Kenneth Masloski: Thank you very much, Jamie Stewart, for being here with me to talk –

Jamie Stewart: It’s a pleasure.

KM: Yeah - to talk about failure and rejection and all sorts of things like that. Just to make sure that everybody is aware, your newest album, ‘OH NO,’ comes out on March 26, which by the time this comes out, it'll probably already be out or just out. And it is an album of duets which is really great and exciting. And I want to start first with asking a really basic, broad question and hopefully we can funnel the conversation from there. In your opinion or, what does rejection mean to you artistically?

JS: Oh. (laughs) I will boil it down to the majority of my experience. I mean, we're - I feel extraordinarily grateful for the position that the band I play in is in so far as for some fucking miracle, we have been able to persist for almost two decades. But as I said, it's by some fucking miracle because it seems like any second it is going to vanish. And I think that that constant looming potentiality of the thing that I have wanted more than anything else in my entire life and enjoy more than anything else in my entire life, always hanging over my head a centimeter away has kept me incredibly motivated to work all the time. I'm like, ‘Oh shit, this could be my last five seconds as a professional musician. I better get the most out of it.’ I guess in some way it is my most practical motivator.

KM: All right. Yeah. When I was framing, like, these questions for you and thinking about just the topic in general, I kind of think of failure and rejection as being kind of the opposite of success and acceptance. So I don't know that that's necessarily the case. Do you think that those are, even though they're maybe linguistically opposites, I mean, does success does, the opp - is the opposite of rejection, like acceptance within a community and art world?

JS: I think so. I mean, going back a little bit to what I just said, like, I'm so constantly freaked out about not being able to do this anymore that I try to think about it as little as possible because it bothers me so much. So I don't know that I really considered what rejection is in relation to what acceptance is. I don't know, I don't really think about them in an abstract ways. I think about them in really practical terms, like acceptance means, OK, another year of getting to do this. Rejection means, oh, fuck, maybe not another year of getting to do this.

KM: Yeah, OK.

JS: I don't I don't feel very philosophical about acceptance and rejection. It's got really pragmatic for me. Insofar as what I, you know, I'm assuming this is about band stuff and in relation to band stuff.

KM: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you think that in the face of failure or rejection, the best tactic would be like, does it - does it force you to make different choices or to persevere sort of on the same path?

JS: I could I could never in good conscience make a choice, an esthetic choice, based on the hopes of acceptance. It's just, it makes me feel gross. Any time a person who is making a creative, who is pursuing something creative, tries to second guess what people want and give people what they think that they want in the short term, it may work out. Very, very, very, very few people are able to anticipate what people want and have that be the motivation for what they are choosing to give to them and have people not be bought by it or see through it in two years or something like that. There's a ton of bands that have two records out because on the second record they tried to do what they thought people wanted rather than what was true to them. And it sounds incredibly pompous and self-aggrandizing, but it's just it's you know, music is extraordinarily important to me as a fan. And because it's so important to me as a fan of music, as a person who tries to make records I think the most respectful thing that I can do towards music is to be truthful towards it as an entity or as a force in the universe or to try to - I mean, it's impossible not to have that in the back of your head, you know, but to the to the best of my abilities to not ever make a decision based on trying to get over, which is essentially what acceptance is.

If you do your absolute motherfucking best and you put your whole heart into it, you know, hopefully the right person who that music is meant for comes across it and, you know, and it has the potential to be meaningful to somebody if it doesn't come from a place of trying to win, you know. Does that make sense?

KM: Yes. Yeah.

JS: I'm sorry. That took a minute to get to.

KM: No, that's fine. That's fine. OK, so that being -

JS: I'm sure a lot of people don't agree with me, you know, but a lot of people are way more successful than me. So - (laughs).

KM: I mean, I guess, yeah, I think about like when you're talking about people being able to predict kind of what is going to be sort of maybe a hit or something like that –

JS: I mean, some people are geniuses at it.

