Good Life Project - Hrishikesh Hirway | Life Beyond Song Exploder

Episode Date: March 24, 2022

Hrishikesh Hirway has been making music for as long as he can remember and, as an adult, spent years building a career in the industry, writing, performing, producing, and touring. But, it was a moment where he took a bit of a pause to re-evaluate that led him to record an interview with a friend about the story and creative decisions behind a song that would change everything. That conversation eventually became the opening episode of the podcast, Song Exploder, which itself then exploded into a global phenomenon that I’ve been obsessed with since hearing that first episode. Now, it’s grown into not just an award-winning podcast, but also a Netflix original television series where musicians break down the creative process behind their songs, featuring many of the biggest names in music like Alicia Keys, Billie Eilish, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Dua Lipa, The Killers, so many others. And, building on the success of Song Exploder, Hrishikesh has now grown a network of shows, producing and co-hosting the award-winning podcasts Home Cooking, with chef and author Samin Nosrat, and The West Wing Weekly, with actor Joshua Malina. He’s also the host and producer of the Partners podcast.All the while, he’s continued to write and perform his own music, releasing four albums under the moniker The One AM Radio, and an EP with Moors, his project with Lakeith Stanfield. As a composer, he has written music for film, television, and podcasts, including the score for the Netflix series "Everything Sucks!" and the theme to ESPN’s "30 for 30" podcast. Recently, he released two singles, “Between There and Here," which features Yo-Yo Ma, and “Home,” featuring Jay Som. These, in fact, are the first songs he’s released in 10 years, and the first under his own name. His new EP, Rooms I Used to Call My Own is out March 30.You can find Hrishikesh at: Website | Instagram | PodcastsIf you LOVED this episode you’ll also love the conversations we had with Kaki King. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So many times you appreciate a musician with some degree of remove. There's literally like a stage that they're on. And I always had this desire for a song exporter to be a way to listen to an artist that you might admire and just see how mortal they were or something, how much this great piece of work that they created came out of the series of small, very human instincts and decisions. So my guest today, Rishikesh Hirway, he's been making music for as long as he can remember and as an adult spent years building

a career in the industry, writing, performing, producing, and touring. But it was a moment where he took a bit of a pause to reevaluate that led him to record an interview with a friend about the story and creative decisions behind a single song that would change everything. That conversation eventually became

the opening episode of the podcast Song Exploder, which itself then exploded into a global phenomenon that I have been obsessed with since hearing that very first episode. As you'll hear in the conversation, I literally know where I was years ago when I listened to the first conversation. And now it's grown into not just an award-winning podcast, but also a Netflix original television series where musicians break down the creative process behind their songs, featuring many of the biggest names in music, people like Alicia Keys, Billie Eilish, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Dua Lipa, The Killers, and so many others. And building on the success of Song Exploder, Rishikesh has also now grown a

network of shows, producing and co-hosting the award-winning podcast Home Cooking with chef and author Simin Nosrat, who is a former guest on our show as well, and the West Wing Weekly with actor Joshua Molina. He's also the host and producer of the Partners podcast. And while he's continued to write and perform music of his own, he's released albums under the moniker The 1AM Radio and an EP with Moors, his project with Lakeith Stanfield. As a composer, he's written music for film and television and podcasts, including the score for the Netflix series, Everything Sucks, and the theme to ESPN's 30 for 30 podcast. And recently, he released two singles, Between There and Here, which features Yo-Yo Ma, and Home, featuring J-Som. These, in fact, are the first songs that he's

released of his own in 10 years, and the first one under his own name, not some other band or brand. And we dive into all of the different decisions and stops and moments along his incredible journey. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him! We need him! Y'all need a pilot?

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Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. You know, it's interesting. So there's so much that I'm excited to explore with you. But I have to start out with something that you brought to my attention, I believe, last night. Bjorn Korn? Yeah. I'm literally in Boulder, Colorado, like running around to natural food stores trying to find this stuff. I'm like, you and Simi made it sound so good. Yeah, I think you might have to mail order it.

I know. I think that's going to be the place I'm going to end up going. Excited to dive into your path, your story, Song Exploder, the sort of like incredible lineup of shows that you've now been involved in bringing to life, and this sort of like you stepping back into the world of your own music. Let's take a little bit of a step back in time and share a little bit of the origin story as well. I think you've described growing up parents, first generation immigrants, and really looked at you as saying, okay, so there's this sort of

fairly narrowly defined set of professional options for you. But even for the youngest days, music was just something that seemed like it was sort of like a DNA level options for you. But even for the youngest days, music was just something that seemed like it was sort of like a DNA level impulse in you. Yeah, I always loved it. You know, it's funny because my parents actually suggested it to me. I mean, it was their idea for me to take piano lessons. And I really, I loved it immediately. But it started with them. So how old were you when you actually started piano lessons? I was around six or seven. Yeah.

Was, I'm curious, was it because at that age, a lot of kids are introduced to sort of like the mandatory music lessons and, um, and becomes more of a burden than something that you're just drawn to even at the youngest, youngest age for you. Was it something then where there was just something that immediately lit up in you? Or was it like this gradual thing where it started as Oh, this is what you'll do. And it became something where this is what I yearn to do. No, I really loved it right away. I mean, definitely became a chore as I got as I got further along, and I had to sort of study and it became harder, you know, became more work to actually learn the pieces that I had to learn.

