Episode 522
with SNL’s Cecily Strong and Rapper Shad
Host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello share some surprising facts about our listeners; comedian Cecily Strong delves into her memoir This Will All Be Over Soon, which weaves themes of grief with moments of absurdity, like filming SNL with her phone during lockdown; Toronto rapper Shad chats about interviewing his heroes for the Emmy Award-winning Netflix series Hip-Hop Evolution and why he's fine with being the "nice guy" in rap music; plus, Shad performs "Out of Touch" from his prescient album TAO.
Cecily Strong
Comedian and Actor
Cecily Strong is an Emmy-nominated actor and comedian best known as a standout cast member on Saturday Night Live, where for ten years she’s been entertaining viewers with classic “Weekend Update” characters like The Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Started a Conversation with at a Party, and earning rave reviews for her impressions of Jeanine Pirro, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Melania Trump, and others. In 2015, she headlined the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. She currently stars, alongside Keegan-Michael Key, in Apple TV+’s hit show Schmigadoon. Her first book, a memoir titled This Will All Be Over Soon, came out in 2021. Website • Instagram
Shad
Rapper
Shad is a JUNO Award-winning Toronto rapper who has been called “Canada’s nicest MC” by The Guardian and “the new standard bearer for positive rap” by Pitchfork. Born in Kenya and raised in London, Ontario, Shad financed his debut album with money he won from a radio station’s talent contest. Since then, he’s been steadily releasing music to great acclaim. He is known as a reflective and witty lyricist who raps about heartfelt subjects. Shad is also the host of the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning Netflix series Hip Hop Evolution, and the former host of the CBC’s arts & culture show q. His sixth album, TAO, came out in 2021. Listen • Twitter
-
Luke Burbank Hey, Elena.
Elena Passarello Hey, Luke! How's it going?
Luke Burbank It's going very well. Summer is finally here in Portland. It is just absolutely lovely, and I'm loving it. How are you?
Elena Passarello I'm good. I'm waving at you from down south in my little Oregon town where all the same things are happening.
Luke Burbank Good, good. I'm glad to hear it's working across the state. Are you ready to play a little "station location identification examination"?
Elena Passarello Oh, yeauuuh.
Luke Burbank That your macho man savage?
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank I dig it. This is where I tell Elena about a place in the country where Live Wire is on the radio. And she's got to guess where I am talking about. Okay, the surrounding valley. So the valley that surrounds this place, produces 77% of all the hops grown in the U.S.
Elena Passarello Somewhere in Washington State?
Luke Burbank Yes, it is in Washington state. I'm wondering if this follow up clue might help you, because, you know, I think a little bit about both of these people. It's the birthplace of the actor Kyle MacLachlan and the writer Raymond Carver.
Elena Passarello Oh, no. Ahhh, people are going to come for me. It's somewhere in the middle.
Luke Burbank It is!
Elena Passarello I don't know. What is it?
Luke Burbank Starts with a Y ends with an akima.
Elena Passarello Yakima.
Luke Burbank Yakima. Washington, where we're on the radio on K Y V T. Who knew it was the home of both Kyle MacLachlan and Raymond Carver? That's pretty cool.
Elena Passarello I can't believe it's not Yeattle.
Luke Burbank I mean, that was also we would have accepted Yeattle. All right. Shout out to everybody listening in Yakima on K Y V T. Should we get on with the show?
Elena Passarello Let's do it.
Luke Burbank All right. Take it away.
Elena Passarello From PRX, it's Live Wire! This week, comedian, actress and writer Cecily Strong.
Cecily Strong It is insane how emotional sketch comedy can be. So I like to go to the newer people and just make sure I'm checking in and being like, it's okay that you're crying about your banana sketch being cut.
Elena Passarello And music from rapper Shad.
Shad Some people's style is to be the baddest guy in the room, and if you do that, well, then you win. But also, if you charm the hell out of everybody, you also win.
Elena Passarello I'm your announcer, Elena Passarello. And now the host of Live Wire Luke Burbank!
Luke Burbank Hey, thank you so much, Elena Passarello. Thanks to everyone tuning in from all across the country, including in beautiful Yakima, Washington. We have a fun show in store for you this week. Of course, we asked the listeners a question going into the show. We asked them, what's something that people would be surprised to learn about you? We have a couple of multitalented, multidimensional guests this week. We're going to hear those answers from the listeners coming up in just a few minutes. First, though, it's time for the best news we heard all week. And this, of course, our little reminder at the top of the show that, yes, there is still some good news happening somewhere in the country or the world. Sometimes we got to look kind of hard for it. We found a couple of stories this week. Elena what is the best news you heard this week?
Elena Passarello Talk about looking hard for a good news story. Yeah, right. This is a good news story involving air travel.
Luke Burbank Oh, boy.
Elena Passarello As you know, this has been a really taxing summer for air travel, but this is actually a pretty great travel story. Good things are still happening in airports. So there's a young traveler named Lena Larmon, six years old, and she was recently traveling back from Norway to Greenville, South Carolina. I know that airport very, very well. It's one of my favorites with her mom. She got hung up for 36 hours in New York, came home 2 A.M. arrival. You know, she's been sleeping. She's a little girl. And then she realized, oh, she lost a tooth on the plane.
Luke Burbank Really?
Elena Passarello Yeah. I'm assuming that it's, you know, when you were little and you'd start to wiggle it to be like, Oh, it's coming soon. It's coming soon. But they got in so late when she realized that she had lost a tooth, that her sleep on the plane, she really wanted to go back and get it because you kind of have some.
