‘Like A Horror Movie’: The New Pornographers’ A.C. Newman Talks Ex-Drummer’s Child Porn Arrest

T
he New Pornographers were close to finishing their next album this past April “when all the quote-unquote shit exploded,” A.C. Newman, leader of the revered indie band, tells Rolling Stone.

The band got word that Joseph Seiders, their drummer for the past decade, had been arrested in Palm Desert, California, on child pornography and other related charges. According to a police statement, an 11-year-old boy told authorities that on April 7, an unknown man had recorded him on a cell phone while he was using the bathroom at a fast-food restaurant. Two days later, an employee at that same restaurant called the police about a man “entering and exiting the restroom with juvenile males at the business.”

Police identified Seiders as the suspect and arrested him. He was subsequently charged with possession of child sexual abuse imagery, annoying/molesting a child, invasion of privacy, and attempted invasion of privacy. Seiders pleaded guilty in June and was sentenced to three years in state prison in September.

When Seiders’ arrest was announced to the public on April 17, the New Pornographers released a statement saying they were “absolutely shocked, horrified, and devastated by the news,” and had “immediately severed all ties” with the drummer. “Our hearts go out to everyone who has been impacted by his actions,” the band added.

In his first interview since Seiders’ arrest, Newman describes the “sobering” mix of shock, fear, confusion, and anger he felt at that time. “Like all of a sudden your brain kicks in,” he says. “We spend so much of our lives worried about the past, or anxiety for the future, and there I was with this nightmare sitting in front of us.”

Throughout our hour-long interview, Newman is candid about the challenges he and his bandmates — Neko Case, Kathryn Calder, John Collins, and Todd Fancey — faced in the aftermath of this horrific revelation. And he’s blunt when explaining why the band decided to keep the name the New Pornographers. 

He also discusses how the events prompted him to rework some already-completed songs for the New Pornographers’ next album, the follow-up to 2023’s Continue as a Guest, which will be announced early next year. And he explains how ace drummer Charley Drayton — who’s played with everyone from the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan to Janet Jackson and Courtney Love — stepped in to re-record all of Seiders’ drum parts. (Drayton likely won’t tour with the band next year, and the New Pornographers have yet to find a new permanent drummer.)

As disorienting as the experience was, Newman says he quickly realized that this was “not our tragedy.” “It sucks for us,” he tells Rolling Stone, “but [Seiders] was married and had kids. For them, it’s this horrible nightmare. We just got hit by some shrapnel. You just try to have some perspective about it.” 

Seven months later, his emotions still vacillate between anger and acceptance. “I’m not a Zen monk now; sometimes I get angry that it happened,” he says. “But I also have to remind myself: It had to happen. He had to be caught. It’s not a better alternate history where he doesn’t get caught and he’s still in the band. That’s the worst alternate history. It all had to happen.”

Before we talk about everything that happened, can you tell me what the New Pornographers have been up to musically since Continue as a Guest?
This new record was just going farther down a path I wanted to go to on Continue as a Guest. I think to make life more interesting for myself, I decided that this record would be a little more narrative-driven, which has really made me annoyed at people who listen to it and can’t figure out the narratives. I’m just like, “How much simpler do I have to be? Do I have to write ‘Glory Days’?” 

Narratives within songs or across the whole album?
Both. The last song on the record, which is the title track, it’s supposed to tie it all together. And the end of that song references about four or five songs that previously came on the record. It’s funny, because a lot of the songs were written before all this shit exploded. But some of it seems so timely to me. And there were even songs that I’d sang before it all happened, and I had to re-sing it, because this song means something different to me now.

When did you start working on this new album? 
There’s never a stop or start point. It’s such a long process for me to make a record that I basically have to start working on the next record the minute one is done. And it always takes longer. Every record, there’s a period where I think I’m almost done, and it just stretches out.

In an ideal world, I thought this record was going to be done at the end of 2023. I went to Neko [Case] and she’s like, “I can’t do anything for eight months.” So that kind of stuff pushes the album. And then [before Seiders’ arrest] I thought it was pretty close to done. Then I was like, “Nope, you’re not, you’re not fucking done.” 

There was a vibe on this record which was kind of… maybe it’s just the mood of the world, or maybe it’s getting older, but there was a [theme] of dealing with and accepting loss. Or just dealing with the end, whether it’s a friend’s life, or democracy in America, or relationships. So when this happened, there was a part of me that went, “Of course this shit is happening. Why would something good happen?”

