Q&A: The Blowies Take on Absurdity with Wit and Punk Energy in ‘Playing with Ourselves’
AUSTIN-BASED PUNK DUO THE BLOWIES ARE GEARING UP TO RELEASE THEIR SOPHOMORE ALBUM PLAYING WITH OURSELVES ON OCTOBER 25. Following in the footsteps of their debut, this new LP doesn't shy away from controversial topics, poking fun at everything from politics to climate change, all delivered with a healthy dose of wit. With the U.S. election just around the corner, their timing couldn’t be better. Tucker Jameson and Samuel Thompson, the duo behind the band, infuse their songs with humor, frustration, and sharp-tongued observations about society’s absurdities.
As The Blowies prepare to release this collection of cheeky, politically charged tracks, they’re proving once again that the best way to tackle the insanity of modern life is to laugh in its face.
Ahead of their album release, The Blowies will celebrate with their release show at Austin’s Chess Club on October 24. Featuring support from fellow local acts PENNER and Tough on Fridays, the show will also be donating a portion of merch sales to Brigid Alliance, a nonprofit that helps people seeking abortions with logistical support.
Read below to hear more about the inspiration behind Playing with Ourselves, how satire serves as their weapon of choice, and why humor is sometimes the best way to make sense of a world that often doesn’t.
LUNA: Your sophomore album, Playing with Ourselves, is filled with witty social commentary, especially with the U.S. election right around the corner. What inspired you to take on these themes in such a cheeky, humorous way?
THE BLOWIES: From the very inception of The Blowies, humor was baked in. It’s the only sane/non-suicidal reaction to the insanity around us. The absurdist/satirical approach aims to reflect the times. There is also an interesting dynamic at play that perhaps Mary Poppins put best – “a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” Tackling topical issues in song is a tricky endeavor; it’s far too easy to come off as hokey and/or preachy. Humor is the sugar that helps us address serious subject matter without taking ourselves too seriously and, just maybe, makes it a little easier for others to swallow.
LUNA: You tackle some heavy issues like climate change, misinformation, and reproductive rights on the album, but with a dose of humor. How do you balance addressing serious topics while keeping the tone light and funny?
THE BLOWIES: With deft precision and care. Picture a scalpel and a bottle of tequila.
LUNA: How did you land on the album title, and how does it reflect the message you’re trying to send through this project?
THE BLOWIES: Also a scalpel and a bottle of tequila!
It’s a nice metaphor for the current state of affairs, is it not? We’re all in our little corners of the world trying to make sense of the whole picture and yet the only view we all want to keep looking at is that damn corner. Confirmation bias is a mother-fucker, maybe it’s an unavoidable part of our psyche designed to ensure our survival on some level, but damn those blinders can do a lot of damage when the systems we’ve set up as a society hack into that instinct. And for what? – to sell you a knife that can cut through a boat? Or a state of the art pillow that if you act on now and call the number flashing on your screen, you could save a fortune on. Plus, for a limited time only, when you purchase that pillow, you’ll also receive a commemorative pillow sham with your name embroidered in your color of choice so that every time your friends are over they too can see who sleeps there (according to the pillow). Are we doomed to play with ourselves? To bury our heads in the sand and watch the world spin out whilst telling ourselves that nothing is spinning and that that pillow sure is nice?
LUNA: "Mediocre Media" critiques the media landscape we all find ourselves in today. Can you expand on what this song is calling out, and how do you personally navigate today’s overwhelming media environment?
THE BLOWIES: What once was meant to inform the public has devolved into entertainment, AND that’s seemingly what the public prefers. In the absence of regulation to curb our worst impulses, we are stuck with traditional/legacy media trying to compete for our attention with the likes of real-time rapid-fire context-free mini-op eds; social media. So, it’s a race to the bottom. The good reporting is behind a paywall that most can’t afford (let alone would even want to if they could) and everything else is readily available “fast-food” that is slowly but surely rendering the public diabetic and eroding any sense of a shared reality. Might as well super-size the order cause who has the time to fact check every tweet or headline that they are fed? To go and gather the context around every breaking story? Our society has allowed a structure to persist that has, step-by-step, dismantled the trust we have in one another and our institutions. It’s no one’s fault, nor is it the fault of the corporations just trying to vie for our eyeballs and dollars; the failure belongs to us all.
