EPISODE 25 - Sadie Dupuis on Songwriting
SHOW NOTES:
Host Shawna talks to Sadie Dupuis (of Speedy Ortiz, Sad13, etc) about her start as a musician, singing in a children’s choir, songwriting, how that differs from writing poetry, surviving on tour, and her dogs. What’s your favorite flora and fauna? And don’t say van mushrooms, that’s already taken.
The official sponsors of this episode are First Defense Krav Maga, and Pupcakes and Pawstries, where you can use promo code waronwomen15 to get 15% off your next order.
Episode transcripts, important links, and ways to support Shawna and this podcast can be found at shawnapotter.com. Everything War On Women can be found at linktr.ee/waronwomen. For bonus episodes, behind the scenes content, and the chance to make special requests and get shoutouts on air, become a patron at patreon.com/shawnapotter.
Thanks to Brooks Harlan for chopping up War On Women’s song “Her?” to create the podcast theme song. Main podcast photo: Justin Borucki.
SPONSOR LINKS:
https://www.firstdefensekravmaga.com/
https://pupcakesandpawstries.com/
SHOW LINKS/MENTIONS:
For all of Sadie’s music, poetry, writings, events, and more: sadiedupuis.com/
Sad13 - WTD? [lyric video]: https://youtu.be/V5w-FmybU8k
Find her on Instagram and Twitter @sad13
No books or activist recommendations, because she’s busy on tour! Will update if that changes!
Author Eve Babitz
Jia Tolentino - Trick Mirror
ZE Records: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZE_Records
“Basement Queens” - a song by LIZZO + Sad13!!! https://youtu.be/w_rT2VMCz1o
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
SHAWNA: Welcome to But Her Lyrics...the show where we delve into the political lyrics of songs I like, songs I wrote, or topics that I think should be a song. I’m Shawna Potter, singer and lyricist for War On Women - and your host. And I’m doing something a little different for the next few episodes. War On Women is currently working on new songs, and we’re set to go into the studio this summer, so I thought it might be cool in the lead up to recording, to let take a peek behind the curtain and share an aspect of my lyric writing process with you. This is a change from how we normally do a But Her Lyrics episode. We usually break down songs after they’re finished and I interview experts & activists about what we can do to make the issue better. Instead, the next few episodes will be a series of unedited, casual, and personal conversations with fellow writers, for the purpose of helping me improve and finish these songs while they’re still in a raw state. By hearing a different perspective it often helps me fill in a 3rd verse I’m having trouble with, you know, stuff like that. I already have the idea, I know what I’m going for, I probably have most of it written already, but I need to reach outside of myself to finish it.
While this might be a new approach for the pod, I’ve had these types of conversations before. I did it for our last album Wonderful Hell, which you can hear about in the Seeds episode, in season 1 when I interviewed friend and activist Brittany Oliver about the conversation we had. But I’ve never shared the actual conversation itself with anyone.
Here’s the catch: These meandering conversations can get so personal, they are exclusively for my patrons, one of which you can easily become at patreon.com/shawnapotter. Whether $5, $10 a month, or $50 a month, you can help me create a podcast, write, record and perform songs, and develop my skills under the safer spaces umbrella, and you get cool bonus stuff like this series as a thank you. And you want to hear them, because I’m chatting with some awesome people. Since it’s not a classic But Her Lyrics… format, I get to chat with some dudes, so friends like J Robbins of Jawbox and Magpie Cage Recording studio, who we work with all the time. Also, Zach Blair of Rise Against and Gwar, among others, my journalist friend Elizabeth Dickinson, we had a fantastic conversation that left me with some homework, which I will share in a diary post, so that’s a must listen, and more tba.
In a second I’ll tell you how today’s guest and interview helped inspire this whole thing, but let’s get it out of the way!
[patreon]
This episode's sponsors are First Defense Krav Maga in Virginia & Pupcakes and Pawstries. Their links are in the description below. Shoutout to my badass Recruit Melissa P. Sign up as a Recruit on my Patreon if you want an official sponsor shout out on the show. You’ll also get a copy of my book for free and get to make random requests! And of course, you’ll have exclusive access to the lyrics in process series of conversations coming out soon, as well as a diary of my afternoon leading a bystander intervention training for our sponsor, First Defense Krav Maga! Thanks for having me again, gang. Head to patreon.com/shawnapotter to see everything else you get at any of the 6 available support tiers. A reminder for my patrons, don’t forget to message me to schedule those one on one calls and show shout outs.
