WEAPONIZED with Jeremy Corbell & George Knapp - Lord Huron - Life & Death With The Cosmic Cowboys - Guest : Ben Schneider

Episode Date: June 6, 2023

What happens to us after we die? Can love transcend physical death? Are time and space mere illusions? Existential and philosophical questions are at the heart of the music produced by Lord Huron, an indie band based in Los Angeles. Fans have given them the nickname of "Cosmic Cowboys" due to the nature of the subjects addressed in their songs and albums. Ghost - both literal and figurative - make frequent appearances in their lyrics, along with ancient legends, malevolent spirits, cosmological lore, and a smattering of broken hearts and lost loves. Ben Schneider, the founder of the Lord Huron, is also its lead singer and principal songwriter. Schneider grew up in the shadow of the Great Lakes where he absorbed much of the rich history of the region and the Native Americans who've lived there for centuries. His music combines elements of folk, rock, country, punk, Asian, and even surf influences. The sound is lush and multi-layered, and the songs address complicated ideas not usually found in popular music. Music critics have struggled to find a specific niche for Lord Huron, but the fan base has no such problem. In this episode. Jeremy and George ask Ben Schneider about the inspiration for his songs, pay a visit to the hidden Whispering Pines recording studio, and share video clips from Lord Huron concerts, including the current tour. Follow Lord Huron here https://LordHuron.com GOT A TIP? Reach out to us at [e-mail] For breaking news, follow Corbell & Knapp on all social media. Extras and bonuses from the episode can be found at https://WeaponizedPodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. From what I can tell, every artist has kind of like a mystery inside of them that they're trying to express. Oh yeah. And now it's different. Welcome back to the LH Shopping Network. It's a very common thing among musicians to have had some sort of encounter. counter. Secrets, cover-ups, and strange phenomena. UFOs and ideas that challenge reality itself. All these mysteries, all this time. Are we ever going to get to the bottom of these?

My name is George Knapp. I dig into news stories that others can't or won't. I'm Jeremy Corbell, and for some reason people tell me things they probably shouldn't. And this is weaponized. This is weaponized. You know, one of the reasons Jeremy and I launched this a podcast a long time ago was a chance to interact with creative people, artists, people we admire and want to learn from, movie makers, singers, songwriters, artists of all kind. And this date on our production schedule has been circled and read for a long time because we're really looking forward to meeting our guest today. Ben Schneider of Lord Huron, man, it's great to have you here. Thanks for having me. Good to be here. Yeah, and just friends, man, being able to sit down with people

that have influenced, but you with George, you know, with your music, I mean, that's kind of why we're doing this, is having these abilities to just talk with people who want to learn more about, you know? I know, I've been playing your music on coast to coast since 2012, I think. I know, I feel like I owe you a cutter. I've appointed myself as your publicist, but I can remember driving through the desert late at night on an I-team road trip, stars, sky full of stars, and hearing this song come on, and it was like, nothing I had heard before.

And it was ends of the earth. And it was just perfect to be out at night looking at the stars, and it just didn't sound like anything else that was on radio. There was a little country twang to it, and I was trying to figure out, how do you categorize this? It's not exactly a rock song. I know people have tried to put a label on you for a long time, but they don't know where to fit you in, do they?

Yeah, I guess that's been to our advantage in a lot of ways. I mean, we just kind of, I don't know, tend to follow whatever we're interested at any given time. And it's taken us to some different places, and I guess nobody can quite pigeonhole that. Well, I've been playing your songs on Coast as bumper songs because they fit, you know, the kind of topics that you cover, the vibe. It works for a lot of the subject matter that we cover. weird stuff, supernatural, paranormal, space, cosmology,

and those are themes that you include in your music. So it's always fit with the show. And then the last couple of years, I've been playing every episode, every episode that I host, playing a Lord Huron song. And people keep track of it. Okay, now it's an official George show because they got that Lord Hurons on there.

That's really cool. I appreciate that. Yeah, I kind of wanted to know. I mean, so I'm a little bit musically challenged. I don't follow as much. But when George gets excited about a musical, you know, anything, a song or whatever, I remember when you told me that, like, you heard it driving through the desert. What was it that about, because you listen, you've taught me about the Beatles,

you've taught me about all these artists, but what was it that hit you about Ben's music? It sounds big. It sounds lush. The production is so many different levels. And again, the fact that you can't categorize it, it doesn't sound like anything else on radio or anywhere. Maybe it gets at some of the stuff you're interested in, which crosses over with a lot of stuff I'm interested in,

which is just mystery in general, I think. And yeah, I've always been fascinated at kind of staring at mysteries and thinking about them and living in them, and just like you guys, I guess. We're going to dive into some of that. I remember in, I think it's 2021, I get an email from a publicist who says, hey, I work with this group called Lord Huron, and we got this really interesting project coming out.

Would you think you'd be interested in interviewing them? I'm going, who's pulling my leg here? What kind of joke is this? I play these guys all the time. Is this a prank of some sort? And then I said, yeah, I'd be interested. And then they unveiled this amazing project where what really interests me

about what you've done with all your albums is you create these alternate realities, this parallel worlds as a framework for the album, that particular project. And this one, that one for Long Lost, oh my gosh, you've created a whole world. world and a series of artists and yeah we tend to do a lot of background work on on all our albums with storytelling and you know it's there for people to discover if they want to but it's not necessary

to dive into it if you're if you're just there for the music that's cool too you know we take all comers but i think taking the time to do all that background work and fleshing up the stories of the people the characters that exist in the songs and where they're from and what their names are even, even if it's not explicit in the outward facing product, I think you can sense that there's something more to it, something behind it. We're interested in the creative process for making these alternate worlds for each of those albums. Like the one, is it Strange Trails where you create this Western writer? Oh, yeah, that was for Lonesome Dreams. Lonesome Dreams. So they create this Western writer

who's sort of somewhere between James Benimore Cooper and Zane Gray or something. Yeah. It's Frontiersman, it's Cowboys. Yeah. You make him up, and then you make up all kinds of scenarios, but it's like you're making a film. It's like you have a film in your mind. Yeah, sometimes it does start from a visual place, actually. And that album in particular was written a lot on the road

when we were doing our first tours through the Southwest. So, you know, we were going through those beautiful landscapes, and I was reading a lot of Western novels and stuff. And, yeah, it just, I don't know. I started thinking about the types of things. of stories that are told in those novels. And it's kind of, you know, like human experience laid bare. And I thought that was a cool place to start for writing songs. You've heard that stuff. I have, yeah. I mean, you obviously have something that you want to say, but I found it really

interesting is your journey towards where you are now. It's almost like it could have come out in a hundred ways. You started off studying painting and as an artist, right? So as an artist, there's different ways things can come out of you, whatever it is. You're trying to say or explore, you know, this is something that has been a good vehicle for you, but you didn't start there from what I heard from you. So I'd love to hear about that, like, as an artist, what was it like? So you were doing some painting was one of the things you studied. I think, I mean, my creative life began when I was very young.

