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It's the sound of Young America, I'm Jesse Thorne.

John Roderick is a singer and guitarist whose work with bands like Death Cab for Cutie and Harvey

Danger in the Desembrists. He's also the frontman of the Indy Rock group The Long Winters.

Among his other side projects were a few cameo appearances on our other guest this week Jonathan

Colton's album, Artificial Heart. He told me that if it had been up to his parents, he would have

become a lawyer, but a zz top song got in the way. He says the song that changed his life

was Gimme All Your Loving. I lived in Anchorage, Alaska and all the things that were causing me

anxiety as a teenager were from my parents at least were all questions of how are you going to

get into a good law school with your attitude the way it is.

It was in junior high we got MTV it was the new thing and what can you say about the iconography

of zz top at that point they would kind of materialize they would beam down with the dusty fedoras

and the opaque sunglasses they seemed like they were a thousand years old and I hear that opening

and it's so right you know I was listening to this and playing along with it on the tennis racket

the guitar tone is the whole tune it's so yeah it just kind of envelops you that is what electric

guitar sounds like any variation on that sound is somebody screwing it up

in the guitar playing a Billy Gibbon there is a tremendous amount of soul but there's

...