I don't know if I would recommend this to be the first Will Wood record you listen to, because it's not emblematic of his greater sound. It's not emblematic of his performance styles. From what I know. It's just kind of a poignant meditation on him and his mental state at the time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Good album, though. I like quite like. Honestly, I'd say if I had to, like, rank the ones I've listened to, I'd say I might like this more than the first one, but that's because this is just more like, more familiar to me in terms of what I usually listen to. Like, it's a lot more like mellow acoustic stuff. I like that.

Yeah.

Which I know. I don't say. I don't. I'm not saying I don't like the. You know, the first one, but that one was, like you said, it's a lot. It's a lot, if you will. Everything is a lot.

Everything is a lot.

Yeah.

If you had to rank them, what order would you rank them in? Real quick?

If I had to rank them, I would be biased by how much I've listened to specific albums over others. Like, In Case I Make It, I have listened to far less than I have the other three current rankings. In Case I Make it, video listeners. They. That's audio listeners. That's a four. And then selfish, which feels really. I'm upset to put that at three, but with so little to draw from. Everything is a lot. I know. I said it's my favorite right now. Normal album gets number one. It's so good. And with the remaster, he also re released some of his demo, like, live studio demo versions of three of the songs. And it reminded me of my favorite performance of Laplace's Angel. Hurt people. Hurt people. Yeah. Where he, right before the performance starts, tells the saxophone player to play the solo at the beginning, like someone is putting a needle into his eye.

Interesting.

Wow.

I don't know how. How one would play a saxophone solo like that, but I guess Will would know. Will would know.

He got it.

He did. He did get it.

He did get it.

I just also really want to mention real quick, going back to the live show again. Again, again, I was really happy with the encore. He played Thermodynamic Lawyer. And then I, Me, Myself, and I, Me, Myself has alternate versions of its bridge, and he originally just played it as is, you know, currently available and recorded. And then he did the old version, which is like my favorite version, and that's how he wrapped up the show, and it was awesome.

And I think you said to me that they accidentally sold. What was it, like, double the amount of tickets they were supposed to.

Oh, my God. So the reason that I was standing and also in front of a bunch of tall people is because he sold, like, twice the amount of tickets that he was supposed to for that venue. So, like, half of us were supposed to be sitting, and he just. He sold. He's too popular, suffering from success. He had a whole lot of bits. He's. He's got jokes.

He's got too much money, and he's too funny. Drag much money.

It's, you know, a hard life.

I mean, at least she got, like, an extra couple songs out of it.

Oh, yeah. He had a specific set list for Kalamazoo because of that. So. Thank you.

The pity music.

Thank you for having pity. That. That was really cool of you. And just so you know, I was the guy in the really sparkly jacket.

Will.

What if you listen to this.

Of course Will would. If you listen to this.

All right. I think. Is there anything else that we need to mention about it?

He's a great friend of the show. Cool guy. Shout out, Will Wood.

Cool guy. Come be a guest. That would be funny.

It would be quite fun.

We'll talk about people that aren't you definitely.

What was about his favorite Steely Dan album or something. Yeah, we'll figure it out.

But I'll talk about Ween again, of course.

Yep. But that's okay. I think that does just about wrap it up for tonight. But thank you all for talking about Wood with Will. Wood with me. That was enlightening. I've learned a lot. Whatever the evil clone thing was, that is fascinating to hear about. I didn't even know that was a thing. Now I have something else to worry about.

If you put some research into those song titles, you kind of learn something.

It's educational and, you know, maybe entertaining.

Nothing better to be at Lansing Community College.

Exactly. But anyway, if you have an interest in coming to any of our meetings or listening back on any of our playlists from the meetings, you can check out our website that'll be linked with the podcast. We welcome everybody at the at our meetings. Whether you're a student, you're a staff, or you're a community member, it's a very welcoming group of people. Very interesting music Taste Whether you have collected records for your entire life or you just started, or you just don't own any and you just want to listen to good music and expand your music taste, then there is no better place to do it.

I bought everything as a lot on vinyl. Come listen to it. I got it.

Yes you do. Yes you do.

That's their calling.

That's the calling. Well, we'll see you all next time. Bye bye. Bye bye. Love you.

Bye bye.

Sharing the Voices of Lansing Community College Visit us@lccconnect.org LCC Connect Voices vibes Vision

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to combat stress and anxiety. It can also be helpful for injury treatment and prevention. The Lansing Community College Massage Therapy Clinic is open to the public and provides the opportunity for students to learn. Visit LCC Edumassage for more information. Thank you for listening to LCC Connect. I'm Paul Schwartz and I host a show called the Safety Plan. The Safety Plan is about the latest cyber scams and how to avoid them. You can catch the Safety Plan here on LCC Connect or listen anytime@lccconnect.org this has been a presentation of LCC Connect, a weekly program that features the voices, vibes and vision of Lansing Community College. All shows featured on LCC Connect are recorded at the WLNZ studio located on LCC's downtown campus. Each program is podcast based and can be heard anytime@lccconnect.org if you or someone you know would like to be a guest on one of our shows. Connect with us by emailing LCC ConnectCC.edu.