And I think from what I can tell, every artist has kind of like a mystery inside of them that they're trying to express, you know, a feeling, a vibe that's very particular to them that they're trying their hardest to express to the world. And for me, it was a matter of trying to find what vehicle to do that through. So I played music from a young age, but I also did visual art. And yeah, I was just trying to find the best way to express this thing that's kind of inexpressible. You know, it's not, I don't even know how to describe it.

It's just sort of a mystery that lives inside of me. So yeah, I tried it through visual. art for a long time, went to art school, studied painting, graphic design. That's what brought me to LA. You know, I came here to do art, did a couple shows, showed in some group shows, did like a multimedia installation at a theater here. That was about, that's kind of deep, but it was about a fictional research institution that was researching an ancient civilization that existed in Antarctica. So, and I presented it as though it was a real thing. So I hired actors to come and play the researchers and I hired other actors to come play the opposing viewpoint. And yeah, it was

really fun and interesting, but I didn't sell any work because it wasn't for sale. So it's just kind of like an exercise and futility in some ways. But I learned a lot from that. So your art has always been kind of very, it sounds like it's always been kind of like in-depth. If you're just making a painting, putting it on a wall, you're creating these worlds that people need to kind of look at and try to enter into that come out of you. Even with the artwork, you were creating a whole world. Yeah, I liked, I liked hinting at some bigger thing, you know? Yeah. Is that, and that's because you're curious, you're exploring that. Like, there's something in there that you can't fully express. Exactly, yeah. And I feel like the more ways, the more outlets that has to come out,

the better chance I have of success, I guess. But yeah, then I started getting more into music again and recorded some stuff up in Michigan. I'd taken the trip. Travel has always been really key to sort of my creative process too, and I'd taken the trip to Southeast Asia and then came back to Michigan. And I feel like those first EPs I recorded after that are very much Bali and Michigan combined it's a music you've been to Bali a bunch and just that once yeah where did you go like Ubu yeah uh Semignac and then to Lombach but then Singapore on the way home and it you know it's just I was there for somebody's wedding you know what did you gain from that I've been to bolly too is incredible what was that what was the thing that inspired you in Bali um honestly that was

kind of more straightforward where it was really just the music okay I went and saw some music and I thought it was in theater and I thought it was something I hadn't seen before and the sound that I thought was kind of remarkably absent from music I knew. And so I had a little Zoom recorder with me and I took some samples of the stuff I was hearing and then went home and tried to recreate that as best like that. Did you see some of the puppet shows? Yeah. That's part of the culture. Yeah. It's really really crazy. And like the stories that they're telling. I mean, I got the gist, these kind of mythological, good versus evil, very violent stories. We're really fascinating.

Let's back up and get some Ben origin story. So you're growing up in Michigan. Your dad's a journalist. Yep, my mom is a journalist. So they probably had ideas about what they wanted you to end up doing. And then you're in music in high school. You had some bands. Doing some art.

And then you moved to L.A. You don't know anyone out here. You just take a wild fling? Well, not quite that linear. So I kind of got the travel bug when I was in high school. I was an orchestra and we got to go to Europe, which was my first time out of the country or, you know, on a plane or anything. And I was just like, wow, this is this whole crazy world out here that I'm pretty interested in checking out. So next chance I had to do that again was, you know, in college I was able to study abroad from my last semester, which

study is a loose term because it really just became a place where I could explore and didn't go to class much but got to see a lot of things. Then I came back and tried New York for a little while because that seemed like the place to go to be an artist. So I was only there for about six months though and then decided to check out L.A., kind of on a whim thinking I'd only be here a little while and just never left. I was so intrigued by the art world here but also by the music scene here, which I thought felt more, a little more open and all over the place stylistically, which I really appreciated. So just kind of never left.

It shows in your albums, you know, so many different kinds of sounds and instrumentation and those first three EPs. You produced them by yourself. Yeah. Everything. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of ambitious. Yeah, I mean, it was amazing for me to discover just how fun.

I grew up recording on a four-track tape recorder. That's how I learned how to record music. And then once I started writing music again, seriously, discovering all the technology that was at hand really opened up my world. I mean, that was a good example for me of how having the right tools can just totally change your life. Was there a point there that you decide,

okay, if I'm going to step it up, I need some help and you got the other guys to come out? Yeah. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly Big Board Buckslot Machined by Aristocrat Gaming, Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is giving one person a $1.6 million dream package. The biggest prize in Yamava's history.

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I recorded those EPs and just burned some CDs at home. We took those up to a music festival in Northern California, me and my sister, and just kind of handed them out. And just for fun, basically, because we wanted to see some of the bands that were playing at this festival. And that was back in the days of blog journalism, was really big, especially music.

and someone happened to write about this EP, someone handed them at this festival. And next thing I know, we get asked to do a show, but, you know, like you said, I was doing this all myself, so I couldn't really pull it off to the level I'd like to by myself. So, you know, I didn't know a lot of musicians here, but thankfully I know I know great musicians from growing up. You know, some of the best musicians I ever have known were these guys I went to high school with. So I called Mark Barry, who's the drummer in the band, and I just said, hey, look, I know you're busy in Nashville. He was living in Nashville at the time, session musician. But would you consider coming out to L.A. to help me get a band together and do a show?

You know, I set him in the EPs, and he said, this is cool. I like this music. It's weird, but it's cool. I'll come out and help you up. So I was so thankful that he said yes. because not only is he just an incredible musician, but he's one of my best friends. So having him come out was like a real boon.

And we just kind of set to putting this band together and did a show, did another show, and we just kind of been on tour. And the other guys came out after? Yeah, so Mark knew Miguel from, who's the bass player, from, they played jazz together in high school. And I knew Miguel a little bit,

but we'd never really played music together. So he recruited him. We found another couple guys from Michigan who we knew. And then they're not in the band anymore, but our buddy Tom, a couple years later, who we had a band with in high school, came out and kind of rounded it out. So some guys that I literally had my first band with are the guys in the band now. I mean, it's clear that whatever is coming out of you, you know, people are resonating with, you know, to go from just handing out a CD because you want to go see a vet.

