Born and raised in Paris, Lancón is a visual artist and — she’s art director for McCann, working across L’Oréal’s brands — as well as the frontwoman of the group, who will celebrate the release of the song tonight at Relax Ridgewood. They’ll also open for San Diego alt rock/shoegaze group Blossom on Aug. 15 at The Broadway in Brooklyn.

Here’s what Lancón had to tell me about Marie, her Parsian sensibility blending with the New Yorkers in Le Bang and what to expect on their upcoming EP.

Are you a fan of Marie Antionette?

Not specifically. I think I’m more of a fan of her aesthetically than historically. She had a great hat collection.

What political or social relevance do you think she has today?

I think she’s become one of the most overused visual tropes. If you want to say someone’s rich, out of touch, or living in excess, you just throw them in a powdered wig with a slice of cake. We were more interested in asking what Marie Antoinette would look like today. She’d probably wear whatever is trendy like an Adidas track jacket and some Los Angeles Apparel socks.

Who is the modern-day Marie Antoinette?

I think she’s become more of a symbol than a person. The modern Marie Antoinette is anyone who mistakes exclusivity for culture. New York can be full of RSVP-only parties, guest lists and scenes that seem more interested in who’s there than why everyone’s there in the first place.

I understand you are working on an EP. Will “God Save The Party” be on it?

Yep!

How do you think the material on the forthcoming EP is similar to or different than the previous material Le Bang has released?

When we first started Le Bang, I think we had more of a Scott Pilgrim energy with some punk undertones. Over time we’ve become more comfortable experimenting and figuring out what we’re actually capable of. The upcoming EP will probably be the most varied collection of songs we’ve made so far. There’s pop, electro and rock, but it all still feels like Le Bang.

How did you meet the other members of the band? Why did you want to work together?

I met both of them through my first band with my ex. My bassist, Stavros Lari, had his own music project and came to our first show at Pianos on the Lower East Side. We barely knew each other, but we realized we’d gone to the same high school and immediately bonded over all the terrible teachers we had.

Not long after, I met my drummer, Billy Hay, who made me laugh so hard I was crying within about five minutes.

When I broke up with my ex, I dragged the two of them out for drinks so I could complain about him and tell them I wanted to start a newer, cooler, better band. I’d already mood-boarded the whole thing and come up with the name Le Bang. I asked if they wanted to join, they said yes, and we’ve been together ever since.

I think the reason it works is because we genuinely make each other laugh. They’re very talented musicians, but they’re also just two of my favorite people.

What type of music did you listen to growing up?

Growing up, I listened to a bit of everything because of my parents. Thanks to their divorce, I ended up with four different musical points of view.

My mom loved ’80s pop like Madonna, Elton John and George Michael. My dad played a lot of French rap like IAM and NTM. My stepdad was into ’90s and 2000s rock like the White Stripes and Nirvana, while my stepmom listened to a lot of bossa nova.

I think all of those genres stuck with me. They’re still some of my favorites, and I like to think you can hear little bits of all of them in Le Bang.

When did you start writing songs? What inspired you to do so?

I’d written bits and pieces before, but I really started when I randomly went a bit feral in my bedroom. I was making mood boards, playing my bass way too loud and annoying my roommates, covering my walls with sketches of Le Bang logos, song titles and drawings of robots and giant cats.

Around that time I’d just watched “Super” by James Gunn and became obsessed with its energy. I was also listening to a lot of Sexy Sushi, which made me want to write the simplest, catchiest electronic song I could.

So I did. “Metrocool” was the first song I ever wrote completely on my own in my room, and it was really the beginning of Le Bang.

Le Bang is often referred to as an “indie sleaze” band. Do you like being called that? What does that label mean to you?

I don’t really care what genre we’re associated with. Le Bang could fit into a bunch of different categories. Some songs lean more rock, some are more electronic, and others are basically pop songs. I think it’s up to the people listening to decide where we fit. I’m really just doing my thing.

Are there aspects of Le Bang that you think are particularly New York? Are there aspects of Le Bang that you think are particularly Parisian?

I think the way we play and perform is very New York. It’s fast, last-minute and a little chaotic. One loud bass pedal, someone’s always missing a pick, so we’re digging through our pockets or using a random piece of plastic we found on stage. There’s a real DIY attitude where you just make it work instead of overthinking it.

What’s Parisian about Le Bang is probably me. Since the boys are from New York, I think I bring that side of it. I like hiding little sexual innuendos between words, and I like lyrics that are blunt and repetitive. I’m also pretty unbothered, sarcastic and a little egocentric, but I’d like to think that’s part of my charm.

With your background in fashion and visual arts, I was wondering if you think of ideas for videos or other visual pieces early on in the process of songwriting?

I always think about the visuals while I’m writing. They happen at the same time. If a song doesn’t evoke anything visually for me, it’s probably a shitty song.

I need to be able to picture what I’m wearing, where I am and what I’m doing. I need to know who that character is. Every song has to build its own little world, otherwise I don’t really have any fun making it.

Who are some musicians (current or classic) who you think have done a great job of blending fashion or visual aspects of art into the presentation of their music?

I love the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. They’re one of my all time favorite bands. Karen O’s collaboration with fashion designer Christian Joy is probably one of my favorite examples of music and fashion coming together. They’ve been working together for years, and the outfits never feel separate from the music.

I also love Gorillaz, but for completely different reasons. I don’t think anyone has built a richer universe around a band. The characters, the artwork, the videos and the way the music constantly shifts genres all feel like they’re part of one world that’s always evolving.

You’ll be opening for Blossom in Brooklyn next month. Have you played with them before? If not, are you familiar with them?

No, we’ve never played with them before, so I’m really looking forward to it.

How would you describe your live show?

Loud, quick, mean and funny.

How have people reacted to your live show?

I’ve had a lot of people come up to me after shows and say, “Oh my god, I love your stage presence,” which is always funny because I’m mostly just yelling at people to dance and making fun of the boys in the band.

When did you start performing in public? Were you naturally confident on stage or were you nervous at first?

I started performing in public about five years ago with my first band, where I sang and played bass. I was so incredibly nervous. I would not move an inch, completely glued to the floor.

When I started Le Bang, I didn’t even have a bass to hide behind anymore. All I had was a mic. It really sucked for a while, but little by little I forced myself to move more, walk to different parts of the stage, and actually raise my arms.

It sounds dumb, but that shit’s hard.

What plans do you have for Le Bang for the rest of the year? Will you go on tour?

