Today’s post is our subscriber interview with James Mercer of The Shins talking to me, Courtney E. Smith, but there’s a part in the introduction I don’t really explain so I thought I’d do that in this newsletter. Yes, the first time I met the band was when we got pedicures together. It was the week of CMJ 2003, and before everyone came to town Megan Jasper, who was then president of Sub Pop, asked if I’d like to hang out with the band and get to know them. I’d been a big fan and a big supporter. A year earlier, I asked Sub Pop to send me a couple of boxes of the first record so I could walk them around the music programming department at MTV and personally ask everyone to give it a listen, just because I loved it so much.

I imagine Megan expected me to suggest dinner or drinks somewhere, but no. I suggested getting pedicures. It made her laugh hard enough that she set it up. Jonathan Poneman, one of the founders of Sub Pop, came along too and fell asleep in his chair while the nice women were working on his feet. If you were wondering, he snores quite loudly. All four of The Shins came but two guys peeled off and were like yeah no this is dumb. They weren’t wrong, but I suspect they also weren’t aware of the wonderful magic of a foot rub. James hung out, gamely, and the funniest part was at the end when they asked if he wanted his toenails painted. He requested a different color for every toe, and asked the pedicurist to choose. If you want to know if James could sell his foot pics on the internet, then answer is probably not but they looked pretty great after that.

In the original interview, James and I talked about this and about a meeting he remembered at the mtvU offices in about 2006, when we were putting together a plan to support the band’s third album. That was a lot less colorful. But to save you, the listener, our rambling to some degree and not make this a two-hour long bonus interview, which our full conversation was, I cut it out and put it in this newsletter instead.

Below is the interview with James, and a few things in it surprised me when we were talking. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard him talk about his feelings on the whole Garden State thing; I’ve read it but it hits differently when people say things. My favorite part of the interview made it into the podcast, and that was when he talked about his daughter discovering Gilmore Girls and finding out his band played on the show. It’s so sweet. I was also surprised to find out he was tech savvy enough to be on Limewire to download movies, and that he had a Rio but not an iPod. Why didn’t anyone send James an iPod in the early days? My second favorite story is a short one about how his parents always look for vinyl copies of The Shins records when they’re traveling. I like to imagine a couple of Silent Generation folks going somewhere and looking up the local record store on Google Maps just to make sure their son’s music is stocked up. It’s also very sweet.

I hope you enjoy this mostly wholesome interview, other than the part about a naked guy on stage at a festival. The audio is below for subscribers, and if you’re not a subscriber yet well… here’s your chance.