Alright, it’s no secret I’m a Sadie DuPuis fan. She’s behind bands like Speedy Ortiz and Sad13, she has done some cool stuff to keep fans safer at shows, which I detail in my book Making Spaces Safer, one of those cool things being to sell my book at the merch table and give it to venues so more people can learn this stuff. You’ll notice in this conversation we’re not focusing on one of her songs specifically. We are friends irl so I think we were more comfortable flaking out and rescheduling this interview with each other than we might be with someone else, so it took us a long time to actually get together. By the time we did, her song choice just wasn’t going to work anymore. I explain why at the top of the interview, so keep listening to hear two friends who’ve never talked about songwriting with each other, talk about songwriting with each other.
[INTERVIEW TIME - please excuse any errors, this transcript has been auto-generated]
Sadie Dupuis Shawna Potter thank you for joining me on the podcast please
5:45
introduce yourself and correct me on how to pronounce your last name I don't even know if I've ever said it out loud yeah
5:51
okay I'm safe did you play and uh as pronounced correctly by your husband Potter
5:57
there's a record um yeah you got it so we were gonna focus on your song wtd question mark
6:05
um but our interview kept getting rescheduled and rescheduled and that's not even all about you it's about me too
6:11
um but it got rescheduled enough that now there is a recent episode of the podcast about climate change so we
6:19
missed the boat on that one um so I thought unfortunately we have not been I mean we've missed the boat to do
6:25
something about it and many regards but uh I think we're living on this boat Shawna that's uh that's the darkness I
6:32
was looking forward to in this interview um well I thought it could still be an opportunity to instead of like honing in
6:40
on like one song uh to just talk about your songwriting in general is that cool
6:46
with you that sounds really fun okay so first question
6:51
how did you start to play music what instruments were you drawn to who
6:56
inspired you what was playing in the house when you grew up where does all this come from yeah
7:02
um my dad played piano and my mom does not play anything but
7:11
both had worked at record labels um oh really 70s so well before I'm born
7:19
in 1988 so I think maybe the last either of them was music Biz was like 1980
7:26
um so you're not a nepo baby is what you're saying the people love to make that comment because my dad worked anr
7:34
for um Ze records so like James chance and like Lydia lunch like label okay so yeah
7:42
I definitely got all of my connections from my dad working an R for no wave bands in the 1970s you got me
7:51
um but they were Avid music fans and always playing the radio in the house
7:57
um we would go to like record fairs and collect CDs and tapes and things like
8:02
that so I grew up listing to a ton of music and then I started to take piano lessons when I was a little kid
8:08
um because my dad played and had one um so I remember writing my first song with my dad's help
8:16
when I was like six years old I just felt like a children's book to music
8:23
um oh wow do you remember the melody or anything I do but I'm not gonna sing it for you but maybe uh you know if we do
8:29
it in two years privately back to this so okay okay next time I see you in person
8:34
um and then I joined a children's choir not that long after that um and I was in a series of children's
8:41
choirs ultimately doing one like semi-professionally like it's a
8:46
children's choir that won a Grammy we toured internationally um it's not like a puncturing but it was
8:55
a little bit and then I slept on like people's couches um they were just like host families who
9:01
were like very Christian and thought uh singing children were Angels
9:06
um so I was doing all that stuff and the children's choir that I was in for the
9:13
long period of time did like really kind of avant-garde a lot of like Russian
9:19
contemporary contemporary to like you know 1920 uh contemporary classical uh
9:24
so weird time signatures uh weird you know you're holding a clashing note against the person who's next to you for
9:31
a long period of time um so I'm doing all that while also like my parents are into
9:38
you know indie rock my dad is getting all the Matador CDs from
9:46
you know other music or wherever right so I'm getting into like Liz fair and
9:52
pavement and sabado um and I also love like 311 and Deftones
9:57
and Incubus so I start playing Guitar what I'm just about to turn 13 and I
10:03
think between those influences and like the Children's Choir stuff
10:09
um I started writing songs pretty much immediately and it makes sense that they came out this
10:15
way yeah wow uh and that's my background I guess do you still read music or do
10:20
you just go by what feels right I am not good at it I couldn't do it but I have to like sit and plank I can't like sight
