Life’s Work: A Podcast About Laura Stevenson’s ‘Sit Resist'

This final episode discusses the lasting impact of Sit Resist, including on the songwriters that started up in its wake and how the album helped to widen the umbrella term “punk.” Stevie Knipe of Adult Mom and Lucy Dacus outline how Stevenson’s music...

On this week’s episode of “Life’s Work,” focus is placed on the songs that would make up Side B of Sit Resist. The second half of the album explores themes of depression, isolation, and fear of the unknown. Here we see the juxtaposition of heavy subject...

Episode 5 sees Stevenson and the band enter the studio to record Sit Resist, focusing on the songs that make up Side A of the album. A wide range of influences, aesthetics, and approaches - some specific to the early 21st century time period in...

Episode 4 covers the DIY scene of the late aughts and early 2010s, and Stevenson’s full-band performances with a revolving cast of accompanying musicians at Death By Audio, Silent Barn, and the annual Hillstock festival which bandmate Alex Billig...

Episode 3 takes a deeper dive into the writing and arranging process of the songs that would make up “Sit Resist”, as the primary contributors assemble in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn in late 2009 and early 2010. Also discussed are the earliest musical influences on Stevenson’s writing, which predate her experiences in the punk and ska scene: those being the Great American Songbook standards popular in the era of her musically-virtuosic grandparents. The arrangements of this pre-rock n’ roll period of popular music would inform Stevenson’s own rejection of modern, contemporary pop and rock song-structures. Interviews with Jeff Rosenstock, Mike Campbell, and Stevenson herself offer insight into their collective arrangement process. Also interviewed in this episode is solo artist and boygenius band member Lucy Dacus, who expounds on the profound early influence Stevenson’s music had on her as a burgeoning songwriter.

Episode 2 tells the story of Stevenson’s early days growing up feeling out of place, eventually finding comfort in the Long Island ska scene. It was there that she first met Jeff Rosenstock who would eventually recruit her to join his new band Bomb The...

Episode One of “Life’s Work: A Podcast About Laura Stevenson’s ‘Sit Resist’” covers the period of time beginning in 2008 when Stevenson was writing and recording the songs that would make up her debut album “A Record”. Also covered is the formative full-US tour that Laura and her band did with Bomb The Music Industry! in 2009, and the loose assembling of the band lineup that would contribute to the arranging of the songs that would make up her 2011 album “Sit Resist”. The episode is bookended by Stevenson’s television debut on the Chris Gethard Show in summer of 2012, and features interviews with Stevenson herself, as well as with partner and bass player Mike Campbell, longtime collaborator, friend and former Bomb The Music Industry! bandmate Jeff Rosenstock, and comedian Chris Gethard who has a singular story to share of his relationship with Laura’s music and lyrics.