Latest / Kyle Meredith With... / Adam Goldberg on Childhood Memory, Mortality, and Making Music Alone

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Adam Goldberg on Childhood Memory, Mortality, and Making Music Alone · Kyle Meredith With...

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's easy to hear your favorite artist on WFPK from wherever you are.
• 0:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: Listen on your smart speaker, live stream from our website at WFPK.org from Louisville Public Media.
• 0:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: And welcome to another edition of Kyle Meredith with, it's the interview series presented by WFPK, the WFPK.org Consequence and the Consequence Podcast Network.
• 0:43
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• 1:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: We've had some great guests drop him by lately, including Joan Armatraining, Mike Scott of the Water Boys, Mike Patton, a Faith No More, Mr. Bungle, Fitten Bailey and Randy Barbado.
• 1:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: They have produced the new HBO Max documentary, Murder and Glitterball City.
• 1:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: I talked with my initial Susie Porter, Thomas Brody Singster, and David Duelis, all about the latest season of the Artful Dodger on Hulu and Disney Plus.
• 1:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Haley Lou Richardson was here to discuss good luck, have fun, don't die, starring opposite Sam Rockwell.
• 1:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: We also talk with Desmond Child, David Foster, and Manner James Keenan of Tool, a perfect circle and a post of her, just an example of what you get when you subscribe to the Kyle Meredith with podcast.
• 1:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that's me, Kyle Meredith.
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Today, I get to talk with actor, musician, multi-hyphenate Adam Goldberg.
• 2:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: You've seen him in days to confuse, saving private Ryan Fargo, the equalizer that he was just on for the last few seasons.
• 2:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's also as I mentioned a musician and his fifth album is out now, called when the ships of my dreams return.
• 2:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a sweeping, it's an interconnected record that finds him revisiting childhood and fatherhood and the passage of time, and Adam's going to discuss how growing up at a home marked by his parent's split, and this stained glass window that had that title on there, when the ships of my dreams returned, really became the emotional anchor for the new songs.
• 2:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to get into the records fluid, almost symphonic structure, writing about death on tracks
• 2:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: and processing memory from the perspective of appearance.
• 2:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Why the salbum made entirely on his own became both isolating and cathartic.
• 2:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll also touch on leaving Los Angeles, the changing landscape of acting, and why directing films remains as daunting as ever.
• 3:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: All of that is more as we discuss when the ships of my dreams return.
• 3:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's Kyle Meredith with Adam Goldberg.
• 3:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Goldberg sisters have the fifth album else, I believe, it's the fifth album right at this time when the ships of my dreams returned.
• 3:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: Technically I suppose you could say it's the fourth because the first album I made was under the moniker of landy, which I then just retroactively called the Goldberg sisters so that they're all in the same place on, you know, streaming platforms.
• 3:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: But it's all meish.
• 3:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, you know,
• 3:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's the name game.
• 3:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like how precious do you get about that?
• 3:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Obviously, you made the change.
• 3:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, I really liked landy.
• 3:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: But then it seemed like there were a couple, like a few other artists.
• 3:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, honestly, I should have just stuck with it, I guess, because it wasn't ultimately that big of an issue.
• 3:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: But it was enough that if you, I guess, looked for landy at the time.
• 3:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: You would end up with, I think it was like a Korean pop
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: And there was some other sort of random, you know, I guess in the rock record that had come out a few years before.
• 4:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I never bothered to check, you know, in advance of, of christening myself that, but anyway, um, yeah, it was a sort of, it was probably unnecessary, but at the time I had only had one record, so I guess it felt like, you know,
• 4:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: I was, you know, the last one of the game, you know, the landy game that is.
• 4:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think you made the wise decision because it's interesting now looking at, you know, the, the, the name game that became popular, like let's say in the 90s, let's say really pre-google is what I'm getting at here.
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: When you have a ban like cake or the church,
• 4:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Which made sense when you were naming yourself thinking of records or CD stores, where would I be in that?
• 4:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then when they went away and it was all about Google and if you look at the church.
• 5:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then you type in the church band and the church music and you're never getting the band.
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's right.
• 5:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: And that is what happened.
• 5:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: Certainly with Landy at the time, because I mean, I, you know, I mean as much as I was trying to do press obviously, there were, you know, all the pre-existing references to the Landy, which, you know, I mean it was a reference to Eugene Landy, the, you know, the, you know, Brian Wilson's, you know, sort of, you know, weird culting mentor, you know, but there was also, you know, way, you know,
• 5:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: a faint, you know, a well-known rock photographer in Landy.
• 5:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, it became, it became more about Googling than it's, you know, certainly by that point than it was about reference or yeah.
• 5:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: So now we've got the Goldberg sisters and let me tell you how the one who comes up on that one.
• 5:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, well done.
• 5:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: True, although the Google alerts I get are most often about a wippy goldberg and sister act So you just and those are that's fair you just have it transcended that's and I don't think anybody can fault you for that I mean, that's something I ever will either it's about a rumor.
• 6:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I know more about a rumor
• 6:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: Systract 3, I guess, then probably anybody on the planet because of these Google alerts right now.
• 6:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: Have you hit up the director yet to see if you can get in there?
• 6:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 6:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think that would be a two-month-long clash for confusion.
