The One You Feed - Strand of Oaks (Timothy Showalter)

Episode Date: July 16, 2014

This week on The One You Feed we have Timothy Showalter from Strand of Oaks.Strand of Oaks aka Timothy Showalter just released one of the years best records. Heal has been celebrated by NPR, Pitchfork, Mojo and Uncut among many others. It's one of our favorite records of the year. The story behind Heal:"From the first bars of HEAL, the exhilarating melodic stomp of 'Goshen '97' puts you right into Tim Showalter's fervent teenage mindset. We find him in his family's basement den in Goshen, IN, feeling alienated but even at 15 years old, believing in the alchemy and power of music to heal your troubles. "The record is called HEAL, but it's not a soft, gentle healing, it's like scream therapy, a command, because I ripped out my subconscious, looked through it, and saw the worst parts. And that's how I got better." HEAL embodies that feeling of catharsis and rebirth, desperation and euphoria, confusion and clarity. It is deeply personal and unwittingly anthemic.Showalter was on tour, walking home on a mild autumn night in Malmo, Sweden, when he first felt the weight of the personal crisis that would ignite him to write HEAL. "It was a culmination of pressure," Showalter recalls. "My marriage was suffering, I'd released a record I was disappointed in, I didn't like how I looked or acted...so I'd gone on tour, I was gone about two years! I didn't take time to think about failure, but I knew I was going deeper and deeper...I was thinking, I have this life, but it's not my life, I haven't done it right..."When Showalter returned, he wrote 30 songs in three weeks, a process that proved difficult, but cathartic and at times invigorating. Previous Strand Of Oaks records were more skeletal, raw examples of folk-rooted Americana with occasional rock and electronic currents, that have now come to the fore. HEAL is a bold new beginning, with a thrilling full-tilt sound that draws on Showalter's love of '70s, '80s and '90s rock and pop, with the singer and guitarist playing the intense valedictory confessor.In This Interview Tim and I Discuss...The One You Feed parable.The great success of his new record.The saddest line on his new record.The importance of feeling all of our emotions, not just the good ones.How hard it is to write uplifting music that isn't cheesy.Disliking ironic music.The redemptive power of rock and roll.How we care less about what people think as we age.The power of being our authentic selves.Becoming who we are.Avoiding the victim/villain mindset.Jason Molina of Songs:Ohia.Fighting the dark times.Strand of Oaks LinksStrand of Oaks homepageBuy Heal on AmazonStrand of Oaks on TwitterStrand of Oaks on FacebookStrand of Oaks playlist on YouTube Some of our most popular interviews you might also enjoy:Kino MacGregorMike Scott of the WaterboysTodd Henry- author of Die EmptyRandy Scott HydeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Man, I hear Led Zeppelin songs and I just feel awesome. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves

moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like... Why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor? What's in the museum of failure? And does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer.

Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the show. Our guest on this episode is Timothy Showalter, or more commonly known as his songwriting moniker, Strand of Oaks. Following a personal crisis that came to a head after his third album, Tim has found great personal and musical success with his new highly acclaimed album, Heal. Here's the interview.

Hi Tim, welcome to the show. It's good to be here. Yeah, glad to have you. I have really been enjoying the new record. It's one of those rare records halfway through the first song. I was like, I really, really like this. So immediately out of the gate. And congratulations on, you seem to be having a lot of, at least initial success. You're getting a lot of coverage. You've been on NPR and a lot of different things and Time magazine.

So congratulations. There's a lot of good stuff happened for you. You deserve it. Yeah, I'm surprised myself. I mean, I love the record. But it's, yeah, it's, it's, you know, it's, it's shocking to me, because I always have very low expectations for people's reactions. And this is exceeding them, for sure. Did you have any sense that that was coming, or did you get a feeling that the promotion on this one was going to be different, or was it kind of just you've been truly caught off guard by it? Well, I knew that, I mean, A, I like this record a lot more than anything I've ever done.

