It's not the first time Eddie Hunt has shown up late to an interview.
It's not even the first time Eddie Hunt has shown up late to an interview with me.
I interviewed Hunt in 1989 for Internal Organs, the failing punk magazine a friend and I ran out of our apartment in West Hollywood. We must have landed the interview as a result of some clerical error — there was no reason for Raze, the chart-topping punk band about to depart for the European leg of their world tour, to include us in their press junket. My friend and I showed up 3 hours early with a notebook and an 8mm camcorder; Hunt showed up 24 minutes late to a 30 minute interview looking blitzed to shit. You may know where I'm going with this.
That six-minute, drug-fueled conversation with Internal Organs became one of the most notorious interviews of Hunt's career, if not of the 80's punk scene in general, if not in the history of music interviews. It was the setting of Hunt's famous anti-press tirade and birthplace of the quote, "DIE, CAMERASCUZZ, DIE!", the punk world's fuck-the-press rallying cry that went on to be printed all over Raze merchandise and was referenced in the fourth track of Raze's 1990 record, Mutiny, "Sanctimonious Scuzz."
I am that scuzz.
I'm not complaining: CAMERASCUZZ was the launching point of my career. The second Hunt sat down, mouth ajar, looking at me with all the unadulterated hatred his drug-addled brain could muster, I knew we'd hit the jackpot. My friends and I screened those six minutes at every bar, made as many copies as we could afford, and quickly profited from the notoriety.
If you've seen the interview, then you know just how frightening Hunt can be. With the right cocktail of drugs, he could probably commit enough violence to violate the Geneva Convention.
And for six horrifying minutes, I was the direct recipient of that violence. It wasn't particularly pleasant. Which begs the question — why am I sitting on Eddie Hunt's couch in his mansion in Topanga Canyon, with my notebook and camera, waiting for my old tormentor to show up?
A few things.
First thing: this time around, I'm not waiting for Hunt to finish pushing off in the bathroom. I'm waiting for him to get back from McDonald's with an Egg McMuffin. To some, Hunt is more famous for being sober than he is for being a musician, largely due to the success of his 2021 memoir, High Above the City. The memoir recounts his fragmented childhood, his wild days as the guitarist for Raze, his "monstrous enmeshment" with Raze frontman Reddy James, the birth of his daughter, his various brushes with death, and the general "downstairs tumble" of his 30s and 40s until he crashed face-first into the imperative to get sober.
As far as punk memoirs go, it's just as sordid and rambling as you'd hope, with the added element of Hunt's sober-minded reflections, impassioned lambasting of the Sackler family, and many apologies which he writes out as painstakingly as prayers.
Which is to say — I don't necessarily think he's going to slobber over me like a rabid dog this time.
Second thing: I'm not here just to interview Hunt. I'm also here to interview his musical collaborator, XC, the 24-year-old singer from Seattle.
XC is the one who lets me into Hunt's mansion. She waves at me through the doorside window, and I can see even through the warped glass that she's terrifically beautiful. I straighten up like a dog at attention. But then it takes XC a pitifully long time to figure out the door lock, and my feelings of intimidation fade. I may not be beautiful, but at least I can navigate a deadbolt.
The door opens; she is terrifically beautiful; and she takes a grand bow, laughing at herself. She leads me through the house, at ease amongst Hunt's security detail and expensive furniture. Her notebooks are scattered across his single-slab mahogany dining table and her laundry litters the… everything. She pulls her jacket off an armchair so I can sit, then kicks an errant dress and pair of underwear under the couch only to plop down, immediately discard her socks, fling them to the floor, and kick her bare feet between the cushions. Needless to say, she looks comfortable here.
XC is a recent graduate of Vanderbilt's Blair School of Music, and she has all the earnest curiosity of a student. She's clearly familiar with my work — while we wait for Hunt, she asks me about some of my most recent interviews. We share our favorite albums of the year so far. Hers, Ambiguous Desire by Arlo Parks; mine, Masquerade by Cardinals.
