The Taproot Podcast - 🎶✍️ The Psychology of Songwriting with Jefrey Siler

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

Buy the album Jefinently: https://jefreysiler.bandcamp.com Jefrey's Webste: https://jefreysiler.com/ On today's episode we have a very special guest - singer-songwriter Jefrey Siler, here to talk about his latest album "Jeffinently". Jefrey has been making waves in the music scene with his unique blend of folk, rock and soul. His introspective lyrics and heartfelt performances have earned him a dedicated following. In our conversation, we'll dive into the creative process behind "Jeffinently",  Jefrey's musical influences, and the stories and experiences that have shaped his songwriting. We'll also discuss Jefrey's journey as an independent artist navigating the modern music landscape. To stay up to date with all of Jefrey's latest music and musings, be sure to follow him on social media at @jefreysiler and visit his website jefreysiler.com. https://www.instagram.com/jefreysiler/ Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/jefreysiler Venmo: https://venmo.com/u/JefreySiler Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-133421165-516130113/sets/jefinitely-2 Cashapp: https://cash.app/$jefreysiler #JefreySiler #Songwriting  #NewMusicFriday #IndieArtist #SingerSongwriter #FolkRock #austin #Storyteller #SongwriterLife #MusicMonday #IndieFolk #interview  #newalbumsong  #OriginalMusic #texasartist  Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/ Podcast 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]  

Here we are at Megan's wedding, it's 97 degrees I'm seeing faces I ain't seen in years, we're all praying for a breeze there are people I'm enjoying and others I'm flat out avoiding but we all agree this year's been pretty hard and we love Emily behind the open bar

wounded in similar ways wounded in similar ways it sounds in similar ways. It sounds like something that a hippie would say, but the truth is we're wounded in similar ways. But yeah, so I'm here with Jeffrey Seiler, who's got a new album out. I've been listening to that and then some of your other stuff. So I'm excited to get into it because I really enjoyed it. I, you know, how old are you?

48. 48. Okay. So yeah, so I'm, I'm like about 10 years behind you. And the music scene, it was funny. You've seen this change over time. Like I've I've mentioned it as like a metaphor for some of my patients when they're talking about stuff at therapy and I'm talking about like individuation and now when you're a teenager, you relate to stuff or college and people around a certain age. You're like, yeah, the music scene, like if you weren't listening to Neutral Book Hotel, you couldn't date somebody.

And that's so stupid now. But like that was where it was because you had to be understood you know or you know you had to know who the mountain goats were or something and then you start to get you know a couple years younger than me people start being like what what are you talking about you know um so it is wild uh you've seen that stuff kind of roll and change um but uh i when i i hadn't um you know really found a ton of new music that i was interested in so i get eight million requests from people and when your agent had sent me your stuff i'd clicked on it and just wasn't really expecting a ton um because i'm kind of hard to please music wise never really thought would sit down but i enjoyed like i enjoyed that album man i enjoyed i've been like listening to it you know beyond just what i would need to do an interview so and then getting into some of the older stuff where i

could find it um so it's good stuff can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your history because it looks like you've been doing it longer than that one yeah uh i'm i'm originally from north carolina and um when i graduated in 94 i immediately moved to los angeles so i was a massive jane's addiction fan and so then um you know i was i didn't really understand how like in the 90s it was a maybe of a different scene because everyone it was like there was very strict lines drawn it felt like you know you were grunge you wanted to make sure you weren't a poser and uh those are the kind of things that can really impede your creative growth it's like really a fog when you're trying to find your voice and so i did my first album i moved to back from LA to Atlanta, and I started recording in earnest.

And then you just kind of found my voice along the way. I mean, when you read any of your early song lyrics, it's like reading your teenage poetry. It's bad. It's full of pretensions. You can see where you're hiding from what you're actually wanting to say. And does it help you find what you were trying to say, though, you know, when you jump back into that stuff? Big time. You know, it's I remember Mike Mills from REM. He said he always leaves like 10 instruments lying around and throughout his house. So he goes, I pick it up, you know, 10 times a week and I get the bad

stuff out of the way so that I can begin to write the good stuff so I can weed it out. And that's kind of how I've learned to have a much more forgiving filter where you kind of understand where who's in, I've, I've, I refer to it as who's invited to the writing process and when, and the editor is kind of like that uptight guy at the dinner party where you like him there. And, you know, three ones into the evening, he's good conversation,

but he only comes for dessert. And so when you're in that, when you're in that, uh, that open place where you're wanting to write and you're figuring out what you're trying to say, the editor's not invited. And so it's just kind of a more less judgmental,

you know, vibe. And you, and you, uh, was there anything in particular when you're going through the younger stuff that you kind of saw? Oh,

I was trying to say that in a messianic or an immature or a, a, a not quite, you know, full of the vocabulary of maturity way. But this is what that was. That actually is a cool idea. Do you find those in your younger stuff?

Yes. And there was this one song. And I actually musically like it. It was called Sharpened Your Essence. And I was just knee-deep, neck deep, probably in Echo and the Bunnyman fascination at the time. And, you know, with the English accent and that great hair and permanent sunglasses, you can pull that off.

But when you're a 17 year old with a thick, most Carolinian accent, and so you see that you were just trying to say something a lot more. I don't know. There's only so many subjects you can tap into. But I was trying. And I think that being obnoxious in those years helps because you're like, I've got to say something. But the floweriness of early writings gets diluted to actually what you can sit with and say yeah there was um there's an artist that i like that does um this comic called deadly class that image comics puts out that's kind of like andy

comic or whatever and the premise of it is kind of making the way high school feels like an actual worldview or actual like thing and so it's like the school for assassins where the kids have to learn how to be assassins when a lot of them die and it's super intense so if you pick the wrong click you know it could kill you and there's a lot of this kind of it's really good but there's this pseudo serious like ness that um you feel as a teenager um that is sort of made into a world and he said that if he didn't save his journals from being a teenager, he never could have written it because there was this just kind of like myopic,

unquestioning intensity that you had to go back and find or else you could never remember, you know? Or, you know, and I think there is something to that. I've found some journals from college and like, woo, woo Lord. Yeah. I love,

I was listening to, like I've got a, we're renovating an old home from 1908, just north of Austin. And so I've just had this huge lawn. And so I have all the time in the world to just listen to podcasts. And I was listening to a Brene Brown interview where she calls it the, she calls her high school years, the cafeteria. It's like the cafeteria period where you don't

know where you can sit in the cafeteria and there's tables that you want to sit at. And there's tables that you know that you're only going to be allowed to say that. And that's when I heard that, it just, I know exactly that feeling. I can picture the cafeteria and I can even remember specifically sitting at the table and this girl, Daniel Hong going, since when are you sitting at the popular table? And I just felt like a, like a, like a balloon turned into a raisin right there but that same precariousness you need in songwriting because you go can i pull this off yeah i think i survived just by kind of uh playing dumb you know people like this table what's it's so good about this table?