I mean, as an artist, is this an unexpected path kind of view? It wasn't planned out, right? I mean, or was it? I mean, it's like you, so that's kind of a, that's a rocket ship, man. You're just kind of expressing something and it really hits people, you know? And then bam, you go from not playing a show to playing these huge concerts. Yeah, I mean, it still surprises me every day, really to think about how that trajectory went. But what I'm glad happened is that I was able to see, I mean, I guess it was because

the situation I was in at the time, you know, I was working as an art director doing ads and stuff, trying to find a creative outlet that I could make a living at basically, but kind of getting ground to dust by it, to be perfectly honest. Once I saw that, yeah, yeah, I was just, you know, making TV commercials and print ads and, you know, I met some great people and it was nice to be able to be creative, but I didn't have an endless supply of creative energy. So at the end of the day when I was done with that work I would feel completely zapped and the thing I had to show for it was not a true expression of that that thing I was talking about earlier that that inexpressible you know mystery that you have so such a drive to express it was something else entirely it was somebody's

sales pitch you do have an end to a supply of creative energy just not for somebody else's project yeah maybe that's what you said last night it was I was curious about it is like you said maybe you said you don't know maybe we do have a limited amount of that creative energy to do these things. You know, what do you think? Where do you fall on that? I don't know. I mean, I guess I'm pretty, I guess I don't think about it too much because what's the point?

Like I'll just keep making stuff as long as I can. And then if the well runs dry, I'll take up fishing or something, you know? Like, it'll be all right. It will be all right. And, you know, I'm just going to ride it as long as I can. But yeah, like you were saying, it's just surprising that it's, worked out the way it has to me. And I'm just glad I was able to see that maybe it was good that I was desperate enough to just be like,

I need to get out of this and like, here's an opportunity to get out of this. That's a bold move, man. Yeah, it was a little scary. But, you know, my family was really supportive. Having my close friends be the guys in the band was really great because it was just like, we all knew each other and we knew how to support each other and how to make it happen. Lonesome Dreams, first big album, full album. Is that what you wanted to do?

did it come out to how you wanted and how does it change your life when it happens? Yeah, it came out as we wanted. We've been lucky that we haven't really had anybody in our creative business at all throughout our career. So we've been able to just do what we want to do. You know, we had definitely a limited budget to make that. It was the first time we ever went to a recording studio and all that. But we had a great engineer who was kind of patient with us.

His name's Rick Parker. He's kind of a legend in L.A. in certain circles and he was just a perfect guy to pair with for that and we decided we'd produce it ourselves because we kind of knew what we were looking for so he engineered it and we produced it and yeah it was it was a cool feeling putting that out you know and going on tour to support it our first kind of big national tour well it's just in a beautiful stuff it's just thank that that's what grabbed your ends of the earth there's no other song like it on radio then or now you know so you start getting known you start

doing on television here and there. We were looking for interviews that you've done over the years, and you've had to do some to promote your music and your band, but not a lot. I mean, you're uncomfortable with it, aren't you? A little bit. Are you comfortable right now? Good, that's great.

You guys are making me feel right at home. Okay, good. This desert water's doing the trip. Thank you. Yeah, we need more of that. I mean, you are a little worried about where it leads. I mean, you're a creative person. You want the world to see your music.

but at the same time you worry about what it means to you and your wife and your private life? For sure. And we just don't want it to be about us. Like, we're very focused on it being about the stuff we're making. Which obviously there's, you can't have that entirely when you're an artist and you're out there performing every night. You know, I guess we should have thought ahead and done the daft punk thing and war masks or something. But no, I think we have really respectful fans too who kind of know that we have certain feelings about our privacy and everything. they're really cool about giving us our space. And we love interacting with them. I'm not saying we like turn a shoulder to them or anything.

But, you know, we like our space. We like it to not be about us. It's not a cult of personality or a tabloid sensation. We're just not that kind of people. You can feel that, you know, in what you're saying or what you're creating or the feeling that someone like me gets from the music is that it's big, it's vast. It's about something more cosmic.

And you said that to me yesterday when we're at your studio. that it wasn't ever just about you guys. And you get that even from your art where you obscure the faces. I know you said that's like memories, how you start to lose them. And your memory of that is not complete. But you just get this sense that you're kind of sitting back, but your music and the ideas are moving forward. But, I mean, you can only hold that so long.

People, like, you know, you've touched a nerve. Yeah. And I'm happy to, you know, share in the right settings. And that's not like I'm trying to be caged. or anything. It's just, yeah, it's just I value my privacy. And I really do, more than anything, I want it to be about what we're creating and not about us as people. Because sometimes people think that means that the music we make isn't personal when I say that, but that's not what it means. It just means that it's something inside that I'm trying to express. It's very personal,

but it's not autobiographical, I guess, if that makes sense. And that comes from, you told this last night at dinner that comes from like an earlier time in your life where you know maybe just as a local kid there was stuff coming out about you but tell us tell us that that's pretty good yeah oh gosh you need more desert water yeah that's okay yeah well so like you mentioned my dad was a journalist uh he wrote a daily column for 35 years for the lansing state journal and um you know he could write about whatever you want it was like a job that doesn't exist anymore basically uh so during the week he would write about, you know, local businessman cheating old ladies and kind of, he was kind of a champion of the people and stuff.

That was the ad? Yeah, there was an ad that said, John Schneider, he's a huge champion of the people, which we made fun of him for endlessly when we were kids. But on Sundays, he would write about the family. And, you know, it just, it was rough sometimes to go to school on Monday and have your teacher be like, I heard you got busted for a party this weekend or whatever, you know? And your business was all laid bare to the whole community. And that's not like I actually hold any hard feelings against them for it because, you know,

I get, I get it. But it was kind of, it was kind of hard sometimes to have that all out there. I think that did make me, you know, make me decide that I was going to devote a bit of energy to guarding my privacy as I got older. We got to see the legendary Whispering Pine Studio, and, you know, your fans, I watch them on, there's some Reddit, subreddit things where they, you drop them a lot of Easter eggs, and there's a playful relationship there. You'll give them things that are essentially clues to some other kind of mystery, or they interpret them that way, including the story of the studio. And I honestly had no idea, really, what was true and what wasn't, until we saw it yesterday. It is a place that does have a history. It's just not exactly the history that you've weaved for the last project. Yeah.

I mean, I think we were inspired by the space just because you can sense that things have happened there. You know, I mean, just we think it was built in the early 70s. And, you know, it's been pretty much unchanged since then. So all the acoustic treatment and all the parquet floor and the glass that you can't clean is all just as it was. you can really feel the history. I think when we were starting to make those alive from Whispering Pines episodes during COVID, we kind of took a lot of inspiration from that. Like, what kind of ghosts are hanging out in here and what can we tell their stories? Maybe we don't know exactly who was here, but let's imagine what happened here. I just noticed that it was alive

from Whisperin Pines, not live, meaning you're not exactly sure everyone who's at Whispering Pines is really alive or dead. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, it's a really inspiring place. I mean, it's, you know, you had us come and we go down this little alley, we get into the back, we see some cars, we're like, this is probably right. And he started telling us that it was a place that they used to do recordings back in the day. So it's really hard to encapsulate that to show that. I think actually your videos kind of show the feeling.

