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Folk Interviews Podcast

Talking Tracks: Life’s a Party and You’re Working It by Fun Forest

The six-track EP moves through themes of what it's like to work in the service industry, the benefits to and dangers of drinking, and the power of traditional folk song.

Dan Ray April 20, 2021
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Talking Tracks: Life’s a Party and You’re Working It by Fun Forest April 20, 2021

Raised by a single mother in the suburbs of Detroit, Dan discovered an early passion for singing, songwriting, and the arts as a whole. She got her BA in English and music at the University of Michigan, where she reported for the school’s paper, The Michigan Daily. She worked as a Senior News Reporter on the government beat, transitioned to arts writing, and eventually became the managing editor of the social media department. She moved to Seattle in 2017. After losing her job during the COVID-19 pandemic and discouraged about the lack of press surrounding Seattle’s music scene, Dan made the decision to turn Dan’s Tunes, a fully fledged music journalism website focused on showcasing the Seattle area’s musicians, into its own startup. There’s so much music happening in the city that spawned Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Jimi Hendrix — among others — and Dan’s Tunes is determined to find and expose those outstanding acts. The goal is to have satellites in every major US city, uplifting diverse and compelling voices and helping music communities thrive. In 2020, Dan was featured in the Seattle Times’s year-end music critic poll. Other than her musical endeavors (singing, playing ukulele, and auditioning for American Idol four times before the age of 24) Ray is passionate about food and education around the American food system, and she’s also a large proponent of eliminating the stigma around mental health. Ray loves cats, especially her own, who is named Macaulay Culkin (but she’s a lady).

Photo by Samantha Witt

Twice a month on Talking Tracks, we interview local artists about their latest drops — song by song. It’s a little bit like a curated Spotify playlist, except way more in depth, and it’s all the people who live right in our city. In each episode, you’ll get to listen to the full album or EP right alongside the artist’s inspiration behind the tracks. Now, we’re teamed up with LiveMo and Amit Sounds to bring you special, live set editions of the podcast.

Seattle true-folk band Fun Forest released their debut album, Life’s a Party and You’re Working It, on February 7, 2021. In this live episode of Talking Tracks, Dan and Fun Forest break down the meaning behind and the making of each song on the project — a six-track EP about what it’s like to work in the service industry, the benefits to and dangers of drinking, and the power of traditional folk song.

Listen and subscribe to the full interview below, and then click through our photo story for all the best moments. Download the LiveMo app on Apple and Android to stay updated on future live episodes.

Track listing:
1. Hell Whiskey – 16:35.
2. Tourniquet – 32:55.
3. Led Me to the Wrong – 46.
4. Penelope – 59:15.
5. Sampson and Delilah – 1:12:55.
6. Ballad of Noah – 1:25:45.

This episode of Talking Tracks was recorded in LiveMo Co-Founder Fernando Turrent's backyard. Each episode is streamed live on LiveMo and uploaded to Spotify afterwards. Here, Fun Forest sound checks before going live.
Host Dan Ray introduces the podcast by acknowledging the engagement of a previous guest who recorded at this location: Natalie Paige.
Fittingly, Fun Forests's Janelle Pfeifer and Brandon Hopper are also a couple. They met working in a dish pit together and bonded over folk music. Hopper was singing a folk song from O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and he was impressed that Pfeifer both knew the song and the movie it was from.
Pfeifer has been playing accordion for five years, and it's the only instrument she plays. She plays a piano accordion, which means it has buttons on one side and keys on the other. Button accordions have buttons on both sides.
Four of the six songs on Life's a Party and You're Working It were written by vocalist and guitarist Brandon Hopper. The other two are traditional folk songs.
In honor of first track "Hell Whiskey," Ray asks Fun Forest what kind of whiskey goes with each song. For "Hell Whiskey," the band picks bottom-shelf staple Mellow Corn.
The band takes its name from the Fun Forest Amusement Park, a section of Seattle Center built as part of the 1962 World's Fair that Hopper worked at for a month before it was shut down in 2009. Chihuly Garden and Glass was built in its place.
Track two, "Tourniquet," is about having a bad hangover — and the process of figuring out what made you get so drunk in the first place.
Many of the songs on Life's a Party and You're Working It deal with themes of drinking, from being a service industry worker unable to afford anything other than well drinks, to the need for release, to the dangers of drinking and driving.
Track three, "Led Me to the Wrong," is a bluegrass folk song credited to Ola Belle Reed. But the definition of a true folk song is that it's so old it's not traceable to any songwriter.
Hopper said one of his songwriting joys is using words not typically expected in songs, like "dodecahedron" and "tourniquet."
Fun Forest's goal is to fill out their sound with drums and bass. Their current drummer was unable to make this recording because he fractured his thumb.
Hopper wrote track four, "Penelope," before he met Pfeifer about a woman he was dating at the time. He chose Fireball as the whiskey to pair with the track because, as he put it, this is one of the only songs with "a time and a place."
After a lyric in "Penelope" about getting behind the wheel of a car after a night of drinking, Hopper clarifies that he's in no way condoning drinking and driving but simply telling a story.
While Hopper wrote all of the originals on Life's a Party and You're Working It, the band said they decide who sings lead on the tracks based on who does it better.
Throughout the EP, Pfeifer and Hopper use modern harmonies, but they also utilize singing in the round, a more traditional folk style in which voices sing overlapping melodies.
Track five, "Sampson and Delilah," is the other cover song on the EP. Originally by Rev. Gary Davis, the song tells the Old Testament story of Sampson, the strongest man on earth who derived his strength from his hair, and Delilah, the woman who cut his hair off.
For anyone looking to get into accordion playing, Pfeifer suggests Petosa Accordions in Lynwood.
The final three tracks on Life's a Party and You're Working It all reference mythological stories: Penelope and Odysseus, Sampson and Delilah, and Noah's Ark. The band said they wanted to pay homage to their religious upbringings that they have since diverged from.
Hopper wrote "Ballad of Noah," the final track, about the loneliness he felt when Pfeifer was working a day job and the couple wasn't spending much time together. He decided to title it "Ballad of Noah" because of the first line: "All of my friends have washed away with the rain."
As night falls, Ray wraps the podcast.

Photos by Samantha Witt.

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Raised by a single mother in the suburbs of Detroit, Dan discovered an early passion for singing, songwriting, and the arts as a whole. She got her BA in English and music at the University of Michigan, where she reported for the school’s paper, The Michigan Daily. She worked as a Senior News Reporter on the government beat, transitioned to arts writing, and eventually became the managing editor of the social media department. She moved to Seattle in 2017. After losing her job during the COVID-19 pandemic and discouraged about the lack of press surrounding Seattle’s music scene, Dan made the decision to turn Dan’s Tunes, a fully fledged music journalism website focused on showcasing the Seattle area’s musicians, into its own startup. There’s so much music happening in the city that spawned Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Jimi Hendrix — among others — and Dan’s Tunes is determined to find and expose those outstanding acts. The goal is to have satellites in every major US city, uplifting diverse and compelling voices and helping music communities thrive. In 2020, Dan was featured in the Seattle Times’s year-end music critic poll. Other than her musical endeavors (singing, playing ukulele, and auditioning for American Idol four times before the age of 24) Ray is passionate about food and education around the American food system, and she’s also a large proponent of eliminating the stigma around mental health. Ray loves cats, especially her own, who is named Macaulay Culkin (but she’s a lady).