Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Lessnett's Podcast. My
Speaker 1: guest today is Rick Matera Tanda a Goose. Rick, how
Speaker 1: did it feel to play Madison Square Garden?
Speaker 2: Thanks? Thanks for having me, Bob. Felt surreal for sure.
Speaker 2: I mean, I grew up in Connecticut and that's you know,
Speaker 2: that's it, you know, bears a lot of weight in
Speaker 2: our world in many ways. So yeah, it was. It
Speaker 2: was a wild experience. You know. It's just really grateful
Speaker 2: that we were able to do it.
Speaker 1: And any difference other than you know, the Gravitas location,
Speaker 1: Was there any different thing in the show or the
Speaker 1: fact that there were fifteen thousand people.
Speaker 2: There in terms of our show? Yeah, we what we did.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's there's so much, you know, like like
Speaker 2: you said, the gravity toss of the whole thing. There's
Speaker 2: there's so much uh lore and history and every so
Speaker 2: many respects that you know, I think we obviously we're
Speaker 2: readily aware of all that, and UH just did our
Speaker 2: best to to you know, to bring the heat, I guess,
Speaker 2: to uh to do to do what we do, try
Speaker 2: to show up and be present.
Speaker 1: You know. So you're from Wilton, Connecticut, Yeah, I'm from Fairfield,
Speaker 1: which is right now exactly. So you grew up in Wilton.
Speaker 1: What did your parents do for a living?
Speaker 2: They both worked in insurance. I think when I was
Speaker 2: born my mom stopped working in insurance. My dad kept
Speaker 2: kept working in insurance reinsurance and you know, kind of
Speaker 2: worked his way up in that industry.
Speaker 1: And did he work in the city or you know,
Speaker 1: Wilton Westport?
Speaker 2: Uh? He was worked mostly in Stanford as far as
Speaker 2: I can recall. I think he was bouncing around a
Speaker 2: different companies, mostly in Stanford.
Speaker 1: And how many kids in the family.
Speaker 2: It's me and I have a sister. He's ten years
Speaker 2: older than me.
Speaker 1: And what's she up to.
Speaker 2: She's a teacher. She's got three little boys, and she
Speaker 2: lives she lives in Richfield a couple times.
Speaker 1: Okay, Ridgefield Playhouse. So you're growing up. Was there music
Speaker 1: in the house? Yeah?
Speaker 2: My dad was from Long Island and so you know,
Speaker 2: there's like a lot of Billy Joel and he was
Speaker 2: into smooth jazz there, you know, some jazz guitar players,
Speaker 2: but kind of like you know, like Larry Coriel. He
Speaker 2: liked a lot, so it was kind of random stuff.
Speaker 2: He liked Springsteen, he liked Delvert McClinton a lot, which
Speaker 2: you know sometimes we gave him a hard time about that.
Speaker 1: But why a hard time about Delvert McClinton.
Speaker 2: It kind of just be came a joke, No, no
Speaker 2: shade to Delbert whatsoever, but it just it just became
Speaker 2: this this stick where my mom and I would would
Speaker 2: bust his chops about his his Delbert obsession.
Speaker 1: Sandy Beach is good song there by DOUBLET mcclinn. So
Speaker 1: did you listen to his music and like his music
Speaker 1: or did you quickly get your own music?
Speaker 2: Billie Joel took from a from a young age. You know,
Speaker 2: I I started really uh loving some of those songs
Speaker 2: when I would ride in his car and stuff. But
Speaker 2: I think, you know, my sister listened to Dave Matthews
Speaker 2: a lot when I was when I was, you know,
Speaker 2: a very young kid, and that that took even more
Speaker 2: took a minute. I didn't like it. It didn't speak to
Speaker 2: me at first when I was really young, but at
Speaker 2: you know, at a certain point that one, that one
Speaker 2: really kind of took hold.
Speaker 1: And when did you start playing an instrument? Uh?
Speaker 2: Sixth grade was the they rented a guitar for the
Speaker 2: first time for me, and I took a couple lessons.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I was probably eleven or twelve.
Speaker 1: So what was the motivation for them to rent a
Speaker 1: guitar for you?
Speaker 2: I had been asking for a while. I had a
Speaker 2: music had just a like a crazy effect on me
Speaker 2: as a kid. Any anything I listened to. I mean
Speaker 2: I remember like it was the you know, the CD era,
Speaker 2: so I got like the space dram sound. It really
Speaker 2: didn't matter it was I had a discman, I'd walk
Speaker 2: around and with my little headphones and listen to whatever
Speaker 2: CD I could get my hands on, and things just
Speaker 2: had like a they just made me feel like a
Speaker 2: like a crazy person, you know, had had a profound effect.
Speaker 2: So I was always drawn to it. I was always,
Speaker 2: you know, pretty intensely moved by it. And then seeing older,
Speaker 2: older brothers and and things like that of friends of
Speaker 2: mine playing guitar. There's you know a few experiences like that, right.
Speaker 2: I saw someone playing you know, smells like teen spirit
Speaker 2: on a guitar, and I was like, whoa, yeah that
Speaker 2: I want to do that.
Speaker 1: So they rented the guitar. What were lessons like.
Speaker 2: Those? First? The first couple lessons, I don't even remember, honestly,
Speaker 2: I started studying with a guy named Bob Ricchio in
Speaker 2: in Wilton, and uh, it was a kind of a
Speaker 2: slow start in the beginning. I you know, I liked
Speaker 2: to play music that I you know, liked in that
Speaker 2: you know, like recordings of some great songs and pretend
Speaker 2: like I was playing it like I knew what I
Speaker 2: was doing, and I really didn't. And I also started
Speaker 2: writing kind of right away before I had any discipline
Speaker 2: with practicing or anything like that. I started if I
Speaker 2: learned a chord or something, I just started making up songs.
Speaker 2: That was. That was kind of something that happened right
Speaker 2: out of the gate. But the discipline to start actually
Speaker 2: studying music and working on and practicing took took a
Speaker 2: little bit for me, didn't. It didn't happen right away.
Speaker 1: Well, starting writing songs, was it something like you'd been
Speaker 1: writing before, non musical stuff? Poet three short stories? Where
Speaker 1: did the genesis come from?
Speaker 2: You know? When I was when I was really young,
Speaker 2: I would I would, you know, make up little little
Speaker 2: like really silly little things and be like, hey, you
Speaker 2: want to hear my song. It's going to be some
Speaker 2: silly little thing, but really not not much of that.
Speaker 2: I wasn't writing a ton of poetry prior to that
Speaker 2: that I recall at least stuff to remember some of
Speaker 2: these things sometimes. But I think when I when I started,
Speaker 2: you know, when I got a guitar and started really
Speaker 2: getting into music, it just it all kind of happened
Speaker 2: at once around that Around that time, you know, the
Speaker 2: music kind of came first, and then I was like, well,
Speaker 2: I'm just going to write lyrics for this and write songs.
Speaker 2: So I wrote little songs about you know, bullies at school,
Speaker 2: whatever whatever it was, and quickly got into recording with whatever,
Speaker 2: you know, whatever kind of recording apparatus I could get
Speaker 2: my hands on at the time, which you know, I
Speaker 2: could started with like a little cassette recorder thing, which
Speaker 2: was awesome.
Speaker 1: Okay, if you're writing a bullies at school, were you
Speaker 1: bullied at school?
Speaker 2: Uh? Not not particularly, but I just like, I mean,
Speaker 2: sometimes sometimes I get there. There's there's definitely certain situations
Speaker 2: where I, uh, you know, I caught a caught a
Speaker 2: hard time. But it was also like, when I think
Speaker 2: back to that was kind of an observational thing too,
Speaker 2: just like seeing seeing people going through their own stuff,
Speaker 2: but then like taking it out on other people that
Speaker 2: I don't know. I just the first song I kind
Speaker 2: of remember writing was about that.
Speaker 1: And how did you fit in in school?
Speaker 2: I went through like different phases. There's a bunch I
Speaker 2: think a good number of years I was pretty quiet.
Speaker 2: It kind of like phase in and out of different
Speaker 2: zones and then sometimes you know, it kind of had
Speaker 2: this pattern of like I'd go into a new school
Speaker 2: and you know, kind of had like the slate would
Speaker 2: be clean, and I would I'd be really quiet and
Speaker 2: kind of keep to myself and really shy. I was
Speaker 2: pretty like, I was pretty shy. I've always been pretty
Speaker 2: shy and like socially anxious. But then you know, by
Speaker 2: the end of my time out of school, i'd have,
Speaker 2: you know, a group of friends and a little micro
Speaker 2: community kind of thing, and it changed forms a bunch.
Speaker 2: But yeah, you know, when I was really young, I
Speaker 2: was I was less shy, and then I think when
Speaker 2: I hit middle school is when I started getting really
Speaker 2: shy and awkward and anxious.
Speaker 1: So did you do well in school? Did you participate
Speaker 1: in activity sports?
Speaker 2: I played sports up into up until high school, and uh,
Speaker 2: and I had a really good time doing it. I
Speaker 2: played baseball the most, the longest, I would say, But yeah,
Speaker 2: by the time I got to high school was it
Speaker 2: was kind of like I saw that the the demands
Speaker 2: that you know, playing sports in high school had, and
Speaker 2: by that time I was already way too set on
Speaker 2: pursuing music and I wanted to kind of do everything
Speaker 2: I could do in that regard. So yeah, I kind
Speaker 2: of made the conscious decisions to not to stop playing sports.
Speaker 2: By by high school school I was, I was, I
Speaker 2: was like, all right, it wasn't great. Definitely wasn't That
Speaker 2: didn't come super easily to me. Some some subjects were
Speaker 2: easier than others. But it wasn't like a it wasn't
Speaker 2: a total mess, but you know, it wasn't great.
Speaker 1: So you're taking lessons. What is your teacher teaching you?
Speaker 1: And are you practicing?
Speaker 2: And the beginning is kind of the route of, you know,
Speaker 2: the the typical rudimentary stuff. You know, he showed me,
Speaker 2: like a chili pepper song and he kind of showing
Speaker 2: showing songs and licks and stuff like that, and chords.
Speaker 2: He was he was a good teacher in that way,
Speaker 2: and he taught a lot of people, a lot of
Speaker 2: kids in in the town. There and uh, I you
Speaker 2: know it, like I said, it took me a while
Speaker 2: before I started gaining gaining any discipline or getting serious
Speaker 2: about it or you know, showing real progress in that regard.
Speaker 2: I was always taken with it, but you know, it
Speaker 2: was more in the writing, in the creative, creative side.
Speaker 2: And then at a certain point, Uh, that started to
Speaker 2: shift throughout middle school, I would say, And and I
Speaker 2: think by the you know, there was there was a
Speaker 2: turning point with him where he started to realize that
Speaker 2: I was I was really I was taking it seriously
Speaker 2: and pursuing it. And when he saw that I was
Speaker 2: starting to make strides, he started pushing me more and
Speaker 2: more into jazz and started teaching me jazz. That was
Speaker 2: That was kind of where that journey started in a
Speaker 2: lot of ways.
Speaker 1: I would say, So, did he teach you how to
Speaker 1: read music? Can you read music today?
Speaker 2: Not proficiently? He did? You know? That was something that
Speaker 2: he taught and we're worked on and you know, I
Speaker 2: went to I went to music school, so it was
Speaker 2: it was part of that, but I kind of just
Speaker 2: got by with it. It was never it was never
Speaker 2: something that was that I became, you know, very very
Speaker 2: competent with.
Speaker 1: So he got you into jazz. What kind of jazz.
Speaker 2: He you know, he just started throwing standards at me
Speaker 2: and and teaching, you know, showing me how to get
Speaker 2: through the chord changes and and uh and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: There wasn't I didn't really get a knack for playing
Speaker 2: through changes until I did a summer program at Berkeley. Well,
Speaker 2: some summer I was in high school. I did like
Speaker 2: a I don't know if that was the one week
Speaker 2: guitar thing or the five week program. I forget what
Speaker 2: it was, but they you know, I went and did
Speaker 2: this ensemble and they put five hundred miles high. It
Speaker 2: was the Chickeria tune in front of me, and and
Speaker 2: I was still I still really didn't know what I
Speaker 2: was doing. At that point. I could, I could solo,
Speaker 2: you know over a modal thing. But you know, the
Speaker 2: first quarter was E minor, and you know, the head
Speaker 2: came around. I learned the head and played the head,
Speaker 2: and then solo came around. Everyone look to me and
Speaker 2: they're like, all right, you know, go and I was
Speaker 2: like E minor cool, got it and started selling over
Speaker 2: E minor. The second chord is G minor, which is
Speaker 2: like a total total change, and uh, you know, I
Speaker 2: kept selling an E minor and sounded like a total dufist.
Speaker 2: So that was like the wake up of what that
Speaker 2: is was really all about. And uh that that was
Speaker 2: like the turning point there for me, which was like,
Speaker 2: it was a really cool moment for me in my
Speaker 2: musical journey, I guess because I just took that tune
Speaker 2: and sat down and learned the chord scales for every
Speaker 2: every change and learned it in each position. And then
Speaker 2: you know, that was that was kind of the the
Speaker 2: impetus and in the moment catalyst for learning that type
Speaker 2: of thing, which was a cool experience.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back. You start writing songs. Most people
Speaker 1: start writing songs think their initial songs are fantastic and
Speaker 1: want to play them for people. Later they realized they sucked,
Speaker 1: but at first they think they're great. Welling through your mind.
Speaker 2: You know, I think back to that period so often,
Speaker 2: especially now, the freedom I had at that age that
Speaker 2: I think everyone has at that age in one way
Speaker 2: or another, and I imagine that you know, it varies
Speaker 2: quite a bit. I you know, can't can't under undervalue
Speaker 2: or or you know, I can't stress enough how how
Speaker 2: incredible was to have parents that were really supportive and
Speaker 2: and you know kind of we're there for it, whatever
Speaker 2: it was. But uh, yeah I didn't. I don't. I
Speaker 2: wasn't thinking about if they were good or not. And
Speaker 2: I wasn't trying to I wasn't trying to go out
Speaker 2: and play play them at gigs. I wasn't trying to
Speaker 2: play them for people or like trying to do anything
Speaker 2: with them. The the discovery of them, like figuring out
Speaker 2: of learning some chords and finding a new chord progression
Speaker 2: that I hadn't I don't know, just discovering this the
Speaker 2: sound of a new chord progression and then writing a
Speaker 2: song and then recording a song. That's really all I
Speaker 2: wanted to do, was like write these songs and record them.
Speaker 2: And that thing was just like the most thrilling process.
Speaker 2: That was the most thrilling thing I could possibly do
Speaker 2: with my time at that time. And yeah, there there wasn't.
Speaker 2: I really wasn't thinking about playing gigs or or or
Speaker 2: doing anything with it. It. Eventually, I you know, got
Speaker 2: a band together, I got a got my best friend
Speaker 2: to start playing bass, and and we you know, found
Speaker 2: another guy who we were friends with at school and
Speaker 2: he was playing drums. We had a trio and by
Speaker 2: eighth grade we recorded like an album in my in
Speaker 2: my basement with a little cork twelve track you know,
Speaker 2: you just burn you bounce everything down into a CD
Speaker 2: and I you know, uh copied a bunch of CDs
Speaker 2: and sold him around school and that was like it
Speaker 2: was it was this just the purity of the whole
Speaker 2: thing was just I you know, I think back to
Speaker 2: it all the time. It was kind of doesn't get
Speaker 2: better than that.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: We'd get have like band practice once a week after school,
Speaker 2: come home and eat popcorn chicken and go down to
Speaker 2: the basement and just you know, whack it around. And
Speaker 2: it was it was like that's it still feels like
Speaker 2: that's what it's all about, you know. But uh, yeah,
Speaker 2: that you know, it wasn't uh. I think the only
Speaker 2: show we really ever played was the Talent Show in
Speaker 2: eighth grade, which I was you know, that was the
Speaker 2: first time I'd really performed. I think the Talent Show
Speaker 2: in eighth grade. You know, we had we had made
Speaker 2: this this this album had like fifteen tracks on it
Speaker 2: and sold around school and had never played out anywhere,
Speaker 2: but never played live or anything like that, and uh,
Speaker 2: you know, it was this. It was this like the
Speaker 2: night the day of the thing, Everyone's like you nervous.
Speaker 2: I was like, no, I feel totally fine. And then
Speaker 2: I just like threw up everywhere. So I guess that
Speaker 2: was the the maiden voyage of learning what what performance
Speaker 2: anxiety does to my nervous system. But yeah, it was
Speaker 2: It was a it was a funny experience.
Speaker 1: Okay, you say about recording to cassette, did you have
Speaker 1: a four track poored a studio? When you're talking about cassette,
Speaker 1: how sophisticated was it?
Speaker 2: The cassette thing was very unsophisticated. It wasn't even a
Speaker 2: four track, and I barely remember that it was pretty
Speaker 2: it was fairly short lived. That was like that was
Speaker 2: in the early early stages. And I honestly don't even
Speaker 2: know what that thing was and where it came from.
