Music

Last month, acclaimed journalist, producer and radio host Jenny Eliscu launched the 100th edition of her LSQ podcast featuring an interview with Samuel T. Herring, frontman for the band Future Islands. Then she released episode 101 with Brittany Howard. And then episode 102 with Idles frontman Joe Talbot.

“For what it’s worth, episode 103, with Dhani Harrison, comes out next week on March 5,” she notes. “And I’ve got upcoming episodes with Rodrigo y Gabriela, Ty Segall and Gossip’s Beth Ditto, among other awesome ones this spring.”

For a good deal of music fans, that the show has lasted this long with no signs of slowing, it’s worth a lot.

SiriusXM host since 2006 and former Rolling Stone staffer and contributor for over a decade, Eliscu has built a prestigious reputation for herself as an extensively knowledgable journalist passionate about music and championing artists. Launched in 2017, LSQ‘s milestone — and the episodes since — is a feat of longevity at a time when music journalism is undergoing downsizing and traffic-driven celebrity chasing. Independently produced, these long-form interviews are a rarity these days in any medium, as well as a service to artists and audiences seeking more insight behind the music.

Looking back at the list of names Eliscu has interviewed on the podcast, it’s a who’s-who of music’s most influential artists in and around indie rock: Conor Oberst, Jack Antonoff, Courtney Barnett, Steven Van Zandt, Angel Olsen, Kevin Parker of Tame Impala, Johnny Marr, Tegan and Sara, Caroline Polachek, Leon Bridges, Sharon Van Etten and many more. But for LSQ, what’s made it such an important destination for artists is her investment in each interview, delivering lengthy, in-depth conversations with the kind of casual tenor that’s more like close friends getting deep than journalist and subject. It’s no coincidence. Many of her subjects either are friends or become so afterwards.

“Talking to Jenny Eliscu makes you feel like the most intriguing person in the room thinks you’re the most interesting person in the world,” says Tegan Quin of Tegan and Sara. “With her years of experience, Jenny isn’t afraid to go deep, but you trust the process because along with great questions and exceptional listening, she peppers in memorable insights from her vast knowledge and love for music. Jenny knows more about the music that influenced most of us to become artists in the first place than we do, and so no interview is ever typical. Somehow you learn something about yourself in the process.”

“I first met Jenny well over a decade ago, and honestly, she made me feel so at ease instantly that it didn’t feel like the first meeting at all,” adds Beach House’s Victoria Legrand. “Felt like we had always known each other. Interviews with her have always felt like natural conversations, and as simple as that may sound, it is a true skill. Her deep love of art, of music, of love – and her deep care and support for the relationships forged is incredibly beautiful. She is a pillar of strength and peace and I am lucky as an artist to call her a friend.”

“Jenny has a remarkable way of disarming an artist in an interview,” says Christian Stavros, founder of Little Operation Management, whose artists Angel Olsen, Devendra Banhart, King Tuff and Bethany Cosentino have all been featured on LSQ. “I think it’s because she too is an artist in the way she approaches interviews. She has a way of connecting and relating, but also has a directness to her questions that bring real insight to the process. I’m a huge fan and have the utmost respect for her talent. And I know, for the artists I work with who she has had on her podcast … all would agree that it never felt like work but more like a great hang.”

Outside of LSQ and her SiriusXM hosting, Eliscu executive produced the 2021 Netflix documentary Britney Vs. Spears and is currently in production on another major music documentary due later this year.

She spoke with Billboard about passing 100 episodes with LSQ, and the broader music media landscape.

If you listen back to old episodes of the podcast, what do you notice most? How has the show changed?

When I started the series back in 2017, the goal was to create a space for longer audio interviews with artists. I’ve been fortunate to have awesome outlets for other types of interviews over the years – cover stories for Rolling Stone, festival chats for Sirius XM, and everything in between – but I still yearned to capture more thoughtful, extensive conversations where the artists could talk about their earlier life and the moments that forged their approach to their craft. I wanted to know about childhood music lessons and first concerts and early attempts at songwriting and all that evolutionary stuff. And getting answers to those questions continues to be my favorite part of this podcast.