10:27
read yeah what do you remember about your first live show that wasn't the
10:34
Children's Choir like that was your band yeah I went to um so the Children's Choir was inactive in
10:41
the summer um probably should have been the other way around because I missed a lot of school [Laughter]
10:49
and I almost didn't pass a grade so I went to this summer camp
10:55
um starting when I was 13 and I'd been to a couple camps before that were kind
11:00
of like YMCA or like Girl Scout adjacent very like you know you're gonna do archery
11:08
and like do a lanyard and stuff like this um and I didn't like it at all I hated
11:13
it I wanted to be home I wanted to just be like reading my books all day and then uh my mom had moved at some
11:23
point so I grew up in New York uh and my parents were like never together when I
11:29
was alive but um my mom moved to rural Connecticut when I
11:35
was going into Middle School um and she happened to be 20 minutes away from this like amazing summer camp that
11:42
was Montessori style and basically it had it was composed of a number of
11:47
different art studios so there was like a glass blowing Studio sculpting welding like metal smithing recording studio
11:56
um for children um wow and the cool thing was if you
12:02
wanted to do nothing all day you that was your decision for that day you're totally free to
12:09
decide what your day looks like unless you commit to being in a play or something like that um
12:14
so I started to play in bands at camp that year when I was 13. yeah that must
12:20
have been the first time I played but I don't remember the specific like first show but I had a little punk band the
12:27
first year um and I just kept having different bands every year and eventually I would
12:32
do that when I in my high school they weren't a time it was a really really small rural school that served like
12:39
for surrounding very rural towns so there were like maybe there were maybe a hundred kids in
12:46
my class and maybe like 300 kids in the whole High School um so there weren't a ton of people who
12:52
wanted to play in bands but one of my best friends went to a neighboring high school and also went to Camp with me and
12:57
she kind of became my drummer she's still a good friend her name is Dana wickens she's a podcast producer so wow
13:03
any listeners who who yeah have heard Earwolf stuff she was doing a bunch of those oh yeah
13:10
um and yeah that I don't remember the specific first gig but it was a lot of stuff from camp and then random High
13:17
School open mics and uh the church basement would do like a monthly Open
13:23
Mic things like that that sounds more familiar but the the summer camp punk
13:28
rock band like that's that feels pretty unique it was very cool and I feel like there was no girls Rock camp or anything
13:34
like that right near where I lived but um this was like like all gender girls Rock
13:43
Camp which is not the point of girls Rock camp but I'd be like oh there's like three cool girls in a locust cover
13:49
band and I'm like a 13 year old you know nice it wouldn't have happened uh at my high school right
13:57
um now you have a couple bands uh Speedy Ortiz and sad 13. are there any others
14:02
actually before I um I play sometimes with Mr Goblin which is my friend
14:08
Sam's band they were at some point based in DC and now in
14:15
um why can't I remember Indiana Indiana I'll play with friends once in a while
14:20
or I'll show up on people's things as like a guest vocalist guitar producer
14:25
things like that but those are my two like touring active projects is is sad 13 a solo
14:34
project is that the difference between that and Speedy Ortiz yeah um
14:40
it's a band for tours because I just absolutely hate to play solo and won't
14:46
do it um and I've have been working with the same
14:51
drummer for a long time his name is Zoe brecher she's amazing
14:56
um She was recently playing with Bruce Springsteen so she's got quite the resume okay but in terms of I basically
15:06
started it so I could have a home recording and production project because I had started Speedy Ortiz to be my home
15:12
recording project and then it became a band and it no longer seemed appropriate
15:17
for it to be like things I recorded in my bedroom
15:22
um yeah and then a few years and I was like damn it I miss I miss having a thing that's things I recorded in my
15:28
bedroom and then of course the second sad 13 album I wound up working at a bunch of different Studios but we kept a
15:35
lot of the stuff I'd done in my you know I still produced and uh yeah how do you
15:40
know when something is a speedy Ortiz song or a sad 13 song is
15:46
it just that you want to write about this private thing in your bedroom no it's not even about the subject matter
15:52
um it their delineation for me really was about like am I getting any help did I solely do
16:01
this to myself if so it's the sad 13 album gotcha gotcha uh I think
16:07
