Vampire Weekend’s Chris Baio & Chris Tomson Launch Podcast With Black Keys, Strokes Members as Guests: Exclusive

By Dominique Perez On 25 September 2019

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‘The Road Taken’ will premiere Oct. 2 on the Ringer Podcast Network.

Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koenig has been hosting his Beats 1 radio show Time Crisis for the past four years and now, the band's rhythm section is getting in on the online broadcasting action.

Bassist Chris Baio and drummer Chris Tomson are prepping a new podcast called The Road Taken, Billboard can exclusively announce today (Sept. 25). The podcast will feature conversations with fellow musicians about the realities of touring life. Confirmed guests include The Black Keys' Patrick Carney, The Strokes' Albert Hammond Jr., Michelle Branch, Mumford and Sons' Winston Marshall, Mobb Deep's Havoc, Laura Marling and Can's Malcolm Mooney.

The 10-episode season will premiere Oct. 2 on the Ringer Podcast Network.

“When CT told me he had an idea for a podcast about touring, I thought to myself, ‘But wait! Touring is boring!'" Baio tells Billboard. "Little did I know what I was in for: discussions across decades and genres about how touring is both art and commerce, how it changes the music artists make, and how it can be punishing sometimes and rewarding at others.”

Adds Tomson: "Ever since I attended my first big rock show — Allman Brothers Band at PNC Bank Arts Center, Aug. 29, 1999 [in Holmdel, NJ] — I've been fascinated by the endless mystique and social economy of touring, probably even more so as I found myself fully part of that world with Vampire Weekend. In my own experience, I realized that a lot of what I had read and imagined was true… and a lot of it was wildly inaccurate! This podcast, then, is kind of a Trojan Horse for me; it has allowed me to have the conversations about touring that I've always wanted to have — and to hear! — with so many people I respect and look up to."

Currently touring behind their Billboard 200-topping album Father of the Bride, the Chrises should have plenty of material to draw from, such as their six hour, 56-song Webster Hall marathon and selling out Madison Square Garden earlier this month.