Yeah. It's really. I mean, it has a, when you record something in a space like that, it's got to inspire you a little bit. It's a really unique feel in that place. Chilling out with your buddy, Ben. My buddy Ben. That's out. So this is your studio.

People from the album would recognize that, but that's you. You did that work. I did paint that, yep. Yeah, that's the gatefold from the long-lost LP. Priceless artwork. Did you paint it for the album, or you already had that in mind you wanted to do, and then you made the album fit to that? Good question.

They kind of developed together. I guess I just had this kind of vibe that I was trying to create. and at first it seemed like painting was probably the best way to get there, to visualize it, and then it turned into songs and other stuff. So I think I actually did paint this before I wrote a lot of the record. I was telling Jeremy about you make up these country groups, and then you release songs under it, and you don't even say it's Lord Huron. There's a new song out, it's yours, and it's by hefty-lefty or something.

Sometimes it helps me conceptualize things to go deep like that. It might be a little overkill, but for the people who appreciate it, I think, it's worth the time. Donnie and Midge, is that? This is Donnie and Midge. Wow. Yeah. That's amazing. George is a big fan.

He ain't kidding. That's beautiful, man. See, he painted that. Some of that stuff just made me, God damn, just laughed out loud. Donnie and Midge, sounds like it would be an old country. Doesn't it? Yeah.

Reding Craig Baines is like one of the pleasure. Tubbs talk about. Yeah. Hems, that was hilarious. Hands of Scott. Hands of Scott. Songs. What do I say?

Some songs I know. know and the more songs I know or something like that. Yeah, it's been very inspiring. So we've made every record since Strange Trails there. So the last three records we've done entirely there. Wishing you could be there live for the big game, soaking up the atmosphere in the crowd. But too often, life gets busy.

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We shoot our music videos there. We throw parties there. We hang out there. It's just, it's been like almost another member of the band or something. You know, it's like a character in our world. We noticed all the cars, all you guys drive. And thenlies and Rolls is, and you're living the rock star life then, right? Yeah.

Yep, you're right. We're absolutely bawling out of control. Yep, that's us. That mythology about Whispering Pines and Tubbs Tarbell, and that was what the publicist introduced me to and these elaborate scenes and mythology that led up to the release of that album. And, you know, we saw it yesterday. We were talking about it about all these country artists that you have.

made up. So obviously a lot of country influence that you've incorporated into your work over the years. But you make up all these country artists and then you make up songs for them. And then you actually released them. You released songs that are not even under Lord Huron's banner and just pop it out there and let people figure out what it is. I don't understand that. He was so like, you create these fictional characters and like old countries and then you actually do just put it out under their name with no attachment to your work? Yeah. Okay. How does that? You said it. It's a great plan.

So that one painting that Ben did up on the wall that we saw, I think he labeled them as Donnie and Midge, this country duo. And there was a brief clip of the song that Donnie and Midge were doing in the commercial that they had. That later became online. Yeah, that's right. That's some elusive shit, man. I know.

I don't know. Yeah, the label wasn't quite on board with that either. It's hard to monetize. But like I was saying, I don't know. maybe sometimes it goes a little far, but I really love giving things some background. And I think it comes through somehow. I guess I hope it comes through something. It does, man.

It's like whispers through the trees, man. I mean, you got people just speaking about your music. I mean, that's George's been preaching, Lord Huron ever since he heard it. It took me a while to kind of tap in. But there's a sense of like you want to enter that world because it's not being thrown in your face. So, you know. Yeah, I think the mystery of it has been part of the allure to our fans. And they, you know, it's been really cool to see them discover things that I thought were pretty much just this background work for ourselves.

I didn't really think would ever find any, find its way into any public consciousness, really. And to see them discover that. And not only that, but expand upon it. I've seen it spark creativity in the community, which is really, I mean, just the most beautiful gift they can give back to us is to see that it's inspired them to make things. You know, people are making these beautiful paintings based on songs. And, you know, a close friend of ours made a movie based on one of our albums and a feature-length film. And it's just so, it's beautiful.

Well, there's a humor element to it that I don't know that everybody gets, but God damn, it was funny. I mean, the names that they made up that Ben and made up for some of these artists, hefty, Lefty, handsome Scott, Donnie and Midge, sounds like real country artists. I would try to stump him when we would exchange emails about old country artists that I figure I'm the only person alive that still knows who they were. He knows all of them. Yeah, I've got five albums for the Lefty Frizzell and Webb Pierce and acts like that. Because that stuff has, it has mythology built into it too.

And I think those artists were very aware of what they were doing too. I mean, you know, people think of country music as three chords and the truth and all that. And that's really true to a degree. but they were also very conscious of their personas and of the mythology surrounding the songs. And I think that's really cool. There's incredible artistry to what those old country musicians did.

Well, it's incorporated little tiny little things that you keep in these records, a rinky tink piano that sounds like Scott Kramer or what am I thinking of, Floyd Kramer, the ballet stuff that's in the three EPs. And French, you obviously spent some time in France. French titles they get into it too. Yeah. It's a great mix.

It's just nothing else like it. Thanks. What was the whole thing? So last night I was looking at a bunch of stuff and I saw the one where there's all these little commercials that kind of blip in and out and your music kind of goes through it. It's just like a creative way to show and enter people in. But did you like

set up those actors to talk about each of those things? Yeah. So bizarre. Tell my friend, Heidi here is wearing what we like to call a sky gazers harness. Now that is a proprietary term. So if you run across one with that phrase, you know you're getting the real thing. Unbelievable. What does this allow you to do? You may be asking, you may already know, but it allows us to do exactly what it says. Gaze into the sky and

accept what it is giving us for our health and for the health of those around us. It's comprised of the helmet, which is receiving the energy from the tube that goes right in the segment. This glorious wonderful product that will open you. It moisturizes. Do you hear that? It moisturizes. You're not going to find that anywhere else. You're not going to find mind pigment cream that's actually good for your skin.

Anywhere but on the L.A. I'm going to go out of my living room. I see. Yes. Our aura is being warped by this threshold. It's difficult to discern. That was great bizarre. Thank you.

