Latest / Basic Folk / Hrishikesh Hirway: From Monikers to Podcasts to Music Under His Own Name, ep. 349

Transcript

Hrishikesh Hirway: From Monikers to Podcasts to Music Under His Own Name, ep. 349 · Basic Folk

0:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Hi and welcome to Basic Folk, where we have on his conversations with folk musicians on the bluegrass situation.
0:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Cindy Hals and I host this podcast.
0:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for joining us.
0:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Rishi Cash hereway is on the show today.
0:25
[SPEAKER_02]: very cool and fun.
0:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Before we get into that, have you signed up for basic folks monthly newsletter?
0:32
[SPEAKER_02]: You can do so at the link in the show notes or you can go to basicfolk.com and there is a sign up link there.
0:40
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0:43
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0:49
[SPEAKER_02]: We're also a listener supported podcast and you can make a donation and help us with production costs at baseofok.com slash donate.
0:58
[SPEAKER_02]: You can also find a link in the show notes and thanks.
1:03
[SPEAKER_02]: If you've been paying attention to music for the past 25 plus years, you'll probably be familiar with Rishi Cash hereway.
1:11
[SPEAKER_02]: He formally released music under the moniker, the 1 a.m. radio and has also produced and hosted the premiere music podcast of the 21st century, the only century with podcasts so far, so clearly we feel strongly, song-exploder until recently his name had not been front and center on any of his projects until his newest album in the last hour of light.
1:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Rishi grew up in Massachusetts, the son of Indian immigrants, immersed and in love with music.
1:41
[SPEAKER_02]: After releasing music as the 1 a.m. radio until 2011, he started the podcast song exploded in 2014.
1:49
[SPEAKER_02]: He's hosted and produced numerous shows and has been a crucial part of the podcasting landscape for 12 years.
1:56
[SPEAKER_02]: In our basic folk conversation, Rishi expands on the power of grief after his mother died and how his grief came gradually because of her long illness.
2:05
[SPEAKER_02]: He spoke of his name and what it felt like to reclaim it in a public space in 2026 versus 1999, and gives a little shout out to Obama.
2:15
[SPEAKER_02]: He gets into his feelings about his speaking voice and the person who likes it the most, his wife.
2:21
[SPEAKER_02]: We also hear from Rishi about what it's like to be a figure in the music industry that can offer musicians a bigger platform with his podcasts.
2:30
[SPEAKER_02]: He's someone who enjoys connecting and collaborating with others, but I wanted to know how it felt when sometimes the equation doesn't always add up.
2:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Overall, I give this interview a 10 out of 10.
2:42
[SPEAKER_02]: It was a pleasure getting to know the wonderful Rishi Keshe hairway.
2:46
[SPEAKER_02]: We will listen to a song from his new album in the last hour of light.
2:50
[SPEAKER_02]: This track actually features Iron and Wine.
2:53
[SPEAKER_02]: It's stray dogs and then we'll get to our conversation with Rishi Keshe hairway on Basic Folk.
3:11
[SPEAKER_00]: My pack of stray dogs by my uncle's house Tearing down the street A streak of all glad eggs and eggs
3:53
[SPEAKER_00]: We used to be that free We should catch her away.
4:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to Basic Folk.
4:08
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so happy to have you on.
4:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for having me.
4:12
[SPEAKER_02]: I am also from Massachusetts.
4:15
[SPEAKER_01]: We're in the legislature.
4:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Walpole, South Shore.
4:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, North Shore over here.
4:21
[SPEAKER_02]: I know, yes.
4:22
[SPEAKER_02]: So, um, did you, you grew up in Peabody?
4:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
4:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
4:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you excited that I said it correctly?
4:28
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I assumed you would, but, yes, it's certainly, uh, rare these days that I'm, encounter people who know how to say it.
4:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
4:36
[SPEAKER_02]: So, I, I'm trying, I think you're maybe my age or, like, a couple years older.
4:41
[SPEAKER_02]: I was born in 82.
4:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm a little bit older.
4:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
4:44
[SPEAKER_02]: So, do you know Ryan Mont Blu?
4:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I do.
4:47
[SPEAKER_01]: We went to middle school together.
4:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Famously also from Peabody.
4:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
4:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's the, that's a one person.
4:54
[SPEAKER_02]: I know I know two people.
4:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
4:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
4:56
[SPEAKER_01]: We were, we were classmates.
4:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, that's so cute.
5:01
[SPEAKER_02]: You have been in love with music your whole life as both player and as a listener.
5:08
[SPEAKER_02]: What did the beginning of music look like for you as both of those roles, music player and a music listener?
5:14
[SPEAKER_02]: I know your family like listen to a ton of Bollywood music when you're growing up.
5:18
[SPEAKER_02]: So like when did you start developing your own identity around each of those in music?
5:25
[SPEAKER_01]: It's funny, because even with the Bollywood stuff, I definitely had favorites.
5:29
[SPEAKER_01]: There were things that my parents would play that I was into more so than other stuff.
5:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And looking back, it was the late 50s, early 60s, and maybe mid 60s stuff that I gravitated towards the most, and especially there were a couple of
5:52
[SPEAKER_01]: of musical directors, the composers, you know, that I really loved.
5:57
[SPEAKER_01]: One was Opie Nayar, and the other was Arty Berman, and they would give the music to movies and they had folks like Asha Postlay and Latha Mungeshkar.
6:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And...
6:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, different, moment of roughy, different singers and between the melodic choices that they made and the voices of those singers and then just the sort of like, you know, saturated, overly saturated kind of distorted.
6:28
[SPEAKER_01]: quality of those recordings.
6:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I just I felt they all felt like like when the whole orchestra would come in because they'd have these big orchestras and you know it would you could definitely hear things going into the red at times and peeking in and
6:45
[SPEAKER_02]: that is such a vibe.
6:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And I wonder if that started because I know that you're like really into like the punk aesthetic of things.
6:52
[SPEAKER_02]: So I wonder if like Bollywood was where it all began.
6:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Everything was distorted.
6:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that is definitely a vibe like getting that red line in a Bollywood song.
7:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, something about nostalgia entered my brain early through these songs.
7:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't even, you know, understand what year they were from.
7:12
[SPEAKER_01]: I had a really hard time understanding what time things were from when I was growing up.
7:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I didn't realize that happy days was a period piece.
7:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
7:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
7:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
7:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, yeah.
7:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
7:25
[SPEAKER_02]: That is a just using example.
7:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
7:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Because it was on before, you know, it's a day was on before we were born.
7:33
[SPEAKER_02]: and it was a throwback.
7:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
7:36
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like that 70 show.
7:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
7:39
[SPEAKER_01]: For somebody watching that 70 show now, they might just be like- It's confusing.
7:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, this is a show from the 70s.
7:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
7:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah.
7:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Why else would it be called that 70 show?
7:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
7:49
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, happy days honestly should have been more clear.
7:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
7:53
[SPEAKER_02]: About that.
7:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
7:55
[SPEAKER_02]: So, all right.
7:56
[SPEAKER_02]: So we talked about Bollywood music, but what about when you started to develop your own taste in music?
8:03
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it happens slowly, but I don't think the first time I started making choices for myself was when my sister got a Columbia house subscription, you know, yes, I am of all time.
8:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but you get eight CDs for a penny and well, I know it was eight cassettes.
8:24
[SPEAKER_01]: That's so old CDs weren't invented yet, but she took six and then she generously let me pick two, which is very, very sweet, yeah.
8:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think I chose, it was either white snake by white snake and permanent vacation by aerosmith.
8:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's right.
8:53
[SPEAKER_02]: possible it was invisible touch by erosmith i think it was erosmith because i read about this where you choose whitesmith whitesmith white snake and erosmith and that totally tracks to choose erosmith like in that era because that was like that was the Boston band.
9:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, yeah, exactly.
9:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Every little boy was into Aerosmith.
9:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
9:21
[SPEAKER_01]: But invisible touch was another one that I liked.
9:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember just at some point registering that Phil Collins had a voice that I could recognize.
9:30
[SPEAKER_01]: that I knew it was him singing.
9:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, oh, that's cool.
9:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And hearing Phil Collins solo staff and being like, but wait, isn't this Genesis?
9:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, doesn't this have the same voices Genesis and then realizing it is the same voice.
9:45
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the same guy.
9:46
[SPEAKER_01]: He just sometimes isn't a band and sometimes he's solo.
9:50
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the same part of your brain that was trying to figure out happy days.
9:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
9:55
[SPEAKER_02]: I thank you.
9:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And the same part of my brain that got excited when I realized the voice of Garfield was also the voice of the cartoon Peter Venkman on the Ghost Busters.
10:08
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that.
10:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that happens to me too.
10:13
[SPEAKER_02]: It seems like food was really important to your family growing up.
10:17
[SPEAKER_02]: You said that my mom gave me a sense of who I am through food.
10:21
[SPEAKER_02]: What is your connection to food look like throughout your life?
10:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, my mom was in an incredible cook.
10:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of my friends were introduced to Indian food by coming over to our house and having her cooking.
10:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And then they would get excited.
10:35
[SPEAKER_01]: They would be excited to come over to our house.
10:37
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, they'd be like, oh, and it looks like I might have to stay for dinner.
10:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, no.
10:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was always really fun.
10:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I knew how great my mom's food was.
10:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was so exciting to see my friends also feel the same way.
10:54
[SPEAKER_01]: So that was just, I don't know, that felt like a basic building block of my whole upbringing was looking forward to that food and you know, when I would, when I would have a birthday or a special event, you know, my mom would always ask me what I wanted her to make.
11:13
[SPEAKER_01]: That was always part of it was like, what's the thing that she's going to make?
11:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, I think like a lot of moms,
11:24
[SPEAKER_02]: your mom passed away in 2020 and it seems like her death has come to sort of like redefine your whole being and also you can skip this question if you want to but how has your grief evolved and what has been surprising about it?
11:42
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, my grief over losing my mom kind of didn't, didn't hit like a sledgehammer because she had been ill for so many years before she passed away.
11:54
[SPEAKER_01]: She had this neurodegenerative, neurodegenerative condition called PSP.
12:00
[SPEAKER_01]: That
12:02
[SPEAKER_01]: we didn't understand at first, it took many years before it was diagnosed.
12:07
[SPEAKER_01]: But because it was neurological, she sort of changed and became a different version of herself.
12:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember when she passed away,
12:19
[SPEAKER_01]: saying to my sister that in some ways, I was almost grateful to the fact of her having PSP, because it meant that grief came kind of slowly, like we lost her in stages instead of all at once, which was awful and tragic in the moment when it was happening.
12:38
[SPEAKER_01]: But then when she was finally gone, I was like, I've been kind of practicing in a way for the last several years.
12:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And then when that actually did happen when she when she died and her presence, you know, just her sheer presence wasn't there.
12:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I certainly felt it and I don't know how much it's changed.
13:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I think like
13:11
[SPEAKER_01]: the the fact of her not being there, you know, it just feels like an incomplete part.
13:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And and I know that part's never going to be complete and there's nothing that's going to sort of fill it.
13:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I think one of the things that I have been thinking about and one of the things that kind of went into the album that I made is the idea that
13:33
[SPEAKER_01]: As you get older, it's not just about in accumulation and evolution, there are also parts of you that just break off and are missing permanently.
13:44
[SPEAKER_01]: New parts can get added, but ultimately you're going to be a different shape, including pieces that are missing.
13:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, this new album in the last hour of light is your first full album under your name, Rishi Keshiroi.
14:02
[SPEAKER_02]: What's your connection to your name?
14:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, how has that relationship changed?
14:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And what has it been like releasing music under your name versus a moniker, which you have in the past with the one I am radio and as a duo with more.
14:17
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels nice to be able to put it out under my name.
14:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it feels very appropriate, given how.
14:23
[SPEAKER_01]: given how personal this album is to like I feel like the making of it has been a matter of stripping back layers of protection and and veneer like you know both in terms of
14:40
[SPEAKER_01]: The songwriting is incredibly directly autobiographical, but also the way that it was made.
14:46
[SPEAKER_01]: It was all really, really exposing, and so putting it out under my own name felt
14:56
[SPEAKER_01]: appropriate, but it also made me feel happy because I'd like to think that the world has changed from when I first started making music.
15:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I started using the name the 1am radio because it felt weird and bad.
15:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, when I was first putting, you know, putting up flyers with my name on it and, and, and people, um, ask me questions and made comments that made it clear that they, they thought that maybe I made Indian music or like music that was related to the Indian diaspora in some way, um, because of who I am and because of what my name was.
15:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And, um,
15:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, you know and just like people like I remember putting up a flyer and just someone saying like Oh, is that you and do you make Indian music and I was like, no, I I mean, yes, it is me, but no, I don't and And I remember saying that they're like, oh, kind of music do I make do you make somebody else be like what kind of music do you make and I was like Oh, it's kind of like
16:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know, not, that's something, that's something you wouldn't miss here if you weren't looking at me probably.
16:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
16:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I wanted to use a moniker just to give some distance between someone's assumptions about the music and my name.
16:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know that they might just listen to the music more with more of an open mind.
16:38
[SPEAKER_01]: if there was a little bit of a mask there.
16:43
[SPEAKER_01]: But then, you know, in nowadays, I think that there are all kinds of singer song writers who use their own name.
16:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know if this is like...
16:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I haven't really thought about where it started from, but maybe, you know, shout out to Barack Obama, like maybe there was, you know, America and, you know, the Western world at large got used to such a visible figure with the name that fell outside of what they might be familiar with.
17:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe that broke some kind of glass ceiling.
17:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't really know.
17:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I haven't actually thought about where the, where the change came, but I feel like, um, I feel like the, yeah, I feel like things Changed at some point and and I felt more comfortable using my own name and that I wouldn't have quite the same uphill battle, um, as I did before.
17:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Seems like there's like an essay or like a podcast series like in that question or it just seems like such a huge topic to talk about in like five minutes, but.
18:00
[SPEAKER_02]: So you host several podcasts, including song exposure, which is like the music podcast as far as I'm concerned.
18:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much.
18:09
[SPEAKER_02]: You say you created the show to solve the distance between the creator and the audience.
18:15
[SPEAKER_02]: So right around the time, you were feeling like a little burnt out on music when you're performing as the one I am radio.
18:21
[SPEAKER_02]: You came up with the idea for the show, song Exploder, which started in 2014, and you like to shout out tape-op magazine, which is every production studio's favorite coffee table magazine.
18:33
[SPEAKER_02]: If listeners are not aware, it's a free audio production magazine that has been in print since the 1900s.
18:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll say especially about that magazine, compared to some other recording magazines, it's really aimed at the creativity behind recording.
18:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And it featured so many of the artists that I loved, who I knew had a kind of
19:00
[SPEAKER_01]: DIY approach to the way that they made music, and so it felt accessible.
19:05
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't like, well here's how you get the best sound out of a $2,000 mic, and a $50,000 vocal chain or something like that.
19:14
[SPEAKER_01]: It was, you know, I remember reading an article about deer hoof using
19:20
[SPEAKER_01]: For different computers that they were recording on using just the built-in stereo microphone simultaneously to fake an eight track recording.
19:31
[SPEAKER_01]: You know stuff like that where it's like just people making really cool music out of whatever McGyver situation they could they could manage and that felt very much like what I was doing.
19:44
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, tape up was huge for me.
19:46
[SPEAKER_02]: That's amazing.
19:47
[SPEAKER_02]: So what was your introduction to the podcast format and why did it draw you in so much?
19:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you know, I think my first sort of pseudo-experience of podcasts was in 2007, when I was going on tour with the one named Radio for an album, I'd put out that year.
20:09
[SPEAKER_01]: A friend of mine gave me as like a going on tour present, like a case logic, full of burned CDs, CDRs,
20:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Hell yes.
20:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think there were four episodes of this American life per CD or something like that.
20:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
20:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe it was just one.
20:32
[SPEAKER_01]: In any case, it was like a whole stack of this American life episode.
20:37
[SPEAKER_01]: So I could listen to the show whenever I wanted to.
20:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And even though I did not have an iPod, and I think maybe the term podcast had been invented already, yeah, because it was 2004, yeah, but uh, but that was really kind of my first experience with that kind of listening of like, oh, I want to listen to this kind of story, and I'm going to put it on.
20:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it was much later when I started listening to podcasts in sort of the more pure podcast form.
21:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the first few that I was listening to were the memory palace.
21:13
[SPEAKER_01]: by Nate to Mayo, WTF with Mark Marin, and then there was a sort of comedy game show movie quiz show called Doug Loves movies.
21:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And between those three, I felt like I really had different parts of my tastes and my brain kind of covered.
21:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, nice.
21:39
[SPEAKER_02]: I was wondering about your singing voice versus your speaking voice.
21:43
[SPEAKER_02]: So you're singing prior to song exposure with something that you were used to hearing through the speakers, through the headphones.
21:53
[SPEAKER_02]: But you didn't speak intentionally into a microphone, like as a podcaster or a broadcaster until you started song exposure.
22:03
[SPEAKER_02]: So what was it like to get used to and enjoy your speaking voice?
22:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think getting used to it and enjoying it are two separate things.
22:14
[SPEAKER_02]: I really took a chance there when I have a lamp.
22:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, I mean, like, I don't know, do you feel like you're used to your voice?
22:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
22:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you enjoy it?
22:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I, yes, at this stage in my life, I do enjoy it because I think I have the confidence, there are things I don't enjoy about my.
22:45
[SPEAKER_02]: presentation, but my voice.
22:48
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm pretty okay with.
22:51
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm enjoying.
22:53
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm enjoying the way it is now and I'm worried about, like, as I get older, it's just going to get deeper and deeper and deeper and I'm not excited about that.
23:02
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm trying to keep up.
23:03
[SPEAKER_01]: I think you should get very excited about it.
23:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's awesome.
23:08
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, no, no, no, you go.
23:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I remember on one of the first states I went on with my now-wife, Lindsey.
23:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I had been talking to her about something.
23:24
[SPEAKER_01]: and and I checked in and she wasn't it seemed like she wasn't really paying attention and I was like Like do you know what I mean or something like that and she or I thought she had been paying attention But then she looked at me and she said, oh, I was just listening to your voice I was just listening to the sound of your voice.
23:40
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels like a blanket or something like that.
23:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, uh, and Your heart was like boy, you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're
23:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that was my first, that was the first time somebody had sort of said something about my speaking voice that they liked.
23:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I associated the way that I speak mainly with just trying to be polite, but trying to be a good Indian boy who speaks politely to their elders
24:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, I hadn't really thought about the sound of the actual voice until she said that.
24:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but when I started making a podcast, that, that moment kind of came back to me and I thought, okay, well, I know there's somebody who likes the way that my voice sounds.
24:30
[SPEAKER_01]: So like, I'm just going to, I'm just going to go with it.
24:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're going to not try and think too much about it.
24:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Although I certainly got a lot of comments when the podcast first started about like,
24:40
[SPEAKER_01]: like why is this dude always talking like he's in a library or something like that and I was like I don't know man because I am in one.
24:49
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like I talk.
24:53
[SPEAKER_02]: You you telling me your story about Lindsey just listening to your voice but not really listening to what you're saying is a great segue into your TED talk.
25:05
[SPEAKER_02]: I watched your TED talk about listening and
25:09
[SPEAKER_02]: I watched it and I was like, this is so, this is such great advice, I do all of the terrible things that you're bringing up and what you shouldn't be doing when you're talking to somebody, like, I feel like when I'm interviewing someone and I'm trying to like, in this interview, not do it.
25:27
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm just trying to think about what's going to happen next and I'm not really listening to what the person is saying and I'm like a highly anxious person, so I feel like
25:38
[SPEAKER_02]: the more nervous I am or the more things that are going on outside of the world, like the worst it is.
25:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, but I feel like the pointers you gave of like work on engaging do not multitask.
25:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And this was a really good one.
25:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Fight the urge to talk about yourself instead of going deeper with someone on like what they're actually talking about.
25:59
[SPEAKER_02]: So I imagine, because you gave this TED talk, which everybody should watch, it's so good, I imagine that you became a great listener from your podcast work and your interview work, but what did that journey of becoming a good listener look like for you?
26:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think it started for me.
26:18
[SPEAKER_01]: before I started making a podcast, and I think really a lot of the training that I had just when I first started the show because I had never interviewed anybody and I didn't have any kind of experience in that way.
26:30
[SPEAKER_01]: I really borrowed from my experience of doing therapy, doing couples therapy specifically with Lensie.
26:38
[SPEAKER_01]: That was a really interesting experience that I had started a few years before the podcast started.
26:47
[SPEAKER_01]: But that was the first time that I was in a setting like that where you are basically being interviewed by a therapist.
26:55
[SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of the best interview you get because someone is really asking the questions and they're really listening and then they're trying to ask you.
27:04
[SPEAKER_01]: The next question that'll get you to go deeper, and I borrowed so much of that.
27:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it was really the only form that I knew how to borrow from, but it was especially interesting to do it in the context of couples therapy, because I'm both having the experience of being asked these questions and having to
27:27
[SPEAKER_01]: answer them in a way that felt meaningful and then getting these follow-up questions.
27:31
[SPEAKER_01]: But then I also got to just witness someone else having the same experience next to me.
27:37
[SPEAKER_01]: So there would be times, you know, when we'd be speaking, when Lindsay and I would be speaking to each other, there would be times when we'd be speaking sort of collectively to our therapists, but there were also times when our therapist and Lindsay would just be having, they would just be going in on something of hers, something individual.
27:52
[SPEAKER_01]: that would, of course, end up being relevant to our relationship, but it was fascinating to both, you know, just as a partner to hear these answers, but also glean something about the exchange and how that worked.
28:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So I brought a lot of that, I think, into my, my interviewing, such as it was when I first started and to this day, I think the best compliment that I have ever gotten over the course of making the podcast is anytime somebody says, oh, this felt like therapy.
28:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's a good one.
28:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's a good compliment.
28:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
28:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I think therapy at its best makes you feel like you're talking about yourself and also learning something about yourself in the process of doing that.
28:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And if someone can learn something about themselves while talking about a song that they made, that then I really feel like I've added something to the experience.
28:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I haven't just documented thoughts that they've already had, but I've also managed to capture and maybe
28:58
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, evoke something new for them, too.
29:06
[SPEAKER_02]: This is an inside baseball question.
29:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
29:10
[SPEAKER_02]: It seems as though
29:12
[SPEAKER_02]: and you could just totally blow my mind here and tell me that I'm wrong, but here's my perception.
29:18
[SPEAKER_02]: You want to be a part of this, like, under the radar roots Americana ish singer songwriter world based on, like,
29:31
[SPEAKER_02]: what press you're getting for this new album where you're being pitched the concert and conversation series that you're doing with different moderators while you're on tour for this record.
29:42
[SPEAKER_02]: It seems like you have put a lot of thought into what you want your music career to look like like to me.
29:50
[SPEAKER_02]: It seems that you could probably go for any kind of music career you'd want, like one that's based in, like, big time commercial radio play, like commercial AAA radio, rolling stone magazine cover, like more like mainstream situation, huge venues, Coachella, other huge festivals, TV appearances, but it doesn't seem like
30:12
[SPEAKER_02]: you're going for that.
30:13
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if that seems true to you and like why do you want your career in this particular music space or am I absolutely wrong and we're just going to move on to the next question.
30:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Well I appreciate the idea that you think that I have that much choice over things.
30:31
[SPEAKER_02]: It seems as though whenever you're like, I have this idea and it involves three celebrities and the king of Spain and it's going to take place at Madison Square Garden.
30:45
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just like it happens.
30:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Like you have like the mightest touch of like whatever you would like to happen is going to happen.
30:53
[SPEAKER_01]: That's amazing, I thank you, that is definitely not my experience, it doesn't feel like that, especially when it comes to my own music for sure.
31:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I think if I had
31:07
[SPEAKER_01]: the wherewithal to control how my music career has gone or even just like how my music has been heard things would have been so different and honestly i probably would have never started podcasts at all because i would have been too busy just being deep in making records and touring all the time um... so this really feels like the result of i don't know accidents
31:37
[SPEAKER_01]: I made the album, like when we finished recording the album, my first reaction was a little bit of shock.
31:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe more than a little bit at how it turned out, sonnically, because it wasn't what I had actually imagined.
31:54
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know that I had a completely concrete version of what I had imagined, but- Just started Bollywood.
32:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
32:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, honestly, like I might have imagined there would be more of that in the way that it sounded.
32:09
[SPEAKER_01]: But I remember specifically like there's this song, the first song on the album is called Stray Dogs.
32:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And in the demo version of that,
32:20
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like I had I had a drum machine in there doing like a sort of like straight 16th kind of high hat thing.
32:29
[SPEAKER_01]: It was like a it was very drum machini in a way that a lot of the one-day radio stuff was
32:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And then when we recorded it, it has this very different feel or what I extrapolated from where the demo had been.
32:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember saying to my friend being like, I'm kind of surprised that this is how the song ended up turning out.
32:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And they were like, really?
32:55
[SPEAKER_01]: from based on the demo I can't imagine that you were aiming for anything else like this seems like the inevitable conclusion of what you were writing.
33:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, oh, maybe it was and I just had no idea.
33:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that was one of the things that was exciting to about making the album this way, like kind of open-ended.
33:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't want to close myself off from from other
33:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, this is a very rambling way of saying, no, there hasn't been the kind of forethought that you have so generously ascribed.
33:35
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if it's generous.
33:37
[SPEAKER_02]: It just was like, I was like, this seems like Rishi Cash is like, people call you Rishi.
33:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Rishi.
33:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Rishi.
33:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Rishi.
33:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, it seems like Rishi.
33:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the rhymes with Fishi, Rishi.
33:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Rishi, okay.
33:50
[SPEAKER_02]: It seems like Rishi wants this, like, cool ass indie career.
33:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I definitely feel like independence is a thing that has mattered a lot to me.
34:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, from,
34:08
[SPEAKER_01]: really kind of playing in bands around the same time that I learned about Fugazi and discord records and just like what independent music was and the whole DIY aesthetic, that always felt exciting to me.
34:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, you know, song explorer is an independent podcast.
34:25
[SPEAKER_01]: The idea of just that kind of thinking that DIY approach has not been limited to music for me has been really meaningful.
34:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, look at gigantic labels had come knocking on my door and saying like, we want to do this album with you and it's going to be like this.
34:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe I, I don't know, but that certainly, that didn't even, that wasn't even a possibility.
34:58
[SPEAKER_01]: So, it's not like, it's not like, I had every single option at my fingertips and I said, no, no, no, no, no, I want to do this kind of, I want to be this kind of person,
35:21
[SPEAKER_02]: a cool-ass indie career?
35:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Cool-ass indie career?
35:23
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I mean, cool-ass would be great.
35:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Career would be great.
35:30
[SPEAKER_01]: I think indie is just, you know, that's... That's important to me and it's, uh, have always done things.
35:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but it's not a super conscious choice or anything like that.
35:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Hmm.
35:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, now it's time to talk about Jenny.
35:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Owen Young's.
35:53
[SPEAKER_02]: She said to tell you that I met her in her Catholic school uniform era.
36:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
36:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
36:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
36:03
[SPEAKER_02]: In the O's.
36:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
36:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, you said about Jenny and I really agree with you.
36:08
[SPEAKER_02]: I immediately wanted her to be my best friend.
36:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Everyone feels that way when they meet Jenny.
36:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And you also said that she shifted the course of your life.
36:17
[SPEAKER_02]: So what was that shift and what has your life looked like since then?
36:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, apparently I have a cool ass in the career, which is amazing.
36:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And to the extent that I do, I really give Jenny a huge amount of credit for that because when I met her,
36:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Although she did not know it at the time, I was years into a writer's block that had started in, you know, 2012.
36:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe the last time I had written a song was, I think, the summer of 2011.
36:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And I had not been able to write my own songs for a long time.
37:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd done some music for higher.
37:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd scored some films and done some themes for podcasts and things like that.
37:06
[SPEAKER_01]: But I hadn't been able to do the actual work of songwriting.
37:11
[SPEAKER_01]: for so long and that's when I started making songy explotter was in that in that vacuum.
37:19
[SPEAKER_01]: But then I met Jenny through podcast stuff and I did an episode of her show buffering the Vampire Slayer as a guest.
37:28
[SPEAKER_01]: just talking and then several months after that she reached out to me kind of out of the blue and said hey you're a songwriter do you want to co-write a song with me for for buffering because I'm writing songs for every episode and I have this one coming up and I feel like yeah it would be cool if we wrote it together and uh
37:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I, one, like I said, hadn't written a song until long, but two, I had never co-written a song before.
37:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was a world that Jenny lived in, you know, that was where her, at least half of her career kind of was in, in that world of co-writing and she writes songs for Pitbull.
38:08
[SPEAKER_01]: yeah exactly um panic at the disco you know she just she was used to this this experience that I had only just recently started learning about through making song explotter even though I lived in LA and had made a bunch of records at that point that was just a world that was unfamiliar to me.
38:32
[SPEAKER_01]: the whole co-writing, publishing, all that stuff.
38:37
[SPEAKER_01]: The kind of maybe more like Nashville way of making music, I didn't know about any of that stuff.
38:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So she raged out to me and she asked if I would co-write with her and I really didn't know what to say because I wasn't sure if I could.
38:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't sure if I said yes, what I would contribute, if I could contribute, what was expected of me and if I would live up to those expectations.
39:02
[SPEAKER_01]: But it also felt like a special chance to do something and maybe do something in a lower stakes way, you know, like part of the reason why I hadn't been able to write was because of the stakes.
39:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I felt like every time I tried to write, it needed to be good and it needed to be special and awesome and I needed to be able to imagine it being a hit or something that would
39:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, change my life in a way that I had always wanted from my music.
39:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's an impossible thing to aim for, you know.
39:41
[SPEAKER_01]: It's impossible to try making music with the idea, or at least I find it impossible to write music with the idea that's like, well, this has to be incredible.
39:52
[SPEAKER_01]: This has to be, you know,
39:55
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't argue with how this is going to be because immediately I'd start writing and then I could argue I'd be like, well, this isn't this doesn't seem like it's going to be great doesn't sound like it's going to be awesome from the first chord that I've played from the first word that I said so I would throw it away.
40:13
[SPEAKER_01]: But with Jenny asking me, I thought, well, maybe the stakes are lower and I could just be a sounding board.
40:20
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, maybe I'm not going to be able to come up with anything, but maybe I can at least be, yeah, some kind of collaborator in a different kind of way.
40:30
[SPEAKER_01]: So let me give it a shot.
40:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I can go get the coffee orders.
40:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
40:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I can say, hey, that sounds great.
40:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I like that, or, you know, she'll be like, option A or option B, and I can say, I think option B, you know, like I had taste, and I trusted that, and so maybe I could, maybe I could lend that some kind of way.
40:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't tell her any of that stuff.
40:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I just said, yes, eventually.
40:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And then she came over and we wrote this song together and it wasn't just me saying A or B or just being a sounding board.
41:05
[SPEAKER_01]: It ended up being something where we really did write together like we came up with the corporation together.
41:11
[SPEAKER_01]: We came up with the lyrics together.
41:12
[SPEAKER_01]: We came up with the melody together.
41:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And I felt connected to a part of me that I thought had been lost.
41:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
41:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And it felt incredible.
41:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it really, yeah, I can't describe how exciting it was.
41:31
[SPEAKER_01]: It was sort of like, when you have a really, really terrible breakup and for a very long time you are convinced that you will never, ever, ever be in love again in the way that you had so profoundly been in love before.
41:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, years later, or whatever you meet somebody, and suddenly it's like, oh, actually all of those teenage feelings that I once had those have not died, they've just been dormant, and now I can feel them again.
42:00
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what it was like to write a song again, and that was an experience that only happened because of Jenny introducing this to me.
42:09
[SPEAKER_02]: That's so cool.
42:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And she knows all this now.
42:13
[SPEAKER_01]: she knows all this.
42:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
42:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
42:16
[SPEAKER_02]: She doesn't let it get to her head.
42:18
[SPEAKER_01]: No, no.
42:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, she could.
42:21
[SPEAKER_01]: She should.
42:22
[SPEAKER_01]: She should.
42:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like like in sitcoms where you know, somebody saves someone's life and then it's like, well, now now I have to do your bidding for the rest of my life because because you say, well, that's how I feel about Jenny, like I'm I owe her forever.
42:44
[SPEAKER_02]: the album, the new album in the last hour of light, it was recorded live with your producer Phil Weinroof.
42:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
42:52
[SPEAKER_02]: He says name.
42:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
42:54
[SPEAKER_02]: All right.
42:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
42:55
[SPEAKER_02]: He gave you, I feel, I think the same way that you felt about this, he said, don't practice too much.
43:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
43:04
[SPEAKER_02]: It feels like a life altering set of instructions, so you didn't
43:10
[SPEAKER_02]: The album is done, it is out.
