Taking off his coat and scarf, singer-songwriter Joshua Radin (Communication/Weinberg ’96) shivers as he recalls the bitter cold of his days in Evanston. Two hours before his performance, Radin is clearly excited to be back at his alma mater as a part of A&O’s alumni speaker series. From the start, Radin shows the familiar makings of a Northwestern student. After graduation, he started as an art teacher and moved on to screenplay writing before his interest in music flourished. Laid back and friendly, Radin definitely exuded the aura of a former NU slacker as he spilled all about his days of skipping class and partying at Nevin’s and the Deuce. Oh, and he talked about music, too.
What was your Northwestern experience like?
It was good.
Where did you live?
I lived in the pit of Bobb-McCulloch freshman year. Then I joined a fraternity.
Which one?
SAE. Do they still exist here? After I graduated they got kicked off campus for like 10 years or something.
Yeah, they’re back.
Yeah, so we had to live in the fraternity for two years, and then I lived on 828 Simpson my senior year. That house was always handed down through guys I knew.
What was your favorite part about going to Northwestern?
I didn’t go to classes very much. In fact, I graduated one credit shy. They gave me a diploma anyways. You might not want to print that, they’ll having people walk up and be like, “what’s up?!” (laughs) I don’t know, I really liked the friends I had here. I used to go to Chicago all the time. I love Nevin’s. You know, that’s the best Guinness around. Even better than every pub I went to in Ireland.
So you went to Nevin’s more often than The Keg?
Yeah, The Keg sucked because I never had a good I.D. I probably had 10 fake I.D.’s taken in this town and Chicago. So that was the bane of my existence in college was finding bars I could get into. It was definitely more social for me than academic. I mean, my favorite class was this European fiction class I took. It was sort of my introduction to Dostoyevsky and Sartre and Camus and all these writers that I read all their stuff after graduating. I took about two years and felt so guilty because my parents spent all this money and I never went to class, so I read every book I felt like I should’ve read in school.
When did you start writing songs?
I started writing songs four years ago.
So what’s your favorite show that you’ve had your music on?
It didn’t last at all, but I liked that show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. It was sort of behind the scenes of an SNL. I had a song on there and it was the only show I really watched.
And how has TV propelled your music career?
I guess pretty well. I just started and people seem to be buying the records and coming out to the shows. I mean, it’s sort of going about it in a backwards way. Usually you start on the radio and it goes the other way, or whatever, but I started with the film and TV and commercials. So it’s sort of an interesting model, I guess.
Who’s your favorite person that you’ve worked with?
Well I guess I have to say Zach Braff. I mean, we’re at Northwestern.
So what inspired you to start writing songs?
A breakup with a girl. She was another Northwestern alum.
And what song holds the most meaning for you?
“You Got Growing Up To Do.” It’s a hopeful breakup song. It’s like a victim of timing song. Like when you’re with the right person at the wrong time. I have two ex-girlfriends and two records. That one’s on the second record about the second girlfriend, who did not go to Northwestern.
Who is your greatest musical inspiration?
Bob Dylan. He just didn’t take any shit from anyone.
Is there a new girlfriend in your life right now?
No … that’s why I came back to Northwestern. No, I’m just kidding.
So is that’s what will bring about your next album?
Probably. I’m still on the lookout for the third record.
And what did you do in your time at Northwestern?
Right around [Norris] I used to play Frisbee golf. A couple of my friends made their own Frisbee golf course like all around the campus and we would play all the time. A lot of the time I would spend the summer here too and I waited tables at Noyes Street Café. I also parked cars at Pete Miller’s and I had so many jobs here. I worked at Uncle Dan’s. And during the school year we’d go down to Chicago a lot because I fortunately had a car so all my friends would pile in my truck and we’d go downtown. And I would go see music shows all the time.
What kinds of shows?
Bumpus was a partial student band, partial guys who didn’t go here. And then my friend Rachel Yamagata, she went to school here; she’s an amazing singer-songwriter. She used to be the backup singer in that band and my friend Dave Presser, whose dad is actually a law professor at Northwestern, was the drummer. And I was a big fan; I used to see so many student shows. We had the Cone Zone in Norris, like where the ice cream is. I saw Blind Melon play there. I saw Ben Harper play there. I saw The Samples play there. We used to go see shows like three times a week. Chicago’s a good music town. And we used to always hang out in the blues bars. My 21st birthday I spent at the Mark II.
That’s where my friend just had her 21st birthday party.
It used to be a lot different. I think they started putting a velvet rope outside of it and tried to make it all uppity and swanky but it was a complete pit and dive bar when I went there. No students even knew about it.
Students go there, but it’s still sketchy as hell.
We found that place. That’s why you go there. My friends and I would go there and basically you could get a Pabst Blue Ribbon for like a dollar. There’d be us and then like three local homeless people and that’s where we used to hang out. And we used to throw parties there and then it started to pick up and now I heard it’s like a student bar now.
Yeah, it’s Thursday nights at the Deuce.
Oh my God, that’s hilarious.