“Drinks With” is an artist-on-artist interview series about the creative process. The conversations almost always happen in person, and usually over drinks, coffee, etc.
Typically the questions are asked by Skip or Timshel Matheny, the photos are taken by Timshel Matheny, and any audio / video is captured & edited by Logan Matheny, All are currently songwriters in the band roman candle.
If circumstances allow, Skip (formerly a bartender in a retirement community) will make the drinks.
Interviews are typically published by Paste Magazine or American Songwriter Magazine.
Interviewing Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis in Nashville 2013 (photo: Will Holland)
Excerpt from Episode 1 of the Drinks With Podcast:
“We have been writing songs and putting out records for the past 15 years in a band called roman candle. We have spent a fair share of time playing a few of the most illustrious rooms and the majority of the worst rooms in America and abroad.
One thing that most people don’t know about the Touring life of a band is that you spend a ton of time hanging out in dingy green rooms and empty clubs at 4 in the afternoon doing a lot of waiting and spending a lot of time talking.
Talking about whatever town you are in, talking about our lives, but more often than not, eventually, about making art. At some point this became, for us, the thing we ended up talking the most about. Whether it was songwriting or books or films or whatever was on our mind.
And so, in a very unconventional but natural way, Drinks With started. In 2009 we sat down with artists who we were touring with, and started to ask the questions we had always asked, but mostly we just talked about the creative process. For the past 7 years, we have been sitting down with some of our favorite artists asking them the kinds of questions we ask ourselves, the kinds of questions their art makes us want to ask. And so far, the conversations have been nothing less than fantastic to be a part of.
Interviewing Thomas & Chris from Phoenix in 2010 (photo: Timshel Matheny)