Episode 518
with Kirsten Johnson, Chris Garcia, and Jeff Tweedy
Host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello celebrate dads this week, in honor of Father's Day; filmmaker Kirsten Johnson comes to terms with the life, death, and legacy of her father through her Netflix documentary Dick Johnson is Dead; comedian and podcaster Chris Garcia pokes fun at his life choices by channeling his Cuban father; and Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy serenades us with "Save It For Me," accompanied by his two sons.
Kirsten Johnson
Documentary Filmmaker
Filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has been principal cinematographer on over 40 feature-length documentaries, including the Academy Award-winning film Citizenfour. Her 2016 film Cameraperson, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival, was awarded three Cinema Eye Honors, including “Outstanding Nonfiction Feature,” and was named one of the “Top Ten Films of 2016” by both The Washington Post and The New York Times. Her 2020 film Dick Johnson is Dead—which she wrote, produced, filmed, and directed—is a darkly funny and wildly imaginative love letter from a daughter to a father. In the film, she stages inventive and fantastical ways for her father to die while hoping that cinema might help her bend time, laugh at pain, and keep her father alive forever. Website
Chris Garcia
Comedian and Writer
Chris Garcia is a comedian, television writer, actor, and podcaster from Los Angeles. A proud son of Cuban refugees, Chris is known for incorporating poignant explorations of family and grief into his comedy. He has written for Comedy Central, Adult Swim, Broadway Video, and is currently writing and acting on Netflix’s Mr. Iglesias. He’s been a guest on This American Life, WTF with Marc Maron, and 2 Dope Queens. Chris’s podcast, Scattered, was named one of the “10 Best Podcasts of 2019” by TIME Magazine, and since January 2022 he has hosted iHeartRadio’s Finding Raffi. Website • Twitter
Jeff Tweedy
Country Band
Jeff Tweedy is one of contemporary music’s most accomplished songwriters, musicians, and performers. Best known as a founding member and front-man of the Grammy Award–winning rock band Wilco, Tweedy has also been a member of the innovative alt country group Uncle Tupelo, collaborated on three albums with Mavis Staples, appeared on episodes of Parks and Recreation and Portlandia, released several solo albums, toured the world in the band Tweedy with his son Spencer, and authored two books, including the New York Times bestseller Let’s Go (so We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc. Listen • Twitter
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Luke Burbank Hey, Elena.
Elena Passarello What's up, Daddio?
Luke Burbank Wow. Now, we should clarify. It's Father's Day show...
Elena Passarello Daddio!
Luke Burbank ...this week.
Elena Passarello I'm a hep cat.
Luke Burbank Right. Right? I'll see you at the drive-in.
Elena Passarello That's right, we'll go for malteds.
Luke Burbank We'll get a cheeseburger and a malted for $0.05. Are you ready to play a little station identification location examination?
Elena Passarello You know I am.
Luke Burbank Okay, so this is where I tell Elena about a place in the country where Live Wire is on the radio. You've got to try to guess where I'm talking about. Now, because we're talking about Father's Day on the show this week, this is where the first Father's Day was celebrated, June 19th, 1910.
Elena Passarello Hmm.
Luke Burbank Let me give you a hint. It's also the smallest city to ever have hosted the World's Fair.
Elena Passarello Spokane, Washington.
Luke Burbank Yes! [Bell rings] You are exactly right, Elena. Spokane, Washington, where we're on the air on KPBX. How did you know that?
Elena Passarello I have visited the fair city of Spokane. I've actually visited that radio station as well. Great people there. And I remember seeing all of the remnants from the World's Fair and thinking this is a pretty modest-sized hamlet to have hosted a World's Fair. So it came from my own reaction to that great place.
Luke Burbank They did not let it go to their head as a city.
Elena Passarello Mm-mm. No.
Luke Burbank Spokane, Washington. All right. Well, really good memory, Elena. Should we get to the show?
Elena Passarello Let's do it.
Luke Burbank All right. Take it away. [Music plays.].
Elena Passarello From PRX. It's Live Wire. This week, filmmaker Kirsten Johnson.
Kirsten Johnson I said to my dad, I'm thinking maybe we can make a movie with you where we kill you over and over using stunt people until you really die for real.
Elena Passarello And comedian Chris Garcia.
Chris Garcia I was born a year after my parents got to the United States, and my dad wanted me to be an astronaut. He just got to America and he wanted me to already go to space.
Elena Passarello With music from Wilco's Jeff Tweedy. I'm your announcer, Elena Passarello, and now, the host of Live Wire, Luke Burbank.
Luke Burbank Hey, thank you so much, Elena Passarello. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in from all over the country, including Spokane, Washington. It's a special Father's Day episode of the show this week. Shout out...
Elena Passarello Woot woot!
Luke Burbank ...to Tony and Walt.
Elena Passarello Tony P!
Luke Burbank We are going to hear the lessons that some of our listeners got from their fathers or father figures coming up with our audience question. That's a little later on in the show. First, though, we have got to tell you about the best news we heard all week. [Music plays.] This right here is our little reminder at the top of the show: there is some good news happening out there in the world. Elena, what's the best news you heard this week?