But just the idea of sitting down at the piano and playing and just like making sounds, making music, that all was really joyful just from the beginning. I have a bit of a similar experience, except on the guitar side of things. But it's interesting because I always wonder when, you know, part of the joy of, I think, any musical instrument, it comes when you have this sort of baseline level of proficiency where you gain the ability to just hear something in your head and then start to noodle and figure out what would it be like for me to make this? And I feel like that's a turning point for so many people sort of early in life. It's like where you go from having to do it to, Oh, this is something bigger. Yeah. Yeah. I, um, I really enjoyed messing around on the piano a lot more than, than doing my homework. I don't know what my parents expected or really,

if they had any understanding of what they were getting themselves and me into when they suggested it. I think they were imagining that is just something that would be nice, you know, just sort of something that's kind of part of a well-rounded upbringing and education. And I don't think they had any idea that it would be such a huge part of my life. So when do you start to have this inkling inside of you that says, you know, maybe this isn't something that I just love that gives me this feeling, but maybe this is actually something that is the thing that I quote, want to do. I think that that happened sort of gradually. You know, when I got to middle school,

I started playing in the school band and I started doing sort of extracurriculars around music. You know, I played in like the orchestra pit in the school play. And I think I started to feel some sense of identity around music at that point. I was like, I really love music. And I really, you know, I was 12 years old, 13 years old, and just in love with all the music that I would listen to. And the idea that I could connect to it in some way, because I also played music in my small way, was really important to me. Yeah. It's like, maybe I'm a part of this lineage. Not that you're thinking that when you're 12 years old. When you start to sort of get a little bit older, and this actually becomes more of a legitimate thing that you're thinking about,

well, maybe this is actually what I'm going to do. And I'm always curious when you have that conversation with your parents, when you're still at a younger age, where you're kind of still looking for their approval, what's that conversation like? It was several conversations. You know, I think it was more, it was more like I slowly eroded their sense of what I might do rather than, you know, having one conversation that really changed anything. They just kind of eventually stopped trying to talk me out of it. But I think, you know, at first, I think at first the conversation was really just around

wanting to do it more and more that I wanted to take time off from other things that I was doing and sort of dedicate myself to music. And that was easier, you know, for them to understand that I was just like, this is something I'm serious about. But I think they still imagined it as a hobby for me, a hobby that I was very serious about, but a hobby. I think it was really after college, right after college, I was living at my parents' house and, you know, I was working my first job post-college in Massachusetts, close to where I grew up. So I was staying with them and I went on tour and I remember coming back. So at this point I was, you know, 21 years old. It's not like I was a kid, but that was the moment when I, for me, I realized that music was what I

wanted to do. That was the thing that I wanted to dedicate my life to in a way that was, you know, where I wanted that to be my job and not just something that I fit into the gaps between what my job might allow. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting when you make a decision like that also, right? Because there, when you say, I want music to be my job, my life, that doesn't automatically tell you what the path is going to look like, what the trajectory is going to look like. I think so many of us start out in bands or just singer-songwriter, kind of doing our own thing.

But the universe of opportunities to say yes to expressing this impulse is, on the one hand, beautifully broad and freedom-inducing. And also, you know, along with that very often comes the anxiety of the broadness. I'm wondering how, you know, in those early days and you're trying to figure out like, where am I in this space of things in the world of music? What's that experience like for you? Well, the tour that I had done was, um, it was the first sort of time that I felt like, I don't know, like I had some kind of momentum or something. I was, I was, it was not a long tour. I'd been on a longer tour in the summer, but, but this was one that just felt it was a little more, it was well attended.

I played, you know, a festival in, in Florida. I played to more people and, you know, sold some records. I came home with money in my pocket. And so all that felt like, it felt like there was some, some path that I couldn't see, but I could imagine existed, you know, if I could just figure out a way to, to get there. And that was the first time I felt that. I think one of the things that was funny about that tour, though, is I was playing my sort of very quiet, sad solo music, you know, just me and me and guitar, or sometimes me, guitar and a violinist, or me, guitar and a drum machine. But like really, this kind of very quiet, somber, kind of set at punk shows. I was on tour with with my friends

band, and they were a very, very loud, screamy punk band. But we were very close friends. And when we were fans of each other's music, and they asked me if I wanted to go on tour with them. And I said, Yes, they, you know, they had all these shows, book, and they brought me along. So it was great for me to get the experience. But it was in terms of knowing where, where I fit into the landscape, it was a little confusing, because it was definitely not the music that the people who were there to the people who were coming to those shows weren't really set up to um see what i was playing as you're describing that visions of like the blues brothers playing like behind a chicken wire fence on stage and like being asked what do you play we play both

kinds of music country and western sort of like That vision came to me as you're describing that a little bit. Yeah. Luckily, everybody was really nice. And I think one of the things that gave me some encouragement was that if I could reach people, even in that context, you know, the fact that I could sell a few records here and there, that people would come up and talk to me after the shows and say that they liked the music. That was really meaningful to me because the shows and say that they liked the music. That was really meaningful to me because I felt like I had won over people who weren't necessarily

inclined to what I was doing. Yeah. I mean, how interesting also, right? Because I wonder if when you think about the audience that would go to a punk show, you make certain assumptions about who they are and what their preferences are. And then to hear them come up to you and say, oh, yes. And you're like, I'm this and this, it must've been so interesting to you just from a sort of like almost psychological profiling standpoint. Well, you know, I mean, like I said, a lot of them were there to see my friend's band. I was a fan of them, of their music as well. So we had some overlap just from that standpoint, you know, that I could, I knew that their music was something I responded to. It was something that these people, they responded to it as well. And when I say it's punk, punk is such a broad umbrella. I think it's easy to imagine a very narrow genre of music, but it's actually, it can mean so many things. And, you know, so there's an emotional strain of punk that I think has a lot

of overlap with the kind of sad stuff that I was doing, even if what I was singing was really quiet. Yeah, no, that makes sense. I've heard you describe your earlier impulses or your earlier expectations about your own musical abilities and what you're creating as saying, if I can't be a genius, then why even bother? Tell me about this. Yeah, it's a hard instinct to get rid of. I think, I don't know how much of this is my upbringing and how much of this is my own instincts, but there's a desire to be excellent at whatever you try. And that kind of feedback, whether it's internal or external, that like, yeah, I did this thing well, it's really strong. And if I do something and I know that I'm not good at it, I immediately want to just give it up. It's very

hard for me to just sort of persevere through something when I know that I don't have, have much natural ability for it. And really like natural ability isn't even enough. It's like, what I really want is just to be, yeah, I want to be excellent at the stuff that I'm doing. And if I'm not excellent at it, then I don't want to be doing it. It's, it feels, it feels like a curse that I carry that I'm carrying around. I think you're not carry, that I'm carrying around. I think you're not the only one that carries that around. Yeah. You know, I think it just stifles so many of us in so many different ways.