You can have it. I think people thought I was playing dumb and I was like, no, I'm playing trying to play as hard as I can. Well, so you had said that you're in LA to do music or in LA to do what when you head

down there you know like when i would watch videos yeah when when i was watching videos i didn't understand the difference between a different scene like i was seeing bands all the time when i would go down to atlanta and it was like punk and you know ska and stuff like that. And I kind of always thought that whatever my experience was, it was second tier to true artist statements. And so when I saw Los Angeles, I mean, I was into the Chili Peppers and Mother's Milk and Uplift Mofo. And I kind of, you know, naively snubbed my nose when Blood Sugar came out because it got so popular and I was just silly. But I always thought that Los Angeles was this elevated place where, man, it's so pure.

And of course, you have no idea how, you know, cheesy and like that all cities can be. But when I came to L.A., you I, I just wanted to experience what that was. And, uh, yeah, I mean, that's what that, do you know the song on the album,

uh, history lesson part two, part three. Yeah. That's, that's a, that second verse is about that. It's like,

by the time I got to California, I had a self-help section on my bookshelf between the mirrors. Yeah. Some of it was pieces of autobiography I could kind of put together and others were parts of autobiography. I was like, you know, you could tell it was something personal, but wasn't quite sure what it was, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And that, and the take the, even the name of that song was named after a Minuteman song. Cause they've got a song called history lesson part two. So it was just, it was a node to that.

The California that I learned was, you know, beneath the surface and the sheen that I loved and still love. It seems like people who were, I mean, they're still popular cities. It just seems like the relationship has changed, but it was,

seems like a lot of nineties kind of, uh, aspiring artists, filmmakers, whatever saw either new york or la as the place that was the source that if you weren't there you were getting a watered down version you know what what is it about people of your generation why la and not new york you know what what was that appealing to that la was yours and new york was one that you, I think a lot of times other people, other types of personalities or other kinds of art were called to that. Yeah, well, it's funny because my little brother went to New York. He's six years my junior, but when he graduated, he went to New York.

And when, but he went to high, he went to college. But I always thought that New York was just a steeper hill than Los Angeles. I thought Los Angeles was steep, but I just thought New York would eat me alive. And then when Matthew did it, I was like, I so wish I had had that chapter. But then my wife and I did that chapter for seven years and loved it. But there's a certain regret of not having experienced it at a certain time but i mean you're gonna have that with anything so you can only be at one place at one time but i think that la held out this you know i mean i was i had the

raymond pettibone books of art you know i was into the lore of what Redondo beach was and those, uh, books of poetry and essays by Henry Rollins. And then all the tens, gentle, tens, gentle, 10 is that,

how is it? 10, anyway, yeah. Tangential. Yeah. Uh, all those scenes that were attached,

you know, so, I mean, I, there's a band called Thelonious monster uh he had a therapy talk show about uh rehab and recovery with dr drew his name's bob forest and i mean he was flea's best friend and he john frusciante was in his band before and that's how the chili peppers stole him but i mean he was introducing you know the chili peppers to peter hook from new order so i was just i read everything i could being in north

carolina and just living through spin magazine and all the odds well and then you start making the music that uh or the the scene how do you break free of the scene? Is that just kind of when college rock falls apart, you know, or the segregation between grunge and punk and, you know, classic rock and everything in the 90s? Where do you start? How do you, you know, chart that progression of time. Well, it's funny because at my age, I'm starting to, I've gone back to, I've gone with Spotify to start making playlists of what I was listening to at that time, like age specific playlist. And it's funny, it came from an idea. There was an interview with Joy Williams and she mentioned in the Parisis review where she mentions uh james salt or the author used to teach a course in authors uh what they wrote at the age of the uh class and i thought i want to understand what what albums i was listening to and why and then it tapped into some of the otter stuff that i make that i thought oh that that doesn't

suit a record but it should because i'm just giving a i'm not that i have listeners but that i'm giving the potential listener only you know two-thirds of the photo of my face or my person and so i started to understand how much I mean when that album Ween the pod when it came out I remember buying it and I mean they only had that one in the first one and I ate that up I loved it I mean this

was before Push the Little Daisies and all that and you know the early They Might Be Giants that like those first two albums that was but that was so left of center probably how ben folds oh when he came out because exactly and i i kind of think i do therapy i think that i kind of there's these stages for me where you you start to understand certain things like someone's shedding the light and then 10 years later you start to

accept it so you felt like there the process of therapy was helpful to you realizing that you could just kind of blow everything up and if somebody judged that then that that was what's going to happen but that the people who you were being called to when you were younger that you were saw something and they were just kind of blowing something up it wasn't like they were iterating on something else that was already out there and correct yeah yeah no no no it's it's actually perfect uh there's a rawlins band song uh called i'm a liar and he goes i'll say things you already know so you'll say oh he so gets me and it's i think that that's the process when you're when you're when you're doing like the like object writing like journaling and stuff like that you're trying to get to the core of what your issue is because like my big issue was

belonging and not feeling like i belonged anywhere or half someplace and the other half someplace else. And I think that when you start to step out of a scene, I would imagine, you know, exactly. And so you're, you constantly are, you're reading the rules, you're understanding them so that you can try and fit in. And then when you start to get a modicum of acceptance, you start to be able to read the room objectively and you go, oh, I don't want to be in this room. And so it's so it's it's interesting. It's just I even feel like I'm still there now. Like it's like the concrete hasn't hasn't set yet. What was helpful?

I think it keeps you young. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think people that make a certain kind of art tend to age slower especially comedians you see that kind of you it's like you can't even predict their age their perspective has to be so relevant because and i think that is it's an active listening to yourself in the world to be like what am i saying how do i say it i have to say it different tomorrow they're kind of aware of that dialectic that even though I'm saying the same thing, I can't release the same album. So it's got to, you know, David Bowie's got to move on to the next thing, you know, in a way that does keep you relevant and young, you know, almost.

Yeah, I'm working on a book about how songwriting works and just like activities. And so the first exercise that I do is I say, write down seven things that have happened to you in the last four weeks, because I think there's a separation between what songwriters, at least for me, think songs should be like what, what is worthy of a song and what subjects aren't. And then when you look at like the seven things that have happened to you in the last few weeks, then you can kind of get into the minutiae. And those are little windows into subjects that are rooted in deeper feelings,

like getting cut off in traffic twice, you know, might, you know, trickle down into feeling invisible and all those little things. But I'm kind of very open about where it can lead. I think Vic Chestnut, the songwriter Vic Chestnut, really opened that attic door to me because he would just write about any and everything. And I was like, and he's from Georgia. And so it's a strange way that someone from your locale doing it uh was it in a weird way it gives you permission

i don't think that artists should wait for permission but i think that a lot of people a lot of artists do and uh you know seeing vick and i got to sit with him on his porch for a couple of hours and you hear jeff mangum go i moved to uh i moved to athens to find god and instead i found vick chestnut yeah elephant six collective i mean that really was uh something that kind of passively changed music for about a decade and the way it was made and just even the even the network i mean everything was it was kind of a reference point uh when i was in school because you had i don't know i mean you see you're talking about grunge you're a little bit older than me it may be interesting before we get into like your style and your genre to just kind of hop through some of the kind of peaks and swells of the culture of music especially uh since some of the people are younger and they may not

