Tim Crisp Interview
Tim Crisp is the podcaster behind Better Yet, which features longform conversations with musicians and other creatives. Launched in 2016, Tim has featured Steve Albini, Sadie Dupuis, Tom Scharpling, and many others on the show.
How did you get to where you are today, professionally?
I grew up in a very musical household. To this day, my dad buys more records than anyone I know. He was always making mixtapes for car rides and telling stories about shows he'd seen, be it David Bowie on the Young American tour or The Cure in New York City before Robert Smith was wearing make-up. I wrote about music for my high school newspaper and I was a feature writer for my college newspaper, Illinois State University's Daily Vidette. I suppose I had aspirations to do music writing of some sort but never really had the discipline to write consistently.
I moved to Chicago after college and started playing in a band called The Please & Thank Yous and was lucky enough to get a gig as a barista and then a coffee roaster. The idea for Better Yet was in my head for a few years after getting into Marc Maron and Colt Cabana's Art of Wrestling Podcast. There were tons of bands in the pop-punk and emo world that were making music that was flying under the radar of the Indie Rock publications at the time, bands like Everyone Everywhere, Hard Girls, and Pile, and then there were people I'd met in and around Chicago like NNAMDÏ, Julia Steiner of Ratboys, and Seth Engel from Options.