Speaker 1: You can feed that part of you that wants to
Speaker 1: be mad at the success of mediocrity, and then you
Speaker 1: will become a bitter, sad person. Or you can cultivate
Speaker 1: a habit of loving great work. Welcome to the one
Speaker 1: you feed Throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized the importance
Speaker 1: of the thoughts we have quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think, ring true. And yet
Speaker 1: for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: them selves moving in the right direction, how they feed
Speaker 1: their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest today
Speaker 1: is Dan Wilson, a Grammy Award winning singer, songwriter, musician, producer,
Speaker 1: and visual artist. He's known as the leader of the
Speaker 1: band Semisnic, for which he wrote the Grammy nominated Closing Time.
Speaker 1: Wilson has also released several solo recordings, including the two
Speaker 1: thousand and fourteen release Love Without Fear. He was also
Speaker 1: a member of the Minneapolis psychedelic rock band Trip Shakespeare.
Speaker 1: Here's the interview. Hi, Dan, welcome to the show. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. As I was just saying to
Speaker 1: you a little bit before we got started. I'm very
Speaker 1: excited to have you on. I have been a fan
Speaker 1: of your music since I was probably eighteen years old.
Speaker 1: And there is just something about your voice when you're
Speaker 1: singing that every time I hear it, it just immediately
Speaker 1: makes me feel better. So, um, that's a great thing,
Speaker 1: and so thank you for that. That's fantastic. I really
Speaker 1: appreciate hearing that. So our podcast is called The One
Speaker 1: You Feed, and it's based on the parable of Two Wolves,
Speaker 1: where there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and
Speaker 1: he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of
Speaker 1: us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 1: the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 1: greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and
Speaker 1: he thinks about it for a second. He looks up
Speaker 1: at his grandfather and he says, well, Grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you how that parable
Speaker 1: applies to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. Uh wow, well, I think um. The
Speaker 1: first thing that strikes me about the parable is that
Speaker 1: the grandfather doesn't commit to like a permanent victory of
Speaker 1: one wolf or the other, and the way he talks
Speaker 1: about it, it's like that both wolves are always available
Speaker 1: for for the feeding. And I kind of like that
Speaker 1: about the parable. My my, you know, I definitely have
Speaker 1: a similar philosophy, although I guess wolves haven't entered into it.
Speaker 1: But I I feel like whenever I have pictured something
Speaker 1: happen happening in the future, so often that thing has
Speaker 1: actually happened or something really close to that thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've been very lucky in my choice of things to picture,
Speaker 1: I guess, because it seems really very consistent that whatever
Speaker 1: we put our energy or our imagination into eventually becomes reality.
Speaker 1: So I guess that's that's how I see the wolf parable,
Speaker 1: is that it's it's the idea of which wolf winning
Speaker 1: is almost like which wolf becomes which wolf gets to
Speaker 1: turn into you know, it gets to be real. Which
Speaker 1: wolf gets to be uh turned into reality? Right? One
Speaker 1: of the I like that and you talk about sort
Speaker 1: of you're thinking about what the wolf that wins is
Speaker 1: the one that gets your thoughts and um, your attention.
Speaker 1: And one of the things I like about your your
Speaker 1: a visual artist as well as a musician. And and
Speaker 1: you've also started doing something on Vine's six second Songwriting
Speaker 1: Lessons And one of the things that I've picked up
Speaker 1: from some of those and also from some of the
Speaker 1: pictures that you've drawn, UM, is this idea of just
Speaker 1: showing up and doing the work towards the things that
Speaker 1: you care about consistently. And I think that that plays
Speaker 1: into that theme. Also. Yes, one one thing that needs
Speaker 1: to be nurtured and fed is is whatever your gift is,
Speaker 1: whatever is the thing that you want to share with
Speaker 1: the world, and whatever is the the gift that you
Speaker 1: want to give to the world, you actually have to
Speaker 1: feed that. You have actually have to nurture it and
Speaker 1: feed it. You can't. It doesn't giving it, Giving it
Speaker 1: doesn't make it go away. And it's it's ignoring it
Speaker 1: is what makes it go away. Giving it makes it
Speaker 1: stronger and more powerful. Hoarding it and saving it and
Speaker 1: not doing something with it makes it wither. There was
Speaker 1: something I saw of yours very recently, and I'm not
Speaker 1: going to get it right because I don't I don't
Speaker 1: have it right in front of me. But you talked
Speaker 1: about having a um, a good plan in doing something
Speaker 1: is better than waiting on a great plan. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I've always been, you know, in songwriting, I always feel
Speaker 1: like it's hard to tell. I mean, maybe some people
Speaker 1: are really geniuses at this, but it's hard for me
Speaker 1: to tell which idea is, you know, amazing, and which
Speaker 1: one is really really good. I can tell when they're bad,
Speaker 1: but even even then, I maybe I can't tell. But
Speaker 1: but but I a lot of a lot of times
Speaker 1: I think I have started out a song with what
Speaker 1: seemed to be a pretty good idea, and then somewhere
Speaker 1: along the line, at some point, something happened, some little
Speaker 1: turning point or some additional some other idea kind of
Speaker 1: sprang out, and then the what seemed to be pretty
Speaker 1: good actually is incredible and great and a gift, you know.
