Speaker 1: Welcome to Inside the Studio presented by iHeart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: your host Joe leeby So. On this home edition of
Speaker 1: the show, our quarantine correspondent Jordan Runtaug caught up with
Speaker 1: car Seat Headrest, who have very consistently been my answer
Speaker 1: to the question what's the best new rock band out there?
Speaker 1: Since I first saw them five years ago in a
Speaker 1: small Brooklyn club. If you check out a video or
Speaker 1: any of the articles that have been written about the
Speaker 1: band's excellent new album Making a Door Less Open, you'll
Speaker 1: probably see an image of the singer Will Toledo in
Speaker 1: a gas mask with like floppy, plushy ears. And that's
Speaker 1: a concept he thought up months and months ago before
Speaker 1: the pandemic made masks and music a very different experience.
Speaker 1: That different experience, that's the reason we put together this
Speaker 1: home edition of Inside the Studio and to let you
Speaker 1: know how artists are coping with lockdown and how it's
Speaker 1: impacting their lives in the way they make music. If
Speaker 1: you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out the
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio podcast that Jordan's hosts, which is called
Speaker 1: Rivals Music's Greatest Feuds, and which, as the saying goes,
Speaker 1: is available wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hello everybody,
Speaker 1: my name is Jordan runt Hog. But enough about me today,
Speaker 1: I'm joined by an artist who started making music as
Speaker 1: a high school or in the back of his parents Medivan.
Speaker 1: He named the project after his early audience, a pair
Speaker 1: of car seat headrests. In the first four years of
Speaker 1: his career, he released the flood of songs on the
Speaker 1: online music platform some seven albums, four EPs, and two compilations.
Speaker 1: These are into a deal with the iconic indie label
Speaker 1: Metador Records and inspired an untold number of digital d
Speaker 1: I Y musicians and may He released Making the Door
Speaker 1: Less Open, his first album of new material in four years.
Speaker 1: It's an incredibly varied collection, with each song serving as
Speaker 1: a world of its own. In fact, he describes the
Speaker 1: album of less like a novel, more of a collection
Speaker 1: of poems. His sonic scope includes elements of E d M,
Speaker 1: hip hop, doo wop, soul, and of course some good
Speaker 1: old fashioned rock and roll. I'm thrilled the welcome will
Speaker 1: Toledo carcat headrest. Thank you so much for taking the
Speaker 1: time today. It's such a pleasure and honor. Yeah. Hello,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. I guess first and foremost, have
Speaker 1: you been? The last four months have been crazy for
Speaker 1: so many reasons and tough on all of us. What's
Speaker 1: been keeping you feeling grounded and hopeful? Um? Trying to
Speaker 1: keep my daily business here, daily routine going. You know.
Speaker 1: I was working on this record mainly at home for
Speaker 1: a while, and I finished that up around the beginning
Speaker 1: of April, and that was just when Quarantine was starting,
Speaker 1: so I kind of just stayed at home. You know.
Speaker 1: We were expecting to to get out on the road
Speaker 1: start touring and promoting the record, but I kept doing
Speaker 1: basically what I had been doing. I just kind of
Speaker 1: switched gears and worked on some other music for a while.
Speaker 1: My roommates got a record that I was helping him record,
Speaker 1: and I'm still finishing that up, making some new demos
Speaker 1: of my own, and putting some stuff together with another
Speaker 1: act might be coming down in August and recording with them.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I just I just kind of jumped into
Speaker 1: what's next. You know, if we have this time off,
Speaker 1: what other kind of music can I get into. What's
Speaker 1: a typical writing day like for you? Or it's just
Speaker 1: every day different. I kind of sneak into writing. I
Speaker 1: don't usually sit down to to write. I just, um,
Speaker 1: I start reading, or if there's a mix to work on,
Speaker 1: I'll work on that, just kind of do grunt work
Speaker 1: or get exposed myself to other creative stuff until I
Speaker 1: come across an idea that I have or that I
Speaker 1: find interesting, and then I'll I'll work on that. I'll
Speaker 1: shut that down, and then after a while, I'll kind
Speaker 1: of end up with a lot of kind of bullet notes,
Speaker 1: a few lines of lyrics, or I'll get on and
Speaker 1: just make a demo of a chord progression or something,
Speaker 1: and then um, I'll spend a while just kind of
Speaker 1: generating that material, and then when it comes time to
Speaker 1: you know, show stuff to the band or have some
Speaker 1: more finished work, then I'll start flashing stuff out. At
Speaker 1: that point, What do you do when like the song
Speaker 1: is just not coming and you feel stuck? How do
Speaker 1: you do a reset? Is there a distraction that works,
Speaker 1: or do you just try to plow through it? Well?
