Washington City Paper: What type of comic work or cartooning do you do?

Steven Weinberg: All kinds. A whole lot of book work recently for my new book To Timbuktu, an illustrated travelogue I did with my girlfriend and writer Casey Scieszka. But I also draw an internet/bar comic about a shittily drawn cat with an even shittier disposition called Shitty Kitty (which Casey also writes).

WCP: How do you do it? Traditional pen and ink, computer or a combination?

SW: I love using a variety of mediums so each project can have its own look. For To Timbuktu I used conté crayon and ink (put to paper with nibs and brushes). For work that ends up living more online, like Shitty Kitty, I like starting with nibs and ink, then putting it on the computer and adding digital color.

WCP: When (within a decade is fine) and where were you born?

SW: I can be very specific: February 13, 1984. (It was a Wednesday, not a Friday.)

WCP: Why aren't you in Washington now?  What neighborhood or area did you live in?

SW: Until second grade I lived in Ward 3 only a few blocks from Western Ave. Then my parents joined the '90s migration northwest to Bethesda, mainly for the schools. That’s where I grew up, but since then I’ve gone to school in Maine, lived in countries like China, Morocco, and Mali, and have now settled in Brooklyn.

I’m not in Washington now for a bunch of reasons: my girlfriend Casey is from there, the book world is in NYC so it makes more sense to be up there, and though I speak the praises of Bethesda Bagels around the world, Brooklyn really has the D.C. area beat on that end.

WCP: What is your training and/or education in cartooning?

SW: I’m a big old mix. My art training has always been in oil painting, which I still love to do and find ways to work into my cartoons and application of color. But I really got off the ground as a cartoonist for my college paper. I started as a freshman and worked my way up the paper’s hierarchy to become co-editor in chief by senior year—thus allowing me half a broadsheet to draw sprawling cartoon accounts of the crazy shit students got into as told by some campus security guard friends.

WCP: Who are your influences?

SW: It all started in the Washington Post’s comics page. I grew up devouring Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side, and then slowly moved to another part of the Style section to Richard Thompson’s work in what was then Poor Richard’s Almanac.

From there, I watched a whole lot of The Simpsons growing up and also love the book work of folks like Art Spiegelman, Guy Delisle with his Pyongyang and other travel books, and finally Graham Romieu continues to rock my world with his Bigfoot books and his regular stream of editorial illustration.

WCP: If you could, what in your career would you do-over or change?

SW: I was pretty reluctant to commit myself to drawing pictures until about halfway through college. That was kind of dumb. I don’t know what kind of person I would have made if I stayed as a government major in college.

WCP: What work are you best-known for?

SW: Depends who you ask, but most likely To Timbuktu. Shitty Kitty has some rabid followers though. I was told she was just named patron saint of my favorite bar in San Francisco, Shotwell’s.

WCP: What work are you most proud of?

SW: To Timbuktu. Besides being a massive amount of drawings, I love how Casey was able to tell the story of our two years out of college. She cracks me up and it’s an honor to get to illustrate her words.

WCP: What would you like to do or work on in the future?

SW: More! More travel based books like To Timbuktu, picture books, editorial illustration, gallery shows and installation based art. I could go on!

WCP: What do you do when you're in a rut or have writer's block?

SW: Doodle. Go for a walk. Get a coffee.

Although it’s been really nice collaborating so much with Casey because we’re kind of always on each other’s case to keep the other one working when we need to be. So we can kind of be the anti-writers’ block for each other.

WCP: What do you think will be the future of your field?

SW: Bright but tough. I think it’s never been easy to make something and get people to notice it and technology has just given us more means to spread the word. There are so many more venues now than just the comics page of a paper and the occasional graphic novel that it’s going to push cartooning to keep on evolving in form and style.

WCP: What's your favorite thing about D.C.?

SW: The museums and the Zoo. Go Smithsonian! I spent many weekends going to the Natural History, Air and Space, the Zoo, and the National Galleries growing up. They rock, are free, and get your mind going.

That, and my family. My parents, a grandma, and brother and sister-in-law are down there. Living in Brooklyn is great because I get to go down and see them a lot more than when I was living in Timbuktu.

WCP: Least favorite?

SW: I don’t know. It used to be growing up that I didn’t see enough people making art and doing the kinds of things I wanted to be doing but so much of that has changed over the years. It gets me really excited to see all that.

WCP: What monument or museum do you return to when you're back in town?

SW: National Gallery. I tend to beeline to where the older American painters are. I like to stare at George Bellow’s The Lone Tenement or John Copley’s Watson and the Shark. That’s a crazy painting from the 18th century of this British dude getting his foot bitten off by a shark. We need more of those in this world.

WCP: Will you be at SPX this year?

