To Amen Dunes and Patti Harrison, Comedians and Musicians Are Kindred Spirits

When Damon McMahon, aka Amen Dunes, ran by means of the record of individuals he had in thoughts to speak to about Dying Jokes, his first album launch in six years, he thought-about the standard suspects: Whoopi Goldberg, Martin Shkreli, Tom Cruise. However Dunes, a longtime comedy buff, landed on the comic and actress Patti Harrison, drawn to the summary and infrequently absurd approach she lampoons modern tradition. Musicians and comedians, he posited, may need extra in frequent than you’d suppose. Additionally featured on his new document is an array of comedy titans, together with Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor, whose stand-up clips are interpolated. “This album is me attempting to speak about all this shit that nobody needs to speak about, all of the little stuff that goes on between the traces,” he advised Harrison on a Zoom name earlier this month. “It’s my model of being political.” In dialog, the 2 discuss Tim & Eric, the state of the music business, and deal with the Angophile allegations. 

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AMEN DUNES: Hey, Patti.

PATTI HARRISON: Hey. Can I name you Damon?

DUNES: Yeah.

HARRISON: I didn’t know for those who needed me to name you Dunes, which I’m completely satisfied to do. I don’t need to lifeless title you. Effectively, thanks for having me on. Actual fast, what impressed you to ask me to be the primary interview you probably did?

DUNES: That’s a very good query. Really, the primary query is, what are we doing? Are we supposed to simply discuss random stuff? 

HARRISON: I did an interview for Interview Journal as soon as that was profiling me. I used to be in the identical boat the place I believed it was about two artists interviewing one another equally. The one who interviewed me was Tim Heidecker. So I’m the Tim Heidecker right here. I’m interviewing you and we’re going to discover no matter you need to discuss, actually. It doesn’t must be about your new album. I believe that’s an thrilling factor to speak about, however you would additionally discuss any illnesses or something that you just’re presently combating.

DUNES: I’m very, very, very sick and I’m dying.

HARRISON: That’s TMI and I can not maintain area with you on that.

DUNES: I believed we’d simply randomly discuss, which may go very flawed.

HARRISON: The dialog may veer into one thing that’s deeply painful for each of us, after which we may spiral about it in a approach that makes us lose observe of time–

DUNES: An outpouring.

HARRISON: A gradual outpouring of interior bile and abscesses leaking into the general public sphere. 

DUNES: They had been like, “Who ought to we ask?” So I requested about all these ridiculous folks.

HARRISON: Whoopi Goldberg? Martin Shkreli?

DUNES: Yeah, precisely.

HARRISON: Benito Mussolini.

DUNES: Tom Cruise. Yeah. Anyway, I’m a giant comedy fan, however I’m very choosy about it. I used to be a extreme Tim & Eric fan for a few years. My brother’s a giant comedy individual and through the years he would all the time be like, “Test this out,” however nothing would evaluate. Tim & Eric was all I used to be serious about. Then he confirmed me I Suppose You Ought to Depart [with Tom Robinson], and also you had a scene the place you had been a wealthy enterprise individual or one thing.

HARRISON: I don’t know what you’re speaking about.

DUNES: And I’ll simply say, I discover that this world may be very conservative and that artists are very conservative and they’re copycats or simply fucking need consideration. Issues aren’t in a terrific state. I noticed your efficiency and I used to be like, “She has some kind of absurdity in her that’s not feigned or pressured.” It was not the usual expression. I simply actually admired it. 

HARRISON: That’s very nice to listen to and thanks for saying that.

DUNES: I imply it, as a result of particularly with comedy there’s simply quite a lot of pale performances on the market, you understand what I imply? I believe actually good comedians have a sensibility… I imply, I may get extra nerdy and analytical, however I don’t must.

HARRISON: I agree with you about that. I may discuss all day concerning the symbiosis of comedians and musicians and the way they usually covet what one another have in the best way that they’re in a position to specific, in order that they actually admire one another. I really feel like quite a lot of musicians I do know don’t actually like to speak about music, they need to discuss different stuff.

DUNES: Yeah, precisely.

