Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Feist

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Feist · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Canadian born singer songwriter Feist has been one of
0:23
Speaker 1: the most dynamic indie voices of the last two decades.
0:27
Speaker 1: She scored international fame early in her career, thanks in
0:30
Speaker 1: part to a nano iPod commercial featuring the song one, two,
0:34
Speaker 1: three four, But for fans of Feist, her appeal lies
0:38
Speaker 1: in how she mines her complex emotional life. Just last month,
0:42
Speaker 1: Feist released her sixth album, Multitudes. She recorded it in
0:47
Speaker 1: the aftermath of tremendous personal loss and change. In late
0:51
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, Feist adopted a baby just months before the
0:54
Speaker 1: pandemic started. About a year later, her father died suddenly.
0:59
Speaker 1: Multitudes is a raw and intimate look at how she
1:03
Speaker 1: grappled with deep seated grief and a new kind of love.
1:07
Speaker 1: On today's episode, Lea Rose time with Feist about how
1:10
Speaker 1: being assaulted in high school ultimately led to her gaining resilience.
1:15
Speaker 1: Feist also remembers the day her music career began when
1:18
Speaker 1: she was asked to front a hardcore band, and how
1:21
Speaker 1: screaming on stage and ultimately blowing out her voice forced
1:24
Speaker 1: her to develop her intimate, career defining singing style. This
1:31
Speaker 1: is broken record liner notes for the digital Age. I'm
1:34
Speaker 1: justin Mitchman. Here's Lea Rose with Feist.
1:39
Speaker 2: I have read the PR blurb about the new album,
1:43
Speaker 2: but I would love to hear in your words, just
1:46
Speaker 2: talk about how the project started to come together.
1:50
Speaker 3: Yes, well, everything was pretty topsy turvy, there wasn't it.
1:55
Speaker 3: I mean, there was a complete reframe. There was no
1:59
Speaker 3: presumption of the way things used to be is the
2:02
Speaker 3: way they're.
2:02
Speaker 4: Going to be.
2:02
Speaker 3: And interestingly, the outside world was sort of echoing what
2:07
Speaker 3: was going on for me in my side world, which
2:09
Speaker 3: was that nothing was to be presumed, nothing that had
2:13
Speaker 3: been was going to be.
2:14
Speaker 4: Because I had just become a mother right four months.
2:16
Speaker 3: Before the pandemic started, so it was sort of a
2:20
Speaker 3: double down of complete reassessment. And you know, a friend
2:25
Speaker 3: of mine said something that has become unfortunately so true.
2:29
Speaker 3: I mean, fortunately unfortunately that to become a parent is
2:33
Speaker 3: to be incinerated and so true. But who rises from
2:39
Speaker 3: the ashes is a more interesting person to be for
2:41
Speaker 3: the rest of your life And I'm still working on that.
2:44
Speaker 4: I'm trying to figure out if this is more interesting.
2:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that I know, it's like I just feel
2:51
Speaker 2: like a like depleted version. But hopefully eventually more interesting.
2:56
Speaker 3: Well, the way I've been looking at it is the
2:58
Speaker 3: person who decided to the person who felt capable of
3:02
Speaker 3: being a mother to decided to become a mother, she
3:05
Speaker 3: was actually not.
3:06
Speaker 4: Very useful and not very helpful a monther.
3:11
Speaker 3: So you know, that was then echoed by the whole
3:14
Speaker 3: world kind of being uncomfortable with their former selves that
3:17
Speaker 3: didn't serve them anymore in this new context. And every
3:20
Speaker 3: I felt like everywhere I looked, anyone close to me,
3:23
Speaker 3: let alone kind of collectively, there was just this crucible
3:26
Speaker 3: that was just incinerating every presumption that came from a
3:30
Speaker 3: previous time, you know. And so songs kind of they
3:34
Speaker 3: became what they're they always have been to me, but
3:37
Speaker 3: like they certainly were even more so a kind of
3:40
Speaker 3: a habit that I returned to that brought me comfort
3:44
Speaker 3: or like a it might be in that incineration, some
3:47
Speaker 3: last living arm lunged out of the quicksand like ah
3:52
Speaker 3: and grabbed it a little filament of a former self
3:54
Speaker 3: or something, because I found it really helped me to
4:00
Speaker 3: use some of those wee hours and those sort of
4:03
Speaker 3: that liminal state of pure exhaustion and to open myself
4:09
Speaker 3: to that and a lot of new things and new
4:13
Speaker 3: parts of me were very slowly given a little a
4:17
Speaker 3: place to you know, work out.
4:20
Speaker 4: What that was going to look like in the form
4:23
Speaker 4: of songs.
4:23
Speaker 3: So it was, you know, kind of like a like
4:27
Speaker 3: some people return to hiking, or they get they go swimming,
4:31
Speaker 3: clear their head, they you know, whatever they've done their
4:33
Speaker 3: whole life to return to a kind of a privacy
4:36
Speaker 3: that is going to maybe help them like untangle something.
4:40
Speaker 3: In my very fortunate case, I've always found that in
4:43
Speaker 3: writing a song over the years, like I can put
4:46
Speaker 3: almost every one of my songs has in some way
4:49
Speaker 3: been my attempt to understand some unknowable moments.
4:53
Speaker 2: Are there any songs on the new album that directly
4:56
Speaker 2: relate to being a new parent that helped you articulate
5:01
Speaker 2: something that you couldn't quite grasp before.
5:05
Speaker 3: Well, I would say the only song that you know,
5:08
Speaker 3: she will I was about her is the song Forever Before,
5:12
Speaker 3: which I think might be the second song I think.
5:16
Speaker 3: And it came from this idea that to commit so intentionally,
5:21
Speaker 3: to walk so directly right towards the precipice of complete vulnerability,
5:27
Speaker 3: is to become a mother.
5:29
Speaker 4: And I had never begun a forever before.
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Speaker 3: I mean, that was sort of there was no sidling
5:34
Speaker 3: out of that commitment.
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Speaker 4: It was a true commitment.
5:37
Speaker 3: And you know, as much as I feel that I
5:39
Speaker 3: have been committed to things in my life before, I've
5:42
Speaker 3: shown all the way up to different things and different
5:47
Speaker 3: relationships and different ways of thinking or ways of being,
5:51
Speaker 3: the ways of relating, I had never done something that
5:55
Speaker 3: could not be undone or that I hope will never
5:57
Speaker 3: be undone.
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Speaker 1: It is.
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Speaker 3: It's the first one hundred percent, just like dive Dive in,
6:04
Speaker 3: you know. And so that song kind of helped in
6:07
Speaker 3: a way. It chronologically over the three verses, it's sort
6:10
Speaker 3: of it's like a little parenthesis around maybe the years
6:14
Speaker 3: leading up to understanding the basis of my life and
6:19
Speaker 3: how it was no longer enough or something, and how
6:24
Speaker 3: that I wanted to expand and make myself prone to
6:28
Speaker 3: the unknown.
