Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 431: Open Mike Eagle

Episode Date: April 3, 2021

Open Mike Eagle, amazing musical hamburger blessing to our cave-goblin palettes, joins the DTFH! Check out Open Mike Eagle's incredible catalogue of music (wherever you listen to music), and listen to his podcast: What Had Happened Was. Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: Purple - Visit Purple.com/Duncan10 and use promo code DUNCAN10 for $200 Off any mattress order of $1500 or more! Shudder - Use promo code DUNCAN for a FREE 30 Day Trial. ZipRecruiter - Try for FREE at ZipRecruiter.com/Duncan

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not just because they paid me $50,000 for that particular ad, but also because their content is remarkable. You know, I'm really busy these days. I'm a new dad. I've got two kids. And I just don't have time to go through the internet and figure out who I'm supposed to be angry at from week to week. Fuck You TV, their show, Time to Hate,

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like Drinni Penerson get away with all the fucking bullshit they've been getting away with. And they need to understand that it's time to stop. Fuck You TV, highly recommend it. Welcome, this is the Duncan Tressel Family Hour podcast. My name is Duncan Tressel, and I'm a literary genius with three doctorates in words.

And because of that, I love poetry. And so I'm gonna read to you a poem that I just heard because I said, hey, Siri, play a poem for me because I was feeling starved intellectually because I've only been watching Dateline for the last two years. And this is the poem that I heard. Our Deepest Fear by Marianne Williamson.

Our Deepest Fear. Our Deepest Fear is not that we are inadequate. Our Deepest Fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who might have been brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.

You're playing small, does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine,

we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. Now that's the end of the poem by Marianne Williams. And I, of course, added a few measures, verses rather. Measures is what you call in graduate school, but I'll call it a verse. This is actually a tradition for men in graduate school.

They don't do it anymore, but in the 50s, it was actually required that when a woman wrote a poem, a man would add several verses to the end. And so here we go. Our second deepest fear. Our second deepest fear is that our dicks or butts will fall off. If we were to wake and look down and see our dicks or butts

were not on we, we might try to awaken from a terrible dream. And when realizing we were awake, we would start to scream. That's our second greatest fear. And then I added our third greatest fear. Our third greatest fear is while masturbating to VR porn, the nanny cam will pick us up and we will be recorded. And then our fourth greatest fear. Our fourth greatest fear is that our sixth greatest fear

will become our first greatest fear. And now it's mail bag. Dear Duncan, I just thought I'd let you know that I was just riding in my car on a first date with a beautiful woman that I've had a crush on for a really long time. And I made the horrible mistake of playing the podcast episode where you added extra verses

to a really wonderful poem by Marianne Williamson. And it basically ruined the mood of our date. And I haven't been touched since the beginning of the pandemic. And I really thought that we would be making sweet love tonight, but after I played your podcast for it, she seemed confused and like she didn't really trust my judgment or something.

And anyway, I just thought you should know that that's what happened. Maybe you'll think a little bit more about what you say in the beginning of your podcast, knowing that some people are playing your podcast to dates and people that maybe haven't heard other episodes. All right, okay. Thank you sincerely, Rockford Crawley.

Thank you, Rockford, for listening to the podcast. I just wanna remind you that if you like the podcast, you should also subscribe over at patreon.com forward slash DTFH, you'll get commercial free episodes of this podcast along with access to our weekly meditation journey and a boredom that's every Monday. And every Friday, we have our family gathering where we all hang out together and talk and ramble.

Sign up and thank you for being such a fan and for those kind words, I really appreciate it. Sincerely, Duncan. You know, if my eating habits were similar to my musical listening habits, then I would probably have rickets at this point from not getting enough nutrition, not getting all my greens and all my fruits and vegetables

and musical salads. I'm lazy when it comes to listening to music and it's embarrassing and it doesn't help me at all to only listen to John Denver and John Prine and the Grateful Dead, mostly. Every once in a while, I get lucky in whatever algorithm is serving up music, recognizing that I'm a dad in an acoustic ditch

with my wheels spinning in a kind of sad, never ending repetition of some Uncle John's band, country roads to paradise, maybe a little angel from Montgomery, back to the Grateful Dead, maybe some bored revisiting of Pink Floyd back to the Grateful Dead. It's like the algorithm tries to intercede and is like, here's Daedalus, listen to this

and I'll listen to it and for a second, I'll feel great. That's how I got to meet Daedalus and have him on a previous episode of this podcast, which is luck. It was an AI trying to help me, but today's guest, I got even luckier than that. A wonderful festival that On Air Fest reached out and asked if I would be interested

in doing a kind of podcast with today's guest, Open Mike Eagle for their On Air Fest. And I went on to Spotify and started listening to Open Mike Eagle and it's like imagine someone who's been living in some stinky, moldy, underground cave, like some kind of golem-esque, spindly, greasy, glowing, fungal encrusted creature that's only been eating larva and sucking some kind of slime mold off of the rocks

in the cave and then somebody throws like a hamburger into the cave, that is musically how I felt when I started listening to today's guest, Open Mike Eagle. Holy shit, I'm sure you have listened to him, but if you haven't, before you listen to this podcast, just any of his tracks, they're all good, he's amazing and we had a wonderful conversation and that's coming up right after this, I'm stopped.

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for 10% off any order of $200 or more. Purple.com slash dunkin' 10, promo code dunkin' 10. Terms apply. Thank you purple. I must have done something involving rescuing children from a sacred temple in a past life to get to have conversations like this with people like Open Mike Eagle.