• 6:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: This record is so good when the ships of my dreams return.
• 6:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: And how do you do it?
• 6:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: which is a hard question to ask.
• 6:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: And to paint this for our viewers and listeners, like these records that you do in this, especially this record, like it plays as one beautifully long piece.
• 6:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: And to just sit around like most people write music, like obviously people have done that, people have written albums like this before.
• 6:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: But it's not, like how do you do it because it's not the most general way to put an album together.
• 7:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 7:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 7:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, thanks for that question.
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I definitely tried a little bit more with this one to give it a sense of sort of, you know, inner connectivity.
• 7:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: I did it with, you know, this, I guess the anonymous Goldbrook sisters record, which the second record, however you want to call it, the one called the Goldbrook sisters.
• 7:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: Um, which was done totally differently because that was done.
• 7:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: Excuse me, with a band, I mean, with a set set of musicians, I guess I should say, I did entirely myself.
• 7:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: But that, we left a lot of sort of studio detritus in there that ended up sort of linking the songs.
• 7:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: And again, like you say, that's certainly not the first person to do that.
• 7:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, the Beatles were doing that, where you hear what spoon does it all the time.
• 7:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: before the song begins and after the song ends on certain tracks that you know that you're recording.
• 8:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: But in this case, I guess I started to feel a like there was an emerging theme.
• 8:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: It wasn't that I went into it with any kind of conceptual idea about how this was all going to be connected.
• 8:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: But at a certain point, I did kind of feel like a theme was emerging.
• 8:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: or a few themes were emerging and, you know, particularly this one that ends up, you know, bearing the title track and, and the cover and also my actual back, which is this tattoo, which is this stained glass window that I grew up with when I was a kid living with my mom after my parents got divorced and in the hallway of our stairwell.
• 8:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: when the ships of my dreams returned, it said, although I didn't realize that at the time, I mean, I didn't realize that until I went back and visited, I had always remembered it differently, and then I went back and someone let me in the house and I took a picture of it, and you know, it was, I always had remembered it saying, uh, okay, when the ship sales on,
• 9:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it was quite different.
• 9:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's when the ships of my dreams returned, which was interesting and wild, because I'd always been haunted by this house, I don't know, haunted in a bad way all the sometimes.
• 9:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: I dreamt about it quite often.
• 9:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, really, to this day, I live there between the ages of 6 and 13.
• 9:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, I just carried a lot of really seminal memories for me.
• 9:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I just was constantly revisiting this house in my dreams.
• 9:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so when I saw that, in fact, it said when the ships of my dreams return, I was really blown away.
• 9:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: This was years ago.
• 9:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: But so at some point when this track was kind of almost writing itself, I realized that it was reflecting some other themes on the record.
• 9:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it was probably around that time that I,
• 9:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: was going back through the songs and finding kind of these, you know, many sort of, I don't know, little islands of sound that I would use to kind of connect the various songs.
• 10:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: So at some point it became intentional, but that was really only probably about two-thirds of the way through maybe the record looks like.
• 10:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's beautifully done, the way you've done that.
• 10:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
• 10:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we'll be right back right after this.
• 10:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Welcome back.
• 10:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's Kyle Meredith with Adam Goldberg, but the idea, I mean, that I have a reoccurring dream about a house too, which is one of the reasons why I found that story.
• 10:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: So interesting.
• 10:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: My reoccurring dream of a house.
• 10:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've been having for 20 something years, but it's never a house that I've been to, but it's the same house to actually, I mean, it's, you know, we don't to look very far.
• 10:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Those, you're talking about your most formative years.
• 10:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: Right.
• 10:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: boringly I mean it's not even Freudian it's it's so literal right right right I mean I guess it is Freudian it's not very young in I mean it's just there and and yeah it's a way I think from you to try and make sense of probably you know a childhood that at some point maybe felt a bit fragmented and there are other parts of it that you know I have these incredibly sort of fond memories of it was really hard for me to leave that particular house
• 11:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: Um, when I was 13 years old, um, and, um, you know, um, you know, it's interesting my, my kids and I have moved around a lot because of what I do to really make a living, which is act and, and so, you know, I'm dealing with this with my kids a lot where they're kind of creating memories and a variety of different places and home bases, um, and it's, you know, I guess a little bit,
• 11:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: worries some for me because I kind of feel like I'm, you know, creating a somewhat fragmented, you know, kind of history for them, although, you know, I mean, they're having a, I think a fine childhood, but, but also, I mean, they mentioned it, and they, you know, they talk about, you know, missing this place, or missing that place, or would I ever, so it is definitely, you know, it's definitely a recurring theme in my life.
• 12:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: got him trying not to paint a cliche when I say that, but you know, you must have loved it.
• 12:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 12:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 12:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 12:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's true.
• 12:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I mean, for a while, we were really bopping around because we were, when we, I mean, you know, and there's kind of, there's a song that, that reference is this called, the Great Resignation, which is, was more about a, you know, sort of social phenomenon.
• 12:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: But in our case, we ended up leaving like right smack dab in the middle of the pandemic to go do this job and left LA to come to New York we are living outside of New York and living in this kind of small town.
