The garage rock veteran discusses his new Shove Records album, out June 12, 2026

Transmission 414: Interview with Jon Spencer

Jon Spencer has been one of the most recognizable figures in American rock for over four decades, from his days in Pussy Galore with Bob Bert (read our interview with Bob Bert) and Neil Hagerty, through the cult of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, the band with which he redefined blues, garage and sleaze rock’n’roll for an entire generation. In 2026 he returns with Songs of Personal Loss and Protest, out June 12th via Shove Records, the second chapter of the project started with the 2024 mini LP Sick of Being Sick, again alongside the rhythm section of Kendall Wind on bass and Spider Bowman on drums, both also members of The Bobby Lees.

Title: Songs Of Personal Loss And Protest
Artist: Jon Spencer
Release Date: 2026-06-12
Genres: Alternative Rock, Blues Rock, Garage Rock, Noise Rock
Label: Shove Records
Description: Jon Spencer talks grief, protest and his new Shove Records album, Songs of Personal Loss and Protest, out June 12, 2026.

Twelve songs that fuse personal grief and collective rage, an explosive record (what else would you expect from Jon Spencer) that spares no criticism for the sitting president, lining up paranoia, nausea and resistance into a mix of futuristic power blues and garage punk that is at once intimate confession and act of rebellion. We interviewed him to find out where it all comes from.

Featured image: © Skyler Smith

What first inspired your interest in music and what led you to start creating your own?

Who knows what inspires interest in music? Doesn’t it start when the baby’s in the womb? I think that before you’re even born, you’re hearing and absorbing music.

When my son was still in the womb, we kept a list of all the concerts that we went to, all the gigs, the shows that we went to. So they were considered shows that he had attended, even though he hadn’t been born yet. I’m pretty sure my mother was not going to rock concerts when I was inside of her, still in the womb.

But I know that there was always music in my house when I was growing up. My mother was a big fan of opera and classical music. So that was on most of the time in the house.

That was probably the reason I was exposed to that from birth. But other than that, as far as popular music or rock and roll, I think the first exposure would have come through television.

I grew up in the 70s and I was born in 65. I grew up in a small town or a village in New England, in the United States. Seeing a rock and roll band was limited to something you might see on television.

It would usually take the form of some kind of goofy thing like The Monkees TV show, or some cartoon, the Saturday morning cartoon. A lot of them had, in these stupid cartoon shows, bands. The Partridge Family is another example, a kind of sitcom about a musical family that played kind of pop rock.

So this was rock and roll completely homogenized and watered down, made safe for mainstream America. This is what was just on television. I think that probably made an impression on me when I was a small boy.

I don’t know, I guess we could call them fake bands. The Monkees was a TV show, but that actually then became a band, and The Monkees have great albums, I think.

But it’s all fake stuff, the bands put together for TV or even not even real people, cartoons. So it wasn’t like I was watching clips of Elvis Presley or Led Zeppelin. It was just kind of weird, fake, make believe stuff.

The second part of your question, what was it about that made me want to start making music?

I played different instruments as a kid, but I didn’t get into playing rock or making noise until I was 18 or 19. I think I got into it because I wanted to start doing it for myself, because I was just so into the records. So like the definition of a garage band, which is, you know, the classic definition: kids that didn’t really have any talent, but were so into a Rolling Stones record or a Yardbirds record that they wanted to try to do that themselves.

For me, it was kind of two strains. One was garage rock, listening to bands of the 60s trying to play like the Stones or the Yardbirds, who were trying to play like Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry.

So there was that side of it. The other strain for me was industrial noise bands like Throbbing Gristle (read our interview with Cosey Fanni Tutti), Einstürzende Neubauten and Swans (read our interview with Michael Gira). I think it was just being so into these records, being so into it that it was like, well, that’s what I want to do.

I was a student at the university and I wanted to make films. I was making films, and making a film can be a very tedious, very long process. Playing a show, being in a band, there is a feedback loop with the audience.

You’re doing something. If you’re in a band, you’re not just working by yourself. You’re working with your fellow bandmates and the other people in the group.

Also, you’re working with the people who are coming to see the band, the audience. So I liked very much that, not just the collaboration, but the kind of exchange of energy, if you will. So I drifted away from visual arts, from filmmaking, and just wanted to be in a band, wanted to play in a band.

The title of the new LP is remarkably direct and vulnerable. What was the exact catalyst that made you feel this record had to be made right now?