For the rest of the year, my main focus is honestly just putting out more music and more music videos. I really want to build a strong body of work and establish a clear identity for Le Bang.

If there’s anything else you’d like readers to know about the single or the band in general, please tell me!

Yes! We’re celebrating the release of “God Save the Party” with a release show on Friday, July 10, at Relax Ridgewood. During the day it’s a restaurant, and at night it turns into a DIY venue full of drunk twenty-year-olds.

We’ll be playing alongside Gavin Oswald, who mixed and mastered the single, and we’ll have DJs playing all night. If you’re around, come celebrate with us.

The post LE BANG IS PART PARIS, PART NYC AND 100% CHAOS appeared first on Highway 81 Revisited.

Lule Tyler Shelton is sitting on a bench in Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn, answering my questions about his rising profile as a singer-songwriter and guitarist in the loosely defined country folk genre. Two nights before, he played his first headline show in NYC at Union Pool in Williamsburg. Then he performed at the Green River Festival in Massachusetts alongside Charley Crockett, Geese, Spoon, The Beths and Kurt Vile.

This run of activity came after the Californian signed with Concord Records (whose roster includes Sarah McLachlan, John Fogerty and Matt Berninger of The National) and recorded with Shooter Jennings and Jonathan Wilson, who produced his debut EP “Blue Sky,” released last year. Today, he shares a new single called “Reasons” and an accompanying video.

While there is no surefire path to success in a music business, Shelton’s achievements seem to have put him on a road to greater things.

“When I signed with Concord, it was kind of an artist development deal, and so I feel that’s what’s been happening: just trying to develop me and find shows or festivals and things that line up and can feel like good opportunities to put me in front of the right crowds and people,” he says.

“Working with producers is like trying to find people that understand the music and that I feel comfortable working with as I’m trying to create and figure out my sound. So my team that I’ve been able to build since I first signed with them, I feel like I’ve been able to get this stuff done and using their guidance I now feel even more comfortable knowing where I’m looking to go and how I want to do things. Because some things go really well, some things, you look back and you’re like, OK, maybe I would do this differently because now I know how that goes.”

Here are some highlights from our conversation with Luke in Brooklyn.

How do you feel that “Reasons” represents where you are right now as an artist?

I’m trying to use some pedal steel less and things like that in my songs and kind of enter a genre of myself that feels even less tied to just a country folk sound. So I’ve been writing on piano and this new song kind of feels a little bit different than the rest of them, which I’m really excited about.

How was the Union Pool show?

It was fantastic. It was great. This was my first show in New York playing my own music. And I was choosing between Union Pool and Nightclub 101, I never played it either one, but a lot of my friends that live out here suggested Union Pool. I think I made a good decision going there because one, the show was on a Saturday, and two, the room is the perfect kind of size to where if you’re not selling it out it still feels full, and a bunch of friends come out. It went great. And my friend Haylie Davis opened and she sounded incredible. It was really fun.

How did you initially connect with Jonathan Wilson and Shooter?

When I met my A&R Mark Williams at Concord I’d put some songs out before when I was younger, but it wasn’t anything serious really. So he was trying to help curate the vibe and the experience of these first recordings that I would put out. And my A&R was close with Shooter and with Jonathan, they both worked with other artists from the label and stuff. Mark had introduced me to Shooter months before we ever recorded anything and Shooter and I kind of formed a friendship just from hanging out. And he brought my band into a studio just to record demos for free so I could hear what my songs sound like that we’d been playing live.

Jonathan I had also met prior to working with him because he lives and works out of Topanga Canyon, and I have a bunch of friends there, and Jonathan will do like jams at his house and little parties and stuff, so I’d been to a couple of those. So by the time we got to recording, which we also did most of at Jonathan’s studio, I had a good relationship with the two of them. They had always wanted to work together but never got to. Everyone was just stoked to be hanging out and working on some music together, and it was very easy flowing. Everyone had ideas and was able to share them, and I felt like I had a voice in the studio even though I was still being guided by the two of them. It was a great experience.

What impact did growing up in a musical household have on you?

My dad is a musician. He writes songs and he sings since he was my age and still does. And both my parents are just huge music lovers, just music always being played in the car, in the house. And so I was always surrounded by it. I think I just found music, it felt like I found it on my own and pursued learning an instrument through my own kind of inspiration. My parents put me in piano lessons when I was a little kid and I think they viewed learning an instrument as just being a good thing for a child to try and do. But it was never because my dad also had played music or because they thought I should be a musician. I did a bunch of things. I played sports and music and I liked to draw a lot when I was younger. But when I got into middle school, that’s when I joined music classes that I chose to do, and l was in orchestra playing percussion and I got super into drums, which was my first instrument. I kind of just took it from there and kept doing that in high school, doing choir, being in the band and then forming my own bands and then picking up guitar halfway through high school so that I could start writing more and singing more.

In addition to your own career, you’ve been playing guitar in Malcolm Todd’s band. How do you balance the two roles?

It’s honestly great because they’re such different jobs. And he’s doing really well. So obviously the pay doing that with him is great and that just helps me do my own thing. The main thing for me with balancing the two is just making sure that I utilize all my time when I’m not doing that as much as I can doing my own thing. Being in his band helps with it too, like gaining fans through being in his group. And I would ideally like to do the two of them as long as I can.

You played “The Tonight Show” with Malcolm last month. How was that experience?

Yeah, that was amazing. It was incredible. We did Jimmy Kimmel last year and so this was our second TV performance with Fallon, and it was different because with Kimmel there’s not a live audience watching the band when you perform. With Fallon, it kind of felt a little bit more like a performance in that way. And we never actually got to meet Jimmy Kimmel, unfortunately, but Fallon came into our dressing room before and we had a bunch of instruments in there, so we were singing “Hey Jude” with him, and he sang the whole song perfectly because he’s actually a really good musician and singer. He was just super sweet and welcoming and the performance went great and it was a great experience.

The post LUKE TYLER SHELTON’S STAR IS ON THE RISE WITH NEW SINGLE ‘REASONS’ appeared first on Highway 81 Revisited.

It is a staggering body of work. But it’s her role as a solo artist that is in the spotlight now, as the Montreal-born singer, multi-instrumentalist, actress, author and activist today releases her new solo album, “In The Hour of Chaos.”

Laden with guests, the record celebrates the spirit of collaboration — in the studio, on the stage and in life.

“I really think about it like the mixtape for a musical that’s yet to be written,” Russell says during a video chat. “I have populated it with people and voices and artists who inspire me, who I love, who I learn from every time I’m in a room with them.”