Elena Passarello Well, you know, I had to stop myself because I was going to say this is sort of sports news, because it has to do with a sports team's cheerleaders. But cheerleading is absolutely a sport, so it is—
Luke Burbank Oh, my goodness, that show Cheer on Netflix?
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank The athleticism that goes on with that competitive cheerleading is, I put that up against any quote unquote sport out there.
Elena Passarello And it's great sports because it's sports that involves dancing, which I love, and it also involves the Carolinas, where I'm from. The Carolina Panthers have a dance team that gets the crowd going called the Top Cats, and there is a new Top Cat on the field who's going to be starting in the fall season. Her name is Justine Lindsay. This will be her NFL debut. She is a lifetime dancer, performer, athlete. She's a graduate of NC State. And she was in competition with, like hundreds of other dancers for just 30 spots on this elite dance team. And it's kind of a magical moment because in addition to being so accomplished and cool and also very, very stylish on Instagram, Justine Lindsay is the first out trans woman to cheer for the NFL, which is just amazing...
Luke Burbank Yeah.
Elena Passarello ...especially in this era of other parts of the sports world. Not necessarily being welcome to trans people.
Luke Burbank Yeah.
Elena Passarello Justine Lindsay auditioned, crushed it, came out. She's breaking down tons of barriers, not just as a trans woman, but also as a woman of color. There's been a lot of conversations about how cheerleading squads sometimes are exclusive or aren't that inclusive towards non-, sort of, blond white...
Luke Burbank There's a certain archetype of the quote unquote cheerleader that I think, you know, comes from a lot of pop culture and things like that. So it sounds like she is really kind of blazing a new trail.
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank ...as far as a lot of those stereotypes go.
Elena Passarello Yep. And she performs with her natural hair. She's bald, so she looks amazing there. And, you know, the Carolina Panthers are kind of crushing it anyways in terms of inclusivity because last year they started letting men onto the Top Cats squad. So there are two men who represent the LGBT community who were there last year and are going to be joining Justine this year. And I think I'm going to have to watch some football just to get a glimpse of this amazing squad.
Luke Burbank That's all really good news.
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank Hey, the best news that I saw this week is involving the larva of something called the darkling beetle. I don't know, Elena, if you get home delivery of the Journal of Microbial Genomics.
Elena Passarello Oh, yeah. Every week.
Luke Burbank Well, in the latest issue, so you've probably seen this article already...
Elena Passarello The centerfold is amazing.
Luke Burbank They were doing a study [laughter] they were doing a study in Australia, trying to figure out why it was that these—they're actually called super worms, but that's slightly misleading because what these larvae turn into is a beetle. But, this kind of little, you know, pudgy larvae thing, they noticed that some of them were eating polystyrene, a.k.a Styrofoam, and surviving it, and not only surviving it, but actually reaching the pupa stage, like doing all right. And so this was just happening sort of accidentally. And so they thought, well, let's actually see if we can track this, because, of course, getting rid of Styrofoam is a big problem. We all know, I mean, even in the days before we thought about the environment the way we do now, I knew the McD.L.T. box from McDonald's was bad news, right? So they did this study down there in Australia where they basically got three groups of these super worms together. One of the groups ate bran, one of the groups ate Styrofoam, and one of the groups ate nothing. Now they ran into a problem.
Elena Passarello [Laughs] Those are some options.
Luke Burbank The nothing group proved to be a problem because they started eating each other.
Elena Passarello Oh no.
Luke Burbank So they had to separate them because that was messing up the data.
Elena Passarello Uh-huh.
Luke Burbank But what they found out was, the groups that were eating the bran, they did really well. 93% of them actually metamorphosized into beetles. But surprisingly, 66% of the ones eating Styrofoam also managed to turn into beetles.
Elena Passarello Whoa.
Luke Burbank Only 10% of the ones not eating managed to turn into beetles. So what we've learned from this is eating bran is the best, but eating Styrofoam is not the worst. It's better than not eating if you're one of these super worms. But the reason this is so important is because they are now kind of studying the enzymes and the microbes in the, I guess, digestive system of these little super worms to figure out how it's actually processing and digesting and basically getting rid of this Styrofoam, because if they can do that, then they can create it on a larger scale and they may be able to come up with something to actually eliminate Styrofoam.
Elena Passarello Wow.
Luke Burbank Instead of just trying to turn it into something that gets used again in the construction process—right now, that's like the best thing they have. Like, maybe we can make something else out of Styrofoam that's useful, but there doesn't seem to be a very good way to actually, you know, sort of rid it from planet Earth.
Elena Passarello And it's not that they're going to feed it to the worms, is that they're going to replicate that process chemically.
Luke Burbank They're going to make a giant worm the size...
Elena Passarello Ooh, I've seen this movie.
Luke Burbank ...of Newfoundland and just feed it Styrofoam. No yeah, they're going to, they're going to study the guts of these worms and see if they can figure out ways to actually break down Styrofoam and and maybe try to do Mother Earth a little bit of a favor because it's long overdue.
Elena Passarello Cool.