there are things that I'm more willing to do with sad 13 just because it's only
16:13
me I don't have to say how do you feel about you know let's all vote on you know how many times we do the chorus in
16:20
a row or whatever I tend to come in with the songs it's totally totally done but in terms of
16:27
where do we want to record how do we want this guitar tone to be what how should the which base to use what how
16:34
many notes should the bass in fact be playing uh how annoyingly complicated
16:39
should the drums be I I always push to make them annoying
16:44
um so that that seems more the distinction to me and
16:49
so on the sad 13 album I included like there's two tracks that have some
16:55
orchestral Arrangements um that's not something I felt was a good fit for Speedy as a band before but
17:01
it's something I like a lot so I felt I'm like I love Skywalker let me let me incorporate some weird Orchestra stuff
17:09
um I love Piper pop let me gesture to that a little bit I like really cheesy
17:15
like 80s New Wave stuff let me grab those scents yeah
17:21
it's it just feels different from the established tone of the the Speedy thing and it because it's just me I feel like
17:29
I can do whatever I want if there's no you say there's no difference between maybe subject matter
17:34
and those two bands um do you approach writing poetry differently than writing
17:40
lyrics for listeners Sadie has published do you have two books yeah two poetry books out yep I just had my second book
17:47
out in October um and I'm about to be on tour for it for a couple times so great I love I
17:54
love doing my book tour it was so cool yeah to not load a cabinet upstairs
17:59
you know what I mean I think the authors don't get it because authors are like you're touring so much on this book I
18:06
can't I do eight shows and I'm exhausted and I'm like yeah and you fly to every single show yeah uh you have no idea how
18:13
much it yeah it pains the body to be in a rock band yeah you're like this is
18:19
[ __ ] easy I'm showing up to a bookstore every day great it's beautiful I come home with books I guess yeah
18:27
breakfast you are an Avid Reader like the kind that like pisses me off you know because
18:33
you can you read so much I don't know how you [ __ ] do it um but check it out do you like I feel
18:38
like people who tell me that they don't understand how I read so much have like some other thing that they do that just
18:44
I just watch TV that's why I just watching TV too but I watch like no movies
18:50
oh wow and I see I'm trying to change I gotta subscription membership why change
18:57
Philly has a cool Indie theater that gets interesting things so I got a membership this year so I'm trying to
19:02
change but that's cool a lot of times the people who are like how do you read so much log like 600 movies a year on
19:09
letterbox I'm like wow well you were watching two movies per day yeah I just
19:14
read for an hour a day and that's that's my secret um
19:19
let's say so all right so let me let me let me ask the other question again first but uh yeah how do you do you
19:26
approach writing poetry differently than writing lyrics or like when do you know actually this is a poem it's not a song
19:33
so it's sort of a similar answer to what I just gave you between sad 13 and Speedy
19:39
like the subjects that I am interested in and want to write about and want and
19:45
feel and want to talk about with you um are kind of continuous across all my creative projects and if I was working
19:51
on an abstract painting it's like the same thing you know what I mean but the process is is
19:58
uh different for me between songwriting and poetry so um I don't ever
20:04
write lyrics and then make music for them I'm always working on the music
20:09
first and I'm often pretty 100 of the way done with
20:15
pre-production before I have lyrics that are a bit are you serious yeah I mean I have little like fake I'm
20:23
sure you have the same exact thing where you're in the shower and you get a weird little whiff of a melody and maybe
20:29
there's some nonsense words attached sure um so I tend to write I record all those into my I'm doing
20:36
this as if people can see me uh at the record show I'm holding my fake phone up to my face
20:41
um I sing a lot of little voice memos in and when it's time to work on an album I go through I wonder if I have you mind
20:47
them yes I go through every single one I take a note what key is it in what kind of tempo is it and I do like my own uh
20:57
self-assembled writer's room yeah of me from the past so often there's like five
21:03
or six voice memos into one song um and sometimes I'm listening to something I'm like oh this isn't gonna
21:09
work for the project I know I'm writing towards which is a speedy album or a sad 13 album but I don't ever get rid of it
21:15
and it usually winds up coming back into something later um so I you know in the eight second
21:22
voice memo and maybe I sang some weird fake words and I may or may not use them