You described an experience that you had, I guess, when you were in college, studying photography, where there was a biweekly crit, or if anyone's ever been in any version of that, whether you're in art class, you know, it's generally this, you go around the room and everybody's work gets exposed and you personally like down to your skeleton feel utterly exposed on every level. And a lot of people experience that, especially if you have this impulse towards perfection, towards just extraordinary high level expression.

A lot of people experience that as just brutalizing, but it sounds like you experienced it a little bit differently and actually in a way even enjoyed it. Yeah, because I think in that context, I mean, with art in all forms, there isn't a perfect score that you can get. I think the idea of, oh, have you done this expertly is really defined by what you're setting out to achieve. So you're defining the parameters of your own work. And if you say, this was my intention, and I was hoping to capture these ideas and these feelings and express it in these ways, then you're really the one making the rules. So that's really, I find that really exciting. You get to sort of set what the game is and then you, and then you

get to play it as opposed to being forced to play something that someone else has come up with and just, you know, to just deal with whatever your own ability is to perform in that or not. Yeah. But I mean, at the same time, it's also, it's you on the line. It's almost like if you're playing covers, you know, if you're recreating the work of masters and, you know, somebody doesn't like what you do, it's almost like, well, maybe they didn't like the original. They just didn't like the way I played somebody else's stuff. But when it's you, you know, and you get that direct feedback and somebody says effectively,

no, it can land on the one hand it's granular it's great feedback and you have this opportunity to just express what is in your heart but also when it's not received well it's so much more personal that's true you know i think it is more personal and i think that you know it's funny that the idea of cover songs is uh an apt one because that's part of the reason why I didn't like piano for so long, you know, the idea of learning these, learning pieces, learning classical pieces, and just interpreting them, as opposed to getting to make your own thing. That wasn't as fun for me, because yeah, you could you could say, Oh, well, you didn't

play this. Well, you you know, there are thousands of performances and recordings of, of these pieces and all these ways in which people have done it better than you. But if you're making a song that no one has ever heard before and saying, singing something that no one has ever sung before, then what do you really have to compare it to? I think, yeah, if someone doesn't like it, it's certainly brutal, but I think it's worth it because if somebody does like it, it's so much more meaningful. Yeah. No, I mean, it's funny as you're saying that, I literally had this flash of the Song Exploder Netflix trailer where there's a line from Alicia Keys in that where she's like,

I show up every day and I don't know if anything's going to come. But what if it does? What if that thing that will like move millions of people at what if this is the day that it comes? And it's sort of like you, you say yes to all the like to all no's in the name of that moment. I think so often. Yeah. Yeah. I think, um, anybody who makes something is an optimist at some core level. Yeah. I think you have to be, or else you don't stay around for very long. Yeah. Given how much you have to sort of like move through. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman.

I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot.

Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. So as you're sort of stepping into the world of music, building a career, you know, like doing the typical thing, working, you got to work multiple ways, like performing, writing, and then also doing things that cover yourself and the world. And eventually stepping into music, I know you start producing and putting your own stuff out for a chunk of time under the name, the 1am radio. Do you get to a point, I'm curious, where, you know, you're like, okay, so people are saying yes to this on a level where I can kind of center it in the thing that I'm doing. But in order for enough people to say yes, to pay me

enough to take care of myself, I need to factor them into what I'm creating also. And I'm always, I'm curious about that tension with all, all different types of artists. I'm wondering whether you sort of hit that, that moment as well. And if so, how you move through it. Yeah, I, I hit that moment about 10 years into trying to do music full time and probably about three years after I first managed to do that. So I was working on a record. It was what ended up becoming the last full length that I put out as the 1AM Radio. And in between actually working on the music, I was also working at the record label where the 1AM Radio was signed. And so on the one hand, I got to have extraordinary access to the inner workings of the label because I was part of it. And at the same time, I also witnessed how different artists were prioritized based on just their commercial success. And it had nothing to do

with creatively what they were doing. It really had to do with just how different parts of the machinery of the music industry moved for them. And I realized that what I was doing and the kind of music that I made just wasn't, things weren't moving in that same way for me. And I didn't know if it was something that I was capable of doing, if I could change what I made to open those kinds of doors so that I could have that kind of success. But it really, it really messed me up. I started, I finished the record and I tried to, I tried to sort of push here and there in ways that I could to basically try and make it feel like it would be something that I could imagine being like commercially successful.

I don't know that I was, it's not necessarily like I was thinking of like I was compromising on things and not making a record that I would want to make anyway, but I was definitely thinking about that, you know, and, and, and spent money on trying to make the, you know, I spent money trying to invest in the record in a way. I had some hopes for what it might bring me. And then it didn't, it just, it just didn't work out. And I think there are a lot of reasons for that. And luck is certainly a part of it, but all in all, it just, I got really disheartened and it's just started to feel like, well, maybe it's just never gonna, it's just never gonna happen for me. Yeah. I feel like so many people reach that point and so many people end up just completely walking away at that point. And understandably so, you know, it's a hard moment because you have this thing that's in your mind. And very often you work so hard to just be able to close the gap between what you hear or see and your ability to express it at a level that matches your level of like, I feel's actually not doing this. It's not making other people feel the same way on a level where they're actually going to show up, exchange value, and let me keep doing it. And you especially having this insider view of being inside the label and seeing what's happening with artists based on that. There's got to be this really interesting confluence of experience. So, so where do you go from there? Cause it, I would imagine that's also probably right around the time that song exploder starts.

