The Blindboy Podcast - Devin Townsend

Episode Date: May 2, 2023

Devin Townsend is an artist who works in the genre of Heavy Metal. He has been active since the 1980s. Playing with Steve Vai, forming Strapping Young Lad and the Devin Townsend project. He explores comedy, mental health, ambient and even opera to create highly experimental music. His contribution changed the sound of Metal. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rim the tin man's bin bag you skin-faced breffinis. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. I'm over here in Vancouver. I'm in sunny Vancouver, looking out the window of a hotel. The sound in this room is a bit shit. It's a bit echoey. Echoey sound. Not the best.

But I'm using a little technique actually, which I've never done before. Like I used to climb into the duvet. When I used to have to record podcasts in hotels before, I would climb into the duvet and adopt like a praying position. And I'd have to record the podcast like that, hunched up in a ball for hours. Deeply uncomfortable and manic behaviour.

But not anymore. And I got this idea from the rapper Pitbull Mr Worldwide Pitbull Pitbull who makes music for bouncers Pitbull looks like a bouncer

and he makes music that bouncers listen to and he calls himself Mr Worldwide I'm nothing against Pitbull. I just can't get my head around him. What the fuck is Pitbull? I just... If you told me that Pitbull was like a CIA operative the whole time and this is why he gets to be Mr. Worldwide

and he gets to tour all over all these countries around the world but really it's just a CIA operation. If you told me that, I'd go, yeah, that makes sense. But anyway, I was on TikTok and Pitbull came up, Mr. Worldwide, and they asked Pitbull, does he spend much time in the studio recording?

And he says, no, he doesn't record in the studio at all. He's Mr. Worldwide. He could be anywhere in the world at any point he only records in hotel rooms and then the interviewer was like what you only record in hotel rooms how do you do that and then Pitbull said I tour with an audio engineer at all times and what we do is we get the bed turn it up like so put the bed on its side so it's standing up right and then face that against where the curtains are and then you create a little vocal booth and that's how pitbull records his vocals when he's in hotels well that's how i'm recording this podcast right

now mr worldwide glamorous stuff ladies and gentlemen, I'm here in Vancouver, stuffed between a curtain and an upright bed and like the bed is upright against the window and I was thinking what if the bed went forward and then burst through the window? If that happened I wouldn't have an excuse. If the police came it would just look like oh this little shit came to Vancouver and he sold out a gig and because of that now he thinks he can throw TVs and beds out windows like he's a rock star that's what people would assume and if I gave him the real excuse which is I took the advice of Mr Worldwide about how to professionally record audio in a hotel and the bed accidentally fell out

the window, no one would believe me because that sounds mad. But it's not going to happen. What would be more likely to happen actually is that the bed will fall forward and crush me against the window and then I

suffocate. That'd be an interesting death interesting date again no one would believe that either they'd think it was a sex thing how did he die he tried to asphyxiate himself against the window with a giant bed he fantasizes about being erotically entangled with large animals he was replicating the sensation of being asphyxiated by a donkey. And why did he have a microphone and why did he have headphones on? He was recording the sound of himself being asphyxiated by a donkey so that he could pleasure himself to it later.

And that's how he died. None of this is going to happen. Everything's fine. I'm just standing here in a hotel room in Vancouver between a window and an upright bed so that I can get the best quality audio for you cunts. So Canada has been fantastic. I was in Toronto, did a wonderful gig there. Now I'm in Vancouver, lots of traveling and my body clock is all over the place. I think

I'm on opposite time to back home. I'm eight hours behind. The culture shock that I've gotten as a result of the legal cannabis dispensaries is mad. It's easier, more open and less stigmatised here to buy cannabis than it is to buy cigarettes

or even fucking nicotine vapes. I went to get fluid for my vape and I had to present my ID before I was even allowed into the shop to see the fucking vape fluids. But with cannabis here, the shops are like Mac stores or something. Capitalism has completely taken over.

It's like you're going in buying a new phone and the people who work there really know what they're doing and you just tell them how you want to feel you tell them how you want to feel I'd like to feel euphoric and I don't want any anxiety and then they go here you go this is what you'd like and it's just mad to see that the same thing at home gets people thrown in jail. And a cannabis breeder in Toronto came to my gig. And he bred a strain of cannabis and named it after Silken Thomas, my dearly departed cat. And I hope we see this in Ireland soon.

Because they've done it so responsibly here as well. When you buy cannabis products here, there's warnings on the front. It's clearly for adults and what you get is choice variety and information to make responsible decisions and you're not criminalized and you know exactly what it is you're getting and it was lovely to see all that and to witness it and to observe it especially in the context of last week's podcast where i spoke to dr sharon lambert about the citizens assembly on drugs in ireland or hopefully at the end of that we will start to see change we'll start to see more mature legislation around drugs which is health focused rather than something which just criminalises people so for this week's podcast

I have a chat with an absolute legend called Devin Townsend very very important heavy metal musician from Vancouver and when I say important I'm not using that word lightly

Devin Townsend has been making heavy metal music since the 80s and his contribution to metal as a genre literally changed metal. That's how important he is. And we had a wonderful conversation about art. We had a conversation about art. So if you're a Devin Townsend fan who's coming to this podcast to listen to this, just a heads up, this isn't an interview because I don't really do interviews. So you might be disappointed because I'm not going to be asking Devin lots of specific questions about his work. Instead, it's a conversation about art between two people who love art.

The other thing too regarding this gig, it was a strange enough audience. This is a thing that happens sometimes when I gig outside of Ireland. Now, it's never happened in Canada before. It's usually more of an Australian thing. But anyway, at my Vancouver gig, where there was like 1 like 1500 people in the audience there was about 10 Irish people and I don't think these Irish people listen to the podcast

or have much awareness about what the podcast is or what it's about instead they're just they're fans of of the song horse outside from the Rubber Bandits from 2010. And there was about 15 maybe of these people in the audience. Interestingly, they were young. Because the thing is, if you remember Horse Outside, you'd be in your 30s now because it was 2010. These people were young, they were in their 20s. And I think what this is, and I've spoken about this before. So that song Horse Outside.

The Rubber Bandits song. That has now become like. A folk song. That gets played. Alongside the Dubliners. And the Clancy Brothers. In Irish pubs abroad. So if you go to an Irish pub.

In Canada. In Australia. In Dubai, wherever, there's a dude there with a guitar doing Irish rebel songs and he will perform cover versions of the Dubliners, the Clancy Brothers, the Wolf Tones and then he'll throw a fucking horse outside in there as if it's also a folk song. I love that. I think that's amazing. As if it's also a folk song. I love that. I think that's amazing.

I'm fascinated that a pop song from 2010. Has taken this new life as a folk song. And if you heard it in a set. It could be written in 1860 and you wouldn't know. I really love that. But it has created a new generation of Horse outside fans so there was quite a lot of people at not quite a lot there was about 15 there was about 15 people at my gig in vancouver who don't listen to the podcast don't know what the podcast is about and have a kind of vague feeling of oh

it's the guy with the plastic bag it's the horse outside man so they came to the gig and now i don't have a problem with these people come to the gig everyone's welcome to come to a gig of course everybody's welcome the issue is is that for these people the show is now instantly disappointing because i think for them they were thinking he's gonna come and do his songs the song about the horse and they're like why is he talking about art for over an hour and everything's really quiet so there was like 15 people at the gig i saw irish flags and as soon as i saw irish flags i was like oh fuck fuck you don't want Irish flags at a live podcast so these people they weren't happy with the show obviously because it's me talking about art with Devon Townsend so they were quite chatty there was a good bit of heckling unfortunately and they were consistently

getting up out of their seats and going to the bar because they were drunk. And the thing is, even though it was a tiny amount of people and there was like 1,500 people at the gig, all it takes is a tiny amount of people to change the tone of an entire room when you're doing something intimate like a live podcast. So the reason I'm letting you know this is because my job on stage as a professional is to go okay there's 15 lads here and they're drunk and they love horse outside okay fair enough they've paid for their tickets so me then as the performer on stage I take note of that and I go okay I have to adjust my tone now so that these people feel welcome so this podcast isn't isn't hugely podcast huggy i'm quite vibrant i'm quite exuberant i'm quite enthusiastic this was done basically to to find a compromise in the room and to entertain everybody now there was a good bit of heckling

but luckily i was able to use artificial intelligence technology to run the recording through this and it cut out a load of the background heckling so it doesn't actually interfere with the recording. Now when I mean heckling, not necessarily people being mean or bad, just a drunk man shouting Roscommon for no reason. Or trying to sing Olé Olé Olé. Imagine a stag party came to a live podcast where two people are talking about art that so the audience was like 70 Canadian people who listen to this

podcast forever brendans and steeplechasing retas so it was like 70 those Canadian people. Then 38% Irish people living in Vancouver who actually listen to the podcast. And then just a tiny percent of a group of lads going, I don't know what this gig is, but I'm going to get drunk and bring an Irish flag and shout the lyrics of a song from 13 years ago and see what happens. But despite that, it was a cracking gig and the conversation that I had with Devin Townsend was thoroughly enjoyable and through editing and other techniques I've managed to actually get out most of the heckling so this is this is a good podcast I just realized there I said 70% of the audience were Canadian and then

38% were Irish. I know now that that's impossible. But I'm shit at maths. I'm terrible at maths. I'm so bad at maths that I will say something like 70% of the audience and then 38% of the

audience. I'm that bad at maths. But I just spotted it now and I'm going to leave it in. But in future if I'm doing a gig outside of Ireland and you're Irish abroad and one of your buddies is like I'm gonna go and see the Blind Boy podcast because I love that song from 13 years ago. If you wouldn't mind just having a word in their ear and going do you actually do you listen to the podcast? Do you know what the podcast is? Maybe you should listen to it and then consider whether you want to go to the gig because the gig might be really, really, really disappointing for you.

