Pheaturing Nell Bryden

Hey, kids, welcome to the Phile for a Thursday. How are you? Let's start with a story about... Monica Lewinsky, the world's first cyberbullying victim on a major international scale, has used the decades since becoming synonymous with intern affairs to become an anti-bullying advocate. Side note: Remember the time a president got impeached for crimes committed while covering up an affair?Sigh. Those were the days. At a conference in Jerusalem over the weekend, Lewinsky was discussing the benefits and nightmares of this toxic cesspool we call the Internet when Israeli journalist Yonit Levi had the chutzpah to bring up Clinton. "Now recently in an interview with ABC News, former president Clinton was rather irate when he was asked if he ever apologized to you personally, and he said 'I apologized publicly.' Do you still expect that apology? That personal apology?" asked Levi. After a pause, and a collective ache of secondhand embarrassment, Lewinsky said as politely as possible, "I’m so sorry I’m not going to be able to do this," and left the stage. Lewinsky explained on Twitter that there were "clear parameters" set for the conversation, and the discussing the C-word (Clinton) wasn't within them. Since the walkout, she's spent her time correcting articles on Twitter, which is one of the Internet's funnest activities.

It looks like Lewinsky is now waiting for another necessary apology, this time from Levi.
Veteran investigative journalist Bob Woodward (of Woodward and Bernstein fame) has a new book coming out on Tuesday, and The Washington Post and CNN got sneak peeks. According to WaPo, Woodward's book "reveals a 'nervous breakdown' of Trump's presidency. "Woodward describes 'an administrative coup d'etat' and a 'nervous breakdown' of the executive branch, with senior aides conspiring to pluck official papers from the president’s desk so he couldn’t see or sign them." All the administration officials who confidentially kvetched to Woodward want you to think that they're the ones saving the country from the disaster, as if the administration isn't already a disaster. While neither the bonkers revelations in Fire and Fury nor Omarosa's book could sink Trump, but if anyone can bring down the president, it's Woodward. He's already done it before. Plus, Woodward's done his due diligence. We can actually believe what he says.
Nike has tapped civil rights activist and benched football player Colin Kaepernick to be the face of their new campaign, and MAGA Heads are LIVID at this free market decision. Kaepernick became conservatives' Public Enemy #1 when he protested police brutality by kneeling during the national anthem, something that is insulting to the troops unlike... I don't know... siding with a foreign dictator over American intelligence agencies? But I digress. Trump fans are hitting Nike wear it hurts... by setting sneakers that they've already paid for on fire. This dude went as far as to cut up his socks, totally owning the libs.

Despite his own legal jeopardy and losing the popular vote, Donald Trump gets to nominate people for lifetime appointments on the Supreme Court. Monday was the first day of confirmation hearings for one Brett Kavanaugh, former Bush White House staff secretary and current judge ruling against people with pre-existing conditions and assault weapons bans. The hearing was nothing short of a shitshow. Democrats on the Judiciary Committee immediately called on the hearing to be adjourned, because they didn't get 42,000 pages of documents about the nominee until literally Sunday night. Protesters were outside the hearing in handmaid outfits... and inside interrupting the proceedings. The schmuck of a judge refused to shake the hand of Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime was killed with an AR-15 at the massacre in Parkland, Florida. "The best people." Kavanaugh has argued that sitting presidents should not be subject to criminal prosecution, which was likely of particular interest to the president who nominated him. The chaos of the hearings would be fun to watch if Republicans didn't have the majority in the Senate, making it likely that the guy who throws shade at grieving fathers is confirmed. If you don't want Kavanaugh to be influencing all aspects of American life for 45 years, call your senator.
Before he was known as that functionally blind man who is accused of assaulting sixty women, Bill Cosby was a comedian. For his work in comedy and television, Cosby received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, joining such illustrious figures as Donald Trump. A vandal updated Cosby's star to read "serial rapist." Check it out...

Womp womp. While vandalism is a crime and crimes are bad, everyone can benefit from this Public Service Announcement.
Okay, are you a baby boomer? Here's a text from a baby boomers that proves the technology struggle is real...

They won't take no for an answer. It is crucial that they communicate with you!!! Do you get a lot of bugs or spiders in your house? I don't, and I am glad I live by myself and have never come home to something like this before...