Speaker 2: I just remember sitting in my bedroom and it just
Speaker 2: had like a built in microphone and it was I
Speaker 2: think you could I don't even know if you could,
Speaker 2: if if you could layer anything, it might have just
Speaker 2: been like a one done kind of situation. But I
Speaker 2: remember I would, like, you know, play and sing and record,
Speaker 2: and then have had a buddy who was like kind
Speaker 2: of starting to learn drums. It was like early early,
Speaker 2: the first things. And he he didn't have a drum set,
Speaker 2: but he was taking drum lessons and he had a
Speaker 2: practice pad, so he would come over and he would
Speaker 2: just like whack on the pack practice pad and I
Speaker 2: would learn it. So that was that was kind of
Speaker 2: the the first thing, which is you know, pretty short lived.
Speaker 1: So then did you graduate you're talking about you made
Speaker 1: this album? What equipment did you make the album on?
Speaker 2: By that time that was probably a couple of years later.
Speaker 2: I had this this COREK twelve track, which then I
Speaker 2: was I was you know, I spent a lot of
Speaker 2: time with that thing. I was able to you know,
Speaker 2: had twelve tracks. And then you know we had I
Speaker 2: had a few a handful of microphones enough to make
Speaker 2: up a drum set and track you know like bass,
Speaker 2: d I guitar maybe I threw a mic in the
Speaker 2: guitar amp on or do I don't even remember, and
Speaker 2: then uh, you know, a vocal mic and and you
Speaker 2: know a few mics for the drum set. So that
Speaker 2: was all going to the cork and then I would
Speaker 2: overdub vocals just to uh, you know, but I was
Speaker 2: a horrible singer. But I had no awareness I did,
Speaker 2: you know. I was just doing it, having a great time.
Speaker 2: But this singing thing was was never never there, never easy,
Speaker 2: never was I was not a natural singer by any stretch.
Speaker 1: Okay, you pick up the guitar in middle school, are
Speaker 1: you the outlier? Or is everybody playing instruments?
Speaker 2: Uh? Not necessarily, I wouldn't say either. There's like it
Speaker 2: somewhat of my minority. For sure. Everyone wasn't playing instruments,
Speaker 2: but you know, there was like you kind of knew
Speaker 2: everyone who was. There's a handful of people that were
Speaker 2: doing it, and everyone had their own kind of thing
Speaker 2: that they were doing or working on or into. So
Speaker 2: there weren't that many, but everyone was kind of aware
Speaker 2: of everyone that was that was checking it out.
Speaker 1: And when you started writing songs recording, who did you
Speaker 1: want to be?
Speaker 2: That's a good question, you know, Like in middle school,
Speaker 2: I mean, Dave Matthews was kind of this like this, uh,
Speaker 2: this touchstone throughout a lot of through really always so
Speaker 2: that that was always, you know, a big inspiration his
Speaker 2: whole world. But when I was in middle school, I had.
Speaker 2: I had this this DVD called Under the Radar. It
Speaker 2: was a Dispatch DVD, and it was it was kind
Speaker 2: of this, uh, kind of scrappy DVD of them like
Speaker 2: on the road and just doing things, going out of
Speaker 2: the studio, playing shows, to talking about their come up
Speaker 2: and Napster and that whole that whole thing. And I was,
Speaker 2: I was obsessed with that band at that time. So
Speaker 2: like I would say, in those early years of you know,
Speaker 2: whould I want to be, it was Dispatch.
Speaker 1: Okay, you got the two other members. You're in the basement.
Speaker 1: Are you a dictator saying I write all the songs,
Speaker 1: I want it this way, I want it that way.
Speaker 1: And they were just basically I don't want to see
Speaker 1: your servants going along with you. What did it look like?
Speaker 2: Uh, I don't remember it being like that, And I said, certainly,
Speaker 2: I hope it wasn't like that. I think, uh, they
Speaker 2: were were we were kind of just you know, doing it.
Speaker 2: I was I was writing the songs and you know,
Speaker 2: had had the ideas and was like, all right, let's
Speaker 2: try this, let's try this. And it didn't feel like
Speaker 2: there was I don't remember there being like they're they
Speaker 2: were I think from what I recall, Uh, they were
Speaker 2: just down down to go for the ride, you know,
Speaker 2: and and you know they weren't they weren't writing songs.
Speaker 2: It was either so it was kind of like a
Speaker 2: all right, yeah, here's this is the song, let's do
Speaker 2: it wasn't really didn't. I don't know. I think we
Speaker 2: were too young for it to be any kind of
Speaker 2: ego battles.
Speaker 1: I feel like, okay, so you finished the fifteen song,
Speaker 1: should make the CD. I assume you just burned the
Speaker 1: CDs on your own burner.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that the core trail track had it had like
Speaker 2: a CD you could you could bounce it down to
Speaker 2: a CD right on the thing and then just go
Speaker 2: make copies in the computer.
Speaker 1: Okay, so how many did you sell it? At? What price?
Speaker 2: I think I don't remember what we were selling for,
Speaker 2: maybe like ten bucks, but I think we made like
Speaker 2: somewhere between five hundred and seven hundred bucks something like that.
Speaker 2: It got a little it got a little conflated because
Speaker 2: the other two guys also crocheteded winter beanie hats, so
Speaker 2: we were selling those two. So you know that they
Speaker 2: were you know when we when when we weren't practicing
Speaker 2: and stuff. They were just crocheting hats and they had
Speaker 2: a little hat business called head Bandits. So we were
Speaker 2: we were kind of little little entrepreneurs, I guess, running around.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I think the album we made five hundred
Speaker 2: and seven hundred bucks something like that, which was pretty
Speaker 2: solid enough to buy like a new base amp.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely, really solid. You know, you got a
Speaker 1: couple of friends give you ten dollars, but how did
Speaker 1: you convince the other seventy odd people to get it ten?
Speaker 2: I think people were being nice, like teachers were buying them,
Speaker 2: and you know, people were people were being nice. But
Speaker 2: I guess it was a lot of kids at school.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't I don't totally remember. There
Speaker 2: there are some friends who are helping us help like
Speaker 2: helping us burn them and like helping us sell them
Speaker 2: and stuff. It was, you know, it's, uh, it's like
Speaker 2: one of those things when you're when you're young. You know,
Speaker 2: you got a little a little pack and everyone's kind
Speaker 2: of like getting in on the like we're doing it
Speaker 2: kind of energy. You know.
Speaker 1: Well where people buying it, listening to it, they say,
Speaker 1: oh I want to hear you play such and such.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know. I mean I listened
Speaker 2: back to it, and there's there's a lot of creative
Speaker 2: freedom there. This is my own perspective. I guess there's
Speaker 2: there's a lot of freedom in it and in the
Speaker 2: songs and stuff, and a lot of decisions that were
Speaker 2: made that I would never make now because they were
Speaker 2: coming from a place of having no no like theoretical
Speaker 2: understanding of of music and you know what, how like
Speaker 2: what kind of chord progressions are normal and things like that,
Speaker 2: which ended up making way more interesting choices, you know,
Speaker 2: because it's it was just kind of throwing things at
Speaker 2: the wall and chasing your ear and wound up being
Speaker 2: some some things that just you know are just very
Speaker 2: like kind of like wild card, wild card choices. But
Speaker 2: the vocals, like I said, were just like brutal. So
Speaker 2: I don't know if people listen to it or not.
Speaker 2: Can So how did you go?
Speaker 1: You know, you had stage fright, but how did your
Speaker 1: performance of the talent show go over?
Speaker 2: You know, I don't really know, Uh, I don't really know.
Speaker 2: I think there was there was something to be said
Speaker 2: for the just the fact that we were right that
Speaker 2: a bunch of songs were being written. It was like
Speaker 2: it was like there was like a body of original music,
Speaker 2: So I guess there was. There was like that. I
Speaker 2: remember that energy being kind of a thing, you know
Speaker 2: because like the other other bands were probably better than us,
Speaker 2: and you know, in the grade or whatever, but they
Speaker 2: were playing covers, but like they're saying way better and
Speaker 2: they're they're probably tighter and they played better or whatever
Speaker 2: it was, but you know, they're they're being just a
Speaker 2: lot of ideas, a lot of original songs happening. Uh
Speaker 2: felt like an energy, But I don't I don't think.
Speaker 2: I don't know if we were good or not, or
Speaker 2: if people thought we were good. I have no idea.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you had a band, you were selling CDs,
Speaker 1: you talk about these cover bands. How many bands were
Speaker 1: in the school? I mean, was this this thing where
Speaker 1: you were one of ten or one of two.
Speaker 2: Like maybe one of four, one of four or five
Speaker 2: something like that. There's like some rockers, you know, some
Speaker 2: hard some hard metal kind of guys, and then uh,
Speaker 2: you know some it was like another classic rock kind
Speaker 2: of outfit and things like that.
Speaker 1: Okay, little school, Ine go to high school. Then what happens.
Speaker 2: The first year of high school. It was kind of
Speaker 2: it was kind of like back to what I was
Speaker 2: saying before, I was didn't really have a crew anymore.
Speaker 2: It was it was it was like low men on
Speaker 2: the Totem Pole I had. I had a girlfriend, and
Speaker 2: I had like a really serious relationship, Like we spent
Speaker 2: a lot of time together and we went in really
Speaker 2: deep for for how young we were. And so I
Speaker 2: spent a lot of time doing that and kind of
Speaker 2: didn't hang out with friends that much at all, and
Speaker 2: was writing and recording a lot. But more so, the
Speaker 2: band wasn't really playing anymore. I think the drummer just
Speaker 2: didn't want to do it anymore. He stopped paying drums.
Speaker 2: He was like he was actually amazing skier. He was
Speaker 2: kind of pursuing that more and just wasn't interested in
Speaker 2: playing drums anymore. So we kind of stopped doing the
Speaker 2: band thing. But I continued to record a lot of
Speaker 2: music and I kept I was writing more than ever
Speaker 2: my first year of high school, and I had another
Speaker 2: buddy who played drums and keys, and he would come
Speaker 2: over and we would record stuff together. He'd play drums
Speaker 2: and keys, I'd played guitar bass and sing something on it,
Speaker 2: and so I was doing a lot of that, and
Speaker 2: then the summer summer after first year of high school,
Speaker 2: I started smoking weed and I got really into that,
Speaker 2: really really into that, and the it kind of propelled
Speaker 2: it was it was a major turning point in the
Speaker 2: journey because I got deeper and deeper into that was
Speaker 2: that was, you know, strangely when I really started studying music,
Speaker 2: starting studying theory and improvisational music in particular, but I
Speaker 2: stopped writing. I think, what is something about the way
Speaker 2: that impacted my brain and how things were, you know,
Speaker 2: there was there was still a lot of momentum and
Speaker 2: forward movement in from a musical standpoint, but the writing
Speaker 2: like halted in its tracks pretty much, which is you know,
Speaker 2: somewhat of a regret looking back kind of, you know,
Speaker 2: I can't help but be curious what would have happened
Speaker 2: if I had stayed on the trajectory it was on
Speaker 2: prior to that. But you know, nevertheless, I had a
Speaker 2: great time in high school for the most part. You know,
Speaker 2: it was those early years I was pretty sensitive and
Speaker 2: emotional and you know whatever. But as as the years
Speaker 2: went on, it was, you know, I had a lot
Speaker 2: of fun. You know, in high school it was kind
Speaker 2: of it was kind of like, you know, all you
Speaker 2: could ask for, and you know, I didn't realize it.
Speaker 2: I mean we was just having a great time at
Speaker 2: the time going through things. You know, I had anxiety
Speaker 2: and stuff too, but I guess it was mostly relative
Speaker 2: to my perspective post high school that I that was.
Speaker 2: That was when I really realized how great of a
Speaker 2: time it was in so many respects. But yeah, it
Speaker 2: was you know, studying the like with the guitar teacher,
Speaker 2: he was pushing jazz more and I was studying that,
Speaker 2: and that was kind of the time I got into
Speaker 2: you know, the Dead and Fish and things of that.
Speaker 2: You know, different types of jam bands. I'm Friese McGee
Speaker 2: and MO and all these all these different bands and
Speaker 2: learning that stuff. Getting into that world. Uh, playing along
Speaker 2: with those bands was kind of the moments where it
Speaker 2: was just like a release. It was just so much
Speaker 2: fun and it was kind of like I'd spend time
Speaker 2: studying jazz and trying to decode that language and then
Speaker 2: let my hair down and play along with with, you know,
Speaker 2: the jam bands in my room after school kind of thing.
Speaker 1: So what happened with the girlfriend? How long did that last?
Speaker 1: How did you meet her and how did it end?
Speaker 2: We we were in school together and my sister actually
Speaker 2: started babysitting for them. There was a yeah, we were
Speaker 2: kind of just in the same in same community, and
Speaker 2: I just had a huge crush on her. And then
Speaker 2: we started spending a bunch of time together and you know,
Speaker 2: went went full like young love mode. And then I
Speaker 2: don't know, you know, when that summer after freshman year
Speaker 2: of high school, I started smoking a bunch of weed
Speaker 2: and we kind of just, I don't know, it's like
Speaker 2: we just we kind of went separate ways in a way,
Speaker 2: and uh, you know, it's tough to remember how those
Speaker 2: things unfold, but you know, they's like when you go
Speaker 2: that that deep as a young kid, you have like
Speaker 2: no idea, you have no idea what like what you're doing,
Speaker 2: and you just kind of like the fall, you know,
Speaker 2: neck deep into the young love thing and it's just
Speaker 2: it's like consuming and then the there's there's you know,
Speaker 2: strange things that come out of it when you don't
Speaker 2: have balance. I guess that maybe that's that's part of
Speaker 2: the thing, is I don't, you know, struggle with balance
Speaker 2: when when there's something I'm you know, really uh drawn to.
Speaker 2: I guess you know it's like, oh, make the analogy
Speaker 2: of like getting getting a bag of Dorito's and dumping
Speaker 2: out the entire bag of Dorito's on your lap. It's
Speaker 2: a weird analogy, but that's that's kind of how we've
Speaker 2: come to refer to that that type of energy instead
Speaker 2: of you know, the lack of being able to pace
Speaker 2: yourself or or maintain some kind of balance in the
Speaker 2: context of entering into or being drawn, you know, engaging
Speaker 2: with something that you're drawn to in in an intense way.
Speaker 2: It could be you know, analogy. You know, it's it's
Speaker 2: presented itself in all types of different situations. Relationships, a band,
Speaker 2: you know anything.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're the type of guy who always has a girlfriend.
Speaker 1: You had a girlfriend who were a freshman. You have
Speaker 1: a girlfriend when you were sophomore junior? How did that
Speaker 1: play out?
Speaker 2: No? No, I was I was way too uh stoned
Speaker 2: and shy to talk to girls for at least for
Speaker 2: the next couple of years I had. I ended up
Speaker 2: having another girlfriend, and like when I was a senior,
Speaker 2: but for the bulk of high school, I was I
Speaker 2: was too stoned and shy talk to girls.
Speaker 1: And who turned you on to dope.
Speaker 2: I don't know e every you know, everyone was kind
Speaker 2: of doing it, and I just it, uh it it
Speaker 2: fired up like the you know, learning music, playing music,
Speaker 2: listening to music on on weed. It was just I was,
Speaker 2: I was. I was just taken with it, you know,
Speaker 2: but yeah, it was it was just around. It was
Speaker 2: kind of as part of the culture where where we were,
Speaker 2: as I imagine it was in most places.
Speaker 1: And this was something your parents were aware of, unaware of,
Speaker 1: cool with, not cool with.
Speaker 2: They're they're pretty sharp, they're pretty aware. And at first
Speaker 2: they were, you know, my mom was mortified, but then
Speaker 2: as time went on, they you know, my house ended
Speaker 2: up being the house that everyone would convene at. Like
Speaker 2: we hung out at my house the most. You know,
Speaker 2: if there was a party going around going on somewhere
Speaker 2: in town, we we'd go there. But if there wasn't, we'd,
Speaker 2: like the default thing was was hanging out of my house.
Speaker 2: And you know, they they allowed. It wasn't like a
Speaker 2: like a weird thing. You know, sometimes it gets kind
Speaker 2: of weird when that's when that's the vibe. But they
Speaker 2: knew what we were doing and they were cool with
Speaker 2: it as long as everyone was making good decisions and
Speaker 2: there I think their philosophy was like, we'd rather them
Speaker 2: here safe and uh learning how to make good decisions
Speaker 2: while partying. Then you know this it being this this
Speaker 2: crazy forbidden thing and then making making much worse mistakes.
Speaker 1: You know, so we're in this story. Do you go
Speaker 1: to the Brookley summer program? Uh?
Speaker 2: You know, I don't remember what when that started. That
Speaker 2: might I might have gone to the first one, like
Speaker 2: at the freshman year after high school, or it could
Speaker 2: have been after sophomore year. I'm not sure, but I
Speaker 2: think I think one summer I did the guitar It
Speaker 2: was just a week I did the guitar thing. There
Speaker 2: was another a guitar uh program, like a one week
Speaker 2: guitar camp kind of thing I did maybe uh maybe
Speaker 2: a year prior. So I think it was like one
Speaker 2: summer I did this one guitar camp somewhere in Connecticut,
Speaker 2: and then I did a one week thing at Berkeley.