Luke Burbank So that right there, worm-based environmental technology, that's the best news that I heard this week. [Music plays.] Hey, if you want some more good news in your life, head on over to our podcast feed where you can listen to our brand new podcast. It's just the best news that we heard each week. We get to expand on the topics. So if you need a little positivity in your week—and who doesn't?—we put it out every Wednesday, so go check that out. All right. Our first guest this week is a cinematographer by trade. She shot the Oscar-winning film Citizenfour. Then she moved in front of the camera with her film Cameraperson, which got rave reviews. Now she's released a project that features her and her father. It's called Dick Johnson Is Dead, and it is really unlike any film I've ever seen. It's a film that they made together to come to terms with his impending death. It's funny. It's moving. It kind of has a surprise ending. And it received Sundance Special Jury Award for innovation in nonfiction storytelling. It also got an Emmy for outstanding directing, and we're so excited to have her on the show. Take a listen to this, it's our conversation with Kirsten Johnson recorded in 2020. Kirsten Johnson, welcome to the show.
Kirsten Johnson Hi, Luke. I'm happy to be here.
Luke Burbank This is an incredible film that goes in all kinds of directions that I wasn't expecting it to as, as the viewer. I'm just wondering, starting from the very beginning, how did you pitch your dad on the idea for this movie?
Kirsten Johnson I said to my dad, I'm thinking maybe we could make a movie with you where we kill you over and over using stunt people until you really die, for real.
Luke Burbank That was the actual conversation.
Kirsten Johnson That was the actual conversation. And he was like, I don't know why anyone would want to watch a movie like that, but I'd love to do it.
Luke Burbank Well, I mean, was it, was that some kind of catharsis or preprocessing for you trying to grapple with the idea of your dad's death by, by sort of enacting it in multiple ways?
Kirsten Johnson Yeah. Well, you know, my mom had Alzheimer's, and my dad and I went through it together, and it's brutal, you know, and I think that we had, like, a lucky version of it. My mother stayed kind and nice and didn't get mean and cantankerous. And even still, it just, you know, the waves of anticipatory grief are so profound where you just like, you think you've lost everything you can lose and then boom, you lose something else of their personality. So I think that Dad and I, having lived through that, we, we knew what that looked like. It scared us. And both of us just wondered, is there any way to face this differently?
Luke Burbank Did it take away some of the fear around his death, too? Because you could have done a lot of things with your dad to kind of document his life. You went with, like, crushed by air conditioning unit. You know?
Kirsten Johnson Yes, I did. I also went with, you know, do a funeral in which all of his friends show up and get to hug him afterwards. I also went with something that would expand our capacity to do things together. And so the film just gave us opportunities neither of us ever dreamed of. And even to this day, you know, like yesterday, I got an email from a lawyer in Seattle who had seen the film not knowing it was my dad, and he'd worked with my dad for 30 years and he just was staggered by the film and then wrote me this extraordinary letter about who my dad was as a professional, things that I didn't know about my father. So it was almost like, you know, brings back to life parts of him that I never knew about.
Elena Passarello Wow.
Luke Burbank I mean, one of the most kind of amazing moments in the film is this funeral that you staged. So your dad's still alive, but you get together what I presume are most of the Seventh Day Adventists in Seattle to kind of like eulogize him. And man, the emotion is real in that room.
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank Like the people talking about your father—and talking about difficult things, about his memory loss, because he was beginning to suffer from that. That was an intense, intense thing. How did you get all of those people in that room? Like, what did you tell them this was?
Kirsten Johnson Yeah, well, I told them exactly what I thought it would be, you know, that we would film it for a movie, but that we were all already grieving the idea of dad's disappearance. And, you know, the only thing I asked of them was to speak in the past tense. My brother refused to do that.
Luke Burbank Huh.
Kirsten Johnson But you know, what I think is so interesting about this, and about life in general, is we all have these colossal blind spots and we can't know things until we know them. So, you know, we can't know what it's like to be 90 years old until we're 90 years old. We can't know what it's like to lose a parent until we've lost a parent. And so with all of these people at the church who have known our family, you know, for decades and decades, and who were at my mother's funeral, I, you know, some of them I talked extensively on the phone about it because they were uncomfortable about it. They had questions. Others, you know, I simply wrote a letter of invitation explaining everything. And they're like, "I can't wait to be there." And you know there were some people who dressed up, who wore crazy outfits, like, there are all kinds of things that people did, but they really responded with a desire to be there. But I would say Ray Damazo, my dad's best friend, who was 91 at the time, he went there, he went to the most profound emotional place on behalf of all of us, I would say. And that's what I love about filming documentaries, is that you always encounter these sort of profoundly unexpected things about life. And so in thinking about this film, I said, you know, dementia is unexpected, death is unexpected. How do we use the tools of cinema language to keep mining the ways the unexpected surprises us?
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank Yeah. You're listening to Kirsten Johnson talking about her documentary Dick Johnson Is Dead here on Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank, right over there, Elena Passarello. All right. We've got to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere because we are celebrating Father's Day this week on the show. And we're going to have much more with Kirsten coming up in just a moment. Welcome back to Live Wire. I'm your host, Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. We are talking Father's Day on the show this week, celebrating fathers, father figures, anybody who falls into that category. We're playing an interview from 2020 with filmmaker Kirsten Johnson about her documentary about her actual father, Dick Johnson. The film is called Dick Johnson Is Dead. Take a listen to this. There's this one scene where your dad's really cold on a street corner and it looks like he's kind of hitting his limit. You guys are filming a scene where he would be sort of killed on the street by like a random accident where somebody swings around with a piece of lumber on their shoulder. And he's gonna—
Kirsten Johnson Happens all the time.
