Episode 524
with Nichole Perkins, Lucy Walker, and Joshua Henry
Host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello celebrate the songs lyrics that reflect our lives; writer Nichole Perkins discusses her memoir Sometimes I Trip On How Happy We Could Be and makes the case for why Niles Crane is sexy; Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Lucy Walker (Waste Land) unpacks her epic documentary Bring You Own Brigade, which goes deep inside the devastation of California's wildfires; and Tony-nominated performer Joshua Henry (Hamilton) shows us how seductive our cellphones can be in his song "Guarantee."
Nichole Perkins
Writer and Podcaster
Nichole Perkins is a writer from Nashville, Tennessee, whose work examines the intersections of pop culture, race, sex, gender, and relationships. She hosts the podcast This Is Good For You, which is all about finding the pleasure in life. Previously, she was co-host of two podcasts from Slate: Thirst Aid Kit, a show about pop culture and desire, and The Waves, which examined news and culture through a feminist lens. Her first collection of poetry, Lilith, but Dark, was published in 2018, and her latest book, a memoir titled Sometimes I Trip on How Happy We Could Be, came out in 2021. Website • Twitter
Lucy Walker
Filmmaker
Lucy Walker is an Emmy Award-winning and Academy Award-nominated British film director renowned for creating riveting, character-driven documentaries. The Hollywood Reporter has called her “the new Errol Morris” and Variety has praised her unique ability to connect with audiences. Lucy's films include feature documentaries Bring Your Own Brigade (2021), The Crash Reel (2013), and Waste Land (2010), as well as the short films “The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom” (2011) and “The Lion’s Mouth Opens” (2014). Her first job out of film school was directing episodes of Nickelodeon’s Blue’s Clues. She is also an acclaimed virtual reality director; her first VR experience, A History of Cuban Dance (2016), premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Website • Twitter
Joshua Henry
Musical Theatre Artist
Joshua Henry is a Tony- and Grammy-nominated Broadway performer, writer, and musician. He made a name for himself portraying Haywood Patterson in the 2010 musical The Scottsboro Boys, followed by lead roles as Aaron Burr in the first U.S. tour of Hamilton and as Billy Bigelow in a Broadway revival of Carousel. In September 2021, Joshua released his first solo album, Grow, a kaleidoscopic spectrum of sounds that showcases his powerhouse vocals and versatile talents. Listen • Twitter
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Luke Burbank: Hey, Elena!
Elena Passarello: Hey, Luke! How's it going?
Luke Burbank: It's going aright. Are you ready for a little "Station Location Identification Examination"?
Elena Passarello: Yes. Hit me with it.
Luke Burbank: Okay. This is where I tell Elena about a place in the country we're on the radio. She's got to figure out where I'm talking about. Okay. Pepsi was invented and first served in this city in 1898 by a local pharmacist.
Elena Passarello: Oh, no. That's in the Carolinas. And I don't I can't as a Carolinian. I'm sorry that I don't. Is it Wilmington, North Carolina?
Luke Burbank: You're close. Let me give you one more clue. It's where The Notebook, the Nicholas Sparks book. It's where it was set.
Elena Passarello: Set the book. Newburn, North Carolina.
Luke Burbank: Newburn North Carolina! [bell rings]
Elena Passarello: It's also the onetime home of my grandfather, Farnam Burbank.
Elena Passarello: What?
Luke Burbank: Yeah. When I was a kid, we would go out to Newburn, North Carolina, to see my granddad. That's where we're on the radio. On W T E B radio, in beautiful Newburn, North Carolina. Shout out to all the listeners there. All right, so we get to the show.
Elena Passarello: Let's do it! From PRX, it's Live Wire! This week, writer Nicole Perkins.
Nicole Perkins: People find themselves in the specifics and not the general. So when you tried to reach an appeal to everybody, it's a little too drab.
Elena Passarello: Filmmaker Lucy Walker.
Lucy Walker: What I learned was that it's not just climate change. There are these other factors, and that is taking a broad view. A reason for hope.
Elena Passarello: With music from Broadway star Joshua Henry. I'm your announcer, Elena Passarello. And now the host of Live Wire. Luke Burbank.
Luke Burbank: Thank you so much, Elena Passarello. Welcome to the show. We've got a great one in store for you all this week. Of course, we always ask the listeners a question. This week we asked what song Lyric best describes your life. We thought of this because one of our guests, Nicole Perkins, talks in her book about how her parents would communicate to each other through song lyrics. Like one of them will put one record on the hi fi, and then it would be telling the other parents some useful information. So we're going to get to those listener responses to that question in just a few minutes. First, though, it's time for the best news we heard all week.
Luke Burbank: This is our little reminder at the top of the show that there is, in fact, still in far corners of the U.S. Some good news happening. What's the best news you heard all week, Alina?
Elena Passarello: Well, not really a far corner as far as I'm concerned. This happened right down the road. A piece for me in Eugene, Oregon.
Luke Burbank: Okay.
