WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1185 - Andrew Bird

Episode Date: December 21, 2020

Andrew Bird's music defies categorization, so much so that he's not even sure how to categorize it himself. Andrew walks Marc through the process by which he developed his sound, from youthful obsessions with classical music and jazz to his days on the road doing Old-Time music in bars to the period of isolation and deprivation he put himself through in order to experience a musical breakthrough. They also talk about his love of whistling, which he did in a recent Muppet movie. Also, Andrew plays a song from his new holiday album Hark! Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com. Lock the gates! All right, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast welcome to it how's it going everybody okay are you okay are you maybe you're not okay you're probably not fuck i'm sorry i'm not great uh i'm i'm nervous and scared and uh lonely and and crazy

and uh aggravated and full of sorrow a lot of the time but i have my moments how about you how's everything how's everything with the kid the kid okay is the other kid all right how's that third kid doing are they going crazy are they ready to get out of the house how about you are you all right? Don't hurt yourself. Don't hurt anybody. How's the cooking coming along? Is that going pretty well?

Did you get that thing fixed? I think you should go to the doctor. I know it's scary, but you should go if you got to go. It's pretty safe at a doctor's office, I believe. Yeah, I mean, look, man, if you're not happy and it seems irreconcilable, you got to do what you got to do. It's a bad time to do it, really. But if you got to do it, you got to do it. This is the time you know these kind of things.

I'm so happy you renewed your vows. Where'd you do it? At home? Online? Who did it? Who led the ceremony? Does that cover it? How are you guys?

Everybody all right? Guys, gals? How are you guys? Everybody all right? Guys, gals, those who identify differently. Today on the show, I talked to Andrew Bird. He's a musician, a singer, a songwriter. He's kind of a musical renaissance man, a savant of sorts. He has 16 solo albums out, plus he's worked with the Squirrel Nut Zippers, the Handsome Family, his own group, Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire. He does scores for film and television,

like Baskets and Lynn Shelton's Outside In, her movie before the movie I was in. His new album is called Hark, and I gotta be honest with you, I did not know a lot about him. I didn't know his music. I certainly didn't know he'd been around this long.

I kind of knew the Squirrel Nut Zippers. I just was not, I didn't know him. But the way I came to him was I knew that Lynn, the woman I was in love with and seeing when she passed away in May. We were living here at the house. She loved Andrew Bird. She loved him. And she was so thrilled that he scored her film, Outside In, with Jay Duplass and Edie Falco. Which is a great movie.

But I just knew she had this reverence for this guy. And I'd listened to a little bit of it, but I never got sunk in. I never like really dug in. And oddly, because I did not know how close he and Lynn were, this intro starts in a sad way because when you were there, when somebody passes away, when you are there when somebody passes away, it's sort of on you to do that first wave of informing people.

You know, you can delegate that to family members and stuff, you know, which you do, but you do want to reach out to a few people to begin spreading the word that someone they loved or knew has passed away. And I put together an email and I had access at that time to some of her email lists or to her friends. And I sent out this email, and he was one of the people that received that initial dispatch

the day, I guess, the morning after she passed away. And I talked to him a bit about it. They didn't know each other that well, but she was so thrilled that he agreed to do her um uh her movie and since then i i've sort of dug in a bit because i got the opportunity to talk to him and i wanted to talk to him about that obviously but i wanted to talk to him about you know a lot of stuff i didn't even know about and as i got into it i realized like this guy's a fucking wizard uh and and a truly gifted person and i had no idea about him until you know a month or

weeks before i talked to him and it was kind of a thrill to talk to him because i was told after the fact uh flanagan uh from largo fame he he was like you know did he talk flanagan will do that to me sometimes because he knows all the musicians because they all come through there where they used to when we could do that. And I didn't realize he was one of those people that might be difficult, but he talked.

So I did, I was able to engage Andrew Bird in a nice, broad discussion about things. Himself, music, stuff, Lynn. So that's who's on the show today. I was feeling very good for maybe a week or two. I felt like I was coming through something. I felt like I was integrating whatever's been happening over the last, you know, eight,

seven, eight months since lockdown, since Lynn's death, you know, and I thought that the spiritual and psychological and emotional abacus that, you know, the beads were lining up, things were leveling off.

The equations were coming out okay. I was coming out whole. I thought that was happening. And I'm sure it was. But you always hear about the waves. The waves of grief. And I don't know what it was. But the other night, I was driving out to set for a night shoot.

And it was just me in the car. You know, listening to music and driving out to the set. And I just was overwhelmed with this sadness. And I guess, I don't remember who I was talking to, is that, you know, the sort of difference between sadness and sorrow and the manifestations of grief are what they are. You know, it comes in waves. And obviously, I'm far away from that day when I sent Andrew Bird that email and the trauma of that and

the shock of that. And I know loss is part of everyone's life after a certain point, but you know how that sorrow informs you and your being from that point on, or how you see life from that point on or how you see loss, all of it, it defines, redefines you somehow. It makes you more whole in a way that the loss actually makes you more whole as a person for having experienced it. I don't know if that makes sense. But then when you get right down to it, you i just miss her and uh i miss everything about her and when your brain gets into that place you know you just gotta let it happen i don't need to push those memories aside all of it you know and I just let the sadness happen. It's okay. And I use it. I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll use it. I can live in it when I want to, but there's no reason

to turn it off. There's no reason to turn it off. Those are the feelings. That is what life is. Is what life is. Joy. Sorrow. Fear. So. I got to act. The other day.

With Steven Root. And Allison Jenny. Powerhouses. And Andrea Riceboro. I was right there. in this little triangle. It was me, Andrea, and Allison Janney in this one very intense scene. And Allison was full tilt, man. And Andrea was full tilt.

And I was like, oh, my God. I was like hanging on for dear life in the acting zone. But it's pretty great. It's pretty great. Scary day. A lot of extras. But everyone was tested. And I guess we'll see.

But it is, I'm excited to see this fucking movie. I don't, I think I'm doing good work. I think I am. I'm definitely not being self-conscious. I'll tell you that right now. So, I was going to get Buster a cat because I was thinking about getting a kitten. And I don't know. I don't know if I really want to deal with a kitten because I think me and Buster, because it was me and the old cats and Buster for so long. And he was sort of on the outside.

We're still sort of bonding. And he's sort of becoming a different cat, and we're getting along in a different way. And I know this sounds ridiculous, but the relationship is deepening. And the only reason I would get a kitten that I've decided I would name Mingus is for Buster. But I don't even know if Buster would get that kitten and just beat the shit out of it all day long.