21:28
to give me some direction for where to go uh or I may just keep vowel sounds and shift things in and out but
21:35
generally the lyrics are like the very last thing hmm and but what about when you're writing
21:40
poetry do you sit down and say I'm going to write a poem right now yep I just said the computer and I type
21:47
until I feel done and then I don't look at it for however long and then I delete
21:53
like two-thirds of it that's interesting to give yourself that
21:59
space to just let it be let it rest and come back with a fresh mind
22:04
and the only thing I would say that is a big crossover in the writing process for
22:10
me is that um like we all do I have a little sticky
22:16
note of cool phrases that have popped into my mind and I'll if I'm stuck
22:21
I'll grab from that for for everything back to books yeah how do you view their
22:29
role in what you do do you find yourself writing songs about books like do they
22:34
is that just like are you just inputting media and then whatever comes out comes out or are you like oh this book oh this
22:41
is a crazy story I'm gonna I'm gonna write about this I think it can happen both ways or
22:48
sometimes neither um sometimes I'll get really into a specific writer and of course their tone
22:55
of voice is going to permeate what I'm working on I went through a really big I
23:01
think everybody who uh is picking up new stuff went through
23:07
this like Eve Babbitt's Renaissance a few years ago and I was in that corner
23:12
um and I think her writing style and tone had a big impact on me
23:18
um there are a lot of poets whose style and tone I feel like have really helped
23:23
me think about my own um and so those are less narrative or structural
23:31
references that I would take from them um more like a way to think about how to
23:37
present my own voice and then once in a while I read more in the non-fiction realm
23:43
um something that will inform a song like the Gia Tolentino book
23:50
um what trick mirrors that was called yeah from 20
23:55
19 wound up informing one of the songs on the Sadler teen record that came out
24:01
in 2020 um and it's funny I write artists bios
24:07
um and I also write a series for spin where I talk to musicians about what books they like and influence their
24:13
songs and it's crazy how many people reference that geoton Tino book she has got the really songwriter Market
24:20
cornered I guess I have to read it then or should I not because then I'll just myself like everyone else's it's it's a
24:27
helpful uh book of essays in terms of the way that she thinks about culture
24:32
and Technology
24:40
question mark um first what does that mean what's the drama what's the drama oh my god of
24:47
course reference and you know what this is when I can exactly point to my process with
24:53
this one Katie Ortiz did a tour with taramelos in 2017 and the you know
25:01
what's the haps what what's good you all right uh as the Brits love to say
25:06
um they were always just like what's the drama uh oh and so we were all saying this Speedy was all copying them the
25:13
whole tour oh yes yeah ban jokes yeah yeah and to the extent that I typed in wtd in my phone to expand
25:20
um into what's the drama which became very annoying when it was a song title because I still don't think I've turned
25:26
that off so every time I've had to type in probably when I was emailing you to say let's talk about this song I'd
25:32
probably type wtd and it expanded I went ah and I had to
25:37
um I had the same problem with with Trump um and I'm sure I think there's a couple other uh yeah anyway
25:46
um so I had this what is the drama uh uh just hook on my phone
25:53
went back to it a couple years later I was like oh yeah that's that's pretty good
25:59
um and had to figure out what that could be about yeah and I believe around the
26:05
time that I had made the demo and done all the pre-production there was some and
26:11
now of course it's much more of a reality at the time this must have been 2018 uh it seemed a lot more
26:19
um unreal but it was that due to climate gentrification uh billionaires
26:27
are taking to the Sea and uh eventually hoping to take to space like now we know
26:33
this is talked about all the time but I think this was like a kind of a breaking investigative essay at the time and it
26:40
really uh freaked me out uh so that's the drama that's the drama
26:46
um now I noticed that sometimes in this song The the lyric phrases they don't
26:52
line up perfectly with the musical phrase they'll kind of wrap around and keep going so that the beginning and the
26:59
ending of each line is a little less predictable um tell me about that you mean that the
27:07
the sentence doesn't end with like when the musical phrase does yeah yeah I like
27:13
to not do that is that like a common thing um for me I guess I feel like that's
27:19
part of my style I like to use uh slant Rhymes and and uh allude to a rhyme that
27:26