Elena Passarello: The farm team baseball there is called the Eugene Emeralds. They are a subsidiary of the Giants, but here's why they crossed my radar. So the Eugene Emeralds were playing the Everett Washington Aqua Sox. It was an Emeralds home game. And the general manager of the Eugene Emeralds is a guy named Allan Benavidez, and he got a prostate exam up in the press box while singing Take Me Out to the Ballgame.
Luke Burbank: I saw this on Twitter. I think the way that this was sort of injected into the public consciousness, maybe a poor choice of words there, but was because the team tweeted out a video, but it's like 10 seconds long. And it's just they're filming the Diamond Vision, and it's just you can kind of see a small little figure that must be this general manager singing into a microphone from the press box. This is the actual audio. I don't know if this is even something we can play on public radio, but we're going for it.
Allan Benavidez: And take me out to the ball game. Take me out to the crowd.
Luke Burbank: Crowd is when he sings crowd is when you really get a sense for what's going on.
Elena Passarello: That's like that moment in that Chevy Chase movie, Fletch. Moon river.
Luke Burbank: I was fascinated with this story as well and was trying to figure out why exactly they did this. And I guess the best anyone can come up with is it was back in June and that's Men's Health Awareness Month.
Elena Passarello: Yeah, I think it was an awareness raising thing.
Luke Burbank: I hope it was, or else it was very strange.
Elena Passarello: But here's something else I found out, Burbank. Listen to this. This is not the first time this has happened. In 2015, a farm team in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, did the same thing.
Luke Burbank: Wow. So this is like a trend. Yeah, like seven years in between events.
Elena Passarello: It's like cicadas, right?
Luke Burbank: Speaking of big wins, the best news that I heard about this week actually happened in Louisville, Kentucky, where a woman named Crystal Dunn had been playing the Kentucky Lottery. She'd bought a $20 ticket, which is, you know, it's not cheap. It's not, you know, a dollar as you're walking out of the gas station or something. And so she was it was for this game called the Bank Buster Jackpot Instant Play. And she was watching TV, but she also had her computer screen open monitoring, I guess the drawing that was happening. And she looks over and all of a sudden it's just flashing. Jackpot winner $146,351.74. And now she's a single mom of three kids. She's worked her whole life. She's not somebody of tremendous financial means. So like $150,000 is huge. Yeah. So she goes down to the lottery offices and they cut her a check. And the first thing she does is she drives to a local grocery store and she buys 20 $100 gift cards. And she just starts walking around the grocery store handing out these gift cards to people, total strangers. And word got out that she did this really altruistic thing and the media started calling her. And she is so kind of like humble and really about, you know, as they say, I think something like character is what you do and no one's watching you. So about that, she like didn't want to do any interviews with the media, but then she started to think about it and she thought, well, maybe this is a chance to talk about just kind of like showing love and altruism to each other. So she agreed to do a couple of interviews really just to kind of inspire other people to do this kind of stuff. But it's a really incredible story and it reminded me because she talked about she was in the foster care system when she was growing up. She'd really had a, certainly a challenging life at times. It reminded me of when I did this kind of social experiment a few years ago of hitchhiking down the Mississippi River. And the people who picked me and my buddy up were almost always people who had themselves hitchhiked at some point, like we didn't get picked up by any fancy cars. It was always someone in some kind of stone cold beater who was like, Yeah, I used to do this right and I can identify with you out there on the road needing a ride. It's sweltering. You're somewhere in southern Iowa. Like, get in there, I think is a certain amount of charity and camaraderie shared among people who have been through life together. That really was kind of on display here, and it's just a really cool story. Just great. So that's the best news that I saw this week.
Luke Burbank: All right. Let's welcome our first guest on over to the show. Nicole Perkins is the former co-host of the podcast First Aid Kit, which was about pop culture and desire. She's also the author of a collection of poetry titled Lilith But Dark. Her latest book, Sometimes I Trip on How Happy We Could Be, examines the intersection of pop culture, race, gender and relationships. Nicole joined us for a chat in September of last year. Let's take a listen to that. Nicole Perkins, welcome to Live Wire.
Nicole Perkins: Hi. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Luke Burbank: Before we were actually recording, Elena and I were sort of commenting on how the writing is so great in this book because you have a really incredible way of describing people with a very economical bit of language. Has that always been a talent of yours.
Nicole Perkins: I guess. So one of the things that I've noticed over the years of going to school and reading and going to workshops and trying to learn the craft of writing is people find themselves in the specifics and not the general. So when you try to reach an appeal to everybody, it's a little too a little too drab. But when you get very specific and when you get down to the nitty gritty of things, that's when people find themselves and are like, yes, that's exactly it. You know? And I also think is just a standard thing. We are very good at describing, describing stuff and creating pictures with descriptions.
Luke Burbank: Well, something that was specific to your family's dynamic that I found to be very interesting, and in its own way relatable, was that your parents would try to send each other messages through the songs that they chose. They would sort of try to work stuff out or maybe not work it out through music. And it was actually a chapter in the book about this. Would you mind reading a little bit from the chapter Janet Jackson and the all black uniform?