There is a way out. It starts with education, perhaps a public health campaign that stresses media literacy for all generations. A.I. will make it worse though and harder to filter, so, we need regulation. Social media companies and those with illiberal agendas claim that any regulation amounts to infringement on our right to free speech within the public square. However, the regulation we need is not on the speech itself but on how that speech is amplified and spread. We need algorithmic regulation.
As far as how we personally navigate the chaos of media goes… with great difficulty. The great part is that there is more information than ever before on any particular subject matter, the filtering is the tough part. Checking sources, reading New York Times, WaPo, and the journal, avoiding FOX & MSNBC and mostly avoiding CNN (Fareed Zakaria is solid). Not just accepting one point of view. Not just accepting any sort of shared information on social media as fact - especially if it seems to fit our world view. Making use of politifact. Local newspapers (not the editorials) are usually a good source of reliable information on local issues. General skepticism is a healthy thing as long as it doesn’t slide into apathy/defeatism or conspiracy theory world.
LUNA: How has your own frustration with societal issues shaped the tone and direction of this album?
THE BLOWIES: What frustration?! Life’s a Cakewalk!
LUNA: Do you think satire and humor are effective ways to encourage social change, or are they more about providing relief in a chaotic world?
THE BLOWIES: No. Humor (and its various forms) alongside music, or any form of art really, can be vehicles through which we can connect to others and the world around us, tapping into what makes us human and reminding us that we aren’t going through this alone. Perhaps this spark or reminder of our humanity can factor into what eventually could be called social change or at least the conversation about change, but that would be an incredibly indirect and even muddled way of going about it. However, it’s a lot like voting, if you don’t do it, it certainly isn’t going to count. So you might as well do it (even if it’s an exercise in futility), otherwise someone else definitely gets to decide the outcome for you.
LUNA: For the album release show at Chess Club, you're donating a portion of your merchandise sales to Brigid Alliance. Why was it important for you to align with a cause like this, and how does it tie into the themes of Playing with Ourselves?
THE BLOWIES: There are real consequences to checking out and burying our collective heads in the sand. Slogans and partisan policies that rile up emotions, function well for those already in power or those seeking it, but they also drown out the nuance of any and every issue with real people caught in the crossfire. The enactment of Texas’ “bounty hunter law” alongside SCOTUS overturning Roe V. Wade, has forced women and families into a one-size fits all hardline policy that makes no room for humanity, putting doctors and their patients in impossibly challenging and tragic situations. While we must share stories like Amanda Zurwaski’s to increase awareness of the importance of proper care to ultimately change minds and the law, we must also deal with the reality on the ground. That reality is that 1 in 3 American women live in states with severe abortion restrictions. Many women seeking abortive care in those states cannot afford to leave the state to receive the care they need, that’s where Brigid Alliance plays a pivotal role. They offer women the support they need to get the care they need. They help to arrange travel, lodging, childcare, meals, etc. for women that might not otherwise be able to do so on their own. So in a place like Texas, where reproductive rights have been stripped away, Brigid Alliance is a vital resource more than worthy of all of our support.
LUNA: How does playing live impact the way you write and perform these politically charged songs? Does the energy of the crowd influence your message?
THE BLOWIES: When we write, we write for ourselves. The meat & potatoes instrumentation (guitar, bass, drums, vocals) has more to do with capturing the visceral energy of the songs in the studio vs piecing them together on a screen. However, that choice to record it in such a manner and the resulting arrangements, usually have the added benefit of harnessing exactly what is needed for translating that rawness to an audience during a show.
When we are prepping for a LIVE show and are choosing which of our songs to play, in what order, how to best execute them, etc, that’s when we consider the audience experience and the arc of the show. Current events impact our set list – sometimes we’ll bench songs that feel less timely or vice versa and bring back an oldie that, for whatever reason, seems to have new legs.
A lively crowd always makes for some choice banter and adds a little extra oomph to the night. The atmosphere can get pretty charged – at one show a while back, we presented a pinata to the crowd that had a certain resemblance to a now former orange skinned elected official; folks were still taking swings long after the candy came pouring out.
LUNA: What do you hope listeners take away from Playing with Ourselves?
THE BLOWIES: We hope they add to it, add their own stories, ideas, ideals and that maybe one day those connections make it something as deeply meaningful to them, as it is to us. Humanity and sanity.
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