She chats with me easefully, as though we're old friends, or at the very least like she's had years of media attention. But she hasn't. Beyond a few small write-ups by local rags or indie-rock Instagrams, XC's music has never seen much success. She has two albums available to stream, a solo project from 2019 and a 2024 EP that she released with her partner, Samuel Bird. But this is her first interview with a major critic. When she first reached out to me, I almost blew her off.
But then she asked if I wanted to preview their album.
Third thing: I previewed the album. And I needed to talk about it with somebody.
I've been in this line of work for decades, but I've never gotten used to that itchy feeling you get when you access a great album before everybody else. The urge to show people is sickening.
Oh, good music makes me sick to my stomach. I can never get as close to it as I want to.
I know what you mean.
As a kid I used to watch performances of my favorite artists online, so many of them now dead or disbanded, or the scene is dead or the venue is closed or overly policed. Even if, you know, say Jeff Buckley were still alive and I saw him in concert, it would never be the way it was when he was testing his material at Sin-é. He doesn't exist anymore, that version of the East Village doesn't exist… That used to make me physically sick, knowing that I would never be there with my own body and ears at the source. Even when I was really young, I felt that grief. I think that's why I started to play. It was as close to the music as I could get.
XC and I shoot the shit for a good 15 minutes. Then Hunt arrives. He bursts through the front door in one deft motion. I tense up. The meeting has been orchestrated between myself and XC. I haven't talked to Hunt yet, and I don't know how it's going to go. He strides purposefully through the kitchen, fast-food packaging gripped in his fist. He comes right up to me. Then he smiles, pushes his shades into his stringy hair, and extends a hand.
He doesn't remember me.
It's not that I'm offended, per say. I'm just surprised. I imagined that I was selected to conduct an early review of the album, in part, in the name of some kind of public redemption arc: Look, Eddie Hunt can be interviewed without pulling a weapon!
And really — Hunt deserves his public redemption arc. It's great to see this reformed, 7-years-sober version of Hunt in action. He's perkier than I anticipated. He offers me a Celsius. When I decline, he says he also has Red Bull, Yerba, Diet Coke, and 4 different flavors of La Croix.
He settles on the couch next to XC, who raises her eyebrow at him.
Hey, kid.
You're late.
I know, I have a problem. A McMuffin problem. They say you replace one addiction with another. You can't criticize me, I'm sick.
Some addicts run marathons.
There are many medicines.
Did you at least bring something for our guest?
Of course.
So we ate our McMuffins.
Hunt and XC have a comfortable, playful energy with one another. If you were tuned-in to the 2-day media blitz about them last summer, you might be curious about the nature of their relationship. In August, 2025, the pair was photographed together at the Capital Hill Block Party in Seattle, then again in a nearby diner, then again that night, getting into Hunt's car. Some fans were quick to critique Hunt for dating a woman younger than his daughter, and soon enough people were retrieving less-than-savory receipts from Hunt's liaisons back in the day. For about 24 hours, Hunt was well-poised for cancellation. Then everyone forgot. Hunt was, it seemed, no longer worth the breath it would take to blow him over.
Though I knew, going into the interview, that Hunt and XC were not lovers but creative collaborators, I still expected XC to be another beautiful, naive young woman hanging off of Hunt's arm, straining for his approval. Not the case. Hunt is clearly besotted with XC — her talent, her wit, her musical know-how. For her part, XC is so absorbed by her own youthful precocity and charisma as to, at times, hardly notice Hunt.
They fall immediately into a well-trodden repartee, where XC plays the shrewd-eyed "straight man" to Hunt's clown.
Chew your food, would you?
I'm hungry.
You're like a vacuum cleaner.
It tastes better when you swallow it whole.
One day I'm going to find you asphyxiated in bed with a McMuffin in your trachea.
At least I'll die doing what I —
Wipe your mouth.
[Clears throat] It caused a bit of a scandal when you two started working together.
Eh. I've had some real scandals in my time. That bullshit didn't even ping the radar.
Yeah, Hunt is a bit notorious. See: drug possession charges; disorderly conduct charges; public indecency charges; physical assault charges; plus this cracked-out interview and also this one; I don't need to remind you about CAMERASCUZZ; and then there was that time at the Grammy Awards; and the infidelity; and the very public divorce; plus all those barely legal girls he was screwing.
