Speaker 1: Hello, This is Christian Bush and welcome to episode nine
Speaker 1: of my podcast Geeking Out. Every episode, I invite a
Speaker 1: new person to talk about one thing that they're obsessed
Speaker 1: with that has nothing to do with their job. The
Speaker 1: only requirement is that they're totally geeking out on it
Speaker 1: and they want to talk about it. From at home
Speaker 1: perfume kits to custom made picture socks from build your
Speaker 1: Own horse barn blueprints to vintage British driving gloves from
Speaker 1: Destination bird watching two Japanese made cafes, tell me about
Speaker 1: what you love, why you love it, how you got
Speaker 1: into it, and what makes it awesome. Each episode is
Speaker 1: presented in three chapters. In chapter one, my guest and
Speaker 1: I will have a conversation about their passion. In chapter two,
Speaker 1: we play a game I called trade It, where my
Speaker 1: guests and I turn each other onto something cool we've
Speaker 1: recently discovered. And in chapter three, I closed the show
Speaker 1: by talking about music that I am currently geeked out
Speaker 1: on and why I believe that curiosity is contagious and
Speaker 1: that life is better with the soundtrack. So let the geakon.
Speaker 1: Begin Chapter one. Today's guest is Rita Wilson. You might
Speaker 1: know Rita from her role in Sleepless in Seattle or
Speaker 1: on The Good Wife, or because she produced My Big
Speaker 1: Fat Greek Wedding. But I know her because she is
Speaker 1: a wonderful singer songwriter and one of my favorite people
Speaker 1: to be around. We even co wrote the song that
Speaker 1: you're listening to right now, which is called every Day.
Speaker 1: This is from her two thousand sixteen self titled album,
Speaker 1: and you should go and buy it immediately, seriously, push
Speaker 1: pause right now and go to iTunes. All right, are
Speaker 1: you back? Okay, enjoy our conversation. First off, introduce yourself.
Speaker 1: I am Rita Wilson. I am an actor, a producer
Speaker 1: and currently, within the last few years, singer songwriter. You
Speaker 1: are partly thanks to you. And where are we? We
Speaker 1: are backstage at the Geffen Playhouse because we just finished
Speaker 1: doing the show Liner Notes that I UM produce and
Speaker 1: participate in and its songwriters telling the stories behind their
Speaker 1: hits and singing them. And you just played and I
Speaker 1: just played it, and just at the end of a
Speaker 1: four day run, yes of this and this is the
Speaker 1: first of two weeks right um, And the Geffen Theater
Speaker 1: is in the middle of U. C. L A. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's Um, it's the Geffen Playhouse, which is named after
Speaker 1: David Geffen, the amazing music producer and now philanthropist. And
Speaker 1: I've been I was born and raised in l A.
Speaker 1: So this year actually is a part of my childhood.
Speaker 1: I used to come here to see plays when I
Speaker 1: was a kid. Yes, but I think it was originally
Speaker 1: a Masonic lodge. So it's beautiful because it has that
Speaker 1: courtyard in the front, and it has, you know, a
Speaker 1: beautiful architectural vibe. It doesn't it's like old fashioned. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks a little bit like a church on the outside.
Speaker 1: It does, it does, but I think that was the
Speaker 1: whole Masonic lodge thing to it. I think I love it. Yes.
Speaker 1: So here on the podcast, the requirement is I'm interested
Speaker 1: in hearing about something that you're um geeking out on
Speaker 1: that it has nothing to do with your job. Okay,
Speaker 1: So job is now off the table, not talking about that, um,
Speaker 1: And what I'm interested in is kind of what you're into.
Speaker 1: And I know what you're about to say because you've
Speaker 1: already told me, but I just I want you to start, Okay.
Speaker 1: So this happened a few years ago, maybe about ten
Speaker 1: years ago, because I as a parent, and as a
Speaker 1: wife and as you know, a woman, I guess I
Speaker 1: am the person who does sort of like puts together
Speaker 1: the family vacations and uh sort of keeps everybody busy
Speaker 1: and gives them things to do during these vacations. And
Speaker 1: sometimes you have to have things on downtime. So I
Speaker 1: was packing up games or the kids would have projects
Speaker 1: or something, and so we would all be really prepared
Speaker 1: and we'd get to someplace we were going to for
Speaker 1: vacation and I would look around and you know, my
Speaker 1: husband would be, you know, writing something, and my kids
Speaker 1: would be involved in some sort of project that they
Speaker 1: had going or putting together some special sort of toy
Speaker 1: or puzzles or whatever, and I would be like, I
Speaker 1: forgot to bring something for myself. And then I realized
Speaker 1: I didn't. I wasn't a puzzler. I didn't know how
Speaker 1: to do anything crafty. I really didn't know what to do,
Speaker 1: and it really stumped me. And so I thought, well,
Speaker 1: what do I want to do? And I realized that
Speaker 1: I had always loved watercolors. And I don't know why
Speaker 1: I had loved water colors. I just think there's something
Speaker 1: about the texture and the opacity of them, and how
Speaker 1: kind of the water. I just love the water. Except
Speaker 1: I had never painted water colors in my life. I
Speaker 1: had never taken a drawing course, I had never done oils.
