Tag: freakwater

WATCH: Freakons, “Blackleg Miner”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Freakons
Hometown: Chicago/Louisville
Song: “Blackleg Miner”
Album: Freakons
Release Date: March 25, 2022
Label: Fluff and Gravy Records

In Their Words: “Freakons is a brand new entity hewn from the dark depths of the earth by various members of the Mekons and Freakwater. Being sprung from Kentucky, Yorkshire and South Wales, where coal was once king, The Freakons share a keen micro-geological/geographical interest in songs about coal mining. ‘Black Leg Miner’ is a song from the north of England in which Sally Timms deals out some rough justice on all those scabs and strike breakers who dare to cross the picket line and betray their own. The video is a homemade, homegrown production that features the brilliant illustrations created for the Freakons album cover by Belgian artist and photographer Jo Clauwaert.” — Jon Langford, Freakons

Photo Credit: Connie Ward

3×3: Freakwater on Tacos, Time Travel, and Actively Hating School Well into Adulthood

Posted on by Amy Reitnouer

Artist: Catherine Ann Irwin and Janet Beveridge Bean (of Freakwater) 
Hometown: Louisville, KY; Chicago, IL; Asheville, NC 
Latest Album: Scheherazade 
Rejected Band Names: The Heart of Darkness, Dr. Peanut, My Little Cauliflower …


If you had to live the life of a character in a song, which song would you choose? 
C: "Pretty Boy Floyd"
J: "Jack and Diane"

Where would you most like to live or visit that you haven't yet? 
C: Iceland
J: With Leonard Cohen circa 1972 in his Greek Isle home

What was the last thing that made you really mad? 
C: Ignorant white people.
J: Willfully ignorant white people


What's the best concert you've ever attended? 
C: KISS when I was 12. Fucking awesome!
J: Prince on the Dirty Mind tour.

What was your favorite grade in school? 
C: I hate school.
J: I like that Catherine still actively hates school. I was also a hater of school and suffered massive bouts of nausea every morning just from the dread of it, but there were moments of peace in the third grade. My third grade classroom was in Central Florida and it had no AC, but it did have a small toilet closet attached to the room. I would go in the toilet closet, lie on the ground, and spoon the cool porcelain bowl. It was like a thunder jacket, for I would sometimes crane my neck in a way where I could read the logo on the back of bowl. Stansbury was printed in blue with a fancy cursive font. This was also the name of my teacher. The connection between the toilet and my teacher offered long moments of imagining my teacher as a toilet mogul.

What are you reading right now? 
C: Greil Marcus — Three Songs, Three Singers, Three Nations. Janet gave it to me for Christmas.
J: I am spliting my nights between the latest Jonathan Franzen book, Purity, and a fascinating book by Tamim Ansary named Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes. It should be required reading. 

Whiskey, water, or wine? 
C: What time is it? 
J: Last night it was whiskey, wine, then water.

North or South? 
C: For food or politics?
J: Catherine asks a much needed clarifier. 

Pizza or tacos? 
C: Tacos
J: That's a tough call. I may have to say pizza only because I think it's more forgiving as far as preparation. I can eat bad pizza and still find enjoyment. A bad taco, not so much so.

WATCH: Freakwater, ‘The Asp and the Albatross’

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Freakwater
Hometown: Louisville, KY / Chicago, IL
Song: "The Asp and the Albatross"
Album: Scheherazade
Release Date: February 5
Label: Bloodshot Records

In Their Words: "The video was made by Morgan Geer, an exceptional singer/songwriter that performs under the name Drunken Prayer. Freakwater is crazy lucky to have him as part of our new band. We love the obscure public domain footage he finds and uses to make videos for his own projects, so we asked him to try his hand at making one for us. He ended up making two for this song and it was a toss up which one to use. The first one used footage from this B-movie noir flick called Daughters of Horror. I loved it but we wanted something a bit more surreal, less narrative. We wanted something like a [Luis] Buñuel film or, more specifically, the opening section of [Ingmar] Bergman's film Persona — but done on less than a shoe-string budget. We needed it on a one eyelet shoe-string, and I think we captured it.

The song came about over what felt like an endless bout of insomnia. There's this old Welsh word that describes the condition perfectly. It's uhtceare, and it roughly means the time before the dawn when you lie awake and worry. It's that time when your heart rushes and your mind races through your back catalog of mistakes and guilt. I think it's something Catherine and I are both too familiar with. Once overwhelmed by this tack, my mind moves on to conjuring future disasters and potential guilt. It's a life-sucking and lonely moment, especially without a wedding party to regale with the senseless antics of killing the albatross. We wanted the video to conjure that feeling of thoughts and emotions juxtaposed against other thoughts and emotions that have no defining connection other than they are the random shit that churns to the surface when you give it reign. I think we managed it pretty well." — Janet Bean

Photo credit: Tim Furnish