• 12:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so but you know around that time when we had really no idea where we were going to end up or how long this job was going to last And we were just kind of popping from place to place You know we'd say things like, you know some kids grow up in the military stuff You know like it can't be that bad you know as though all those kids are all super wild stuff like that But anyway But yeah, like so so these these these
• 13:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: various themes were sort of emerging as I went.
• 13:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: For a while, I kind of thought there was going to be a conceptual tie-in to this other track on the record called content or content, depending on how you pronounce it, which is sort of a point, which was about sort of our public lies or social media persona that is in our sort of actual
• 13:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: Epic and ends up becoming a recurring theme, but it ended up not being primary one that I ended up sort of opening and closing the record with, you know, this kind of book ends by my childhood.
• 13:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, that's that spirit of 76.
• 14:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: When you're processing something like this, you know, because, um, spirit of 76, if you've got it right, I mean, we're looking at when you're, you're, you're, you're parents separated, um, run the time, right?
• 14:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: And like the four, I thought, the 405 isn't just a freeway.
• 14:17
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• 14:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, to be totally honest, I mean, there was a period in my life when I first, you know, I came to sort of, I think songwriting and making music much later, then a person who ultimately is maybe as prolific as I, as I been, you know, which is to say, I did really start writing in earnest, well, really at all, until my early 20s.
• 15:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I mean, I basically played some drums.
• 15:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that was kind of like, you know, the instrument that I played.
• 15:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: Um, so I didn't sort of like playing around with guitars and four tracks and, you know, you know, pedals and amplifiers and things like that until my, until my early 20s.
• 15:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: Um, and even then it was, you know, it was sort of almost as much about kind of recording sounds as it was about writing songs.
• 15:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: But for, you know, many years, I think that writing songs for me were absolutely about catharsis.
• 15:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: They were absolutely, you know, they were, I had a poison pen letter, or they were explorations, or whatever.
• 15:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was really a compilation of several recordings with some additional recordings that I had been doing for several years plus a whole backlog.
• 15:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: I had a backlog of songs and demos and ideas of songs that, you know, you know, I mean, I kind of considered the first couple albums to be sort of a clearing of the hard drives in some ways.
• 16:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, quite literally like.
• 16:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: getting these things out of hibernation or, you know, sort of semi fulfillment and, you know, fleshing them out and recording them, I guess, quote unquote properly.
• 16:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: And many of those songs were about relationships.
• 16:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm not seem to really be the big driver for me.
• 16:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: You had a rock and roll
• 16:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, just trying to sort of exercise certain demons or whatever, but at a certain point, and particularly when, I mean, I mean, even actually, I mean, this one record I made strangers morning, half of that was written one of my wife and I, before we were married, it split up for about a week.
• 16:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I was recording these demos or whatever we want to call them to a Tumblr blog I had where I was recording a song a day for what well over a year, or part part parts of the song.
• 17:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: you know, something.
• 17:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, sort of uploading them to this blog, kind of hoping that she would hear them, which she was.
• 17:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, so many of those songs ended up becoming reworked and recorded.
• 17:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: And, and so, you know, it's late as that records, you know, which was the third album I had made.
• 17:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: I was still kind of using, you know, I just music as a way of,
• 17:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: you know, expressing whatever I was experiencing at that very moment.
• 17:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, again, I'm sure that that's when everybody does.
• 17:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: But I think at a certain point, I did start to feel like, you know, I would oftentimes just write music and then, you know, kind of retroactively put lyrics on there that some of which, you know, we're just poetic.
• 17:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: And oftentimes, even meaningless, there were more about the consonants that work, or the syllables that work, or whatever it is.
• 18:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: And this case, I think it was a combination of both, but I definitely felt like I had a bit more to say, well, I hadn't made a record in eight years, and part of that was, I didn't really feel like I had a hell of a lot to say.
• 18:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: really anything to say.
• 18:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I think that, you know, there's a kind of a combination of like the social and political climate as well as having lived a life now as a father for several years where I guess I felt like I had a crude enough different kind of sorts of life experiences and enough things had sort of changed I guess in the world that I felt of, you know, motivated to start writing again, because I really kind of thought this last record I made,
• 18:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: might be it.
• 18:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, it would took a lot out of me.
• 18:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was a big project.
• 18:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was also a photography book and an exhibition, like a gallery show and all this.
• 18:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: And you know, my kids were really, really little and and and and and I was and you know, I was done.
• 19:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: I thought and I was for like against however long it's been eight years.
• 19:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: And this particular case, though, I do feel like some of this stuff with, you know, trial to definitely was probably
• 19:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: emerging from having been a father and also my mother has been visiting us a lot.
• 19:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's lives in Los Angeles and she comes out and visits us and New York and she's extremely close with my kids and I know for a fact that's jostled up.
• 19:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: quite a bit of stuff.
• 19:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: And particularly that spirit of 76 came to me either while she was here or right after she laughed.
• 19:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I think she was even here when my kids were recording the outro because that's their voices at the end of it.
• 19:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think she was like behind us here on the studio.
• 19:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, there's definitely a lot of stuff that came about into the service.
• 19:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's kind of like a, the answer to your question.
• 19:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like an agent of innocence, agent of experience type of a thing.
• 19:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, a little bit, yeah.
• 20:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: A lot of people, you know, you could have written that in the time, but that's what I mean, like to have to have that, that this version of you now, this far removed and to kind of see what that looks like.
