"Piss in the Wind" - new song out today

If there's one year that deserves an "end of the world" song, it's 2020. Here is my song about throwing in the towel gracefully, it's called "Piss in the Wind": Engineered by Spatola.

Photo- Kevin Goss Ross

LYRICS (Newski/Shaban)

Ignore the warning signs
Write off your alibis
Compartmentalize
Piss in the wind

Blow off your friends calls
Embrace your pitfalls
Put up some new walls
And piss in the wind

Don’t trust what your gut says
Sell off your soul instead
The voices in your head
Say piss on the wind

Sign on the dotted line
Get financially paralyzed
Lie lie lie lie lie lie
And piss in the wind

Fall in love easily
With liabilities
Don’t stop the heartbleed
And piss in the wind

Go point the finger
Let jealousy linger
Let’s all get together
And piss in the wind

DEAD HORSES Sarah Vos guests on the podcast

Sarah Vos (Dead Horses) tells Newski about playing a concert at an elderly swingers club. The two analyze energy burnout, growing up religious, quarter-life crises, and most free moments in life.

Dead Horses music: http://www.deadhorses.net/home

Support the pod: https://www.patreon.com/BrettNewski1

The Figgs Pete Donnelly on Dirt from the Road podcast

Pete and Newski in Jersey 2017

Pete and Newski in Philly 2018

The Figgs co-founder Pete Donnelly sits in with Brett Newski to discuss career highlights and lowlights of the 90's and early 2000's: opening for U2, being on the Weezer Blue Album tour in 94’, playing bass in Soul Asylum, Graham Parker, working with Train, anxiety around late night TV appearances, being signed to a major label.

*Subscribe to DIRT FROM THE ROAD wherever you listen to pods.

More on Pete: https://www.petedonnellymusic.com/

Pete and Newski in Neenah WI circa 2014

Pete Donnelly and Brett Newski circa 2015

EXCERPT:

Brett: What was going on the first Weezer tour like?

Pete: That was exciting. We were really revved up, just loving being on the road and playing. We were kind of out to destroy, as far as our energy goes. And Weezer is kind of, they were good sometimes, but they weren’t a particularly great live band. They didn’t have that iconic status at all at the time, they had just released their first single, so people were literally walking out after they were playing “The Sweater Song”

Brett: Wow!

Pete: But, on the other hand, they had so much buzz that nearly every show was sold out, if not every show. And they were pretty open to us. We got along well with the band, they were cool to us. 

Brett: So you went in there with a mindset of “we’re going to mop the floors with these guys every night”?

Pete: *laughs* No, but for us, once you plug in and start playing, we can’t help it, something takes over. 

Brett: It’s okay to admit that. I think any band would say the same, it’s this form of primal emotion that we have as musicians, where you are friends with these guys, but you think, “I’m gonna fuckin’ mop the floor with them if we can.”

Pete: And when you're skinny dudes like us, you really can’t mop the floor with anyone until you get a guitar in your hand. It really changes things. 

Brett: You’re getting dunked on until you get the Telecaster. 

Pete: That’s right.

Brett: And you had this funny story on how Rivers wasn’t fulfilling his contract most nights? Tell me about that, that’s hilarious.

Pete: Well there was one night in particular...well, Rivers wasn’t that socially interactive. You know what I mean? We were sharing a dressing room, and he wasn’t a dick about it ever to us, he was never a dick, but he was in his own world. 

And you know how dressing rooms are. The chairs that you sit in are disgusting, and it’s cold and dirty, you're in the basement of some club under the bass bins, and we’re sitting down there after our show, and Rivers comes and plops in some puke-green arm chair that’s got cigarette burns in it, and his road manager comes down there and is like, “Rivers! Rivers! You gotta play for 45 minutes! You gotta fulfill our contract or we won’t get paid!”

And he’s just sitting there, like, “But I don’t wanna!”

Brett: *laughs* Love it!

Pete: “I don’t wanna!”

Brett: The man has had it!

Pete: After forty minutes. But they only had a 45 minute set. They didn’t have other songs at that point.

Brett: Yeah, like ten songs, that album’s only 33 minutes long or something.

Pete: Maybe they played a couple of covers, or a new song, but they didn’t have a lot of history as a band, not a lot to stretch out.

Brett: Well I love that story, I feel I’ve told that to a few people at this point. It’s so funny to hear about people walking out on WEEZER. One of the most influential rock bands of all time, having seen them before they found their stride and became swept up in pop culture.

Pete: I think that goes for all the most iconic bands at the time. People were not getting them. Like Led Zeppelin getting panned all the time, or John Coltraine playing his heart out to six people in the audience. Greatest jazz musician of all time, but at the same time people are like, “Huh? What? Well I gotta go.”

Brett: I kind of gives you hope, that you gotta stay in the game,you know?

Pete: How many times have you heard that, Brett?

Brett: Well I just tell myself that on repeat. Even if it’s false *laughs*. 

THE THERMALS Hutch Harris on Dirt from the Road podcast

Frontman of alt-indie legends The Thermals sits in. Newski and Hutch discuss quarantine drinking habits, conversational awareness, accepting criticism, mosh pit survival, psychedelic experiences, and taking a break from the music industry.

More on Hutch: http://www.thethermals.com/

Support the pod: https://patreon.com/brettnewski1

Pick up Life Upside Down (CD or vinyl), produced by Hutch Harris…

Sale

Life Upside Down (CD or Vinyl)

from $10.00

EXCERPT:

Brett: Did you ever see mosh pits get out of hand, to the point where you’d have to coach the mosh pits into not killing each other?

Hutch: We played Beachland in Cleveland a bunch, and that definitely got out of hand a lot. There was a crew of kids who would just bring glitter, shaving cream, and water guns, an arsenal of shit they would bring. And the owner got super-pissed, because there were a lot of shows where it was just trashed at the end of the night. And we had this guitar player who sprained his leg, and was on crutches the rest of the tour, because he slipped in shaving cream when he was on stage. 

All these kids planned it, they were interspersed throughout the audience. They weren’t just in one area. I forget the song, but when we started this song we were just bombarded with water and shaving cream and glitter and confetti and all this shit. It was coming at us from all angles. 

I remember seeing one of the girls in that group later at another venue in Cleveland, and she was saying how the owner of Beachland hated all those kids.

Brett: Oh yeah.

Hutch: Because they were making such a mess.

Brett: They were like the plant at a peaceful protest.

Hutch: Right! Yeah, exactly! 

Brett: Cleveland’s a tough town. Hard-nosed people.

Hutch: I like it, they’re crazy there.

Brett: I can see the Midwest taking to your meat-and-potatoes guitar rock very well.

Hutch: For sure, it’s the same way they love The Hold Steady, who we did a bunch of shows with in Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago. So that make sense.

Brett: You know, I think the first show I ever crowd-surfed was your show in Madison when I was a little guy. I did an interview with you when I was twenty years old. 

Hutch: Right, yeah, I remember that. That was at...not Blind Pig, where was that?

Brett: It was at the High Noon Saloon. I interviewed you for the Badger Herald. 

Hutch: Right.

Brett: I remember being so terrified to crowd-surf. Because you watch it in movies, you hear about it, you see it at metal shows, and kids get dropped. I remember the anticipation of that, thinking, You’re going to crowd-surf, you’re going to do it, you’ll do it, and what a liberating feeling.