Speaker 1: And so I'm really I'm not a believer in assessing
Speaker 1: earlier whether an idea is, you know, of high enough
Speaker 1: quality to continue. I kind of feel like, if I'm
Speaker 1: going to do some songwriting right now, then I'm just
Speaker 1: going to try to figure out what's my favorite idea
Speaker 1: right now that I actually have and work on that,
Speaker 1: or have a new idea and work on that. But
Speaker 1: but I'm I guess I just don't. I don't think
Speaker 1: I think you can wait for a good pitch to excess.
Speaker 1: I think you can. I think sometimes you gotta swing
Speaker 1: out a few pretty good outside the strike zone pitches. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good analogy, and I think that applies really
Speaker 1: to anything in life. There's it's so easy for, you know,
Speaker 1: certainly for times for me in life, to think that
Speaker 1: certain conditions need to line up in order for me
Speaker 1: to do this thing that I want to do or
Speaker 1: that thing versus just doing something always seems to lead
Speaker 1: to obviously better results and and things tend to emerge,
Speaker 1: as at least for me, things tend to emerge as
Speaker 1: soon as I get engaged in the process. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: completely agree, And I just, you know, I think it's
Speaker 1: it's funny because I don't like to argue with my
Speaker 1: fellow songwriters about how to do it. So I almost
Speaker 1: feel like everybody's got there right to pick the pick,
Speaker 1: you know, pick their times. I have a good friend
Speaker 1: who is a really, really talented musician, and he is
Speaker 1: very much of the philosophy that you you wait until
Speaker 1: everything is very is perfect, and then you strike create
Speaker 1: of lee. You know, you wait until the day is right,
Speaker 1: and you wait until the idea is good enough, and
Speaker 1: you wait until the mood strikes. And you know, I
Speaker 1: get that, I understand why that's a good thing for him,
Speaker 1: But um, I've gotten so many good results from just
Speaker 1: charging ahead with an idea that seemed, you know, good enough,
Speaker 1: and then later you find that there was something really
Speaker 1: really magical in there. Are there any of your songs
Speaker 1: that you think that might apply to the parable at all? No,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting question. The one that I thought of
Speaker 1: was free life to some degree, because it's about making it,
Speaker 1: you know, it's about making choices. At least that's what
Speaker 1: it means to me. The vibe that I get from
Speaker 1: free Life is that that we are kind of works
Speaker 1: in progress, that we are always creating ourselves together and individually,
Speaker 1: and that there's a kind of beautiful, scary, open endedness
Speaker 1: about every moment in life and about even like identity,
Speaker 1: who who one is at all? There's a there's an
Speaker 1: open endedness in that as well. I feel like that
Speaker 1: song is almost a reminder of how unformed or how
Speaker 1: fresh and and formable I guess, how malleable and fresh
Speaker 1: and and workable our lives can be if we just
Speaker 1: think of them that way. In the ear, the questtance hang,
Speaker 1: will we get to do some thing? Who are we
Speaker 1: gonna end be? And how we gonna fe in the
Speaker 1: will I get to do? So? The new album is
Speaker 1: called Love Without Fear, and the title track is called
Speaker 1: Love Without Fear? And I think I heard you say
Speaker 1: that you had written that about a friend. Yeah, can
Speaker 1: you maybe share more about that? I was probably part
Speaker 1: way through writing songs for the album, and um, I
Speaker 1: was I was in the I was in a mode
Speaker 1: I had got when I when I'm writing a lot
Speaker 1: of songs, I get into this mode where everything that
Speaker 1: happens it turns into a song in my mind. And Uh,
Speaker 1: I had this uncomfortable conversation with a friend of mine
Speaker 1: on the phone. Um, I think he and I were
Speaker 1: planning are We were not exactly planning something, but we
Speaker 1: were sort of comparing notes about what what we're going
Speaker 1: to do in the in the coming year, and it
Speaker 1: got really uncomfortable and really kind of negative, and I
Speaker 1: couldn't figure out why. And after we got off the phone,
Speaker 1: it's almost it went downhill and it got really bad,
Speaker 1: and I think but at the end of the conversation,
Speaker 1: I felt like, wow, we we just had almost like
Speaker 1: a big fight, and I don't exactly know what it's about.