Speaker 1: I knew nothing about art, and so I came back
Speaker 1: from our vacation that year and I found an art
Speaker 1: class in watercolors, and so I was like, Okay, I
Speaker 1: am going to learn how to do this. And it
Speaker 1: was crazy because I knew not one thing about it
Speaker 1: and I don't know how to draw. So it started
Speaker 1: out super base it, you know, like here are the paints,
Speaker 1: and you know, here's the water, and here's how you
Speaker 1: do a thing called a gradation of color, and here's
Speaker 1: how you mix colors. And we learned about secondary colors
Speaker 1: and tertiary colors and the color wheel, complementary colors and
Speaker 1: all of this was the education educational background, and that
Speaker 1: was basically year one. And then we started doing things
Speaker 1: like painting blocks or square shapes or things that were
Speaker 1: super simple and super basic. But as I started doing it,
Speaker 1: I realized, like, wait a minute, if you do something consistently,
Speaker 1: you will not get worse at it. And that was
Speaker 1: encouraging to me because I was looking around at other
Speaker 1: people everybody was a beginner, but some people had insanely
Speaker 1: good inherent talent, and I was looking around, going, well,
Speaker 1: that's not me. But what happened was I took the
Speaker 1: class for five years and I actually learned stuff, and
Speaker 1: a lot of the stuff that I learned was technique,
Speaker 1: things like if you want to reserve some white on
Speaker 1: a on a piece of paper, that there's this stuff
Speaker 1: called masking fluid. And the masking fluid is basically like
Speaker 1: something that you can put on the paper that when
Speaker 1: you paint over it, it doesn't It keeps everything underneath
Speaker 1: that fluid white, and at the end of the painting,
Speaker 1: you rub that stuff off and then you have these
Speaker 1: white spots. So like you could use that for highlighting,
Speaker 1: right if you wanted to have a really big highlight,
Speaker 1: because the thing with watercolor is you're trying to not
Speaker 1: waste all of your white that's on your paper, because
Speaker 1: once you paint over that white, you can't get it back.
Speaker 1: I mean they're even try to get the white back,
Speaker 1: but you don't use white paint necessarily to create white,
Speaker 1: so thinks so you have to kind of think backwards exactly.
Speaker 1: And um, so then we started branching off from boxes
Speaker 1: and you know, kind of geometric shapes and things like
Speaker 1: still life. So we would do flowers, we would do vases,
Speaker 1: we would do um you know, whatever the teacher was
Speaker 1: setting up. We would learn how to work with shadows.
Speaker 1: But what happened was I loved it. I absolutely loved it.
Speaker 1: And now I travel with a very specific set of
Speaker 1: paints um I for anybody listening out there, I like
Speaker 1: the Shrinky Yes Shrinky forty eight palette forty eight palette set,
Speaker 1: which is a super um compact UH palette for with
Speaker 1: forty eight colors in it. And I like arches cold
Speaker 1: pressed paper forty pound because I like a rougher texture.
Speaker 1: And I have these incredible brushes that are portable and
Speaker 1: they're the number I travel with, the number two, four, six,
Speaker 1: and eight, and sometimes a ten, just a separate ten.
Speaker 1: But what I have found is that I can paint
Speaker 1: on an airplane, I can paint at somebody's house. We
Speaker 1: can paint on little tables. And I have girlfriends who
Speaker 1: also paint now, so when we travel together we call
Speaker 1: it sketch Club. And in the afternoon, after we've done
Speaker 1: a hike or we've done something cool, we come back
Speaker 1: and we like get out the paints and we do
Speaker 1: sketch club. Now, one of the things I cannot do
Speaker 1: is um portraits. I'm so bad at portrait. So I
Speaker 1: took a portrait class. I was by far the worst
Speaker 1: person in the portrait class. If you were being generous,
Speaker 1: you would say, like, oh, Rita's portraits look like they
Speaker 1: want to be Modigliani. I mean, the faces look so
Speaker 1: strange in there. That's because I don't have a background
Speaker 1: in drawing or figurative drawing or anything like that. So
Speaker 1: it's a challenging no, nothing, nothing, nothing, but I am obsessed.
