Michael Farley's PARTS & LABOR

JENN WASNER OF WYE OAK: Fluids Notwithstanding

Jenn Wasner & Andy Stack are Wye Oak, a rock and roll duo from Baltimore. They are both in their early twenties and have been touring nonstop recently. This interview was executed right before they went to Europe with the Dodos, and then scrambled all over the US with Blitzen Trapper. The image above is Jenn at the Merge Records 20th anniversary party where they hot-tubbed with Superchunk. The last time I saw Jenn was in the Nordstrom Rack men's shoe department, where we discovered that Andy & I have roughly the same size foot.

What do you do? What are you doing the most lately?
What do I do? I just spent the last week visiting family out-of-state, trying to construct viable answers to that very question. I think I do music. Play in bands and stuff. I play in this one band, Wye Oak, which is about to go on tour for 9 (count em!) weeks starting in September. That band consists of me and my colleague Andrew Stack. We just put out a new album that looks like this:


I also play in this band Noble Lake, in which Andy and myself (along with an illustrious cast and crew of pickers, pluckers and jammers) expound upon James Sarsgaard's gothic country masterpieces. This summer we made a record, which is, I think, mostly finished.

But lately, it seems like what I'm doing the most has very little to do with either of these things. Mostly I'm just doing...bullshit. Like, dishes and laundry and balancing of checkbooks, etc. Trying to tie up loose ends so that when we finally do leave for tour in a couple of weeks I can just ride the wave....you know?

How long have you done these things?
I've been playing in bands for all of my teen and adult life, but only in the past few years have I been lucky enough to start doing real stuff like touring and answering sweet interviews! (I like this interview because I find myself writing like I would if I was just talking to you, Lexie, even though I know other people will read it, probably.) Anyway...yes...let's go with four years.



Why do you do them? How does it make you feel?
Because I have few other skills (other than waiting tables, which you know I am amazing at) and playing music as my "job" is just as incredible and fun and exciting as you think it could be. I even like the crappy stuff, like the excessive driving and the playing with crappy bands sometimes and the shitty road food and all of that. I never really got to travel when I was a kid so even driving a few hours away has this super extreme energy to it that I really love. And sometimes people like your band, which is the best of all.

When was That Moment in your life that told you you would become what you are? What happened?
Probably when our label (the swell folks at Merge Records) send us a casual email one day that was like "hey, whaddya say we put out this record of yours and basically legitimize your entire band and make your dreams of being a career musician come true!!" That's not what the email actually said but that's how I read it. That moment pretty much made it possible for us to do everything that we currently do. I was out shopping with a lady friend when Andy called to tell me the news and I started babbling and spouting fluids and embarrassed myself in front of the whole store. That was a GREAT day, fluids notwithstanding.



How has your life changed or not changed to accommodate that moment's effect on you?
My life has changed in major, major ways. I pretty much do music stuff now, which seems kind of insane. People I don't already know come to our shows and listen to our music. I've gotten to travel around to awesome places and meet great people.

How has your work affected your life in return?
Well, for the most part I was pretty much prepared to keep at this music stuff indefinitely, because I had no other plan for my life and I was just going to MAKE it work. But the fact that it happened so quickly is amazing, not least of which it kind of vindicates me in the eyes of my immediate and extended family. There were a lot of judgments passed when I dropped out of college to wait tables and start a band. Not that it was that big of a deal...I'm sure most people in creative/arts professions suffer the same judgments daily. But I have to admit that it is really nice to go to my grandparents, for example, and be able to present them some indicators of "success" in a context that they can understand. Like, "so-and-so blog really likes my band" doesn't mean anything to them. But "hey, you can buy my album in BestBuy!" --that means the world. It really means a lot to me that they can be proud of me in ways that they understand.


What is the best thing David Lee Roth has to offer the world?
By far the best thing about David Lee Roth is the existence of this website:
http://www.thetyser.com/
I spent like an hour and a half doing this.

For more about Wye Oak:
http://www.wyeoakmusic.com
and myspace and stuff

Mr. Sunday Afternoon Special

I wait tables at A Restaurant. Like many other establishments looking to kill you slowly, we serve a dish called "The Elvis"; two slices of thick-cut, applewood-smoked bacon is cooked into two gigantic buttermilk pancakes, whereupon they are topped with bananas sauteed in honey and butter, a blob of peanut-butter butter and powdered sugar. This coronary is served with a side of pure maple syrup. For those looking to dip their toes into the experience without committing fully, we also provide a single bacon-pancake-banana-peanut-butter pile to those asking for "The Lisa Marie" (pictured). It should be noted that most of our guests have a hard time cleaning up a plate of even the latter.

This weekend is the anniversary of the day Elvis entered the next world largely thanks to food, so it seems only fitting that The Restauranteurs AKA Bosspeople of The Restaurant crafted a menu of special foodstuffs honoring his demise and, at the same time sort of accidentally, honoring the capacity of our cuisine to interrupt one's life cycle.

