art by Bocho
FLOOD MAGAZINE: While the post-pandemic era has long been marked by interesting musical collaborations, few have been the result of two artists hitting it off during a podcast and moving from one recording booth to another. Such is the case of musician, artist, and podcaster Brett Newski—who now records just under the name Newski—and The Verve Pipe’s Brian Van Der Ark, who first connected on Newski’s podcast Dirt From the Road before recognizing that their chemistry wasn’t limited to banter.
“Why Even Bother?,” the brand new single from Newski which features harmonies from Van Der Ark, sounds dutifully reverential for the ’90s alt-rock scene that’s lent Dirt From the Road so many of its guests, while the lyrics take on a religious hypocrisy that feels a little more timeless. “‘I don’t believe in church, but I do believe in God’—a very drunk nightclub owner said this to me on a sidewalk in Lisbon, Portugal at 8 a.m.,” Newski recalls. “I think religion can be a wonderful thing. However, when it is used in super-abundance, individuals can exploit it to pawn off all self-responsibility to a higher power. Regardless of what we believe in, we gotta take responsibility for our own actions before we harm others.”
BOOK $20 - CD $14 - BOTH $30 - Comes with new stickers & magnets -
*Europeans Can Now Order here for cheap shipping!
Blending humor with mental health struggles, alternative songwriter/illustrator/podcaster Brett Newski makes fun of his own depression by offering mental health boosts in his first book " It's Hard to be a Person: defeating anxiety, surviving the world, and having more fun."
“I love how easy Newski makes it to plow through the dark stuff with some well placed humor and grit.” -Stelth Ulvang (of the Lumineers)
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BOOK SYNOPSIS:
Years ago, somewhere on the Internet, I posted a few dumb drawings making fun of my own anxiety and depression.
The response to them was warmer than anticipated, and people kept asking for more. Blending humor with pure depression seemed to strike a chord with a decent amount of people. So I kept going, and after about three years of drawing, I had enough dumb drawings for a book called It's Hard to be a Person: defeating anxiety, surviving the world, and having more fun.
*special thanks to Ramshackle Press, Anna Sacks and Nomad Union for helping get the book out.
How do you feel when someone starts playing on their phone while you’re talking to them? It’s a dark moment. It’s a seemingly small, yet significant moment when we realize we’ve got work to do as both individuals, and as a species.
BRETT NEWSKI’s fourth studio album Don’t Let the Bastards Get you Down is a call to arms against whatever destructive forces we may find ourselves battling, from our individual struggles with toxic relationships, low self esteem, loneliness, and apathy to the more global challenges facing us in 2020: The erosion of face-to-face human connection, the breakdown of the proverbial village, the destruction of the planet, and the myriad ways in which our social media addictions amplify these problems. Depression and anxiety are at all time highs, with many, if not most of us, struggling to preserve our optimism.