A pivotal song called “Really Real”, featuring Norah Jones, sits in the fifth slot.

“To me, that song is like the heart of it,” she says. “Like who are your stand-up people that show up? It’s recognizing and celebrating those people. It might be one person in your life. It’s deeper than economic currency. That currency of showing up for each other and being there for each other is so much about what we’re digging in on, of what is the antidote to the kind of endless doom spiral that we can find ourselves trapped in, especially if we spend too much time in the online negativity bias algorithms.”

The deep connection Russell experienced with Jones, Joy Oladoku, Brittney Spencer, Sara Watkins and other prominent guests on “In The Hour of Chaos” infuses the material with communion and camaraderie. And some lesser-known contributors hold an equally special place: The Explore! Pop Choir, which features Russell’s daughter, sing on the tune “Cold April.”

“That might have been my most joyful day in the studio ever,” Russell recalls, “with that yellow school bus pulling up to the legendary Sound Emporium in Nashville and 30-plus middle schoolers spilling out to come sing ‘Cold April with us. It was just so utterly joyful. And they give me hope. My daughter’s 12 now, and the kids really, truly give me hope and also give me courage to keep trying to do what I’m called to do, to break cycles of harm, and for me, I don’t have a lot. I have songs and words and stories, and that’s kind of it, and that’s what I can use.”

Russell, who opened for McLachlan on her “Fumbling Towards Ecstacy” 30th anniversary tour in 2024, has reprised the role in a tour that kicked off on July 1. Russell also covered two of her fellow Canadian’s songs — “Angel” and “Mary” — on an EP, “Rainbows,” released this March.

Russell met McLachlan a few years ago through Joni Mitchell’s circle of collaborators and friends. Russell performed with them at Newport Folk.

“I play clarinet and sing backups in the Joni Jam band. Joni had such a blast when we did Newport in ’22 that she wanted to do another concert, and Brandi asked her, where would you like to do it? And she wanted to go back to The Gorge,” says Russell. “She had been there on a tour with Bob Dylan and Van Morrison, and she wanted to go back and headline, and she went back and she sold that out in 10 minutes flat. Brandi ended up adding two more days to the concert because it was sold out so quickly.

“So it turned into like a Joni festival weekend, you know? And we got there a couple of days early to set up the stage, because with Joni Jam, we make the stage kind of feel like her living room. And there’s Joni in her one golden sort of throne armchair and Brandi in the other. Brandi had put this green velvet loveseat just behind. She and Joni and I got there for rehearsal, and she said, ‘OK, you’re going to sit back there with Annie and Sarah.’ I thought, OK, great. I figured nurses, aides of Joni’s, care workers or friends, because it’s not just musicians on stage, And I’m putting together my clarinet and I look over and it’s Sarah McLachlan and Annie Lennox walking over and then sitting with me on this little green loveseat.”

Russell became fast friends and collaborators with bothe of them. Lennox went on to sing on her song “Superlover” in 2025.

The multi-hyphenate artist, who has been nominated for eight Grammys, holds another woman close to her heart: Persephone, the queen of the mythological underground in “Hadestown.”

“She rides along with me now forever,” she says. “I got to do my my debut and that was about five months, all told, between rehearsals and performances. And then I had the honor of being invited back to reprise the role, which I just completed my second run in March of this year. And I have been so deeply changed and informed by that experience, and I think that’s going to come to bear in many different ways. But certainly I feel so much freer in my movement and in my body on stage and to be able to integrate movement into storytelling. It just feels more natural now since I’ve played that role. And she’s also just with me as just kind of my unhinged inner goddess that I can bring out when I need it, you know?”

The post ALLISON RUSSELL FINDS HOPE ‘IN THE HOUR OF CHAOS’ appeared first on Highway 81 Revisited.

The New Jersey-born, Chinese American, self-proclaimed “theater kid” has a flair for the dramatic, but as she manifests herself onto the marquee at “The World’s Most Famous Arena,” she has data to back her cause. Four of her songs have passed the 20-million-streams mark on Spotify. Her overall streaming numbers place her in the top 1% of all independent artists globally, according to at least one metric.

Last month she released a new EP, “A Night at the Opera” and performed at The Slipper Room, a precursor to a two-night run at the larger Sony Hall in the fall (Oct. 16 and 17).

Things are trending up for Emei, but you can’t help but feel like she’s just getting warmed up: as she sings in the EP’s title track, “If you liked Act 1 you’re gonna love Act 2.”

Emei recently chatted with Highway 81 Revisited. Check out the highlights of our interview below the video.

How does “Night at the Opera” represent where you are as an artist right now?

This music feels like the beginning of something very special. Like it’s the first time I feel like I’ve tapped into really using music as a way of getting through parts of my life and it means a lot more to me now so it’s definitely an exciting time for me.

What do you like about your latest single, “What’s The Point?”

I’ve noticed I get so angry when I lose people, and last year I lost a few. I put all of that emotion into this song. I love how the production reflects those emotions and it makes me feel exactly like I did/do when loss happens and I love screaming it at shows.

Where did “Simple Request” come from? It’s a real departure for you. It sounds like a shoegaze song to me. Where did it come from?

This song’s a musical egg. I honestly think it was sent to me from somewhere else, hahaha. I wrote it with Nate Mercereau in a room where we barely spoke but there was a lot of emotion in the air, a lot of sadness, yearning, worry, etc. I wrote the lyrics and melody in one corner of the room and he made the music in the other. And when we came together at the end of the day, I recorded the vocals into the mic and that was that. “Simple Request” was made and it blew our minds.

You’ve said you are leaning back into being a theater kid. What made you move away from that approach initially?

Honestly, I think leaning into being a theater kid really scared me. I think my biggest insecurity ever since I was little was coming off as being annoying or lame or loud or too much, and as I write more music, I’m slowly realizing that my super power is leaning into being myself unapologetically. If someone doesn’t like me, then they just don’t see the vision and I’m not the one for them, and that’s OK!

As a child of immigrants, did you feel like an outsider? Did theater offer you a place to meet other outsiders?

I was lucky enough to be raised in Montgomery, New Jersey, which actually had a lot of immigrants and first-gen Asian kids, so I always had a tribe of friends that I could relate to. That still didn’t stop me from feeling like an outsider and that music was a pipe dream that wasn’t meant for people who look like me. But I think things are changing and Asian representation in the media is increasing, so yay! Theater was definitely a place for me to meet other likeminded people who loved music and performing just as much and I definitely treated it as an escape of sorts.