So now do I want to deal for months with a frightened kitten until it gets big enough to hold its own with the fucking bruiser in there or do i just want to ride it out for a while and keep getting to know buster better and letting him relax i don't know these aren't these are the big problems folks not getting covid and deciding whether or not buster needs a friend luxury fucking problems people so uh as i said before before, Andrew Bird has a lot of stuff, done a lot of stuff. He's actually has a holiday album out. And it's a holiday album in a very Andrew Bird kind of way. It's called Hark.

You can get it at andrewbird.net and digital media platforms. And this is me talking to Andrew Bird. Are you self-employed? Don't think you need business insurance? Think again. Business insurance from Zensurance is a no-brainer for every business owner because it provides peace of mind. A lot can go wrong. A fire, cyber attack, stolen equipment, or an unhappy customer suing you.

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Nice to meet you, Andrew. Good to meet you, Mark. Sorry we couldn't do this in person. I was looking forward to that. I know. Did you freak out or did I freak out? Who freaked out? What happened? I think I freaked out. I was just feeling the doom. I was feeling it closing in from all sides. I feel that every day. But oddly, I felt it before COVID. So, you know, I was ahead of the curve on that. Yeah.

You just felt like you didn't want to go out anywhere. I understood it. Yeah. I just thought like, oh, if we're both in the same room together and one of us has it, the chances are the other one would walk out with it too. That's right. Well, I just got tested today. I'm going to be getting tested every other day now because I'm going to do a job. Do you get tested? How

crazy are you about it? I mean, when I was doing Fargo, I was getting tested every two days. Now I'm like once a week or once every two weeks. That's right. You were in the last season of Fargo? I haven't been on a set yet. It was one of the first ones because it got shut down in March and then we came back in September. Uh-huh. And it was one of the first ones to go back and yeah, there were like 500 people. Oh my God.

Trying to finish, like on staff, like trying to finish the show because they're doing multiple episodes at the same time and then health and safety people and did you feel safe i mean yeah you know it took it was the first one so you know a lot of a lot of the actors were pulling their masks down trying not to mess up their makeup right and people were improvising like within hours people figured out to put the face shield upside down.

Oh, right. Like this. Yeah. So that way it can just come. The COVID can just come in over the top. Seems like. I don't know. I'm about to do a small movie.

And they've convinced me that being on their set is safer than me going to the supermarket. You know, honestly, I feel comfortable hanging around with people that are on that are being tested every day on set like it seems safer than other people sure yeah i mean when i go out man i put an n95 on plastic shield i'm fucking ready has i'm full on ppe but i go out i'd go crazy if i didn't go shop and shit. I know. We kind of moved out into the country to assume crash position just before the election. So we've been out in Ojai, and I came in for this. Of course, I didn't need to because we're doing it this way. So we've just been out in the middle of nowhere. Wait, so you mean in the middle of nowhere um wait oh so you're not so you mean in the middle

of nowhere not ohio somewhere other than ohio just just a remote part of ohio so so where are you now i'm in la i just came in to do i've got to finish this uh soundtrack oh and and do this and okay so this is your la that's your la house yeah this is my living room that's nice i yeah i it was weird because you know i haven't i don't i didn't really know your stuff before uh lynn turned me on to you and when lynn died you know i didn't you know i didn't know how close you guys were you know and i was going through because you got one of those emails you know like when I when I sent out that first round of contacts when it happened because I didn't know how close you guys were but I knew that you know she talked to you and I and that she had your email so I just picked all these people that either I knew that were

close to her or I might have been closer so so I don't know how that made you feel to get that first email. I don't know how close you were to her, but, uh, I didn't know how close you were to her until, until this happened. I mean, I remember having lunch with her in Seattle and she was talking about working with you a lot. Right. And then I heard she was moving to LA, but I didn't really put it all together. Right. Well, yeah, we hadn't been that public for, we weren't that public for that long. We weren't really together in the world publicly for that long. I mean, I did not spend that many hours of my life with Lynn, but she made a huge impression on me. And both of, I just watched Sword of Truth yesterday.

Sword of Trust, yeah. Sword of Trust. Yeah. And that was intense seeing her. I know. And you. And then you did the score to that, and now we've both done Lynn Shelton scores.

Well, yours was, I i'm sure a lot more engaged in the process of actual scoring yeah we just used a bunch of bits and pieces of my music that i i put at the end of the podcast i just i kind of do these little guitar interludes that of all different kinds and she thought it fit the tone of the piece well i did um but we when we did uh outside in she sat next to me for every note that i played she because she's such a fan well it was you'd think you usually wouldn't as in scoring a movie want the director to be sitting next to you for every note you play but i really enjoyed it yeah i thought it was great because she would make immediate comment, you know, say yay or nay or like that's good or, you know.

Yeah. We were done in three days. She loves musicians, you know. Yeah. And she's so happy that you did it. You did it in three days? Something like that. Like three intense days in my studio.

It's a great score. It's a great little movie, that movie. It is. It's a great score. It's a great little movie, that movie. It is. It's a real sweet, interesting movie. But what is the process of scoring? I don't know if I've ever talked to anybody about it. Because I know how I approach an interview. Like talking to you, I have to make certain assumptions by listening to your music or looking at your face or thinking about the words you say. And then I kind of build a person in my head that isn't you, but it's based on my idea of you. And then I kind of chip away at that when I meet somebody. So I imagine that scoring something, there's a similar process where you have to take in the tone and kind of assess what you think is going on and feel it right yeah but ultimately it's not your child you know it's

and that's that's my tricky relationship with scoring is like i'm used to total autonomy right uh creatively i'm used to waiting for things to um just appear out of nowhere and uh isn't that weird how that happens yeah the things appearing out of nowhere yeah yeah um and they just kind of accumulate and and the one the ideas that are most that keep coming back because of some sort of sensory trigger you know like every time i for a while every time i would get into a taxi in new york city i would hear the same melody it's like that terrible air freshener would trigger the same melody real and and i just like well this keeps coming back i gotta i gotta write some lyrics for this. But with a score, you're just like,

you're like much different than the costume designer or the, you know what I mean? I guess so. I guess in terms of supporting the collaborative effort, but it's a very different job than costume design. Yeah, of course. I get what you're saying in terms of the job and your place in the collaborative environment. But still, what do you do? Do you have to watch the whole movie and see how it makes you feel? Or are there

practical elements like suspense building? I mean, did you have to read a book on it? No. No. No. No, I wanted to do it really badly when I was in college because I was studying music and I played all these different... I was just so restless and going from one style to the next. And I thought I'd be good at... And I was kind of into the cinematic dramatization of what you see around you. Right.