HARRISON: When you begin as a honest earnest musician and you place out music and other people fall in love with the expression, if they arrive to your reside present and also you’re humorous on stage, it’s one of the best discovery for the fan as a result of they’re like, “Whoa, this individual isn’t solely a very good musician, they’re additionally actually personable and humorous.” But when a comic is like, “I need to begin both releasing earnest music, or I need to begin being a honest, dramatic actor,” persons are like, “What’s your dumb ass doing?”

DUNES: It’s true. I don’t know why that’s. 

HARRISON: Anyway, I’m going to pivot. I need to ask, the place are you from?

DUNES: I used to be born in Philadelphia. These are good, let’s maintain it boring.

HARRISON: Okay, I’ve to be sincere. After I noticed your image, I assumed you had been Scottish.

DUNES: That’s cool. I’m an Anglophile, I suppose.

HARRISON: Yeah, it’s the hair. And also you appear stoic. I watched a few your music movies and I really feel like you will have a stoic-ness that feels knowledgeable by the ache and the power of the Scotch. However anyway, let’s discuss your album. It’s out in the present day on Sub Pop, and that’s actually thrilling. Big congratulations to you, Damon, aka Dunes.

DUNES: Thanks.

HARRISON: How do you’re feeling about an album launch day? 

DUNES: I imply, I’ve been doing this for therefore lengthy. I’ve so many emotions concerning the music business generally. I had quite a lot of fiery emotions in these latest months, witnessing the musical panorama. I haven’t put an album out for six years and I’ve been placing albums out for 22 years. It’s very completely different now and it’s very disappointing and disturbing the best way the world works nowadays with artwork. When you requested me a month in the past, I’d have been like, “I’m going to stop making music. I don’t actually need to do that anymore,” in virtually all sincerity. However now, folks have sat with this album and I’ve executed these interviews and I’ve had some direct fan interplay stuff and it’s been heartwarming. Interviews have been deeper and other people have understood extra. I really feel some kind of gratification from placing this out. While you hearken to the playback or to a recording of one thing you probably did, you’re like, “That was so superb, I really feel gratified.” Then it comes out into the world and it’s filtered by means of advertising and fucking digital platforms and all that fucking nastiness. That fucks it up, for me. Anyway, I really feel balanced in the present day, however I all the time have combined emotions about it.

HARRISON: Do the fiery emotions across the shift within the music business pertain to TikTok and social media’s integration into the music business and the inventive business at massive, I’d dare say?

DUNES: Yeah, undoubtedly. I’ve all the time made very introspective music, and this album is definitely very outwardly contrarian content material. It’s my model of being political. It’s partly about what occurs when every little thing that we’re is smashed and filtered by means of the fucking digital realm. This album is about that and it was very bizarre to expertise that through the launch.

HARRISON: I completely relate to that feeling. I’ve quite a lot of pals who work in music and once I watch the best way that younger persons are pressured to advertise their very own music by making these movies of them sitting of their automobile, lip-syncing their personal music… I’ve a deep underground bunker of hundreds of cringe TikToks of individuals self-promoting their music which can be so humorous and in addition devastating on the identical time that I’ll by no means share publicly apart from between my pals, as a result of I understand how laborious it’s to place your self on the market. I simply surprise what the sustainability of that’s for artists. I can’t think about how a lot you most likely really feel it, being within the business. I clocked that within the lyrics in your album and I simply watched the video for “Across the World” and there was a line that was basically, “We’re attempting to face up and struggle again, however we’re doing it inside their programs that they supply for us. We’re utilizing their instruments and their means.” 

DUNES: Yeah.

HARRISON: The music video is so—and I apologize for utilizing this phrase about your work—epic. There’s a hugeness to it, quite a lot of discovered footage. With the movies and the album itself, it looks as if there’s quite a lot of ambiance through the use of radio frequency. You mentioned it’s been six years. I noticed that 2018 was when Freedom got here out?

DUNES: Yeah.