So I think I believed in the record immensely, and I also was for the first time paired with an amazing team with Dead Oceans and, you know, the whole Secret Canadian family. It was just, you know, real fortuitous that I met up with those guys and they believed in the record and they allowed me, they allowed me to make the record I wanted and also were excited about that. So it was, you know, and leading up to it i knew i had something that i really loved and it felt in my own in my own mind when i was making i was like i think people are gonna like this but you never can tell you know it's i've i've thought that with other things but

it's you know i'll be the first to admit my first three records were much more nuanced and kind of thought pieces. They weren't just like, I'm going to drink a beer and turn this up loud and enjoy this. They were journeys or whatever. And this one feels like the first one that you can just sink your teeth into immediately. Yeah, well, the songs are very, and this isn't a negative word, they're very accessible. I think there's a lot of depth to them, but they're accessible right away, and it's got a great, it's just, it feels familiar and yet new at the same time, which is what a lot of the best music, at least for me, is.

There's some immediate, like, wait, this resonates in some way immediately. Yeah, I mean, that's the record that I love. And I mean, I basically wanted to make the kind of record that, you know, I wanted to make a record that I would buy and listen to. And, you know, I think the one thing I, my goal for this record was to make immediate songs that you can choose your level of commitment to. to make immediate songs that you can choose your level of commitment to. You know, you can just, you know, headbang or, you know, drive, or you can sit down, you know, with a bottle of, or not a bottle,

let's say a glass of scotch and, you know, kind of dig deeper in the lyrics. Please don't drink a bottle of scotch in 43 minutes. That would not be good. Please. Sit down with a case of scotch. I know. I think my own intake level just subconsciously revealed itself there. So don't listen to this kid and do that.

So our podcast is based on the parable of two wolves, where there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says, in life there's two wolves inside of us. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like hatred and greed and jealousy and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks and he says,

well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to ask you what that parable, yeah, I'd like to ask you what that parable means to you in your life and in the music that you make and just whatever resonates with you from that. Well, I think this record was a result of many years where I didn't feed either of the wolves. And I think the wolves, of good and bad, were kind of pushed aside into this kind of meandering existence. And because of that, I think the wolves got really angry and ate their leader or owner. And I was then fed to both simultaneously. And I think that resulted in this record. It was more of kind of the, it was the absence of feeling for so long and just kind of going

through the motions that then, you know, eventually the wolves were like, I fucking hate you, dude, and we're going to eat you, and later. And then as a result, you know, I had to acknowledge both, I guess, and make the record. Yeah, and I think that was, once I listened to the record a little bit, I was immediately like, I want to bring you on the show, because A, I love the music, but I think those themes are really evident throughout it.

And one of the, as you say that, that sort of lack of things, there's a line in your song, Plymouth, that you say, I stopped listening to music, I kept writing the same songs. Comfort doesn't mean you're better off. I stopped listening to music I kept writing the same song Comfort doesn't mean you're better off I met you when your hair was short

And my ego had barely formed It took a jug of wine to stir To me, that's the saddest and most desperate line. Music is just perhaps a symbol of everything. If you stop doing the thing that you love most, which for me my whole life has been music, that's been the kind of saving life raft of so many problems in my life. I just stopped listening to music, and I think that was a deeper, stronger metaphor for just everything in my life.

Part of that came with this thought of comfort, you know, an apartment, a marriage, cats, and like, you know, relative financial stability. And, and with that, just kind of, you know, I would have preferred to accept the pain or happiness in life. I was, I should have, should have found one of those, but I just didn't. And, you know, I think it was sometimes you need to accept both in order to have just some, just to kick yourself in the ass sometimes. And I, I definitely didn't do that until it was time. Yeah, we, I love that line. Comfort doesn't mean you're better off because that's, that's something that we talk a lot about on this show is that, that line, comfort doesn't mean you're better off, because that's something that we talk a lot about on this show, is that comfort is not the same thing as happiness, and