• 20:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
• 20:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't have a lot of,
• 20:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: Um, you know, my life feels very paired down, um, in a way my social interactions are much more limited than they used to be, um, I don't, you know, so a lot of these songs that were like about this person or that person or whatever, it's like, there aren't those people around it necessarily.
• 20:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: And, um, and, you know, I don't, um, and you know, I'm,
• 20:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: whatever.
• 20:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm a happily married, you know, sort of family guy.
• 20:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so, you know, I'm not, I'm not necessarily inspired because I, you know, I think that most of the time I was inspired by sort of darker or, you know, sort of more negative, kind of, you know, emotional, you know, issues or, you know,
• 21:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: happenings.
• 21:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so in this case, it's, you know, I've been, you know, there's always going to be these sorts of internal demons, and I think that that comes out a lot of times in the actual music itself.
• 21:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes it's sort of not necessarily inspired, you know,
• 21:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: before I heard it, and it's a little spirit of 76, so that's when days you can fuse.
• 21:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's, that's, that's, that's, that's, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I hadn't thought of that.
• 21:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's, no, yeah, yeah, yeah, and you don't need to, but it was one of the guys, like, but it is interesting.
• 21:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, no, I mean, and I also remember that year, so, so, so well, so, it's funny, because I don't even think when I was making that movie, I don't even know that I thought, I don't even know that I put those two things together,
• 21:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: Also, I mean, we were young enough at that point, I think, where I just didn't, you know, I remember thinking, making that movie, how does this guy?
• 22:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: I guess he was, you know, Rick was about nine years older than us, the director, matured link later, and maybe about a decade.
• 22:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, he was roughly 30.
• 22:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: We were all between, you know, in 19 and 21 or 25, or a couple cases.
• 22:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Um, and I just remember thinking like, how does he have such kind of like perspective on that period of his life because I had zero at that point.
• 22:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: I had been at a high school for four years, you know, just and I thought really I'm going to have that much perspective and it's going to seem like this kind of cohesive experience in some way and just a few years and honestly it never really did.
• 22:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I thought back to my high school years.
• 22:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: And kind of about making movies about my high school because it was a extremely different high school experience than that.
• 22:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it's always been hard for me to imagine how one would do that in a way that felt meaningful.
• 22:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: And cohesive, so it's an impressive feat.
• 23:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we'll be right back right after this.
• 23:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Welcome back, it's Kyle Meredith with Adam Goldberg.
• 23:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, it has been the,
• 23:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: the decade since your last directorial thing, right?
• 23:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that's your thing, like every 10 years.
• 23:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like this could be it.
• 23:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I actually was thinking that yesterday I was realizing I was running out of time this decade.
• 23:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: Because I was like, let's see, I made my first movie in my, I guess I was in my mid 20s.
• 23:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then second one was just around the time I turned.
• 23:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, no, I guess I was 32.
• 23:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: So it was early 30s.
• 23:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: Then it was 40 early 40s.
• 23:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: But now I'm mid 50s.
• 23:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I got it right up.
• 23:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: Um, yeah.
• 23:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: I, you know, that's not on by design at all.
• 23:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's because the movies I've made are so draining and and I think in some ways, you know, there feels they're, they've been so hard to produce and so difficult to distribute and there doesn't, you know, frankly, there hasn't been a lot of the cost benefit is, you know, definitely is is not balanced in a way that
• 24:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: you know, feels inspiring to get back into it.
• 24:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: Although that was always the intention.
• 24:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, my goal is a kid really was to be a filmmaker.
• 24:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: But it's an incredibly hard way to make art and certainly an a nearly impossible way to make money.
• 24:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, you make it sound like a blast.
• 24:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's the... Yeah, I'm not one of the people who's like, follow your dreams, kids.
• 24:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm like, no, no, you know, go learn plumbing.
• 24:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're talking about, I talk about a lot in this series.
• 24:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, movies, it's impossible to make a movie.
• 24:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's the line.
• 24:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a possible to make a movie.
• 24:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: And you've really got to want to do it.
• 24:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: And you, and it's really impossible to make a good one.
• 24:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't, well, like my last one, you know, I kind of didn't like it before I was making it.
• 24:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, there was a part of me that was making it very cynically because, you know, I had made this movie called Two Days in Paris with Julie Delby, who was,
• 25:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: you know, an old bus.
• 25:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: She was my ex-girlfriend, you know, some years have gone by and then we made this movie together.
• 25:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, I contributed quite a bit to that film.
• 25:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it was a, it was, you know, we worked on it together and spite of, anyway, I can get into that story.
• 25:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: But the point is is that, you know, it was a very collaborative process.
• 25:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I was like, geez, you know, I need to, I need to show that side of myself as a filmmaker a little bit more.
