Hurray for the Riff Raff - Alibi

0:00You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishikesh Hirway. Song Exploder is sponsored by Intuit TurboTax. I don't know if you have this feeling, but I constantly find myself daydreaming about finding an expert who can solve a very specific problem in my life. And one specific problem that comes up every year is filing taxes. But luckily, finding someone who can solve that problem is easy with TurboTax. They have dedicated tax experts who are there to help you every step of the way. With TurboTax Expert full service, you can match with an expert who will handle your taxes from start to finish, no matter how complex.

0:42You can even hand off all your tax stuff within the TurboTax app. And then you can see updates on your expert's progress while you go about your day. You can check exactly where your tax return stands right there on your phone. And then if someone ever says to you, man, I wish there were an expert who could do my taxes for me, you can say, oh, I know someone. Visit TurboTax.com to match with your expert today. It's only available with TurboTax full-service experts. The real-time updates are only in the iOS mobile app. This episode of Song Exploder is brought to you by Booking.com. And I'm going to go on there right now because I've got a bunch of tour dates coming up between April and June.

1:20So I'm putting in the dates for the first city on my tour, Austin, Texas, and there are over 300 options. There's a huge variety from hotels to vacation rentals. I'm gonna narrow it down to hotels and filter the results based on my budget and my tastes. And okay, there we go. There's still over 20 options for me to choose from. I'm gonna look at the ones that are closest to the venue where I'm playing. And then I'm gonna check out all the reviews and pick the one that feels most like me. Besides being close to the venue, I also want to be within walking distance of great food, preferably a great dessert.

1:58And if I can find my perfect stay on Booking.com, then anyone can. Find exactly what you're booking for at Booking.com. Booking.yeah. Book today on the site or in the app. Just a heads up before we start, this episode contains references to drug use and drug addiction, including in young teens. Alinda Seguera is a singer and songwriter from the Bronx. They formed Hooray for the Riff Raff in 2007. And since then, they've released eight albums. Their most recent is The Past is Still Alive, which came out in 2024. It was named one of the best albums of the year in The New York Times, The Associated Press, Entertainment Weekly, and The Atlantic.

2:41And Pitchfork called it one of the best albums of the decade so far. For this episode, I spoke to Alinda about the first track on the album, Alibi.

3:15My name's Alinda Seguera, and my band is called Hooray for the Riff Raff. I get the sense from this song that there's a lot of history that went into it, but I was wondering for you, where does the story of this song begin? I think this song started shortly after I released my album Life on Earth, the album before Past is Still Alive. I released that in February 2022 and putting out a record so shortly after the pandemic was honestly hell. It was it just felt really hard. I hadn't put out a record in a long time. Traveling and touring was so scary and stressful. I was just feeling like is the world ending you know like is music ever going to be the same am I ever going to be able to pay my rent like I was feeling so much fear just feeling like I don't know if I can do this anymore and I don't know how to do anything else making music and writing songs is my purpose in life.

4:21So it was a really scary time period, but it was creating this urgency to be like, okay, let's just give it one more go and let's write as many songs as we can and be as bare as possible. And at least I can tell myself, okay, I really gave it my all. So I was at home in New Orleans. I don't live there anymore, but I still lived there at the time. And I was going on walks every day around the bayou. And this line, you don't have to die if you don't want to die, was just ringing through my head because I felt like a metaphorical death happening in my life. I remember coming home and having this idea in my head.

5:11And, you know, there was this classical guitar that I had lying around. and I really liked finger picking on it. And I'd been trying to mess around with different chord shapes, even if I didn't know what the chords were, just to try to like find some inspiration. I was getting so sick of my cowboy chords, you know? So I started playing this little finger picking pattern with these chords that I didn't even know what they were. And it just really transported me. It was like a trick. All of a sudden, I felt like the wheels started turning. You don't have to die if you don't die. Take it all back, live your life.

6:00Maybe even be a good friend of mine. Be I. I'm just doing stream of consciousness, And it'll be like 30, 40 voice memos of me just trying to figure out what is this song supposed to be. We don't have to cry if we don't want to cry. Maybe you got something left in this heart of mine. Washed up in the sand on the beach of time. Baby, I.

6:40Sometimes when I'm writing, a line appears to me and it feels like this pin on a map and the map is just blank. And it feels like an obsession of like, how do I get there? What are you trying to tell me? You know, so that's what was going on with this one. You could take it all back in the nick of time. You can take it all back in the nick of time. Maybe even be a good friend of mine.