You have to check out his music please. This is my new go-to. I'll just do it for you. Hey Siri, play Open Mike Eagle. Alexa, play music by Open Mike Eagle. He's great. You'll fake me when you dive in to his incredible catalog of brilliant music.

He's also got a wonderful podcast called What Happened Was and most importantly, you gotta subscribe to him over at patreon.com forward slash Open Mike Eagle. This is my new best friend everybody. Please welcome to the Dunkin' Trussell Family Art Podcast Open Mike Eagle. ["Welcome to the Dunkin' Trussell Family Art Podcast"] ["Welcome to the Dunkin' Trussell Family Art Podcast"]

["Welcome to the Dunkin' Trussell Family Art Podcast"] It's the Dunkin' Trussell Family Art Podcast. Mike, welcome to the DTFH. How long do you have by the way? It's probably as long as we need him an hour, probably be good just cause I'm telling my kid to be quiet in the other room. Okay, how old?

He's 12. Yeah, how great to be a dad. Is it wild? Do you feel like in some ways it kind of like, I don't want to say damaged cause that sounds negative but in some ways it like shifted you so much from what you were before being a parent that it could almost be compared to a kind of apocalypse?

It definitely was an end of looking at the world a certain way and the beginning of looking at the world in a completely different way. Suddenly, I would look at like, I would see like Shaquille O'Neal on my TV and be like, that was somebody's baby. Yes! You know, like just the weirdest thoughts

that I'd never had before, you know? That is the, that is the, to me that's the, one of the things it does. That, so that is a, it fucks with your ability to like judge people as much. When you do that thing and see that little baby and you know, they were just crying and confused and scared to sound.

And just shitting themselves and, you know, they just, and then they grew up and had a personality and made mistakes and I don't know, it's just, it's just a odd, even just watching him grow up, you know? It's like, I see so many consistencies from when he was a very tiny person but also there's parts of him that I have no idea where they came from.

Wow. You know, like personality traits. I just like, where did you get this? Yeah. Yeah, do you see, do you have the thing where you see like those weird flickers of your parents or your grandparents in their face? I see a little bit of my grandma

but I also see a lot of his mom's family. I see a lot of that too. Now that, and I feel like it's okay to talk about it because you transformed your divorce into some very powerful music. But how does, how do you reconcile that? You know, is that, is that that? Cause it's like a normal breakup.

You know, you can clear it out. You're not gonna, any reminder of them as existing up here. Right. But when you have- When it's a person. Yeah. You know, the thing for me is like, like I come from a long line of like broken homes.

You know what I'm saying? So like- Same. I feel like that's just part of it. Like that's just part of life. It's like not having everything intact. Right. So the time when it was was more like the aberration to me.

Wow. That was more like that. This is weird and cool. You know? Yeah. When it was all united. Yeah. But it is still, I mean, it, yeah.

It's like, I remember after the initial like realization of impermanence that your parents getting divorced teaches you as a kid. Yeah. It just became normal. There wasn't- See mine, mine, my parents were never together. Oh wow.

Like I tell people this story like, my first real memory of seeing my parents in the same room together was they took me to lunch after like my high school graduation. And I'm like sitting at a table looking at both of them at the same time. And I can barely, I could count maybe on one time before where I had seen this picture, you know?

I think like when my grandmother passed away, I know my dad was there, but that was like in this big group of people, you know? But like me and them two together was the weirdest thing I had ever seen. What'd you talk about? I don't remember. I don't even remember what we talked about.

I don't even think we had like any substantial conversation. I think everybody was just like having their own experience with this moment. Yeah. And making sense of it in their own way. I don't think we talked about anything profound. I think we were all trying to act like it was normal. Oh, fuck.

And I'm sure it was the weirdest for me, you know? Yeah. Because I don't even, I can't even really conceptualize how they dated. Like they're just very different. Yeah. But your dad, he goes to your graduation, the only other time you saw him one other time?

Well, saw them together one other time. But you were having contact with him. Yeah. He's been in my life the entire time. Oh, great. Okay, okay, cool. Oh, good. I thought he was doing that thing

that some dads do where it's like, they just show up at the like big moment and they're like, ah, I'm your dad, right? I made it. I checked the box. I'm here. Right, you love me. Yeah, that's the thing that it really,

I'm a new dad and like learning this shit is just like, my God, you know, a real dad, that's work. That's a lot of work. So yeah, yeah, it's teaching me a lot. But do you tell me a little bit about how it's affected your art? You know, like, and did you feel, one of the things I was worried about

is I wouldn't, somehow I would stop being inspired or stop making stuff. So far it's proven to be wrong, but did you have that fear that in the sense it kind of flies in the face of, I don't know, like, you know, when the fantasy of the artist or something, you know what I mean?

The loner, the lone wolf. I think for me, the biggest change, it wasn't like an anticipation change. It was like when he was born suddenly, like the act of leaving town to do a show, to do a tour, like that completely changed. Like my emotional relationship to that act took on this entirely different picture,

where like, it would emotionally hurt me to be away to the point where like it physically hurt. Like, I'd be on tour and I would see a child and I would get upset just because, oh, there's people that are getting to hang out with their kids, you know, like, so it was really that for me. It wasn't so much the art

because I'm very like selfish in my art to where like, I feel like there's little that could happen that would change my relationship with what I do. But I think that's because, yeah, I kind of just make what I want to hear all the time. And you know, so it, I feel like sometimes it has suffered from not having any effects from the outside world.

