The Virtue of Saying Yes with Kyle Flynn

First Draft Episode #218: Kyle Flynn

Kyle Flynn is the keyboardist with indie rock group Father John Misty, as well as writer of television and movies.

Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode

The documentary, The Decline of Western Civilization: Part II, is absolutely incredible

Kyle taught himself to play guitar using tablature in Guitar World magazine

Kyle and I both went to the University of Washington and graduated from the English department

Acceptance (check out their debut album Phantom, and they have reunited and released a new record, Collision By Design) was the pop-punk band who first brought Kyle on tour as a merch guy, and he ended up filling in and touring with them for months

Other bands in Kyle’s post-college musical world included my then-favs (okay, still some of my favs), Further Seems Forever, Thursday, Finch, and Yellowcard

Kyle and his brother Kevin were friends with comedian and actor Nick Thune (check out his specials, Folk Hero and Good Guy), and when Nick went to Los Angeles to pursue comedy, he sold Kyle and Kevin’s script in the room with Warner Brothers

In 2007, right when Kyle and his brother Kevin got to LA to work on the script they’d sold to Warner Brothers, the WGA (Writer’s Guild of America West) went on strike. But Kyle and Kevin made a lot of great connections while picketing with other writers, like Steve Zaillian, Academy Award-winning screenwriter of Schindler’s List

Kyle’s friend from Acceptance, Christian McAlhaney went on to join a new band, Anberlin

Kyle played in The Narcs, the house band for Nick’s BIG Talk Show, the late night talk show spoof Nick Thune put on monthly at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater in Los Angeles. Other members of The Narcs include: Liv Marsico (of Liphemra and previously drummer with Cold War Kids and Gothic Tropic) and Miles Gray (comedian and current co-host of The Daily Zeitgeist podcast). While doing that gig, Kyle met Josh Tillman (a.k.a. Father John Misty) and left an interesting impression.

Josh Tillman (a.k.a. Father John Misty) was previously the drummer in the Seattle indie band Fleet Foxes

 

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Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent; Linda Holmes, author and host of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast; Jonny Sun, internet superstar, illustrator of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Gmorning, Gnight! and author and illustrator of Everyone’s an Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too;  Michael Dante  DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender; John August, screenwriter of Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; or Rhett Miller, musician and frontman for The Old 97s. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.

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