The New Pornographers had a gut punch this year when their, drummer Joseph Seiders, was arrested on child pornography charges in April, and was later sentenced to three years in state prison in September. In a new interview in Rolling Stone, Newman is candid about the whole incident, which came deep into the recording of the band’s new album. “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.”
On the new album, Seiders’ drum parts were replaced by Charley Drayton (Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan) who will probably not tour with them when they hit the road in the spring. And despite everything and the associations, Newman says why the band decided to keep their name:
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.
Read the full interview in Rolling Stone.
There’s been no announcement about the album yet, but The New Pornographers will be on tour starting April 22 in Boston, and Okkervil River‘s Will Sheff will open all shows. All dates are listed below.
The NYC show is at Webster Hall on April 23 and tickets go on sale Friday, November 21 at 10 AM local time.
NEW PORNOGRAPHERS – 2026 TOUR DATES
April 22—Boston, MA—The Wilbur*
April 23—New York, NY—Webster Hall*
April 24—Glenside, PA—Keswick Theatre*
April 25—Rochester, NY—Water Street Music Hall*
April 27—Detroit, MI—El Club*
April 29—Millvale, PA—Mr. Smalls Theatre*
April 30—Cleveland, OH—House of Blues*
May 1—Milwaukee, WI—Turner Hall*
May 2—Minneapolis, MN—The Fitzgerald Theater*
May 3—Chicago, IL—The Metro*
May 5—Englewood, CO—Gothic Theatre*
May 6—Salt Lake City, UT—The Commonwealth Room*
May 8—Seattle, WA—The Showbox*
May 9—Portland, OR—Aladdin Theater*
May 11—San Francisco, CA—The Castro Theatre*
May 12—Los Angeles, CA—Teragram Ballroom*
May 13—Phoenix, AZ—Crescent Ballroom*
May 15—Austin, TX—Mohawk Outside*
May 16—Dallas, TX—The Kessler Theater*
May 17—Baton Rouge, LA—Chelsea’s Live*
May 19—Atlanta, GA—Variety Playhouse*
May 20—Saxapahaw, NC—Haw River Ballroom*
May 21—Washington, DC—9:30 Club*
*with Will Sheff (of Okkervil River)