Luke Burbank He's gonna bleed out, and, and I was just kind of thinking about how, you know, in this you're his daughter and you're also a filmmaker. Was it a challenge for you to remember which one you were in specific moments?
Kirsten Johnson You know, I think sometimes you can be both. Sometimes you're trying to be both and you're overpowered by the emotion and you have to stop being one or the other. And those kinds of things are unpredictable, which I also find interesting. And that's why we had sort of a, a setup of having behind-the-scenes cameras filming what was happening, because both my father with dementia and me as the daughter of my father with dementia trying to make a movie about him, like totally unpredictable how any of us are going to respond. And, you know, I could have said, whoa, whoa, whoa, we gotta to stop doing this scene because my dad's upset. And then there would have been a conversation with the producers and that would have been filmed. So we sort of built into the process a documentation of our questioning of the process.
Luke Burbank Was that at some point kind of exhausting? Like, did you, were you very relieved when you could just be in your apartment with your dad with the door closed and there wasn't like four layers of filmmaking going on? That just seems kind of exhausting.
Kirsten Johnson Oh that's interesting. I mean, honestly, we didn't film that much for this movie. I, I'm not a camera person who likes to film all the time in my own life, even though that's surprising to hear. So I was very discreet about the moments where I brought the camera into our lives. I don't want to be a person who's filming other people all the time. I want to be a person who's in relationships with people. And sometimes the camera is a part of it. And, you know, the experience I've had as a documentary filmmaker is, you know, you, you're there with a camera when something's happening that has stakes. So us leaving our family home that we've lived in for 50 years in Beaux Arts Village, I'm going to have a camera there, but I don't know where me or my dad is going emotionally in that moment. But I knew something was going to happen. Right?
Luke Burbank And your dad was a psychiatrist?
Kirsten Johnson That's correct.
Luke Burbank Did that, does that play into, I mean, I'm, as a viewer, trying to understand how much of Dick Johnson is because of psychiatric training and how much is just his natural way of being. There's this very powerful moment where you're talking about selling his car and it's just to watch a human being work through loss and grief in a moment, but sort of keep their equanimity, like it's, like I feel emotional even talking about it. Is that just your dad or is that because he was a psychiatrist and he turned his brain into that kind of a machine?
Kirsten Johnson You know, I think equanimity is such a beautiful choice of words, Luke. You know, even yesterday I talked to him in the dementia care facility and he said, You know what? It's crazy, but I'm kind of enjoying myself.
Elena Passarello Huh.
Luke Burbank Hmm.
Kirsten Johnson You know, he has these layers of self-awareness and, you know, he's often said to me, wow, I really feel for you, like, having to watch me lose my mind.
Elena Passarello Wow.
Luke Burbank Well, because you mentioned the fact that your dad is, is actually alive still. Has your dad seen the film? What does he make of it?
Kirsten Johnson Oh, my dad's seen the film hundreds of times. Yeah.
Luke Burbank Really?
Kirsten Johnson Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's the sort of amazing thing about dementia, right? That you can sort of encounter and re-encounter things and have them be completely fresh for you. So Dad was incredibly useful during the edit process because he'd see a scene as if for the first time and then could give us commentary about it and say, like, This isn't funny enough, or Really? Like, I don't get—.
Elena Passarello Huh.
Kirsten Johnson I don't get what's happening here. So that then we would re-edit. You know in some ways taking his response into account and certainly the scene with Marta Vida, the wonderful caregiver, she and I and Dad were watching the film and then a conversation started happening and then I got out the camera and filmed her.
Elena Passarello Huh.
Kirsten Johnson And then we cut that into the film. So this sort of process of the film as a back-and-forth between all of the people who are involved in the relationships, was the way we conceived it, both in terms of the team of people who made it and the people in front of the camera.
Elena Passarello Wow.
Luke Burbank And what sort of response have you gotten from people who've watched the film? Does it tend to drive people towards just really wanting to hug their loved ones, particularly people who are getting older? Like, what's the takeaway from the film for people?
Kirsten Johnson Well, you may be aware, Luke, but we're in a global pandemic right now.
Luke Burbank I heard something about that.
Kirsten Johnson You heard something about it. So I think we are all grappling with an idea of the uncertain in a way we didn't before. And, you know, it may be that we haven't seen our parents in months and months, but now when the pandemic says to us, you cannot see them, everyone has to grapple with conversations they have or hadn't had yet. Right? And so I think for me, you know, I didn't see this pandemic coming either. Even though we were focused on the idea of the unexpected throughout the making of this film. So I think it lands in a context where all of us are feeling new capacities to face things that we were afraid of facing. New urgencies, new questions. And, you know, one of the responses I get from people is like, yes, I'm going to call someone immediately after seeing this film, but also that I, you know, people are saying, I might consider making something with someone, like, what can we make together? You know, you here, Elena and Luke, you record things, right? And the recording of a conversation sort of crystallizes a conversation. It makes, it makes it more dynamic and crystaline. It's catalytic to record. So, you know, I hope in some ways that this film encourages people to say to themselves, it's not too late. Even if someone that they love is already dead, there are still people who knew them who you can talk to, who you can record with. It's not too late to imagine yourself no longer alive and who might miss you or feel in pain when you are gone. So you know that feeling we have of it's all too late? It's not too late for this planet. It's not too late for this country to really face the pain of who we are.