Speaker 2: And then I think the following summer, I just I
Speaker 2: was getting more and more serious and and uh about it,
Speaker 2: and I did the five week program. Uh the following summer,
Speaker 2: I think, and yeah, I was you know, I I
Speaker 2: was very very lucky that my parents were able to
Speaker 2: and willing to set me up in those programs and
Speaker 2: and you know, that's like, that's the privilege I was.
Speaker 2: It was, it was, it was privileged to be able
Speaker 2: to learn music at that age.
Speaker 1: You know, Okay, you went on the five week programs?
Speaker 1: What was that like? Were the students competitive? Were they
Speaker 1: is good or better? Was it kind of like summer
Speaker 1: camp where music was a part of it, but a
Speaker 1: lot of it was living in the dorm hanging out.
Speaker 1: What was the experience like.
Speaker 2: The five week I mean, because the one week guitar
Speaker 2: camp things were, those were I had a good time
Speaker 2: at those. Those those kind of just they didn't. The
Speaker 2: five week was was tough. I remember that being a
Speaker 2: turning point. It wasn't as much of a communal kind of, hey,
Speaker 2: everyone's here to learn how to jam kind of thing
Speaker 2: it was. It was it was more intense. It was
Speaker 2: more like college. Honestly, you know, you set up in
Speaker 2: a dorm and the people doing that program were just
Speaker 2: way more serious and the vast majority of them were
Speaker 2: way better than me. And that was I think my
Speaker 2: first brush. I remember very vividly having a conversation with
Speaker 2: my with my dad out in the street one night,
Speaker 2: maybe halfway through that thing where I was, I was
Speaker 2: kind of homesick and like just getting my ass kicked.
Speaker 2: It was it was the I mean, the talent there,
Speaker 2: the talent pool. It was the classic thing of like,
Speaker 2: you know, I was very comfortable. I wouldn't. I wasn't.
Speaker 2: I wasn't even a big fish in my little pond.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It wasn't even like that. It wasn't I wasn't good
Speaker 2: enough to even have that be the vibe. But I
Speaker 2: was comfortable in my little pond.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I had my own connection, my own experience with it
Speaker 2: in my own little pond. And then I went there
Speaker 2: and it was the first time I had the experience
Speaker 2: of being totally decalibrated from that and kind of lost
Speaker 2: in the soup of all these immensely talented but really
Speaker 2: really competitive energies, you know. So yeah, I remember my
Speaker 2: dad kind of My dad had an amazing ability to
Speaker 2: to help people talk to talk to people and see
Speaker 2: where they're at, and uh just like say the right thing.
Speaker 2: He always knew how to how to do that, and uh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I remember that night. That was so the five week
Speaker 2: thing definitely stands out as a point of my first
Speaker 2: brush with with that environment of losing feeling like I
Speaker 2: was losing my own connection to music and why I
Speaker 2: do it.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're in high school, you're smoking dough, you're playing
Speaker 1: along to record, you stop writing songs. At what point
Speaker 1: do you start having bands again in high school?
Speaker 2: So throughout Yeah, there was like different things that happened
Speaker 2: throughout high school. You know, I the guitar teachers started
Speaker 2: setting me up with some some other kids who were
Speaker 2: playing jazz, so I was kind of starting to play
Speaker 2: with them a little bit. There was another project that
Speaker 2: I played in. These these two guys were writing this
Speaker 2: a bunch of they were really into dream theater and
Speaker 2: they were writing this. One was like a classical trained uh,
Speaker 2: piano player, pianist, and uh the other one was the drummer,
Speaker 2: the same guy I was. I was kind of recording
Speaker 2: songs with in uh, you know, earlier in high school,
Speaker 2: and they were they were super into like progressive I
Speaker 2: don't know, metal, progressive metal, hard rock, kind of kind
Speaker 2: of dream theater kind of stuff. So they were writing
Speaker 2: writing stuff like that, and Uh, I I was, you know,
Speaker 2: I was in a band with them, and uh, we
Speaker 2: would we were playing Teen Centers a bunch and and
Speaker 2: doing that that kind of thing, and it was nice.
Speaker 2: You know, I had had like a creative I had
Speaker 2: creative input, I had a voice in that band. But
Speaker 2: that was also, you know, one of the first early
Speaker 2: experiences I had of being not the not the driving
Speaker 2: force behind a project or you know, not like the
Speaker 2: main main writer or something like that in a project,
Speaker 2: just kind of like would come in and have ideas,
Speaker 2: but mostly was the guitar player, you know. And it was, uh,
Speaker 2: it was a great experience. We we learned a lot
Speaker 2: together and and uh had a lot of fun like
Speaker 2: playing playing these uh these teen Centers. It was a
Speaker 2: very different scene than the people that I was, the
Speaker 2: friends that I had, and the you know, the parties
Speaker 2: I was going to and stuff like that. It was
Speaker 2: it was a very different, very different world. And uh,
Speaker 2: you know, I'd often like we'd have these gigs on
Speaker 2: the weekend at teen Centers and there'd be like a
Speaker 2: party that everyone else, all my friends were going to,
Speaker 2: and I'd try to get some of them to come
Speaker 2: to the Team Center with me, and They're like, nah,
Speaker 2: we're gonna go to the party. I was like, all right,
Speaker 2: so I'd go, I'd hang out with them for a
Speaker 2: few hours and then roll into the Teen Center and
Speaker 2: it was it was There was a lot of funny
Speaker 2: experiences there. But yeah, I mean the music was they
Speaker 2: The stuff they were writing kind of kind of kicked
Speaker 2: my ass and in some different ways too, you know,
Speaker 2: I was like dose they were it was like soloing
Speaker 2: over some chord progression in fifteen and stuff like like
Speaker 2: learning that was you know, they were pushing me to
Speaker 2: do stuff like that, which was which was really cool
Speaker 2: at that age. At the same time I was learning,
Speaker 2: I was just learning a lot about music and studying,
Speaker 2: studying jazz and stuff like that, and this they were nerd.
Speaker 2: They were like kind of the nerdy metal guys, doing
Speaker 2: weird number stuff, a lot of a lot of strange,
Speaker 2: odd time stuff, and that was that was a that
Speaker 2: was a really good learning experience in that way.
Speaker 1: So you graduate from high school, then what.
Speaker 2: Uh, graduate from high school and I got into Berkeley.
Speaker 2: So I went to Berkeley. But yeah, yeah, so I
Speaker 2: started Berkeley pretty much, you know, right after right after
Speaker 2: high school.
Speaker 1: And how long did that last? I did?
Speaker 2: Uh? I think I did three years and then a band,
Speaker 2: a band came together. Uh, there was there was a
Speaker 2: guy throughout the college years, there was a guy that
Speaker 2: I knew about. He was older, you know, like I said,
Speaker 2: it's kind of small town. You you kind of know
Speaker 2: all the people who are doing it older than you
Speaker 2: and your your contemporaries. And I had known about him
Speaker 2: from playing into different bands that he was in, and
Speaker 2: also just people he was. He wrote a lot of
Speaker 2: songs throughout high school and in college and stuff. And
Speaker 2: you know, some friends of mine knew about and like
Speaker 2: would send me recordings of songs he wrote or different
Speaker 2: things like that. I was, I was readily aware. And
Speaker 2: then I think it was the summer. It was either
Speaker 2: the summer going into my last year of high school
Speaker 2: or the summer after my last year of high school.
Speaker 2: Ran into him at a party which was coincidentally at
Speaker 2: Trevor's house, the bass player for Goose. Now, there was
Speaker 2: a party at Trevor's house and this guy's his name's
Speaker 2: Matt Campbell. And he rolled into this party and and uh,
Speaker 2: I was, you know, I was pretty lit up. I was.
Speaker 2: I was kind of a remote and I saw him.
Speaker 2: I was like, you, like, I know you. I know,
Speaker 2: you, you know, play and write and stuff like where's where's
Speaker 2: your where's your gear? Let's get your gear, Let's play
Speaker 2: right now. So he his parents' house was down the road,
Speaker 2: and we drove and got his gear and came back
Speaker 2: and that was the first time that we'd really connected
Speaker 2: and really hung out. I don't really remember playing that night,
Speaker 2: but I do remember the next day he came back
Speaker 2: to get his gear and we played that afternoon, and
Speaker 2: that was that was really the first time, like we
Speaker 2: really connected and played music together, and it was it
Speaker 2: was pretty impactful. So then throughout the years I was
Speaker 2: in college and stuff, he was in college. Uh he graduated,
Speaker 2: you know a year a few years prior to me.
Speaker 2: Every summer we kind of would link up one way
Speaker 2: or another and play, play gig or something or you know,
Speaker 2: different little projects whatever it was. And then, uh, there
Speaker 2: was this one summer after my second year of college,
Speaker 2: I want to say where I was like, all right,
Speaker 2: I just I gotta I gotta start, I gotta get
Speaker 2: a band together, I gotta start doing something. So I
Speaker 2: kind of went around and uh found a couple of
Speaker 2: random guys at school. Who are I mean, there's so
Speaker 2: many good players there was. It was insane, but I
Speaker 2: found a couple of guys and started just booking gigs
Speaker 2: at bars in Connecticut on the weekends this one summer
Speaker 2: and also just like throwing parties at my house and
Speaker 2: playing there. So we kind of got this little band
Speaker 2: together this one summer and it was a it was
Speaker 2: a really fun summer. And Matt had graduated from college
Speaker 2: and got an internship at Red Light and he was
Speaker 2: thinking about, you know, entering the music industry in that way,
Speaker 2: and he didn't. He didn't get too far in that.
Speaker 2: He was like, I don't. I don't think he was
Speaker 2: there very long before he realized that it wasn't for him,
Speaker 2: and he, you know, at that he had he'd been
Speaker 2: playing with us that summer. We had some like really
Speaker 2: great experiences the first time we started writing together. We
Speaker 2: wrote a couple of songs that summer that we still
Speaker 2: play now. And you know, it was like that fall
Speaker 2: that he was like, I'm not doing the red Light thing.
Speaker 2: Let's start a band, and I was like, Yeah, let's cool,
Speaker 2: let's do it. And so I think it was that
Speaker 2: that following, you know, the top of that next year,
Speaker 2: I dropped out of school and we just started working
Speaker 2: working on this band, and it was so that band
Speaker 2: ended up being like it lasting for a year and
Speaker 2: a half and it was extremely formative experience for all
Speaker 2: of us. It laid the groundwork for what what the
Speaker 2: band is now for sure, But it was also the
Speaker 2: timing was kind of kind of wild in terms of
Speaker 2: like universe karma type stuff. I got sick. I got
Speaker 2: really sick kind of right when that band was starting.
Speaker 2: Like I crashed like right before, right right around that time,
Speaker 2: and that had a pretty big impact on I mean
Speaker 2: everything for me, but the trajectory of that band for sure.
Speaker 1: So would your parents say when you dropped out of Berkeley?
Speaker 2: I was just my mom at that point, and I think,
Speaker 2: you know, my dad passed away when it was my
Speaker 2: first week of college. I was eighteen, So well.
Speaker 1: Let's stop there for a second. Had he been sick
Speaker 1: or what were the circumstances.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So when I was, yeah, my senior year of
Speaker 2: high school, like two thousand and two thousand and nine,
Speaker 2: my grandfather, who was my dad's dad, who I was
Speaker 2: really really close with growing up, died. And then a
Speaker 2: couple of months later, my uncle, who my mom's brother,
Speaker 2: who I was really really close with who had lived
Speaker 2: with us throughout when I was in high school. He
Speaker 2: kind of he kind of moved in. He was in
Speaker 2: a rough spot in his life and moved in with us,
Speaker 2: and we became really really close. He died a couple
Speaker 2: months after my grandfather, and then right after he died,
Speaker 2: my dad got sick cancer and he was sick for
Speaker 2: five or six months and then died in September of
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine. And that was like, it was
Speaker 2: like my uh, you know, first week of at Berkeley.
Speaker 1: God, you cope with that? How do you cope with that? Today?
Speaker 2: Still trying to figure it out? Honestly, it's uh. I
Speaker 2: after the first two it was like my first brush
Speaker 2: with death, and you know, I was, I was grieving,
Speaker 2: and it was it was strange. It was, you know,
Speaker 2: I was trying to learn how to make sense with
Speaker 2: sense of you know that these people that I was
Speaker 2: really close to in my you know, current consciousness in
Speaker 2: my life were no longer here, you know, it was
Speaker 2: it was it was just a very strange experience when
Speaker 2: my dad died. I I mean when he got sick,
Speaker 2: I was in denial. I was running from him. I
Speaker 2: was party a lot. I was having a really great
Speaker 2: time with my friends in school and everything and couldn't
Speaker 2: really show up to that at all. I wasn't conscious
Speaker 2: of it. But you know, in my you know, eighteen
Speaker 2: year old invincible, There's no way my like my dad's
Speaker 2: I'm invincible. My dad's definitely invincible. There's not no way
Speaker 2: nothing you know, bad would happen to him. He'll figure
Speaker 2: it out. He figures everything out. He just he was like,
Speaker 2: he was a really really special guy, and he loved
Speaker 2: me a lot, you know, kind of to a fault maybe,
Speaker 2: and and had a really like I like I said before,
Speaker 2: kind of had a pretty amazing ability to to see people,
Speaker 2: talk to people, say the right thing, do the right thing,
Speaker 2: and just had a lot of a lot of charisma
Speaker 2: and a lot of people were drawn to him and he, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, he solved a lot of my problems throughout
Speaker 2: the my my early life. You know, if something was
Speaker 2: was I was, there was something I was struggling with,
Speaker 2: you know, he would make it better, and it was
Speaker 2: coming out of love and stuff. But when when he died,
Speaker 2: it was I was not really prepared for it, and
Speaker 2: I could just shut down. I like went into full
Speaker 2: full shock. I don't really remember much, you know that
Speaker 2: my memory from like my first year of college was
Speaker 2: pretty shoddy, and uh yeah, I don't know. I just
Speaker 2: you know, all of a sudden had like really really
Speaker 2: bad anxiety issues. I was having panic attacks multiple times
Speaker 2: per week and a couple after a couple of years
Speaker 2: of that, my body just kind of shut down, you know,
Speaker 2: for a long for many years, was trying to figure
Speaker 2: out like what it was, what's the problem. It was
Speaker 2: like mono, you know, Epstein bar lime disease, kind of
Speaker 2: that kind of world. But no one, know, none of
Speaker 2: the doctors I was seeing could really put their finger
Speaker 2: on it. It was just, you know, one of those situations.
Speaker 2: So I've been on been on that journey ever since, honestly.
Speaker 1: So how did you get past that?
Speaker 2: The physicals thing? Yeah, you know, I've I've become ah,
Speaker 2: I haven't you know. There there's there were periods where
Speaker 2: it got a little better. You know, it was really
Speaker 2: rough for a while, and then there's there's a few
Speaker 2: things that I discovered that kind of moved the needle
Speaker 2: and got me to a place where I could go
Speaker 2: back to school, and and uh, you know, there's a
Speaker 2: wild where a while where I couldn't hold a job.
Speaker 2: I was you know, I couldn't get through like a shift.
Speaker 2: I just didn't have enough energy. But they, you know,
Speaker 2: I some there's a couple of things I discovered that
Speaker 2: that helped enough for me to go back to school
Speaker 2: and start the band and you know, kind of be
Speaker 2: getting by and then you know, it's there's it's it's
Speaker 2: up and down. You know, things if stress gets too
Speaker 2: high or you know, certain things change and things you
Speaker 2: can kind of like heads south again. But I've it's
Speaker 2: it's something that I've I've just never stopped trying to
Speaker 2: figure out and and learn about.
Speaker 1: So you say you discovered some things that helped you,
Speaker 1: what were those.
Speaker 2: At that time? It was I her Veda helped me
Speaker 2: a lot. Actually, I was living in Colorado at the time.
Speaker 2: It was like kind of right when right around the time,
Speaker 2: right before maybe this band started. We started playing bars
Speaker 2: and stuff in Connecticut, but I, you know, I'd moved
Speaker 2: to Fort Collins, Colorado with the girls. So the band
Speaker 2: I was talking about before that, I started with Matt.
Speaker 2: You know that we went our separate ways. That that
Speaker 2: band dissolved, and shortly after that I started seeing I
Speaker 2: started seeing this girl and she was moving out to
Speaker 2: Colorado to go study massage therapy, and I had nothing
Speaker 2: going on. I didn't know what I was doing with
Speaker 2: my life. I was kind of down and out, pretty sick,
Speaker 2: had dropped out of school to do this band band
Speaker 2: fell through, had put all my eggs in that basket,
Speaker 2: and I really didn't know what to do with myself
Speaker 2: after that point. And she was moving out there, and
Speaker 2: I was like, is it cool if I come, you know?
Speaker 2: So I went and moved out there, and it was
Speaker 2: kind of the thing I needed. I needed to get
Speaker 2: out of my home here and gain some new perspective
Speaker 2: on on on everything, I guess. And while I was
Speaker 2: out there, I was walking around Fort Collins one day
Speaker 2: and there were these uh Hark Harry Krishna guys playing
Speaker 2: playing music, chanting, singing with a little circle in in
Speaker 2: the downtown area there. They were, you know, based in Denver.