And I thought this is a perfect profession for me and then instead i i got a conversion van and started going around the country playing dive bars and that became more romantic than scoring movies uh was your old timing when you were doing the old timing music uh that yeah that was in the the bowl of fire days um i went through multiple dodge conversion vans um yeah and just hit the pavement for years and it was that was a big adventure you know that was that kind of took all the and then creating an album i thought in terms of a movie as well or a novel or something like right creating an arc and a thread through things. You did that with your own work? Yeah, yeah, trying to find, well, when you're writing, it's just you accumulate 12 songs over, say, two years,

and these characters keep popping up or these ideas keep. Interesting, right. And then you seek through the artwork or through more consciously to tie it all together like a novel a novel or right right yeah so that became the film for me so but when you approach a movie you do you sit down and watch it i i watch it uh with no sound no music with that's the tricky thing a lot of times the directors want to give you temp music which is the bane of most composers existence like songs or little things that somebody noodled on a piano or no it's usually uh taken from other people's scores or other songs

and then you're you're like well if i don't listen to this i won't know what the director wants right you know what i mean yeah you know that that if you just kind of, they get attached to these temp scores. And I'm like, to the point where you're like, you just, why did you hire Andrew Bird to do your score if you want? Right. This. This is what you want. If you want Vangelis, why did you hire me? A lot of times it's someone else kind of doing.

You? My thing, you know? And so it's someone else kind of doing my thing. And so it's this weird loop. And it can drive you. It's just you develop what I call see the soundtrack area of your work to be like just sort of a job that makes you a few bucks. Yeah, exercising an ability I have

or a certain craft. You're not looking to be Randy Newman. Nope. No. I mean, I'd find what he does. If someone wanted me to do the Randy Newman thing, I'd find that way more engaging than just doing an instrumental score, like having to write a song for a movie. That's interesting. And I like, I like the challenge of having to write lyrics that somehow fit with the film, but don't comment on it too much.

Right. You know, that, know that that would uh challenge me a lot but just simply doing the instrumental music is just is not using what i have enough well what about the what about the whistling gig that seemed like a pretty good gig the whistling whistling caruso like i didn't know like i was listening to all your records and my friend kit she's like, she says, oh, he's whistling, he did the whistling thing in the Muppet movie. I'm like, what? Yeah, the whistling Caruso, and then she showed it to me,

and she was like, I thought that was on a keyboard, but that's him. Yeah. I mean, it was manipulated a little bit to be extra virtuosic, but not very much. I mean, that was fun. I enjoyed that because I was talking to the director, James Bobin, and he was trying to nail the exact right comedic tone, which was a self-serious, overly virtuosic.

serious, overly self-serious, like overly virtuosic. And he sent me like a YouTube clip of like a guy in tails, you know, tux, like in front of an orchestra, poised, you know, doing this sort of classical Mozart whistling and completely serious, but yet doing this thing that people do when they're doing the dishes. Why do you think you though, how'd you get known as the whistling guy i do it constantly i've been doing it constantly since i was six years old like if i'm not you were doing it before we started before we started what you were just walking around your house whistling oh yeah uh exactly it's the most uh casual like unconscious way of making music and therefore that's sometimes that's almost always where the good stuff comes from from you whistling yeah because it's not i'm not holding an instrument

there's no right physical physical memory i'm not on office hours i'm not like now i'm composing right you know and that's when you write the good stuff huh Huh. But how did they know to ask you to whistle? Do you do it on a lot of the records? Maybe I didn't listen to the later records. Is there records where it's all whistling? I started doing it on my third, fourth album. It didn't occur to me to do something so easy on an album. The Last Bowl of Fire record?

The Last Bowl of Fire, Swimming Hour. I did it for the first time because my hands were busy. You know, it was just to carry the melody. But that sort of fit the style. There was that sort of weird crossover. It was almost there was some kind of like old-timey style that you were playing with, it seems. And it seems like some of that kind of that era of Americana music would have had some yodels and whistles and stuff sure but i think you know usually it's it would be like okay this is where the the violin's gonna

play something right play the lead melody and then sometimes the violin has too much baggage sometimes it's like it can be be over romantic centuries of associations. Yeah. And the whistle just kind of, uh, is a placeholder. And then I'm like, well, that's, that cuts right through. And it's unique, uniquely human too. Like you can, it's so identifiable, it's so identifiably human. Most people can, can kind of eke out a whistle, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it does reveal whether you've got a tin ear right away um what's that mean out of tune out of tune yeah that like it has there's since there's no frets or keys you know yeah you can i can hear someone whistling i'm like oh they have no sense of pitch whatsoever i'm gonna go tell them i'm to go tell that guy at the bus stop, hey, pal, you're ruining that song. But then when I went solo after Bowl of Fire, I also was trying to hold the attention of an audience in a crowded bar.

I was out there just traveling around by myself, setting up my gear, and I would always start the set by like filling my lungs and holding a note until people stop talking oh it would grab their attention like uh-huh whereas you know just another band setting up out of a four band night is just not gonna get right stop talking right so you just whistle until they shut up exactly do you know how to do that loud whistle with your fingers good i've only got one one there's many techniques and i've only got one and mine's just kind of a full operatic whistle you know so that was the challenge of doing the whistle and caruso was to make itself important to accentuate the funny exactly and i did a lot of back and forth with him,

and I was happy to because I totally understood what he was, I appreciated what he was trying to do. It must have been fun. I was, yeah, I was like really psyched to try it again, whereas usually when a director wants you to do it over again, you're like, oh, Jesus. But I was like, no, we got to get, you know. So they just reached out to you,

not because you were known for whistling, but because you no for i think they heard it on the albums okay and knew that i i did it um i was working on an album at the time i think it was break it yourself it was you know maybe eight eight or nine years ago so we actually we actually met um sort of met at the bell house remember like eugene merman was doing yeah yeah man was were we on the same show with eugene we were on the same i played before you with my friend tift was i was in was i an asshole yeah yeah What did I do? It came out, okay, this is like the first show I was doing with my friend Tiff. I'm so glad we're doing this. We're doing kind of more, we're going back to doing like country, old-timey stuff.

Was it a woman, Tiff? Tiff Merritt, yeah. Yeah, okay. So we're doing these harmonies, and it was, yeah, it was, you were just, you came on stage after we went off stage and you said oh jesus gotta follow this like depressing Appalachian bullshit or something like that it was like well I'm sure it it was just it has nothing personal oh it was but uh but yeah but it was it was completely me trying to do my version of whistling

to get them to change their attention. Exactly. Because you're kind of a wizard with the instruments. I mean, is that something that revealed itself early on? Like, are you a prodigy? I was brought up in an atmosphere of prodigies. I grew up in Chicago on the North Shore, and I studied violin from an early age,

and they groomed prodigies from age four. What does that mean? But your parents were musical people no not at all uh my my mom's an artist and she wanted her kids to play classical music and she's a painter she's a print artist yeah okay and printers and uh she all of us my siblings play but it stuck with me more than the others and how many are there um there's four of us total huh so i i played from age four um and she took me twice a week and and there were these like teachers that would kind of look for the next prodigy and right classical you know and they would take a four-year-old,

and by the time they were six, they'd be, or seven, be playing Tchaikovsky. Oh, my God. By Lincoln Cherto. One of those freaks. That's the thing, yeah. They would have nervous breakdown by the time they were 10.

