The Taproot Podcast - 🪕🎻The Psychology of Music with Tim Rutili of Califone

Episode Date: July 26, 2022

Tim Rutili is the lead singer and songwriter of the dream like mythological soundscapes of the band Califone. He sits down to talk about the depth psychology behind his life and work. His other projects include contributions to the bands Red Red Meat, Loftus, Ugly Casanova and the fil All My Friends Are Funeral Singers. I have been a life long fan of his projects and we are grateful for his time.   Buy Tim's Music at https://www.califonemusic.com/ & https://califonemusic.bandcamp.com/   Check out the podcast version of this interview at: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/ #califone #music #psychology #depthpsychology #songwriting #mythology #sound #singer #singersongwriter #folk #folkmusic #folklore #redredmeat #modestmouse Find more free resources on the website: https://www.gettherapybirmingham.com/ Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/ Check out the youtube: https://youtube.com/@GetTherapyBirminghamPodcast Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/ Podcast Feed: https://feed.podbean.com/GetTherapyBirmingham/feed.xml Taproot Therapy Collective 2025 Shady Crest Drive | Hoover, Alabama 35216 Phone: [phone] Fax: [phone]  Email: [e-mail] The resources, videos and podcasts on our site and social media are no substitute for mental health treatment. Please find a qualified mental health provider and contact emergency services in your area in the event of an emergency to a provider in your area. Our number and email are only for scheduling at Taproot Therapy Collective are not monitored consistently and not a reliable resource for emergency services.

Hi, this is Joel Blackstock, and you're listening to the Taproot Therapy Collective podcast. Today we're sitting down for an interview with Tim Rutile to discuss the psychology of music and the depth psychology behind the things that he creates. Tim is the founding member of the band Caliphone. He's also contributed to several other music projects, but he is also the writer and director of a film called All My Friends Are Funeral Singers, which is a really nice work. So without much further ado, I'm going to go ahead and roll that interview.

I hope you enjoy. falling in love with the light it is so clear i realize well i mean there's something about the way that the i guess the vibe is what they call it now but the way that your music hits that there's like a it has almost kind of a mystical or a spiritual element to it i mean there's nothing that's like on its nose religious but it's kind of this Appalachian, you know, it's sound pieces of it sound like a folk revival people's pieces of it sound like classic rock parts of it sound like you're skimming the AM radio while you're driving through the Appalachian mountains. Um, is that a vibe that you're going for? Or do you just kind of break stuff till you find that what works or you know how do you get there it's just a constant search for stuff um and you just try things and whatever feels right and sounds right

you go with so it's just uh a matter of um playing around writing songs and a lot of it feels like collaging you know um adding elements that elements that shouldn't necessarily go together and smashing them together. Again, it's not, I don't like thinking about it too much. So it's trying to get your brain empty and maybe trust your gut and let things flow that way and see what happens. I mean, one of the things that's interesting to me is because we work with a lot of artists and creatives, and I did even before I was a therapist. And so part of this was kind of trying to find the through line in people that I think are just kind of like visionary and like what they're able to make in different disciplines.

And I mean, a lot of your music has a timelessness to it you know it's like you can't hear it and know where when where it came from that's kind of nice i mean a lot of and so that's kind of what is interesting to me in architecture or other things is when someone has you know found something that's pretty primal or pretty archetypal um they're able to see through stuff and it seems like a a lot of genius in different fields is just people being bored. You know, they've seen this, they've heard every guitar solo, they've seen all of that, and they've just, they're kind of noticing every single pattern that sells something and they want to break it.

And you kind of hear that in what you're doing. You know, there's not, there's a knowledge of what it is. Like a search for your own voice and a search for your own truth and a search for your own physical self even that goes beyond pop culture or trends or whatever. A lot of it is just like it still feels like making music and making art still feels like a search for self. To me, it does. Yeah. it still feels like making music and making art still feels like a search for self to me. Yeah. And that's why I think like, we're lucky that you did get to make the one movie you had mentioned somewhere that you had written others.

And that the one that they got made only one has been made, but you know, watching that movie, it's like all my friends are funeral singers. It's like, this is from the same mind of this music. You know, this is just the, the, the mute, This is the movie that goes with that sound.