strong negative emotions are not necessarily a bad thing. Oftentimes, they're fuel or catalyst to better things. But that comfort, that missing of everything is really a sort of death. And I think a lot of times it's almost like we want to go back into the womb, it seems, with the modern conveniences of life. Like we have enough things in our world to keep us distracted from what truly is there. And we have the Internet. We have, you know, endless. We can get any record we want we can watch any movie we want we can you know look at whatever naked person we want to see on the

internet and all that bullshit and it's like but in the true fact is you're building this false safety net and i think the best parts of my life is when I realize there's no safety net and you can fall as deeply as you want to into depression and bad parts. But in realizing that you also, you also know that it's good. You know, you have to, you have to have both ends in order for it to have any purpose. Yeah,

there's certainly not the, those things are all, they're all a relative thing. There's no, it's sort of an obvious cliche, but there's no light. Those things are all a relative thing. It's sort of an obvious cliche, but there's no light without dark, etc. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer.

And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, Really No Really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition sign Jason bobblehead. It's called really know really and you can find it on the I heart radio app on

Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And exactly. And I think that's what's interesting about the way you brought it in about the wolves is a lot of people. It sort of starts off as this moralistic, the parable can almost sound moralistic, but over and over it's been interesting to hear people say about how they have to integrate both those things, and just trying to pretend that there's only good things is not exactly the point or the heart of what it's getting to. Yeah, and I think also, you know, it was in my past records, I think I only focused on, you know,

the, you know, the bad wolf side of things, you know, the darkness and, you know, and it was funny that in the midst of such a tumultuous time in my life, I somehow, there's happier parts of this record than any record I, or any song I could imagine. Like I never imagined myself capable of writing like a joyful celebratory song, but you know, this record was such a oxymoron for me in the sense of we have these dark and deep and problematic themes, but then sometimes it just feels good, you know,

and there's just, you know, plain and simple, good feelings on the record. And I, I had to grow comfortable with that as this child of, you know, Morrissey and these sad singer songwriters and red house painters and Nick

Drake and all these guys. Like I never, never was the celebration of that. And then I just kind of embraced the better parts. It's like, man, I hear, I hear Led Zeppelin songs and I just feel awesome.

Like, why haven't I done that in one of my songs yet? Like I'm capable of writing a major chord chorus or, or something like that to lift spirits instead of always trying to find that darker minor chord to take you even deeper into whatever I was. I, that's one of my proudest moments of the record actually, because I,

I was, I was happy that I didn't just rely on the darkness. Like there was definite joy apparent. You know, Chris and I are both musicians and songwriters. And I think that writing music that is joyful or happy or triumphant, it's harder. It's harder to do that without it being really cheesy or corny, or at least for people who were maybe raised on Morrissey and Nick Drake. Maybe that's only for us that have that problem. But

that's what I love. It's a rare thing where that's the music that I love the most that is still somehow, there's an optimism or a transcendence to it in a positive way, but it's not cheesy. And I think that always comes out of, it's leading leading out of the darkness right there it's not yeah the darkness is there or the sadness or the the struggle is there as well as the other part and i think that's what makes it all come together so and that's part of what really drew me to the record is that's that's not a common thing no and it's just and it's definitely not common in modern music because it seems like everything, not everything, I don't want to generalize,

but it just seems often a lot of music I listen to or, you know, is on, you know, people try and turn me on to, it's either overly earnest and almost like a delusional sense of, you know, sincerity, or it's doing it with like tongue in cheek or like, I think, I think the guy singing is like snarking at me or something like I'm pulling one over because I love irony or something. And, you know, when I, I was just driving, I was driving back from the store today and I heard a Rush song on the radio and I was like, I think it was Limelight. And I was like, man, these guys just feel this.

Like they totally believe in what they're singing. There's no satire. There's no irony. They just want to play this rock and roll music and they want to find some kind of, you know, I think, I always try and avoid, because now I wrote a record called Heal. I don't want to say it too often because it's just cliche, but that healing sense of rock and roll.