Right, so this was like an international search. These guys would come poking around, looking for the wizards. There's probably a similar scene in in manhattan or boston of of like i don't know they were usually a couple that would take there was a couple that would take over the kid's life and and they wanted to do that with me and my mom said no that's like too too intense thank god yeah no so it was all kind of um it was all fun you know it was i didn't hate it and i can't say i begged to be taken to violin lessons either it was just kind of a thing i did

but you had a knack for it i was reasonably good at i was i was not a model student but i had a good tone and they kept saying, you're very musical. Right. Whereas these prodigies are very technical. And to a six or seven-year-old, those are abstract words. I didn't know what that meant. Like musical versus virtuosic. What do you make of that, though, man?

I mean, because these kids that can do this stuff, where the hell does that come from? I mean, these four-year-olds, it's just kind of a knack for it. Like, it's like, what is it? Just their brains wired a certain way? No, no. I think you take any four-year-old,

almost any four-year-old, and you can turn them into a prodigy. It's like a circus sideshow. It's like their universe is so small that if you fill it all with one thing they'll master it and then they put them up there in front of an orchestra and they're like look it's magic right it's the one thing the kid can do and it's all he'll ever do he'll never live up to this much pretty much. Pretty much. I mean, I got so into violin at certain points in my life that I became boring in other ways. It's kind of like a jock or like an athlete.

Right. Can, you know, in order to be like a gold medalist, you become a little bit atrophied, very atrophied in other ways. Right. Well, I mean, unfortunately for a jock, those other ways are what they're living for. Like, you know, when you get atrophied, you know, like if you're a violin jock, I don't know how many cheerleaders

are going to be hanging around. There's, yeah, I see your point. There's a few, I'm sure. But do you have kids? Yeah, I have one nine-year-old boy. Is he musical? He is, but we don't push him. He plays guitar.

And he's really into Bowie, Lou Reed, and John Cale. Wow, how'd that happen? You know, people are going to think that like I've, I've led him there and, and who are we kidding? He lives in our house. So he's going to hear what, what we listened to, but it's gone the other way around where he influenced influences me because he wants to play DJ around the house. And I don't tend to play music very much on the stereo and he's playing it

non-stop so he was when the pandemic hit he was playing john kale non-stop the old stuff the old paris 1919 and uh-huh and then a lot of and transformer transformer and you know and pale blue eyes you know like oh yeah yeah he he would put these playlists together that were just the best of the best of that stuff and it started influencing me okay that's great so it's going the other way it's funny your mother is your dad a musician or no no not in the arts uh no he's he's a numbers guy numbers guy so you your mom gets you off of the prodigy track but you're good at the violin but you're playing classical mostly before you go to college or yeah uh i didn't know really at first how to find anything else i mean i was i went through high school hanging with the goth art damaged kids.

Right. They're playing a bunch of 4AD stuff and this mortal coil and all this stuff in the car. Yeah. And I didn't care for that stuff. And I was playing Dvorak Violin Concerto, and that was my goth music. That was your goth? The real stuff.

Yeah. I mean, I would listen to Mozart's Requiem and light candles in my bedroom. Wow. Yeah. But that was the same thing as listening to The Cure or whatever. But yeah, I get it. And it's like it's so interesting because that music is so much more sophisticated and elaborate and rich. Like, you know, it's so surprising to me that it's always been this kind of niche thing because it's so hard for most people to appreciate.

But it's like much more interesting music than almost anything else really i don't know anything about it but i know that yeah it is and it isn't you know it's like i listen to mozart now and i find it kind of simple simple oh yeah simplistic because you understand the structure or i don't know i i just i just like rougher music these days. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But when you're a teenager, it was hyper dramatic. Well, what was the first kind of contemporary hole that you fell into that changed the way you looked at violin? Some things happened simultaneously. But early jazz, I i was 18 17 18 and i uh i discovered

stephen capelli who played with django reinhardt right and uh i got into that hot hot club jazz stuff right i was also into like different folk music irish music was like i'd be playing in orchestras during the week for uh school i was at you know music school at northwestern and then on sundays i'd go play sessions and drink guinness and sit in a circle and people would share tunes right and uh like yeah gaelic folk stuff yeah which is the same thing as old timey it's just the european version of old timey it's got a little different uh a little different a little different rhythm right yeah but it was you know in classical music it's all these long phrases i mean sometimes you play like fast rhythmic stuff but it's not syncopated right and in irish music you have to be your own drummer and with

your bow and play the backbeat oh really you know same thing with old time because it's it's dance music basically that's the function of it yeah i i had to kind of rewire my brain to figure out how to you know be my own drummer and play my own backbeat. And then I joined a rock band when I was 19 called Charlie Nobody in college. And they were like a ska punk band when I joined. And then I brought this kind of Irish element to it. How did that work out? You know, it's one of those college bands that was kind of kitchen sink.

You don't know what not to do. I like the idea of it. This is a hybrid ska and river dance. Yeah. The covers we do were, we did come on eileen sure and rio by um duran duran were two like covers those were so that those were the defining that's and everything in between and a couple meters tunes like it was just all over the place but it got you up there doing that and they were like i was in bars before i was of age and there were girls dancing yeah and i was i was pretty pretty uh sold on that lifestyle there you go the violin pays off so from there so you grew up in

chicago the whole time right yeah northwestern So what was the primary focus of the study with the music? I mean, what do you play? Guitar, violin, other things? Mostly those two. I write songs more on guitar these days. Just there's a reason why that's a go-to for songwriters. It's not pressed up against my vocal chords. Right. And I love guitars. I find them sexier than violins. Yeah. I think that's established.

I think that's a... Yeah, I think it is. You're not going to turn that around. And I'm pretty ham-fisted on guitar. I just taught myself how to play. I can't even play bar chords. I just kind of feel my way around on it. And that's mostly it. When you were studying, was the focus, like at Northwestern,

was it mostly classical? I mean, when you broke out into the jazz or the, what was it? What did you call it? Hot jazz, hot club, hot what? Hot jazz, which is kind of pre-war jazz. That kind of like fast shuffle stuff? Yeah. Like Django?

Django, but also I've got Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong. Oh, okay. The pre-bebop stuff. Lester Young is my all-time favorite. And that's still a go-to for me he's great yeah i was studying violin performance so yeah it was classical but i i would take you know an ethnomusicology class where i had to transcribe john coltrane solos ah because you can do that the musicology guy was studying jazz so so that was his area of expertise.

