10 and 2 (decades)!!
Jenny Lewis' The Voyager is 10 years old, Rilo Kiley's More Adventurous is turning 20... both albums changed my life.
What I’m about to recount is the most “LA” story ever, so I need to remind you as you go through these memories with me: you are reading about a goofy teenage boy who sometimes had braces on during these events, and more often than not he was probably wearing a faded Ghost Rider t-shirt that most assuredly did not smell great.
Alright, with that warning aside… let me talk about music and art.
Rilo Kiley was hands-down my favorite band in high school. A friend of mine had discovered them right at the earlier stages of their career because they played some weird cruise to Hawaii his family went on. This friend had a first pressing of The Initial Friend EP (I unfortunately only have a second print because I couldn’t afford it on my $5/week allowance). I was at The Troubadour for their Take Offs and Landings album release show, where I went on-stage for one thing and got humped by a guy in a Troll costume instead. In LA, they were the street cred band, especially for kids our age who grew up on Disney’s endless reruns of Troop Beverly Hills. The band’s frontwoman (and former child actress) Jenny Lewis was a refreshing taste of confident femininity in a sea of indie rock bands that were 97% guys with excellent bangs and busted guitars. With Blake Sennett, they made layered, winsome music that rewarded you after multiple listens, but more than anything: Rilo Kiley made feeling complicated feel good.
Years later, during a show promoting The Execution of All Things, I once again had the gumption to get on stage and sing “With Arms Outstretched” beside a bunch of other Rilo fans and friends of the band. When I got off the stage and back to my friend group, Annie Zuckerman was like “oh my god, you were singing next to Elliot Smith,” and I said: “Who?”
(I just think that moment is very funny.)
That concert was probably same one where I saw Michael Gregory (a friend from middle school) for the last time before graduating high school. He had switched to a private school in our teens, and this was before Facebook… so if a person didn’t give you their number, they were essentially a ghost. My next chance encounter with Michael was on a flight to London. I randomly saw him get on the same plane that my mom and I were boarding to visit my sister while she studied abroad. We remarked about having not seen each other since that Rilo Kiley show, and he said “They’re on this flight, y’know.”
Turns out, Rilo Kiley was making their way to the Glastonbury Festival. I had an interaction with Jenny, one that a flight attendant thought I was bothering her and to leave her alone (she used that word, “bothering”). I spent the entire eight hour flight feeling like a fucking idiot, and basically read all of Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth in one sitting. That 380 page ultra dense hardcover was supposed to last me a week. At the end of the flight, as some nervous peace offering for bothering her, I handed Jenny the book with a little comic strip I’d drawn inside detailing the flight attendant interaction. Whether it was over email or right after that flight, Jenny remarked that she loved the comic strip I drew for her in the note.
I spent the entire London trip gushing about the experience, recounting it to my sister when I got to her flat. She was dismissive and told me that I need to stop putting celebrities on pedestals and that I was no one to this woman.
A week later, when I got home from the U.K., I emailed Jenny something like “I hope you had a great time at the festival,” and she replied to me asking if I’d do a comic for Rilo Kiley’s upcoming album, More Adventurous.
The rest of the summer between my senior year of high school and freshman year of college, I saw Rilo Kiley’s ascension from indie darlings to big label breakout. They were in magazines, released glossy music videos, and had their songs on TV shows. I spent that time listening to a promo CD of More Adventurous, trying my absolute best to do something awesome and detailed and impressive (this is important with regards to lessons I consistently re-teach myself). My comic was used as a cool treat for their huge Halloween show in LA (the one where Jenny came out as the Pink Ranger). It was a glorious homecoming after months of relentless promoting for the band… Rilo Kiley was a thing!