Elena Passarello Mm hmm.
Luke Burbank You have children yourself, Kirsten. If one of them came to you in about 30 years with the same idea for a project, would you be into that?
Kirsten Johnson Wouldn't that be awesome if I had that child? I mean, I think before making this movie, I would have said, definitely not.
Luke Burbank Wow.
Kirsten Johnson But, you know, just because, you know, I think we all care deeply about our image in the world. Our legacy. But our legacy lives in other people. And we don't know what it is. And the fact is, you know, when I was making Cameraperson, I thought I was making it about the past. And then this woman in Bosnia says to me, you know, Oh, you're making this so your children will see who you were. And in this case, also, I consciously thought, I'm making this movie, my children will know who my father was. But in fact, this movie is also evidence of who I am and who I was for the future in which I will not be.
Luke Burbank This movie is just so powerful, and it really, it really takes the fear out of a lot of things that I think we walk around afraid of, you know, in our lives. And so it's just—and it's super funny...
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank ...too, so, great job, Kirsten. This is a really, really important piece of filmmaking.
Kirsten Johnson Thank you all so much.
Luke Burbank That was Kirsten Johnson recorded last year. Her film Dick Johnson Is Dead is streaming on Netflix right now. And I can't overstate this. It's really something.
Elena Passarello Yeah, it's amazing.
Luke Burbank Live Wire is brought to you in part by Alaska Airlines. Alaska Airlines offers the most nonstops from the West Coast, including destinations like Hawaii, Costa Rica and Belize. 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 dot com. Support for Live Wire comes from SelectQuote, reminding listeners they can check a big item off their to do list and find life insurance that fits their budget. For over 35 years, SelectQuote is where customers can shop multiple life insurance carriers in one place. More at select quote dot com. This is Live Wire. Of course, each week we like to ask our listeners a question because we're talking fathers on the show this week and father figures. The question was, what's the most important thing your father or a father figure ever taught you? Elena, what are the listeners saying?
Elena Passarello I love this one from Fellene, who says, A great piece of fatherly advice: how to read a map. Also, how to make decisions for myself, which he probably later regretted.
Luke Burbank That tells you you did it right, right? If you raised someone or helped raise someone who then has no problem diametrically opposing you on various topics.
Elena Passarello Yeah. Also reading a map. Probably maybe not something that fathers are teaching their kids so much anymore.
Luke Burbank If you are from my generation though—I'm 46—the handing of the Thomas Guide was a like a rite of passage. Like, you know, you get your driver's license, you buy some old beater of a car, and then, in my case, my dad brings me the Thomas Guide, which is this very thick book of maps, cross-referencing every street in a city.
Elena Passarello Mm hmm.
Luke Burbank And I don't know if I ever even actually learned how to use it, but it lived in the glove compartment of my 1980 Honda Civic.
Elena Passarello Yes. Do you remember when you used to just print out MapQuest directions and just have like sixteen pages.
Luke Burbank Yes! And that seemed so futuristic.
Elena Passarello It was so...
Luke Burbank Remember? You have your MapQuest print-out and you're like, well, the future is now. It's not going to get more advanced than this.
Elena Passarello No way.
Luke Burbank What's something else that one of our listeners learned from their father or a father figure?
Elena Passarello How about this one from Ellen? Ellen's fatherly advice: Never pick a fight with my mom. That's true. Sometimes—I was an only child growing up with my mom and stepdad, and there were definitely times where we both were kind of allied about like, uh-oh, like when my mom would wake up from a nap, we'd try to give her chocolate right away because her blood sugar was low and she'd be cranky. So that's one thing that I learned, is if your mom's cranky after a nap, give her some chocolate.
Luke Burbank In my family, what we learned was the only thing that we can do that will make our dad mad is say something critical about our mom.
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank Like my dad is the gentlest spirit unless he thinks that one of us is roasting our mom a little too hard. And there's seven kids, and our favorite hobby is roasting our mom.
Elena Passarello Susie B.
Luke Burbank But boy, if if we go a little too hard with it, that's the only thing that will get Walt up in arms. Which is, I think, kind of actually a charming quality. It's probably why they've been married for roughly 800 years. All right. One last piece of fatherly advice.
Elena Passarello Oh, I love this one from Barbara. Barbara's father says Always split aces and eights. That's a dead man's hand, right? Aces and eights.
Luke Burbank Wait. Did I raise, did I raise Barbara? Did I have a, have I completely, is that my daughter under a nom de plume? I mean, that is sage blackjack advice from somebody who probably has come by that information honestly, at a certain financial loss. Well, thanks to everyone who sent in a response. We've got a listener question for next week's show, which we're going to share with you at the end of today's program. In the meantime, you are listening to Live Wire from PRX. We're celebrating Father's Day on the show this week, of course. Our next guest, Chris Garcia, has a lot to say about his dad. He's appeared on Comedy Central, This American Life and WTF with Marc Maron. Chris, we mean, not his dad. That would be sort of a surprising twist. We had Chris on the show back in 2019 for some stand up and also to talk about his podcast Scattered that he was developing at the time, which was about his father's wishes to have his ashes scattered off the coast of Cuba. Let's take a listen to this. It's Chris Garcia performing in front of our live audience back in 2019 at the Alberta Rose Theater.