It might be a really shit bad show for you if you think you're going to something where there's a lot of songs. I think that's the most diplomatic approach I can take. Because I don't want to be an arsehole. Saying, oh I don't want you to come to my gig. No, it's just. If you think the gig is something completely different. Then it's going to be disappointing for you.

It's not going to be enjoyable. Everybody's welcome. So here's my chat with the magnificent Devin Townsend. You don't have to be into heavy metal to listen to this. This is a conversation about art between two people who love art and love creativity. And I say as well in the intro of this, I say Devin Townsend has no business being on this podcast.

And what I mean by that is, he does not need to be on this podcast. He's a legend to end all legs. He doesn't need promo. He's Devin fucking Townsend. And if you listen to metal, you know who he is. He came on the podcast because we just became mates over the years.

We became buddies through mutual love of each other's work and just having good conversations, having a lot in common. I've got an unbelievable fucking guest tonight. This person is a fucking legend. This person has no business being on this podcast. He's doing it seriously. He's doing it because he's sound

and we get along and we have crack. He's a heavy metal musician, right? But not just a heavy metal musician. He's somebody whose work changed what heavy metal music is. If he was a DJ, it'd be Carl Cox. It's not Carl Cox. It's Devin Townsend. Come on out, Devon.

What's the crack? So we can do it. This is the best way. We both understand our way around the mic. That was... Actually, I'm not sure if I should talk about how much I loved your story or if I'm not sure if I have to pee. I think I definitely loved the story. Man, that was amazing. Thank you.

Yeah. So I'm going to go through some of the formalities for people who don't know. Sure, sure, sure. You started off with a project called Strapping Young Lad. Then you went on and did solo stuff and then the Devon Townsend project. You, for such a kind of a nice, quiet man, your music is fucking heavy. I don't know whether me, sometimes I call you the Enya of metal.

I love that. Other times I call you the AFX twin of metal. But what I love about your work is I can't define it. I can't, what I love about your work is I can't define it, I can't pin it down. It sounds like metal, but you do so much shit in it that's weird. And I adore metal, now I love metal, but I do find that it can be quite a conservative genre. It likes to stay the same sometimes. And you're just naturally outside the box you just love doing weird i mean i think i can uh relate to you in in a number of ways and i think hypersensitivity

is one of the defining characteristics of heavy music maybe not maybe not full stop because you get the impression that there's some of it that's just you know cathartic for the sake of you get the impression that there's some of it that's just cathartic for the sake of being a knuckle-dragging musical force, right? But I think that for me, as a kid, I was always hypersensitive to my environment. Things affected me in ways that were arguably overdramatic. And so I think that when it comes to creating something sonically your desire to represent that sensitivity manifests itself with heavy music in a way that very few other genres can can achieve one thing I'd love to know about right you were influenced by the Clancy brothers

oh very much oh my god yeah my grandfather was from Dublin, and it was Christmas time. It was always, I held this. Wait, that's not the part I want. but he insisted on everybody singing Clancy Brothers. But the sense of timing was so fluid because Johnny Cash was also such a part of it that it became this kind of authoritarian tempo that we had to follow. And so every Christmas there was this oncoming dread that we're going to have to sing these songs and follow these tempos and learn the chords.

And that goes against the fluidity of irish traditional music irish traditional music is very fluid it's not about structure it comes from a folk tradition it's it's it's anything i always find music that's anti-colonial and music that comes from an oppressed people tends not to be heavily structured like if you think of to people tends not to be heavily structured like if you think of what i adore about the blues is with the blues music it came from enslaved african-americans who had like western instruments that have fretboards so it's it's the western notes and then because their ancestors came from africa where in africa you have different, the blues was a beautiful compromise. So they get the slide out and the slide is a way to get these notes that are within the structure of Western music. And Irish music is like that.

We're not really strict. It's about the crack. But it's true, the crack is the spirit, the spirit, the feeling. There's no right or wrong. Is the crack present or is it not? So to do it, to hear that like when you were a kid, someone was making you do the Clancy Brothers the right way, that's mad. Yeah, that's a little counterintuitive. Yeah, it sounds very Protestant. But it does. Well, it's funny, actually. His father was a preacher as well, so I think that there is probably no small amount of truth to that. Do you know much about the way that 440,

like the way that instruments are tuned to 440? 440 hertz, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Do you know much about that? No, I said 40 like a Canadian person there. 40. 40, yeah. I know 440 hertz, but I don't know.

Well apparently I don't know enough about it to be definitive with it but apparently it was based on something to do with the Second World War and in fact 432 is actually where the human ear gravitates towards and so everything sort of gravitates towards this thing and so they've got a lot of uh revised versions where you can put it into a daw and sort of make it 432 and i mean it's it fucks with people's heads well i think it's got a more sonorous vibe in some way but we were talking about enya earlier and the album watermark changed my life. We laugh at Enya in Ireland. That's beautiful. And I'm serious, Enya is an unbelievably important artist and outside of Ireland she's given the respect that she deserves. I'm serious!

Lads, Enya took Irish traditional music, mixed it with synthesizers and created something that is only Enya. She's as in, like, I consider Enya to be as important as Brian Eno. And with Brian Eno is considered an ambient artist. He makes ambient music. And I think there's a bit of a misogyny in how Enya's not called ambient. She's called new age. And the difference between ambient and new age is ambient music is like, it's like it has artistic rigor, but new age is... Ambient music is like it has artistic rigor. But new age is like wallpaper.

It's what you play when you're getting a massage. You don't listen to it for the pleasure of the art. It's functional design music. And I want to hear Enya being spoken about as an ambient musician on the level of Brian Eno, because that's what she fucking is. Well, it's interesting. It's like I got into... Seriously. I got into Enya because I was so into New Age music.

Oh, you were into New Age music. Oh, my God. How did you get into New Age? I don't know. It was when I was very young, I was interested in the ideas of astral projection and just sort of lucid dreaming and things like this. And there was the soundtrack that came along with that oftentimes had people that were instructing you how to fall asleep and how to sort of...

But the one guy had a very interesting way of saying the word nostrils. That's the one thing I remember. So as he was going through with the binary beats and the flutes and everything playing, it would pull you right out of that with that particular word. But since... How did he say nostrils? He said nostrils. Nostrils. Adding some extra fucking consonants in there. Nostrils.

I found myself fascinated with the idea of flute. I liked Paul Horn. There's a lad called Paul Horn who's famous for of flute. I liked Paul Horn. I like the... There's a lad called Paul Horn who's famous for playing flutes. I love it. Yeah. That's a rebel. Yeah, man. Oh, I just loved it, man. I thought New Age music was really cool, but it didn't mix particularly well with the aesthetic that came from living in Surrey. You know? It was ACDC and Trans Ams and Metallica and Judas Priest, and that was great. But I also wanted to throw some Enya and flute music in there, right?

What about Black Sabbath? Did you get into Black Sabbath? Never really. What? Yeah. You know, I was Slayer as well. I never really resonated with Slayer. But why not Black Sabbath? you were a bit too young?