I'm not gonna do or hmm I remember being on tour with Tim Casher and I was like
27:32
you're always doing where you think the word is gonna rhyme you then pick a
27:39
synonym for that word that doesn't rhyme and he's like I do he had no idea that
27:44
was one of his tricks uh but I feel like I do like I do I don't always think
27:50
about doing it because it's so part of my style at this point but I think that is
27:55
one of one of my little things and I should say what I am writing lyrics
28:02
and when I'm editing them I edit them as prose um so that probably
28:08
affects the with the the thing you just pointed out yeah yeah that's interesting you kind of
28:15
like toss away the idea of what the music's gonna be so that the lyrics stand on their own I get rid of the
28:21
lineation and I I want to read them as a paragraph and make sure that I like how they read that way because I I can't
28:28
there's plenty of things where I love the music and then I look at the lyrics and the liner notes and it's like like a
28:34
six word phrase it's done like 16 times that's not very fun to read I want them
28:41
to be fun to read too a poet I know through and through
28:50
um how do you know when a song is done I don't let's see I feel like the thing
28:55
I really belabor is mixing more than anything my writing is super quick and
29:00
my production ideas are quick um in terms of tracking how long does it
29:08
take to get it the way that I envisioned it sounding um one take great 30 takes it's not
29:15
ideal but okay um the mixing is the thing where I can get really really in the weeds and I'm never
29:22
sure I'm satisfied until someone's like if you want me to do another revision or
29:29
if you need to book another day like I'm off this project so I like to find a mixed engineer who
29:37
will get really into weeds with me and I've been pretty lucky for the most part but one of the things I have to do right
29:43
now is listen to a Master revision and I'm like if there are revisions I'm going to lose my mind so it's it's so
29:49
[ __ ] tough mixing and mastering like I it's like I have a good ear you know I
29:56
do I have a good ear but those tiny differences adding up to bigger total
30:02
different it's just like yeah you could just never stop mixing one album like
30:07
you could do it forever um and you kind of have to at some point be like okay that's it I feel like
30:13
there's an adage in here but I don't quite have it yet but you know the thing where it's like cheap fast good oh you can have like two
30:20
you have two mine is like small picture big picture not losing your mind and I
30:26
have like small picture in big picture but I lose my mind no that's good that's good I think that's accurate yeah
30:34
I want to end with a couple light things oh um because well I drink my green juice
30:41
yeah drink your green juice care about this yeah think about your chakras kill
30:47
me yeah um in Philly they just burn the recycling fun fact
30:54
I do it and I rinse everything out I you know it's getting set on fire I said
30:59
that on the podcast episode it's it's orange Skies with rozzy for anyone interested but at the end I say like
31:06
like you know we're talking about the fact that like it's really it's politicians it's billionaires like it's
31:11
not it whether I personally recycle or not is Not Gonna Save the Earth or kill it but I still do it because I'm in
31:19
control of that at least I'm in the habit that's right that's right if one day Philly stops burning the recycling
31:25
mine is gonna be so ready to be turned into a wallet or something
31:33
um you have a rescue dog too don't you yes tell me about your rescue dog she
31:39
was in here when we started um I have two oh I have uh one that I Foster
31:45
failed well let me rewind a tiny bit um my mom's boyfriend when I was growing
31:51
up was a dog trainer oh it's really like 10 dogs of his own in addition to
31:56
whatever dogs he was boarding to train um so I grew up with Ola and my mom and
32:02
I had a dog too so I grew up with at least 11 dogs around a lot of the time and became obsessed with dogs and my
32:10
first email address was dog smart7 at AOL.com because I was seven
32:16
um why'd they let me have an AOL account nobody knows
32:23
um and so when I was
32:29
the second I was away living from home I started fostering dogs I got kicked out
32:35
of an apartment for fostering dogs um wow and I Foster failed for the first
32:40
time in 2011 uh with Buster who's my my special big boy he's about to turn he's
32:47
going to turn 13 this year um and is that right is that math yeah he's
32:54
gonna turn 13 this this fall um and he's the best it's really sweet boy
33:02
um and whenever I was on tour my mom would watch him which was great because he'd get to be in the country and you
33:10
know my mom lives in the middle of the woods there's like bears and coyotes uh he loves to go on a walk through the
33:16
woods and sniff everything do dog things yeah do dog things so when the pandemic started I was like I guess I'll pick