I've had no scandals in my time, so it pinged my radar. My mom wanted to kill me. I had to be like, no, Mom, I'm not sleeping with some old man.
Hey.
It frustrated me. Block Party was the biggest gig I'd ever had. And it led to Musikase, which is the most exciting creative project of my life. So of course it got reduced to me being some random groupie chasing a rock star for clout. He came up to me.
So that day in Seattle, that was the origin of Musikase?
Yes.
Not really.
More or less.
I would say Musikase started back in Nashville between me and Birdy.
Samuel Bird, 25, is the rhythm guitarist, lyricist, and second vocalist for Musikase. XC met Bird in Nashville, where they played the same open mics. Bird's a folk musician. He sings with the mellow, sonorous tone of Bill Callahan or F.J. McMahon. Soon after meeting, XC and Bird developed a mutual admiration, which became a mutual infatuation. They've been together for 5 years.
And, look, I'm not going to claim to know why. But when XC brought up Bird, the energy became… strained.
You played with Sam in Nashville, but you didn't start Musikase with Sam.
I never would have landed that gig without Birdy.
What does that matter?
The Capital Hill Block Party gig?
Yeah. It was the summer before my senior year of college. I was in Seattle because that's where I'm from. Birdy was still in Tennessee, because that's where he's from. That's the only reason I was there and he wasn't there. Of course I wanted him in Seattle for the set, but he couldn't afford the flight.
See, I don't get that. When Raze was coming up, we'd do anything to get to a gig. We once jumped a horse truck to get to a gig in Chicago — you know those trucks with the horse pens in the back? There was an empty one so Reddy and I crammed in there. It smelt so vile, and I was so hungover. I was sticking my head out of the little window to vomit on the road. [Laughs] That guy was so mad when he found us. He left in buttfuck Ohio.
You've told me this story. You didn't even make it to Chicago.
Well, at that point we were covered in vomit and horse shit, so naturally nobody else wanted to give us a ride. But we tried!
What's your point, Eddie?
That Sam should have tried!
Just because I wasn't performing with Birdy that night, doesn't mean Birdy wasn't part of the performance. Everything I was performing was Birdy. The lyrics, the composition — everything Eddie fell in love with about me was Birdy.
[Shaking his head] Everything I fell in love with about her was her.
Why don't you tell the story of that first meeting?
I was in Seattle to see some old friends. We were checking out the Block Party. They book a lot of smaller, local artists.
Just during the day in these tiny little venues. I was playing in the basement of this bar where nobody was. It was probably 2 in the afternoon.
I was in the bar — that was the first thing people wanted to point fingers at, when those photos leaked. But I wasn't drinking. I wasn't even thinking about drinking.
He was just looking about drinking. And smelling about drinking.
I was getting out of the heat. And I didn't know anyone was performing there at that time. You couldn't hear the set from upstairs. But then all these people were coming out of the basement to grab their friends at the bar, like, you gotta come downstairs, you gotta hear this. So I followed them.Honestly, my first thought was, this girl is mentally unwell.
[Laughs]
First of all, she's wearing, just, the ugliest outfit. I mean it. She was wearing, like, a striped onesie —
They were leggings —
— underneath a shiny, tinfoil-looking dress, and she's wearing a tulle rose around her neck, and pumps. It was kind of matronly, but also kind of something you would dress a toddler in.
[Laughing] Fuck off.
But she made it sexy. She moved with so much confidence. She was just so clearly a rock star, already. And of course she's gorgeous. Then after a minute, I'm kind of thinking, you know what, I dig the striped onesie. I dig the tinfoil. This was all before she started singing, by the way. She had some friends backing her, and she was just kind of dancing, being freaky, being totally unselfconscious and weird. She was like Joplin up there, or Karen O — she just had that wildness. And the crowd... This generation is so uptight, you know? But they were all getting into it. I felt heartened, or something. Like, hey, the spirit never dies. And I'm also noticing, you know, this track isn't half bad.Then she starts singing and… I mean, you've heard the album. Her voice is gravely and sturdy, and then pushes higher and higher, and it's so raspy you're thinking, where does it break? But it doesn't break. It goes into a new register where it floats. And then she does these, these trills, these yelps.But the biggest thing was how in it she was and how she moved the crowd and how she was tuning everyone to the frequency she was at. I had this feeling like, I need to turn the world onto this girl, right fucking now. Like, what the fuck is going on? Who is this girl? Why the fuck is she in this tiny basement in Seattle, you know what I mean? But also I'm kind of looking around at everyone in that basement thinking, dibs. I call dibs. I'm working with this girl. Everyone else, get out.
