Sound opinions, and this week we're remembering Loretta Lynn and drummer Anton fear. I'm Jim D regattas, and I'm Greg kott. But first, we're revisiting Lowe's interview and performance from 2011 in tribute to Mimi Parker. Greg listeners will, no doubt, remember that just a few weeks ago we paid tribute to Mimi Parker of low, who died on November 5th of ovarian cancer at age 55. As the drummer and sometimes vocalist in low, she had a huge influence over the band's 13 studio albums and many EPs and singles. Simply put low as Alan and Mimi without her, I don't know if Alan sparhawk, her husband is going to continue with low in any form, probably continue making music. But it remains to be seen what the future is for Lowe's music. What we do know is that they left behind an incredible discography dating back to the 90s. I mean, to my mind, there wasn't a bad album in the bunch. It was after the 9th album that we had them on sound opinions for an interview and performance, and that day the band was rounding up by Steve garrington and Eric Pollard. Let's go back to that 2011 interview and hang out with Mimi for a bit. Welcome to sound opinions. Thank you. A long time coming, I guess. Ellen Mimi, this band had a unique sound, almost from day one, came up in the middle of the alternative rock era. Remember that back in the early 90s and you guys sounded like no one else was strictly a case of, you know, if we're gonna be a band, we might as well do something completely different. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, I had played in more rock bands, but it's felt my interests and sort of my curiosity was more with minimalism and very simple stuff, some of the more simple things from, say, a Velvet Underground or Joy Division and yeah, it was more or less very against the grain of what was going on at the time, but that was sort of part of the challenge and the fun. I think kind of being true to that time to me meant more about doing something new and the freedom and the public that was suddenly aware of what could be done at the time, early 90s. How did it go over? Beautiful northern Minnesota. Well, it, you know, our first show. We played in Duluth for about what ten, 15 people. And some of them stayed. Yes. Yeah, now by the time we had written a couple songs and then played our first show and had a few people really react to it. We knew we were onto something. Yeah, the atmosphere was at the time, you know, grunge, Nirvana, soundgarden, really loud, aggressive, you guys come in really quiet and slow and moody and atmospheric and melodic playing a lot of the same clubs that all those bands were playing. And all the noise your bands. And later on in your career, you obviously proved that you could play loud and aggressive music, but Mimi, at the time, was it more a case of we're just happier doing this? My history, you know, my parents listened to country music and this is kind of the music that I think comes pretty natural to me, not that I don't like to rock out, but that is more of a strength. For my personality, has it ever been an albatross around your neck? Because as Greg said, when we look back now on this, what 9 album career. There are explosive moments and there are very experimental moments and they're very quiet moments, but the phrase slow core is on you guys. You're in the inheritors of what galaxy 500 had done at the end of the indie era. Sure, sure. I don't know. I mean, people are always going to need sort of simple definitions of what's going on. And subdivisions, black metal, slow core. You know, you know what you're getting into. But I don't know, we don't know that as much as maybe people think we do. We don't refer to ourselves in that way. But as long as they're talking about you, right? Yeah, that's all you need. Well, if there was a premium put on certain things, what were they? Well, minimalism for sure and from that sort of the drive to try to get as much of the essence of a song or sort of the spirit of a song. In their with as little with his little going on as possible, simple melodies very simple lyrics early on. It just really struck us as a very good vehicle for the spirit or the vibe of certain a certain vibe that would just sort of happen when we stepped into that realm and you know after a while it became very natural to us. We toured a lot over the years and that ethics sort of just becomes more ingrained and different times in our career. We would be even further down that road in her times early on where we were playing songs that were 5 minutes on the record for 8 and ten minutes long without adding anything because we were actually playing that much slower. And it was just it was a certain envelope. Yeah, it was weird, but I think you were the first band that I encountered that probably had to have a rider to allow people to bring pillows into shows. Like, sir, you can't bring that pillow in here. But it's low. But it's low. Are there deals? We're going to need to sleep at some point during this. It's nice playing places that people can sit down and there were years where we would play really even the dingy club people would decide to just sit down on the floor, but I don't know, you can't get too precious about the way people react to you. And if you try to stay shut up or come on, let's get round and never works. We've never told anybody to shut up. And you have worked with an amazing string of collaborators, producers, Steve albini, Dave fridmann, lately met Beckley, who people may not know. What's the lineage there on? Matt is actually the son of Jerry Beckley who's in band called America. Yeah. And as you'd expect, growing up in LA, he was a musician, come producer, mixer. He's worked with everything from us to Britney Spears to Avril Lavigne.