John Roderick is the singer and songwriter responsible for Seattle's the Long Winters. Send your questions to jroderick@seattleweekly.com.

​John: Many music folks, myself included, have left Seattle. What keeps you there?--Krist Novoselic is the founding bassist of Nirvana and a Reverb contributor.

Roderick: I'm loyal to the city because I keep thinking how much better it would be for Seattle if everybody cool didn't move out to Grays Harbor County and become chairman of their local Grange Hall. I'm not divorced, so there's no reason to move to Oregon, and I can't move to Los Angeles because my teeth aren't weird enough. The only other reasonable option would be New York, where I could enjoy the sound of people screaming at each other through my apartment walls while the smell of frying cat entrails comes in through my air conditioner, but I'm not wealthy enough.

Read Roderick's entire Q&A column -- featuring queries from Aimee Man, Duff McKagan, Luke Burbank, and Cupcake Royale's Jody Hall -- in the new issue of SW's Reverb Monthly.

John Roderick is the singer and songwriter responsible for Seattle's the Long Winters. Send your questions to jroderick@seattleweekly.com.

​John: Do you really walk naked around your yard? If so, EXACTLY when?
-- Duff McKagan, co-founder of Guns N' Roses and a Reverb columnist.

Roderick: I consider my garden to be a sovereign nation, and it's written in our Constitution that the whole great state of Roderickania is clothing-optional. Also, my street is a migratory pathway for certain rare breeds of South-end gangbangers, so whenever I see a Caprice Classic on 22s roll by real slow with the bass thumping, I go out to the garden naked and practice sword fighting, (our national sport is not "fencing", it's sword-fighting). It reminds everyone who the REAL gangster is.

John Roderick is the singer and songwriter responsible for Seattle's the Long Winters. Send your questions to jroderick@seattleweekly.com.

​Luke Burbank: Is there a knack to keeping your junk covered when you're sitting in a bubble bath in a hotel, and lots of strangers are walking by?
-- Luke Burbank is the host of the podcast TBTL. He's also hosting the Sasquatch! launch party, Thursday at the Neptune.

Bubble-placement is key, although it helps if you ask for a room with a deep tub. When Spencer Moody interviewed me in the bath at the Sorrento Hotel the tub was very shallow and I spent most of the interview heaping bubbles up around my middle-area to avoid exposing myself to curious onlookers. I don't mean that Spencer was in the bath with me, by the way. It was one of those "art-happenings" that make Seattle such a fun and vibrant cultural culture-place.

More >>

John Roderick is the singer and songwriter responsible for Seattle's the Long Winters. Send your questions to jroderick@seattleweekly.com.

​This is but a taste of John Roderick's next Answers & Advice column. Read it the January issue of SW's Reverb Monthly online, on your Kindle, or find it inside the Weekly TOMORROW!

Dear John: Why is it that there are never any shows in January?
--Seven

Roderick: If you'd ever tried to catch three hours of sleep--four guys in a Ford van--with your breath freezing in the air, parked in front of a Canadian television station in a minus-20 degree ice storm because you were playing two songs on Good Morning Winnipeg at 7 a.m. between the woman who made little animals out of deviled eggs and the couple who played "singing bowls" and slept under a copper pyramid, you would know the answer to this question.

​John Roderick's next batch of answers to your questions will be running in Reverb Monthly's Year In Music issue. If you've got a question about the year in music, about the hitmakers who are bringing CDs back from the brink, or about the indie kids who are driving the sales of cassettes, LPs, and bellows, send them to John. Or, actually, send them to me (ckornelis@seattleweekly.com), and I'll make sure John reads them. Be sure to include "QUESTIONS FOR RODERICK" in the subject.

Per usual, John's not to be limited by musical questions. If you have a problem or an issue that needs to be resolved, or you what to know John's take on the state of Penn, drop him a line. You'll see the answers in the next issue of SW's new music mag, Reverb Monthly.

John Roderick is the singer and songwriter responsible for Seattle's the Long Winters. Send your questions to jroderick@seattleweekly.com.

​Q: You are required to use one of the following tools/instruments in your band--AutoTune, harp, or theremin. What would you choose and why? Cheers,

--Warwick

Roderick: In small doses I have used ALL THREE, because it is required by the Indie Rock Code of Conduct that I utilize each and every annoying instrument in the world at least once or have my commitment to Sparkle Motion questioned. But you're asking which of the three I would FEATURE in my band if I were forced by a totalitarian cabal of Indie Fascists to conform to "twee standards" by hiring five extra twits in gingham shirts to stand there making whale sounds and looking bored. Indie bands are locked in an arms race to see which can have the greatest number of moon-faced hurdy-gurdy players onstage at once, a contest in which everyone loses. I suppose I would pick the harp, because at least they are excellent at signaling the start of a dream sequence.

More >>

Laura Musselman

​The following is a taste of John Roderick's upcoming column in Wednesday's edition of Reverb Monthly, Seattle Weekly's new music magazine.

Dear John: Have you ever met David Bowie?
-- The Pope of Cats

John Roderick: One time I was wandering around backstage at a U2 concert at Madison Square Garden and popped through the wrong door into an extra-special VIP area. The backstage of a U2 concert has about 17 levels of VIP status and, although I had passes that said VIP all over them, I was definitely not authorized to be in this particular corridor full of massively famous people.

More >>

John Roderick, right, seen here with his worship team band the Long Winters.

​The following is a taste of John Roderick's upcoming column in Wednesday's edition of Reverb Monthly, Seattle Weekly's new music magazine.

Q: I was at a show recently and I thought I had been magically transplanted into Mars Hill. It's not the music. It's the vibe. And all the people who really love Jesus. Am I the only one to notice that part of Seattle's local music scene is beginning to look decidedly Christian?

--D. Ball

Roderick: There are several forces at work here. On the one hand, Evangelical Christians realized a few years ago that their strategy of condemning rock 'n' roll as "Satan's Negro Jungle Rape Music" wasn't really filling the pews with young people. Suddenly, those same "taboo rhythms" were deemed appropriate church music, as long as the lyrics were ambiguously about Jesus rather than ambiguously about teens humping in cars.

More >>

​Since international readers of the columns of Reverb's John Roderick and Duff McKagan had a hard time making it out to see the men play their respective, one-time-only sets last night, I've emptied my notebook for y'all here. It should be noted that in order to catch both sets, I missed the Q&A portion of "An Evening With Duff McKagan" at the Neptune, and the first couple songs of John Roderick's set with his band, The Long Winters, at the Showbox at the Market. But I did to see enough to learn that . . .

1. Duff's decision to enlist some ringers -- and longtime sideman Jeff Rouse -- to back him up during "the reading portion" of a night celebrating the release of his memoir, It's So Easy, was killer. Nothing like a little acoustic "Paradise City" to keep things moving and the mood light.

2. I brought a pocket full of one-liners to the show, but held back after seeing that those who didn't remain quiet during the reading portion were promptly drop-kicked in the face.

More >>

The Long Winters & School of Rock from Adam Pranica on Vimeo.

Yeah, seriously. Check it out. Tickets to Thursday's show are still available.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.