Chris Garcia Hi. How's it going?
Live Audience [Cheers].
Chris Garcia A little bit about me. My family's from Cuba. I am the first person in my family born in the United States. Anybody else?
Live Audience [Inaudible].
Chris Garcia [Laughs] There was a laugh. So I was like, Are you kidding? No. How about someone? How about the Mayflower? Anyone's family come over on the Mayflower? Just kidding. My family put a lot of pressure on me as a kid. My father wanted me to be an astronaut. I was born a year after my parents got to the United States, and my dad wanted me to be an astronaut. That's how ambitious my dad was. He just got to America and he wanted me to already go to space. I think he forgot that he is a hard working immigrant. I'm an American. My dream is to get hit by a Wal-Mart truck and get paid for the rest of my life. Not trying to do space math over here. I love my parents a lot. I try to speak about my family in a dignified manner because I think you've seen a lot of comedians maybe speak lowly of their immigrant parents or they make fun of them in a way and I don't think we should do that anymore. And I think for a lot of reasons, it's rude. It's also very unfair. You know, my dad never got on stage and made fun of me. My dad never came here and made fun of me. Never once did he get on stage and he wasn't like [in a Cuban accent] Hey, you guys. Anybody have an American-born kid? No, but okay, I want to talk about it. Oh, man. My son, Christian, he goes by Chris. Getting on stage. Oh, I'm cool man, whoa, wow. He doesn't look cool when he looks like he works at Trader Joe's or something. You believe this guy, man? I tell you what, me and his mom, her name is Mantica, were refugees from Cuba. In our thirties, we came to the United States. You later, boom, Christian. Chris. Oh, okay. Chris pops out. I'm so excited. He's my only son, my only American-born kid. He's my second chance. I do everything for this boy. I work blue collar jobs, graveyard shift. I put him in escuela privada, a private school. We got him tutors because he's stupid. He came out undercooked. I don't know what happened. Mom forgot to preheat the oven, but he came out a little soft but I don't care. I say Christian this is America, the land of opportunity, you can do forever you want. Forever you want. You're a good person. You don't fool around. You work hard. You pay your taxes. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. Christian goes to UC Berkeley for college, one of the best public universities in the United States. And you want to know what he studied? Any, uh, anybody want to take a [yells] gander at what he studied? Poetry. Po-e-try. Are you telling me I floated through shark-infested waters on a hubcap so this ***** can read haikus? This kid got so smart, he became stupid again man. [Drops accent.] My dad never did that. Great guy. You know, I did this show recently at a comedy festival, and this other comedian afterwards stopped me and he said it was cheap that I was talking in my dad's voice and that I had—it was cheap and unfair that I was talking about the heritage and that it gave me an unfair advantage. But I thought about it. I think the guy's right. Like, I remember when my dad sat me down. And I was a little boy. And he said, Chris, as a first born son of refugees, your life is going to be harder in every way. Grew up poor. You're not going to have as many opportunities out the gate. Kids might make fun of your lunch at school. You're going to have the first mustache in third grade. But there's going to come a time when you need to make a roomful of strangers laugh, and then you can rely on my crazy Cuban accent. [Sings]. Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum, banana! Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum, papaya! I have every right to create art based on the circumstances of my life.
Live Audience [Cheers].
Chris Garcia I am very proud of being Cuban, though I do, I do get annoyed how people have exoticized it a little bit. You know what I mean? Have you been? Oh, my God, you have to go. You have to go before it changes. Just picture it. Drive around in old cars. Smoke a cigar. It's the perfect level of poverty for Instagram right now. The people, they're so poor, but they're so happy. Have you heard people talk like this? Oh, my gosh. It makes me so sick. You know who never vacations in Cuba? Cubans that left Cuba. My parents left 40 years ago. They've never gone back. When I lived in San Francisco, my dad wouldn't even visit Alcatraz. He was like, You want me to go to a prison island surrounded by sharks? Fool me once. Shame on you. Fool me, can't fool me again. You guys have been great. Thank you so much. Good night.
Luke Burbank That's Chris Garcia. Chris, welcome to Live Wire.
Chris Garcia Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Luke Burbank I didn't know you were, that you studied poetry in college.
Chris Garcia I sure did.
Luke Burbank How did you end up where you're at now?
Chris Garcia I think they both stemmed from marijuana in college. No, I'm just kidding. I just really loved—I was, I was a sensitive kid. Sometimes I'm sad and sometimes I express it in a happy way, like in comedy. And sometimes I have to be emotional and write it out.
Elena Passarello Do you still write poetry now that you're a comedian?
Chris Garcia No. And I just moved and I looked back and read some of those poems and what a waste of money and time that was for me. I loved reading it, but writing it? Woof. Not my bag.
Luke Burbank When did you, when did you start doing comedy then?
Chris Garcia Well, my first sets were kind of during spoke—like slams, but I was like the funny poetry slam guy.
Luke Burbank Right.
Chris Garcia And then I started doing improv and then I was like, I don't need a group of people. And then—I'm a one man show, baby. And, I was like...