Speaker 1: With with my method, it's kind of like it it's
Speaker 1: it's definitely hardest when I'm at the point where I'm
Speaker 1: supposed to be finishing it up. Um, but I kind
Speaker 1: of work pretty slowly where it is just you know,
Speaker 1: create a piece of it if you can, and if
Speaker 1: you can't, just work on something else. I always have
Speaker 1: different stuff that I'm going between producing for other people
Speaker 1: are writing my own work. I just kind of switched years.
Speaker 1: If it's not working, you know, if I can't come
Speaker 1: up with lyrics, I'll work on the mix. If the
Speaker 1: mix isn't working, I'll go play guitar and see if
Speaker 1: anything is happening there, building that up so that by
Speaker 1: the time I am at a finishing point, you know,
Speaker 1: the groundwork is already there, and I can only go
Speaker 1: so wrong from there. I I usually hate reading people's
Speaker 1: quotes back to them because it's kind of tedious. But
Speaker 1: there's a profile in Rolling Stone, Uh you did earlier
Speaker 1: this year, and you had a quote that really stuck
Speaker 1: with me. I really really struck a chord with me.
Speaker 1: You said, if you're not stressed out at any point
Speaker 1: making a work of art, there's a much higher chance
Speaker 1: it's not going to be good at the end of it.
Speaker 1: Why do you think that is? I totally by the way, Yeah,
Speaker 1: well I think that you know, you know, if um,
Speaker 1: if you feel like a lot is at stake when
Speaker 1: you're working on something that's automatically going to be stressful.
Speaker 1: And I think if if you're a musician and you're
Speaker 1: working on something that is your main project, it it
Speaker 1: should feel like there's a lot at stake. You know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to be life or death, but it
Speaker 1: should be something that you're taking seriously that you know
Speaker 1: you would feel you wouldn't feel good about it if
Speaker 1: you came to the end of it and it wasn't
Speaker 1: really a record that you wanted to listen to. In
Speaker 1: terms of financial success or popular success. You know, those
Speaker 1: are things that you can't control. But one thing that
Speaker 1: you can work towards is making a record that that
Speaker 1: lasts on your own stereo. You know, that that you
Speaker 1: want to listen to again and again. Um. And that's
Speaker 1: what I always work towards making my own records, and
Speaker 1: it can be really stressful because I have high standards.
Speaker 1: You know, if if I'm making it and it's just okay,
Speaker 1: you know, that's not a record that I'm going to
Speaker 1: be wanting to come back to. So I have to
Speaker 1: really push myself to to get rid of what's not
Speaker 1: good and replace it with something better. A lot of
Speaker 1: critics and fans have been calling making the door less
Speaker 1: open like this, I will reinvention. It's a total creative overhaul.
Speaker 1: It's your it's your kid a. Do you agree with
Speaker 1: that assessment or do you see this as just like
Speaker 1: an obvious next step for your work. Um, it's hard
Speaker 1: to see it as an overhaul because car Set Headress
Speaker 1: has already been through a lot of different phases. And
Speaker 1: you know, it started off as a solo project and
Speaker 1: I was just recording on my computer in my bedroom
Speaker 1: or in my car and just trying to put stuff
Speaker 1: together in that environment. And then after about five years
Speaker 1: of that, I moved to Seattle, got a band together,
Speaker 1: and got on Matador, and things really shifted in terms of,
Speaker 1: you know, how we were playing, how it sounded. That
Speaker 1: was an adjustment, you know, that was different songs we
Speaker 1: were working on, and we were working in a studio. Suddenly,
Speaker 1: you know, some people might have just called it a
Speaker 1: new band at that point, I remember Mattador asking, you know,
Speaker 1: do you want to keep the name or or should
Speaker 1: we change it? But to me, the the appeal of
Speaker 1: of having a weird and nondescript name like car Set
Speaker 1: head Dress is that it can kind of be anything.