Speaker 1: So like what I do now sometimes is I like
Speaker 1: to paint if you're just sitting outside and doing a
Speaker 1: landscape or something like that. But what I often do
Speaker 1: if I know that I'm not going to be able
Speaker 1: to be in a place for you know, three or
Speaker 1: four consecutive days in a row, I'll photograph something and
Speaker 1: I'll paint it while I'm at that place, and then
Speaker 1: I take the photograph with me so I can continue
Speaker 1: painting it after I'm done. Refer back to that, I
Speaker 1: refer back to it. And also I do this thing
Speaker 1: too where it's like if I see something and this
Speaker 1: is actually just a good exercise if I see something
Speaker 1: like last summer, I was painting this amazing, big kind
Speaker 1: of rock island and I wanted it was such a
Speaker 1: beautiful day and there was kind of a weird little mist,
Speaker 1: and the sky was pink and orange and the sea
Speaker 1: was very calm, and I wanted it to kind of
Speaker 1: reflect the colors of the sky and this rock. And
Speaker 1: I did maybe four or five of those in a
Speaker 1: row until I got it right, because I became obsessed
Speaker 1: with Nope, that sky is not right, Nope, that sea
Speaker 1: doesn't look right, and uh, and that You just keep
Speaker 1: doing it and doing it until you kind of get
Speaker 1: to the point that you feel like, Okay, this is
Speaker 1: kind of what I saw in my head that I
Speaker 1: wanted it to be. This is awesome. This explained little
Speaker 1: bit of your Instagram. Yes, yes, wondering. Yeah, so that's
Speaker 1: what it is. I mean, it's hard to do. I
Speaker 1: always think it's hard. I always feel like I'm starting
Speaker 1: something and I go, I mean, you know, the the
Speaker 1: hardest part is the drawing of it, the sketching of it,
Speaker 1: the proportions, the perspective, um making sure that you know
Speaker 1: it's balanced in the right way, And the fun part
Speaker 1: for me is the actual painting and like mixing the
Speaker 1: colors and getting the colors right or the texture right
Speaker 1: or something, you know, like that the technique of it.
Speaker 1: But the sketching can take That's that's the bulk of
Speaker 1: the time, sketching it, I think. And then and then
Speaker 1: I always get mad at myself because like, why am
Speaker 1: I not looser? Why can't I just like do it
Speaker 1: without like being so what's the word? Um? Trying too hard?
Speaker 1: Like why can't I just be? And And sometimes I
Speaker 1: just do that on purpose. I'm like, I have five
Speaker 1: minutes to paint this, and I give a boundary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I give myself a boundary. I have five minutes to
Speaker 1: paint this, and I just see what happens with it.
Speaker 1: And then you know, and it sounds like junk. It
Speaker 1: sounds like your version of golf. Yes, it's kind of
Speaker 1: like you versus you. Yes, it is it is. Do
Speaker 1: you have anything like that? What is your version of that?
Speaker 1: I don't know. You know, I love board games. Do
Speaker 1: you which ones? I'm a big board game fanatic. It
Speaker 1: just depends on how do you like risk? Oh no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's like monopoly in our later section, I'm will start you. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's what we'll do. We get to trade you. I'll
Speaker 1: do that. Okay, good. But so let me ask you
Speaker 1: a couple of so if someone was just trying to
Speaker 1: start out in this, how do they start? Like, well,
Speaker 1: if you had to recommend three things that they do,
Speaker 1: they just anybody could do if they wanted to do this.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, the first thing I would say is
Speaker 1: try to find an art class near you somewhere, and
Speaker 1: there's usually a lot of art classes. If there isn't
Speaker 1: an art class near you, I would try to find
Speaker 1: an art teacher that's near you. And if you can't
Speaker 1: find an art teacher, there's always YouTube. I can go deep.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, but Russ, but you can go to YouTube
Speaker 1: and you can just google watercolor tutorial, watercolor portrait and
Speaker 1: they will do time lapse of like this is how
Speaker 1: you do it? And so I have gone deep at
Speaker 1: night into the watercolor tutorials definitely. But I think there's
Speaker 1: always room and there's always somebody who's doing it near you,
Speaker 1: so you can always find someone a good teacher. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's there's people are so cree aative and actually, without
Speaker 1: taking the watercolor class, I don't think I would have
Speaker 1: done songwriting because it was so daunting to me that
Speaker 1: I knew that if I stuck with it, and I
Speaker 1: stayed with it, that I wouldn't get worse, and that
Speaker 1: I would learn from the people that I was working with.