XC looks embarrassed, listening to Hunt rhapsodize. The tension from before has transmuted. She's looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the verdant canyon, a faint blush on her face, and I'm thinking about what she said earlier, about how good music makes her physically sick. Whatever that sick feeling is — that desperate desire to get as close to the music as possible, to possess it and consume it — it's the same feeling Hunt has about her.
Then she starts playing one of my songs. At first, I'm like, there's no way. People don't really cover Raze songs anymore. If they do, they're probably covering "Garden Wall" or something. But she was playing an old one, this song called "Order." I hadn't thought about that song in years. Plus, she made it kind of singer-songwriter-y, which I thought was funny. We weren't exactly known for our lyrical competence.
I love the lyrics to that song. [Singing] "How's it supposed to feel? How's it supposed to feel?"
She made those lyrics good with the way she sang them. And then she kind of changed the chord progression, she used compounding chromatic mediants to create this bit of dissonance, this bit of tension, this kind of a surreal sound. And when the progression resolved, it was just so beautiful.I mean, it was the best that song ever sounded. My feelings about that were complicated. I felt competitive, I guess. But I also felt connected to her on this soul level. I had put a song into the world when I was just a stupid kid, and almost forty years later, she'd finished it. I don't believe those kinds of things are coincidences. So, after her set, I walked right up to her.
I didn't recognize him.
She had no idea who I was.
He just said, "Hey," and then kind of paused and smirked as if I was going to start hyperventilating. And I was just like… "Hey."
I did not smirk.
Obviously, once he explained who he was, I was embarrassed. I love Raze. I told him I would have recognized him back when he was young.
She was mean, so we got along.
We talked in the bar for a while, but I hadn't eaten all day and I was starving, so we went to a diner. Then we just talked and talked for hours.
What did you talk about?
God, I don't know. He asked me a lot of questions about myself and what I was into and what I was working on. And I asked him who he listened to these days and what kind of stuff he wanted to make now.
It was easy to talk to her. It's not always like that, across generations. We talked about art, and culture, the way we experienced culture. I wanted to know her opinion about everything. I still do. We're always talking.
Arguing.
There's a fair bit of arguing.
I think we talked until the diner closed, and then he invited me back to his friend's place to jam. I was so nervous. I was like, holy shit, I'm going to a famous musician's house. I just had this idea about it. And I didn't really know Eddie then or what his intentions were. But all of Eddie's musician friends are just like him, you know, totally straight-edge. There were wives and kids around. It was nice. That's why the scandal around it was so stupid.
The jam was awesome. Immediately, the communication was there. We'd start the jam from one place and end up somewhere totally different and surprising but so obvious... and I couldn't tell where the ideas came from, if they came from me or from her or somebody else in the room. They didn't seem to come from anybody. It was like using a ouija board, like funneling a spiritual energy. Like the music came through us from a foreign place.
We were there all night. I didn't leave until the sun was coming up. I don't think I've ever been that tired, but I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep. My entire body was online.
I drove her home and neither of us said a word the whole ride. We drove through Chinatown and the sky was pale and people were opening storefronts. I remember thinking, When will I get to see this girl again? I was supposed to fly back to L.A. the next day. Before she left, I said, "What are you doing tomorrow?"
I said, "Nothing."
So I told her I'd see her tomorrow.
And did you?
Of course.
He stayed the rest of the summer.