33:22
Buster up my mom was like uh I live alone in the middle of the woods
33:28
you're gonna take your dog back for uh so Buster lives up there now so yeah
33:35
she was like no yeah they just hanging with me and after it I guess it must
33:40
have been end of 2020 I had a friend who worked for uh one of the local rescues
33:46
and there was a dog in pretty bad shape he was not thriving in the shelter um we didn't think we would be able to
33:52
adopt her because she had a whole queue of other interested adoptees but a few months later they offered her to us and
33:59
that's lavender and she is a pit bull border collie mix uh Buster's a Pit
34:06
Boxer I should say so he he's they look really similar it's weird
34:11
um he's white and tan she's white and black but they have really similar spots markings
34:17
um and general shape except he's just like the scaled up version as there's 40
34:22
pounds um so she's tiny for a pit mix but yeah five is pretty normal
34:28
um they're best friends they have very different personalities Lavender is bossy because she's a border collie
34:35
she's always trying to hurt people yeah uh and she's very vocal Buster's like
34:41
sensitive Shy Guy um but they're both really sweet and they love each other and those are my
34:46
two rescue dogs that's great and haven't you because lavender has some
34:52
um you know doesn't look like she's got a special special face yeah she's
34:58
missing most of her lip um and a big part of her nose so her teeth are exposed all the time and she's
35:05
got a big smile didn't I but didn't I see something about you like taking her
35:10
someplace to sort of like share with kids like that people look different
35:15
sometimes or something like am I imagining no I don't think so but yeah I haven't done that but or
35:22
maybe it just happened maybe you were just out and and and the kid what's going on with that dog I do have
35:28
conversations like that with kids sometimes um because even other dogs sometimes misinterpret
35:34
her face sure her teeth are just out you know she can't help it there's nothing to cover them
35:40
um so I do sometimes get to talk to kids who are a little scared and then they find out she's a love bug yeah and
35:47
they're very happy to meet her um other dogs we have to be a little careful about and we haven't we don't take her
35:52
to a dog park because um we've had situations on the street she loves meeting other dogs and she's very
35:59
friendly she's got no issues which is interesting because she probably was part of the right ring
36:05
um that is the best explanation for her injuries um no trust issues with dogs or people
36:11
totally friendly to everybody but once in a while another friendly dog that
36:16
she's playing with suddenly gets really weird and aggressive and presumably it's because her teeth look bared even though
36:24
she's just going about her day yeah oh yeah well I feel for her
36:31
um so yeah she's a spoiled brat don't feel for her okay okay she's only not harassing me for dinner
36:36
because I fed her 40 minutes early so I could talk to you she's a princess who
36:42
gets everything she wants um all right so in this song wtd question mark
36:50
um and I'm totally just it's just called wtd I'm just being a jerk by saying question mark over and over yeah yeah
36:57
um you can add the question mark thank you uh but you mentioned flora and fauna
37:05
and so I thought I would ask you what is your favorite type of Flora and Fauna oh
37:10
my God I know nothing about plants this is the this is the dark moment where you
37:16
find out how dare you write a song about it then because it's you know the chorus is from the perspective of someone who's
37:22
like I don't care about the the planet Earth what's the drama if they're gone due to my miserable actions
37:30
um what's my favorite flora and fauna fauna I mean dog smart seven I gotta
37:38
pick I gotta go with canines yeah all varieties of canines and anything that is like I'm obsessed with fox videos I
37:45
love anything that is at all in the canine family uh yeah cool plants what
37:52
plants do I like I have can I just go with food can I say food sure
37:59
I'm sure you've been like poisoned by living on the road uh mentality but I'm
38:04
always after like veggies that will keep for like a couple days yeah are you
38:10
refrigerated and I can just throw into I do a lot of like rehydrating of things at gas stations so I love like a cup
38:17
noodle or like a black beans that are dried and I just have to add water um and I will throw in
38:24
veggies uh such as mushroom mushrooms are the best really if I think about it
38:30
but it's not the answer you just gotta you just got a bag of mushrooms in the van um if the venue gave them to me last
38:36
night at the in the green room um but really bag of kale love a bag of
38:41
kale you just throw it in some hot water and it's cooked all right so this is my road hack I think mine is like go find
38:47