Ugh! You know, some people are sooo creative when it comes to picketing signs...

So, I was thinking of getting a new tattoo but someone had the same idea I had...

You know Thanos from Infinity War, right? Well, he was supposed to have a different look...

I recognize that look from something. They tell me people will wear anything when they go to Walmart... I didn't believe them until I saw this...

Jeez. One thing that cracks me up though is old people with inappropriate t-shirts, like this dude...

Hahahaha. So, how's your kid doing in school? Hopefully better than the kid that did this...

What teacher uses crayon? Right now it's raining but this summer has been really hot everywhere so I thought I would help by showing you some cheap things to help you stay cool during the hottest damn summer ever. Keep your second most important body part cool with this hat with cooling crystals...

Not only will your head stay cool all day with this hat, it’s pretty damn fashionable. Just ask Teddy Roosevelt or Hunter S. Thompson. Grab it on Amazon now for $30. Alright, so, it's Thursday. You know what that means...

Oh, shit! Get that vision outta my head! Man alive! Fuck! Moving on... the new NFL season starts tonight and that means once again it's time to invite my good friend Jeff onto the Phile for another season of Phootball Talk. Yay!

Me: Hey, Jeff, welcome back to the Phile for Phootball Talk, our 8th year. How are you?

Jeff: Hey, Jason. It's always good to be back on the Phile. I gotta do what I can to get my top spot back for most appearances from Laird. Just kidding, or am I?

Me: Ha! So, for those that don't know, explain what we do here.

Jeff: So yeah, what do we do? We pick 2 games off the NFL schedule and pick the point spread while we're at it. If we win we get 2 points. In addition to that, since you're a Giants fan and I'm a Steeler fan, if they win that week we get an extra point added to our total. Winner has bragging rights for the rest of the year.

Me: So, what has been happening in the off season?

Jeff: It was a chaotic off season that saw quite a bit roster changes. Dez Bryant still doesn't have a job. And no, it wasn't a catch so it's time to let it go, folks! We saw your WR Odell Beckham Jr. become the highest paid player in the league. Then Aaron Rodgers got a big deal too. So did Aaron Donald. Then even last week the Raiders traded Khail Mack to the Da Bears. The Browns released LB Mychael Kendricks after he was arrested for insider trading. And this is just in the last two weeks! So yeah, anyone can win the Super Bowl this year. Except for the Browns. They've already been eliminated from playoffs.

Me: Okay, so, did you see this year the British are taken over the teams? Look...

Jeff: That logo makes me think it says, "Good day, kind sir? Care for a field goal today?" So that's the theme we're going with this season?

Me: Yup. Haha. So, I have to ask you about the whole Nike thing. What do you think of it?

Jeff: So there's a little bit of controversy that needs to be addressed. Nike has signed Colin Kaepernick to be the face of their new ads. It has been met with mixed results (to say the least). I will try to keep this as unpolitical as possible, because that's where the divide is. But I fully support him and I support the company. The man is just trying to earn a paycheck. Whether you think he's right or wrong, I believe in second chances. Apparently he's been being paid by Nike for a few years, which again I applaud the company.

Me: Okay, let's do the first picks of the season. I say Rams by 5 and Chargers by 3. What do you say?

Jeff: Good picks. My picks for week one are the Lions by 7 and Panthers by 4. May the best team win. Good luck!

Me: Alright, I will see you back on the Phile next Thursday. Have a good week, Jeff.

If you spot the Mindphuck let me know. Alright, so, last entry I had lawyer Bill Buggerz from the law firm Suetha, Buggerz & Wynn. He came on and kinda plugged the firm. Well, another lawyer from the firm wanted to come on and say something. So, please welcome to the Phile...

Me: Hey, Sid, how are you? Welcome to the Phile.

Sid Suetha: I'm good, Jason, Bill sez hi.

Me: Cool. So, what do you have to tell us?

