stew sez

I really got a kick out of Stephen Roderick’s article about Heidi and me in the current issue of New York mag (sorry I don’t know how to create links so sue me), despite the inaccuracies, which I’m here to anally address. You may remember when I reviewed Stephen Holden’s review of us in the NYTimes (what is it with us and new york journalists named “Stephen.”???). So I’m continuing the practice here. The internet affords me this freakish luxury so…

they’ve got a new show … about breaking up.

ok, the show is not “about” us breaking up. Who the fuck would wanna see that? The show is about many things: our experience of Broadway, the joys and concerns of being a sub-cult band on the road, the challenging reality of being an aging hipster, the work/life/love balance and countless other stuff. The show is also a concert and a return to something Heidi and I did before we stumbled into theater. That’s why we called the show “Making It”: to reflect the multiple meanings of the phrase, all of which apply to our lives and which our show, unlike this cool article, fully addresses.

He’s a troubadour playing songs he calls “Blackarach.”

Oh lawd! A critic once called my music that and I found it cute and flattering. However, I have NEVER called my music that.

Alas, the band is called the Negro Problem and has larger marketing troubles. So they start recording under the name Stew. Critics fall in love with the couple’s California-as-Weimar songs

This strongly implies if not outright states that we changed the name of the band because of “marketing troubles.” It also implies that the Stew thing was better received than TNP. Both are wrong. TNP put us on the map, not Stew. And there was no name change. We just added a band because we wanted to explore a different kind of music than we were making with TNP. White boy indie rockers form multiple band personas all the time and nobody accuses them of looking for a more marketable name. The Negro Problem will be on tour this Fall.

By now, Stew and Heidi are in their forties. This is 340 in L.A. rock years.

this is TOTALLY TRUE and a great quote and I just wanted to point that out. Good one Stephen!

They call the show Making It, after their old sense that if they just do one thing—win a Tony, sell a screenplay—they will be Officially Successful, their problems solved.

Uh, no. The reason Heidi and I are still a creative team, despite the drama, is that she is the only person I’ve ever met that understands that OFFICIALLY SUCCESSFUL is a total fucking illusion. And that’s one of the main things that “Making It” is about. We’ve never been after The Dangling Carrot of Success.

The carrot we were after was the same one every couple is after: a balance between love and work. We both had differing ideas of how to achieve that balance. But neither of us thought official success would be the thing that would bring it all back home. And so some of the show is about our differing views of how to achieve that balance.

I understand that New York mag thought nobody would wanna read a detailed article about two little known artist’s struggles to balance their relationship and their career so it was easier to reduce it to such a sound-bite as quoted above. I get it. But if yer interested in the full scoop and there are no Merv Griffin re-runs that week, come to our concert and we’ll flesh it all out for you.

(Who in their right mind would name their band “The Negro Problem” if they were looking for official success?).

To almost end, I realize many of you might be thinking why whine about good press. Well I say “why not?” I don’t think that just because we are low-level public figures that it means we should to allow inaccuracies about our personal lives to go unanswered. Fuck that. You try it sometime and then we’ll talk.

And to Stephen, thanks for a fun article (and some good hanging). It reads like a water-slide. And that’s a good thing. I wish it coulda been as detailed as our conversations. But maybe you can do a deeper article about us after we’ve really made it.

Love,
/stew and heidi

if you’d have asked the 17 year old me whether working with the public theater, berkeley rep, the sundance institute, being on broadway or winning a tony would be a dream come true i would have said no.

but if you’d have asked me if any work of art i had anything to do with being broadcast on pbs woulda been a dream come true i would have said without a doubt, yes.

pbs played such a crucial role in my artistic upbringing that it would take an essay to even begin to address it. after the music i was listening to, pbs was the single biggest influence on my brain. mostly
because, like the music i was listening to, it made being an artist seem like the coolest job in the world.

so tonight, jaded as i am, i was quite blown away.

thanks to all who did what they did to make it all happen.

/s

there was a time when I was too busy or too impatient to appreciate Morton Feldman’s music. But on long late autumn nights here in Berlin I have no time for impatience. I can go the distance. “Why Patterns” has been my late night theme song lately. Ok, at 29 minutes or so that’s a long theme song but whatever.

And yes Ms. B, I am READY for the fondue pot…but I don’t know how to play bridge!

/s

i now own a punch bowl.
this punch bowl makes me think of my mother and father in the late 60s, early 70s
and their finger poppin’ parties. Back when adults were still cooler than kids (although the kids were gaining ground).
I remember how limitless and cool adult life looked. They smiled like gods. And they danced with irony and total commitment.
Our definition of cool, back then.
And it looked to me like they were having the best kind of fun. Mysterious fun. You could see it in their sly grins
when they walked in or out with someone they met by the punch bowl at my parent’s party. I am haunted by those sly grins like
like glimmering lights in the distance waiting for me to grow up and join them. Those sly grins were proof they knew of things sweeter than candy, rides wilder than merry-go-rounds, smaller, more intimate Disneylands.
These toe-tapping finger-poppin’ drink clutching gap-toothed be-hatted gods smiled slyly while telling me don’t hurry to get old. Which of course I couldn’t hear.
This saturday i’m throwing my own little punch bowl party and i hope there’s an 8 year old in attendance
who will note my sly grin and look up at me like I’m a drunken loud mouthed god and not just some old cat trying his damnedest to be cool.

/s

i just found out from my kid that its still running at the IFC. Of course, being on facebook, she learns of these kinds of things well in advance of me or anyone else who had anything directly to do with the film. She has actually been my only timely and reliable source for Passing Strange info since the film premiered. And shes way over here in Berlin with me.

And although there are no ads saying it, I’m pretty certain this is the last week it’ll be there. So make a move to see our movie. Who knows when it will ever show again on the big screen. Because, without a doubt, on the big screen (with the big speakers) is where it belongs.

http://www.ifccenter.com/films/passing-strange/

/s

i am speechless.
they are so amazing.

http://willyoumissme.wordpress.com/

Friends,
Spike’s film will be happening on opening night of the Downtown LA Film Festival on Wednesday, August 12th.

And stay tuned for my thoughts on the recent NYTimes article.

with greetings from the capital,
/s

the problem with my local organic supermarket is that you have to be a millionaire hippy in order to buy lamb there.

tribeca was cool. someone told us they were shocked cuz our talk-back was actually entertaining. i didn’t few the film but i heard it looked and sounded amazing in their theater.

i’m still trying to come to terms with the fact that this crazy little thing me Heidi and Annie cooked up just for the hell of it is actually going to live on as part of the PBS canon. I really cannot wrap my head around that yet. PBS changed my life a number of times as a teen – for instance, – like or not Robert Hughes’ politics, his “Shock of the New” series was a watershed moment for me as a kid who wanted to be an artist for life. That doc made art making seem heroic, suspenseful, important and downright necessary. After seeing it I went out and bought a canvas, some oil paints and tried to be Munch for a few months until a painting I made looked so much like a guitar (and a woman) that I realized where I should be hanging my focus. And there it has remained.

And so the idea that PS is going to be there for some unsuspecting teen (so that she may realize that shes not alone in thinking that there’s gotta me more to life than what she’s been handed by her community) and some equally unsuspecting Mom (who will see that we who run away with the circus do eventually get it, albeit too late sometimes)…is just all quite alot to fathom for a singer in a rock and roll band.
/s

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/arts/music/09stew.html

…and of course even then it may not make sense…
/s