Speaker 1: And when I thought about it for a little while,
Speaker 1: I realized that that my friend was worried that I
Speaker 1: was going to do a series of dumb things that
Speaker 1: we're gonna hurt him in specific ways. It took me
Speaker 1: a minute to figure out what those things were and
Speaker 1: and you know, and how to convince him that that
Speaker 1: those things weren't going to happen, that that wasn't part
Speaker 1: of my plan. But he was definitely afraid that I
Speaker 1: was going to kind of trample his his agenda in
Speaker 1: some way. And uh, once I realized that, it was
Speaker 1: a huge relief I could because for a while I
Speaker 1: was sort of mad at him for being sort of difficult,
Speaker 1: or you know, mad at him for being afraid or
Speaker 1: sad or whatever it was. And once I realized that
Speaker 1: I had it within my power to reassure him, it
Speaker 1: was like it's sort of weight was lifted. And I
Speaker 1: I would like to say that I called him right
Speaker 1: away to talk to him about it, but actually I
Speaker 1: wrote a song first, Well, I'm glad you did. I
Speaker 1: love the melody on that, thank you. In this life
Speaker 1: of mine, someone to take my head? What would be
Speaker 1: side by side in this world of someone to give
Speaker 1: me time? Loved give me time? I love with that.
Speaker 1: So Trip Shakespeare was the at least I wouldn't say
Speaker 1: it was your first band, but it was the first
Speaker 1: band that you were probably known for. And I just
Speaker 1: love that old music. It's just it's amazing. Is there
Speaker 1: any music from that time, UM, that really sticks with
Speaker 1: you today that you feel like you're particularly proud of.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a great body of work, but I'm
Speaker 1: kind of curious what stands out for you of the
Speaker 1: Trips Shakespeare music. UM. I have been listening to it
Speaker 1: a bit more lately because John Munson from the band
Speaker 1: has been spearheading a rerelease project of the albums, and
Speaker 1: so we've listened to a lot of the songs on
Speaker 1: the records, and also a lot of B sides and
Speaker 1: unreleased things, and um, the stuff that really strikes me
Speaker 1: almost is the stuff is the live bootleg recordings. Um
Speaker 1: where the band uh jammed and improvised, because I think
Speaker 1: that was one of our great superpowers. And uh, that's
Speaker 1: one of the reason people really loved the live shows.
Speaker 1: And I think we never did figure out how to
Speaker 1: get that to happen on on records. A couple of
Speaker 1: gigs and we're well received, but the tool Master lost
Speaker 1: his verve. Don't ask me why. For some reason he
Speaker 1: lost his Yes, sacred that got something to tell me
Speaker 1: Dan a letter king from the Buckeye Creamery. It's said,
Speaker 1: it's just we're going to start up all of machine
Speaker 1: and why why a girl friends like Up in the
Speaker 1: Sky and the Kiss the Twin Times. But fine, you
Speaker 1: were both sure well it change ups scenery, fine tool
Speaker 1: mastered up Window, cool Master. So when I listened to
Speaker 1: the records, I sometimes feel like, Okay, these are really good, like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of rock songwriting songs. And yet I
Speaker 1: think that the thing that the band did best was
Speaker 1: often hidden and not not part of the records. So
Speaker 1: I like listening to the live bootlegs is any of
Speaker 1: that going to get be part of the rereleases. I
Speaker 1: think it is. I think there are going to be
Speaker 1: some um I mean, I it's interesting because I feel
Speaker 1: like that. I think maybe it's either going to be
Speaker 1: that that some live versions are going to make it
Speaker 1: onto the the rereleases, or or that we're going to
Speaker 1: just do a separate project entirely um involving live stuff,
Speaker 1: which either one would be great. It would be great.
