Bartees Strange is a songwriter and producer based in Washington, DC. He was born in England to a military father and opera-singer mother Strange had a peripatetic early childhood before eventually settling in Mustang, Oklahoma. Later, he cut his teeth playing in hardcore bands in Washington D.C. and Brooklyn whilst working in Barack Obama’s administration and (eventually) the environmental movement. Since charting a path as a solo artist, Bartees Strange has released an EP reimagining songs by The National (Say Goodbye To Pretty Boy, 2020), his debut album proper Live Forever (2020), and the critically-acclaimed follow-up Farm To Table (2022). Bartees says about “Tisched Off”: “As an up and coming musician, there’s a very special pain that comes with realizing a huge chunk of the artists you’re competing with have way more money and resources than you. This song takes little digs at them. It’s cute. Tisch is like the fashion school at NYU. When I was living in BK I ran into a bunch of young punk bands and experimental acts that rose quickly from that school. I remember feeling like damn - how do you compete with people like that? They’ve got some very real resources. Anywho - it’s just me making fun.” Of “Keekee’in,” Bartees offers this: “This song is extremely special to me. During our tour with Car Seat Headrest the band had Covid. I was bunkered down with my guitarist Dan at his family’s house in the basement. I figured it would be cool to write something using only the tools we had. All of the instrumentation was done with stuff from that room. Matchsticks, pillows for drums, very random keyboards, etc. I wrote this song to get some feelings out I had about some business people I was considering working with - they ended up being shady and I was feeling very betrayed. I was thinking about how valuable it is to have people you can really trust. And how few those people are.”