7:13I was thinking, like, how do I stop being my own enemy? And I really liked, you could take it all back in the nick of time. Like, what if you just, like, held on a little longer? And then I need to listen back later and be like, okay, now that I'm out of the emotion of it, now I can think critically about the craft of it. to meditate on what does this mean? You don't have to die if you don't want to die. And it brought up all these people that I grew up with that I really loved who were struggling with addiction and how I would just do anything to be able to make this sickness that they had go away.

7:59I grew up in New York. I grew up in the Bronx, but I got into punk pretty early when I was like 13. and it was really a lifeline for me. I was struggling with depression as a kid, and this punk scene that was happening in New York City at the time was so important to me, and it really became my family. And I just knew a lot of kids really struggling with heroin, and it was just so easy to get and so cheap. How did you manage to escape that? I was just really scared of doing any drugs. I was so afraid of being out of control. I mean, also, my dad was a Vietnam vet, you know, so I heard plenty about the guys at the veterans hospital struggling with addiction.

8:49I remember really arguing with a close friend of mine. We were both probably 14 years old. And at the time I felt so grown and they were like, you know, this is just my life path. Like this was just set out for me. I think I'm going to be an addict. My dad was an addict. You know, that was the story they were telling me. And we were just two little kids. But at the time we felt like we were ancient, you know, and I was trying to be like, this doesn't have to be your fate. That memory led me to that frustration and that love and that just trying to break through to somebody. And it led to I See Your Track Marks Poking Out Your Hoodie Sleeve.

9:51I want my language to be specific and I want it to be so true to me and my life. And that image felt really like, OK, this is true. Sleeping by East River Park You told me your big secret on the FDR I couldn't hear you through the tears in the word cars We would get in trouble if we drank in Tompkins Square Park, which is where I used to hang out as a kid. So we would go to East River Park and it would just be like all these train riders and older crusty punks and people would get some food on their food stamps and they'd grill and there'd be dogs everywhere and people would be playing tapes on their like boom boxes and people would be doing drugs.

10:48And it was just like this world that I was in. And it kind of felt like this was my version of like family barbecues, you know. And as a young kid, because I was searching for belonging, I was really wrapped up in what my friends were going through. And it was a way for me to not have to think about, well, where am I going? What do I want to do? And how am I hurting myself? And I just really thought that loving someone meant just giving up everything. and being totally devoted. And I had to learn, honestly, making a band and starting to write songs was what gave me a structure in my life and what gave me a structure in relationships.

11:46You don't have to die if you don't want to die Maybe I got something left that is worth a try I'm not gonna be your alibi

12:08I get so much clearer when I know the name of the song. When the name appears, then you have the story. Like, maybe the lyrics aren't totally fleshed out yet, But alibi, it's this feeling of being an outsider to an experience that you're witnessing, that you're so wrapped up in and you're so worried about. But I don't want to be a part of covering this up or hiding it from somebody, hiding it from yourself. I have to try to convince you that you deserve to get out of this and you deserve more. but I can't be around for the downfall. It's too painful for me. That was what Alibi said to me. And I guess it also worked with me talking to myself, you know, of like, okay, if we're going to do this one more time, then do it with everything you got.

13:16the bands, baby, try to live again. Maybe take my hand, maybe we'll start a band. Just try to understand, oh baby, help me understand. My conversation with Alinda Seguera continues after this. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length. And this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikesh Hirwe. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists.

14:02And it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabond, Fen Lily, and the producer Phil Winerope. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city.

14:34Like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzoukas, Josh Molina, Min Jin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Kleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage. And then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website. rishikesh.co or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks.

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18:07when it came time to record did you already know if there was someone that you wanted to work with as a producer i had time booked with brad cook we had made our first record together with life on earth and i just loved the process and i thought it was really challenging and i thought i was making the best work i'd ever made and i knew i wanted to do it again you know i knew that he was the person that could push me. So I had studio time booked for March and then maybe three weeks before my dad passed away very suddenly. So my mind and my body and my spirit were all just in a totally shell-shocked place by the time I got to the studio.

18:59With this song in particular, Brad kept telling me, this is not a finger-picking song. This is like a banger. This is like an anthemic song. He kept telling me that. And I was just like so in the muck of my mind. I was like, I don't know what you're talking about. I just couldn't hear it. I thought it was going to be finger-picking, like no percussion. And he was like, we need to get this driving energy to this song. So I was like, okay, let's try it.