Yeah, it's not a perfect piece of work, but it is. One of the intentions was to make a movie that looks and feels like the music sounds. And I think we did that. Yeah, it's a gorgeous film. It's a lot of fun. It ended up helping me way back when. I think I just graduated college. I had some like long form story about all of these, all of these like, like different genres of ghosts,

like goes from different genres of horror that were different, different types of, you know, people's psychological need for ghosts, but they're the genres are all smushed together and they're in this house. And so they don't quite get along. And then when your movie came out, I was like,

well, I can't make that. That's exactly, this is a better version of what I was trying to do and so i ended up splitting it up into these short stories and it but it it was better i mean the the short stories were published separately and and it made a better thing but it came at an interesting time for me it's a really fun film yeah and i mean thinking about it it didn't didn't think about it at the time, but thinking about it now, it's like all those characters, all those ghost characters were aspects of Zell, the main character, you know, like that was all her. I mean, those were all archetypes that she carried, if you want to talk about it in that, you know.

Yeah, no, that's what makes it beautiful and bits of her history and family you know good and bad they kind of hold us back from our authentic journey yeah i mean you reference like a lot of kind of appellation folk remedy ritual you know or superstition or wish made burning onions will make or wish made while burning onions will come true different different things like that in your music do you have an interest in kind of folklore and myth oh of course yeah um my family um when i was growing up there was a lot of gambling going on and a lot of superstitions so So the way that whole funeral singers project started was I started interviewing, you know, I had a little video camera and I started, you know, asking people in my family and then friends and people that I knew. And sometimes

people that I would just run into about superstitions that they had. You know, some people that's like, I have to touch the outside of the plane before I get on the plane. Yeah. And all that. I don't know why. I guess it's a need for control in some way. Mm-hmm. But all that fascinated me.

And all the, like, thinking like, uh, being a little kid around that stuff and a little kid with an overactive imagination. It was like that stuff. I knew it wasn't real, but, uh, the possibilities made my head spin, you know, even the possibilities of like, uh, like growing up Catholic and, and learning and learning you know some of those images still make my head spin just uh it does not make sense but the images are really really strong and hit something i don't understand i don't understand anything well and i think when you are tapping into something that's kind of unconscious or archetypal and universal, it doesn't feel like it's yours almost. You're like finding this thing within you that doesn't quite come from you or that we know is not limited just to us.

It's kind of a collective experience that is authentic and personal, but also almost kind of dissociative. Yeah, and that might be one of the attractions to like looking into that stuff is to know that you're not alone and this strange stuff that bubbles up into your consciousness you know you're not you're not alone we're all just uh part of the soup here you had mentioned um when i had emailed you that you had done some work with a yungian analyst yeah for years do you mind sharing any of uh what that process looked like for you or what was helpful um it started as like therapy to deal with um you know like i've always been sort of a depressed person and dealt with the anxiety and depression. So a lot of it was to work through some of those things without, um,

medication. Um, and then as we got going, she taught me about, um, meditation. She, you know, it felt like part of it was therapy and it felt like part of it was going to school. She was always giving me stuff to read that was kind of great that I never knew about. But yeah, I did it for a long time and it really did help quite a bit and helped me break some patterns and it helped me look at myself and my dreams and everything in a very different way yeah you can spot the yungian leaning therapist when you're getting the reading

list and the dvd list and the poetry you know assignments yeah there was some beautiful stuff that um i i still look for stuff like that to read sometimes well it's uh i think it's kind of a part of it it's how it's an art to be able to understand what somebody needs to read even if it's not the point that speaks to you or something there's sometimes where i'm like i think this is kind of where your head is why don't you check this out in between this session and the next one? Yeah. I mean, even transposing an old story, I mean, I guess that's Joseph Campbell stuff too, but transposing these old, old stories onto your own trip

is really, really interesting and can be a beautiful thing. Do you have a particular kind of myth or tradition, folklore, something that you relate to? Oh, God. A lot of therapists, I feel like, get stuck somewhere between Chiron and Cassandra. I don't know. There were these books. I've read them a couple times, and I might get the pronunciations wrong.