6:30
Speaker 1: Yeah.
6:31
Speaker 2: On your song Borrow Trouble, there's some lyrics that talk
6:34
Speaker 2: about picturing a life that you are left out of
6:38
Speaker 2: and how that is maybe different than what you imagined.
6:42
Speaker 2: And it seems to me like you're now trying to
6:46
Speaker 2: appreciate a life that you've created for yourself.
6:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say I found the idea years ago
6:54
Speaker 3: that like, if I can't make it better, if it's
6:57
Speaker 3: out of with it, not within my power to make
6:59
Speaker 3: it better, it being what, you know, whatever I'm in
7:01
Speaker 3: the midst of trying to face or solve like psychicalge
7:06
Speaker 3: break equation of like solve for X.
7:08
Speaker 4: It's like the X is.
7:09
Speaker 3: Ever changing and it is ever present, and it's just
7:11
Speaker 3: going to shape shift and always be something to me
7:14
Speaker 3: to solve. And if I can't make it better, at
7:17
Speaker 3: least I can learn how to not make it worse.
7:19
Speaker 3: And to not make it worse means to not spin
7:24
Speaker 3: my wheels in and concretized thinking or learning actually what
7:30
Speaker 3: the mechanics of passive aggressivity is and what it is
7:33
Speaker 3: to And that's another thing about to commit to the
7:36
Speaker 3: words that come out of your mouth. It's sort of
7:38
Speaker 3: bootcamp for committing to the steps you take towards in
7:41
Speaker 3: which directions and all of that, I guess is it's
7:45
Speaker 3: sort of been the quiet background of all the work
7:48
Speaker 3: I've done in my life and my mind. And as
7:52
Speaker 3: art imitates life, songs the songs these songs in particular
7:57
Speaker 3: have taken the form of like a roadmap or as
8:01
Speaker 3: we all self mythologize, you know, in our you don't.
8:05
Speaker 3: And as friends who work very different they have different jobs.
8:09
Speaker 3: Me friends who don't get a response from the world
8:14
Speaker 3: about what their work is. They say, Hey, don't kid yourself.
8:17
Speaker 3: I have the exact same self mythologizing. I invest in
8:21
Speaker 3: the lore of my life. What is you know, the
8:24
Speaker 3: background of my childhood and what it did to me
8:26
Speaker 3: and how it created the expectations that I then had
8:29
Speaker 3: to fight to.
8:30
Speaker 4: You know, It's just that in my case, I work
8:33
Speaker 4: it out in this way that can then be like a.
8:36
Speaker 3: Silly, petty puzzle piece that someone people can take it
8:39
Speaker 3: and then reform it to fit the puzzle that they're
8:42
Speaker 3: trying to solve. You know.
8:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm curious, like, what were you like in high school?
8:50
Speaker 2: What were you into?
8:51
Speaker 3: Like?
8:51
Speaker 2: What kind of kid were you in high school?
8:54
Speaker 3: Well? I suppose I was probably kind of shy, but
8:59
Speaker 3: I also had started to go to all the punk
9:02
Speaker 3: shows in my town, and I had assumed the exterior
9:07
Speaker 3: of looking other than what I was on the inside.
9:09
Speaker 3: And I was sort of you know, I had piercings
9:12
Speaker 3: and shaved my head and it was manic. Panic was
9:15
Speaker 3: and I went to a pretty conservative high school, and
9:18
Speaker 3: maybe in the first couple of maybe the first month
9:21
Speaker 3: or two or something of my first year of high school,
9:25
Speaker 3: I was attacked by a group of guys, not like
9:29
Speaker 3: I mean here I am making excuses for them, like
9:31
Speaker 3: not violently, but come on.
9:32
Speaker 4: Like I was.
9:33
Speaker 3: Lifted up and slammed into a wall and handcuffed to
9:36
Speaker 3: a door. And then I've actually never told this story
9:40
Speaker 3: except to friends, but at this point I kind of
9:43
Speaker 3: understand how this was. All The adversity I was against
9:47
Speaker 3: was like ultimately helpful but very difficult.
9:50
Speaker 4: But the whole student body, you know, no one came
9:53
Speaker 4: to my aid. They created kind of like a.
9:55
Speaker 3: Giant school size semi circle around me, and you know,
10:00
Speaker 3: laughed and jeered and snickered, and then we're shoed into
10:05
Speaker 3: the cafeteria. And then the vice principal, I guess, after
10:10
Speaker 3: like half an hour or something, I got un handcuffed
10:13
Speaker 3: and was completely in shock. And then he he was like,
10:17
Speaker 3: who did this? And I said, I don't know. They
10:18
Speaker 3: came up from behind me, and he said, that's why
10:21
Speaker 3: we don't want kids like you here. And then he
10:24
Speaker 3: made me walk through the entire cafeteria in front of
10:27
Speaker 3: him while he walked behind me through a dead silent
10:31
Speaker 3: cafeteria TI so that I would tell him who had
10:34
Speaker 3: done this, and up and down the rows of the
10:36
Speaker 3: different seats while the only sound in the cafeteria was
10:39
Speaker 3: my own crying because I was, you know, choking in
10:42
Speaker 3: my like and I was being marched up and down
10:45
Speaker 3: these aisles. And then you know, in the silence, someone
10:48
Speaker 3: screamed freak, and then the and then twelve hundred people laughed.
10:51
Speaker 3: And I'd say that was the basis of my high school.
10:54
Speaker 3: And I started skipping, and I started going to like
10:59
Speaker 3: more and more shows and not really knowing where to
11:02
Speaker 3: go and what to be and what to do. And
11:05
Speaker 3: luckily these girls came up to me in the hallway
11:08
Speaker 3: and they were like, hey, you go to all those shows, right,
11:10
Speaker 3: but aren't you in the choir because I had found
11:12
Speaker 3: the choir at that school. And I was like, yeah,
11:15
Speaker 3: I'm in the choir and I go to all the shows.
11:17
Speaker 3: And they're like, well, we need a singer for our band.
11:19
Speaker 3: Do you wanna Do you want to join our band?
11:23
Speaker 3: And I was like, without that, I have no idea
11:26
Speaker 3: where I would have ended up. And then I transferred
11:29
Speaker 3: myself to an alternative school, and I didn't tell my
11:33
Speaker 3: mom didn't even know. You know, it was like maybe
11:35
Speaker 3: many months in the school contacted her and said, Leslie's expelled.
11:40
Speaker 3: She hasn't shown up, And my mom was like assumed
11:42
Speaker 3: I was just completely and I was like, no, no, no,
11:44
Speaker 3: I just didn't tell you because I knew you.
11:46
Speaker 4: Would probably make it even harder for me to just
11:49
Speaker 4: pull this off. So I just did it. And I
11:52
Speaker 4: was at this.