You know, you're like, what am I watching? Yeah, we had this idea of making, I don't know, we always are drawn to this idea of like infomercials to kind of launch our albums. And I don't know, it's just a cool format because you can have the humor, which I think, you know, sometimes our music can seem serious in a way that I think is maybe over earnest. But there's always humor involved in everything we do. And we like to show people that that's riding shotgun constantly in what we're doing. Not to say that we're not serious about the things we're talking about, but I think we're the, our philosophy is kind of what can you do but laugh when you look at the, when you stare into the void, you know. Well, the void comes up a lot. Mortality comes up a lot. Ghosts, literal and figurative ghosts in your music. And obviously you put a lot of thought into the big questions, like what comes next? Yeah, I think, yeah. I mean, I think everybody, as far as I know, everybody thinks,

a lot about that stuff, but maybe we've been pretty obsessed with exploring it and just thinking about all of its facets and not necessarily trying to answer any of those questions, but kind of, as I was saying before, just being comfortable, sitting back in awe of those mysteries and of those questions and just how intrinsic they are to our lives and our inner lives and our outer lives. Yeah, to me, it's an endless source of material because it's kind of unanswerable. You slip a lot of stuff into songs and lyrics references that suggest to me you read a wide range of stuff, like not only fiction, but cosmology, religion.

I mean, are we exaggerating there? I do like to read a lot, and I do have pretty varied tastes, yeah. Trying to think what a... Like mathematics books? you like you have a physics I'll read like you know layman physics I can't do the deep stuff but I love those books about just like

you know trying to explain to the layman the size of the universe and the origins of the universe why do you love those? I think because it's like to me those are the ultimate spooky mysteries and it's really interesting that we know quite a bit about it but we still don't know

everything and and I don't know what's more interesting than those huge huge questions you know stuff about consciousness too I love reading about that just because it's kind of seems like an unanswerable question to me which is really interesting or my intuition is that it's unanswerable I don't know maybe they'll figure it out but but yeah my wife is even more of a voracious reader than me so she's often giving me stuff to read and the cliff notes yeah

and the cliff notes she's I'm reading House of Mirth right now which she recommended Edith Fortin and reading Steve Biko's essays. We just visited South Africa, so I was kind of digging into that stuff. And I'm also reading a book on Ojibwe mythology. So, yeah, pretty varied right now, but it all feeds something.

That's who the Huron are today. Yeah, exactly, yeah. We've been spending a lot more time in Michigan, and I've been kind of trying to, you know, learn as much as I can about the people who were there first and what, whose land that is. And I think mythology of a culture is an interesting place to start because it's kind of the foundation of culture, you know. So you had told us about this vacation you went on and I, we exchanged emails in different parts of it. And I realized, holy crap, this guy's been on the road with his wife for three, four months, traveling

the world. Are you a workaholic while you're traveling? Are you taking notes looking for story ideas and song ideas? Yeah. I mean, I've tried really hard as I've gotten older, especially, to integrate my work into my just everyday life so that it can be kind of seamless. And, you know, for a long time, I was working in a way that I think was unhealthy for my physical health and for my relationships because I was just kind of disappearing and re-emerging pale and awkward. But to travel, like I was saying before, has been such a source of inspiration for me. It is a vacation, but I do consider it also like a real place where I collect ideas. So I always end up with a bunch of fragments for songs. I got this great little guitar that I can put

in the overhead bin. So it's like I've got my sort of travel setup really dialed in now. So, you know, we'd be floating on a boat on the Nile and I could play my guitar and think about a song. And, you know, we stopped through some cities too, so like in Berlin, I actually put some studio time and did a little work. But, yeah, nothing's been more valuable, inspiration-wise, than travel for me. We're really interested in the creative process. Neither of us can write music or songs or anything, but where it comes from. You know, read about the Beatles. You occasionally hear a story like from,

Cartney that he woke up, he had a dream and woke up with yesterday in his head. It was all, the whole melody was there. Other people who would, an entire song written, there it is, when you wake up. Does that happen? Not quite that fully form, but I definitely have woken up with melodies in my head. And I think I was talking to you guys before about how, you know, my insomnia has led to these auditory hallucinations occasionally. And sometimes it will be musical.

Usually it's voices, but sometimes it will be. Yeah, just melodies. And I know I've probably woken up my wife a few times humming into my voice recorder in the middle of the night trying to not forget something. And, you know, honestly, sometimes when I get around to actually looking at it later, I'll be like, I actually wasn't that cool. What the hell was I thinking? But every now and then, there's a good one. I've never had a number one smash hit appear in my head when I wake up to like Poplarney. Do you know that when you write something, do you know that it's going to resonate?

People are going to feel that. Do you know before it goes out, that one is going to touch people? No. I mean, I hope. And like, sometimes I'll write something and think, this seems really true or really resonant to me. And sometimes it will end up, I think, being that way for other people. But you just never know. Some songs I've written that I thought would be more, have more of a connection,

haven't landed the way I thought. which I think that's all part of that thing I was talking about, where everybody has a different mystery they connect with, and sometimes you hit it, sometimes you don't. You had told me once before that there's always an element of truth or something of you and the songs and the lyrics that you're writing, and I'm thinking, what a dirty bastard this guy is. I'm looking at some of his songs.

I didn't mean the things I said. I didn't honestly wish you were dead. Well, I can expand into things. fiction a little bit, but I think exploring some of my, you know, your darker impulses that you do have and thinking about where they could lead has been really a fertile ground for me, you know? And just, you know, the good things that I have in life, sometimes I'll take those and just think about, it helps me see how bad it could be, if that makes any sense, like appreciating the good things that I have.

So yeah, it's not always literally about me, but usually it's either something that's happened to someone close to me or sort of a fictional spinoff of something that I've gone through or someone close to me has gone through. But like we've talked about before, sometimes you can convey so much more truth in fiction because you can cut out all the real surroundings that are getting away sometimes of getting to the heart of a matter. Is there like one of the songs that you might play? it you know when you do these shows that like is really special to you like it always

feels you know powerful to you when you play it's a good question it's different on different nights I think just depending on what you know frankly how good the performance is sometimes I'll be really inspired by the way somebody's playing or the way we're playing together or the way someone's voice sounds or whatever or just seeing how the audience is reacting too can really color a song. I remember playing at Red Rocks, I think two years ago, I guess it was, I don't know, a few years ago. And we played one called The Ghost on the Shore and got so quiet when there's 10,000 people that are that quiet and just really paying attention to the song and seemed

to really sort of understand what it's about or it seemed that way to me. That's pretty, that was pretty special. What's the biggest crowds you played too? And do you get nervous? Do you get stage fright a little bit or butterflies when you're going on to something big? I've never had too big of a problem with stage fright, honestly, except for the times when some circumstances are making it extra stressful. But, you know, we've played to huge festival audiences, and that's stressful in a way, but almost less stressful than a smaller theater audience where you know they're there just to see you and they have certain expectations about show you should you should deliver and yeah it can it can be a little nerve-wracking I mean especially when and when we play in Detroit and I know there's 100 of my