Nicole Perkins: Not at all. I'll be happy to. My parents like to send messages to each other via song. The entire song didn't necessarily have to apply to whatever situation was going on in their marriage. The chorus was the most important part, even just a line or two. My father would come home after being God knows where, when he should have been at work, and my mother would queue up. It's over now by Luther Vandross. It was a song about someone suspicious that his lover was cheating. The chorus went, "You did me bad. It's over now. You treated me so bad. It's over now". I don't know if my mother really thought he was cheating. I just think she wanted him to know, she knew, he had not been doing what he should have. And she was over it. Depending on my father's mood. He'd give as good as he got. Usually with Rick, James is cold blooded. The song was about how sexy Rick's lover was and how he'd hoped she'd return his attention. But my father focused on that repeated chorus of "She's cold blooded". He wanted to call her cold because she couldn't tolerate the way he neglect his responsibilities. I got to hear a lot of good music because of my parents coded fighting. In 1986 Janet Jackson's album Control began to take the world by storm, and the eponymous single rocked my home. My mother's passive aggressive game skyrocketed. Janet was 20 and ready to establish herself as more than Michael's little sister. She wanted to show the world her independence, talent and maturity. My mother was 32. She'd never lived alone. A teenage mother. She went from her childhood home following the rules of the grandmother, who raised her into what would become an abusive marriage. And she'd never had a chance to establish her own identity. Although Janet was much younger, from a vastly different childhood, I think my mother connected to Janet's journey of finding and asserting herself. And Mama was losing patience with my father. His addictions, his abuse, his irresponsibility. She had been working as a nurse at the same clinic since before I was born. In every corner of her life, she was taking care of someone her patients, her children, and her trifling husband. Mama was tired and ready to gain control over her life. Enter Janet Jackson's third album and its lead single. If my mother started playing control, it was for a few reasons. One, it annoyed my father. Two, she was giving herself a musical pep talk. Three, She was letting my father know that for all his abusive bluster, she was the decision maker in the household. Four, the album was banging and no one could deny that. When Control came out, MTV and Betty played music videos around the clock. Janet released a video with every single she danced her heart out, creating choreography that's been passed all the way down to the tik tok generation. In most of the videos from this album, Janet wears all black attire. I was eight years old at the time and didn't think much about it until I overheard someone say that Black was slimming and that Janet was trying to hide her chubbiness.
Luke Burbank: That is Nicole Perkins here on Livewire reading from her book of essays. Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be, which is itself a prince lyric.
Nicole Perkins: Yes.
Luke Burbank: I'm curious why why you chose that lyric from Prince as the title for this book.
Nicole Perkins: It is from my favorite Prince song, If I Was Your Girlfriend from my Favorite Prince album, Sign of the Times, that came out in 1987. And I think the song itself is one of the most beautiful songs, most romantic songs I've ever heard. This idea of someone who wants to be in his lover's life so much that he's willing to change who he is for that. And just ultimately thinking about what if I approached happiness from a different angle? What if I decided to look at happiness from my terms? What a fantasy that is like. How beautiful that could be. Isn't that amazing?
Luke Burbank: This is Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. We are listening back to a conversation with the writer Nicole Perkins about her collection of essays. Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be. We've got to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere. Much more with Nicole in a moment. Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm your host, Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. We are listening back to a conversation we recorded with the writer Nichole Perkins talking about her collection of essays. Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be. We recorded this last September. Let's get back into it. We were talking before the break a little bit about Prince and his influence on you. You also write in this book about the influence that Niles Crane, from Frasier, had on you. Or at least helping you kind of develop your view of romance and sex and how to be in the world. I got to be honest with you. I did not see Niles Crane coming as the as the other influence.
Nicole Perkins: Most people don't. But Niles Crane is he's adorable. He's cute. He is sexy in his own little special way. And I think that's another thing that I wanted to get across is sometimes sexy is just not always the, you know, muscle bound guy. It's not always the woman in a bikini or whatever. And that you can find attraction wherever. And it's okay. But Niles is a very passionate person and he's very devout. He's also very ethical. You know, he has his morals and he sticks with them. And he will not sacrifice like his professional ethics. He will not sacrifice those even for the love of his life. So I admire this fictional character probably too much, but he's great. I have a pop funko of him in my office, as a matter of fact.
Luke Burbank: You do?
Nicole Perkins: I do.
Luke Burbank: He might be the person who looks the most like a funko just in real life. I think he's almost the physical embodiment that got bigger, had kind of a narrower body. We're talking to Nicole Perkins. Her book of essays is Sometimes I Trip On How Happy We Could Be. A big component of this book is you describing sexual experiences that you've had. And I'm wondering and, you know, you hosted a podcast, First Aid Kit, which was also very much about sort of your adventures in life. Have you just gotten comfortable at this point writing about and talking about that side of your life in a very, as they would say, outward facing way?