11:53
Speaker 3: Alternative school and I was in this band and like,
11:55
Speaker 3: you know, kind of turned that frown upside down sort
11:57
Speaker 3: of thing through the support of like genuine community.
12:01
Speaker 2: Did you tell your parents about the incident with the
12:03
Speaker 2: being handcuffed?
12:04
Speaker 4: Yes, my mom.
12:06
Speaker 3: I didn't live with my dad was across the country,
12:08
Speaker 3: but yeah, I told my mom. And I think that,
12:11
Speaker 3: you know, she had just watched her daughter change so
12:16
Speaker 3: radically that she might have just been so frustrated that
12:21
Speaker 3: like she you know, let's just say that in recent years,
12:24
Speaker 3: I've recontextualized hey ps. Nowadays, luckily there's language to meet
12:29
Speaker 3: this type of moment that at the time there was
12:32
Speaker 3: no language for. And I can say that I'm grateful
12:37
Speaker 3: that now, like, you know, the gradations of experience that
12:41
Speaker 3: any single word can carry within it is now at
12:45
Speaker 3: least available to be evoked when it needs to be
12:48
Speaker 3: because that principle. You know, like I can still get angry.
12:51
Speaker 3: I can still think I need to find out who
12:53
Speaker 3: that was. I need to write an open letter to
12:55
Speaker 3: that school letting them know how.
12:57
Speaker 4: You know, they might be like, ooh, will you come
12:59
Speaker 4: speak at our graduation.
13:01
Speaker 3: It's like, well, I might have something to say that
13:03
Speaker 3: you don't necessarily want to hear. But it was a
13:07
Speaker 3: different time, and not to excuse it, but I can
13:10
Speaker 3: say that like it just we all.
13:11
Speaker 4: Know it to be true. It was a different time.
13:14
Speaker 3: There was no vocabulary around this, and without that, I
13:18
Speaker 3: don't know where I would be. And so it's like
13:21
Speaker 3: anything that helps you grow or causes you to have
13:25
Speaker 3: to unavoidably find some interior basis for understanding, and you
13:31
Speaker 3: can cave into bitterness or you can, you know, And
13:34
Speaker 3: I'm sure I had many years of caving into bitterness.
13:36
Speaker 3: But something else rose from it that I'm grateful for.
13:40
Speaker 2: When did you start writing songs?
13:42
Speaker 3: Well, in that band, I suppose was the beginning of songwriting,
13:47
Speaker 3: even though we were doing it together. It was baby
13:50
Speaker 3: steps in lyrics, and you know, who's the narrator, is
13:55
Speaker 3: this first person, is this dream sequence, is this stream
13:58
Speaker 3: of consciousness?
13:59
Speaker 4: Or just you know, melody.
14:02
Speaker 3: But it was a hardcore band, so ultimately our main
14:06
Speaker 3: asset was volume and.
14:09
Speaker 4: Yeah, and melody came a lot later.
14:11
Speaker 3: I mean there was melody, I suppose at that time,
14:14
Speaker 3: but it was mostly I didn't play guitar. I just
14:17
Speaker 3: was the front person and I and volume was you know,
14:22
Speaker 3: kind of where what I leaned on. And Yeah, so
14:26
Speaker 3: many years later, after I blew my voice out on
14:28
Speaker 3: tour with that band, like just from screaming, I ended
14:32
Speaker 3: up kind of under doctor's orders to you know, stay silent.
14:36
Speaker 4: I had nodes. I had the whole that period of
14:39
Speaker 4: regenerating and I learned.
14:41
Speaker 3: I kind of taught myself to begin to play guitar
14:43
Speaker 3: at that time when I when I was in this
14:46
Speaker 3: sort of imposed silence and I'd had to quit the band.
14:48
Speaker 3: I'd moved to Toronto. I you know, I was living
14:52
Speaker 3: in my dad's basement and just like kind of dealing
14:55
Speaker 3: with my first dose of isolation, and what I found
15:00
Speaker 3: there was you know, melody essentially.
15:03
Speaker 2: Do you remember some of the first songs you wrote
15:05
Speaker 2: once you started playing guitar.
15:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, I also had this thing called a melodica, which
15:11
Speaker 3: is kind of like a wooden boxed miniature xylophone that
15:14
Speaker 3: I was really and also had a four track. My
15:17
Speaker 3: dad had given me a cassette four track a task
15:19
Speaker 3: am and I had started with layers and singing harmonies
15:24
Speaker 3: and making these long overtones with the metallophone, and I
15:28
Speaker 3: kind of maybe something like sound sculptures using the radio,
15:32
Speaker 3: using interference and just kind of playing with the form,
15:37
Speaker 3: and like maybe the first songs I wrote the kind
15:40
Speaker 3: of clunky first, you know, broad strokes attempts were you know,
15:45
Speaker 3: it's like now I listened to them and it's like
15:46
Speaker 3: the touching yearbook photo kind of thing.
15:49
Speaker 2: Where do you identify with any of the lyrics?
15:52
Speaker 3: Still, maybe there was a there was a kind of
15:54
Speaker 3: a sensibility and interest in metaphor already. Was there a
15:59
Speaker 3: kind of wordplay you know, I can hear now the
16:02
Speaker 3: kind of grandfathered in sort of tendencies to like how
16:07
Speaker 3: to speak around a subject rather than directly to it. Yeah,
16:12
Speaker 3: I guess I wouldn't like sit and probably cover any
16:16
Speaker 3: of I would say. And see I'm even calling it covering,
16:19
Speaker 3: like as if it's not my own.
16:22
Speaker 2: That's so interesting a former self, Yeah exactly.
16:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, probably wouldn't cover her songs, but I can, but
16:30
Speaker 3: I can appreciate that there's some DNA there.
16:33
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break and then come
16:35
Speaker 1: back with more from Leo Rose and Feist. We're back
16:43
Speaker 1: with Leo Rose and Feist.
16:46
Speaker 2: What do you think that you do as a songwriter
16:48
Speaker 2: as a performer, What do you think you do especially
16:53
Speaker 2: well or what are you the best at?
16:56
Speaker 3: That's a nice question. I don't know that I can
17:00
Speaker 3: really characterize it in words. It's a there's like a
17:03
Speaker 3: location in me that is interested in all sorts of
17:07
Speaker 3: variables and how they how they cross over, and maybe
17:11
Speaker 3: I on this record in particular, I was interested in
17:15
Speaker 3: kind of unseating some of my tendencies and seeing what.
17:18
Speaker 4: Might might be behind them.
17:20
Speaker 3: And there's, maybe for the first time in my life,
17:23
Speaker 3: an awareness that there's a kind of a rigor and
17:26
Speaker 3: a craft and an interest in craft that I wouldn't
17:31
Speaker 3: have known with my frontal lobe previously, I wouldn't have
17:33
Speaker 3: really thought that's what I'm doing.
17:36
Speaker 4: But I'm kind of I continue to learn from what
17:38
Speaker 4: came before.