So was song exploder something that was bubbling in the back of your mind for a long time, or was this something that kind of dropped around the time where you're just in this moment of existential questioning and, and it's just something that you decide, well, let me, let me go over to my friend Jimmy's house and see what happens. There was a little, there were a couple of years in between, but the idea was bubbling for a while. At first I thought maybe it's time for me to try some, something else just in a, in a very vague way. You know, maybe I had been pushing and pushing and pushing, trying to make my music career happen in a way that had some momentum and felt like it was really real for so long. And after feeling like

I kind of stumbled out of, out of the gate instead of the way that I wanted to with the, you know, last record, I thought, okay, well, what else can I do? And, and right around that time, I got the chance to score a film that a friend of mine had written and directed. And that was a reason why I had moved to Los Angeles in the first place. And so it was really exciting. And I worked on that movie and it ended up going to Sundance. And I thought, okay, maybe this is actually the path. Maybe it took me this long to get here.

And now I'm going to score films maybe instead of or maybe on top of what I was doing. But it just felt like a chance to do something different with my brain. And then eventually I got a second film. But it's not like after the first film, suddenly people were like, hey, score my film too. I still had to really hustle to try and find another opportunity. And then I did. And then that film came out and it went, you know, it played at film festivals and that was a film called our Nixon and CNN ended up buying it and airing it. And that was, it was like the biggest audience that I'd had in terms of a score that I'd done. But even still, similarly,

it's not like it led to people knocking on my door saying, Hey, we want you to score our film. So by that time, it was around 2013. And I was thinking, okay, I can just keep pushing uphill on either my music career or on this aspiring film scoring career, but, or maybe I could just stop and think about what else is in my brain. What else, what are some other ways that I could use what's in here and make something, put something out in the world and, you know, also try and address the very, uh, real pragmatic issue of, well, how do I pay my bills? Um, now that I'm not touring full time and I'm not scoring a film and I'm not, you know, engaged in being a working musician in the way that I was. So all of that was kind of in the pot, you know, part of the stew for when Song Exploder started.

Yeah. So it's like you're trying on different things. You know, it's interesting also, you know, if you sort of zoom the lens out, I know your dad was a food scientist when you were younger and he would, you've told stories about how he would regularly bring home just like every imaginable food, generally all the stuff that was actually not your favorites. And he had, you know, a bit of a mantra, which was something different. And it sounds like as you're sort of like deepening into your life, you're reaching this moment where you're sort of like, you're in this space where there's something that is deeply passionate and connected about just the world, the culture,

the expression, the creation of music. It's like a Goldilocks moment to almost like, I tried this. I've tried this. And that's something different. It seems like you're being dropped into this mode where you're sort of like asking yourself that same question. That was your dad's sort of mantra when you were a kid. Yeah. I mean, it was not ideal. You know, I think in the Goldilocks scenario, it would have been perfect to walk in and get the right bed on the first try and get the right bowl of porridge on the first try and just be like, Oh, this is so wonderful sailing through life. Everything is just right. But yeah, that wasn't the case. So when you decide on that faithful day, okay, I'm, I've got this idea, you know, to sort of, and to, to, to tell a story and your friends with Jimmy Tamburella, who does this project, I think it was a one-time

project back then, the Postal Service, to kind of go over to his house and just sit down and say, let's just record, let's deconstruct this incredible song. In your mind, when you're doing that, are you going over there because this is the start of something new or are you just going over there because you're like, this is interesting. Let's just see what happens. I think I had ambitions for it already. You know, I wanted to talk to Jimmy because he's a dear friend and somebody I felt comfortable with, but also because I knew that that Postal Service record was something that a lot of

people loved. There were a lot of people who were fans of that music. So that was part of my thinking. I was like, well, it's not just that I'm interested in this. I think a lot of people will be interested in this. A lot of people or a lot of musicians? No, I think a lot of people. There are certainly lots of people who love music who aren't musicians.

And I think there are people who are interested in how things get made just at a general level, at least maybe I was biased about that, but because I really love, you know, I used to love all of those, you know, like PBS videos of like, Oh, we're going to go into the Crayola crayon factory and watch how crayons get made. the close-up shots of the crayons getting wrapped in their individual colored paper and things like that. I loved all that stuff. And to be able to take that kind of approach and apply it to music felt like it would appeal to a lot of people, not just musicians. I wasn't thinking of it being something just for musicians. Yeah, no. And I completely agree with that. I mean, if you look at other,

if you look at shows like how I built this, like, I think there's just this broad, pervasive fascination with how things that, that touch our lives, especially at scale, like how did they come into existence, you know, and, and not just what was the process, but what was actually happening in the mind of the creator, you know, in the experience and the decisions and the feelings that they were making. I think we're fascinated just by those deeper stories from human beings. Yeah. I mean, I was someone who would buy the criterion versions of, you know, movies that I loved and watch all the featurettes and listen to the director's commentary. So it wasn't just in music that I felt this way. And I think, you know, it goes back to crits. Those were

opportunities to listen to artists, whether they were my peers or whether they were people who were kind of coming in and visiting school, talk about their work and why they wanted to make what they wanted to make and how they did it. So you create this first, basically, breakdown with Jimmy of this one song. And when you leave that conversation, you go there, you record it, you get the different pieces of it, you see how it all came together. When you leave that first conversation, do you know immediately that something special just happened and that you've got something here that might be pretty incredible? No, I think I didn't really see what it was. It didn't really take shape for me until I could edit it together. It was an hour-ish long conversation, lots of

starts and stops. And then when I edited it together, it was, 10, 11 minutes long. And in that form, I thought, oh, this is nice. This is, I, I got what I was, you know, trying to aim for. And there were some, some, like, I got to learn things that I was surprised by about his process and about the song. And it changed the way that I heard the song by the time I was done. And that was really the thing that I was looking for. Would your ears taken this song in a new way once you'd heard this story and once you'd heard those pieces on their own. And once that happened for me, I thought, Oh, maybe other people have this feeling too.