Yeah. And then I had to play the John Coltrane blue train, and that kind of expanded my ears. All these things, and the Irish music, they all made my ears grow beyond where they would have with classical music. But you never dug into the uh country fiddle early on um i did a little bit i actually got it's you know i got into the country thing or the American folk thing through on it to tell you the truth through the ken burns civil war soundtrack oh yeah jay unger and that ashokan

farewell tune right was like i played so many weddings and funerals and with that tune yeah i mean i i mean it's what paid my rent for the first couple years really so that was like a gateway drug into the uh the darkness of Appalachia, huh? Yeah, in a way. That was a modern composition, but it was just kind of a beautiful kind of Anglo-Irish Appalachian tune. And then I got into, through playing with Jimbo Mathis and the Skullnut Zippers,

Through playing with Jimbo Mathis and the Skullnut Zippers, Jimbo is a big Charlie Patton. Bo Weevil blues. Yeah, he's like, he can do that stuff. He can do those weird ways that Charlie Patton would sort of vamp and turn the beat around. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That no one really does. Right. That I've heard.

It's hard to isolate it when you listen to the records because the records are so, you know, kind of swamped. They're kind of like damaged. It's hard to, it's all you can really hear is that weird rhythm. I know. And he knows all those little inflections that no one does in blues or anything anymore. And he kind of rides, I just made a record with Jimbo that's coming out next year,

which I'll send to you, called These 13. But it's just a duo record. I wanted to do like a Mississippi Chic's kind of Charlie Patton thing with him. And it kind of goes from country blues to churchy early country music. And we wrote a bunch of these songs together. That sounds great. Yeah, that was fun to kind of go back and finish that thought because I really got into, in my early 20s, that... Because i was living in chicago in uptown edgewater

neighborhood and near the green mill and uh this jazz club and i was really immersed in it that during those in my 20s listening to this radio show called blues before sunrise right you listening to all the like the the old 78 style stuff. He would play 78s from midnight till four in the morning of like, you know, Dixie hummingbirds and, and just all this really obscure Southern music. And I would tape it,

stay up as late as I could. And I would tape them and fall asleep and turn the tape over and keep taping it, stay up as late as I could, and I would tape them and fall asleep and turn the tape over and keep taping it. It's so wild to me that, like, you know, because, like, I listen to, like, there's definitely a point, like, I can hear that stuff in the music, in the early stuff you did, like in the first three or four records.

And I could see that it was its own thing, its own time zone, that there was, you know, it was a thing, its own time zone that there was you know there was it was a thing you were doing a thing and i don't know if there was a community around it but i knew the style of music you were playing but it was almost felt like you know like that period in america where it's like everyone decided it was time to swing dance i was like there's a there's a point where like the music is great but i started, and I imagine you did as well, how far am I going to go with this? Oh, my God.

So I was sitting there watching, sitting at a bar with, you know, where they're having swing dance lessons. Oh, no. People are smoking cigars and drinking martinis. Right. And it's like, oh, the music is just another accessory to a lifestyle trend like a novelty yeah and i i thought i was in it because i i thought i was fascinated by the music and i was kind of enchanted by the era yeah um and but i did start to see that that it was a dead end first of all like why listen to me play it when you can listen to grappelli honestly well but but like but but like i don't know that many

people are going to make that jump but just as a young and sort of creative person to be lumped into a trend becomes sort of problematic you know because then it's like a goddamn costume party and nobody's necessarily appreciating the music other than the novelty of like time travel exactly yeah and we would we would show up to gigs you know with bowl of fire and they would say the promoter was trying to make get people in the door so he put out like a science swing dance lessons to andrew bird's bowl of fire and uh the my tunes had so many twists and turns and stops and starts and tempo changes and everything people would just stop their lessons and they'd be like look at us like what are you doing what's happening like yeah you're like we're doing the thing that we came here to do you fucking weirdos

but i was still i was in my early 20s and i i was still in a student i was still a student sure i understood that i mean i understood that by listening to it but like like what was fascinating to me and listening to like whatever shift you made it's it's fairly dramatic like from after you know from swimming hour to weather systems and beyond you know you like you reconfigure your entire approach i kind of look at it like i was started off in new orleans um with the first couple records literally yeah and also as far as the locus of the music and kind of went up through memphis or detroit to chicago and uh with with swimming hour and by the time you get to the end of swimming hour i'm kind of on the cusp of i'm like playing with you know more modern pop, whatever things.

But that's right. So like Swimming Hour, right. So Swimming Hour is sort of like, it's a little all over the place. Yeah. Stylistically. Like, you know, there's a rock tune on there. There's an old timey tune.

There's a blue tune. Like, right? For sure. And then I got a little tired. I thought I've got more to say than, hey, isn't this old music cool um right and i felt that i'm gonna write some original i mean i was writing original lyrics there's not much between the some of the old songs that i got a little better at writing lyrics over the years

but um still i felt like if i'm got your attention and i'm singing words i might let's talk about something interesting instead of like you know typical old-timey stuff but i started stripping away all the things i saw is like stylistic cinematic references uh-huh and i thought i even challenged myself like how how few chords can I get away with putting in this song? How few little inflections? Because I kind of put the band aside playing with other people for a while. I moved out into the country, into a barn. And so I had to really physically isolate myself to get away from other musicians record collections in my own and i you know spent weeks and weeks without talking to anybody it was

a little extreme i don't know if i needed to go that far but um and i didn't bring any records with me i was just living in this barn uh looping my violin all day long. Was anybody concerned? You know, I thought my friends were going to come visit me, but I forgot to remember that they didn't have cars. Any of my friends. So you're just stranded out there with your looper? I was three hours away from Chicago on a farm. My parents lived like six miles down the road.

And I just would get up and make coffee and play till the sun went down. And that's where you found it? and play till the sun went down. And that's where you found it. Yeah. I was, I was really looking for something. I was,

I was, um, little things from my collective experience would bubble up in the song, you know, in the songs, but otherwise I was, um, trying to strip away all the distractions.

And that's, and so you, and you arrived at the base of your voice. Yeah. I can hear that. And that's when people started calling what I do indie rock, and that was confusing to me. I saw someone describe it as Baroque pop.