Do you feel that drama finds you in your day-to-day life? Does that inspire you as a songwriter?

I would say that most of my friends and family would definitely describe me as dramatic. Always been, always will be. I think sometimes I wish I felt things less and was more pragmatic, but it absolutely makes me the songwriter I am!!

How do songs start for you? A beat, a melody, a lyric?

Totally depends! I’d say a lot of this project was made lyric first and then slowly unfurled for me.

How do you write — on paper, voice memos, on a laptop, etc.?

Also totally depends! I go through eras/stages. Recently been a HUGE on paper note pad girl. I definitely use voice memos as well religiously. I wrote most of “Night at the Opera” in paper and pen, though, with a lot of scribbles.

TikTok was key to you getting noticed. Do you think TikTok and social media in general are important for maintaining your success?

Yes, social media is definitely still very important. I’m hoping one day I won’t be shackled to posting every day, honestly, but right now, every extra person I can reach with my socials just means I get an extra person to listen to my music and potentially find new songs they love! So, I won’t be letting up any time soon, that’s for sure.

How do you measure success? What are some milestones you’d like to reach?

I want to sell out a headline show (or two or three) at Madison Square Garden one day.

You had a taste of the entertainment business as a teen but decided to attend college. Why?

After getting that taste, it actually turned me off of pursuing music for like two years. I was so burnt out after Idol and I didn’t really get to express myself creatively that much that year. So, college was the obvious next step for me since, honestly, I’ve always been a bit of a nerd and actually enjoyed school. But as I continued in my academics and started writing my own music, I realized I couldn’t do anything else except pursue music, I just had to.

You’ve talked about your parents being very supportive of your career. Do you feel like they “get” your music?

Ah, my parents are the sweetest. They’ve always been so supportive but still realistic. They came to so many shows and open mics when I was a kid and still come to every single tour. My dad actually had me as his top artist last year on Spotify so that was a big deal. I actually think they do “get” my music!! I think “getting” my music just consist of “getting” me, ya know? So I do think they understand me and my big emotions.

How did you keep your billboard on Times Square a secret from your mom? How did she react when she saw it?

I just texted her the day before, “hey i’m going to boston to see alice (my sister), but I’m stopping in nyc! Wanna meet me in the city before i head to boston?” and she was like sure! So literally I didn’t really have to do anything, hahahah, but it was so amazing to see her reaction and how pleased and proud she was of me.

I’ve read about your admiration for Chappell Roan. Who are some other artists who have inspired you?

Yes! Love Chappell, I love Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson. I love Lady Gaga. I love Olivia Rodrigo and Hayley Williams, Wet Leg, Alanis Morissette, etc!! I’m just a big fan of women expressing themselves and their emotions so candidly through music and a bit of drama.

The pop music world moves quickly. How do you maintain a sense of normalcy?

I try to stay as present and grounded as possible! I take cold showers during very strange hard weeks. I exercise a lot. I spend time with my friends and family as much as I can! I journal. Ya know, all the things, and try not to get swept away in craziness sometimes.

How would you describe your fashion sense? Who are some of your fashion idols?

I’m currently living in the old venetian operatic fashion world. It’s been so fun looking at vintage corsets and dress hoops and masks and all of that. I’ve been drawing from A-line silhouettes and even a bit from Beijing opera styles that I grew up watching. I don’t have a specific fashion idol right now; I feel like I’m just really enjoying playing dress-up all the time.

The post EMEI, UNAPOLOGETICALLY DRAMATIC, LAUNCHES ‘A NIGHT AT THE OPERA’ appeared first on Highway 81 Revisited.

Roger Greenawalt, 65, moved through the music industry first as a member of The Dark, then as a session guitarist and in-demand producer. A lifetime spent mostly serving other artists’ vision has informed his first solo album, “You Are My Star.”

“I’ve always been a Cyrano, behind the scenes advising people, supervising the transaction of the money to the recording studios, all of that,” he says. “I’d often be in the position where I’m recording young artists and providing adult supervision. They’re not really going to give a big pile of money to a teenager. There’s got to be a grownup in the room.

“I’ve been doing all these songs forever and I always play solo gigs. Now is just the time. I ain’t done losing yet, it’s just too late to give up. You get to 65 and people start to drop like flies.”

The album was produced by Ben Kweller, the indie singer, songwriter and guitarist who Greenawalt guided through his early career, including a bidding war for his services from the likes of Jimmy Iovine with Interscope and Madonna’s Maverick Records, after he discovered him when he was just 14. In the press notes for Greenawalt’s new record, Kweller says: “This guy has taught me so much of what I know, and here he is coming to me like Mr. Miyagi coming to Daniel-san for help.”

Greenawalt says working with Kweller again “was delightful, because I’m just lazy. I was so thrilled to be sitting in the back of the room on the couch, besides when it was time to play instead of being nervous and anxious doing performance, which is what producing and engineering is, because you’re holding the energy in your hand. You’re like a pilot in an airplane. You can’t show lack of confidence of the plane is gonna crash.”

Greenawalt has been living in Bangkok but is in the US for finger surgery due to a condition called Dupuytren contracture. In Thailand, he has been working with artists like Aey Kuljira and Topsie.

The ukulele-playing musical savant chatted with us about “You Are My Star,” which he calls “a compendium of my life’s work,” rubbing shoulders with the industry’s upper crust and running Shabby Road, his old studio in Williamsburg, where he regretfully turned down the opportunity to work with a young Lana Del Rey.

There’s such a whimsical outlook in your lyrics. I’m reminded of writers like Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein.

Thank you very much. I really adore Dr. Seuss, I really adore free association with early childhood things: I miss my blankie, have you seen it? It’s gray and I lost it 60 years ago. I think my mother threw it away.

How did you get into playing ukulele?

Oh man, because basses and guitars, they’re actually heavy if you’re a small-framed person like me. I’m 5-10, 5-11-ish and about 150 pounds, so I had a hard time carrying these things around. The ukulele is like an iPod with strings that you can play live and walk and play it, stroll and play it. The crucial thing is to carry it on your back without a case, just in case you need it to be spontaneous.

How did you transition from a guy playing in bands to becoming a producer?

The switch was around [age] 27. What happened was I was lucky to have really good mentors. So I got to record with Ric Ocasek when I was 19 and work as a tea boy in the Cars’ studio and see good recording.

