Exclusive: Hear a New Episode of Ben Arthur’s SongWriter Featuring Byron Isaacs of The Lumineers
Isaacs responds to a story written by retired New York City police captain Rita Mullaney
Paste’s partnership with Ben Arthur and his music/literature podcast SongWriter continues today (Sept. 24) with the premiere of the show’s ninth episode, a week ahead of its Oct. 1 wide release. Today’s exchange of story and response song comes courtesy of retired New York City police captain Rita Mullaney alongside Byron Isaacs, a songwriter and session musician best known as The Lumineers’ bassist.
Mullaney pulls from her 25 years as a NYC police officer to recount the story of two homeless people who secretly spent years living in the precinct police station where she worked; meanwhile, Isaacs taps into the NYC of it all by playing a song inspired by both Rita’s stories and Lou Reed.
“From those experiences, I took a lot of photographs,” Mullaney says of her years on the beat. “And I also went back and did a lot of documentary work on the subjects that I photographed to get their story … I wanted to go and kind of put them on the map. Because some of their stories really were never told publicly. And I thought that they should be.”