Luke Burbank The answer is always, yes, I am better without you.
Chris Garcia Yeah, yeah. Yes and I'm going solo. Yeah. And so then I started stand up and I've been doing it for now 14 years.
Luke Burbank Wow.
Chris Garcia Yeah. Thank you.
Luke Burbank And I know you are working on this new podcast that WNYC Studios is going to put out. Your mom is involved in at least the kind of early stages of it. What is the show?
Chris Garcia So my wonderful father, who I talk about in my act, he passed away two years ago. It's okay. I had a great dad and he was just such a good person with such an interesting life that we decided to—and it's, we, I guess we just announced it yesterday, that we're going to have a 13 episode podcast on WNYC about my dad, my family, and then dealing with, like, grief and loss in a comedic manner because my mom is super funny. Like, my mom—thank you—my mom, one of the questions I asked her when we first started recording the podcast, I was like, Mom, if Dad was alive for 5 minutes, what would you say to him? The WNYC people were like, That's a good question. And without flinching, my mom was like, 5 minutes, I'd have sex with him. [Laughter.] And I was like, What? And she was like, 5 minutes isn't enough. And I was like, How long do you know is enough? She's like, you know, when it starts, you never know when it's going to end, honey. I was like, Wow! So my mom is able to talk in very gallows humor that is so hilarious. We also interviewed my cousin Machito, who is my mom's cousin from Cuba, who, like my father, was a political prisoner for many years. And so I thought it'd be interesting to talk about his experiences and if he could see things in my father that he knows about himself and trauma and stuff like that. And so this is how grateful my cousin is to be in the United States. So Machito told me that he had been a political prisoner, he'd been in prison so many times he can't remember. And his longest stints were three years and one year, but altogether, he's been in political prison for multiple years. He comes to the United States in like 2004. And the first job he gets is as a janitor working for a janitorial company. And the company, they're like, hey, you can, you know, clean a school for like $7 an hour. You can do a hospital for like $8.50, or you could do a maximum security prison for $10.50. And he's like, Give me the prison. So he's telling me this story. He's working in a prison. He's working in a wing of the prison where there's rapists and murderers. And one night he gets locked in with the inmates overnight. He's supposed to leave at 1 a.m.. He is stuck there until six in the morning and I was like, What the hell was that like? He was like, They paid me overtime, man. It's this type of, like, humor that is like, so human and it seems so dark, but it's so, it's so real. And from, like, I love my dad so much and I feel like I want to immortalize the man or at least have a nice living memorial of him. And I think this podcast is a nice way to do that, and it's also a nice way to help those that may have experienced something similar.
Luke Burbank All right.
Chris Garcia So I think it'll be cool.
Luke Burbank We'll look for it from WNYC. Chris Garcia, everyone.
Chris Garcia Thank you so much.
Luke Burbank That was Chris Garcia recorded back in 2019 at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland. If you'd like to hear more about Chris and his dad, you can check out his podcast Scattered from WNYC Studios. It was named one of the ten best podcasts of 2019 by TIME Magazine. This is Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. We are celebrating fathers on the show this week with some past conversations about the dads that we love. We've got to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere, because when we come back, we are going to hear a song from a dad that I love almost as much as my own father, Jeff Tweedy from Wilco. He's going to be playing a song along with his actual sons. So stick around for that, it's coming up in just a moment.
Luke Burbank Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I am Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. We're celebrating Father's Day on the show this week. And there is no musician whose work has been in heavier rotation over the last, probably, 20 years of my life than our guest this week. By the way, a lot of that listening was done with me and my daughter together, which makes us feel all kind of extra special on a Father's Day show. In all, he's released over 20 studio albums, including this year's Cruel Country, which he recorded with his band Wilco. He's also got a memoir out. He releases a cool newsletter that I subscribe to. Just basically like my favorite singer on planet Earth. So check this out. It is our conversation we recorded with Jeff Tweedy right here on Live Wire. Jeff, welcome to the Live Wire House party.
Jeff Tweedy Thank you for having me remotely.
Elena Passarello Woohoo.
Luke Burbank Yeah, I have been a fan of your music for many, many years and have always really dreamed of getting you onto a radio show to interview you. It's sad it took a pandemic for it to happen, but I will consider that a silver lining.
Jeff Tweedy Yeah, I don't know. I don't, I think, I like to think that I would, I would have done this if it wasn't for the pandemic. So it's just a coincidence, I think.
Luke Burbank Well, you've been doing this, like, Instagram show with your family that I have been watching, and it is fascinating, but not even for the reasons I was expecting. Like, I thought it was going to be a concert, but it's just like a fly on the wall in the Tweedy family dynamic.
Jeff Tweedy Yeah. I don't know why we're doing it. I just, but, but it's oddly comforting to us, and it seems to have that same effect on other people somehow. I didn't want it to be like a, like a substitute for a concert or that kind of connection. My, my feeling is, is that everything is so disorienting that being reminded that there is like some normalcy, some shared reality is maybe helpful to confront the disorienting parts of what's happening.
Luke Burbank And then also, I know that you, you make music with your kids. We're actually going to hear a song.
Jeff Tweedy Mm-hmm.