sushi somewhere like get some avocado roller cucumber but you know when you're on like the 10 hour drive and there's
38:53
nowhere you just can't yeah you just have like yeah you have a cup noodle and you're gonna do the best you can with it you're gonna deal with it yeah let's
39:00
throw some Kalin it'll be great that gas station water is boiling it's
39:06
gonna okay tour hacks people yep and what's sad is
39:14
that I love my tour noodles and I make it at home if I'm
39:19
pressed for time yeah no they're great they're great they're great they're great
39:24
I think yeah I think the first thing to go for me is like like I can only have Subway so much like
39:31
I will always vote for Taco Bell over Subway because I'm vegan too so like yeah Taco Bell's the number one I've
39:37
never been poisoned by Taco but I never get food poisoning from Taco Bell because I don't eat meat and what's weird is Chipotle also very vegan
39:44
friendly but it makes me I like it I like it a lot but it makes me so much more sick than Taco Bell really why is
39:50
that and it's more expensive so and it's a lot more expensive okay well how can people find you what do you want to plug
39:56
blah blah blah um you can find me on Twitter if it's still up well before
40:03
this podcast comes out it do take a while to edit so you never know and it's sad 13 sad13 it's the same one on
40:11
Instagram um I do have Facebooks but I don't look at them ever
40:16
those are kind of the ones I'm on I don't have Tick Tock that's fine um I'm on a book tour or I maybe I will
40:24
be by the time this comes out I don't know but safe to assume yes um and you can find more about that at
40:31
Sadie dupuis.com which I you know you can see then how it's spelled in the I'll put it in the show in the episode
40:37
I'll put in the show notes I'll put links to your stuff and also uh you know
40:42
I'll get some stuff from you about any books organizations or activists you want to share with us that
40:48
made an impact on you regarding this song um and so yeah we'll get it all in the
40:54
show notes and people can find it there awesome thank you Sadie so much for joining me
40:59
thank you for having me Shawna I'm sorry it took us so long but it's great to get to see you I think it was worth it this
41:04
was so much more fun this was so fun to talk to my friend about songwriting in
41:10
general instead of like having to talk about climate change again which I know I know we have to do we're all thinking
41:16
about it every moment of every day so it's nice to have a laugh with a friend
41:21
I got hailed on today while it was like 65 degrees out wait is that true yeah oh
41:26
my God yeah you ain't lying okay yes well good luck to us all and maybe we'll
41:33
all still be around by the time the podcast comes out who knows who knows what'll happen to the planet fingers still crossed sounds good thanks
41:41
[Applause] [Music]
SHAWNA: Thank you Sadie for this fun and enlightening conversation. Touring children’s choir?! C’mon, that’s so cool. Obviously check out all the links in the show notes to Sadie’s music and books, plural. I’ll still play her song “WTD?” at the end of the episode to satisfy your curiosity, but there’s also a cool lyric video available to watch, so that’ll go in the show notes too. Like I said at the top of the show, the next few episodes after this one will be hosted exclusively on my patreon and they are not to be missed. They are deep, raw, unfiltered, unedited, personal, and I think they give an accurate view of writing lyrics in a political feminist punk band that’s been around over a decade.
Keep listening to hear the song “WTD?” by Sad13.
You can support this podcast by liking my youtube channel, and sharing, subscribing, and reviewing But Her Lyrics.. Wherever you get your podcasts - it’s free and it helps. To find episode transcripts, or to find out more about what I do, my book, my trainings, my patreon, head to shawnapotter.com
To learn about all things WOW, head to linktr.ee/waronwomen
”WTD?” LYRICS:
Some of us are gonna die faster than the other guys, ones I thought shoulda been shining my shoes. That’s how a gamble’s gamed, real until it’s razed away forcibly. Descend from ladder to chute and call that a truce.
So high, quite low, mid-range: domains you control. “Drink me,” shrink down. Make a toast to the loss, you allowed it. And if I’ve had enough of flora and fauna, then what is the drama? Hold me close til the next year’s trauma. What is the drama?
Wish I had said something but we can’t go back in time. Goons waltz in wearing shitkicking grins without reason, without cadence. So, we’re gonna die! Faster than our fathers make crime out of fiction, a silent cohesion. Less paranoia, more progress.
Haha, unknowns derange me. But I make it my own and own up, get down. This is happening cuz you allowed it. That’s enough of flora, fauna. What is the drama? You were splayed for the valet, a cap gun on ya. Now put your hands where I could see ‘em. Is there any drama?