The Milk Carton Kids join Southern Craft Radio with Joy Williams and talk about “New York Lonely Boy,” a track they worked on for the Peacock original show Girls5eva starring Sara Bareilles and Busy Philipps, heading back to the studio in the fall, and how they arrange the intricate harmonies they’re notorious for. Tune in and listen to episode in-full this Sunday (July 18) at 12pm PT / 2pm CT / 3pm ET or anytime on-demand here.
Kenneth Pattengale of The Milk Carton Kids on recording and self-producing a new album coming in the fall
Kenneth Pattengale: For the entirety of our band, Joey and I always wrote songs, practiced them a lot, figured out the arrangement, got them in, some in super tight shape, some in just passable shape. Then, we’d go into the studio and we’d cut songs live. Up until our ‘All The Things’ record in 2018, I’d say we spent for the previous five albums maybe a sum total of 11 days in the studio our whole career. Then, we spent a few more. We spent about that to make the ‘All The Things’ record, but this album we’re doing exactly the opposite, which is that we’re going into the studio in October and Joey has been having several songwriting breakthroughs. I expect he’ll show up with some good songs. But come October 8th or 9th we get to work and whatever comes out on the other end of the seven weeks of studio time we bought, you will be forced to listen to it.
Joy Williams: I cannot wait. Are you heading into someone’s studio that you’re working with or are you guys going to be self-producing this?
Kenneth Pattengale: For the first time in history, Joey Ryan has agreed to Kenneth Pattengale producing The Milk Carton Kids if you can believe it.
Joey Ryan of The Milk Carton Kids on writing “New York Lonely Boy” for the Peacock show Girls5eva starring Sara Bareilles, Busy Philipps and more
We’re old friends with Sara. I guess the people from the show had written this song, “New York Lonely Boy,” and they wanted it to sound like Simon & Garfunkel. They asked Sara if she knew anybody that could do Simon & Garfunkel and she’s like, “Yeah, actually I do.” She called us and was like, “Can you guys do a Simon & Garfunkel thing?” We were like, “Finally, somebody noticed that we kind of sound a little bit like Simon & Garfunkel and we’re going to get some money for it after all these years.” It was one of these things that’s super easy to say yes to because it was a really beautifully written song that was a perfect Paul Simon New York feeling song where it’s almost like ‘Only Living Boy In New York’ or something like that. I don’t know. It felt like exactly what we already do. Literally, three days later we went into Capital Studios and we just cut it in a day.