And that's why like, on this last project, I was trying to be more true to actual emotions that I was feeling. Because I wanted to like, open it up a little bit and have it exist in the world as a thing that came from me as like a living person in the world, rather than just manifesting the ideas that, you know, it's one half of my mind

speaking to the other half. That's what the rest of my career had been pretty much. It's just messages back and forth in my own head. Now, sometimes they would try to reflect the world or point fingers at the world or, you know, that sort of thing, but they didn't really exist in the world. Yeah.

Like I tried to make this one like be in a space time. How'd that feel? I was, it was, it was very rewarding making it. It was terrifying putting it out. I like that. Yeah. It was weird, man. Like, cause you know that thing when you have a product and you know you have to, you know,

you know, you make it, you know, you give it a title, you know, you give it a release date, you announce it, and then, you know, you kind of go into that promotional mode. You push, push, push on the socials. It felt really weird to do that with this. It felt really weird. Yeah.

Cause it felt like it was me. Yeah. You know? I was reading an interview you did where you said that negative reviews, that thank God you didn't get that many, but the negative reviews of that album, I think you just read one and it was like a personal,

it felt like an attack or a person. It did. I'm still not over it with that person. I'm still not over it. And that was months ago. Like still whenever that person pops up on my social media, cause we're actually cool. Like me and this like really popular reviewer,

like we've hung out. I like had him on my podcast back in the day. I still hold something about that. Like I'm still angry at him in a way that I don't even know how I can address it. I don't know how I can process it. This episode of the DTFH was brought to you by the purveyors of the best horror movies available online.

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you're gonna love this series. You know, when something like that you hear it's coming out, you cringe for a second, because you're like, they're gonna ruin it. It's gonna be another beautiful thing that gets sacrificed on the pulsating alter of Hollywood. But no, they completely did it, replicated it, and you're gonna love it.

This is shutter. You got to check them out. I don't have time anymore to dig around, to try to find some horror movie I've never heard of. I need shutter so I could go into the archives and watch some of the crazy horror movies that exist. I bet you don't know about all the weird fucking Italian horror movies out there

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into the molten cauldron of gore that that network is. Thank you, Shutter. When the Midnight Gospel came out, somebody said that you're not supposed to read your own reviews. What the fuck, how do you not, are you crazy? What the fuck, what am I, that's something like a yogi maybe could avoid reading reviews,

but how do you not look, because you want a sense of how it's being received? Yeah, and I am, I mean, the people that I'm reading are like, yeah, yeah, and I am, I mean, the people who gave it shitty reviews, I mean, I don't even know them, and I'm pissed at them still. I still think, I don't even know what they look like,

but I think about them like that, motherfucker, why not just stab me in the face? It feels like you're being stabbed in body parts. It feels like you're being stabbed in sensitive areas. Like, you know, sometimes, actually, I'll say this, way more than I should. I searched my own name on Twitter, like way more than I should.

And typically, that's okay. You know, like typically that's okay. Typically it's innocuous things. Man, last week, somebody had made a tweet. They were, and the tweet was like, rank these four artists. And the other three, they're all my friends. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. So I'm talking about, I would look at these things,

look at what people were doing, it would feel like people were riddling my body with bullets when they had my friends ranked above me, which is a perfectly fine opinion to have. I just didn't wanna read it. I didn't wanna see it. I didn't want it to exist. I was like, you know how you can mute a conversation?

I wish that I could delete the conversation from the servers, just take it away. Because for me, it only served to hurt my feelings. Sure, sure. That's something that you might expect to see in like a modern rendition of Dante's Inferno. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Yes, it was that sort of thing.

And it was me paying the cost for doing this thing I'm not supposed to do. Right. If I hadn't searched my name that day, that couple of days, never would have saw it. Yeah, that's, I have to tell my wife, because sometimes she goes on my subreddit and tells me shit, they're saying,

I'm like, don't tell, I don't wanna know. Like, don't tell me. I had to develop a discipline to not look at that stuff. That for me, I had to learn in the early days of like early days of Rogan's podcast. Because his fans would just like, just for fun, they like you. It's like sport for them.

Yeah, yeah. How can you skewer Duncan for sport? Exactly, it's so like, you just learn, like don't go there. If you want, like, even Rogan doesn't go there. You know, it's like, don't go there. Just let them, you know, if they're gonna attack you or whatever, it's,

they don't know you. That's the main thing, right? I mean, that's what you have to keep referring to is, or I keep referring to is like, I barely know myself. So how could someone out there really know me enough to like despise me, even if they're like, making pretty accurate, like commentary

on my physical appearance. You know, you make a good point about, sorry, my neighborhood is- Oh, same, you'll get it. I'm like, somebody around here is just always like hurting themselves, it seems like. Okay. You made a good point about learning early on,

like how to keep a certain distance. Like I did, cause I learned early on like, like I don't read the comments on stuff, you know, like if, you know, whatever music site posts an article or even like on YouTube largely, like I don't read the comments there because I, you know, I know that those people are competing for attention

and there's no real stakes there, except for me potentially being offended. Like there's nothing, there's no real, but like, yeah, it's impossible, at least with the space that I am even to this day, not to like read the reviews, cause the reviews feel, they feel like they're coming from sources that matter more in terms of platforms, websites, whatever.

And typically there's someone who is paid to be thoughtful. And I am interested in thoughtful assessments of my work, not like hot take assessments, but like somebody really is sitting and listening to a project in the, in the sequence and for the amount of time that I intended and they have formed a thoughtful assessment, I'm really interested in that.

