Joining us today is the musician Joshua Burnside. 

Joshua is a singer-songwriter based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He’s released five albums across his career, with his first record, Ephrata, winning the Northern Ireland music prize in 2017. 

Joshua is known for incorporating a wide range of influences into his work, from Colombian and Indonesian music, right the way through to one Elliott Smith. And while Elizabeth was over in Northern Ireland for work this summer, Joshua was kind enough to invite her to his studio to discuss his love of Elliott Smith and talk her through his pick for his favourite song.

Hope you enjoy listening to this episode.

Extra things to look at / listen to:

Tomorrow, Tomorrow by Elliott Smith on Spotify

XO by Elliott Smith on Spotify

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My Favourite Elliott Smith Song is produced by Rob Comba and Elizabeth Withstandley. Find us on social media @myfavesmithsong.

Joining us for episode six of this season are Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten from the band Momma.

Etta and Allegra have been playing music together since they became close friends while at high school in Los Angeles, California. Since those early days, they've gone on to record three studio albums, including most recently, Household Name which came out earlier this year.

2022 has been a great year so far for Momma: that new album has been released to widespread acclaim, they’ve been tipped as the next big thing by a range of publications and they’re currently touring with the band Snail Mail. So, what better way to cap that all off than by being guests on this podcast...?

Etta and Allegra were great guests and kindly shared lots of Elliott Smith-related anecdotes, as well as discussing their musical influences more broadly. Hope you enjoy this conversation.

(Photo credit: Sophie Hur)

Extra things to look at / listen to:

Household Name by Momma

Documentary on the making of Household Name 

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My Favourite Elliott Smith Song is produced by Rob Comba and Elizabeth Withstandley. Find us on social media @myfavesmithsong.

Our guest today is the multi-talented, Lola Kirke. 

As an actor, Lola has starred in the TV show Mozart in the Jungle and the film Mistress America, as well as many others. And, as a musician she has released two studio albums - most recently Lady for Sale which came out on Third Man Records earlier on this year. 

Her favourite song pick is a great selection from Figure 8 and, in this interview, she delves a bit deeper into this track, and tells us how her how she was introduced to Elliott Smith by her boyfriend when she was 13.

Photo credit: Zack Michael. 

Extra things to look at / listen to:

My Favourite Elliott Smith Song is produced by Rob Comba and Elizabeth Withstandley. Find us on social media @myfavesmithsong.

Our guests today are Dan Alvarez and Jordan Dunn-Pilz, who together make up the band Toledo. 

The pair have been making music together since they were 11 years old, growing up in Newburyport in Massachusetts After parting ways for college, Dan and Jordan are now reunited and living in Brooklyn, New York, and are steadily building a big following, with their debut coming out in September this year. 

For this episode, Dan and Jordan took a slightly different route, and instead of picking one track, we compare two well known recordings of the same song. 

It was a lot of fun chatting to Dan and Jordan - you really get a sense of their friendship and chemistry as a double act - and I hope you enjoy listening to this conversation.

Extra things to look at listen to:

My Favourite Elliott Smith Song is produced by Rob Comba and Elizabeth Withstandley. Find us on social media @myfavesmithsong.

Our guest for episode three of season five is Orono from Superorganism.

Superoganism are a band now based in London, though they started out more geographically dispersed. When the group formed, Orono would record her vocals separately from Maine, where she attended boarding school.

After finding prominence with their debut single Something for Your M.I.N.D in 2017, Superorganism followed it up with their first album - a self-titled record - a year later. The group released their second album, World Wide Pop, in July 2022.

Orono has been an Elliott Smith fan since her dad introduced her to his music as a teenager. In this interview, Orono shares more about how she discovered his music, we talk about how the self-titled album accompanied her through some very difficult times, discuss learning to play Elliott songs and, of course, we go in depth on her favourite song pick too.

Our listener cover today comes from Andrew Alarcon (featuring Tawnie Lucas). 

Photo by Jack Bridgland.

Extra things to look at / listen to:

My Favourite Elliott Smith Song is produced by Rob Comba and Elizabeth Withstandley. Find us on social media @myfavesmithsong.