Sid Suetha: I just represented this guy getting a divorce from his wife of 15 years. Super toxic breakup and they split everything 50/50, even the land that the house they lived in sat upon. Well, she decides to build a house right behind the other house, mind you this was a lot of land probably 200 yards separating both home sites, so that the back of the houses faced each other. The house gets built and I gets a call from my client asking about the legality of a situation he had gotten himself into. Apparently his ex-wife would spend a lot of time in her backyard, so he saw her all the time. What he did was buy a female dog and name it the same name as his ex-wife. Anytime he would let his dog back in from letting her out he would yell "Susan you bitch! Get in here!" He would also yell if she was peeing on the flowers,"Susan you bitch! Quit pissing on the flowers!" or "Susan you bitch! Quit digging in the dirt!" The ex-wife called the cops on him a couple of times, but there was nothing they could do because the dog was registered under the name of Susan, and it was in fact a bitch so there you go.

Me: Wow. That's crazy.

Sid Suetha: Yeah, golden, right? If you need a lawyer anybody call Suetha, Buggerz & Wynn. Good evening.

Me: Lawyer Sid Suetha, everyone.

I can barely read that, can you? Oh, well. Now for...

Leaving on the read receipts. There is a subtle rudeness in communicating, “Yeah I read your text, but I’m not bothering to respond.” It’s a passive-aggressive way to make someone feel unimportant.

Burt Reynolds 
February 11th, 1936 — September 6th, 2018
No longer east bound, but definitely down.

The 86th book to be pheatured in the Phile's Book Club is...

Freddy will be the guest on the Phile on Monday. Now for some football...

Phact 1. The Korean soccer player, Ahn Jung-hwan, who scored and knocked Italy out of the 2002 World Cup, immediately lost his contract with his Italian club Perugia for "ruining Italian soccer."

Phact 2. German soccer player Mesut Ozil donated his €300,000 World Cup victory bonus to pay for surgeries for 23 children in Brazil.

Phact 3. The word “soccer” was first used in England before the U.S.A. adopted it.

Phact 4. The fastest red card in football/soccer history was two seconds. Lee Todd was sent off for foul language after he exclaimed “fuck me that was loud” after the starting whistle.

Phact 5. The North Korean World Cup soccer fans are actually hand-picked by the North Korean government. The fans are also made up of Chinese volunteers since North Koreans are not allowed to travel.

Today's pheatured guest is is an American singer-songwriter, whose latest album "Bloom" is available on iTunes, Amazon and Spotify.

Me: Hello, Nell, welcome to the Phile. I have to say you're gorgeous. How are you?

Nell: I'm good, thank you so much.

Me: I love your latest album "Bloom." You must be proud of it, right?

Nell: Awe, thank you very much, but I don't listen to it anymore. Once I'm done with something I never listen to it ever again.

Me: Why is that?

Nell: I think if I listen to my stuff I'd want to change everything about it and it's impossible to put to down. So, once an album is down and I finished it and it's been mastered I don't listen to it ever again.

Me: I have to ask you about the song "Barcelona's Gone," Nell. Where did it go and why that certain city?

Nell: I wrote that one with a couple of writers in Nashville and we've all been well traveled in the world. That was one of the songs I was thinking about with songwriting before this interview. I was thinking of something's that you would talk about because I feel like a fraud, trying to come up with a method how I navigate this madness. Actually that was one of the few things that I felt was important to me in my life... a place base sense of narrative. With the song "Barcelona's Gone" starts in Rome because that's very much a scene we were setting. Someone's running to catch a train and they're at the start of their relationship, then it skips to California. I think for me cities have been very important, I based the whole first album off New Orleans and my time there. How much a city can have a flavor and a spice and a mood to it that informs the lyrics, let alone the style of music. It's very much the characters that you meet there as well. With "Barcelona's Gone" it's kind of an amalgamation of all that stuff.

Me: Do you like to travel, Nell?

Nell: I do. I think it's impossible as a musician to not to travel, I live out the suitcase most of the time. I have this passport of music to take me all over the world and form how I see things really and how I view people... I become an observer in a different land.

Me: I like to travel domestically. Haha. Do you write the lyrics first?

Nell: This is the type of question I was dreading because I don't think there is a formula for doing this. I'll say what I do the I'm stuck, yes, I get some ideas or fragments that I come up with ahead of time... I'm often recording them on my phone. Either it'll be a lyric idea or a title of a song or a snippet of a verse or a feeling of a character that I want to write about or a narrative that I suggested from that character. Or I have some chords that I'll come up with a melody and I won't have any words, I'll just be singing dummy lyrics over them. I'll play with them a little while, those fragments in my phone and if they're niggling enough I'll come back to them or I'll see if there's anything in that and I'll go do it. I can't say there is a method to writing a song. I feel I have to be standing in the river and feel the water going by, be present and just keep going.