I often think of a story the National’s Aaron Dessner shared in his interview for episode two, about when he and his brother Bryce were six years old, how they discovered a dusty old drum set in the furnace room of the basement, and it was this 1959 blue sparkle Slingerland that their dad had gotten for his bar mitzvah. He had been a successful jazz drummer before the twins were born, and this was how they found out about that piece of family history. Aaron started playing drums immediately thereafter. Or the story Michelle Branch told in episode 50 about how she was so tenacious as an unsigned teenage singer-songwriter that she drove a neighbor’s golf cart to a Sedona restaurant to hand-off her demo tape to some record exec she heard was dining there. Or Sam Herring from Future Islands in episode 100, remembering the first time he ever tried to freestyle, at age 14, alongside one of his favorite KRS-One tracks. “You just have to start and don’t stop,” his older brother had told him. He freestyled for about 20 seconds and then jumped up and down on his bed, elated by having done it. I love those kinds of stories!

All of which is to say that the show itself really hasn’t changed much since it started, because I still really enjoy doing this particular kind of interview, and there are so many other artists I’d like to ask about those things. I have, however, learned from experience that it’s better to stick to one interview per episode (some earlier episodes had two). I also spent a lot of time in the first few seasons trying to include vintage audio from my pre-podcast archive, but as a one-person operation, that proved too challenging to do on a regular basis.

How do you select artists for your interviews? What makes for a good interview subject?

The selection process is really just about taking in the artist’s work and learning about their backstory and then following my instincts from there. Sometimes I’ve already interviewed the person in the past, and so I’ve had a chance to see how smart or funny or sensitive or charismatic they are, and I can imagine a longer interview being interesting. But I think all artists are potentially great interview subjects, if you can put them at ease enough to open up.

You’ve worked all over music media and journalism. What do you like most about the podcast format?

I love that podcasting itself has so many different formats, whether it’s immersive, high-production storytelling or more informal chat shows or a straightforward interview series like LSQ. I love that podcasting still feels a bit more DIY and vaudevillian, in that you can sort of put out episodes of whatever length you want, however often or rarely you want, and that’s fine. And podcast listeners are the kind of devoted audience who support more nuanced, niche programming, and I’m always stoked to be part of that exchange.

What do you think is key to your success as an interviewer? We have quotes from artists and their management praising you. How do you create this kind of comfortable setting?

I think the key is openness and authentic curiosity. It can be tempting to read or listen to every interview the person has done, but I prefer to err on the side of less preparation, so that I am genuinely asking questions without preconceptions about the answers. And I try to convey a sense of ease about the interview process, to make the experience feel more like a conversation over coffee with a friend who cares enough to listen closely and ask thoughtful follow-up questions.

You’ve been covering music for almost three decades now. The music industry has changed drastically in that time from CDs to piracy to streaming to social media… What about your job — aside from where you’ve done it — has changed? Why do you think it’s important to host a venue for these kinds of long-form interviews?

Yeah, the music industry and the media landscape around it have gone through so much since I started back in the ’90s. It was amazing to work at Rolling Stone in the early to mid-aughts, before the print business really started wilting, because you could get a substantive amount of time allotted with the artist you were writing about, and have a couple of focused, long interviews. But as the web and social media took over, things shifted and artists didn’t have to rely on that kind of press. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s ultimately better for artists to be able to communicate to audiences without media control, but it’s definitely changed things in major ways. For a while it felt like there would be fewer opportunities for longer journalistic undertakings, but I’ve found that both podcasting and documentary film have opened up exciting avenues to share artists’ stories in greater depth. That’s the next frontier for me: Collaborating with artists to help tell the stories they care about, in ways that allow them to retain authorship.

Would you share some names still on your LSQ artist wish list?

Erykah Badu, PJ Harvey, Mac DeMarco, Mitski, Thundercat, Jarvis Cocker, Jonathan Richman, Run The Jewels, Fiona Apple and so many more.