even be aware of those movements but i mean i i remembered kind of gen xy people had to pick between um you know a couple scenes like there were less scenes for them than there were for me you know it was kind of like cobain was someone you couldn't ignore and Grunge was kind of going out. It was like what everybody's older brother listened to. I mean, what was your experience with that, the post-punk and all that stuff? I think the first or the second band I ever saw was Mudhoney on the Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge tour. And you're almost in disbelief because when you're in North Carolina, I finally was able to get cable when I was like 15. I can remember we would watch 120 Minutes and Smells Like Teen Spirit was debuted on

that at midnight. And, you know, I didn't know Bleach. And I heard that song. And I always VHSed all of 120 Minutes. And I remember waking my little brother up the next day before school to play him that song. And we were both like, it was unheard of how monumental. I mean, you just felt like it ushered in a, I mean, that one riff. It's the power of just one idea. And it was, I think that when I'm hanging out, like a friend of mine, Honey, in Australia, she is 17, and her mom has been one of our best friends.

And the context of hearing this song by Stone Temple Pilots, it just disgusts me. It just makes my stomach turn. But when you were in that age, you saw the rollout of all these bands. Nirvana came out the pearl jam was right there but it seemed like stunt double pilots was one of those bands that the labels scurried to get their version of an allison chains meets nirvana and when they came out and scott and i was you know part of the problem where i just saw people as posers, but I still stand by like Scott Weiland, just unacceptable. And, uh, but you know, like I remember when Alice in Chains, I mean, you would watch Headbangers Ball on Saturday night and Sunday night, uh, 120 minutes.

And I remember when Wood, that very first Aliceison shane's uh song came out so that was that was a really really cool time because i mean i saw a radiohead play a tower records the night before the bins came out and uh you know there was like 60 people there so it's i i still think that this stuff like i i was talking to a a girl who was 18 i feel like i'm talking about teenage girls too much but her uh i was talking to she and her mom and she was she made i go i don't understand where to like what the k-pop stuff is and make me a playlist and And so I just dug into it because I don't, I don't feel that the night, I feel that the nineties tapped into something as unique as what K-pop is

tapping into is unique is, you know, aiming dunes, uh, you know, I'm, I'm really open to just accepting that time moves on and I'm, and I love that it has,

I would hate that if grunge just stayed what it was you know and it just kept stayed at the as the king of the hill i'm very happy that things move on well what's interesting to me i mean we talk kind of about like social anthropology a lot on the podcast and is it art mirroring culture or whatever and one of the things that's like you know like had cobain lived he probably would have just continued to change i mean radiohead's still around it doesn't sound anything like the radiohead from the 90s you know um he probably would have gotten into other genres and you know he was a talented person but i think one of the reasons why that um suicide is held up as so relevant to like a generation too,

is it's like, you know, boomers never really gave up any financial control still. I mean, they just, just, just statistically they've got 80% of the country's wealth, but usually youth culture takes over.

And with Gen X, it kind of skipped them, you know, because they had these weird anomalies where the internet, everything they thought was cool was like gone by the time they graduated. And way it was kind of sad it was like they were like yeah publishing magazines zines rock music new york um and you know all these not those kids are using iphones and they don't know how to open a pdf and so it was like no one you know we have this crazy nostalgia where the boomers or the boomers are still you know financially in charge millennials aren't doing

too hot you know financially but they got the breweries with the edison classic light bulbs on strings and the stomp clap stomp clap you know inspirational ballad music and like whatever they got you know and they get to be nostalgic for all the stuff they grew up with but no one's going back and like rebooting daria you know no one's like going back to gen xe things and and and so it did kind of feel i think like cobain was like their guy that when he was it felt like it ended his era he was like the kennedy of you know i don't know if that makes sense but so you know you've got so that happens and then what do you have next college rock rock, Modest Mouse, guitar rock kind of comes back and kind of goes away. I mean, how do you see those next eras of music?

It's funny. I saw, I think, Modest Mouse on their first time they came to Atlanta on the Lonesome Crowded West. I actually got dinner with Isaac just because I was doing a brief interview, and then we just chatted and hung out when modest house came out. Yeah, very nice. Yeah. I remember he was like, I'm living in a like an empty office. I sleep there when I'm not on tour. And I was like, interesting, you know, I was like, I was soaking it up, but i was i was trying to seem like a very nice

and very sad person real interesting guy yeah but it i mean just to i mean i remember when they came out they were really branded as you know really ripping the pixies off and uh but i mean everyone's harsh on harsh on everyone i don't i'm not subscribing to that, but I'm just, I remember articles saying that, but they were, they were great live. And ironically of all the bands I've ever seen, I have seen modest mouse more than any band. And I like modest mouse a lot, but I've just been given more free tickets to see my, I don't know why,

but yeah, that, that, that was good. I mean, I was at the, um, Jeff Mangum and neutral milk lived in Athens and there was,

uh, and so I went to the record release show in, uh, at the 40 watt in their hometown for in the airplane. And, uh, because there was a record store next to it i don't know if it still is there but it's called the low yo-yo but i i think that i think that different uh different like sonic colors were coming to the light like with uh when neutral milk hotel came out within the airplane over the sea, I was saying how I got to go to their record release show. And you didn't know kind of where, what galaxy that was coming from.

And in reality, it was maybe a crossroads of Flaming Lips and Vic Chestnut and all those different things. And so that was that was interesting i think that vick chestnut unlocked a lot for me because he he just got into the minutiae you could kind of vaguely sew together all the little things and he would use words like a swage and he would and i you know read every interview and talked to him on his porch for a couple hours about songwriting one day which is one of my most treasured memories but then that you know all you're just piecing together how you how you're starting to view songs and so that was you know i i can see all that that lineage of the song era, the era specific songs that were clicking with me.

So then I was like, oh. And so then when you hear things like Spoon's meticulousness in their recording, and then you hear like what we were talking about with big thief, their, uh, their looseness, but there's still like, she's a, she's a curve. Well, you know,

long time attendee. Like, I don't, I don't know Adrian, but she's friends of people not familiar, not in the industry. Yeah. So it's like a songwriting retreat in Texas and there's ones in Colorado and you're just working with other songwriters, not necessarily just co-writing, but playing songs in different stages of completion and you're there in a community of people who largely are performing

just with the accompaniment of a of an acoustic guitar and so there's not a lot of not a lot of places to hide and so i i like that because i would have like say written down versions of a of a song and i go i'm not sure about this lyric. I might change it later. And they would go, why? Like, change it now. Like, decide on what you're going to say. And I thought, oh, that can be done. And that really, that kind of discipline I responded to. of the folk world but i'm i'm just as tied to the the art rock world of like deer hoof and one of my favorite bands is the rocketeens and so all those things uh all those things were the soil that i came from i think that's why i loved that album so much was and i wasn't expecting a ton was that that fusion of kind of the folk stuff the folk influence but art rock is kind of where i always was as like an indie rock kid and and in college and when it when that started to go a different direction and everything was just kind of stomp clap tambourine anthem i kind of checked out um and uh yeah and uh when i was

listening to you it's like this is the looseness of dylan planet waves their people in the studio are having fun there's not too much of a plan you know like i'm not listening to cake where everything is just so clean you know like so so smooth off but then also there's this texture like you know the last i heard it on that last big thief album where i was just like man you're really making me listen to specific sounds. This is like Wilco, A Ghost is Born, where you're not just shredding on a rock song. You're really playing with the texture of stuff. And you all do that really well.