17:39
Speaker 3: Like everything I've done previously is sort of composted into
17:43
Speaker 3: the new body of work, and I can say to
17:46
Speaker 3: people I'm working with, like, this feels a little bit
17:49
Speaker 3: like mush of Boom's great granddaughter or something like there's
17:53
Speaker 3: some there's some DNA. There's something in here that is
17:57
Speaker 3: or like if Century and Sea Lion had had a
18:02
Speaker 3: love child, that might be you know, bort of Trouble
18:06
Speaker 3: or something like that. Or but yeah, there's a lineage
18:10
Speaker 3: maybe in what I've made so far that that makes
18:15
Speaker 3: me curious about what will come next or how the
18:21
Speaker 3: perspective will continue to be interesting.
18:24
Speaker 2: Do you feel like the character that you've created or
18:30
Speaker 2: do you feel like there even is a character that
18:32
Speaker 2: you've created through your work? And if so, is that
18:36
Speaker 2: person you or is it similar to you? Or does
18:40
Speaker 2: that make sense?
18:41
Speaker 4: It does? It does? It makes more sense now than ever.
18:45
Speaker 3: I feel like an alignment has occurred where I now
18:50
Speaker 3: know I owe nothing to the avatar. You know, the
18:53
Speaker 3: thing that is refracted by this particular light that's shined
18:57
Speaker 3: on this thing I do, that society that our society
19:02
Speaker 3: shines this particular timbre of light is quality of light
19:06
Speaker 3: on what I do, and it refracts out beyond me,
19:08
Speaker 3: and in some cases maybe leans a little bit too
19:12
Speaker 3: much importance on it in a way that is on
19:14
Speaker 3: the surface. I've learned that my investment in this very
19:19
Speaker 3: private conversation with myself, yeah, and my voice being like
19:23
Speaker 3: literally and then part of my anatomy that over many
19:27
Speaker 3: years I learned to listen to from the inside rather
19:30
Speaker 3: than from the outside.
19:31
Speaker 4: And so it's kind.
19:33
Speaker 3: Of like I've never thought about this before, but imagine
19:36
Speaker 3: like a you know, like how a door knob reaches
19:39
Speaker 3: through a door, and on one side you can turn
19:42
Speaker 3: it to go in, and on the other side you
19:43
Speaker 3: can turn it to go out, and those are two
19:46
Speaker 3: different gestures, but there is the same portal. It's the
19:49
Speaker 3: same desire to move through. And so my voice or
19:53
Speaker 3: the way I've chosen to try to formulate not this
19:56
Speaker 3: not only the sound or the expression of it, but
20:00
Speaker 3: the words that it's encants I now acknowledge and I
20:04
Speaker 3: feel comfortable in knowing that that part is it's as
20:09
Speaker 3: much me as it is what it becomes in someone
20:12
Speaker 3: else's listening, you know.
20:14
Speaker 4: So it's and.
20:15
Speaker 3: That's the part that I feel doesn't get refracted and
20:20
Speaker 3: like it's not like a house of mirrors where that
20:22
Speaker 3: can't be changed by the perception of it, because if
20:26
Speaker 3: my privacy goes into someone else's privacy, there it's like
20:29
Speaker 3: a you know, it's like hermetically sealed.
20:31
Speaker 4: It's safe. Yeah, it's kind of there is a safety
20:34
Speaker 4: to it.
20:35
Speaker 3: And I feel as I lean deeper into myself, into
20:39
Speaker 3: the discomfort of my like continual daily misunderstanding of myself
20:44
Speaker 3: and just trying to align to some personal responsibility, that's
20:48
Speaker 3: kind of a north star that is looking for different
20:51
Speaker 3: these dimensions. I'm hoping to find out how to be
20:54
Speaker 3: fed by them because I'm increasingly depleted and I'm realizing
20:59
Speaker 3: my like psychic organism cannot sustain often how much I'm
21:03
Speaker 3: attempting to be and do into how many people into
21:07
Speaker 3: It's like I'm never quite so for X. It's just
21:10
Speaker 3: like every single day I'm like, I can't find X.
21:14
Speaker 3: I can't solve for X. And yet then these songs
21:17
Speaker 3: weirdly are a place where I think I can because
21:20
Speaker 3: I can pause time and I can give myself just
21:23
Speaker 3: like a little a little navigation somehow.
21:27
Speaker 2: Is there anything on the album that you feel like
21:29
Speaker 2: you did solve, Like any feelings that you either came
21:33
Speaker 2: to terms with or you were able to articulate.
21:37
Speaker 3: There was sort of like a secondary you know, because
21:40
Speaker 3: I somehow wrote these songs through like this really difficult time,
21:46
Speaker 3: and I think I managed in that time to kind
21:49
Speaker 3: of make myself evoke or lean into also the responsibility
21:55
Speaker 3: to find the joy or to you know, like be
21:59
Speaker 3: a little bit of a solar panel and face the
22:02
Speaker 3: light and be energized by these things that I'm learning
22:05
Speaker 3: or the relationships that you know, just help me keep
22:09
Speaker 3: the horizon insight and not get.
22:10
Speaker 4: Completely lost, you know.
22:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so weirdly, you know, you'd think songs are
22:16
Speaker 3: you're saying something out loud as if you know something.
22:18
Speaker 4: And so I.
22:22
Speaker 3: Once the record was kind of you know, no longer
22:24
Speaker 3: just in my within my reach, like I'm still changing it,
22:27
Speaker 3: I'm still mixing it, I'm still working on it. And
22:29
Speaker 3: now it's like at once, you know, from one day
22:32
Speaker 3: to the next. Now it's it's out, or at least
22:34
Speaker 3: it's out of my it's it's sealed.
22:36
Speaker 4: It's done. It's like with a wax seal is like boop.
22:40
Speaker 3: And there was sort of the secondary wave of a
22:42
Speaker 3: discomfort and a kind of grief because I'm like oh
22:44
Speaker 3: my God, Like I don't feel any better. It's like
22:48
Speaker 3: maybe I could have well, I mean not to say
22:52
Speaker 3: I mean every day I feel a range of reality.
22:56
Speaker 3: But maybe even I thought that these songs could solve
23:01
Speaker 3: something for me, or they could make something a little
23:04
Speaker 3: easier or something. But the problems remain very much a
23:08
Speaker 3: lot I've you know, the kind of shape shifting required,
23:12
Speaker 3: like the woman who became a mother wasn't useful as
23:15
Speaker 3: a mother, and now I need to become someone else
23:17
Speaker 3: to be able to be that mother.
23:19
Speaker 4: It's also the daughter who lost your father.
23:22
Speaker 3: Like these things are the adultification is ongoing. And so
23:29
Speaker 3: to answer your question, maybe I think I caught a
23:32
Speaker 3: kind of hope, you know, like it's there is some optimism.