Our second guest of this season is Carmen Perry from the band Remember Sports. 

Remember Sports formed back in 2012, when Carmen and her bandmates were studying at college/university. Since then, they've released five albums, most recently Like a Stone, which came out last year. 

It was as a teenager that Carmen became an Elliott Smith fan. She discovered his music when she was searching indie artists on download sites and immediately connected with it.

In this episode, we discuss her Elliott Smith origin story, how he made the piano cool and, of course, we talk about her favourite song choice too. 

We close out the episode with a cover of Angel in the Snow from the band Sam and Me. 

Extra things to look at / listen to: 

My Favourite Elliott Smith Song is produced by Rob Comba and Elizabeth Withstandley. Find us on social media @myfavesmithsong.

Our guest for the opening episode of season 5 of My Favourite Elliott Smith Song is Ruth Radelet.

Ruth is a musician based in Portland, Oregon, who has recently started a solo career, after a long and successful stint with the band, Chromatics, a group she joined back in 2006. One of her first releases as a solo artist was, in fact, a cover of Twilight by Elliott Smith, which she recorded for the 30th anniversary celebration of the record label, Kill Rock Stars.

In this interview we talk about that cover, why Ruth wanted to do that song in particular and what it means to her. As an added bonus, the conversation was recorded at New Monkey Studio in Los Angeles, California and we're very grateful to Greg, Robert and Joel for allowing us to use the space, and for being such great supporters of the podcast.

In this episode, we also announce to new additions to the podcast for this season - a newsletter and the chance to have your cover featured. You can find links to these below.

Extra things to look at / listen to:

My Favourite Elliott Smith Song is produced by Rob Comba and Elizabeth Withstandley. Find us on social media @myfavesmithsong.

We're very happy to welcome Craig Thomas onto the podcast for the final episode of this season.

Craig is a writer and producer perhaps best known as the co-creator of the comedy, How I Met Your Mother, but he's written lots of other things as well, including for David Letterman, American Dad and Oliver Beene.

It was as a young writer living in New York City that Craig became a big Elliott Smith fan. And, in this interview, he shares a great story of hearing his song pick live during that period.

Hope you enjoy this chat with Craig and thank you so much for all your support during this season. We'll be back very soon.

Extra things to look at / listen to: 

My Favourite Elliott Smith Song is produced by Rob Comba and Elizabeth Withstandley. 

Find us on social media @myfavesmithsong.

Our guest today is the musician and podcaster, Hrishikesh Hirway.

Hrishikesh is the creator of the excellent Song Exploder podcast - where musicians dissect their songs and discuss how they were made - which has recently been made into a TV show by Netflix. He's also involved in other popular podcasts including West Wing Weekly, Home Cooking and Partners.

But music is Hrishikesh's first love and he has been working as a musician on and off for the last 20 years or so. From 2002 to 2011, he put out several albums under the name The One AM Radio and just last month he released a new track, this time under his own name, called Between There and Here.

In this interview, as well as talking through his favourite song selection, we discuss where Hrishikesh first discovered Elliott Smith's music, how it influences his own work and what track he would cover on an Elliott Smith Song Exploder episode.

Extra things to look at / listen to:

My Favourite Elliott Smith Song is produced by Rob Comba and Elizabeth Withstandley. 

Find us on social media @myfavesmithsong.

Today, we're joined by Elliott Smith's close friend and publicist, Dorien Garry.

Although they had already known each other for a little while, the two cemented their friendship when Elliott moved to New York City in the late '90s and stayed for a while at Dorien's apartment. At this time, Dorien was also working at Girlie Action, the PR agency that represented Elliott.

So, in this interview Dorien talks about their friendship, how it developed over the years and how another one of their good friends in New York inspired the song she’s chosen to talk about today.

Hope you enjoy it!

Extra things to look at / listen to: 

My Favourite Elliott Smith Song is produced by Rob Comba and Elizabeth Withstandley. 

Find us on social media @myfavesmithsong.