Tell me about how Charley Drayton got involved.
Charley’s just one of the best drummers in the world, and I’m lucky that I knew him. His longtime girlfriend and my wife are really good friends. I think a couple of days after it all happened, he said to my wife, “Tell Carl to call me. I’ll do it.” And he’s such a big deal that I think I needed that. I would have felt weird cold-calling him and saying, “Hey, I know you’ve played with Dylan and the Stones and Neil Young and everyone else, but would you lower yourself?”

When and where did the re-recordings take place?
We did Charley’s at a studio called Area 52 outside Woodstock with a guy named Dave Cook [in June or July]. What was funny about that was, Dave was the engineer on B-52’s “Love Shack” and Charley was the drummer. They had literally not seen each other since they recorded [that].

Were there any logistical or technical challenges to re-recording the drums for this album?
There was a little bit of a push and pull, because you’re kind of overdubbing, but you’re kind of not overdubbing. The new drums changed the vibe a bit, too, and then you’re trying to figure out how much can you keep, how much do you ditch? Being a person who can’t let go, there was part of me that was glad I was going back and fixing things. Any horrible thing, you try and figure out what good you can take out of it, and the record is better than it would have been. Which is not a thumbs-up for what’s happened by any means. But Charley is such an amazing drummer, it was so cool to have tracks where I felt like I didn’t need to do anything to them. 

Is he going to be joining the New Pornographers full-time?
No, no. I would never want him to do that. That’s a much bigger ask to say, “Get in the Sprinter with us and travel around America for three weeks.” Maybe he would, but he’s got some pretty good gigs going on. 

Tell me about the non-drumming parts of the album you felt compelled to re-do.
There’s a song on the album that’s very much a ballad called “Wish You Could See Me I’m Killing It.” It’s kind of autobiographical, but semi-fictional, and it’s about a person buying flowers for their parents’ graves and talking to their parents. I guess it’s a song about how we talk to the dead and the people we’ve lost. I felt like I had to re-sing that. It doesn’t matter to anybody else, but it was a song I was singing to my parents, who I’ve lost, and this had happened, and what I was singing about in the song seemed more true. It seemed more current. I just felt like I had to re-sing it with a certain feeling. Even if nobody else would spot it, I would spot it.

Where and when did you find out about Seiders’ arrest?
I was at home and I got a text from his brother. He texted me and our manager, and said there’s some bad stuff coming down, some bad charges. [He sent] a link to the charges and it was kind of vague. It was charges that had [criminal code] numbers. My wife, who’s just that kind of person, immediately went, “I’m gonna go through all these and figure out what they are.” Then it started getting bizarre. Like, “What the hell is going on here?” And it kept getting worse. 

It was dark, weird, and confusing. And it was terrifying, because there’s three of us [in the band] that have kids. We all felt afraid. We were all like, “When was our child with him?” Everybody’s going through their heads, “Were our kids ever alone with him?” Which was terrifying, like a horror movie where you can’t see the monster. We didn’t know what was going on. And then, as days passed and we were beginning to piece things together, there was just that liminal space of, like, “Well, this is gonna explode.” And we were just waiting. When I got word that it was public, I don’t even remember… There wasn’t even a sinking feeling in my stomach. It was just a feeling of like, “Well, here it is. Don’t go on the internet for a week.”

He was arrested on April 9, but it wasn’t publicly announced until April 18. Were you told after the initial arrest? 
Yeah, it was probably the next day. And then I started calling everybody, which was just bizarre. Trying to prep somebody for this, saying, “First off, nobody’s died, but you’re going to be so shocked. What you are imagining in your brain right now is not as bad as reality.”

The next weird step was when it went public. His now ex-wife, I’m talking to her and she’s saying, “Can you get news out to people that we are going along with the police, that we were blindsided by this, that we have nothing to do with this?” You realize, all of a sudden, there’s these kids and this mother who need to be protected from the world. Because the world is coming after them. And then the guilt we felt as a band, because the band’s name turned it from a private matter to a public matter. And then the realization that, “Oh, this is entertainment.” What he did, and the fact that we’re called the New Pornographers, it was — for lack of a better word — just too cute. It made it news that was going to go everywhere.

I didn’t care that much about us, but it’s difficult for [Seiders’ ex-wife and children]. This nightmare that should at least be a private nightmare was a public nightmare. People were, like, doxxing and looking them up online. There wasn’t much positive about it. 

Tell me about the conversations you had with your bandmates. How did you find the right words to say it, and how did people react?
I was pretty matter-of-fact. These are people I’ve known for a long time, and it’s like, “What I’m about to tell you is super fucked-up.” You know, a lot of stunned silences. I remember Kathryn crying. That felt like the harshest moment. Sometimes, you’re dealing with something and you’re so used to it that somebody crying all of a sudden — the reality of it hits you. I do remember, it’s kind of a funny thing, but it’s so hard to get Neko to text me back. I remember texting her going like, “This is an emergency. Do not ignore this text. I cannot stress to you how serious this is. I’m not asking you to sing right now. This is an emergency.”