I can see why you might get that from some tunes you know where there's a slightly uh you know orchestrated nature to it but it's a lot i think of it as a lot rougher than that especially live sure well what do you what do you call it god if you could think of something and and tell me you'd save me a lot of trouble oh so you got nothing people's eyes glaze over when i try to well i mean but but it's sort of like it's like there's bands like there there's something like as you it seems that as you evolved like i think it's interesting that you had stripped it all the way down because you know what you kind of end up with when you build up from that is you know i think a way of organizing like there's some elements of what you do later on that reminds me a little of uh philip glass even you know and how

you know the the beat and the rhythm is organized you know it's certainly that kind of world of like you know some you know the the american music of dav Byrne as well, you know, post Talking Heads before the Brazilian stuff. Like, I mean, I don't know what you would call that either. So I think you're in good company. Yeah. I got, you know, with the looping kind of pushed it in that minimalist direction. And then the pizzicato, I would find these three against two sort of polyrhythmic patterns just from improvising and uh that was the cool thing is that once you get rid of the band for a minute

and the bass drums and guitar all kind of creating something together and you just it's just me like creating my own bass lines that don't make any sense according to uh what's been done before right uh but makes sense to to me at the moment um that's i think that might be where you're getting like the the steve reich and the or philip glass and the yeah west west african core music is another big influence. I love music that doesn't conform to the eight-bar phrase. Right. That'll turn the beat around like Charlie Patton. It just doesn't care or never was indoctrinated fully into the whole,

basically the eight-bar phrase. That's right. There's no turnaround. Yeah, exactly. Right. You can just John lee hooker it just stay on the one thing until you oh you know just stay on the e until you feel an a and don't feel pressured to stay in the a for very long if you don't want i know i love that stuff that's

what that's what jimbo does so well that that uh that even the 12 people the 12 bar blues is like, why, why is that such a thing? It's like the, the really cool stuff doesn't, doesn't conform to anything. You'd call it 12 bar blues. Sometimes it's just like a hymn, but it's just, yeah,

like you said, it doesn't, it doesn't go to the four chord. It doesn't. Oh, it's all, it's all from that gospel stuff. I talked to that.

I was talking to Bootsy Collins the other day. It's just like, you can just stay on the one chord. You can stay there all day long if you want yeah but uh but it seems like you kind of landed on some something that's uniquely yours which is no easy trick, you know? Yeah, it did take some extreme measures to get there. Sounds like it. But it doesn't sound like you had to destroy yourself. They weren't Dionysian, unless you're not telling me something.

They were more sort of isolating and repetitive and kind of immersion. But you didn't have to go out and get all fucked up, did you? No. No. immersion but you did you didn't have to go out and get all fucked up did you no no but but you know extreme states of mind do tend to get you somewhere yeah whether it's extreme fatigue or emotional stress even yeah uh or just what i did was a deprivation chamber for a couple years. And yeah, but lately it's just kind of, I did have something to prove after I came out of that phase of like to get away from all that association of that swing, whatever, lifestyle. It took a couple years to like wash my hands of that so which

album do you think you it was the first you record the uh mysterious production of eggs uh no the swimming hour i mean uh not the swimming hour the uh weather system whether that was like but that's where you feel really feel like like this is what i've been doing this is what i this is what I yielded from my submersion. Exactly. That was just before. I tried to make mysterious production of eggs out at the farm, but I hadn't shed the city yet. Right.

And I tried to make it, and it was a disaster, and I scrapped the whole thing, and I went and made weather systems instead and no one understood what I was doing the guy, engineer I was working with was like this doesn't seem like you or something he was just confused and I stuck with it

and I had to do that mostly by myself did you think you were losing your mind i did when i i couldn't make mysterious production of eggs uh successfully it took me three tries to get that album what so what now like only you know what's going to make that right and you were made and you made another record so what was it that was hanging you up what you did could you see the obstacle or or were you concerned that like maybe i'm making this obstacle up and my brain is like

falling into itself you know weather systems was this more ambient thing where i was just exploring um textures and right patterns and stuff and it really had no pressure to it like i there was no expectation i put it out no expectation. I put it out. I didn't even put it out on the label. I just kind of self-released it. And Mysterious Production was way more ambitious. It's all about childhood and it's almost a concept record. And, uh, okay. So you had an arc. Yeah. I had like a real, something I was trying to impart, but I didn't know, didn't have the skills yet to do it. So I, you know.

I get it, yeah. And it never works. I made weather systems. I was trying to make it like with the band, like my old city life didn't work. And then I said, I'll try to make it like weather systems. And that didn't work. life didn't work. And then I said, I'll try to make it like weather systems. And that didn't work. And then I finally went to LA to, uh, work with this engineer, David Boucher. And then that finally worked. Just need the right collaboration and a little time. Yeah. Yeah. And a little bit

of like coming out to LA, it was, I was like, Oh, this is is, I guess people come out here to get paid cause they're good at their jobs and they work like, uh, from 10 to six or normal, somewhat normal hours. And they, you have to pay them a lot more than I'm used to paying in Chicago, but they're good.

You get, you get way more shit done. No kidding. I was like, okay, I get it. I get it. Why,

why people come out here. But i was very suspicious of la really otherwise well you thought it was all polished idiots who didn't understand art uh no i thought there was wasn't enough suffering here um i was kind of hung up on the idea that that that i was still this is a long time ago i thought that suffering was uh essential to uh adversity like chicago you know it's like we we do the we make art to get through the winter and from keep from going insane or just fighting off seasonal depression right and you see see what you come out with it in in the spring, when the flowers come. You see what your flowers look like. And I came out to L.A. I was like, these plants aren't indigenous. You know?

No one's indigenous here. What's everybody wearing shorts for? Yeah, I get it. There's plenty of suffering out here. I think you probably learned. No, it's sometimes you think you probably learned. No. Sometimes you have to manufacture it. Yeah.

It's a whole different type of suffering. It's not seasonal. It's just like the sunshine around here. The suffering is year-round out here. Yeah. But then, okay, so then you're kind of on. So you take, as the album's progressed, do you still, I mean, outside of the Christmas record or whatever else you're doing, do you still see them all as, because you said something earlier about you kind of take into mind the music and the lyrics and the artwork, like all of that.

Do you still approach all records like that as singular pieces in and of themselves outside of the songs necessarily yes i now it's just like in this um cycle of there's the the songs that just accumulate over the course of like two years and all the stuff that i'm i'm concerned about during that time. And they just, I just wait for them to come. I don't force anything usually. How does it happen? What comes first, the melody? Yeah, the melody almost always comes first.

Really? If the lyrics come first, it's a different kind of tune. Really? Why, because you got to, why is that? Well, okay, so I've got, the usual way it happens is it's a melody, and I think this melody is so good, it keeps coming back without having to record it or remind myself. It just keeps coming back. And so I know I've got to do something with this.

And I know in order to do the melody justice, the human voice is what needs to carry it. So now I need words. And then you're just kind of running the numbers this is what i do when i have insomnia at night like i'm i'm just crack trying to crack the code of the melody the shape of the melody with words and i just sort of point point the melody at a subject that i'm thinking about oh interesting yeah just kind of aim it at it and like see if they can eventually fit and try not to let the words compromise the melody too much like i'm right in the thick of that as we speak um and uh because i i take the words out

and the melody sings and i put the words out and the melody sings, and I put the words in, and it kind of cramps the melody style a little bit. Drags it down? Words are dragging your melody down? But I love words, too, and sometimes I can have a motif, some kind of thing that something gets under my skin, a melody, and sometimes a word gets under my skin, a melody. Yeah.