You like that out. Your album is great. Are you how much are you writing with the people that you're recording with or how much are they coming in and you know what's the process of making Getting from the songwriting camp and curve L to getting that album out in the form that it's out in the way that I did this one is I pretty much had all the structure in place and then we went to Shawn the drummers apartment in Brooklyn and he had a full drum kit up and Brian and Brian Betancourt and Adam Brisbane and we were just sitting in that room and we went through it did the songs like twice I kind of had loose chord charts for them to follow I recorded it and then then we waited like two weeks and all I

did was just pour over those recordings. And then we went in an apartment in Brooklyn and just recorded all those versions. I think we did seven songs in the first session, like a three-hour practice, and then six more. And then we recorded 13 for this album. And we didn't use three. And yeah, so I kind of feel like my part's done when I have the structure and the words done. And then it's like, I don't want to keep a tight rein. I mean, when you're playing, the way that I wanted to make this record is I just went to as many shows in Brooklynoklyn and new york as i could and i wanted to watch the locals play you know i saw you know buck from big thief he play a house show and i'm just watching the players and just soaking it in and uh and then you go okay cool i just want to be in a room and just i've done my part and And then you like, I mean, Brian plays with DaVinger now, uh, you know, all these, you know, Sean, I think he's played with, uh, Kevin Morby and so forth. So then,

then you just let them do their colors and then you're just kind of, you just kind of move in the canvas so that they can paint on it here. They're, like that and so then then when you come away with it you go okay cool and then i mean the uh linea from habibi she's a good friend and i mean man it was that was probably some of the most fun is like after we had done a lot of the backing tracks just linea coming over to my wife and us house and us just having fun with the background vocals. Cause we're all Shangri-La fans and Francois Harding. So just having that,

you know, French girl background feel. And, uh, you know, my wife was like, listen to beauty school dropout, you know,

for a song like Jean Francois so that it's, it's not just one dimensional. It's, uh, got sonic depth of field and emotional depth of field. Cause you can't just be all the only, the impediment for me with goth was that it just seemed all dark. And for me to believe the dark, I need to see some of the light, you know,

so that you see how dark is dark. Yeah, it's the contrast. Not that I hold out that way. I mean, yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, I think that's like the novice, like early novice songwriter, like when you're like 14 and you write your first song, it's always going to be like, there's no contrast. There's no story. There's no loss. It's just you're like, oh, I better get some serious images.

And it's all like, I smoked cigarettes at the graveyard in the rain. Dad. And you got to start off, you know, like looking at the beauty of the oleander and then meditating on its poison before you smoke the cigarette in the graveyard in the rain. I love that you know i was thinking uh when we had been emailing back and forth to schedule uh you know you just think about therapy and uh when i was in brooklyn before we moved down to

austin uh we were at this thai place called ugly ugly baby in Brooklyn. And so we were there with some friends and we were waiting on our table and then we sit down and literally, uh, so they get up to leave and I didn't want to bother them, but I just, I walked out as they were waiting for their Uber. And I said, Hey Lee, uh, my name's Jeffrey. And he goes, Oh, Hey Jeff. And nicest guy, just best, just the best experience. And I said, Hey, uh, I just wanted to tell you when I was like 16, I was like chronically depressed. And my parents made me go to see a therapist. And so the therapist was going, oh, you're really into music? And I go, yeah, I'm trying to get into this show, but it's sold out. It's this band Sonic Youth.

And he goes, oh, do you know who Lee Ronaldo is? And I go, yeah, of course. And he goes, he's my best friend. So I couldn't get it. I couldn't get into the show anyway, because I think it was a like 21 and older. But, uh, the next week he came back with a, with a note that said, hang in there, Jeff, Sonic life, Lee. And I said that, that gave me, it gave me chills just now because it was just like you saw these people as like everything outside of North Carolina just seemed like so far away and to see something and I was not like the person to have idol worship of these guys but it was they were unlocking and meant so much they were building

a bridge to sanity for me and i was like that lee ronaldo would take that time so he was like i am i go i didn't want to bother you during dinner but i just want to and he's like i am so glad you came up he gave me a hug and his wife gave me a hug it was just really uh touching yeah that's really cool it's neat the connections that you're able to, you know, that you have through the music that you do. Would you say, you know big point that the singer songwriter is trying to meditate on you know incredibly poetically there's just kind of a subtle conversation and reflection about like isn't it kind of wild that that works this way and then the moment goes on like you're talking to the audience at a bar you know and then there's

also um a con like a fixation on things that wouldn't normally be in a song you know waiting in a line at a wedding and counting your drink tickets you know i think the last time i heard drink tickets in a song it was uh like on the alopecia album by like why you know uh and which is you know he kind of does the same thing you know is is that something that you're aware of or is that wrong i don't know no no no it's it's definitely i mean it's like therapy you know like like when you when you watch therapists on tv they're they're explaining what your problem is but with all the therapists that i've had and i think it's like three or four they've I've always been underwhelmed by how much they make me reach the conclusion. And it's my understanding that that's the healthy way because they're not always

going to be around. And I think I've taken that to songwriting where I'm like, this is my experience and the specificity of the setting. Like I remember Tom Waits saying, you should always know what the weather is like in a song. And I think that you really want to let people know where the furniture is so that then they get a lay of the land and then they can reach their own conclusions because, you know, however,

people, people are in a different seat than me. And, uh, so I'm, I'm trying to go, well, this is the view from the backseat,

but you know, you might be seeing the same landscape, but you know, it's different for you. And. Well, and I'm, you're talking on the screen,

but not on my audio. So I want to make sure I'm not cutting you off due to the delay. No, no, no. The, there's a little bit of a delay, so I'm trying to figure out what's going you off due to the delay no no no yeah the there's a little bit of a delay so i'm trying to figure out what's going on some of the time but the yeah and i think that's like one of the reason why writing a song in your 20s is different than writing a song in

your 40s it's like you kind of feel like you'll have something figured out or there'll be some sort of ultimate truth at the top of the hill you know by 35 ish you're like yeah okay i'm at the top of the hill there's a couple ways down this thing but i see where it goes you know like this is kind of you know the story feels less important in a way but then that is ultimately i guess what makes the story important there's like a therapist that worked with all these famous la actors that were like all the people that went on to be famous in the 90s and the 2000s he's like real old kind of yungian guy and he had said in an interview i think with mark maron about how like he would just tell him to bring the shadow in the room they were trying not to be insecure they were trying to not look at the limitations of their performance and that made the performance flat so he was just like go in there