SW: I want to be. It’s an amazing lineup and I love Craig Thompson’s poster right out of Habibi (which I have been eagerly awaiting for a few years now.) Casey and I are all over the place this fall going to schools and talking about To Timbuktu so my schedule for September is kind of nuts.

WCP: Do you have a website or blog?

SW: Don’t I!

Everything that Casey and I do is on TelephoneAndSoup.com

To Timbuktu has its own site AllTheWayToTimbuktu.com

And Shitty Kitty is bad at sharing, so she lives at ShittyKitty.biz

Malian singer Khaira Arby and her band will appear for free tonight at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage as part of their first U.S. tour, which coincides with the release of Arby's first North American album, Timbuktu Tarab, on the Clermont Music label. Arby sings in a brash, raw-edged voice in Sonrai, Arabic, and Tamashek over her band’s mix of noisy electric guitar, traditional Malian percussion, and stringed instruments.

Arby has been singing professionally for two decades.  The daughter of a Songhai/Tamashek Islamic mother and a Berber father, she began singing as a child in her Saharan village home just north of Timbuktu, but was discouraged from continuing to do so by her father, who married her off at age 14.  At 22 she was divorced, and began singing regularly with a band, and on occasion with her cousin, the late guitarist Ali Farka Toure. In Mali she and her group have released a number of cassettes including the effort Ya Rassoul, which according to the Awesometapesfromafrica blog, was “enormously popular in Timbuktu, where you will hear this tape playing out of a ghetto blaster in a shop or the cassette deck of a car. This is not 'world music,' this is just plain old awesome music that straddles the linguistic and cultural divide of a place like Timbuktu.”

Timbuktu Tarab has its awesome moments, as well.  Arby’s voice is loud and husky as she roars out a mixture of praise songs and social criticism over her two desert-blues electric guitarists, the ngoni lute, the njarka one string fiddle, bass, drums, and backing vocalists.  Not all of it works.  It’s a bit samey-sounding at times, as Arby does not display here the wide melodic range of her fellow countrywoman Oumou Sangare. However, videos of older material show that she can sing more softly when she wants to.

Khaira Arby and band perform for free  from 6 to 7 p.m. (the concert will also be webcast) today at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage,  2700 F St., NW.  (800) 444-1324.

Dambe: The Mali Project (94 minutes), directed by Dearbhla Glynn, screens as part of the Capital Irish Film Festival Wednesday Dec. 16 at 7:30 p.m. at Goethe-Institut, 812 7th St. NW.

Nearly 3 years ago Malian guitarist Vieux Farka Toure’s debut release appeared.  It came out shortly after the death of his legendary guitar-playing father, Ali Farka Toure, known for his distinctive Malian Islamic roots in the desert meets John Lee Hooker style.  His father, before passing away from cancer, recorded four tracks with his son. Vieux’s musical mentor, kora (21 string African harp) player and bandleader extraordinaire  Toumani Diabete also appeared on four songs on that debut, so despite its merits, it was hard to hear that cd as that much more than the effort of a still learning musician who was not quite his Dad or his Dad’s pals.  Now on Vieux’s recently released second album Fondo (it means “the road”) he is beginning to establish his own identity.  He will also be back in town Monday night June 22, this time at the Rock and Roll Hotel.

While Toumani Diabete is on one track on Fondo, and veteran Malian vocalist Afel Bocoum is on three cuts, this is very much Vieux’s cd as he penned all but one song (a traditional) and his guitar playing, influenced by Dad but with some rock and Caribbean influences as well, dominates the sound.  However, Vieux also adds some modern touches with the help of bassist/producer/remixer Yossi Fine (he and Vieux produced) from Israel and New York trap drummer Tim Keiper who has played with John Zorn and with the Dirty Projectors. Not afropop ala Amadou & Mariam, this is more Saharan bluesy drone, but with enough distinctive touches in each cut to keep it from being too repetitive.

On album opener “Fafa,” Vieux quickly establishes his turf with some raw, powerful chords, then the band joins in and his playing turns lyrical as the vocals and the rhythm section help turn the number into a melodic desert blues lullaby.  Vieux has noted in interviews that in learning music from Toumani Diabete, he has tried to make his guitar conjure up a sound that resembles that of the harp-like kora, and he succeeds in parts of this song as well in the album closing reprise version of the tune.  “Ai Haira,” “Sarama,” and “Cherie Le” on the other hand, strikingly meld uptempo and more abrasive Farke Toure guitarwork with polyrhythms courtesy of Malian percussionists and drummer Keiper.  “Diaraby Magni” features dub reggae playing and production while “Paradise” spotlights Vieux and Diabete dueting acoustically with radiant strumming and demonstrates that he can play traditionally without just imitating the past.

Monday June 22 at 8:30 (doors at 8) –Vieux Farka Toure with local openers Elikeh and Farafina Kan at the Rock and Roll Hotel, 1353 H Street, NE, Washington, DC USA – (202) 388-ROCK, $15.