Luke Burbank Decent money in that racket.
Elena Passarello That's right. The tooth fairy needs that proof. But since it was 2 a.m., security was closed and she had a fit, she had a very understandable, full on tooth fairy meltdown. But an airline pilot who was walking, I'm assuming, to wherever he was going to lay his head for the night named Captain Josh Duchow saw young Lena having a meltdown and realized that he could help? He wrote on the spot, you know, he's in his uniform. He's looking super commanding. And, you know, fairies fly in the air, pilots fly in the air. They must know each other somehow. So he pens a letter that says, Dear Tooth Fairy, Lena had a tooth fall out on her flight to Greenville. Please take this note in place of her tooth. Captain Josh, there's a comma misplaced in there, but we'll. We'll let it ride fror Captain Josh.
Luke Burbank Everybody was a exhausted. There was a missing tooth.
Elena Passarello And a missing semicolon. But, oh I'm just kidding. Sorry. You can't take the English teacher out of the best news story, anyway. So Lena feels much better. She takes the note from Captain Josh home and puts it under her pillow. Luke Burbank. She got six bucks from the tooth fairy!
Luke Burbank Inflation is real.
Elena Passarello Yeah. And also, you know, the hope and good nature of two very weary travelers was restored.
Luke Burbank My story that I saw, that's the best news also kind of involves travel, like sort of in a way. And this actually happened a couple of weeks ago, but I just found out about when I was visiting Port Townsend, Washington, which one of my very favorite places in the world I used to live there. There was a boat there called the Western Flyer that had been on the hard, as they say it, been being repaired and restored for over nine years to the tune of a couple of million dollars. Some people call it the world's most famous fishing boat. It had been a fishing boat built in Tacoma, Washington, in the 1930s, but it became famous because John Steinbeck took a trip on it in the Sea of Cortez. And he wrote a book. He wrote two books, one called Sea of Cortez, and then also a book called The Log from the Cortez in 1951. A lot of people read about it, were quite captivated with this boat. Well, this boat went on to be a salmon tender in Alaska, and lake happens a lot with these vessels. The name got changed. They changed it to Gemini. This appears to be when the bad luck really set in for the Western Flyer. It sunk three times while it was the Gemini. I'd figure, you know, you think about once and you get it back going, okay, you sink it twice. I just say, give up on it, but.
Elena Passarello Sink me twice shame on me.
Luke Burbank Exactly. So this thing ends up sinking for a third time and they bring it back up and it's just, like, covered in barnacles that it's like totally destroyed pretty much. They tow it into Port Townsend, I think, in like 2013. And the community comes together to fix up the Western flier and they put all this money and time and donations and sweat equity into it. And just a couple of weeks ago it was finally finished and they're going to put it back in the water. But this is the funny thing. There's a lot of, you know, superstition around all things maritime. And they didn't want the boat to be called the Gemini anymore because that was like not great luck for this boat. So they wanted to change it back to the Western flier. But you've got to do a whole thing before the boat touches the water, because if you put it back in the water, then it belongs to Neptune. That's what they were saying in Port Townsend. The whole town turned out somebody pretended to be Poseidon, somebody who was like the great long relative of someone who had been instrumental in this boat being built in the first place. And he says, I well remember the day the Western Flyer first touched my waters at Western Boat Building Company. She was a sound yar vessel.
Elena Passarello She was yar.
Luke Burbank Which I just think is like the coolest way to describe anything. A sound yar vessel. And so then the person playing beside and ask the whole town, what should we christen this ship? And the whole town yells Western Flyer together. The only hitch in this entire process was at one point a Great Dane walked out from the crowd. I'm reading from the Port Townsend leader, by the way, a Great Dane walked out from the crowd, wandered up to the boat launch and started drinking from an open plastic container that was holding the holy water that they were christening the boat with.
Elena Passarello Well, the Danish were Vikings, right?
Luke Burbank So yeah, it all makes sense. Also, that dog is now mayor of Port Townsend. That's what happens if you drink the holy water. So the cool thing is the Western flier is now going to be a state of the art research vessel for students and young people. So it goes from a being this thing Steinbeck wrote about to a working ship to now something that's going to continue to captivate the minds of young people, which is such a cool thing.
Elena Passarello I love that. That's amazing.
Luke Burbank Yeah. So best news I heard is that, that yar vessel is on its way to Seattle to have its new motors put it in. So that's the best news that I heard this week.
Luke Burbank All right. Let's get our first guest on over to the show. Cecily Strong has been a Saturday Night Live cast member since 2012. She's known for her impressions and also original characters. I have a personal favorite, which is the girl you don't want to get stuck talking to at a party, which she does on Weekend Update. She also co-hosted Weekend Update for a while and she stars in Schmigadoon from Apple TV plus. A show name that I cannot say without Elena erupting into peals of laughter.
Elena Passarello It's the best name ever.
Luke Burbank Schmigadoon is a show about a couple that gets stuck in a town that operates basically like a musical. That's not like where you want to live Elena your happy place. As if all that weren't enough. She's also released a memoir. It's called This Will All Be Over Soon. We talked to Cecily during August of last year. Let's take a listen to that. Cecily Strong, welcome to Live Wire.
Cecily Strong Thank you for having me.
Luke Burbank We are huge fans of your your work on TV and this memoir is is a really fascinating and really personal read. Other than you, the main character in in this book is is your cousin Owen Strong, who passed away from brain cancer when he was 30. Did you have thoughts about writing a book before you went through that experience with him?
