Thanks for doing this!
Are you kidding me?
I know that you've already done a Tape Op thing recently...
I'll do it again and again.
Awesome. How do you see some of the aesthetics or the process that you learned at art school showing up in the way that you make music today?
Well, the school that I went to, which was Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver, BC, they were really good about making sure that the big question that you understood was, you know, "Does my piece – whatever it may be, art, music, performance, animation, paintings, whatever – does my piece say to the audience what I'm trying to say?" They want you to try to figure out what it's like for people viewing it from different perspectives. To see it from every angle, to weigh whatever the details are. I dunno. Of course, it depends on how heavily you cared. "Is my piece really saying anything, or am I just doing it for fun?" Sometimes you are just doing it for fun. You try to be several people at the same time. I think writers, people who write novels and who write fiction, want to be everyone in the world. They want to be like tourists in other peoples' existences, which can be a problem, but it's also a really pure want. It's based on compassion for people and interest in people and excitement. Not just people, but like you want to be a tourist in the life of a tree for example. You can do those things. I don't know. That's where really exciting ideas come from. Ideas make other ideas, and it's this crazy rabbithole you can go down. Ideas breed like rabbits. This really is going somewhere, I swear to god. You also learn there, or at least I did from my particular institution, what it meant to make an honest assessment of yourself and figure out how it was you worked and how to be your own boss as in figure out what your disciplines are, figure out which circumstances contribute or detract from what you're doing, how you deal with distractions, you know, what's your optimum work environment? What do you have to do to whip your ass into shape, basically? You learn how to structure your life if you want to be an artist or a creator of any kind. That's probably the most helpful lesson I've learned, because you can apply it to everything. I think that education, a lot of times, can be a real waste of time, but I didn't have any parents, and I didn't have any sort of structure growing up, and I really needed it to go into adulthood. I kind of used art school as my parents, but my super freaky, free-thinking parents. I don't know how I would explain that. If I were to give advice to a younger person, I'd be like, find someone to apprentice with; someone you admire. If you have to do it randomly at first, do it, but find out what you like and don't like. Your input really matters. It's really good to figure out how to be humble and take criticism and have people say, "No, that's not right," to you. You can use your own opinion as to whether it's right or wrong. But I've learned so much from people. I wouldn't be anywhere if I didn't take it on the nose sometimes.
Yeah, sure. Do you have a routine?
Well, there are so many different pieces of being a musician and a producer. Sometimes we're on tour, and that is super structured. I'm not good at being a boss of that, so I hire several bosses to be my boss in that instance. Rachel is my manager, Luke is our tour manager, and then I have the booking agent, etcetera etcetera. I'm not doing it alone at all. There are a lot of people who are really great who are setting things up and making sure things move smoothly. In the songwriting process, I work with less people. I write songs on my own sometimes, but I don't really like it. It's possible, but I never got into a band because I wanted to be by myself. I wanted to be with people, and I wanted to be in a gang. I wanted to make big sounds, which of course you can do on your own, but I enjoy the back-and-forth with other people and that cool plate spinning that you do with other people, that weird connection of making a circuit, essentially. Then in the studio, it goes all different ways. On this last record, I did about half of the record with Björn Yttling. I worked in the studio with a lot of people as well as him, like Thom Monahan, who's an amazing engineer and just a wonderful person to hang out with.
Thom's the best!
Oh my god, isn't he the best?
We get together every time I'm in L.A. We have long sushi chats.
One of my favorites.
He's just a great guy to call and have a conversation with and shoot the shit with and talk about ideas. That's what I love about Thom.
Yeah. He's a rare person. He reminds me very much of my songwriting partner, Paul Rigby. They're both in their 40s, but they're both as excited about music as they were when they were 13. It's like ideas and sounds are so exciting to them. They're not ashamed to just geek out. The geeking out is the funnest part, and they know it. I think the whole worried about being cool thing goes back to what I was saying about you can't be afraid. If it's early on and you're starting, just admit you don't know everything. In the world of audio, I've noticed people are sometimes very strong about their opinions about gear or the way to record because they want to look really knowledgable, but it's just silly. It's silly.
Yeah. I can recall earlier on both in playing music and in recording like really trying to do it "right". "Am I doing it right? How's my time? How's this, how's that?" Now when I give advice to young recordists, I'm like, "Just plug stuff in and blow stuff up. Explore and make mistakes." The idea of the perfect mix and the perfect sonic balance and this and that, I'm not discounting it, but the idea that you can't make something cool and creative because it's not 100 percent technically proficient, those things don't have to go hand-in-hand. That's a super important lesson for young people.
Yeah, right. Also like sometimes the heaviest opinions are totally based in fact. But they're also the most expensive ones. Like, "You're not gonna get those kind of warm sounds without the Neumann microphone" or whatever. And it's absolutely true. The Neumann is like the greatest microphone, maybe, but I don't like using them! I have a very nasal voice, and a very loud voice. I like the Audio-Technica 4050. And it's not considered like a super-fancy Telefunken, you know. You're like well…
It works!
Yeah. And I enjoy working on huge desks as much as I like working with an ADAT, which people think is just a joke, but I loved recording with the ADAT, because I'm so fucking ADD. Pro Tools, I understand in theory, but I can't keep track of all the menus that are hidden all the time, and like the tiny things that are checked off. I love having every track where I can touch it. It's all visible, all the time. It's very simple. Arm it. I think that's totally valuable too.
Absolutely.
I am sure working on the Neve console is the greatest thing ever, but I also get the same amount of joy working with the ADAT and you know, it doesn't matter.