Speaker 2: They were they were like, they were young, young people
Speaker 2: and most of them had went to you know, went
Speaker 2: to jazz school coincidentally and and then got into got
Speaker 2: into that thing. So they were they were like good musicians.
Speaker 2: This guy, this guy was playing the murdanga a drum
Speaker 2: and he was really good. And then there's another guy
Speaker 2: playing the harmonium and had had this beautiful voice, and
Speaker 2: so I kind of became friends with them. They they
Speaker 2: came up before Collins once a week and I would
Speaker 2: just go to the go to the gatherings and you know,
Speaker 2: they you would sing, chant, meditate, eat, they'd bring food,
Speaker 2: you food for free, and there was just discussions about
Speaker 2: spirituality and different things like that, and and uh, it
Speaker 2: was awesome, you know, we I got really into it,
Speaker 2: just just that that experience hanging out with them and
Speaker 2: learning all these wild stories about you know, Vedic like that,
Speaker 2: all the Vedic stories. There's all these crazy characters and
Speaker 2: monsters and dragons and and you know, the gods are
Speaker 2: you know, the whole thing was it was very colorful
Speaker 2: and and uh it's kind of this illustrious world of
Speaker 2: spirituality and and uh, you know they were they were
Speaker 2: great people, and I'd met someone who was you know,
Speaker 2: the kind of At one point told them I was
Speaker 2: struggling with my health and stuff, and they they referred
Speaker 2: me to someone in their community that was a aravadic
Speaker 2: aveda practitioner, and I started learning about learning about that
Speaker 2: that whole thing, and that was that was kind of
Speaker 2: a starting point of of just getting some basis on
Speaker 2: you know, what what my what type of body I have,
Speaker 2: and what type of foods are going to you know,
Speaker 2: be nourishing or not make me feel you know, really
Speaker 2: sick kind of thing. So that was that was the
Speaker 2: beginning of that journey.
Speaker 1: I guess, So what does this therapist say about all this?
Speaker 2: The therapist which which therapists?
Speaker 1: Have you been to therapy about all this? You went
Speaker 1: through all these crises?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, man, I've done I've done a lot of strange,
Speaker 2: strange things. There's different types of therapists. I talked to
Speaker 2: some you know, the traditional talk therapy used in you know,
Speaker 2: for the most part, I don't In those years, I
Speaker 2: never really I wasn't consistent with with with anything like that.
Speaker 2: And I think that the times that I did try
Speaker 2: that it was maybe it just was it wasn't the
Speaker 2: right fit, you know. But regardless, I I felt like, uh,
Speaker 2: talk therapy wasn't going deep enough for me. I knew,
Speaker 2: I knew it wasn't because the issue wasn't in my
Speaker 2: in my mind, it was in my body, you know,
Speaker 2: like the the the feeling or the experience of that
Speaker 2: loss relative to what my life had been prior to that,
Speaker 2: and my you know, like relationship to the world and
Speaker 2: and and things like that, and just kind of just
Speaker 2: not feeling safe in the world after all of that
Speaker 2: was it was not something that was in my mind.
Speaker 2: It was it was totally in my body, and the
Speaker 2: talk therapy just wasn't like I in my mind. I
Speaker 2: kind of got the whole thing I was. I was
Speaker 2: I was almost I was too much in my mind
Speaker 2: and had just like the connection between that and my
Speaker 2: life and my body. It just had been like kind
Speaker 2: of severed. So that just wasn't any time I tried
Speaker 2: something like that, it just it just wasn't working for me.
Speaker 2: It wasn't moving the needle at all. So yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: I once I exhausted all the all the conventional medicine
Speaker 2: types of things like you know, infectious disease doctors and
Speaker 2: all kinds of weird specialists and everyone. You know, there
Speaker 2: was like blood work stuff that was off and things
Speaker 2: that were you know, clearly an issue, but no one
Speaker 2: really knew why. You know. Then I started getting into
Speaker 2: the alternative stuff and exploring that way. It was you know,
Speaker 2: out of largely out of desperation. But then you know,
Speaker 2: on the note of the talk therapy thing, it was
Speaker 2: at the same time there was you know, born out
Speaker 2: of all that was kind of this pretty intense like
Speaker 2: needing to know, needing to try to find answers about
Speaker 2: what's going on here because that whole experience was so
Speaker 2: strange for me, and there was so many it's hard,
Speaker 2: it's you know, it sounds pretty pretty strange to say,
Speaker 2: but around that whole experience there was so much crazy
Speaker 2: synchronicity and you know, like I was, it's a yeah,
Speaker 2: really hard to explain, but so many experiences of there
Speaker 2: being wild signs and just things like that that just
Speaker 2: felt like there was no way that you know, it
Speaker 2: just took me completely out of my frame of what
Speaker 2: life was prior to that, and it kind of sent
Speaker 2: me on a path of pretty you know, ravenously seeking
Speaker 2: answers about what's going on here.
Speaker 1: Okay, the nature of being in a band, they are
Speaker 1: multiple people, things are planned in advance. Sometimes in excess
Speaker 1: of a yeared advance, planning goes down. Is there any
Speaker 1: voice in the back of your head, well, maybe my
Speaker 1: health won't be good enough to do this I might
Speaker 1: not be up to it. Is that a factor current day? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Current, No, at this point, I've I've it's it's not
Speaker 2: that extreme. You know, I've gained enough ground, so it's
Speaker 2: it's not like that. It's not that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm still seeking, I'm still looking for you know,
Speaker 2: looking for means to to move move the needle more
Speaker 2: and more. But you know, functionally, it's it's not I
Speaker 2: don't crash out like I used to as much. And uh,
Speaker 2: you know, it's it's not the same kind of struggle
Speaker 2: that it was, but it is. I mean, it's for sure,
Speaker 2: very challenging lifestyle to to be in with that kind
Speaker 2: of underlying. Yeah, I don't want to say I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't want to say weakness, but you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's with that that backdrop of a thing going on.
Speaker 2: It's it's definitely not an easy thing to continue healing
Speaker 2: while traveling around and you know, very high stress performance situations,
Speaker 2: all kinds of things like that. It's you know, it's
Speaker 2: it's tricky to navigate, but you know, throughout it's it's
Speaker 2: been many years of us you know, on the road. Now,
Speaker 2: I guess and Uh, in the earlier years, there is
Speaker 2: a lot more challenge to it. And I think as
Speaker 2: time has gone on and I've I've learned more things
Speaker 2: about things that can help and support on a physical level,
Speaker 2: whatever it may be, it's gotten easier.
Speaker 1: Okay. Would one say that your physical issues are behind
Speaker 1: you or you just know how to manage them now?
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe somewhere in between. You know, I certainly hope
Speaker 2: the worst, you know, I think the worst of it
Speaker 2: is behind me. But there's it's you know, I feel
Speaker 2: like the truth is out there. There's there's uh, there's
Speaker 2: still ways to that I could be moving the needle.
Speaker 2: It's really the simple stuff. It's, you know, but just
Speaker 2: just kind of there's there's so much that we don't
Speaker 2: learn learn about about, you know, how to what the
Speaker 2: things that actually support us in that way. And I've
Speaker 2: tried a lot of weird, weird alternative things, and you know,
Speaker 2: some of them were helpful, some of them I learned
Speaker 2: things from. But for the most part, it's really it's
Speaker 2: really like the simple stuff that I rely on the
Speaker 2: most and and have been the most impactful. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean I'm still as as much as I can.
Speaker 2: It's continuing to study and learn about things like that,
Speaker 2: things in that world, and it's it's such a it's
Speaker 2: a crazy space. I mean, there's like there's so much
Speaker 2: noise in that world, just like any any any space
Speaker 2: these days. But you know, it's just more and more
Speaker 2: so many different ideas about things, totally contradictory ideas about things.
Speaker 2: And so I'm just trying to you know, I try
Speaker 2: to keep an open mind and keep learning and and uh,
Speaker 2: you know, trying to get stronger all the time.
Speaker 1: So what's your relationship status today? I'm single and is
Speaker 1: there a significant other in the picture or not now?
Speaker 2: Not right now? Now?
Speaker 1: To what degree is that a result of the so
Speaker 1: called rock and roll lifestyle?
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, I'd say it's it's definitely a result
Speaker 2: of that. You know, I think it's a result of
Speaker 2: a number of things. You know, in part probably it
Speaker 2: feels like the the the health journey, and you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's not just the health thing. It's it's like,
Speaker 2: you know, the the degree to which I'm I'm able
Speaker 2: to be present with myself and with with everything. It's
Speaker 2: like that that feels like a factor. But it's also
Speaker 2: you know, the the like the the drive for for music,
Speaker 2: you know, the rock star lifestyle. It feels like more
Speaker 2: so a personal thing than that, more so just you know,
Speaker 2: being being my own biggest enemy, maybe from a from
Speaker 2: a lifestyle standpoint, and in terms of just like the
Speaker 2: hunger to to keep working and keep trying to move
Speaker 2: forward in both in any way possible, like the you know,
Speaker 2: creatively or or with like the well being thing, all
Speaker 2: of that. It's it's uh that it doesn't. It's a challenge.
Speaker 2: What's what's left? There's not much leftover. I guess that's
Speaker 2: what I'm getting at from that.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're driven in terms of relationships. On one level,
Speaker 1: you have this success that draws women to you. On
Speaker 1: another level, it draws women to you and they're attracted
Speaker 1: to something that might really not be you. What has
Speaker 1: your experience been.
Speaker 2: That's a tough one to to comment on.
Speaker 1: It.
Speaker 2: Does it they really? Uh, you know, it doesn't. It
Speaker 2: doesn't feel like there's uh, you know that we're we're
Speaker 2: you know, we have to we're not we're not swimming
Speaker 2: in uh, I'm not swimming in that kind of attention.
Speaker 2: It doesn't feel like, you know, there's there's there's some
Speaker 2: of it but it's it's really not uh you know,
Speaker 2: we're not the Beatles. It's I haven't had a ton
Speaker 2: of that experience, like when we're on the road and stuff.
Speaker 2: It's I'm kind of in a bubble. I'm not I'm
Speaker 2: not meeting a lot of people honestly in that way.
Speaker 2: And uh, yeah, it has it hasn't been a super
Speaker 2: present thing. When when the band first started doing really well,
Speaker 2: I I was I was in a relationship and I
Speaker 2: had fallen I had fallen for her really hard, and
Speaker 2: uh it was, uh, you know, it was kind of
Speaker 2: when that happens, at least in my experience, it's there's
Speaker 2: there's zero hesitation. You you kind of just like see
Speaker 2: red and it's just kind of like there's no it's
Speaker 2: tunnel vision kind of. And that was that was the situation.
Speaker 2: I started seeing her in twenty nineteen and right when
Speaker 2: the band really started, like you know, when the moment
Speaker 2: happened kind of, So it was it was a crazy
Speaker 2: that was a crazy turn of life. It was a
Speaker 2: it was a really really intense change of momentum from
Speaker 2: where where I was coming from what I was used to,
Speaker 2: you know, in both ways, like the band kind of
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, you know, starting to pop and
Speaker 2: then and then that that relationship on a personal level,
Speaker 2: it was it was just like this like roller coaster
Speaker 2: and it it kicked my ass, honestly, but yeah, that
Speaker 2: was that. I kind of thought that that was that
Speaker 2: was the one. And then as as the years went by,
Speaker 2: and you know, a lot happened throughout the pandemic and
Speaker 2: you know, things going on her family and things I
Speaker 2: was going through. You know, my health kind of got
Speaker 2: really really rough again throughout that period from the stress
Speaker 2: and I don't know other factors that were introduced into
Speaker 2: I don't I don't know what it was, but for
Speaker 2: whatever reason, I kind of crashed again pretty bad. In
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, kind of when it hit came to
Speaker 2: a head, and yeah, we just you know the nature
Speaker 2: of our relationship changed a lot, and we were kind
Speaker 2: of coping with every everything that was happening. Her father
Speaker 2: had passed away, and so I was I was with
Speaker 2: her through that, and you know, the things she was
Speaker 2: she was trying to work through with her, you know,
Speaker 2: in her in the context of her family and her
Speaker 2: own life and things. We had this like very supportive friendship,
Speaker 2: but the romantic part of our relationship kind of just
Speaker 2: went away, and that took a toll over time and
Speaker 2: to the point, you know, eventually we just you know,
Speaker 2: decided to to go our separate ways. You know, we're
Speaker 2: don't touch and she's she's amazing. But yeah, just you know,
Speaker 2: it was it was a tough thing to navigate.
Speaker 1: Okay, what you're telling the story. The relationship ran its
Speaker 1: own course on traditional relationship issues. It wasn't a factor
Speaker 1: of your profession and dedication or was it.
Speaker 2: I don't think that was the That wasn't the reason
Speaker 2: for it. It was it was a factor. It poses
Speaker 2: a lot of challenge, for sure, but I don't I
Speaker 2: don't think that was you know, I can't point the
Speaker 2: finger at that, like that's why, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, So at this point in time, how many gigs
Speaker 1: a year does Gooset do?
Speaker 2: Uh? You know, probably around eighty It feels like more
Speaker 2: than that.
Speaker 1: How did you establish that number is more too much
Speaker 1: or you need more the other the rest of the
Speaker 1: time to do something? How do you come up with
Speaker 1: that number?
Speaker 2: I think it's something we're you know, constantly trying to
Speaker 2: trying to figure out the world we're in. It is
Speaker 2: that the customary thing is perpetual touring, which you know,
Speaker 2: I've kind of talked about this a good amount in
Speaker 2: different different things, but it's, you know, the observationally typical
Speaker 2: artists bands, you know, the typical thing is, you know,
Speaker 2: you you make a record, you put the record out,
Speaker 2: you tour for like a year, two years usually, and
Speaker 2: then you kind of go dark and go back in
Speaker 2: and work on the next thing and until you're ready
Speaker 2: to make the next statement and you have that time
Speaker 2: to to be you know, two go into like creative
Speaker 2: fertility mode, you know. And that's been something I've I've
Speaker 2: I've kind of wrestled with, I suppose because you know,
Speaker 2: some people are able to write on the road, and
Speaker 2: I'm not one of them. It's when there's a lot
Speaker 2: going on, there's a lot of momentum and all this
Speaker 2: stuff over like overstimulation. It kind of it quiets all
Speaker 2: the the the voices from which I you know, rely
Speaker 2: on or try to tap into for making songs and
Speaker 2: stuff like that. They're they're they're quiet, they're they're subtle,
Speaker 2: you know, and it takes a lot of work and
Speaker 2: a lot of patience and a lot of stillness too.
Speaker 2: To hear hear anything from from that from that place
Speaker 2: for me, So that's been something I've wrestled with and
Speaker 2: I think we're still kind of constantly talking about it
Speaker 2: and and trying to figure out what the right balance
Speaker 2: is to to keep keep the momentum and keep the
Speaker 2: ball moving forward and keep playing shows. And because it's
Speaker 2: it is this that is like a self propelling thing.
Speaker 2: It's it's and I love it. Like when we get
Speaker 2: off we get to the end of a tour and
Speaker 2: where you know, everything's feeling great and like the crew,
Speaker 2: like the vibe with every it's a big family, it's
Speaker 2: a big tribe, and you know, there's there's so much,
Speaker 2: so much amazing, so many amazing things that come with
Speaker 2: that and from that. So it's it's it's pretty frequent
Speaker 2: that at the end of a tour it's like, man,
Speaker 2: I don't want to stop, Let's keep going. You know,
Speaker 2: it feels so great. But then at the same time,
Speaker 2: there's this other other side, this other voice that's like, dude,
Speaker 2: you need to stop for like three years. We need
Speaker 2: to just hang out in the woods and stare at
Speaker 2: trees and and be quiet and see what you know,
Speaker 2: just like be present in a way that I haven't
Speaker 2: in a very long time, you know. So you know,
Speaker 2: it's a balance thing.
Speaker 1: Well, I understand taking a break to recharge and to
Speaker 1: be inspired, but going back to the concept of an album,
Speaker 1: is a new release you talk about traditional cycle, but
Speaker 1: we no longer live in a traditional era. Is a
Speaker 1: new album necessary?
Speaker 2: It's a good question. It's a good question. Maybe not.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I uh, but whether it is or not,
Speaker 2: I want to make them, you know, I just I
Speaker 2: love it. That's that's kind of you know, from from
Speaker 2: day one in the basement, that's like that was the
Speaker 2: thing that excited me the most, and telling telling stories
Speaker 2: in that format, So you know, yeah, it's it's it's
Speaker 2: definitely valid, especially in the in the world that we
Speaker 2: primarily exist in. It's you know, the question of its
Speaker 2: relevance is is very valid because we you know, for
Speaker 2: the most part, are it seems like most of the
Speaker 2: people who you know, uh, come to the shows and stuff,
Speaker 2: are are just interested in that. Primarily they just want
Speaker 2: to come to the shows and listen to the shows
Speaker 2: and and do that. But regardless, I guess I don't.
Speaker 2: I just love I love making albums, and I want
Speaker 2: to make a lot of.
Speaker 1: Them, hope. So if you have to split it, to
Speaker 1: what degree are you in percentage wise into live performance,
Speaker 1: into what degree are you into making records.