Me: How do you compare writing with someone and writing on your own?

Nell: It's different in every circumstance, its different writing with someone than writing on my own. When I'm co-writing I'm in a room with people and I got to get a song sone by the end of that day, especially if I'm in Nashville where they're used to showing up in the morning and by the end of the day I have one or two songs written and probably recorded too. I've had other times where songwriters would come into my house and we kicked back some ideas. I'd talk about where I am in my life ands they'll say where they are and we'll come up with something and it's a much gentler process. Then there's writing on my own which can be anything from a song that comes out in a hour fully formed and I can't tell you which came first, music, lyrics or story because they are so ironic together they just came out as a fully formed structure. Those are very, very rare. Most often its something that has taken years and I've labored over it and stressed over it. Oh my god, that was terrible and I've thrown it out and went back to the drawing board. Sometimes I had a song that I've written and I thought it's just not catchy enough so I changed the chorus and made it into this incredibly catchy chorus. A friend of mine, a radio plugger said, "It's lost all its soul. Go back to the original version." Which is the version that made it onto the album.

Me: Do you write on an instrument? Do you play an instrument?

Nell: Yeah, I write on the guitar. I have been writing more recently on the piano. I got a piano a year ago for my birthday and it's really exciting. I think one of the liberating things about that is I can't play. I had a couple of lessons when I was a kid but I play piano the way some people type. One or two fingers, looking like a little chicken pecking at it. That's kind of liberating though because it's like I'm coming up with a host of new sounds. The same C chord I played a thousand times on the guitar on the piano it sounds different and takes me off in a different direction. I think that the most successful songwriters are the ones that I work with are really good. Some one said to me once, a teacher of mine, "In the western scale there are only 12 notes. Really in pop music there's only 3 chords. So the fact that we have such a finite palette making an infinite amount of songs there's something magical in that." I think if you can hear the same chord and the same melody but hearing it in a different way that's a different emotion for me. There's something really amazing about that so it's tricking myself hearing something different that I heard a thousand times before.

Me: Do you do demos, Nell, or go right into making an album?

Nell: I don't have a producer brain, I tried, I tried to set up a studio at home, I tried to get into Logic, I tried all stupid things but I get so bored and so frustrated the second I press record. It doesn't even get to that point because it's twenty minutes of fucking around trying to get the stupid thing to work. I end up writing the song in it's entirety just in between playing back snippets on my phone so I remember it, or on GarageBand, something really basic so I know I'm not trying to make a proper demo of it, I'm just trying to write it. Once it's written I have people I can send it off too... my people, my manager, my label, my radio plugger, a song in the format where they know it's not an active demo, they know not to send the song to anybody but they can tell me if they like the song or not. Then at that point I just go ahead and try to record it. Most people skip the demo phase now because if I'm pitching a song to somebody I need a fully recorded version, there are no demos anymore. I can't send of a phone recording to someone like Cher and ask them if they can hear the potential in it. She's got too much else going on. But having said that its expensive recording if I'm hiring other people to do it, so I want to make sure the songs at the level where it's worth the investment before I get to that point for instance.

Me: The song "I Thought I Was Meant For You" is a beautiful song, very Annie Lennox sounding. What was it like writing like that song?

Nell: That was me writing on a piano. All I can play is a C chord, that's all I know how to do. I think that's why it sounds like a classic pop break up song because of the simplicity of the chords, the lack of ability as a piano made it just be that. Sometimes I think I'm more sophisticated than I am but then I over complicate something. Whereas a pop song in its purist form is universal and is simple. Especially a break up song. I'm not exactly inventing the wheel here. Those are emotions, lyrics and chords that people have heard so many times before. So, to make them sound fresh I have to suspend disbelief a little bit, and kind of think wow, I'm doing something different. It sounds so different and amazing because I'm so new to the instrument and so new to the song in that order. That's where that song came from... when I wrote it I remember thinking there is something to this but I'm definitely not investing the wheel here either so as long as I can avoid it sounding cliche then I might have something. But I'm going to suspend belief and follow the idea even though I know it was incredibly simple.

