How Long Gone · Chris Black & Jason Stewart / Talkhouse

916. - Melissa Auf der Maur

March 11, 2026·1 hr 14 min·5 clips

Melissa's mother is upset because the memoir's first line calls her a product of a one-night stand.

The room starts wired. A rare Monday taping catches New York on its first almost-spring day: street food, street drinks, ping pong, and park torsos everywhere. Chris calls it feral. Jason treats the sunshine like a trap, assuming winter still has one more irritating encore left. The bit keeps sliding around. Dakota Johnson's Calvin Klein ad becomes household news for a minute, then the conversation swerves upstate. Hudson, she makes clear, is not some pastoral escape hatch. She is an urban girl in a tiny city, and the Brooklyn thing got there late. The hosts keep poking at the premise anyway, throwing out Postmates, Cafe Mutton, Netflix, garbage, and alternate street parking while she calmly steers it back toward self-possession. What she misses is not restaurants or city convenience. It is the bass-channeling force of playing music into a room full of people who are really listening. That answer changes the temperature. The joke was fishing for lifestyle details, and she gives them the road, motherhood, staying home, and the cost of not touring anymore. The rhythm stays loose, though. Even when it gets sincere, the hosts keep tapping the glass with jokes, so nothing gets too polished. The ending turns soft: an audiobook recording with real crying left in, engineers crying too, then the perfect whiplash of an independent-bookseller pledge, a Spotify nickel joke, an upstate invite, and a Kroger creamer tag.

As heard by us

A loose Melissa Auf der Maur conversation finds its weight in motherhood, music, and the life she chose away from touring.

Melissa Auf der Maur's stop on How Long Gone starts in the show's familiar weather-and-culture drift: spring New York, Calvin Klein chatter, and hosts Chris Black and Jason letting the room warm up through jokes.

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Why you'd press play

You want a spring-day hang with loose, nosy banter and a musician who still misses the bass.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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