Speaker 2: Like my own? You know what? Am I right?
Speaker 1: Your own inner tuning for decision.
Speaker 2: That's that's that's tough to put numbers too, you know,
Speaker 2: I from I from being really honest like I I
Speaker 2: I love making albums, probably more than playing shows. But
Speaker 2: that's that's uh. At the same time, when I think
Speaker 2: about what we're doing playing shows and our and our
Speaker 2: crew and moving, you know, and making improvements upon that
Speaker 2: and moving, you know, working on that, it's I I do.
Speaker 2: I love it just as much and and you know,
Speaker 2: on another hand, so it's really tough to say, but
Speaker 2: you know, I guess the cool thing is that both
Speaker 2: both can both can happen, and both will continue to happen,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, making a record, there's writing the song as in
Speaker 1: recording the songs. A lot of people are very into
Speaker 1: the process of being in the studio or wherever you
Speaker 1: do it, your bedroom, your basement, and getting it down
Speaker 1: with the facts and layering, et cetera. Where does the
Speaker 1: interest lie with you more in the actual writing of
Speaker 1: the songs or getting them down in recording form.
Speaker 2: They feel it feels kind of like a an equal
Speaker 2: They're separate parts of the process. You know, they exist
Speaker 2: in a different space for sure, but i'd say they
Speaker 2: you know, I love that entire process as one thing
Speaker 2: so much, so they don't. You know, they are separate
Speaker 2: parts of the process. But you know, at the same time,
Speaker 2: it's it's it is one, it is one thing, one process.
Speaker 2: So I you know, I think I guess I love
Speaker 2: them both equally, and you know, there's there's sometimes they're
Speaker 2: not separate. Sometimes it's you know, sometimes the best if
Speaker 2: I'm stuck on something like from a just a writing phase,
Speaker 2: I'll just start, you know. Sometimes the way out of
Speaker 2: that is is working on a demo for it and
Speaker 2: just starting starting recording it and throwing ideas and decisions
Speaker 2: at it in that way. And then sometimes that can
Speaker 2: kind of like creak, you know, look at like get
Speaker 2: the wheels moving on on finishing an idea. Although I
Speaker 2: will say finishing things is not my strong point. I'm
Speaker 2: a lot better at starting ideas than finishing them.
Speaker 1: Okay, we live in an arrow now more than ever.
Speaker 1: One person can do it all themselves. To what degree
Speaker 1: is the songwriting and the recording collaborative with your band members.
Speaker 2: The songwriting varies. There's there's I guess, different buckets you
Speaker 2: could say of of how the how the writing gets done,
Speaker 2: uh for us, And you know, I think the philosophy
Speaker 2: of the band is like anyone anyone can write, anyone
Speaker 2: can bringing things to the table, and you know, everyone
Speaker 2: has brought ideas and things to the table the recording,
Speaker 2: you know, finding parts and also you know, there's also
Speaker 2: a different thing between the difference between the writing and
Speaker 2: then maybe you know, someone will write a song, I'll
Speaker 2: write a song and bring it to the band and
Speaker 2: then it's still a whole process of arranging it and
Speaker 2: finding parts and that whole thing. And that's that's kind
Speaker 2: of tied in this, you know, the same same, same,
Speaker 2: but different in terms of recording, you know, finding the arrangement,
Speaker 2: finding and sometimes we you know, we'll play as you know,
Speaker 2: we go and to record a song that we've been
Speaker 2: playing live for a while and feel a desire to
Speaker 2: completely change it and we do or not, you know,
Speaker 2: or we like we're still excited by the way we
Speaker 2: play it and it still feels good. So we decide
Speaker 2: to try to just record it the way we play
Speaker 2: it live. It all depends on how we feel about it,
Speaker 2: and and you know, what we feel most ect I
Speaker 2: did buy, I guess you could say, But yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean the process of arranging it, inevitably, that's gotta be.
Speaker 2: That's it's always interactive, finding parts and finding you know,
Speaker 2: what feels most alive, because sometimes you can have an
Speaker 2: idea about how something should be, like what kind of
Speaker 2: groove it should have or what kind of feel, and
Speaker 2: you know what the arrangement should be, and then you
Speaker 2: bring it in the room and it doesn't feel as
Speaker 2: alive as you thought it would. So then you have
Speaker 2: to go and explore and see see what you know,
Speaker 2: what feels the most alive and what plays the most
Speaker 2: to the strengths of the people in the band.
Speaker 1: You know, so your band has changed members multiple times,
Speaker 1: you're a steady factor. Does that make you the de
Speaker 1: facto leader?
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know if I don't know if
Speaker 2: that would be the criteria for that, but I think
Speaker 2: I guess, I guess it's. You know, it's it's kind
Speaker 2: of just the same thing as like the old days
Speaker 2: it was. It was kind of like, you know, no
Speaker 2: I wanted to start, wanted to be in a band,
Speaker 2: wanted to play in a band, wanted to write songs
Speaker 2: and play them with a band. It's and no one was.
Speaker 2: No one was like handing out that opportunity. So it
Speaker 2: was kind of like, well, I'll just do it. I'll
Speaker 2: just start it, you know, and and and do it
Speaker 2: that way. And it's kind of I guess always just
Speaker 2: kind of been that way. So, you know, I think
Speaker 2: there's there's a lot of qualities and that I see
Speaker 2: other great leaders in in our world, you know, band
Speaker 2: leaders and stuff have that I don't feel like I'm
Speaker 2: I'm not you know, on that level with the with
Speaker 2: in certain respects, and so you know, there's I think
Speaker 2: there's I don't know, it's tough to tough to compare,
Speaker 2: tough to tough to look at that type of thing.
Speaker 2: But yeah, you know, I think just due to the
Speaker 2: nature of of like, hey, here's this idea, let's do it,
Speaker 2: and that that being you know, applied many times over,
Speaker 2: I guess kind of has resulted in, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: how how how things roll in our camp?
Speaker 1: Well, how jarring or inspiring is it to change band members.
Speaker 2: Depends I you know, like you said, it's we've it's
Speaker 2: happened a lot. You know, it was. It was not
Speaker 2: an easy process for us. You know, it took a
Speaker 2: lot of work and a lot of experimenting and a
Speaker 2: lot of you know, different iterations to try to find
Speaker 2: the right formula and and and uh you know the
Speaker 2: thing the things that will just work for us, and
Speaker 2: you know, it's a yeah, it's been a serious process.
Speaker 2: There's there's a lot of uh, there's like this this air,
Speaker 2: this can this this conjecture that in in like the
Speaker 2: jam band world that you know, Goose was this uh,
Speaker 2: this like test tube thing, like an industry plant and
Speaker 2: that like you know, it was like a you know,
Speaker 2: the the boy band of the jam band world or
Speaker 2: something where like some some guy like put it all
Speaker 2: together and it's it's a it's a funny it's a
Speaker 2: funny thing too funny perception that has evolved out of
Speaker 2: that in the context of like what a crazy rocky
Speaker 2: road it was in reality and how imperfect and how
Speaker 2: much failure there was getting to this point in those
Speaker 2: early years, like yeah, we went we went through we
Speaker 2: tried a lot of different things, went through a bunch
Speaker 2: of different members. Some of them it was, you know,
Speaker 2: incredibly amicable, and it was just kind of like, hey,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't this is really work anymore, and
Speaker 2: they're like cool. I was thinking the same thing. We're
Speaker 2: like cool, let's be friends and and like go our
Speaker 2: separate ways. And then other times it was like, hey,
Speaker 2: this isn't working anymore, and it was you know, people
Speaker 2: were really hurt by it, and and it was it
Speaker 2: was a really difficult thing to navigate, and you know,
Speaker 2: it's yeah, it's both just it's just like relationships in
Speaker 2: any in any circumstance, you know.
Speaker 1: You reference, you know, conceptions of the world, the jam
Speaker 1: band world calling you a boy band, etc. A. Isn't
Speaker 1: that just jealousy? And where do you think that blowback
Speaker 1: is coming from? What is that about?
Speaker 2: I don't know, you know, there's there's some aspects of
Speaker 2: it I would say that are that are kind of obvious.
Speaker 2: There's there's kind of like it's just part of the
Speaker 2: nature of maybe the jam band scene is there's this
Speaker 2: kind of tribalism and you know, sports teams kind of
Speaker 2: mentality where like, you know, my jam band is better
Speaker 2: than your jam band kind of thing. So you know,
Speaker 2: part of that's just just part of the scene has
Speaker 2: been for a long time, and you know, is what
Speaker 2: it is. It's nothing ultimately, you know, it's it's nothing
Speaker 2: that's worth losing sleepover. And then you know, sometimes I
Speaker 2: did it does I'm like whoa, Like why? You know?
Speaker 2: How did it? How did this? How did this happen?
Speaker 2: Like how did it get this crazy? You know? So,
Speaker 2: I you know, on some on some levels, there's there's
Speaker 2: some obvious stuff where there's there's answers to that, and
Speaker 2: then other times where I'm like, I don't know this
Speaker 2: whole things strange, you know, because when when we were
Speaker 2: coming up, when it was first happening, there wasn't you know,
Speaker 2: there wasn't much of that. But uh, and then you know,
Speaker 2: part of the thing is just like if something gets
Speaker 2: gets bigger, then it's no longer cool to think it's cool,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: So how big can it get? If you're talking on
Speaker 1: the roots of the Jambn scene, the Grateful did maybe
Speaker 1: the Alman Brothers, that was a completely different era. Time
Speaker 1: has flown by when they started calling at the Jambn scene.
Speaker 1: Blues Traveler had a hit on MTV Run Around, but
Speaker 1: since that time there's a scene. But even Fish one
Speaker 1: of the at this point the stall warts of the scene,
Speaker 1: they don't cross out of the jam band world. Ay,
Speaker 1: do you have a desire to cross and what would
Speaker 1: it take to reach more people?
Speaker 2: Mm? Yeah, you know, I think Trey has talked about
Speaker 2: that when you know, when they were around, there was
Speaker 2: no quote unquote jam band scene, which you know I'm
Speaker 2: saying that saying using that term. You know, it's yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's a strange thing.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: What I think is cool about that scene is, you know,
Speaker 2: it was maybe never more never more so the case
Speaker 2: than in the nineties. There was just like the hord
Speaker 2: Tor kind of kind of world. Everyone had their own
Speaker 2: sound and their own voice, and and it was a
Speaker 2: it was a very colorful like community you know of music.
Speaker 2: And you know that's that's still the case. There's there's
Speaker 2: still so many cool things going and on now and
Speaker 2: create really really amazing bands and people with different sounds
Speaker 2: and different combinations of influences. You know. I guess to
Speaker 2: your question, I my philosophy about that is if you
Speaker 2: can have ideas about that kind of thing, and uh
Speaker 2: be like, oh, I want to I want to be
Speaker 2: different in this way. I want to you know, not
Speaker 2: be this or be I want to be this. And
Speaker 2: it's it's that being heady about it like that rarely
Speaker 2: in my experience, results in anything worthwhile. It rarely works,
Speaker 2: you know. I think I've always had this feeling that like,
Speaker 2: you kind of have what you have, you can work
Speaker 2: on it, you can get better, you can you can
Speaker 2: you know, pull your thread as much as you want
Speaker 2: to get deeper and deeper into your process, which is
Speaker 2: what everyone should do. It's the you know, that's the
Speaker 2: best thing you can do. But at the same time,
Speaker 2: it's your you. You have to honor and you have
Speaker 2: to be real about, like what you are really drawn to,
Speaker 2: what you really get off on, and what you're really
Speaker 2: inspired by. In my case that you know, I kind
Speaker 2: of what we're talking about before, in high school and stuff.
Speaker 2: I was, you know, fully immersed in that you know,
Speaker 2: quote unquote jampan world, which I admittedly don't I don't
Speaker 2: think that's the uh the most you know, illustrious term,
Speaker 2: but you know whatever, the improvisational rock world, the jam
Speaker 2: band world, whatever you want to call it. I was.
Speaker 2: I loved it. I was totally immersed in it. Where
Speaker 2: I grew up, that was what everyone was doing. Everyone
Speaker 2: was going to the shows. And you know, even even
Speaker 2: like the really cool kids, the cool popular kids were
Speaker 2: going to those shows. Everyone. It was just it was
Speaker 2: a thing. And so that was where I was coming from,
Speaker 2: and I was. I loved it. I was. I was
Speaker 2: completely taken with it. And then you know, as I
Speaker 2: got out of college and those those years, and I
Speaker 2: was kind of entered into a very different I wasn't
Speaker 2: partying at all. I was pretty sick. It was kind
Speaker 2: of in a very different emotional place. I started getting
Speaker 2: into really different music, and a lot more modern music,
Speaker 2: because I prior to that point I really wasn't in
Speaker 2: tune at all with with like the current indie world
Speaker 2: or even you know, pop or anything like that. I
Speaker 2: had no idea. I was listening to more Otis Redding
Speaker 2: and West Montgomery and Nina Simone. Had no idea about
Speaker 2: Fleet Foxes or Bony Bear, but those those bands. When
Speaker 2: I kind of discovered that music, it like took over
Speaker 2: my my situation. I was so inspired and so enamored
Speaker 2: with that music. It started with the Fleet Foxes. I
Speaker 2: was like that I was just fully immersed in that
Speaker 2: world for for years and my throughout my twenties. It
Speaker 2: was you know, those first two records and that that
Speaker 2: EP the sunshint Ep. It was like those It was
Speaker 2: such an immersive thing, which I that's what I you know,
Speaker 2: I love that so much. It was it was like
Speaker 2: this timeless yet kind of like this medieval medieval world
Speaker 2: and the artwork and their aesthetic and and the music,
Speaker 2: it all, it all worked so well together, and it
Speaker 2: all created such a specific feeling and world that I
Speaker 2: just like didn't want to leave. And that led to,
Speaker 2: you know, discovering other other things. So at that point
Speaker 2: in my life that that type of music and and
Speaker 2: different artists doing things in real time now became became
Speaker 2: like my main point of inspiration and in a lot
Speaker 2: of ways, and I think you know that that to
Speaker 2: me kind of became the somewhat of a novel idea.
Speaker 2: You know, I wanted to hear I wanted to hear
Speaker 2: Fleet Foxes, you know, go on a really cool twenty
Speaker 2: minute improvisation after they're really cool songs, you know, and uh,
Speaker 2: that didn't really exist to my awareness, So that kind
Speaker 2: of became this this idea of like, you know, well,
Speaker 2: I'm I'm very taken and drawn to these these these
Speaker 2: this world and you know, other other approaches to songwriting
Speaker 2: and production and stuff like that, and uh, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe marrying that with with my roots and in the
Speaker 2: improvisational rock world and jazz and stuff like that. It,
Speaker 2: you know, it it felt like a h there was
Speaker 2: there were things to threads to pull, there things to
Speaker 2: explore there.
Speaker 1: You know, I've never met an artist who didn't want
Speaker 1: to reach more people, have a larger audience. So you
Speaker 1: talk about your personal musical journey by the same token,
Speaker 1: you want more people to listen to music, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like you said, I don't, I don't you
Speaker 2: know who doesn't want that? I mean there there's there's
Speaker 2: the part I think a lot of probably a lot
Speaker 2: of artists I maybe maybe have a similar thing of
Speaker 2: of there's there's some kind of point of wrestling with
Speaker 2: that where you know everyone wants that because I guess
Speaker 2: it's just a natural thing to want. But then you know,
Speaker 2: as the more it happens, the more you do it,
Speaker 2: the more you realize like the things that come with
Speaker 2: it and how those things can be struggle. And you know,
Speaker 2: for me, I still I still believe in that I
Speaker 2: feel like though, I feel like it's worthwhile, you know,
Speaker 2: trying to get trying to get bigger and working working
Speaker 2: to you know, to reach more people there. You know,
Speaker 2: it's it's easy. You can easily view that maybe the
Speaker 2: impulse is to view that as as a self serving
Speaker 2: kind of endeavor, which I'm sure you know, inevitably on
Speaker 2: a lot of levels it is. But at the same time,
Speaker 2: there's a I've always seen something beautifull about it, and
Speaker 2: you know, have seen, like I know, the way that
Speaker 2: I know the impact that bands who have been very
Speaker 2: big and have done big, amazing things have had on me,
Speaker 2: and how inspiring that's been to me. And I've seen
Speaker 2: how it's the space that's occupied in other people's lives
Speaker 2: and how you know, it has the ability to help
Speaker 2: people get through, you know, things that they're experiencing and
Speaker 2: things that they're struggling with and provide some kind of
Speaker 2: light in their lives. And you know, so I think
Speaker 2: that that you know, became that became a mission for
Speaker 2: me at a certain point after after the things I
Speaker 2: had experienced and stuff. It kind of amplified that, it
Speaker 2: reframed and amplified that as you know, going from being
Speaker 2: stone in high school watching Fish DVDs being like that
Speaker 2: looks awesome. I definitely want to do that too, you know,
Speaker 2: really kind of getting to this place where I was
Speaker 2: really struggling with my existence and trying to make sense
Speaker 2: out of that, and you know, all the things that
Speaker 2: had happened and the things I had lost and the life,
Speaker 2: the life, that lifestyle and experiences that I had lost.