KM: Yeah

JS: And some people have really long, super successful, not embarrassing careers and base them on a lot, like big record producers, on anticipating what will move large numbers of people. And most of that music is pretty boring. But a lot of people like, you know, Taco Bell and Coca-Cola and that food is really boring. But it's, you know, it's satisfying in a superficial kind of way. You know, a handful of record producers and songwriters are able to write long term, genuinely moving for serious, wonderful, beautiful will be fantastic forever genuine works of art. But those people are - they're thinking ahead of time as to what someone would like. And they can give it to them. And it will still have depth, you know, but, you know, those people come across like, you know, three or four in a generation.

KM: Yeah. Is there anyone you have in mind, if you don’t mind answering?

JS: You know somebody I mean, this is a dumb fucking example, like the Beatles or somebody like that.

KM: Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah.

JS: You know, shit like that. I think, I think that there are so few now because the music industry now, the mainstream music is now more than any time that I can ever think of it is so much about trying to get over that therefore almost nobody can get over because it's just it's based largely around sort of fear and, you know, short term commercialism. And, you know, I mean, people like it for a second, but looks like it's not music that's going to change somebody's life.

KM: Right.

JS: I mean, can you think of a band that's come out in the last fuckin 10 years that people deeply will give a shit about 40 years from now?

KM: It's hard. It’s hard.

JS: But you can think about, you know, it's not because people are bad, musicians are not, but it's just the delivery system for music is now is based entirely on a lack of on a lack of depth or just people haven't figured out how to deal with the new delivery system for music and still and how to make music. Or so it seems.

KM: Sure. Yeah. And I think like maybe just to go off of that, just how I've been, I've been listening to –

JS: But also I'm a grumpy bitch so you know. (laughs) Don't necessarily take that to heart.

KM: (laughs) OK, yeah.

JS: I feel this way about almost everything.

KM: (laughs) I've been listening to more music than I can fathom kind of in some ways, like where like I just like have been finding a lot of different things from as many places as I can, so it's hard to sort of spend time with things and get to maybe like them or love them and develop -

JS: That's another aspect of that's unfortunate about very suddenly having all the fucking music that there ever was. You know, like it's hard to really get deeply into something. I purposely about 7 or 8 years ago started buying CDs again and not downloading stuff, I certainly never listened to any streaming services just for that very reason. I was like, wow, I don't pay attention to anything I'm listening to anymore, because if I don't like it in, like a second, I'm like, oh, my God, that's that's what makes me crazy. And I'm doing it. And if I go to the record store and spend 20 bucks, I'm like, ‘OK, well this is OK, but I spent 20 bucks so I'm going to listen to us at least 7 or 8 times and see if I'm wrong,’ you know? When I was you know, when I was a kid, that was how I got into music. I mean, there's a ton of records of the first time I listen to it's like, ‘This sucks.’ And then I listen to it 4 times and, you know, and I I'm like, a lot of that stuff is still my favorite music now. I just - you got to give stuff a chance. And when you can, you know, when there's four hundred billion songs for free, then, you know, there's no motivation to give anything a chance. You have no motivation to grow to love something. It’s like loving anything. You meet a person and you don’t love a person and 20 seconds. You take months and months and months to grow to love somebody and not super dissimilar to music.

KM: I'm going to switch gears a little bit and maybe talk about the new record. What I want to ask is that you're not - your band has done many collaborations and things that would maybe fit into, you could maybe make a record of all the duets that you've done, maybe, over the course of the years if you compiled them or something. So was a duet record something that you had always maybe wanted to do that? Were you planning on this being what it became or did it sort of happen to - or did it become it sort of organically?

JS: It didn't start out this way. We finished the last one and as is generally the case just immediately start working on the next one. Usually when a record is done, I feel really kind of pumped up to start getting onto the next thing and made a bunch of sketches. And this is kind of melodramatic, but surprise, surprise. But around the time that we finished the last record and shortly thereafter, but in a pretty compacted period of time, a bunch of people that I was very close to socially and professionally treated me super badly. Not - in no way were they related. It was just a lot of preposterous mistreatment. But like one person and another person, another person, then another person just over the course of a couple of months. And I'm pretty wobbly emotionally and I don't deal with stress very well. And, you know, a lot of just stuff from growing up that, you know, it's all of that tension and all of that stress caused me to have a nervous breakdown. You know, I think if it had been one thing, I just would have been irritated. But it was it was just like so and it led to a lot of tangible difficulties. It was it was a lot of emotional stress, but it also led to a lot of financial difficulties.