Hunt and XC spent the next month building the foundation for two songs from the back-half of the LP, "Reverence" and "Amy Calls." Hunt flew to Nashville with XC in the fall for her fall semester, where he met Samuel Bird. The collaborations between Hunt, XC, and Bird were, to XC's mind, "so natural, like we'd been making music together forever." Within a week, they started performing in the local Nashville music circuit under the name Musikase.
Where did you get the name Musikase?
Well, we had this joke —
No, it started with my radio show. In college, I had an hour-long set on the college radio station on Tuesday nights. It wasn't a big thing. I probably had, like, 14 listeners. But I took it so seriously. [Laughing] And I called it Musikase. The name came from omakase, the kind of Japanese dining where you let the chef decide. It translates to, "I'll leave the details to you." So that was kind of the gimmick of the show. I was like, "Fuck your Spotify algorithm. Let me curate a musical experience for you. Let me play you some stuff you haven't heard. Leave it to me."And it was also about, you know, putting different things in conversation with one another. If you get 12-course omakase, they're not going to give you 12 pieces of yellowtail. They're going to start simple, and then it'll get more complicated, and each course will build off the flavor profile of the last. Diverse, but not random. That's what I tried to do with my show. I would start with, I don't know, you know, Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares. Bulgarian folk choir music. And end with Bjork.
Debussy to Brian Eno to Fela Kuti.
I was interested in investigating how genres talked to and influenced one another across difference.
She just graduated college, by the way. If you couldn't tell.
When Musikase came together, that was the idea. We were going to have a diverse oeuvre. We were going to take inspiration from a bunch of different places. And we were going to curate our own, unique sound. Which I think we do.
Listening to Patron Saints, Musikase's diversity of influences is obvious. A song such as "Pass Her By," for instance, might at first seem decidedly slacker rock/dream pop, with its hypnotic flanging and breathy, disaffected vocals, but soon it devolves into the heavy distortion of grunge. The chordal and rhythmic complexity across the album belies the influence of jazz; the bass lines sparkle like midwestern emo.
This is due, in large part, to the diversity of Musikase itself. The 6 members that comprise the band — in addition to XC, Hunt, and Bird, the band includes keyboardist Christopher Wood, drummer Kilroy, and bassist Elizabeth Rose Taylor — hail from every corner of the country, from L.A. to Alabama to Minnesota. Among them you can find a highly trained studio musician, a bedroom singer-songwriter, a graduate of jazz conservatory, and a garage band rebel.
“We all come from a different place, so when we get together, we make a sound that couldn't be anyone else's. We have our own thing going on.”
Despite Musikase's stylistic variance, Patron Saints is clearly unified by an overarching vision. XC and Hunt describe the music-making process as highly collaborative, but no band as diverse as Musikase can have a truly equanimous writing process and come away with something as coherent as Patron Saints. Amidst the swarm, a tyrant operates.
Let's just say I can guess who it is.
The name is also about how much better we are than everyone else.
Oh, shut up.
Because it means "I'll leave the details to you." So basically we're saying, just leave it to us. Not to diss what other bands are doing. But, you know. It's a lot of slop.
We don't really think that.
I think that.
It was a joke we made one time. But we were kidding. We were drunk.
You were drunk. I'm just a narcissist.
I wouldn't call Hunt and XC narcissists, just… healthily self-preoccupied. These are two people who like to listen to themselves talk. Even more, they like to listen to themselves argue. And argue they do, about just about everything under the sun. At one point, they start debating some ages-old Legs McNeil article; then they're arguing about whether the punk philosophy's preoccupation with DIY was radically anti-institutional or troublingly individualistic; and then something about Kim Gordon; then something about Gil Scott-Heron.
Frankly, they're insufferable. And that's coming from me.
But there's also something hypnotic about listening to them go at it, about the way the flame of each idea lights the wick of another, a sparkchain reaction that becomes a propulsive rhythm, that develops its own pulse, like something alive. It feels exactly the way Hunt describes the first time he played with XC — like an energy that "came through them from a foreign place."
So I ask them to play for me.
They play the two songs they wrote during that first summer together, "Amy Calls" and "Reverence."