The recording studio was always there but my passion was to be the Jimmy Page to somebody’s Robert Plant, to be the Pete Townshend to somebody else’s Roger Daltrey, the Keith to the Mick. I literally just learned all the skills to protect myself from bad producers and bad engineers. It wasn’t like an original idea. But the studio is magic.

What did you learn from Ric?

Attention to group backing vocals. I learned how The Cars did their backing vocals. They’d sometimes take a whole 24-track tape, it had a mix on channels one and two and fill up the rest of the tracks with backing vocals, and it would be like four of the cats from the band around a mic singing unison notes and tracking them, everybody singing the harmony, four people on one note. They had a nice blend vocally.

I read the New Yorker story from 1997 about the courting of Ben and all the A-listers that were around you and him at that time. What was that like?

It was really fantastic. First of all, I get to feel like I belong here, I can hang. And Ben has just the idiotic confidence of absolute youth, so he was confident even though he was pretending, and it read very well. He just made such a good impression. And I really just liked observing the lives of these famous people. People were really in awe of Axl Rose. I was sitting with Dr Dre, Rick Rubin, Tom Petty and Joe Strummer, which is how I ended up working with him. Joe Plays “London Calling,” Tom Petty plays this Beck song called “Asshole” that I had never heard before. Then he made up a song about Jimmy Iovine’s big green lawn because that’s whose house we were sitting in. Then they tossed the guitar to Ben, and Ben Killed. He did one of his songs and he killed with all these people there. And I just thought “this kid is gonna make it. My work is done here.”

What else stands out in your memory from that time?

The smartest person I met in the music business I think is Madonna. Super intelligent, super high emotional intelligence. I was kind of quiet and she understood that I was the most experienced person on that team and that’s who needed to be convinced. She showed me her Frida Kahlo [painting]. People have this stuff in their houses, it’s incredible.

You worked with Iggy Pop, right?

I babysat him once when he was in his hedonistic days and I was the guitar player in the Cars’ studio. Ric connected with Iggy, so Ric’s producing Iggy, great. We do two songs and they have been released somewhere, they’re on Spotify.

Jim [Iggy’s real name is James Newell Osterberg] is an extremely well-read cat but was also a total libertine at the time. I would have to find him across the street at Frankenstein’s bar. He’s sort of get there at 11:30 or 12 and just drink beers and hold court. He was a complete world-class raconteur, really funny.

One time he came up to me and said, “you got any pot?” I said “not on me, I have it at my home.” I had the most posh, proper English South African girlfriend, a painter. Very refined and cultured. I brought Jim over and flirted with her the whole time and ate every bit of food we had and smoked every bit of my pot. It freaked Lisa out. She said don’t bring that guy over here again.

Tell me about your time at Shabby Road in Brooklyn.

I’ve always had a recording studio. For the last 30 years I built all these studios and moved one. Shabby Road was at North First and Kent Ave right on the river. It was during like the electro-grunge thing. Avenue D, they were like an obscene girl hip-hop group. Larry Tee was a big guy in that scene and I used to record a lot of this music. I think he moved to Berlin.

The one that got away was Lana Del Rey. I had produced The Pierces at Shabby Road and she was a fan of them. She was Lizzy Grant then. She came to see me and talk about producing. I think I got the sense that she didn’t have any money and I’d just have to do it for free or something. I don’t know why I didn’t do it. And I’m a huge Lana fan. And The Pierces have since become friends with her and she’s written to me fanboy things that made me gush. She’s a really nice girl.

The post PRODUCER ROGER GREENAWALT, 65, GOES FROM ‘CYRANO’ TO SPOTLIGHT ON DEBUT ALBUM appeared first on Highway 81 Revisited.

Their youngest son Evan grew up with The Alarm, and even recorded drums on an album and filled in behind the kit on a few shows at the family’s pub in Wales. But fronting the band with more than 40 years of history, more than 5 million records sold and a legion of fans spanning the globe?

The task became nearly impossible when Mike Peters passed on April 29, 2025. The first performance would find Evan, then 18, singing at his father’s funeral, with Jules playing piano. He sang “Wonderwall” by Oasis, a song Mike often sang in difficult moments.

“Rock and roll prepared me for this,” Jules remembers Mike saying during one of his tougher moments with cancer, a 30-year period that started in 1995 with a diagnosis of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a blood cancer.

Distraught but fortified, Evan fronted what is now billed as Evan Peters presents The Alarm for the first time at The Gathering, the annual concert and fan festival Mike hosted in Wales and elsewhere that has continued. The band fulfilled its touring commitments with the Scottish band Big Country (which Mike had fronted for a time after the death of its lead singer).

On May 29, a year to the day of Peters’ funeral, “Transformation,” his final album with The Alarm, was released. Hearing the songs now, with lyrical content that explores death and transition to another plane, with the knowledge that Peters anointed his youngest son to carry the band forward, it’s reasonable to assume that the elder Peters knew his days were numbered. But after three decades of ups and downs with his illness, he was planning on sticking around for the release of the album and expected Evan’s fronting of the band to be temporary.

While his death landed an emotional sucker punch on his loved ones, Peters’ attitude about his illness and his philosophy about life helped inspire some positivity. In fact, Jules calls his passing “a beautiful death” and goes as far as saying “cancer was a weird blessing.”

Indeed, Mike Peters sounds defiant, not despondent, on the new album. The song “Chimera” was inspired by his Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-Cell Therapy (CAR-T), which was deployed for his battle against Richter’s syndrome, a rare but aggressive complication of chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

The BBC reported last year that Peters’ tour bus dropped him off at The Christie hospital in Manchester, where he told the network Richter’s, if left untreated, would kill him in two weeks.

“My white lymphocytes were harvested in December,” he told the TV network before he began the personalized immunotherapy. “Those were then sent to a laboratory where each blood cell was re-engineered by scientists and then targeted to seek and destroy the Richter’s syndrome.”

On “Chimera,” he sings of “sleeper cells programmed in a laboratory/ targeted to hunt down my disease.”

“Soul Town” is special in a different way, a tribute to Northern Soul, a music and dance phenomenon that emerged in the workingman’s clubs of northern England and the Midlands in the 1960s. With a Motown beat and vocals that might remind some listeners of U2’s Bono, Peters sings of “fighting for survival” on “broken streets” in a “Northern Soul town.”

It’s a “dusty old religion,” as he sings, that he experienced first-hand working in the cloakroom of the 100 Club, the home to the world longest running Northern Soul all-nighters. He shared duties with Shane MacGowan before he went on to front The Pogues.