Cecily Strong No. I mean, it's something that came up in talks with agents and certainly like, okay, well, this is a thing I may do someday. And I assumed I would be doing, you know, funny essays or something. So I was not thinking I would write anything like I have written. And I certainly didn't expect to write about Owen that I'd lost him, because even with brain cancer, I was convinced he'd beat it just because of who he was and how positive and brave. And it just seemed like if anyone could do this, it would be him.
Luke Burbank You had told your agent, I think you write in the book as the pandemic was beginning, that you were hoping to write something. What was it like for you, though, to write like a memoir like this versus like an SNL sketch?
Cecily Strong For me, you know, all writing is kind of the same. Not that it comes out the same, but that I'm it still feels like it's coming from a similar place. And I, you know, I usually want to write on Tuesday because I've trained myself to do that on the show. Oh, really? So and so. And it's usually like it's by that Tuesday, I'm kind of like, okay, I should write or something. And I just started dating somebody. And, you know, we got to that point. I was like, you know, I really like you. Let's say that we're dating, let's be dating. And then, you know, four days later, he got COVID and we didn't even know he had COVID because it was so early on, he wasn't even allowed to get a test. But I had been I just started talking with my cousin's oncologist at Duke, Dr. Henry Friedman. So I met Henry. And then it was like the next day was Jack got COVID. And I'm asking Henry, what do we do? Because we just knew so little. And so I quarantined for two weeks. Then I'm worried do I have it? And I have this, you know, funky little thermometer because you couldn't get thermometers at the time either. And I'm like, I have anxiety, depression. I can't trust what I'm feeling and I'm having to trust this little instrument. But it was like sometimes they would show me I'm 105 degrees or I'm 93 degrees. And so I was like, Well, I'm so I'm dead either way. But I then finally I got out, I booked an Airbnb and that was really right away. I started writing. Everything just started pouring into my head. There was space again. There was a little bit more space for it. And not just like the panic of like, is he going to die? Am I going to die? Just really afraid of everything during those two weeks.
Luke Burbank You do write in this book that you're a pretty anxious person, and I wonder if people sometimes have a hard time squaring that with your job as a person who like goes on TV and pretends to be Judge Jeanine Pirro and is like very funny and seemingly kind of not anxious.
Cecily Strong You know, I think that's definitely true. People assume we have a lot more confidence. And I can say we because I know the people I work with, too. And really, you know, if we were kind of like very cool elected people, we wouldn't be as funny as we are, you know?
Luke Burbank This is Live Wire from PRX. We are listening back to a conversation we had with the comedian and writer Cecily Strong from Saturday Night Live. We've got to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere because we will be right back.
Luke Burbank Welcome back to Live Wire. I'm your host, Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. We are listening to a conversation we had with the comedian and Saturday Night Live cast member Cecily Strong, recorded last August talking about her memoir. This will all be over soon. Let's get back to that conversation. I'm curious about what it was like for you as you were up in the Hudson Valley of New York with a couple of your friends. You're staying in this Airbnb and you don't have the the daily ritual or the weekly ritual of creating SNL. And your cousin has passed away, which you're still trying to process, and your boyfriend has COVID and is not calling you back. How were you able to actually like you said, you write on Tuesdays just out of habit, but like, how were you able to actually write this book? Were you just keeping a diary and thinking maybe this will be the book?
Cecily Strong Yes, I certain I didn't even know it was a book. I just knew I would write. And my agents sort of were like, it doesn't have to be a book, but. But I think you should keep writing.
Luke Burbank That sounds very much like a thing an agent say.
Cecily Strong Yeah. But I say that. I mean, I really I am friends with my agents as well. They were my friends before being my agents. And I trust them a lot. And so and it was it was a great exercise for me. A lot of days would you know, I would write during the day and then I we'd make dinner. We had like a family dinner that we would do and Kevin would read what I had written. So I didn't even read any of it out loud until recording the audiobook, I think.
Elena Passarello Hmm.
Cecily Strong But because it was such an isolating time, it sort of felt like I was writing to somebody. And so I did. I felt less alone. Either I'm talking to Owen or I'm talking to Jack who's not there, or I'm talking to some nameless, faceless, intimate friend. And so that's it was a way to communicate and not feel as isolated.
Elena Passarello It feels like it wants to be really immediate as well. This book, the way it's shaped in the structure, it seems like, you know, there's this other version of it that could be really novelistic and have all the symbolism in it from the get go. Were you always interested in keeping that sort of connection to the period right before it came out?
Cecily Strong Yes, it was sort of going back and forth, like, do I want to involve COVID this much? And then it was sort of like, well, yeah, I have to because COVID is involved in my life and all of our lives. There's no way to ignore it at that point. And so that's why we wrote about it. And I think I don't know that I could write that. The other novel that you're talking about. You know, I don't know that I'm a good enough writer for that. But I know I can be very honest. And honesty, I think, is where that immediacy is coming from, too.
Luke Burbank This is Live Wire. We're talking to Cecily Strong from Saturday Night Live and Schmigadoon. And also the new memoir.
Cecily Strong It will always make me laugh when people say it. It still works!
Luke Burbank Can I just say? Can I just tell you, we chatted with Barry Sonnenfeld a while ago, who was director of Schmigadoon. And when we said the word Schmigadoon, Elena laughed for five solid minutes. The show wasn't even on television. Just the name.
Cecily Strong I'm with you Elena and I do the same.
Elena Passarello And then I watched every episode. I am your target market for both the title and the show. It's great.