• 25:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so I remember kind of being inspired by this, but I didn't have anything necessarily, I really wanted to say,
• 25:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I was like, well, you know, I had to dig too deep and, and I think, you know, when you're sort of making something that feels sort of outside yourself, um, which ironically is meant to be extremely personal, which it was, it was about like my sort of ambivalence, you know, sort of my, you know, being a commitment foe, but essentially, um, you know, you have to kind, you know, I have to, you know, I have to, you know, I have to, you know, I have to, you know, I have to, you know, I have to, you know, I have to, you know, I have to, you know, I have to, you know, I have to, you know, I have to, you know, I have to, you know, I have to, you know, I have to, you know, I have to, you know, I have to, you know, I have to, you know, I have to, you know,
• 25:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: I never could really find my way into it in a way that felt super organic and was constantly being rewritten and I just had a sinking feeling going into it, which is a kind of ironic also because at the first time I had any kind of distribution deal in place before I even made the movie, whereas the other films I made, which I kind of like, you know, were these
• 26:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: totally immersive artistic ventures, you know, um, are impossible to find or see it.
• 26:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: Right.
• 26:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: But anyway, well, you know, and sort of bring you back around to the record because we're talking about the great resignation in a minute ago in and how that works with this part of your career because leaving a lay and coming to small town, New York.
• 26:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so it's always a
• 26:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: very contradictory statement, but I know what you're talking about.
• 26:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 26:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 26:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 26:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: How does that change your career?
• 26:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: Positively?
• 26:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, I mean, it's impossible to know because, you know, I really was in this, you know, first we were sort of in this pandemic bubble where I didn't seem like, you know, anybody was ever going to, like, there was never going to be any work ever again.
• 26:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then, but, you know, I really left to go do this, this job, excuse me, and
• 26:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: Um, and in the city, uh, well, it was initially in Jersey, which is kind of how we ended up outside New York, um, which is about the equalizer.
• 27:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 27:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and then they, and then they, and then they moved into Brooklyn.
• 27:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so it ended up just becoming a really wretched commute for about four years.
• 27:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: But anyway, um, so, uh, you know, I sort of feel like I emerged from that job if, why, I was gonna say a few months ago.
• 27:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's been nearly a year now.
• 27:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like, as a kind of rip band winkle figure, because A, the entire landscape of the business had been totally changed,
• 27:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: new was happening even before the pandemic but between the pandemic and those two strikes things were really different and have felt extremely different.
• 27:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't think it has anything to do with how, you know, where it is that I'm, you know, living.
• 27:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, my career is kind of run itself in a way, which is not, not, not, not, not a positive or negative in a way.
• 27:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's just sort of like things happen when they happen.
• 27:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: And no matter how much I try to kind of
• 27:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: be proactive, it doesn't really much seem to matter.
• 27:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, the only thing that I seem to have any to the agency over are things like making music and to a certain degree, making films.
• 28:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: And you know, to a certain degree, things I've written and that I've tried to get made that haven't, but you know, at least the writing part before others get involved or turn it down or whatever is yours.
• 28:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so, but yeah, in terms of where I live, other than feeling,
• 28:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, where I live now feels like the literal sense of isolation I had always felt living a life in Hollywood.
• 28:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I'm from Los Angeles, so that will always be my home, and it will just have been a total coincidence that that's where, you know, quote unquote Hollywood is, but I always felt
• 28:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: like an interloper in terms of my sort of place, like in the business, you know, I find myself on red carpets and, you know, sort of, you know, really feel as though I was acting as if.
• 28:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I feel that way, you know, even on stats.
• 28:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I'm often said that like, I know, I'm my greatest performance was my performance as an actor, you know, acting as an actor.
• 29:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, right.
• 29:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: But though it's a big part of the thing of who I am, and I like to think I possess a certain facility that allows me to do it and make a decent living doing it, it's such a fraction of who I am.
• 29:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: I guess holistically, and then also there is the whole sort of kind of schmoozy business part of it.
• 29:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's always felt super alien to me.
• 29:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: So now, just kind of living out here and focusing more like on, I don't know, like my mixed doubles tournament at the local country club.
• 29:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: Hey, it feels weirdly and prothentic, you know.
• 29:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: How's that going?
• 29:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: You got a, not great, not great.
• 29:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you know, my wife my wife is my wife is something taken 10, 10 is an incredibly seriously and and having never played but she's on sort of super athletic and so she's she's doing great.
• 30:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm I still play tennis like it's, you know, the late 70s, you know, where she's like playing this very modern, you know, kind of, you know,
• 30:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: hard top spin tennis, you know, and you might as well just give me like a wooden racket.
• 30:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Just lobbing it.
• 30:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hopefully with the 70 shorts on top of that.
• 30:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, I believe me.
• 30:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's actually an Instagram account.
• 30:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, though, it's actually a website where it sort of aggregates a bunch of repro-like
• 30:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I do on quite a few of them.
• 30:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Good on you.
• 30:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 30:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, let me quickly pay you some more compliments on this record too.
• 30:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 30:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Please do this.
• 30:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Stuck with me.
• 30:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Of course, that line.
• 30:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: You fuck with me.
• 30:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: I fuck with you.
• 30:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's a good line.
• 30:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: What was the title?
• 30:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: I guess.
• 30:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: For a very long time.
• 30:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 31:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: To follow that song around though, because that song... Snakes.
• 31:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, it goes places like like that's feels like a song like I don't know that you might have to chase when you're right yet.
• 31:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 31:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, I that was the only song that was a remnant of something I had written or had, you know, was based on a riff, you know, from
• 31:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: many years ago during that period where I was making, you know, music every single day.