You know, I would love to chat with you just for a second about the sequence itself, cause I don't know, I feel like that doesn't get talked about as much. And I'm curious, when you're may, when you're working on an album, how much, how thematic are these things? How much time are you spending? Are there songs that actually get inspired

out of a need to follow another song? Yep, for sure. There's, and typically I don't like to be in that position where I'm trying to fill holes, but that does happen. Cause sometimes, okay, this part, this song needs to be with this first half of the project. Cause there is a sequence, there's always, with me, there's always a through line.

But sometimes like, it's like, okay, this has to be song five and this needs to be song six, but something needs to go in between them. A palette cleanser or something needs to go. So like, I have like done that where I've made a song to fit between. But I think, you know, to point to what you're saying, I for one, spend a lot of time on sequence.

And I don't think that that's something that, I don't think it matters to people as much as it matters to me, you know? My, I have a friend who's a musician and we were working on something together once and I was watching him and getting kind of frustrated with the amount of thought he was putting into the sequence. I'd never even, I mean, this is how literate musically I am.

I'd never even, I hadn't put much thought into that. But it was, but now I get it. I mean, when I was working at the comedy store, the owner Mitzi, I used to work for her and she would put that level of thinking into each lineup. And I think there is some similarity between a good comedy show and an album. I mean, obviously not all albums are comedic,

but I know what you mean, the rhythm, the tone, making sure like, if it's an hour long show, it feels like something put together with some intention. I feel like that is important. I'm glad to hear that she was putting that level of thought into it. Cause I'll go to the comedy store, you know, they have all the rooms or like the improv,

they have all the rooms, you'll see all the lineups. A lot of times I look at them and they feel random to me, but it's interesting to think of that, curating it with that level of intention. Yeah, well, she's thinking about, like she would, she explained it to me. It's like a lot of different things all mixed together, what they're, you know, what their stand-ups like,

but then also what they look like, size, every, like the whole thing was meant to be like a, each one was meant to be some kind of weird mosaic. But when you're thinking about sequencing, and forgive me if this is a question emerging from a lack of deep understanding of making music or if it seems like a new question or something. But what, when you're thinking about this arrangement,

what is going through your mind? Or is it just an instinct or? Well, okay. So it's interesting that you said that she's dealing with a couple of different factors. Cause I feel like there is the natural inclination I have to make a sequence that's just based on me trying to paint a picture

or me trying to like make the audio equivalent of a movie where this scene goes here, this scene goes here, this scene goes here. But I've also learned over the course of like having a career that there's, like there's business stuff I have to consider with my sequence as well. And that was one of the toughest lessons for me to learn

was like my first album, I took it to the label guy and I'm like, okay, this is a sequence. And he's like, no, this song that you have 10th needs to be the first song. Because this is going to be the single. And because we're entering, and we, at that time, we were just really entering, you know, iTunes and streaming and all of that.

And he's like, you have to know that there are going to be thousands of people who click on this first track that never get any further than that. Like that's something you have to consider when you're putting this together, if you want it to be successful. Cause I was always of the mindset,

like my thing was I'd want to start the album with a skit. You know? And he's like, no, you kind of have to earn that. Like you have to build that sort of trust with people where, you know, you can invite them into an experience that way. And they know it's going to be worth their time. Like you can't come out the gate doing that.

And it blew my mind, you know? We compromised by, I took that 10th song and like put it second. Yeah. Cause I did have a song that I felt like this is the vibe of the album and I want to establish that. But instead of doing what I thought would be next, I put that song next.

And it broke the sequence as far as I was concerned, but I do think it was a valuable lesson, you know? Did you feel, did it fuck you up doing that? Did you feel a little satanic or like, you know, like? I felt a little gross, you know? It felt a little gross. I think I ultimately ended up justifying and rationalizing it with the thought that it's still my song.

It's not like I'm putting somebody else's song, you know? And it's still not first, you know? So like I did the things I had to do to wrap my head around it. But I didn't want to ignore his advice either because he had been putting out albums for years and he knew what he was talking about, you know? Right. Listen, I think there is something to be said for,

we have to have some kind of respect for people with experience, you know? Like, hubris gets, it fucks you up so bad. And these people are like, generally have, have your like, success in mind because their success is linked to your success. Yes, exactly. Much thanks to Zip Recruiter

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at ziprecruiter.com slash Duncan. The special offer is only good at ziprecruiter.com slash d-u-n-c-a-n. Zip Recruiter, the smartest way to hire. Thank you, Zip Recruiter. Now, I'm curious though about like your thoughts on the algorithm and on the way that technology is impacting, it's impacting the way

we make stuff now. It's impacting the process. It's getting deep into our lives. What are your thoughts of that? To me, it seems kind of apocalyptic. It's terrible for me as a creator because I just wanna make what I wanna make and I don't wanna have to think about any of that,

but it's the same as like when everything was physical, you wanted your album cover to have a certain pop, right? Yes. You wanted it to stand out on the end cap or wherever they would put it, you know, like. Oh, wait, I'm sorry. I just did that thing where I said yes before even thinking about what you said.

I've never put an album out and I don't know what an end cap is. But I think you know what I mean. Oh, I know what you mean. I just said yes too fast. Now I understand. Cause people are gonna hear me go yes, but like shut the fuck up, you don't know.

What album have you ever put out? Shut up. But you know, I think the way I put it to you wasn't necessarily about having half the direct experience. We're trying to understand that you can, your album cover should be a reflection of your creative purpose in some sense. Yeah.