Speaker 1: You know, you can go anywhere with it, and I
Speaker 1: like the idea of just having this one discography where
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different stuff on it, so mad Low.
Speaker 1: You know, making a doorless open was definitely a shift, um,
Speaker 1: you know, away from that studio environment. But you know,
Speaker 1: it just wasn't the only shift that we've done. And
Speaker 1: I associate car Seat Head Dressed with these sort of shifts,
Speaker 1: So I think it's it's nothing new to to change
Speaker 1: change up the sound from album to album. It's just
Speaker 1: a question of you know what we're going for with
Speaker 1: that particular album. And you've also been working with Andrew
Speaker 1: Kats on the One Trade Danger project. What did that
Speaker 1: allow you to do that? Carseat Head Dressed didn't, Well,
Speaker 1: it was an outlet for him at the time because
Speaker 1: he was making music. He's he's always kind of made
Speaker 1: his his own music on the side, and it's a
Speaker 1: lot more E d M, you know, computer driven stuff.
Speaker 1: When he first joined car Seat Headdressed, you know, he
Speaker 1: was there as a drummer and we were doing a
Speaker 1: lot of live based recording, so there wasn't much room
Speaker 1: for that mode of music to exist in the car
Speaker 1: seat world. So this side project of One Trade Danger,
Speaker 1: you know, allowed us to have that experience where it
Speaker 1: wasn't under the car Seat name and we could kind
Speaker 1: of redefine, you know, start from the ground up as
Speaker 1: far as what it could be. And you know, what
Speaker 1: we wanted it to be was fun. You know, it
Speaker 1: was stuff that we were coming up with on tour
Speaker 1: and you know, we just we wanted to laugh and
Speaker 1: relieve some tension and One Trade was a good outlet
Speaker 1: for that. Um. Working on the car Seat Headress record,
Speaker 1: you know, that ended up being mad low. Um. I
Speaker 1: wanted to take that energy, you know, that sense of
Speaker 1: fun and of building stuff from the ground up and
Speaker 1: apply it to a car Seat record. You know. So
Speaker 1: it ended up being sort of this crossroads between what
Speaker 1: we were doing with One Trade and what we had
Speaker 1: been doing with Car Seat. It reminded me a little
Speaker 1: bit of the famous sort of McCartney when the Beatles
Speaker 1: were at Across Roads in in late sixty six, when
Speaker 1: they stopped touring and Paul McCartney developed the the alter
Speaker 1: ego of Sergeant Pepper as this way of kind of
Speaker 1: blowing apart what a Beatles album could be and kind
Speaker 1: of freeing themselves to any preconceived notion did that factor
Speaker 1: into it at all to like just kind of like
Speaker 1: I guess, like you just said, starting from the ground up,
Speaker 1: I wasn't really thinking of the Beatles specifically in terms
Speaker 1: of narrative. I always go and listen to Beatles records
Speaker 1: when I'm recording, just because I think that they've got
Speaker 1: some of the best produced records that are available. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I think that George Martin was the fifth
Speaker 1: Beatle and they just made a lot of great stuff together,
Speaker 1: and sort of Sergeant Pepper was kind of accompanied by
Speaker 1: you know, in the Revolver era, they stopped touring and
Speaker 1: they started focusing solely on studio stuff. And I think
Speaker 1: it makes sense to sort of, once you're away from
Speaker 1: that that grind of the tour, to start thinking of
Speaker 1: your identity in a different way, you know, start playing
Speaker 1: with it more. And um, so I think that Sergeant
Speaker 1: Pepper really rose out of that sort of being um
Speaker 1: submerged in the studio environment and being able to do
Speaker 1: whatever you want. And that was definitely something that we
Speaker 1: were doing in Madlow. Uh, not in the studio so much,
Speaker 1: but in our in our bedrooms on the computer, um,
Speaker 1: just taking these modern sounds and doing whatever we wanted
Speaker 1: with it. And I think there is a parallel, you know,
Speaker 1: the the idea of a new identity that is really
Speaker 1: just comprised of these new sounds that you're making. Can
Speaker 1: you tell me a little about the character of trade, like,
Speaker 1: how is it different than you? It's kind of a
Speaker 1: way for me to be more free live on on
Speaker 1: a stage, and it kind of comes with the idea
Speaker 1: that you know, for me, music has always been about music,
Speaker 1: you know, it's been about the sound. Um it's something
Speaker 1: that you can just close your eyes and experience, and
Speaker 1: the vision rules just I don't I never know exactly
Speaker 1: how they relate. And so playing live it's always been weird,
Speaker 1: you know, feeling like it becomes a visual spectacle as
Speaker 1: well as something that you're listening to. And um, I
Speaker 1: wanted to play with that in a way for there
Speaker 1: to be something happening on stage, but it was sort
Speaker 1: of driving you back to to the music side of it,
Speaker 1: to the creative side of it. So treat to me.