23:36
Speaker 3: I learned years ago that whatever I sing, and in
23:39
Speaker 3: the repetition of it, I can find myself making it
23:44
Speaker 3: true and truer, like whatever you look at becomes.
23:49
Speaker 4: You see it.
23:50
Speaker 3: And so if I'm looking to see more hope or
23:53
Speaker 3: more optimism or more like I'm trying to like collect
23:55
Speaker 3: the little crumbs of clarity put my puzzle together, that
24:00
Speaker 3: maybe is what I think I found Indie songs. And
24:05
Speaker 3: even as I say all this, I feel a bit
24:07
Speaker 3: absurd because this is that self mythologizing I was talking about.
24:11
Speaker 4: But it's important to me.
24:12
Speaker 3: I'd say, it's more important to me than anyone else,
24:14
Speaker 3: because this is what I this is the form I
24:17
Speaker 3: used to try to unpack and understand what's going.
24:21
Speaker 4: On in there.
24:23
Speaker 2: Right, And just speaking of having the feeling that nothing
24:28
Speaker 2: has changed after accomplishing something, have you had the experience of, like,
24:34
Speaker 2: as you've gotten more successful or as you've experienced success
24:37
Speaker 2: over the course of your career, did you ever have
24:41
Speaker 2: the thought that when you reached a certain place of
24:45
Speaker 2: success or fame or whatever it is, that some of
24:47
Speaker 2: those problems would go away.
24:50
Speaker 3: I don't think that I ever had a fixed destination
24:53
Speaker 3: in mind or edward or was it within you know,
24:57
Speaker 3: maybe the illusion that I could make anything easier. But
25:00
Speaker 3: I will say that something, something that led to some
25:03
Speaker 3: of this cracking open was precipitated by going to that
25:07
Speaker 3: People festival. I don't know if you've heard about it,
25:09
Speaker 3: but it was a festival in Berlin that was curated
25:13
Speaker 3: or the context of it, which was created by Justin
25:16
Speaker 3: Vernon and the Desert Brothers of the National Era, Aaron
25:20
Speaker 3: and Bryce, and they created a festival and it invited
25:23
Speaker 3: me to it, and they kind of tried. I think
25:25
Speaker 3: they invited me a few years and I didn't quite
25:28
Speaker 3: have the ears to hear what they were saying until
25:31
Speaker 3: I was ready to hear what they were saying, which is,
25:34
Speaker 3: we really want to create a situation where people step
25:37
Speaker 3: outside of their own expectations of themselves and find something new.
25:41
Speaker 3: What they do is they invite, like in this one
25:44
Speaker 3: in Berlin, there was like three hundred people, and in
25:46
Speaker 3: each case it was someone they kind of knew. Concentric
25:49
Speaker 3: circle like you know, a few radiations out from them,
25:52
Speaker 3: or old friends, like we're old friends, and Justin and
25:55
Speaker 3: I are old friends.
25:56
Speaker 4: And they take people out of their comfort.
25:59
Speaker 3: Zone in sense like not you and your drummer and
26:03
Speaker 3: your bass player and your tour manager and you're in
26:06
Speaker 3: your monitors person or or something. It's just you or
26:09
Speaker 3: the bass player from that band, or the drummer from
26:11
Speaker 3: that band, or the guy who wrote the libretto for
26:14
Speaker 3: that opera, that poet or that choreographer or that the
26:18
Speaker 3: trumpet player musical director for Paul Simon's band. You know,
26:22
Speaker 3: just all these individuals who possibly have knit themselves very
26:27
Speaker 3: closely with the people that they've been in collaboration with
26:29
Speaker 3: for many, many years, and.
26:31
Speaker 4: As I had done with my immediate family.
26:34
Speaker 3: And then they just put us all in a hotel
26:36
Speaker 3: in Berlin with food and drinks, kind of like we
26:39
Speaker 3: were joking, it's like being at a really nice wedding.
26:42
Speaker 4: And then they took over this campus called the.
26:47
Speaker 3: Funk House, which is an old radio kind of a
26:51
Speaker 3: Soviet era giant radio station with many studios in it,
26:57
Speaker 3: and we would go between the campus and the hotel
27:00
Speaker 3: and the ideas everyone's supposed to for five days cultivate.
27:04
Speaker 4: Kind of like I don't have an idea, do you do?
27:06
Speaker 3: You?
27:07
Speaker 4: What should we do?
27:08
Speaker 3: But tickets have already been sold for Saturday Sunday to
27:11
Speaker 3: thousands of people coming who don't know who's there. They
27:15
Speaker 3: didn't buy the tickets knowing who's going to be at
27:17
Speaker 3: the festival. They just know that this people festival invites
27:21
Speaker 3: people and then something will occur.
27:24
Speaker 4: As a result. And it was just the most remarkable thing.
27:26
Speaker 3: It was just I reconnected with the Kings of Convenience
27:30
Speaker 3: there who I hadn't played with for years. I created
27:32
Speaker 3: an improvisation project with Todd Dhlhoff and Shazzad is Maley
27:37
Speaker 3: based upon Emily Wilson's translation of the Odyssey.
27:40
Speaker 4: I mean just literally.
27:41
Speaker 3: Because I had it at dinner one night, the book
27:44
Speaker 3: that I was reading, and shaza said, what's that?
27:45
Speaker 4: And I was like, you wouldn't believe this book.
27:47
Speaker 3: You just flip it open in any phrase from this
27:50
Speaker 3: ancient Greek.
27:52
Speaker 4: This woman made it read.
27:53
Speaker 3: So readable, so relatable, and anything could be sung.
27:57
Speaker 4: And he's like, hey, well then let's do that.
27:59
Speaker 3: Let's ask Mary the creative director, Mary Hickson, to give
28:04
Speaker 3: us space and give us an hour.
28:05
Speaker 4: And that's what she did. She would she would have kind.
28:08
Speaker 3: Of and this enormous spreadsheet the size of a room.
28:12
Speaker 3: She was moving people's names around through the rooms available
28:16
Speaker 3: and helping people find ways to incubate new projects. And
28:20
Speaker 3: then programmed this entire festival on the fly, so that
28:23
Speaker 3: when the audience came, they all each member, each person
28:26
Speaker 3: who came, I think they divided these thousands of people
28:29
Speaker 3: up into ten groups. They all got wristbands it said
28:32
Speaker 3: number one, number two, number three, and there was a
28:34
Speaker 3: different itinerary for each group of people. So they would
28:37
Speaker 3: be brought from room to room to room in twenty
28:39
Speaker 3: minute to forty minute increments and see these projects that
28:43
Speaker 3: were just being.
28:43
Speaker 4: Born on the fly, and that is so cool. It
28:47
Speaker 4: was so cool.