And luckily, if it's really effective, there is a certain inherent pop to it, right? Right. But if you do one and it has, if it's bland and somebody told you it was bland, you might change it, you know? And it wouldn't necessarily feel like a betrayal of your creative idea.

You would just want to do something to balance out your creative idea and like the retail effectiveness of this thing. And so I feel like thoughts about what factors affect the Spotify algorithm, what factors affect the YouTube algorithm. Like it is good to be aware of these things. Yes.

But I guess it feels grosser in a way because we don't really know, you know? Like if you're dealing with the pop of an album cover, like your eyes are good to trust and your friends' eyes are good to trust and the label's eyes are good to trust because we know what we're trying to do is make something appealing

and you get like a yes-no thing, right? Yes. But the algorithm, there's no yes-no, you know? Yeah. Like we kind of know the factors. We kind of know what we think can do, we can do to our products to make them more viable but we really have no idea

and I think that's the scary part. Yeah. It's one thing to be trying to pull the levers in ways that you know you understand. It's another thing to try to pull your levers based on phantom information. Fuck. You know?

Like it really feels a little worse to do that, I think. Yeah, it's like at least let us fucking collaborate and we can't collaborate if you don't share with us how this algorithm works. It's like you're offering a sacrifice to a God that you don't know its appetites, what it looks like, what it is just hoping and then maybe it gets accepted, maybe it doesn't.

Either way, you're still confused at the end. Yes. Yeah. They gotta share this shit with us but they can't because it's like their great secret. If people figured it out, they'd fucking hack it. They'd exploit it. There's people who exploit it anyway though.

Like there's people who make a lot of money on Spotify, just making tracks full of brown noise. Yeah, I heard about that. You know? And that's another thing. It's just messing with the algorithm. Yeah. You know what I'm saying?

Oh man, I had something else. I can't remember. Oh, well, we're getting to see to me this thing that we're talking about is spectacular in that we are having to contend with this brand new thing. In the history of art or creation, this is no one's had to figure out how to work with an artificial intelligence, a synthetic intelligence.

And it seems completely counter to my understanding of making stuff. But have you ever thought about making an album specifically, not cheaply, not like the brown noise bullshit, but thinking of this new medium. And do you know of any people who are intelligently putting out stuff?

And it feels weird to me when they, like they tell me what they're doing and why. And I get it, you know? Cause you just wanna, like it's weird, man. My retail example was from like thinking about going to the store and purchasing something. But now that like everything's on apps, it's like we live in the store.

We're all in the store all the time. So like you want your product to be a top seller in the store, you know? And it's like, man, the thing I make music on is right here. And the thing I listen to music on is right here. Why don't I make it, you know, seamless? Why don't I make something that will pop on here,

on the phone, from here, where I make stuff? But I don't know, man. To me, it echoes the same feeling I have when people ask me, do I think about who's listening when I make music? Cause there was a time when I did try to think about that. But the real answer is I'll never know who's listening. And I'll never know who's gonna come to the show

and say, I love that song. It meant X, Y, and Z to me. There's no way for me to aim it, direct it, target it at anybody. So all that does is cause me to have thoughts that get in the way of anything I'm actually trying to do. And so to me, yes, you can make songs that the robots like. You can make a product that the robots like.

And if that works, great. I think who I am and my situation economically when it comes to making music, how it's really just me, mostly, and people I get beats from. Like it's a two-man operation at most. Right. I'd rather put my chips on making the song

that I want to hear. Yeah. You know, and if that ends, you know, if that doesn't please the robots, that's what I earn, is I earn the robots just pleasure. That's the fucked up art, man. To me, that's the great, that we live in a time period where you can seriously say, we need to please the robots.

Listen, you gotta put that song at the beginning for the robots. What the fuck are you saying? Like just going back like 15 years, someone hearing that, they would think that their producer had gone nuts. Yeah. But I wonder, whenever I get to chat with an artist who I have a lot of respect for

and who is making beautiful things, I ask some questions because that's inspiring. Whenever you put the kind of music you're putting out, people might like me get inspired because we think, oh, maybe it isn't at the end of the world. And oh, you know, maybe there is like, that things are turning around or something. It's a very powerful kind of magic.

And then we think, I want to make something that good. And so we wonder to ourselves. And even though, I know it's an absurd question because everyone has a different thing. I have some real basic questions for you. Sure. Notebook, do you write stuff out or put it in your phone? Where do your ideas go?

That's so interesting. Okay, so I was notebook for a long time and I had it in my head. It was always going to be notebook. And I have moved to computer notes. I don't like to do the phone thing. I like to do computer note and print it out and hold the paper when I record.

That to me feels best. I don't like holding the phone. For some reason, my eyes don't track that naturally when I'm trying to like scroll and, you know, it's just, it's not, I don't know. I think it's asking my body to do different motor skills that I haven't practiced for this whole career. Right.

But holding the paper feels right. I miss hand, I mean, I hand wrote lyrics for probably like my first six albums or six projects released, you know, and it's only the last like few I've gone at typing. I do miss handwriting some, but I have horrible handwriting too. So like there was definitely pros and cons either way.

Yeah. Well, but when you don't have your computer around all the time, I mean, these, like, where are these ideas coming to you? What are you, where are you? I kind of am around my computer all the time. Oh, okay. I kind of am.

And even when I'm not like it's my iPad or it's my phone, it all ends up on the computer. Gotcha. Yeah, I got you. You know, I'm constantly like feeling weird about I don't know a good centralized way of getting everything smashed together. I feel like a lockets left out.