Speaker 1: You know, it's there's a level of metafiction to it,
Speaker 1: I guess where you know, you're supposed to derive some
Speaker 1: pleasure from the fact that it's not a real character,
Speaker 1: you know, it's more like a cartoon or something that,
Speaker 1: to me is what he embodies, you know, just sort
Speaker 1: of this cartoonish energy. When you first started making music,
Speaker 1: was being a you know in quotes frontman a goal
Speaker 1: for you? Or is that just did that just become
Speaker 1: a necessary part of what you do to get the
Speaker 1: music out there? It was definitely just necessary. You know.
Speaker 1: The first one of the first bands I was in
Speaker 1: was in high school and I was the drummer, and um,
Speaker 1: that was just because no one else could play drums,
Speaker 1: and um, I was interested in it, so I got
Speaker 1: I got a real cheap drum kit and we started playing.
Speaker 1: But then I also ended up being the lead singer
Speaker 1: just because no one else really wanted to be the
Speaker 1: lead singer, and um, we were all kind of writing
Speaker 1: stuff and and tossing stuff around. It didn't really feel
Speaker 1: like a frontman thing at all. It just felt like
Speaker 1: those are the things that I've got to do in
Speaker 1: this in this band to make the music work. You know,
Speaker 1: when I'm making my music, I want to keep it
Speaker 1: in my zone. But I don't really think about that
Speaker 1: in terms of being a frontman. I guess UM. I
Speaker 1: just think about it in terms of giving myself things
Speaker 1: that I like in my own records, and so the
Speaker 1: live performance of it, you know, it always feels like
Speaker 1: a reinterpretation to me. One of the one of the
Speaker 1: singles off the record, Hollywood Uh, has the incredibly memorable
Speaker 1: refrain that those who haven't heard it, Hollywood makes me
Speaker 1: want a puke. Uh. It reminds me of the Pavement
Speaker 1: song Range Life a little bit. They both seemed to
Speaker 1: be written from this perspective of a guy on the
Speaker 1: outside of contemporary culture and not really sure where he
Speaker 1: fits into it. How much of that song was satire
Speaker 1: or a character and how much of that is your
Speaker 1: own feeling and experience. I mean, to me, like the
Speaker 1: best satire or the best comedy song, novelty song, whatever
Speaker 1: you want to call it, UM is the one that
Speaker 1: that has this serious underside to it. UM. There are
Speaker 1: definitely parts that that just seemed funny to me. You know,
Speaker 1: I kept them in because they made me laugh. And
Speaker 1: there are parts that I kept in because I felt,
Speaker 1: you know, I felt like they meant something. I felt
Speaker 1: like it was actually communicating something to to leave that in,
Speaker 1: And I just kept both of those into this one
Speaker 1: song because I kind of wanted it to be a
Speaker 1: challenge and to you know, open up people's ears and
Speaker 1: shocked them a little bit and then make them sort
Speaker 1: of approach the song as if they'd never heard music before. Um.