Nicole Perkins: Yes. And, you know, strangely enough, I made it a point not to get too detailed. So when people tell me, oh, this was much more explicit than I thought it was going to be, I'm a little like, oh, really? Because I could I could have gone there. I could have put even more details in, but I did not. But I was very aware that there would be a lot of people coming from the First Aid Kit audience who were probably expecting. We used to write travels on the show a little like short fiction, fan fiction pieces of the people that we were talking about. So I knew that some people were probably expecting a little bit of that and I can do that. But I was not writing erotica and I was not writing a romance novel. I just wanted to be open and honest. Sometimes I've had really good experiences and I wanted to say what part of those experiences entailed? That is for me to to show off, but also so that other people, especially women who might be reading the book, could kind of be like, Huh? I also had that experience and it was a good time for me too. And maybe they would have like a good memory, or maybe they would realize, Oh, I've never had this experience. What do I need to do to get that?
Elena Passarello: Yeah, I would argue maybe that the most I don't know if erotic is the right word, but the most sensual description of the whole book involves what it used to be like to go to the library back in the analog days and the pulling out of the card catalog, and you're not quite sure how much force to give it. And rolling through a microfiche and paying $0.10 for a copy of something. And I was it was so viscerally moving. It was like romance novel for, like, 40 year old nerds.
Nicole Perkins: Thank you. That is such a lasting memory for me, because that's where, you know, my love of reading and writing came from was going to the library as a child. And, you know, it got to a point where I was going to the library by myself just to, you know, just to find books. And also the smell of the library is so distinctive, it doesn't matter where you are in the world, you know that you're in a library.
Luke Burbank: You already sort of answer this question a little bit, Nicole. But I'm curious, other than yourself, obviously, this is a memoir. Who were you writing this book for? Do you have somebody in mind who you're hoping picks it up and has a certain experience with it?
Nicole Perkins: Yes, but no. So I try thinking of my audience as I was writing it, and that made me freeze up to the point that I could not sit down and I would have to, like, go get wine to relax my nerves in order to write. But ultimately, I wanted to be read by women, but especially black women and especially women in my age range, Gen-X, because we know what it's like to be the middle child is kind of pushed to the side, neglected a little bit, but also for black women. A lot of memoirs that we know about tend to be of like famous people, celebrities, or they tend to be kind of how to manuals, like how to keep a man, how to find a man, how to get married, how to keep your marriage strong along those lines, or how to become a millionaire and stay successful, or like things like that. And obviously I could never do a how to because my life has just been, you know, a series of mistakes. But but that's also what I wanted to get across is that I've made a lot of mistakes and I didn't have a very straightforward career path at all. But I am still here and I am satisfied and I am still like moving and finding myself. And I don't have all the answers. And if you are finding that to be your situation, you will survive and you will come out on top of it. So don't like don't freak out if you haven't succeeded by 25 or 30 or even 35. There's so much more on its way to you.
Luke Burbank: Nicole Perkins, thank you so much for coming on Live Wire.
Nicole Perkins: Thank you for reading and having me here. This was fun.
Luke Burbank: That was Nicole Perkins right here on Live Wire recorded last year. Her collection of essays Sometimes I Trip on How Happy We Could Be 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 Air.com.
Luke Burbank: This is Live Wire from PRX. Of course, each week we ask the Live Wire listeners a question inspired by Nicole Perkins's book. We ask all of our listeners what song lyric best describes your life. Elena has been collecting up those responses. What are you seeing?
Elena Passarello: This is a classic from Suzanne. The song lyric that best describes Suzanne's life is from Leonard Cohen. "There's a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." It's from his song Anthem. Isn't that great? Wow.
Luke Burbank: That is I guess I'm not surprised that Leonard Cohen was able to create profound lines. Do you know about his whole silence retreat stuff that he would do?
Elena Passarello: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: I mean, that's to me, like the ultimate. I don't know if it's self-actualization or self-realization. He would go to this place, Mt. Baldy, outside of L.A. and just, like, sit in silence for, like, days and weeks at a time, right?
Elena Passarello: Yeah. And then when he came out, he would come up with stuff like that.
Luke Burbank: Maybe that's why I never come up with anything good on this show, because I never stop talking. Maybe if I recharged for, like, a week, I'd come back with, like, some really great observations.
Elena Passarello: Or maybe we need to do a silent episode of Live Wire. Very John Cage of us, you know.
Luke Burbank: Very, very high concept. We'll ask the stations how they feel about that 57 minutes of silence. Although sometimes, depending on the week, maybe the listeners would prefer it. All right. What's another song? The lyric that describes one of our listeners lives.
Elena Passarello: How about this one? It's an Emmylou Harris quote. Rebecca says, This best describes Rebecca's life. The lyric is, "How would you feel if the world was falling apart around you? Pieces of the sky were falling in your neighbor's yard, but not on you. Wouldn't you feel just a little bit funny? Think maybe there's something you ought to do." That's a call to action.
Luke Burbank: Wow. And what an interesting way to describe it, right? This idea that we're all in this together, even if maybe you've been fortunate enough to not have the sky falling on you. Right. It's a kind of goes back to the best news story that I have this week about the woman who won the lottery and was sharing the money. Like, yeah.
Elena Passarello: I wonder, she's an Emmylou Harris fan.