• 31:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: And there was this kind of, yeah, there was the, right, essentially the main one or progression that I always, and it always, and it used to, you know, the demo is just, you know, you fuck with me, I fuck with you, it was just the first thing that came up to my head and, um, and,
• 31:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, it was about 25 seconds long, and I thought, you know, let me see if I can make something out of that.
• 31:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: And that was one of the first two songs I think I recorded, and I think it was the first song song that recorded drums on.
• 32:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, part of this record, part of the idea was for the dog my guess was not just that I was going to play everything myself, which I had done before, but that I was going to record it all.
• 32:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: And mix it all, which I hadn't done before, primarily at a convenience because I now fully alone.
• 32:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't have any of my music compatriots that I used to work with.
• 32:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so that was a challenge in many different ways, because it was the first time I was trying to record a drum set.
• 32:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: I've recorded a drum set, but not in the way
• 32:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: um, you know, in a classic, you know, less sort of garage bandy style.
• 32:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: And um, but in terms of writing that song, yeah, I kind of just had this riff left over and then, yeah, one thing left to another, um, and then there's this kind of break in it, which I always enjoy adding, uh, I kind of an unexpected, um, I don't know, what you call those, I guess it's a, a C part.
• 33:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: And you know, that was one of those I had to kind of
• 33:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: sort of retrofit because it existed as a concept and I didn't really know what I was singing about.
• 33:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: And honestly the lyrics in that song I think are the only set of lyrics on the record that I sang into a scratch track right like to attempt vocal and just kept them.
• 33:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: In other words, I never sat and wrote them down.
• 33:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so I think that might have just been whatever came to my head as I was just trying to demo the song or scratch track the song.
• 33:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then on that track, I have to say this because she's truly extraordinary.
• 33:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you'll never get a sense of it from this.
• 33:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: But there was a, so my, sort of my best friend, my old friend, Eric Seagull, who I,
• 34:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: We went high school together.
• 34:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: He played my dad and you know the skin of our teeth when I was in the 11th grade.
• 34:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: We've been in bands together.
• 34:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's played on several of the records.
• 34:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's played in live iterations of, you know,
• 34:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I mean, really crazy.
• 34:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like, you know, Heliotsmith means, you know, wise blood.
• 34:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know how to start it or something like that.
• 34:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: And you know, she just made a record, which I got a sneak listen up.
• 34:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I mean, and she's not like even necessarily pursuing that.
• 34:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: She just went off to college, like, because she's smart.
• 34:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: But anyway, she's singing, she goes by Oli Lou, her name's all up, but she goes by Oli Lou, and she's singing back up on this.
• 34:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: So that was kind of like a really night.
• 34:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: And she sort of picked it, because I said, you know, do you want to sing on something?
• 34:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I really liked that one at that time.
• 34:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: I only had about three recordings done.
• 35:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 35:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: I got to look her up.
• 35:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 35:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: She put out a little, like, four song.
• 35:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think E.P.
• 35:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: or something like that.
• 35:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: But this record, which is beautiful.
• 35:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: But this record is going to be fantastic.
• 35:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: And she went out to LA and I did work with some of the same people I worked with in the past.
• 35:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it's going to be cool.
• 35:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for the recommendation on that.
• 35:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 35:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 35:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then, again,
• 35:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Everybody is dying.
• 35:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's one of my favorites and help me out on the tally of the acala.
• 35:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you helped help me out on that.
• 35:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a playman on Rio and Spanish.
• 35:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there you go.
• 35:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
• 35:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Those those two songs.
• 35:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Some of my favorite moments.
• 35:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, thanks.
• 35:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Call of the wild and that line.
• 35:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Genocide is the call of the wild.
• 35:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Never knew the kids had such style.
• 35:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's a master piece of
• 35:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's a weird song because, you know, there's a kind of a, you know, it's a hard song to, you know, I wrote that recorded, I should say, well, I'm wrote it.
• 36:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, most of these songs were written and recorded kind of in concurrence, right?
• 36:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so that was written and recorded a couple years ago.
• 36:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, I was even wondering kind of whether I should leave that off the record because.
• 36:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: You can make of that song, I guess, what you will.
• 36:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: But, you know, sort of singing that like a kind of a, I don't know what you would call that kind of song, what is that a power pop song?
• 36:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if that's about things.
• 36:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, or I, you know, I catch a song where genocide is one of the lyrics is as a as a slippery slope and the song is probably it's so subject to interpretation that you could really, you know, you could decide it means what you want it to mean or not, but you want it to mean and be totally supportive or totally furious about it.
• 36:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I, it's, it's basically my much, you know, it's it's sort of trying to write a song about nuanced about nuance in a nuanced way.
• 37:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: totally volatile topic, so you know, when, you know, my publisher said, you know, we have, we think we, we want this to be the single and funny because a really good friend of mine just got the record and he was like, this is the track, you know, and I was like, yeah, it's too challenging to discuss it.
• 37:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: Um, but, uh, but yet,
• 37:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: catchy and actually we recorded that several times and I did that with a bunch of these songs because I recorded that one really early on and I essentially from suit and that's almost re-recorded every single part of it as I got to the mixing phase.