Speaker 1: In Let me put it this way. At this point,
Speaker 1: whatever label we use, jam band, improvisational rock, it's a ghetto.
Speaker 1: And if you're in it, you know who all the
Speaker 1: acts are. Your act is a relatively new act that
Speaker 1: has been very successful. Okay, that is not the case
Speaker 1: with most acts. There's not a plethora of new acts
Speaker 1: bubbling up. So Goose came along was very successful. Okay,
Speaker 1: you could do what you're doing. I'm not talking in
Speaker 1: terms of the music itself. I'm talking about a career arc.
Speaker 1: You could do what you're doing, and thirty years from
Speaker 1: now you could be Fish. You could do what you're doing.
Speaker 1: Thirty years from now you can be Fleet Foxes. Those
Speaker 1: are ultimately cult acts. They have an audience that keeps
Speaker 1: them alive. Now, in reality, everybody's a cult act today,
Speaker 1: even Taylor's with people are paying attention where they're not. Okay,
Speaker 1: But as I say, it's not rocket science. You look
Speaker 1: at your new album. These songs are lengthy, and you
Speaker 1: could say, theoretically, you're an educated person literally musically educated,
Speaker 1: could say, well, you know I could do a verse
Speaker 1: chorus bridge thing, throwing a solo, and you know that
Speaker 1: might have a chance of moving the needle further. What
Speaker 1: do you think about that?
Speaker 2: So you're asking if if we're thinking about things those
Speaker 2: in those.
Speaker 1: I'm being practical. Where you are right now is a
Speaker 1: very good spot. But all of your predecessors that's as
Speaker 1: far as they've gotten. Okay, you have other people in
Speaker 1: that world we're using shorthand Jamban, let's just use that
Speaker 1: who are jealous of your success. But the vast majority
Speaker 1: of the public has no idea who you are, or
Speaker 1: if they know who you are, wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: identify your music. So if you look at history, that's
Speaker 1: the way it's going to be going forward. The difference
Speaker 1: with your act is you are very successful in a
Speaker 1: short period of time, which has not happened in this
Speaker 1: world for a while. So the question arises is there
Speaker 1: a broader audience for your music. Secondly, is there a
Speaker 1: tweak such that it can be made? Listen, if we
Speaker 1: used the progenitor here, the Grateful Dead, Okay, Anthem of
Speaker 1: the Sun, those records, those were long improvisational records for
Speaker 1: hardcore fans, only growing slowly. You get The Working Man's Dead,
Speaker 1: American Beauty Quanti. It is a little bit of a
Speaker 1: change in style, but a lot of people could understand it,
Speaker 1: and the people who understood it became fans and carried
Speaker 1: through many years after. You know, they ultimately were on
Speaker 1: Arista and they had an MTV hit whatever. They knew
Speaker 1: what the game was, and they made certain choices that
Speaker 1: ultimately didn't compromise who they were, but it brought them
Speaker 1: to a larger audience. They were not the only band
Speaker 1: in that sphere. They're just the band that's most remembered,
Speaker 1: that has the largest audience. Okay, you're a smart guy.
Speaker 1: In the back of your mind, do you think about that? Hey,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm here and it's pretty good to be here,
Speaker 1: but could I be somewhere that would even be better?
Speaker 2: Yeah, when you put it like that, definitely, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't think that in our case, I don't think
Speaker 2: it equates to like, hey, let's write some you know, Uh,
Speaker 2: there's I don't. I don't there's not a there's not
Speaker 2: a moment of a contrived desire to write pop songs,
Speaker 2: you know. I I think there's there's a lot of
Speaker 2: pop music that excites me. Actually, there's you know, there's
Speaker 2: certain yeah, there's certain pop music that I think is
Speaker 2: awesome and and production and you know, as much as
Speaker 2: I love a twenty minute jam, I there's sometimes I
Speaker 2: love there's like three minute songs that are you know,
Speaker 2: crushing on the radio that I think are amazing. So
Speaker 2: part of that is it's a genuine you know, I
Speaker 2: part of me wants to make more music like that.
Speaker 2: Another part of me wants to get deeper and deeper
Speaker 2: into the improvisational thing. So it's uh, you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't think. Uh, there's The thing I
Speaker 2: want to do mostly is pull on new threads and
Speaker 2: try to become more more of what we can be,
Speaker 2: you know, like like how how much can we be?
Speaker 2: You know? And when it comes to the to the
Speaker 2: business of it and the the thing I know, I
Speaker 2: never really you know, all of all the people that
Speaker 2: I look up to have have paved their own path
Speaker 2: and created their own worlds. And to me that I
Speaker 2: think that's always seemed like the best case scenario is
Speaker 2: just being existing in your own world pulling people in
Speaker 2: that weren't aren't always you know, not like that. Aren't
Speaker 2: just fish fans or just you know, other fans of
Speaker 2: other things. That's that really excites me. You know the thing,
Speaker 2: you know, the notion of someone hearing a song of
Speaker 2: ours that has no bearing, no awareness, no experience with
Speaker 2: improvisational music, there jam, the jam band scene, any anything
Speaker 2: like that, and getting into it, coming to a show,
Speaker 2: probably being pretty surprised with you know, there being music
Speaker 2: happening for twenty minutes on end with no vocals or
Speaker 2: anything like that. And you know, the notion of some
Speaker 2: of those people that person discovering that they like that
Speaker 2: approach to music and are are you know, are taken
Speaker 2: by that, by the journey of that. That's really exciting
Speaker 2: to me. And I think, and I hope that's already happening.
Speaker 2: You know, obviously we've we've come up in in that scene,
Speaker 2: in that world and for the most part, and you know,
Speaker 2: some it's it's tough to tell. There's no way to know,
Speaker 2: but it feels like it's somewhat split. You know. Some
Speaker 2: of those some of those people like what we're doing.
Speaker 2: Some of them, you know, pretty passionately don't like it seemingly,
Speaker 2: which you know, there's nothing we can do about that,
Speaker 2: but just keep trying to get better. But you know,
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, I think that's a really exciting thing having, uh,
Speaker 2: having people that exist that listen to completely different types
Speaker 2: of music somehow stumble into our world and if they
Speaker 2: like it and want to learn more about it, and
Speaker 2: that's I think that's a really cool thing and that's
Speaker 2: something worth striving for. It in my mind, is you know,
Speaker 2: opening up, opening up more more past, and sometimes that
Speaker 2: leads people to other improvisational music that other jam bands
Speaker 2: and uh, and I think that's a really cool thing.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: So let's go back a chapter. Your father dies. You
Speaker 1: say your mother didn't work outside the house after the
Speaker 1: children were there. To what degree did that affect the
Speaker 1: family and you financially?
Speaker 2: My dad worked really hard. I mean he was you know,
Speaker 2: he came from lower middle class US and in Long Island,
Speaker 2: didn't didn't come for much of anything, and uh, worked
Speaker 2: worked really hard, worked his way up in the insurance
Speaker 2: insurance companies in Connecticut, and you know it was a
Speaker 2: was a like I was, like I was saying, kind
Speaker 2: of a charismatic guy. People were drawn to him. People
Speaker 2: really liked him, and I think that really helped him
Speaker 2: in his career and you know, he he ended up
Speaker 2: doing doing well. We weren't like, we weren't loaded, but
Speaker 2: we were comfortable, and you know, there was there are
Speaker 2: certain points in my life where it seemed like I
Speaker 2: think things changed for my parents financially, like when when
Speaker 2: they first when they first got a house in Wilton
Speaker 2: when I was born, and they didn't pay much for
Speaker 2: it at all. It was it was a you know,
Speaker 2: the town I think was still there was still pretty rural,
Speaker 2: kind of lower income, uh options for for for people
Speaker 2: at that time there. And yeah, maybe I was in
Speaker 2: middle school or something. I think he got a promotion
Speaker 2: or something like that. And you know that I was
Speaker 2: too young to like, I wasn't really aware of things
Speaker 2: on that level at that point. But in retrospect, is
Speaker 2: it is you know, we we we started going on
Speaker 2: vacations and going you know, doing a trip to a
Speaker 2: to a hotel in Mexico for a week, you know,
Speaker 2: or they did. They did some work on the house
Speaker 2: that you know, there was there's some things that I
Speaker 2: think there are points where he started doing better and
Speaker 2: making more money. And by the time he died, I
Speaker 2: think my family, my mom was comfortable enough so that
Speaker 2: we were able to she like, she's she's able, she's
Speaker 2: she's able to live off of off of that, and
Speaker 2: was able to, you know, support me enough in the
Speaker 2: ways you know that that I needed. I lived, you know,
Speaker 2: through a lot throughout my twenties when I wasn't doing
Speaker 2: well and working on music and striving and trying to
Speaker 2: make something of it. I was living in her, living
Speaker 2: with her, you know. So yeah, we were it was
Speaker 2: it was comfortable enough. We weren't we weren't rolling in it,
Speaker 2: but we were. It was comfortable.
Speaker 1: So how did you get back from Colorado to the
Speaker 1: East Coast.
Speaker 2: When I was out there? You know, it wasn't. I
Speaker 2: wasn't out there for too long before I started getting
Speaker 2: a fire under my ass again, and you know, I
Speaker 2: wanted to start projects. There were a couple opportunities back
Speaker 2: here that were popping up, and I started to just
Speaker 2: the school thing felt like a big, big unfinished business,
Speaker 2: big open end, and uh so, I, you know, I
Speaker 2: wanted to I wanted to go back, and it felt
Speaker 2: like the right thing to go finish what I what
Speaker 2: I started there. And uh yeah, things, you know, different
Speaker 2: things were popping up back east, not big opportunities, but enough.
Speaker 2: It was the only I did have no opportunities then,
Speaker 2: so it was the only thing. So after being out
Speaker 2: there there for like six months or something like that,
Speaker 2: things started popping up. So I started flying home for
Speaker 2: a weekend here and there to go do a gig
Speaker 2: or or do an opportunity and one of them. You know.
Speaker 2: During that time, it started playing with Trevor again and
Speaker 2: started you know, putting together what was the earliest formations
Speaker 2: of this of this band. But it actually wasn't the
Speaker 2: main thing I was focusing on at that point. But
Speaker 2: as time went on, it it just it became it
Speaker 2: became the main thing.
Speaker 1: So you went back to Berkeley. Did you finish at Berkeley?
Speaker 1: Did you graduate?
Speaker 2: I did?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, in the hindsight, you're growing up when you
Speaker 1: go to Berkeley. There's a lot of changes there. But
Speaker 1: was Berkeley advantageous for your musical career.
Speaker 2: Uh, yes, yes, And I mean for sure in the
Speaker 2: way of learning, you know, I learned. I learned things there.
Speaker 2: I studied I was exposed to. You know. That was
Speaker 2: that was the more extreme, you know, like the kind
Speaker 2: of the full uh the full capacity of that experience
Speaker 2: of that I you know, talked about during the five
Speaker 2: week of being lost in a sea of people way
Speaker 2: way more talented than me and and uh, you know,
Speaker 2: way better at being competitive at music than me, you know.
Speaker 2: So uh it was, you know, I I did. I
Speaker 2: did lose myself there kind of both times. The first
Speaker 2: time I went it was I was coming out of
Speaker 2: the experience of all that loss, So it was it's
Speaker 2: kind of it's a pretty loaded thing. I can't really
Speaker 2: be objective about that at all because I was just
Speaker 2: like I was fried. I was in total shock and
Speaker 2: had no idea of what like where I was at
Speaker 2: and how how you know, how smoked I had gotten
Speaker 2: by all that. But when I went back, when I
Speaker 2: when I went back prior to that, I had I
Speaker 2: had really found after the that previous band that I
Speaker 2: started with Matt, after that band broke up, I really
Speaker 2: started writing again because when I, you know, when I
Speaker 2: when I moved out to Colorado, I was at I
Speaker 2: was working at a taco place, and I was at
Speaker 2: that point where I was really thinking about, you know,
Speaker 2: can I stop pursuing music? Can I stop thinking about
Speaker 2: this as like the thing that I need to do.
Speaker 2: That was the closest I've ever come to thinking about
Speaker 2: it in that way, because I was always just naive
Speaker 2: about it. I was like, yeah, there's this is what
Speaker 2: I'm doing. There's no there's no other way for me.
Speaker 2: But that was the closest I had come to that.
Speaker 2: I was working at this taco place and thinking about,
Speaker 2: you know, about giving up, I guess, and you know,
Speaker 2: giving up didn't look like I was never going to
Speaker 2: stop playing and working on you know, writing and things
Speaker 2: like that. But you know, the notion of not thinking
Speaker 2: about it as the career, you know, That's that was
Speaker 2: where I was at during that time. And I think
Speaker 2: that that being at that point where I was no
Speaker 2: longer trying to force something, I was no longer trying
Speaker 2: to make something out of, you know, I was I
Speaker 2: was kind of like at the end of my rope,
Speaker 2: so to speak. You know, I was I was lost,
Speaker 2: and and UH had had nothing going for me. And
Speaker 2: that was when I started actually writing again because it
Speaker 2: was it was for me, you know, it was it was,
Speaker 2: it was honest, and and it was because I just
Speaker 2: had to. It was like when you're left with nothing,
Speaker 2: then all of a sudden, you get you start getting
Speaker 2: the real stuff, you know, And that was what happened
Speaker 2: for me. So, you know, for for a year or two,
Speaker 2: maybe a little more, I was writing a lot and
Speaker 2: a lot of this stuff that was you know, the
Speaker 2: formation or the foundation for this band was written during
Speaker 2: that time, and other things that I have never really
Speaker 2: recorded or put out there. So there was there was
Speaker 2: like that, and that thread was continuing to grow. It
Speaker 2: was growing and growing. There was a lot of unfinished
Speaker 2: ideas from that from that time that I still have
Speaker 2: like strong feelings about and still intend to finish someday.
Speaker 2: But yeah, when I went back to Berkeley, that that
Speaker 2: that well dried up pretty quickly. You know. When I
Speaker 2: first started, there was so many ideas and so many
Speaker 2: things I was working on, and then within six months
Speaker 2: to a year, that flow had kind of stopped, and
Speaker 2: I was I was pretty deep in the course load.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was also we uh, we were starting
Speaker 2: this band. We recorded the first record, and I was,
Speaker 2: I was working on that a lot. We went up
Speaker 2: and did basics. We rented out a a cabin in
Speaker 2: New Hampshire and just brought all our own gear, and
Speaker 2: someone an engineer at a Look studio came and recorded with
Speaker 2: us and and and helped produce, and you know, we
Speaker 2: had we had basics and kind of sat on those
Speaker 2: for a while. And then, uh, during that time when
Speaker 2: I was in school, I was, I was, I didn't
Speaker 2: even have a place up in Boston, so I was driving.
Speaker 2: I was like commuting to Boston for a minute to
Speaker 2: go to classes from Connecticut, which was crazy, and so
Speaker 2: I was I was kind of on the weekends working
Speaker 2: to working on overdubs, working on you know, editing and
Speaker 2: you know doing d I Y finishing this record and
Speaker 2: then uh, you know midweek was driving to Boston and uh,
Speaker 2: crashing on people's couches. But if I had like, you know,
Speaker 2: three days of classes in a row, and you know,
Speaker 2: it was just too much to drive that many hours
Speaker 2: back and forth every day. So that was. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: was kind of kind of a crazy time, and the
Speaker 2: creative flow got got pretty burnt up during then, and
Speaker 2: it was the struggle to get it back.
Speaker 1: Okay, Berkeley is a music college. There are teachers. To
Speaker 1: what degree do they squeeze the creativity out of you?
Speaker 2: Listen?
Speaker 1: I had this in my own college experience. They have rules,
Speaker 1: they have the way you want to do it, which
Speaker 1: is actually forcing you into a traw through a tunnel
Speaker 1: that is against you. To what degree do you say, no,
Speaker 1: that's not for me. I need to explore my own way,
Speaker 1: which is not how they want me to do it.
Speaker 2: I think in my experience there was a there was
Speaker 2: kind of a bit of a bunch of different things.
Speaker 2: Some people really cared, and some people really nurtured, and
Speaker 2: some people really engaged. Some people were just uh, you know,
Speaker 2: I think you know, some people were incredible musicians that
Speaker 2: you know, maybe their their career didn't go the way
Speaker 2: they wanted it to, and they it's a really it's
Speaker 2: a really great teaching gig. But they weren't they're not
Speaker 2: like passionate about teaching a little bit of that thing
Speaker 2: of like I'm just really good at this, Like I this,
Speaker 2: you know, I worked hard and I'm I'm amazing at
Speaker 2: what I do and if you can't do it, then
Speaker 2: like I don't know that kind of just sucks for you.
