I love hearing about how people got into music. You grew up in a house full of writers.
Yeah, that's right.
Were you interested in playing music, and was that something you were doing in school?
It was always present in my life. My folks weren't musicians, but they were very into music. There was always music being played in the house. A lot of the music I remember hearing when I was young was sitting in the back of the station wagon on trips up north, to the northern part of Michigan. Back then, they would lay down the back seats, and it was a flat bed in the back, and we would lay in the back of the station wagon, which sounds so unsafe now, and listen to music that my folks would play. That stuff stuck with me for sure. My dad wasn't a professional musician, but he and his brothers would love to sit around and harmonize and sing the songs they liked – up north, around the campfire. It sounds cliché, but that's really what they used to do. They would sit around and harmonize on Neil Young and Johnny Cash songs, and I soaked that all up. I started playing around on my dad's guitar when I was pretty young. I'm left-handed, but I got a right-handed guitar and I forced myself to play that way. I joined the orchestra and played upright bass. I chose the biggest thing I could, because we had the station wagon, right? I had to fill it up. That led me to electric bass, and I remember a school assembly where the jazz combo from the high school came through and played for us in middle school, and I think that was the first time when I was really thinking, “Okay, I could be in a band, maybe.” I started my first band in seventh grade with some of the guys who are in the band still today. We geeked out through high school, playing out around town and even traveled a little bit, just in punk bands and maybe a couple of ska bands. I don't want to talk about that, but... [laughs]
The music we listen to as kids is always interesting. It’s part of the musical quilt that makes us who we are.
You remember Columbia House? [A mail order music club. -Ed.]
Oh, yeah. I mean, that's where I learned about all the music.
Yeah.
I still have some of those tapes.
My brother was a member. I soaked up all the financial ruin he led himself to through that service. It was the early way to sample all kinds of stuff, so he ended up becoming a big hip-hop head, which is great because I got to soak up a lot of that. But he also had The Smiths and Nick Cave records, and I got to hear all of it through him. He was my biggest musical supplier in those formative teenage years. He was listening to all this weird stuff and taking me to shows. It was pretty cool having someone like that around.
Did you guys keep that high school band together into college?
Once high school ended, we all went our separate ways. I went to art school and I kept playing in bands, but with new people, and I think everybody did the same thing. Really, we all went our separate ways for quite a while, well into our twenties. But I started recording again when I was about 27, back in 2009 and 2010, and I got the itch again to get out and get a band going. My sister and I handed out some demos I made at a few music festivals out here in California, and I started getting hit up to play shows so I was needing to put a band together. The first people I thought of were those guys who had started that journey with all those years ago. They're like my brothers. I've known them so long, and it felt like a really comfortable way. They all came out West, and at first it was, "We'll just play a few shows.” But we've been on the road ever since.
There's got to be a comfort level with people that you've known for that long, and a level of communication being from the same place. Having a common language musically and socially really lends itself to the creative process.
I don't know if I had that much foresight, honestly, but I'm so glad it worked out that way because we didn't have to go through all the growing pains that a lot of young bands go through getting to know each other. If it's going to become your lifestyle, you want to be around people you love. I'm really thankful that it all fell together the way it did.
What got you interested in the technical and production aspect of record making?
To some degree, it was just necessity in those early days of trying to find a way to put things down on tape. I got a TASCAM 414 [4-track cassette] when I was 15 for Christmas, because I wanted to make recordings. Eventually, [Apple] GarageBand was the first in-the-box thing I used, and then onto [Apple] Logic Pro, and that's what I've been using ever since. I had such a clear idea of what I wanted to do, and I felt I should set out and do it as much as possible. I learned in art school that there's something to not knowing what you're doing exactly, technically, that I think aids in creativity. I have tried to surround myself with people who know more of the technical side of things and can help me with that to free up that part of my brain. But I have such a clear idea what I want to make most of the time that it feels like being in charge of that makes sense, and it's fun. It's fun trying to figure it out, trying to chase all that mystery, and figure out how to express these sort of intangible things that are floating around in my head. It makes sense that I'm the best person to figure out how to do that since it's originating inside me to some extent. That said, five records in, every time we start making a record I feel I'm learning to do it again. Things I thought I retained from the previous process don't work anymore, or don't necessarily fit what I'm trying to say anymore. To some degree, it's square one every time. Which is fun, but it can be daunting when we're trying to get a record done!
One of the things about your records I find so interesting is that they’re sonically rich and lyrically they have these stories that are tied together thematically. Concept albums to a degree. It’s almost like set design with the tones, and the sounds, and the palettes and colors. How much thought is actually going into that for you in terms of that part of the process?
I think there's definitely thought going into it, but a lot of it is following my interest and following my instinct to some degree. Chasing that mystery; trying to find a way to express these things without overthinking it too much. You have to let it tell you something, let that mystery speak to you, or I guess speak through you in some way. I let it develop naturally. I don't try to over conceptualize too early on. I like to let ideas flow, follow little threads or fragments, and then later on see how they hang together and see what it tells me. That process was even more evident making this record, where it was created over such a long period of time, in such varied places, and in such varied ways, that at some point I had this massive collection of fragments and little bits of lyrics and ideas that I had to figure out how to turn it into something. I guess I think really visually about music too, where I like to try to describe things that I see in my head with sound, like you were saying, set a scene or paint a picture using sonics, and sometimes that image changes and blurs as you try to make it. I found that trying to be too strict about sticking to what I had in my head initially will often lead me to a dead end. Whereas, if I let it sort of paint itself I'll end up with something that's more rich. Maybe from my subconscious, or elsewhere, that becomes more meaningful.
It's a pretty abstract concept in general. Can you give me some examples of painting those pictures with sounds? Are you speaking specifically about things like reverb or instrumentation? I love when somebody marries the sentiment of tone and lyrics – when those are intertwined and working well together with the songwriting and production.
I do think there's a musical and stylistic shorthand that we have, that we can draw from the past. It's really interesting trying to see how you can combine those things in new ways. Take the Bo Diddley beat as an example. It evokes so many concepts for so many people because of all the history it has and all the ways it's been used in the past. Whether it's been in movies, or the associations people have generally with that period of time and finding ways to combine those things to create a vibe or a setting. The tone of a spaghetti western guitar mixed with the Bo Diddley beat and some synth sounds that come from way later. What's this new landscape you paint when all those things are put together? There's a bit of experimentation there. And, like you said, maybe there are some more literal ways of creating space with effects like reverb and delay and giving a sense of distance. It's funny to try to put that stuff into words, how it all comes together. But I guess that's part of that mystery.
Let's talk a little bit about The Cosmic Selector Volume 1. And, no surprise, it's a concept album! What’s the story you're trying to tell?
There was a lot of searching making this album. Some of the songs were cut multiple times and I don't know exactly what I was looking for at the beginning. It's a good example of that idea I was talking about before, of the idea of revealing itself over time. I had this idea of looking backwards, forwards, down and up, out and in, all at the same time. I had this idea about a jukebox that represented the vagaries of fate, the different ways a life can go, and how each song in this jukebox is sort of a different fate. Yeah, and there's not really a specific story behind that other than the different hands you can be dealt in life, not knowing what's coming your way, and there not being any rhyme or reason to the randomness of the universe.
And it was recorded at Whispering Pines?
