Clem Snide’s Eef Barzelay isn’t a big fan of sitting still. You’ll find him out there playing for anyone who’ll have him, whether it’s in a living room, a church, on a houseboat or in an abandoned hospital. And there are still plenty of passionate Clem Snide devotees willing to pull up a rusty gurney and listen, many of them compiling life experience along the same skewed trajectory as Barzelay.
If there’s an official reason for Clem Snide to hit the road these days, it’s Oh Smokey, which found its way to fans online in late 2024. The LP has now been issued on vinyl via Foreign Leisure, a label run by Promise Ring’s Dan Didier and Talkhouse’s Josh Modell. Produced by Josh Kaufman (Craig Finn, Hiss Golden Messenger), the album finds Barzelay’s innate melodicism buoying a set of songs soaked through with grief, regret and reassessment. His inspiration at the time: a painful divorce, a break with his longtime manager and a move from Nashville to Cape Cod, Mass.
Here MAGNET’s Hobart Rowland supplies the questions, and Barzelay offer some succinct, occasionally hilarious, answers.
Would you offer some context for Oh Smokey? It seems like a pretty painful, personal batch of songs.
Not so much painful as transformational. But, yeah, Oh Smokey for sure has a certain soon-to-be divorced energy. In general, though, Clem Snide songs are never really about me in a direct way. I try to be more an empty vessel—or like a version of me, but from another corner of the multiverse. Like I am you and you are me, to quote myself.
You worked with hardcore Clem Snide fans for your past two albums. What was it like recording with Josh Kaufman, and how did it differ from the experience with Scott Avett on 2020’s Forever Just Beyond?
Both guys are wonderful human beings whose enthusiasm and support are what’s keeping Clem Snide in the game. It’s a bit like apples and oranges to compare them. With Scott, it was more a co-writing and swapping songs vibe. With Josh, I came in with songs and he fleshed them all out and made it sound beautiful.
Aside from the obvious fluctuations in personnel, how does the Clem Snide of the 2020s differ from the Clem Snide of the early 2000s?
Clem Snide, in spirit at least, has never really changed over the years. It’s always been living on a prayer while remaining faithful in its love of the unknown. People have drifted in and out of participation, kind of like a small flock of migratory birds. The Clem Snide of the 2020s maybe just pees a bit slower, if not a bit steadier.
Clem Snide has always had a special relationship with its fans. How would you explain it?
It’s weird and wonderful for me to meet folks who’ve been fans for all these years. I like to tell them we’ll get through it together. In a way, it’s a nice consequence of not ever becoming too successful. The moat between us is very swimmable. It makes for a unique sort of intimacy. I’ve written and covered songs for fans that have ended up on records, and I spend a good part of the year playing in their living rooms and backyards. It’s pretty sweet.
You like to perform in some pretty offbeat spots. Talk about the craziest show you’ve ever played.
There’s so many … One time at a festival in Spain, we bought hash from a beautiful gypsy girl with a glass eye and a bright red rose in her hair. That’s all I can seem to remember.