One of the items on this weekend's menu of death is a $35 crash course in diabetic shock called "The Graceland." We do sweeten the deal, aha, though: if you can plow your way through its SIX bacon-laden pancakes, THREE bananas sauteed in a pint of clover honey and clarified butter, THREE BALLS OF PEANUT-BUTTER BUTTER THE SIZE OF A TEENAGE FIST and a bowl of maple syrup, we will award you a bona fide Restaurant Logo tee shirt.

Luckily the only t-shirts we have left these days are Large an Extra Large. Also, you have to eat the whole thing in 30 minutes or under.

This morning, the restaurant is quiet. A little too quiet. At about 10AM, a lone gentleman arrives. At my mercy. At our mercy. He carries with him a backpack and a plastic bag, through which a bottle of something and paper currency is clearly visible. He is in my section. He is fine with only water. Pointing at the specials menu, he looks up at me. He has one eye.

"This come with a t-shirt?"

"You have to eat the entire thing. In a half and hour or less. Its alot of food!"

He smiles. "I'll take it!"

I ask him if he's sure; he says he's sure yes. The kitchen goes nuts, the manager is joking did he ask for a bucket too. Twenty minutes later, I place before him a pile of flapjacks and slime weighing over five pounds, dripping goo from a height of eight inches. The previous evening, four people working in unison could not conquer this dish. He says "Can I wash my hands?"

"The restroom is right around the corner, first door on your left."

The Graceland is thus allowed a moment of repose. Diners gawk, whispering, and capture its steaming, wide-shouldered form in their memories. We take pictures of it with our digital cameras and inside the tiny image within the tiny screen The Graceland makes everything around it seem to contract in size. The man returns, hands still wet. From his backpack he produces two rubber gloves and fits them awkwardly, squeakily, over his fingers.

Turning around, I leave him to his work.

Momentarily, a coworker gasps "He's eaten a whole ball of peanut butter butter!" Suddenly we're all watching again; he's working on the banana chunks, getting them in there. The peanut-butter butter globs are mostly gone. The topping is going down first. He requires more water. He has not yet engaged the silverware.

He drinks a glass of water, sixteen ounces of cold water. Our cooks are emerging one by one from the kitchen to satisfy their curiousity about the man who bragged he could do it in less than thirty for sure. They can't believe it. He cuts the entire pile in half with his silverware, then again. This will be the extent of his cutlery use for the duration of the meal.

Ten minutes down. Toppings gone, syrup undisturbed, pancakes a pile of shrapnel the color of vehicle upholstery. He has food all over his face like a postcard of a baby, and is hoisting jagged wedges of pancake halfheartedly into his mouth. He needs more water.

Fifteen minutes down. He is starting to reel, eye half closed, sitting up from his meal, from his intense pancake-ingesting hunch.

"You better bring a bucket, I'm gonna throw up!"

At this I sort of laugh and pour him some more water and then head into the kitchen looking for a suitable container for what would be, at this point, about a gallon of foamy tan vomit. It occurs to me that we should probably not cater to his immediate whim or perhaps fantasy of barfing in the middle of a restaurant but I sort of feel like I'm going to vomit myself and I momentarily fear that if I return to his side I will either vomit or be vomited upon. The host is ashen; he, too, has got the puke fever.

No. At eighteen minutes, we have to address the situation. A half-dozen tourists are watching him intently, having just finished their comparatively miniature breakfasts, and it would not do to encourage their accidental regurgitation either.

I return to the table.

"These are the worst pancakes I've ever had!" He is swirling in his chair, gloved hands coated with pale muck, fingers wiggling slowly.

"Sir, are you ok?"

"You better bring me a bucket."

"Ha ha! Well. Lets get into the restroom, then. Can you stand up?"

He rises, teetering, and I guide him as gingerly as I can towards the men's room. He stumbles through the partially opened door towards the urinal.

"Sir! The stall!" I exclaim, alarmed. He changes course, heading for the toilet instead. Once more, I leave him to his work.

Twenty-two minutes. An intrepid dishwasher volunteers to check on him. The report back from the front is there's no mess, he wants some more water, and now he's in the hallway. The manager is concerned about whether or not we've landed him in the hospital later today. We decide he's earned The Graceland, now an assortment of cake nuggets and melting ice cubes waiting moistly for his return. This one will be on the house.

Thirty minutes. At a table in the bathroom corridor, head in his hands. I fill his water glass and at the sound of ice cubes hitting plastic he looks up. I give him antacid tablets and he chews them like dinner mints.

"I don't know what I did to myself!"

"Its on us. Could have been the peanut butter butter, right?"

"I'll be fine I'll just have a cigarette. Want to have a cigarette with me?"

"No thanks."

He gathers his belongings and reemerges into the balmy heat of the day. We think, Ah! If he comes back we should give him a t-shirt anyway.