Cecily Strong Yes.
Elena Passarello Great, great, great.
Cecily Strong Me too. I am. I'm also the target market.
Luke Burbank You write in this new memoir about what it was like trying to make Saturday Night Live from an Airbnb in the Hudson Valley of New York. And like you're your friend, who you're quarantining with is like now the prop director for this. Yeah. It's like an insane thing trying to make television that way. Like, what was that like for you?
Cecily Strong It was absolutely crazy. I mean, and especially as someone who is so bad with technology and so, you know, We're getting all these weird apps and they're hacked, they're looking in our phones so they can see what we're filming. And and they sent us. I would just get sent costume pieces from Amazon and talk to Ward Tom at wardrobe, like, well, here's how we're going to make this Jeanine dress. I think we should add these bows here. And so I was making those. And then Kevin was I'm a horrible artist, too, so Kevin would do all of the props. He made me a big box of wine, I think, for Janine. And then and then we had this they sent us this big green screen and then they so we had to hang it. And I remember coming into the room at one point and like Kevin is ironing greenscreen. Wow, that's crazy. Yeah, but it gave us something to do. And, you know, there's a lot of weird, frantic energy, so that was a good place to focus it.
Luke Burbank When you talk to somebody who's on Saturday Night Live, you sort of have to ask this obligatory question about their audition process. And you write about this in your book. I think you may have come up with the greatest audition characters in the history of SNL auditions. A New York cruise ship passenger trying to bring a fresh pineapple back onto the ship with her husband and demanding to speak to someone in charge when they won't let her. A chubby little boy thanking his waitress at a diner after a Saturday family meal and a midwestern party aunt bragging about wearing her niece's size.
Cecily Strong They're all people I have seen and enjoyed in real life.
Luke Burbank And was that I mean, something that was just you were just carrying her and obviously you had done improv in Chicago, so you had been developing these characters. But I mean, is that sort of how it works when you're in your line of work? Like you see somebody doing something and you just you're some part of your brain goes that's going to be universal for people for some weird reason, and that's a character.
Cecily Strong Early on, I didn't do any impressions. I didn't think of myself as an impressionist. Once someone tells, you have to do three characters and three impressions. So that's when I was like, Okay, well, what do I find funny? And that's how those came up. But I think now I yes, I am more trained to see things and go, Well, that's a character or an impression or something. My brain is more that way, but early on, it was just really throwing spaghetti at the wall.
Luke Burbank Huh.. I mean, you also did a character from Elimidate when which I was a huge fan of, by the way.
Cecily Strong I love'd Elimidate. You are truly I think you're the first person I've met who even knows what it is and is a fan.
Luke Burbank Somehow you and I were keeping elimidate going for a period of a couple of years back there in the nineties. Yeah, you do an Elimidate Milwaukee, dude. And also your your actual dating life is sort of a topic in this in this new memoir and a thing that you said that I thought was really interesting, which I bet you a lot of people can actually identify with, was you are pretty comfortable being single during the periods of your life when you're single. And your friends seem to be very worried about about your singleness, but it's them worrying about your singleness that is the larger hassle than being single, right?
Cecily Strong Yes. Everyone kind of would start coming up or people would be like, "Can I introduce you to some-? And it would be like, Why? What's happening? Is it bumming you out to sit here and talk to me right now to come to my house and not see a partner? Does that bother you? But I think, you know, it's they want to be helpful. It's coming from a good place.
Luke Burbank Sure. You also the Saturday Night Live family. You lost the music director, Hal Willner. And I know that was very hard on you during the pandemic because you had a pretty close relationship with him.
Cecily Strong Sure. And I will say it's not even with Hal. It's not even that we were necessarily very close. But when you work with people, there is that closeness. It was more that Hal was so eclectic and bizarre and such a character and like the first person that you'd see when you walk into SNL because he'll draw your eye. So he's got, like a big hat on and a big beard and and he was so friendly right off the bat because we had other friends in common, because the other thing about Hal Willner is that he knew everybody and worked with everybody. And I had been emailing with Hal about a show over the hiatus? And so it was also another thing like it's bizarre to be emailing with someone about COVID and then they passed from COVID. That's how fast and how much of like a, a snowball this thing is. And you know Hal, the night he died, I think 600 or so people died in New York. And it's like that's such a huge number to even imagine that those are people and they're people that are as big and singular as Hal Willner, you know?
Luke Burbank Right. We're talking to Cecily Strong. Her new memoir is This Will All Be Over Soon. She's also has been a cast member on Saturday Night Live. But I'm reading that that it's sort of TBD.
Cecily Strong Yes, it's still TBD.
Luke Burbank What does that mean?
Cecily Strong You know, it's such a wonderful, supportive, hilarious environment. And the people there are so great. So it's it's a hard place to leave. And I think the show is kind of changing to allow people to do other projects at once and to just be more flexible. So there's a lot of reasons to stay, too, but I'm just not quite sure.
Luke Burbank Uh-huh. I feel like when you talk to somebody who's been on Saturday Night Live, they describe it as being the most exciting, sort of engaged, thrilling process that also almost kills them every week and leaves them feeling emotionally hollow afterwards. It seems like a lot goes on. Like, what's your experience generally?