Luke Burbank What's that like collaborating with them? And does that, like, does the parental-child dynamic come into play?
Jeff Tweedy Um, well, it's just sort of, I think it's just a normal activity, like playing catch or something for, for us. And we were out on the road and, and the tour started to fall apart and started getting more and more cancelations, and we were, we were preparing to kind of lop off the last half of the tour and come home. And then, then all of a sudden, like overnight, almost everything got canceled. So I got home and, and almost, I think, I think it was the first day I was home, we started recording a record and thinking about making music, you know, and, in that context, like, it was something to do to take our mind off of everything.
Luke Burbank You're going to play a song for us, I understand. You, you and your sons right? What are we going to hear?
Jeff Tweedy We're going to hear one of the songs that we worked on in the last few weeks. And I think it was like the second or third song that we recorded when the shelter-in-place order came down.
Luke Burbank Okay, what's it called?
Jeff Tweedy It's called Save It for Me.
Luke Burbank All right. Well, let's take a listen.
Jeff Tweedy Save it for me / When the world falls apart, I can say with certainty / There's a reason / A light left on in an empty room/ Is how a love can be / A rainbow word in a mouth of clouds / Darkened days, who needs you now? / A rainbow word in a mouth of clouds / Darkened days, who needs me now? / Save it for me / When the world falls apart, I can say with certainty / There's a reason / There's a pie left out that you can't consume / So sweet you cannot eat / [Whistling] There's a reason / No one will call today / The people you lean on don't always know what to say / Save it for me / When the world falls apart, I can say with certainty / There's a reason / A light left on in an empty room/ Is how a love can be / Is all a love can be / It's all a love can be / It's all a love can be
Elena Passarello [Cheers].
Luke Burbank Jeff Tweedy and family right here on Live Wire Radio. Hey, thank you so much you guys, we really, really appreciate it.
Jeff Tweedy Thank you for having us.
Luke Burbank Stay safe.
Jeff Tweedy You too.
Jeff Tweedy's Sons Yeah, you too. Thank you.
Jeff Tweedy Bye bye.
Luke Burbank That was Jeff Tweedy.
Elena Passarello Woohoo!
Luke Burbank Right here on Live Wire. We recorded that back in April of 2020. Now, since that interview, Jeff has published a book called How to Write One Song: Loving the Things We Create and How They Love Us Back. This guy cannot stop generating content that I love to consume, Elena. Also, he has a new album out with Wilco. It's called Cruel Country, so check that out as well.
Advertisement This episode of Livewire is supported by Aspiration, helping offset climate change by planting a tree with every swipe of the Aspiration debit card. To date, Aspiration has funded the planting of 75 million trees. Aspiration dot com. Aspiration Financial LLC.
Luke Burbank All right. Before we get out of here, a little preview of next week's episode. First up, we're going to talk to former Saturday Night Live writer Sam Jay about her HBO show. It's called Pause with Sam Jay. It's a really interesting idea for a show. It basically starts with Sam kind of having a get together at her apartment. And then the people that come over are like comics and artists and thinkers and they all just kind of like basically bat around cultural issues and various topics. So we're very excited to talk to Sam about that. Then we're also going to get some comedy from our friend Sean Patton, plus music from psych pop master Kurt Vile.
Elena Passarello Huh.
Luke Burbank I'm a big Kurt Vile fan, so we were super stoked to get him on the show. You're going to hear that next week. And as always, we're going to be listening to get your answers to our listener question. Elena, what are we asking the Live Wire listeners for next week's show?
Elena Passarello We want to know what is your go-to icebreaker?
Luke Burbank That is apropos because of like the format of Sam Jay's TV show, but also I could use some tips.
Elena Passarello Would you rather have fangs or a tail? That's mine.
Luke Burbank Wow. Okay, well, now I'm set. Now all my parties between now and next week's show are going to go splendidly because I'll know how to break the ice. All right. If you've got an answer to the question "what's your go-to icebreaker?" send them in via social media. We're on Twitter and Facebook at Live Wire Radio. All right. That's going to do it for our show this week. A huge thanks to our guests, Kirsten Johnson, Chris Garcia and Jeff Tweedy. Live Wire is brought to you in part by Alaska Airlines.
Elena Passarello Laura Hadden is our executive producer. Heather de Michelle is our executive director. Tim Harkins is our outgoing development and marketing director.
Luke Burbank Aww.
Elena Passarello We are going to miss you so much, Tim. [Kissing sounds.]
Luke Burbank Don't leave us. Tim.
Elena Passarello Stay Tim.
Luke Burbank We're going to be lost without you.
Elena Passarello Our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Our assistant editor is Tré Hester and our marketing manager is Paige Thomas. A Walker Spring composes our music. Molly Pettit is our technical director and mixer. Our house sound is by D. Neil Blake and Viviana Castillo Serrano is our intern.
Luke Burbank Additional funding provided by the Marie Lamfrom Charitable Foundation. Live Wire was created by Robyn Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week we'd like to thank member Sarah Miller of Seattle, Washington, and Anastasia Moro of Portland, Oregon. For more information about our show or how you can listen to our podcast, head on over to Live Wire Radio dot org. I'm Luke Burbank. For Elena Passarello and the whole Live Wire crew, thank you so much for listening and we will see you next week.
PRX.