But when you're writing a song, how much of it, and again, I apologize. And for those listening who are big music fans, I apologize. Just, this is just, I'm illiterate about this stuff, but are you, how much of it is improvisation and other, how much of it are you doing at the mic in the moment and how much of it

are you writing down beforehand? Man, like 95% of mine is written beforehand. But there's this thing, is it something somebody told me early on in music that it took me a long time to realize what they meant. Especially specifically with rap music, because there's written raps and there's freestyles, right? Yeah.

I started out my whole career freestyling. So I freestyle for years before I ever wrote anything, but I wasn't making songs then. It was just me and people getting together and rapping. Like, that's what we did. Yeah. He told me that the best freestyle sound like written raps, and the best written raps sound like freestyles.

Whoa. And it took me a long time to understand that, because I was always like, how can a written rap sound like a freestyle? Yeah. But then I realized it as I've gone through my career, because there was a time when I would write something and I would record it very robotically.

Like, very like, let me nail each elicution of the syllable in this to the beat. Yeah. And that's just what it was, but in the way that an actor has to bring life to the words on the page, you learn in recording raps, you have to do that too. You have to infuse the written word

with some sense of immediacy. Yeah. And for me, that immediacy, like the way I bring the energy I bring to it is like conversational. Like I like to think as if I'm saying these things to a person, you know, and they're hearing it for the first time.

So like, so you're not hearing the fact that I've recorded this same part 15 times already. Right. Yeah. That's the feeling I get listening to your music, which is so wonderful. But now you must have the problem, a great problem of all these best friends you don't know.

Like there's all these people who think you're their best friend. Do you know what I'm saying? You have an intimate connection to you who like, you know what I mean? That's for you. I do. I know exactly what you mean.

And I haven't figured out how to balance it because like there's that sense that people come away with from the music and you have to multiply that with like the accessibility of social media, you know? Like, and I've never been, I've never been in a position where I can afford to be like reclusive.

Right. I've always had to be the one out front pushing my product and engaging with people. So like, not only is there this sense that people know me from my music, there is also this sense that if you say something to me on Twitter, I am likely to respond. Yeah.

You know? And so I think that does really build this, yeah, this intimacy, this sense that people know me. And like on my Patreon, I lean into that. And I actually try to like put, like I do a secret podcast just for my Patreon. You know what I'm saying?

Where I like tell them like actual shit I'm going through. You know what I'm saying? Like and put it there. But I think that in some ways I have benefited from that sense overall in terms of having a career. But I think it costs something too, you know? And not even just in terms of my own mental health.

I think like in terms of the value of my product, I think that I've seen a bunch of examples, especially in independent music, where the mystery brings all the value. Right. I have no mystery. I know what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, but you do.

I mean, cause it's kind of like you can't help. Like I think if you're a really talented artist, you're always going to see mysterious because you know what I mean? Like it's just wild that anyone can even do that. You know, and so in that there's something really cool. But yeah, I think the archetype of the rock star is really changing, you know?

And now if like someone's being all mysterious and not really interacting, I think there's a general suspicion that starts emerging where people are like, come on, who do you think you are? Like in the old days, not talking to people, it's like it's a rock star, what do you want? They're not going to talk to you, that's whoever the fuck.

They're unreachable. Now it's like, okay, well, I guess you're, what are you, some kind of fucking rock star? Right, so it feels pretentious now. Yeah. But the thing about indie rap specifically is that, and I think this whole thing is informed by people having generally kind of low expectations

of like the artistry of rap, because of that, a little pretense goes a really long way in indie rap. It really like, people get really excited when they can't see a person's face as a rapper. They get really, really excited about that. When it's like, whoa, who is this? Right. You know, like that's, and then all the think pieces

come out and everybody's guessing. Like, you know, so being elusive inside of rap music, especially on the independent side, you know, there's some real benefits to it. Right. And when I say I don't have any mystery, I mean, I can't access that. Right.

You know. I'm glad, I'm glad that you can't access that. I think that whole thing, no offense to everyone, who am I gonna offend? We don't know they are anyway. It doesn't matter. Ha, ha, fuck you. I don't know who you are.

Ha, ha, ha, ha. But to me, that all forms of mask wearing musicians, to me, that seems just like a brilliant way to get an actor to go to your shows. You know what I mean? And not have to be there. You just play your music over the speakers and someone wearing the mask pretends to be rapping.

Do you know anything about MF Doom? Yes, I've heard a little bit about this, where people were confused about yes, but could you talk about it a little bit? Okay, he's my favorite rapper of all time, like all time. He made the absolute best rap music for me, my personal taste that ever existed. He actually passed away late last year.

He wore a mask, like inspired by Dr. Doom from Marvel Comics. After already having had an early part of his career in the 90s, where he was in a rap group as a very public figure whose face was out there, his brother ended up dying in an accident. His brother was in, he was in a group with. And then their record label shelved their album

after that too. And so he just spiraled, became kind of like an alcoholic. And then he started showing up in New York at like open mics with his face covered, like with a stocking. And like doing these new songs that he had been working on like in his basement. You know what I'm saying?

It was real raw, like throw away all the rules, sample, whatever, these new songs that were really exciting. And then from that point forward, he always wore this metal mask. And there was a time, I would say between like 2010, 2012, maybe, maybe a little earlier than that. He started sending an imposter to do his shows. He started sending a guy with the same physical build as him

with the mask on to go do shows. And they would just be playing basically the song over the PA like you just described. And the guy would be holding the mic to his mouth and stomping back and forth on stage. I was at a couple of those shows, they were deeply upsetting, deeply upsetting. You knew?

