Jordan Wax

Wheels Off with Rhett Miller

Rhett Miller

Arts, Performing Arts, Music

5.0 • 596 Ratings

🗓️ 27 May 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Rhett is joined by multi-instrumentalist, folklorist, and genre-defying artist Jordan Wax to discuss his emotionally rich new album, The Heart Deciphers. With roots in Missouri and a home in rural New Mexico, Jordan brings a rare blend of intergenerational storytelling, Jewish diasporic heritage, and indie rock sensibility to his work. The two explore the complexities of honoring tradition while making art that feels alive in the present moment. Jordan opens up about the deeply personal nature of his latest songs, sung partly in Yiddish, and the surprising universality of intimate, hyper-niche creative expression. He also shares what it's like to build music from micro-communities, how he wrestles with internal doubts, and why the best antidote to creative paralysis is showing up for your art—even when it's hard. Listen Now: Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and all major platforms. Stream The Heart Deciphers wherever you listen to musicLearn more at jordanwax.com Follow Rhett @rhettmiller Wheels Off is hosted and produced by Rhett Miller. Executive producer Kirsten Cluthe. Editing by Matt Dwyer. Music by Old 97’s. Episode artwork by Mark Dowd. Show logo by Tim Skirven. Revisit previous episodes of Wheels Off with guests Rosanne Cash, Rob Thomas, Jeff Tweedy, The Milk Carton Kids, and more. If you like what you hear, please leave us a rating or review Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Wheels Off, a show about the messy reality of the creative life.
0:04.9	I'm Rhett Miller.
0:06.3	That's when it got wheels off.
0:09.2	We started on, we ain't going to stop.
0:11.6	Oh, she made me feel like with God.
0:15.0	That's when it got wheels off.
0:18.2	Jordan Wax is so brave and inquisitive and fearless in his approach to making music.
0:25.4	You will hear during the course of this interview that my imagining that he is fearless
0:30.5	isn't 100% correct, like every human being.
0:34.5	He is, you know, sometimes afraid and freaked out by the world. Of course he is.
0:44.2	But he's just such a thoughtful person. And this new record that he's made, the heart
0:50.6	Decipher's, is maybe at first blush. it would seem like something that's too niche for the world to be drawn in by.
1:01.0	But, you know, I am not someone who has traditionally sought out Klesmer music or traditional Yiddish music.
1:09.9	And this is neither of those things exactly.
1:12.3	I mean, it's also an indie rock record.
1:15.0	It's also very much an account of living in our times.
1:19.1	And it's, you know, very personal songwriting.
1:22.1	I think it transcends so many things.
1:24.5	And the fact that he was willing to go there is just such a great
1:28.2	lesson for all of us in the creative fields as we worry about what is the world going to think
1:34.9	of what we do. Jordan's just out there doing it. So I'm really excited that you guys are going to get
1:41.5	to hear this. He's such an intelligent, you know,
	...

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