I am pretty touched that Chris Koltay snuck mentions of you into the Tape Op gear reviews for half a decade. That’s friendship.
Wow, I didn't even know that. I would say he's probably the only reason why I'm getting this interview. [laughter] Koltay is definitely my sonic guide. I came from an era of producers in the early MySpace age. That transition from using a proper studio with a bunch of gear, to a bunch of kids in their bedrooms with Ableton [Live], or [Propellerhead] Reason, or [Steinberg] Cubase, or FruityLoops [Now Image-Line's FL Studio]. Producers from that era were taking the very raw, over-compressed, in-the-red approach. It was the sound of the time and Chris opened up my ears and mind to this magic area where you are paying attention to the rules but also disregarding them to create something really original. Before, I was like, "I'm going to take this voice memo, smash the fuck out of it, and use that as the main part of the song." Chris got my mindset to recognize this deserves to be mixed really well. I was ignoring part of the craft, and I was a very stubborn laptop producer. I was kind of like, "Fuck it. Throw it away." I'm a jazz school dropout. When I started working with Chris, I started to realize – my wave shouldn't be a chocolate bar. It should have peaks, valleys, and all this character to it. I started hanging out with Chris and listening to a lot of different music from a lot of different time periods and recognizing what made that stuff sound so good. I think a lot of people don't realize how much your engineer and your front of house guy is making it happen.
Cherry Blossom Baby is a very precise, meticulous record. Clearly you learned something from Chris Koltay over time.
The first ideas of this record probably started in late 2018, and they were just little skeletons of tracks. It was me drum programming right into Reason. I would put out a little beat on the [Elektron] Machinedrum and play a [Roland] JUNO with a key part, bass part, and drum part. I started working with KESSWA [Kesiena Wanogho], who's the main vocalist on this record. It’s just as much her record as it is mine. She would lay down these little infectious phrases. This was all little, simple jams and tests laying the vocals over these tracks. In 2019 and 2020, everything got crazy – I dipped off the map, like we all did. I was watching way too much TV, and didn't have a sleep schedule. There was a moment where I was like, "Oh man, I really want to get guitar on this." I'd been working on this boogie-like roller skate track, and I really heard my friend Sasha [Kashperko] in it. This was in the middle of the pandemic, when we were completely quarantined. I sent him that rough version, and I asked, "Can you just send me a bunch of takes?" He did, and immediately my inspiration returned because it felt like working with people again, even though we weren't in the same room. I hit up Tim Shellabarger, who's a bass player for Will Sessions, a great funk and soul group here in Detroit. He laced these tracks with the most incredible bass. I just kept hearing more players on [the record]. I think the focus was to get players that were part of my life throughout this time. We had all cut our ties down immensely. Our circle became much smaller. Our time became much more valuable about who we were spending it with. We became more sensitive to vibes that we weren't vibing with. To tangent a little bit – this Shigeto thing has been a solo project for so long – me and the drums, then it became me touring around the world with Koltay. And then, right before the pandemic, I started bringing out Marcus [Elliot] and Ian [Fink]. I love what I've been doing. I put all this work in – but I come from jazz; I come from bands. I'm not reaching these moments of magic on my own. I needed to start playing with other people so I could feel good again, so I could feel creative, and so I could feel happy. Once I had all these friends involved, it created a natural, genuine excitement. It felt really powerful to have a platform where I could actually get all these friends involved. Additionally, I wanted to be able to use the last 10 to 15 years with Ghostly International [label] to uplift these incredible players, because there's no lack of talent. You're never going to hear all the great music. You're never going to hear all the great producers. Without the collaboration with these people, I don't think an album would have come out.
You have a track record as a community builder and being vocal about local DIY scenes being the only sustainable way forward. You did a few performances to support the Living Wage for Musicians Act over this last year.
Yeah! As soon as they asked, I said, "Whatever you guys want me to do, I'm happy to try and help." [U.S. representative] Rashida Tlaib met with us on FaceTime – it was truly surreal and an honor. And it felt hopeful to be face-to-face with this politician who wants to try to do something about this. Musicians are getting put through the meat grinder. It's not sustainable. The way that people consume music now is insane. The environment we're in creatively, with this pressure to constantly pump out fleeting works of art for a fraction of a cent to stay relevant, or get playlisted, or whatever. It doesn't feel good. It's also hard because Ghostly is such a great label that embraces the future, while also trying to hold onto tradition. I feel very polarized. Part of me is like, "Support the musician's union!" Then, at the same time I'm like, "Listen to my single on Spotify." It's this constant push-and-pull of trying to fight for change, but then also drinking the Kool-Aid at the same time. It's going to be a long journey, but the good news is that it's not written yet. There are no rules right now. I think that's just going to happen until there's some sort of reform with how it's being done. This also goes back to what I was saying about community – if things like Spotify are how people are digesting it – the real shit is the live show. I don't know, maybe it was Dexter Gordon, a jazz musician – but they were like, "The record is only promo for the concert." That's how they always looked at the music industry.
I like that sentiment.
I still believe that. The record is not how we're paying our bills. It never was, unless you were part of a major label, and even then you could be in debt. As the listeners, we don't know what a band is going through, no matter how big they are. We have to focus on what's right in front of us, and that's the live show. That's when fans can connect with you directly in real time and feel good about it. I don't want to start a Patreon with all this random bullshit. I want to just have you guys come to the show.
You don't want me to pay for access to your healing journey over Patreon? That's the one that always gets me. We're paying for emotional access to artists rather than purchasing music in a fair way.
Right? This isn't it. [laughter]
In piecing together Cherry Blossom Baby, was it all emailing loops and collage over the pandemic? Did you finally get into the studio together?
It was a combination. The first stuff exchanged was audio – where I'd send them the track and rather than loops they'd record three different takes all the way through. Then I would start going through and cutting out little bits. I wanted the record to sound like a studio record, but it's very much a collage. It's pieced together from live takes that they'd send in. The final touches were live in the studio, like all the percussion that Dez [Andrés] did, all of Keth's vocals, all of Cleveland Thrasher’s vocals, and all of Tammy’s [Lakkis] vocals. Basically, I wrote these songs and then Ian would come in and reharmonize them and make them a hundred times better. 2020 was all sending files back and forth. Then 2021 to 2023 was just session after session, adding little bit after little bit. It was my first record I felt I was producing. I've never worked on a project where I'd sit on a track for months and then say, “I'm going to add a glockenspiel.” [laughter]
I noticed the glockenspiel. Glockenspiel juxtaposed with rhymes like “top down with surround sound.”
I love that, because she [KESSWA] improvised that section too. It was completely freestyle.
What were you leaning on during these live studio sessions that felt like your workhorses?
You know what? I'm going to walk out to the studio.
These live sessions, were they in your studio?
Oh, yeah. They were in my studio.