Luke Burbank: I am. Maybe so. They didn't put that in the article, but I'm going to assume that Crystal Dunn is big on old Emmylou. Yeah. All right. One more before we move on.
Elena Passarello: Okay. This one's from Ben. It's the song lyric that best describes Ben's life, and it comes from George UTS. Are you ready for this one? Burbank. Okay, I've tried therapy and LSD and I've been lost. But now I've found and it's music, sex and cookies that makes my world go round.
Luke Burbank: So for them, the LSD and the therapy did not work. But the cookie therapy. Yeah. Was finally what what helped enlighten them.
Elena Passarello: I like that, you know, sex, drugs and rock and roll becomes sex music and cookies, too. I mean, cookies.
Luke Burbank: All right. Thank you, everyone, who sent in your responses about song lyrics, we've got another listener question for next week's show, which we will reveal in just a few minutes. This is Live Wire Radio, our next guest. Lucy Walker is a documentary filmmaker who's been nominated for two Academy Awards. Her subjects have included Amish teenagers and nuclear weapons and snowboarding. Not all in the same film. That would be incredible, though. Her latest film, Bring Your Own Brigade, premiered at Sundance last year, and it takes a look at the camp fire in Paradise, California, back in 2018 and what that event and its aftermath tells us about the future of wildfire in this country. We talked to Lucy back in September of last year. Take a listen to that. Lucy Walker, welcome to Live Wire.
Lucy Walker: Thank you so much.
Luke Burbank: The first 40 or so minutes of this film might be the most intense 40 minutes of film I've ever seen. I mean, because it's real stuff that's happening. Was that intentional? I mean, where were you looking to create an almost overwhelmingly intense opening for this?
Lucy Walker: Well, I think the experience of being trapped in a fire with your life in jeopardy is, to say the least, an overwhelmingly intense experience. And so if the goal is to accurately portray reality in a documentary, I think that's what was accomplished. And I don't think it was gratuitous because the rest of the film goes on to really understand what we're seeing and to keep following these characters that we've met, the firefighters and the residents. And if you don't understand how bad these fires are and how so many people are dying, then I don't think you can quite understand what's at stake or actually how the events unfold and where the risks truly lie, which is what we really seek to illuminate. So I wanted it to be both accurate but also useful. And each of the details in the stories is kind of the tip of the iceberg. I did a tremendous amount more research and spoke. Even more people and gathered even more harrowing footage and stories, but contained within those stories as well. I think there are clues that make these events kind of case studies so that you can see the bigger picture in these individual details.
Luke Burbank: Just to kind of set the table for people who maybe haven't had a chance to see the film yet, can you kind of explain where are we at with fires, particularly in the West? Like, what is the what's the scale of this and where does it fit in in terms of precedent?
Lucy Walker: We're on fire.
Luke Burbank: Yeah.
Lucy Walker: Right now we have Burning the Dixie Fire, which has zoomed up the charts to be the second biggest fire in California recorded history. It started yards away from the campfire that we see in the film, off of Highway 70, in the Feather River Canyon, off Camp Creek Road. So these fires happened the same place over and over again, because geographically this had to have winds and droughts, and that is the recipe for these fires. And there's a new fire that just exploded and is 0% contained and extremely windy conditions. I think fire season has lengthened by 75 days, is the estimate, to the point where firefighters will tell you there's no such thing as fire season. It used to be that they go on shift and the shifts could be up to 70 days at a time. They go home for a day, they get sent out and another 70 days because these fires burn in the backcountry and the firefighters and equipment all get loaned to one another in a system of mutual aid. But now that so many fires are burning, the firefighters don't come home all summer. But it's not even just the summer anymore. And the fire season kind of peaks at different places at different times and sort of winds up down in southern California, where the rains come, the latest, but the winds kick up. So it's a we're in an emergency. And I began making this film inspired by the Thomas Fire, which was at the time the biggest far in California history. And I thought I'll make a case study of that one. But it's now just number eight in the biggest fires in California history three and a half years later. And it's not just climate change that's driving it. So the reason it's so extreme is not just that we're in a drought and climate change is obviously trending worse. Climate change isn't trending quite that quickly. Worse, there are other factors. And as we learn in the film, if it wasn't for climate change, we would be having a crisis. And climate change is about performance enhancer. That's certainly exacerbating the crisis. But it's not just that. And we're also seeing it worldwide. You know, I don't know if you've been seeing any of the images coming out of Greece, for example. And of course we all remember Australia last year. So fortunately, this is really not just California and not just the western United States.
Luke Burbank: This is Live Wire. We're talking to Lucy Walker about her latest film, Bring Your Own Brigade. And actually, something that was very interesting to me in this film was someone talking about how the smoke that people complain about those of us that live in cities, cities that don't generally catch on fire. I'm in Portland. We sort of grumble about, oh, it's ruining my sunny day. And this person in the film says those are the remains of of my pets. And I was just wondering, as a filmmaker, how do you ask someone, hey, can I film you walking around the wreckage of what was your life as you see it for maybe the first time? I mean, it just seems like an intensely personal experience to have with someone.