Me: So, you're married... damn it. Haha. What does he think of your music, Nell?

Nell: My husband is not a musician but he's good at finding moments. Sometimes it takes someone outside a bit to go whoa, oh, hey... what's that?

Me: Haha. Your parents were talented as well, right? So were you destined to me an artist?

Nell: Destined or cursed, depends on the day. Hahahaha. My dad is a painter and a sculptor, and my mother is a classical soprano. They both remarried and my mom married a classical flute player and my dad married a modern dancer. So, the whole family is crazy artists. I think one of the thing I learnt from my parents, especially my dad growing up was a level of discipline and structure that is imposed in my day... by me. He didn't have a boss and he didn't go to an office to work but he woke up as soon as he was able and worked all day until the sun wasn't available to him. When he didn't have enough light and couldn't work any longer he would stop the he knew he was finished for the day. There was a level of perseverance and discipline there that was very inspiring to me as a kid. I think that's something people potentially miss. I think I am like that in my own life, I have to kind remind myself to create that structure, to just sit down and do it.

Me: Nell, do you enjoy writing songs? Or is it a chore?

Nell: Recently I found myself as a songwriter a bit burnt out because I was writing so many songs were for radio and that is a very specific formula. A radio song is verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, verse, chorus. I know that's going to have the same formula even of I'm going to make it sound different. Its got to have that arc to it. The business started to creep into the creativity of it and that's stagnating. What I did was something I always wanted to do, even when I was at university, was write a novel. So, I started to take a class and I'm half way through a novel I'm working on and every spare minute I have I actually sit down and write prose on a laptop. It reminds of my father who was a painter like I said, an oil painter, who one day just picked up sculpture. He had all this freedom to because he didn't have all this baggage of being a painter. He could come to it knowing all the perspective, knowing all the artistic technique and the way he visualizes things and sees them. He had all that to hand but it is a completely different medium so he had a whole new found freedom of creative sphere that made him have a different relationship with painting and made him have that creative spark again that runs through his soil, making him feel he is a creative person. I think that has been really important for me. Coming into a novel I feel that I love characters, narrative, I love stories and songs are just another way of getting characters and narratives across. But they're shorter. Its still the same thing and when it comes to that creativy with a new found spark is very important to me I think.

Me: Ever think of writing a memoir? I just started one myself about my Disney career.

Nell: I thought about writing a memoir but there'll be too many that I'll offend. Ha. I'm writing fiction instead but its fiction based on my life.

Me: Did you do anything musically when you were young, Nell?

Nell: Yeah, my parents didn't really give me a choice whether I was going to play an instrument or not. They just said I have to pick which instrument. I started out on violin which is excruciating as as a child I was good at it. Then I switched to piano for a little bit, then I picked up the cello. I think there's something about the cello that still does this for me, I think it's the most beautiful instrument in the world. It has a vibration, the frequency of it sounds soulful. Theres something about the sound of the cello that is so nostalgic, melancholic and soulful. It must just be the frequency of the notes coming out of the wood and the side of it. It's just incredibly inspiring. The problem with me and classical music is that it requires hours and hours of practicing. Practicing an existing repertoire that has been written hundreds of years ago and played by thousands of people before me played much better than I would ever play it. That level of practicing was daunting to me as a teenager so I just bumped it off and didn't do it. I had this symphony that I sent an audition tape in, because as a musician I can fudge an audition tape. I could sound I was a really good player because it was a recording and so I knew I could play it live, it was a different pressure. I sent it off to this orchestra and I they put me second cello. The first cellist had all this solo and everything, it was Stravinsky's "Firebird" suite which was very hard, they sent me the music weeks ago and I hadn't opened the envelope, I was such an arrogant teenager. I went down to Washington D.C. to this big Kennedy Center national orchestra, and it was one of those most humiliating experiences of my life. Everybody behind me that I was supposed to be leading in the cello section knew it backwards and forwards. I think the conductor singled me out and said, "Are you going to sort yourself out?" I think I realized pretty quickly I was not cut out to be a classical musician. The cello for all that I loved it, as wonderful as a bass what it was, I'm just a bit to loose and free for rock and roll for classical music. 