I don't think it was the intent in a way. You know, I just wasn't attracted to it in the same way that I was with Led Zeppelin, I guess, or Pink Floyd even. Do you know why I love Sabbath? Because I really, really love Sabbath. Here's what fascinates me about Sabbath, and this is what changed my opinion of him,

is so Black Sabbath came from Birmingham, and they would have grown up, they would have been kids in the 1940s. And Birmingham was very heavily bombed in the Second World War. So when they were children, when they would go to school, it would be completely normal for a literal Nazi bomb to be found, and it might blow up and kill everyone. And there were sirens and this was their childhood, was the trauma of war happened before I was born, but we're still living with this. And then when Sabbath first came to America,

their audience was made up of Vietnam vets who'd just come back. They used to get vets in the front audience and there'd be dudes in wheelchairs and their friends would get them to stand up and all these vietnam vets who just returned from war found themselves attracted to the music of black sabbath and i find that fascinating i find it fascinating that for me it has to be something about their sonic landscape is about trauma and war specifically and it came out through the sound and of course Tony Iommi chopped his finger off yeah and that

used a thimble yeah I love that when you first heard him what was your reaction what was the first song that you heard Paranoid okay which I heard when I was about seven um i i find them it's i don't like led zeppelin i find there's a there's a pretentiousness to led zeppelin whereas with sabbath they don't give a fuck and ozzy is really silly as a person and his lyrics are silly and there's an authenticity to sabbath that it's like tonyommi loves playing guitar, he's great at it, I love the fact that because he's missing fingers, there's a simplicity, and I don't think anyone ever, but simplicity is beautiful, simplicity is great, there's an authentic simplicity to Sabbath that I can really relate to.

I think it's a synesthesia, like I find that... You have real synesthesia. Yeah, and I find that certain tonalities are reflected in nature so born and raised in Vancouver it was at least when I was younger it rained so much here that so much of my creativity was attached to the weather that certain tonalities I found would remind me of it like a suspended or a whole tone. Certain things like, I remember living out in Surrey years ago, my first guitar, we would go out and play the guitar when it was raining with a delay pedal

because the sound of that delay pedal and those tonalities reminded me of that environment. And I think it was less about Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin, but a lot of what Jimmy Page did in open C tuning, which is a tuning that I use exclusively in my own work as a result of that, defaults to a suspended chord. And I think there's something psychologically with the sound of a suspended chord that perhaps maybe it was just where I was at on an emotional level where nothing ever resolves. And with Sabbath, it was visceral in a way that I didn't relate to as a kid.

And I think it was the same thing with Slayer. It was so visceral that I was always trying to figure out what the intent is. And I even ask people, why do I not relate to it? What is the intent of this music in your opinion? And I think that it was less about the intent of Zeppelin and more about the tonalities and how it reminded me of the rain and the mountains. And with Black Sabbath, it was, you know,

Ozzy, you know, it was great, right? But at the same time, it just wasn't an emotional connection. I love thinking about music and how music develops in terms of like an environment. Like you're saying there, thinking about rain in the mountains. So like, you know, Gregorian chant.

So Gregorian chant, I think it was up the 12th century and it was monks singing in a huge chamber basically, right? And it's just this this it's a bit like a cave a monastery and all the monks are singing and they sang together and they kind of stayed around the same octave and then what happened is in the 13th century they built Notre Dame Cathedral in France and the mathematics of how

they built Notre Dame which went up in fives now that's the architecture of a building when monks sang their gregorian chant in this building they naturally started to harmonize with the fucking architecture of the building no one said it to him but music is symmetrical vibrations that go through air. So these vibrations are going to correspond with the mathematics of a building. That's awesome. Isn't it? Yeah, it is, because it's like, in a sense,

it's like everything is vibration at a certain speed, and so music is corresponding to it in a different way. So in a sense, every environment has got some sort of corresponding frequency that you could probably adhere to. But I guess a lot of that has to do with bias as well. Like if you were born and raised in a place where you're surrounded by that, for whatever reason, insecurity or fear, you might be connected. You mean emotions. Yeah. And I think that was the connection to Enya's music. The first record, not the first record, Watermark, it was because it had a lot of minor in it. Like after she achieved phenomenal success, a lot

of it was very sort of saccharine. A lot of it was major and commercially amazing for her as a result. But Watermark had this sort of sense of isolation. There's a song called Exile on there where it's just a single voice and a flute. And it just, it seemed so evocative. And the times that I've been, it's not even necessarily Ireland, but you take that ferry from Ireland to Scotland

and you're along the top there where it's just rugged. But that sort of environment is evocative of those sort of sounds. And to be able to capture that, I think is almost the test of an art form for me. Like if you're able to listen to an artist and say, okay, so what I'm getting from this is evocative of a place or a person or an emotion. And yeah, no, I think that was it. It was the tuning of the guitar in Led Zeppelin that really... When I listen to, we'll say, 90s hip-hop,

I can tell when I listen that's East Coast hip-hop. I know by the way the beats are and how close things are. This was music that was made and also debuted with very tall buildings around. I can tell that. When I listen to West Coast, Dr. Dre and G-Funk, I can hear the wide open spaces that they have. Like even, you know that band Kios? Of course. So Kios, what I heard is, so Kios was a Josh Hams band and they're they pioneered a genre because there's a sludge metal stoner rock yeah

so but what I heard how they got their sound which is like a real slow metal quite quite different to yours they were living in the Palm Springs desert in California where there's fucking nothing it's desert and there's a mountain two miles in the distance. And when they were teenagers, they would play outside and they would try to play Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath. They couldn't play fast

because the echoes from the mountain were too extreme. The echoes would come back and they would go out of time. So they slowed their music down to match the echo of the mountain and invented a genre of metal. It's also interesting that your own bias is going to determine whether or not you resonate with it.

Someone else could just go, fuck this, I'm not playing with those cunts of mountains. So where were you, so you were born in Limerick, right? Yeah. So... Excelleme, sir. So I guess there's some sort of cultural familiarity with what they were going through in Birmingham. Is there some sort of...

Don't say Stab City to a Limerick man. The cultural phenomenon... I'll tell you the thing with Limerick, and this is one of the things with, like, when we started off as the Rubber Bandits, because that's how I met you, Devin, was you became a fan of the Rub bandits the best man thank you very much um limerick like even when we mentioned limerick there someone shouted stab city because because

limerick has got a bad reputation it's considered somewhere that's very very violent it's not it's just some places get these labels and Limerick got that. And Chicken Hut, which is good. We're okay for being famous for fried chicken. But when the bandits came about, I really wanted to do hardcore gangster rap. But it's like, we're from Lerick and we're not gangsters but the the it's the label of when we started doing it people assumed like oh they're from limerick they must be serious boys and then you listen to the lyrics and it's a it's a love song

to a greyhound yeah you know so we use that we use the fact that we knew people would have a presumption of what we would be or what Limerick was like and then flip it on its head and go, actually, no, we're just lovely boys talking about grounds. I would love to hear more about the game show. Almost impossible game show. Oh, my God. Some of the sentences that you strung together

were unbelievably poetic about things that had no right to have poetry. It's bouncing over his head like a single gray testicle. I remember that. I don't even remember that. Oh my God, dude. I remember sitting in a car with my buddy when we were traveling, and I said, you fucking have to watch this. And it's just, how did that come about? How can't I find it anywhere? Because it's the best.

ITV, this channel in the UK, had this terrible game show. So it was a really bad game show. It was like Takeshi's Castle, but full of people from fucking Sheffield. And they had this thing made, and then they were looking for voiceovers, so they came to us. So I'm kind of going, this is shit. I'm fucked, but I need the money.

I need this job. So how can I subvert this? How can I get something that's on TV that is actually pretty bad and then do something funny and weird with it and luckily the producers and and the Commissioner were like actually this is quite good quite a nice juxtaposition so they're not expecting lines about testicles so it was one of the few times in TV that I had this full creative control. So when I was writing the script, I used to go into dictionaries from the 16th century.

Yeah. And pick out phrases and words that aren't used anymore and figure out what can I get on TV. Because it was primetime ITV. And you could watch it without the sound if you wanted. It's just people falling over that's all it is but when you have something when you have the simple comedy of someone slipping on a banana peel and once that's there you can do what you want over it yeah but what you uh what because I watched it with my son when we when when he was very young and and remember thinking like some of

the people were so abhorrent that you chose. And just the idea of taking that fucking guy and putting him on a greased piece of metal with a tiny bicycle with an oversized heavy hat. So there's no way that he's not going to, but his pride forces him to continue over and over and over. It was delicious, man. Thank you very much. But that is there, because we spoke earlier about the definition of absurdity. And the definition of absurdity is we understand that life is meaningless. We know as humans that the universe is chaos,

but we still search for meaning within that. And that search for meaning within what we understand to be meaningless, that's absurdity. So you think that that search for meaning within what we understand to be meaningless that's absurdity so you think that that search for meaning is based in a fear of death I think it is I think we can't reckon with our own impermanence I think like even we were talking about creativity earlier like like sometimes I go like what why the fuck do I do this why do I write a short story why do I do any creativity and sometimes I think at the why the fuck do I do this? Why do I write a short story? Why do I do any creativity? And sometimes I think at the core of me,

it's, well, fuck it. Maybe I can avoid debt. Maybe my thing can live beyond and I'm leaving something behind because I don't want to rot with the worms. Do you actually think that? Not really. It's deeply unconscious.