Speaker 1: And that's what's good about being in a class, because
Speaker 1: if you're in a class, you're you're seeing the person
Speaker 1: next to you going, oh my god, that's great. How
Speaker 1: did you learn how to do that? How did you
Speaker 1: come up with that technique? You know, I want to
Speaker 1: know how you got that. And somebody's coming up to
Speaker 1: you saying, well, how did you do that? And so
Speaker 1: you're constantly observing and um taking it in, you know,
Speaker 1: so you're you're soaking it up as well. If this
Speaker 1: keeps going, which it sounds like it's going to keep going, right,
Speaker 1: I'm going to keep painting. Definitely. It's so soothing. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's really calming to me. How if there's a point
Speaker 1: where you think I think I'm I've I've come over
Speaker 1: the edge, like is there a line that you've already found,
Speaker 1: You're like, oh, you know, I blew off, Like I
Speaker 1: missed picking up the so and so like like like
Speaker 1: is there a line that you've found so far? And
Speaker 1: if not, is there a line in the future past
Speaker 1: which you won't go. I was on a plane trip.
Speaker 1: It was in an international flight, and you don't need
Speaker 1: a lot of room to paint, and you only need
Speaker 1: a glass of water and you know, some paper towels
Speaker 1: and I went deep. I was so tired. I should
Speaker 1: have been completely sleeping on this flight, but I could
Speaker 1: not stop painting. And I got to my destination completely exhausted,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't I couldn't stop. I really could not stop.
Speaker 1: I was like, I have to finish this. I have
Speaker 1: to finish this, and I don't want to stop. And
Speaker 1: I had my music on and I you know, my
Speaker 1: little headphones, and yeah that I'm sure there would be
Speaker 1: when you're working on something really um and you're really
Speaker 1: liking it, you you don't want to stop. And but
Speaker 1: I've learned, I guess over the course of just because
Speaker 1: you're if you're a mom, you have to stop things
Speaker 1: like okay, my kids need me. Um. I kind of
Speaker 1: can pull myself away and then come back. But it's
Speaker 1: it's really fun, this is awesome. Come on, I will
Speaker 1: confess the only award that I ever won in middle
Speaker 1: school was for watercolor. Come on, in seventh grade, I
Speaker 1: painted a picture of the Only reason I remember this
Speaker 1: is because my mom saved it. Um of like a
Speaker 1: a beach shack and like a palm tree and whatever.
Speaker 1: I had done the shading on the palm tree correct
Speaker 1: and um, it was a pretty low bar that I
Speaker 1: had to hit the sound grade. But that was my
Speaker 1: only experience. When you still have it, did your mom? Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, Mom's frame think And now you look at
Speaker 1: it and you're like, oh, no, dude, that's that's like
Speaker 1: a coloring book. That's but um, I'm fascinated that this
Speaker 1: is a form of expression for you that seems like
Speaker 1: you didn't find till now. And then if I hear
Speaker 1: you right, you feel like maybe you won't stop. I
Speaker 1: don't think I'll stop. My mom was a really creative person,
Speaker 1: and you know, when we were little, she sewed all
Speaker 1: of our clothes. She made our bedspreads are curtains, and
Speaker 1: you know, she was Greek. And I would go to
Speaker 1: a store with her and I'd look at something, you know,
Speaker 1: a piece of clothing or something like that, and she
Speaker 1: would studiously look at it, and she'd kind of examine it,
Speaker 1: and then she'd look at me and say, I can
Speaker 1: make that for to you. You don't need to buy it.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, as a kid, I just wanted store
Speaker 1: bought stuff, you know, like please take me to J. C.
Speaker 1: Pennies and buy me those jeans. And she's like, no,
Speaker 1: you can't make jeans. Mom. She's like, I could make jeans.
Speaker 1: And we would go down to the fabric store and
Speaker 1: pick out fabric and get a Buttermilk or Simplicity or
Speaker 1: Vogue pattern and she would make me my clothes. I mean,
Speaker 1: crazy gorgeous things. I mean I look back on that
Speaker 1: stuff now and I think she was amazing. But she
Speaker 1: also could crochet, and she could crochet so beautifully, and
Speaker 1: she has made me the most extraordinary bedspreads. And one
Speaker 1: day we were in a Ralph Laurence store, and you
Speaker 1: know how Ralph Lauren has a lot of vintage stuff
Speaker 1: in it, and they had a vintage crochet bedspread, probably
Speaker 1: from the twenties or something, all white, and I was
Speaker 1: my mom was over there looking at the crochet bedspread,
Speaker 1: and I was wandering the store and I came back
Speaker 1: in about twenty minutes and my mom was sitting there
Speaker 1: and she had her hand under her chin, and she
Speaker 1: was just staring at the bedspread, staring at it. And
Speaker 1: I said, Mom, what are you doing? And she said,
Speaker 1: I'm counting the stitches because I'm going to do this
Speaker 1: pattern when I get home. It was the most intricate pattern.