family extended family members out there all I'll all wondering if I'm really the real thing or not yeah you're telling that's so you were telling us last night night it's an interesting thing where your family you know they kind of know you as you were a kid obviously so they've seen you through everything. What is their barometer for understanding, you know, kind of what you're doing now in the world? You were saying for some people, if they see me on a late night show, they're like, oh, you really did it. Yeah. You made it. Other people see a concert of yours. But then one of your family members, it was a hearing that George played one of your songs. Yeah. So my, yeah, my aunt, Patty, who lives in Vegas, and so she knows you as a personality,

uh, loves you and listened to your show. And she heard you play a Lord Huron, uh, one of your bumpers and I think that's when she was like, oh. Oh, you finally made it, Ben Jim is actually not a loser. Because, you know, yeah, they all knew me from, they knew I had bands. You know, I played it like when my brother graduated high school, my band played in the garage, you know, and they were like, okay. We don't need punk music at this. Was it a punk band?

Yeah, we kind of went through some phases, but that was that, you know, in the midnight. 90s, it was kind of ska and punk was kind of the indie music of the moment. So we were all pretty drawn to punk. You know, it's fun to play. And when you're learning an instrument, it's really fun to play. You don't think it's too much of a transition to country that there are some similarities to that. I do, yeah. I mean, I think, again, there's that sort of idea of creating mythology around what you're doing that I think they both embrace. And hard times are both common themes in those types of music, simplicity, a deceptive simplicity, I think. People often confuse having fewer chords with simplicity, which I don't necessarily think is true, because

there's an emotional depth behind a lot of that music that's really complex. The night we met, I've seen on YouTube videos where you've addressed the audience, say, if somebody, a lot of you are here because of this song, is that that was a really big song for your band? Yeah, it ended up being. I mean, we put that album out in, that was on strange trails. We put that album out in 2015. And actually, my wife and I were on our first big trip we took abroad where we were just living, sort of in the countryside in France for a few months between albums, took some time to write and just had a friend who had a place they weren't using. so we were able to live there really cheap.

And my manager called and said, hey, they want to use this song in this TV show. And honestly, I was like, I don't want to deal with this right now. Let's not do it. And my wife said, well, might as well. Like, we're pretty cool about putting our songs in narrative projects.

Like, I don't want to be on a dishwasher soap commercial. Yeah, yeah. But, like, I'm cool if I can add. a little something to somebody else's story they want to tell. So we've been pretty liberal about letting people use music and if it's in something, you know, creative. So we said, we ended up saying yes and they used it on this show called 13 reasons why. And, you know, I forgot about it, honestly, and just went about my trip.

And then, you know, it ended up being this big hit show. and the song plays a role in the story. So it kind of made it even more of a connection with people. And yeah, it just really took off. So we've been super thankful that it's a song we like, you know, one of our favorite songs to play and stuff. So, yeah, I mean, it's very gratifying to see people connecting with it on such deep. Did you tell us it had a billion downloads or something like that?

Yeah, I mean, Spotify recently. sent us a plaque because it was streamed a billion times just on Spotify. I know. It's hard to believe. A lot of years on that. It's a lot of years. Yeah, it's really cool. So it's definitely expanded our audience and you know, hopefully it's just a gateway where people can get into the other stuff. And so far it seems like it has been. People will start there, get a taste for what we're doing, and then kind of find out there's a lot more to the style. Jeremy's asked me, well, so what are you So what are your favorite songs?

I can't even list the favorite songs per album because it changes from week or week or something, you know. It depends on your mood. I'm thinking the last song, next to the last song on Long Lost is pretty spectacular. Deep thought, it's what do it mean? Seems you're digging pretty deep there. What if it doesn't mean anything? What if there is nothing else? What if there is no, we have no personal destiny, there's no plan, this is it.

Yeah, I mean, that does encapsulate that philosophy I was talking about before where it's not about answering. I mean, this title of the song is literally a question with bad grammar. Because it's not about getting to the bottom of that mystery. It's just about kind of accepting and floating in it, which has been a, yeah, something I've been grappling with for a long time. ancient names. I mean, you had told us you read a lot of mythology, you used to like that stuff. It's clearly you got you've got some influence there and going way back. That was a cool theme there. And it rocks, too. Yeah, it rocks. Thanks. Yeah, that was a inspired by what literally by walking around in Chinatown and seeing all the psychic parlors there and thinking about where that could go.

Do you have any of those experiences like a premonition, a precognition, a synchronicity stuff? Does that play in at all to your human experience? Not so much personally. It's one of those things where I'm really interested in that. And I kind of envy people who have had those types of experiences. And I know a lot of musicians who, it's a very common thing among musicians to have had some sort of paranormal encounter or that they believe is a paranormal encounter. The ghosts are very common among my musician friends.

You know, they've all had something. And I can't say that I honestly ever have. And I can't say that any of that aligns with what I think to be true, honestly, scientifically. But it fascinates me to a degree that I would love to have experience like that and to be able to question what I believe to be true. Same about UFO's life out there. You're not, you don't have a foot in one camp or the other? Well, not particularly, although just thinking about it in terms of probability and what we know about the universe. I mean, it seems like it's pretty unlikely that we're the only beating hearts.

But I don't know. I got to see something. I would love to. Yeah. I lied. So in my listening, mental listening of your songs, that's in a category by itself. That is just, that's beautiful. Remember hearing the debut on television?

It was a Kimmel or a Tonight Show? Yeah, I'm trying to remember which one it was. I think it was either Kimmel or Tonight Show. Good grief. From their new album, Long Lost, Here's Lord Huron featuring Allison Pontier. Tried to change my ways you. Thank you.

How'd you pick Allison for that? We were looking for someone, a female singer, to sing that other part, and had a lot of ideas for them. around but my friend Jen who does our publishing suggested Allison she just said you know this is a hear me out because she hasn't put anything out yet but I want you to hear her sing and I think she's really talented I think she's got the right voice for this song and yeah met with her and had her give it a try and I thought her voice was perfect for it you know oh she has a Donnie and Midge were born yeah right there you

I admit, she's got an extraordinary presence. That's one of the first things that he, you know, kind of showed me. And that feeling of having this duet and having this, you know, female voice and kind of presence come in, it was just such a cool. And we're talking about that a little bit yesterday. You know, what is that when you're inserting kind of this different voice into that? How does that feel? Yeah, I was starting to write that song.