I don’t know if there’s an exact catalyst, but I don’t think I’m alone in saying that living in the United States of America in 2026 is hard. These are terrible times, and not just for the United States of America, but for all over the world. Times are tough.

We could just alone consider climate change. Where I am right now in upstate New York, we just had three days of intense rain and flooding, and they call it a hundred year storm. It’s a storm that’s only supposed to happen every hundred years.

Well, now it happens every year, because of the increased energy in the ocean from climate change. You’re getting these storm systems, which are dumping incredible amounts of water in a short period of time, and rivers, streams, creeks can’t handle it. So you’re getting things washing out roads, washing out buildings, property getting damaged.

Municipal drainage and sewage can’t handle this volume of water either. In your neck of the woods, you’ve got fires, you’ve got heat waves. So it’s hard to live, there’s real problems in the world.

In my country, in the United States of America, same as all the rest of the world, we’ve got the climate change, but there’s also political unrest. We have this knucklehead president, this terrible Mr. Trump, who’s just, this current administration is just a horror, it’s terrible, it’s criminal, it’s corrupt. It’s awful.

It’s amoral, and it’s immoral. It’s crazy-making, because it is so clearly corrupt, and so clearly terrible, and yet we are told repeatedly, no, everything’s great. This reflecting pool in Washington, DC, a monument that Trump recently repaired, they fucked up the repairs and it just became a big mess. Yet they insist it’s perfect.

Everyone can see this reflecting pool is now full of algae, no longer a reflecting pool. Why? Because these idiots, these dopes, painted it a dark color, and that dark paint in the pool creates heat, and the heat hastens the spread and growth of the algae. Everyone can see this is a mess, it’s a disaster, it’s just ridiculous. And yet Trump and all his administration will say, oh no, it’s perfect, this is just a perfect job, it’s great, it’s beautiful. This just happens every fucking day.

So it’s crazy-making to see something with one’s own eyes, to see something for what it is, the truth of it, and to be told again and again that it is not true, that it’s something else. The lying is just terrible.

This is not our first go-around with Mr. Trump. He was president once before, I cannot believe or understand why he got elected again. It’s a real punch to the gut.

It’s completely heartbreaking, how any of my fellow Americans could vote for this person again. But he is the president again. What’s going on? It’s just terrible, it’s awful. We are building in this country concentration camps, they call them detention centers, and they are demonizing anything that’s different, foreigners, immigrants. This is not restricted only to my country, this is happening all over the world, where people in power want to create a boogeyman, and sadly it is foreigners, it’s immigrants, and it’s happening everywhere.

So yeah, the things are really bad, politically and socially. That inspired the album, some of the themes of the album, some of the lyrics, and certainly part of the title.

It is, as I said before, a really heartbreaking time to be alive, because I kind of believe in the promise or the idea of America. As someone who plays rock and roll music, and rock and roll is one of the few gifts that America gave to the world, it is an original art form that came from America, a mongrel art form, it came from people from other parts of the world, some of them brought to America against their will. It is a combination of blues and hillbilly music and other things. By definition, in its very essence, it is the other, and the current administration is trying to get rid of the other, or anything that is different.

If it weren’t for people like Little Richard, we wouldn’t have rock and roll. Little Richard is the kind of person that this current administration, the United States of America, wants to deny. They do not want a person like Little Richard to have any rights.

Little Richard was a black man. He was a drag queen. He was bisexual. This is not what they want to have in this country today. So me, as someone who has played rock and roll for more than 40 years, who has dedicated my life to this, I can’t stand it. As far as I’m concerned, rock and roll is one of the only good things America ever did, and this country now is trying to erase it or deny it. So it’s maddening and heartbreaking. There is a sense of heartbreak, a sense of loss. So there’s also the loss in the title.

But it also ties into loss that comes with age. I am now old, or I’m getting there, we all get old, that’s what happens. But when you reach a certain point in your life, a certain age, then you begin to experience losses, people dying, people getting sick and dying. As you get older, that is more and more what one finds themselves dealing with, loss of friends, loss of family, parents, sickness, illness and death. This is something that happens, it’s natural. But it doesn’t mean it’s a walk in the park. It’s not easy.

Is there a song on the record you point to as the emotional center?

I think a lot of this, the last song on the record, No More, I think it was. I’m very happy with the way that came out. That, I think, is more about the loss part of the record rather than the protest part.

That was inspired by personal events, personal experience. When we went into the studio to make the album, we had the songs written, we had the songs well rehearsed. But there are a couple of songs on the album that just sort of happened, and one of them was No More.