On Christmas Day last year, Mike, who wasn’t feeling well and sitting on a stool, put the then-unreleased “Soul Town,” on the turntable and winked at Jules, she recalls, her voice cracking.

Jules’ life path was not heading toward a life in rock ‘n’ roll: she earned an English degree and planned to become a lawyer. But she had trained as a classical pianist and studied ballet — she credits her working-class parents for finding the money to pay for expensive lessons. When she met Peters in 1986, they became engaged within a week, and their romantic partnership became musical, with her playing in his group Poets of Justice while The Alarm was split up in the ’90s.

When Peters got The Alarm back together, he needed a keyboardist and he wanted Jules to do the job. She adamantly refused before he won her over.

“I was a very reluctant member of The Alarm because of all the connotations of being married to the lead singer,” she says.

The family business was set in motion, with Evan — whose first concert was his dad’s Empire State Building rooftop set in 2007 when he was three months old — now taking the spotlight. Evan Peters’ The Alarm hosted a Gathering at Cardiff University in Wales in January, with guest performers including Billy Duffy of The Cult and Jamie Watson of Big Country. More dates with Big Country in the UK will kick off in November, including shows at the various 02 venues across Britain.

Love Hope Strength, the foundation the couple founded in 2007, continues its mission to “help save and change lives one concert, one step, one helping hand at a time through partnering with cancer care specialists across the globe, and offering support when families affected by cancer need it most.” The organization takes its name from the 2007 Alarm song “Love, Hope, and Strength.”

In 2024, LHS campaigned to double the number of people signed up through the charity on international stem cell registers. To that point, LHS had already encouraged 250,000 people to register in partnership with the blood cancer charity DKMS.

LHS’s fundraising events include hikes, most notably “Everest Rocks” in 2007, a 14-day trek with 38 musicians, including Glenn Tilbrook of Squeeze and Slim Jim Phantom of Stray Cats. A few months ago, “El Camino Rocks” took a group from Portugal to Spain, and Everest Rocks II in December will bring a hearty crew back to the highest mountain on earth above sea level. It will be Jules’ first time hiking Everest.

The post MIKE PETERS’ FAMILY CONTINUES THE MUSIC OF THE ALARM AND HIS SPIRIT OF HOPE appeared first on Highway 81 Revisited.

Her new single, “Bootfirst,” is based on that push and pull between pragmatism and spontaneity.

“My dad is kind of a strict, careful-thinking doctor,” Lam says during a video interview. “He’s an Asian man. He’s always very calculated and thinking things out. My mama is a southern woman who does stuff without thinking — she just kind of jumps in. The theme of the song is like a mix of those two things. Yes, I overthink, but I also do stuff without thinking, and it’s just the way I am. I’m a perfect mix of both my parents.”

Released today, Lam wrote the song about jumping in feet first, but with a country play on words, with Jessica Cayne and Kayliann Lowe. It was recorded it at the legendary Blackbird Studio in Nashville with producer Lowell Reynolds.

“I brought in a whole bunch of titles to this songwriting session, and I think the session itself was very much a ‘bootfirst’ moment for me, because it was my first ever co-write,” said Lam. “I was very nervous because songwriting is such an intimate thing, but I still found my footing in co-writing because it’s different than solo writing because you got to collaborate.

“When you’re the artist and you’re working with these songwriters, you want to kind of go with everything they say, even if it doesn’t fit who you are. And I found my voice while I was writing, and Kayliann and Jess, they were amazing to work with, very easy co-writers to work with.”

In advance of the single’s release, she launched a fan-driven social media campaign called “Bootfirst Confessions.” At CMA Fest earlier this month, she took to the streets of Nashville to ask attendees about their own “bootfirst” moments.

@itsbellalam

PRESAVE BOOTFIRST NOW! out 6/26 #bootfirst #cmafest #trending #countryartist #originalmusic

♬ original sound – Bella Lam

The song is the follow-up to “Take It Out On My Guitar” and “Tears In My Tequila.”

How have her parents reacted to the song they inspired?

“My dad’s actually in my band, and so when we’re practicing, he’s heard it a lot. He’s a hard guy to read, but I think that he’s very happy with it. I think that he’s happy with the fact that I think he’s very, very wise and he thinks things out before he does stuff. My mama, it’s funny. After we wrote the song, Kayliann was like, is your mom going to be upset that we called her a little bit crazy? Because there’s a line that says ‘got the crazy from my mama and got the careful from my daddy.’ And I was like, nah, she’s gonna think it’s funny. And she thinks it’s the funniest thing ever. She loves it.”

The effervescent young woman is a natural on social media, but it’s a relatively new endeavor for her.

“Once again, I had a strict Asian dad growing up, so I didn’t have social media until my junior year of high school. So going into it, I had no idea what I was doing. Artists, they kind of have to be an influencer at the same time. It’s not ideal, but you kind of have to find your own way to have fun with it. I think that it’s a skill that you have to develop, and I really enjoy doing it. I love going live and I love posting and vlogging and doing all these things. I look forward to it. In fact, on my desk, I have like a little notebook where I plan out every single week what I’m going to film, what I’m going to edit, what I’m going to post, and I think it’s truly one of the joys of my job.

“Does it bring a little bit of anxiety because of numbers and stuff like that? Yes. But when you’re in creative industries, and I’ve heard artists talk about it, I’ve heard influencers talk about it, I’ve heard YouTubers talk about it, it does bring anxiety. But you have to love it to keep going, and I think that I love music so much, and I love connecting with my fans so much, that while the numbers do bring me anxiety, I love it enough to keep going.”

Photo by Joey Schrader

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In either situation, one of your options is to deploy CashorTrade, the fan-to-fan, face value ticket reselling platform.

CashorTrade, whose logo is a single finger held aloft (recalling pre‑smartphone days of scouring venue parking lots for a “miracle”), was founded in 2009 by Brando and Dusty Rich, brothers who were bummed about the astronomical prices of secondary-market tickets to see Phish after the band returned from a hiatus. The Burlington, Vt., company now employs about 30 people and recently expanded its offerings by integrating with Ticketmaster as part of its “face value movement.”

Ticketmaster tickets listed on CashorTrade are authenticated using Ticketmaster’s verification technology, and the listings are capped at or below true face value. Sellers can choose who they sell to, and buyers receive a newly issued ticket from Ticketmaster in the CashorTrade app.