You listen to Back in Black and you're just like, fuck yeah, rock and roll. This just makes me feel good. We're not trying to weirdly or ironically wear Ray-Bans. I don't even know what kids wear anymore. I'm so out of it, but you know, it's just, it's unabashedly embracing rock music.

And, you know, I, I just, I think, I think I've just kind of signed up for whatever religion that is. And I don't know if I could ever go back. Like that's just the music I want to make from here on out. Yep. Well, it's, it's great stuff. We had, uh, we had, uh, a musician, I don't know if I could ever go back. Like, that's just the music I want to make from here on out. Yeah, well, it's great stuff. We had a musician, I don't know if you know him, Frank Turner on the show, and he's very straightforward and upfront about the transformative power of rock music, and he just doesn't shy away from it.

And that turns some people off, but I love it. Yeah, and I think the people that get turned off by it, it's almost we're peering into their self-conscious i want to be in the same room with like bob seger and leonard skinner when they were writing their song just be like dude let's just ride a riff let's ride a riff and make this happen like you know there wasn't this there wasn't this tortured thing about it and i maybe that's where i'm now Maybe in a year if we talk, I'll be completely different. But I'm really on that kick right now.

I'm not 20 anymore. I'm in my 30s. I don't look like a young guy anymore. I'm just embracing getting a little bit older and actually loving the fact that I don't give a fuck anymore. I don't care about, I dress how I want to dress. I get the tattoos I want to get and I drink cheap beer and it's just who I am. And I,

I feel like that's been a part of the whole process of this record, just embracing that and not trying to be anything else, but exactly what I want to be. You know, you could argue that's one of the biggest goals or purposes of life is to become who you actually are, and age certainly does help. At least for me it has. As I've gotten older, I've been much more able to sort of say, here's who I am, and there's much less posing or thinking or worrying about where I fit, how I fit.

Yeah, and I think it just feels very freeing right now, and I hope it continues, and I think it will, because what's so nice is to put out a record. When Heal was released, I had a bit of nervousness because I, this was the exact record that I want to make. And like, this is exactly who I am. And the music that I love, albeit really scattered on, you know, there's a lot of different genres on the record, but I realized like, this is me and I'm putting this out to the world. And to see people enjoy that and actually embrace that only validates it more for me to think, like, I can do whatever I want. And people, you know, like, not everything.

You know, I won't write, like, a 45-minute song, like, stoner metal song made. But, you know, it's like they, the critics and people buying the record have been like, hell yeah, do what you want, man. And the opportunity for people to engage in a deeper way and to do something more meaningful versus the idea of being a little bit more calculated about what parts I show and what parts I don't show. There's an inauthenticity there that I think people resonate with. Yeah, and I can tell. I mean, I listen to this, and I'm trying to think about records this year, but I don't know if you've heard the new Sharon Von Etten, but I'm just obsessed with that record

because I'm listening to a person that is just being like, I know Sharon a little bit, but this record is, it's uncomfortable in the best ways to hear how much she's putting on a line for this. And, you know, it feels like the best kind of Bruce Springsteen song that, you know, I know that he's meaning it. Yeah. Or at least I hope I know.

And, you know, it's, it just, that's inspiring to me. And there's probably a great art pop band out of brooklyn that i'm not giving a chance right now and i'm sorry to whoever you know they are but i just i'm not in that place right now i probably was when i was 21 but you know it's those are the records that i'm seeking out to listen to yep yeah me too my favorite record of the year and yours is yours is is starting to rise up the charts very quickly, but is Against Me, their record, Transgender Dysphoria Blues, which is about the... Oh, I need to listen to that. I definitely... It'll floor you.

I need to take some time with that. It just blows me away how good it is and how you talk about coming from being yourself in an uncomfortable place and really just laying it all out there. She does that in a major way, but yet it just rocks so hard and it's so fun. Well, probably because when that record was written, it's maybe the same feeling that I had, just that celebration of like, I'm just being fucking honest. Yeah. I'm being exactly what I want to say right now. And it's, you know, I obviously didn't go through what she went through, but it's, it feels, it feels similar in the sense of just purging yourself.