Well, then I think on some level, it's interesting because it's deeply unconscious well then i think on some level it's it's interesting because it's it's the more you're able to uh intellectualize your process the more it becomes difficult to continue because the effort that goes into doing any of these things like to do that game show to do an album to do the podcast it takes an absurd amount of effort that takes an absurd amount of logistical thinking in order to keep it active but you can't rationalize that strictly on no absurdity i mean can you the the key is and i think you'll relate this is there's the there's the the creativity that comes from within you that the the feeling of flow, the emotional part of it that you can't put words upon,

that has to come through. And then as a professional, you have your craft. There's the things that you know, and you have to balance those two things. But you can't be 100% craft because then it's shit. But you can't be 100% feeling

because then it's mad. I keep thinking as we were saying backstage there, and it seems like it's such a luxury to even be able to think this way, but what is the reason for creating art? You had said that in your opinion, humanity is the only creature that's able to articulate itself creatively, and maybe it's because humanity humanity is the only creature that's able to articulate itself creatively?

And maybe it's because humanity is also the only creature that as far as we know, I don't know, has a sense of self? I do have a theory about this. Okay. So humans are the only animals that can, we're the only ones with a proper structure of language. When you have a proper structure of language when you have a proper structure of language we're capable of holding an idea outside of ourselves i can say apple everyone in this room

can think of an apple and we can all talk about an apple other animals can't really do that and the capacity for us to all think about an apple that's called culture like there's an experiment they did about what culture is they got a bunch of monkeys and they put them in a cage like 10 monkeys and there's a lock on this cage so in order for the monkeys to escape they gotta solve the lock a simple puzzle one monkey goes to the lock figures it out and exits second monkey goes to the lock does the same thing figures it out for himself and exits. And it happens again and again until all the monkeys have left. Then they put 10 humans in the cage. The first human goes to the lock, figures it out and says, this is how you do it, lads.

And everyone leaves. And that's culture. The capacity to use language to share ideas in a system. And that's uniquely human. and I think with art and creativity and mythology in particular because before we had writing we had mythology oral mythology and this is present with all cultures and the thing with oral mythology and oral storytelling it's a way to map your landscape you can't just have a mountain the mountain has to have a spirit attached to it or the tree has to be magical and if everything has a brilliant story then you understand your environment because you can't write it down i think the reason human beings as an animal have mythology and storytelling and creativity is to keep us in line with biodiversity

if you think of it this way when the like in Ireland it used to be illegal up until the 1600s to kill a white butterfly because people believe that a white butterfly contained the soul of a dead child so you don't fuck with butterflies seriously in Ireland the goddess Bridget's bees used to belong to the goddess Bridget, and she lived in the other world. It was like a parallel universe. So the bees were the goddess Bridget's bees, and they flew in the mist into our dimension, and that's how they fertilized flowers.

But you didn't fuck with bees because bees were magical. So mythology, and this is with all cultures, it keeps us not destroying the environment. It keeps us afraid and respectful of the environment because we have stories around it and we're fearful. And I think that's why mythology and creativity exists, because once you take that away with colonialism, then everything's up for grabs. Now you take what you want. I wonder if it's our primary dysfunction, though. I wonder if our need to validate ourselves

primary dysfunction though. I wonder if our need to validate ourselves externally is what leads us to the things that we found ourselves in as opposed to finding that sense of validation internally. And I often wonder if art is another manifestation of the same thing. You know, like the fact that we can externally say, we know this is an apple, like the reason for doing that, the reason for needing to do that. Maybe you say mythology is coming back to the fear of the unknown so if we have a story that validates its existence then on some level it reminds us that we exist as well and perhaps art is fundamentally rooted in that same dysfunction fucking hell i wonder time now for an ocarina pause I don't have an ocarina Because I'm in a hotel in Vancouver

Like Pitbull Between a window and a bed What I do have is A tube That a joint of legal cannabis Comes in And I'm going to play the legal cannabis tube And you're going to hear a digitally inserted advert.

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conversation with the wonderful devin townsend The first ever art that humans created, so I'm talking 50,000, 60,000 years ago, cave paintings, but the paintings are of the human hand. So people 50,000 years ago would put their hand on a wall in a cave, they'd get like flowers or dye in their mouth, and they'd spit on their hand and put it away, and you're left with a handprint. And that's the earliest human art. But when i was staying in my hotel in toronto there was this wooden headboard above my bed and in the certain light it's just loads of human hands

of these fucking businessmen who are fucking someone. And it's just the Prince of Hands, and it reminded me of Cave Art, and all it was was a businessman and coke fucking someone. That's all it was. There was a beauty in it. There was a beauty in it. I think the Prince of Hands is a pretty good title, by the way. The Prince of Hands, yeah.

His Royal Highness. Yeah, that's his Royal Highness. That's like a name for a man who's good at wanking. Yeah. The Prince of Hands? Yeah, this is his royal high name. That's like a name for a man who's good at wanking. Yeah, the Prince of Hands? Yeah, man. No, I wonder even with that first cave art, it's like by doing that, they're able to say,

listen, I exist. That's what I mean. I'm somebody. I'm permanent. I'm not going to die. There's my fucking hand. And we're talking about some cunt's hand 60,000 years later. Yeah, well, he didn't die then.

Good for him. Yeah. I mean, I 60,000 years later. Yeah, well, you didn't die then. We didn't. Good for him. Yeah. I mean, I wonder, though, it's like, but again, if you're able to recognize that that's what's going on, what's your motivation to continue? Well, then what's the, yeah. Meaning, meaning. Meaning.

Well, okay, so I pursue art. Obviously, it's how I earn a living. Yeah. But the earning, like, I'm going to finish my book. And when that book is finished and published, that feels really, really sad. I hate it. It reminds me of death, straight up. When my book is finished and published, and it was the same with my last two books,

the actual actual it's out i get a deep dark feeling and i know that that deep dark feeling is the my death and what i love is the middle the process the doing that's the enjoyable part i hate the end and i know that i hate it because it reminds me of death um meaning is what I get from the bit in the middle. When I'm achieving creative flow, the peak of creative flow, I'm in the dream world and I'm writing. It feels like I am somebody

and I'm here for a reason and my life has meaning in that moment. Is that in your definition of, what was it? Beckett, did you say? No, Beckett was the absurdity. So Beckett's thing is absurdity is the pursuit of meaning in something we understand to be meaningless. Do you agree with that?

No, I don't agree. I would be more kind of John Paul Sartre, which is, yes, I think the universe is meaningless, but however, there's a wonderful freedom in being able to find my own meaning. It's almost like you can ascribe meaning to what you choose, and that's kind of the rub, in a sense. It's, again, when we had children, my, you know know the dark night

of the soul of what you had once had your identity invested in is no longer you can see through it in a sense so your art started to mean less because now you have a little baby yeah but the art as a result became a tangible expression of gratitude and in that way it in that way, I can back that. So, because when we were chatting backstage, you mentioned the word gratitude a lot when you were speaking about what art means to you. What do you mean there by gratitude?

Grateful for who or what? I've got a really good friend who's got multiple sclerosis. He's had nothing but problems for years. I talked to him today. But I'm grateful for his friendship, but I'm also grateful for the fact that I can walk and I can create and I can learn. I had a profound moment of humility a couple of weeks back where I was like, what a fucking asshole. Holy shit. But there was something about that that I was like, I'm really grateful for that.

I'm really grateful. To have the self-awareness. You did something that made you feel like an asshole. And you were grateful to have the self-awareness to go, oh, I'm not happy with that. I'd like to change. Totally, man. New age.

And that's a lot to be great because some, lads, some people don't. But I think it's like, if you can have a tangible expression of that in a painting or a book or a song or a dance, then in a sense, it's like I can get behind that as a rationale, as opposed to I'm doing something of value or I'm dispensing benevolence to others. It seems like the further you go into any of those things, the more you're like, oh, I'm full of shit. It's just this or that or the other thing.

It's a fear of death or it's a need for validation or what have you. But if you can say, listen, I've got time here. I'm fortunate to be able to do these things. I've got a certain amount of capacity to do those things. So that's what the root of of it is it's thank you you know and i i can get behind that because as fucked as things are again the mountains and the the you know all the things that are external from us are just so awe-inspiring that it warrants gratitude, I guess, on some level. Heavy metal? I don't know. Before we take our interval, I'd love for you to describe what it's like to have synesthesia.