But the books are He, She, and We. Do you know those books? Mm-mm. I think a guy named Robert Johnson, just like the old blues man, Robert Johnson wrote them. The Indian analyst, Robert Johnson? Yes. Yeah. And it deals with Fisher King myth. And I'm finding I'm like one of them deals with that a lot. And I'm finding, I keep thinking about that now,

just getting older is how you have to make yourself, um, innocent again. I think, I think in the story you have to make yourself an idiot to get into the kingdom again, you know, as an older,

you have to deal with uh there's like a crone that tells you you're a piece of shit there's like all these things that you have to get past to get back to the to get back to that kingdom and and a lot of it is like um letting go of cynicism um finding your finding your innocence like all that stuff in that Fisher King myth kind of, I guess it's hitting me now. I think about it a lot. Yeah, and it is part of the process of aging. It's just giving up our intellectualism and our ego and our need to be certain, how you look or accepting who you are. I don't know.

That's the one that keeps bubbling up these days is that Fisher King myth. Well, that's really pretty. That's beautiful. You had said that Heron King, the album, was inspired by a dream that you had, that you had looked into it, and it was a druid ritual, I think? I can't remember. I read that probably 10 years ago. Yeah, that was a weird one. I probably was doing many drugs back then too but um there was uh dreams that i was having that were happening a lot and there was it looked like a gigantic bird um just screaming for me to get the fuck out of there

and i really didn't have anywhere to go and as as I got closer, I realized it was kind of a person, like a person in a costume or a person that was like a hybrid person and gigantic bird. And then I was reading a book. It was Robert Graves' book. It might have been, it was either I,udius or claudius the god one of those two books which i love and they talked about the uh romans trying to take uh britain and one of the ways that they started beating the druids was they they took this um

mythological creature that they the druids had in their uh in their mythological system and dressed up a guy put him on stilts and had him just scream in the morning hog like standing in this stream and the druids took that you know they took that as an omen and got the hell out of there and they were you know and i was like that's kind of like the image in my dream and a lot of the music from that record came from you know those images and um a lot of that feeling of uh the claustrophobia of being in a in a forest you know and a b and being afraid in being and moving closer to that thing you're afraid of

and then you realize it might be human it might be you you might be the one yelling to get the bug out of the mask you might be the asshole still yelling at people so I don't know but yeah that whole

making that record felt like a big fever dream. I'm pretty integrative and eclectic. You know, I like Jung, but a lot of people who just have a severe dissociative disorder, they're not coming in for kind of years of dream analysis. They just want to do brain spotting and stop dissociating and get back to life. But the people who do kind of come in for, you know, a personal and creative rebirth to really rediscover the self, you get a dream at the beginning of that process, you know, almost before you know that that's what you want. A lot of the time that you're like outside of a labyrinth or a maze or the woods, you know, some kind of wood, whatever. And some type of thing is screaming at you to go or to come fight it or to, you know some kind of wood whatever and some type of uh thing is screaming at you to to go or to come fight it or to you know and it's usually a hybrid you know a dwarf or a giant or a half man

half animal i mean it you it's just wild how many much of the time that happens at the beginning of that process do you find that when you're when you people that come in with dreams like that, that you have to lead them or let them come to, like, everybody in your dream is you. It's an aspect of you that you have to deal with and that you have to look at. something that i understood intellectually but didn't know in my bones until like after you know using all that weird all that weird stuff that was happening to like make a record out of it well i think that's one of the things where people um especially younger people like younger therapists have a hard time because they want the Jungian stuff to be all analytical, all intellectual, and it doesn't matter if it's here, you know, it's got to get down into the sub-brain. It has to be experiential and somatic and in the

body, and a lot of that is deep creativity and creating things. And, you know, and that's kind of, I think that's why you see a whole lot of Jungian analysts in the 70s leave the Institute and start these somatic models or experiential models, like process therapy and voice dialogue. And so many of them did that because they were getting frustrated that it was so intellectual. And people were trying to publish these papers about myths instead of really pushing patients to experience the self and to go somewhere yeah i mean there's also in in my experience there was a spiritual aspect to it where it was it it did have a lot to do with um learning how to quiet my brain and learning how to you know like learning how to meditate learning how to be quiet learning how to quiet my brain and learning how to, you know, like learning how to meditate, learning how to be quiet, learning how to, um, like, uh, learning that creativity does not come from, uh, like chaotic experience. It comes from silence. You know, the things that bubble up when your mind is quiet, the things that come without

thought, usually are the things that are worth, the ideas that are worth pursuing, and they're all mysterious in a way. And they're scary when you're used to the just pace of the kind of obsessive cycle in life and all of the fast-paced protective parts that stop us from having to sit with that kind of obsessive cycle in life and and all of the uh the fast-paced protective parts that stop us from having to sit with with that kind of deep authentic self yeah it's really scary well um you do a lot of mixed media art too that's really pretty again you get the same juxtaposition in that that you get in your in your writing and in your music. Yeah, I really enjoy that.