You made a really interesting decision in the edit also, which has become a sort of like a consistent through line for years now, which is, and it's, and it's a, it makes the edit a lot harder, which is, okay, so if you sit down with Jimmy for an hour, you've got an hour of tape, you know, part of that is going to be you asking him questions, eliciting, you know, like what, what about this? What about this? What about this? And very often what hits the airways is the entire interaction. And in a way, because it's easier to do that, you make this really interesting sort of editorial in a way, because it's easier to do that, you make this really interesting sort of editorial call to say, I just want it to be the voice of the

creator and all the things that went into the creative process, which can actually make it much harder to create the compelling edit because all of a sudden you're missing, you're like, ooh, we missed this tape. We missed this tape, which is why so many radio shows and podcasts have voiceovers that add that in. I'm curious about that decision for you. Well, I wanted the show to feel, I guess, professional, for lack of a better word. You know, my background in punk had really instilled in me this desire to do everything myself. You know, DIY punk was the, that was the world I grew up in and D-ing I-Y was what I, um, what I was used to. But I also had some, you know, feeling of pride of like, I didn't want it to feel that way. I didn't want it to feel like

it was some homemade thing, even though it was. I wanted it to feel like it was professional and had some air of legitimacy. And one of the ways that I thought I could give it that legitimacy was by imitating what felt like legitimate nonfiction that I had seen, that I was most familiar with, which was documentaries. Documentary films, they would present the story, usually, without hearing the voice of a director or an interviewer, you would just have the camera pointed at the subject, and they would speak directly, you know, kind of to the audience. And so that was what I was trying to do. I was like, well, this is how you this is how you do it, if you want it to feel real, you don't have my stumbling questions in here. You

just have this perfectly delivered narrative that's been carved out of all the raw material. Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting to me that the form of media you look to was documentary filmmaking, whereas it's almost like the more natural analog that you could have looked at back then. And this was in the days really before podcasts popped. So a lot of people were looking at public radio. And then you saw shows like This American Life and Radiolab and things like that, which were hypersound design. But also there's a ton of narrator voice in that.

And that really dominated the public radio scape at that moment in time. And that wasn't the thing that you were drawn to, which is kind of interesting to me. Yeah, I think I don't feel much affinity for it. Maybe it goes back to the thing of like, I don't want to do a thing unless I'm going to be good at it. And it was never something that I, I think that those shows come out of people's experiences or desires as reporters. And I just knew that wasn't me. I'm not a journalist and I'm not a reporter. If anything, I just felt like I was somebody who made things. It came more from the art background than anything else. And so I didn't want to try and present myself

as a reporter or somebody who was telling the story for somebody or even in conjunction with somebody. I wanted to be more like, I've designed this canvas and here's their story and I've just built the frame around it. Yeah, no, I totally get that. When you take this and you decide, okay, this is going to be a podcast. This is what it is. You go through the editing process and you're ready to launch, right? You give it a name.

Fantastic name, by the way. Nobody knows that this is, you know, like this is, this is pre pre-launch and it's the night before or the 20 seconds before you hit publish to make this thing public. What's going through your mind and body just before. It's funny, you know, I actually, just before I was, I was in India for my cousin's wedding. It was going to, it was going live January 1st, 2014, but I was going to be in India before. So I actually had to finish everything, the website and set it all to publish about a

week beforehand. So I actually had a long time to kind of anticipate it. And then I was in India. So the time difference was pretty vast. And so in the middle of the day, when it finally turned midnight in California, that's when I hit publish on the thing. And I remember I was in a hotel room in Mumbai. And that's when I hit it. And then I just sort of walked away from it because everybody was asleep, even though

I was awake and I knew, you know, I, I just was like, well, I'm not going to see any reactions or hear about anything for, for a while. So in some ways it was really nice because I had no choice, but to kind of, um, uh, publish it and then just ignore it. And then, you know, and then get thrown into stuff with my family. Hmm. Yeah. So it's sort of like, um, you didn't even have the bandwidth to really obsess about it or to sort of like fret about it. It's like, okay, do what I gotta do and then go back to the family.

Yeah. I'm very good at fretting. And so it was, it was very, very lucky that I got to be in a, in a setting where I was too distracted to fret as much as I normally would. Got it. So I actually discovered that very first episode and that ended up being that first episode that you, you recorded with Jimmy Tamburello. I literally remember I, and I didn't discover it until a little bit later in 2014, but I can tell you actually, I know where I was when I heard that first episode. Like I. Like I was in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, sitting on a bench two blocks away from the water, scrolling through, just like looking for something random.

And I hit this and I hit play. And it was like, I was no longer in that space. I was drawn into this alternate universe. And I was just like, what is this? Because it doesn't sound like anything I've heard before. And I was just mesmerized. And I wonder how many versions of that story you have now heard. You know, not that many. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. That's so nice. I also it's nice, because I feel like I've sat on that bench in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

I'm imagining there's that mural with the whale, the big whale on that. Anyway, no, you know, I think one of the things that one of the side effects of editing myself out of Song Exploder is that people don't have a very personal relationship with me through the show. You know, the way that people do with other podcasts, with so many podcasts, podcasts that I listen to, you know, I feel so much affection or proximity to, to the hosts, because you hear them talking all the time, you get to hear their perspective, and they become sort of familiar figures in your listening life. But I, I don't really have that with the song exploder listeners so much because I've taken myself out. So yeah, I mean, I've certainly gotten nice emails

here and there. But no, it's still it feels very nice and surprising. I knew you were going to be fun. Tell me how to fly this thing. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot? The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever,

making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. The show becomes a phenomenon. I know you may not use that word, but I'll describe that from the outside looking in as, you know, it's extraordinary. It gains traction and it really does become a phenomenon. It opens a lot of people's eyes to what's possible. And it also

drops at a really interesting time in podcasting because right around then it was the moment where people weren't sure if podcasting was going to be around in another year. I think this was just around, I don't remember whether it was late 2013 or it was later in 2014 when Apple splits off the podcast app, installs it native on devices and then serial hits. I think it was later in 2014, actually. But before that, people were really suspect about the medium. So I'm curious about your decision to say, okay, so I could take this in a lot of different directions. And podcasting is the thing that feels like this is right. I mean, I knew it was going to be an audio only show, and I didn't know how it was going to be delivered or, you know, how people would listen to it. But when I decided that I was going to make it, you know, shape of that was.