43:12
[SPEAKER_02]: In fact, today, the day that we are speaking, I forgot to wish you a happy release day.
43:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
43:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, the album is out, the album is done.
43:23
[SPEAKER_02]: You didn't practice too much.
43:25
[SPEAKER_02]: How has that instruction continue to impact your creative approach?
43:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, what he was getting at with that idea of don't practice too much,
43:40
[SPEAKER_01]: to make room for the recording to feel alive.
43:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And I had this idea that the more you practice, the better you'll be, the sharper you'll be, the more you'll have it in your bones.
43:55
[SPEAKER_01]: So when it comes to recording, you'll play it perfectly.
44:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And his idea was that playing it perfectly
44:05
[SPEAKER_01]: is not the point.
44:07
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, it might actually be the opposite of the point that music is the most exciting when it feels alive and it feels alive when it's new and fresh and there's there's an energy in the room and among the people who are playing it and you can't
44:32
[SPEAKER_01]: you can't exactly pinpoint when the music goes from feeling fresh to not feeling fresh anymore.
44:39
[SPEAKER_01]: But you have to catch it before that.
44:43
[SPEAKER_00]: So the only thing you can do is make sure you catch it early.
44:47
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't know when it's going to be too late.
44:48
[SPEAKER_00]: But once it's too late, it's too late and you can't get it back.
44:52
[SPEAKER_00]: So you have to leave space for that that
45:00
[SPEAKER_01]: newness to be captured.
45:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And if I had practiced it too much, then I wouldn't be playing it.
45:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I would just be performing it.
45:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And that went through the whole recording process.
45:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So not only was I supposed to not practice too much, I would go in and teach the songs to the session players who were on the album with me, the day that we recorded it.
45:28
[SPEAKER_01]: They weren't going to hear my demos at all.
45:31
[SPEAKER_01]: He was like, you'll be meeting some of them for the first time that day.
45:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And he'll...
45:36
[SPEAKER_02]: It's fine.
45:36
[SPEAKER_02]: It's great.
45:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you'll just say hello, they'll say hello.
45:41
[SPEAKER_01]: You'll teach them a song.
45:43
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll all figure out what our parts are going to be.
45:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And this red button.
45:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and then we'll record and, you know, within two or three hours, that'll be it.
45:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
45:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think the answer to the second part of
46:03
[SPEAKER_01]: continue to resonate for me has been really like a kind of permission to see the world differently.
46:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I don't know if Phil realized what he was doing, but in a way he was kind of repairing me from the worldview that I'd always had, which is that
46:27
[SPEAKER_01]: The worlds are meritocracy and the best you can do is to get an A plus.
46:35
[SPEAKER_01]: There is a level, exactly, A is really the least you can do.
46:41
[SPEAKER_01]: A plus, which does exist, and A minus is really not.
46:46
[SPEAKER_01]: You know you really you didn't try hard enough and anything below that.
46:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's just the but the less said the better But anything less than a perfect score meant that you you hadn't worked hard enough You know that perfection exists
47:07
[SPEAKER_01]: is kind of this overarching idea that I had lived with and I was applying that, you know, to music, like as if it were an algebra example.
47:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think so much of my unhappiness and my writer's block came from that way of thinking and seeing the world that the reason why
47:33
[SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't happy is because I hadn't been successful enough in music and the reason I wasn't successful enough in music was because I Could not figure out the answer You know, and there was an answer and I just it was alluding me and I was looking for you know, yeah, the answer key or somebody to teach me something what was I doing wrong and I think fills instruction has really
48:01
[SPEAKER_01]: made me question all of that.
48:04
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, look at all your favorite albums and think about how many of them you love where someone sings out of tune or the tempo is not perfect all the time.
48:16
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like, I bet that you love them not only despite the fact that those things happen, but actually some of those moments are some of the most exciting moments.
48:26
[SPEAKER_01]: We're like,
48:29
[SPEAKER_01]: like if everything were perfect all the time, then that kind of surprise might never get in the door.
48:38
[SPEAKER_01]: So he was really saying that the feeling was more important than the accuracy.
48:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was terrifying at first, but I think I have really tried to let that idea in in so much of how I, not just approach music, but just approach everything.
49:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I wanted to talk about one of the songs that really struck me on the new album.
49:05
[SPEAKER_02]: It's Charlie, short for Charlotte.
49:07
[SPEAKER_02]: It is such a deeply sad and personal song.
49:11
[SPEAKER_02]: It's about if listeners have not heard it, it's about how you and your wife decided not to move forward with a pregnancy, which is a lot like that Ben Fultz-Fibes song, a different circumstances.
49:24
[SPEAKER_02]: But I was trying to think of like, you don't really get to hear
49:28
[SPEAKER_02]: this perspective of like the man singing about and writing about this situation.
49:37
[SPEAKER_02]: You said that this song was easy to write and hard to record, but how does it feel to share this story and your feelings about it and how do you own this story and your feelings of hope and regret?
49:58
[SPEAKER_01]: about talking about this experience probably a dozen times.
50:03
[SPEAKER_01]: She's always said yes.
50:05
[SPEAKER_01]: That I'm really grateful for that.
50:09
[SPEAKER_01]: But I do feel like it's not only my story, but luckily, yeah, she's she's very generous with me.
50:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that was sort of my first concern.
50:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I've just met so many great kids, so many of my friends have incredible kids and I've really enjoyed meeting them and learning who they are and how their brains work, even while knowing that I did not want to have kids.
50:50
[SPEAKER_01]: But that was a choice that I sort of made by default.
50:53
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I was like, I'm, that's not for me.
50:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm passionate about so many things.
51:00
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not passionate about having kids.
51:03
[SPEAKER_01]: So I just, I feel like that speaks for itself.
51:07
[SPEAKER_01]: But then yeah, then, then,
51:10
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a moment where that theoretical answer has to be put into action and that changed everything, just made everything so much more real, but we really had to decide if that was in fact, not just sort of a default position.
51:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I think what I appreciate about that song for me is just, I think writing songs is the place where I can put a feeling like that or I thought like that.
51:54
[SPEAKER_01]: It's such a complicated feeling, you know, the idea that like I don't want kids,
52:03
[SPEAKER_01]: we decided we weren't going to have a kid and yet what do I do with the parts of me that think about how nice it would be if we had had a kid?
52:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Like where does that go?
52:19
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not something you can really talk about casually in conversation because there's so much pressure, you know, to be like,
52:28
[SPEAKER_01]: We would get so many comments.
52:31
[SPEAKER_01]: When you guys gonna have a kid, you should have a kid.
52:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, your kid would be so beautiful.
52:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Why don't you have a kid?
52:35
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, all the stuff that people say and And you kind of have to like really dig in and be like, no, no, no, it's not for us.
52:44
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not for us.
52:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, we've decided.
52:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, we thought about it.
52:46
[SPEAKER_01]: No, we really aren't gonna have kids.
52:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you even just sort of let in a little bit of like, yeah, maybe it could be nice suddenly it feels like
52:55
[SPEAKER_01]: you're opening the door to all of those comments, you know, from parents and from friends and other people giving them an excuse to take hold and double down on that pressure.
53:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So you kind of have to keep the walls up.
53:09
[SPEAKER_01]: But in truth, it is a very ambivalent feeling for me.
53:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I have all kinds of mixed feelings, and it's not, it's not like,
53:24
[SPEAKER_01]: even fifty one percent is enough but then what do you do with the other forty nine percent and and so this song was a place to put that that forty nine percent or whatever it is yeah so it was a it's a big one yeah very if I think very brave to thank you to write a song like that okay
53:50
[SPEAKER_02]: one more question, also kind of inside baseball, and then we'll do the lightning round.
53:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
53:56
[SPEAKER_02]: So your Rolex, you have a Rolex, right?
54:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Like an old fashioned.
54:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Like an old fashioned.
54:02
[SPEAKER_02]: It must be like very impressive.
54:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks to song explotor, all of the shows, all of the work that you've done.
54:10
[SPEAKER_02]: You are really into collaborating on different projects and events, and you are as far as I can tell a friendly, nice, talented person who has a lot of power in your industry.
54:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks to your position, especially with Song Explode, like people want things from you.
54:32
[SPEAKER_02]: You offer a really unique and great opportunity.
54:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And you also want to make real connections.
54:39
[SPEAKER_02]: You want to make real friends.
54:42
[SPEAKER_02]: This is a kind of a complex question, but I think about this sometimes too.
54:47
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not in the position that you're in at all, but I'm in a little bit of a position.
54:53
[SPEAKER_02]: How does that work for you internally when connecting with people?
54:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, they want something from you and sometimes you want something from them.
55:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And the word want, I think, also could be seen as negative, but sometimes it's not negative, but sometimes it is.
55:08
[SPEAKER_02]: So sometimes the equation of like, they want something from you.
55:12
[SPEAKER_02]: You want something from them.
55:14
[SPEAKER_02]: That equation doesn't like always add up.
55:17
[SPEAKER_02]: So how does that, what's what's going on in your head with that kind of thing happens?
55:23
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm asking for a friend and it's me.
55:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I really appreciate the question.
55:29
[SPEAKER_01]: It is a really complicated one and end and I appreciate in this episode.
55:37
[SPEAKER_02]: So only the hardcore listeners will get to this part.
55:41
[SPEAKER_02]: So spill all spill all your guts, name names, and I'm just kidding.
55:47
[SPEAKER_01]: No, there is something that feels kind of dirty about it, and I appreciate you speaking about it openly, because I think the way that my brain normally circles this idea is
56:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody actually cares about my music, you know, that nobody really cares about me as an artist, me as a creator, me as somebody who is making something that really, people only see me as someone who can do something for them.
56:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And so even the idea of approaching someone and saying, hey, can we do some, you'd like the idea of
56:36
[SPEAKER_01]: having the arrow go the other way and saying like I want something from you is inconceivable, you know, that they're the way you, who are you?
56:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Like who are you?
56:53
[SPEAKER_01]: You are purpose in this world is only to provide a service for others.
56:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, like where do you get off?
57:07
[SPEAKER_01]: trying to pull in some oxygen for yourself.
57:10
[SPEAKER_01]: That's sort of the fear that I have.
57:15
[SPEAKER_02]: So sad.
57:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, I hate it, I hate that for you.
57:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
57:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think that there's a lot of truth unfortunately that probably goes into it, because of the way that like the dynamic of making a show,
57:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't really think of it as power, even though there are people who want to come on the show or rather, you know, their publicists want them to come on the show or something like that.
57:49
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't feel like power.
57:51
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels a little bit like the opposite sometimes because I'm just there to, I don't know, check a box for them, you know, to like get, be of service, you know, in, in some way.
58:08
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, even just, you know, the episode will come out for every episode of song Exploded.
58:15
[SPEAKER_01]: There's about three weeks of work that goes into it.
58:18
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, there's a lot of editing and And a lot of fun.
58:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And you do that editing on your own.
58:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Now I have other people who help me with it as well.
58:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, thank God.
58:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, thank God.
58:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm worried about you.
58:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
58:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Looking at your pro-tool sessions, when I, for the first few years, it was just me.
58:38
[SPEAKER_01]: But once I started making other podcasts at the same time, I just realized I couldn't do all of it all the time.
58:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And then especially when I also started trying to make music on top of it, luckily, you know, the show got big enough that I was able to, I was able to hire people to come, come work on it part-time, and that's, that's been huge.
59:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I still feel like I'm the architect of it and a lot of the hardcore editing I am doing, you know, and sort of like the editing of the music and kind of shaping the stories.
59:14
[SPEAKER_01]: But yes, thank God, I have other people who also work with me on the show.
59:19
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a small team, you know, there's like four of us, but one person does the music rights, one person does like a transcription, you know, things like that.
59:30
[SPEAKER_01]: But instead of just me doing everything.
59:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I heard you say that for every minute of the show, what is it for every minute of the show?
59:38
[SPEAKER_02]: It's an hour of editing.
59:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, that used to be true, I think.
59:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Is that an old comment?
59:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
59:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it can still be true.
59:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Now it's like a matter of another thing that's nice about having other people who work with me is they can just tell me to stop to like step away.
59:58
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'll be like, you know, pull up blood.
1:00:00
[SPEAKER_01]: What if I change this by half a DB?
1:00:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that better?
1:00:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that the right answer?
1:00:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Get in here.
1:00:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Shut it down.
1:00:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I will the truth is basically I will take up as much time as you give me if you give me a month to make an upset I'll it'll take me a month to make it and if I have to do it in in 10 days, I'll do it in 10 days Like a much like a goldfish.
1:00:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah exactly So I I guess I have felt because of that that like
1:00:37
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't feel like, you don't feel like it's like currency of like, like with song explode or like you have banked enough currency to then when you're like, okay, now it's
1:00:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, I am a musician and I would like to co-write with you Stevie Nix, you're like, you're going to go to the bank and withdraw.
1:01:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
1:01:02
[SPEAKER_02]: And you don't see it like that.
1:01:03
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
1:01:04
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
1:01:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Definitely not.
1:01:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I think there's also probably some...
1:01:12
[SPEAKER_01]: stuff of growing up brown in America that also plays into that as well.
1:01:19
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I think there's there is a way that I tried to take again the lesson of like being a good polite kid from my parents and then apply that to fitting in in school and you went to some schools.
1:01:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:01:41
[SPEAKER_02]: you really did.