Lucy Walker: That's right. And isn't that line poetic? I want to salute the people that I spoke with. Again, both firefighters and residents were real poets and really open up emotionally to me. And I think that's because they know what they're going through is really tremendously rough. And I think they felt very motivated to share the extent of what was happening to them in hopes that it might help other people. It is really difficult interacting with people and it's not like I have a team of researchers doing things for me. Usually there was just a team of three or four of us in disaster zones driving up and greeting people and seeing if they had the time to chat and navigating those interactions. But people are, I think, grateful for an opportunity to share what they're going through. If it feels like it, it's worth it. And it's a elevating conversation. My goal is always for it to be a win-win experience when I'm talking to someone, and I've been really grateful that the people I filmed with have really embraced the film. It's a complicated picture and their points at which, for example, it turns out that these lovely people I'm chatting with think climate change is a hoax, for example. And I find myself suddenly realizing that I have very different political views that might be very challenging to them. But actually something that was really a gift I felt was that opportunity to have these conversations that went really deep and to perhaps be really bonded in these moments of adversity. And it's very human being in a disaster zone, and it's very humanizing how vulnerable we all are in these moments. And we're all, you know, needing the bathroom and needing a snack and wanting to know how we're doing. And so it's perhaps very straightforward and another level, you know, just to have very human to human kind of conversations and interactions and a lot of how I set myself up as a filmmaker in the field in a situation like. This is about trying to keep things really authentic and immediate and simple and unpretentious and unintimidating and just really sweet and honest and friendly and and then really trust to the human, you know, desire to connect. And it kind of works. It's absolutely extraordinary. And it was really, really moving.
Luke Burbank: Something else I wouldn't have known until watching this film, by the way, we're talking to Lucy Walker about her new film, Bring Your Own Brigade. Is is the the sort of early approaches and tactics that Native Americans would use. And this is something that really comes out in the movie that, you know, fire is something that was used as a tool and something that was used to keep worst fires at bay for a long time. And then you have this the colonizers coming in, the Europeans and and and fearing fire and ultimately making the problem worse.
Lucy Walker: That's exactly right. I learned so much making this film and I was really quite ignorant when I began. I've grown up in the UK and I'd lived in New York City. I'd gone to film school and when I moved to California I was shocked to see these hills on fire and to see the smoke in the air and the ashes falling. And my first thought was, why can't they put them out? Because in London, the last great fire we had there, the last big fire, I should say, was the great fire abundant in 1666. So I grew up thinking that fire was a problem that we'd solved and a thing that shouldn't be allowed to happen. That was, you know, if the fire department was on their game, we wouldn't have fires. Right. And turns out that that was my European head's head mistaking this landscape for one that was similar to where I grew up. And it's not it's a far adapted landscape. It will burn. And the question is how it will burn. And because we've been suppressing fires in recent years, in the last hundred years, we've had this policy to put out all the fires and stop all the fires with the result that the fuel has piled up and built up. And we didn't recognize that the Native Americans had been living in this landscape and had figured out a way more sophisticated and effective way to live safely with fire, which was to allow it to burn or even deliberately set it to burn. We do know that California's burned since the beginning of European contact, and now it's emerging that all along indigenous people had a better way of living in this landscape. And what we've been doing has unfortunately really stacked up a huge problem that we're now seeing unfold.
Luke Burbank: Another detail in the film that was news to me was that the Olmsted brothers, who famously designed Central Park and a number of America's great urban parks, they came out to California and they looked around and they just basically said, well, if you want to live out here, if you're going to live in the woods, live in a cabin without many of your valuables and just expected to burn down every so many years, we have not followed that advice as as is evidenced in the film.
Lucy Walker: That's right. On the contrary, we put these incredibly expensive mansions stuffed with all the most expensive treasures in places like Malibu. And of course, also in general, not just the rich spots, but in general. We've been pouring into these areas with California's population growth and, you know, general housing crisis and people looking for homes. And if you move into one of these gorgeous areas, it might look like a suburban type of subdivision with nice, green lawns. And you might not realize that actually this area is extremely flammable, that insurance companies are dropping customers there like flies, and that the previous residents may even have been killed in a fire incident. So it's pretty confusing. And I don't think the public has quite understood all that. It's it's hard to really get your head around the fact that we can't just get the firefighters over and put these fires out and live exactly what we want to live with. Nice insured homes. Right. That seems like, you know, the modern way we should be able to control these things. And the truth is that nature just is going to laugh at that hubris. And unfortunately, when real trouble.
Luke Burbank: Before we let you go, Lucy, I just wanted to sort of ask, because you start the film by saying this is there is reason for hope. I mean, we're caught in this cycle of building in dangerous areas and then trying to put out every fire before it gets too big and thereby allowing more fuel to build up, which means the fires are ultimately not controllable by humans. How do we break out of the cycle? What did you learn from all this research and talking to all these people?