You knew it wasn't him? We knew once the show started, it wasn't him. You know what I'm saying? Like we bought tickets, we show up to the show and like, wait, this isn't him, you know? And it was upsetting. Come to find out later, not that this excuses it. He wasn't born in America.

Yeah. And he'd never been naturalized. So he had gone to do a European tour and when he came back in, they wouldn't let him back in the country. And so he was deported to the UK when his family and shit was still here. And he decided that he wanted to collect all of those,

collect all that show money for the next couple of years, even though he couldn't come back. So that's why he had sent the guy in his place. Fuck, that is the worst explanation. Just making money. I thought maybe he was doing a critique of identity. The end of the day, man, this is a hustle. It's a hustle.

It's a hustle just like anything else is, you know? And he was in a position where it wasn't a bunch of other ways he could make money. So he put out records still. He put out records still and then for them a couple of years, he had somebody else doing the shows. Until that jig was up because people stopped booking him. Yeah, what the fuck?

Yeah, you're like, when he shows up, you're like, take off the fucking mask, let's see now. Or talk to us between songs like a normal person. You could just start recording like just very generic things that you could say. But this makes me think of, I think, like one of the great emerging problems. Like it couldn't get worse for musicians

as far as monetizing goes these days. I mean, you know, it seems like musicians are in a really brutal predicament. It's rough and it's fucked up. And it's one of those things where like people assuming history continues are gonna look back and be like, what the fuck? They were getting so exploited by these big companies.

And like, this is the kind of thing where the government should be stepping in. And like, you can't just pay somebody, you know, five cents or whatever you're paying. Not even a penny. Not even a, you can't do that. That's insane, you can't do that. But that's where you're at now.

It sucks, but like, I think it's gonna get worse in this deep fake stuff that we're looking at a time where like, and I don't mean like immediately, but 10, a decade max, where AI and AI is just gonna start where like someone's gonna be able to grab you, your voice and speak into a microphone, rapping as you and everybody's gonna have duplicates. And some of these duplicates,

this is the part that fucks with my head. Some of these duplicates, they might get more successful than you. You know, it's the nuke, it's like soul, instead of copyright infringement, soul right infringement, you know, and so the power of identity is gonna get that much more diluted, you know? It's till like fame itself becomes an impossibility

because anytime anyone becomes famous, triplets and multiple, zillions of them will suddenly appear everywhere. What do you think, how as an artist, like how can you protect yourself? What are musicians even doing to like get ready for this shit or to deal with the shit that's happening now? I think in a lot of ways,

the people who are gonna be targeted by this technology that is probably gonna be very expensive, even though it's attainable, I think they're gonna go for the pop music first because that's gonna be the easiest to do. Like I think that the robot, when the robot start writing pop music, Taylor Swift, Keith Urban,

maybe potentially, well not, definitely the singer songwriters, like they're in trouble then. Because the robots are gonna write great songs. And like, I don't, what I assume is that the rich people will come up with legal ways to protect themselves and maybe we can hide under those.

Because those people, like there's a lot of people invested in those artists. Right. And them being successful in terms of them being a one to one person. Right. So I have faith that they will legally protect themselves. And I also think that like,

there's a lot of artists you're gonna want to copy before you get to me. You know what I'm saying? Cause what's most likely to happen if you copied me is that you would make less money than me. You know what I'm saying? So I don't know if that's where you wanna put your chips if you're the robot rap pirates.

You probably wanna go for Drake, you know? We'll see, I know, but I mean, this is the thing. I mean, you're, yes, I guess they're gonna go for Drake or whatever, but you'll see, people are gonna start copying you and I'm going to be one of them. No, I would. I totally would, man.

See, that's the other thing. Like I get the liberation of the masked performer because, you know, I'm sure you feel this. Like there's times you want to do something completely different. Yes, absolutely. But you're trapped in your body. Everybody knows what you look like.

Everybody knows what you sound like. And so it's like going in another direction. Like you have to either do like, I guess like what Bowie did. But you know. Yes, what's that fantasize about? We, every, like not just as an artist, but as a person, you know, just completely like, like getting out of your old life and starting a new life. So maybe part of what this technology could do is like,

let us swap identities or something, you know? So it's like, you make podcasts for a few months. I'll make music for a few months and destroy your career. What happened to him? My podcast will explode. The narrative itself might be worth it for me. Oh, God. Because then I can take the story of it

and make my next album about that. It's easy. It writes itself. It writes itself. But look, we have about 14 minutes. And this is another question that I love to ask. Artist I respect. Where do your,

do you have any theories on where your ideas come from? You know, we talked about Robert Anton Wilson. Yes. On that other conversation that we had. And he's the one to introduce the notion to me that we might be receptors of like alien intelligence. And that all of our creativity could potentially be ideas from another place just filtered

through our conscious minds. And there's part of me that thinks that's true. There's another part of me that deeply understands that every idea is just taking something and breaking it and reconstituting it in some other way. Cool. You know. And so like, especially with hip hop,

that's where hip hop literally comes from. It's taking other people's songs and breaking them. And making them something else, you know. And that sort of repurposing is just so much a part of our creative landscape. Like we're doing a podcast now, which is something somebody else started, you know. And different people throughout time have repurposed

this idea of recording a conversation all these different ways, you know. So I don't know. I think that I am keen to that idea of looking around for things to break, you know. And I'm also aware that sometimes entirely new things that don't exist pop into my mind and I don't know where they come from.