That feels like no pressure, fun, is to make visual art. Like paint and stuff like that. A lot of it looks like the Dave McKean Sandman covers. Do you remember that Neil Gaiman wrote? Have you ever seen those? No, I haven't. Neil Gaiman's an author that does a lot with myth and stuff, but he did the comic book series Sandman,

kind of about storytelling and things. It was real big in the 80s and 90s. But the covers, Dave McKean would do these mixed media ones, and similar vibe. Do you sell any of the pieces that you make, the visual art? Yeah, the last batch that I made in the lockdown times,

I think I sold almost all of that. I'd love to get some for our office if you ever have another batch going on sale. Yeah, I don't know when I'm going to get a chance to dig into doing it again. But yeah, I'll let you know well um when uh the kind of idea of music where music comes from uh music being like an archetypal thing

and you ever you ever uh wonder about that i was like looking at a study like there's all these kind of sometimes i'll find i never was much of an anthropologist but sometimes that would be these things that kind of jumped out that i thought were really cool and like one of them was a study when i was in college this guy was like being like well all the people these prehistoric people are going to these spots in the caves that are like really hard to get to and kind of dangerous that they're not really they're going to the weirdest part of the cave where you wouldn't really want to go so what is it about it that makes them want to go there and they did this sonic testing and they realized that it was like the parts that would reverberate

to us that you're going there to you know you get these crazy echoes and spiritual you know experience um i always thought that was interesting you know this primal drive to to create i never heard of that that makes sense though like there's something in the physical like like finding um finding rhythms that you personally can feel and finding like modal uh scales that you that it feels very at home to sing, you know, things that feel like really, really, really,

really natural. Like there's something, there's something in that. And, you know, for some people it's going to be playing, you know, like,

like making loops on a computer or other different kinds of like uh patterns like that but for me like finding what feels really really really really natural um comes with like putting a guitar in a strange tuning um you know like like letting things drone like that and finding like rhythms that feel like like uh you know like naturally walking you know but your music is maybe more timeless because you're using a felt sense to just kind of create a bunch of texture and then find the ones that feel right instead of thinking and planning and intellectualizing the yeah i don't know timeless is hard to tell but it is like, there is something in there where it's like, okay, that feels

really, really easy. It feels really easy and it feels really natural to do that. And sometimes I'm working on writing and recording a record

or a few records now and it's like I'll write something and work on something that's like challenging get it so that it's right and then after all that puzzle making

I'll let myself write something that is so easy and effortless that I would normally just throw it away, you know, but almost like as a reward, doing something difficult, I let myself do something that feels so natural and easy that it's like a no brainer, like literally a no brainer. Like I didn't even think about this and i'm starting to like hum along this thing and then words are forming and it just kind of naturally like falls out like a fucking turd and you're like i feel better feel better now you know and sometimes that's the best stuff

so i don't know but you don't i can't really get there unless I do something that's challenging first. Suffer through a puzzle and find something great and then do something that's effortless and have that be better than something that you labored over for a month. So it's a weird process. But a lot of that stuff that feels really, really natural, for me, goes back to almost like west african music and you know and um like drone music and mountain music from from the u.s and and it's it's like all that stuff feels really awful and i always felt at home there yeah um and even sacred harp that kind of oh yeah there's um i think i think robert poke harrison mentions it in the dominion of the dead but there's like a study there's various like theories about the beginning of language and one of them is that they came it begins from

song because language is kind of before we're all the way evolved into humanity it's already proto-language is probably there and a lot of social species of animal um the time where they vocalize uh is when there's death and that's you know there's a grieving ritual and so like when an animal dies then the mama lion yells at the heavens or you know yells at god or yells at the universe or something even though there's no practical purpose it's clear the babies died um and you know um a lot of in our evolution so it's like you have even that kind of singing of singing about death, people grieving and wailing and then slowly being like, Oh wait, ideas can fit inside of these sounds.