Speaker 1: I think that's that's the goal when you make any
Speaker 1: sort of music, is too challenge people into coming into
Speaker 1: it fresh. You don't want them to be on autopilot
Speaker 1: when they're listening. One of my favorite songs on the album,
Speaker 1: and I've read one of yours too, is a Martin
Speaker 1: and I think you've said that that has the power
Speaker 1: to move you to tears sometimes. I was wondering, what
Speaker 1: is it about that track that affects you so deeply? Um.
Speaker 1: For me, it was really rewarding to work on it
Speaker 1: because I started off with this demo that was just musical,
Speaker 1: you know, just had that basic chord progression and the
Speaker 1: beat and um, you know, it just had this this
Speaker 1: feeling to it. You know, it was melancholy, um, but
Speaker 1: but it was positive at the same time. And when
Speaker 1: you have music like that, you know, it can be
Speaker 1: really hard to execute it and and turn it into
Speaker 1: a full song. Um. And you're really afraid of losing
Speaker 1: that feeling as you go along. So with Martin, it
Speaker 1: was a really slow process of putting that song together
Speaker 1: because I didn't want to lose that feeling. And for me,
Speaker 1: you know, that's why it's so rewarding and one of
Speaker 1: my favorites to listen to now is that, you know,
Speaker 1: piece by piece it got put together, and to me
Speaker 1: it felt like it it did still convey that feeling
Speaker 1: at the end that it had at the beginning. And
Speaker 1: you know, it's not really describable, you know, in any
Speaker 1: sort of way other than the song itself. You know,
Speaker 1: it just it captures the emotion that I felt like
Speaker 1: it it could capture when I first heard that melody
Speaker 1: I was making. Do you write better in like the
Speaker 1: heat of the moment, in the midst of an emotional
Speaker 1: crisis or in a static high or do you write
Speaker 1: better from a period of reflection kind of later on
Speaker 1: down the road. It's usually more about reflection to me.
Speaker 1: You know, it'll be like I'll have a period where
Speaker 1: there's some sort of emotional crisis, um or you know,
Speaker 1: just feeling that that cloud of negativity over me and
Speaker 1: UM when I'm really in the middle of that, it's
Speaker 1: it's hard to write anything. Or I'll try to write
Speaker 1: and nothing will sound good, nothing will nothing will work right,
Speaker 1: and I'll just get more and more deeper into it, angrier,
Speaker 1: and then maybe I'll hear something, here's some song that
Speaker 1: knocks me out of that a little bit, so I
Speaker 1: start climbing my way out, and then at that point
Speaker 1: I can start writing, and I can start developing that
Speaker 1: emotion into something more, into transcending it. You know, I
Speaker 1: really have to be working my way out of that
Speaker 1: emotion by the time I start writing about it. Otherwise
Speaker 1: it kind of goes in circles and I don't get
Speaker 1: don't get good stuff out of it. The songwriting on
Speaker 1: this album, and I mean, this is the best way,
Speaker 1: is the best compliment I can offer. It feels a
Speaker 1: lot more just concise. There's not a lot of like,
Speaker 1: you know, a battle of the constant Concordia length songs.
Speaker 1: Was there a conscious effort to get simpler in a way.
Speaker 1: I think that the core of Cars Addressed has always
Speaker 1: been pop music, you know, from different eras, but always
Speaker 1: that sort of core of simplicity of shortness. So I
Speaker 1: really focused on that with this record and tried to
Speaker 1: dig into what made a good pop song good? You know,
Speaker 1: what made a short song work. In a way, it's
Speaker 1: easier to write a long song because you can kind
Speaker 1: of spread out and articulate every idea that you're working through.
Speaker 1: It's hard to write a short song because you have
Speaker 1: to condense stuff so much. You know, you have to
Speaker 1: really make every word count and every second count of
Speaker 1: the song to put as much into it as as
Speaker 1: you would a longer song. And so that was kind
Speaker 1: of the challenge with this record was to make songs,
Speaker 1: you know, three and a half minutes or less, and
Speaker 1: a lot of songs we didn't succeed in that barrier.