And, you know, it's something you don't want to do. You don't want to, you don't want to you don't want to rip that band-aid off because all your hairs are going to get ripped off with it but once you do it's like i did it and it feels great like it feels so good so the record is called heel and and the the the title track heel is a really uh wonderful song and you say something in there that i i think is a really... your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you, and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth.

Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all.

Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really. No Really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Great insight. And I think it ties to the show theme a little bit. And you're talking about your relationship and you say, you cheated on me, but I cheated on myself. And then you also say,

I know it wasn't me and I know it wasn't you. Yep. on myself. And then you also say, I know it wasn't me and I know it wasn't you. What I found so poignant about that is recognizing in the middle of a really painful situation that it's not all someone else's fault and it's not all your fault. There's a role that both people play and I think in a lot of things it's easy to get stranded on one side of that divide or the other. And both sides, whether blaming somebody else or blaming yourself, have pitfalls. And I just thought that was really a profound way of expressing that. I think it was one of those lines when I wrote that song,

it was, sometimes when I write a song, it's a few steps ahead of where I am mentally. My mind is actually more further along therapeutically than maybe it's my subconscious, but I'm actually giving myself advice. And, you know, that song, I needed to make clear that this record was no one is the victim and no one is the villain.

And it's just what happens when people live with one another or, or deal with one another. And it's, you know, my wife is not the villain and I'm not the villain. You know, we both as fucked up, we've done where people are just bad to one another and they're also good to

one another. And it's just, I, in the past, you know, I think I have played the victim and I've played the villain and I've never come to the state of mind where I can be both or neither of them are real. It's just what a relationship is, you know, whether it's with my family or my marriage or my friends, you know, it's I, I, I fuck up all the time, you know, and with, with all those relationships, but they do too. And it's just people are flawed.

We're inherently flawed creatures. And I needed to make that clear because I didn't want this to be a pointing fingers album, if anything. And I didn't want to point fingers at myself either, you know, because there's many times in the record where I talk about problems, but then I say, I think on the song Mirage here, I'm talking about the same kind of issues, but then I say like, I wasn't there, you know, I wasn't there. And, you know, and that, that was the hardest realization to be like,

yeah, things like this happen. And to almost understand where the problem originated from. You know, you think about the action, but you don't understand where the action started and what drove, what drives us to make mistakes or hurt people. is to make mistakes or hurt people. And it's just, it's so complicated. And the record is just scratching the surface of it because I have to live and deal with that every day. But I needed to somehow relate to that, to these songs. Well, I think that's neither the victim nor the villain approach.

There's nowhere to really go from there. Neither of those are useful approaches to actually making anything better. Exactly. Exactly. And, you know, because if you're the victim, you're just, you don't, you make so little progress. It's the same as if you're the perpetrator. And, you know, I just have to find that common ground. And it's funny, over the course of this record, you know, I've tried to mend relationships with friends that I might have had problems with. I've tried to get closer to my family.

And, you know, and that wasn't as a result of writing the songs. It just was, it was kind of happening as I was about to write this record or writing the record you know it just was it it coincided with the with the you know with the songs and it's actually made me feel a lot better because in that same time where i wasn't opening myself up to good or bad emotions i also was closing myself down to relationships and it I had never been to therapy, and I know very little about psychology, but I think that's just textbook depression and isolation that I was going through, just shutting myself off from everything else.

Yep, yep. And that textbook depression, to a large extent, is just not feeling anything. Yeah. So in that song, you've got a line, and I'm just kind of curious because I don't, and you can say it says what the song says, and I'm not, I don't, you know. But what's the painted like a warrior part of that song?