And just lately in general, I've really been interested in writing. for a female voice because I think for one thing, they can do different things musically, but also just a different perspective than my own. And I really wanted to write a song where you could hear both sides of relationship and maybe a surprising way. And I think the only way to really do that

was to have the other person come in and tell their side of the story, you know? So yeah, I wanted it to kind of evoke those old country duets without being stylized the exact same. So yeah, her voice has like a little twang, you know, she's from Texas. Yeah. And she's a beautiful singer. And yeah, it just worked out. Well, that song's a heartbreaker. That's a tear in your beer old school. Tear in the beer. And I mean, do you get airplay on country stations on Sirius XM?

It seems like a lot of it would be a good fit there. Yeah. Not that I know of. I know we have fans in the country world you know I've had people reach out to me and say you know Kenny Chesney covered winds of the earth oh which is kind of a surprising thing but yeah I know we have fans and I've started writing trying to write with other people and I've written with some country folks and is there somebody you really want to work with that you haven't is somebody you'd love to I'm not not particularly I'm honestly trying to figure out if I if I'm any good at it no for real like Some people have a skill where they can tap into that other people's intentions.

And I'm still learning if I can do that the right way. Because I think it's crucial to have a certain type of empathy as a co-songwriter, where you can really like understand what someone's trying to say and help them say it. But even having somebody sing one of your songs, like you really seem to embrace technology. Another thing where he got me, he's like, check out what band just dropped. And it's this thing where you can watch a video. and you scroll and it shows you two different perspectives.

It's a female singing in French, right? So you're having somebody else kind of portray your music, right? So I'd like to know more a little bit how that happened, that idea of like we had a much or a little deeper conversation about yesterday that you embrace these new technologies. Definitely. And this is not even on an album. It just comes out of nowhere.

Oh really? What the hell is this? It just appears. Yeah, the song is called Your Other Life. We'd recorded it for Long Loss, our last. album but it just kind of didn't find a place in the flow of the record not because I mean it's honestly one of the one of my favorite songs we recorded but just didn't seem to fit in the album you know it's always good to save a couple b sides in the back pocket for follow-up

so yeah we had this song and we're kind of like what's a special way we can put this out and again that was the kind of song where I thought two perspectives would be really interesting to hear because it's sort of a song about betrayal But, you know, it's never as simple as that, I don't think, in a relationship. So we wanted to tell it from the female perspective as well. And why not do it in French? But you could, so technically though, you know, he shows me this video and you could pull this cursor and it would completely change the perspective, right?

Yeah. So we shot two videos basically with this director, Adam Willis, good friend of ours. And it's basically the same story unfolding from their two perspectives. And it's very subtly different, but you get a sense that they've, these two people viewed this situation in a very different way. So yeah, we had this guy, Lee Martin, build this really cool player, which I guess it hadn't really been done before, surprisingly, but he found a way to make it. And you can just take a little scroll. And if you want him to be overlaid where you can see them both a little bit, you can do that, or you can go all the way to one side or all the way to the other. and the audio crossfades as well.

So, yeah, it was really nicely executed by those guys. For people haven't seen it, it's shot in this bar, this dark bar, that looks like 50 bars I've spent way too much time in in my life. And it was a little bit dangerous in there, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's got a feeling like anything could happen. Yeah. Which are my favorite types of places to go into where you don't really know.

I mean, that's what the valley is good for. Don't feel completely comfortable. Right. It's a good thing. Exactly. The night could go anywhere and you could end up anywhere. The business side of it. You know, you're not Taylor Swift selling out a giant stadium. You want a big audience. You have a growing audience. You have legions of loyal fans. How do you make it go? I mean, you guys have a certain amount of independence.

But COVID hit and then streaming. I just think of streaming is a great thing. it exposes people with a lot of different kind of music, but for artists, it just seems to screw over creative people in that you get so little out of your own music. It's definitely evolving, and it's hard to figure out exactly where

everything's headed, but we've got an advantage in that we're very hands-on with what we do, so you know, we've always been in control of how we run the business, and, you know, we're not in any deep debt to a label or anything,

And that's, I'm really thankful for that. But, you know, it's just been grinding on the road, you know, from the early days. We've just been hitting the road and trying to get as many fans as we can and spending as much time out there as we can, connecting with people. And then, you know, radio is kind of a mystery these days. So placements in TV and movies has been like our radio. And that's how we've reached a lot of people, I think. And that's what I was saying. We've been kind of pretty liberal about allowing that.

You know, I think it used to be kind of taboo or looked down upon for artists to license their music. But these days, it's just kind of like, it's what you have to do. Yeah, it fits a story. It's a good fit. Yeah. That's what I think. If it can help someone else fulfill their creative vision, I'm more than happy to get some money out of it. We got to hear the debut of a song yesterday. We're not going to say much about it.

We wanted to record that so much. Oh, we listened. Oh, my God, this is so good. It's the upcoming song. We're a movie project coming up. Yeah. Can you talk about it? Yeah.

I mean, it's coming out. Probably be out by the time this podcast is out. It's called The Starling Girl. It comes out, I think, in wide release on the 19th of May. It's a really beautiful movie by a director named Laurel Parmet, who approached me a couple years ago about doing the score and then COVID happened and I thought the project was going away, but it came back and I feel really glad that I got to work on it. There's an original song and then also a score. You did the score for the whole movie? Yeah. That's a whole new challenge.

Most of it anyway. There's a couple of other pieces of music in it, but it's mostly stuff I did. Yeah, it was a whole new challenge. Definitely challenging. But cool. I really liked, again, trying to get inside her head with what she's trying to sit. and just do whatever I could to help communicate that. It was really, really interesting. I got him real good yesterday because, so a couple of things I get to tease George about is, like, you know, he is the music guy. He's teaching me everything.

And in my town, Pioneer Town, California, this place called Pappy and Herriots, which I now know you're familiar with. So he missed it when Paul McCartney came through. They're kind of like on a secret performance. He didn't believe me. I said, he's going to come through. Trust me, he's going to come through. So he has always hated that I was there who could, you know, I can't appreciate it like him.

And I watched it. And I got to just say, it was so great. Yeah. This is a scab. Jeremy pulls off about once a year. There I am. It's like close encounters. You know, we're sitting in tailgating and there's Paul McCarty 10 feet away.

You would have loved you, George. But then I saw him got, he got desperately upset it too because we found out you actually opened one of your tours by going to Pappy and Harriet's in playing there. We did. Yeah. Did you like that? We loved it. Oh, yeah, it was great.

I mean, I had seen shows there just as a fan. And, you know, I like hanging out in that part of the world, too. It's cool out there, yeah. But yeah, we got to start a tour there once, and it was a hell of a party. You're doing it again? Are you going to go back to Pappies? I hope so. You know, we've talked about it, and I don't see why we wouldn't.