Speaker 1: There's still a lot of you know, four minute, five minutes,
Speaker 1: six minute songs there. But just to kind capture that
Speaker 1: condensation where you know, you can't go into a whole
Speaker 1: different part, you have to just condense it into one
Speaker 1: different chord. You know what that what is that chord
Speaker 1: going to be? Stuff like that is what interested me
Speaker 1: just making that really condensed record because you really, you
Speaker 1: sat down and listen to you know, that week's most
Speaker 1: stream songs on on digital platforms, right, and really very
Speaker 1: like a student approach to it. What did you learn
Speaker 1: from that exactly. I mean, just was it song structure?
Speaker 1: Was it melody? Was it production? Was it all the above?
Speaker 1: I really just wanted to hear mostly the production on
Speaker 1: what those songs were doing. You know, I'm a producer
Speaker 1: as much as I am a songwriter, and it's important
Speaker 1: to me to see what is going on, you know,
Speaker 1: in the contemporary scene, because the tools that pop artists
Speaker 1: are pop producers use, you know, that is the cutting
Speaker 1: edge of production technology. And if you're ignoring that, you know,
Speaker 1: it kind of creeps up on you until, um, you know,
Speaker 1: you're using equipment that isn't working right, and you don't
Speaker 1: know how to upgrade, and you don't know how to
Speaker 1: use the sounds that are most prevalent in music. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't know how to make them work for you.
Speaker 1: So I was looking at pop music for that. I
Speaker 1: was also looking at it just to sort of have
Speaker 1: some sort of grounding in what people were listening to.
Speaker 1: You know, I spend a lot of time just digging
Speaker 1: through completely random stuff. So I feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: if I don't have that grounding of, well, what's super
Speaker 1: popular at the moment, then I just go off into
Speaker 1: my own world completely it's just a little less satisfying,
Speaker 1: I guess, to be completely off in my own world
Speaker 1: and feeling like I'm just I have no I have
Speaker 1: nothing in common with what people are listening to. So
Speaker 1: I like to to have that, as you know, sort
Speaker 1: of a seesaw that I'm working in the middle of.
Speaker 1: And you've got, you know, touches of post Malone in there,
Speaker 1: but touches of Diann and the Belmonts and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: which is amazing. The album has been released in a
Speaker 1: number of different formats with substantial differences between them. In
Speaker 1: some places they're totally different versions of like songs like
Speaker 1: Him for example. What was the motivation behind that? How
Speaker 1: did that come about? Well, it really started just, um
Speaker 1: looking at the vinyl and wanting to do something that
Speaker 1: worked on vinyl, you know, because ever since we joined Matador,
Speaker 1: you know, it's always been vinyl, CD streaming, you know,
Speaker 1: you put every record out on those three different formats,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, it's it's a challenge to make
Speaker 1: something that works on all three formats, um, you know,
Speaker 1: especially vinyl, because you have these sides of music that
Speaker 1: have certain prescribed links to them, and you want to
Speaker 1: have an experience that feel satisfying when you go side
Speaker 1: to side. You know, it bugs me when I see
Speaker 1: a modern album come out and it's a double vinyl
Speaker 1: but there's only you know, ten to twelve minutes aside
Speaker 1: because they just kind of split it up, UM to
Speaker 1: make it fit, but they didn't really think about how
Speaker 1: it was going to be sequenced. UM. And so you know,
Speaker 1: selling a physical product, I wanted it to feel, you know,
Speaker 1: like it was worth owning the physical product. UM. So
Speaker 1: this album especially, UM, you know, I went into mind
Speaker 1: thinking just one disc this time, because Twin Fantasy and
Speaker 1: Teens of Denial we're both double double vinyl, and I
Speaker 1: think they filled it out well enough. But I was
Speaker 1: interested in in the single disc format UM. And so
Speaker 1: we really worked and worked UM mainly with that in mind.