Speaker 1: And she got home and she made she made it.
Speaker 1: I don't know how she did it, and that is
Speaker 1: what is on my bed. I mean, it's unbelievable. So there.
Speaker 1: I think I always saw my mom being creative and
Speaker 1: having something to do that was, you know, something she
Speaker 1: did out of love really or her own creative endeavor.
Speaker 1: But you know, I look around my house and there's
Speaker 1: so many things that my mom made, so I know
Speaker 1: I'm doing that now. I'm just painting a bunch. I'll
Speaker 1: leave them around. The kids will like either want them
Speaker 1: or not want them. You know, have you sold any no,
Speaker 1: have you ever thought about selling them? Would you sell one?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess if somebody wanted one, maybe
Speaker 1: here's I got a suggestion. This is a silly one.
Speaker 1: It's pretty Actually it's not a silly suggestion. I love
Speaker 1: rock posters, which are these there's a whole culture of
Speaker 1: people who are these designers and printers who print posters
Speaker 1: just for one show. They do a design just for
Speaker 1: one show and then they make it on a you know,
Speaker 1: screen print or something and they make it. Um. That
Speaker 1: might be kind of cool. You could make a series
Speaker 1: of show posters. Wow, I like that idea. And then
Speaker 1: you don't have to sell them, but you could use
Speaker 1: them to Yeah. Well, like Joni Mitchell used to paint
Speaker 1: a lot on her album covers and yeah, she used
Speaker 1: to do a lot of paintings. She didn't she was
Speaker 1: really good and amazing self portraits and all of that.
Speaker 1: I did take one painting and I made um um
Speaker 1: cards out of them, like Greenland cards. And then I
Speaker 1: did this one painting that was um, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you guys know what evil eyes are there? Those
Speaker 1: like little symbols in sort of Mediterranean culture that are
Speaker 1: supposed to be good luck. And so I did a
Speaker 1: whole series of evil eyes and I printed fabric out
Speaker 1: of that and made pajama pants up. It's like and
Speaker 1: I know, and then I was thinking, well, maybe I
Speaker 1: could do you know how you do lyric posters when
Speaker 1: you go out on tour, and so I thought, well,
Speaker 1: maybe I could paint my own lyric posters and then
Speaker 1: handwrite the lyrics on there, like something like that. It
Speaker 1: would be fun to do it, all right, Okay, Chapter two.
Speaker 1: In every episode of Geeking Out, I see if I
Speaker 1: can trade one thing I've discovered recently with one thing
Speaker 1: that my guest has discovered. Anything is admissible in this
Speaker 1: friendly exchange. I call trade it, all right. This section
Speaker 1: of the podcast is called trade You. I'm going to
Speaker 1: trade you something like one thing I'm kind of into
Speaker 1: right now in exchange for one thing that you're into
Speaker 1: right now. It could be anything. Could be like a
Speaker 1: show you're watching on one of the services. It could
Speaker 1: be like a record you're like, a book, could be
Speaker 1: just like, for instance, the other day, I suggested, like,
Speaker 1: I found this pillow that stays cold. What's that? You
Speaker 1: know it's not that, But you have to listen to
Speaker 1: the podcast, all right, So I'll start. Um. You had
Speaker 1: mentioned this earlier when our conversation. Uh, I am into
Speaker 1: board games, and this has happened in the past five
Speaker 1: years maybe, and it started very um innocently. I think
Speaker 1: as like an extent shouldn't like a trivial pursuit was
Speaker 1: kind of too hard to some degree, and I came
Speaker 1: across this one called bezer Wizard, which was this kind
Speaker 1: of Swedish trivia game. It was it was Swedish design,
Speaker 1: but it's in English and uh, and it became just
Speaker 1: a funny thing to pull the cards out and just
Speaker 1: talk to people in my house, and my kids were
Speaker 1: smart enough to try to answer, and eventually, or pretty quickly,
Speaker 1: I was like, well, do they have an extra pack?
Speaker 1: I know all the answers already, So I got online
Speaker 1: and I found the website I went through was a
Speaker 1: website called board game Geek, but that was just where
Speaker 1: it popped up first, right. I was like, where are
Speaker 1: the extra bezer Wizard And it came up at this
Speaker 1: and then it said, oh, this is an award section
Speaker 1: of our highest award winning games for each year. And
Speaker 1: I went back two or three years and I bought
Speaker 1: one of the games. And all of these games are
Speaker 1: things like your brain just doesn't quite get until you
Speaker 1: see them. Okay, they've made apps out of some of
Speaker 1: these things, like video like off your phone, but I
Speaker 1: would start you on a game called Ticket to Ride.