Well, for those who aren't aware, I was told that I had this, so I assumed that I do. But synesthesia is, and this is just me paraphrasing, when you connect certain stimulus to each other. So for example, I think of the musical note C as being a circle in blue. And I think of A as... And do you see these things? Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, and like a is red and a square and b is orange and g is dark green and d is dark blue and c is light blue and you know c is a triangle and and and so as a result of that when you're playing shapes on the guitar or you're listening to to music it evokes feelings based on on uh sort of intangible aspects of the frequency range. And a lot of what I listen to is just not ambient music as much. It's just like sound because it's almost like a watercolor for your environment. So if you're traveling, as we do, as opposed to hearing somebody's hopes and dreams,

which I just honestly don't give a fuck. It's like, you know what I mean? But if there's just something that acts as like an auburn watercolor, it's a rainy day out or it's a sunny day out. In the morning, I love listening to Tycho. In the evening, and it's rainy and driving, I listen to Rappun.

It's like, there's things that I choose based on like a soundtrack that then illustrate that environment. And I just find that those sort of complementary sounds, I just really enjoy it. And I guess that's... How advantageous has that been to you as someone who makes and produces music?

It's been, it's kind of, it's a dual-edged sword in that as a result of that, I learned to do what I do with a certain degree of proficiency without actually knowing what I was doing. And then when we had the opportunity to start working with orchestras and choirs, I realized I didn't have the vocabulary to be able to communicate in a way that was cost-efficient. So I had to kind of retroactively go back, and it was, you know you you have this capacity to run

and they're like okay now you have to crawl here's where the violas live here's where the violins live here's where the celli live and and as a result of connecting those two dots it's modular forms elliptic curves you know it's like two different i realized earlier i adjusted my balls while we were talking. And I've been thinking about it ever since. Do you know what, though? They're good now, though. I'm wearing a plastic bag in my head. I know, it's good.

You can do what you want. Like, you're there fucking going, oh, I'm worried about the impropriety of fucking adjusting my my balls you're talking to a fucking fella wearing rubbish on his head nothing can go wrong so what's the name of that particular store which story the one would know the store that provides oh this is sword shopping center and yeah so they closed down in like 2012 and then they had 10 000 bags and they gave them all to me so that's how long my career is pretty much and i've used about a thousand so far so if you don't mind me asking you were talking about a mausoleum yeah so my i don't throw the plastic bags away um i get a couple of uses out of them, and then I keep them.

Because the thing is as well is that it's environmental. You can't, like, single-use plastic will never biodegrade. So when I get a single-use plastic bag and turn it into a mask, that's the only kind of environmentally sound thing you can do with this shit. It is. It is. So I'm repurposing it and making it into a mask and getting multiple uses and i never throw them out i keep every bag i've ever used and my plan is when i'm older i'm gonna get a build a giant kitchen sink like 20 feet high

and i'm gonna get every bag i ever wore and put it in a much bigger bag. And I'm going to put that underneath the giant kitchen sink. And then I'm going to bury myself underneath it. Well, someone else will bury me. And there's my mausoleum. That's amazing. All right. Mental health is a huge part of your music. One thing I often...

So you know this thing with manifesting? People say manifesting, you ask the universe for nice things and it happens, right? I don't believe that. But one thing I do believe is, if my mental health is in a good state, and opportunities present themselves to me, I take those opportunities. But when I'm in a very bad place,

opportunities are terrifying and I don't take them and I can't. And one of these things that happened to me was over lockdown, you contacted me with the opportunity to musically collaborate with you on a track. And I didn't take the opportunity. I didn't do it. Yeah, you did it yeah you did well no no we had we

got a compromise we had a compromise you had sent me a bunch of stems for a track i had the opportunity to literally make some fucking music and have it on a devon townsend album i didn't do it because my mental health was really really bad really bad, instead of saying to myself, fuck it, let's do it, what's the worst that can happen, let's have fun, I became terrified of it, I procrastinated,

and then at the end I had to say to you, I can't do this, Devin, and then as a compromise, you got some bits out of my podcast and mixed it in with the track, but that there, I reflect on that as, when my mental health is bad

opportunities are terrifying i see everything that can go wrong instead of going no try it and if you fail fuck it that's when i'm in a good place that's and and when i'm like that success happens conversely you're you know the old adage your your vibe attracts your tribe yeah I remember I kept thinking to myself I love you oh thank you no I love you thanks for it I love you too yeah what you bring to people what you do how you struggle through that how you like I yet it didn't matter at all even the nature of that project didn't matter about a collaboration it mattered about like this is someone who I I think is

amazing and I would love to just be present with them that's it and it was the fact that you said oh I said you know could I use some of your podcast you're like of course and i was just like that's all thank you thank you because more so than more so than a collaboration it was just that was such a a challenging time and it's it's almost like the the the work that uh i felt compelled to do at that time was a reflection of a shit chaotic time And it was just if we can get 50 or 60 people around us whom I feel are lovely people Then it's it's a monument to a time and so the fact that you were okay with that

Being involved meant a huge amount to me man. Thank you Thank you for asking me and huge because there's a track on on is it your last album Devin yes and it's called the Yugos yeah and elements of my podcast are in it and the amount of Devin's fans who contact me thinking that their spotify is broken they're listening to devon's album and all of a sudden like my voice is in it and they're like no no no no there's there's no way blind boys on devon that's not happening my my my spotify is broken and it's playing devon's songs on his podcast at the same time well on the opposite side, people are like, why the fuck would he work with you, man? Come on. Yeah, it was awesome.

I really, really appreciated it. We were talking about AI backstage, and I heard a phrase the other day I thought was really interesting. Have you heard of Bok Fawcett? No. So basically, the idea is with the onset of a vehicle of unlimited creative potential like mid journey or chat GPT or what have you there is unlimited amounts of hyper creative content that in many ways humans aren't able to access at least that quickly and the Bach faucet is a term for because it's no longer rare, just the surplus of it loses its value.

Of what? Of art? Of creativity? Of whatever the value that was ascribed to it in the first place. Because that's an interesting thing I think about. Like, we've lost scarcity. The internet has, like, I'm old enough to remember

having to spend 25 euros on a CD, and if that CD was shit, I had to listen to it. But I found amazing music that way, whereas now I could go through Bruce Springsteen's entire catalogue in 15 minutes and decide he was shit. The scarcity meant... But even you go back further, there was a time in history

where someone heard Mozart once if they were lucky, if they were wealthy enough to get into a theatre. They heard Mozart once, and that's it. And it stays with them forever as a memory. I have to ask, what is the album that you remember spending 25 euro on that you hated? Like proper hated and never.

Yeah. I had this band from the UK called The Doves. They got five star reviews and everything. It was like 2002. So I said, that's where my 20. I was in school. 25 quid. That was months to save up.

And I got it and I stuck with it for months. i said i'm sorry this is harsh shit and i and i even go back to it on spotify now and it's like sorry it was harsh shit but then another one was discovery by daft punk which i got in the year 2000 i fucking hated hated it. But I spent 25 quid on it and it's one of my favorite albums of all time because I simply had to. I could not dispose of this thing that I'd spent money on. I had to work with it.

And I went, actually, no, this is amazing. And I didn't get it at first. There was another thing that you did that I think was just so stunning. What was the Rubberit's guide to everything? What was the TV show? Oh, the one about philosophy. Yeah.

The rubber bandit's guide to reality. My God. So that was, we have this TV station in Ireland called RTE. Yeah. How many episodes of that was there? There was four. There was the rubber bandit's guide to sex, the rubber bandit's guide to money.

No, there was three. Sex, money, and reality. That's all there is. And we have this TV station called RTE. They're not very creative. They're not very imaginative. So I wanted to make a documentary on the history of philosophy.

That's what I wanted to do. But you can't go to this channel and say, I want to make a documentary about philosophy because they'll go, no, you're not, you fucking lunatic. So what I told them instead was, I'm going to make a documentary about reality TV. You know, reality TV, Love Island, all that stuff. So they loved that.

So I called it The Rubber Bandit's Guide to Reality. They didn't know the difference. And then I spent all their money and came back to them with fucking... And also, the way we got around it too is we interviewed a real reality TV star, Innes. He was in The Only Way is Essex or something. His name is Stevie Johnson. Is The Only Way is Essex? Is that a reality TV show?

Yeah, so he was in that. So we got his interview. So the channel heads are looking at the paper going, well, they have a real English reality TV star and they're interviewing him. That's good. But what we did was I studied CIA

and KGB techniques about how to destabilize a person's reality. And we got this reality TV star, Stevie Johnson, and used CIA techniques to manipulate him into questioning his own reality. No, I'm serious. I'm not joking. It was fucking amazing. I edited his Wikipedia page to say that he was investing in saunas. He wasn't. But it said it on Wikipedia because I changed it. And then when we were interviewing him, I pulled up his Wikipedia and says, it says here on Wikipedia that you're investing in saunas.