Speaker 2: And you know some people who were doing it because
Speaker 2: it was it was a good job, and then you
Speaker 2: know some people who were engaged and passionate about it,
Speaker 2: but more entrenched in some rule set. You know. I
Speaker 2: had that probably that that experienced most. I studied jazz
Speaker 2: performance and classical composition and studying like, I wanted to
Speaker 2: learn counterpoint. I wanted to learn what, you know, the wheels,
Speaker 2: like what what made the wheels turn in classical music
Speaker 2: on some levels, which is obviously an incredibly deep rabbit
Speaker 2: hole and it's like a completely different world. But I
Speaker 2: started getting into that, and uh, you know that that's
Speaker 2: where the rule set is really in place. You know,
Speaker 2: that's there's there's like that that's like that's that's there's
Speaker 2: a lot of rules there. And I wasn't. I like,
Speaker 2: got really bad grades in some of those classes because
Speaker 2: I was, you know, breaking the rules. And I was like,
Speaker 2: but like, this is you know, this is an idea,
Speaker 2: this is this is my that is the four part
Speaker 2: harmony thing that I wrote. He's like, yeah, but it's
Speaker 2: just wrong, It's all right, And he was probably right
Speaker 2: on some on some degree. You know, it wasn't Maybe
Speaker 2: it wasn't that great, but you know, so there there's
Speaker 2: a bit of that. But you know they're the thing.
Speaker 2: The thing about all that I think the best the
Speaker 2: best musicians, Well this you can't. You can't say that
Speaker 2: because there's you know, West, here's West Montgomery who didn't,
Speaker 2: as I understand it, didn't know anything about music theory
Speaker 2: or anything like that. And was you know, wrote the
Speaker 2: book on a whole a whole way of approach to
Speaker 2: playing there. So you can't make these generalizations. But seemingly
Speaker 2: a lot of people, you know that. The thing is,
Speaker 2: like you you have to learn the rules so that
Speaker 2: you break them. You know, when when you break them,
Speaker 2: you you ah have a much deeper understanding of why
Speaker 2: you're breaking them, you know. So yeah, no, one way.
Speaker 1: Okay, you talked about questioning your future in music in Colorado?
Speaker 1: How many times have you contemplated giving up the music gig?
Speaker 1: And when was the last time you did it.
Speaker 2: In a real way? That kind of feels like the
Speaker 2: only time that that was the closest I've gotten to it.
Speaker 2: And even then it wasn't It wasn't that, you know,
Speaker 2: I didn't get too far down. It was like I
Speaker 2: was like scratching at the idea of like, am I
Speaker 2: gonna hang this up? This is crazy? You know, there's
Speaker 2: got nothing going on. I'm down and out. I feel
Speaker 2: like I feel like crap every day, Like I don't know,
Speaker 2: I don't know. But you know, since then, it really
Speaker 2: I was. I was too stubborn to go there for
Speaker 2: the most part.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you finish up at Berkeley, you have a
Speaker 1: band that is the beginnings of Goose. What is the
Speaker 1: first point of positive reinforcement? Will you say, wait a second,
Speaker 1: you know we're getting a good reaction. This might be something.
Speaker 2: It definitely wasn't for a while. I graduated. I finished
Speaker 2: up school in twenty sixteen, and then in twenty seventeen
Speaker 2: was when we got a booking agent and started just
Speaker 2: you know that that helped because you know, sometimes bands
Speaker 2: early in their time, someone in the band is like
Speaker 2: has a knack for making connections like that and booking gigs,
Speaker 2: and none of us had that. You know, it was
Speaker 2: it was hard. We played bars locally here and stuff,
Speaker 2: but like booking gigs and starting to build a little
Speaker 2: thing like that, we just weren't get at it. So
Speaker 2: when we got a booking agent. We were like, you know,
Speaker 2: let's go hit, let's hit the wheels, and and uh,
Speaker 2: just get us out there. We want to play, we
Speaker 2: want to play a million gigs, we want to tour.
Speaker 2: And he was, you know, he was, he was great,
Speaker 2: he was he was like, you kind of don't want
Speaker 2: to do that, and we were like, yeah, we do.
Speaker 2: He's like, all right, if you say so. And he
Speaker 2: threw us out there and we, uh. The tour. The
Speaker 2: tour that year has been commonly referred to as the
Speaker 2: Thrown to the Wolves tour because he was like, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna throw you to the wolves, and we're like, let's go.
Speaker 2: And he did, and we were thrown to the wolves
Speaker 2: and we were like, oh, got it. Okay, we need
Speaker 2: to we need to we need to rethink this whole thing.
Speaker 1: He threw you to the wolves. What did that look like?
Speaker 2: Uh, you know, touring in a in a in a
Speaker 2: twelve passenger van with no a C in the South
Speaker 2: in the middle of the summer, sleeping in our trailer
Speaker 2: and Walmart parking lots and just playing terrible gig after
Speaker 2: terrible gig, like hemorrhaging money, you know, the whole the
Speaker 2: whole thing you know, and uh, not only that, but
Speaker 2: the band dynamic at that point was was pretty it
Speaker 2: was pretty bad. It was just like it wasn't we
Speaker 2: weren't connected and we weren't doing it for the same
Speaker 2: reasons everyone in the band. So we just had a
Speaker 2: lot to learn at that point, and it was it
Speaker 2: was necessary because of that, you know, just getting our
Speaker 2: asses kicked like that, and Trevor, Trevor and I there
Speaker 2: were many nights when we were out there just like
Speaker 2: what how do people do this? What is like? This
Speaker 2: is crazy? How to like where do we go? Like
Speaker 2: how do what is? What is what is this? What
Speaker 2: the what the fuck are we doing? And then you know,
Speaker 2: we'll just to.
Speaker 1: Be clear, a lot of that, so you're playing for
Speaker 1: little to know money to a fewer no people who
Speaker 1: weren't interested anyway.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, one hundred percent. Yeah, a lot of that.
Speaker 2: You know, there's if we got if there was like
Speaker 2: a you know, there was a some place in South
Speaker 2: Carolina where we'd go and play on like the tiki tiaki,
Speaker 2: like it was like a Helton resort or something like that.
Speaker 2: We'd go and like play on the tiki porch. We'd
Speaker 2: play like three or four sets and got five hundred bucks,
Speaker 2: and we were like, this is this is a this
Speaker 2: is great, you know, and we did not even give
Speaker 2: us a room, but we got five hundred bucks and
Speaker 2: covered gas for you know, however many shows. So yeah, no,
Speaker 2: it was it was weird. There was there was very
Speaker 2: there was to your question, your original question. There was
Speaker 2: nothing in that time, you know, pointing towards any hope
Speaker 2: or success there. But it didn't. It was like it was,
Speaker 2: I guess in retrospect it was crazy, but like I
Speaker 2: was that stubborn and they were like, no, we just
Speaker 2: got to just keep going, keep trying. There's got to
Speaker 2: be a way, you know. So you know, you know,
Speaker 2: we made we made changes and things evolved, and uh,
Speaker 2: you know kind of found found our way to a
Speaker 2: better dynamic within the band at least, you know, like
Speaker 2: a better one, a more functional one where we were
Speaker 2: more connected and and uh, you know, when Peter joined
Speaker 2: the band, he understood more of you know, he understood
Speaker 2: what we were, what we were trying to do, and
Speaker 2: he was coming from the same place like the he had.
Speaker 2: He was coming from that that like you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: I play music with my friends and my parents' basement
Speaker 2: because that's because that's really fun and that's like what
Speaker 2: we're trying to do, and it's just a it was
Speaker 2: like a it was more of more of more of
Speaker 2: that energy that of the original why you know what
Speaker 2: I mean, why why you do it? Instead of like
Speaker 2: some other energy of like I want to be on
Speaker 2: stage in front of lots of people and like in
Speaker 2: the industry and getting good looks and all the things
Speaker 2: that come with that's it, you know, those things are
Speaker 2: there's there's cool parts to all of that, but it's
Speaker 2: I don't know, not it's not what what I'm in
Speaker 2: it for, you know. And as time goes on and
Speaker 2: just become less and less interested in that side of
Speaker 2: things and just want to, you know, be more and
Speaker 2: more connected to the core of of the why of
Speaker 2: it all and uh okay experience.
Speaker 1: So they throw you into the Wolves, you reset when
Speaker 1: you start to work again. What does it look like?
Speaker 2: Uh well, we never really stopped. It was kind of
Speaker 2: like from that point for Forward is it was really
Speaker 2: trial by fire. We there was no there was no
Speaker 2: like there was one long tour which was a thrown
Speaker 2: to the Wolf's tour, but at large we were playing
Speaker 2: we were kind of doing a lot of Weekend Warrior
Speaker 2: stuff and once we started, we we haven't really stopped.
Speaker 1: Okay, but you're playing original material to people who really
Speaker 1: don't know who you are. How does that work?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, we we played covers too. Sometimes that helps,
Speaker 2: you know, are doing an interpretation of a cover that
Speaker 2: someone knows. And you know, in those days, it was
Speaker 2: it was it was, you know, that thing could be helpful,
Speaker 2: but I don't know, you know, if we got an
Speaker 2: opening gig or something like some some of those were
Speaker 2: some of those were helpful. You know. Really a turning
Speaker 2: point was the beginning of twenty eighteen. That was in
Speaker 2: my you know, for all intents and purposes, that was
Speaker 2: the turning point in terms of us kind of getting
Speaker 2: our getting our act together. Peter joined the band, and
Speaker 2: he was he was kind of, you know, a driving
Speaker 2: force in the band that he was in prior to that,
Speaker 2: and him and I just started working together a lot.
Speaker 2: And prior to that, I hadn't really had that like
Speaker 2: someone on the front lines in that in that same
Speaker 2: way you know, Trevor and I were working on things
Speaker 2: all the time. But yeah, it did. Peter kind of
Speaker 2: had this this like workhorse vibe and kind of day
Speaker 2: to day which is like was you know, was making
Speaker 2: sure all the recordings got the soundboard recordings, were We're
Speaker 2: getting getting done, and he started getting into video. He
Speaker 2: learned how to edit video and and really really quickly
Speaker 2: and well so and him and I just were on
Speaker 2: the same wavelength of like thinking about creating a world really,
Speaker 2: you know, because it ties into like the branding and
Speaker 2: all of that, but really it's that the branding is
Speaker 2: in my mind, has always been just a vehicle to
Speaker 2: create a feeling. And when he first joined the band,
Speaker 2: we had already had this opportunity to go open for
Speaker 2: this band, Stafford, who at that time was like on fire,
Speaker 2: like really they were having this big moment crushing and
Speaker 2: their tour was so intense and they were playing maybe
Speaker 2: you know, it was like five hundred to fifteen hundred
Speaker 2: cap venues, which felt and they were like full, all
Speaker 2: of them were slammed, which was way bigger than anything
Speaker 2: that we had done to that point, and it felt
Speaker 2: the energy around it was so is so intense, and
Speaker 2: we were opening for them. We opened them for them
Speaker 2: for seven shows in January of twenty eighteen, right when
Speaker 2: Peter joined the band, he barely played keyboards.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: You know, very very trial by fire. But that experience
Speaker 2: sort of set the tone for for for us and
Speaker 2: it was kind of like, okay, we I think we
Speaker 2: understand like what we need to do. That that kicked
Speaker 2: us into gear in terms of building it just informing
Speaker 2: the world that we wanted to start building. It was
Speaker 2: an extremely valuable experience and we started doing that. You know,
Speaker 2: we started working on the website and like, what is
Speaker 2: what kind of feeling does the website have, you know
Speaker 2: when you when you go on there, does it feel
Speaker 2: like some kind of immersive thing? You know? And then
Speaker 2: filling out our catalog and filling out you know, show recordings,
Speaker 2: soundboard recordings for people to listen to, videos for people
Speaker 2: to watch on YouTube, which ended up being really really
Speaker 2: the thing that in you know, outside of the music
Speaker 2: and all of the chemistry and all the things we
Speaker 2: were working on in that regard the the building the
Speaker 2: content world online was was really what it was. It
Speaker 2: was just an extremely necessary thing for the way that
Speaker 2: we got to the place that we got to. So yeah,
Speaker 2: that was that was really that was really the thing.
Speaker 2: And you know that that experience we got a taste
Speaker 2: of that energy of like people coming to shows and
Speaker 2: rapidly you know, and consuming and like looking for looking
Speaker 2: for something to be you know, experienced or found on stage,
Speaker 2: something unique and something you know, happening in real time
Speaker 2: and and and real you know, and like later that
Speaker 2: year there was a there was I think we got
Speaker 2: our our first taste in our own respect of a
Speaker 2: very very long winded answer your question, I apologize for that,
Speaker 2: but our first taste of that in our own, you know,
Speaker 2: respective world was a few months after that, we did
Speaker 2: a tour out to Colorado and we played, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: same same deal, status quo, ton of you know, shady
Speaker 2: gigs that no one came to, no one cared about us,
Speaker 2: but we had We had this one gig booked on
Speaker 2: the way out to Colorado, and then two weeks later,
Speaker 2: on the way back from Colorado in Covington, Kentucky, and
Speaker 2: this one this one guy who had like there was
Speaker 2: a crew of friends that lived there, but they're really
Speaker 2: they lived in Cincinnati, but they went to shows in Covington,
Speaker 2: Kentucky's right over the right over the river. And this
Speaker 2: one guy listened to our saw we were on the
Speaker 2: schedule this at this club, the Octave in Covington and
Speaker 2: listened to it, like, found our album, listen to it,
Speaker 2: liked it, spread it around to his friends. They all
Speaker 2: listened to it. They learned some of the songs, and
Speaker 2: you know, maybe there was ten twelve of these people,
Speaker 2: of these kids that came to this show totally unexpectedly,
Speaker 2: and you know, we just played expecting another you know,
Speaker 2: shit gig on a Tuesday night in Covington, Kentucky where
Speaker 2: no one was there, and here are these twelve kids
Speaker 2: who like know the lyrics to some of our songs
Speaker 2: and are just throwing there brings so much energy, like
Speaker 2: they're having a great time, and it's just kind of
Speaker 2: us in them. It was like this really intimate thing
Speaker 2: and for us that was like that was amazing. So
Speaker 2: we you know, fortunately, uh we like we were coming
Speaker 2: back to the same place two weeks later, and they,
Speaker 2: I guess the word spread. They they talked to more
Speaker 2: people around town, the word spread more, and we came
Speaker 2: back and there were like one hundred people there and
Speaker 2: the energy was awesome and we you know, we threw
Speaker 2: down and and it was it was kind of this like,
Speaker 2: oh wow, one hundred people came to actually to kind
Speaker 2: of to see us, and then I think three months
Speaker 2: later there or four months later that year, we went
Speaker 2: back in June and did two nights at that club
Speaker 2: and it was sort of sold out, and we felt
Speaker 2: like we were on top of the world doing two
Speaker 2: nights of this this this little club, and it was
Speaker 2: it was it was like our first taste of of
Speaker 2: of that kind of thing at all, you know. And
Speaker 2: then we kept touring and playing other places and we're
Speaker 2: you know, in other areas for all intents and purposes,
Speaker 2: went back to playing shit gigs for no one. But then,
Speaker 2: you know, throughout that year in the early twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: gradually saw you know, we sold like sold one hundred
Speaker 2: tickets in Buffalo, you know at the door, and like
Speaker 2: that was a huge win for us. We were like, oh,
Speaker 2: all right, great, another one, another place where people know
Speaker 2: who we are and are coming like some people are
Speaker 2: coming to a show. That was a big deal because
Speaker 2: it wasn't there was no there was no label, there
Speaker 2: was no like our music wasn't being consumed in that
Speaker 2: way at all. It was it was all just our
Speaker 2: only hope was the grassroots thing, you know, at least
Speaker 2: as far as we were aware. So then you know,
Speaker 2: gradually we got we got more some more festival stuff,
Speaker 2: more opening gigs for you know, opening for other bands
Speaker 2: like Pigeons playing ping pong and bands like that, and
Speaker 2: you know, throughout twenty eight the latter end of eighteen
Speaker 2: and into twenty twenty nineteen, first half of twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: they felt like the pressure, the pressure points were just
Speaker 2: getting hit more and more. You know, we were just
Speaker 2: in the flow with it and doing doing these things
Speaker 2: and could feel could feel the needle moving a little bit,
Speaker 2: but not not crazy substantial. After that, you know, the
Speaker 2: experience in Covington and stuff, it was, you know, it
Speaker 2: was a kind of us flow flow role for the
Speaker 2: most part. And then you know that summer, the real
Speaker 2: turning point was the Peach Peach Festival in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: There was a lot of hype around the set. We
Speaker 2: played the set, and you know, we kind of gotten
Speaker 2: used to like playing these festival sets, which like back
Speaker 2: in the day, you know, I had this like really
Speaker 2: naive mentality around it, like, oh, we'll play this festival
Speaker 2: set and like it's really things are going to really
Speaker 2: change after that, like all of a sudden, people who
Speaker 2: will know who we are, will come to shows and stuff,
Speaker 2: and I got I had gotten so used to that
Speaker 2: not being the case, you know, thinking that the needle
Speaker 2: was going to move, and then it didn't. So we
Speaker 2: played that gig and there was hype around and I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, that's cool. A lot of people were there,
Speaker 2: you know, it was pretty packed. And then we put
Speaker 2: out the video from that set like really quickly after it,
Speaker 2: as we kind of had gotten used to doing at
Speaker 2: that point, and I didn't think that much like it was,
Speaker 2: you know, it was a big moment. It felt like
Speaker 2: a lot of hype. It was pretty stressed about it,
Speaker 2: but then we just did it and I didn't think
Speaker 2: too much of it, and it didn't realize, you know,
Speaker 2: that was that was going to be as much of
Speaker 2: a catalyst as it was, or as much of a
Speaker 2: breaking point as it was. You know. The video kind
Speaker 2: of started getting shared a lot online and and then
Speaker 2: there was this sort of viral thing. I guess that
Speaker 2: happened with like fish Twitter. Everyone was like doing meme,
Speaker 2: like joking with sending all these memes around about goose jokes,
Speaker 2: and people thought it was a joke but then ended
Speaker 2: up going and checking out the band, So it kind
Speaker 2: of just h it kind of just erupted by there.