28:47
Speaker 3: And I guess what I'm saying is that that was
28:51
Speaker 3: to answer your question with the longest answer of all
28:53
Speaker 3: time through history, is it was a kind of a
28:56
Speaker 3: I called it like a mid career detox or something,
28:59
Speaker 3: because it was it was a way to strip myself
29:03
Speaker 3: of all of the rules that I'd come up with
29:05
Speaker 3: that they were like collated over invisibly over time. I'm like, Okay,
29:10
Speaker 3: I shouldn't do that anymore because that didn't work. Okay,
29:12
Speaker 3: so now I have rule number one. Now I shouldn't
29:15
Speaker 3: play multiple shows in the same city because it seems
29:18
Speaker 3: that by the third show it's change and it doesn't
29:21
Speaker 3: feel right.
29:21
Speaker 4: So okay, no more multiples.
29:23
Speaker 3: Or like, technically I should use my pedal chain this
29:26
Speaker 3: way because that's the way that seems to work best.
29:28
Speaker 3: I should use my And I had kind of collected
29:31
Speaker 3: this armature of all of these things that I knew
29:35
Speaker 3: in air quotes, because what it was was I was
29:38
Speaker 3: just limiting myself. I created all these conditions that kind
29:41
Speaker 3: of disempowered me.
29:42
Speaker 4: At the core where I thought that I.
29:44
Speaker 3: Could only be what I am and do what I
29:46
Speaker 3: do if these conditions were in place. And so slowly, slowly, slowly,
29:50
Speaker 3: I lost my scissor kicking punk clarity, a vision, and
29:56
Speaker 3: I became like a professional who in that transition kind
30:00
Speaker 3: of lost access to like the primary energetic truth surge
30:06
Speaker 3: that it makes sound out of my body, you know,
30:09
Speaker 3: and that people festival. Really it just gave me this
30:13
Speaker 3: feeling of being like at Summer Camp, like.
30:17
Speaker 4: You know every single person there, and these are people.
30:19
Speaker 3: Who have achieved tenure, Like we've all been touring for
30:22
Speaker 3: twenty years, and everyone's walking into the cafeteria equivalent and
30:26
Speaker 3: being like, I don't know anyone.
30:27
Speaker 2: Here, like who it must be so humbling.
30:30
Speaker 4: Yeah, can I sit with you guys?
30:31
Speaker 3: Like that kind of thing, And everyone was feeling that,
30:34
Speaker 3: and yeah, it was a really remarkable experience.
30:38
Speaker 4: It really changed everything for me.
30:40
Speaker 1: We're taking one last quick break and then coming back
30:43
Speaker 1: with more from Leo Rose and Feist. We're back with
30:51
Speaker 1: the rest of Leo Rose's interview with Feist.
30:54
Speaker 2: There's a certain threshold that all of us have for
30:58
Speaker 2: letting something new in. When you're listening to new music
31:01
Speaker 2: or a new artist or a new genre or whatever
31:04
Speaker 2: it is. Does that happen for you with your own music?
31:08
Speaker 4: How so like, do.
31:09
Speaker 2: You have to hear something maybe like ten times, or
31:12
Speaker 2: sing something a bunch of times, or hear even if
31:15
Speaker 2: it's just a track here it a bunch of times
31:17
Speaker 2: before it sticks. You know.
31:19
Speaker 4: It's funny because I.
31:22
Speaker 3: Just listened last night on a long nighttime drive to pod.
31:27
Speaker 4: I love on being. I'm sure you say it.
31:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, oh yeah, I love it. She'stipic, she's wonderful
31:33
Speaker 2: and she's so great.
31:35
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm sure it is doing what you do.
31:37
Speaker 3: You must feel like you identify with her or something
31:40
Speaker 3: that it's to conduct an interview, you know, which, by
31:43
Speaker 3: the way, you're doing really beautifully.
31:45
Speaker 2: So oh thank you.
31:47
Speaker 3: But but she interviewed Rick Rubin. I don't know if
31:49
Speaker 3: you heard that one that is, I did it. It's
31:52
Speaker 3: like it's recent and it's not often that she interviews
31:54
Speaker 3: anybody from anywhere close to I mean, not that i'd
31:58
Speaker 3: say I'm close to anywhere close to what Rick Ruben's accomplished,
32:00
Speaker 3: but in the sense that I don't really hear her
32:03
Speaker 3: speaking to people who make art. It's more people whose
32:07
Speaker 3: life as they live it is in a way way
32:09
Speaker 3: art or writers or you know, theologians, or I mean
32:14
Speaker 3: just people from all walks of life, but not often
32:16
Speaker 3: like a record producer or a musician, you know, because
32:19
Speaker 3: we were kind of like the low art on the
32:21
Speaker 3: art spectrum or something.
32:23
Speaker 1: You know.
32:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, but he really he said something that I really liked,
32:26
Speaker 3: which was she was admitting that though she speaks with
32:30
Speaker 3: writers all the time and she's trying to cultivate her
32:32
Speaker 3: own practice of writing and make space for that, and
32:36
Speaker 3: that it's that when she sits in front of the page,
32:39
Speaker 3: she's kind of just tortured and having such a difficult time.
32:43
Speaker 3: And I found that so touching, because that's I don't
32:47
Speaker 3: know that anyone gets to bypass that part of it,
32:49
Speaker 3: the self loath, the self loathing, the you know, impostures
32:54
Speaker 3: syndrome sort of thing. But he said, well, it's because
32:58
Speaker 3: if you're the writer and the reader in the same instant,
33:01
Speaker 3: there's a cognitive dissonance between the doing.
33:04
Speaker 4: And the absorbing. So you've you've squeezed.
33:08
Speaker 3: It out of you and you're now you're immediately absorbing it,
33:11
Speaker 3: and you're gonna you're going to taint the reading with
33:13
Speaker 3: the writing of it because you're going to be the
33:15
Speaker 3: writer reading it, and that's that.
33:17
Speaker 4: Those are two different roles. And so he gave great.
33:20
Speaker 3: Advice, which was to just create a buffer and separation
33:24
Speaker 3: between those two halves of yourself and right right, right,
33:28
Speaker 3: right right, as if it's a muscle you're exercising, and
33:31
Speaker 3: don't read anything. And then maybe way later, when you're
33:34
Speaker 3: absolutely certain you have no idea what's in that book,
33:37
Speaker 3: open it again, and then you can be the reader,
33:39
Speaker 3: and then you can judge truly. So in writing, you know,
33:45
Speaker 3: in writing these songs, what he said, I recognize it
33:49
Speaker 3: as something I do. My mind is maybe not interested
33:52
Speaker 3: or patient enough to really like no melody can survive
33:56
Speaker 3: my scrutiny. Basically, if I work on something too much
33:58
Speaker 3: on Tuesday, it's sort of like dead to me by Wednesday,
34:02
Speaker 3: and I don't care about it anymore because I feel
34:04
Speaker 3: like the muse didn't play ball or something. Yea, So
34:09
Speaker 3: the song a day thing, you know, I don't think.
34:11
Speaker 3: I don't think we spoke about that, but did we?