Speaker 1: So what it is good it's a it's a great title.
Speaker 1: Love that song. UM. It's about trains and you you
Speaker 1: draw destinations that you have, but you don't reveal which
Speaker 1: destinations you have, UM. And then you have a certain
Speaker 1: number of trains and each turn you can play a
Speaker 1: certain number of trains or you know, depending on what
Speaker 1: you have, and you have to have the certain cards
Speaker 1: with the right colors to get the right track allocations.
Speaker 1: And but nobody knows where the other guy's going. I
Speaker 1: love this right, And what it is is that it's
Speaker 1: a culture of um. Kind of this Eastern European game designers.
Speaker 1: So they're they're from Poland, they're from uh, like the Netherlands.
Speaker 1: They're also from like Norwegian. Some of them. These game
Speaker 1: designers are Swedish and you they have this unbelievable um
Speaker 1: conservancy of rules in order to create a game that
Speaker 1: never repeats. And they've gotten better and better and better
Speaker 1: and better at it. So I'll start you on ticket
Speaker 1: to Ride and you just you just buy it, okay,
Speaker 1: and and one night at your house you pull it out.
Speaker 1: You can play it between two sounds like right up
Speaker 1: my kid's alley and play between two people, or it
Speaker 1: can get bigger you know, you'll expand out to a
Speaker 1: certain number of people. But um, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: the gateway drug to what the new board game world is. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I still like board games, I don't want to necessarily.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can only do a couple of online games,
Speaker 1: like on my phone, but I don't really you know,
Speaker 1: I get I get bored with them online. I'd like
Speaker 1: to sit in a room and sit across froom somebody
Speaker 1: and get very competitive. And you're going to love this. Okay, good,
Speaker 1: And then when you're done with that, reach out to me.
Speaker 1: I'll help you on step too. Okay, good, all right,
Speaker 1: I will. So now I'm supposed to trade you something.
Speaker 1: So now you turn me onto something that you think
Speaker 1: I would like. Okay, I would like to trade you Antarctica,
Speaker 1: the entire continent. Yes, but yes. Last year we went
Speaker 1: to Antarctica with a bunch of friends and we went
Speaker 1: on a boat called an ice breaker. And what that
Speaker 1: is is a boat that actually can cruise through ice.
Speaker 1: Because when you get way way way way down into Antarctica,
Speaker 1: you are surrounded by ice. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that we did was we slept in the ice because
Speaker 1: you can't put an anchor down anywhere, so your boat
Speaker 1: has to constantly be moving or you have to be, um,
Speaker 1: what's the word jammed into the ice. So imagine that
Speaker 1: you have a piece of ice and it's miles and
Speaker 1: miles and miles and miles long, and it looks like snow,
Speaker 1: but it's really ice, and maybe it's I don't know,
Speaker 1: a foot thick, so maybe a foot or more in underwater.
Speaker 1: And you're on this boat and you're like, all right, well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get ready to go to bed now. And
Speaker 1: they take the boat and they just jam it into
Speaker 1: the ice. They yeah, kind of, and then what happens
Speaker 1: is the ice around it us sort of hugs the
Speaker 1: boat and keeps it in place. So one night we
Speaker 1: were sleeping and about one or two in the morning,
Speaker 1: and of course down there it doesn't get dark, so
Speaker 1: you have maybe two or three hours of nighttime and
Speaker 1: that's it. It's like the rest of the time. But
Speaker 1: we're sleeping and all of a sudden we hear this horrible,
Speaker 1: horrific crashing noise and I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: we have hit an iceberg. But no, it was just
Speaker 1: the boat repositioning itself into the ice. So that we
Speaker 1: wouldn't float away. But one of the things that you
Speaker 1: I thought, like going into Antarctica and like, you know, what,
Speaker 1: what are we going to do on this boat for
Speaker 1: two weeks. We're gonna go crazy. You know it's gonna
Speaker 1: be freezing cold. What are we gonna do? Honestly, the
Speaker 1: time went by so quickly. We didn't have enough free
Speaker 1: time because there was constantly whale watching, going out on
Speaker 1: dinghy is, following whales, kayaking, following whales, hiking and looking
Speaker 1: at penguin colonies, or just hiking and and looking at
Speaker 1: icebergs and um watching icebergs calve, which means the part
Speaker 1: of the iceberg falls off into the water. We saw
Speaker 1: one iceberg that's so huge it's called B fIF K
Speaker 1: that it is tracked by NASA. It's seventeen miles long,
Speaker 1: four miles wide, and four or five feet tall. It's
Speaker 1: like it's like Manhattan floating around down there. So I
Speaker 1: would say Antarctica way more interesting than I ever thought
Speaker 1: it was going to be. And I got to paint
Speaker 1: down there, and we did sketch club, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: we did. And you had to reserve all the white, yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: That was hard to do when you're painting snow. Snow
Speaker 1: is hard to do that a lot of white. Okay,
Speaker 1: I only have one question about him. Okay, did you
Speaker 1: like panic pack? No. We had a very specific packing list,
Speaker 1: and I was very proud of my packing because you're
Speaker 1: basically wearing things like ski clothes all day long and
Speaker 1: then at night you're in sweats. It was like super easy. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: that would be my only anxiety. Yeah, like very easy.