And he's like, no, I'm not. And then I show it to him and slowly but surely he starts to become a sauna entrepreneur so the interview itself was like four hours long and this was a real posh English dude so we kept at it and at it and at it and by the end of it we got him to dress up like he was in the IRA and we'd use CAA techniques to do it so like RTE didn't know they were fucking funding that they didn't know that but I was talking amazing um something I'd like to ask you is so you your your first break as such was when you got to sing on a steve with steve voi yeah and you did this and having done this you what i read was you hated the industry

and wanted to move away from it or do something is that true or is that just something i read on wikipedia well i mean i think it's a it's did you put it on there? I mean, it's a slight distinction between that being like an altruistic connection to my artistic motivation fundamental to what I consider the source of the creative flow to be connected to I and you know I strangely I wasn't a social flower as a kid yeah so I I got this opportunity to go down to Los Angeles and participate in that which I thought of clearly that's what it is and this is early 90s LA metal scene which was pretty superficial well and it but it was also I came down there were stars my eyes thinking well everybody here has this connection to music and you mean Sunset Strip that that's a whole thing well, man. The whole thing. But you know, I was like, I'd had one relationship, I didn't do drugs, I didn't drink, I went

down there thinking, this is going to be a manifestation of my inner desire to represent my environment through sound. And you're a fucking Steve Vai singer, so that's pretty legendary shit. And he just came out of being like a legitimate rock star. Like there was an era where you could get away with being that guy. Like Steve Vai, if you don't know who he was, when David Lee Roth went solo from Van Halen, because Eddie Van Halen is a legend with guitar,

David Lee Roth was like, who's the next best guy? Or who can I get who will make Eddie Van Halen jealous? So he got Steveve vi but the thing with steve is his foundation though was with zappa so he was of course and we both love frank zappa any frank zappa fans in the audience okay yeah but i yes i do love zappa but i i appreciate him more than love him first i get you yeah Yeah. But because Steve's lineage was that, he was connected to music in a way that was fundamental in my estimation. So he had had this rather unfortunate experience of becoming a rock star. But I think his psychology wasn't really that.

So we met each other at this intersection in life where I was just a kid. And he was coming out of this scene in a way where you know it was it was a difficult thing for anybody to be 25 years old and have you know millions and millions of dollars and all these sorts of things so so my reaction to that scene was I guess petulant but I didn't have the emotional maturity at that point to articulate it. Well, at the time, you're like, this is bullshit. I hate this. Well, fortunately, I moved in with a buddy of mine from Long Island.

We shared an apartment, and he picked me up at the airport, and he's like, listen, before we start, everybody here is full of shit, and we're going to have a hard time navigating this. So I remember with Steveve poor guy i love him we're still friends this day but my way of articulating discontent was i took a shit in his guitar case and then jesus christ but i mean it said more than i was able to verbalize at that point we that's a big decision we the fuck are you doing i gotta say at the time it was less of a decision than it would be now were you drunk no i wish man uh we did the tonight show the jay leno tonight show yeah

you shat on jay leno's chin no no i wish it was that actually so what we were we were managed by desmond child who had written like all these big rock hits right and he had groomed us a week or two before he they put this fake hair on and it's like you have to look a certain way and you have to pout and so before we did the tonight show the night before me and mark we shaved my head and my eyebrows and and then we went on and they were just like what the fuck and then when we were at the tonight show it there was a few people, but everybody was just really foolish shit, I guess. And so at the end... Ah, now I understand why you did this.

So we were in the green room after and Mark and I, and he's still my buddy to this day, I was like, dude, cover up the windows. And so we covered up the windows, and I got naked. And there was the phone there, like the green room phone. And I stuck it up my ass, and they took a bunch of photos. And then we thought it was funny, and I went home. And we got a call the next morning from Desmond Child,

who was going fucking bananas. And he's like, what did you do? And I was like, right. And he's like, you you do and I was like right and he's like you stuck the phone up your ass and took photos of it and I was like there's they're like we have all the cameras that they had in the green screen and so I remember and Steve who I love dearly I remember him just being like, why did you...

That's a good question. Yeah, and I didn't really have an answer. Again, I figured that at that point, I wasn't emotionally mature enough to articulate my discontent, so I figured... It was performance art, Your Honor. That's what it was. That's what it was, yeah.

But it does, it feels like performance art. Well, I what it was that's what it was yeah but it does it it feels like performance art well what i like when when you're saying everyone is full of so now automatically yeah you know you're sticking a phone up your ass the phone is how you communicate the that you're full of this is it um now it's full more and but what i can't poor old steve vice guitar case i know yeah i feel bad for him too. And it was funny because we... Well, did you have a problem with Steve? Was this like... Was it the Steve... His fame? Like, I mean, why would you shit in his guitar case? Because I loved him. I loved him. All right, that doesn't make a lot of sense, does it? No.

I loved him and I thought that what the scene represented, I just didn't understand it because it seemed incongruent with the person that I see. Okay, so you met this lovely dude called Steve and it's like you are not, your Steve-vines is very separate and different to who you are as a human being. And I couldn't rectify that. And a lot of that was on

me clearly but it was it was our relationship has evolved over here i mean did he have a conversation with you well i think that was the thing is who cleaned it out i i think it wasn't i at this stage steve i would have been big enough that he didn't have to clean out of his own guitar case yeah absolutely i left it though and i mean it was um when he found it it was white you know like like oh white dog shit a remnant of the past dude that's the thing were you the one that was talking yeah i'm big into white dog shit yeah what is it it's it's the is it part of the the feed at one point it had more lime in it so the only information i could guess now i don't know how this i'm talking about dogs here not your bowels apparently before ireland joined the european union there was quite a lot of ash in dog food and this meant that there was a lot of white dog

shit when i was a child right but the other theory is, as a grown man, as a professional grown man, I just don't spend a lot of time in fields on the ground. So it's like, is there less white dog shit or do I just have responsibilities? Take my word for it. But I can't explain how your fucking shit went white, man. Yeah, it's a lot of hash in the feed, man.

Explain how your fucking shit went white, man. Yeah, it's a lot of hash in the feed, man. Well, no, it's interesting because I often think about geese as well because that oxidizes in a similar way. Geese? Yeah, geese. Tell me about this. Well, so goose shit is white as well. Now, here's the interesting thing about bird shit.

Please. Birds don't shit or piss. They do it all at once. One hole. And I know this because a fossilized dinosaur shit is called coprolite. And when they looked at fossilized dinosaur shit, they went, something's not right here.

This shit is a bit like what a bird does. And it was dinosaur shit that led them to kind of go maybe these are not lizards maybe they're a type of bird because dinosaurs are bird t-rex had feathers i'm sorry to say it but jurassic park was wrong t-rex had feathers and honked like a goose that's what we know now that would ruin the movie that's slightly less intimidating completely gone give a shit about him i wonder what the honk was like. I wonder if it was like really... I'd imagine it'd be a domineering honk.

It would be a honk with presence at least. That's a band name. Domineering honk. Yeah. Yeah. So when you were like, okay, this whole industry is shit, and then you founded Strapping Young Lad. It was before Strapping, so I was on tour with Steve,

and we had a big blowout, and I broke a bunch of stuff. And then I was on tour with a band from the UK called The Wild Hearts. And then after I broke all these things, Ginger, the singer, was just like, oh, you should join our band. And so I moved to the UK, and I lived outside of Birmingham in a place called Wensbury, which is basically council housing and depression, and like 75 gentlemen's pubs.

Okay. And that was my introduction to drinking and drugs. Really? Oh, my God, outside of Birmingham. Oh, yeah, yeah man because there was fuck all else to do to be fair did you not have much uh drinking done in canada well it's a different drinking culture it is very different very different like people in my experience with canada and america it's like people are shit-faced by eight you know they start at five and they're

done by eight and then it just turns into debauchery is it big drinking here in Canada? oh yeah is it? but you have to go to a drink shop to buy drink I can't just walk into 7-11 they don't have any cans no it's like Sweden it's controlled by the government and the fact that it's taxed

so if you get a 4 pack of beer it's like 20 bucks for like a yeah beer, it's like 20 bucks for like a... Okay, like in Ireland. Yeah, basically. But it's... What were we talking about? We were talking about how you founded Strapping Young Lad.