Cecily Strong I think that's absolutely true. I can speak about it so glowingly because I've been away from it for a couple months. But yes, I mean, we don't get a lot of sleep and it is insane how emotional sketch comedy can be and that it's it feels very isolating, too, because it's so you feel so embarrassed when you first get there to be sad about a sketch being cut or to to be nervous. So I like to go to the newer people and. Make sure I'm checking in and being like, Hey, I know that this really hurts and it's okay that you're crying about your banana sketch being cut. It's like, I get it. I was told Dana Carvey cried in his dressing room, and I'm sure I'll be like, Here's the nice snot stains from a really bad night I had about something I'm sure that I can't even remember. You know, it's just we go through these wild swings.
Luke Burbank This is why you have to stay on the show. A, you're hilarious. And B, you need to be there to sort of, you know.
Cecily Strong Point out the snot stains.
Elena Passarello Yup, point out the snot stains.
Luke Burbank Take care of the next generations. Speaking of one of, I think the greatest characters in SNL history, at least a character who I quote constantly when I say, xactly Seth. Where did the the the girl you don't want to get stuck talking to at the party. Like, did you have that experience and then to create that person for Weekend Update?
Cecily Strong Well, I sort of it started as I was making fun of myself. Colin and I were trying to write an update piece early on. We were going through characters and I think I said something like and you know, like, that's really good for society. And then we were kind of that's where it started and playing around with that. And then I remembered a lot of my straight male friends telling me some stories about, you know, they'd see someone who looked pretty and they would talk to. And then it was like, Oh my God, the things that are coming out of this person's mouth were so crazy. And so it was a mix of all of that. And then I think Colin and I just love malapropisms too. The way to play with that, you know, we wrote that in 2012 and it was sort of the start of Facebook really being the big one. And now social media has made everybody kind of into that person who gives themselves a platform and, you know, just kind of plucks things out and doesn't really understand any of these issues, but uses them to shame other people or to talk down to anyone around her. Doesn't really. It's sort of like talking into a void because she doesn't care about the other person she's talking to. She doesn't care about their response. She wants them to know she's smart. She knows that. Shame them. Check her phone. Who cares that another person is there? It's just about her existence.
Luke Burbank Right. I want to kind of wrap things up here, sort of where we started talking about this memoir, which is really beautiful and really very moving in the way that you talk about your cousin. And I'm wondering what it's been like for you in doing the publicity for this book to talk about him so much. Has that been cathartic for you or has it been retraumatizing?
Cecily Strong No, it has been cathartic and it's sort of. Sometimes I'll cry, but I think, I think that's okay. And this is a time where we sometimes cry. And it's it's important to me that I get to share him. And it's a gift every time I get to talk about him.
Luke Burbank Yeah, I was on I was on his band's website last night.
Cecily Strong oh really?
Luke Burbank Vibing out to his music. And I was like, This comes up a lot in the book, so let's see what's going on. It's really cool stuff. I mean, this was an amazingly talented person, obviously.
Cecily Strong Yeah. It's it's so cool to me that people can find his music. And I was talking with my uncle about it, and it's like, what an amazing gift that Owen left us with these songs that we get to have this and share it and like, thank God they're good.
Luke Burbank That's, I was nervous. I was nervous clicking on the link because I was like, this is obviously very important to Cecily. Ummm let's see. And then it was actually good.
Cecily Strong Yeah, it makes it much easier to share.
Luke Burbank Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Cecily Strong, great job on this memoir. It is titled This Will All Be Over Soon. Great job on Schmigadoon.
Cecily Strong Well, thank you.
Luke Burbank Thanks so much for coming on, Live Wire.
Cecily Strong Thanks for having me.
Luke Burbank That was Cecily Strong right here on Live Wire, recorded back in August. Since we last spoke to Cecily, she is still on Saturday Night Live and Schmigadoon has been renewed for a second season. So, Lenny, you can continue to crack up at the name for at least one more season so you can catch it on Apple TV plus. And of course, her book. This will all be over soon, is available now. Live Wire is brought to you in part by Alaska Airlines. Alaska Airlines offers the most nonstop from the West Coast, including destinations like Hawaii, Palm Springs and San Francisco. And as a member of the OneWorld Alliance, Alaska Airlines can connect you to more than 1000 destinations worldwide with their global partners. Learn more at Alaska AirCon.
Advertisment This episode of Livewire is supported by aspiration dedicated to making a difference to combat climate change with aspirations. Zero the credit card that plants a tree with every swipe. To date, 75 million trees have been planted. Aspiration.com. Aspiration Financial LLC.
Luke Burbank This is Live Wire as we like to do. Each week, we asked our listeners a question. We were inspired by the versatility of both of our guests this week. And so we asked the Live Wire listeners, what's something that people would be surprised to learn about you? Elena has been collecting up those responses and is going to tell us about them now. What are you seein?
Elena Passarello You want versatility? I will give you versatility. How about this from Peter? Peter says I can ride a bicycle backwards and steer the handlebars with my butt. Peter adds, I'm a 68 year old male.
Luke Burbank Wow. See, that sounds like the kind of thing that I would have tried when I was 12, but I would absolutely not try at 46. I mean, everything that me and my friends did related to bikes was just taking our life into our own hands, you know.
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank Building ramps and jumping off the high dive at Greenlake like.
Elena Passarello What?
Luke Burbank We just did all kinds of unsafe things. And by the way, not a helmet in sight. This was the eighties.
Elena Passarello So do you know what I did with my bike? I turned it upside down, stood over it, and pretended it was a printing press and did not ride it.
Luke Burbank You have been a lifelong writer even before you, you know, probably knew it. What's some other versatility on display from our listeners?