• 37:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: But the song about Rio and Blamina Rio and you know everyone he is dying was you know well the song about Rio is about my old friend Rio who died a couple of years ago and everyone is dying is because everyone has been dying
• 37:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so there is definitely, there is a, you know, there are these three, three songs that sort of run into each other.
• 38:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: One is about Elliott Smith.
• 38:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, one is about listening to Elliott Smith, Mark Lincoln, Lincoln, and David Burman, you know, three songwriters that, you know, influenced me greatly and then moved me greatly who all took their lives.
• 38:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: And when I was about my friend, Rio, the loss is like the cancer, the other was, everyone is dying was when I thought
• 38:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: And an old friend of mine, who I had lost touch with, I found out, had just committed to a side himself.
• 38:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, 2025 seems to be a year, just sort of right with all kinds of loss.
• 38:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so there is this kind of,
• 38:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: trip deck of songs about death are relating to death anyway.
• 38:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: But the fact that you can write about it and you can do it poetically, you know, Jim Carroll has one of the greatest songs of all time, you know, people who died.
• 38:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 38:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: And you know, the radio programmers and the 80s who looked at that and like, I can't touch, you know, it's like, you can, you can touch that.
• 39:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: We can handle this.
• 39:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, no.
• 39:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: And honestly, I've been really
• 39:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, everybody is dying.
• 39:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, like, is there a more blatant, you know, again, and there's no symbolism in there.
• 39:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I, you know, because I really did just, you know, what, I'm trying to, you know, I'm getting older, we're all getting older.
• 39:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: But, you know, I'm at the age now.
• 39:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm at an age that was unfathomable to me.
• 39:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it still is.
• 39:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: I still wake up thinking I'm in my 40s, which already seemed old.
• 39:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: Um, and then I realized I'm in my mid 50s and you know, there are just people who are, you know, um, you know, contemporaries who are die.
• 39:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, they're just in a way that's, but was a little uncommon for a while.
• 39:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: I've had some travel to do some my life for people of, you know, really die prematurely and people are close to me.
• 39:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: Um, but, uh, but.
• 39:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: But in general, you know, I'm entering that period where, you know, you know, you go through like, you know, you go through a period where everyone's getting apartments, put your friends, we're getting apartments, put your go through a period where your friends are, you know, getting married, and go through a period where they're getting divorced, and you go through a period where they're got it.
• 40:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I didn't think I was there yet.
• 40:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: I assume that would happen, you know, in my 70s and 80s, but, you know, it's happening.
• 40:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it's a, and then just,
• 40:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: singing about it in a somewhat, I don't know what, celebratory way, felt cathartic.
• 40:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: And that'll tell you something else, the only time, and I'm not saying it's because it's some incredible, you know, that song is perfection or whatever, but I really wanted to sort of limit the amount of tracking I did on it, I wanted to just kind of spit it out.
• 40:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it came out real fast or recorded it in a couple of days.
• 40:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: And most of these songs, I was layering and laboring over.
• 40:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, the whole record took two years.
• 41:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: That one was in about two days or something.
• 41:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: And when I listened to more or less, you know, the finished version, I really just cried.
• 41:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Because it was like, it was the first time I think where anything I had been sort of
• 41:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: maybe dealing with it was bubbling to the surface just came fully exploding to the surface.
• 41:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it was the first time, you know, in a long time where a song had felt cathartic in that way, that had reminded me a bit of why I like to making music to begin with.
• 41:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I don't know if I've probably weeping for all of that for the content and also for the process and anyway,
• 41:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's funny how that works out, you know, those, those ones that just kind of just happen, but we, you lay back in and I love so many of the songs on this record and that's one of my favorites.
• 41:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's one of my favorite moments, you know, with the weight, you know, just as a fun song on top of it, you know, it's, yeah, it's, the record is so good.
• 42:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it really is.
• 42:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's so good.
• 42:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you take this out?
• 42:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you play this?
• 42:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Is this?
• 42:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I, no, I mean,
• 42:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: because it wouldn't be exactly easy to pull this album off.
• 42:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: I would say what it's not, and I tried to do it.
• 42:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: So the only time I really tried to do it in earnest was when I made my first record, I put together this band and it was really massive.
• 42:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was like those bands, like, you know, I mean, it wasn't quite like the polysponic spree, but it was a little like that.
• 42:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: There were so many of us on stage, we couldn't fit, you know, like barely fit to the gigs we were playing, you know, it's face land or wherever in Los Angeles
• 42:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: But so I played with a band that was a fully formed band called Blackpine and I kind of folded them into my as my band basically for for for the landy stuff and then my wife played violin
• 42:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: her friend, Marit, play violin, and this amazing music, Natalie, who plays with Cat Tower now, was right there.
• 43:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: She, you know, playing all these accessory sort of things, well, so that I had my friend Greg, who's, you know, at the time, I, I, I, I, a lot of friends who were like, you know, hadn't settled down yet, and it was just a, it was perfect timing.
• 43:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: So Greg hadn't settled down yet, and I always got two kids and blah, blah, blah.
• 43:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: So he was playing keyboards and addition to me playing keyboards and guitar on my friend there.
• 43:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: I just had a second baby and his wife's fears couldn't believe that she was doing this, but if he was playing bass and so I don't know how many of us, it was eight of us or something like that.
• 43:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: And we got kind of close.
