mourning Mark Lanegan with Brassland founder Alec Hanley Bemis

I met Alec in... Jesus, 2001? Ironically, we met partially in the context of me grieving a friend who had passed. We met again through music. He had started a record label in order to put out the music by a new band from Ohio called The National. I was managing Baby Dayliner, who wound up on Brassland. But our way into the conversation today is Mark Lanegan. When Lanegan's memoir 'Sing Backwards and Weep' published, Alec read it and plunged into Lanegan's music during the pandemic. We cover a lot here but honestly, you need to listen to this podcast because Alec is such an earnest fan of music, even after working in the industry for more than 20 years. Being a fan is deeply cool. Remaining a fan is even cooler.

 

Alec Hanley Bemis is a writer, producer & curator of creative projects, primarily in music. In 2001, he co-founded the Brassland label with Aaron and Bryce Dessner of The National. For that work, he has been covered by The Irish Times, The Guardian, Print Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal. In his first career as a writer & journalist, he was published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Bookforum and LA Weekly on topics ranging from Beck to backyard wrestling. Once a month or so he posts algorithm-free music playlists to his mixtape delivery service AHB’s Goodies: http://alechanleybemis.substack.com Learn more at http://brassland.org and http://alechanleybemis.com