and be terrified at the in the interview and that's the you know that's it and they're like no but it's a confident police sergeant he's like yeah that's boring you know, that's it. And they're like, no, but it's a confident police sergeant. He's like, yeah, that's boring. You need to be confident as a police sergeant because you're afraid. And that there's and that them taking the counterpoint to their performance made the performance work. And you kind of will do that in the songwriting a little bit, you know, like that. The stuff that feels like a trope or silly also being true. I mean, that wounded in similar ways where you say like, well, it's, it's, it's almost like, it's just some,

it sounds like something a hippie would say, but it's also the name of the chorus of the song, you know, you're kind of like being your own, you know, writing your own, you know, YouTube review there and then responding to it in the thing in a way that becomes the song like that that's clever that's that's i don't know i mean what's your thought process there you know in those songwriting retreats everyone would say cut that hippie line out and i was like that's no that would be the exact line that vick chestnut would keep in and and even if vick

wouldn't i was like that's that's right for me i think that that's the contrast because i mean that was a and just as a footnote that was a specific line like when we were in imago couples therapy that uh she said you know mother nature has a way of matching us with people who are wounded in similar ways. And I was like, it's hard for me not to grab a pen and I would have been kicked out of it. But yeah, I think that, um, yeah, I want, uh, I want people to feel like I'm being conversational and honest with them because I feel like the, the, now I understand how,

how much a gift someone's full attention is to give to you. And so if you haven't, if you're asking them, please give me your undivided attention, uh, then I want it to be rewarding and I want them to go away going. I know what that, you know,

I feel like I've got a feeling. So is, I don't know. Is that what you were saying or? Yeah, they're pretty open-ended questions. I don't know. One,

another question I got to ask. I, I, I'm always trying to like tune, clean these podcasts up and get them the file ready. And then I'll, I, it'll be two in the morning.

I got to go to sleep and then I get up at six and i'm taking the kids to school and be listening to the file in the car so i didn't realize my daughter was like listening to the podcast but now she started to like ask for whatever and you know she's six she doesn't know what is going on but uh i uh so she was this morning she was like i want to listen to the podcast and it's like no we can listen to your music. We don't have to do that. And she asked who the next person was. And I said, I was seeing somebody who was a singer. It wasn't just a musician. They were a singer, a songwriter, and a musician, like Taylor Swift,

because that was the comparison that she understood. And I asked if she had a question. And she said, yeah, if you want to just write songs and sing them to people, how do you get money? So I said, I would ask that question of you. Yeah. yeah if you want to just write songs and sing them to people how do you get money um so i said i would ask that question of you yeah and you know which is also going to be one of my questions because that you we talk about the history of the industry artistically well a ton of the industry financially is totally different you know i mean the streaming service thing has kind of made

everybody be permanently on tour if they want to make money. Eventbrite is your option. There's still some hipster record store holdouts, but if you are going to try and pursue it professionally, the landscape is different. Can you say anything about that or how you navigate that? There's no science or recipe or formula but i remember it makes me think of that thing that i read that kim gordon said where she said i've been amazed in my whole career as a musician how much money people will pay to watch someone on stage who believes in themselves. And I think that the, I think that the, also Paul Westerberg said, if you aim for their

wallet, you'll miss their heart by a mile. So I think that, I think that all those, and you're talking about two of the best musicians and songwriters in the past 40 years. So I think that you just have to accept that if you're going to be completely yourself, that audience might have a limit because maybe you're a niche artist. I mean, Daniel Johnson, when he was around, he certainly wasn't for everyone, but when he spoke to people, he spoke so acutely. And so I think that your idea of money also needs to be tied to realistic expectations. Because if you are down to only be honest, then you are going to find the right people.

And every dollar that they spend is going to feel like a million dollars because they will have accepted you for you. And so money becomes a very nice thing in that setting. I mean, when you see people support Dave Bazan, when he needs to buy a van and you go, that is his tribe going, that's their way of saying thank you. So that's, I'm very interested in money in that way because if,

if I can create art because of that, I mean, it's like I got paid for working at a pizzeria, you know, because I worked hard. And if I work hard at being honest and being vulnerable, then if that's rewarded commiserately by the right people, then I'm all for it. And, and and it just that comes with time, you know. Well, and I think the the cultural space that music fills, it's coming back as one of the only outlets for often authentic, not celebrity, but like authentic public persona, you know, like, you know, YouTube and everything was kind of conceived of as well everybody will have a voice and you know it won't you know what is it that um andy whirl had said that you know the everybody in the future will have their 15 minutes of fame there won't be celebrity um as these cameras shrink and all that but then it kind of turned into the people who are big who make money they

can't have a personality you know like i that i'm too old for it but it's like mr beast or one of these people that is one of the younger you know gen z influence or something said something about how like i can never say anything about myself or anything like i have to talk like i don't i want to have nothing i don't even want to know what who i am was essentially what he said in order to be maybe a millionaire at you know 20 and it's like oh that's you know these those algorithms have ripped all of that out of it and you know i think politics used to be something that people kind of saw i mean it's arguably largely been fake in my lifetime but i mean no one even is sort of pretending that right left is not just a

performance you know it it looks weirder and faker than it ever has. And I think singer, songwriter, musician, I mean, there's kind of a rap feud going on right now. It seems like one of the only places where you can see a real authentic person doing a thing,

um, and any kind of part of our culture. Now, I don't know if you feel that or, or dialogue with that, but it does seem like a trend. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think that it was, it was gobsmacking that, uh, when Kendrick wrote that verse, just about like to Drake's son, I was like, Whoa, because that is so,

uh, so it's so, uh, so it's so, uh, it made me feel strongly, you know, it made me feel strongly that that is such a stance. And it, I mean, it's like Jeff Koons, it's like art. It's like going, whoa, that is hard. And so while the right and the wrong of it certainly is debatable, I thought in that way, Kendrick was going, I don't care to be on the cover of the magazines. He goes, I like, he goes, I'm not trying to be everything to everyone. And I, and yeah, so I, it's,

it really is interesting how the more you lean into yourself, you, it's also a risky thing because you can become self-indulgent, lose objectivity. But I think that you do, I think that you do tread the line of you know flirting with narcissism because you're trying to really understand where you're coming from and that so you know it's it's it's just a it's a balance and it's a balance that, you know, it's like you can tread a tightrope when you're young and thin, but then when you get older and you've got weight and you don't have as good a balance and you're on a tightrope, it's like you can never quite get rid of it you know it's almost always on its way out because it's always changing but there's something about the archetype of the

authentic poet speaking truth to power or the other poet or you know you channeling the culture that singer-songwriter as a tradition is pretty close to that you know in the same way hip-hop maybe is you know um yeah how do you create you're creating your own radio station where people go well i'm not always tuning into 88.5 but i feel like 88.5 right now and that's each of our as songwriters that's our radio station like i mean not always 88.5 but just where you go i'm coming to this guy or girl or you know i'm coming to this songwriter for that reason and that is that is incumbent upon every songwriter to have that definite reason you did it's not definite genre but you go i come to this person for this well and uh you know you've come over and over again to the idea of asking