1:01:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and yeah, and trying to be okay there and feel like I was, you know,
1:01:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I went to those schools on scholarship and so, you know, to be able to justify my place there, I was always trying to be like, hey, what can I do, how can I contribute, how can I make sure that nobody looks at me and thinks this person doesn't belong here?
1:02:09
[SPEAKER_01]: The feeling of belonging has been something I've been, you know, looking for for so long.
1:02:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think in my dreams, making song-explotor comes from an active musician, you know, that it comes from my own experiences as a musician and making a show that I would like to be on.
1:02:29
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, getting asking someone the questions that I want to be asked and talking to someone and telling their story in the way that I want to have my story told.
1:02:37
[SPEAKER_01]: All of that stuff, but the people who come on the show, I would say 90 to 95% of them have no idea about any of that, you know?
1:02:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, they don't know all the hopes and dreams I've put into this interview.
1:02:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
1:02:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And all of the years of playing shows and making records that went into this question.
1:03:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, right.
1:03:03
[SPEAKER_01]: So, it doesn't feel like currency in that it's something that you can exchange.
1:03:08
[SPEAKER_01]: It just feels like it's a one-way street.
1:03:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, does that answer the question?
1:03:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
1:03:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And I have so many more, but let's do the lightning round.
1:03:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we can get on with our lives.
1:03:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:03:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I really appreciate that question though, because I think that is a stutley asked and noticed.
1:03:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I, and I, I,
1:03:36
[SPEAKER_02]: I think there's so much there, you know, I don't know if you drink beer, but we should get one.
1:03:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Sometime.
1:03:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't drink beer because, you know, I got to be a good boy.
1:03:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Seltzer water.
1:03:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:03:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Between being a good boy and, you know, DIY-strained, hardcore punk.
1:03:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
1:03:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
1:03:58
[SPEAKER_02]: I forgot.
1:03:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:04:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Rock.
1:04:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
1:04:04
[SPEAKER_02]: This is the lightning round.
1:04:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
1:04:06
[SPEAKER_02]: These are quick answers.
1:04:08
[SPEAKER_01]: My camera seems to have gotten dark again.
1:04:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you want me to fix that?
1:04:11
[SPEAKER_02]: No, it's okay.
1:04:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you sure?
1:04:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you already do the camera part.
1:04:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the camera part's already done.
1:04:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, great.
1:04:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, what is the first podcast you ever listened to?
1:04:21
[SPEAKER_01]: the Ricky Jervais podcast in 2006.
1:04:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my god.
1:04:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I bet that would be so not aged well 20 years later.
1:04:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I have not gone back.
1:04:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, this is an easy one.
1:04:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Best interview you've ever done.
1:04:42
[SPEAKER_02]: that's an easy one.
1:04:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Ben interviewed and that you have interviewed.
1:04:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's an easy one.
1:04:48
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not not easy.
1:04:49
[SPEAKER_02]: It's obviously this one.
1:04:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll see this one.
1:04:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep.
1:04:54
[SPEAKER_02]: And then what is your favorite interview that you've ever conducted?
1:04:59
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not an easy one.
1:05:02
[SPEAKER_02]: just say Dave Grohl.
1:05:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I did love the Dave Grohl one.
1:05:06
[SPEAKER_01]: That was really special.
1:05:07
[SPEAKER_01]: He told me that my mom was paying attention to the music that I made about her.
1:05:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that's, that was pretty incredible.
1:05:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
1:05:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was a free one because I answered it for you.
1:05:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
1:05:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not going to answer any more of these for you.
1:05:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
1:05:22
[SPEAKER_02]: What is your current most prized possession in
1:05:32
[SPEAKER_01]: What I recently
1:05:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I recently acquired a pair of jeans from my wife's company, Grover Red.
1:05:42
[SPEAKER_01]: It is a women's wear clothing company that makes very, very, very cool stuff that normally I just look at and say, wow, that's so cool.
1:05:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, I'll never get to wear that.
1:05:53
[SPEAKER_01]: But Lindsay the other day found in their archives and old pair of jeans that happened to be model on like a 501 Levi's.
1:06:03
[SPEAKER_01]: and they were my size and she brought them home and so now I now I get to wear them and they're they're screen printed they're like white denim with black screen printing all over them and they're so cool and um I just got them last week so this is a there's a recent sea bias here but I'm gonna say those I can't I would love to see those
1:06:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, a couple more.
1:06:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you a Bluetooth or a wired headphones guy?
1:06:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I currently wired, you know, for my work, I'm always in wired headphones.
1:06:47
[SPEAKER_01]: But
1:06:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, the thing that really changed it was when I went from third party Bluetooth stuff.
1:07:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Because you know, sometimes, I'll say one of the, one of the perks of doing song exposure, sometimes you get like audio stuff, you know, from sponsors or whatever.
1:07:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I had a few different pairs of Bluetooth headphones over the years earbuds or whatever.
1:07:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And they were, they sounded good, but the Bluetooth connectivity was so annoying that I was like, Bluetooth just sucks, and then I finally went and actually got myself AirPods, and then it turns out, oh, there's a world where Bluetooth always works, or at least works 99% of the time, and it's pretty awesome.
1:07:51
[SPEAKER_02]: This is the last one.
1:07:53
[SPEAKER_02]: When was the last time you woke up and remembered your dream?
1:07:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, uh... Two days ago.
1:08:03
[SPEAKER_01]: It's pretty good.
1:08:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I wake up and remember my dreams pretty often.
1:08:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
1:08:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:08:11
[SPEAKER_02]: I had such crazy dreams during the pandemic.
1:08:15
[SPEAKER_02]: they were like adventure dreams yeah and I couldn't wait to go back to sleep because it was so much better than me that's where you're a Viking yeah exactly well thank you so much Richie I really appreciate it would a great interview thank you so much I feel the same way
1:08:42
[SPEAKER_02]: This episode of Basic Folk was produced by CJ Nungesser, Dietrich Strauss Composes our music.
1:08:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Basic Folk is a production of the Bluegrass situation.
1:08:51
[SPEAKER_02]: You can find all of our episodes there.
1:08:53
[SPEAKER_02]: You can also find us at folkalli.com or on folkalli's mobile app.
1:08:57
[SPEAKER_02]: You can search for Basic Folk on the Syria Sex M app.
1:09:01
[SPEAKER_02]: you can find us wherever you get your podcasts or you can go to basicvoke.com.
1:09:06
[SPEAKER_02]: If you enjoyed this episode, you should share it with a friend.
1:09:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe that friend who's from Peabody, Massachusetts, and would really like to get to know somebody else who is also from Peabody, Massachusetts.
1:09:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Send it to that friend.
1:09:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for listening all the way to the end.
1:09:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Talk to you next time.
1:09:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Bye!