Sure.
A lot of us don't have that kind of money, you know what I mean? Frankly, when everybody was telling me to work with a Neve console, I just liked the SSL so much more. It's like, I know I'm supposed to like that more, but I really prefer the SSL! And that's the right answer. Everything's a right answer in a way. And I was young. I'm not immune. I was guilty of adopting other peoples' opinions as my own from time to time. I was like yeah, "That was just kind of a dumb thing to do." You've just got to own it.
That's just growing up. There is like a giant need to sort of be validated. With the way that the internet is today…
It's really up to you and what's working. You don't have to die on the Neumann hill if you want to try other microphones.
You mentioned the idea of creating something and trying to see it from the audience perspective or having that be part of the process. It seems like that's a tough one.
It is a tough one. Basically, I look at it with the aspect of, "Have I left enough holes or entry points so that the listener can make the song their own? Have I been not specific enough about certain things so that the listener can make the song about them?" Does that makes sense?
I think so.
For example, classic love songs. They don't mention a pager necessarily. They don't stick themselves to one specific time period so much. It's more about the feelings and the passing environment and the ambience.
They're more timeless.
It's an emotional like gray area that stamps a kind of chapter heading that a person can always refer to. When they hear a song they always loved as a teenager in a restaurant, it might make them cry. It's that weird, how do you get into a person's subconscious, but not get into a person's subconscious exploitatively? Like kind of getting in there more lovingly. Does that make any sense? I want people to be able to wear it like their special punk rock vest that they personalize. I'm also into super-specific songs that are about one thing, but I like writing stories more and trying to comfort people and make people acknowledged or valid somehow.
Are you conscious of that when you're actually in the writing process, or is that just sort of inherent to what you do? Great songwriters that reach a lot of people have a way of being universal with their message in some way.
Universal's difficult. There are people who can do it, and I'm not saying I'm one of them.
It may not even be intentional.
Editing yourself is not necessarily about editing what you're talking about, but trying to say it as elegantly or with as few words as possible, or as awkwardly and as with as few words as possible. To just get that little in-between space that you can't explain, like you have to make up a new language. It'll click with people sometimes. That's a really magic connection to have with your audience. When you're out on the road and they show up to see you play, you can play that experience. We don't play alone. We play for people. It's like harmony singing. It's this really incredible ability that human beings have as natural creatures in the wild. We're pretty amazing when we want to be.
Yeah.
So just setting up those places where you can use your instincts that you maybe have forgotten about, or this just sort of raw, human feeling and connection with other human beings. Trees, even. I don't know. You can connect with whatever you like.
I want to talk about that. When you were in the last Tape Op piece that we did, you talked about harmony, and you talked about vibrations. I was talking to my wife and telling her what you had said about the harmony, and she goes, "Oh, you know, there's a study they did that when people sang together in groups, it releases oxytocin which is the same hormone women get when breastfeeding, it helps form bonds and relationships, it's a pretty magical thing." I thought that was a pretty interesting thing to talk about. There's a mental aspect of songwriting, lyrics and all that, but then there's an actual physical reaction that people can have to music.
You talked about it. "Hey, I want to be in a band. I want that feeling and create that circuit" as you said just now. I think those things are all related. Some of it seems super new-agey in a way.
It does, but I think that if you think about it from the stance that people love to watch nature shows for example. Studying animal behavior is addictive. We are fascinated by what they do. Watching BBC Earth or something and seeing how an ant communicates with a tree to make sap, all these crazy things. I think a lot about horses when I'm working on vocal parts, because horses have one of the most sophisticated methods of communication with each other. When I try to describe things to people, I often use horses, because horses are led by a dominant female. Horses are like, they do a thing that's a lot like murmurations of birds. The horses are always keenly aware of what the lead female is doing. She can signal a huge group of horses simply by turning one ear slightly. They're completely attuned to her. They move in the right way. They do what she says. It's not that they don't cross the line or challenge her or whatever, but it's a way that they communicate that's really subtle and really beautiful. Humans have that same ability. We just don't study ourselves that way, because we have this fucked up Victorian view of human beings in Western culture where we're not actually animals, and we're totally removed from the animal kingdom or nature in general. It's a huge problem, because I think it's one of the reasons that we don't understand things like climate change. "Well, it has nothing to do with us," you know? So just the way these natural ways of communicating affect fight or flight, or like we say a lot, what can one person do to change the world? Those little tiny signals are what are so fascinating, because I think those little tiny signals reinforce other peoples' beliefs, and they reinforce a feeling that you're not alone, or a signal to move in a certain direction. That doesn't necessarily mean a physical direction. That could mean a just, where are we going as human beings, or I don't want to feel alone, or I don't know, there's a million ways to sound new-agey about it as you said.
There is a concept about positive vibrations and all these things, but then you really look at it, and it's like wow, it's a super-important way that people connect and bond on a non-verbal level. You hear that harmony and it makes you feel emotional and it makes you want to cry. Interestingly enough, the study showed that it was elevated levels of oxytocin, especially in improvised music, that excitement of creating improvised music with others.
Yeah, that excitement of hitting it!
Having that communication on a level that wasn't verbal.
It's like you turn on a switch in other people that they didn't know that they had. It's a switch that makes them feel very alive and very capable and very effective. Very important and useful. Like, "Wow, I have these abilities that I didn't know I had!" It's like runner's high. I think that's another one people talk about, exploring this really powerful physicality that you turn on with a sound, rather than running three miles or something. It's really exciting.