Speaker 1: And because that's that's the first thing that you have
Speaker 1: to do, UM when you're delivering the record is delivered
Speaker 1: the vinyl version, because that needs to be printed. That
Speaker 1: takes the longest to to get from start to finish
Speaker 1: once it's delivered. UM. So we delivered it and got
Speaker 1: it onto vinyl. UM. But then once we did that,
Speaker 1: it felt like where can we go from here? You know,
Speaker 1: it's sort of an open door again. Um, and what
Speaker 1: works on vinyl doesn't necessarily work best for the other formats.
Speaker 1: You know, what what works for streaming? Um, you know
Speaker 1: it's it's two different environments, or it's several different environments. Um.
Speaker 1: So we started looking at each track and the track
Speaker 1: list and just what's gonna go on, what's going to change,
Speaker 1: what's gonna drop out, what's gonna come in? And um,
Speaker 1: it was just a way of keeping the album fresh
Speaker 1: right up to the last minute for us, so that
Speaker 1: I could feel like I was listening to the record
Speaker 1: in the same way that other people would be listening
Speaker 1: to the record. But to me, they are just kind
Speaker 1: of different ways of experiencing the same core record, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of like, um, two different memories of
Speaker 1: the same event. That's a beautiful way to put that. Wow.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're right, there are so many different environments
Speaker 1: platforms to listen to music. Now. I think of producers
Speaker 1: like Phil Specter and Brian Wilson, who you know, preferred
Speaker 1: to work in mono because they could control every bit
Speaker 1: of the sound and how you would hear it. And
Speaker 1: now that's blown apart with stereo and now that's really
Speaker 1: blown apart with all the different manners that we consume music,
Speaker 1: Is it frustrating to you as a producer and an
Speaker 1: artist to not have total control over our listeners experience? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's probably a myth at any
Speaker 1: point in history to assume that a producer could have control.
Speaker 1: But I think that it is at a particularly disjointed
Speaker 1: place right now. And I think that a lot of
Speaker 1: people are listening on setups that just aren't very good,
Speaker 1: you know, on phone speakers, on laptop speakers, and I
Speaker 1: mean I do that too, um, but these devices just
Speaker 1: aren't really designed for sound. They're just designed to have
Speaker 1: super good visuals, but the speakers are just kind of
Speaker 1: an afterthought. And it is frustrating because you feel like
Speaker 1: you're working in a culture where the odds are stacked
Speaker 1: against you. You know, you're making music and you know
Speaker 1: you're making audio in a in a visual world, or
Speaker 1: you know you're you're you're the radio star in the
Speaker 1: video music world. Um, so you know that it's been
Speaker 1: the case since I guess, but it's um you know,
Speaker 1: you kind of hope that there will be some reaction
Speaker 1: against that, that you know, maybe there will be some
Speaker 1: cheaper alternatives, because you know, it is about costs. It
Speaker 1: costs money to have a nice audio set up, and
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't have the money for that.
Speaker 1: So I'm kind of hoping, you know, there are some
Speaker 1: alternatives provided and people can get better systems into their
Speaker 1: homes that they listen to music on THEO Young's Triumph. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what do you feel when you finish an album? Is
Speaker 1: it thrilling? Is it nerve wracking? Is it sad? Is
Speaker 1: it all the above? It's usually kind of a letdown
Speaker 1: because I bank so much emotionally on on it, and
Speaker 1: then by the time it's it's delivered, I pretty much
Speaker 1: feel drained, and you know, I feel overprotective of it,
Speaker 1: and if anything doesn't go to plan, I get um,
Speaker 1: I get upset about it. And that's that's just how
Speaker 1: it is. I guess, you know, I think, um, I
Speaker 1: think it's for me. It's about making it and the
Speaker 1: process of making it, and then once I put it out,
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's kind of like ripping a band
Speaker 1: aid off. You just have to do it and then
Speaker 1: move on to the the next thing, the next record,
Speaker 1: And that's that's what I'm doing for this one, you know,
Speaker 1: already at square one for the next thing. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: are you working on now? Are you able to say? Um,
Speaker 1: I've been working on just some demos again, just little bits, um.