Speaker 1: You guys were so fun to watch live. We had
Speaker 1: just developed over time, we developed a very intuitive way
Speaker 1: of relating to each other where we could we really
Speaker 1: knew where things were going without having to acknowledge it
Speaker 1: on stage at all. We're just gonna new, oh, we're
Speaker 1: heading into this weird zone. Then we would really all
Speaker 1: kind of flock from sound to sound or idea to idea,
Speaker 1: and it was very if you know, it's funny because
Speaker 1: it's like I, um, I think Trip Shakespeare was was
Speaker 1: just ahead of the jam band idea. You know, the
Speaker 1: circuit of touring that was designed, you know that got
Speaker 1: designed around the jam bands all happened just a bit
Speaker 1: after Trip Shakespeare. So you know, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of you know, groups that admired us and watched our
Speaker 1: concerts like fish, you know, just they got started just
Speaker 1: a little bit later, and they and and a kind
Speaker 1: of a scene in a way of presenting that music
Speaker 1: kind of coalesced around them, and we were just a
Speaker 1: little bit on the early end. Yeah. The thing I
Speaker 1: loved about so much of that music was there was
Speaker 1: that free flowing element to it. And yet the songwriting,
Speaker 1: at least in my perspective, was so so good in
Speaker 1: comparison to a lot of what I would consider jam
Speaker 1: band songwriting. Just so, how did you guys write songs?
Speaker 1: Because you had um across the different songs, there were
Speaker 1: three of you that would take lead vocals, right, your
Speaker 1: brother or John. How did you guys write songs? And
Speaker 1: how did you decide who would um, who would sing? What?
Speaker 1: Was there any sort of process to that? It was
Speaker 1: kind of uh, well, how did the songs get written?
Speaker 1: It was mostly Matt who would initiate them. Um. My
Speaker 1: role in the songwriting was quite often just to finish
Speaker 1: something like, um, you know, a song would be three
Speaker 1: quarters done and but it needed a bridge, and so
Speaker 1: I would write a bridge, or Matt might have a
Speaker 1: a completed lyric, but he just didn't have a melody
Speaker 1: for it, and he would give it to me and
Speaker 1: I would write a melody for it. You know. For example,
Speaker 1: there was a song called Spirit that was on the
Speaker 1: second album, and Spirit was a poem that Matt gave me,
Speaker 1: and I wrote a piece of music to it, and
Speaker 1: I sang it for the band, and John said, can
Speaker 1: I sing that one? And I think that John sort
Speaker 1: of would like lay lay and wait for a really
Speaker 1: good song and say, hey, can I sing that one?
Speaker 1: And so I think he, you know, he he often
Speaker 1: sang some really good songs partly because he was sort
Speaker 1: of patiently waiting for a really good one to come along. Well,
Speaker 1: I doubt he had to wait too long. You know.
Speaker 1: It's funny because I feel I do feel like the
Speaker 1: songwriting kind of the that the pure songwriting side of
Speaker 1: Trip Shakespeare was was definitely very quirky, but very very
Speaker 1: strong in its own way. You walking from the back
Speaker 1: the bad to the field that evolves at the center,
Speaker 1: and you wait for the ankle, the hook when the
Speaker 1: dodge in the bank are finding now and then I'm
Speaker 1: like I'm being found at the base of the canyon.
Speaker 1: I'll be hod from the wreck of the log let
Speaker 1: me let me crave in the worlds to come with
Speaker 1: me when I'm racking, cracking, year crack. I think it
Speaker 1: almost would have been great for the band if we
Speaker 1: had just if if the rule was that you could
Speaker 1: do different versions of the same song on different albums,
Speaker 1: because our versions live of of a particular song would
Speaker 1: be so wildly different from month to month, and it
Speaker 1: almost was like a new work of art. But there
Speaker 1: was this kind of like pop songwriting um, an unwritten
Speaker 1: rule that you you know, once you recorded a song
Speaker 1: on an album, you couldn't put it on another album.