We can make them mean different things. You know, language being the song that we kind of forgot was a song. It was always kind of an interesting. Yeah. I mean, it's like a baby crying. Yeah.

It's yeah. That's real. Well, do you you you have anything uh else you think is like interesting or you want to share about your thought process as a writer visual artist or musician or lack thereof thought lack of thought process yeah it all feels like tumbling towards brainlessness. But I don't know. I'm really happy that I to still have ideas and still have ideas that like frustrate and excite me and make me but you know and that and take over my whole being so that I need to do

this you know I need to do like I feel really lucky that I still need to do this creative work you still have the drive yeah something something and and to try to like just honor the impulse and and use it to um still keep searching for uh i guess myself a lot of your lyrics are almost kind of hard to follow in the music you know they kind of show up and then disappear back into the texture of the sound um it seems like there's a lot about kind of grief and just accepting things you know um i remember it was like you know after 2020 in the world was wild and your stuff has a timeless element but then it also kind of addresses some cultural things and i was like i wonder what this album will sound like and like that first song is you know romans romans drink

yourself sober algorithms kill kill the algorithm it's like wow there there it is that's very well put um but i can't tell you i can't sit there and explain to someone like i was like telling my wife like doesn't this make a ton of sense that she was like no you know but it made sense to me it makes all the sense in the world to to me um but i can't expect people to get it a lot of it's like need to especially with the script i have to go this is what happens and then this is what happens and then they say this and they say you know and it's you have to leave a lot of room for people to come in and then leave a lot of room for people to, you know, figure it out for themselves.

And with music, it feels, I think with music, it's really hard for me to be, to like try to sell an idea. Um, because it does feel so personal. So there might be things that pop in that do feel cultural but really it's like

i think that's maybe you know one of the reasons that a lot of people don't like what i do or can't even that hear nothing you know like and that's part of it and i'm okay with that but it is like a lot of people would you know hear a cal California record and just go, this is just sound. And that doesn't make any sense. And I have to be like, okay, you know, like it's okay. Because the purpose of it for me is to make this thing. And if it does hit some people in their heart and they can feel it and they can understand it then that's who's supposed to be getting it you know like i'm not trying to

like communicate with a bunch of people i'm trying to like figure out how to say a prayer you know i'm trying to figure out how to like i'm trying to figure out how to like uh be alive and be okay with being dead you know that's that's what a lot of the process of creating music is so i can't expect um people to get it and i'm that's another thing with the stuff I'm doing now is I have to be okay with that. But I think when you make art in a personal, authentic way and you've done your own work and your own healing, the insecurity goes away and you don't need to sell it.

Your ability to sell it is gone because it's like you're either going to get this or you don't. This is what it is. Yeah. It's still frustrating because I would would like more money but sure yeah but you know that's the way that's the way it is but it feels like it would be like i just did a job and made music for a game you know that you've got some soundtracks a couple of them other than the one for your film a whole bunch i've done a whole bunch of that kind of work and uh it feels like

a relief to do that sometimes because it's not about me at all you know you're clocking in and clocking out but using your technical ability yeah and also like like being as creative as possible but being also as impersonal as possible like this this is what is going to serve the story or serve or serve the idea or you know you always do the best you can and you always try to like um like feel it in your gut but with my records with cat with califone stuff especially it's like that's that's for me you know like that's the only area in my life where i have the final say and where i do have a bit of control over what the final product is going to be you know everything else i have to work like i have to make decisions

with other people yeah and when you're when you're doing something that's a soundtrack it's not about you you know it's easier to to not to not worry about it you know or just serving a story and you've done a couple uh things with isaac brock of modest mousey ugly casanova and then you did some studio work with him too um i mean that guy's got a lot of you know inner vision and drive too what's what was that like kind of coming together to to work with him um i don't know it's been a long time but uh yeah he's a he's a he's all nerve, you know? And I don't know how he does it. I remember, like, when we were doing that Ugly Casanova thing,

like, sort of, like, working on lyrics and getting ready to put some things down. And Isaac, I don't even remember him, like, looking at a piece of paper. He just seemed to be singing. And it seemed to be like he was just making it up on the spot. And it was incredible. So I don't know. I don't know. But you were able to collaborate with him?