Yeah. But it starts with breaking something. I think it ends with breaking something. Like even if it's a new idea, like, it's so hard to just introduce something completely novel into people's minds to let alone the marketplace of any kind. You know, it kind of always has to start with some reference point.

Yeah. Totally. And I think at that point, you are breaking something. Yeah. Yeah. Fuck, that is so heavy. I don't think people understand that. I mean, in general, when they're thinking,

like when we're thinking about how this process is working, it definitely doesn't involve, you know, there was a time where that was considered. Remember in the, there was a period, maybe I don't think it still exists. It'd be a musty take if it did, where people thought like hip hop was like theft, that the, that you were stealing from others and blah,

blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, it was like people losing power basically, right? But. I mean, people still think that. And honestly, there is a bit of truth to that. But the same bit of truth extends all over the place, like where there are scenes from movies that are shot for shot remakes of a scene

from a different movie. And it's like, is that stealing? Is that inspiration? Like, is the scene itself copyrighted, even if there's different people and different lighting and different cameras capturing it? Like, it's really easy to take hip hop and look at it through a lens that says,

this is the unacceptable kind of stealing. It's really easy to do that, you know, because you're taking a copyrighted work and putting it inside of another copyrighted work. And you have, and in some cases, especially early hip hop, they didn't do much to it. You know, they looped it or they put like extra drums over it, you know, so it's really easy

if you're James Brown to be like, hey, that's my song, not gonna ask me nothing, you know? And James Brown's got a point, right? Because in some cases, part of what the appeal of the song is, is that James Brown wrote this really cool part of a song that people like listening to. Sometimes that's the appeal. So like, you do have to have a certain reverence for that,

but I think the narrow view of it as straight theft really does hip hop a disservice and a lot of the creative in our world, you know? Well, it seems like a fairly neophyte perspective, you know, because anytime you read about the great artists, they're always like, oh, I'm a thief. The one, you know what I mean? They're always like, I steal those.

I fucking steal stuff all the time. And they're shameless about it. And quite often they'll act like, what? What do you think there's an original, you're gonna make an original thing, go ahead. And comedy, it's different though. Because like, mother fuck, you can't steal a joke. You can't even like, even if you have the original idea,

because a lot of comedy, you know, it's math. It's just math. So like, if you put two variables together, you know, probably you're gonna, there's a few similarities. Even if people are never meet, or they're gonna maybe say the same thing, to the point where if you, I've done jokes, and then like, realized, seen like a,

I did a joke for the longest time. I hadn't seen Bill Hicks do it. And then I saw Bill Hicks doing the joke way, of course, better than, way funnier than my version of it. I thought she meant, of course, it was a long time ago. I didn't know if you were gonna say what was going on. No, it was like, no, it was a long time ago. It was also fucking up, it was Bill Hicks.

So he's gonna write a better joke to me. But you know, all I'm saying is like, it's an easy thing to do it, but we try to avoid it. But this makes me wonder your take on honesty when it comes to writing too. Not honesty in the sense of like, copyright and all that bullshit, but honesty in the sense of like,

there's like comedians who feel like they have to have had the experience before they write the joke. Oh gosh. And songwriting? I absolutely not. I think, and this is the thing, like, I think hip hop specifically suffers

on a large scale from a lack of imagination. People think they have to be authentic to whatever they lived. Or they feel like they can only pardon, they can only embellish in a certain direction that plays into the expectations of certain lifestyles. We're like, I want hip hop to be about like dragons and you know what I'm saying?

And magic snails. And like, I want this as a craft as a genre to be just as open as, you know, Lord of the Rings. Yeah. You know, like, so for me, my stance is always like, write whatever you want. You know, you shouldn't, I think maybe you shouldn't wrap

as if you really have magic powers. If you don't really believe that maybe. Yeah. Like maybe you shouldn't try to sell truth as a lie. Yeah. But I'm all for the expansion past, like the truth of the material world and the time space that you live in.

I want it to be as big to contain every possible perspective, realistic, fantastic, all of it, you know? Mike, please be friends with me. Of course, man. After this. Of course, man. Let's trade emails to the end of time.

Let's maybe even link up and drink whatever beverages we both enjoy at some time that becomes possible again. Thank you. That would be fucking amazing. Thank you so much for your time. I've learned so much from this conversation. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

I'm like honored that there was anything that you could learn from me as many people as you've talked to. That's really an honor for me. Man, are you kidding? You are, ah, it's very nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too, man. I wonder if you could direct people listening

to where they can find you. I'm typically like present on Twitter at Mike Underscore Eagle. I have a website, mikeeagle.net, which has all the portals to all of my social stuff and then the stuff that I'm doing, Patreon, my podcast, network, all that stuff. What's your Patreon?

Patreon.com slash openMikeeagle. Cool. All right, God bless you. Hade Krishna, thank you so much. Thank you, brother. I appreciate you. Thank you for your time, man. Appreciate you, thank you.

That is my new friend, openMikeeagle. All the links you need to find, Mike, are gonna be at duckatrustle.com. A tremendous thank you to our glorious and noble sponsors. Thank you, Shudder. Thank you, Zip Recruiter. Thank you, Purple.

But most importantly, thank y'all for listening. If you wanna find me, I've been hired as a new Peloton instructor. I go by the name Ringo Stardt and I'm gonna be leading high intensity workouts only. So look for me on Peloton and I will see you next week. Until then, Hade Krishna.

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