The Weather Station and PHILTHY MAG, A History (9/12 at The Met w/ Ray LaMontagne)

If you caught the latest episode of Philthy Radio (now streaming on Y-Not Radio), you heard “Robber,” off of 2021’s Ignorance, the fifth studio album from The Weather Station, the indie rock/folk project of Toronto singer/songwriter Tamara Lindeman, who have become regulars on Philthy Radio.  Well, Lindeman has been a phriend of PHILTHY MAG for more than a decade now, first chatting with us in 2015, following the release of The Weather Station’s third full-length, Loyalty, and just prior to their first appearance at Johnny Brenda’s.  We last caught up with Tamara last March, following the release of LP #7, Humanhood, and ahead of appearances at both Underground Arts and World Café Live (for WXPN’s Free At Noon).  And next Saturday, September 12th, The Weather Station will be returning to the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection to open The Met for Ray LaMontagne on the Trouble 20th Anniversary Tour.  Get your tickets below and read my 2015, 2016, 2018, and 2025 chats with Tamara Lindeman.

“I’m a slow writer, and it takes me a long time to edit and pare down and create a full album,” Tamara Lindeman says during our very first chat, in July of 2015, following the release of Loyalty, The Weather Station’s first album in almost four years and follow-up to 2011 sophomore LP All of It Was Mine.  She also tells me about studying and reflecting on songcraft, becoming a touring and full-time musician, and a number of acts she’s excited to see during her upcoming appearance at Pickathon, including Alice Gerrard, Joan Shelley, Nathan Bowles, and Hiss Golden Messenger with a full band.

In January of 2016 I got to chat with Lindeman as she prepared to return to Johnny Brenda’s for the second time in just six months, and just six months after our first meeting.  In that time, she toured much of the world with Loyalty (She says Australia, “was truly a life highlight.”), saw Ryley Walker a lot (“His band is my favorite band to watch right now – they’re just incredible musicians and so dialed in with each other.”), and, “fell in love with an electric guitar” (“It’s a new frontier for me – guitar music – for lack of a better phrase – and exciting to me in the way that quiet music was a couple years ago.”)

April of 2016 saw Tamara bringing The Weather Station to Johnny Brenda’s for the third time, this time in support of 2017’s self-titled fourth album, her first attempt as making a rock n’ roll record, after previously falling in love with electric guitar around the time of our last chat.  The Weather Station is also the first album that Lindeman produced all on her own, which she says was quite nice: “I let myself make all the decisions and was really self-indulgent with a lot of this record.  It’s been really fun [laughs].”  She also tells me about discovering the “fantasy world” of Denmark and how, “Philadelphia is actually what you want of an American city.”

Seven years after we last spoke, and since The Weather Station’s “breakthrough” fifth LP, Ignorance, more than doubled the size of the rooms she was headlining, I chatted with Tamara about the biggest and most intricate live show she’d ever constructed (in support of her most recent full-length, Humanhood), which she put on for a local audience at Underground Arts, with a stripped-down set for Free At Noon earlier that day.  We also talk about what it was like to see Fat Possum Records blow up since she signed with them almost half a decade previous and how it was to open massive tours for Mitski, First Aid Kit, and Belle and Sebastian.

*Get your tickets here.