But when I happened, unexpectedly, a lot of people who I hadn't heard from and several years on, a lot of people into the band and a lot of close friends of mine way - and I didn't - like a lot of people checked in on me to see how I was doing. And it very quickly reminded me that - I mean, I I'm not a very social person, I don't really like people, and then all those people treating me badly made me really fucking hate people, but then so many more people treated me with a tremendous amount of generosity and thoughtfulness and kindness that I pretty quickly got my act together again. I mean, I was seeing like seeing a therapist and everything, but it was it was really that, all of those people reminding me that it is possible for people to be decent, which I really needed to be reminded of.

So the idea of duets is essentially a symbol of, you know you do it with another person, a way to - the record is not about this. None of the songs are really about this. But the idea of doing it with duets was a way of trying to serve as a symbol of gratitude or a way, a symbol of saying thank you to people for helping me out. And I'll also say it, but for helping me out of an incredibly dark time. So it was nice of people to be cool. I really needed it.

KM: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, sure. Yeah. That's really great.

I find that the music that you make as Xiu Xiu and even as like the solo stuff that you've done is, in a lot of ways I would describe it as fear-less. Fearless. And I think that it, for me why I think that is because you maybe touch on subjects that others maybe wouldn't touch on or use sounds that others wouldn't use. And I'm wondering, has there ever been a time that you've kind of leaned into something that somebody or others would have recommended you not lean into? Does that make sense?

JS: It totally makes sense. Can you hear the ice cream truck outside?

KM: (laughs) I can.

JS: (laughs) I just wanted to give you an example of sounds people have recommended I not use. You know, I don't - you know, everybody that we work with is pretty unhesitant as a musician, and so actually, you know, no, I mean, we a couple have labels have asked us at a time when we had a blog not to post hardcore pornography on our blog. But, you know, I mean, you know, they had you know, I think they didn't want to get in trouble themselves which is not unreasonable. I mean, not not in any songs. I mean, there have been some things over insipid social media that people have said, ‘You're going to - that's - dude, don't do that. You're going to fuck things over for yourself.’ Mostly just like calling out particular music writers for being stupid or something, you know?

KM: Yeah.

JS: You know, 4:00 in the morning, I'm drunk and I'm, you know - but not as far as songs, thankfully, no. I mean, if somebody brought something up to me that they thought might be a not a good idea for the long list of reasons that things are not good ideas, I would certainly, I mean if it was somebody that I trusted. I would certainly listen to it and consider it take it to heart. I mean, it's not like I think like it all must come out. I must be totally free. But, no, I can't think of anything. I mean, not that there shouldn't have been when.

KM: It just seems like I think and I don't want to like sort of maybe fan out and gush a little bit, but I will just say I feel like it's germane to this discussion. Things that I find in your music that resonate with me, I don't find in other places. And so to me, it just seems - and it’s things that I felt like I had to maybe not think about or hide or whatever. And I feel like I guess where that question came from is just like to me, almost like listening to your music in some ways, at some times, I felt like I was sort of freeing in those ways in that I was able to think about these things in sort of in a judgment free place.

JS: That's really nice of you to say. Thank you.

KM: So in terms of reception, I know you've mentioned that you don't - well, yeah, you don't like to think about and, what, sort of how something will be perceived when you're making it. Is that it fair to say?

JS: Oh, yeah, I mean, occasionally I do. And it makes me crazy. To me, that's the antithesis of being in a productive, creative mindset.

KM: OK. So then do you, people know that, I feel like it's kind of baked into the cake a little bit, there’s - you have like a revolving member, like you have a lot of band lineup changes. And I wonder - I mean, it suits whatever purpose it suits, I'm sure. But do people ever find, like - are people upset at that, like fans of yours, do they get sad or dismayed?

JS: Over somebody leaving?

KM: Yeah, if somebody leaves or if somebody -

JS: It's not by design, like, I would really vastly prefer to have a steady, I mean, the recording lineup is really pretty solid. Angela's been doing stuff for 10 years.