Speaker 1: And it strikes me now like thinking back, like woll
Speaker 1: it would have been kind of it would have been
Speaker 1: kind of awesome if we could have had a few
Speaker 1: songs that appeared again and again on records, and you know,
Speaker 1: if that could have been sort of part of our playbook,
Speaker 1: it might have been interesting, because our transformations of the
Speaker 1: songs were really pretty cool. Yeah, I think it's a
Speaker 1: little bit like like Dylan. You can hear all that
Speaker 1: stuff got released later as part of that, but you
Speaker 1: can hear multiple versions of one song. It's just really
Speaker 1: interesting to hear them so drastically reinterpreted. Or arranged. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had there was a concert around the heat of
Speaker 1: Trips experience time. I can't remember exactly what it was,
Speaker 1: but it was Elvis Costello in um in Minneapolis at
Speaker 1: the Northern Auditorium and he had a horn section. It
Speaker 1: was him and the attractions and a horn section and
Speaker 1: and they just they they did horn heavy versions of
Speaker 1: all of us Costello's songs, and completely different from the
Speaker 1: album versions of the songs, like so different. A fast
Speaker 1: song would be slow, and a slow song would be fast,
Speaker 1: and there's blasting horns on everything, and it was just
Speaker 1: to me, it was very disorienting but kind of amazing.
Speaker 1: It made me realize that the song itself is like
Speaker 1: a a free floating idea that doesn't necessarily, ah I
Speaker 1: have to be tied to one interpretation. And that was
Speaker 1: a really huge learning moment for me. Yeah. So after
Speaker 1: Trip Shakespeare, you went on and formed a band Semi Sonic,
Speaker 1: that you had a big hit with Closing Time. There
Speaker 1: was a song on your first record that I'm was
Speaker 1: a huge fan of and still am. I was going
Speaker 1: through a really bad break up at the time and
Speaker 1: it was brand new Baby, And what is so great
Speaker 1: about that song is that it is such a such
Speaker 1: a sad subject, but there is just the joy that
Speaker 1: comes out of the way it's produced and sung. I
Speaker 1: just so many times that was such a great song
Speaker 1: to just make me feel better. Time you need a
Speaker 1: time on the Man's dream to find a just sad
Speaker 1: brand Baby makes you. I guess that's I guess that's
Speaker 1: nice to hear. I like that a lot, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, all of the songs that I write, if
Speaker 1: they're if they're angry or bitter or sad or troubled,
Speaker 1: it's because I'm angry or bitter or sad or troubled
Speaker 1: at the time, you know. So everything I write comes
Speaker 1: out of some real experience, but it's actually for me
Speaker 1: kind of come to turn it into something beautiful or
Speaker 1: something rousing. You know. I think Brand New Babies are
Speaker 1: really rousing song. And it's kind of it's really fun
Speaker 1: to play live. It's got a lot of chords, it's
Speaker 1: kind of hard to play live, but it's really fun
Speaker 1: to play live because it's just like it's almost like
Speaker 1: shaking off your troubles just by being really loud about them,
Speaker 1: you know, right exactly it is. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: great one. So after that you've kind of gone on
Speaker 1: and released a couple of solo records. And the other
Speaker 1: thing that you've had a lot of success with is
Speaker 1: you have co written some really big hits for Adele
Speaker 1: and the Dixie Chicks and and have had a lot
Speaker 1: of success in that area. That's been an interesting and
Speaker 1: kind of unexpected joy for me. I always wanted to
Speaker 1: co write songs and put them on other people's albums,
Speaker 1: or at least I I knew that was a thing
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, and then in the late nineties,
Speaker 1: I really I really worked to try to make it happen,
Speaker 1: and I guess it took me like maybe four or
Speaker 1: five years to figure out how to do it well.
Speaker 1: It seems like you certainly got the hang of it.
Speaker 1: A question that I have for you is, um, one
Speaker 1: of the ways that My Bad Wolf tends to manifest
Speaker 1: itself is in is in comparison or and I wonder,
Speaker 1: is it ever challenging for you that some of the
Speaker 1: songs you've written UM co written go on to get
Speaker 1: huge and your own solo work is is comparatively obscure
Speaker 1: in that How do you Because there's obviously it's great
Speaker 1: that that's happening for you. Do you ever wrestle with that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I do. I'm it's it's funny. I Uh. There's a
Speaker 1: joke that a friend of mine told me years ago.
Speaker 1: A man gets two ties from his mother for his birthday,
Speaker 1: a red tie and a blue tie. And the next
Speaker 1: time he sees his mother for lunch, he wears the
Speaker 1: red tie and they sit down to lunch and she
Speaker 1: looks down at his tie, and she looks back up
Speaker 1: at him and says, what's the matter? You didn't like
Speaker 1: the other tie? And to me, it's a very like
Speaker 1: similar thing, like if I write two songs and one
Speaker 1: of them becomes a hit, I you know, and and
Speaker 1: an unavoidable little knee jerk reaction that I have is
Speaker 1: what's wrong? What's wrong with the other song? You? People
Speaker 1: didn't you didn't like that other song? Everybody? What's wrong
Speaker 1: with you? I can't help it. I want them all
Speaker 1: to be sort of equally loved, even though it doesn't
Speaker 1: in the case of the tie story, like you can't
Speaker 1: wear two ties at once. But in my case, like
Speaker 1: you know, I so if I do uh a solo
Speaker 1: album and and then write a song that's you know,
Speaker 1: gets on the radio and someone else is singing it.
Speaker 1: It's it's both of them are my work. But you know,
Speaker 1: I kind of want people to like everything that I do,
Speaker 1: so I want them to hear my my solo records
Speaker 1: and my co writes and my productions and everything else. Right,
Speaker 1: I think that's one of those sort of what wolf defeat.
Speaker 1: It's easy to twist that into I mean, I know
Speaker 1: I know people who would certainly look at that and
Speaker 1: just feel grouchy about it. And the other interpretation about
Speaker 1: it is it's amazing the things that you're doing and
Speaker 1: that people are hearing them and to have those opportunities,
Speaker 1: and it's sort of what perspective do you want to
Speaker 1: take on it? Yeah, and there's a there's there's kind
Speaker 1: of a it's hard to explain exactly, but I was
Speaker 1: talking with a friend about a project that they were
Speaker 1: working on that is um charitable. And this charitable project
Speaker 1: is a very specific thing that's only gonna benefit a
Speaker 1: few specific people. It's best that it works that way,
Speaker 1: but my friend it feels a lot of pressure from
Speaker 1: the world to to have whatever idea that they're working
Speaker 1: on be scalable. You need to be able to scale
Speaker 1: it up. You know, what's the matter. You can't help
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand people with this idea. You're only helping
Speaker 1: for people with this idea. You know, you've got to
Speaker 1: be able to scale it up to a million people
Speaker 1: or form people or whatever. And and you know, I
Speaker 1: think artists struggle with that a lot, especially pop pop artists,
Speaker 1: where scaling your work up to massive numbers is is
Speaker 1: a you know, it's a longstanding hope that a lot
Speaker 1: of people have you write a song. It's it's great
Speaker 1: to have it be very meaningful for a handful of people,
Speaker 1: but it's also awesome to have it be meaningful to,
Speaker 1: you know, millions of people. The thing is like for me,
Speaker 1: like if I think about who, who whom I am
Speaker 1: envious of in the world of music, It's really funny.
Speaker 1: It's a strange thing because I'm not very envious. Usually,
Speaker 1: I'm actually pretty much on my own path and I
Speaker 1: kind of understand that i have a weird and quirky,
Speaker 1: kind of unique path in music, and I'm very lucky,
Speaker 1: you know, no one else gets to be me. But
Speaker 1: if I'm ever envious, the strange pattern is that I'm
Speaker 1: envious of people musicians or creators of music for their
Speaker 1: success only if I despise their music. I'm never envious
Speaker 1: of someone who's music I love and who is successful. Yep,
Speaker 1: there's a I read a I read a study recently
Speaker 1: or some research about that that that seems to be
Speaker 1: exactly because I've been really interested in when does because
Speaker 1: it's we all compare ourselves to others, right, It's just
Speaker 1: part of what happens, and it would be nice if
Speaker 1: it didn't happen, but it does. And but there seemed
Speaker 1: to be cases where that comparison is kind of benign
Speaker 1: or even can be motivating. Um, and then there's other
Speaker 1: cases where it's it's not so much. And it's really
Speaker 1: interesting that the research seems to say that when if
Speaker 1: you compare yourself to somebody who you um a you
Speaker 1: like or be you see like you could become what
Speaker 1: they're being or then you two, it tends to be
Speaker 1: pretty benign. But if you compare yourself to people who
Speaker 1: don't seem anything like you, or seem to have gotten
Speaker 1: some break that you never got or seemed to you know,
Speaker 1: there's something about their circumstance that makes them able to
Speaker 1: do it, then that tends to become more of um uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a maladapted And I just thought that was
Speaker 1: really interesting. That sort of fits exactly with what you're
Speaker 1: saying there. My theory about this whole question of like
Speaker 1: envy and comparison for myself is that when I contemplate
Speaker 1: or think about or kind of dream about the successes
Speaker 1: of people that I whose music I love, my my
Speaker 1: biggest kind of emotion is is gratitude, like I'm so
Speaker 1: happy that I've gotten the chance to hear their music.
Speaker 1: And somehow that that kind of neutralizes, you know, what
Speaker 1: you could imagine would be, um, the possibility of feeling envy.
Speaker 1: And so that's that's why, strangely, my my only little
Speaker 1: twinges of envy here and there are like I sometimes
Speaker 1: envy people who who I think are you know, creating
Speaker 1: mediocre music and are very successful, Like why I don't
Speaker 1: even want that life. I don't. I don't even want
Speaker 1: to be like that at all. But I think, I
Speaker 1: I it's almost like I I envy them in the
Speaker 1: way that a person might envy someone who wins the
Speaker 1: lottery by chance, you know, and so you know, but
Speaker 1: but it's you know, one I think one of my
Speaker 1: lucky breaks in life. Is that that's a very small
Speaker 1: kind of component of my psyche. And you know, years
Speaker 1: ago I had this really interesting experience. I went to
Speaker 1: a question and answer by Frank Stella, who's a painter
Speaker 1: from New York that I admire a lot, and uh,
Speaker 1: he gave a talk and then afterwards we were allowed
Speaker 1: to ask questions, and I I said to him, um,
Speaker 1: and I was. I said to him, you know, I
Speaker 1: go to the museums and I look at the paintings,
Speaker 1: and there's so many bad paintings. Is so much bad work,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, up on the walls of the museum,
Speaker 1: and it's getting rewarded and it's succeeding. And yet I
Speaker 1: dan know that it's bad. You know what, what do
Speaker 1: you think about that? Mr? Stella? And he said, UM,
Speaker 1: worrying about bad art succeeding is not your job. It's
Speaker 1: of no concern. Your job is to find the art
Speaker 1: that inspires you and that fires your imagination, and your
Speaker 1: job is to is to study that art and figure
Speaker 1: out how they did it. Forget about the bad stuff.
Speaker 1: Your job is to look for great stuff that you love.
Speaker 1: And I was so struck by that. It seemed it
Speaker 1: was very simple, like, oh, oh, I get to just
Speaker 1: ignore the things that I don't think are good and
Speaker 1: and just pay super close attention to the things that
Speaker 1: I think are great. And that's really that that helped
Speaker 1: me so much over the years. That one bit of
Speaker 1: advice has been super helpful for me. Yeah, it's really
Speaker 1: about putting the focus on sort of the process and
Speaker 1: the internal piece and and that internally versus the external
Speaker 1: reward of it. Or it's like this, Um, you can
Speaker 1: feed that part of you that wants to be mad
Speaker 1: at the success of mediocrity, and then you will become
Speaker 1: a bitter, sad person. Or you can cultivate a habit
Speaker 1: of loving great work and feeling grateful for it and
Speaker 1: being excited about it and sharing it with your friends
Speaker 1: and and thinking, I want to do something that's great,
Speaker 1: and then that's the part of you that will grow
Speaker 1: and that that becomes your character over time. And I
Speaker 1: really feel like Frank Stella was at the right place
Speaker 1: at the right time in my life to say that
Speaker 1: thing that was so helpful. That's great. Well, I think
Speaker 1: that brings us to a pretty good point. To wrap up, Dan,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for being on the show. I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed talking with you, and it's uh, like I said,
Speaker 1: your music has meant so much to me, so speaking
Speaker 1: of appreciating great art, thank you, cool Man. Yeah, thanks
Speaker 1: for having this conversation with me. I hope that what
Speaker 1: I said makes sense. I think it was great. All right,
Speaker 1: Take care, cool Man, Bye bye. You can learn more
Speaker 1: about Dan Wilson add this podcast at one you feed
Speaker 1: dot net slash Wilson