Or did it feel like more supporting the vision, feeling out what that was that he had? Well, on the Modest Mouse stuff that that i worked on which is not very much i did a little bit on that on moon and antarctica record um and brian produced it brian deck produced it and it was at our studio you know so i was around quite a bit. Yeah, that was like, do you have any ideas? Well, this is what I think. Well, let's try that. It was like that. But the Ugly Cast Nova thing, we came in,

we were doing stuff together quite a bit. But yeah, I couldn't really put my finger on what he was doing but it was very very effective he's i think he's like you know he waffles between being a total maniac and sometimes seeming like a total idiot to being a genius and doing something really brilliant or saying something amazing another thing when we were making that record is like, he's an incredible cook. Like every day we had really good food.

He and Brian were cooking a lot and they were making great food all the time. Yeah. I remember reading about him. He'd said that he may retire into culinary at some point. Yeah. And I mean, I guess cooking could be not that different than making records. Yeah.

I mean, you're trying to find something new and, you know, trying to find things that go together in a certain way. Well, what are you working on now? Can you talk about it? or you have anything coming out um just right now like working on uh like a californ record that might be a few different

records and getting ready there's a couple more things to record and a couple more things to write, but it's really close and it just needs to be mixed. So just trying to find time to, um, to go and, uh, mix this thing to like camp out with, uh, with Brian deck and mix the record.

Well, uh, I can't wait to hear it. That's, that's really exciting. Anything that you want to plug or, promote now i don't know we're just getting ready to play some shows for the first time in a long time um in la and in ohio and phoenix and portland and seattle in aug. So we're around there. I don't know. Does this go on

Apple Podcasts? It goes on everything. Everywhere you can get a podcast and YouTube too. Okay. I remember way back when I don't remember what it was for, but

y'all were doing the Living room show series and we're in Birmingham, Alabama. So the, they were one of the things, they were like, if you have a living room that works in Birmingham, we're doing these living room shows. And me and my wife had this teeny tiny like Monopoly house that was like one, one room, you know, the kit, you could see from the kitchen into the bedroom and I was like, Oh, we could open the back window and then the backyard and we could

find some way to make this work. She was like, I don't know. I don't think this is going to work. I think we did some living room shows there. I think we played in Birmingham a couple of times. It wasn't on that one. It was called Bottle Tree there.

Yeah, Bottle Tree. This was after Bottle Tree was gone. Y'all played at Bottle Tree before I was back in Birmingham. I was always at Swanee when you guys were playing there. That was a neat venue. Yeah, I really liked that place. But I thought we played

a living room show or two in Birmingham some years ago. Well, we played a living room show or two in Birmingham some years ago. Well, we got a bigger house now with a bigger backyard. If you ever want to do another one, there's a waterfall and stuff you could play next to. Yeah, the waterfall. I'm down with the waterfall. I don't know if I'm down for living rooms until maybe there's less people getting COVID all the time.

Yeah. Because you have to be sort of like crunched together. Like it's usually like people smushed together. And I don't know if that's, I don't know if I want to, if I want to do that. For sure. It all be outdoors.

We got, we got room in the back. If you, if you ever have need, but well, I want to be respectful of your time. I know I had originally said 15 minutes. I don't want to keep you from everything you're working on.

But, you know, anything else about storytelling or, you know, the scripts you've written that weren't made or, you know, writing, you feel like you'd like to talk about? I don't know i'm working on like uh like uh it's turning into an animated series now and i'm writing with a friend and working with an artist that's great and uh i don't know it's really really fun it's really fun to do um but so yeah there's still scripts hopefully something we'll get to make another film at some point and hopefully this we'll be able to get this thing made but i don't know in the meantime i'm just uh i'm always doing something

yeah well that's fascinating i really appreciate your your time and um just kind of talking about the psychology of music and creativity there. It's always really interesting to see what is on the other side of the artwork when it's something that I enjoy and have spent a lot of time with. Awesome. Well, thanks. It's great talking to you. Yeah. Thank you so much. And good luck with everything. I hope that everything that you want to make, you're able to make in the way you want to make it. Thank you. I hope the same for you. Well, take care. I'll turn the recorder off.

Okay.