Re-issue: Thao & The Get Down Stay Down - Astonished Man

Song Exploder

Hrishikesh Hirway

Music

4.8 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 13 December 2018

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Thao Nguyen is taking over as the new host of Song Exploder in 2019. This is a reissue of an episode from 2016 in which she was the guest.

Thao & the Get Down Stay Down released the album A Man Alive in March 2016. In this episode, Thao Nguyen breaks down the song "Astonished Man." Thao talks about working with Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards, who produced the album, and she speaks candidly about her relationship with her estranged father, the subject of the song.

songexploder.net/thao

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made.
0:06.5	I'm Rishikesh Herway.
0:11.0	If you haven't heard the news yet, Tao win from the band Tao and they get down, stay down.
0:15.2	It's taking over for me as the host of this podcast, starting in January 2019.
0:19.3	I'm going to step a little further into the background and she'll be the one interviewing the artists and you'll hear her voice introducing each episode.
0:25.6	So I wanted to reissue the episode from April 2016 where she was the guest.
0:29.6	Breaking down one of her own songs.
0:31.6	You can get to know her better if you missed it the first time around or re-listen to it if you heard it then.
0:35.6	Tao and I have hung out a few times in person, but when we did the interview for this episode, it was over the phone and it was the first time we'd spoken.
0:42.1	By the time the hour had passed, it seemed clear to me that she was a kind, smart, and sensitive person who was thoughtful about art and process.
0:49.1	For all those reasons, I'm so excited that soon she'll be hosting Song Exploder in my place.
0:53.6	Okay, here we go.
0:55.6	This episode contains explicit language.
0:58.6	My name is Tao Winn of the band Tao and the get down, stay down.
1:03.6	I was reading Marilyn Robinson's novel, Gilead, and there is this character who is a black sheep or an outcast of his family and he's returned after several years of being completely out of touch.
1:20.6	And he's about to leave again and basically break his father's heart.
1:24.6	And there's this passage where he's asking forgiveness from a family friend.
1:31.6	Then he stopped and looked at me and said, you know, I'm doing the worst possible thing again.
1:37.6	Leaving now, glory will never forgive me.
1:40.6	This character and the way that he's developed and rendered struck me so deeply and it reminded me so much of my dad.
1:50.6	In this one, passage in particular, sort of brought me closer to understanding my dad and gave me a kind of compassion and a curiosity about him that I hadn't entertained before.
2:03.1	Wondering what kind of person he had been all these years that I didn't know him.
	...

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