Oh, yeah. And then I remember after the Wild Hearts because I thought they were... I love those guys. They were brilliant. But it was really a lot of drugs and it was a lot of toxicity what type of drugs a lot of crack ah come on not not me okay yeah but it was like I remember just they were just like would you like some of our crack and I was like no I'm good I you know in fact I remember touring and I had a I bought a gas mask because everybody smoked cigarettes

and I just wrote Canada man on the top and sat back petulantly and I remember there was one night we were in East Germany and and they everybody was drinking and drinking and drinking they'd never tried Jägermeister and I was like hey you should try this Jägermeister and how that night ended was East German police with guns to the back of the head of the tour manager and the bass player and the sound man punching the singer out, quitting the tour. And then we got kicked out of the hotel at like one or two in the morning and the TV flew out after because the drummer was in there. And really, I'm from Guilford. I'm just like, wow, this is out of my comfort zone.

In a country that doesn't exist anymore. In a country that doesn't exist, right? So yeah. In a country that doesn't exist anymore. In a country that doesn't exist, right? So, yeah, in the country that doesn't exist, yeah. Well, getting in trouble in East Germany is like, you don't want to do that. That's the Soviet Union. Hucked. Yeah.

I remember I got back to Vancouver, and the thing that I didn't take into consideration is, as toxic as it was that whole culture like living in the UK I was like wow this is fun like they're all from Newcastle and the sense of humor was amazing and when I got back to Vancouver I was like oh I'm really bored now and so I was like well what we should do is in Vancouver we should do drugs and drink and then I decided that my reaction to the industry that I had interpreted as being one way,

which is of course my own interpretation of it, I would use the facility that I had that was rooted in I want to sing to the mountains and listen to India. I was like, I want to watch it burn. I want to see how destructive we can make it yeah but it was through that that i recognized my motivation was like a fear of anger and so it took going through strapping to get to the point where i was able to sort of rationalize what had happened there and it's funny because you know you go through all that period and

experimenting with psychedelics when i was in my mid-20s and then doing interviews on it and then people like and was it acid or mushrooms or oh dude I think at all man yeah yeah but it was it was through that experience that you know because in my early 20s and having not had experience with that when I was in my teens I had already sort of developed this sense of of self and identity that was compounded by arrogance and fame and all these things. And so when I finally took drugs, I had a full-blown Christ complex. And that's what you do. It was crazy. It was like did the whole thing, walk around with white clothes

and telling everybody what they needed to do and then consequently having to apologize to everybody. About two years later, I had to go up had to go it sounds like a doctor as well that's the best way like i remember going up to my mother after be like i'm sorry and you know my wife and my friends and just like man that's that was a that was a less than violence to be like, oh, that happens to everybody who does that. Shit. Okay. Welp. Yeah, man.

Do you find it difficult to listen to some of the strapping young lad stuff because of where your head was at at the time? I like it. I think it's great. It's fucking amazing. Thanks, man. I put a lot of effort into it. I was listening to Goat today on the first album.

And there's a real goat in that, isn't there? Yeah, there is. Yeah, I could hear him. There was a record we did called Alien that I was very proud of, and City was good too. But it was, I think the thing that was, and this goes back even to what we were talking about at the beginning of our conversation,

is your motivation for your creative output, what is its source? And I think that unless you're willing to be 100% honest about where you are, regardless of whether or not it's delusional, or if you're able to articulate that in a complete sense, whether or not you agree with it down the line, you're able to recognize the honesty in it, uh the value that i place on on the work and also the reason why i will fight uh for my ability to do whatever i want now that's separate from that stuff is because it's rooted in trying to

find some degree of artistic truth and and man if your artistic truth is the same when you're 50 as you were when you were 23 that implies a lack of of growth that's why i don't have any tattoos but it's true dude i got that done in uh canada is that your only tattoo no no i gotta they're they're all worse than the other but it's like uh but i got that done in birmingham because i was just i was at that point i was trying to you know i was trying to establish some sort of identity and i'll take it i was like i guess i'm can Canada that's my trip right I'm the guy that shits and things you know then when you moved on to the Devin Townsend project yeah that was after kids where was what emotions what feelings what senses were driving because it is quite different musically

when I felt the need to do was retroactively explain my motivations for going down the avenues that I went with some of the strapping material because part of the impetus for making some of that material was experimenting with a lack of accountability to see what would happen. And the result of that, we say vibe attracts your tribe. My world became, it resonated with things that because i consciously tried to experiment with a lack of accountability like say whatever the fuck you want say it just do it and then by doing that i was like oh my god this is what the result of that is so you became surrounded by

negative people well negative things in general including my my thought patterns and what i also found is with uh some sort of public platform which is why i have and you know still feel so much admiration for you comes the sense that there's going to be people that listen to what you say yeah and if what you're saying is coming from a place of consciously trying to create art from a place of lack of accountability and that people view that as okay well there's a certain amount of success that comes with that then it becomes almost socially acceptable to follow that so when I realized that there were certain people that were experimenting with their mental health based on interviews that I had done things that activities that I had done, activities that I had engaged in, I thought, okay, well, after having children,

I recognized how much of my process had been unconscious up to that point, yet by consciously having children, I'm like, okay, so now I have to be at peace with those motivations in order for me to create anything that I feel is worth a shit. And so a lot of the Devon Townsend project became an experiment I guess in retroactively trying to articulate the method in which the

strapping stuff was written from and then say this is why this part of this was appropriate for me this is why this part of it wasn't appropriate and so the devon townsend project ended up being a lot of quiet music a lot of melodic music but also concurrently with the strapping stuff all through that time i had uh recorded music that was the polar opposite of that like for every strapping record for for the first album there was ocean machine for the second one there was physicist and infinity so there was always the the dichotomy between those two things but the intent of the writing has always been the foundation of my interest in it so the devon townsend project

ended up just being uh a way for me to retroactively analyze what had happened this sounds fucking horribly pretentious i'm so sorry but it worked and by the time it got to the album empath the idea was to make a version of each one of those uh aesthetic uh you know uh musical things yeah and then um and then try and make a record of it that you can sort of lay it out it acts as as as like a bunch of boulders in the in the way of the creative path get them out of the way and then you see where it goes from there and the puzzle the thing that that you and i uh had a moment with there was basically where i find myself now i did a record last year that was just it was very complicated for me emotionally. And now I'm in a place where,

as we were talking about earlier, what is the reason to continue? Like what is the fundamental motivation of an artist? Is it to run out of things to say? Is the desire to make art in some way rooted to either a fear of death or a need for validation? And if that is the case does that matter right so i don't know but i really like gardening now

i really do i weeded yesterday i got in there i did it right i got the little trowel um yeah man because my my philosophy on art is that the goal the goal of the artist is to return to childhood okay i i want to i'll never make anything as good as i i'll make when i was three playing with lego i want to get to that mindset the my a child playing with lego doesn't care about whether it's good or bad they don't even care that they're making something they're doing lego and i think for me what i'd love to whatever i'm doing i'm doing writing i'm doing music i'm doing it it's all about the process complete right in the middle of the process i'm not thinking about good or bad process based stuff because if you try and make

something good it ends up being shit. So do you think the process is important, or is it just something we do? The process is where I get meaning. In the process is where I feel worthy and feel like I deserve to exist and why I exist. Do you think that you don't? Now, there's the problem.

If I take art away, then it's like, do I have any value as a human being and then i have to be careful because i know my value as a human has to be intrinsic i have to if you place your self-esteem and your self-worth in something external whether it be someone else's opinion whether it be your work you're fucked we're all born with the same worth all human beings have the exact same worth no one is better than anybody else we're too complex to evaluate against each other you know but we trick ourselves into thinking i am worthy because i'm good at this i am worthy because i'm better than that person i have no worth because i'm not as

good as that person you know what i mean because I'm not as good as that person. You know what I mean? I need to not be that. I need to work against that through self-compassion and self-love. Amen. Hypothetically, you take away all your art, your ability to do it, where would the worth be?

In what part of your field? Being kind to people. Awesome. You know what I mean? 100%. You can't go wrong with that. And I think that comes through in everything you do. Thank you very much.

Thank you. 100%. Devin has to catch a bus. Yeah. Like literally, I'm not joking. I'm out of here. So I'm going to give you

a 10 minute head start because I can tell that you're really worried. And I've got to pee again. Yeah, and you've got to go for a wee-wee. Yeah, yeah. So I'm going to bid adieu

to Devin, right? Devin Townsend, thank you so much. See you. Have a good one. Now, after Devin left the stage, because he did have to catch a bus, for real, I decided I was going to take some audience questions. And there were some great questions. So here they are.

So this is a chicken cross road type question okay you're on desert island i'm not i'm doing a podcast man on stage go on go on you have a horse yeah is it outside you have a subaru ah it is you're going there you have a missy bishy but But here's the funny question. You have a Toyota Corolla. What do you fucking ride to town? There's a man here from 2010, ladies and gentlemen.