And sometimes a word gets under my skin or a phrase. Yeah. I'm working on this song right now about like human molting, you know, like how animals molt. They shed their skin or their feathers or their fur. Like I feel like every season I kind of emotionally, physically molt in a way. Like, I go into this hibernating, weird, like, low-grade fever.

And it happens with such regularity that I'm, like, starting to think, like, maybe I'm molting, you know? But, I mean, when you molt, do you emerge a chrysalis or just you again? Yeah, I mean, it's really unpleasant. It's really unpleasant for two weeks, and then I come out like a newborn foal. I'm full of energy and clarity, but I have to go through this very unpleasant, really physiological, physiological experience. But you've never pathologized it? You've never thought you were ill in some way? No.

I mean, everyone around me thinks I'm depressed, but I'm like, I swear to God, I've got some. I'm just molting. Do you tell them that? I'm just molting. Yeah. That's what I tell my wife, and she just rolls her eyes. Here we go with the molting again. So anyway, I'm writing this song where I've got a melody.

Yeah. And I remember, I don't know where I heard this, but it was like, I think it was like a New Yorker comic or something where there's a baby in a, in a crib and in a ICU or whatever, not ICU, but you know, the prenatal thing and, and maternity ward. And the baby says, OMG, I just got born. And I, I like that. I just got born. I was like, okay, that let me work that in there somehow. Because that's a little more compared to saying molting and sheathing

and exoskeleton, trying to work that into a song. I just got born is funny, too. It's got a little jokey to it. Anyway, so that's like a pretty early phases of that that song won't be ready for another two years but wow so but and you just accept that this is going to be in the this is going to be in the hopper for two years yeah and they're like you know i can only maintain because i like i said i work on these when i can't. So I pull out a file in my head or when I'm waiting for a plane or whatever, some idle time, you pull out this file and you like hammer at it.

Yeah. And I have a pretty good playback system in my head so I can demo things in my head that I'm working on. Yeah. And these songs become like my companions for that period that period of time for that two or three years until i get it down and then what and how is so how is it different when you start with words they tend to be uh more rhythmic um oh because that's the melody's not first so you can you have a little more freedom a little more leeway with yourself. Yeah. Right. Musically. Like Sisyphus, you know, Sisyphus peered into the mist,

a stone's throw from the precipice paused. Right. Like that was not melody driven. Exactly. Or Sauvé was like, and they tend to be a little more, you know, they're not too far, though maybe culturally far away from, but they're not too far away from the process of a rapper, honestly. Right, right, right, right.

I think you're just looking for good rhythm and rhyme. And you don't know. They just come like the melodies. Just sort of out of nowhere, a few things come together. Yeah, a few things come together. I kind of just recede into myself and get that thousand yards there. And I'm kind of in, in here just sort of running numbers,

running, doing crosswords. It's, it's sometimes it's not as, it's creative, but it's not, you know what I mean? It's like,

well, yeah, right, right. It's, it's, I imagine that if you're a melody guy that's a little more enchanting in some way where words are kind of like yeah you just

they're like math problems exactly and melodies i just i simply cannot tell you where they're coming from right and that's and that's the amazing thing like i like that even when i'm improvising uh you know comedy where the ideas are that moment where you your brain needs to get the laugh but you don't know how it's going to come and something comes out of you and you're like wow that was exciting where did that come from yeah i don't know i know i feel an affinity with with comedians honestly the i feel like when i get up on stage, I shrug my shoulders. I don't know, folks. This is just what's.

Let's see what happens. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I like, well, I'm impressed by comedians, you know, a profession where you're living by your wits. I think that seems noble to me. Yeah, me too. You know?

Yeah. And it's scary. It is. Like getting ready to do this interview, I realize I get to play a song. That's my security blanket. But otherwise, I'm being judged on my personality right now. Yeah, I think you're

doing very well that's scary i i think you know i'm serious no i'm serious like it's weird i mean you're being judged on personality i didn't know you though you know and i had thought certain things but but it is different you know when you have i've always thought that musical music as much as magic in a way where like if you're just doing jokes i mean you can do them a few times but they're gonna wear out whereas like you got music not only can you hide behind it or whatever you think you're doing or or it gives you an assist but you know a song can he can stay with somebody forever and actually change as time goes on whereas a joke but it's just like you did it though it's interesting that I didn't really think about it like that. Cause you remembered that joke. Like sometimes a joke

is exactly what you need. And sometimes they're old jokes and sometimes they're good points of reference, but they're not the same as the song, you know? Yeah. But I mean, whether, whether they're there, you've done them a million times to the audience, you're, you're living by the seat of your pants. Like you're. Yeah. I try never to do a joke a million times, God forbid. Yeah. Yeah, that'd be like a nightmare. That's like the worst dream ever. You'd be stuck in a joke.

Yeah. I mean, you just feel like, I feel like when I'm playing night after night shows and I say the same, a similar banter to what I did the night before, I feel like such a fraud. Imagine doing it for a living, dude. I know. So how do you choose this, like, you know, on the new record, on the Hark record?

I mean, some of them are your songs, some of them are songs you like, correct? Yeah, I just, you know, they were all at arm's reach. They were all, sometimes with an album, you just put a bunch of stuff in a room and see if they get along. I started off just being, thinking, I'm going to do a Vince Giraldi cover album, put together a great bunch of jazz musicians and just play Vince Giraldi tunes.

And then I got a little greedy and I wanted to write some originals. And you see them as holiday music? Oh, the ones that I wrote? Yeah, I thought, well, that's kind of what gets a songwriter up in the morning is thinking, oh, this morning I could write the song that gets everybody singing the same tune. And what better place to do that than, what if you could get a song into the holiday canon? Yeah, yeah.

I don't know when so i thought you know try to reinvigorate the the tired canon of holiday music with you know some choice covers that i think deserve entry yeah um you know i set the bar pretty low you just have to either mention Christmas or snow or something. And that's good. As long as it's a good piece of music, then let's do it. But when I wrote the originals, like Alabaster, I tried to write some... The first couple of originals I tried to write were too dark.

You ask yourself when you're writing something, the dark Christmas songs? Yeah, does the world... The dark Christmas songs? Yeah, does the world really need this? Is this what people... Because it's a utilitarian thing, like Christmas music. It's like, you put it on to create an atmosphere. It's not being... I noticed that.

Yeah, yeah, right. When I was listening to it, I thought like, all right, so this is like, you know, the fire's going, I thought, all right, so this is the fires going, families around. But you did that great John Prine song. Isn't that a John Prine song on there? It is. Yeah, Souvenirs.