All I knew was that there were a few podcasts that I listened to and I liked them. And I thought there was a specificity and a sort of niche quality that they allowed for that felt right for what I was doing. As the show grows and the audience gets big and your exposure gets big, the profile of guests that you start to bring on, the profile of performers that you start to bring on goes higher and higher and higher and higher. And in fairly short order, you're bringing on the biggest names in music who have been around for a really long time. Reasonably recent episode, you actually had Cat Stevens on who I grew up with his music yeah um and you deconstruct the song father and son which i have hard time listening to to this day without

being moved to almost to tears yeah and deconstruct how he remakes this song like 50 years later and and the song is a back and forth between the father and son and you know when he's doing it in his 20s he's playing both roles and now he's describing the new album they literally mix in the original track from when he was a kid and now he's you know like he's got to be in his early 70s at this point or maybe later um and he's having this conversation with his younger self on tape which is i mean when you describe that feeling of being able to experience a song differently now, it's really, really profound. When you have, you know, for a kid who starts out with just a deep love of music and wanting to play music and being on the road playing music,

and I'm assuming, and tell me if I'm wrong, that a part of that was an adoration, a fandom for just all of these different musicians of all different genres and all different ages. And then you find yourself years later sitting down with all these people. I'm curious for you just on a personal level. We've had some experiences here with Peter Frampton and Jimmy Vaughn and these folks who as a kid I was just like, wow. And then you sit down and just talk to them as human beings, especially later in life. And it's the most extraordinary conversation. How does that they find enough value in it, that they are willing to spend their time.

I mean, you know, some of these artists are so huge that they have no end to the kind of opportunities that are presented to them. And so that any of them would say, yes, it's really meaningful to me. You know, I can think about it in a sort of cerebral way that like, yeah, I put together this idea for this show and I've seen it through enough that this got to happen. But it's rare that I feel emotional about it. Sometimes people ask me that, oh, don't you get so nervous when, you know, this huge person is on the show? And despite being somebody who feels stage fright, it's, I don't, I think that it's a little bit like what we were talking about with the crit, you know, even though this is something that I made, it feels closer to the

idea of doing a cover than doing my own song. It's still more of a job in my mind than it is my art, which still feels like music to me. So, you know, we have our interaction, we have this conversation, and then they go away. And I spend a lot of time listening to their voice and putting together this episode over the course of weeks before it comes out. Maybe I'm speaking about this from, you know, these many years into it. But, you know, I would tend to fall in love with all of my guests a little bit by the end of it. And then, but I've started to realize that that's a one-way relationship for a lot of these folks, if not 99% of them.

I'm just another person that they talk to, and then they moved on, and that was it. And for me, I was like, oh, it's this really meaningful conversation. We got to connect really deeply, and isn't that special? And then I started to realize that it was only special for me. And once you start to realize that enough times, I think I kind of stopped thinking of it as being quite as special. It sounds just so cynical. So, but now I'm really curious about this, right?

Because you're creating something extraordinary that other people are experiencing as extraordinary. And even though it's almost like this is a job for you, not that you don't enjoy it in many different ways, there's something that tends to come through on the tape that feels different than the thousands of other quote interviews that these people have done. And it really feels like there's, you know, you take people who've created something where the world only experiences the final product, right? And very often they're hesitant to deconstruct all of the stumbles, the stems, the stories that went into that. But there's something that happens when they're in conversation with you. There's, you know, whether it's a shared point of reference as musicians, a psychological safety that comes out of it, that allows them to go there. And I feel like shares not just the process, but the humanity in a way that does something similar to what music does.

Thanks. I really love talking to people and I love asking them about, yeah, I love asking them about how they thought of something. It's definitely a benefit of editing the show, because I edit for the that side of things, you know, I'm drawn to the more all the moments where they feel the most human and sort of like the least sort of distant and cool musicians, which I think, you know, so many times you appreciate a musician with some degree of remove. There's literally like a stage that they're on top of that they're on. And I always had this desire for a song exporter to be a way to listen to an artist that you might admire and just see how, how mortal they were or something, how, how much this great piece of work that they created came out of the series of small, very human instincts and decisions. So I'm editing for that.

But yeah, I, I really, despite what I said before about, about, uh, oh, it's a, I don't feel emotional about who's been on the show. I do really enjoy talking to people. And I feel, I think, like I said, I think that's more a learned response the distance that i'm putting between me and it i think my instinct is to i just want to you know i just want to hang out with them and be their best friend and ask all the questions that like the way that two close friends would talk and i only have an hour or so an hour and a half with them to get to that place. I try and bring all of that. I don't know how to articulate it, but I think I feel it. And maybe they, maybe they can feel it too, that I love what they do and I want to just know more about it.

Yeah. My sense is that they probably do. I mean, and that also seeds something that you shared in a recent TED talk, which was, you know, like, what if you actually took this out of the context of music, out of the context of songs, you know, and what if you could be in conversation? What if you could simply sit across from another human being and try to just be with them, like truly and utterly with them, present with them, to listen, to see, to embrace, to hear them. You know, you described the show as we walk by houses and we generally, we see the outside of the house and it looks awesome. But like you take people inside the house and you plant this really fascinating question. What if we could just do that every day in conversation with the people that we're

sitting across from? I mean, that's one of the nice things I think about our jobs, you know, like that's what you get to do. You're you professionally get to talk to people in this dedicated kind of way. And I think it's a real, it's a real luxury and a real gift to be able to have that kind of connection with people, even just, you know, in the course of time that we're going to get to talk to each other. I don't think that a lot of people get to do that. Just sit down with somebody they've never met before and talk for an hour, hour and a half and get to know the other person. It's really, I don't take it for granted. And that was really what was behind that, that Ted talk was just knowing how much I, I appreciate that. And just wanting to express that to other people too, and just say, it's cool. And you could do it too. Yeah. It's really, it was an invitation to sort of say, you know, like, what if you woke up and just did this with one person like today, you know, and then what if you did it tomorrow? And then what if you did it tomorrow? Which I think we're all feeling like we need more of these days.

