Interview with photographer Sawa, music discussion and tracks

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo It's all I can do All I can say I'll sing it till next weekday guitar solo Oh, I'll sing it till I can't explain it. I ain't got no use for your air. I can't change. Ain't got to be. I ain't got to be. I ain't got to be. I ain't got no use for your red rocking chair. Ain't got to be. Ain't got to be. Ain't got to be. One, two, one, two, three. Winter is cold, but not as cold as the haze covering your heart. The moon is dead, like the light in your eyes, faded and gone. Cast out over the hills, wandering forest and field. Still no resolve when sorrow calls and silently takes you from here. April showers held up inside for weeks on end. The room is empty. Memories have all passed you on by. Medicine is slowly running. Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe To Laces to pennies in their face guitar solo guitar solo Summer shadows are long guitar solo The day is long The days collapse underneath This coldness I've known Is now my own Silent path to you guitar solo guitar solo My own path to you, dear guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo That was the incomparable Calexico with Dead Moon from their latest record, Algiers, that was out last year on Ante Incorporated. Did you know that song, that song was on the playlist for the Endeavor, the Space Shuttle Endeavor? That song was played in space. Algiers record, the record Algiers was inspired by New Orleans. Before that, we heard Black Prairie with Red Rocking Chair off of the Feast of the Hunter's Moon record. And they're playing in LA Saturday, March 16th at McCabe's. Black Prairie, have you heard them before? No, I have not. They're pretty cool because they got a good chunk of the members of the Decembrists. But they kind of have a different vibe. First of all, they don't use the same singer from the Decembrists. That's a big plus for me. But they got a little bit more of that murky, kind of dark folk, you know, vibe to them. I like them a great deal. Prior to that, we heard the A La La's with Busman's Holiday and we started off the set with Black Rebel Motorcycle. Club, Love Burns from their BRMC record, 2000 out on Virgin Records. I'm joined here in the studio by Sawa. Hi, how are you? Hi, I'm great. How are you? Really good. Sawa is a model, photographer, musician. Am I leaving anything out? Yeah, my photography leads into other branches of art like screen printing and murals and stuff like that. But yeah, photographer. Cool. And did you start, which came first, modeling or photography? Definitely photography. I've been doing it since I was a small girl, just for fun. Yeah. What did you start with originally? Which camera? Sure. Oh. It was just like a Pentax SLR. But I would just pose my friends in my bedroom and use a little house lamp and shoot them and use them as models and I would just pose them. And I would travel with my mom and take pictures on our travels as well. I don't know, kidding. Awesome. And when did you decide to step in front of the camera or is that something you could really pinpoint? Yeah. Well, I was in photo school and we would have all these projects to shoot and we would need models. We would just kind of model for each other. So I would pose for some of the other photo students and then at one point I was approached to do Suicide Girls. That was almost 10 years ago. And I started doing that. And I figured as a photographer who shoots girls you should be able to feel what it's like on the other side of the camera too. Yeah. I've been made fun of before because if I'm working with a model it's not unusual for me to be showing a female model. Yeah. To be showing what to do and so you'll see me and my chubby ass out there saying, okay, so stick your tush out like this and I'll have my hands in back. Yeah. It's really funny to see male photographers. Yeah. Give examples of posing. As far as, first of all, let's get this out of the way. Where can somebody go to look at your work? I think your current website is the sawa.com. Yes. T-H-E-S-A-W-A.com. Dot com. That's right. Yeah. And in there you have some current still photography and a little video or two. Yeah. It's going to be updated a lot really soon but there's some photography on there. There's a link to my blog and there's some videos on there but the most exciting part for me this year is I just shot like a documentary in Europe, an art film and it's being cut but the trailer is coming out this week so that'll be on my site and it's a trailer for this movie that I shot in Europe when I basically decided to put my whole life in storage and go travel and live for my art 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've seen your work through the years. I mean we're acquainted and I'm really kind of impressed with how you could take and it's such a pigeonhole word but the pinup style and keep it fresh and keep it and just break new ground with it. I mean that's personally as a photographer myself like the pinup style can be so stale and boring at some points but your work kind of transcends that. Thank you. Yeah. And it's not well you could still touch on the same themes of the pinup genre. You know there's some of the traditional poses but you seem to take it somewhere else. Yeah. I like well I like to keep it pretty raw and I like to get something out of the girl. If I'm shooting a girl I don't want to just go through the textbook of poses like okay do this pose that pose. I like when you can see in their face that they are you know into the photo and feeling something and bring something out of them and yeah. And you brought some music with you today. I did. And is this music you find like personally inspirational or cathartic or is just something you like that you think kicks ass? It's all like definitely my hugest form of inspiration is music so there's inspirational music in here and sometimes some music is just great background music for while you're working like if you're painting a wall or something you can put on something to work to but yeah should I talk about the first track? Let's name them off real fast. Well I brought Turk Mix by the Gaslamp Killer Sacred Predictions by Burning Witch and Everybody Daylight by Bright Back Morning Light. Okay. We're going to hear Gaslamp Killer first. Oh great. And we'll come back and talk about it. Thank you loved ones. Thank you