The New Pornographers were blindsided by an extremely unfortunate turn of events in April when Joe Seiders, who had been the power-pop group’s drummer for the past decade, was arrested on charges including possession of child pornography. The band immediately severed ties with Seiders and has mostly stayed off the radar since then, save for some Substack posts from frontman A.C. Newman. Today, Newman has given his first interview since the Seiders debacle, and the New Pornographers have announced plans to get back on the road.
Speaking to Rolling Stone, Newman describes his shocked reaction to the allegations against Seiders: “We spend so much of our lives worried about the past, or anxiety for the future, and there I was with this nightmare sitting in front of us.” On the other hand, “This is not our tragedy… It sucks for us, but [Seiders] was married and had kids. For them, it’s this horrible nightmare. We just got hit by some shrapnel. You just try to have some perspective about it.”
Newman says he learned about Seiders’ arrest the day after it happened, via a cryptic text from Seiders’ brother that referred to forthcoming charges.
It was dark, weird, and confusing. And it was terrifying, because there’s three of us [in the band] that have kids. We all felt afraid. We were all like, “When was our child with him?” Everybody’s going through their heads, “Were our kids ever alone with him?” Which was terrifying, like a horror movie where you can’t see the monster. We didn’t know what was going on. And then, as days passed and we were beginning to piece things together, there was just that liminal space of, like, “Well, this is gonna explode.” And we were just waiting. When I got word that it was public, I don’t even remember… There wasn’t even a sinking feeling in my stomach. It was just a feeling of like, “Well, here it is. Don’t go on the internet for a week.”
He also talked about the decision to keep the band name:
The day [we found out], we were all like, “Obviously we can’t call ourselves the New Pornographers anymore.” And then time passed. A few weeks later, I ran into my friend Zach Djanikian, who played on this record and Continue As A Guest, and I was talking about the band name possibly changing, and he had the first violent reaction, which was, “No! You can’t change your name. You worked too hard for that name.” And I thought, “Yeah, you’re right.”
The more I thought about it, it just seemed like a bad-faith argument [for changing the name]. I named it after a Japanese movie by Shōhei Imamura [1966’s The Pornographers], so, should we go to the estate of Shōhei Imamura and say, “You should change the name of that movie because there was a band that named themselves after your movie, and this happened”? And from a purely pragmatic point of view, if we changed our name, people would go, “Who is this new band? Oh, it’s the New Pornographers, they changed their name. Why did they change their name? Because of this.” Or, we were gonna change the spelling of the name. “Well, why did they change the spelling of the name? Because of this.” It seemed to me, if you don’t want to talk about it, the best thing you could do was just continue with our name. I’m sure I’m going to be saying this 50 times in the next year.
Newman says the band recruited drummer Charley Drayton to re-record Seiders’ parts for an album coming next year, though they’re still looking for a permanent drummer, and Drayton likely won’t be behind the kit when the New Pornographers tour next spring. He talked about how Drayton, who has drummed for some of the biggest names in music, got involved:
Charley’s just one of the best drummers in the world, and I’m lucky that I knew him. His longtime girlfriend and my wife are really good friends. I think a couple of days after it all happened, he said to my wife, “Tell Carl to call me. I’ll do it.” And he’s such a big deal that I think I needed that. I would have felt weird cold-calling him and saying, “Hey, I know you’ve played with Dylan and the Stones and Neil Young and everyone else, but would you lower yourself?”
The album is supposedly narrative-driven, though Newman, a famously obtuse lyricist, says he’s been annoyed that some listeners can’t easily pick up on narratives that he believes he spelled out quite clearly. After Seiders’ dismissal from the band, Newman re-recorded the vocal for a song called “Wish You Could See Me I’m Killing It,” for reasons he explained like so:
There’s a song on the album that’s very much a ballad called “Wish You Could See Me I’m Killing It.” It’s kind of autobiographical, but semi-fictional, and it’s about a person buying flowers for their parents’ graves and talking to their parents. I guess it’s a song about how we talk to the dead and the people we’ve lost. I felt like I had to re-sing that. It doesn’t matter to anybody else, but it was a song I was singing to my parents, who I’ve lost, and this had happened, and what I was singing about in the song seemed more true. It seemed more current. I just felt like I had to re-sing it with a certain feeling. Even if nobody else would spot it, I would spot it.
Lastly, yes, this new album will be accompanied by a return to the road. Check out the tour dates below and read the full Newman interview here.
TOUR DATES:
04/22 – Boston, MA @ The Wilbur*
04/23 – New York, NY @ Webster Hall*
04/24 – Glenside, PA @ Keswick Theatre*
04/25 – Rochester, NY @ Water Street Music Hall*
04/27 – Detroit, MI @ El Club*
04/29 – Millvale, PA @ Mr. Smalls Theatre*
04/30 – Cleveland, OH @ House of Blues*
05/01 – Milwaukee, WI @ Turner Hall*
05/02 – Minneapolis, MN @ The Fitzgerald Theater*
05/03 – Chicago, IL @ The Metro*
05/05 – Englewood, CO @ Gothic Theatre*
05/06 – Salt Lake City, UT @ The Commonwealth Room*
05/08 – Seattle, WA @ The Showbox*
05/09 – Portland, OR @ Aladdin Theater*
05/11 – San Francisco, CA @ The Castro Theatre*
05/12 – Los Angeles, CA @ Teragram Ballroom*
05/13 – Phoenix, AZ @ Crescent Ballroom*
05/15 – Austin, TX @ Mohawk Outside*
05/16 – Dallas, TX @ The Kessler Theater*
05/17 – Baton Rouge, LA @ Chelsea’s Live*
05/19 – Atlanta, GA @ Variety Playhouse*
05/20 – Saxapahaw, NC @ Haw River Ballroom*
05/21 – Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club*
*with Will Sheff