for permission that you're not even aware of you know where you're asking for permission to do something that you can just do and that you're better off if you just do it you know and that you kind of confronted that with your looking at your older songs and looking at the um lyrics at the songwriting camp and different in therapy you mentioned it um and it's a big question but do you know what it is that you're wanting to say you know do you know what it is that you're trying to have permission to do you know as a as a project you know what is is what is the nature of your art or you're kind of you're you're not not met not that it has to be a message um but you what, what you're getting at in a way that someone else is getting at

a different thing. I think it's belonging. I think that it's, it's you, you want to be well-read. So you want to find other people who are well-read. So you want to put it out that, you know, you want to put it out there that I will want to, it out there that i want to i want to have a beer or coffee with people who are well read i want to be in that company but then you go well am i being pretentious when i you know when i throw out that magnet of being well read and so it's constantly like you're you get that i have have many leather bound books vibe that,

you know, a lot of YouTube. I guess moleskins are good enough for you. Where, where is this? Like you, like today's a perfect example, you know,

like that's why it is. It was a pleasure. Like it's not lost time when we lost those few minutes recording because it was like, you're exactly like, I would insist that we go to dinner if I came to Birmingham. Yeah. And so that's, that's, that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to build your community of, of people who make you feel like you belong. And I think that, I think that you can be insecure because you can

you know the the more honest and vulnerable you be the brighter your light shines like that that it's so and it's a threat in some ways you know people hear something that they want to call um well i think that that vulnerability and authenticity is what other people are going to attack as pretentious, you know, and then as an artist, you're always vulnerable and insecure that that is pretension, that it isn't really real, that it's somehow a performance of the self and not the real self. And so is this actually how I feel? Yeah. And so you have to get over that fear of you're going to get that message. There's somebody in the room that's going to say, who are you to say that? Do you have a right to say that you're not really saying that you got this from somewhere else?

It isn't yours. I mean, that's just going to be the voice of the critic at some point. And you have to have some kind of greater principle of faith or self that takes you through that before you can really get it out. I think I work with a lot of, I mean, I work with a lot of artists in different professions and even,

you know, business can be an art in a certain way. Sometimes, you know, people authentically, you know, I just work in that process of self and development. And that's kind of the pattern I see over and over again is that people kind

of weigh the pros and cons. And when they get to a place where they're like, yeah, you know, of course they're going to say that. And I don't care. And that's when the thing hits and all of a sudden lightning strikes and you've got the next thing yeah yeah and it's it's a it's a weird sentiment but it's like uh you know you're doing something

right when you've got haters because you are provoking a reaction and i think that as long as you're not doing it to get a reaction then the reaction's okay long as you're not doing it to get a reaction then the reaction is okay but if if you're doing it to get a reaction maybe it's because you are reacting and if you're reacting and you're making sense of why you reacted that's an idea uh but if you're saying something i mean not that reacting isn't just as authentic because, I mean, we're all reacting to, you know, one thing or another. But it's just interesting the, yeah, the pursuit of how we go about, you know, what, why would you put yourself through all this art, like the amount of, uh, bites, you know, my wife and I've had about money spent on creating art and the amount of shows that I've played that no one came to. And the amount of hours that I spend at 6.00 AM fine tuning the lyric or like there was a song

on this album that didn't make it. And I, I bet bet you i went through 40 different versions of lyrics not not minor changes significant changes and at that point you're like i'm doing something wrong because i'm trying to make it perfect and i mean i don't know who said it but it's like no art has ever uh completed it's just abandoned so yeah or is it i think um was it da vinci that was about stone carving said it like it just stopped in nice places or something um you know i like that yeah yeah that's good yeah that's very good that you're never uh never finished yeah i mean is there anything about the album that we haven't gotten into as far as lyrics i mean you've got to just kind of walk through every song lyric by lyric seems um like maybe not uh you know a fair thing to ask the artist in an interview but like are there places that you want to talk about that uh you know it's

a it the songs are all very different you know but they hang. I'm glad that somebody's still making albums as a project. Thank you. I think that there's a lyric in Heart Decides where it says, where it's something about so-and-so was in love with so-and-so, and so A was in love with B, and B was in love with C, but C was in love with so-and-so and so on like a was in love with b and b was in love with c but c was in love with him with himself and that was the sentiment that launched that whole thing and it was just about these three people in australia when i lived down in sydney for 10 years and so then i took that that sentiment and just that one sentiment was just the piece of sand in the oyster. And I just let it, what is it, gestate, gestulate over time?

I just let it become what it needed to become. And then I tried to tie it in. I do a lot of object writing, like journaling just about a sentiment, just to find out where I stand, what it is about that sentiment that rings my bell. But stuff like that, it's interesting how you put an album in chronological order because you're really getting to know someone in a certain order. And in that way, I wish I wouldn't have put the first song first, like let somebody in first. I wish I would have, like with that song, it was, I initially wrote that song like Glad

Girls from God About Voices, Isolation Drills. It was like, instead of let somebody in it was like everyone gets in and it was like a club where everyone it keeps like the club expands and there was every the bouncers were like everyone gets in it was like about probably about belonging but then i was like i don't know and i but i wanted it to be between that and then between that and John Prine's Way Down. It's off the white album with the drawing on it, the white. Anyway, but yeah, grown man. I was shaving one day, and that actually happened that I made a joke that I thought was subtle.

He said, modestly. And my wife laughed and I thought I could, and I said, I could never be married to someone stupid. She was like, it's not easy. So yeah,

it's, I'm trying to draw from the stuff. I wish I wouldn't have chickened out. I didn't say stupid. I said foolish. And I thought stupid lands was such a thud but i wish i would have said that so yeah well i mean i i think when the ball gets rolling the the regrets from the last album become the next album you know and then that's what there's sort of a when you're really in touch with an artistic project i mean one of the three

lines i see with creatives is that you're never happy, but you're never unhappy because you're working on it. But also the thing that you're doing right now, you don't really care about because it's done and the faults with it or the thing it failed to say, right. Become the next thing, you know,

and there's this momentum to it. It's like the, uh, piston and the train engine, you know, that's kind of always going backwards and forwards, but you're never quite done. There's a process. And that's why I love, every time I go to dinner