HARRISON: What’s been happening together with your music life since 2018? You mentioned you had been even eager about quitting music…

DUNES: I imply, I used to make artwork for artwork’s sake… Equally, I really feel like your work and possibly your stand-up has a kind of contentious, difficult high quality to it, too. Your comedy feels prefer it’s partaking with the fucking issues of the world, even when abstractly. So anyway, in the previous few years, it broke my coronary heart to see what was happening on the planet. And I began making this album and these songs they usually got here on their very own. I don’t sit down with a pen and write out what’s in my head. I sit down an instrument and I begin taking part in when the temper strikes me, after which these lyrics simply come out. All this began popping out that was commenting on what I used to be seeing round me. So as a substitute of being introspective, it was very outward and important. 

HARRISON: I undoubtedly suppose that the lockdown of all of it, even pre-lockdown, how a lot stuff was happening throughout Trump’s presidency… I believe the best way that we’re uncovered to the horrifying information of the world actually skyrocketed the publicity stage. There’s a stage of trauma that comes with that mentally. 

DUNES: Yeah, completely. This album is me attempting to speak about all this shit that nobody needs to speak about, all of the little stuff that goes on between the traces. That shit, such as you mentioned, trauma through the pandemic, that’s one thing that individuals simply faux didn’t even occur. I’m not speaking concerning the pandemic itself, however the heightened ratcheting up of our emotional lives was consultant of one thing that had been happening since Trump was elected. It reached this breaking level and the entire world was like, “Nah, this simply doesn’t fucking matter. Simply maintain making shit, maintain making content material or go carry out for the world.” I’m a really delicate individual. My music has all the time been very delicate and for the primary time, I used to be actually affected by it. So I’m speaking about all that stuff on this album. However what I found was folks noticed this album, which is fucking insane. At first it was like, “Oh yeah, it’s one other piece of content material. I’m not going to trouble to learn into it or ask questions or give it some thought in any respect.” It was simply one other swipe on their Instagram feed or one thing. It was a world feeling like, “Wow, folks don’t give a fuck. They only need to have their mouths fed they usually simply need stimulation. They don’t need to cease and query something.” That’s a part of what I’m speaking about on this document.

HARRISON: Loads of that resonates with me so deeply. We’re educated to try this versus the larger programs that situation folks to be that approach, like all of the algorithms and the best way the apps are designed to fireplace your mind up in sure methods and shorten your consideration span. And that’s unhealthy for artwork, that’s unhealthy for you, that’s unhealthy for me.  However I do suppose there are folks on the market who’re nonetheless aching for the Dunes expertise they usually’ve been ready for it for a very long time. So I believe it’s an unbelievable reward even when folks’s brains are a little bit scrambled by being on-line on a regular basis. Can I ask you one final query? What made you decide on the title Dying Jokes for the album?

DUNES: Effectively, I occur to have a non secular follow, and there’s this Hindu concept of Vedanta, which is basically that this little being on this physique isn’t your complete actuality, not your true identification in a nutshell. They kind of tease that dying is a fantastic, virtually unreal cycle of types. So through the pandemic, I used to be confronted with my clinging to this little factor whereas remembering that I don’t have to be so connected and terrified. These songs had been like my dying jokes. When you hearken to the lyrics and stuff, they’re kind of speaking about my music outliving me and reminding me to not be so hung up on myself. That’s what I meant by dying jokes. 

HARRISON: Effectively, I ought to have requested that query proper on the prime as a substitute of claiming that I believed you had been Scottish.

DUNES: However basically, on the finish of two years making this album, I found that what I used to be speaking about was the impact that this world has on inventive expression and the power to be contentious and take dangers in your artwork making. And the way it kind of put a stranglehold on so many individuals. Such as you mentioned, it’s not people, however these programs which can be kind of in place that we form of give up to affect being dangerous, on making a joke or making artwork or dialoguing. There’s all these comedians within the album. I don’t know for those who observed Lenny Bruce all through the document, and Richard Pryor and George Carlin. There’s all types of comedians in there and basically, they’re like social irritants. They’re like people who find themselves antagonizing and upsetting folks to fucking wake the fuck up and suppose twice about what they kind of blindly undergo. There’s different folks like J Dilla and this well-known French girl on the finish–

HARRISON: The Statue of Liberty?

DUNES: She’s not in there. She will be able to’t discuss as a result of I couldn’t pattern her.

HARRISON: She can discuss, she’s simply shy. 

DUNES: Patti, thanks a lot for doing this.

HARRISON: Yeah, after all. Thanks and congratulations.