• 43:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: And we played a few times, but it was hard and people's time is valuable and we weren't that young.
• 43:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so we did a bunch, but
• 43:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: superstresses me out.
• 43:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm not a great player.
• 43:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, though I play everything on these, you know, later records, less couple records, you know, I do it in a way which is just, you know, you know, I'm comping stuff like crazy, you know, I'm layering stuff.
• 44:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, playing live, you know, is always felt incredibly nerve wracking and stressful.
• 44:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, always make it more complicated than I need to, even though I have eight musicians on stage in that case.
• 44:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: I still had loop pedals.
• 44:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: I still had like a giant board.
• 44:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: I still had like, you know, tape echoes where I was trying to, you know,
• 44:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: Um, and as time went on, um, you know, I would try and do that in a more paradigm way, so then there was an iteration that was just sort of me and my wife and Andrew Lynch who recorded, um, uh, two of my records and played on them, um, a bunch of them and, you know, we went to Europe to promote the second one I kind of had to promote because it was, it was a label and they, you know, we were like playing on the BBC
• 45:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, it was very hard to get the sound that I wanted and, you know, to figure out how to turn these things into samples and into loops.
• 45:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: And, um, and again, you know, really sort of exhibit the density of these recordings.
• 45:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, and, and oftentimes, a way of me sort of metaphorically doing that is with loop pedals.
• 45:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: But that's just a very stressful process.
• 45:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I'm not one of these, you know, what I'm what's his name at Ed.
• 45:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Sharon can't share it.
• 45:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
• 45:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't know which way you were going on that.
• 45:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's yeah, yeah, I'm not like a you know, I'm not I'm a looping master though.
• 45:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: I've been using loop pedals as songwriting tools, you know, for you know, 20 plus years or something now, but you do the nails in way.
• 45:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 45:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, you just, yeah, you make the records.
• 45:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: You let the records live.
• 45:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I'm I way, yeah.
• 45:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, yeah, I wish I was making a record there.
• 45:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: He knows the way that just
• 45:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'd be genius, but, you know, my, you know, the opening track on my last record was called their dear Mr. Nilsson.
• 46:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was that asking him for a song or a good advice.
• 46:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: But, um, but yeah, I mean, that is, I mean, look, and yes, I mean, or the Brian Wilson way, I mean to use another,
• 46:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: tapstone, you know, but yeah, where it's like, I like, I mean, it's the biggest cliche in the world, the studio is the instrument, but for me it really is because I'm not player, you know, seriously, you know, no complaints for me.
• 46:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: I loved it, love to see it, love, but the record, again, I'm just over complementing you at this point.
• 46:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't mind.
• 46:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: No, I've so nice to hear it.
• 46:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's such an insanely, lonely, isolating.
• 46:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: process and there's some real benefits to do these things by yourself.
• 46:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think because there's no pressure necessarily it's something posed, you know, you're not wasting anybody else's time or not feeling like you are whatever it is.
• 46:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: Um, you know, you're doing it on your own terms, but it is really, really lonely.
• 47:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so, and you kind of feel like, for what?
• 47:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: Because I'm not, look, I mean, let's face it.
• 47:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I'm not a guy who's, nobody's expecting the fifth Goldberg sister's record.
• 47:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, they're, they're not.
• 47:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: And that's fine.
• 47:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: I've sadly, nobody's expecting anybody's record anymore.
• 47:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Um, you know, all own rules.
• 47:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: Seemingly, regardless of statute and, unless you're, you know,
• 47:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: So it's sort of like, it's just a crazy time to sort of be releasing music into the ether.
• 47:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: And you're always just like, you know, whenever the pebble in the ocean, you know, metaphor used to be, you know, it's got to be expanded for the modern era.
• 47:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: So hearing that is extremely, and I've always said this.
• 47:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: I was like, if I were six or seven or eight or nine, and that's true, it's like, you know, I get a text from a, there's a great friend of my wife who used to be a music publisher, and she's a total, you know, audio file, well, music file, what do you call that?
• 48:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: Sure, the both works, yep.
• 48:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: record of file.
• 48:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: And she's, you know, sending me these really specific things.
• 48:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, man, bro, thank you so much.
• 48:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it's true.
• 48:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it's, it's, that's all you can hope for.
• 48:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, all I wanted to do is just get to the point where I could live with listening to it a couple years later.
• 48:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: That was my goal.
• 48:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, well, I'm so happy you're doing it and the record is so good.
• 48:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Seriously.
• 48:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
• 48:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: So whatever it takes for you to keep doing this occasionally, and maybe even directing again and occasionally, you know, all right, all right, I'll look into it.
• 48:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: My thanks to Adam, when the ships of my dreams return is out now, thanks to you for checking out the episode.
• 48:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Before you get out of here, do remember to hit that subscribe button so you can keep up with all the interviews that I put out every single week at Spotify, Apple Podcast, NPR,
• 48:58
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• 49:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: where I do a show Monday if you Friday starting 6 p.m. Eastern 4 hours of classics from the 80s and 90s you get the best in new music, a bonus interviews, lots of music news as well.
• 49:25
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• 49:39
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• 49:48
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• 49:54
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• 49:56
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• 49:59
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• 50:00
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• 50:04
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• 50:19
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• 50:20
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• 50:27
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