Speaker 1: I would overpack just out of anxiety. Like no, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna phrase no, no, no, Okay, that's awesome. We need
Speaker 1: to thank you for being here. Thank you. Podcast loves You,
Speaker 1: good Bye. Chapter three me geeking out on music, the
Speaker 1: set list, the mix tape, the sequence, Why it matters
Speaker 1: where your favorite song lives, Between the shrinking aisles that
Speaker 1: used to carry music in your favorite store to the
Speaker 1: streaming apps that flood your phone. I can see how
Speaker 1: some people might think that albums are dead and the
Speaker 1: music is in trouble. I, however, would like to propose
Speaker 1: that music is alive and healthy, but that for now
Speaker 1: we are in the age of the playlist. If you
Speaker 1: squint your eyes the right way, a playlist is actually
Speaker 1: a mixtape, and if you have a mix tape of
Speaker 1: your favorite band, it's actually what you hope the perfect
Speaker 1: set list would be if you ever got to see
Speaker 1: them live. And if you trust your favorite band, really
Speaker 1: trust them, then the list of their new music is
Speaker 1: the running order of their current album. In each case,
Speaker 1: I believe that one song supports the one after it.
Speaker 1: It could be story or rhythm or key or even
Speaker 1: shock that connects one song to the next. But there's
Speaker 1: no class that you can take as an artist. To
Speaker 1: get this right. You kind of have to go the
Speaker 1: long way. The schooling probably looks like this. You make
Speaker 1: mix tapes for every girlfriend through middle school or high school,
Speaker 1: and then one day you join a band, and then
Speaker 1: you keep changing the set list through hundreds or even
Speaker 1: thousands of shows, and eventually the PhD level of this
Speaker 1: skill happens when you make records. You pick the best
Speaker 1: songs you can and you try to put them in
Speaker 1: the best order. Today, I'm gonna tell you what I
Speaker 1: know about song order from a mix tape to a
Speaker 1: set list to an album, and show you how it
Speaker 1: applies to the new Sugarland album and the tour we're
Speaker 1: going on this summer. The mix tape. These I would
Speaker 1: make in middle school in high school to try to
Speaker 1: tell girlfriends how I was feeling about him. I happen
Speaker 1: to really say how I was feeling out loud, you know.
Speaker 1: I try to pick one funny song, when sexy song,
Speaker 1: maybe a serious song, but definitely one as a test
Speaker 1: to see if she even liked good music. And in
Speaker 1: my mind it was a way to see if we
Speaker 1: were compared hatible. I always seem to have an excess
Speaker 1: song for the sexy, or yaz song for the cool,
Speaker 1: or maybe even a Charlie Sexton song to see if
Speaker 1: she liked him or not. But the first song in
Speaker 1: the last ones were the big ones. I would start
Speaker 1: a lot of times with this in excess song. I
Speaker 1: was standing, what's never? And then I would close with
Speaker 1: this you Tube song, And after a couple of days
Speaker 1: I would ask her what her favorite song was, like
Speaker 1: the answer was going to indicate whether we were compatible
Speaker 1: or gonna make it. Mix tapes are the first real
Speaker 1: exposure to picking songs and putting them in an order
Speaker 1: that flows. Nowadays, you can do this by yourself on
Speaker 1: Spotify or Apple Music instead of two cassette tapes, and
Speaker 1: then you can share them with friends. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: not saying, but I'm saying, right now, there's somebody you like,
Speaker 1: maybe you should make him a playlist. The next level
Speaker 1: of the music list video game happens when you're in
Speaker 1: a band and picking the set list. You could come
Speaker 1: out of the gate with energy or ease the audience
Speaker 1: into the night. Play your hits early, save them for
Speaker 1: the end. The choice is yours. How you want the
Speaker 1: roller coaster to feel to the audience when they write it.
