The Witzard

"Don't sleep on Butch Bastard ," read a statement credited to Josh Tillman of Father John Misty and Fleet Foxes fame attached to a cold submitted message sent days after I posted my email address on Twitter , along with an open call for new music "not featured on Pitchfork ;" after reaching out to Poor Moon bassist and newly-christened Butch Bastard frontman Ian Murray himself, the Father John Misty -affiliated artist would go on to specify, "[ Josh is] my friend and I appreciate his endorsement, but I don't wish to be viewed as an appendage to his career." It would likely appear as though Butch Bastard was born when the singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, performer, producer, and director uprooted his life from Seattle to Los Angeles in 2014 and started recording tracks from the comfort of his bedroom. Murray's wonderfully titled forthcoming album, I Am Not a Man , which currently lacks a proper label or release date, showca...

The Internet really is a never-ending Twilight Zone -esque worm hole of a place sometimes; case in point, just last night, after returning home from rollicking Sweat N Soul -filled a Har Mar Superstar concert in the depths of Philly around 1-1:30am, I wasted nearly an hour aimlessly Googling covers from Sean Tillmann 's one-time touring mate and fellow Tillman(n) , Father John Misty ... starting with two unabashedly ironic Taylor Swift in the vein of Ryan Adam 's 1989 covers and ultimately, ending up at a sparse SiriusXM cover of Nirvana 's "Heart-Shaped Box." Somewhere down the seemingly endless sonic worm hole I created, I stumbled upon @fatherjohnmisty 's sprawling, wonderfully executed renditions of widely-known Leonard Cohen , The Arcade Fire, John Lennon , Rihanna, and most recently, Nine Inch Nails classics. Former Fleet Foxes drummer and ironic "rockstar" Josh Tillman unexpectedly covered NIN 's breakout anti-pop hit, "Cl...

"My interpretation [of "Blank Space" ] from the classic Ryan Adams album "1989,"' former Fleet Foxes drummer and semi-ironic, self-loathing Indie-Pop superstar Josh Tillman aka @fatherjohnmisty Tweeted Monday evening on the heels of Ryan Adams' just-released Taylor Swift 1989 covers album. Tillman was seemingly riffing on Adams' 1989 re-imagined in the style of Bruce Springsteen 's Darkness On The Edge of Town meets The Smiths' Meat Is Murder , sloppily crooning Swift's chart-topping "Blank Space" and "Welcome to New York" in the style of Velvet Underground frontman Lou Reed . "In the studio working on a [song-for-song] reinterpretation of Ryan Adams "1989," gonna be great! Ryan's amazing," Father John Misty sarcastically wrote in a since-deleted "so psyched"-hashtagged Tweet. While Tillman's rendition of "Blank Space" is, to say the very least, a litt...