34:13
Speaker 2: No, I want to ask you about that. I've heard
34:15
Speaker 2: Maggie Rodgers talk about that about the group. Is that
34:18
Speaker 2: what you're talking about? The writing group sort of like workshopping, yes,
34:23
Speaker 2: songs and there was an assignment.
34:25
Speaker 4: That's right. Yes.
34:26
Speaker 3: The Song and Day group is led by our intrepid
34:30
Speaker 3: Captain phil Winrobe who's a producer out of New York
34:34
Speaker 3: and he created this game I think with Damien Rice.
34:37
Speaker 3: I think it was Damien and him that first thought
34:38
Speaker 3: of it. So in that Rick Ruben advice way of
34:43
Speaker 3: be the maker and then later be the listener. I
34:47
Speaker 3: the Song of Day was this repetition of like you
34:50
Speaker 3: have to to qualify kind of in a good natured
34:53
Speaker 3: way to stay in to not get booted, because the
34:57
Speaker 3: consequence of not showing up on Monday is like, okay,
34:59
Speaker 3: well then you're out. You know. Good, we all love you,
35:03
Speaker 3: like we all raise a toast to you, but you're out,
35:06
Speaker 3: you know.
35:07
Speaker 4: But it's like all warm and good nature y.
35:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, But it's good though, because it sounds
35:11
Speaker 2: like with the people festival. Yeah, And that was sort
35:15
Speaker 2: of an assignment. The song a Day is sort of
35:17
Speaker 2: an assignment.
35:18
Speaker 3: Yes, And because of the need to keep going, there
35:22
Speaker 3: would be kind of at the end of the seven days,
35:25
Speaker 3: I would maybe be aware that I caught a little
35:27
Speaker 3: a few messages in a bottle, like something just came
35:30
Speaker 3: clearly through arrived intact. I managed to like lob it
35:35
Speaker 3: out into the song a day community and then and
35:38
Speaker 3: then I would kind of know that if I listen
35:40
Speaker 3: back to these right now, I'm going to I'm going
35:43
Speaker 3: to make them worse, I'm gonna pick them apart, whatever.
35:45
Speaker 3: But if I just wait a few months, like let
35:48
Speaker 3: the compost start to regenerate the soil, like Liz let
35:51
Speaker 3: it sit. It was really amazing because I did four
35:54
Speaker 3: or five of these, and the group changed each time.
35:58
Speaker 3: There was kind of like a few of us that
35:59
Speaker 3: did everyone, and by the end there was you know,
36:02
Speaker 3: twenty something songs from which this record was essentially born.
36:06
Speaker 3: But I gave myself the distance between the doing and
36:09
Speaker 3: the beginning to I don't know understand what amount of
36:13
Speaker 3: reformulation any of them needed. I waited there was a
36:16
Speaker 3: window between the doing and the and the and the
36:19
Speaker 3: kind of working on them.
36:21
Speaker 2: Are you working on any new music?
36:24
Speaker 3: No, But I've had that kind of inclination, you know,
36:27
Speaker 3: like a craving almost.
36:28
Speaker 4: It's it's sort of you know, it's sort of like.
36:31
Speaker 3: You never know that you're in an epoch until you're
36:34
Speaker 3: out of it. Like I didn't know in my twenties
36:36
Speaker 3: that moment was like actually a thing, like it was
36:41
Speaker 3: a time I will be able to remember.
36:43
Speaker 4: I never you never know when you're in the moment
36:48
Speaker 4: of writing.
36:49
Speaker 3: It's kind of like until you notice, oh, I haven't
36:51
Speaker 3: haven't felt that craving, haven't been in that mind frame.
36:55
Speaker 4: I haven't like been receptive to that for a while,
36:57
Speaker 4: you know.
36:58
Speaker 3: But honestly, finishing a record is so obliteratingly like.
37:03
Speaker 4: It's such a task that there wasn't a lot of room.
37:06
Speaker 3: But maybe because it's done now, I'm already starting to
37:08
Speaker 3: feel that. Yeah, so I did ask Phil for another
37:12
Speaker 3: song a day because now I feel I like being
37:16
Speaker 3: inside that it's a phantom community.
37:19
Speaker 4: There's yeah. You know, one time in.
37:21
Speaker 3: The pandemic, Adam had everybody to his yard for a
37:25
Speaker 3: very distant you know, everyone had a picnic blanket like
37:28
Speaker 3: thirty feet from each other, and it was Amelia Meath
37:31
Speaker 3: from Silvaneso and Beck and Maggie was there that time,
37:36
Speaker 3: and Adam Cohen and you know, it's just like a
37:38
Speaker 3: mac DeMarco. He did that one and it was the
37:41
Speaker 3: first time we'd all you know, been together. To say
37:44
Speaker 3: is that was pretty that's pretty cool that we get
37:46
Speaker 3: to do that together but alone, you.
37:49
Speaker 2: Know, so people like sitting on their blanket and singing
37:52
Speaker 2: their song.
37:52
Speaker 4: No, not at all.
37:53
Speaker 3: We were just hanging like it was song a day
37:56
Speaker 3: had happened, and it's such a commitment and it's such
37:58
Speaker 3: a you know, our whole week is pointed at this
38:01
Speaker 3: like very private exercise that we know other people are
38:04
Speaker 3: having the same private exercise, you know, maybe like cramming
38:08
Speaker 3: for an exam, like everyone in your class.
38:10
Speaker 2: Totally, That's what I just thought of too.
38:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like no one can get that information into
38:14
Speaker 3: your brain but you.
38:15
Speaker 4: But you know everyone's also doing it, you.
38:17
Speaker 2: Know, right, so it feels a little better in solidarity.
38:21
Speaker 3: But I requested another one and for my birthday this year.
38:24
Speaker 3: Hilariously because on Valentine's Day, which is the day after
38:28
Speaker 3: my birthday, the first songs came out. And then I
38:30
Speaker 3: wrote Phil and said, hey, ps, these songs, for the
38:33
Speaker 3: most part on this record came from what the opportunity
38:36
Speaker 3: you gave me to like find them, so you're kind
38:38
Speaker 3: of the godfather of this record. And he's like, okay,
38:41
Speaker 3: well then happy birthday, Let's do another week and it
38:43
Speaker 3: can be any week you want. So I picked the
38:45
Speaker 3: week when I know I'm not on tour, when I
38:47
Speaker 3: know I can get quiet, and we're going to do
38:49
Speaker 3: another one in June.
38:50
Speaker 2: So that's that's awesome.
38:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, we've already started to like send out the invites,
38:55
Speaker 3: justin Vernon wanted to do it, kind of think of
38:57
Speaker 3: some other friends who have expressed interest and said, like,
39:00
Speaker 3: tell me next time it's happening, and yeah, to get
39:04
Speaker 3: out of our own way at this point and have
39:07
Speaker 3: Phil and Damien create that context, it's such a gift totally.