“When we first started, the industry didn’t believe the face value movement would work,” Brando Rich, the CEO, told Highway 81 Revisited. “And we stuck around trying to fight that fight for years and years and years, and no one ever really had interest. Artists would make a comment here or there, but it just didn’t amount to anything.”

He said the company went on to work with Billy Strings, Tyler Childers and Summer Camp Music Festival. “Not only did fans really want to participate in the service, but artists did too, and festivals and venues alike.”

Rich surmised that the rise of dynamic pricing on the primary market and talk of legislation regarding ticket prices meant “the primaries finally felt that they had an opportunity — or the artists felt they had the opportunity — to start obtaining market value rather than letting StubHub and Vivid and all the scalpers be the only ones who really get to leverage market value.”

StubHub and Vivid Seats did not respond to requests for comment.

Ticketmaster in April announced the integration with CashorTrade. This followed Ticketmaster’s 2019 launch of Face Value Exchange, which it continues to make available to artists who “want to set clear boundaries around resale pricing.”

The CashorTrade integration is available for select tours, with more to come, Ticketmaster said.

“Face value resale works best when it’s built on trust: trust that the ticket is real, and trust that the price reflects what the artist intended,” David Marcus, Ticketmaster’s EVP of global music, said via email. “That’s been the foundation of Ticketmaster’s Face Value Exchange since 2019, and it’s what CashorTrade has been building from the community side for even longer. This integration is a natural extension of that shared commitment, expanding the ways fans can buy and sell verified tickets at the price artists intended.”

Rich stressed that “partnership is not an acquisition.”

“I don’t know why people decided to use those words interchangeably, but words have meaning. And no, we didn’t sell to Ticketmaster or Ticketmaster did not buy CashorTrade. But we found ourselves engaging in great conversations around face value ticketing years ago, maybe 2023. And we were partnering with these artists, and the artists were playing a bunch of Ticketmaster venues, and I think there was communication with Ticketmaster about partnering with CashorTrade.”

He added: “I was on a Live Nation call and some Ticketmaster staff popped in and we got to meet each other, became friends and talk about the industry,” Rich said. “And I realized that it was really cool how focused they were on providing face value ticketing and how they wanted to support that.”

Brando says CashorTrade is open to working with other primary ticket sellers as well.

When fans are upset about ticket prices – which he notes are set by the artists’ team, not the ticketing company – primary sellers like Ticketmaster can receive the brunt of their frustration. Did that give Rich pause about a potential reputational hit to CashorTrade for partnering with the industry giant?

“Absolutely,” he said. “People have been frustrated by Ticketmaster. … There’s a lot that the average fan, including myself, did not know. And generally, ticketing sucks. There’s like five different organizations trying to run an event: the promoter, the venue owner, the ticket company, the artist, the merch industry. They’re all coming together, and they all need a slice of the revenue.

“Now, I never understood this or saw it, and I’m still trying to understand it, but what I’ve seen is primary ticket companies generally play the bad guy.”

Ticketmaster said it advocates for stronger anti-bot enforcement, banning speculative ticketing, all-in pricing, and common-sense caps on concert resale prices to better protect fans and artists.

“We believe artists should control how their tickets are priced, sold and resold, including tools to cap resale and protect fans,” Ticketmaster said.

Another layer of CashorTrade’s offerings is memberships. Benefits for gold users, who pay $48 a year or $6 per month, include the ability to submit a request to buy tickets immediately, forgoing the usual wait of 10 minutes after a listing has been active, and no 10 percent platform fee. Details on gold and free memberships can be found here. All purchases on CashorTrade, including those by gold members, incur a 3 percent card‑processing fee.

The post CASH OR TRADE CONTINUES ‘FACE VALUE’ MOVEMENT WITH TICKETMASTER PARTNERSHIP appeared first on Highway 81 Revisited.

For bassist and vocalist Melanie Radford, the perpetual motion of touring with her bands Built To Spill and Blood Lemon created a desire for stillness. She found it in the contemplative periods between movement, when she made field recordings that helped form the songs of her debut album “For The Sake of Stillness,” out June 26.

“It is probably the most personal record I’ve ever released,” says Radford from Los Angeles, where she’s just gone to see Rush at the Kia Forum with Built To Spill’s drummer. “And it’s also the first time I feel like I’m finding my voice. I don’t think I’ve felt confident enough to do something like this until probably three years ago when I started getting more into writing as a solo artist. I’ve done similar things like this before, like 10 years ago, but I just wasn’t confident enough to pursue it.”

She adds: “I’ve always been a really collaborative musician working in other projects. So this does feel like an extremely personal album, but it does also feel like a good declaration of who I am as an artist.”

The field recordings were made from Philadelphia to Brazil.

“I went in with the concept of trying to build songs off of the recordings initially. And I recorded [the field recordings], and I recorded the songs, in a bunch of different places while I was on tour and while I was traveling in hotels and Airbnbs, so it kind of has a homemade feeling to it, and that’s what I wanted. I wanted something kind of like a quiet, very comfortable, homemade, lo-fi record.”

On the song “Seagull,” she tracked her bass and the sounds of the ocean simultaneously in a beach town in Brazil with assistance from her partner Lê Almeida.

“I was sitting next to an open patio door in an Airbnb that looked out onto a beach and was watching a seagull hover in the wind, above water,” Radford says. “Lê and I had multiple mics set up to get the sounds happening outside. So almost everything you hear — the ocean sounds, people chatting, the bass meandering through a melody — was all improvised and recorded live in that moment.”

Radford, based in Seattle, is releasing “For The Sake of Stillness” via the Portland, Ore., label Jealous Butcher Records.

In addition to Almeida on drums and guitar, the album features former Built To Spill guitarist Jim Roth on synth, pedal steel and vocals; Cacá Amaral on additional drums, and Lori Goldston, who was Nirvana’s touring cellist — you’ve seen her in the MTV Unplugged performance — with cello arrangements. (“She’s a legend in Seattle, and she very graciously came on to the record,” Radford says.

Radford will play an album release show on Friday at Good Shepherd Chapel in Seattle, an opening set for Califone at Substation, also in Seattle, on July 18, and serve as artist in residence at the Doe Bay Resort & Retreat on Orcas Island, Wash., Aug. 12-18.

She’ll also do double duty on a run of Northeast dates with Built To Spill, performing an opening set, including at Music Hall of Williamsburg (Oct. 22 and 23) and ending at Ardmore Music Hall outside of Philly (Oct. 30 and 31).