Elena Passarello Well I don't know about versatility, but this is something that people are surprised to hear about Lydia. Lydia says, I eat the same thing for lunch every day. I have for the last two years. It keeps me from staring into the fridge in the morning and stalling out, I guess to pack in the morning when you're packing your lunch to get me to go to work. I feel like I could use so much more of this kind of discipline in my life. I cannot do the same thing every day. I can't.
Luke Burbank Does Lydia say what the lunch in question is?
Elena Passarello No.
Luke Burbank That to me is to is, get back at us Lydia. I want to know what that is.
Elena Passarello Apparently, it's really good for your caloric intake to have, like, the same breakfast and lunch.
Luke Burbank I mean, unless I'm going pizza for lunch, I think I'm going to get bored with anything else. That's the problem. I don't get bored with the food. That's probably not great for me.
Elena Passarello That's probably what Lydia is doing. She's having pizza for lunch every day.
Luke Burbank Maybe that's why she's not letting on. All right, one more thing that is surprising about one of our listeners.
Elena Passarello Oh, I love this one from Sally. Sally says, I used to hitchhike every day to work at my summer job making pizzas. Making pizzas, which Lydia would then have for lunch, potentially.
Luke Burbank We don't want to assume, but that's what we're guessing. Wow. That was a really different time.
Elena Passarello It must have been a while ago, right?
Luke Burbank Yeah. I mean, although I hitchhiked down the Mississippi River, like, five, six years ago. What? Yeah, it was a stunt for a different radio show that I worked on. But we were hitchhiking from Minnesota down to Mississippi, and it was really interesting to see who the kind of folks that picked us up were. It was typically very working class folks. It was a lot of people who had themselves hitchhiked. It was never a fancy car. We got picked up in a zero Lexuses or Lex. I don't know what the plural of that is, but people would just come down on a stone cold beater, pull over and just be like, get in.
Elena Passarello You know, I guess I hitchhike last week now that I think about it, when I was in Vermont that I was working at the top of the hill in Montpelier, Vermont, but I went and drank a bunch of margaritas at the bottom of the hill, and I was trying to walk up the hill and not get like the margarita farms. And this green truck drove by that knew that I was going to the top of the hill because it's a small town and the drivers like get in. And so I just hopped in the back of the truck and rode uphill for about 90 seconds.
Luke Burbank You know, I can't believe that you missed the chance to literally run up that hill.
Elena Passarello Oh, I know.
Luke Burbank Doubt Kate Bush fan that you are.
Elena Passarello After drinking margaritas. Yeah, totally.
Luke Burbank All right. Thank you to everyone who sent in a response to our question this week. We've got a question for next week's show, which we're going to reveal at the end of this episode. So stick around for that. This is Live Wire. I'm Luke Burbank. That's Elena Passarello. The Guardian calls our next guest, Canada's nicest emcee. And Pitchfork called him the new standard bearer for positive rap. He's also the host of the Emmy Award winning Netflix series Hip-Hop Evolution, which is super good. It won a Peabody Award. He knows radio, too. He was the former host of the CBC's Arts and Culture Show, Q. His name is Shad, and we talked to him back in August about his sixth album, which is out. It's called Tao. Let's take a listen to that conversation right now. Shad, welcome to Live Wire.
Shad Thanks for having me.
Luke Burbank It's nice to see you, man. And this new album is really good. I'm wondering, when you first started writing music and who were you trying to sound like? Was there someone that you were you were emulating up there in Toronto?
Shad So my heroes in high school were Common, Outkast, Lauryn Hill, Biggie. A number of artists and the weird thing is that they actually they inspired me to not rap kind of like they inspired me to rap, but also not to rap because they were so good and they had real things to say and they really had their own story. And so in high school I was just freestyling for fun because any time I tried putting anything to paper, it was just, you know, it was nothing compared to them. So it was it was a little bit later, maybe around 2021, I started to feel like I had stories that were my own. That's when I got more serious about it. So, yeah, to answer your question, that's who I was trying to emulate in the sense of, you know, having something to say, having my own, my own stories and my own style. But that that obviously takes a bit of time.
Luke Burbank So you kind of needed to to have some life experience under your belt before you felt like you really had like substantial stuff to write about.
Shad Yes. I remember writing something in high school and and looking at it afterwards, and I was just mortified and was like, I'll just freestyle in the cafeteria until I have something to say.
Luke Burbank At least you have the presence of mind, you know, in the moment, a sense you were still a little bit, a little bit green.
Shad Also, thankfully, that was the era where you couldn't record very easily. Right?
Luke Burbank Right. Because if it was now, we would have like thousands of Shad TikTok videos.
Shad Yeah, there would be a million mixtapes. Tik Tok, I mean, yeah, yeah. There'd be a lot to sort through.
Luke Burbank I was reading some articles about you in preparation for this, and I noted that of maybe like the five articles I read, I think exactly five of them referenced you being known for being a nice guy in hip hop. And I was wondering if that if that's a compliment still or if that's a little exhausting to keep hearing that kind of feedback.
Shad Look, I feel like it's true. I'm a kind person. My, like, kindergarten report card says Chad's a nice kid. Really? Like, it actually does. I like to make people feel good. It's a, I think that's a performer's instinct. You know, I think it's a entertainer's instinct. You like to see people feel better, so they're definitely worse things to be called. It's actually true and yeah. So, you know, it's, it's fine. It's fine by me.
Luke Burbank And yet hip hop I mean, hip hop is such a wide range of different styles of music and messages. And I think it would obviously be really reductive to say it's just about being tough or whatever, but there is an element of that where that's that's something that is associated with, with parts of hip hop. And you're coming in saying like, hey, I want to talk about us getting along. I want to talk about thinking about people who are experiencing, you know, homelessness, stuff that you get into on your records.