39:12
Speaker 2: Do you need to hear feedback from people when you
39:14
Speaker 2: play something new.
39:16
Speaker 3: No, I usually feel I'm better served to keep it
39:20
Speaker 3: real tight.
39:22
Speaker 4: Until I'm pretty sure about where I'm going with it.
39:25
Speaker 3: The development of those initial little embryos that were found
39:29
Speaker 3: in song a day, it happened like in an isolation
39:32
Speaker 3: beyond even usually I kind of self isolate through the
39:34
Speaker 3: writing process.
39:36
Speaker 4: But I would show MOCKI or Gonzo.
39:38
Speaker 3: I would show certain friends, my really dear friend in
39:41
Speaker 3: Toronto named Adriann, like she's just sort of always been
39:44
Speaker 3: a witness. I kind of like she's always like I
39:47
Speaker 3: believe you or I don't know if I believe you
39:50
Speaker 3: in this case, the closest collaborator, I would say through
39:53
Speaker 3: the writing process besides Song a Day was I became
39:56
Speaker 3: pen pals with the director Mike Mills through the Pandemic
40:00
Speaker 3: and we were just sort of like this epistolary ping
40:04
Speaker 3: pong game that was all about craft and it was
40:06
Speaker 3: all about He was in the middle of editing his
40:09
Speaker 3: new film Coman Come On that's since come out, and
40:13
Speaker 3: I was in you know, kind of isolation Song a
40:16
Speaker 3: Day and like, it's really strange, but this friendship bloomed
40:21
Speaker 3: right at the beginning of the Pandemic and it became
40:23
Speaker 3: kind of this like I don't know what accountability centrifugue
40:27
Speaker 3: or something, because there was someone curious listening, he for
40:32
Speaker 3: whatever reason, got he received energy from other people's problems,
40:37
Speaker 3: like he from solving kind of a problem other than
40:39
Speaker 3: his edit. It seemed to always he'd bring something back
40:42
Speaker 3: with him from coming into my little laboratory, and then
40:47
Speaker 3: he'd leave and go back to what he was working on.
40:49
Speaker 3: And similarly he'd send me screen grabs or little bits
40:52
Speaker 3: of dialogue or something, and you know, it was sort
40:55
Speaker 3: of we were activated by each other's different form like
40:59
Speaker 3: I don't know.
40:59
Speaker 4: I don't know anything about film, and he can.
41:02
Speaker 3: He considered music to be like this playground that was
41:05
Speaker 3: not responsible to like a two hour arc and character
41:07
Speaker 3: development and all of this arduousness that comes with filmmaking.
41:11
Speaker 4: Yeah, he gave me a lot of really cool homework too.
41:14
Speaker 2: I'd very cool.
41:15
Speaker 3: I'd send him an early song and you know he
41:18
Speaker 3: would or like a song a day the day I
41:20
Speaker 3: wrote it. I'd say, I'd lob it over to him
41:22
Speaker 3: and say, like, this was my offering today, I feel
41:23
Speaker 3: particularly good about it. And then he'd he'd have like
41:27
Speaker 3: he was the only person I felt interested in cross
41:29
Speaker 3: talk from or in like input from.
41:31
Speaker 2: What would he say, Like what sort of feedback would
41:34
Speaker 2: he give you?
41:35
Speaker 4: He'd often say, can you put that in plain language?
41:39
Speaker 3: Like write your lyrics out and then underneath verse fyve
41:43
Speaker 3: verse line by line, or just like kind of summarize
41:46
Speaker 3: each verse and what you're trying to what you're what
41:49
Speaker 3: are you saying with that? Like what do you what
41:51
Speaker 3: is the concrete thing you're you're getting at? Because you
41:55
Speaker 3: part of my thing is I like speaking around a thing.
41:57
Speaker 3: I like creating the the image of what's inside in
42:02
Speaker 3: relief kind of and it's sort of like in the
42:05
Speaker 3: in like casting ceramics or something. You make a mold
42:09
Speaker 3: and then you pour something inside it, and when you
42:11
Speaker 3: crack the mold off.
42:12
Speaker 4: There's the shape.
42:13
Speaker 3: Like in a way lyrically, I like doing I like
42:16
Speaker 3: finding a shape in relief, you know. So he would say, Okay,
42:21
Speaker 3: I get that you're you're creating a shape and relief,
42:23
Speaker 3: but now just describe to me what that shape is
42:26
Speaker 3: and then go back and see if you can put
42:29
Speaker 3: a little bit more of the clarity of what that
42:30
Speaker 3: shape is inside. You know, this is a man who's very,
42:33
Speaker 3: very good at narrative.
42:35
Speaker 4: You know.
42:36
Speaker 3: It was just so helpful because I think I was
42:39
Speaker 3: also just trying to find a way to be a
42:43
Speaker 3: little bit closer to the quick and I'd say that
42:46
Speaker 3: that influence from Mike really found I found him in
42:50
Speaker 3: my mind's eye kind of, you know, he's a little
42:53
Speaker 3: angel on my shoulder or saying that, is there another
42:56
Speaker 3: way to say.
42:57
Speaker 2: That, you know, yeah, yeah, I was going to ask
42:59
Speaker 2: you if there's somebody in your mind while you're writing,
43:01
Speaker 2: But it sounds like he was the little angel. He
43:04
Speaker 2: made that wonderful movie with the film that he made
43:07
Speaker 2: for the National Yes, and I think he got them
43:10
Speaker 2: unstuck as well.
43:11
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly, And that's how we met, ironically because Aaron
43:16
Speaker 3: and brace After people now we've all joined the same
43:19
Speaker 3: cult essentially because of what that festival did for me,
43:23
Speaker 3: and they asked if I would come and do the
43:25
Speaker 3: Q and A for screening for that film in Toronto.
43:29
Speaker 3: So that's how I met Mike Goes through that film,
43:31
Speaker 3: which I found.
43:32
Speaker 4: Incredibly powerful, so powerful, and I hate.
43:36
Speaker 3: To say it, but at this point I think I'm
43:38
Speaker 3: incredibly late and I have to go on a motherly
43:41
Speaker 3: errand to pick someone up, if you know.
43:43
Speaker 4: What I'm saying.
43:44
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, yes. Thank you so much for taking
43:47
Speaker 2: the time to talk today. It was so much fun.
43:50
Speaker 2: I'm loving your album.
43:52
Speaker 4: Thank you.
43:52
Speaker 3: This has been such an interesting conversation and it was
43:55
Speaker 3: really really nice to talk to you.
43:57
Speaker 4: I appreciate it.
44:00
Speaker 1: Thanks Device for talking through the inspiration for her new
44:03
Speaker 1: album Multitudes. You can hear all of our favorite five
44:07
Speaker 1: songs on a playlist at brokenrecord podcast dot com. You
44:12
Speaker 1: can subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com
44:14
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44:17
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Speaker 1: Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.