"Amy Calls" has an ecstatic sound, fast-paced and jolting. XC subs in on rhythm guitar, normally manned by Bird, while Hunt whips out his doubleneck. The 12-string neck creates a fullness for the chorus, distorted to an almost overwhelming power, over which XC's vocals get truly wild, yipping and growling. Despite this punk-style aggression, the chordal turns are pleasantly complex. On the open-tuned six-string, Hunt cranks a few badass solos.
"Reverence," on the other hand, is slow, intricate, and atmospheric. It makes you feel unmoored; the ambient microtonal sound never seems to settle anywhere stable. The melody is not so much circular as spiraling. In the recording, keyboardist Christopher Wood utilizes an ondes martinot to glide between pitches. The interplay between the onde martinot's sirenic cry and XC's vocals is dizzyingly sad. In person, Hunt recreates the gliding effect of the martinot by utilizing bottleneck slides and quarter-tone bends. XC's voice hovers above, tremulous, at once light as air and powerfully clear.
As they play, a block of golden sunlight crawls toward them over the floorboards. I can see the tension in their fingers and faces, the same tension I feel in my throat. The whole room is silent. Dust mites catch the light. Swirling in the middle of everything is this breathtaking sound.
I ask Hunt what it feels like to be making music again.
Oh, I don't want to get all emotional and all that. It means a lot to me. I've been given a lot of second and third and fourth chances in my life. I don't take that for granted. I've had lots of Angels come down and save me from myself and take my hand and tell me where I needed to go. I'm indebted to all of them. I'm especially indebted to this girl right here.
At last I feel like I have everything I need. I grab my things and thank them both for being so generous with their time. But then this happens:
It was a joy to talk to you both.
Yes, it was great to finally meet you, Camerascuzz.
I pause with my jacket halfway on, arms awkwardly constrained. I look at Hunt. His surprised expression so perfectly captures my own sentiment, like a guidance counselor's feeling chart: Now point to the man who got played.
What?
For the record, I think you're a very competent interviewer. I've always thought so.
I appreciate that.
Is this real?
I'm caught off guard and embarrassed, but not as embarrassed as Hunt, who hides his face in his hands for a while, making apologetic noises like a wounded cat. Eventually he gathers his wits enough to issue a few threats to XC, who looks rather pleased with herself. After some more embarrassed mumbling he gets a grip and seems to find the situation pretty funny.
Just when I think I've made all my amends, I'm reminded of yet another achievement from my long career of assholery.
You were a captain of industry.
Will you forgive me?
He asks me so sincerely. For perhaps the very first time, it occurs to me that I owe him an apology, too. All my life, I've dismissed Hunt's CAMERASCUZZ tirade as the ravings of a junkie. Of course, it was crazy — like a pre-industrial indigene, he accused my camera of "capturing his soul" — but his delusions came from somewhere. I did show up to that interview with the intention of exploiting him for profit. And despite how violently he thrashed against it, that's exactly what I wound up doing.
Only with several decades retrospect can I see how vulnerable and desperate he was in that moment, and how humiliating it must have been for him, for some part of him, when they emblazoned his ravings all over t-shirts and hats and made millions of dollars off his spiritual malady.
I want to ask his forgiveness, too, but I don't. Eddie Hunt is a stronger man than me. If he's reading this now, I want him to know that I'm sorry. Eddie, do you forgive me?
I forgive you.
Excellent! [to XC] You, on the other hand, are in big trouble.
I hang around for a few more hours, just talking about music. Hunt runs upstairs and returns with a first-edition CAMERASCUZZ t-shirt, which I put on for a photograph. XC says it's like watching Clark Kent don his cape. I guess CAMERASCUZZ has been, in some ways, my secret identity all these years — my tragic backstory, the source of my power — but whether I'm a hero or a villain, I don't know. We listen to "Sanctimonious Scuzz." I've never listened to it much, for obvious reasons. It's not so bad. I drive home through the brush in the evening, thinking about all the people I've been, for better or for worse, wearing Hunt's shirt. I could hawk it for a fortune, but I won't. It's a totem of my redemption.
Michael Honnold is a journalist and music critic. He has written for Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Interview Mag, the Fader, and more.