Shad Yeah, well, what I learned really early on, again, like I'm from the era where you couldn't just record. It's a lot of live performances, a lot of battles and stuff. And what I learned early on is that it's actually all about the audience and winning over the audience with whatever your style is. So some people's style is to be the baddest guy in the room and like, that is dope. And if you do that, well, then you win. But also, if you charm the hell out of everybody, you also win. So, you know, that's something I learned is that's also a rule of hip hop, you know, and those are the early battle lessons that kind of, like, informed my approach. So, yeah, whatever you have to offer to engage people, you know, for me it is talking about what's, what's on my mind, what's on my heart. I love to put humor in my music and humor in my style. And also I like to share my perspective when I feel like my perspective is a little bit different, you know? And I think people can tell that it's genuine and and so hopefully that's engaging. Like, yeah, I think I learned that early on. You got it. You play the hand that you're dealt.
Luke Burbank You've got this show on Netflix, hip hop evolution, which it won a Peabody is just a really fascinating show, but it's also so ambitious. It's sort of like the the history of hip hop music and how so many things in hip hop sort of got created and the way that things play off of each other. It seems daunting to sit down and go like, we're going to try to document all of this because like such a big topic.
Shad Yeah. So the way the show started was we actually thought we were only going to make one season, so we thought it would be a document of the origins of hip hop. You know, while these pioneers are still around and in terms of scope, that is much more manageable because if you're talking about the beginnings of hip hop, there actually weren't that many people around. You're talking about the Bronx in the late, you know, the seventies and that particular hip hop community. It's, it's actually quite small and something that has been documented super well in books and something you capture on film. So after that first season, we got the opportunity to do more. And then yes, it gets super, super daunting. And our writers and producers, I think, did a very good job of well, the show shifted. I think, at that point it became an overview, you know? Not nothing comprehensive, but this is, this is a general overview of how this music has moved and grown as it's landed from New York and to different places and mixed with those different local cultures. And what some of those spots brought to hip hop that was that was different and unique. And, you know, if we get a chance to continue the show, it will get even more daunting because you get into the Internet era.
Luke Burbank Right. We just do like four episodes on Juice World.
Shad Oh, yeah.
Luke Burbank And just like just talking about these like these SoundCloud rappers that have had this, like, amazing rise and impact now on the on the sound of things.
Shad Yeah. That's where I think the show would go. You know, ours is mapped out geographically. And I think what happened after the mid 2000 is that geography went to the Internet and new places on the Internet changed the music. So that is almost certainly where the show would go in the future.
Luke Burbank You talked to some really heavy hitters on on this Netflix show, like, you know, Killer Mike and KRS One and Master P, among many others. Were you nervous? Like you're just a kid. You grew up in Toronto, you're rapping, you're listening to this music, you're making your own, and now you're talking to the people who are literally the founding members of it.
Shad Yeah, I was. Definitely nervous. The good kind of nerves, you know, the proper respect kind of nerves for these artists and also for what we're trying to do with the show, which is just provide this useful document and hopefully do right by the culture. There were a couple of times, though, where I was sort of surprised by what I felt in terms of nerves. Like Q-Tip is the one that jumped out at me because I was excited to interview Q-Tip. Nervous in the good kind of nervous. But when I was suddenly in front of him there, the thought occurred to me of how much I owe this guy, you know? My career, my style. Like this guy really opened the door for people to be different in hip hop. You know, I think of hip hop sometimes as like a tree. And Q-Tip is one of the major branches that a lot of people come out of or come out of the branches that come out of him. So, yeah, there were moments like that for sure, and that one stands out.
Luke Burbank This is Live Wire. You're listening to a conversation that we recorded with rapper and broadcaster Shad. We got to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere. We'll be back with much more with Shad, including a song. So stick with us. This is Live Wire.
Luke Burbank Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. We are listening back to a conversation we recorded with the rapper Shad in August of last year. Let's take a listen to that. So you've got this new album title out, and I was reading correctly your previous album. It's kind of this one's building off of you were living in Vancouver, British Columbia, and just kind of looking around and noticing just the the sort of tremendous inequity in a place like that.
Shad So this one I started writing when I was in Toronto and it's much of the same situation. But this one I was thinking more about our humanity and the different aspects of our humanity and how each of those different aspects seem to be under threat. You know, for example, work this even pre-pandemic work was getting more precarious and work was getting more scarce. Our connection to other people, of course, like moving online social media, like that's becoming more two dimensional and more fraught. And so that's where this album was inspired. But but that's also affected by so many economic pressures, right, that are the same in Toronto as they are in Vancouver. Toronto is a very expensive city. Very unequal city.
Luke Burbank Yeah. But the album definitely seems pretty prescient talking about the themes that are raised on the album and, you know, and that was all before the pandemic. So now, I mean, you listen to it and you think about how the last year and a half has unfolded, and it sort of seems like you had a crystal ball or something. I mean, that was just stuff you were kind of thinking about and feeling?
Shad Yeah, totally. There's a friend of mine wrote this article early, early in the pandemic, and he said something like, The pandemic hasn't been a new situation as much as it's sort of taken the situation we were already in and like pushed it to its logical conclusions. Right. We were already isolating ourselves more by just kind of being online and ordering Uber eats and, you know, and now that's all we can do.
Luke Burbank It's like the tide went out and you saw all the barnacles that were always living on the the pier. But we just didn't see them as maybe as clearly or some of us didn't.
