Newsletter #1: Ruth Radelet, Carmen Perry, Twilight and more

Hello,

Thank you very much for subscribing to our new newsletter. It seemed like everyone was using Substack these days. So, not one to be almost too late to jump on a trend, I thought it would be a good idea to set one up.

The basic plan is that, once a month, we’ll send out a round-up of the two My Favourite Elliott Smith Song episodes we will have published over the course of that month - with some behind the scenes background, maybe the odd clip that didn’t make it into the final edit and some extra photos too if we have them - as well as other Elliott-related things we’ve come across. And maybe we’ll throw in the odd joke here and there too.

This is very much a work in progress, so please feel free to send me any feedback, recommendations or anything you’d like included in the next one - you can reach me at rob@myfavouriteelliottsmithsong.com.

Hope you enjoy reading it.

Rob

S5E1: Ruth Radelet

Kicking off our fifth season was musician Ruth Radelet. Ruth is perhaps best known for her work as part of the band Chromatics, an electronic band that formed in Portland, Oregon. She joined the group back in 2006 and they played together until 2021, when they decided to go their separate ways.

Ruth came to our attention as an Elliott Smith fan, when she recorded a cover of Twilight for Kill Rock Stars’ 30th anniversary album. It’s 100% worth checking out her version of it if you haven’t already, it's very good. And I should also say that this harp version of Twilight by Mikaela Davis is great too - again, worth a few minutes of your time.

Not to reveal too much of the secret sauce of tracking down famous Elliott Smith fans but it often involves the complex procedure of Googling “Elliott Smith”, opening up the News tab and then sorting by “most recent”. That FBI-worthy process was how we found out Ruth was a fan.

So, Elizabeth got in touch with her through Instagram and they started chatting. What was pretty exciting for us was that, because Ruth often visits LA (where Elizabeth lives) from Portland, we were able to set up an interview in person. Our first IRL interview since pre-covid. And, not only was the interview going to be face to face, the kind people at Elliott’s former studio, New Monkey, let us record it there as well.

The studio - which is now run by Joel Graves, Robert Cappodonna and Greg Cortez is full of incredible memorabilia for any Elliott fan - including lots of equipment he bought, restored and used, including the “Trident Triad A-Range”. I’m not an expert on production equipment but I understand the Trident A-Range has pretty much mythical status, as there were only (I think) 13 ever made and the A Range consoles have been used to produce work by David Bowie, Frank Sinatra and Rod Stewart (I got these names from the Wikipedia page).

If you don’t know New Monkey, then definitely take a look at their website and follow them on social media, to dig a bit deeper. This LA Times article from 2006 also has some background, as does this episode of your favourite podcast.

As well as running an amazing studio in its own right, Joel, Robert and Greg are doing an incredib;e job ensuring Elliott’s legacy live on, and we’re so thankful for the support they give us. In particular, we’d like to give a special shout out to Greg, who kindly hosted Elizabeth and Ruth for the interview - in this newsletter exclusive photo you can see Ruth getting ready to share her favourite song choice:

You may well have listened to the episode already, so I hope it isn’t a spoiler to say that Ruth picked Twilight. As she covered the song, she knows it very well and I think it made for a lovely, in-depth conversation.

There were some parts of the conversation that didn’t make the final cut though. I don’t usually leave a lot out of the final versions but if some areas of the interview go off-topic, or if there are parts that just don’t seem to fit the flow too much, then I do edit them down.

But when it comes to editing, I can find it hard to know where to draw the line and know what will be interesting to another Elliott fan listening, and I can worry if I’ve left out some of the best bits. Being able to include additional clips here may help ease that anxiety a little!

So, here are a couple of snippets from the interview that, for a reason that definitely made sense at the time, didn’t go in the episode. It’s Ruth talking about her career as a solo artist and what she’s been writing about:

You can, of course, find the episode on your preferred podcast channel and on our website.

Episode 2: Carmen Perry

What’s been a great privilege of doing the podcast is getting to chat to some of my favourite artists. That’s definitely true of Carmen Perry from Remember Sports - my #1 most streamed Spotify artist of 2020, I think Elliott was #2 that year - and our second guest of this season.

I’d seen somewhere that Carmen had included an Elliott Smith song in a list of inspirations and so immediately emailed her to see if she wanted to be a guest on the show. As you may already be aware, she said yes.

Carmen’s choice was Pitseleh from XO, which is also probably in my top 10 Elliott Smith songs too. What I found interesting from our discussion on the song was that Carmen and I had taken completely different approaches to enjoying it.

For example, when I like a song, I tend to want to be quite literal and try to find out what the songwriter intended it to be about and place that higher in terms of importance, than how it relates to me. So, for this episode I came prepared to discuss what Elliott may or may not have been thinking at the time he wrote Pitseleh in tribute to JJ Gonson, his former partner and band manager. Btw, if you do want to delve into this story, Todd Schultz’s Torment Saint goes into it in some detail.

But what I’m learning from speaking to musicians like Carmen is that what’s really the most important thing is what the song means to you. And, for Carmen, she wasn’t fussed about the exact reason he wrote the song but was more interested in talking about the impact it has on her - the following clip was in the final edit of the episode but I’m sharing it again here as I think it sums up this point nicely:

Like many of us, Carmen discovered Elliott’s music as a teenager and she really explained (better than I ever could) what it feels like to connect with music at that age and how it will always be different:

As a fully paid up member of the Being British Club (BBC), I do find it hard to be sincere at times, so I really appreciate that people like Carmen can put feelings like that (that I also have) into words.

Also, if you fancy seeing Remember Sports live and you live in the UK/Europe, then take a look at their autumn tour dates.

Covers

One new thing we’re trying out this season are covers. At the end of every episode, we’re playing an Elliott Smith cover sent to us by a podcast listener. We’re trying as much as we can to connect the cover to our guest in some way - whether that’s because it’s the same as their favourite song, from their favourite album or we just know that it’s an Elliott track that they particularly enjoy.

We launched the feature with Ruth’s cover of Twilight, so to round of this first newsletter, here are the covers of that song we’ve been sent by listeners:

Twilight by Starbelly:

Twilight by Rick Andrade:

If you have a cover you’d like to be featured, please do send it over to us at covers@myfavouriteelliottsmithsong.com

Thank you

For reading this far. Our next episode will be out on Wednesday 20th July when our guest will be Orono from the band Superorganism. Speak to you soon.