Speaker 2: And then by the by that fall, the fall tour
Speaker 2: was was pretty much totally sold out all the little
Speaker 2: clubs we had booked and stuff like that. People were
Speaker 2: just buying tickets and then it kind of just kind
Speaker 2: of just grew from there.
Speaker 1: So then COVID hits. So what do you do for COVID?
Speaker 2: We I mean, it was I feel that in a
Speaker 2: lot of ways, you know, for us, it was it
Speaker 2: was really helpful to to for things to slow down,
Speaker 2: to stop at that time because the schedule we had
Speaker 2: planned for that year was going to tear at least personally,
Speaker 2: I don't know, it was gonna tear me up, like
Speaker 2: it was. It was. It was crazy that summer. The
Speaker 2: schedule we had plotted for that summer, it was shooting
Speaker 2: around to three festivals every weekend all around the country.
Speaker 2: It was just like, you know, you can't, you can't
Speaker 2: do well in the under those circumstances. Especially, I mean
Speaker 2: I for sure can't, and maybe other people can't, but
Speaker 2: like that, I just not a recipe for for doing
Speaker 2: your best work, you know, So we slowed down, well,
Speaker 2: you know, the world slowed down. We because of the
Speaker 2: momentum we had at that point, we just kind of
Speaker 2: instinctively we didn't stop working, but the fact of you know,
Speaker 2: the nature of just sleeping at home for the bulk
Speaker 2: of that year and being in one place and going
Speaker 2: for walks in the woods every day in conjunction with
Speaker 2: the things we were working on. We finished a record
Speaker 2: we were that was taking us forever to work on.
Speaker 2: I was doing all the editing myself, and it was
Speaker 2: I was just laboring over it way more than I
Speaker 2: should have. And you know, that gave us the opportunity
Speaker 2: to finally finish that thing, which was you know, important
Speaker 2: for us. And you know, we were just cranking out videos,
Speaker 2: live streams and working on that and trying to make
Speaker 2: make those things interesting and and different. You know, there's
Speaker 2: we did all these live streams in the spring of
Speaker 2: that year and had gotten like a really good response
Speaker 2: from a lot of them. The way we were doing them,
Speaker 2: it felt kind of alive. We had people on on
Speaker 2: like handicams and moving and it was kind of dynamic,
Speaker 2: and it felt felt interesting, and you know, we put
Speaker 2: a lot of energy into that and trying to make
Speaker 2: those as cool as we could, and then summer rolled around,
Speaker 2: and you know, our managers were like, all right, we're
Speaker 2: gonna everyone's doing tours, virtual tours, and you know that
Speaker 2: sounded really like boring to me. It was just kind
Speaker 2: of like, we're we're all just gonna keep doing what
Speaker 2: we're doing. Just just do more and more videos of
Speaker 2: us playing kind of the same mute, same songs in
Speaker 2: the same room over and over again. That you know,
Speaker 2: what makes touring. You know, you're you're in different places,
Speaker 2: playing to different people, so it it you know, it
Speaker 2: doesn't get as it doesn't get as redundant because of that.
Speaker 2: So it just felt like like a like a really
Speaker 2: redundant thing. So that that kind of triggered us to
Speaker 2: to think to try to think about it in a
Speaker 2: different way and make it compelling and add some element
Speaker 2: to it that was more interactive and uh and more engaging,
Speaker 2: I guess, and and and more and more immersive. So we, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, we did this bingo tour thing, which is
Speaker 2: which is you know, turned the entire how many of
Speaker 2: every many shows it was into a bingo game and
Speaker 2: everyone had cards and it was it was we they functional.
Speaker 2: We had our own TV channel for like two weeks,
Speaker 2: which we really ran with. We had we built up
Speaker 2: all different kinds of kinds of content. We had people
Speaker 2: doing videos walking them through like whatever. If someone had
Speaker 2: in our community here had a farm in the backyard,
Speaker 2: you know, we did a video of them walking through
Speaker 2: the farm. Or we did like yoga videos or or
Speaker 2: cooking classes and all kinds of stuff. We were just
Speaker 2: cranking content through this thing, and we were all just
Speaker 2: in this area and being really creative and coming up
Speaker 2: with ideas and having a lot of fun. And it
Speaker 2: was a really really special time. So I think they're
Speaker 2: doing all these things. It was a special like it
Speaker 2: was a special time, a special opportunity, I guess because
Speaker 2: the world had just you know, stopped, everyone had slowed down.
Speaker 2: And you know, if that happened now, we probably would
Speaker 2: use it as a opportunity. I mean maybe to do
Speaker 2: the same I don't know, but but you know it
Speaker 2: would it would be at a very different point because
Speaker 2: it would be like, all right, I'm going to slow
Speaker 2: down and like write, I'm going to write a lot.
Speaker 2: And I think probably a lot of people did that,
Speaker 2: but for where we were, it was like we were
Speaker 2: we were in a place to be just turning and burning,
Speaker 2: and we did and it ended up I guess, you know,
Speaker 2: it reached a lot more people. Somehow, it just continued
Speaker 2: to grow through all of that, and then we started
Speaker 2: doing the drive in shows and doing doing whatever we could,
Speaker 2: whatever was whatever people were doing, whatever was coming you know,
Speaker 2: coming up, we were we just didn't stop working, and
Speaker 2: you know it seemed to work.
Speaker 1: Okay, so now live gigs come back. What does the
Speaker 1: landscape look like?
Speaker 2: It was pretty gradual, right, I mean the the I
Speaker 2: mean it felt like we like shows were happening and
Speaker 2: it was kind of like intense, and you know, there
Speaker 2: was people are in pods or whatever, and and then
Speaker 2: you know, COVID would kind of come back strong and
Speaker 2: and things would kind of slow down and shut down again,
Speaker 2: and but you know, fun functionally, for the most part,
Speaker 2: we were riding that landscape. We just we we really
Speaker 2: didn't stop and uh, it kind of just kept growing.
Speaker 2: I guess, you know, the shows just kept getting bigger,
Speaker 2: and uh, you know, in a lot of ways, it
Speaker 2: was it was tough to it. It's a challenge, you know,
Speaker 2: being on that kind of wave and keeping up with
Speaker 2: it and meeting meeting the expectations that other people, that
Speaker 2: everyone has and that you have on yourself in in
Speaker 2: that type of opportunity. It's it's you know, it's not easy.
Speaker 2: So you know, I think we throughout all of that.
Speaker 2: It's just it continued to grow, and you know, there's
Speaker 2: a huge the adaptation process to that from a production
Speaker 2: standpoint was was a huge challenge as well. You know,
Speaker 2: we we didn't we were like playing clubs. We didn't
Speaker 2: know how to how to graduate into these bigger things,
Speaker 2: and there was like a massive learning curve with that,
Speaker 2: you know, big time crew and and how to how
Speaker 2: to go into these bigger rooms and actually do it right.
Speaker 2: And you know that's uh, we we did the best
Speaker 2: we could. You know, we were we were just doing
Speaker 2: our best through that that period. And also, like I
Speaker 2: said earlier, you know, twenty twenty one, I crashed out again.
Speaker 2: I was I was you know, I was hanging out
Speaker 2: by a thread for a lot of that time. So
Speaker 2: it was, you know, we were just we were doing
Speaker 2: doing the best we could with what we had.
Speaker 1: You know, well, when did the numbers start to jump
Speaker 1: in terms of you know, attendance.
Speaker 2: I mean early twenty twenty it was already like that
Speaker 2: fall of twenty nineteen, that whole tour had kind of
Speaker 2: sold out and we had done our our first show
Speaker 2: to six hundred people that you know, that sold out
Speaker 2: in Virginia, Richmond, I think, and Chicago kind of hit
Speaker 2: a similar number, and that that felt huge to us.
Speaker 2: You know, that was massive. And then you know, during
Speaker 2: that time, during that fall, I remember, we put up
Speaker 2: we had we had gotten we just started working with
Speaker 2: our current agents and they they were like, we want
Speaker 2: to put up two shows in New York, one in Brooklyn,
Speaker 2: one Manhattan in January of twenty twenty. And they did
Speaker 2: and they and we were like, well they were both
Speaker 2: six hundred cap rooms and they were there was like
Speaker 2: back to back rooms, back to back nights, and we
Speaker 2: were like whoa, Like that seems way aggressive, but maybe
Speaker 2: one of those, you know, but there's no but like
Speaker 2: two that's no one, you know, it's gonna we're gonna
Speaker 2: take a bath. It's not no one's gonna come, you know.
Speaker 2: And they put them up and they both sold out
Speaker 2: in like a second, and we thought there was The
Speaker 2: initial reaction was like there's there's you know, there's must
Speaker 2: be something wrong with the website. You know, but yeah,
Speaker 2: so that they ended up cooking really hot, and you know,
Speaker 2: I think the attendance was just kind of that once
Speaker 2: that that fire starts, the buzz and all of that,
Speaker 2: it kind of just it kind of just kept going.
Speaker 2: You know that that spring, these all they all got
Speaker 2: canceled because of COVID, but you know, I think we
Speaker 2: had rooms rooms like thousand to fifteen hundred kind of
Speaker 2: zone booked, and I think they were all sold out.
Speaker 2: So it was kind of on that trajectory. And then
Speaker 2: you know, by fall of twenty twenty, we started doing
Speaker 2: those driving things and it was like, you know, selling
Speaker 2: two thousand of these driving kind of show tickets and
Speaker 2: things like that, and I don't know, the numbers of
Speaker 2: it all just just kind of get gets fuzzy, but it,
Speaker 2: you know, it's always an up and down kind of thing,
Speaker 2: always till to this day. You know, there's there we
Speaker 2: play some really big shows and then there's some places
Speaker 2: where they're not as big, you know, but the yeah,
Speaker 2: it was it was just a lot of growth for
Speaker 2: years after that. I mean, the numbers kind of just
Speaker 2: continued to grow.
Speaker 1: I guess, well, what point do your peers start to
Speaker 1: embrace you you know, the famous people, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about.
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, the more here heroes than peers. But but yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, I think twenty twenty two is really when
Speaker 2: that there was like a huge turning point there. We
Speaker 2: put out we put out another album that year, and
Speaker 2: we played Radio City that summer and that was you know,
Speaker 2: Trey came out and played with us, and so did
Speaker 2: Josh Tillman, father John Misty, which you know, that was
Speaker 2: a that was a wild combination, like to the point earlier,
Speaker 2: you know, the merging of those two worlds was like
Speaker 2: was one. I mean, it was just insane that that
Speaker 2: that happened. I just still don't understand, you know, I
Speaker 2: still like there's there's a certain degree of dissociation that
Speaker 2: has to for me, that has to happen in order
Speaker 2: to just like show up to those things. And when
Speaker 2: that's it's like, Okay, this is happening. Cool, you know,
Speaker 2: it doesn't feel real to me on some level, but
Speaker 2: it's just it's happening, so you just will go do
Speaker 2: it and try our best, you know, do our best.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so that was I think that was that
Speaker 2: was obviously a massive moment for us in so many
Speaker 2: ways and the momentum at that time, I'm it was
Speaker 2: it was just crazy. And you know, after that kind
Speaker 2: of those things just kept kept happening. But that that
Speaker 2: that year felt like the turning point as far as
Speaker 2: that stuff is concerned.
Speaker 1: Okay, going forward other than more gigs anything special in
Speaker 1: the pipeline.
Speaker 2: You know, I I think, uh, it's just you know,
Speaker 2: building the building our own world feels that's like feels
Speaker 2: like the most special thing to me. You know, I
Speaker 2: I want to, like I said, I just I want
Speaker 2: to keep writing a lot of music and putting out
Speaker 2: as much music as I can and working on different
Speaker 2: projects like that feels like the juice. That's the sauce
Speaker 2: to me. And uh, you know, getting getting deeper into
Speaker 2: into special events is feels really good and something that
Speaker 2: we're excited to keep doing. And and the things that
Speaker 2: that feel authentic and exciting and unique, you know that
Speaker 2: that's that's those are the kinds of things that that
Speaker 2: really fill up the well. You know, we're doing a
Speaker 2: we started doing we did the first year of a
Speaker 2: Destination festival in in Cabo last year, so we're you
Speaker 2: know doing that again this year and is a really
Speaker 2: special place and really special experience and you know kind
Speaker 2: of uh, we kind of did this once before, but
Speaker 2: it was a very last minute thing. This is kind
Speaker 2: of the first time we've we've put ourselves in the
Speaker 2: in the situation to be working on a lineup and
Speaker 2: having people come to a thing and and and uh
Speaker 2: kind of hosting in that way. And it's it's really fun,
Speaker 2: and it feels really good, and it feels really good
Speaker 2: to be you know, having having other artists there and
Speaker 2: that that we that we love and and you know,
Speaker 2: look up to and and uh love love just you know,
Speaker 2: collaborating with and and and you know, getting to be
Speaker 2: peers with. So you know, that's that's a pretty special thing.
Speaker 2: Continue to work on that. Our our you know, our
Speaker 2: event every December Goose Miss. We uh, you know, we
Speaker 2: try to make that special every year and come up
Speaker 2: with new ways to to think about that and approach
Speaker 2: that and just like you know many other people in
Speaker 2: our world have done. But you know, finding our own
Speaker 2: our own ways into these things and our own our
Speaker 2: own spin and you know, the way our our energy
Speaker 2: can can bring it to some some different place. It's
Speaker 2: it's it's a fun process. But yeah, mostly I just
Speaker 2: want to keep writing music.
Speaker 1: So you got this destination vessel in Cabo, you played
Speaker 1: Red Rocks, you played Madison Square Garden. How many tickets
Speaker 1: can you sell in secondary markets Cleveland, Minneapolis? I mean
Speaker 1: you tour in those places. How big are the poles?
Speaker 2: It varies, you know, even even within one city, it
Speaker 2: varies depending on what time of year is, or what
Speaker 2: the venue is or whatever it may be. You know,
Speaker 2: there's certain spots where we're getting up where you can
Speaker 2: do like the ten thousand maybe a little over, maybe
Speaker 2: a little under kind of mark. And then there's some
Speaker 2: spots where you know, we're like twenty five hundred to
Speaker 2: five thousand zone. I'd say most places are are, you know,
Speaker 2: in that like three to five thousand kind of zone.
Speaker 1: So personally, do you feel like you've arrived? You're still
Speaker 1: pinching yourself.
Speaker 2: You know, if the whole thing is such a whirlwind
Speaker 2: and it goes so fast, it moves like time when
Speaker 2: all the tours and stuff, you know, you do three
Speaker 2: tours a year and then the year's over, and the
Speaker 2: time moves so fast. It still feels in a lot
Speaker 2: of ways like like I'm just starting to like trying
Speaker 2: to get caught up to that change of pace in life,
Speaker 2: but at the same time, like it's been going on
Speaker 2: for a while now and I think we have in
Speaker 2: a lot of ways. Is like we we continue to
Speaker 2: I think, catch up to it in different ways. But
Speaker 2: I see I see so much, so much more, runway,
Speaker 2: so much more. Like That's why when it's it's like
Speaker 2: kind of what's next, it's like, I want to just
Speaker 2: keep getting better out where we are, you know. It's
Speaker 2: it's not thinking about the next the next biggest venue
Speaker 2: or the next you know, most tickets we can sell.
Speaker 2: It's just like I just want to continue to be
Speaker 2: able to show up more and more to to where
Speaker 2: we are and what we have, you know. That's that's
Speaker 2: the thing that that feels relevant. I guess yeah, I
Speaker 2: think it's a combination of both. It's like, you know,
Speaker 2: I think hopefully we arrive more and more each each month,
Speaker 2: you know, each day, but it still feels surreal for sure.
Speaker 2: There's still like you know, playing the garden again. It
Speaker 2: feels like, you know, because we're not we're not part
Speaker 2: of the mainstream world in that way in so many ways.
Speaker 2: You know, Uh, it doesn't, it doesn't. It feels like
Speaker 2: it's like a like a you know, it's like some
Speaker 2: cheat code or something. We're just like in our own
Speaker 2: little universe. And and if I think about, you know,
Speaker 2: comparing or competing with the broader thing, it's it's it's
Speaker 2: just like, oh, thank god, we don't have to do
Speaker 2: that because we're just in our own little universe over here.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Well, speaking of showing up, you definitely showed up today.
Speaker 1: I think we got a good understanding of you and
Speaker 1: the band. Rick. I want to thank you so much
Speaker 1: for taking this time to speak with my audience.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you for having me until next time.
Speaker 1: This is Bob left Sex