As Radford continues to find and share her own musical identity, she takes inspiration from bassists like Rush’s Geddy Lee (“a really huge influence on me growing up, maybe not as much now with the kind of material I write now, but he’s very much a part of my DNA”) and Jaco Pastorius, citing him as fueling the expressive nature of her playing: “I feel like I get to do this more on my solo album. I get to be more expressive and let my bass sing in the same kind of way Jaco and others in his genre have done.”

She mentions the chamber jazz group Vega Trails, calling Milo Fitzpatrick “a clever bassist who uses space and plays sparsely. Taking cues from a band like that was really helpful for me to contextualize my own projects.”

When it comes to singing and writing, Radford says Erika Wennerstrom (Heartless Bastards) “was huge for me when I was young, because she had a really great way of writing emotional but simple songs that kind of captivate you. And she also has a low alto voice, so she made me feel more secure in my voice as well.

“More recently I take a lot of inspiration from a lot of ambient songwriters. So Grouper was huge for me. Gia Margaret, a more contemporary artist right now, she’s fantastic. She uses field recordings and they’ve really entered into her songwriting, and she’s able to create a really great atmosphere with it.

“A lot of slowcore bands, like Low, in terms of atmosphere again and their creativity to do unexpected things like bursts of sound, bursts of magic in their songs, really helped me gain the confidence to do similar things in my music. Even bands like Mazzy Star, right? Bands that really have a great way of harnessing minimalism and harnessing simplicity and really relying on the songwriting to carry you through.”

Photo by Travis Gillett

The post MELANIE RADFORD OF BUILT TO SPILL FINDS STILLNESS AMONG THE CHAOS ON SOLO DEBUT appeared first on Highway 81 Revisited.

That metamorphosis is quite all right with singer Susan Ann Sulley, the voice of the iconic “waitress in a cocktail bar” in The Human League’s breakthrough hit, “Don’t You Want Me.” Chatting before the Radio City stop of the Generations Tour, which also features Soft Cell and Alison Moyet, she quips, “You have to call it something, don’t ya? We’ve had music from many generations.”

Formed in 1977 Sheffield, The Human League had some success with their first two albums but only broke through after the departures of Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh and the joining of a teenage Sulley and her friend Joanne Catherall, who were discovered at a club by vocalist Philip Oakley.

Sulley opened up about her early days in the group, how clothes and videos have played a role in The Human League’s image and the night she recorded her timeless vocals on “Don’t You Want Me.”

What singing experience did you have when Philip spotted you and Joanne?

None. None whatsoever. I’d been in a couple school plays in like junior school when I was like 10 or 11. Joanne and I didn’t have any aspiration to being musicians. We were both doing higher ed at school, we were going to go to university and do something different completely.

Phil was looking for someone that could do the high backing vocals. He was looking for one person. He saw us together in a club dancing and thought we looked good together and he hoped if we could sing we’d agree to go on tour with him. He never asked us to join the band after all these years. He only asked us to go on tour, then he got stuck with us.

You’ve been putting out music for almost 50 years. How do you feel about being called an ‘80s band? The ’80s were just about one-fifth of your career.

You know what, I figure if people have, what’s the word, the niceness to spend their money and they come and have a look and all they want to hear is “Don’t You Want Me,” that’s OK as well. … They just have to wait until the end of the show. I hope they go, wow, that was really good and I didn’t realize that they had so many songs that I recognize.

We’re all stretched with money these days and there’s a lot of horrible things going on in the world and people being nice enough to go out and see us play. We want to do the best show that we can.

Why haven’t you split up? Did you ever come close?

Yes, there were many, many times where we were threatened with bankruptcy from managers and we got dropped from our record company, all the usual things that happen to groups that have longevity. There was never a point where the three of us wanted to split up. There was always one person saying no, no, no. We’re like a cat with nine lives and there’s always been someone saying we have another life or five more lives or something.

We sort of get on like brother and sister. We know each other sort of inside out. We know what makes each of us tick. We don’t tend to see each other very much when we’re at home not working. We have quite separate lives. I speak to Joanne every week on the telephone. I rarely see Phillip. We love the job. We love the music, we love performing, so I don’t know that any of us would know what [else] to do for a living.

The visuals — like the way you dress on stage and your music videos —  have been an important part of The Human League. How do you feel about that?

I have to say the videos were never really any of our ideas, they call came from the director. So the way the songs were portrayed in a video never came from us.

I suppose because we’re a little old-fashioned, we like shows, you like to see people making an effort, you like to see costume changes, you like to see the lights changing. We’ve tried to become more physical. We run around, especially Phillip, he runs around the stage a lot. In the original group he used to just stand there, really. We just try to put on a show.

I think how you look can sometimes be too important, especially the criticism that some people get for pushing the boundaries. I’m really, really sad that people have criticized Madonna when she did the Coachella set with Sabrina Carpenter. There are always some horrible people that say she shouldn’t be dressing like that now. Shut up. Why not? She’s a wonderful, original longevity artist who can do what the hell she wants.

I think people should not be too critical of the costumes. Maybe it’s not what one would wear to go down the store in the daytime. They are work costumes. No one criticizes actors when they’re old and they’re in the new Marvel film in a Lycra skin-tight suit. She’s 67, a wonderful, amazing pop star and she gets criticized.

What do you remember about recording “Don’t You Want Me?”

We did the vocals really, really late at night at Genetic Studios. I think Madness was recording days, so it was like two shifts, sleeping all day and going to work at night. Martin [Rushent, the producer] gave me the lyrics and said you’ve got to sing now, and I just went and did it. Yay!

People think it’s about the group, but it’s got nothing to do with the group. It’s to do with the Judy Garland and James Mason film “A Star Is Born.” But my favorite is the Barbara Streisand-Kris Kristofferson version.

Are there plans for the band to record new music?

I don’t know. I don’t write. Joanne or I have never written. Don’t ask me why that is. It was just how things fell into place at first. Phillip, I can’t speak for him, but I know he’s really enjoying life at the moment. He’s just living, which he spent a long time sitting in his house too much and now he’s living life. I don’t think he wants to sit in a studio.

New music is great and there are so many doors it opens for you and stuff, but there’s also nothing wrong with just being able to sing the songs that we like singing and you all like hearing. Look at “Les Misérables.” It’s the greatest musical of all time and it keeps selling out.

The Generations Tour, featuring The Human League, Soft Cell and Alison Moyet. Radio City Music Hall (1260 6th Avenue, New York, NY). Friday, June 26, 8 p.m. Tickets and info here.

Photo by Perou

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