KM: That's right.

JS: I work with Greg Saunier and Ches Smith since the first record. John Congleton I've worked with for 8 or 9 years. So, you know, Jherek Bischoff has been on stuff on and off. Caralee was in the band for 6 or 7 years, so. But the live lineup has really a lot of people have come and gone. And it's you know, it's for a long list of - it's for a lot of reasons. I mean, some people leave because they get other gigs that they want or they just don't want to tour anymore. And a lot of people get fired for being shit heads or for playing badly or for not - for being lazy.

I mean, we're in a funny spot because we you know, we do OK financially, like I haven’t had a day job in a million years. But, you know, but the tours are pretty grimy still. You know, maybe half of the shows will be in nice places and half of the places will be - half the show will be in gross places. We're still in a van. You know, it's not like we're on a bus or doing planes much. And, you know, and part of that is in order - the less you spend on the nice things, the more money you could take home to pay your bills.

But because of that -you know, the music, it's hard music to play, so I can't just kind of get fucking whoever to do it. And it's hard to get people who are really good players to put up with some of the yuckier parts of the level of touring that we're at, which is not the bottom, but it's still a little below the middle. I played in somebody else's band for a while who was very successful, and I was like, ‘Oh, shit, this is why people like touring.’ Everything’s clean. Everybody does everything for you. All I had to do was show up and play and sleep all the time. There's always food everywhere. No disgusting bathrooms. Everything sounds really good. So it's a lot of work. And I, you know, I think because it's a lot of work, I sometimes will make rash decisions about who - so not everybody who I want to say yes to do it will do it. So I have made some very hasty decisions about who I have said, ‘Yes, let's fucking be on the road together for the next 12 months,’ you know, and then a couple months. And I'm like, oh yea, you suck. As a player, I thought you were good. Everybody told me you good or you're a horrible person. What am I doing. Yeah. You know or somebody who's really great, we'll just be like, I like you and I like this band, but this is too gross. I'm a grown up. I can't do this anymore. Oh yeah.

I know we're in a funny spot. No one has really come know. No one who comes to shows has complained to me about it directly. I mean, I don't know how people feel about it. I am quite exhausted by not having a regular lineup. I would absolutely love to play with the same people for a long time. When you do that, you get really, really, really good. But time people have also said they like not knowing what the show is going to be like. They're not alone. I don't either. (laughs)

KM: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess what I was thinking of when I thought to write that question down was I remember, I think when Caralee left or wasn't in the band anymore, I remember like I was on, like, I think there was a reddit, the Xiu Xiu reddit or something that people were kind of upset or and I just don't know how if that got to you, like, if that made it to you.

JS: Oh, I'm too thin skinned to really look into that stuff. But that wouldn’t surprise me. I mean, Caralee was great on stage. She's a fantastic musician, wonderful presence, great singer, really, really, really good keyboard player. And you know a really a big part of kind of the most developmental period of the band insofar as going from total obscurity to sort of partial obscurity, you know? I mean she was in the band at the point when if you had ever heard of us, that's when that started. Yeah, it was a drag. But I mean, we made each other crazy. I mean, we were on good terms now. We were awful to each other. I mean, I don't blame her for joining another cooler band at all (laughs). You know but the upside is, you know, Angela joined after that. And, you know, she's my, the best friend I've ever had and, you know, unfortunately can't tour anymore, are much, you know, but is a huge part of making the records and a tremendous part of what the band has evolved into. So, yeah, I mean, I miss Caralee a lot, but I'm incredibly glad to be able to work with Angela, and I know Carol is doing great. She's way happier than I think you've ever been.

KM: OK, that's good. And yeah, I am a huge fan of Angela's, too.

So you are - I would describe you as being very receptive and open to people that reach out to you. I mean, to me personally, you've corresponded with me an email. It's been wonderful.

JS: Well you’re a delightful person.