Speaker 1: But I've been listening a lot to classical music and
Speaker 1: that's something that kind of reinvigorated my interest for longer
Speaker 1: form music. Um, you know, just the totally different culture
Speaker 1: in classical music and an opera of um, telling a
Speaker 1: story through you know, a certain length of time and music,
Speaker 1: you know, an hour or two hours or three hours sometimes,
Speaker 1: and I like, you know, that is a totally different mode,
Speaker 1: I think. And I'm interested in seeing what I can
Speaker 1: do with that, you know, seeing if I can put
Speaker 1: that energy into Carci head Dress songs. You know, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think I can make a classical record as yet,
Speaker 1: but I'd like to play with the idea of something
Speaker 1: that is connected throughout, you know, throughout the entire record.
Speaker 1: I haven't really done anything like that, you know. I've
Speaker 1: had more conceptual records, but I've never written anything that
Speaker 1: was really start to finish, considered to be just one
Speaker 1: single piece. I'm interested in that. Oh wow, that's incredible.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to hear that. I mean, are you
Speaker 1: are you still able to to be collaborative with your
Speaker 1: bandmates in this setting and this is strange quarantine world
Speaker 1: we're living now or is it very much uh? Solo
Speaker 1: at this stage, it's all solo. Um. You know, I
Speaker 1: just felt like, you know, Andrew's been trying to work
Speaker 1: on one trade stuff, but for me, I feel like
Speaker 1: while we're in quarantine, you know, it's it's the time
Speaker 1: to do the solo stuff. It's not the time to collaborate.
Speaker 1: And so the ideas I'm going to be brewing up
Speaker 1: demos once quarantine is over, once we can get out
Speaker 1: and start practicing again, we'll start working on that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, having the basic structures there and figuring it
Speaker 1: out as a band. And then once we figured it
Speaker 1: out as a band, maybe we played on the road
Speaker 1: some if we're able to tour, and then we take
Speaker 1: it into the studio and you know that that's kind
Speaker 1: of a route that makes sense to me. Mad Low
Speaker 1: was pretty different where it was kind of take a piece,
Speaker 1: play with the band, maybe going to the studio recorded
Speaker 1: version of it, then take it out, play with it
Speaker 1: on the computer, play with it solo just kind of
Speaker 1: constantly going back to the start and reworking stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: I think this time it's going to be more you know,
Speaker 1: the traditional way demo. Then the band gets ahold of it,
Speaker 1: then we go in and record it. One of my
Speaker 1: my favorite songs of yours as a strangers from Teams
Speaker 1: of Style, and he had a great line and it
Speaker 1: always stuck with me. When I was a kid, I
Speaker 1: fell in love with Michael Stipe. I took lyrics out
Speaker 1: of context and thought he must be speaking to me.
Speaker 1: How does it feel to be the one now doing
Speaker 1: the speaking? Um? I guess it's interesting. I don't think
Speaker 1: I'm working on the level that Michael Stipe is, but um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it just feels like a continuum to me. And it
Speaker 1: it makes sense. You know, if you're someone who cares
Speaker 1: a lot about music when you're young, and you start
Speaker 1: making a lot of it, um, eventually you're not young
Speaker 1: anymore and hopefully people are listening to it, um, and
Speaker 1: then that you know, that's the way it continues. People
Speaker 1: interest in music gets passed down from one person next,
Speaker 1: and I think that will just continue for as long
Speaker 1: as we're around. My last question, I always ask, what's
Speaker 1: the first thing you want to do when this pandemic
Speaker 1: is over. If you can snap your fingers, what would
Speaker 1: you do? People you want to hug, trips you want
Speaker 1: to take. UM, I'd probably go on tour. Honestly, UM,
Speaker 1: I feel like we're overdue. I missed the band and
Speaker 1: I miss being on the road, you know, I miss
Speaker 1: seeing fans in different cities, and it's it. It feels
Speaker 1: like high time for it. So let's snap those fingers
Speaker 1: and make it happen. Well, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: your time today. I really appreciate it. Oh yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1: Jordan's We hope you enjoyed this episode of Inside the
Speaker 1: Studio home edition of production of I Heart Radio. For
Speaker 1: more episodes of Inside the Studio and other shows from
Speaker 1: I heart Radio, check out the I heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.