I try and take a photo of everyone that was there. It's not going to be a perfect photo. Someone's always going to be unhappy about how they looked in it, but that's a song. You're just capturing something in time. It's not definitive. Like, I think a lot of people go, oh, not a lot of people. I think that I used to think one song is going to define this one subject. And it doesn't. it describes an aspect of a subject, but it no, no one four minutes, six minute song is going to encapsulate exactly how you feel about one

subject. Like my hometown is a great example of like Bruce Springsteen, phenomenal song, great, great through line, but he's talking about his hometown. I mean, he touches on the fact that his dad,

he was sitting on his dad's lap but that doesn't spell out what his relationship was like with his dad his mom's not mentioned his siblings aren't you know it's just his relationship to his hometown and it seems like a it encapsulates his life but it just encapsulates very thoroughly one aspect of his life. And he can go away and write another version of light, what it was like to be on the, you know, play in second base in his hometown. And that just fleshes out the,

the photo, the background. And do you, um, when, when you, uh, do you have anything like, cause you you also work you have another job too

like you you work um you had we were when we were emailing you and said you got another stuff do you have anything about the work-life balance of it because all i think all the singer-songwriters or all the musicians that i see kind of struggle with that that they make you know like at what point do i you know can i quit my job or i do I, you know, can I quit my job? Or I guess I'll never really be able to quit my job because I'm saying the thing I want to say. And it has, and it's gotten successful, but that there's a limit on how many people are going to get that without me watering it down. I mean, that process of being somebody who, you know, is a professional musician and also a professional else anything interesting to you there is that all just kind of the the boring not fun part uh i think i think that um it's good to have

a job because i think that just to write songs you need to go away and not think about songs and i think the balance is if you're what was it that I think my wife was telling me that there's a sweet spot of how much money you can make before your job owns you. And I think it was like maybe between like 110 to 175, which is, you know, a stratosphere that I doubt I'll be flirting with. But it's one of those, if you can find a job and do that, it's important to wake up and listen to music in the morning on the way to something that you don't want to do. Because there's this duality of things where you're driving and you're not fully concentrated on the song. And so you're just absorbing it in the things where you're driving and you're not fully concentrated on the song and so you're just you're just absorbing it you know in the background while you're turning on your you know turn signal and whatnot and you also have less pressure i mean you i would go to lunch by myself

a lot and just do writing in a in a place that i normally wouldn't be. I'd be in San Antonio. And so I think it's good. I certainly didn't feel that years ago when I felt so frustrated with my own creativity and music. But then there's that middle ground where if you can be smart about what you do, where I worked in construction and my heart didn't, it wasn't required to have my heart in it. And that left a lot of free time where I wasn't mentally taxed when I came

home where I could write. And, uh, and then you get to the point where you need to play shows. You need to be in front of people because that is its own, just cause you can write songs. Doesn't mean you're good at performing songs. Even if you wrote them, you know, like you, you hear people do phenomenal.

I mean, Jeff Buckley did a phenomenal cover of hallelujah. And, um, that's, that's where songs take on a new form when you, you can play them live in front of people and you get past the nerves. And I mean, Coltrane's always used to say, I practice eight hours a week, six days a week, eight hours a day, six hours a week. So that when I'm playing,

I'm not thinking it's second nature. And, and it does help to get into different rooms, different cities, because then you go, I have gone out of my way. I'm not with my family. And I certainly work hard to have that balance. I mean, I don't play a lot of shows because my wife is my priority,

but it is vitally important to play shows and to get out of your comfort zones and to remind yourself that it's a discipline. And if you're going to go and drive three hours to play a show, you believe in what you're saying and you believe that it's worth someone's time. And so it's just, you're in different stages and just enjoy the stage that you're in. Well, that's beautiful. That's probably a great place to leave it. I want to be respectful of your time and not go too far over anything that we'll definitely link to your SoundCloud and your website in the show notes. Is there anything else that you'd like to talk about

or encourage people to look up? No, I think it. The, the only thing I'd say is because this is about like therapy, like the, the, the premise of your podcast. Well, it kind of becomes the psychology of, you know, weird stuff, which is sort of the, I just didn't have it in my, uh, in my, I had no ability to have a podcast where once a week I was like, here's the 10 mindfulness tips to, you know, we're just talking about art and design and, you know, peeling the meat off your soul and talking directly to God and all of the, you know, strange mystical things out there. So that's kind of our niche. It's funny that you can get to something directly in an indirect way. Like I've, uh, I've, I'm editing my own, uh, podcast that I'm about to be coming out with called talking singles, drinking doubles, where it's, it's, you're talking about a single piece of art, whether it be a single song or a single painting, or even a single approach as a window into how one individual piece of art works and so that like that's why it meant a lot joel when you said like you like the songs but

they're all different because i like the album's out now on spot, but I'm going to be still releasing the songs individually with their own artwork, because I want people to see each individual piece standalone. So you go, you walked in and you heard this song. Would you go, that's my guy because that's how lines stand. And so I think that,

I think it's cool the way that you do it because it lets it take its own shape, the conversation. But it's, yeah, just the importance of saying, yeah, saying what you want to say in one thing and how that drills down to therapy or acceptance. Yeah. And do you, was there anything in your history with therapy that was kind of interesting to you or even as a, even as a question or an open ended, you know, just as a conversation? Cause I think,

I mean, a part of my project with this and probably with taproot is to kind of reclaim psychology as this part of life and art and growth and design. And like, yes, we do state of the art trauma treatment we do a lot of things that you cannot get anywhere else in the state of alabama but that you don't have to be a wounded hurt puppy to go to therapy it's not like oh there's something wrong with you come here you know and i i want even you know there's nothing

wrong with you if you're traumatized um you know, and kind of letting us see the humanity. Maybe I can't get rid of the liberal arts education, but then music and psychology and the artists that are and architects and all that stuff. And I think when you lose that, there's a problem. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. My friend Sally, her mom had has been in therapy her whole life

and uh and then sally goes i i just feel like going for a tune-up you know like a three or four months just to work through things and that's how i would view it like financially if we got more on our feet you know i'd like to when we went into a maga therapy um it was good because you you have another person keeping you honest and it's so so interesting if you if you feel uh you're open to hearing hard truths about yourself, boy, that accelerates your growth because then you're going, this person, you're perceiving it this way, but that's not the way it was. And I mean, heaven, I'm so fortunate because my wife is such an objective and positive influence and thinker on my life and very leads with her heart

and cares. And so, you know, I think that it's, yeah, I think that having a clear mind, I think also, I think it opened my eyes where when you go to therapy, you don't come out necessarily happy. You come out with a clearer mind and your expectations on life are a lot more realistic. And it doesn't mean that the things that triggered you... The growth is grief. You're really accepting something that you wish was not there, but it is there. And your emotional reactions to it are not helping you make it disappear because it's life. And somebody who says, hey, this is not going to go away, but you can become bigger than that is something that too much therapy has has stared away from doing. And it made people dependent on the therapist and it made therapy more simplistic and mechanistic than it should be, I think.

Yeah. And even if therapy just sets you 50% more free, how, like when, when do you think would be the right time to get that 50% back? Yeah. Yeah. So you're, you're in Austin right now.

Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. The emotional transformation therapies. That's like one of the only places that you can get it consistently. Uh, ETT. Uh,

and then brain spotting is also another one that we do. But they're both, they sound cranky as hell. Like I wouldn't have believed any of it if I hadn't done it. And then, you know, now like I'm so fascinated by the science just because it took months for people, for me to just be like, all right, this thing works. This is 100% replicatable, but why?