KM: Oh, thank you very much. And you've agreed to do this, which is also wonderful. I really appreciate that. But like other people, like in the the fan group, the people that love your music are really, I think, taken by how personable you are and how open and receptive you are to communicating. And I just wonder if that is something that – like, where does that come from? Because I think it would be really easy to be and through no fault of your own with just being too busy or something to sort of not keep up with that. But I can't imagine that it’s easy.

JS: I mean, I do know I. Well, we were in an interesting position where, you know, like I said, we do well enough. I don't have a day job, but we're not, like, so exaggeratedly famous that it's just numerically impossible. Know, I mean, it kind of comes in waves. I mean, there'll be times where a lot of people are communicating and there's just not enough hours in the day to say hi to everybody, although I would like to. And there's sometimes when I am able to do it, like I make my best effort to be able to say hello to everybody who says hello because they're super nice people. Every band we have ever toured with so that we have the best people at shows that they have ever played for.

KM: Oh, really? That's great.

JS: Yeah. And having played, having opened up for other bands, it became super clear to me how true this was. I always felt it from people and people said it and I said, oh yeah, that makes sense. And then I played with other bands of like, oh my God, it's really, really, really, really true: people who come to Xiu Xiu shows are the best people come shows in the entire world. So I mean, that also makes it easier because it's it's not like, you know, maybe once in a great while, a shitty person or somebody who is nuts or inappropriate will try to get a hold of me, it's very, very rare. Ninety-nine percent of the time, it's really genuinely sweet, smart, cool, creative and funny people, cute people saying hello. And yeah. And, you know, I'm extraordinarily - I know I keep saying that, but I'm really grateful that, you know, people are so, treat us so nicely. You know, as far as people, individuals interested in the band, you know, business wise and journalism wise, it's a little more mixed. But as far as single humans interested in the band: the best.

And not a lot of not a lot of the other musicians I've talked to don't have this experience, you know, that they - I know someone who is super famous who told me flat out he hates the people who come to their shows. And he’s not a shitty guy. I think just some for some reason, the music that he makes just resonates with a type of person that he is repulsed by.

KM: Oh, no! (laughs)

JS: So it's not it's not inherent in being in a band.

KM: Yeah, yeah. That sounds incredibly unfortunate.

JS: Like it must be really, really tough to be him at a show. Because he puts a lot into what he's working on and then it's just getting into the hands of the wrong people.

KM: Oh no. Oh no. Yeah.

JS: I, I had very luckily I have never had that experience.

KM: Yeah. Well and it seems so - yeah, I guess like I, I hesitate to say this because I'm afraid that, well I've started now, so I'm going to - I'm afraid that it's going to come off as like a jab or something, and I don't mean it to be like that at all, but -

JS: Go for it!

KM: OK, you’re self-described as being kind of like curmudgeon, right? So it seems like you would - one maybe from the outside would expect there to be this distance between you and the people that like the fans of your music. But you've done a really amazing job at really respectfully closing that gap, and I think that's really great.

JS: Well, I am a crabby person, I'm super moody. Anybody who friends with me would agree with that. (laughs) But I, I appreciate - I am a grouchy bitch, but I, that doesn't mean that I don't appreciate the good things in life, that I don't see those things as being mutually exclusive. And I will not hesitate to say the meanest possible fucking thing I can think of if somebody pisses me off or is mean to me. And that's not - that is my least favorite thing about myself is I have a really bad temper and it's something I'm working on. You know, but the passion goes as wildly in the other direction that I, I feel no hesitation about being positive and abusive towards people who are, who are cool.

So that I am not working on that. I feel great about it. Losing my temper like that (snaps) I am working on. It is not - it doesn't help me at all. Angela told me something really good about that because she is really, she's fantastic about to it to a degree that, like a logical – not that she's a pushover, you know? She's much better at if something is difficult not losing her mind. And I asked a pretty recently, like, ‘How do you fuckin’ do this?’ And she said, ‘If something is bothering you just think about how you want things, what do you want out of the situation?’ And that's that's been it's been it's been really helping me in the last probably year or so not scream, fuck you, I'm going to kill your parents at strangers.

KM: Well, that's that's great.

JS: Yeah. It's not it's not cool. It never helps.

KM: It's good that that's happening less. (laughs)

JS: Yeah I agree. (laughs)