Shad Exactly. Or the inequality. Right. Like that was always there. And then the pandemic just pushed it to an almost absurd extent. Right. So I think that's a little bit of why it feels feels kind of prescient. And I think this is the direction we were heading. We just hit fast forward.
Elena Passarello Hmm. Mm hmm.
Luke Burbank Well, we're going to hear a song off of this latest album, Tao. What song are we going to hear?
Shad This song is called Out of Touch.
Luke Burbank Anything you'd like to say context wise about this song?
Shad Yeah. So Out of touch is like talking about pressure, and it's like, maybe too on the nose now.
Luke Burbank Right.
Shad And there is a line actually, I say the people is sick more than just a needle, a fix. And this is way before the pandemic. And I'm not an anti-vaxxer.
Luke Burbank Right. Okay, good. Well, that's see that's good context.
Shad For asterisks, preface, you know? Yeah. So, yeah. But the song's called Out of Touch. To me, it's like the thesis for the album, you know, because the album is about our humanity and these different parts of ourselves we seem to be losing touch with. So the song touches on a lot of different things and I tried to make it some people can move, too.
Luke Burbank All right. This is Shad on Live Wire.
Shad Yeah. Oh.
Shad Canada Heat / Getting hotter than a Panama Beach / In a Canada goose / speaking of Canada beast / Who's speaking Canada's truth? / Who's standin for peace? / Live from the home of the slaves in the land that was theifed / Lot of broken and lost souls on this planet of freaks / Supply and demand's the only commandment we preach / Each man is. abrand, each night's a famine or feast / So we quote "I sell therefore I am" in these streets / The people sick and nothing that a needle will fix / We need presence (presents), we just get recipts for the gifts / Playing God - We just got a cease and desist / When our own souls wish that we would cease to exist / We out of touch now /
Shad Too out of touch now / In the 6 like touchdown / I was tripping I just touched down / and touch now /
Shad My how we've come a long way / But it seems we're headed in the wrong way / Hope we finally turn it around one day / Before it's too late /
Shad Yeah now how do we attach the roots? / I don't mean no metaphor I'm talking about these packaged foods / mass produce / who's the most impacted group? / Who gets to a black and blue? / Really? It's a question that's connected to the facts and truth, lesson plans and passionfruits / We got crashing moods, diseases. Another rage abuse / lack of direction from having no grasp of past and future / Gratitude is now. Plus, we love to escape / we love entertainment, especially if it's public disgrace / no love and embraces.
Shad And nothing is sacred / public makes discussions of late the trust in a space / the drugs in the safe / the pleasant, the block and all that to say / The main cause of all the suffering and hate
Shad We out of touch now / Oh. To add a touch now / oh. In the six like touch down / I was trippin I just touch down / and touch now.
Shad My how we've come a long way / But it seems we're headed in the wrong way / Hope we finally turn it around one day / Before its too late
Shad And that's the way that it goes / Oh Lord, I don't know if I can take anymore / Got my hands in the air and my knees on the floor / Wanna reach out and touch something deep in my soul /
Shad We out of touch now / Oh Lord, I don't know if I can take anymore / Got my hands in the air and my knees on the floor / Wanna reach out and touch something deep in my soul / Too out of touch now /
Shad My how we've come a long way / But it seems we're headed in the wrong way / Hope we finally turn it around one day / Before it's too late.
Luke Burbank That is Chad. Right here on Live Wire, a new track off his new album, Tao. Chad, thank you so much, man.
Shad Hey, thank you. That was great. I appreciate it.
Luke Burbank All right. Before we get out of here, a little preview of next week's episode. We are going to be talking to Dylan Marron. He is the host and the creator of this critically acclaimed podcast called Conversations with People Who Hate Me, which was sort of a social experiment that he started because people were leaving mean comments about him on the Internet, about videos that he had made. And so he started engaging with them and interviewing them to kind of find out what their deal is. That podcast is now a book by the same name, so we can talk to Dylan about that. We'll also be chatting with the musician Brittany Davis about how, as a blind person, music became their first language, as well as why they're a more recent fan of Pearl Jam, which is kind of a fun story as well. And we're going to hear a really moving song from Brittany as well. And as always, we will be looking to get your answers to our listener question. Elena What are we asking the listeners for next week's show?
Elena Passarello What's the most unexpected conversation you've ever had?
Luke Burbank Right, that is inspired by Dylan's podcast and book that we're going to hear about next week. So if you have an answer to that, what's the most unexpected conversation you've ever had? You can submit your answer on Twitter or Facebook. We are at Live Wire Radio. All right. That's going to do it for this episode of the show. A huge thanks to our guests, Cecily Strong and Shad Live Wire, as brought to you in part by Alaska Airlines.
Elena Passarello Laura Hadden is our executive producer, Heather Dee. Michelle is our executive director. Our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Our assistant editor is Trey Hester and our marketing manager is Paige Thomas. A. Walker Spring composes our music and Molly Pettit is our technical director and mixer, and our new intern is Kotaro Chavez.
Luke Burbank Welcome to the team Kotaro. Additional funding provided by the Marie Lamfrom Charitable Foundation Live Wire was created by Robin Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week we'd like to thank members Miles Allenby of Portland, Oregon, and Phyllis Fletcher of Seattle, Washington. For more information about our show or how you can listen to our podcast, head on over to Live Wire Radio.org. I'm Luke Burbank. From Elena Passarello and the whole Live Wire team. Thanks for listening and we will see you next week.
PRX.