Yeah. Which I've been covering that for years. I didn't really think. But then it's like, oh, he's talking about the post-Christmas crash. And it's such an evocative tune. That's a little bittersweet. A little dark. A little dark.

Yeah. It's talking about memories and nostalgia and feeling kind of betrayed by your memories, I guess. And green wine. Is that an old melody? That's Greensleeves. Greensleeves, is that an old melody? That's green sleeves. Green sleeves, right. Okay, there you go. Yeah, so I've always loved that melody,

and I mashed that up with a handsome family tune about mental illness and alcoholism and Christmas. Yeah, the handsome family subgenre, alcohol, mental illness. Pretty much. I like them. They live in my hometown. I've interviewed them. Oh, you're from Albuquerque? Yeah. I grew up there. Okay. So in the movie you say you're from New Mexico. That's for real.

It's for real, man. I grounded that improvisation in my own life. Yeah. And then the whole Lower East Side. Well, yeah. Well, no, the Lower East Side, I lived there for a long time. But my parents are from Jersey,

but I grew up in New Mexico. That's where my dad settled in the early 70s. So that's what I consider home. Okay. So which one of these original Christmas standards are you going to play? First I was thinking green wine, and then I thought maybe Christmas in April. Christmas in April. It's up to you. I can do either one.

What is that, a ukulele? It's a violin. Oh, okay. Yeah, I'll do, since we talked about green wine, let's do green wine. Okay. Okay. Okay. I had nothing to say On Christmas Day

When you threw all your clothes in the snow When you burnt your hair And knocked over chairs I just tried to stay out of your way when you fell asleep

with blood on your teeth I just got in my car and drove away listen to me butterfly butterfly Listen to me, butterfly You know there's only so much wine You can drink in one life

But it will never be enough to save you from the bottom of your glass. © transcript Emily Beynon guitar solo Where the state highway starts I stop my car I get out to stare up at the stars And as the meteors died And shot across the sky I just thought about Your sad shining eyes when i went back for my clothes when the sun

finally rose oh and you were just passed out on the floor listen to me, butterfly You know there's only so much wine You can drink in one life But it would never be enough Be enough to save you from the bottom of your glass. Yeah, great. I love it, man. Thank you. Sounds great.

That's such a moving melody, and the words are great. That's a nice dark Christmas song. It is quite dark. Yeah. I love the, you know, I think part of, some of my favorite Christmas tunes are minor key tunes. And I think, you know, part of the holiday is, because it's somewhat arbitrary, the birth of Christ, I think actually happened in May or something like that.

Yeah, I have no idea. It's a pagan holiday about doing something festive to get through a dark time. Sometimes it's like embracing the darkness is helpful. Yeah, that seems to be the theme of our conversation. is helpful you know yeah that seems to be the theme of our conversation the uh molting seasonal darkness coming out after the darkness you know struggling with the darkness yeah well i look i i agree with you i mean i uh it's a very weird thing and when i ask you about you know like that isolation and stuff like i i know that most of my personality is built around knowing that, you know, it only takes me a couple of steps and I'm in a pretty deep hole. You know, it did. Yeah. And like and you just kind of you kind of make your way around that.

And and and the more you you create out of that place, the more relief you get and the more resources you get to not live in that hole, you know? Yeah, but I think the suffering for your art is a myth. No, you can't do it on purpose. That's why it's, I don't know whether it's a myth or what, but the romanticization of it is,

you know, yeah, there's plenty of fucked up artists around that have their own struggles, and arguably anybody who does original art and commits to that life is a certain special type of person that's willing to engage in a life of struggle. But I don't think you can do it on purpose. No. No. I've found other ways to channel that impulse, though.

Just to kind of blunt my myself against the world yeah but it's not not that's not saying my art if i if i wake up and i'm happy and energetic i i do better work you know sure yeah because you're excited you're not you're not you're not trying to climb out of a pit. Exactly. Do you exercise? Do you mountain biking or something? How did you know? Yeah, I like riding. And I've been doing this more since the pandemic.

Yeah. My way to cope with it is to do extreme, exercising to the point of almost nausea. Yeah, good. And I think it makes me dumb enough to be able to handle the day and handle the world. Right, because you're fucking exhausted. Yeah, you're just kind of, you're just. I do that too, where you're like, at two o'clock, you're like, why am I need a nap?

Oh yeah, i rode up a mountain and it's also to get the endorphin hit that i used to get from performing too i think yeah yeah i've been i've been doing these live instagrams in the morning to engage with a live bunch of people and it's a double-edged sword but it does give me the little jolt of being engaged that way you know yeah it doesn't take too much to feel like you're just on the hot seat a little bit um yeah to get that to get that fix and also talking to people's good you know talking to you i can do sure well it was good talking to you man it was great talking to you i i really when you wrote that note about lyn, I wanted, it may sound disingenuous at this point, but I wanted to reach out.

Yeah. And I was thinking, maybe, but then I was like, you don't know me from Adam. Yeah. If I wrote to you and said, hey, let's go for a walk or something. Yeah, we could have. But I had that impulse. Well, thanks, man. And I didn't act on it.

That's okay. You know, it's been a really difficult thing, you know? Yeah. I don't even know how. It's just so normal, but so, like, it's not normal in that it's tragic, but it's what happens in life, you know. But it's like, it's really hard to wrap your brain around it, you know, and to the absence and whatnot. Like, there's no way to kind of make it, there's no way to normalize it, you know.

But it's like, it's as normal as being born in some ways. You don't know how it's going to go down, but, but Jesus, man, it's rough go. Cause she was a special person. She's an uncommon, uncommon person. I noticed that moment I met her. So,

yep. Yeah. But, uh, thanks for talking. And, yeah. And,

uh, I really enjoyed getting into your stuff more, preparing for this, and I like the new holiday record. Thanks, man. It was good getting to know you a little bit, man. Yeah, same here. I'll be in touch someday. Yeah.

When we get out of the plague, we'll hang out. That sounds good to me. I'll play some one-chord blues with you. I'd love that, yeah. Okay, man. Take it easy Andrew Alright Sing a song for us The song he played was Green Wine

From his new album Hark You can get that at andrewbird.net Also go to wtfpod.com Slash merch Got the two clothes shirts got all the other stuff. Might be able to squeeze in a quick Christmas gift purchase. It'll probably get there late, but you can still do it. I'm bad with gifts.

I'm good at getting them. All right, I'll play a little guitar. Thank you. Boomer lives and monkey and La Fonda cat angels everywhere. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category.

And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. cannabis store and a cast creative. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of kids night when the Toronto rock take on the Colorado mammoth at a special 5. PM start time on Saturday,

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