Oh, that is, oh man, thank you for bringing that up. That is not even my line. That's my best friend Christian Mattson from Tallest Man on Earth. That's my best friend christian mattson from tallest man on earth that's my favorite line from one of his songs uh from there's no leaving now it's a song off his oh i love that record yeah he says like when you're painted like a warrior and we you know a lot of this record resulted i i made this record to a large part because of our friendship together. And, you know, we did like four or five different tours together and spent, you know, months in a bus

and van together. And that's what we call each other warriors. And it's kind of based off of, we both read Carlos Castaneda around the same time, and we were reading Teachings of Don Juan, and, you know, we refer to each other as warriors, and, you know, it's a very private thing that we both share, but that was me just telling Christian, thank you, in my own double talk or whatever, you know, i wanted i wanted i wanted to show that admiration that i have for him and yeah that that that line to me it's not my own but i love i just love that line so much i love it so much that i just ripped it straight from the song well you're giving credit and it's uh it it it fits it fits very well um one of the other songs on the record that I think I've heard you refer to

as sort of the centerpiece of the record, or maybe a critic said that, but is the song JM about Jason Molina, the deceased songwriter, singer of Songs, Ohio. And I was a big fan of that. And can you tell us a little bit about that that song and and your feelings on that that song it is it is you know that's the best way to explain it it's the centerpiece of the record because it's in its own way it's the it's the mission statement of heal and i i didn't intend for it to be that way because i wrote that song just to kind of write a song for Jason and

I I almost wanted it to be a eulogy for him that I don't I didn't know Jason you know I think I met him once in Bloomington but you know it was it felt like I knew him and it felt like he was much and and that's what happens with the artists that you love so much you feel so close to them even though they're not friends of yours, they feel like they're your family. It was poignant that he's no longer with us in my life, too, to realize that this wasn't Joe Strummer or Johnny Cash or George Harrison. This wasn't one of my parents' idols that's passed. It's my peer. It's someone that's, you know, only a few years older than me that's, you know, is gone.

And he will not make any more records. I just wanted to be, like, just tell him thanks. Like, you know, it's kind of a weird, it might be seen as a corny line, like sweet tunes to play. But that's what he did. That's what every single time that guy opened his voice, you know, and shared a song, what it did to my life. It's almost too much to take in. At the end, though, the thing that really gets me is when you talk about, I won't let these dark times win. You know, I've got your sweet tunes to play.

Times win, you know, I've got your sweet tunes to play. And I think that's just so powerful because in some ways, you know, for Jason, the Dark Times did win. And I found that message so powerful about, I don't know, there's just something in that. It's a touching, touching thing. Now it's hard to hear you sing The crow has lost his wings I got your sweet tunes to play I'm getting older every day Still living the same mistakes I got your sweet tunes to play Either get out or stay in

I won't let these dark times win We got your sweet tunes to play. Your sweet tunes to play. Yeah! All of it is weird. It's weird. It's weird. It's the word homage or homage or homage, I guess. But it's, you know, all of that song is me doing tributes,

whether it's my style of guitar playing or melodies or lyrics that I chose to sing. You know, that was my most labored over song. And a lot of these songs are written on just the spur of the moment, quickly. They were done. They were very uncalculated. But this was the one song that I labored over, the lyrics. And I really thought about because Jason's music is what inspires me the most in art. And it's what we've talked about. And that sums up, like,

I Won't Let the Dark Times Win is what Songs of the High represents to me. It wasn't feel-sorry-for-me music. It wasn't pitying music or pitiful music. He would sing about dark times, but he would fight those dark times, and he wouldn't succumb to them. And I just, that's what just, it's again, overwhelming to me because I know he did not, I don't know him, but I know he didn't want to go. Right. Well, we're, we're, uh, we're at the end

of our time here, but Tim, I've really enjoyed the conversation. I really, I do love the new record. I'm really happy for the success that you're having. It's been, it's as much fun to talk with you as it is to listen to the record. So thanks so much. Thanks again, Tim. Thank you guys. This has been great. I'll see you guys in Columbus.

All right. Bye. Bye-bye. We'll see you. We'll see you. You can find out more about Timothy Showalter and this podcast at oneufeed.net slash showalter.