Sarah. To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To To Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's a faceless prediction Why Did I fall With the dark I lost To To In my life now I won't lose my pride Now Why do you think I do what I do I do what I do Don't you know I'm just Thinking of you Thinking of you Thinking of you Thinking of you And say that And say that This is all in my mind This is all in my mind This is all in my mind I won't lift I won't lift Life over and over again Supersonic force The one night superhero Holding time and space And I think and feel Look what he's done now Smoke fills the sky now Star nuclear winter Disluster don't try low Toe scene Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Watch Me Burn, and I was like, oh my god, people are, like, people still listen to it. It's still out there, yeah. Well, Loved Ones Watch Me Burn was, I guess, Grind. I'd call it Grindcore, but we were a little more experimental, and the favorite term I heard for it was Avant Grind. But, I mean, all bias aside, you know, going to see that band and watching and this is an internet radio show, but I gotta tell you that Miss Sawa, she's easy on the eyes. Oh, thank you. So seeing her up there and just screaming her heart out and her eyes rolling back in her head, and it was really something to see. There was a lot of passion with that band. You guys are really good. Yeah, we were feeling it. I had a lot of energy. Maybe it's good that that band ended before you guys started to suck. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's good to quit while you're still ahead. And we called it quits like maybe six years ago or something, and maybe one day you'll see me screaming in another band, but it hasn't happened yet. Are you looking? Yeah, I would like to. I still feel like I have a couple years of screaming left in me. It was my favorite outlet. It's the best therapy in the world to just play heavy music and scream your head off. So if it worked out, I would love to scream in another band again. Yeah, but I know you, Sawa, you don't truck with no job. I'm sure you're looking for the right project, not just any old high school kid that comes home. Yeah, I would want to play with a bunch of heavy metal type heavyweights and make some sort of rad lineup and do some touring. And then the first tune you played was from a motherfucking gas lamp killer. A motherfucking gas lamp killer. I dig that dude, man, because he's like Shadow, man. His crates are just deep. You could tell he's just got a huge... Yeah, when he DJs... He's a music fan. Definitely. When he DJs, he'll mix some, like, 60s garage music from Japan and Turkish funk music and, like, he finds the best beats and makes the best beats out of most of the people. Yeah, it's like Quentin... You know how they talk about Quentin Tarantino and say he's a movie maker, but he's a fan of movies. He loves watching movies, and it's evident in his work. Likewise, yeah. Gas lamps like that. Yeah, and uh... Like, talking about people's energy on stage, like, I go to Low End Theory a lot. It's a club in L.A., and it's the beats music that's coming out of there, I think, is unique to anywhere in the world. And I think 20 years from now, like, people will be talking about what's happening at Low End Theory. I think they're making history. And when he's on stage there, he just has an aura. Like, he has the most amazing energy projecting from him. Yeah, um... Alright, brace yourself, Sawa, because I'm gonna do a little bit of ass kissing here. Okay. Um... So, I've been watching your work through the years, and in its various forms, and I think, uh... Again, this is biased here, but, uh... What I really enjoy is, uh... I think we have a mutual... I see what you see. I'm gonna put it that way. When I see your work, I see what you did. I see what you created. I see what you manipulated. And, uh... I'm very appreciative of that. Thank you. Having said that, uh, what's next? Well... Lately, my main focus is I'm doing these travel diaries that's... Because basically my whole life has been, you know, I've been going on these adventures and shooting girls, and now I'm maybe doing a little bit of, like, appreciating of graffiti, and now I'm just showing it through my point of view, and I'm shooting video while I do all of these projects. Well, I mean, the bulk of your still photography has been, you know, let's face it, a lot of tits and ass. Yeah, I shoot a lot of hot babes. Yeah, there's, um, you know, there's an adult, you know, theme there, and I'm not necessarily vulgar, maybe occasionally, but not really... It's provocative. But is that going to be incorporated into the next, uh, series? Definitely, yeah. I'm basically, you know, one of the best things about what I do is I can go on a tour through anywhere in the world, but most recently was Europe, and shoot girls along the whole way. Like, I went to six different countries and shot maybe 15 different girls, so that's, like, the glue of the trip, and then each city I go to, I try to find graffiti spots and do some work of my own, and that's incorporated into the video and all the other adventures that come along with it. And that's the video that's going to be debuting soon at, uh, at thesawa.com? Yeah, the trailer, because it's a big project, so the trailer, like, the teaser, which is awesome, I mean, I hope, I mean, it gets the point across, at least. That'll be on my website this week. And that's, uh, thesawa.com, T-H-E-S-A-W-A.com. Uh, you can also find Miss Sawa here. Uh, you can look up her old band, Watched Me Burn, and like I said, I saw that on the MySpace. Uh, also you can check her out, Sawa, on Suicide Girls. As I said, she's a model, but if you type in Sawa Suicide Girls, you're gonna get tons of pictures of all kinds of girls, because she's a, she's one of their main photographers and models. And I post a lot of my pictures. The thing I stay most current with is my Instagram, which is Sawa Suicide. We're gonna, awesome. We're gonna play a little more tunes. This is John Spencer Blues Exposure, and he wants you to get your pants off. Get your pants off! Get your pants off! Get your pants off! Get your pants off! Get your pants off! Get your hands down! Get your rock and roll on! Come and get it done! My Blues Explosion! Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe Toe To guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo