Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to The Bob left Set's podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Damian Kulash. Okay, go Damien, how
Speaker 1: do you feel about your BM being more famous for
Speaker 1: its videos than its music.
Speaker 2: I think it's just a it's crazy, Like I my
Speaker 2: feeling is, it's what it is. Like, I'm just I
Speaker 2: feel very lucky that I get to keep making art.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Okay, but you know you look on Spotify and some
Speaker 1: of your early material has been streamed more. What do
Speaker 1: you think it can do to get people to listen
Speaker 1: and pay attention more to the music than the videos.
Speaker 2: Let's keep making it. I mean, there's there We get
Speaker 2: this question all the time, and that as if the
Speaker 2: videos are somehow cannibalizing the music, like it's the other
Speaker 2: way around, Like I you know, we make great songs.
Speaker 2: We make really great songs. Lots of bands make really
Speaker 2: great songs. We also make really great videos. Not lots
Speaker 2: of bands make really great video you know, So we'll
Speaker 2: sort of like in a category of one with respective
Speaker 2: the videos, whereas we're in a category of lots when
Speaker 2: it comes to the songs. And I'm glad that that
Speaker 2: the videos bring more listeners I'm glad that we keep
Speaker 2: get to keep making the stuff we get to keep making.
Speaker 2: I mean, do I understand the difference between my eyes
Speaker 2: and my ears. Absolutely, But from my perspective, like what
Speaker 2: I want to spend my days doing is chasing art ideas,
Speaker 2: you know, chasing chasing the muse, and I get to
Speaker 2: keep doing it. That's what matters to me.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk about the upcoming year, twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1: I look at your website and I see one gig
Speaker 1: listed in February. So what are the plans for twenty
Speaker 1: twenty six?
Speaker 2: We have We have some during plans that have yet
Speaker 2: to we haven't announced them yet where we have a uh,
Speaker 2: we're looking at some summer festivals right now and possibly
Speaker 2: a tour of the summer. We're starting up some work
Speaker 2: on new videos right now. You know, we had our
Speaker 2: first album in years come out last you know, last April.
Speaker 2: So this has been a big year of shows and
Speaker 2: promo and videos and we're happy to be back at it.
Speaker 1: Other than video, how do you promote the new album?
Speaker 2: I mean, we do all those standards stuff like there,
Speaker 2: you know, we've we have indie radio promoters and we
Speaker 2: do we you know, we we are active on social media,
Speaker 2: and you know, we have we're we're we're published through
Speaker 2: Warner Chapel, and we are We're distributed through Symphonics, so
Speaker 2: we have like and both of those have their own
Speaker 2: promotional arms as well. So like, I think we do
Speaker 2: all the standard stuff, but to be honest, I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't really know what the music industry standards are anymore,
Speaker 2: and and I'm not you know, a big part of
Speaker 2: it for us just keeping it keeping in direct contact
Speaker 2: with our existing fan base, you know, Like since the
Speaker 2: earliest days of our band, we would go out after
Speaker 2: shows with a with a spiral notebook and just get
Speaker 2: people to you know, give us their email addresses because
Speaker 2: we didn't want to be you know, we didn't we
Speaker 2: didn't want the label to be stuck in between us
Speaker 2: and our fans. We would, of course loved the label
Speaker 2: to help us find more fans and connecting more people
Speaker 2: out there in the world. But the the you know what,
Speaker 2: the real sort of transaction for us is make the
Speaker 2: stuff find the people. You know, Like, we make the
Speaker 2: stuff and we want to give it right to the people.
Speaker 2: That's sort of the whole game.
Speaker 1: To what degree are you personally active on social media
Speaker 1: promoting both yourself and the band?
Speaker 2: It kind of comes and goes. I I personally hate
Speaker 2: social media, like just because I'm a father. I see
Speaker 2: what it can do to young kids. I'm a human.
Speaker 2: I see what it does to my own brain, like
Speaker 2: that sort of like that suck of that attention suck
Speaker 2: where you go down the rabbit hole and you can't
Speaker 2: get out. It's just a gross feeling. But I also
Speaker 2: know it's how culture moves these days. So especially with
Speaker 2: a record coming out, I'd made an effort to be present,
Speaker 2: to to like pay attention to my own social media
Speaker 2: and to the band social media it is a hard
Speaker 2: thing for me to do without losing myself in it.
Speaker 2: So I am kind of always walking a balance, you know.
Speaker 1: So if one were to subscribe to your feeds, what
Speaker 1: would they see?
Speaker 2: My personal feed is mostly like stuff I'm interested in personally,
Speaker 2: and I try I try to I when I do podcasts,
Speaker 2: I try to, like, you know, I try to put
Speaker 2: a link on there. The band's feed is the band's feed.
Speaker 2: We try to be more regular with the band's feed,
Speaker 2: make sure that we have something every couple of days,
Speaker 2: and make sure you know, we have things specif the
Speaker 2: shows we've just done, specific to the awards that were
Speaker 2: up for, specific to the the things we think the
Speaker 2: fans would care about. We do our best to try
Speaker 2: to make material that fits the the format, which is
Speaker 2: an ever evolving thing. You know, It's like it. I
Speaker 2: think there are people who grew up more native to it,
Speaker 2: who actually want to take out a phone and film
Speaker 2: themselves doing their daily routines. That just doesn't interest me.
Speaker 2: I'm sure if that were native to me, we would
Speaker 2: be better at it.
Speaker 1: But you know, okay, so there's a line between your
Speaker 1: art and your personal life. You don't have a need
Speaker 1: or don't want to get your personal life out to
Speaker 1: many people.
Speaker 2: Oh god, no, I mean I remember early on in
Speaker 2: our career a person at a major label telling me, like,
Speaker 2: you really should just like, you know, live stream your life.
Speaker 2: You know, you should have a blog going all the time,
Speaker 2: you should have all this stuff. And I remember thinking,
Speaker 2: because I remember that the example in my head was
Speaker 2: the Pixies, that I grew up a massive Pixies fan,
Speaker 2: and if I had actually like part of what I
Speaker 2: loved was that they were godlike to me, and and
Speaker 2: imagining who and what that person was, and that if
Speaker 2: I actually had to watch, you know, Frank Black eat
Speaker 2: breakfast cereal in the morning, I probably would feel pretty
Speaker 2: differently about him. And I was just wrong, you know,
Speaker 2: like I was wrong in terms of the way culture moved.
Speaker 2: I'm I'm not wrong for me, like I just that's
Speaker 2: not I want my private life. I want my time
Speaker 2: with my kids to be my time with my kids.
Speaker 2: I don't want them online, you know. I want my
Speaker 2: time with my family to be my time with my family.
Speaker 2: I want my time sitting alone in a studio trying
Speaker 2: to figure out what cords should come next. That's like
Speaker 2: a nearly religious experience for me that I don't The
Speaker 2: last thing I want to be thinking about at that
Speaker 2: time is like the camera angle, you know, or or
Speaker 2: letting somebody into the process. I know, it's I know,
Speaker 2: that's how marketing has done. I know that's like that
Speaker 2: people half my age feel differently about that than I do.
Speaker 2: But I it's just that's me. You know.
Speaker 1: Have you met Frank Black Black Francis, Yeah, yeah, I have.
Speaker 2: Actually, our mutual friend Jamie Kitman introduced me to him
Speaker 2: early on, and he gave me some very great advice
Speaker 2: about my career. I'm still I'm still a mega fan,
Speaker 2: but you know, still at a distance.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess what I'm asking is, you had an
Speaker 1: illusion of the man after meeting him. How did you feel?
Speaker 2: I have a different illusion to the man. It's still
Speaker 2: a good one. I it's you know, we're not We're
Speaker 2: not like best friends. But I I, I was already
Speaker 2: an adult with enough with and what I was asking was,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, the big question I had for
Speaker 2: him when I was a twenty two year old with
Speaker 2: just getting my first major label deal, was I want
Speaker 2: to learn to sing better. And he gave me. He
Speaker 2: gave me his vocal coach, you know, like and I
Speaker 2: still do that. I still do the warm up his
Speaker 2: vocal coach gave me every day, you know, And I remember,
Speaker 2: I remember his His publishing advice was very very draconian,
Speaker 2: don't don't give a cent to anyone kind of thing.
Speaker 2: And I mean, I just he it was already an
Speaker 2: adult getting an advice from getting advice from another adult,
Speaker 2: Very different from a fourteen year old getting get you know,
Speaker 2: getting your way in the world by hearing raw rage
Speaker 2: on vinyl.
Speaker 1: You know, Okay, but the privilege of stardom, if we
Speaker 1: want to call it a privilege, is that you get
Speaker 1: to meet a lot of household names, and needless to say,
Speaker 1: they're very different from one's impression in most cases not all.
Speaker 1: So what has been your experience meeting the famous people?
Speaker 2: They're humans, They're all humans, you know, like it. It
Speaker 2: is remarkable how how pedestrian and human every human is,
Speaker 2: and and there there are. I mean, I've gotten the
Speaker 2: chance to meet some extraordinarily talented famous and and uh
Speaker 2: well healed ones and it doesn't you know that it's
Speaker 2: it's always the same human stuff. I mean, I find
Speaker 2: that very reassuring in some way that it's not there
Speaker 2: isn't an us and in them there isn't a way
Speaker 2: that the other half lived that's different. You know, they
Speaker 2: might have a lot more money or more access, but
Speaker 2: there's the.
Speaker 3: The people I know who are really really big celebrity
Speaker 3: have a really big celebrity face are are unfailingly nothing
Speaker 3: like it.
Speaker 2: On the other side, it's just there's no we as
Speaker 2: as consumers of the world around us. I think we
Speaker 2: just need things to be more black and white, broad
Speaker 2: stroke stories than is real. So we so we decide
Speaker 2: that a certain celebrity is vapid or another one is
Speaker 2: incredibly you know, dark and mysterious or whatever it is.
Speaker 2: We write the stories about these people and they sort
Speaker 2: of snowball, but the people themselves just aren't. Like there
Speaker 2: are always multidimensional humans with everything going on, They're not
Speaker 2: anything like that, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, to what degree do you personally know your hardcore.
Speaker 2: Fans depends which ones. There's a few of them I
Speaker 2: know really well. I mean like, we literally have a
Speaker 2: fan who we just played some shows last week and
Speaker 2: she went to her seventy third show. I think this
Speaker 2: on this last run. She's seen every show we played
Speaker 2: this year, including ones that weren't announced. You know, like,
Speaker 2: I know her really well, and she's great, She's awesome.
Speaker 2: And there's a handful of fans who come to so
Speaker 2: many shows that I do know them really well. I
Speaker 2: suspect they actually distort my opinion, my perspect on what
Speaker 2: the rest of the sort of megafandom is like. Because
Speaker 2: no matter how insanely into a band you are, what
Speaker 2: are the chances you're going to travel to see you know,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five shows in a year Like that's puts
Speaker 2: you in a very very very small category, and the
Speaker 2: people who really keep our career alive are much broader
Speaker 2: set than that and yet still really really engage. So
Speaker 2: and I think I know I know them by again
Speaker 2: in broad strokes, you know, like I can promise you
Speaker 2: like I do a lot of questions and answer at
Speaker 2: our shows. I asked that the audience just I'm like,
Speaker 2: who's got a question? And we just do. We just
Speaker 2: have discussions at the shows, and you get a pretty
Speaker 2: good sense of how engaged and nerdy and arty our
Speaker 2: fans are, you know, and that I just that I
Speaker 2: love that, Like, couldn't be more thank Back to your
Speaker 2: question about the videos, it's sort of like they they
Speaker 2: filter for a self selecting group of very curious and
Speaker 2: very sort of prone to wonder nerds, and those are
Speaker 2: people I like hanging out like it's a it's a
Speaker 2: good feeling.
Speaker 1: Well, have you had any bad experiences with fans? I
Speaker 1: was talking trying to get too close.
Speaker 2: Uh, that has happened. It's been a while, but there
Speaker 2: was there was a there was a time in Florida
Speaker 2: when there was a there was some sort of scary
Speaker 2: moments with it with somebody who had who had not
Speaker 2: taken her meds and was out of the institution she
Speaker 2: was supposed to be in and so forth.
Speaker 1: So how did you handle that?
Speaker 2: Uh? Distance, Like you just be really when you're in
Speaker 2: that city, you're just really careful to watch keep your
Speaker 2: wits about you. I don't know that there's much you
Speaker 2: can do without without letting it affect your entire life,
Speaker 2: you know. And I don't know, maybe I'm maybe maybe
Speaker 2: this is naive, but it feels to me like we're
Speaker 2: a pretty small like we're a big deal to a
Speaker 2: few people, but it's a it's a small category, you know,
Speaker 2: Like I would, I think there are much bigger, bigger
Speaker 2: fish out there for the craziest to go for.
Speaker 1: Okay, but just talking about this woman in Florida, did
Speaker 1: you have to get the authorities involved?
Speaker 2: Came close? It didn't. I think this one did not.
Speaker 2: I think we had. I can't remember. It was like
Speaker 2: fifteen years ago now, but I do remember having to
Speaker 2: like alert everybody at the at the show, and you know,
Speaker 2: our tour manager had to be the hotel had to
Speaker 2: be notified and all that kind of stuff. Because there
Speaker 2: was there were some close calls and some threatening emails.
Speaker 2: I guess it was at that point as opposed to
Speaker 2: Dam's or whatever. But I honestly don't remember the specifics
Speaker 2: I remember it being. I remember what I needed to
Speaker 2: do was like, stay calm.
Speaker 1: Are you recognized out in public?
Speaker 2: Generally not much, or at least not You know, it
Speaker 2: happens every every once in a while, but it's not
Speaker 2: like a certainly not a constant thing. Sometimes my kids
Speaker 2: will be wearing okay go T shirts and and and
Speaker 2: like somebody will be like, oh you like that dand
Speaker 2: and not realize that I'm standing right there with them.
Speaker 1: Okay, how old are your kids?
Speaker 2: I have seven year old twins.
Speaker 1: Okay, usually maybe they're a little young. The kids have
Speaker 1: contempt for the father's work or the mother.
Speaker 2: It could it may I'm sure we're headed there eventually.
Speaker 2: We'll get there. Right now. My daughter says her plan
Speaker 2: is to join my men and and perhaps replace me,
Speaker 2: which I'm excited about.
Speaker 1: So what have you learned having kids?
Speaker 2: Everything?
Speaker 1: I mean?
Speaker 2: I I I love being the father, and I love
Speaker 2: the the way that it has opened up my heart,
Speaker 2: and I think I think a lot of people. The
Speaker 2: thing I had always heard is that like you see
Speaker 2: the world anew through the eyes of your kids, and
Speaker 2: I had some of that experience, but it's more that
Speaker 2: I like parts of myself that had ossified or I
Speaker 2: hadn't that I thought I understood already, even my relationship
Speaker 2: to love, like I'm a romantic who has chased love
Speaker 2: my whole life long and thought I knew all my
Speaker 2: relationships to it, And all of a sudden, you have
Speaker 2: a kid, and it's just like God, there's a whole
Speaker 2: new wing. There's a whole new wing to this castle,
Speaker 2: and it's it's bigger and more amazing than anything I've
Speaker 2: been in before. I love it.
Speaker 1: To what degree you talked about not being enamored of
Speaker 1: social media? To what degree do you direct and restrict
Speaker 1: your children.
Speaker 2: I'm very our kids. I mean, at this age they
Speaker 2: have they don't have devices, will keep that that way
Speaker 2: for a long time, and they have very limited screen
Speaker 2: time on any you know, for anything. And I I mean,
Speaker 2: I hope social media is a different universe by the
Speaker 2: time that they're you know, I don't know, but thirteen
Speaker 2: fourteen years old, it's changed so much in the last
Speaker 2: five years that I hope, I hope, I hope it
Speaker 2: can change again. I just think about what I was
Speaker 2: like as a teenager, and whether or not social media
Speaker 2: would have like it would have ruined. It would have
Speaker 2: been terrible for me. I would have been got out
Speaker 2: and awful. And from everything I understand, it is basically
Speaker 2: really horrible for teens now, so I will keep my
Speaker 2: kids as far from it as I can.
Speaker 1: Why would it have been awful for you?
Speaker 2: Because I was experimenting with personalities? You know, because I
Speaker 2: was like, because I think at that age, you're trying
Speaker 2: to figure out who you are and taking you know,
Speaker 2: big swings, and it's and I'm just glad that's not
Speaker 2: that's not all on record somewhere, know, But also because
Speaker 2: like the number when when I got home from high
Speaker 2: school to what I thought about all night was that
Speaker 2: girl right like if I if? And and what she
Speaker 2: thought of me? And vice versa and what and that
Speaker 2: other guy who liked that? And what are all the
Speaker 2: stuff that you that goes through your head as a kid.
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 2: If that if I could still be gaming that all
Speaker 2: night long? I mean, you know, like I already spent
Speaker 2: hours on the on the phone as a teenager. I
Speaker 2: think if if that could have been a sort of
Speaker 2: gamified and broadcast system of social hierarchy. Got it was
Speaker 2: been off for me.
Speaker 1: So what kind of kid were you?
Speaker 2: I was a nerdy art kid. I I went, you know, like,
Speaker 2: I spent all my time painting and with my headphones
Speaker 2: on listening to rock and roll like it. I I
Speaker 2: went to a school where there was like really heavy
Speaker 2: on jocks, and and I got along well with him.
Speaker 2: I wasn't like, I wasn't in the sort of classic
Speaker 2: battle of the arty kids against the jocks. I just
Speaker 2: like they liked different things than I did. We didn't.
Speaker 2: We didn't even like the same girl. So it was fine.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's start from the beginning. Where did you grow up?
Speaker 2: I grew up in Washington, DC.
Speaker 1: And were your parents involved with the government.
Speaker 2: They were not. My dad is a well so sort
Speaker 2: of tangentiy, I should say. My dad is a civil
Speaker 2: engineer whose work was not funded by the government but
Speaker 2: was used by the government law and my uh my
Speaker 2: mom is a was in uh basically worked for a
Speaker 2: consulting firm interpreting what the government's rules were at any
Speaker 2: given time for pensions and benefits. So they both they
Speaker 2: both had a lot of government overlap, but were not
Speaker 2: employed by the government.
Speaker 1: Okay, it would sound like to do her job, your
Speaker 1: mother would be somewhat of a news junkie. Are you
Speaker 1: a news junkie?
Speaker 2: Not currently, I am susceptible to it, but I a
Speaker 2: special I found during the first Trump administration that I
Speaker 2: I there's a certain chadenfreuda I was looking for in
Speaker 2: the news every night, and and I just would go
Speaker 2: diving deep down these holes looking for that, you know,
Speaker 2: trying to find the moment that this that this would
Speaker 2: all crack and and and sanity would would come bubbling
Speaker 2: up through the the truth somewhere, and seeing one piece
Speaker 2: of news after another, going God, this is ridiculous, Oh
Speaker 2: my god, oh God, And like that that I realized
Speaker 2: after a while it was I was not staying informed.
Speaker 2: I was just I was. It was just rage scrolling,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Well, needless to say, we're in the second Trump administration.
Speaker 1: What's your outlook today?
Speaker 2: Not good? I you know, I'm I'm I'm obviously left
Speaker 2: of center politically, and and and I I I can
Speaker 2: say just the same. I don't. I don't. I think
Speaker 2: it's very hard to look at what's happening right now
Speaker 2: and think there's any sanity to it. And I am
Speaker 2: worried that that I'm just another one of the sort
Speaker 2: of head in the sand, Like it's so that the
Speaker 2: flood the zone offense of of the of the Trump
Speaker 2: administration and MAGA in general. The sort of like let's
Speaker 2: just pour, you know, just just sort of set everything
Speaker 2: on fire, and and if it's all burning at the
Speaker 2: same time, nobody will know what to do has been
Speaker 2: relatively effective with me because I'm just I'm overwhelmed. I'm
Speaker 2: sort of like God, I don't know what to do
Speaker 2: about any of it. It doesn't leave a great doesn't
Speaker 2: leave me with a very positive outlook. So how do
Speaker 2: you think it's going to play out? Well, I'm a
Speaker 2: I'm I I am a cynic and also like this
Speaker 2: sort of a sort of hopeful, optimistic, romantic on the
Speaker 2: to sort of counterbalance that I I guess my rational
Speaker 2: side thinks it's only going to get worse. My the
Speaker 2: other side of me is sort of like it just can't.
Speaker 2: There has to be a breaking point. And I'm and
Speaker 2: I don't know, I mean, like I I I wish
Speaker 2: I could give. I wish I had anything other than
Speaker 2: than songs to give, you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 2: we have a song on her most recent album called
Speaker 2: A Stone Only Rolls Downhill and the whole it's I
Speaker 2: wish I could say this that I'll be all right,
Speaker 2: Like if that's the song written specifically to my kids,
Speaker 2: like I don't have any you can't lie to them,
Speaker 2: But you also can't raise your kids going like, well,
Speaker 2: the world is going to hell in a hand basket
Speaker 2: and you're going with it, you know, I don't know,
Speaker 2: what do you think?
Speaker 1: Oh wow, Well, let me ask your question first. In
Speaker 1: the sixties they fought or said both actually that music
Speaker 1: could change the world. What power does music have in
Speaker 1: today's world?
Speaker 2: I think you would be able to answer that way
Speaker 2: better than I, because I think you look at music
Speaker 2: across like in its in its aggregate form. I look
Speaker 2: at music one song at a time, you know. But
Speaker 2: like I will say that my life has been changed
Speaker 2: by songs, and my relationship to the world changes dramatically
Speaker 2: when those songs are on, when something changes my soul.
Speaker 2: And I know that our fan like I get letters
Speaker 2: all the time from you know. The most recent one
Speaker 2: that really moved me was a a an activist, an
Speaker 2: Israeli activist in Palestine trying to bring the war to
Speaker 2: an end, saying that she just needed like that that
Speaker 2: after a day of hell all around her, she needed
Speaker 2: something to escape too, and our songs we're doing that
Speaker 2: for her, and like that that those are the types
Speaker 2: of things that booy my soul. Because I'm I. I
Speaker 2: can feel very navel gazing and and sort of self
Speaker 2: serving to sit in my in my safe bubble writing songs.
Speaker 2: But you know when we hear from people all the
Speaker 2: time for whom our songs are getting them through the
Speaker 2: death of a parent or the death of a child,
Speaker 2: or uh, you know, the realization that the world around
Speaker 2: them is going to ship like them. I know these
Speaker 2: individual stories are I don't know if they're if they
Speaker 2: have any if they move any globe, you know, huge
Speaker 2: cosmic needle. All I can do is do do do
Speaker 2: my part in my little world, and and I I
Speaker 2: know it has been done for me. I know it.
Speaker 2: You know I know that that music keeps me alive,
Speaker 2: and I hope, I hope it's doing that for us.
Speaker 1: Let's say that I said financial considerations were taken off
Speaker 1: the table, but no one would ever hear your music.
Speaker 1: You could make it, but no one could hear it.
Speaker 1: Would you still make.
Speaker 2: It, probably not. I don't know. I mean I would,
Speaker 2: what I would make would change a lot like I
Speaker 2: think I would be. I would I'd spend a lot
Speaker 2: more time practicing piano just to play it, and a
Speaker 2: lot less time trying to figure out but how does
Speaker 2: this become a song? And I don't know, And my
Speaker 2: answer to that would have changed dramatically over the years,
Speaker 2: because I like as a as a kid. When I
Speaker 2: first started making music, it was a compulsion to be
Speaker 2: able to like the thing. When I heard Rocket by
Speaker 2: Herbie Hancott, a certain scratch itch in my brain was
Speaker 2: scratched deep inside my skull in a place that nothing
Speaker 2: else had ever gotten to it. And I don't know.
Speaker 2: Ten years later than that, the first time I had
Speaker 2: a four track sitting in front of me and I
Speaker 2: could start layering things up and go, oh my god,
Speaker 2: I think I just wrote a song that did something
Speaker 2: in my brain in a whole different way too. They're
Speaker 2: related but not the same, you know. And I spent
Speaker 2: I spent years just trying to find that thing, either
Speaker 2: with other musicians in the room or multi tracking something
Speaker 2: in a studio, whatever, trying to it. It's this other
Speaker 2: itch in my brain. I think I would have done
Speaker 2: that regardless of who was listening at this point in
Speaker 2: my life. I I make the songs for like I
Speaker 2: am the audio. I'm the only test audience. Like, if
Speaker 2: it's not moving me, there's no point in making it.
Speaker 2: But if there were, if there were no if there
Speaker 2: were no audience outside of that. Ever, again, I'm not
Speaker 2: sure it ever finished them. I'd probably be playing with
Speaker 2: them all the time, but I would I don't think
Speaker 2: it would ever goes to the part of where I
Speaker 2: go like, no, these lyrics aren't good enough. Try again.
Speaker 1: Okay, you have a band, long tenure, you have an audience.
Speaker 1: How important is it for you to have more people
Speaker 1: hear your music?
Speaker 2: It's a it's a it's a totally like what is it?
Speaker 2: What's the name of the thing? Or OBErs, it's a
Speaker 2: it's a snake eating its tail question? You know, like
Speaker 2: I it. I watch my kids, for instance, want to
Speaker 2: get stuff for uh the holidays, right, They're like, I
Speaker 2: want to get this, and I want to get that.
Speaker 2: I know, I know the things that will be fun
Speaker 2: for them to open versus the things that will be
Speaker 2: fun for them to have. I know how little each
Speaker 2: individual toil will matter in the course of a year
Speaker 2: or in the course of their lives. And it's I
Speaker 2: think that people look at when I look at my
Speaker 2: own career and when I look around the musicians I
Speaker 2: know an artist that I know in their careers, it's
Speaker 2: the same basic thing. There's this sort of compulsion towards
Speaker 2: towards UH can act with more people, you know, towards
Speaker 2: feedback from those people out there that it's like, oh, yes,
Speaker 2: this thing landed. You know that the thing I made
Speaker 2: mattered to somebody. But it's all relative, like ten more
Speaker 2: tomorrow is better than ten less tomorrow. But I don't
Speaker 2: But does it really matter? Like I don't actually know.
Speaker 2: I'm not there for these interactions. When somebody puts our
Speaker 2: song on somewhere, I'm not there to feel it. And
Speaker 2: I wouldn't know if ten more people did it tomorrow
Speaker 2: or less? Is this too abstract? Like I don't. I
Speaker 2: like the idea of continuing to do this. I like
Speaker 2: the feeling of continuing to do this, and and I
Speaker 2: need people to keep showing up at shows and keep
Speaker 2: streaming our songs and keep watching our videos and stuff
Speaker 2: for me for that to be an operational career. But
Speaker 2: it's not the abstraction of more and more and more
Speaker 2: is I'm aware of that as an abstraction. Does that
Speaker 2: answer the question absolutely? How are the economics fine? I mean,
Speaker 2: it's we entered the music industry right at the end,
Speaker 2: like just as CDs were dying, and we never had
Speaker 2: a time where where we got you know, got fat
Speaker 2: off of off of master side sales. You know, we
Speaker 2: we we didn't live in there of of of big,
Speaker 2: big hits. You know. There there was there was a
Speaker 2: lot more licensing. Like I I think that it was
Speaker 2: a lot easier to to to get from album to
Speaker 2: album without worrying about people paying their rent or their
Speaker 2: mortgage or whatever. When when licenses from TV shows and
Speaker 2: movies and stuff were significantly bigger than they are now
Speaker 2: and more frequent than they are now. And I gather
Speaker 2: that's not just our band aging, that's that's the industry
Speaker 2: as a whole. I mean, we we have this weird
Speaker 2: thing where we get to make these expensive videos because
Speaker 2: we find sponsors for them generally, and those that is
Speaker 2: this is such a weird little cul de sac off
Speaker 2: of the rest of the music industry and affects our
Speaker 2: finances so much that it's a little bit hard to
Speaker 2: know what are what are what our bottom line would
Speaker 2: look like without that. But you know, we tour profitably,
Speaker 2: We make a lot on merch Things are pretty good
Speaker 2: in general.
Speaker 1: So how was it financially during COVID during the shutdown?
Speaker 2: Uh, it we happened to be between albums. Then it
Speaker 2: was like a pretty good time for it to happen.
Speaker 2: My kids were eighteen months old when it started. I
Speaker 2: was not going to go touring with toddlers at home anyways.
Speaker 2: And uh, and my wife and I directed a film together.
Speaker 2: We directed a movie for Apple, and so I had
Speaker 2: sort of briefly pivoted out of out of the music industry.
Speaker 1: Right then, how did you get a deal to make
Speaker 1: it movie for Apple?
Speaker 2: Well, my band makes these videos. You might have heard
Speaker 2: it where so yeah, so for your for any listeners
Speaker 2: who don't already know this about our band, we're the
Speaker 2: band with the ridiculous videos and they were they are
Speaker 2: well respected in the film and ad communities. And so
Speaker 2: when we pitched a movie to Apple to co direct,
Speaker 2: my wife is a screenwriter and she's written some very wait.
Speaker 1: Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait, let's start
Speaker 1: at a base level. You're at home, your wife says,
Speaker 1: I have an idea. There's a long process between creation
Speaker 1: and actually having a deal in making the movie was
Speaker 1: like a big plan. I mean, how did you get
Speaker 1: did you get an age? And how did this all
Speaker 1: come to be?
Speaker 2: When when my wife and I knew each other in
Speaker 2: high school years and years and years ago, and we
Speaker 2: didn't see each other for twenty years after that we
Speaker 2: both had totally separate lives and then ran into each
Speaker 2: other on Staten Island of all one of the places,
Speaker 2: and uh, and we're friends again. And when when it
Speaker 2: when it first got romantic? We I remember us, I
Speaker 2: mean we It was sort of a specific thing. It
Speaker 2: was like, you're in film and I'm in music. The
Speaker 2: more successful I am, especially these days, that the more
Speaker 2: the more that means being away from home. The more
Speaker 2: successful you are means being off on sets being away
Speaker 2: from home too. So it doesn't really seem like the
Speaker 2: type of relationship we want to build. Why don't we
Speaker 2: make stuff together? And we so we, Yeah, we decided
Speaker 2: we would we would try directing directing stuff together. Because
Speaker 2: I'm we that was sort of an obvious next stept
Speaker 2: for both of us, she as a as a narrative
Speaker 2: film writer and me as a video director, and so yeah,
Speaker 2: we we knew it would be a long game type
Speaker 2: of thing, because you don't get that that opportunity very often.
Speaker 2: And we started to develop some ideas just you know,
Speaker 2: when we'd be out on a hike or something like that.
Speaker 2: We just passed back and forth ideas. This one came
Speaker 2: up because of a she got the opportunity to to
Speaker 2: write a book about I'm sorry to write the script
Speaker 2: based on a book about the economics of the beanie
Speaker 2: baby bubble. And we were both teenagers when that happened
Speaker 2: and completely immune to its charms, Like we had that
Speaker 2: it was the type of thing that we were both like,
Speaker 2: who fucking want a small stuffed animal and think it
Speaker 2: was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, And so we
Speaker 2: had like exactly the right distance from it to sort
Speaker 2: of look as scans at it and it and it
Speaker 2: turns out to be such a weird story of sort
Speaker 2: of what America is about that we just both kind
Speaker 2: of fell in love with it. She had written she
Speaker 2: had written one draft of the script already, and we
Speaker 2: just sort of we thought, okay, if this were an
Speaker 2: okay Go video. If this narrative were a video, how
Speaker 2: would we how would we do it wrong? And the
Speaker 2: way that okay Go always gets the music industry wrong,
Speaker 2: how would we do this movie wrong? And we pitched
Speaker 2: it to Zach Gallifacus, who is who would make the
Speaker 2: perfect tie Warner?
Speaker 1: Oh wait wait wait wait wait how did you know?
Speaker 1: How did you connect with Zach galifanaka?
Speaker 2: He was our he was our landlord. We were he
Speaker 2: we he We were renting an apartment that he owns
Speaker 2: in in uh in Venice, California.
Speaker 1: Just for the record, sideways, where do you live now?
Speaker 2: I live in Santa Barbara? Now?
Speaker 1: Okay, So you pitch it to Zach?
Speaker 2: He was into it and uh and so we took
Speaker 2: it to we we uh, we took it to various
Speaker 2: different I mean, Imagine Entertainment signed on pretty early to
Speaker 2: produce it. And and at that point.
Speaker 1: Wait wait wait wait who connected you with Imagine?
Speaker 2: My wife she'd written several scripts for Imagine at that point. Okay,
Speaker 2: she already know and uh And it was at Amazon
Speaker 2: for almost two years and eventually they were just on
Speaker 2: the fence about it for too long. And actually, I
Speaker 2: hope it's legal to say. At this point, Zach Zach
Speaker 2: got so upset about the business practices of Amazon that
Speaker 2: he was like, I'm not making this if it's an
Speaker 2: Amazon anymore. And that pushed them off the fence and
Speaker 2: we get it. And Apple was just starting their film
Speaker 2: division and we got to be one of the things
Speaker 2: they made.
Speaker 1: So are you happy with the result?
Speaker 2: I love that. Yeah, the film is great. Film is great.
Speaker 2: The process of making the film is less fun than
Speaker 2: I had hoped. It is deeply creative, but also more
Speaker 2: more management than it is. Uh muse chasing that makes sense.
Speaker 2: I longed to get back to, like the the chasing
Speaker 2: of the of the emotional part of it, that sitting
Speaker 2: down in a piano or a guitar. Uh and and
Speaker 2: and finding that moment where one plus one equals five hundred.
Speaker 1: You know, film is a collaborative art, which music is
Speaker 1: more about the individual. Was that where you notice a difference.
Speaker 2: Yes, But you know our videos are incredibly collaborative. We
Speaker 2: obviously the Okay Go videos are very you know, they
Speaker 2: can have giant crews sometimes that there's I think the
Speaker 2: love video, the one that is Grammy nominated right now
Speaker 2: is up. It was one hundred and thirty six people
Speaker 2: on the crew, and you know that's that's almost narrative
Speaker 2: film size, but it is a very different You're basically
Speaker 2: it's a sprint up to one three minute shot. A
Speaker 2: film is a you know, a forty day shoot, fifty
Speaker 2: day shoot. It's a you're it's your all your pre
Speaker 2: production sits in an office for several months, and and
Speaker 2: yes it is. It is a collaboration on a grant
Speaker 2: much bigger scale. I think more of it. I mean,
Speaker 2: it was a steep learning curve for me. I really
Speaker 2: enjoyed it, but there was a lot of it that
Speaker 2: it was that you're what you're doing is you're describing
Speaker 2: a vision, and people with even more experience than you
Speaker 2: will go make that vision. You know, like your your
Speaker 2: art department will now go produce the thing you have described.
Speaker 2: I'm used to actually describing the vision and then going
Speaker 2: and producing it myself.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to the music side of it. Okay,
Speaker 1: go as a band. To what the degree is the
Speaker 1: creation collaborative. I'm not talking about the recording, I'm talking
Speaker 1: about the writing. To what degree is it really just you?
Speaker 1: Or to what degree is it collaborative.
Speaker 2: It's very collaborative. Tim the Basis and I have known
Speaker 2: each other since we were eleven years old, and I
Speaker 2: would say, I mean we both sort of write demos
Speaker 2: ourselves and then bring them to the other, but they
Speaker 2: invariably change a lot after that. I tend to be
Speaker 2: the pretty soul lyricist. The other guys will definitely weigh
Speaker 2: in on the lyrics, and I value their feedback a lot.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you've dealt with this with other musicians before,
Speaker 2: but it's a very like It's unlike any other business
Speaker 2: or or art form that I know of in terms
Speaker 2: of it's the balance of of sort of democratic decision
Speaker 2: making and and you know, autocratic decision making. Because there's
Speaker 2: this there's an illusion and sometimes it's the truth that
Speaker 2: it that it's more a family than it is a business. You're, you're, you're,
Speaker 2: you've got one foot in each camp, and so having
Speaker 2: everybody's blessing on something is not just a matter of
Speaker 2: decision making, it's also a matter of your own self
Speaker 2: feeling okay, Like it's it's steamrolling the people you've been
Speaker 2: in a band with for thirty years because you feel
Speaker 2: like you're right about something. Doesn't feel good. You would
Speaker 2: eat like it's not operable to be like I won
Speaker 2: this one good, you know what I mean? Like you
Speaker 2: eat it. So we've you we've sort of spent decades
Speaker 2: doing this in a way where we need each other's
Speaker 2: approval on things, but we also need to have you
Speaker 2: also need someone who's where, you know, like I'm where
Speaker 2: the buck stops generally, and so there are lots of
Speaker 2: times when I just have to make a decision and
Speaker 2: I don't feel like making it, but I just have to,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: And how do you split up the publishing we have?
Speaker 2: We split up the publishing half goes to the people
Speaker 2: who wrote the song, and we try to break that
Speaker 2: down fairly, and the other half goes to the band,
Speaker 2: anyone who has participated in the entire promotion cycle for
Speaker 2: the album, because we figured that there's no value to
Speaker 2: those songs if they are if they haven't gotten a
Speaker 2: good lift off into the world.
Speaker 1: Okay, so what is your process? Are you writing when
Speaker 1: you know you have to record or want to record
Speaker 1: an album? Are you coming up with songs all the time?
Speaker 1: Are you waiting for inspiration? How does it work for you?
Speaker 2: Closest to the first one You've said, like, mostly I
Speaker 2: go into long periods of writing when it's like I,
Speaker 2: when I've checked off all the other stuff that has
Speaker 2: to be done. I like. The thing I love doing
Speaker 2: the most is sitting here, playing with sounds and trying
Speaker 2: to discover moments where you put two sounds together and
Speaker 2: out the other side comes in emotion, and that's that
Speaker 2: has never stopped being magical to me. I'm also so
Speaker 2: thrilled by the opportunity to go make this ridiculous film,
Speaker 2: right like, can we make this art project? Do I
Speaker 2: get to go play with robots in a train station
Speaker 2: in Budapest? That is like, I'll never say no to that,
Speaker 2: and I want that opportunity, So I will face that
Speaker 2: video until we get it made. And as long as
Speaker 2: we have things we sort of need to be doing,
Speaker 2: that's generally what I'm doing. And when we run out
Speaker 2: of those things, I'm like, good, now I get to
Speaker 2: write another album. And by then I'm generally so exhausted
Speaker 2: of working in large groups of people and and and
Speaker 2: chasing down these big logistics that I'm really excited to
Speaker 2: just sit home and write for months straight. When I
Speaker 2: was younger, I remember feeling a lot of pressure to
Speaker 2: write while we were on the road, to get to
Speaker 2: write faster than I do, or to always be writing.
Speaker 2: And I honestly I'm jealous of the of the musicians
Speaker 2: I know who keep themselves to a really militaristic schedule,
Speaker 2: who just like every day put in five or six
Speaker 2: hours or whatever it is. And every every year, I
Speaker 2: promise myself, I'm gonna I'm gonna develop that kind of
Speaker 2: habit that I have yet too, so we'll see.
Speaker 1: Okay, do you know when you write an eleven now,
Speaker 1: so you working, you know you've been doing it so
Speaker 1: long you're not going to write something that's complete shit.
Speaker 1: But every once in a while and you can't do
Speaker 1: it that off, you go, wait a second, this is great.
Speaker 2: Well to me, they all start with a hint of that,
Speaker 2: and it's more about not losing it right, Like, this
Speaker 2: is the model that operates in my brain, and I
Speaker 2: think it's true.
Speaker 1: Ish.
Speaker 2: I'm just like playing around with sounds, and for the
Speaker 2: most part, when you put two sounds together, you get
Speaker 2: another sound on the other side. Every once in a
Speaker 2: while you get an emotion like something happens, and that's
Speaker 2: unbelievable to get that to flow into another set of
Speaker 2: sounds that also have an emotion that and those two
Speaker 2: emotions counterbalance each other in such a way that there's
Speaker 2: some actual arc and feeling and spread and journey to
Speaker 2: it all that's even more rare. So you can get
Speaker 2: a wildly hooky or a wildly punchy or wildly evocative
Speaker 2: single chord progression or groove or whatever, and it just
Speaker 2: doesn't go anywhere. Like you can get thousands of those
Speaker 2: and they still don't turn into a song. And even
Speaker 2: once you have that arc of a song, how not
Speaker 2: to kill it by describing it lyrically? Like what are
Speaker 2: the actual things you're saying now? Now you're crossing over
Speaker 2: from the sort of murky space of magical emotions into
Speaker 2: the specific space of things you've actually said a poem,
Speaker 2: you're actually singing along with this, How not to get
Speaker 2: that to flatten it into just a description of the
Speaker 2: sad song you've just written, or of the enthusiastic song written,
Speaker 2: whatever it is. And so it's more like it's whittling
Speaker 2: down the whole time. You're going from this thing that
Speaker 2: is full of promise, and at every stage it has
Speaker 2: the opportunity to just turn back into a bunch of sounds,
Speaker 2: and it's so rare that everyone's every once in a
Speaker 2: while you get all the way to the end of
Speaker 2: it and it's stayed full of promise.
Speaker 1: Okay, there are some people have a bolt of inspiration
Speaker 1: write a song in fifteen minutes. It sounds like you
Speaker 1: build a song over a long period of time.
Speaker 2: Usually, Yeah, every once in a while, something will start
Speaker 2: lyrics first, and then maybe that'll like sort of drag
Speaker 2: along the song behind it, and that does happen faster
Speaker 2: and they're more succinct, and sometimes they're really good, But
Speaker 2: there's not usually how they write.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to the videos. You have a concept,
Speaker 1: you nail it down as much as possible, You get sponsors,
Speaker 1: You have a shoot those who are uninitiated. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of money involved. There's a lot of people and
Speaker 1: equipment involved. You have a set period of time to
Speaker 1: film the video. The nature of making a film is
Speaker 1: even with the best intentions, the best script, the best actors,
Speaker 1: the best directors, it can go sideways. It doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: end up what you wanted to be. So have you
Speaker 1: had that experience with these videos where you're looking at
Speaker 1: the footage you have and say it's just not there,
Speaker 1: and what do you do when you have that feeling?
Speaker 2: Well, because our videos, like the reason we wound up
Speaker 2: making videos like this is because ages ago we set
Speaker 2: up a camera on a tripod in my backyard and
Speaker 2: filmed us doing a rehearsal of a ridiculous dance. It
Speaker 2: was sort of a thing we would do on stage
Speaker 2: to fuck with the hipsters. You know. It's like it
Speaker 2: was the era of the Strokes and everybody was shuffling
Speaker 2: their feet and smoking and it was and we just
Speaker 2: we wanted to we wanted we wanted to feel like
Speaker 2: cheap trick. We wanted to feel like Jon Jet. We
Speaker 2: wanted we wanted like, we wanted a smile in the room.
Speaker 2: So we would do this ridiculous boy band dance, taking
Speaker 2: the piss out of ourselves just to kind of to
Speaker 2: because it was the punkest thing we could do at
Speaker 2: the time. And a we taped us a rehearsal tape
Speaker 2: of that in my backyard and it went sort of
Speaker 2: proto viral before YouTube was ever a thing, right, And
Speaker 2: that taught us something about just being like, wait, there
Speaker 2: is this type of if we our instincts as a band.
Speaker 2: We're not like, how do we make a film? It
Speaker 2: was what do we do in front of a crowd
Speaker 2: of people to get them to smile, to get them
Speaker 2: to feel, to get them to emote, to get them
Speaker 2: to connect with us? And so our filmmaking has always
Speaker 2: been sort of a just a reflection of that, is
Speaker 2: sort of like, what what thing can we do that
Speaker 2: we can put a camera in front of and and
Speaker 2: bring people to And more and more over the years,
Speaker 2: I have found that it's basically that is the closest
Speaker 2: facsimile I can digitally make to what a concert feels like.
Speaker 2: Like when you're at a good show, there's just, you know,
Speaker 2: as I'm sure you know, people's you know, physically align
Speaker 2: with the singer, like you're actually your heartbeats actually line
Speaker 2: up with other people in the audience with the singer,
Speaker 2: and your saline levels all adjusted, and it's all this
Speaker 2: like crazy stuff that's happening sort of under the surface,
Speaker 2: and you feel it right like it's such It's why
Speaker 2: we're all drawn to those experiences. And that's not something
Speaker 2: that happens when you're looking at TikTok, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean, That's not something that happens when you're looking
Speaker 2: at this little screen, no matter how good the musical
Speaker 2: performance is. But the videos that we make do have
Speaker 2: this sort of sense of wonder to them, this kind
Speaker 2: of like this discovery, this magical feeling that is about
Speaker 2: the closest thing I can come to that that feeling
Speaker 2: on stage. And we've gotten there not through the standard
Speaker 2: process of filmmaking where you script something out and you
Speaker 2: plan it all in advance and then try to put
Speaker 2: together in the edit, but rather by coming up with
Speaker 2: these performances that we the band actually do that we
Speaker 2: can then film in basically one take usually like it's
Speaker 2: usually one take thing. Sometimes we're doing multiple takes, but
Speaker 2: it's still a single event or whatever it is. But
Speaker 2: it means that at the end of the shoot, we
Speaker 2: know we have it for the for the Love video
Speaker 2: that the Grammy nominated one right now. It that I
Speaker 2: didn't even I knew when we'd done the last take
Speaker 2: that we had it, And I didn't even watch it
Speaker 2: for several days after that because we didn't. We were
Speaker 2: at we're out of money, there's we couldn't do another
Speaker 2: take anyways. But I knew we'd gotten to the end,
Speaker 2: and I knew what it felt like to perform it,
Speaker 2: and so if the camera sees if like if it
Speaker 2: didn't look quite the same through the camera, it wouldn't
Speaker 2: really matter. The spirit was there.
Speaker 1: You know, how many takes were there and how many
Speaker 1: days was the shoot?
Speaker 2: Thirty nine takes? The official shoot like the you know
Speaker 2: in film world, the shoot starts when you when the lights,
Speaker 2: when when the expensive lighting package gets turned on. Basically
Speaker 2: that it was officially a three day shoot, but we
Speaker 2: were on the ground in Budapest for three weeks prepping that,
Speaker 2: and many months of prep you know, stateside before that.
Speaker 2: So and that was and there was a Sunday off,
Speaker 2: like I think our last day was a Monday or Tuesday,
Speaker 2: and there was a Sunday off right before that that
Speaker 2: we had to wasn't off anymore. We were running too
Speaker 2: far behind schedule and we had to buy an extra
Speaker 2: day on the ground. You know, like we we often
Speaker 2: have sponsors. We usually have sponsors, but we also pay
Speaker 2: for them. So like we're the clients so to speak.
Speaker 2: So when when things aren't going well enough and we
Speaker 2: know we need, like, well, just put in the extra
Speaker 2: money if we have to. It's it's much more important,
Speaker 2: Like a B plus video does nothing for us. You know,
Speaker 2: if we if we spent this much money on something
Speaker 2: that people didn't think was spectacular, it would be a
Speaker 2: real waste of money. So you know, it also puts uh,
Speaker 2: you did this is not quite the question you asked.
Speaker 2: But when I'm working with film people in the film world,
Speaker 2: it's a it's a real blessing to be doing such
Speaker 2: an absurd art project as one of our videos is
Speaker 2: because nobody gets into film because because they thought it
Speaker 2: was like, eh, an okay way to make a living,
Speaker 2: and they just wanted to put in the hours. Like
Speaker 2: everybody is is in love with the art, but the
Speaker 2: way you make a living is to make toothpaste commercials
Speaker 2: and you know, bitcoin exchange commercials or whatever. Like you know, people,
Speaker 2: most of the time, people are working on things they
Speaker 2: don't love, and most of the time they're working on
Speaker 2: a very strict schedule and never get to do never
Speaker 2: get to be very creative. And like in our videos,
Speaker 2: we don't usually have the same budgets as everyone else.
Speaker 2: We don't usually like you're not gonna get paid quite
Speaker 2: as much as you did on the Crest commercial, but
Speaker 2: you're gonna be really proud of the thing you made, Andre,
Speaker 2: and we really need you to be creative. And people
Speaker 2: usually usually really for the fences on them and and
Speaker 2: really want like it's the rare time on set when
Speaker 2: you're getting to make something where like h ah, where
Speaker 2: where the client so to speak, will go to the
Speaker 2: mat to make it perfect, you know, and so and
Speaker 2: and that is a that is an addictive feeling. It's
Speaker 2: something that like every filmmaker I've worked with, whether it
Speaker 2: is a grip or the guy cleaning off the dance
Speaker 2: floor that we are dancing on, it's super infectious. Like
Speaker 2: that feeling that this matters and you and then and
Speaker 2: and that you're going to be proud of it. It
Speaker 2: goes a long long way.
Speaker 1: So what was the budget for this clip.
Speaker 2: For the for the Love video? Yes, I am contractually
Speaker 2: not allowed to say, but it is high six.
Speaker 1: Figures okay, So as originally planned? Was the amount of
Speaker 1: money covered by sponsors? No? What percentage of the money
Speaker 1: was sponsors in the end in the beginning.
Speaker 2: Zero in the end ninety.
Speaker 1: Okay, how do you get the sponsors?
Speaker 2: Uh? We we make it. We have a lot of
Speaker 2: friends in the ad world. At the point we've been
Speaker 2: doing it for years and years. You know, they used
Speaker 2: to come to us all the time, right right, like
Speaker 2: when when when being viral on YouTube was the thing
Speaker 2: that was threatening terrestrial TV, we were a first call,
Speaker 2: you know. And and it's still the case people in
Speaker 2: the ad world when they when they have to pitch
Speaker 2: their deck to the client the mood board, there's an
Speaker 2: okay go video still on that mood board, you know,
Speaker 2: twenty percent of the time, fifty percent of the time,
Speaker 2: Like we're we are a touchstone for for those people
Speaker 2: in terms of like we wanted to have this feeling.
Speaker 2: We wanted to feel genuine we wanted to feel homemade,
Speaker 2: we wanted to feel inventive, we wanted to feel resourceful.
Speaker 2: And you know, I think what I to me, the
Speaker 2: thing is like when you're watching something that that feeling
Speaker 2: of a as a viewer, feeling the filmmakers on the
Speaker 2: other side of it, going like, oh I get what
Speaker 2: they put into this, and knowing having that relationshipstem It's
Speaker 2: very very similar to me as it is to listen
Speaker 2: to a singer, right Like, it's like that connection between
Speaker 2: you and them. That's not the case generally and narrative film,
Speaker 2: like when you're watching you know, the best of Scorsese's films.
Speaker 2: Hopefully you are in the you're in the scene, you're
Speaker 2: watching the Gangsters. You're not watching the filmmaker, right, but
Speaker 2: in an okay go video. The whole point is we
Speaker 2: never you're where there's no suspension of disbelief. You're never
Speaker 2: asked to leave, like we want you to see how
Speaker 2: it was made, and we want you to have that
Speaker 2: connection to us as we made it. And I think
Speaker 2: that's that is something that that brands in particular are
Speaker 2: really they want that they want you when you watch
Speaker 2: this to go like, I love this. I love that
Speaker 2: this was made for me by these people, and who
Speaker 2: are these people? And I want to know about this
Speaker 2: right like that that connection again to me, it feels
Speaker 2: just like music. It's sort of like when I hear ROBERTA.
Speaker 2: Flack singing do what you Gotta do, I'm like, I
Speaker 2: want to have dinner, Like I need to know the
Speaker 2: rest of the story. I want to I want to
Speaker 2: know how her heart was broken like this, I need
Speaker 2: to sing it to me again, like it's a personal
Speaker 2: connection between me and her all of a sudden, And
Speaker 2: that's how it feels with our videos, I hope, and
Speaker 2: and so getting sponsors on board is generally a matter
Speaker 2: of them. They're just looking for ways to connect with people,
Speaker 2: and all we have to do is sort of prove
Speaker 2: to them we're not here. We're not here to steal
Speaker 2: your money. We're like, we're here because we want to
Speaker 2: make this thing that connects with people. Do you want
Speaker 2: to connect with people? And generally if they believe that
Speaker 2: we will, they want to.
Speaker 1: Okay, you have the idea, you know what cost X?
Speaker 1: How do you find the sponsors?
Speaker 2: Literally, it has been different with every video we've done.
Speaker 2: I mean we we we do a lot of outreach.
Speaker 2: It almost never works like going going out to ad
Speaker 2: agencies or you know, the chief marketing officer of some brand.
Speaker 2: We have an almost zero percent hit rate of going
Speaker 2: I've got this great idea and you make the thing right.
Speaker 2: But they frequently come to me asking for me to
Speaker 2: direct a direct a TV commercial for them, and then
Speaker 2: I could go, well, I'd love to do that, or
Speaker 2: you could make the next Okay go video and that
Speaker 2: has often worked. There's there if if the if the
Speaker 2: production company we're working with already has lots of clients
Speaker 2: that they're making commercials. For as long as it comes
Speaker 2: from somebody they trust in the marketing world that this
Speaker 2: is a good marketing maneuver, then they might consider it.
Speaker 2: And so for this last one, it was it was
Speaker 2: the it was a combination of both of those Meta
Speaker 2: was working with. Are the producers who are making the
Speaker 2: video with us already worked with Meta on other projects
Speaker 2: and they were like, would you consider working on this?
Speaker 2: And that was a multi month process and they paid
Speaker 2: for about half of it, and uh and the the
Speaker 2: project Management Institute was had already worked with us on
Speaker 2: a different video and we were let and we were like,
Speaker 2: the next one's going to be bigger. We be interested
Speaker 2: in working. So it was like two existing relationships.
Speaker 1: Okay, what does a sponsor want for their money?
Speaker 2: Engagement attention? I mean they're like, and that's measured differently
Speaker 2: every time, and there's I think think that it used
Speaker 2: to be at least I remember it being much more
Speaker 2: metrics driven five ten years ago, when it was sort
Speaker 2: of like how many hits or how many shares or
Speaker 2: how many of this? And I think people have started
Speaker 2: to realize that it's so much more about a continuing
Speaker 2: relationship that like the sort of zeitgeisty feeling of something
Speaker 2: has more to do with being popping up on three
Speaker 2: different platforms than it does with you know this many
Speaker 2: YouTube hits that generally it is when we've gotten the
Speaker 2: feedback from the brand partners at the end, it's all
Speaker 2: about overall feeling they're getting and not look.
Speaker 1: At this number, look at this number, look at this number,
Speaker 1: and you've made a number of these. What satisfies a
Speaker 1: client a sponsor. They want to be able to be
Speaker 1: seen in the video, they want to presents by credit what.
Speaker 2: Yeah, ours generally have there's usually a thanks at the end,
Speaker 2: like there's just like this, you know thanks at the end.
Speaker 2: Sometimes there's something right at the beginning. A lot of
Speaker 2: times there's behind the scenes pieces that are very focused
Speaker 2: on on their relationship to it because it's all it's
Speaker 2: like if when you click on one of our videos, we
Speaker 2: hope you go down the rabbit hole, right like it's
Speaker 2: like how do they do this? And then you're and
Speaker 2: then you're in the universe of how it was all
Speaker 2: made and that stuff is you know a lot of
Speaker 2: ways more meaningful to the clients because they're like what
Speaker 2: they want is a a a a value connection with
Speaker 2: the people who are watching. It's not just a sort
Speaker 2: of impression, you know.
Speaker 1: So what's your view on directing commercials?
Speaker 2: I you know, I have done it before, it and
Speaker 2: it's a it can be a fun way to sort
Speaker 2: of practice a technique or learn a filmmaking thing. I'm
Speaker 2: less into it. I'd rather be writing in songs, you know.
Speaker 2: And right now, like commercial directing is a horrible isn't it.
Speaker 2: I mean it's just like, you know, the music industry,
Speaker 2: as you know, turned into something like a service industry
Speaker 2: in the last ten years, fifteen twenty years, and that
Speaker 2: is that has happened much more to directors in the
Speaker 2: last five ten years than they had thought was going
Speaker 2: to happen. I think, you know, like I think a
Speaker 2: lot was learned from the from the digital makeover of
Speaker 2: music from the films. I'd learned a lot from watching
Speaker 2: that happen, but there's a lot that was still a
Speaker 2: big shock. And watching my friends who are commercial directors
Speaker 2: struggle for work, it's like, I don't, you know, I
Speaker 2: don't have any great desire to be fighting tooth and
Speaker 2: nail to get to get a film job that I
Speaker 2: don't really want to do. In the first place, you know.
Speaker 1: But it is lucrative if you do the work.
Speaker 2: It has been it was in the past, it is
Speaker 2: getting less and less. So from what I understand, I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm not Look, I'm not a a a student of
Speaker 2: any of these industries like you are, so I don't
Speaker 2: want to stick my foot in my mouth. But it
Speaker 2: used to be that that, you know, multiple day shoots
Speaker 2: with big budgets were pretty common for commercial shoots. That's
Speaker 2: that is the margins have come way down and there's
Speaker 2: and they know now that a lot of what they
Speaker 2: have to produce is all this ancillary stuff for social media.
Speaker 2: So so what you have to make is, you know,
Speaker 2: there's ten times more stuff you have to make, and
Speaker 2: the budgets have come out.
Speaker 1: So to what degree do you feel pressure to top
Speaker 1: yourself with the next video?
Speaker 2: The The true answer to that is very complicated because
Speaker 2: I'm aware that they're the like that it's an attention economy,
Speaker 2: you know. But you would never write a song to
Speaker 2: try to top the last song, you know, And it's
Speaker 2: sort of the same with the videos. It's like, what
Speaker 2: I want to do is make is make the thing
Speaker 2: that best serves this idea. I want to make the
Speaker 2: thing that's most evocative, that's most emotional, that is most
Speaker 2: connected to me, and that I will be proudest of
Speaker 2: for the longest, And those aren't always It's not a
Speaker 2: I mean sort of back to your earlier question about
Speaker 2: like always finding new fans, like you're not You're not
Speaker 2: always trying to grow things. You just want to make
Speaker 2: it the best you can, you know. So I don't know,
Speaker 2: I feel like I've sort of dodged your question, but
Speaker 2: that well, let me you know, I no, no.
Speaker 1: I don't think you are. But let me ask you this,
Speaker 1: are you thinking of video ideas all the time or
Speaker 1: after you write music?
Speaker 2: I have a have a sort of running list of
Speaker 2: things that I think would be fun to try, and
Speaker 2: they line up with songs I have written generally. Sometimes
Speaker 2: every once in a while, a song something lyrically will
Speaker 2: actually inspire the video idea itself, but usually it's it
Speaker 2: is a Venn diagram where it's sort of like I
Speaker 2: remain surprised that these two things really line up so well,
Speaker 2: but I shouldn't be. They just they both came from this,
Speaker 2: like it's the same part of me. It's the same
Speaker 2: reflection of what I think is exciting and full of
Speaker 2: wonder in the world. Like of course they line up.
Speaker 2: You know, let's go back to the beginning. You say
Speaker 2: you grew up in Washington and DC. Most people don't
Speaker 2: grow up in the district. They grew up in suburbs,
Speaker 2: but some do. Where did you literally live the district
Speaker 2: in the northwest side of the district. I grew up
Speaker 2: just south of Chevy Chase Circle off of Connecticut Avenue,
Speaker 2: and it was I really lucked out in terms of
Speaker 2: the timing I was. I was born in seventy five
Speaker 2: and so nineteen ninety I went into high school and
Speaker 2: it was like Fugazi was just coming out with their
Speaker 2: second album, and I was treated to the like one
Speaker 2: of the greatest DIY indie punk scenes that has ever existed.
Speaker 2: Like that the discord that heyday at the Discord of
Speaker 2: Discord Records or what was did a lot for me.
Speaker 2: Fugazi and Shudder to Think and Jawbox and all these
Speaker 2: incredible bands and most of all the feeling that anybody
Speaker 2: could just do this right. There was a record label
Speaker 2: there called called Simple Machines, and they put out a
Speaker 2: pamphlet I think it was a dollar fifty and it
Speaker 2: was how to make your own seven inch and it
Speaker 2: was like, here are the three pressing plants that still
Speaker 2: exist in the United States. Here are their phone numbers.
Speaker 2: Here's you asked for when you call, you know, here's
Speaker 2: what here's here's what your budget will actually look like.
Speaker 2: So you like, don't think you can do this for
Speaker 2: a less And I think it was seven hundred fifty
Speaker 2: bucks or something like that. It's like, for seven hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty bucks, you can make a pressing of five
Speaker 2: hundred records. And and that was and I and I
Speaker 2: ordered that pamphlet for a dollar fifty and I started
Speaker 2: a quote unquote record label for my you know, my
Speaker 2: friend's bands. And that was normal. That was like, that's
Speaker 2: what That's what the scene in d C said. Was
Speaker 2: normal to a fifteen year you know. And honestly it's why, like,
Speaker 2: you know, our other the other thing we're up for
Speaker 2: a Grammy for this year is our the album cover.
Speaker 2: The packaging for our album, which is this like it's
Speaker 2: a three D sculpture that pops out of the album
Speaker 2: when you open it up. And my love of that,
Speaker 2: of the packaging and of the sort of the opportunities
Speaker 2: around the art that you make all come from that era,
Speaker 2: that DC era. That it was sort of like the
Speaker 2: that making music was a community activity, right, like that
Speaker 2: the shows were a community activity. That were pasting your
Speaker 2: posters on the mailbox was a community activity. It was
Speaker 2: sort of like joining this community to make the because
Speaker 2: you get to make the stuff, you know. It was
Speaker 2: like just it was like there were endless opportunities for
Speaker 2: making things. And I love that that chase of the
Speaker 2: of the muse.
Speaker 1: Did you go to public school or private school?
Speaker 2: Private school?
Speaker 1: Was it one of the famous DC private schools?
Speaker 2: Which one was Saint Albans is pretty famous. I mean
Speaker 2: it's not I think these days did well as the
Speaker 2: one everyone knows about pop. Yeah, it was a it
Speaker 2: was a I had an incredible education, and it was
Speaker 2: that I raged against the conservative culture of that school.
Speaker 2: But but I but it was a great education.
Speaker 1: How many kids in the family.
Speaker 2: Two?
Speaker 1: Who's the other one?
Speaker 2: My older sister and she h four years older than me.
Speaker 2: She and she made several of our videos. She was
Speaker 2: a professional ballroom dancer. Her name is Tricia and and
Speaker 2: she after the Treadmill video which we filmed at her house,
Speaker 2: she she switched into filmmaking herself, and she's now a
Speaker 2: successful film director.
Speaker 1: How did she get into ballroom dancing?
Speaker 2: She I think she's a lot like me. She just
Speaker 2: it was the thing that made her, that made the
Speaker 2: world around her more magical. She she was she was
Speaker 2: studying it for fun in college and there was a
Speaker 2: job open at the local teaching studio and she started
Speaker 2: as a sort of intern there and the next thing,
Speaker 2: you know, she was she was competing on the circuit
Speaker 2: and she was. She she built. She managed to get
Speaker 2: enough students that she could build a small ballroom in
Speaker 2: her backyard in Florida, where she had moved. And it
Speaker 2: was a that's some hell of a way to keep
Speaker 2: your art alive, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you go to school. Do you play sports
Speaker 1: at all?
Speaker 2: I did a little bit. I wasn't. I wasn't very
Speaker 2: good at any of them. And I'm and but it
Speaker 2: was a requirement, so I did.
Speaker 1: And what about friends? You have a lot of friends?
Speaker 1: You're alone or what? What were you like?
Speaker 2: I was a pretty social kid. I had a lot
Speaker 2: of I mean, there was a small group of kids
Speaker 2: at my school who were who were sort of the
Speaker 2: punky outsiders. I mean, you know, you know, the band
Speaker 2: of the Walkman. They were all the great ahead of
Speaker 2: me and the singers a couple of guys behind me,
Speaker 2: and I mean, and there were up there was a
Speaker 2: there's a you know, five percent of each year was
Speaker 2: what was kids like me and there but there was
Speaker 2: that was enough kids to for it to be a scene.
Speaker 2: And no, it was weird. It's like we didn't we
Speaker 2: weren't at odds with the rest of the school. It
Speaker 2: wasn't like the the combative cliche I see in movies
Speaker 2: about about, you know, high school experiences. We were just
Speaker 2: we had our own thing. We didn't care about those kids.
Speaker 1: Okay, what degree did you have pressure from your parents
Speaker 1: to do well in school?
Speaker 2: I self pressured. They my parents, I think we're smart
Speaker 2: to let me rage against school when I wanted to
Speaker 2: have blue hair. They're like not going to try to
Speaker 2: stop me. You know, they let me. They let me
Speaker 2: try to shock enrage my my conservative teachers instead of them.
Speaker 2: So I was pretty much a straight a student. And
Speaker 2: you know, I went to school at Brown after like
Speaker 2: I went to you know, an ivy League school, and
Speaker 2: I was always I was fairly pragmatic about this, Like
Speaker 2: I knew I wanted to be that all I cared
Speaker 2: about was art, but I also knew that that you don't.
Speaker 2: Really it's not very very few people get to live
Speaker 2: their life making art. And so when I got out
Speaker 2: of school, like during high school, I thought of myself
Speaker 2: more as a visual artist. During college it switched to
Speaker 2: music more. You know, in high school, I was putting out,
Speaker 2: like I said, records for my friend's bands, but that
Speaker 2: was much more of a kind of like social hobby
Speaker 2: than it was my my calling. And I went to
Speaker 2: I got to college and the the academic art program
Speaker 2: was going over stuff that I had already learned about.
Speaker 2: It was it was sort of like abstract art and
Speaker 2: was blowing the minds of my my peers. And I
Speaker 2: felt like I didn't know this ship and and there
Speaker 2: was a sort of pretense of I didn't like that
Speaker 2: it was all about the the it was about the
Speaker 2: essay that you write to go along with your piece,
Speaker 2: not the piece itself, and what and and I fell
Speaker 2: in whereas music that there, uh, there was an electronic
Speaker 2: music studio there with incredible equipment, and I didn't know
Speaker 2: how to use it. And I could go into this
Speaker 2: place and the actual experiential uplift I got from like
Speaker 2: I go in there and find magic, and that was incredible,
Speaker 2: Like that was just addictive to me to go into.
Speaker 2: I would spend hours and hours and hours, and by
Speaker 2: by my sophomore year, I was the I had gotten
Speaker 2: the role. I had gotten the position of the ta
Speaker 2: who got to schedule the hours in the music studio.
Speaker 2: So then any any all the two am to eight
Speaker 2: am hours that weren't being used, I would block off
Speaker 2: for myself and I would just go in there every
Speaker 2: night and learn how to record music, learn how to
Speaker 2: write music, learn how to make music. And by the
Speaker 2: time I came out of college, that's what I cared.
Speaker 2: I mean, that was my calling. And so my years
Speaker 2: right after college I worked as a radio engineer at
Speaker 2: NPR one day a week and the other four days
Speaker 2: I was a photoshop retoucher for a for an ad agency.
Speaker 2: All of this in Chicago, where I had moved to
Speaker 2: rejoin my old friend Tim Basis of Okay Goo, who
Speaker 2: I had met at summer camp ten years prior.
Speaker 1: Okay You talk about buying the pamphlip making the records,
Speaker 1: When did you start playing an instr of it.
Speaker 2: In high school. I mean I played violin as a kid.
Speaker 2: I was terrible at it, and in high school I
Speaker 2: played guitar a little bit. I was bad at it
Speaker 2: then too. I didn't even when Okko started, I was
Speaker 2: it was it was, man, I was. It took me
Speaker 2: a lot of a lot of practice to be able
Speaker 2: to sing any of our songs and play them at
Speaker 2: the same time, you know. The I fell in love
Speaker 2: with playing instruments in college, but I of course was
Speaker 2: too impatient to spend the time really necessary for them.
Speaker 2: And it was the years of touring that actually taught
Speaker 2: me on a plan, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, so when you were in high school, you were
Speaker 1: coordinating making records for other groups or did you have
Speaker 1: a group yourself.
Speaker 2: I had a group myself, but we were terrible and
Speaker 2: we were I only put one song on one thing.
Speaker 2: Mostly it was other groups.
Speaker 1: And did that band ever play outside the basement once?
Speaker 2: Maybe twice, you know, in our own school gym, like
Speaker 2: not not, But you know, the other the other band
Speaker 2: that night was the band it with the same kids
Speaker 2: that wound up being first Jonathan fire Eater and then
Speaker 2: eventually the Walkman.
Speaker 1: You know, So why do you end up going to Brown.
Speaker 2: I it was the I knew I wanted to. I
Speaker 2: knew I valued my good education. I knew I liked
Speaker 2: the feeling of my brain being pushed by by my
Speaker 2: superiors in a good way. But I also knew that
Speaker 2: school was for me. Was not going to be a
Speaker 2: trade school. I was not going there to learn to
Speaker 2: be a computer scientist or to learn to be a doctor.
Speaker 2: I was going there to learn to grow up, you know.
Speaker 2: And this was the one that the good school, where
Speaker 2: the other kids that were there seemed like they were
Speaker 2: comfortable in their own skin and making and and and
Speaker 2: learning to make decisions as opposed to learning to game
Speaker 2: the system. You know.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're at Brown. Do you form a band
Speaker 1: at Brown?
Speaker 2: And did? Yeah? Several? But yeah I had. I had
Speaker 2: a sort of punky band my first two years, and
Speaker 2: a sort of electronic band my second to you, two
Speaker 2: different electronic bands my second to you.
Speaker 1: And did they play out of the practice room? Yeah?
Speaker 2: We played a lot. We had jos.
Speaker 1: Really, so you had gigs? Where were these gigs?
Speaker 2: There were? Providence was pretty good at the time for
Speaker 2: that stuff, because you know it Risdy's right there. So
Speaker 2: so we played a lot of club Babyhead, and there's
Speaker 2: a there's a club on the Brown campus called UH
Speaker 2: called the Underground to believe it's called there was you know,
Speaker 2: loop Os. And in Providence we used to get get
Speaker 2: gigs opening for people. I remember opening for like Karen
Speaker 2: Black and and UH. I remember opening for Blonde Redhead,
Speaker 2: you know at Brown like we we did we did
Speaker 2: pretty well and and that and man, they're like the
Speaker 2: that talk about getting into the sort of the art
Speaker 2: project side of it. I remember learning about screen screen
Speaker 2: printing while I was there from from Risdy students and
Speaker 2: and just like that started my love affair with with
Speaker 2: design for the band. Like that that you could actually
Speaker 2: screenprint your own posters, like and make them a thing
Speaker 2: of beauty was what And it was like so thrilling
Speaker 2: to me. It was not, you know, it didn't feel
Speaker 2: like the necessary marketing. It felt like the life value
Speaker 2: add that now I get to I get like that
Speaker 2: part of the part of going to do this show
Speaker 2: next week is going to make posters this week, you know.
Speaker 2: And that that carried on into our Chicago days. We
Speaker 2: did a lot of screen printing into Chicago and urged
Speaker 2: okay Go's earliest UH fan base in Chicago is definitely
Speaker 2: because of our absurdly overprinted for color you know, screen
Speaker 2: prints that were all over Chicago in the late nineties.
Speaker 1: Okay, you graduate from Brown, you moved to Chicago. What's
Speaker 1: the dream?
Speaker 2: The dream was to continue to be surprised and thrilled
Speaker 2: by make an art. Like I was rational enough to
Speaker 2: know how unlikely a job as a rock star is, right,
Speaker 2: but irrational and hope and delusion driven enough to see
Speaker 2: all these converging things in the world around me and
Speaker 2: and think there's a way to make a living out
Speaker 2: of that. Right that that technology was making recording a
Speaker 2: different thing, you know that that like during college, I
Speaker 2: remember my love of of hip hop. You know, DC
Speaker 2: growing up in high school had been all about punk
Speaker 2: and hip hop, right Go Go is from DC, and
Speaker 2: the nineties were like, you know, it was the era
Speaker 2: of Tribe called Quests and Black Sheep. You know, it
Speaker 2: was like it was an incredible time for all that stuff.
Speaker 2: And I remember being in college and going how come
Speaker 2: punk rock doesn't have hip hop beats? And being like
Speaker 2: how someone's going to make this album? And then the
Speaker 2: next thing, you know, there's like I remember Odelay by
Speaker 2: Beck coming out and being like, there is a person
Speaker 2: who just made rock and roll with a sampler, Like, actual,
Speaker 2: it's not it's not just like trying to write songs
Speaker 2: over a sampler. It's rock and roll with a sampler.
Speaker 2: And I was like so so in love with that
Speaker 2: record and also so jealous of it, you know, but
Speaker 2: but that was I remember feeling that convergence in the
Speaker 2: late nineties, in the early offs that it was like
Speaker 2: every that you could fluency with the with the world
Speaker 2: around you. What technologically was it was a huge boon
Speaker 2: to creativity, like you could make things differently than than
Speaker 2: than our parents generation had to like it that you
Speaker 2: could get a sampler and make rock and roll with it.
Speaker 2: That was a whole that was really really inspiring to me.
Speaker 2: And it's hard to say exactly how that crosses over
Speaker 2: individual but like, the reason I know how to use
Speaker 2: photoshop was because a couple of punks in DC had
Speaker 2: hired me to work for their software publishing company, where
Speaker 2: they they got a job putting out the CD ROMs
Speaker 2: of Time Magazine in the early nineties when when Time
Speaker 2: Magazine didn't want to didn't digitize anything themselves, they would
Speaker 2: send all their issues to these two punks in DC
Speaker 2: would get them all digitized, and I literally my job
Speaker 2: was put them on a scanner, scan the thing and
Speaker 2: and digitize from the physical copy of time magine goats,
Speaker 2: take off the barcode, and and fill in Hillary Clinton's hair,
Speaker 2: you know, like and and the idea that that visual
Speaker 2: art like this was that it was all malleable, that
Speaker 2: you could get into your computer and start playing around
Speaker 2: with the way this image looks. That to me, it's
Speaker 2: hard to explain about how that connects, but that and
Speaker 2: the sampler at the same time, you could see they
Speaker 2: were heading the same place, you know. And so that
Speaker 2: was the dream to do that.
Speaker 1: Okay, you moved to Chicago, your old friend is there.
Speaker 1: Do you immediately form a group? Yeah.
Speaker 2: They were gonna they were gonna be my backing band
Speaker 2: for a bunch of shows of sorry, a bunch of
Speaker 2: songs I had written in college. That was the first practice.
Speaker 2: But after the first practice, we're like, now we're just
Speaker 2: a new band. Because it was all the guys in
Speaker 2: the band had They had all been in a band
Speaker 2: called Stanley's Joyful Noise prior to this, and they were
Speaker 2: they were not quite on hiatus yet. But they were
Speaker 2: just going to be this other they were going to
Speaker 2: be my backing band for this thing, and then we
Speaker 2: just decided it was an evand.
Speaker 1: Okay, you have this incredible marketing with the posters. What
Speaker 1: happens Usually it's a slow grind. Did you play a
Speaker 1: lot of gigs? When did the light go on? What happened?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we played a lot of We played. We played
Speaker 2: as many gigs as we could, I would say it
Speaker 2: was I mean we were playing at least once a
Speaker 2: month in Chicago, and and and as many times as
Speaker 2: we could in this surround, you know, anywhere within a
Speaker 2: six or eight hour drive of Chicago, and that I
Speaker 2: We did that for a couple of years, I guess,
Speaker 2: and it it we started to get I think we
Speaker 2: like Chicago at that time was a scene not too
Speaker 2: different from DC ten years earlier than that in terms
Speaker 2: of like the small scene of kids that were there.
Speaker 2: Everybody was in a band, like all my friends were
Speaker 2: in bands. Everybody went out to shows pretty much every
Speaker 2: the night of the week. And what I think the
Speaker 2: way the reason we stood out in some way was
Speaker 2: because we were just all kind of pop focused like
Speaker 2: the other bands we were living in with as roommates
Speaker 2: and playing with were all these sort of aggressively post
Speaker 2: punk sort of art bands, and that was like it
Speaker 2: was an awesome scene. But like it was like all
Speaker 2: these mostly dudes playing, you know, playing math rock and
Speaker 2: and trying to push the boundaries of a of a
Speaker 2: particular scene. And we wanted, like I said, we wanted
Speaker 2: cheap trick and Elvis Costello and a certain type of Catharsis.
Speaker 2: And so I like to joke at the time that
Speaker 2: basically like they'd all come and their girlfriends would all
Speaker 2: like us, you know, and it was Our shows were
Speaker 2: just really really fun. It was like a really really joyous,
Speaker 2: playful event. And they got to be really popular in
Speaker 2: Chicago and that sort of growing regionally, and and uh
Speaker 2: we we found a manager. We went on tour opening
Speaker 2: for they might be giants at some point, and and
Speaker 2: they might be giants themselves, Like you said, they wanted
Speaker 2: to start managing us, and uh it in in the
Speaker 2: end we wound up being sort of co managed by
Speaker 2: the by there man. It was an awkward deal in
Speaker 2: the beginning, but you know, Jamie, our first manager, and
Speaker 2: he who I loved dearly and who I think was
Speaker 2: did wonders for us and uh, and then we got signed.
Speaker 2: Eventually got signed. We thought we'd be an Indian. We
Speaker 2: sent our demos to all the the indies you would
Speaker 2: have imagined, you know, like we figured we belonged in
Speaker 2: the sort of you know, sub pop lane. But we
Speaker 2: wound up there. There was a big It was the
Speaker 2: majors who were interested. It turned out like we had
Speaker 2: a demo for a the song get Over It that
Speaker 2: caught fire and it you know, it's a big bidding
Speaker 2: war between I think it was Universal and Capital at
Speaker 2: the time and who are now the same?
Speaker 1: Right? But so you signed with Capital with the Andy Sleader,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a deep line of demarcation of between
Speaker 1: the wooing and then the making. So now you had
Speaker 1: a deal. What was the making like.
Speaker 2: Well, Andy is famously very involved in the making of
Speaker 2: the album center Man, and he was I he was.
Speaker 2: We like we were an easy sell on over production
Speaker 2: because it was it was this moment of of when
Speaker 2: most of the industry was so was chasing garage rock
Speaker 2: and we just didn't want. We were we were like
Speaker 2: we wanted we wanted Roy Thomas Baker and glam you know,
Speaker 2: and so we were happy to go along with the
Speaker 2: with with like with with just you know, no do
Speaker 2: it again, try and make a bigger version, make it,
Speaker 2: you know. And I I have a hard time listening
Speaker 2: to our first record because of that. But also I
Speaker 2: think it's I think it has more to do with
Speaker 2: the fact that, like, who wants to hear their them
Speaker 2: their own voice twenty years hence, you know, like I
Speaker 2: hate the little guy who's singing in those albums, but
Speaker 2: other people don't, you know. And there's some things I'd
Speaker 2: do differently, but I don't. But I'm also like, I
Speaker 2: can't be mad at whatever brought us here, you know.
Speaker 2: I like that how it's gone.
Speaker 1: Okay, So the record comes out, and what was the experience.
Speaker 2: Well, it was whirlwind. It was just like we just
Speaker 2: we toured for two straight years or something. And I
Speaker 2: think it was young and naive enough to think that
Speaker 2: everything was just the next step, you know, that every
Speaker 2: that that every opportunity was just another door open. You
Speaker 2: don't get that, like I didn't have the sense that
Speaker 2: I didn't really have a sense of whether it was
Speaker 2: going well or poorly. You know. It's like we had
Speaker 2: a we had a we had a single that I
Speaker 2: think broke the top twenty, but not the top ten.
Speaker 2: So it was like it was the kind of it
Speaker 2: was exact. It was big enough to get you a
Speaker 2: second album, but not big enough to make you a
Speaker 2: household name, you know, and it I don't know. I
Speaker 2: as you can tell from all these answers, it's like
Speaker 2: there's a part of me that like is willfully delusional,
Speaker 2: right like, because I I if you only listen to
Speaker 2: the rationalist part of yourself, you you don't get to
Speaker 2: chase art. If you only listen to the arty side
Speaker 2: of yourself, you'll you'll you're going to do it, you know,
Speaker 2: alone in your basement. So you've got to keep these
Speaker 2: two things in balance. And especially in my twenties, you know,
Speaker 2: fueled by a lot of caffeine and alcohol, I was
Speaker 2: it was easy for me to stay delusional when I
Speaker 2: needed to, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, did you make any videos for the first album?
Speaker 2: We did. We made two videos for the first album,
Speaker 2: one with with Francis Lawrence. Uh, you know, Mega Mega
Speaker 2: director who I think we were. We were stuck between
Speaker 2: Will Smith and Pink in his schedule. He had one day,
Speaker 2: you know, and uh, and it was for the song
Speaker 2: get over it, and it was. It got some rotation
Speaker 2: on MTV, but not I think no one yet knew
Speaker 2: how how how dying MTV was right, like YouTube had
Speaker 2: not yet eaten it. But but it was rapidly moving
Speaker 2: towards reality TV and away from music videos. Some people
Speaker 2: saw it. It it It did its job. But it
Speaker 2: was the biggest budget video we would make for the
Speaker 2: next twenty years.
Speaker 1: How big was the budget.
Speaker 2: I think it was something like five hundred K or something.
Speaker 2: You know, it was whatever it was was thatt you know,
Speaker 2: It's like it was something we that could only be
Speaker 2: approved by a Slater like Slater had to pick the
Speaker 2: I had to pick the the director cool right, like
Speaker 2: you could say, pick between these three kind of thing.
Speaker 1: You know, Okay, you make the second record, tell me
Speaker 1: from the beginning, not the mechanics, but the inspiration and
Speaker 1: how you gain control to make the treadmill video.
Speaker 2: The treadmill video was it was the follow up to
Speaker 2: the backyard dance that I described earlier, right that that's
Speaker 2: for the video that the song was a million ways
Speaker 2: and on the on the first album. Prior to this,
Speaker 2: we had been ending our show with this ridiculous dance
Speaker 2: routine that for a song from the first album, and
Speaker 2: again it was a way to be in that that
Speaker 2: that indie rock club in Chicago where all of the
Speaker 2: hipsters are shuffling their feet and to be like like
Speaker 2: fucking smile or get out, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: And because you can't watch a bunch of nerds like
Speaker 2: us try to do a dance and uh and and
Speaker 2: not laugh at it in some way. And and so
Speaker 2: we knew that it was like we wanted with our
Speaker 2: our second record. We didn't want to keep on ending
Speaker 2: our show with that, but it was so fun, right,
Speaker 2: So we came up with a new dance routine for
Speaker 2: a new song on our second album, and that clip
Speaker 2: got we we we made a video of us. In fact,
Speaker 2: i'll give you the full story. We heard from a
Speaker 2: friend a cap that Michelle Gondree, best video director of
Speaker 2: all time, had a dance video he was gonna make
Speaker 2: with some unheard of from Chicago named Kanye something. And
Speaker 2: we were like, wait, he's gonna make a dance video
Speaker 2: with someone other than us. We're the dance band. So
Speaker 2: we we videotape ourselves doing this and you know, again,
Speaker 2: we have a delusional side here. Thinking like, we're going
Speaker 2: to convince Michelle Gandrie he has to work with us,
Speaker 2: But that video has made. The clip in my Backyard
Speaker 2: was made for the of an audience of one. It
Speaker 2: was just to convince Michelle Gandri that he should make
Speaker 2: a video with us. I don't know if he ever
Speaker 2: even saw it, but it wound up so ludicrous and
Speaker 2: sort of like, you know, there was just something so
Speaker 2: ridiculous about it and popped the bubble of self seriousness
Speaker 2: in rock and roll enough that we when we showed
Speaker 2: it to our friends, somebody put it on a site
Speaker 2: called I film that was before YouTube is a download site,
Speaker 2: and a few months later we saw that it had
Speaker 2: been downloaded three hundred thousand times. I think our first
Speaker 2: album had sold three hundred thousand copies, which, you know, great,
Speaker 2: but we just reached the same number of people accidentally,
Speaker 2: Ya this nerd website, right, And like at that time,
Speaker 2: you can assume the people watching that are all working
Speaker 2: in the IT department, right, Like it's not like normal
Speaker 2: people don't do a lot of video downloading circa two
Speaker 2: thousand and two, two thousand and four, whatever it was.
Speaker 2: But and so, like I said about the sort of
Speaker 2: like us going out into to the fans with spiral notebooks.
Speaker 2: It was like this was we suddenly had a direct,
Speaker 2: a direct connection to a fan base almost as big
Speaker 2: as the one Capital had had helped develop for us.
Speaker 2: And there were one click away and it was sort
Speaker 2: of like, well, if they if they like that, let's
Speaker 2: make them another one of those things. We didn't really
Speaker 2: think of it as a music video. It was just
Speaker 2: like we now have a bunch of people who get
Speaker 2: our sense of humor, who think that because there's something
Speaker 2: about that that's not quite like you know, we've been
Speaker 2: very careful never to make joke music, right, And there's
Speaker 2: bands that sort of like think of themselves as funny
Speaker 2: in a way that I that never appealed to me,
Speaker 2: but I did it. But I did like bands who
Speaker 2: don't take themselves too seriously, you know, And and it
Speaker 2: was sort of a way of connecting with those people.
Speaker 2: So we my sister is a professional barum dancer. We said, like,
Speaker 2: we want to make another dance like that, but we
Speaker 2: don't want to dance. We can't just be a dance band, right,
Speaker 2: so like, what are we going to do? So I
Speaker 2: remember brainstorming with my sister, what could we do to
Speaker 2: make dancing different and that, and we came up with
Speaker 2: this idea of the treadmills. But that was it. Like
Speaker 2: we didn't tell the label we were going to do it.
Speaker 2: We didn't tell our manager we were going to do it,
Speaker 2: because they would taking ten days off from tour to
Speaker 2: go make this thing. Was a terrible idea, you know,
Speaker 2: like what were you going to do with that? So
Speaker 2: we made it and and and it was. We figured
Speaker 2: we'd use it as a sort of like love letter
Speaker 2: to those nerdy fans when we were done with the
Speaker 2: album cycle, right like when everything else is, when we've
Speaker 2: done the big rock videos, when we've done all the touring,
Speaker 2: we'll have one more thing to give those people to
Speaker 2: kind of keep the connection alive until the next record
Speaker 2: comes out. So after eighteen months of touring, several rock videos,
Speaker 2: you know, and won by Michelle Gondry's brother, Olivia Gundry,
Speaker 2: and you know, decently successful. You know, our shows are
Speaker 2: bigger than they were on the first album, where our
Speaker 2: audience is a little bit bigger, but like we're not,
Speaker 2: we're by no means a household name.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: We put that video out, well, no I'm sorry. The
Speaker 2: label who had never okay the making of it, but
Speaker 2: did say okay, all right, well that's kind of cool
Speaker 2: what you made. They're the head of their internet department,
Speaker 2: without our permission, put it up on stupid videos dot Com.
Speaker 2: And we were in we were in we were in Moscow,
Speaker 2: playing at the i think second to annual rock festival
Speaker 2: in Moscow, when our roadie goes, hey, I saw your
Speaker 2: videos up on stupid videos dot Com. And of course
Speaker 2: we freak out, you know, we'd go ballistic on the
Speaker 2: label and they're like, what what what I mean? It's
Speaker 2: got tons of traffic, and you're like, you don't think
Speaker 2: there's some there's maybe a little bit of an optics
Speaker 2: problem releasing the video with as Stupid videos dot Com.
Speaker 2: We got them to take it down before the US
Speaker 2: was awake, and we put it up ourselves without the
Speaker 2: permission on YouTube. This this new site which just the
Speaker 2: guy who ran our you know, our email list at
Speaker 2: the time was like, you should check out this one.
Speaker 2: And we'd had an we'd had a a request from
Speaker 2: Chad at YouTube dot com. You know, the founders in
Speaker 2: that first year were sending out anytime they thought they
Speaker 2: saw something cool. They just write to them. So we
Speaker 2: had some emails from them saying you should put your
Speaker 2: stuff up on our platform. So we did, and within
Speaker 2: a week it was you know, like we thought, we
Speaker 2: thought maybe we'd reach those same three hundred thousand people
Speaker 2: after a few months, but it was a few million
Speaker 2: in the first few days, which back then was you know,
Speaker 2: that was breaking the entire internet. And vh one added
Speaker 2: it with in a week, and and and we had
Speaker 2: been asked to perform on the VMAs, and and you know,
Speaker 2: a few months later we got a Grammy, and and
Speaker 2: we toured for another We toured for another full year.
Speaker 2: I mean like our record, which had debuted at the
Speaker 2: top of the heat Stickers chart, went back to number
Speaker 2: one in the fifty third week. So it was like
Speaker 2: literally a full year after the record was out, we
Speaker 2: started a whole other record cycle, and we toured for
Speaker 2: another year, and and it was awesome. I was very
Speaker 2: very spent by the end of that.
Speaker 1: Okay, where was the label on all this?
Speaker 2: They were very cautious about us because they they they
Speaker 2: they wanted look that record. They they they were very
Speaker 2: anti sort of you know, the youth and sharing, right,
Speaker 2: Like there was this there was. There was a worry
Speaker 2: with that album. When that album came out, they wanted
Speaker 2: to put DRM on it. You remember the whole DRM thing, right,
Speaker 2: they wanted to put DRM on it. We looked at it.
Speaker 2: We were like, look iPods in the in the in
Speaker 2: the three years since our first record had come out,
Speaker 2: iPods had taken over. And if you're telling our fans
Speaker 2: they that they can't they can if they buy our
Speaker 2: CD legally they can't put it on their iPod. That's
Speaker 2: the same things as shooting the band in the face, right,
Speaker 2: like it like, no one is going to listen to
Speaker 2: something that they can't have on their iPod, So please
Speaker 2: don't do that to it. They we had a long
Speaker 2: argument with them about that. They in the end decided, okay, no,
Speaker 2: we're doing DRM. So we added as a a the
Speaker 2: secret track. You know, the final track to our album
Speaker 2: was exactly as long as there were bites left on
Speaker 2: the CD. We made it thirty two minutes and whatever
Speaker 2: seconds long, which filled up every last remaining data bought
Speaker 2: on the CD. So they couldn't fit the DRM on it,
Speaker 2: you know, which they didn't realize until QC sent it
Speaker 2: back and sudden they couldn't put a DRM on it,
Speaker 2: and it was too late to deal with it. But
Speaker 2: that obviously set off that was the relationship. Right, They
Speaker 2: were like we were the band that that was that
Speaker 2: wanted our video to be embeddable back when that was
Speaker 2: an issue, right, and I had written op eds for
Speaker 2: The New York Times saying like, yeah, our label won't
Speaker 2: let us embed our video and here's our problems with it.
Speaker 2: That was the sort of thing that that put us,
Speaker 2: you know, not on great footing with the label. We
Speaker 2: were all, you know, sort of aligned in terms of
Speaker 2: like all, all of the attention this is getting is good.
Speaker 2: But the same person who had when I when I
Speaker 2: first showed the label our backyard dance video, the first
Speaker 2: response was is if this gets out your because it
Speaker 2: was because they thought it made they thought it made
Speaker 2: us look gay, if they thought it made us look nerdy,
Speaker 2: they thought it made us And it was like We're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: like it makes us look different than everyone else. Like
Speaker 2: that's the that's the point, you know, Like that's that's
Speaker 2: we are different than everybody else. And and the same
Speaker 2: person who had said that then had made very sure
Speaker 2: that when you know, like a USA today wanted to
Speaker 2: do a piece on the on the on the Treadmill video,
Speaker 2: and it's grammy, you know. Eighteen months later they that
Speaker 2: person had to be sitting in the room to make
Speaker 2: sure they didn't. I didn't repeat the story I just
Speaker 2: did to you, you know, And so they I don't,
Speaker 2: And honestly, like I think everybody, I don't. I never
Speaker 2: had a like an a super combative relationship with the label.
Speaker 2: It just became pretty clear that like what success looked
Speaker 2: like to us and to them were very different. Like
Speaker 2: they needed success that was replicable and scalable across all
Speaker 2: of their investments. Right, we needed to be able to
Speaker 2: make art the next day and to have to chase
Speaker 2: the things that are working and optimize them, right, Like
Speaker 2: that thing's happening and people love it, and that's an
Speaker 2: opportunity for us to make more things like that in
Speaker 2: the future. And that's like, that's what I care about
Speaker 2: for my life, you know, And being able to do
Speaker 2: that wasn't was not a good business model for the label.
Speaker 2: I get that, like, but it's a good business model
Speaker 2: for our band. So it got to a point where
Speaker 2: it was obvious that we just needed to go different directions.
Speaker 1: Okay, but in the interroim, you made a third record.
Speaker 1: What was the story with that, Well, I.
Speaker 2: Mean they were so look, the same video that they
Speaker 2: thought would was going to sink us. They then, you know,
Speaker 2: we're once we were getting Grammys for for breaking MTV.
Speaker 2: They loved that right, like there it was. They loved
Speaker 2: taking credit for it once it was successful. And so
Speaker 2: we were off onto the idea of a third record
Speaker 2: where we would we would really lean into the video thing. Awesome,
Speaker 2: We're gonna make a video for every song, and they
Speaker 2: gave us a budget for that. And then when we
Speaker 2: started making the videos and asking for the budget payoffs,
Speaker 2: they didn't pay the checks. You know, they were like, yeah,
Speaker 2: but we didn't say yes to that one, and we
Speaker 2: didn't say yes to this certain like and so our
Speaker 2: manager at the time, good friend of yours end mine,
Speaker 2: basically just went to them. It was like, if you're
Speaker 2: not gonna pay, look, if you don't want, if you
Speaker 2: don't want a band like this, just let us off
Speaker 2: the fucking deal. And they did. It was pretty shocking.
Speaker 1: Okay, you described it with the emotions of you know,
Speaker 1: from the side of creativity and the differences with the label,
Speaker 1: but at the time, not today. Leaving a major label
Speaker 1: was not what people did.
Speaker 2: No, it was scary. It was scary. But again remember
Speaker 2: the DC background in the sort of like anti establishment
Speaker 2: roots of of of the things I love. Uh, you know,
Speaker 2: obviously too cocky about it because I was also you know,
Speaker 2: twenty something or whatever. I we knew we had a
Speaker 2: connection to our fans and that that was valuable, you know,
Speaker 2: Like I think what we now recognize as like the
Speaker 2: attention economy, it was back then. What it felt like
Speaker 2: was we're able to make things that that these that
Speaker 2: that our fans love, and they know how to get
Speaker 2: to us, and we know how to get to them,
Speaker 2: and what we used to need a label for. We
Speaker 2: it like that that that pipeline is shrinking, right, There's
Speaker 2: still lots that we need, but it's it we're less
Speaker 2: dependent on them than ever and they don't want to
Speaker 2: do the things that we know will work. So it
Speaker 2: was kind of gold.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you've been independent for an excess of a decade.
Speaker 1: How does that feel great?
Speaker 2: I mean, I look, I don't like the business part.
Speaker 2: I don't like as you can tell from from all
Speaker 2: my squirrely artsy answers. I don't like thinking about budgets.
Speaker 2: I don't like thinking about money. I don't like thinking
Speaker 2: about you know, return on investment. But I but I
Speaker 2: really don't like not being able to make the things
Speaker 2: we want, you know, and so we make some So
Speaker 2: we make we we you know, have to. We have
Speaker 2: to assume a lot of risk that in terms of
Speaker 2: investing in things like, you know, a six figure of
Speaker 2: video which we don't know if we'll find a sponsor
Speaker 2: for and that's scary as hell. But no label except
Speaker 2: my own.
Speaker 1: Okay, So at this point, you know, things have been
Speaker 1: sort of weird because of COVID et cetera. But how
Speaker 1: many gigs a year is? Okay, go playing.
Speaker 2: It right now? I mean where we have it down
Speaker 2: fairly low number because we all have young kids. But
Speaker 2: so like, if we wanted to make a lot more money,
Speaker 2: we'd play a lot more. But we but like this
Speaker 2: album and this year, I think we did thirty five shows,
Speaker 2: maybe forty.
Speaker 1: Okay, you know you are the record company, you have costs.
Speaker 1: Streaming is a winner take all proposition. You could work
Speaker 1: thirty five days a year and everybody could pay all
Speaker 1: their bills.
Speaker 2: I didn't say we worked thirty five days a year.
Speaker 2: I say, we tour thirty five days a year.
Speaker 1: Okay, then what are the other revenue streams? Oh?
Speaker 2: I mean first of all, those even those shows take
Speaker 2: a lot more work than the days are on. But
Speaker 2: but the the I mean, our videos take months. So
Speaker 2: I'm not to worry about.
Speaker 1: No, I'm not saying you're not working. I'm saying where
Speaker 1: does the money come from?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 2: The the I mean the our our shows are profitable, right,
Speaker 2: like so our shows are merger profitable. Sometimes our videos
Speaker 2: are profitable, like this album, We've only gotten to break
Speaker 2: even on them. But there are like we made on
Speaker 2: our third out I'm sorry, third album, third and fourth album,
Speaker 2: we made videos that were sponsored to the degree where
Speaker 2: we could get feed like one of one of them
Speaker 2: was a super Bowl commercial. Like we you know, that's
Speaker 2: a that's a hefty, hefty check. It used to be
Speaker 2: that a lot of that that we would also make
Speaker 2: a lot in licensing. We do okay in licensing, but
Speaker 2: you know, our our sort of ongoing streaming and licensing
Speaker 2: revenue is enough to pay for our infrastructure.
Speaker 1: Okay, what does it look like going forward? Because if
Speaker 1: you look at the business at large, Okay, the barrier
Speaker 1: to entry is very low. You have name recognition in
Speaker 1: the history from the twenty first century. The lot of
Speaker 1: people have name recognition from the twentieth century who still
Speaker 1: can't get over the fact that A labels not supporting them.
Speaker 1: So as you look forward, what does it look like?
Speaker 2: I am terrified, But I also have always been terrified,
Speaker 2: like we've are. Our financial model has basically been the
Speaker 2: roadrunner off the cliff forever, right, Like, just keep on going,
Speaker 2: keep on making the thing you want to make, and
Speaker 2: if there's money in the bank to do it and
Speaker 2: you can stomach the risk, it usually pays off, you know,
Speaker 2: or rather the one out of ten times it pays off,
Speaker 2: it pays off tenfold. And so that has sustained us
Speaker 2: this long, and that's all. I just have to hope
Speaker 2: it keeps doing that. I look, what I know of
Speaker 2: the industry at large is not a good bet. But
Speaker 2: it's the only one I can make because I want to,
Speaker 2: because I this is this is what I love doing.
Speaker 1: Okay, If I spoke with the other band members, are
Speaker 1: they on the same page.
Speaker 2: I think so. I mean, we would all love to
Speaker 2: have bigger paychecks. But but certainly no one, No one
Speaker 2: wants to tour more during this phase of our lives.
Speaker 2: I could see us touring more when our kids get
Speaker 2: a little older. But it's do you have kids, No,
Speaker 2: it's it is the period during which they really want
Speaker 2: to be with you and you really want to be
Speaker 2: with them is short and different, and and I I
Speaker 2: would have a really hard time being gone more than
Speaker 2: I am right now. That right now, that as you know,
Speaker 2: that sort of service industry model of music, of music
Speaker 2: industry where you can get paid as long as you're
Speaker 2: out there pounding the pavement is the only way to
Speaker 2: really make it profitable. We're we are happy to live
Speaker 2: fairly frugally right now and keep on making, keep on
Speaker 2: making this weird art that we get to make, and
Speaker 2: and look at where that leads us. I mean, here's
Speaker 2: one thing that we do that no other band can.
Speaker 2: We have a performing Arts center show where we live,
Speaker 2: score our videos, and we do the circuit. You know,
Speaker 2: we we'll do some of this again, like you're asking
Speaker 2: about next year, We'll do some of this next year.
Speaker 2: This is like we're playing in you know, like Disney
Speaker 2: Hall style things, right Like we're sit down show where
Speaker 2: there's a you're you're invited to bring your kids. The
Speaker 2: volumes are a little lower. There's a lot of Q
Speaker 2: and A with us, and and and instead of trying,
Speaker 2: instead of trying to put on the most energetic and
Speaker 2: most uh moving, sweaty rock show where we're inviting you
Speaker 2: to watch the film and we're gonna live score it
Speaker 2: for you, right and those that that tour is pretty evergreen,
Speaker 2: like we've never had trouble, Like we can do that anywhere,
Speaker 2: And we can only do that if our videos are
Speaker 2: as great as they are and every and every album
Speaker 2: we're gonna add to, you know, and that that show
Speaker 2: is a real, a real pleasure. I would I think
Speaker 2: that there's a real opportunity for us to do similar
Speaker 2: theater type things with with the videos that we have
Speaker 2: in the future. That may or may not happen, but
Speaker 2: we have a lot of offers from science institutions and
Speaker 2: from from theaters you know, Broadway and Broadway adjacent stuff
Speaker 2: Like I don't know if we'll do it or not,
Speaker 2: but like I'm not sitting here trying to figure out
Speaker 2: how we're going to make ends meet by the number
Speaker 2: of shows we're playing next year. I'm trying to figure
Speaker 2: out what art projects are going to remain exciting and
Speaker 2: and worthwhile and riveting and worth putting our lives into.
Speaker 2: Because so far, if we're able to make great stuff,
Speaker 2: there will be a revenue stream that attached to it.
Speaker 2: We're not always sure where it's going to come from,
Speaker 2: but it happens.
Speaker 1: Okay, you've gotten older, the band is evolved, but there's
Speaker 1: been rapid change in the world. You had this moment
Speaker 1: with the Treadmill video the VMAs. One can ask whether
Speaker 1: anybody can have a moment like that anymore, But are
Speaker 1: you searching to equal that? How do you metabolize having
Speaker 1: that peak yet keep going on.
Speaker 2: Well, that's why the Grammy nominations this year are such
Speaker 2: a big deal to us, because like we've been look,
Speaker 2: I went away and made a film after COVID, which
Speaker 2: shut down things for it, like it was ten full
Speaker 2: years between it. In fact, a little more than ten
Speaker 2: years between our last two albums. That's the kind of
Speaker 2: you know, we didn't intentionally go on hiatus. We were
Speaker 2: just busy, but that's the type of thing that when
Speaker 2: we were putting out the record, we were like, look,
Speaker 2: this could easily come off, as you knows, as the
Speaker 2: has beens trying to make a comeback or whatever, but
Speaker 2: the fact that we're nominated for multiple Grammys is like,
Speaker 2: it is I'm very gratified by this nod from our
Speaker 2: peers that like it still matters, you know, and our
Speaker 2: shows have been selling out. We have you know, we
Speaker 2: have our fan base is as big as it ever was,
Speaker 2: and so I'm I feel very gratified that it's still here.
Speaker 2: It's something we can be doing, and it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's this is sort of related to the like how
Speaker 2: do you deal with the videos being more famous than
Speaker 2: the music question. It's like that's only the case to
Speaker 2: the broad shallow audience. The narrow, deep audience go like
Speaker 2: those who go down the rabbit hole with us. Man,
Speaker 2: it's a deep rabbit hole, and I that's the one
Speaker 2: I get to live in, right because they're my songs
Speaker 2: and my videos and they're my art projects, and so
Speaker 2: where I live that the shallow thing is just like
Speaker 2: that's just a catchment for more people who want to
Speaker 2: come in, you know, and I love it.
Speaker 1: Okay. Simultaneous with this career, you're married a number of times.
Speaker 1: When were you first married.
Speaker 2: My late twenties to my early thirties.
Speaker 1: And how did you meet that woman? And where were
Speaker 1: you in your career at that point?
Speaker 2: That was my just after she and I met in college,
Speaker 2: but we weren't romantically. After college, I followed her. That's
Speaker 2: how I moved to La She went to grad school
Speaker 2: at UCLA, and I followed her out there. I was
Speaker 2: already spending more time in la than Chicago because we
Speaker 2: were recording our record there, and and and we we
Speaker 2: got married during the middle of that law that that
Speaker 2: that thirty two month tour for our second album. I
Speaker 2: think the law guest we ever took off of that
Speaker 2: tour was so that I could get married. We took
Speaker 2: ten days off and and uh it we were just
Speaker 2: too young and too in our own worlds for it
Speaker 2: to last. I mean, she's a wonderful woman, and we
Speaker 2: we maybe in a different life, but it was by
Speaker 2: the end of it, it was we were just we
Speaker 2: had different lines like being in a relationship like like that.
Speaker 2: Trying to have that close relationship when you're on tour
Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty days a year is crazy, you know.
Speaker 1: But how long until you get married again?
Speaker 2: It was then, I guess three or four years. So
Speaker 2: I got married again in a I fell head over
Speaker 2: heels for someone too quickly, and and we we had
Speaker 2: we had like a fantasy relationship where I think we
Speaker 2: were both in love with an idealized version of the other.
Speaker 2: Slightly slightly, I mean, at least the touring was less
Speaker 2: of the of the downfall of that relationship. But we
Speaker 2: weren't grown ups yet.
Speaker 1: So how long did that last?
Speaker 2: The full relationship was less than four years, including a
Speaker 2: marriage of two.
Speaker 1: So how long after that do you meet your present wife?
Speaker 2: I met my present wife at the very end of
Speaker 2: re met my present wife at the very end of that.
Speaker 2: But we were just friends for a full year and
Speaker 2: then we were romantic for two before he got married.
Speaker 2: And then we've been married.
Speaker 1: Ten Had she been married before?
Speaker 2: She had been married once before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And did she have any reluctance to marry you
Speaker 1: because you were a two time loser? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think she probably did. I think she probably did.
Speaker 2: Luckily she gave me the benefit of that.
Speaker 1: Okay. Her father is al Gore's like being the sudden
Speaker 1: law of al Gore.
Speaker 2: It is very humbling. It's it's really good at reminding
Speaker 2: you of what's important in life, because if you think
Speaker 2: what you're doing matters. Look at what he does, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean, it's it is ah it. He's
Speaker 2: a he's a spectacularly smart and soulful man who I
Speaker 2: really looked up to great deal. But he's also he's
Speaker 2: also a grand granddad, you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 2: he's my My kids didn't know, didn't know he had
Speaker 2: a famous history until just this last year. Like because
Speaker 2: he's just to him, he's to them, he's his granddad,
Speaker 2: you know. And my wife grew up you know, my
Speaker 2: my wife, I knew her in high school. We we
Speaker 2: we knew each other in high school. She and at
Speaker 2: the time she was the daughter of the vice president,
Speaker 2: and we didn't know each other well. But you know,
Speaker 2: that was a brutal, awful thing to go through as
Speaker 2: a teenage girl. Uh. And so like it's not a
Speaker 2: The last thing I'd ever want from my kids is
Speaker 2: for them to feel to really have any relationship to
Speaker 2: my public life. Like I want them their lives to
Speaker 2: be their own, you know, or their grandfather.
Speaker 1: And so how much contact does your family have with
Speaker 1: al Go or how often you see.
Speaker 2: Him several times a year? I mean we we overall,
Speaker 2: we he's a very he's a he's a very busy man,
Speaker 2: but but he's also a very active grand so we
Speaker 2: see him a lot.
Speaker 1: And how about his significant other? Tiper Gore, of course,
Speaker 1: was involved in the whole Lyrics controversy. Is that something
Speaker 1: you've ever discussed with her?
Speaker 2: Only only superficially. She is an incredibly playful and incredibly
Speaker 2: wonderful and incredibly artistic woman. You know, she like has
Speaker 2: played drums with that with the Grateful Dead, like she
Speaker 2: and you know she and Frank Zapp were like really
Speaker 2: good friends after all of that, Like the I think
Speaker 2: that was a that whole episode was I have realized
Speaker 2: with distance is was greatly greatly I'm amplified by the Right,
Speaker 2: Like the whole point is to sew division and and
Speaker 2: in fact, all she was was a young mother who
Speaker 2: was like, didn't didn't want her wanted to know if
Speaker 2: if an album she was buying for a kid was
Speaker 2: filled with the word fuck, like I would want that
Speaker 2: for my kids, you know. And it turned into this
Speaker 2: whole like it got the Right used it as a
Speaker 2: wedge between lefties to be like, look they're trying to
Speaker 2: center you, you know it, and it worked like the
Speaker 2: it's easy to convince us that we're being that, that
Speaker 2: the powers that be are trying to to shit on us,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: And how did you end up living in Santa Barbara.
Speaker 2: Because of her? We went she during the fires last year,
Speaker 2: we escaped, We escaped La. My kids school, sorry, our
Speaker 2: house was fine. My kids school was too close for
Speaker 2: comfort to the eat and fire in East La. I
Speaker 2: mean in Pasadena, sorry, Alaina and uh and we came.
Speaker 2: We came up to stay with with Tipper, and we
Speaker 2: loved the community up here so much that we stayed.
Speaker 1: Okay, you have a very full life, Okay, go and
Speaker 1: all its permutations. You're married, you have a couple of kids.
Speaker 1: Is there any time left over for other things? Whether
Speaker 1: it be streaming television, movies, books, whatever.
Speaker 2: I read a lot. I read a lot of books
Speaker 2: just because that's how that's my like nighttime routine. But
Speaker 2: I know, I mean I I have even before kids,
Speaker 2: I had a problem where anything I find interesting gets
Speaker 2: sucked into the art. Right Like if I if I
Speaker 2: get fascinated with something, let's make a video out of it.
Speaker 2: If I get fascinated with, you know, some instrument, let's
Speaker 2: make a record out of it like it. It's hard
Speaker 2: for me not to take everything I love and make
Speaker 2: a job out of it, which is a blessing and
Speaker 2: the curse obviously it means I don't have a lot
Speaker 2: of of of hobbies. Well, I'm trying to play tennis.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to play tennis. But then once you add
Speaker 2: kids to that, there's really there's zero time left for
Speaker 2: ant of it.
Speaker 1: Just so I understand why is it a curse?
Speaker 2: Well, because you'd like to be able to shut off sometimes,
Speaker 2: you know, like every when you professionalize your passion, there's
Speaker 2: it also means, you know, like you sap it of
Speaker 2: some of its purity. You know that that I want
Speaker 2: to learn to be a better piano player. So I'm
Speaker 2: so I'm taking piano lessons right now, and I love
Speaker 2: practicing and I feel it. I feel it coming in
Speaker 2: when I start playing something and go, oh, what's that
Speaker 2: I got to I should make a song out of that? Right,
Speaker 2: And that's a beautiful thing. That's that's my that's what
Speaker 2: I want to feel. But it's also almost impossible for
Speaker 2: me not to be kind of like looking for the opportunity,
Speaker 2: you know, just to be and there, you know, and
Speaker 2: there's a, there's a there's a I I just don't
Speaker 2: really understand the idea of hobbies the way other people do,
Speaker 2: because everything I've ever had as a as a demi
Speaker 2: hobby has turned into a.
Speaker 1: Job of something you know and what books do you read?
Speaker 2: Well? I kind of vacillate between different things right now.
Speaker 2: I just I've just gone through a big Ted Chang phase.
Speaker 2: You know, the sci fi writer. He's absolutely fantastic. And
Speaker 2: I let's say, I just read James the you know,
Speaker 2: the Personal Ever book, and I'm I'm just finished now
Speaker 2: one called Same Bed, Different Dreams, which which is sort
Speaker 2: of a broadened my understanding of the Korean War and
Speaker 2: Korean history quite a lot. Every once in a while,
Speaker 2: I go through a uh a non fiction phase like
Speaker 2: have you have you been? Have you read? If anyone
Speaker 2: builds it, everyone dies.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: Well, it's it's about AI, obviously, and I find it
Speaker 2: very I find it shockingly convincing. It's very well written.
Speaker 2: I there are many there there are many arguments to
Speaker 2: the contrary, but it's it's it's but I recommend it
Speaker 2: as a good read. And uh, I don't know. I
Speaker 2: I I've been doing a lot of audiobooks recently too,
Speaker 2: because if there's a lot of driving back and forth
Speaker 2: between La and Santa Barbara and I, when I'm not
Speaker 2: in love with a new band or a new a
Speaker 2: new uh new piece of music, an audiobook is a
Speaker 2: good way to pass that time.
Speaker 1: And what's your take on AI?
Speaker 2: It's very complicated. I mostly like, I think it's inevitable.
Speaker 2: So it's it's sort of like it's it's like what's
Speaker 2: your take on streaming circa ten years ago? You know,
Speaker 2: it's sort of like, what are you gonna stop it? Like,
Speaker 2: it's not like the major labels thinking they can sue
Speaker 2: it out of existence is crazy. Like it's coming. It's coming,
Speaker 2: and it can do all the things you're worried it
Speaker 2: can do. And so how quickly will we adapt? And
Speaker 2: what will it mean for creativity? You know, it's already
Speaker 2: the case. I think that like people are just even
Speaker 2: bands like in our echelon, are re recording things that
Speaker 2: they demoed using AI. They just demo in an AI
Speaker 2: and then and then record like and I to me,
Speaker 2: it just it SAPs all of the joy out of
Speaker 2: it for me. Uh, Like the idea that you that
Speaker 2: you could create something more efficiently and also without any
Speaker 2: of the joy of creation, sort of like, well, then
Speaker 2: what's the point, you know now, I but I do understand,
Speaker 2: like as a as a as a person, you know,
Speaker 2: as the director of a of a you know, relatively
Speaker 2: high budget feature film. If if if my choice were
Speaker 2: to make this really difficult shot out in the middle
Speaker 2: of the wilderness, in this incredibly beautiful place that's going
Speaker 2: to be really expensive and really hard to do, or
Speaker 2: do it all in ai I I would want to
Speaker 2: do the former, and my film would require that I
Speaker 2: do the latter. You just can't waste you can't waste
Speaker 2: all the money to do the thing and not pay
Speaker 2: every you know, like you you have to make everything
Speaker 2: in the most efficient way possible and under circumstances like that.
Speaker 2: And it's hard to know where that how to flip
Speaker 2: that switch when you get back down to sitting in
Speaker 2: a room with the three your three lifelong friends trying
Speaker 2: to make music, you know, and it's hard to know
Speaker 2: what to do when you flip yourself onto the other
Speaker 2: side and just say, now I'm not caring about what
Speaker 2: I make. I'm caring about what I consume. Like you know,
Speaker 2: if you don't know it was made by AI. Does
Speaker 2: it matter to you, like if it still moves your soul?
Speaker 2: Who cares?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Like that scares the living shit out of it. But
Speaker 2: I also believe it's it's possible, you know, like there's
Speaker 2: no I'm not enough of I am enough for romantic
Speaker 2: to want to spend my life doing this and enough
Speaker 2: for rationalists to be like, yeah, I'm sure that the
Speaker 2: AI can mimic the types of things we're doing well
Speaker 2: enough to be good at it. Like there's no I know,
Speaker 2: no guitarists who learn guitar by reading right, you learn
Speaker 2: like everybody heard a guitar and mimicked it. That's all
Speaker 2: AI is doing, you know.
Speaker 1: Yes, but AI cannot come up with the idea for
Speaker 1: the treadmill video yet. Well, according to you know the
Speaker 1: experts I read in the paper, not that diamond expert,
Speaker 1: they say any level of being a sentient being is
Speaker 1: at least thirty years off.
Speaker 2: You should you should read the other books too, Okay, Okay,
Speaker 2: I hope, I hope you're right. I hope you're right.
Speaker 2: My concern like I worry for the creative industries, but
Speaker 2: I worry about them actually less than every everything else
Speaker 2: because like, why would you hire a paralegal right now,
Speaker 2: right like why would you like when even like wouldn't you,
Speaker 2: to be honest, trust an AI cancer diagnosis if if
Speaker 2: it's suitably well trained and as really good data inputs,
Speaker 2: Like all it's doing is really high level pattern recognition,
Speaker 2: and almost every job that humans do is really high
Speaker 2: level pattern recognition. Yes, so is creativity, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, but just staying since we're talking about the
Speaker 1: hallucination rate is extremely high in terms of lawyers. They're
Speaker 1: getting busted on a regular basis where they have AI
Speaker 1: right there briefs, then the judge reads it. No such
Speaker 1: case exists.
Speaker 2: Oh I'm not look, I'm not a booster. I'm scared
Speaker 2: of shit.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, I'm looking at it. I think it's inevitable. Okay,
Speaker 1: but I think the paranoia is not warranted. If it
Speaker 1: is something simply zero's in one's digits programming, it is
Speaker 1: proven that it works extremely well as soon as you
Speaker 1: get to conceptual things and thinking. You know, the previous
Speaker 1: version of chatch EPT was chatch you know three that
Speaker 1: hallucinated more than two. I might have the numbers wrong.
Speaker 1: And the latest version that got some of the hallucination down.
Speaker 1: You have uh elon musks, which he tweaks one way
Speaker 1: or another. You know the way this stuff works. I
Speaker 1: don't want to be a louttite and say it can't
Speaker 1: be right, but I believe it's a tool. As I say,
Speaker 1: at this point in time and the way it works,
Speaker 1: there is no way it can take a great leap
Speaker 1: forward conceptually and artistically. That is still with the artists.
Speaker 1: You're talk about learning how to play the guitar. Yes,
Speaker 1: this is something from my generation. A lot of people
Speaker 1: spend time in bedrooms learning how to play, and you
Speaker 1: have people today who can barely play, who promote themselves
Speaker 1: saying listen to me all over the internet. Okay, but
Speaker 1: I am savvy enough to know that the new tools
Speaker 1: can be used in a new way, not really as
Speaker 1: replacement of what we have, but as a stepping stone
Speaker 1: to the next place.
Speaker 2: Yes, I I think I agree with everything you've just said.
Speaker 2: I don't have any way of predicting how fast it
Speaker 2: moves or what it can do eventually. I hope you're right.
Speaker 2: I'm because I'm old enough to be scared of change, right,
Speaker 2: Because I like I I like making the things I
Speaker 2: make and I like. I like the constraints i'm up against.
Speaker 2: I like the tools I've gotten good at and I
Speaker 2: don't and I'm not I'm not looking for you know, like,
Speaker 2: even if the street the attention industry isn't it's a lottery,
Speaker 2: you know, like it feels it feels like, well.
Speaker 1: Well, I wouldn't say it's a lottery. I'd say it's
Speaker 1: a tower of Babbel, but not a lottery.
Speaker 2: Okay, I guess I mean in terms of in terms
Speaker 2: of how music works with it, it's sort of like
Speaker 2: it hits our our our memes, you know it. Hits
Speaker 2: are are like a thing that spins up out of
Speaker 2: a out of the mailstrom of attention on on social
Speaker 2: media in a way that it's much hard like it
Speaker 2: doesn't Not that I haven't understood how culture works entirely,
Speaker 2: but it's very hard to understand how how art interfaces
Speaker 2: with that anymore. For me, that's already hard enough without
Speaker 2: it without putting in.
Speaker 1: Oh, okay, what do we know? Prior to maybe twenty
Speaker 1: twelve or so, you could be pretty sure that if
Speaker 1: something was great, it would surface. I'm not sure that's
Speaker 1: the case anymore.
Speaker 2: Okay, I agree with that I'm not even sure I
Speaker 2: agree with that prior to twenty twelve, but.
Speaker 1: There's some period along the time. But let's I don't
Speaker 1: want to argue, you know whatever. However, there are very
Speaker 1: few great things out there, and if you find something great,
Speaker 1: you want to tell everybody about it. Okay. It can
Speaker 1: be as simple as a one off Gangnam Style, or
Speaker 1: it can be a whole ovuh whatever you however you
Speaker 1: pronounce oeuvre okay, And they're different things. And I think
Speaker 1: because of the focus on money as opposed to art,
Speaker 1: people are constantly bitching I'm not making enough money. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can go on about this. You know, if you
Speaker 1: were trying to get a record deal in the sixties
Speaker 1: and you didn't sing, well, everybody say, well, what's up
Speaker 1: with this? Or or like you'd have to be Bob,
Speaker 1: don't you have to be like the best writer of
Speaker 1: all time? Whereas today we have bands they're not great
Speaker 1: writers and they're not great singers, and they're wondering why
Speaker 1: they're not getting noticed by the said, did you watch
Speaker 1: the TV show Adolescens?
Speaker 2: No, but I've heard great things about it.
Speaker 1: Well, it's a type of thing. If you see it,
Speaker 1: you want to talk to other people about it. Now.
Speaker 1: It's interesting to me because it being on Netflix, where
Speaker 1: they drop it all at once, is supposed to go
Speaker 1: over time. It didn't get the mind share of White Lotus,
Speaker 1: even though when White Lotus finished more people had seen Adolescens.
Speaker 1: So I mean, listen, there's so many issues there, publicity,
Speaker 1: mind share, how you measure it. All I know is
Speaker 1: if you say the word adolescence, someone's going to have
Speaker 1: a reaction, whether they saw it, liked it, didn't like it,
Speaker 1: like the way it was made, or you know, are
Speaker 1: not interested. Whereas I can name twenty things off the
Speaker 1: top of my head that even you were going to say,
Speaker 1: I had no idea what you're talking about, and I
Speaker 1: can't say, you know, well, if you check it out,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be phenomenal. I mean, I can talk about
Speaker 1: adolescents and say that's phenomenal. You may or may not
Speaker 1: like it, but we're all looking for those things and
Speaker 1: those things that you're gonna get me going here, those
Speaker 1: things have been buried under a tsunami of hype and reaction. Okay,
Speaker 1: I have a different feeling about social media. Let me
Speaker 1: just make it the Internet, which then blends into social media. Man,
Speaker 1: if I could connect with all these like minded people
Speaker 1: in high school, what would have been better? Sure there
Speaker 1: would be etcetera. But there's always bullying and parents can't
Speaker 1: protect bullying whatever, et cetera, et cetera. But I can
Speaker 1: talk to you virtually, I can reach people all around
Speaker 1: the world. Does it come at a cost? The example
Speaker 1: I always use, you're a little young. Prior to air
Speaker 1: conditioning in every car, cars came with vent windows. Once
Speaker 1: every car had air conditioning, they got rid of the
Speaker 1: vent windows for cost control. Then windows were great, but
Speaker 1: air conditioning is a lot better. So with every step
Speaker 1: forward there is somewhat of a loss. The other thing
Speaker 1: is you say, listen, I you know, just living through
Speaker 1: this whole napster thing. Change is tough, and I'm someone
Speaker 1: who doesn't like change in many ways, but it's happening.
Speaker 1: And it's same thing with AI. I mean, the best
Speaker 1: thing I've heard about AI is we can decide whatever
Speaker 1: we want to do with restrictions in America. That doesn't
Speaker 1: apply to China. They're gonna do whatever they want on anyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, I'm not before I get into
Speaker 2: AI restrictions like when, but but suicide ras and teens
Speaker 2: go up as soon as they get social media.
Speaker 1: You know, this is just like I don't want to
Speaker 1: sound like a right winger here, but the data can
Speaker 1: be interpreted multiple ways. They had the guy I said,
Speaker 1: I forget his name, he's the anti social media guy.
Speaker 1: A lot of this right, A lot of this stuff
Speaker 1: is the way the data is parsed. You know, they've
Speaker 1: been studies saying no, they're really social media doesn't have
Speaker 1: a negative effect. Really, Okay, yes, absolutely, but I wish
Speaker 1: I had it at my fingertips. Okay, but I'm not
Speaker 1: pulling it out of my ass.
Speaker 2: Okay, but now I get that. But do you do?
Speaker 2: Do you personally when you're on social media? You don't
Speaker 2: feel that poll of just like that dopamine another thing
Speaker 2: to look at, another thing to look You don't you don't.
Speaker 1: Wait a second, Wait a second. You went on a
Speaker 1: about emotion connection. If you get a sponsor you want
Speaker 1: to have in the production, you make a connection where
Speaker 1: the audience can connect with the maker and see all
Speaker 1: the stuff is. Suppose something that's fast and flat, they
Speaker 1: saw it. Whatever, let's just talk TikTok because it's a
Speaker 1: dominant platform. Okay, are there influencers on TikTok who are
Speaker 1: hawking stuff, who are sold out to the max. Absolutely, Okay,
Speaker 1: there is raw humanity there when I see people across
Speaker 1: the country testifying about their stories and here that I
Speaker 1: love that. In addition, there's a lot of informational stuff. Okay,
Speaker 1: but the raw humanity on TikTok is not evidenced in
Speaker 1: the superhero movies and the Spotify top fifty. Okay, so
Speaker 1: that for me, you know, this is like the New
Speaker 1: York Times. Okay, they are constantly listen, it's the best
Speaker 1: we have. I'm a subscriber or whatever. But they're constantly
Speaker 1: anti technology. All they're saying an infinitum is put the
Speaker 1: phone down. Are you fucking kidding me? The phone is
Speaker 1: the best thing that ever happened. I can connect with
Speaker 1: anybody anytime I have all this information. Do I like
Speaker 1: it when I go to dinner and somebody's on the phone. No, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it's perfect. But these are people, these
Speaker 1: are baby boomers and gen xers representing the largest percentage
Speaker 1: of the population. We're very self satisfied saying they know better.
Speaker 1: And the other thing is I grew up in the
Speaker 1: era of television. It was called the idiot Box and
Speaker 1: a lot of it was junkie. Okay, but didn't stop
Speaker 1: the kids from watching. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I my experience of kids with social media is not
Speaker 2: It is not that that it makes them feel connected
Speaker 2: instead of make them feel disconnected, because they're not. They're not.
Speaker 2: They're not. It's not one to one and it's not
Speaker 2: in person and it's not human. It's one to many
Speaker 2: and it is it's judge yourself against this because the
Speaker 2: algorithm is sending it to you. I agree when when
Speaker 2: social media.
Speaker 1: A lot of what you're saying is true and Instagram
Speaker 1: is more fomo look at me, et cetera. But I
Speaker 1: went to public high school, not gigantic, but not small,
Speaker 1: sixteen hundred people. There was a stratification. There were the jocks,
Speaker 1: there were the popular people. On the other hand, there
Speaker 1: were real nerds, people who had no friends, not what
Speaker 1: they call nerds today. Okay, yeah, finding your like minded
Speaker 1: people was difficult to be able to go online and
Speaker 1: find all these like minded people.
Speaker 2: Is the dages, Well, but I just playing Devil's advocate here.
Speaker 2: Finding the like minded people was difficult, and then they
Speaker 2: meant some like in the same way that finding the
Speaker 2: song that you loved was difficult back in the day,
Speaker 2: but but boy, your relationship tool there was a lot
Speaker 2: more when you went to Tower Records and you bought it.
Speaker 2: And I I'm not I'm I just I think the community.
Speaker 2: I think physical communities are very different than digital ones.
Speaker 2: And I think echo chambers are a dangerous thing sometimes,
Speaker 2: so like it, especially if the echo chamber is set
Speaker 2: in motion at the same time that your brain is
Speaker 2: still developing. Like, I think it's pretty hard to argue
Speaker 2: that that, you know, adolescent female brain should be fed
Speaker 2: lots and lots of pictures of of you know, the
Speaker 2: swimsuit issue.
Speaker 1: Well, needless to say, you can just google that stuff.
Speaker 2: Okay, sure, but that's but that's different than that than
Speaker 2: not having an algorithm that specifically picks it for you.
Speaker 2: That is, like, these algorithms are designed for our attention,
Speaker 2: and they were.
Speaker 1: What you're talking about is a very serious issue, and
Speaker 1: it is problematic. This may sound too adjacent, but when
Speaker 1: I grew up, my parents were not about restrictions. When
Speaker 1: I grew up, that's when the movie reading started. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's like my parents were not protective, and that's the
Speaker 1: background that I come from, and social media is it's
Speaker 1: beyond that. But the protection of children to this level,
Speaker 1: it's like a friend of mine, his nephew okay, even
Speaker 1: went to private school and was complaining to the mother
Speaker 1: about bullying, and the mother went to the principal. I
Speaker 1: guarantee you that had no effect, if anything, that the
Speaker 1: kid ended up of course, because this is the nature
Speaker 1: of life. You cannot protect people from the nature of life. Okay,
Speaker 1: And let's let's let's use the example John. I don't
Speaker 1: want to get too many crazy things. Some people are
Speaker 1: just crazy. Some people are just prone. Some of the
Speaker 1: best raised kids become drug addicts. Okay. And I don't
Speaker 1: want to throw the baby out with the bathroom and
Speaker 1: the ongoing paranoia with you know, it's amongst the classes
Speaker 1: in power, whether it be AI, the smartphone, social media,
Speaker 1: it's all negative when we see, you know, in foreign
Speaker 1: countries that gen z is bringing down the government using
Speaker 1: these platforms. I don't want to oversimplify it and make
Speaker 1: it twenty ten in the Arab spring. But I guess
Speaker 1: the narrative is the one you were uttering. The question
Speaker 1: becomes does the narrative reflect what is really happening? I
Speaker 1: mean all these anti technology, all this other stuff. If
Speaker 1: we were to the classic case here is they wanted
Speaker 1: to get rid of poornography. This is a true story
Speaker 1: on the cable systems in Utah, and the law was
Speaker 1: community standards. Well, they did the research. More people in
Speaker 1: Utah were watching porn on television than in other states,
Speaker 1: so they couldn't ban it. So the question becomes other
Speaker 1: than the people screaming loudest, what are people really doing?
Speaker 2: You would know better than I for sure, and I
Speaker 2: definitely don't like I am not a big crusader on technology,
Speaker 2: and frankly, like you know, it would be an incredibly
Speaker 2: strange and hypocritical position for me, like the the YouTube
Speaker 2: guy to to to to get angry at new platforms
Speaker 2: just for existing. I what my like to bring it
Speaker 2: to bring it back off of the precipice of sort
Speaker 2: of like where is culture going? And what is what
Speaker 2: is the whole world doing? Just back to like my
Speaker 2: own life. I I like investing lots and lots of
Speaker 2: time in one piece of art that I think is transcended. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's pretty much the opposite of what works on social
Speaker 2: media these days.
Speaker 1: One thing I don't believe in is the short attention span.
Speaker 1: I believe people have incredible shit directors with they used
Speaker 1: detectors even what they used to watch, it wouldn't people
Speaker 1: are binging, streaming television, they're watching All the Friends twenty four.
Speaker 1: How short of it is henshon spin can you have?
Speaker 1: If people find something is great there, they have unlimited
Speaker 1: amount of time to dedicate it to it. That's what
Speaker 1: your fans are doing. You're saying, they are tapped into
Speaker 1: your mind. They go deep. This is not someone who
Speaker 1: heard something in the Spotify top fifty has to go
Speaker 1: to so far and you know, go to the show
Speaker 1: and buy merch and then think about something else. They're
Speaker 1: living for this. In addition, you're not in the Spotify
Speaker 1: top fifty, and that that means we have the luxury
Speaker 1: of all these other things that can surface. Now. We
Speaker 1: used to have gatekeepers and we used to be able.
Speaker 1: It used to be more comprehensive. It's so incomprehensible how
Speaker 1: you find stuff, et cetera, et cetera. But people get
Speaker 1: to play and there will be a few steps. It
Speaker 1: will become more comprehensible. This is the flip side. As
Speaker 1: much as the older people who are anti technology. You
Speaker 1: have all the people who have who can complain. Now
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not getting paid. That becomes the narrative.
Speaker 1: Daniel Leck is the devil. It's like it's too detached.
Speaker 1: As I say, if you create something that resonates with
Speaker 1: the public, you know there are plenty of things when
Speaker 1: they say many people consider it to be astral Weeks
Speaker 1: to be one of the best albums of all time.
Speaker 1: I own it. I've seen Van Morrison performing live. I
Speaker 1: don't agree. Okay, public didn't resonate with it. Some things
Speaker 1: of public resonates, some don't. And the em and sent
Speaker 1: stuff is such oh yeah, yeah, that was something I
Speaker 1: listened to. It's like it's the beanie babies.
Speaker 2: I think I agree with that.
Speaker 1: Okay, this is a much longer discussion. I'm gonna leave
Speaker 1: it here.
Speaker 2: A great deal. I'm enjoying it, A great deal.
Speaker 1: I am.
Speaker 2: I'm I'm I'm glad to hear like. It makes me
Speaker 2: excited to hear someone so pro I'm not because I
Speaker 2: don't feel like i'm particularly anti like I like, I
Speaker 2: feel I'm happy in my little community, Like I'm really
Speaker 2: happy that we've developed this relationship to our fans. It
Speaker 2: does not seem to be dependent on the ebbs and
Speaker 2: flows right like the and the and the and the
Speaker 2: the the platforms service serve it pretty well, I guess.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't mean to keep dragging you through this,
Speaker 2: but like when we've put up a video as a
Speaker 2: music video and we put up the same video with
Speaker 2: factoids that you can read at the same time, the
Speaker 2: ones with the one with the factoids is what goes viral,
Speaker 2: I think, because that's what works on social media. Now,
Speaker 2: I'm not saying I'm just making the point that the
Speaker 2: platforms do that a different type of of thing resonates there. Right,
Speaker 2: I'm taking taking all value judgments out of it because
Speaker 2: it's not about like is it good or bad? But
Speaker 2: what I mean is that like that, if you want
Speaker 2: to develop a career on social media, what you're making
Speaker 2: is a lot of material that's very that's very repeatable,
Speaker 2: very quickly. It's all about I think you have multiple
Speaker 2: things there in order to survive with social media. It's
Speaker 2: a full time job and that's fucked up. Okay, but
Speaker 2: there's a lot of stuff that's lengthy whatever reason.
Speaker 1: Okay. The algorithm on TikTok found that I'm interested in
Speaker 1: car repair. Have I ever repaired one thing on my car? No? Okay,
Speaker 1: there are certain people I can tell you. There's Royalty
Speaker 1: Auto in Georgia, there's the Car Wizard. They have multiple things.
Speaker 1: It ends up being like fifteen or twenty minutes. I
Speaker 1: will watch or even Jay Leno's garage whatever. It's not
Speaker 1: hid and run. Are there people trying for hit and run? Yes,
Speaker 1: but you know as an artist, that's a different business,
Speaker 1: and you don't want to be in that business. You
Speaker 1: want to be in the blue sky business.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, But I also know that they at least Instagram stopped.
Speaker 2: You cannot put something over three minutes and have it
Speaker 2: shared algorithmic TikTok you can. But you know what they
Speaker 2: do to our videos. They put do not try this
Speaker 2: at home, which also keeps it off like their algorithm
Speaker 2: puts do not try the zero gravity video at home.
Speaker 2: What are you going to try? Who's going to try
Speaker 2: a zero gravity video at home?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean you made a video with meta, so
Speaker 1: there are limits to what you can say. And this
Speaker 1: is the thing right now. Is Apple winning by losing
Speaker 1: the AI war? Are they losing? If you look at
Speaker 1: the history of Apple and it was all Steve Jobs.
Speaker 1: They were late to every everything. Yeah, and then they won. Okay,
Speaker 1: So Mark Zucker has not invented anything in his life.
Speaker 1: Did invent Facebook, didn't invent Instagram, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 1: which is why they could come along with TikTok. Okay.
Speaker 1: So the only good thing about Instagram reels, which is
Speaker 1: not great but not terrible, is that you can play
Speaker 1: music at the same time. You can't do that with TikTok.
Speaker 1: But as I say, the other thing is we talk
Speaker 1: about this, the world is so broad and so amorphous.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're obviously in listen. I could talk about
Speaker 1: this for hours. I'm gonna stop because it's about you,
Speaker 1: not me. So when you when you do a podcast,
Speaker 1: you can you can have me and I'll I'll go
Speaker 1: on and on.
Speaker 2: It'll be a terrible podcast if I'm if I'm hosting, well,
Speaker 2: thank you. I really enjoyed it, appreciate it.
Speaker 1: No, I really you know, you're obviously a thinker in
Speaker 1: you're an artist in the intersection of what people don't understand.
Speaker 1: As I continue to go on, it's about conception. Execution
Speaker 1: is secondary to conception. So you can get twenty people
Speaker 1: together to write a song and make it perfect. It
Speaker 1: could be trump by something that someone came up with,
Speaker 1: an instant that touches people, and we live in a
Speaker 1: mercenary society where that people don't even recognize that. But
Speaker 1: that's the business you're in. How can I push it
Speaker 1: far enough that I get to a space You've said
Speaker 1: it very early. It's about the emotion and lenk iguan emotion.
Speaker 1: You can listen to people talk about hit music all
Speaker 1: day long. They're not going to even use the word emotion.
Speaker 2: It's true, it's true. I'm not going to say anything
Speaker 2: about AI before about whether or not it can ever
Speaker 2: get real emotions out of us. I think it's going
Speaker 2: to get real emotions out of us, and then we're
Speaker 2: going to be really confused. I mean, there are there
Speaker 2: are does, right, aren't there already? AI hits?
Speaker 1: Wait? Wait, hold on a second. First of all, they're
Speaker 1: not hits. If you look at the statistics, you know
Speaker 1: this is typical. I usually get more magazines than anybody
Speaker 1: I've ever known. I subscribe to the Apple News. There's
Speaker 1: so much clickbait there. Okay, it's like the record went
Speaker 1: to number one. Yeah, in Bulgarian Chance and Zanzibar. There's
Speaker 1: a chart for everything. You look at, how many people
Speaker 1: you know? There's a country one which also wasn't successful.
Speaker 1: But the woman wrote, has you know wrote the lyrics?
Speaker 1: Et cetera. Okay, so far they have songs. Okay, this
Speaker 1: is really going back. I was a big Beach Boys fan. However,
Speaker 1: big a Beach Boys fan you were, you could not
Speaker 1: predict California girls forget good vibrations. Okay, when you're a
Speaker 1: California girls, she said, this does not sound like what
Speaker 1: came before, with a lengthy intro. The way AI works
Speaker 1: is there's a query, it is sent out in a
Speaker 1: million different places, Everything comes back with data, and it
Speaker 1: assembles an answer. This is the whole thing about training
Speaker 1: in the model that shit that already exists. No.
Speaker 2: I get that it's definitionally at current it's definitionally copying. Yes,
Speaker 2: my What scares me about it long term is that
Speaker 2: what it's good at is pattern recognition, right, Okay, and
Speaker 2: so what it's currently doing is figuring out what patterns
Speaker 2: fit fit your query? Right. But if you are to extrapolate,
Speaker 2: like I don't think we're that many steps away. I
Speaker 2: hope you're right. I really really hope you're right, because
Speaker 2: that that's what that's the world I want to live in.
Speaker 2: But it seems to me that you can actually look
Speaker 2: at the at the twentieth century and and find a
Speaker 2: pattern in what broke the music industry, right what like
Speaker 2: you can go of course punk was doesn't come because
Speaker 2: as soon as as soon as you get this far
Speaker 2: into disco, you're gonna have something counter that, right, or
Speaker 2: you know, as soon as you've got this far into
Speaker 2: a racism, you're going to you're you're going to add
Speaker 2: actual pleasure to soul and hip hop too, right, Like
Speaker 2: you you can you can look at the the cultural
Speaker 2: dynamics and see the patterns playing out, and I would
Speaker 2: and if we can make if we can see that pattern,
Speaker 2: it can see that pattern.
Speaker 1: Right. Let me ask you this. Though we used to
Speaker 1: have a new sound every three to five years, since
Speaker 1: the turn of the century, we haven't had a new sound. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the pattern doesn't exist. It's like uh, skew lines
Speaker 1: or if you really look at how you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not good on science. You know, the protons of the
Speaker 1: new time, they don't get around in circles. They bounce
Speaker 1: all around. Okay, I'm not saying that I have the answer.
Speaker 2: We have no homogeneity period, So there's no way to
Speaker 2: have a sound because they have everything.
Speaker 1: It's so what we have now is akin to religion.
Speaker 1: The religion is answers for the unknown. It's a little
Speaker 1: bit more than that, but that's the genesis. So we
Speaker 1: have a lot of people acting like they know in
Speaker 1: order to feel good about themselves. I don't want to
Speaker 1: make it about social media, but I'll use exactly. I
Speaker 1: hear negative stuff about TikTok all day long. My first
Speaker 1: question is have you been on the service? No, they've
Speaker 1: all not been on the service. You may hate it
Speaker 1: if you're on the service, but you you don't have
Speaker 1: any self, you don't have any knowledge, no experience.
Speaker 2: Well on that one, I mean, I'm much more Instagram
Speaker 2: than I am TikTok, but I find it incredibly it
Speaker 2: but it's not a good feeling.
Speaker 1: Wait, wait, it is addictive. I'm not saying it's not.
Speaker 1: Is that a good thing? No, but that's not the
Speaker 1: only thing that's there.
Speaker 2: I will then, then we have arrived at our point
Speaker 2: in perfect agreement. Because I do think like as a
Speaker 2: connector fantastic I have no problem with that with with
Speaker 2: with technology connecting us. I it's it's that I feel
Speaker 2: like it's disconnecting and I feel like it's it is
Speaker 2: it puts us into the into sort of you know,
Speaker 2: the classic thing you've heard over and over again, that
Speaker 2: you are, that you are the product. You know that
Speaker 2: your attention is what's being sold. And and I and
Speaker 2: I feel that because I can feel I got like
Speaker 2: I can feel the urge to pull my phone out
Speaker 2: because I need another hit of of I haven't gotten
Speaker 2: any emails that I want to read today. I got
Speaker 2: thirty that I don't want to deal with, but I
Speaker 2: haven't gotten any more that I want to read. But
Speaker 2: I but there's another platform where there's probably more, and
Speaker 2: and I can feel, I feel that pull to it,
Speaker 2: and it is addictive and and not devoid of inspiration.
Speaker 2: And I've also found tons and tons of inspiration and
Speaker 2: and and made real connections there. So it's not like
Speaker 2: it's definitely it's definitely not one or the other, but
Speaker 2: it is. But the dangers are real and and I
Speaker 2: and I and I what I want to do is
Speaker 2: believe like if we could cherry pick all the good
Speaker 2: stuff from what's there and and your version of what
Speaker 2: could be like that's that's wonderful. If if AI only
Speaker 2: it only acts as a more efficient tool that I
Speaker 2: than then that it's going to be a wonderful, wonderful thing.
Speaker 2: I I you know, like I've worked you know again,
Speaker 2: put put yourself in the position of a film director
Speaker 2: who who's on a tight budget and needs background music?
Speaker 2: How are you not going to use AI for them? Right?
Speaker 1: And you know we live we live through this with
Speaker 1: the drum machine? What did it reyield yield programmers? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can use drum machine.
Speaker 4: But these guys who make a fortune programming the drum machine, well,
Speaker 4: it's not gonna it's not gonna be the If it's
Speaker 4: not gonna be the director, they're gonna hire somebody who
Speaker 4: puts in the right prompts to get the right.
Speaker 2: Oh well they're gonna hi there. But that's a much
Speaker 2: smaller industry that like there are those are the only
Speaker 2: the orchestral composition jobs left in the world, right is
Speaker 2: film film score? And and and I just came through that, right,
Speaker 2: And it's and they make a lot more money than
Speaker 2: I do. I'll tell you that it's like it's a
Speaker 2: it's a it for for for to hire a set
Speaker 2: of union violinists, and you know, to hire a union
Speaker 2: orchestra to play for six hours. Is you know that's
Speaker 2: that's several rock and roll albums worth of money right there,
Speaker 2: and that and that job will go.
Speaker 1: In without going down the rabbit hole of that. I'll
Speaker 1: just say one thing leading out all of what we
Speaker 1: just said. Pretty much, you have a device in your
Speaker 1: hand where everything is playing to you. How many times
Speaker 1: have I been in environments where I say I can't
Speaker 1: relate to these people. I can't talk to these people.
Speaker 1: But here on my device is stuff specially curated just
Speaker 1: for my interests? Is I say you have to you
Speaker 1: have to see it.
Speaker 2: Down And I do love that, but that also just
Speaker 2: stopped you from connecting with those people. Now you don't
Speaker 2: have to understand.
Speaker 1: Yes, but there's a fiction that everyone. Let's use it.
Speaker 1: Musicians as example. You know, I've met a lot of
Speaker 1: classic musicians. A lot of them can't talk to anybody.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we're the worst.
Speaker 1: They can play their instrument and that's how they connect
Speaker 1: with people, but they can't have a conversation. They can't
Speaker 1: do it. Okay, So all these people say, well, you
Speaker 1: got to meet face to face. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of people can't do that.
Speaker 2: Fair enough.
Speaker 1: Let's leave it at that, because it'll go out forever.
Speaker 2: David, I really enjoyed this thing.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's been great talk you do, great hearing about you.
Speaker 1: You're being in your insights and creativity. In any event,
Speaker 1: Thank you. Till next time.
Speaker 2: This is Bob Left sets