Lucy Walker: Well, I started out thinking that this was a film about climate change, and this problem was rather like climate change going to be really difficult and really slow to turn around even if, you know, we can turn it around at all. And what I learned was that it's not just climate change. There are these other factors. And that is taking a broad view, a reason for hope, because I do think that even if we're not quite able to get these measures done yet, the fact that we can do things is going to mean that we will do them. I do think the problems coming into focus. I also look at the logging industry and as they lose a tremendous amount of their assets, as these places burn, I think they're going to be looking at their practices. I think we're going to be looking at those native burning practices and wondering how we can educate the public that they don't mind having more control burns and that they understand that that's actually probably the only way that we're going to be able to manage and scale this enormously productive landscape. It is interesting, though, because as you capture the town of Paradise, where less than a year earlier, 85 people had been killed in the most horrible way and 18,000 structures had been lost. When you see them less than a year later voting against the building codes that everyone is desperate to bring in, and the fire chief begs them this five foot setback, if you do one thing, just do that. And even then, you can't get people together to take steps to mitigate this tremendous deadly risk. And I thought that is what's going on with climate change. It's so hard for us to come together as humans around these complicated risks. And I don't think we've solved it quite yet, obviously. But perhaps problems are starting to crystallize. And the film, I think, really sheds light on that and I hope is part of us having more honest and practical conversations moving forward about how do we come together to solve these fiendish, wicked, you know, complicated problems, you know, en masse?
Luke Burbank: Yeah, it really does become a film about human behavior. Lucy Walker The new film is Bring Your Own Brigade. It's a really amazing piece of filmmaking, something everybody should see. Thank you so much for making it and thanks for coming on Live Wire to talk about it.
Lucy Walker: Oh, it's such a joy. I really appreciated this conversation. Thanks.
Luke Burbank: That was filmmaker Lucy Walker, recorded back in September of last year. Her film, which is really required viewing if you're trying to sort of wrap your head around what is actually going on with wildfires, particularly in the West, and the human behaviors that surround them, you really got to see her film. It's Bring Your Own Brigade, and it's currently streaming on Paramount Plus. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. We've got to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere because when we come back, we will hear music from Broadway star Joshua Henry. Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. All right. Our musical guest this week is a legend in the Broadway theater world. He's best known for his Tony nominated run in The Scottsboro Boys. And also he played Aaron Burr in the first touring company of Hamilton and of a small musical you may or may not have heard of. He recently starred in the screen adaptation of Tick Tick Boom, and he released his debut album, Grow, last fall. Joshua Henry stopped by the show back in September of 2021. It was super fun. Let's take a listen to that. Joshua Henry, welcome to Live Wire.
Joshua Henry: Thank you. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
Luke Burbank: Yeah, we're so excited to have you on. I have been following your career for a while, and I'm just wondering, like, because you can really, really sing. Like, when did you first realize that that was something you could do?
Joshua Henry: You know what? I would say, well, the first time was like in high school when a teacher told me that, and I didn't understand what she was saying, but she said and she had to is coming down on her face. And I believed her at that moment because I was like, okay, fine.
Luke Burbank: What song had you been singing that brought tears to the eyes of this teacher?
Joshua Henry: There's a song in a musical called The Music Man, and it's called Til There Was You. Well, sure. It's a really it's a really lush, crooning, baritone situation.
Elena Passarello: And there was music and wonderful roses.
Joshua Henry: Alannah knows it. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So that was the first time that I knew or I felt that I could really, really sing. And then I think, you know, well, there was a moment where when I got to New York and I was in the Heights and I was in the ensemble, and I went on for Benny, which is the big role that I understudied. And when I actually did it, I remember the people in the wings Lin-Manuel Miranda, Alex Lacamoire, who's incredible music supervisor, just in the pit, just going like, Oh, I felt that. And I heard the audience response. And that was a big moment. I always knew that I could sing, but like when I felt the big reaction from people that I had never seen before or, you know, the audience reaction. So that was that was the moment.
Luke Burbank: You perform in a variety of different kind of genres, I guess. But your big thing has been Broadway and we've, you know, seen the complete shutdown of Broadway because of the pandemic. I'm wondering what that was like for you and also for your friends, because you must mostly be friends with people that this was what you all did all the time.
Joshua Henry: It was it was really rough. There was no in-person, you know, rehearsal rooms. There was nothing on stage. It was devastating. It really was. Because, you know, that's how I express myself, you know, in a big way. And so how I got back on my feet was like 15 minutes a day. I was just like, you know what? I'm going to play for 15 minutes, then pull up the guitar. And that's going to be my productivity for the day. That turned into half an hour, turned into more, and turned into writing a whole album. And, you know, but it just was like I had to really reconstruct in my mind what being productive was and get back to the joy of doing it for myself.
Luke Burbank: How long have you played guitar?
Joshua Henry: I played since I was about 11 years old.
Luke Burbank: Oh, wow. So you always kind of had that going. I don't know if maybe you, like, developed that, like, you know, during the like, you know, as you're understudying on in the heights, like, you know, you're backstage and just kind of noodling around.