And Rilo Kiley stayed a thing, as did the notion that the band’s lead singer Jenny Lewis had an ‘it’ factor that warranted solo attention. Her album with The Watson Twins Rabbit Fur Coat came out, and the indie world was never the same. I was going to college in Santa Cruz and spending a lot of my weekends in the Bay Area, so the next few years on my end were more about going to comic expos, getting good grades, and learning to become a better comic artist/ writer. Not as glamorous, I’m aware. While I didn’t engage with Jenny directly for those years, I followed each of her releases and kept them as soundtracks to my life all the way through.
Then, The Voyager came out.
Listen, I’m probably Acid Tongue’s biggest fan. It’s such a cool album, and “Black Sand” is a classic. I love Acid Tongue because it doesn’t give a fuck and achieves a level of excellence without trying to prove anything. Acid Tongue forever!!
The Voyager, however, is a lightning in a bottle accomplishment where Jenny’s nowhere-near-normal life and her smarter-than-you musings yielded an album that became a universal soundtrack to so many folks from all backgrounds. Even as a gay man, “Just One of the Guys” hit me hard because I could feel the confines of being openly faggy in comics and how that was affecting my career. “Slippery Slopes” was the song I used to broach the topic of an open relationship with my then-boyfriend. The title track, “The Voyager” became my grief lullaby whenever someone I cared about died (which, at the time, was my grandmother). Perfect songs combined with a sickeningly original aesthetic (Gram Parsons suits FTW) made for a truly standout era in Jenny’s career. I loved loved loved that album!
Thanks to the power of social media, Jenny clocked a newer drawing I did of her online, and reached out to me asking I’d want to do a comic adaptation of her Voyager song, “Aloha and the Three Johns.” It’s a trippy track about a trip to Hawaii gone wrong. Like I had done ten years prior, I thought overworking everything and making the pages ultra detailed was the move. Jenny wanted dirty, loose, Ralph Stedman vibes. I ended up not really having time to overwork it in any event, because my deadline for her final stop on the tour. When Rilo Kiley got a write-up in the LA Times for More Adventurous, the interviewer noted Jenny Lewis admiring proofs of my comic while sitting by a fire pit at Edendale in Silverlake. Ten years later, I was standing in front of Jenny while she showed her godfather Jerry the “Aloha” comic after a show in Santa Ana.
It’s been a decade since The Voyager came out, and now it’s going to be two decades since More Adventurous came out. At this point, whenever I think about how long it’s been since something came out, I’m more like “time flies, dude” than “holy moly where does the time go!?”
I’ve been struggling with a so what? to this entry. I already know how and why these albums are important to me, so why am I sharing this information with you? Maybe the significance here is not about what this stuff means to me now, but what the person I’ve become means to the person I was one and two decades ago. If my entire career has been predicated on following the whims of a nine year old boy, there may be some value in putting a time-stamped letter to my future and past self at this spin on the merry go-round to keep myself honest.
To the me who existed ten years ago, twenty years ago, and ten years from now, here are my thoughts that we should always keep in mind:
People will always prefer your looser art to when you try to draw like one of the guys. Keep it loose, keep it fun. You’ll go further when you stop trying to be something you’re not
If you love an album, go see it performed live. Madonna will never play an American Life b-side gem outside of that album cycle much in the same way you’ll never hear Jenny howl “two! three! four!” in the middle of “Small Figures In A Vast Expanse” ever again. You were there for that moment, and you’ll always remember that feeling for as long as your body lets you
I dare you to put just the tiniest bit more effort in other interests so you can prove to yourself that you’re good at something else besides comic books
Things will happen exactly the way they need to when it’s time, and never on the timeline you want them to
You’ll be surprised which albums you’ll be talking about in twenty years and which ones will get forgotten to the sands of time (remember when you told Ashley Serra that Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible would be the album of the decade, then you never listened to it again like two weeks later?)
Jenny Lewis is ten years ahead of you, so pay attention
Great story! I believe even less that Voyager is 10 than I do that More Adventurous is 20.
Damn. This was great!!! I could have easily kept on reading about your adventures and relationship with Jenny. I hope you write more! Please?