You have started to come full circle in an interesting way. So you're back to your own music. Yeah. The end of, I guess it was last year you put out between there and here. And I want to talk about that a little bit. And then the beginning of this year, another single home and you're about to hit the road. Yeah. So what's behind this, what's behind this sort of like centering of your own musical creative process again? Well, I think it was a long time coming. I needed a little bit of a break just to sort of get away from that feeling of despondency that I had after the last record came out and just get excited about making music again. And that that happened, it took a few years.

But that was a few years ago. And then it took a few years to just be able to find a way to put that feeling that desire to make music again into practice and actually do it. And then I finally was able to do that, you know, basically last year. So yeah, it's, it's, it's nice. I missed, I felt like I missed this part of who I was. I felt really disconnected from, from some core part of my identity for a long time. And so to be able to do it again is really, really satisfying. And the other thing that I had to kind of deal with was this idea of, you know, what I was grappling with before, which was like, how much do I worry about the success, like the commercial success of the music? And I decided I just had to, I couldn't,

which is easier said than done, especially now as the songs are coming out. And of course, you just want everybody to listen to it. And it's really hard, but for a while in the last year, I got to be in a place where I wasn't thinking about that stuff and I was just making music again. And it felt connected more closely to when I first was writing songs in a really nice way. Yeah. I'm curious how, because your circumstances also changed in a really interesting way that that is different in that as you step back into your own music, as you start to put it out into the world again, you also now have, and if I'm making the assumption and it's not right, let me know. But, you know, over the last chunk of years, you've built a bit of a machine, both a media machine and also a business engine. It's not just Song Exploder. Now it's on Netflix.

It's a fun home cooking show over the pandemic with Samin Nosrad. It's West Wing with Josh Molina. It's Partners. It's like you're building this. There's an economic engine that exists outside of music. So that I wonder if that gives you any sense of freedom to know that sure, you want people to like this when you put it into the world, but your very survival really doesn't meaningfully depend on it anymore. Yeah. I think that was crucial. It's funny because, you know, my, I i guess my in some ways my parents were right uh they're they're

their version of things came true and that you know for so long they were like well yeah music is great you can have it as a hobby and do something else and uh and i was like no no no no music is my entire life and that's all i want to do and and i worked for so long, so that it could be my full time job and my entire life. And then I tasted the bitter side of that, and then did something else. And now, yeah, I don't know that I would be able to return to music without feeling that kind of paralyzing pressure that I felt before. If I didn't know that I didn't have to worry about it as being as my job anymore, I have a job, I made my own day job that I didn't have to worry about it as being as my job anymore. I have a job. I made my own day job. I didn't have to go down some prescribed professional path. I

got to make my own thing with the podcasts that I've done. But yeah, I'm grateful that that worked out because then it allowed me to make music and not worry about the commercial part of it at a practical level. Yeah. I mean, it's a very different place to be in, in terms of sort of being able to step into the creative process and just say, this is what I need to make. You know, without saying also, and people need to be willing to pay for it because I need to support myself doing it. Yeah. And people need to be willing to pay for it because I need to support myself doing it. When you sit down to create the song Between There and Here, which is a song about a dream. So your mom passed and you have this dream, which sort of brings you back into conversation with her briefly and wake up and write this song. When that happens to you, were you writing other stuff beforehand? Were you writing like, were you,

was this just the thing that dropped into you and said, Oh, this kind of needs to be the thing that brings me back into writing, producing, creating, and then offering out to the world, my own impulse. Yeah, that was the, so that was the first song that I had written in a couple of years. I had written one song at the end of 2018, but then I was working on the Netflix adaptation of Song Exploder from 2019 to 2020, and also still doing the podcasts at the same time. I was doing the Westman Weekly and Partners and Song Exploder at the same time. And so trying to do all of those, it just didn't leave a lot of room in my schedule or in my heart to like, you know, come up with other things. But this was after we had handed out all of the episodes, all the full eight episodes of Song Exploder at that point had been turned

into Netflix. And this was a few weeks after that. And as soon as we handed it in i already had the the feeling that i was like as soon as i am done with this i'm really going to try and find time to make music a part of my life again and so this was one of the actually i think it was the first day that i kind of i was supposed to start earlier i was supposed to start in this kind of dedicated schedule you know i was supposed to have this the plan was that i was going to start in this kind of dedicated schedule. You know, I was supposed to have this. The plan was that I was going to carve out time in my schedule. Every Friday I was going to work on music. That was the way I was like, I could give myself one day. And I was going to start that as soon as we, um, we turned in the episodes and we did.