Was the decision to cut ties and fire Joe immediate and unanimous? Or were there discussions about it?
Yeah. It didn’t feel like there was any doubt. It’s funny, I was talking to a band member recently and they were saying, “Well, it was no secret that you didn’t like him.” And then I said, “That’s so nice of you to say.” 

Nobody wants to be the person that goes, “I barely knew the guy!” And it was horrible, but it didn’t feel like it struck at the core of the band. Because we’d been a band for 15 years before he joined. If it was John, it would have been like, “Well, we’re done” — because me and John have been arm-in-arm every step of the way. That would have torn at the very foundation of our band. 

For the first few days, I think a lot of people had the same reaction: There is something really jarring when there’s this person you thought you knew, and then there’s who they really are. And it took days to join those two together. To realize, “No, there are not two of those people.” That person you thought you knew basically does not exist. Then slowly, those two people form into this one sole, solitary piece of shit, and then you can go, “Fuck that guy.”

It sounds like maybe the relationship was already a little strained before this. 
Maybe not for everybody. I think it was just kind of normal. When you’re in a band, there’s always people that annoy you. I’ve had band members who annoyed me way more than him, but obviously he was the worst of them all. 

One thing I realized from this is, people like to think, “There must have been signs.” And it’s like, no. And that was a horrifying part. It could be anyone. A good resource we had was my wife’s cousin, who is a high-ranking lawyer in the Los Angeles Family Court who deals with this kind of thing all the time. We learned so much from him about how widespread all of this is, like child trafficking and child pornography. And immediately we all wanted to scrub our kid off the internet. That’s my message now for parents: Don’t put pictures of your kid in a bathing suit on your Instagram, because creeps are gonna get off on that stuff. They’re gonna find it. That was horrifying, because it makes you not trust anybody. These people are hiding in plain sight. 

And another thing that my wife’s cousin said was, “They always have their eyes open. They’re always looking for an opportunity.” We learned a lot more about the world than we wanted to learn. But it was a good lesson. Her cousin’s big advice was, “Watch your kids very carefully. Watch what they do online.” Because the kids that are getting trafficked aren’t just kids from broken homes and poor families. 

I was going to ask if there were any red flags, or if there was anything in retrospect about him that now seems off. 
Hindsight is always 20/20, but he kept up an act that was very convincing. He had been with his now ex-wife since high school, they had two kids. When he joined the band, I liked that he was such a normal guy. I just wanted a normal person who was good at their job and was not going to cause a lot of shit. And of course that backfired horribly. 

I think normal people let themselves be messy in public. But he seemed very straight, and you realize, “Oh, it was all a cover.” You realize that so many of these people have covers like that. Some of them are Boy Scout troop heads. Some of them are priests. They’re trying to create this friendly cover and they spend their life working on it. And it’s very easy to fool people, because nobody’s looking for it. 

Was cutting ties difficult from a business standpoint? Were there any contractual entanglements? 
It was pretty clear cut. I think we had something written in the contract — not a morality clause, but something like that. Like, if you had reasons to cut them out, and this was a very good reason. I just felt like, “I would like to see that motherfucker challenge this.”

Everyone in the band lives in different places. Did you feel compelled to get together in the aftermath, or were you just communicating over phone or Zoom? 
Some of us did. Me, Kathryn, John, and Todd did that. I think Neko just wanted to do her own thing [and] deal with it however she chose to deal with it. But even when we had a Zoom call, there wasn’t weeping and gnashing of teeth. It was just friends hanging out and going, “What the fuck?! Seriously, what the fuck!” We did that a few times and realized, “Well, we don’t need to do this.”

The last time I talked to John, I think it’s been on his mind a lot. Of course, it’s a hard thing to not think about, and I just had to tell him: “Most people have forgotten. You’re remembering this way more than most regular people have. The people that were coming after us online in late April, they literally don’t remember it happened. They’re attacking somebody else now.”

Beyond pushing the album, did this force you to change any other plans? Did you consider going on hiatus?
Well, we are on hiatus. This is the first year since 1990 that I have not played a gig. So we were just forced on hiatus. For me, making music is what I do. So the band can go on hiatus, but I’m still going to be sitting at home writing and recording.

We were gonna tour this year. So we had to tighten the purse strings a little bit all of a sudden. But I also realize, I feel pretty lucky. My wife has a decent job, and we don’t have as much money as we did because of everything that happened. But all told, especially when you look around the world, and just the country, for everything that’s happened, I have way more to be grateful for. We have a home, we have a roof over our head, we have money to buy food. 