We were on the studio floor. We always record live, not everything, but the basic track, it’s a live performance of three of us in the band playing in the studio. There was a problem with a tape machine or something, so we’re waiting for it to get fixed, just staying with our instruments because maybe it’s just going to take 30 seconds. We just start to play to mark the time, and out came that song.

It can be very exciting, very thrilling, and sometimes very satisfying to do something like that, to have a song just come out of nowhere, out of the blue, almost like a chance thing. That’s one of the reasons why I like that song very much.

What have you been reading or watching that fed into this record?

Reading and watching the news, I guess. Not just mainstream news, but also newsletters, things on Substack, trying to understand, first of all, what is going on day to day, politically and socially. Then also trying to understand what is happening: sadly, in this country, the mainstream media has largely rolled over and gone into a submissive pose. You can’t have a proper democracy without a free press.

Getting back to the lying thing: if somebody is telling you something that’s plainly not true, you don’t repeat the falsehood. And yet even the New York Times will print or repeat the lies that come out of Trump and his cronies, his associates. Instead of labeling something for what it is, a lie, it just gets repeated. That’s not what the press is supposed to do, that’s not helping, that’s doing a disservice to everyone.

Other than that, musically, it’s not like there was any great new discovery for me. I still listen to music, I still love to buy records, and I like to go see bands. But I can’t point to any instance of, oh, I discovered this new singer, I learned about this group I never heard of before, and that was an influence on this record.

One could listen to the album and hear the influences. If we take the song No More as an example, the drums are very much coming from like Devo, the great drummer of Devo. That’s something I share with Mackie, a love of the Devo drummer, Spider Mackie.

Other than that, I don’t have a reading list I can offer you, I’m sorry. I just finished a very good Philip Roth novel, Everyman, which is about age and death. I read that well after making the record, but it seems apropos.

Do you view songwriting as a form of direct political action, or is it more of a survival mechanism for your own mental sanity?

For me personally, I would say the latter. I think political music, especially political art, especially rock and roll, can be a very tricky thing. I certainly am not a big fan of it, and I don’t really get into listening to a song in which somebody, a singer, is telling me how I should think or which way I should vote. (Editor’s Note: If you’re interested in other seminal songs of counterculture and rebellion against authority, check out this list of protest songs.)

Also, the problem with writing a political song is that if you tie it too closely to a specific cause or movement or event, then the song loses some power, if you will, it’s no longer so universal. I could not sit idly by while all this was going on, while the lies were being told, while rules and laws were being broken, while everything was being trashed, while my fellow citizens were being mistreated, while people were being rounded up and thrown into detention centers, or put on planes and flown to some other country. I could not just sit by. So yeah, it’s kind of a coping or survival mechanism.

What was different about recording this one compared to your last few records?

Let’s compare it to the previous record, the first record I made with Kendall and Mackie, the Sick of Being Sick mini LP. That record was done quite quickly, it was an attempt to just make a record so I could put a record out on this new band. It was really meant to just be a document, okay, here is the band, here they are playing, this is what it sounds like.

This new album, Songs of Personal Loss and Protest, was more, there was more time taken, we spent more time working on it in the studio, it’s more fleshed out, more produced. I think also a big difference is that it comes after the three of us playing together for a year, year and a half, and playing many, many shows. All of that, all the shows, all of that time spent playing and working together, that informs what we do and how the band sounds, and it has strengthened the kind of musical connection or language that exists.

You can’t just make a band with anybody. You can try, but it might not sound very good. To be able to find a group of people that can get together and play together, play a song, let alone even write a song, let alone even play a song, it’s a very special thing. This is, I believe, a very special group, and that’s something that deserves to be cherished.

How involved were Kendall and Spider in shaping the songs versus just playing them?

On this record, they became more involved. As the band continues, they are more confident and more and more contributing their own ideas, not just to what they are playing, not just what Kendall’s playing on the bass or what Spider’s playing on the drums, but also there’s more input as far as song structure. I think this comes again from the time spent playing together and working together.

Are you working on new material now?

No, not right now. We had a tour of the UK, we’ve had a tour of Europe. Next we have a tour of Japan, and then we’re going to Canada, and then we have a couple of tours in the United States. So right now I’m not working on any songs. I’m just focusing on running the band and the shows that we have.

Photos courtesy of Jon Spencer

Matteo Damiani

Matteo Damiani is an Italian photographer and author. Curator of the sites Retrofuturista.com; weirditaly.com; china-underground.com and others