Fuck your Honda Civic. I have a horse outside. Fuck your Subaru. I have a horse outside. Don't. Fuck your Mitsubishi, I have a horse outside. If you're looking for a ride, I have a horse outside. Do you know what? No, no, I'm not going to take it away from him. He enjoys that song. Do you know what? It's not a bad song. It's just, as Devin was saying, it's a horrible time in my life. It was a horrible time in my life. But thank you for that contribution, sir. I mean, I don't know what I'd do if I'm in a desert. I've got a horse. I've got a Honda Civic.

I'm worrying about water, man. You know, I think if you think of it in terms of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, cars aren't there when you're in the desert. I'm thinking about, well, who's got some water here, lads? I'm curious what you think well-being means or could mean when we choose to be online. Oh, that's a good one. I don't know, is there well-being online. I don't know because the thing is is that you're performing a version of yourself. Like the thing is with being online is do you know the way you'd be walking down the road and you almost bump into someone. You know

someone's walking towards you and you almost bump into each other while you're walking. And you go, oh, oh, oh. And you have a lovely smile with the person. You know, when you all, you have a lovely smile and you always have a lovely moment of connection with another human being and you figure it out and you move on. And that tends to be what happens when you almost bump into a person in physical space. Now imagine almost bumping into someone in a car. Do you do a little laugh and go, you don't. You go, get the fuck out of the way, you stupid prick. And you beep your horn. Because when you're in a car, oh, I forget the name of it. I think it's called the disinhibiting effect. I think it's called that. When you're in a car, you feel protected. Your sense of identity and self is protected by the car. So you project your anger on that other

person. And online, it's the same shit. Online, I mean, Jesus Christ, if I'm in a pub and someone disagrees with my opinion, it's like, oh, really? Okay, fine. Let's move on. If someone disagrees with you online, you can have a fucking huge giant argument. I've seen massive fights start over fucking bananas. You know what I mean? So I don't know. The best type of well-being you can have online is to know when to stay away from it.

You know? Like I find with Twitter in particular, the best way, it's what you don't say. You know? Like fuck online for, you're not going to find mental health online lads you can read about it you can read about it but anything whereby you're performing an avatar of yourself and let's not forget when we're speaking in the context of social media these platforms are designed to appeal to what's called high arousal emotions. That's anger and anxiety.

The entire structure makes us communicate in a way where we definitely end up having a fight. So it's designed against sound mental health. They don't want us agreeing with each other and going, oh, that's fine, I'll talk to you later. It's like, no, no, no, no, you need to argue there for six hours so we can have all of your data, please. So it is. Any other questions? Up at the back there, Usher. I'm sorry, Usher, for making you do all that. If you were to go into psychology, like actually go

through like how you've talked before on your podcast. You mean if I was to train to be? If you were to train, like get a a degree in psychology what field would you go into so I did train for three years um I trained for three years to be a psychotherapist and then I gave it up because there was a song about a horse and integrative counseling I'd go into integrative counseling I'd like to be a psychotherapist so I don't think psychology would be my thing I'd like to be dealing one-on-one with human beings and I'd be integrative in that I'd learn as many different fields of psychotherapeutic theory as possible and then use them as appropriate with whoever comes to me so I'd have gestalt psychology CBT all these different

things and depending on the person's needs I'd be ablealt Psychology, CBT, all these different things, and depending on the person's needs, I'd be able to take from this toolbox and help them as an individual. So that's what I do. And it is, it's something I am like considering, like when I'm older and I don't want to do this anymore, because I have a bag in my head. I can't actually take the bag off and go and train to be a psychotherapist. And then when someone presents to me with anxiety, they're not like, he did that song about the horse. Because if you're trying to be a therapist and your client is like, I remember that song about the horse, you can't establish a therapeutic relationship there. You just can't. It's not possible. How are you? Hi, how are you?

I'm fantastic. I have a question. How is Napper Tandy? And also, sorry for your loss. Oh, thank you so much. So for those of you who don't know, my cat, Silk and Thomas, died. A cannabis breeder in Toronto

is after breeding a breed of cannabis called Silk and Thomas now in honor of my dead cat so I smoked some of that and listened to the Creedence Clearwater revival as he would have wanted now pretend he's doing really well and for a while I was worried because she was grieving for her brother you know herself my two cats he was deaf and kind of blind she was his sister. She's very, she is his sister. She's strong, but she hasn't been separated with him since they were kittens.

Like, they were together their whole lives. So she was weird for about two weeks, and now she's learning how to be a solitary cat now. She's learning how to do it. She's going back to her old patterns. My ma is feeding her while I'm gone, so I'm getting daily reports learning how to do it. She's going back to her old patterns. My ma is feeding her while I'm gone. So I'm getting daily reports about how she's doing. She's eating her food. She's not letting the tomcats come in and eat her food. That was my big fear. So Napratandi is doing well. I'm going to take one more question. Hi, blind boy. How are you?

I want to say that I've been going to Ireland my whole life. My family's Irish, and because of you... Is that why you're so tall? Yes. Do you grow an inch each time you go to Ireland? Facts. Firstly, I want to say that every time I've gone, like, I've heard negative things about Limerick,

but this last time I was in Roscommon for a family reunion, took a detour to Limerick. Yeah, thank you. All right. I specifically took a detour to Limerick to go see Pharmacia and Chicken Hut. Loved it. So thank you for convincing me that Limerick's a good place to visit.

My question is, you're fascinated by the history of music. If you look at rebellion in music and you look at folk and that leads into rock and roll and that leads into hip hop, unfortunately all of those genres have sort of been diluted by commercialization and diluted by that. Do you see any current music genre having the potency to have rebellion right now? So it's not... That's a great question.

Not the same. So there's a genre called hyperpop. There's a band called 100 Gecs. And it rebels against what's considered nice. Like, I mean that in a good way, in the way that AFX Twin did. It's very abrasive, difficult music to listen to. It's incredibly fast. I've been told with hyperpop music, it's for Gen Z.

It's for a generation who grew up during the, who were children during the recession and had to go to children's parties when Bass Hunter was being played and drinking a load of Coca-Cola and that's what hyperpop is. So that's what jumps out when I think of rebellion. It's rebelling against, it's really awful.

But awful can be good. That's what I think of. Rebellion politically, I don't think music is as important anymore. I don't think music has cultural weight like it did. So the rebellion that you see, I mean, there's a lot of fucking activism going on now that wasn't really going on 20 years ago.

I went to art college, lads, in the 2000s, and a lot of people weren't political. In fucking art college, people were not political. People didn't, people just rented places and didn't worry about rent if there were in art college when i went to art college there was like three people calling themselves a communist and they were strange now you're going to get 90 percent of people they're going i care about socialism i care about communism i don't like what's happening, I want it to change.

So the activism now, they're not expressing it via music, they're expressing it via online identities and memes and actual boots on the ground activism. If it was 30 years ago, maybe they'd have a guitar in their hand, I don't know. Who's going to lead the rebellion?

Pat Kenny. I don't know who's going to lead the rebellion, but I tell you what we need is a Charles Stewart Parnell. By which I mean, and fucking Vancouver could do it one too. Something that's happening the world over is, like everywhere you go, the rents are too high. The rents are too fucking high and it's killing everybody. And one of the things is you can riot, but the powers that be loving all riots,

you can quash a riot really, really quickly. And you can call the people who riot thugs and you can make you that's that's they love that what the powers that be don't want is collective bargaining they don't want unions they don't want like renters unions like we have in ireland a community action tenants union katu what charles stewart parnell did in ireland in the late 1800s was there was a problem with landlords then too. He just got a bunch of people together and said, how about everybody don't pay rent? How about everybody civil disobedience? And that is what terrifies the powers that be.

They're not scared of a riot. They're scared of everybody getting together and going, I'm not going to pay rent. This is unacceptable. I feel that this violates my human rights. I'm not going to pay rent. This is unacceptable. I feel that this violates my human rights. I'm just going to stop all of us at once. That's scary shit. You know what I mean?

Okay. It's a quarter past 10. They're very strict on curfews in Canada. Thank you very much. Do you know the the Vancouver accent, the Toronto accent is something else, isn't it? It sounds like a Jamaican person making a formal complaint.

Couldn't believe it when I heard it. All right. You've been a wonderful audience. Thank you to Devin Townsend who has left us. Have a lovely night. Oh, that was this week's podcast. I'm going to be back next week with some hot takes.

I couldn't do hot takes this week because I'm in a hotel like Mr. Worldwide recording between a mattress and a window so I might do something about the history of door handles next week, I don't know we'll see what happens to all of you glorious people rub a dog

say hello to a worm wink at a cat and I'll catch you next week. Bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to rock city at torontorock.com you