Tell me about the discussion about the band name and why you decided to stick with the New Pornographers. 
The day [we found out], we were all like, “Obviously we can’t call ourselves the New Pornographers anymore.” And then time passed. A few weeks later, I ran into my friend Zach Djanikian, who played on this record and Continue as a Guest, and I was talking about the band name possibly changing, and he had the first violent reaction, which was, “No! You can’t change your name. You worked too hard for that name.” And I thought, “Yeah, you’re right.” 

The more I thought about it, it just seemed like a bad-faith argument [for changing the name]. I named it after a Japanese movie by Shōhei Imamura [1966’s The Pornographers], so, should we go to the estate of Shōhei Imamura and say, “You should change the name of that movie because there was a band that named themselves after your movie, and this happened”? And from a purely pragmatic point of view, if we changed our name, people would go, “Who is this new band? Oh, it’s the New Pornographers, they changed their name. Why did they change their name? Because of this.” Or, we were gonna change the spelling of the name. “Well, why did they change the spelling of the name? Because of this.” It seemed to me, if you don’t want to talk about it, the best thing you could do was just continue with our name. I’m sure I’m going to be saying this 50 times in the next year. 

Do you think there’s any scenario in which you and the other members would talk to Joe again?
I don’t think there’s anything I have to say to him. It fucking sucks that he dragged us down with him as much as he could. But yeah, I don’t have anything. Nothing good. Nothing that he hasn’t heard. He brought this upon himself. He destroyed his life. 

Do you think you’d ever be compelled to write about any aspect of this in a song?
It’s tough. If I did, it would take a long, long time to figure out. There’s a song on this record called “Bonus Mai Tais,” which I wrote about something that happened in 2012, when I was hanging out with a friend of mine who was dying of cancer. I would come back to it and think about it all the time, but it took me over 10 years to write that song, because I felt like I had to do this correctly. So if I was ever going to write about what happened, I would not enter into it lightly. I would be very careful. And it would be hard to artfully communicate that kind of anger and betrayal. I’m not in a hardcore band. It’s trickier for us to do anger.

I have to imagine this is the most shocking thing you’ve gone through in the nearly 30 years you’ve been in the band. Is there anything you’ve experienced that’s been remotely similar?
No. Although what’s shocking is that you find out how many families have these stories. Ours became a news story, but this is more common than people know, which is terrifying. But I also feel like it’s somebody else’s tragedy. Within hours of it happening, I realized, “We are not at the center of this.” We are getting dragged in because we are called the New Pornographers, and how that connects vaguely to what happened. But realizing this is not our tragedy, and seeing what we can do to help the people who are at the center of this tragedy. If people decide they’re going to turn on us because of what happened, I can’t control it. I don’t think we deserve to be treated like pariahs, but if you want to, it’s like, who cares?

Has this made it difficult to engage with the music that you recorded over the past 10 years, or is it easy to separate those songs from the person who drummed on them? 
I think it is. When he joined the band, I wanted somebody who was just normal and professional. On songs, I would bring him in and go, “This is what I want you to do.” I’d usually have demos worked out and if I didn’t have a drum part worked out, I’d be like, “I want it to be this vibe.” I listen to those songs and there’s nothing that I hear and go, “Oh, that’s such a Joe moment.” I feel like he was just one of the carpenters that worked on the building. He wasn’t one of the architects.

But I’ve still thought about that — like, we should go back and take out his drums. I do want to do that. Take out his drums and replace them on Continue As a Guest, In the Morse Code of Brake Lights, and Whiteout Conditions. It’s a lot of time and effort, and also, who’s going to pay for it? It feels like work you never imagined you’d have to do in a band. I think if I did that, I would feel the urge to completely remake the albums. But that would be fun. It’d be in the spirit of what I love about music. Like, re-record the albums, remove songs, add songs, but don’t tell anybody. That’d be funny. Somebody’s like, “Have you noticed Whiteout Conditions has two new songs now?”

How are you and the band feeling now, especially as you gear up to begin a new album cycle next year? 
I’m feeling very, “Que sera, sera.” All we can do is control what we can control. Over the last 10 years, I would talk about having a music career and semi-flippantly say, “I don’t know, my career might be over and I just don’t know it yet.” Because the music business is like that. Money might just stop coming. And now I say that, and I’m not so flippant about it. I think: “Yeah, my career might be over and I just don’t know it yet.” But what can I do? I’m still making music. We’re still making music. We’re still gonna go on the road. And we will see what happens.