It was kind of the perfect setting. You know, the stars were out. We played out back, and it was a perfect temperature. You know, it was just a beautiful night. Everybody was having a good time. I'm going to have to look up the date. and see what the hell I was doing there. It has to be something really good for me

not to have been there. I wonder, it was pretty early in our career. I wonder if it was maybe before you even knew who we were. I don't know how long you. Before a Lonesome Dream? It was probably right after that. I gotta look it up. As the sheriff of Pioneer Town,

I'll make sure that you get Ben back there, that you're actually there. We'll show him the mystery of Pioneer Town. Yeah, something cool. That sounds great. That's really neat. So you got a tour coming? It's not in support of an album.

I mean, it is supportive of an album because, you know, Long Loss is still out there, but I mean, you don't have a new one coming with this tour, but is this tour a little bit different? You're trying to space it out? Yeah. It's kind of, you know, it's what you call off cycle touring, so we're not, yeah, not specifically promoting any album. But it's kind of nice because we get to look at it more of as a retrospective. You know, we can kind of play some older stuff, give fans kind of songs throughout our career, which is really fun for us. But yeah, since there's new additions to the families and the band, babies have come along in recent years, not me personally, but it's kind of changing the way we tour, you know, people want to be at home more.

So our runs are a little shorter. We're going to try it out this year, see what it's like. Take a break in between spurts and- Let people go home and see the fam, which is cool with me too. You know, I don't mind coming home and seeing my cats and my wife. Could be a grind. I mean, that wears you down if you're out on the road for six months. months I would imagine. It can. I mean, it's incredibly exhilarating sometimes and other times it's really hard. Have you had a like a, you know, everybody loves redemption story. Have you had like a

really hard moment on the road that just kind of crushed you man? Something that happened that changed. Yep. Last tour. This is an easy one. Okay. This was the first tour back from COVID. So everybody's kind of real high alert about getting sick. I got sick. Not with COVID, according to nine home tests and two PCR tests. But there's something else going around at the same time that people were losing their voices. And it happened. I lost my voice in the middle of a tour. Not only in the middle of a tour, but the day we were going to play Red Rocks.

We do two nights at Red Rocks, which is, you know, it's a legendary venue. One of our biggest audiences, I think it fits 10,000 people or something. And not only that, but it's become kind of like a pilgrimage for the fan club and for our families all come and see those shows. You feel like you're letting people down. There's nothing you can do. Not just, yeah, not just the band, but the fans, the crew, just kind of everybody, you know. But did. Did you try to go on?

I mean, we did. We played both the shows. And you sang? I sang the best I could. And it was hard. It was very, very hard. I mean, just knowing I couldn't physically do what I normally do, yeah, it was very. The show must go on.

The show must go on. Show best. Exactly. There was all kinds of talks about, yeah, would we cancel the shows? Could we even do that? Could we, could Ben not sing as much somehow? Kind of like, how? How could we do that?

You sing it every song. And I sing a lot. Some of those notes. Yeah. So we just barreled through, honestly. And it became, it was really hard and really nerve-wracking for me. But it was great that my family was around, you know, because they were really supportive. And the guys in the band, guys and girls in the band were all really supportive. And, you know, then in the end, the fans, I think, were kind of charmed by seeing me in that vulnerable state.

You know, I think they really supported me too. So there's a lot of singing along. Dude, that's amazing. Did you tell them what was going on? Yeah, I did. I was debating whether or not to do that, but I just felt like I wanted them to know, to know what I was, what it was happening, just in case they were like, that sounds like shit. You know, that's some reason. Have you played there since that time you couldn't?

No, but we're going to play, we're doing two shoes. June first. I looked at back, where's the redemption? Yeah. But you know, it would be funny. You go there and you'd be like, last time I couldn't. I'm going to sing, but I love hearing you. I mean, you let, you know, you engage them.

Again, like, it ended up being a really positive experience in some ways just because it made me realize how supportive everybody is. And, like, you know, they were still there for it, even though I couldn't quite perform the way I normally do. So June 1st, George, Red Rock. Oh, I'm going to see him before then. Okay, wow, lucky you. Rino.

Yeah, I'd be in Reno. Were you out having fun at some epic concert without me? I can neither confirm nor deny that I saw Lord Huron playing in Reno. This is a Bose moment. It's 10 blocks from the train to your apartment door. 10 basic, boring city blocks until the beat drops in Bose clarity. Streetlights become spotlights as you strut down the sidewalk, your own personal runway. With Bose, you get every note, every baseline, every detail, just as you should. Those 10 blocks, they could be the best part of your day. Your life deserves music.

Music deserves Bose. Find your perfect product at Bose.com. We will put up the list of the dates. The Alpred around the time you launched that tour. And then what about a new album? Working on it. Got about 12 songs written right now that I'm starting to record, and once we get a break, we'll put them down.

Do you have the framework, the umbrella story, the mythology around it? Not quite. It's kind of starting to take shape. but I'm still letting it reveal itself, I guess. So the songs come first, and then you weave them together. It depends, honestly. I've never had a strict process for that.

It's kind of like there's definitely elements of that floating around already. I just need to choose which ones to accentuate or which ones to sort of bring to the forefront, if that makes sense. It's fun to go to your shows and see the audience. I was never quite sure. I went the first one, who's going to be there? And there were a lot of people with gray hair like mine. And a lot of moms and dads with little kids.

We went with Matt Adams, my photographer, who taught his, brought his, I think, 11-year-old daughter, who was over the moon to meet you after the show. Super fan. That's pretty cool. Yeah. That was nice meeting then. I remember that in Vegas. Yeah.

She was over the moon about that, but we really enjoyed it. Can't wait to see on the road. Thanks for doing this. I know you don't always like to go on. I'm just glad to see you guys be able to sit down together and talk because he, you know, he's just taught so many people about this and, you know, you've really struck a nerve, dude. It's so cool that you've done that. I mean, he's a fan, man.

I've been a fan of yours for a long time, too, so that's really cool. Long time listener for his life. Exactly. Well, you're going to come back to coast to coast as well for your band members. We would love that. We all remember listening to coast to driving through the desert on that first tour. I remember in the Lone's Dreams tour. Excellent.

It's a great memory for us. I can't see, I can't wait to see what you continue deciding to share with everybody. I really appreciate your art. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. Thanks, man. All right. Thanks, brother.

Thanks. Never has so few, have so much to tell, but could say so little. Following this in a webinar, the presentation of Jeremy Corbelle, George Knapp, dark course entertainment, and Cadence 13 Studios. available now for free on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your shows.