- Could you please touch on "David Byrne Radio"?

- Oh!

- Thank you.

- Wow.

Okay.

Probably like a lot of us, I make playlists for myself, for my friends.

And then, so again, I thought, well, I may as well make these public.

So every month I make a playlist that lasts couple of hours or so of various things I've been listening to.

And it might be kind of popular music, it might be kind of, contemporary pop music or whatever, but it also might be kind of all Arabic music or all from Senegal.

- But it's all stuff that you personally either have listened to or do listen to.

- Yes, yeah.

- And recommend personally.

- So I accumulate these playlists.

And then eventually I go, oh, that one, I should do that one next month or whatever.

So the one that's, we've got a few more days, I have to just write a little, I make a little paragraph introduction.

The next one is Christmas music for people who hate Christmas songs.

- Oh my God!

(audience applauding) Inject that into my veins right now.

That's gonna be out, where can people find this?

- Oh, I think- (audience laughing) - Is that the wrong question?

- I mean, it's on my website, but it also goes to Spotify and Apple and all that stuff.

- Okay, good.

I'm gonna be right there, I swear.

Okay.

Hi, come up.

- Hi- - Liam, what's up?

(audience laughing) - Wait a minute.

How do you know this guy?

(audience laughing) - We met 30 minutes ago.

- Oh.

(laughs) - What advice would you give to starting a band?

- Wow.

- Open for the Ramones.

(audience laughing) - Yeah, yeah, no.

- Sounds pretty good.

- Well, kind of what we were saying earlier, if you can play live, not every musical artist is a live performer, but if you can, if you say you have a band then you probably can perform live.

Yeah, there's lots of clubs in Austin.

Yeah, and if you can have a, even a small audience, you've got the beginning of it, and, yeah.

Now I know that a lot of musicians now are kind of using social media or they're attaching themselves to brands and all kinds of other things that are different than when I was coming up.

So I don't know about that.

- Would that have been your taste if you had been coming up now?

- I might might've thought, oh, maybe there's maybe there's some creative stuff that can be done with social media, but that was then, I mean, and now I think, oh, now I'll just post my photos on social media.

I don't, I'm not gonna like talk about my wellness routine or whatever.

(audience laughing) (David laughs) - Thank you.

- But, yes, there's probably things I don't know about.

Yeah.

And yeah, it's a real cliche, but it's like, stay true to what your vision is, yeah.

- Thank you.

- You're welcome.

- All right.

(audience applauding) Hi.

- Hi.

How has the meaning of making music changed for you over the years as the world has changed?

- The meaning of making music?

- Well, the world's a lot more complicated, of course.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hmm.

Okay, personally, I think when I first started making music and performing like I was maybe that person's age, Liam?

- Liam.

- Liam's age, maybe.

And I think it was, there was a (laughs) kind of desperation.

I was kind of like, I was kind of socially awkward.

So music and performing was a way to, here I am.

I have something to say.

I exist.

I have trouble having a conversation with you, but I can communicate this way.

Over the years, yes, that abated, I'm not as socially awkward as I maybe I was then.

So it became different.

It became, and I also over the years realized, oh, there's a kind of skillset, I kind of know how to do certain things.

I have to make sure I don't repeat myself and just fall into a kind a repetitive thing.

But yeah, it wasn't, I felt like, oh, I'm not doing it for the same reason.

- So did you start out making music for yourself and now you're making music for us?

Is that kind of the transition?

- Could be.

Yeah, yeah, could be.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

Good, thank you.

- Thank you.

- Good question.

Hi.

(audience applauding) - Big fan.

My dad was also a very big fan, so this is amazing- - Thank you.

- To be speaking with you.

One of the question, or the question I have is, you have had such an eclectic amount of collaborators across generations and genres from St.

Vincent, even John Mulaney with the Sack Lunch Bunch that you did on Netflix.

So how do you choose your collaborators and who you create with?

- Right?

It was like Selena, right?

Olivia Rodrigo.

(audience member applauds) I mean, like, that's a great question.

It is just- - Haley Williams.

- One end of the spectrum to another, right?

- The Selena one was so bizarre.

(audience laughing) (Byrne laughs) - Go on.

- Okay.

(audience laughing) Wow.

- If you wanna tell a Selena story, we have no place to be.

(audience laughing) It's okay.

Go ahead.

- There was this movie called "Don Juan DeMarco," and it was with Johnny Depp and Marlon Brando.

And there was some scene, I think, in the movie where they go to like a Latin club or something like that.

And they said, and I'd been working with Latin musicians.

So they came to me and said, can you, they said, I think Selena might have been in the club or something was going on like that.

And they said, I think they suggested could you work with her, and, we need a song for this scene.

And I was familiar with her music and I said, yeah, I mean, doing something together, it's not gonna be exactly like what I do, and it's not gonna be exactly like what she's been doing.

But I had, yeah, I wrote something, sent it to her.

And, yeah, what she added, what she did was incredible.

And then they never used it in the movie.

(laughs) (audience laughing) - You know, that should be on one of your playlists.

I think we'd all like to hear that.

So the broader question about collaborations, how do you decide what is a collaboration and who is a collaborator?

- It's, hmm.

Yeah, there's obviously musicians I admire (indistinct) work, like, and if they reach out, and if it's possible, if it seems like it's a possibility, I'll try and explore that and see if it works.

See if it's something to do.

- You're open to it.

- Something we can do together.

Yeah, it might be like somebody in Brazil or somebody in Argentina or somebody in Los Angeles or whatever, yeah.

- Fun.

Okay.

We need to wrap?

- Yes.

- Oh, I'm sorry, we have to get David back downtown.

I apologize those of you who are waiting for questions.

Very few times am I starstruck and speechless.

(audience laughing) But we are so lucky to have had David Byrne here today.

(audience applauding) Give him a hand.

Thank you all very much.

All right.