Me: Didn't you sing opera?

Nell: Yeah, but I don't have that kind of voice. I have a blusey soulful voice that is giving to bending and to imperfections and improvising. I love improvising. I love changing the melody as I go and that's not something that I could do in classical music. I was singing jazz standards for awhile, thinking I was going to be a jazz singer. I improvised in jazz, but I changed the lyrics and my jazz teacher said, "You know, you might want to write your own songs."

Me: Who are your music influences, Nell?

Nell: Ray Charles, I love people like Dusty Springfield, Eva Cassidy is another one... Patsy Cline, Janis Joplin, Bonnie Raitt, Aretha Franklin... Joni Mitchell. They all have several things in common... they all had this duality to them which is a vulnerability and a toughness. Even with Annie Lennox's voice, she's incredibly fragile and vulnerable and at the same time she is a woman and a force to be reckoned with. I found that duality as a singer is interesting. Secondly they all have a technique as a singer that they could sing... Aretha was fireworks, it's amazing. You know that she means it, she's singing from a deeper within, it's not from relying on technique. I find some people like Celine Dion a bit soulless sometimes, they have this sense that they got to sing this to you or they will die.

Me: You're from New York originally, right?

Nell: I grew up in Brooklyn in a loft on Atlantic Avenue and it was this massive loft that my parents converted from an old run down school house and they knocked down all the walls. I think it was like 4,000 square feet, it was massive, and I learnt how to ride a bike in this place. There were painting all over the walls and it was a completely bohemian upbringing. Then I moved away for a little while and I came back after university as if a love affair I had had to end at my consent had picked back up. The city and I have this romance that I think a lot of artists feel and have with New York City. The love and passion I have for New York has driven me for everything I do. I live in London now and my parents still live in New York and I think it as home in a lot of ways.

Me: Did I read that you were there on 9/11? Can you tell us about that?

Nell: When I was living in Greenwich Village it was just two miles away from Ground Zero. I was there that that day and I heard the plane, the first one flying overhead... I went out on Seventh Avenue and had the whole view of the Twin Towers and everything that was going on. It was like a big hole and I could see the jet plane... when they fell down the wave of people walking up Seventh Avenue just covered in dust, the chaos of being in the city. We didn't know what was happening or who was responsible. We thought more was coming because we thought we were under attack. I didn't have a smart phone at that point so I couldn't go on a news reel or whatever and read what was happening. I didn't have a TV either so people in England knew more what was going on than I did and I was right there. Going through that it's so massive of a tragedy of that magnitude is quite difficult to put into words. It has a soberness to it that defies writing a song about it. Ten years later I was talking about that day with a friend, on the tenth anniversary and my song "Sirens" came out. One of the things I wanted to get across on that song was not just an account of being there, but also show what I thought was inspiring and amazing about New York was a sense of hope and sense that people that were strangers were becoming neighbors to me. We would reach across and help out whoever was there because we were all one family, one village, a little neighborhood where everybody was a neighbor of mine.

Me: So, I have to ask you, when I first saw your picture of you I was wondering if you are really bald, then I read your bio. Can you tell the readers what happened because I find it interesting?

Nell: I lost my hair because I got this stressed related auto-immune called alopecia about five years ago. I think I got it because I was so driven in music and I was working with the wrong people at the time... equally how amazing and creative songwriting is the business is inversely horrible. It's very easy to get stressed out and feel down trodden. I let it get to me and think with stress is I didn't know what's going to happen to it until I woke up and my whole life has changed. I think a lot of people find that with stress disorders and diseases. I was lucky that mine was just cosmetic. It still was a very traumatic thing to go through.

Me: You're gorgeous, don't let anybody tell you different. Nell, thanks so much for a great interview. I wish you continued success and I hope you'll come back on the Phile when your next CD comes out.

Nell: Thank you so much, Jason, bless you.

That about does it for this entry of the Phile. Thanks to my guests Jeff Trelewicz and of course Nell Bryden. The Phile will be back Sunday with Earth, Wind & Fire bassist Verdine White. What demographic am I going for? Hahahahahahaha. Spread the word, not the turd. Don't let snakes and alligators bite you. Bye, love you, bye.

Not if it pleases me. No, you can't stop me, not if it pleases me. - Graham Parker