Speaker 1: In Sugarland, Jennifer and I like to divide the set
Speaker 1: into three acts, the first being the welcome, the second
Speaker 1: being the wandering, and the third being the run to
Speaker 1: the finish. This summer, we're starting with the same first
Speaker 1: song that is the first song on our new album.
Speaker 1: The album and the song are both called Bigger, and
Speaker 1: the song sounds like this. Well, the fun part is
Speaker 1: that I stripped out some of the sounds and decided
Speaker 1: to make it sound even bigger as an intro like this,
Speaker 1: and I'm excited just hearing that. I love the top
Speaker 1: of shows. You know. Next, we walk you through some
Speaker 1: of the songs you know by us Stuck like glue.
Speaker 1: All I want to do. I even try to move
Speaker 1: us from more progressive instruments and sounds into more acoustic
Speaker 1: and routs instruments within three or four songs. By the
Speaker 1: time we're in already gone. We are the band that
Speaker 1: you remember. This is exactly when we start messing with you.
Speaker 1: Act two should contain the tension of any play. It's
Speaker 1: where things go wrong, where the hero gets lost, and
Speaker 1: in rock and roll terms, I would say it's where
Speaker 1: you start asking what happened to your favorite band? What
Speaker 1: are they doing? What is this song? This is where
Speaker 1: you truly contemplate a bathroom break or another drink. This
Speaker 1: is where songs like Incredible Machine, Though as the middle
Speaker 1: part of the set starts to heighten, it will be
Speaker 1: capped off with the production moment, usually something that transforms
Speaker 1: us on stage as well as our audience. This year
Speaker 1: it's a song called Burden of Cage. Sounds like this.
Speaker 1: Quickly after we roll into Act three and begin to
Speaker 1: climb into joy waves and waves. Song after song, you
Speaker 1: try to move the energy up until you get to
Speaker 1: the last song. If we plan an encore, it will
Speaker 1: usually be two songs long, one for message and then
Speaker 1: one for a goodbye, thank you it feels like maybe
Speaker 1: an epilogue. I know it sounds corny that we put
Speaker 1: this much care into it, but it feels like the
Speaker 1: responsible thing to do. These fans are the lifeblood of
Speaker 1: our work. This brings us to albums equence. This is
Speaker 1: like the graduate level. When you listen to a sugar
Speaker 1: Land record, you should listen for three things. Now, this
Speaker 1: is just personal to me. One, how the first three
Speaker 1: songs feel. Then for the album break which is where
Speaker 1: you would turn the vinyl over. So that's the last
Speaker 1: song on side one, and the first song on side
Speaker 1: two that matters. Then for the last song on the album,
Speaker 1: these spots are where all of the magic happens. To me,
Speaker 1: I believe that the first three songs have to be unstoppable,
Speaker 1: and without that buy in, a new listener is just
Speaker 1: kind of gonna move on. Then, the last song on
Speaker 1: side one says I Dare you to turn it over,
Speaker 1: and on this album it's a song called leaning on Back.
Speaker 1: The first song on side two is Babe, our song
Speaker 1: that features Taylor Swift, and the album ends with a
Speaker 1: song called Not the Only, which is coincidentally our first encore.
Speaker 1: So you see how this works. So now you know
Speaker 1: when our album comes out, go listen for the flow
Speaker 1: of it, see how it makes you feel. And the
Speaker 1: next time you put on your favorite record or go
Speaker 1: see your favorite band, notice how much time they took
Speaker 1: to build the album or the show. And if you
Speaker 1: get the time, make a mixtape or make a playlist
Speaker 1: for someone you love, put it in the right order.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this episode of Geeking Out and
Speaker 1: we are all hard at work here on the next one.
Speaker 1: Are you obsessed with something amazing? I want to tell
Speaker 1: us about it? Right to us at geeking Out with
Speaker 1: KB at gmail dot com and you might be a
Speaker 1: guest on an upcoming episode. Come find out more about
Speaker 1: me and this pie podcast at Christian Bush dot com,
Speaker 1: Christian with a K, follow me at Christian Bush on Twitter,
Speaker 1: Christian Bush on Instagram, Christian Bush on Facebook, and Christian M.
Speaker 1: Bush on Snapchat. Thanks to Bobby Bones for the opportunity
Speaker 1: to build this podcast, Brandon Bush for the editing and
Speaker 1: the soundtrack, Tom Tapley for the audio wizardry, and Whitney
Speaker 1: Pastoring for being a great producer and making this whole
Speaker 1: thing possible. This is Christian Bush gigging out. Thank you
Speaker 1: for listening,