19:46So we add drums.

19:52Jan Westerlund is playing drums. Brad adds some bass.

20:06But I could not get the vocal take. I just like the vocals felt so hard. I was so not used. I was like, am I supposed to be happy? I was just like, I don't know how to sing this song at like this different driving feel. It felt like I was doing an impersonation of myself. But then his brother Phil Cook came in and laid down this guitar line. I was like, holy shit. This is classic.

21:03When I heard that guitar line, I just saw such an expansive highway, desert, nowhere. Like, it just felt so lonesome to me, but it also felt driving. And I just remember being like, oh my God, that's it. That's the song. You know, you know that time can take you for a ride, can take you by surprise. Maybe you're all snake eyes. Baby, tell me why. You gotta play your luck. Two aces call your bluff. I love you very much. And all that other stuff. The choruses is when we get to the present day, where it's me looking back on my life. time can take you for a ride can take you by surprise maybe you'll roll snake eyes that also felt very much of that street kid world and new york hanging outside in the park world just people playing craps people like playing boxcars it made me think about gambles that we take, you know, whether it's like trying out a drug or getting fucked up or trying to start a band or, you know, just all the gambles that we take all the time.

22:27But then in the second course, you have different lyrics, which I thought was interesting. Yeah. You know, I thought about Dolly Parton because I read something that said that Dolly really thinks that if there is a change you can make in a lyric, you should do it. Like, don't get lazy. So I thought about that.

22:57I'd been plagued by this image of getting the bends and this feeling of going really deep into memory and that you have to be careful about how you come back into the present world because you can get the bends. because you're going so deep. So I was learning how to be gentle with myself about memory and coming back to, well, here I am right now, and right now I'm safe, actually. Time can take you for a spin Can't really do you in Can't leave you with the bends Baby, try to live again And play another hand Maybe we'll start a band I want you to understand Baby, help me understand So me and Brad get very, when it comes to harmonies, it becomes very like we're one brain.

23:49And he's just like pointing up, pointing down, saying a note, and I'll start singing it. And it's like, it feels like I'm surfing. Because you don't have to die if you don't want to die. Maybe I got something left that is worth a try. But I'm not going to be your alibi. This time. This record really was a next chapter for me in my life and as an artist. This time in my life that I thought was an ending suddenly was like, oh my God, it's only just beginning.

24:27Especially when this song came out and the way that people responded to it. It felt immediately different than any other time in my career. And I just felt like, whoa, I'm not giving up on this. We're going to do this. And I felt my dad with me. I felt his spirit. You know, when I was in the studio, you know, I brought photos of him. And I don't know, I just felt like he was there with me and he was looking out for me. And then you don't have to die if you don't want to die. suddenly that started to mean my father will never die because he lives on in me and he lives on in my music and in my stories.

25:12And this song suddenly had this whole new meaning.

25:31And now, here's Alibi by Hooray for the Riff Raff in its entirety.

25:53You don't have to die if you don't want to die You could take it all back in the nick of time Maybe even be a good friend of mine Baby, I And we won't have to cry if we don't want to cry Maybe I got something left in this hard pine A wash in the sand on the beach of time Baby, I You know, you know that time can take you for a ride Can take you by surprise Maybe you're all snake eyes Baby, tell me why You gotta play your luck Do aces call you bluff? I love you very much And all that other stuff

26:48Thawing out my heart like meat I see a track mark poking through your hoodie sleeve Tic-tac-toe game to the destiny I grieve Marching towards the East River Park You told me your big secret on the FDR I couldn't hear you over choppers and the bus and cars so far You know, you know that time can take you for a spin Can't really do you in, can leave you at the fence Baby, try to live again and play another hand Maybe we'll start a band, I want you to understand Baby, help me understand

27:42Cause you don't have to die if you don't want to die. Maybe I got something left that is worth a try. But I'm not gonna be your alibi this time.

28:23Visit songexploder.net to learn more. You'll find links to buy or stream Alibi, and you can watch the music video. This episode was produced by me, Craig Ely, Mary Dolan, and Kathleen Smith, with production assistance from Tiger Biscop. The episode artwork is by Carlos Lerma, and I made the show's theme music and logo. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at radiotopia.fm. If you'd like to hear more from me, subscribe to my newsletter. You can find it on the Song Exploder website.