You know, but they're both using visual stimuli to kind of skip the front and largely the middle of the brain i mean you're going through all these emotional reactions that you don't even have to know what they are and if anything comes back it usually is kind of later um it more is a felt thing and then the memory comes back later um but artists and creators uh so they're they're both different ett uses three things like really specific there's these machines that make really specific uh color uh and light blink rate frequencies and then the direction of the light on the pupil to do something to the occipital and then brain spotting uses eye position um like you have a pointer and it's just finding a spot where you the therapist sees a bizarre pupil dilation that reflects that there there's some parasympathetic

and sympathetic activation of the nervous system but basically what both of them do is they're finding a place where your parasympathetic primitive parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system are trying to handle the same emotion in two different paradoxical ways so you can't go through the emotion and you're kind of stuck and you're popping that, which releases a lot of somatic and kind of icky emotional energy. And then two, three days later, a lot of time, if you're going to remember what that thing is, it pops up. I mean, what, for me, I was like, I just felt so vulnerable and kind of angry for like two days. And then when I was just done and

didn't care anymore, that's when I remembered the stuff that had happened to me and was like, Oh yeah, like that's really messed up. Like I would have been really upset if you told me that that happened and I remembered it, but I've already felt that for two days. That's just a picture that went with it. I'm done.

Um, but, uh, yeah. If you're ever passing through, you stop by, you can, you can,

you can try them, you know, a lot of, that's one of the things that were excited. The through you stop by you can you can you can try them you know a lot of that's one of the things that we're excited the podcast studio because you can you don't you know if you want to do some serious long-term work finding a therapist is a good thing but they're so fast you know like i can show you a spot and what it feels like in in just five minutes um like it's but yeah the a lot of times it spikes creativity and stuff. And so, you know, artists will have these kinds of periods afterwards, but you may want to look up, um, somebody who does that. If you're interested, it's a, it's a weird world.

It's not the same stuff that was around in the nineties. Really? Yeah. I don't know if you've ever, uh, um, I read an interview with David Lynch and he went to therapy and he goes, the first session he goes, will this at all impact? I mean, that's how David Lynch talks. Will this at all impact my creativity? And the therapist goes,

it could. And he goes, then I have to go. I was like, I think, I think therapy can impact your creativity in a phenomenal way um it broadens the colors you can paint with when i think it's like a dated perception of the 80s and 90s that the artist has to be super tortured genius and that when you take away the pain then the art goes away like that that is kind of a psychoanalytic neo-freudian psychoanalytic concept that isn't really true um that talking about the pain for a super long time all of a sudden you know you no longer have anything to say isn't

it it's that you're being able to tell and you feel it a lot faster um because brain spotting and i did hypnosis and existential therapy and kind of then got more into a yungian leaning thing for years and the same process happens in therapy it just speeds it up so fast where you feel something that you felt like i can never go back there emotionally because it would kill me that thing overwhelms you you learn that you can hold it and then all of a sudden you're like oh wow i can do all this other stuff i'm just allowed to do that but it all of a sudden you're like, oh, wow, I can do all this other stuff. I'm just allowed to do that. But it's like a week, you know, instead of months of getting somebody there.

And I think the newer thing is not, oh, the artist is tortured and sad. When you take the pain of childhood away, then I don't want to sing anymore. It's that I'm learning to tell the difference between my intuition and my creativity and my intuition and creativity and my trauma my trauma reaction the need to neurotically do something or pretentiously do it um you know or to to control how i'm seen it being separated from what i actually want to say you know that's what i that's what i feel in my fiction and non-fiction writing um yeah yeah yeah i'd like to add send me your stuff because i'd love to i'd love to check it out it's it's when you have nothing to hide yeah therapy helped me just go what have i got

to hide i'm not i'm not like the only imperfect person on earth so when you you know fly your freak flag people go go, hey. And the right people walk towards it. And the crazy people. Yeah, you do start to connect with people that you wouldn't have found otherwise. There is almost something resonant about it or something like that. Well, we'll point everybody to your website. And do you have any shows coming up?

Do you have any shows coming up? Do you have any, uh, like, and is there a place that you prefer people to buy an album that is better for the artist than, you know, just streaming it or something? Yeah.

Yeah. Band camp is the best, particularly band camp Fridays because it a hundred, a hundred percent goes to the artist, but also just on my website, Jeffrey Siler.com. We've got the merge page and, you know,

that helps out a lot. So, I mean, yeah, you actually have no idea how much it helps. And, uh, because I had to press physical copies of a CD,

uh, for record, like for, uh, radio. So sometimes people like to have the relic to feel the feels. The radio stations still make you mail them a physical CD for the optimal fidelity on the radio. Yeah, and when you're unknown, I'm sure

with more established artists, they can just get the link, but you're really vying for attention when you're unknown. Well, Austin's a good place to be. It seems like there's a lot of good music and art coming out of there. So, um, we'll definitely link to that. Um,

I'll link to the band camp. Um, if you want to buy it, buy it on a Friday and then we will, or is it every Friday or is it like a special Friday that they do it? I don't know. Honestly, any,

any day of the week, if, if, if they're so inclined don't wait you know like enjoy as much as you can and if you don't have the money that's fine spotify is fine but yeah i it's like the listening is very generous yeah and and you are you do you plan to tour and promote it or is there a place people can check and get updates other than your website for something like that? Get on a mailing list? Yeah, just Instagram. Yeah, that's the most helpful thing to join the mailing list and you can do that on my site. And then if you want to see live dates, like I'm playing June 2nd at the Far Out Lounge and June 21st at Captain Quack's

both here in Austin. Okay. Well, yeah. That sounds great. I will use your music to play you in and play you out with this if YouTube doesn't take it down and tell me that I have to upload proof of ownership.

Back in Atlanta when I lived with Tom we had a U-Haul loft upload proof of ownership. All you could need. Ooh. Ooh. That was the year I swore off girls. And let me assure you, as a group, they didn't even shrug. Then despite alarm bells, I fell headlong for Michelle. Put a harp along to what's-his-face, who was in love with himself. Thank you. How hard you try, the hard decides. The hard decides. You know the hard decides. By the time I got to California,

had a self-help section of a bookshelf between the but upon inspection, while they gloat in their reflection, not even a page of dog, which of course is when you find real love, the perfect excuse to put everything else on hold. The irony they say is we could have been healing each other's pain. Wasted those first ten years. Pulling and pushing away.

Ain't that the way? It all made sense at the time. You fight it, feed it, pretend not to need it No matter how hard you try The hard decides The hard decides You know the hard decides Just last week I got lunch with Tom

And I said sorry for not calling during his divorce It was all just as well Cause I'd been in the same boat myself We got out by the skin of our teeth But it took its toll on our health And if the saint you are Out by the skin of our teeth, but it took its toll on our health. And if the saint you are, what you eat applies. Feast dries on a slice of human humble pie.

I've had highs and lows and fallouts with friends. Always feeling on the outside looking in. I've learned how to give. I'm learning how to need. Still learning how not to take myself so seriously. Ain't that the way it all made sense at the time? You're fighting, defeated, pretend not to need it. No matter how hard you try, the heart decides. The heart decides.

You know the heart decides. Thank you. Bye.