Uh, but then my mom passed away. So for a few weeks, that plan was put on hold again. And then the first Friday that I was going to write music the night before I had that dream. It's almost like it was meant, like that was the thing that was supposed to bring you back to, and the song that was supposed to emerge. You make a really interesting decision in the song too. I know you tell the story of when you were younger and you were playing music you would occasionally hear your mom humming some of you know like your songs and that was this sort of like tacit like oh yeah like this is kind of like it's okay that's cool it's a little bit of approval going on there you had yo-yo ma come in and effectively you know

the lines where you had thought well like i want to bring her into the song and didn't have like this you had him essentially play what she would have been humming along with yeah what's that like for you sort of like putting that experience together uh it was wild i think uh all of those circles kind of started overlapping at the exact same time, um, in a way that was a little almost overwhelming to realize that, you know, that there was a way to incorporate this idea of my mom and the way that she used to interact with my songs. That was the same time, you know, that was the period when I, when I had graduated college, but I was still living in my parents' house, but I was making music all the time. You know, every available minute I had, I basically turned my bedroom into a recording studio with a little corner where my twin bed still, still was. And every other inch of it was covered in equipment and cables and things. And I would close the door and I would just work on songs. And so I'd be listening, you know, I'd be playing back the song over and over and over again, as I would record

other parts or whatever, and listen back to what I'd done. And then I'd go out, you know, into the hallway or I'd go outside or go to the bathroom or something. And I'd come back and I'd hear my mom humming one of the things that I had just been playing. It had gotten into her head as well. And that was, yeah, yeah it just it made me feel so good because it felt like she she had connected with it at some level so to have this song about her and this dream about her and then figuring out a place i had a conversation with my sister uh actually you know um and she even said she was like oh this is like the part that mom would sing she's like i oh, this is like the part that mom would sing. She's like, I could see this would be the part that mom would sing. And at the same time,

I'd had this conversation with Yo-Yo Ma about my, you know, dreams of getting back to music and writing again. And he'd made this incredibly generous offer to play on my music. And so really all this, that happened the same week that I wrote the song. So I was able to go back to him and say, I wrote the song and this was the part. And I was thinking at first that maybe I would hum it, but his cello, you know, his cello playing, it is incredibly human sounding. It sounds so much like a human voice in this magical way and in a way that kind of gave this surreal quality that evoked the dream more so than my literal humming. And so I asked him to replace it. And then he said yes. It just was, yeah, like I said, it was almost too much. much yeah like a magical sequence of events and definitely very

like ethereal very dreamlike um which matched the feeling the of the song and the story underneath it the video that you end up creating in collaboration which is this animated um dream state type of video also it was so interesting to me because i i had this flashback while i was watching it to um the very first time I saw Aha's Take On Me video, which has now kind of become legendary, like in MTV history. And this really similar sort of like it would appear and go away like dream state of somebody, you know, like wandering through this and like illustrated world. The one huge difference being, I mean, there are many differences, but the one really big difference being the person was in the image and you made this

interesting choice for it to be just through the eyes of, I'm assuming it was you in the video itself, as if like we were listening to the song and we were all moving through this space with you. Yeah. Yeah. Take On Me was definitely an influence on the video. I love that video so much. Oh my God. Epic. Yeah. The song you just released more recently, also Home, I thought was really interesting. And it's probably an interesting way for us to start to come a little full circle in our conversation too. When you put it out, it's this really deep, it's a very reflective song about life. You life. I think it was in the Twitter post, I may be getting this wrong, when you shared this song, you said, as I turn in age, that seems hard to believe. This is the song that you're releasing to the world. from everything we've been through. Places change and fade away. But one thing that stays true, home is me and you.

I'm curious, you know, you talk about being at this age that's hard to believe. And the song and the video shares all of these people older in life reflecting in this really, certainly deep, beautiful way. What was happening inside of you that felt like it was

time to write that? Well, that was a song that I wrote a few months after, after my mom's funeral, it came a little later. Um, and you know, for a while I was thinking about this, the sort of memory that I was going to have forever of the call that I got, you know, the night that my mom passed away, you know, is fixed in my memory. I remember where I was sitting in my house. I remember that, you know, I was on the bench where we keep, um, like our tote bags for the grocery store and, uh, which was a housewarming present for my mom and my dad. I was sitting on that and I just, I can remember it. And I remember it feels very fixed in my memory and, uh, and I can't help but associate it with

the place that I was sitting in, you know, the physical, the memory of the place and all the physical aspects of it are get tied up in the emotional parts of it as well. And I was thinking about it. This was, you know, we were six months into the pandemic at that point. And so I'd been spending a lot of time as everyone was, you know, in my own home. And at a certain point I was thinking like, maybe I can't, I can't live here anymore. It's, it's too tied up in this, the sadness of, of that memory. At the same time, I was thinking, well, how could I leave this place? Like this incredibly life-changing thing happened here. This has to be my home forever, you know?

But I also started to think about all the other memories that I associated with that house, all the wonderful things. I remember the first time that my wife and I moved in, we were, you know, newlyweds, and we moved into that house. And, and just what a dream it seemed, you know, to have our own place. And there was a garage where I could work on, you know, Song Exploder hadn't launched yet. It was it was a couple months before it came out. But I was like, Oh, there's a garage where I can make music and I can make this podcast. It just, it was so full of possibilities and all of the, those things started to collide. And, uh, and I was also thinking about just all the gratitude I had for my, for my wife who had been through all of that with me and also thinking about my, my own parents and what

their life had been as they moved from city to city and home to home. Yeah, so all of that was what I was thinking about. I guess it was a love song, but kind of acknowledging how many bad memories get rolled into a life, even a life that's full of love. Yeah, I feel like the last couple of years have led a lot of us to reflect on really what is home to us, who is home to us. Is it a place? Is it an in-between human beings?

Is it within our hearts? Yeah, it's an interesting question and a beautiful song and feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. So in this container of good life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? For me, I think I want to feel like what we talked about with the crit. I want to feel like I got to create the game that I wanted to play and then I got to play it. There's nobody to say you did it the right way or you did it the wrong way, except for me.

Beautiful. Thank you. Thanks so much, Jonathan. Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, safe bet you will also love the conversation that we had with Kaki King about her journey into the heart of music. You'll find a link to Kaki's episode in the show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so, go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app. And if you appreciate the work that we've been doing here on Good Life Project, go check out my new book, Sparked.

It'll reveal some incredibly eye-opening things about maybe one of your favorite subjects, you, and then show you how to tap these insights to reimagine and reinvent work as a source of meaning, purpose, and joy. You'll find a link in the show notes, or you can also find it at your favorite bookseller now. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

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