Joshua Henry: Well, yes, that is true. Every show that I've done from In the Heights the last 15 years of my life, I'm always backstage, very harmonizing, remixing, you know, thinking up different mash ups that just occur to me in different styles. When I was in In the Heights, I had some when I was doing Hamilton, I, I did this whole series called Ham Jams. I just yeah, different song in a different style, you know, think of like wait for it in the salsa or jazz, huh? You know, so that's just I've always been a music music fan first before the musicals came along, and I fell in love with musicals. But so now this is a really interesting time because because things have shut down, I've had I've been able to focus on recording, being a recording artist, which I haven't had to before, because eight times a week I have to be on stage. So the pause was a really good thing for me.
Luke Burbank: What song are we going to hear?
Joshua Henry: So you're going to hear Guarantee from my EP called Guarantee. I wrote it because it made me think about what guarantees we have in life. As we know the rug can get pulled out from under us. So. And what I'll say is this song to me is like, from the perspective of our phones.
Luke Burbank: [Laughs] Okay.
Elena Passarello: Okay.
Luke Burbank: Okay. All right. That's a good piece of context for everyone. All right. Let's take a listen. This is Joshua Henry here on Live Wire.
Joshua Henry: Halos I paint on my forehead / Forget, your pain. Watch me instead / I shoot your bliss / I plead the click / Like at what I did / Keep your eyes down on me / Everything that you need I guarantee it / I, I guarantee it / Run away you do you / You gon' come right back. Ooh / I guarantee it / I, I guarantee it / Hey, hey, don't look up. Just look down. They don't know what we've found / they don't know I'm your dopamine open me / I'm here right now (Right now baby) / I like what you said when you saw what I did / Daylight to the bed. Imma ride your hip / Keep your eyes down on me / Everything that you need, I guarantee it / I, I guarantee it / Run away you do you / You gon' come right back. Ooh / I guarantee it / I, I guarantee it / Hey, you know, you mess these bi's, these tri's, these days of our lives / Throwback, flashback Fridays, you pray, Lord, let me get that / Let me get you caught up, everything I bought up / Oh, everything you can't afford / Double click this bliss, I know your wishlists / Took the pick, fixed it to your / Ever desire. Look at me, I you admire / Check the blue check. These take you higher, higher / Nah, nah baby don't run. Don't we have fun? / Don't I show you what you've never done / I need your love. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done / You like this one? / Keep your eyes down on me / Everything that you need, I guarantee it / I, I guarantee it / Run away you do you / You gon' come right back. Ooh / I guarantee it / I, I guarantee it /.
Joshua Henry: [Plays out]
Luke Burbank: Goodness. Thank you, Joshua Henry right here on Live Wire.
Joshua Henry: Thank you so much.
Luke Burbank: Oh, my gosh. That's great. And also really has me taking a hard look at my relationship with my cell phone.
Joshua Henry: Oh, that's good. Yeah.
Elena Passarello: I don't think I've ever been so attracted to a cell phone that that cell phone was really, like workin me.
Luke Burbank: Doesn't it tho?
Joshua Henry: I'm glad. I'm glad. Yeah. Yeah, it's.
Elena Passarello: Seductive, right? Perfect sense.
Luke Burbank: That was incredible, man. Thank you so much for stopping by the show. We really appreciate it.
Luke Burbank: My pleasure. Great to talk to y'all.
Luke Burbank: That was Joshua Henry right here on Live Wire, recorded in September of last year. Joshua's album Grow is out right now. All right. Before we get out of here, a little preview of next week's show. We are going to be talking to author Chuck Klosterman about his latest book, The Nineties. It was an instant New York Times bestseller. GQ magazine calls him the Generation X's definitive chronicler of culture. I think that's an accurate description. Chuck is great. We're also going to hear a very special musical appearance from the international rock band making movies. Remember that? Their appearance on the show at Rib Hall and like brought the house down.
Elena Passarello: Yeah, that was a real scorcher.
Luke Burbank: I loved it. It was awesome. And you're going to hear it on next week's show. We also need to get your answers to our listener question. Elena What are we asking the Live Wire listeners for next week's show?
Elena Passarello: Oh, I can't wait for this one. Don't let me down. Listeners, I really want to hear your answers to this one. What are you most nostalgic for from the 1990s?
Luke Burbank: I got thoughts on that too. You can go to Twitter or Facebook or at Live Wire Radio, pretty much anywhere out there on social media. All right. That's going to do it for this week's episode of Live Wire. Big thanks to our guests Nicole Perkins, Lucy Walker and Joshua Henry Live Wire is brought to you in part by Alaska Airlines.
Elena Passarello: Laura Hadden is our executive producer. Heather de Michele 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 is our music. Molly Pettit is our technical director and mixer and our intern is Kotaro Chavez.
Luke Burbank: Additional funding provided by the Regional Arts and Culture Council and the James F and Marion L Miller Foundation, Live Wire was created by Robin Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week we'd like to thank members Courtney Hofmeister of Portland Oregon. One time host of this actual program, and Matthew Jenki of Seattle, Washington. Who I'm also pals with also a special shout out this week to board member Toby Fitch. 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 crew. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.
